On 28 August, 2019, relatives of a former gun dealer called police because, they said, they were concerned the 72-Year-Old man might be depressed and/or suicidal. I do not know if the man was suicidal or not, but old white men commit the largest percentages of suicides. They tend to use guns to do the deed. The police raided the house, on the authorization of the relatives. It appears to be a nice home in a nice neighborhood. Bustleton is home to many of Philadelphia's police officers and firefighters.
The wellness check turned into a full blown media circus. Swat was called "to assist in clearing weapons". The bomb squad was called. Hazmat was called. Why? Because the man involved, who had been a gun dealer, according to relatives, had a modest gun collection, some inert grenade bodies (easily and legally purchased), a smoke grenade (totally legal), some mercury (totally legal), and about a thousand rounds of ammunition. From abc.com:
According to investigators, officers encountered a 72-year-old man whom relatives expressed concern that he may be depressed or suicidal. The man was taken to the hospital for evaluation. Relatives said the man used to be a gun dealer.
Police say family members authorized them to enter the home, and upon entering, they found more than 50 guns, hundreds of rounds of ammo, 10 hand grenades, a pipe bomb and liquid mercury. The grenades are believed to be inert.
Here is the headline from cbslocal.com: Philadelphia Police Find More Than 50 Guns, Grenades And Liquid Mercury In Bustleton Home, Officials Say
Watching some video of the raid by Philadelphia's finest, I winced as the nice long guns were unceremoniously, dumped on top of each other in the back of a police van "to have their serial numbers checked to be sure they were legal". In today's digital age, serial numbers can easily be checked in the field. The former firearm dealer had been taken to the hospital for an evaluation.
This does not require the guns to be taken from the home. Once impounded by the police, try to get your guns back, especially in Philadelphia. The mayor is notoriously biased against gun ownership. The modest collection of pistols, rifles, and shotguns, say, 55, as the number was over 50, and almost certainly less than 60, or the reports would have said "more than 60", is likely worth 20-30 thousand dollars. It might take more then $30,000 in lawyers fees to fight the city to have the guns returned. The city will be using other people's money and city attorney's to prevent the return of the guns.
50-60 guns is a modest gun collection. Many people have hundreds of guns. A thousand rounds of ammunition is only 20 rounds per gun. It could be two bricks of .22 ammunition that sells for less than $40, total.
Hopefully, the rule of law will be followed and the guns returned immediately, if the former gun dealer is not adjudicated as a threat to himself. Proving your self to not be a threat to yourself, is not clear cut and obvious. Some in our society would say merely being old, white, male, and a gun owner shows you to be unfit to have guns.
It only takes one relative who is disgruntled or overly cautious to create this nightmare for the former gun dealer.
In this case, it was the police who turned an ordinary welfare check into a media, anti-gun ownership circus.
If the police cannot, at a glance, tell that an inert grenade body, without fuse or filler, is *not* a grenade, they are incompetent. If they are saying a piece of pipe with, or without end caps, if there is no explosive filler or fuse, is a "pipe bomb" they are incompetent. If they feel the need to call a hazemat team because someone owns a bottle of mercury, which has numerous legal uses, and is completely legal to own, they are incompetent.
Worse, much worse, is the possibility the police are *competent*, but in this case, and others like it, are malicious in order to secure media propaganda and political kudos. They know the guns, inert grenade bodies, ammunition and mercury are legal, but see a great opportunity to grandstand, create a media circus, and gain political credit from a rabidly anti-gun ownership mayor. That seems to be the attitude of Chief Inspector Scott Small, in the video.
I do not know Inspector Small. Maybe he really is as clueless as he would be required to be, to avoid the perception as a politically correct party apparatchik.
I hope it is not happening in this case. I would love to be proven wrong.
Maybe, in a few days, we will see a followup where the former gun dealer was found competent, all his guns and legal possessions are returned, at no cost to him, and the police offer an apology for overreacting, but, of course, claim it was all in concern for his safety. Or, if he is not found competent, the guns are turned over to his relatives or fiduciary, to be cared for as the substantial assets they are.
I will not be holding my breath. The suspicion of potential suicide should not override our Constitutional rights. The suspicion of relatives should not trump all the careful protections provided for in the Constitution, yet that is precisely what is happening. It may take a Supreme Court case to stop this insanity.
Who knows? One or two more Supreme Court appointments by President Trump, and it could happen.
An armed man was shot while breaking into an apartment early Friday, according to the Jackson Police Department.
Johnathan Jenkins, 27, is charged with residential burglary, armed robbery and aggravated assault for the incident that occurred in the 900 block of E. Northside Drive, JPD said. More Here
He made a noise complaint to the police, who arrived, but they did not issue a citation before leaving. Smith said shortly after, Ladner came pounding at his front door.
“So I opened the door,” said Smith. “As soon as I opened the door, he grabbed me and just started beating the hell out of me.”
He said, “I was fearing for my life."
Smith did not say what happened afterward. He and his attorney said the shooting was self-defense.
"This happened on Larry and Lori Smith's property at night,” said Glass.
An 84-year-old repeat robbery victim shot an attempted home invasion suspect who tried to break into his home early Wednesday morning.
Officers responded to a residential street near Loop 12 and Interstate 35E around 1:30 a.m, Dallas police said.
Neighborhood crimewatch leader DeRouens Mitchell praised the victim for taking a stand.
"If more people would shoot at the robbers or invaders, they would think twice about breaking into their homes. 'Hey this person may be armed,'" Mitchell said. More Here
Image from New Zealand Police, Christchurch, NZ 12 July, 2019, scaled by Dean Weingarten from independent.co.uk
On 15 March, 2019, a political terrorist attacked two mosques located in Christchurch, New Zealand. He killed 51 people and wounded many more. The far-left government of Jacinda Ardem immediately set on a course to ban semi-automatic firearms in New Zealand. Those opposed were shouted down. The government censor worked hard to keep the public from reading the manifesto published by the terrorist. That conveniently prevented people from knowing that gun confiscation was one of his goals. When academic John Lott pointed this out on Twitter, he was banned.
Initial reports were few guns were being turned in, partly because of doubts about the accuracy of compensation the government was willing to pay.
The picture above is from the first turn-in event at the Riccarton Racecourse in Christchurch, New Zealand, on July 13th, at the first event of the turn-in.
224 firearms were turned in at that event, as well as 217 accessories. Legal gun owners had registered 905 guns on line to be turned in. 169 gun owners showed up. Compensation paid for guns and accessories was $433,682 NZ dollars. The highest compensation paid to one gun owner was $13,000 NZ dollars. The total averages to a bit less than $2000 per gun (NZ).
Since the initial legislation, the NZ Prime Minister has put forward a test balloon pushing the idea of mandatory gun registration, in part, because the government does not know who has the guns they want to ban. The P.M. claimed this was the plan all along. It is hard to believe. From stuff.co.nz:
Firearm owners will have to register their guns amid the largest changes to gun laws in decades.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced details of the firearm law
overhaul on Monday, saying it would come with a message ingrained in
law: firearm ownership is a privilege and not a right.
The Government is seeking cross-party support the latest reform effort,
but already resistance to the a firearm register – a contentious
measure linking gun serial numbers to licence holders – is fomenting.
