Mississippi: Armed pervert beaten nearly to death: "Police had been watching Vincent Goff for years, convinced he was the masked man who sexually assaulted couples at gunpoint on the Mississippi coast. But before investigators closed in, they say Goff picked the wrong victim and was beaten nearly to death with his own rifle. Goff, a 37-year-old unemployed Biloxi man with a wife and two stepsons, was being held Wednesday in the Harrison County Jail after spending five days in a hospital recovering from severe head wounds. Little is known about Goff's background or the unidentified man who beat him so hard that the wood stock of the rifle broke. But authorities say Goff's arrest caps a terrorizing series of attacks that began on the sandy banks of the Biloxi River in 2006. Goff allegedly approached a man and woman last Thursday afternoon on an isolated logging road in Harrison County and forced them into the woods with a rifle, Sheriff's Maj. Ron Pullen said Wednesday. They were forced to strip off their clothes and told to perform sexual acts when the male victim, described as a physically fit member of the military in his mid-30s, wrestled the gun away. "He beat him until the stock broke over his head and then continued to beat him until he thought he had him incapacitated," Pullen said."


Louisiana: No charge against business owner who shot intruder: "No charge is expected to be filed against the owner of Central Station who fired a shot at an intruder when the man lunged at him Tuesday afternoon. "We're not new to this," Joseph Giglio, 68, of Shreveport, said of someone breaking into the defunct railroad terminal-turned-bar. The business in the 1000 block of Marshall Street has been burglarized 20 or 30 times, he said. Jason Funderbunk, 35, hometown unavailable was rushed into emergency surgery at LSU Hospital in Shreveport in serious condition for treatment of a gunshot wound to his torso, according to a Shreveport Police Department news release. Funderbunk was charged with one count of burglary and placed in police custody at the hospital Tuesday night. Hospital officials said they could release no information about his condition because of his status as a prisoner. The security company that monitors Central Station detected an intruder in the unoccupied business shortly before 4:30 p.m. and alerted Giglio, who was at another of his operations, a plumbing outlet, according to police. Giglio armed himself and he and an unidentified bartender went to the bar, authorities said. Giglio found someone hiding behind the counter and him to get on the ground while he called police, Giglio and authorities said. Instead, the intruder leapt over the counter toward Giglio and tried to disarm the business owner. Giglio said he held the man away from the weapon with one arm and fired one shot. "I tried to shoot him in the leg, but I don't know where I got him," Giglio said, explaining that police soon arrived and whisked him into a police cruiser. The intruder "apparently entered the structure through a hole in the roof and was burglarizing the business there," the police news release states."


A few words on gun control: “Almost everyone here in the US can tell you what was to be the first battle in our War of Independence. The Battle of Lexington Green in Massachusetts in April, 1775. … But what’s now conveniently left out of the US History textbooks today is why the British were coming.And why was that? … General Thomas Gage, military governor of Massachusetts … decided to counter these moves by sending a force out of Boston to confiscate weapons stored in the village of Concord. Confiscate the weapons .… And why did the British want the weapons confiscated? Well, to be able to properly control one’s subjects, first you must be able to take away their ability to resist.”


Australia has a Shooters Party with real power: "The Shooters Party MP Roy Smith is as emphatic as he is resolute. The Premier's chief of staff, Graeme Wedderburn, and the Treasurer, Eric Roozendaal, have been schmoozing him and his colleague Robert Brown in recent weeks to try to get them back on the Government's side in voting in the upper house, all to no avail. The Shooters Party insists that the Government must agree to its bill, which would allow shooting in national parks, or face the Shooters opposing many Government bills - a situation that led to bizarre scenes two months ago when the upper house was shut down unadjourned after the Government lost control of it. Mr Smith said: ''Our talks, as far as I'm concerned, are limited to us reiterating our position as it was when Parliament rose.'' Mr Wedderburn is understood to have offered the Shooters Party the right to shoot in national parks under Department of Environment and Climate Change supervision. However, that was not shifting Mr Smith yesterday. ''They said [that] last time round. We're not interested in that. The bill we have put forward is entirely reasonable. It's best practice around the world and in other states in Australia - why shouldn't we do it in NSW?''