CT: Victim of Gunshot Accident Charged, Gun Taken

As he was walking out of his bedroom loading his Rock Island Armory, 1911 .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol, the gun accidentally fired, striking him in his left index and middle finger, he told police.

Belske was taken to Stamford Hospital with what police said appeared to be superficial wounds. Shawinsky said there was no mention in the report of anyone else in the apartment.
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SC: Bodycam Video Contradicts Sheriff's Account of Deputy Shooting Homeowner

Body camera video footage of a deputy shooting and injuring a Simpsonville homeowner in June contradicts the agency's original account of the events leading up to the incident.

The video, captured by the Greenville County deputy involved in the shooting and released Monday morning, shows the deputy shot the man through the window of his house. Initially, the Sheriff's Office said the man was shot after he opened the door and pointed his gun at the deputy. In the video, the man never opened his door.
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TN: Domestic Defense, Man Shoots Intruder who Assaulted Woman

MCMINN COUNTY, Tenn. — An Athens man is dead after victims claim he was attempting to invade a residence with several people inside and fired a shot at another person, according to the McMinn County Sheriff's Office.

Sheriff Joe Guy said McMinn County deputies were dispatched to a residence on County Road 114 around 1:30 a.m. Sunday to a report of shots fired.
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GA: Husband Shoots 78-Year-Old man to Protect Wife

Sumter County Sheriff’s Chief Deputy Co. Eric Bryant told the Times-Recorder the incident occurred at 6:38 p.m. Sunday at 250 Edgewood Drive, in the Dixie Hills subdivision. He said Ritch McCutchen, 78, of Cordele attempted to enter the residence of Bill and Vicki Brewer to “take Vicki away with him.” Bryant said McCutchen was “infatuated” with the woman. He had recently been released from Crisp County Jail on a charge of aggravated stalking.
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Shooting at Garlic Festival a Gun Free Zone, but Many Police Present

The Garlic Festival is south of San Jose and San Francisco, North of Salinas and East of Monterey Bay. The police response was very quick. It appears the killer was shot less than a minute after he started killing.

At least three people were killed and 15 other people injured in a shooting at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in Northern California, authorities said Sunday night. A suspect was also shot and killed.

"It's sort of a nightmare you hope you never have to live in reality," Gilroy Police Chief Scot Smithee said at a news conference.

Smithee said the suspect appeared to be shooting "somewhat randomly," and that investigators had no information on a possible motive. He said that police believed a second person may have been involved but that they didn't know in what way.

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NC: Woman Shoots Man who had Axe, Charged Her

HIGH POINT, N.C. -- A woman shot and killed a man who she says had repeatedly assaulted and charged at her with an ax, according to a High Point Police Department news release.

Saturday at around 4:10 a.m., police were dispatched to 400 Hickory Lane after being told in a call a shooting had just happened.
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TX: Security Guard Wounds 1 Holds 3 for Police

The armed security guard told police that he heard a woman screaming from the parking lot of the La Estancia Apartment Complex building, so he went to see what was going on.

When the guard arrived, the woman told him that she was robbed at gunpoint by three men, and pointed him in the direction that they fled.

Houston police told ABC13 Eyewitness News that the guard followed the men to an area off US-59 and Chimney Rock. Moments later, the guard and the men exchanged gunfire.

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NH: Homeowner in Rochester Holds Intruder at Gunpoint

Once Cameron realized that man was trying to break into his home and steal his kids' bikes, he pulled his gun.

He carries it all the time, and while he's never before had to use it for protection, he says this is exactly why he has it.

"Because you never know who is going to do you harm," Cameron said. "I was at the zoo yesterday with my children. It was a great day, we had fun, and then there was a situation."

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Media Contagion Effect: 19-year-Old Arrested in England

Picture of Glock and Ammo Introduced in Court

A young man in the United Kingdom has been arrested, tried and convicted of attempting to possess a pistol and ammunition with the intent of endangering life. In June of 2018, he purchased a Glock 17 and five rounds of ammunition on the dark web. The cost was £300 in bitcoin. The papers in the UK say the pistol and ammunition were intercepted at the Newark Airport in New Jersey.  That is probably true.  Many of these sort of actions are preceded by a "sting". I would not be surprised if the firearm and ammunition were ordered in a sting operation. From the dailymail.co.uk:

A teenager who saw Anders Breivik and those behind the Columbine High School massacre as his 'poster boys' was today convicted of attempting to possess a firearm and ammunition with intent to endanger life.

Kyle Davies, 19, ordered a Glock 17 handgun and five rounds of ammunition from an online gun dealer on the dark web after developing a 'deep and persistent' interest in mass shootings during his A-Levels.