When gun owners see guns being confiscated, they tend to resist gun registration. It limits their options. There are always some gun owners who are eager to turn in guns. Many are people who inherited guns, as well at those who no longer use them. Before the beginning of the confiscation/compensation scheme, legal gun owners had registered eight thousand firearms to be turned in. 905 guns had been scheduled for the event in Christchurch, but only 224 showed up. It is likely the guns that did not show up, would be turned in for compensation later, as they were already identified.
One month after the confiscation began, a bit over 10,000 firearms
had been turned in.
8,000 guns had been registered online to be
turned in before the start of the confiscation/compensation scheme. We
do not know how many of the 10,000+ guns now turned in, consisted of the 8,000 that had
been registered online to be turned in. It may be a large
proportion.
Nicole McKee, spokeswoman for the Council of Licensed
Firearms Owners estimated the vast majority of banned guns are not being
turned in. From stuff.co.nz:
Only the most law-abiding firearm owners would show up, leaving New
Zealand "less safe than on March 15" with "hundreds of thousands" of
firearms still at large.
"Perhaps the greatest tragedy is the
Government's decision to exclude illegally-held firearms from the
buyback. It appears to be telling law-abiding firearm owners 'line up',
while telling criminals 'keep doing what you're doing," he said in a
statement.
Council of Licensed Firearms Owners (Colfo)
spokeswoman Nicole McKee earlier said some owners were concerned about
safety and most were unhappy with the compensation package that was
worked out on wholesale rates rather than retail prices.
She
said Colfo estimated 250,000 to 300,000 banned firearms were in
circulation, but only 8000 firearms had been notified on the police's
online system.
Compensation
is limited to legal gun owners. The New Zealand gun
confiscation/compensation scheme will end on 20 December, 2019. Over
$200 million NZ has been allocated for compensation.
When Australia passed a somewhat similar law 23 years ago, the police and politicians hailed it as a great success. They crowed about the piles of sporting guns being destroyed. They showed small mountains of guns that had been turned in. The pictures were everywhere.
Admittedly, the New Zealand numbers are very small compared to the Australian version of gun destruction. 10,000 compared to 650,000. 10,000 is still a respectable pile of firearms.
Where are the pictures?
In the United States, when voluntary gun turn-ins are arranged, the organizers invite the media to take pictures and celebrate the destruction of the valuable items. We are not seeing many pictures from New Zealand. We are only seeing a few, very select, pictures.
The compensation is limited to guns that have been banned. But not all banned guns need to be destroyed. In addition to compensation and destruction, the government is willing to pay up to $300 to make a guns legal under the law. From loc.gov:
A new option allows owners of some prohibited firearms to have them modified by approved gunsmiths to make them lawful, with costs up to $300 met by the Crown;
It is not clear, exactly, what modifications are accepted. One option considered, was to have guns converted from semi-automatic to manual operation. Another option would be to reduce the size of the magazine on semi-automatic .22 rifles, or shotguns.
There are several potential reasons why we are not seeing pictures of piles of guns being turned in for compensation, in New Zealand.
First: The turn-in events are being held in many, widely dispersed locations. The number of guns at each location is probably less than a couple of hundred.
Second: The police may not be not interested in the propaganda value of the pictures. They may see the whole issue as silly and rather embarrassing.
Third: Many of the guns being "turned-in" are being sent to gunsmiths to be altered to meet the requirements of the new law. With up to $300 NZ is being allowed for this purpose, it would be an attractive option for many, and could save the government money.
At the end of January, we should know how many guns have been turned in, and if the police will post photos of the thousands of guns to be destroyed.
DAYTON, Ohio (WDTN) – Two 17-year-old boys are dead after a shooting at a home in Dayton Wednesday night.
Police responded to a residence in the 800 block of Conners Street after a man called 911 to report that he had shot two people in his garage. More Here
Sgt. Paul Parizek, a spokesman with Des Moines police, told the Register that the shooting victim was actually the aggressor in the incident, which occurred about 8 a.m. in the 1400 block of Capitol Avenue. The man has not been named because charges have not been filed. He is still undergoing medical treatment for a non-life-threatening gunshot wound to the leg, police say. More Here
(KFOR) In the chaos of late-night storms Monday, Oklahoma City police were called to a house on an alarm check…and shot at a man who turned out to be the homeowner.
“When officers arrived, they went up to the front door, knocked on the door, somebody from inside approached the front door with a gun in his hand,” said Oklahoma City Police Capt. Bo Mathews. “The officer stepped back and started shooting at this individual.” More Here
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (RBG) is no friend of the Second Amendment. Justice Ginsburg voted against
the Heller decision. She voted against the McDonald decision. Her
opinion on the Second Amendment is clear. From armsandthelaw.com:
"If the court had properly interpreted the Second Amendment,
the Court would have said that amendment was very important when the
nation was new," she said. "It gave a qualified right to keep and bear
arms, but it was for one purpose only — and that was the purpose of
having militiamen who were able to fight to preserve the nation.""
Ruth's position is to define the Second Amendment out of existence,
without any argument, because she believes it has no purpose in modern society. Her position has been: The Second Amendment is old. Therefore we can ignore it. That is the Progressive position about the Constitution. It is old,
therefore we can ignore it.
On 21 December of 2018, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had the lower lobe of her left lung removed because it contained two malignant cancer nodules. From theatlantic.com:
On Friday, surgeons in New York removed the lower lobe of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s left lung. According to a statement from the Supreme Court, two nodules—which had been discovered in a CT scan after Ginsburg broke three ribs last month—were determined to be malignant.
Images before the surgery showed no evidence of cancer elsewhere in her body, and doctors at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center reported that there was “no evidence of any remaining disease” after the procedure. According to the statement, no further treatment is planned.
On 23 August, 2019, the Supreme Court released information indicating Justice Ginsburg had completed three weeks of radiation therapy to treat a tumor on her pancreas. This treatment occurred less than eight months after the surgery to remove a lobe of her lung.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg today completed a three-week course of stereotactic ablative radiation therapy at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. The focused radiation treatment began on August 5 and was administered on an outpatient basis to treat a tumor on her pancreas. The abnormality was first detected after a routine blood test in early July, and a biopsy performed on July 31 at Sloan Kettering confirmed a localized malignant tumor. As part of her treatment, a bile duct stent was placed. The Justice tolerated treatment well. She cancelled her annual summer visit to Santa Fe, but has otherwise maintained an active schedule. The tumor was treated definitively and there is no evidence of disease elsewhere in the body. Justice Ginsburg will continue to have periodic blood tests and scans. No further treatment is needed at this time.
Justice Ginsburg is old, but we cannot ignore her. She is one of nine votes on the Supreme Court. She is one of four that routinely and regularly vote to ignore parts of the Constitution they dislike, especially the Second Amendment. She should never have been nominated for an appellate court position, let alone the Supreme Court. She should never have been a judge. Her philosophic opinion, that she can ignore parts of the Constitution she wishes to, is the philosophic equivalent of no Constitution.
RBG is old, but she is tough. For those who wish her ill, keep your fingers from the keyboard. Leave the left to wish death on others. They are on the side of death. As Second Amendment supporters, we need to exert the self discipline. We possess self restraint in much greater quantities than those on the Left. As much as a lack of self discipline is a signature of the modern leftist, self discipline has always been a key quality of Second Amendment supporters.
Second Amendment supporters need to be prepared for the insane flood of pressure from the Democrats and their party organs of what used to be main stream media. If you thought the pressure on President Trump and the Republican Senators was insane when replacing Justice Kennedy with Justice Kavanaugh, expect it to be redoubled, tripled, quadrupled, when Justice Ginsburg's replacement is being considered.
The Left will demand that a person of the same leftist, anti-Constitutional, anti-limited government, anti-Second Amendment philosophy be appointed in her place. Expect threats of civil war. Expect death threats. Expect marches of thousands of crazed leftists calling for violence. Expect to see riots promoted in Democrat strongholds. Those have all been used already in an attempt to sway President Trump from upholding his duties as President of a Constitutional Republic. They will be tried again. They will not succeed. Expect more agent provocateurs to attempt to goad patriots to violence, as they did during the campaign of candidate Trump. Expect false flag operations such as were done during the Trump campaign and later. They will not be successful if patriots pursue and expose the truth. The Left has shown itself to be the party of lies, deception, hatred, and false accusations.
Those tactics worked for decades, as the Left controlled the information flow in the United States. With talk radio, the Internet, social media, and a video recorder in the hands of the majority of citizens, the Left no longer controls the flow of information.
The Left has made clear they wish to destroy this country as it was founded and as it has existed as a Constitutional Republic of limited governmental power.
If Justice Ginsburg is replaced with an Originalist and Textualist justice, they will feel cornered. They will feel desperate. The party organs of the former main stream media will not do anything to discourage extremism, hatred of the Republic, and yes, violence. I will not be surprised to see actual assassination attempts against Conservatives. They have already happened. Expect more. Be on your guard. Know the laws of self defense in your state. Know how to operate your phone as a recording device. Today, the video recorder is as much a tool of freedom as is a pistol or rifle.
Pray for Justice Ginsburg. She desperately needs redemption and the love of God. She needs Jesus. We are all sinners. Pray for Justice Ginsburg to gain wisdom, for her to see the error of her ways. She could change her mind and decide to uphold the Constitution.
It could happen. I would not give odds on it.
Justice Ginsburg will die. We all will. She will likely die during the Presidency of Donald Trump. Be prepared. Know the Left will do anything to prevent an originalist, textualist justice from taking her place. They are desperate. Desperate people are dangerous.
Investigators say the father in a fatal Limestone County shooting will not face charges. They say the shooting that happened on Corrie Lane in Athens appears to have been in self defense.
A male intruder was shot early Wednesday morning in East Flagstaff. Police say when the man forced his way into the residence in the 52-hundred block of East Cortland Boulevard at around 2:42 a.m., one of the people inside shot the intruder while another resident was on the phone with 911.
Daniel McGown was uneasy when he went to bed Monday night — so much so that he slept with a loaded Sig Sauer 9mm handgun under his pillow.
He would need it in the morning.
McGown, 73, a retired business litigation attorney, held a burglary suspect at gunpoint inside his Crosby Street home in Akron’s West Hill neighborhood early Tuesday morning until police arrived. More Here
Police were called just before 12:30 a.m. to The Liquor Store in the 4600 block of Mansfield Road.
The store’s clerk shot the would-be robber. The robber was taken to a Shreveport hospital for the treatment of a non-life-threatening injury. More Here
A young pregnant woman was shot three times Monday evening in southwest Houston.
The woman, 19, and her boyfriend were walking in the
6500 block of Willowbend when someone inside a passing vehicle started
shooting at the couple around 7 p.m. As the woman collapsed, her
boyfriend pulled his own firearm and returned fire at least once,
according to Houston Police Department Lt. Alisa Smith.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.— Michael Ortega was fighting back tears Sunday morning as he described the deadly fight that occurred between two neighbors the night before that left one dead and the other hospitalized.
Ortega said one of his neighbors, who he calls Yahtzee, was shot and killed by the man who lives next door after Yahtzee attacked that man with a baseball bat. More Here
EL CERRITO, Calif. (KTVU) - El Cerrito police have arrested a man, armed with a rock, for assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer. The man, described by police as a transient, was shot and injured by an off-duty San Francisco police officer during the incident.
Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg has announced felony murder charges for former Sgt. Gerald Goins of Narcotics Squad 15, the Houston Police Department (HPD), in the homicides of Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas. The married couple, who lived in their modest Houston home at 7815 Harding Street for 20 years, were killed with their dog in a no knock raid on January 28th. DA Ogg also announced former officer Steven Bryant has been charged with second degree tampering of a government document.
Both officers retired two months after the raid, as the investigation into the raid proceeded.
At every turn of the investigation of the 28 January raid, where the married couple were killed, and four officers wounded, more questions are raised and more disturbing facts uncovered.
We know the no-knock warrant was fraudulent. Both Houston Police Chief Acevedo and District Attorney Ogg acknowledge this fact. We know no significant amount of drugs or cash was found at 7815 Harding Street. We know most of the neighbors did not see anything suspicious, and knew Dennis Tuttle as a medically discharged Navy man, and Rhogena Nicholas as a caring, believing Christian wife, who sent a prayer to her mother every day. The neighbors said the couple kept to themselves, with few visitors. We know the only heroine found in relation to the raid was heroine found in Sgt. Goines Houston Police Department vehicle.
We know it was the police that fired the first shot, killing the couple's dog, after they broke down the door without warning. Breaking in without warning is the point of a no-knock raid.
In the press conference, delivered with confidence and authority by District Attorney Ogg, several facts were highlighted.
The no-knock warrant for the raid was approved by a municipal judge. No member of the Harris County District Attorney's office saw or had anything to do with the warrant until after the raid occurred. DA Ogg was careful to make this point early.
The raid was carried out by HPD narcotics squad 15. There were 10 members of the squad at the raid.
Sgt. Gerald Goines prepared a tactical plan to be carried out by Goines and the other nine members of squad 15. Goines briefed the squad the white man at the target was known to carry a handgun and there was a large dog that could cause a problem. Four members of the squad were shot, including Goines, who was wounded in the neck, in such a way that he communicated with investigators, in the hospital, by writing.
Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas were both killed with multiple gunshot wounds. Their deaths were homicides. Because their deaths were predicated during the commission of a felony (the fraudulent warrant), former officer Goines is being charged with two counts of felony murder.
DA Ogg reported, two days after the raid, Officer Steven Bryant wrote a supplement to the report. In it, he claimed he had assisted Goines just the day before. He claimed he recovered a bag with heroine. Bryant claimed he recognized the drugs as being purchased by the CI two days before. Ogg says all those claims were false.
The Texas Rangers presented evidence to the District Attorney's office about who was responsible for the gunshot wounds to the four members of narcotics Squad 15. The findings will be presented to the grand jury being convened by the DA's office, to investigate the raid. In this extraordinary case, charges were made against former Officer Goines and former officer Bryant, in the interest of the safety of the public and informants, before the grand jury was convened. Both suspects were known to have active passports and access to their retirement money.
As the investigation unfolded, former officer (then Sgt. Goines) claimed a confidential informant made the buy. That informant denied it happened. Then Goines claimed it was a different confidential informant. That informant denied it. It was not stated how many confidential informants Goines claimed made the buy. They all denied it.
Goines later admitted there was no confidential informant. He claimed he personally made the drug buy.
Goines affirmed that Steve Bryant never identified the drugs.
Goines said he could not identify Dennis Tuttle as the person he purchased the drugs from.