The order purchased by Bitcoin was intercepted by Homeland Security at Newark Airport in New York, with police arresting Davies at his home in Gloucester after delivering a dummy package to him.

A jury at Gloucester Crown Court unanimously convicted Davies of attempting to possess a firearm with intent to endanger life and attempting to possess five rounds of ammunition with intent to endanger life.

The investigation by the police in Glouchester, England, found numerous handwritten notes and digtal devices with trails to more than 100 web pages involving weapons and explosives. It found Kyle Davies, 19, was inspired by the young men who planned and executed the Columbine mass murder, as well as the mass killer in Norway. While Davies never received the pistol or ammunition, the evidence that he was inspired by mass murderers was sufficient to convict him of attempted crimes.

It is clear the media coverage of mass murder, especially when committed with firearms, is the dominant factor here. A paper submitted to the American Psychological Association (APA) indicated that such rampage murders might be cut in half if media would adopt policies to reduce the copycat effect, or, as some have started calling it, media contagion.

“Unfortunately, we find that a cross-cutting trait among many profiles of mass shooters is desire for fame,” she said. This quest for fame among mass shooters skyrocketed since the mid-1990s “in correspondence to the emergence of widespread 24-hour news coverage on cable news programs, and the rise of the internet during the same period.”

 Semi-automatic firearms have been in existence in the United States for over 110 years. There has been widespread availability of military semi-automatics with magazine capacity of 15-30 rounds for at least 70 years. Yet rampage shootings have only increased significantly in the last 30 years.

The theory that media promote rampage shootings far more than gun ownership does, fits the observable facts better than the theory that gun ownership is responsible. The police say the pistol and ammunition were tested and actually worked. From dailymail.co.uk :

 The court heard the handgun, magazine and five rounds of ammunition the teenager had ordered were all tested and found to be viable.

We are not told if the young man's digital devices were tested and found to actually work, as well.

Politicians are far more dependent on the media to stay in power than they are dependent on gun owners, especially in countries with low numbers of gun owners.

It is not surprising politicians would deflect blame from media contagion to gun owners.

©2019 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.

Gun Watch

AZ: In Surprise, Arizona, Homeowner Shoots, Kills Aggressive Intruder

The man then got a gun from his car and told Sagasta to stop and to leave his property.

When Sagasta did not stop his aggressive approach, the man reportedly fired at him multiple times.

Sagasta was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
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FL: Gunfight in Auto Shop, Mechanic Killed, Three Brothers Wounded

Jemar Devonte Reid, 20, was arrested after he was allegedly involved in a shooting at Dwayne’s Body Shop, located on the 2400 block of Southwest 31st Avenue, Tuesday night that left his brother and a mechanic dead.

According to officials, Reid and his siblings Kamar and Davieon Reid got into a confrontation with a mechanic before a shooting ensued.

The three brothers were all shot and drove to a nearby Broward Sheriff’s Office Substation to seek medical assistance.
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GA: Gunfight, Store owner Responds to Shots Fired

No one was injured at the scene. It was not immediately clear if the gunman was injured in the exchange of gunfire.

Police said the dangerous robber got away with an unknown amount of cash.
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OH: Gunfight, six people, 1 Dead, 2 Wounded

The 24-year-old man told Cleveland police officers that he was in the studio early Thursday when roughly five males came into the building with guns. He got into a shootout with them, police said.

Investigators did not offer a motive for the shootout.The group of males left the building and drove in a gray Ford Escape, which they crashed into a pole at the intersection of East 18th Street and Prospect Avenue.More Here

Breakthrough: How to make Cheap Rifled Barrels at Home with Electro Chemical Machining

I have long suggested practical homemade guns of the future will only use 3D printing as part of the process. They will be hybrid designs using the strengths of 3D printing and simple metal components to produce practical firearms in the home or in small, unregulated shops.

A prominent experimenter of homemade and small shop technology for crafting usable guns, Ivan the Troll (Internet screen name) claims to have made a breakthrough in home manufacture of rifled barrels. Ivan is part of, and often the spokesperson for, the Deterrence Dispensed project. (Ivan says Jeffrod did similar work a few years ago)

Rifling a barrel has been done for hundreds of years in small shops. It has been done by individuals over the entire period. It is not hard to do in mild steel. But it takes time, effort, a little skill and some homemade tooling that also takes some effort and skill to produce.  Most current homemade and small shop guns either use mass manufactured barrels (there are hundreds of millions in existence) or use a barrel without rifling.