The interview was taped. Goines answered in writing.
Former officer Goines has been charged with two counts of felony murder.
Former officer Steven Bryant has been charged with one count of second degree tampering with a government document. The intent of the false entry was to defraud the public.
Both former officers have surrendered to the authorities. Bail has been set at $300,000 for Goines and $50,000 for Bryant.
Images from Houston Police Department, source nbcnews.com, 23 August, 2019, combined, cropped and scaled by Dean Weingarten.
A Harris County grand jury will investigate this incident and to see if there are further incidents that should be prosecuted. They will determine if any others of the 10 members of the raid should be charged. They will determine if there was a greater, preexisting problem in Houston Narcotics P.D.
DA Ogg emphasized this is only the first step of the investigation. There will be an in depth review of the HPD narcotics division and especially Squad 15. It is not known if more arrests will occur.
DA Ogg apologized to the family members of the victims. She wanted them to know how sorry she was that this had happened. She said the investigation is only starting, and a motive for the fraudulent warrant and raid were unknown at this time. She emphasized that, often, motive is the last thing discovered during an investigation.
DA Ogg said the Harding street address came to the Narcotics Squad's attention because of a telephone call from a neighbor. Rumors had circulated that Rhogena's mother had made the call. It appears those rumors were false.
At least one confidential informant (CI) has cooperated. DA Ogg may have slipped when she referred to the CI as "she". That narrows the potential pool of CI candidates, for those wishing to determine her identity.
The DA grand jury investigation will look into many previous cases. Narcotics Squad 15 has ties to 14,000 cases. At minimum they are reviewing all of approximately 2,000 cases that involve former officer Goines.
No immunity has been granted. No grand jury presentation has yet been made. The investigation is to determine if this was a pattern or a single instance. Other individuals have come forward with complaints about former officer Goines.
Police Chief Acevedo held a press conference shortly after the press conference by DA Ogg. He said the raid was conducted in good faith, that it was only two officers making bad decisions, that there is no evidence of systemic problems in the department. He claimed the case showed the HPD was perfectly capable of investigating itself. The facts seem to contradict that claim.
The forensic investigation of the raid, by the Houston Forensic Science Center, left considerable evidence at the scene, according to an independent forensic investigation commissioned by the family of the victims. The independent investigation occurred in May, about four months after the forensic data collection by the Houston Forensic Science Center (HFSC). The CEO of the HFSC, Peter Stout, admitted that items might have been missed. From houstonpublicmedia.org:
HPD’s report on the shooting has not been publicly released. A police spokesman declined comment, pending the continuing internal affairs investigation.
The president and CEO of the Houston Forensic Science Center, Peter Stout, told News 88.7 a dozen investigators collected more than 220 items and took more than 2,200 photos and videos.
He said it was a chaotic scene and acknowledges things could have been missed.
“At the time of a scene and even for some time after processing the scene, things that may not be important to the investigation at the time may become important as other information comes in,” Stout said. “Everyone has to look at what are the best things to try and collect at that time.”
The independent investigators were able to recover a cell phone video
of the event. The most provocative evidence claimed from the video, is
two shots were fired almost 30 minutes after the raid started. The
investigators claim it was shortly after those shots were fired, the
police at the scene said that “Both suspects were down”. The private
investigators found evidence that two shots were fired inside the home,
into the back wall of the dining room, from very close range, contrary
to police versions of the event. In total, the private investigators
recovered more than 10 bullets from inside the Harding Street house. From houstoncronicle.com 24 July, 2019:
The independent review, released in a court filing
Thursday, also highlighted the perplexing presence of two bullet holes
in an inner room of the home, shot into the wall from inches away but
more than four yards from the shootout by the front door. Taken in conjunction with video footage that appears to have
captured the sound of two shots half an hour after the gunbattle, family
attorney Mike Doyle argued in a 22-page legal petition that the
independent findings raise enough questions to merit further
investigation in preparation for a lawsuit.
The independent investigators say they did not find evidence of people inside the house firing toward the outside.
The independent investigators recovered two teeth,
they say belonged to Dennis Tuttle, inside the house. The autopsy of
Dennis Tuttle should reveal if he was shot in the head and if he was
missing teeth as a result.
The
news comes the same day investigators from the DA’s Office and the
Texas Rangers returned to the Harding Street residence to gather more
evidence six months after the shooting.
In spite of Chief Acevedo's claim the HPD has shown it can investigate itself, both private investigators hired by the family, and the Harris County DA and the Texas Rangers have been investigating and finding additional, important, evidence. There is the ongoing federal investigation, where a federal grand jury has been empanelled. In late July, it became known that a federal grand jury was investigating the case.
Two Houston police officers testified Wednesday before a federal grand jury regarding the botched drug raid that left two homeowners dead — the first sign that federal prosecutors are pursuing criminal charges in the controversial case.
Houston Police Officers’ Union Vice President Doug Griffith confirmed that the two officers appeared before the grand jury, though their testimony is secret by law. Grand jury investigations can last weeks or months.
That is three investigations independent of the HPD. First, the family commissioned an independent forensic investigation. Then the Harris County District Attorney's office's investigation, who will now impanel a grand jury. They hired 10 additional investigators for this purpose. Third, the parallel investigation, with a federal grand jury, by the federal government. Four independent investigations should be able to reach conclusions about the truth of what happened, and if there have been systemic problems in either Squad 15 or the HPD Narcotics division, or HPD as a whole. Shortcomings of one investigation should be overcome by other investigations.
DA Ogg said there is a potential motive for the incident, but it is too early to tell if it is correct.
Four items stand out. Forgive the indulgence in speculation.
First: The HPD Chief Acevedo and Harris County DA Ogg are independent of each other. Chief Acevedo does not support DA Ogg's investigation, or he would not claim the HPD had been vindicated in investigating itself.
Second: If former Officer Goines had not been wounded, the heroine found in his HPD vehicle might have been found at the 7815 Harding Street address instead.
Third: How did former officer Bryant know he needed to falsify the record about the raid, unless he knew the raid was fraudulent before it happened? If the raid was simply an error, why falsify the document?
Fourth: If former officers Goines and his partner, Bryant, had been able to communicate immediately after the raid (they could not, because Goines was in the hospital and could not talk, due to his wound), it is plausible none of this would have been known. Goines could have conspired with Bryant to convince or pressure a CI to claim they had purchased the drugs. They could have coordinated their story.
They could not do so. Four other members of Squad 15 were hurt, three by gunshot. We do not know if anything was prevented by their hospitalization. With five of 10 members of the raid taken out of action, the ability for potential cover-up was limited.
In the United States, former officer Goines, former officer Bryant, and all members of Squad 15 are due the presumption of innocence before conviction. There may be innocent explanations, or mitigating circumstances of which we are currently unaware. It may be other members of the Squad (the four wounded all had 20 or more years in the Narcotics Division) were simply doing their job, as Chief Acevedo contends.
All members of the Squad should be forbidden to communicate with each other, to prevent collusion or witness intimidation, until the investigations are completed. This should be possible as a condition of their employment in the HPD.
The investigations should reveal much over the next few months.
According to the York County Sheriff’s Department, Davidson ran over one of the bondsman and struck the other with his car.
At some point one of the bondsman shot at the suspect twice, shooting him once in both arms.
When deputies got on scene, Davidson had a tourniquet on his arm and all three men were lying on the ground. They are all expected to fully recover. More Here
BALTIMORE (WBFF) - An off-duty Baltimore school police officer and a retired Department of Corrections officer shot and killed an armed robbery suspect after he tried to rob them in north Baltimore Saturday night, reported city police.
The suspect was in critical condition after being shot. He was later pronounced dead.
The two victims were at the corner of East 23rd Street at Guilford Avenue at about 11:14 p.m. when they were approached by an armed man trying to rob them. More Here
FLINT, MI – A man is in critical condition after he was shot by a female homeowner during what Flint police are saying was an attempted break-in.
Officers with the Flint Police Department responded Sunday, Aug. 25 to the 2300 block of Kellar Avenue, between Dayton Street and Welch Boulevard, for a report of shots fired.More Here
This is the case of Siwatu-Salama Ra, who was sentenced to two years in prison after using the display of a gun to protect herself, her mother and her daughter. Ra was pregnant at the time of the event on 16 July, 2017.
The other party involved, Channell Harvey, contacted the police first, three hours before Ra did. The Detroit police assumed that Channell Harvey, the first person reporting the incident, was the victim. This is a common occurrence in law enforcement, which is why there may be a race to the phones to be the first to report an incident to the police.
Channel Harvey had recorded Ra with her phone, showing her displaying her defensive firearm. Ra had a valid Michigan concealed carry permit. Channel was reportedly on probation for felony assault in another case.
Both parties claimed the other had threatened the other. Several organizations, including the Second Amendment Foundation and the NRA, as well as several on the Left, defended Ra's use of non-deadly force.
At the trial, the judge mistakenly ruled that merely displaying a gun was the use of deadly force. That goes against common sense and several precedents.
This varies from state to state; in Arizona, it is clear merely displaying a firearm is not the same as using deadly force. In Arizona, the threat of deadly force is not the same as using deadly force.
The Michigan Court of Appeals found the legal distinction is important and has meaning. The standard to justify the threat of deadly force is considerably lower than the standard to justify the use of deadly force. From the Michigan Court of Appeals:
The trial court’s conclusion that the brandishing of a gun is the equivalent of deadly force is contrary to this Court’s holding in Pace that brandishing a weapon is not the equivalent of the use of deadly force for purposes of self-defense. Here, evidence was presented to support the defense of non deadly force self-defense. At trial, defendant testified that she brandished the weapon but did not make any attempt to use it, that the gun was not loaded,and that the safety was on. She also testified that she believed brandishing the gun was necessary because she and her mother were both in danger when Harvey drove her car onto the grass at her mother’s home, attempting to hit both defendant and her mother, and in fact did hit defendant’s car. Anderson also testified that Harvey used her car as a weapon and that Harvey nearly hit her. Defendant’s niece also testified that Harvey used her car as a weapon,hit defendant’s car where the two-year old was playing, and attempted to hit defendant and her mother. When a defendant requests a jury instruction on a defense supported by the evidence, the trial court is required to give the instruction. Riddle, 467 Mich at 124. In light of the evidence supporting non deadly force self-defense, the trial court’s failure to give the jury instruction regarding the use of non deadly force in self-defense was erroneous.
To the jury, the difference is considerable. The use of non deadly force only requires the jury find the defendant reasonably believed the non deadly force was required to protect herself or others from the imminent unlawful use of force.
The use of deadly force requires the jury to find the defendant reasonably believed she or others were in imminent danger of being killed or seriously injured.
The display or threat of deadly force often defuses a situation through deterrence. Many people are deterred from using force when they face the prospect of deadly force being used against them in response or as a preventive measure.
The mere display of a gun, or the pointing of a gun, is a threat of deadly force, but is not the use of deadly force.
Not all states or all prosecutors can be relied on to interpret the law in this way. Considerable effort has been expended to equate the display of a firearm as the same as the use of a firearm for people who are not police. Police, on the other hand, routinely draw and threaten deadly force with little or no consequences, because the difference is clearly understood.
The Second Amendment protects the individual right to use arms for self defense and the defense of others. Merely displaying arms is not the same as firing them. Displaying them is a use of arms, but not a use of deadly force. The display of arms may be used for deterrence, as in this case, as a First Amendment political statement, or even as a fashion statement. All should be protected uses under the Constitution.
GRAND FORKS — A man here arrived to work Friday morning, Aug. 23,
thinking it was going to be a routine day, but it nearly turned deadly
after police say he interrupted a burglary and defended himself by
pulling a gun and shooting it at intruders.
During the fight, both pulled out guns and started shooting at each other, according to police. One bullet hit the security guard in the hip. He was taken to BAMC and is in stable condition. The shooter ran away, and police are still looking for him. More Here
The officer parked his vehicle about 2:35 a.m. in the 9100 block of South Ellis Avenue when three males got out of two different vehicles — a dark-colored sedan and a silver-colored SUV, Chicago police said. They approached the officer’s vehicle and at least one of them pointed a handgun. More Here
A Jacksonville homeowner went into his home off Edgewood Avenue North
Thursday morning to find a woman holding one of his guns, police said.
He shot her, and she is now hospitalized, police said.
Lopez, a CPL holder said if he didn't have loose pants, he would have
definitely got bit. Instead, he said he pulled out his gun and aimed at
the first dog.
"I shoot once, I miss. Then the dog took two steps and ran back at me
again and I shot it again and I hit it on the side," he said.
The Truth about guns did an excellent job covering the Gun Owners of America rally in Austin, Texas.
Rachel Malone is Gun Owners of America's representative in Texas. I have met Rachel. She is smart, dedicated, talented, and easy on the eyes. She is also extremely effective.
The rally is nicely done with Stephen Willeford, the hero who stopped the mass killing at the Sutherland Springs church in November of 2017. Stephen is articulate and knowledgeable. He does an excellent job. It is worth watching him debate a heckler who is passionate, but poorly informed. The debate starts about 18:50.
As The Truth About Guns notes, the rally attendee to Rachel's left seriously needs to get a holster.
The debate about citizen ownership of guns is mostly one-sided, if there is an actual debate. Second Amendment supporters win on facts, with the culture, and with the Constitution.
But, there has to be a debate for Second Amendment supporters to win.
Without the debate, emotion and Leftist propaganda win.
Did you know that there are more fatal accidents involving children and bicycles than there are involving children and guns?
It is documented in the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) fatal injury database.
As you can see from the illustration, for the last 19 years, from 1999 to 2017, there were 2,467 children killed in fatal accidents involving bicycles, versus 1,994 children killed in fatal accidents involving firearm.
Both of the rates are very low. The firearm rate is 1.4 per million children, the bicycle rate is 1.8 per million children. There are numerous things far more commonly involved in unintended deaths than bicycles or guns, for children.
The total accidental deaths of children (unintended deaths) from 1999 to 2017 were 135,259. Fatal firearms accidents were 1.47 percent of the total. Many other circumstances accounted for much higher numbers of unintentional deaths than those occurring with firearms. Here are numbers from the CDC database for the same period, 1999-2017, for children aged 0 - 17.