In the United States, rifled barrels make a legal difference. If the barrel is rifled, a gun meant to be shot one handed is officially a pistol. If it is smooth bored and meant to be shot one handed, and over 26 inches long overall, it is a firearm. If it is smooth bored and was originally manufactured to be fired from the shoulder, is less than 26 inches long, or has a barrel that is less than 18 inches long, it is classified as a short barreled shotgun, and requires an application, interminable months or year long waits for permission to manufacture, and a $200 tax stamp. Short barreled shotguns have been exempted from protection under the Second Amendment, by the courts. While the law is antiquated and of dubious value, it is still the law.

If you wish to legally experiment with making your own pistols, they need to have a rifled bore or the National Firearms Act (NFA) paperwork and tax stamp, in order to comply with United States law. An alternative is to make muzzleloading guns, which do not require a U.S. tax stamp or a rifled barrel, because they are excluded from the NFA.

3D printed guns, when made of plastic, do not have effective rifling. The rifling printed in plastic barrels is to meet legal requirements, not to stabilize a bullet.  Obtaining a mass manufactured rifled barrel in the United States is easy.  They are legally for sale through the mail or over the counter and do not require any license or background check.

Some reasons to make your own rifled barrel are; for experimental purposes, proof of concept, pride in craftsmanship, or political reasons. What Ivan the Troll has done fulfills all those purposes. One character in the expletive in the following quote was altered.  From project ButWhatAbout:

On a quest to make a gun using zero legally defined gun parts with EU laws as a benchmark, Project ButWhatAbout is a 21st-century realization of the Luty SMG. Using modern manufacturing methods like 3D-printing and ECM, the efforts of Project ButWhatAbout have culminated in what is now known as the FGC-9 (F*ck Gun Control). Currently being developed by members of Deterrence Dispensed, the FGC-9 is a 9x19mm firearm based on the Shuty AP-9 by FOSSCAD contributor “derwood”. The FGC-9 uses Glock magazines, and unlike the AP-9 which uses a store-bought Glock barrel, the FGC-9 uses a homemade ECM barrel.

Ivan the troll has produced and tested a 9mm barrel, using commercially available thick-walled steel tube. He bored the tube to the desired dimension for a 9mm cartridge. He rifled it and chambered it. He pioneered doing those things with homemade Electro Chemical Machining (ECM) apparatus. The apparatus parts cost less than $100. The apparatus is simple to assemble from commonly available products and is easily understood. Machining the bore, rifling and chamber took about two hours. The material cost was a few dollars.

Ivan built a firing fixture to test the barrel. He says he fired over 30 rounds through the barrel with no visible wear, nor does he expect unreasonable or exceptionally fast wear. The steel tube was chosen, in part, for its strength. The ECM process works well with hard, tough materials, as long as they conduct electricity.

The purpose of a rifled barrel is to stabilize projectiles for accuracy. Ivan says he achieved 3 inch groups at 25 yards, using his test fixture and commercial ammunition. An ordinary Glock pistol will often achieve 2.5 inch groups at 25 yards. It is practical accuracy, better than most people can shoot a pistol.

Once the ECM tooling is made, there is almost no wear, as there is no physical contact between the tooling and the work piece. The steel tube used to produce the barrel is cut to the desired length with traditional methods. After cutting, making additional barrels will consist of a simple setup, and turning on a couple of switches. The three steps take about two hours, according to Ivan. Most of the time is waiting for a process to be completed, and switching out tools. The time spent waiting can be used in reading, watching a video, or other pursuits. A timer could be used to stop the process instead of watching a clock.

The tooling Ivan used for the ECM  was partly produced with a 3D printer. Looking at his video, it does not seem necessary to have a 3D printer to make effective tooling. It could be done with simple hand tools, with a similar time expenditure. ECM tools have almost no wear. Hundreds of barrels could be produced with one tool, perhaps thousands.

I suspect, with experimentation, the three steps could be combined into one, using one tool that would produce a chambered, rifled bore, from a suitable metal tube, in about an hour.  The tools themselves could be mass produced, and sold cheaply. There is no law against this; such a law would be similar to outlawing drill bits or chamber reamers.

The barrel produced by Ivan is 4.5 inches long. Producing bores five times as long might present challenges with tool rigidity and placement. I suspect 9 mm bores to 10 inches could be produced with little effort.

Bores of .22 caliber would present challenges if over 10 inches long, in my opinion.

All that Ivan the Troll has done with ECM could be done, and has been done, with conventional tools and tooling.  It is easier to purchase a manufactured barrel than to make one yourself.

The exercise shows a person does not need exceptional skill or training to make their own rifled barrels at home. No machine shop is required. Little room is needed.  The process does not produce excessive noise. The process is virtually untraceable and unregulated.

Ivan has shown, as they say, you cannot stop the signal.