Occupants of motor vehicles 27,189
Unknown situations, motor vehicles 24,201
Suffocation 21,008
Drowning 17,270
Pedestrians and motor vehicles 12,098
Fire/burning (non-residential) 7,982
Fire, residential 7,237
Poisoning 5,166
Other land transportation 3,489
Bicycles (pedal cycles) 2,467
Firearms 1,994
Natural/Environmental 1,797
Fatal accidents involving firearms and children are low and have been trending downward for a long time, even as the number of firearms both absolute and per capita, have increased enormously.
The rate of fatal firearms accidents has been cut by 94% since 1933 while, as a wealthy society, the number of firearms per capita has increased nearly fourfold, from .35 to 1.28 firearms per person in the USA.
Why is there so much focus on requiring gun owners to lock up guns, but not requiring poison owners to lock up poisons? People are told it is a good preventive measure to lock up poisons, but there is no legislative effort, that I know of, to criminalize the failure to do so.
The political reason seems clear. People who do not own guns do not see any cost to themselves by creating penalties that only apply to gun owners. The politicians are appealing to non-gun owners.
Most gun owners are men. Most non-gun owners are women. By phrasing the debate as one about children's safety, the politicians use the emotional plea "it's for the children!" The appeal short circuits logic and reason.
There are many single parent homes. Most of them are headed by women. Singe mothers have been an enormous voting block for Democrats. If Democrats were to criminalize the failure to lock up poisons, they would be creating penalties that would apply primarily to their voting base.
The problem of requiring guns to be locked up and unloaded is it prevents guns from being used in self defense. From 1999 to 2017, there were 33,095 children who were deliberately killed with firearms. Most of them were murdered (the CDC does not differentiate between justified homicide and murder).
The CDC, during the Obama regime, found firearms were used for
defense and to prevent crime, from 500,000 to 3 million times a year. From the CDC:
Defensive
use of guns by crime victims is a common occurrence, although the exact
number remains disputed (Cook and Ludwig, 1996; Kleck, 2001a). Almost
all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by
victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with
estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3
million (Kleck, 2001a), in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes
involving firearms in 2008 (BJS, 2010).
Responsible people can judge their own risks and requirements better than the government can.
Why compare fatal accidents with bicycles to fatal accidents with guns?
It is a starting point for a discussion about how few fatal accidents with guns there are. The fear of guns has been hyped by the media as part of their effort to demonize guns and gun ownership.
When someone calls for guns to be locked up, you can tell them bicycles are involved in more children's fatal accidents than guns are.
You can say that locking guns up prevents them from being used for self defense, just as storing bicycles in an attic prevents them from being used for transportation. You cannot schedule a need for defense of self and others, as you can schedule a need for transportation.
In a bad neighborhood, you may need to store your bicycles inside, and have guns ready for defense of self and others. Each persons requirements for transportation and defense are different and individual.
Defensive gun uses are at least five thousand times more common than fatal firearms accidents involving children. That should give pause when the government considers legislation to effectively make defense of self and others in the home, difficult.
A white Florida man who told detectives he had a “pet peeve” about illegal parking in handicapped spots was convicted late Friday of manslaughter for the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man outside a convenience store.
Six jurors deliberated for six hours in Clearwater before convicting Michael Drejka for the July 19, 2018, death of Markeis McGlockton. Drejka, who could get 30 years, looked down after the verdict was read then wiped his brow with a blue handkerchief. The 49-year-old Drejka was ordered held without bond until his sentencing in October. He stared straight ahead as he was handcuffed and led out of the courtroom.
The Harlem businessman who blasted a gang of robbers with a shotgun as they terrorized his staff said Friday, "I had no choice."
"They were probably going to work us all over," Charles (Gus) Augusto told the Daily News. "You know me - I'm not going to take anything lying down."
Surveying the spattered blood and shotgun pellet holes in the door of his store, Augusto said he didn't want to pull the trigger and kill two of the four invaders. More Here
A man was shot and killed during an incident in Alleyton. Colorado County Sheriff's Office reports that on Monday Aug. 12, at approximately 5:41 p.m., deputies responded to the 1100 blk of Alleyton Road in reference to a disturbance in progress with shots fired. More Here
PASCO COUNTY, Fla.
-- A Pasco County, Florida, neighbor is hailed as a hero after deputies
say he shot and killed an armed domestic violence suspect and helped
free the victim's children from a dangerous scene.
In several cases this summer, there were times where you read what happened and say, they should have had a gun. Fatal bear attacks are rare. Attacks where someone is injured happen much more frequently. Close calls, without injury, are more common yet. Here are some cases from this summer where it seems the people involved would have been well served by the availability of a defensive firearm.
It is better for everyone concerned if the attacking animal is killed by the people immediately involved. It takes the authorities time and considerable money to respond.
On 26 June, 2019, 54-Year-Old Alex Woods was doing his job, searching for diseased trees in British Columbia, Canada. As he started down a steep slope, alone in the wilderness, he was charged by a 200 lb black bear in a clear, predatory, attack. He tried to access bear spray, but could not get the cap off. He kicked the bear, then was able to access his hatchet. From outside online.com:
“So
then the bear dropped down from the tree,” he continues. “And as it was
doing that, I’d reached into the back of my vest. The zipper’s broken,
so I was able to get at my hatchet fast. But the bear was right back on
me by then, so I just sank the hatchet into its head. I was lucky enough
that it happened where those trees were, and on a such steep slope. I
wouldn’t have been able to kick it otherwise, or get it on the head.
Those trees slowed it down, and fortunately I didn’t struggle getting
the hatchet out like I struggled with the bear spray. But also, if it
wasn’t for those two charred trees, I’d probably be dead.”
In the reporting, it was suggested that bear spray could have solved the problem. It is far from certain. Black bears have shown considerable ability to shrug off bear spray and continue predatory attacks. Why leave a bear that considers people to be food, alive in the woods, when the next human it encounters may not be so lucky in circumstance or armament?
Alex would have been better served with almost any handgun. They do not have to weigh more than bear spray, and have been optimized, over hundreds of years, for quick and efficient use under stress. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to obtain the legal permissions required to carry handguns, even in wilderness areas, in British Columbia.
On 12 July, 2019, in Vermont, near Glastonbury Mountain, at the Goddard shelter on the Long Trail, multiple hikers had been harassed by a bear acclimated to getting food from humans. The situation got so bad that people piled rocks at the shelter to use to drive off the increasingly aggressive bear. It is a remote area, and cell phone coverage is spotty. The bear was taking backpacks, had come into the shelter while it was occupied by humans, and had charged at least one person. From benningtonbanner.com:
On Friday, wardens returned to the area, and when the bear appeared, it was shot and killed.
"The bear was showing no fear of humans at this point," said Amsden, who was not one of the responding wardens Friday. "Human safety was now at risk, so we felt it was necessary to put the bear down," he said. "The remoteness of the area obviously had some challenges for dealing with it."
In the judgement of the game wardens, the bear had become so "conditioned" — that is, so accustomed to food access — that it wasn't going to stop coming back.
Fortunately, no one was injured. Multiple people had their backpacking trip turned into an ordeal, where they lost food and had valuable equipment destroyed. Why, in Vermont, where Constitutional Carry has been the rule ever since the Constitution has existed, did no one shoot the bear earlier?
Educated speculation on my part: It is a long hike, and few backpackers feel the need to carry an extra pound or two of firearm and ammunition; Vermont has become rather leftist oriented, a bear shot by a private citizen is likely to engender a serious investigation.
On 22, July, near White Iron Lake in Minnesota, a 16-year-old girl was attacked, from behind, by a black bear, in what appears to have been a predatory attack. Fortunately she escaped. From duluthnewstribune.com:
“She didn’t see
the bear until it started running at her from behind,” said Dan Stark, a
large-carnivore specialist for the DNR. “It bit her in the leg, but she
was able to pull away from it. She continued to run to try to get away
from it, and then it stopped when she reached kind of an opening.”
That
same evening, a DNR conservation officer found a bear at a garbage bin
near the location of the attack. The bear reportedly showed no fear of
people, and the DNR officer killed the animal, a 240-pound male.
While most 16-year-old girls do not carry firearms, many are capable of doing so responsibly. When my daughter was 16, and with me in Arizona, I had her carrying her Glock 19. She said she became very aware of her responsibilities that summer. That was legal in Arizona. It is against Minnesota law for anyone less than 21 to carry a handgun; they are not able to obtain the carry permit required in the state.
On 29 July, 2019, again in British Columbia, 45-year-old Cowlin Dowler was attacked by a grizzly bear while mountain biking. He saw the bear in plenty of time to use a firearm, if he would have had one with him. He did not. It is very difficult to obtain a permit for a handgun in British Columbia. He talked to the bear. He threw his bike at it. Those attempts did not work. From the independent.co.uk:
Mr Dowler told Canadian broadcaster CBC: “It grabbed me by the stomach and kind of pushed me down and dragged me toward the ditch maybe 50 feet. I tried eye-gouging it away and it didn’t really work.”
The bear also bit into his limbs during the 29 July attack, the reports said.
He added: “It sounded like it was grating my bones up.
“Somehow, I don’t know how I did it. I used both hands to pull underneath the bear to get to that knife, and I grabbed the knife ... and stabbed the bear in his neck.
I am sure Mr. Dowler would have preferred to have a handgun over a 2 inch pocket knife in his fight for life. The bear stopped the attack, bleeding profusely. Mr. Dowler was able to walk out until he found some loggers, who gave him aid and contacted emergency responders. As is usual, the bear was tracked down and killed by the authorities.
In the early morning hours of 15 August, 2019, a bear grabbed talented musician, Julien Gauthier, 44, from the tent he was sleeping in. His companion did not know he was gone until 7:45 the next morning. He was in the remote Tulita area, on the Mckenzie River in the Northwest Territories. From the nypost.com:
Gauthier was sleeping when the bear suddenly dragged him away sometime in the middle of the night, said Toscani, who realized what happened around 7:45 a.m. Thursday and raised a distress alert, according to the report.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police searched the largely isolated area, accessible only by sea or air, and found Gauthier’s body the next day, according to the report.
Attacks while sleeping are difficult to defend against. When I was hunting in Alaska, I kept a .357 magnum revolver attached to my wrist by a lanyard when I was sleeping in our tent. An electric fence is a good idea when you are in bear country. In the Northwest Territories of Canada, obtaining a permit to carry a revolver is nearly impossible. Authorities have killed two bears that were found near Gauthier's body, a black and a grizzly, so far.
Finally, on 10 August, 2019, a man was attacked by a mountain lion near Kremmling, Colorado. He saw the lion long before the lion pounced. He backed up 200 yards, and ended stabbing the lion with a pocket knife. From steamboatpilot.com:
GRANBY — A man attacked by a mountain lion Saturday night near Kremmling did everything right when he fought back and stabbed the animal with a pocketknife, a spokesman for Colorado Parks and Wildlife said Friday.
The man was reportedly attacked around 9 p.m. while scouting out places to hunt elk around the Big Horn Park subdivision northeast of Kremmling. Authorities and their hounds tracked down the mountain lion at about 7 a.m. the next morning and killed it.
Mountain lion attacks are even more rare than bear attacks, but as lion populations, like bear populations, expand, they come into more contact with humans. This lion was noted for its bold approach. It was a young, mature male, hungry, but otherwise in good condition. The attack was clearly predatory. Just about any handgun would have been sufficient to drive off the big cat.
As Second Amendment activists have passed legislation to restore the right to keep and bear arms, more and more people are exercising the right. It is clear that handguns are effective tools to prevent and stop animal attacks in the woods, as well as human attacks everywhere. It is better to prevent injury before it occurs. The person at the initial scene is best able to identify the attacker directly and to respond immediately.
Bear populations, black, grizzly, and polar, are expanding. Mountain lion populations are expanding. They have to be controlled. It is the responsibility of humans to regulate those populations. It is better utility for a bear or lion to be killed to stop an attack on humans, than to kill the bear or lion as part of a planned hunt. One of the principle advantages of handguns over bear spray, is the bear or lion is usually killed.
SAN ANGELO — A 42-year-old man underwent emergency surgery Tuesday night after he was shot entering a home, according to a San Angelo Police Department news release. More Here
It was just after 5 a.m. Wednesday when a Will County homeowner's dogs started barking.
"I
grabbed my pistol and I called, 'If somebody is in the house, leave
now,'" said the homeowner, who asked not to be identified. "He hollered
back, 'I'm not leaving.' I fired one shot and I said, 'Won't fire
another shot if you leave now' and he said, 'I'm not leaving.' I just
said, 'Go out the way you came and I won't shoot again.' He said, 'I
don't want to die tonight.' I said, 'You shouldn't be in somebody's
house,' and he took off out the back."
One of the suspects was found minutes later armed with a knife and hiding underneath a trampoline.
Spartanburg police said Monday a man who shot and killed another man following an argument at the Lowe’s Home Improvement store will not be charged because he acted in self-defense.
Randall Eugene Belk, 54, died at Spartanburg Medical Center at 3:17 p.m. Sunday.
"We have no trespassing signs, so I'm always armed. I answered the door
with my little pistol and there was a terrified-looking young man on the
front porch," said Clover.
She says the man on her porch told her he was being chased by his girlfriend's dad and wanted her to call his grandmother.
"When
he sat down on the front porch, I noticed he had gloves hanging out of
his back pocket, and not many boyfriends take gloves to sneak in and see
their girl," said Clover. More Here
When the mass murder in Dayton Ohio was conducted by a leftist drug addict, most in the media jumped to the conclusion that he used a rifle. It was not hard to do for those ignorant of firearms and the arcane classifications created by the National Firearms Act (NFA) of 1934 and its follow on legislation. The logical contradictions of the NFA have become more and more obvious, partly through legal holdings of the BATFE, and partly from Court decision. It takes a serious understanding of the law to know what is a pistol and what is a rifle. Some study is required to know when a $200 federal tax stamp, and processing through the Byzantine BATFE bureaucracy is mandated, and when it is not.
There are understandable reasons why some media outlets were confused. Here are a few that have not corrected their misunderstanding of the technology, more than a week after the killing:
Betts, armed with an assault rifle, opened fire in the Oregon District, a trendy nightspot neighborhood, early Aug. 4. He killed nine people in 30 seconds before police officers shot him dead.
Ten
weeks ago, documents said, Betts and Kollie assembled the rifle in the
latter's apartment. Six to eight weeks ago, Betts returned to retrieve
the rifle and to pick up the body armor and the 100-round magazine,
prosecutors said.
Armed with a .223-caliber high-capacity rifle with 100-round drum magazines, Betts fired 41 shots in fewer than 30 seconds, killing his sister, Megan, and eight others in Dayton’s entertainment district, police said.