©2019 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.

Gun Watch 

VA: Customer Shoots Robbery Suspects Armed with Replicas

The gunfire didn’t come from the robbers. Police confirmed a customer who legally had a gun confronted the suspects. He killed one suspect and injured another.

One of the witnesses said the customer who shot the two was heard saying, “No one points a gun at me and gets away with it.”

Another customer wanted to get the weapon out of the would-be robber’s hands.

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WA: Man Threatened by Suspected Car Burglar Shoots Same

The homeowner told KOMO News that he thought the man he shot had a firearm.

“I came out, saw the guys, and literally caught them red-handed,” he told the station. “The guy turned around and he had what appeared to be a pistol in his hand, and he hid behind the vehicle and I just took cover beyond the 4-Runner and had to put him down because he was coming right at me.”

According to the sheriff’s office, a handgun was recovered at the scene from the wounded suspect. Detectives said the weapon was stolen during a car prowl in the City of Kent five days ago, according to statement from the sheriff’s office.

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Followup OK: District Attorney to Determine if Shooting was Justified

Ward said the resident was outside and aware of the police presence in the area and "felt threatened" when two people jumped his fence and ran across his yard toward him.

He shot a one of them, the juvenile, in the abdomen.

The third suspect, later identified as Jaylen Cooper, the older brother of the boy who was shot, surrendered to an officer shortly afterward, Ward said.
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PA: Surveillance Video Shows Attack, Defensive Shooting, in Walmart

On Friday, 5 July, 2019, two young women attacked a third woman, Rojanai Alston, in a Walmart store in North Versailles, Pennsylvania.  It was about 9:30 p.m.  A an unknown man accompaning Alston  intervened, and tried to separate the two women attacking the victim from her.

Rojanai had a concealed carry permit, and a handgun, in her purse. As she is resisting the attackers, she manages to pull the pistol from the purse. The young man dives for cover, and the two attackers flee as she fires five shots. It is shown in the video below.


 

Video at link

Then Rojanai, in the heat of the moment, made what may be a significant legal error. She followed one of the attackers for a short distance. It appears one of the attackers is coming back. She fires two more shots. Those shots have landed her in trouble. They connected with her initial attacker. From pennlive.com:

"She was cold-cocked in the head, not once, not twice, but at least three times, and then they attempted to drag her to the ground. And if she didn't have a firearm on her to disperse her two assailants, I don't know if my client would even be alive right now," Haber said.

Despite this, Alston was held for trial on a charge of aggravated assault, WTAE reports, adding:

Alston initially fired five shots. But seconds later, when the woman who threw the first punch comes back in Alston’s direction, Alston fired two more times, shooting that woman in a finger and an upper thigh. All of the women were interviewed by police.

 The  Allegheny County District Attorney has said the first five shots were justified, but the last two were not. Rojanai's attorney disagrees. Rojanai has been charged with aggravated assault.  This case will likely be decided by a jury trial. It will be expensive in time, money and emotional stress.

This is an illustration of how difficult it is to exert calm judgment during and immediately after being attacked. We do not know exactly what was going through Rojanai's mind when she followed her attacker.  Video of that area is not very clear in the clip that has been released. Was her attacker coming back to renew the attack when she fired the last two shots?  Was that a reasonable assumption on her part?

It is easy to say that Rojanai should have not followed her attacker. Those judgments are simple to make from the safety of a computer screen, when we are not in an adrenaline charged fight or flight mode.

The legal standard is, when the threat has stopped, the justification for deadly force no longer exists.
Was the threat stopped when the two attackers fled? Was the threat re-initiated a few seconds later?

The attackers showed no weapons other than hands and feet that I could see in the video.

The conventional wisdom is, once they started to  flee, let them go.

This case shows the wisdom of believing each bullet fired has a lawyer attached to it.

Whatever the jury decides, Rojanai will be paying a price, from large to extremely heavy.

©2019 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.

Gun Watch 

CA: Gunfight, Police Arrest Suspect on Attempted Murder Charge

About 11:30 p.m. Sunday, police responded to the 1000 block of 6th Street after receiving a call about gunshots and broken glass. A male victim inside the residence later told police that Pallas shot into the home and broke several windows. The victim told police he shot back at Pallas in self-defense, police said.

Another resident of the home told police that Pallas said she was at the home to kill the first resident.
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TN: Burglary Suspect Captured at Gunpoint in Oneida

Only the title mentions the suspect was held at gunpoint.

An alleged burglary attempt at an Dean Hill residence in Oneida ended in the arrest of a Winfield woman, after the was cornered inside the home she allegedly broke into by the son of the home's owner.

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