Betts
used a .223 rifle with drum magazines containing 100 rounds. Police
have said he legally bought the gun online from Texas and picked it up
at a local gun dealer.
I wrote an article about the firearm being a legal pistol on August 5th. It was posted on Ammoland on August 6th. I wasn't the only person who saw what was clear from the photographs the police released. The Washington Post, about as mainstream (Progressive) a media outlet as can be, noted the firearm used was a pistol on August 5th. From the washingtonpost.com August 5:
Wearing body armor and a mask, Betts opened fire with an AR-15-style pistol outside a bar in Dayton, Ohio, early Sunday, killing nine people.
Betts, 24, legally purchased the AM-15 pistol used in the attack, authorities previously said. The pistol has a shorter barrel than the AR-15 rifle variant, but uses the same ammunition and magazines.
We are making progress when the Washington Post correctly identifies a firearm.
What should come of this, but probably will not, is an understanding of the irrational, unsupportable nature of the restrictions and artificial distinctions between pistols and rifles that have been built into the National Firearms Act and the BATFE interpretations of it.
All those legalistic distinctions between a short barrelled rifle and a pistol with an arm brace, and a firearms that was designed to be fired without a stock, really are silly.
It would be better to do away with the NFA altogether.
I do not think we have the media power to do that, at least not this year. It makes wonderful sense, with logic and reason, to do so. But public perception is tremendously influenced by urban elites who know almost nothing of firearms and are proud of their ignorance.
An intermediate step would be to reform the NFA to only differentiate between concealable (anything that can be fired in a configuration of less than 26 inches in length) and long guns, anything longer than 26 inches in length. Suppressors, also known as silencers, should never have been in the NFA. They are primarily safety equipment, are seldom used in crime, and were not regulated for decades in many countries which otherwise heavily regulate firearms.
I do not see machine gun regulation being reduced to that of ordinary rifles, at least in the near future. It should be possible to remove the 1986 freeze on any new guns. Legal machine gun owners are the most lawful of the lawful. They should not be punished for being extremely law abiding.
It is easy to make full automatic firearms. It is easy to make silencers/suppressors. Yet both are seldom used in crime. The law ought to take that reality into consideration. There is no point of having heavy regulation of short barreled rifles and shotguns when pistols and revolvers are protected by the Second Amendment.
The woman said the two men were dressed all in black and wearing masks.
She said that they demanded money, and in the struggle, her fiance
grabbed one of the guns and shot off a round at the intruders.
Police said a 49-year-old man intruded into the backyard of the home at
about 4:59 a.m. in the 2900-block of West Walnut Street. The intruder
was then shot in the upper thigh by a 54-year-old man who owns the home,
police said.
She told the dispatcher her husband -- wearing only a T-shirt and boxer shorts -- was holding Silba in the driveway until Volusia County deputies could arrive.
"My husband has him in the driveway at gunpoint," she told the dispatcher. "The guy is not moving. Yeah, he said, 'I have him at gunpoint. '" More Here
Several media outlets in California have teamed up with the anti-Second Amendment organization, The Trace, to investigate and write about homemade guns in California. They claim that BATFE sources say 30 percent of guns confiscated in California are homemade. Given there are over 400 million guns in private hands in the United States, and the border between California and other states is porous, and only lightly regulated; it seems an extraordinary number. From nbcbayarea.com:
An Investigation by NBC Bay Area in partnership with NBC San Diego, NBC Los Angeles, and the non-profit journalists at The Trace found that law enforcement agencies across California are recovering record numbers of ghost guns. According to several ATF sources, 30 percent of all guns now recovered by agents in communities throughout California are homemade, un-serialized firearms, known on the street as “ghost guns.”
Individuals in this country have been making their own guns for centuries. The practice is deeply rooted in our constitutional history and tradition. Legal scholars have recognized that the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the right to keep and bear arms would be meaningless in practice unless the state afforded individuals the ability to exercise that right—which includes making their own guns.
For the past almost half-century, however, the sale and subsequent control of firearms have been heavily regulated by federal law. It may come as somewhat of a surprise that even in this era of regulation, it is still completely legal to make and own a homemade gun. Even more surprising is the fact that a gun made wholly or even twenty percent at home need not be registered and its owner is not required to be licensed.
The individual manufacture of guns has not been illegal or regulated at
all until very recently, and then only ineffectively. California recently required people who wish to make guns at home apply for a state
supplied serial number before they make the gun. The law has been
largely ignored.
Government regulation of individual making of firearms is probably unconstitutional under the Second Amendment, as applied to the states by the fourteenth amendment. It should be unconstitutional for the federal government because of lack of jurisdiction, but with the promiscuous application of the commerce clause to all activities, that remains to be seen.
In the world at large, the making of guns at home has been criminalized in nations with fewer Constitutional protections than the United States. That has not stopped homemade and small, clandestine shop manufacture. From Beyond State Control, published by the Small Arms Survey:
Improvised
and craft-produced small arms account for a sizable proportion of
weapons seized in domestic law enforcement operations in several
countries. In the UK, some 80 per cent of all guns used in crime in 2011
and 2012 were improvised, craft-produced, or converted; in São Paulo,
Brazil, 48 per cent of the sub-machine guns recovered during the same
period were homemade; and in Indonesia, 98 percent of the guns
confiscated from robbery suspects in 2013 were homemade.
The approach pushed by those who wish for a disarmed population is not reasonable or achievable. The FGC9 shown in the picture does not use any parts considered to be "gun parts" in the European Union, which has far, far stricter restrictions on firearms than any being considered in the United States.
The magazine is a homemade version of the Glock magazines. The barrel is homemade from a steel tube, with the machining done by a homemade, inexpensive, electro chemical machining apparatus that cost less than $100. The homemade machine created bore, chamber, and rifling that are fully functional. Other parts were printed on inexpensive 3D printers.
I have my doubts about the 30% figure. It seems quite high. While the article about "Ghost Guns" harps on the lack of any ability to trace homemade firearms, the utility of tracing guns in preventing crime has, at best, been minimal. Tracing guns only allows someone to determine to whom the first retail sale of the gun was made. That results in a few guns being returned to their legitimate owners each year. Otherwise, it has almost no effect.
Most guns move through many hands before they are used in crime. Determining the first retail owner results in a dead end, once the gun is stolen. The totalitarian impulse is to restrict the law abiding access to gun parts; then to restrict information on making guns, then to access to machine tools. It never works to reduce crime.
As shown in other countries, limiting access to firearms parts or even to machine tools has been spectacularly ineffective. Homemade/small shop guns are being made in Australia, India, Brazil, China, Canada, and now, in spectacular quantities, California.
The United States is a first world country with easy access to metals, machine tools, electricity, and computing power. Making guns is 15th century technology. Making an unregulated gun in the United States is a weekend project any hobbyist is capable of.
The attempt to reduce the access to legal guns has resulted in a burgeoning culture that creates guns beyond state control. There are physical limits to what California laws can accomplish. It appears they are bumping up against those limits in their zeal to disarm their population.
At what point do the proponents of disarming the public admit their scheme is counter-productive, ineffective, and does nothing to stop crime?
Never. It is not criminals they wish to stop from having guns.
It is you.
Failing that, they wish to make you into a criminal.
