WA: Armed Victim Shoots at Man who Brandished Gun

According to the victim, just prior to contacting law enforcement, the victim observed an unknown male suspect siphoning gas from his vehicle. The victim, armed with a firearm, confronted the suspect. The suspect reportedly began to walk away when the victim demanded that he stop.

The suspect then reportedly brandished a firearm at the victim, at which time the victim fired one shot at the suspect. It is unknown if the suspect was struck, however, no evidence of injury was located at the scene. The suspect then ran to his vehicle and fled the scene.
More Here

TN: Stabbing Victim (off duty officer), Shoots and Kills Attacker

That is when one of the drivers got out of his vehicle and approached the Redbox movie rental unit next to the building’s wall.

The second driver confronted the man about the road rage incident. That person suddenly stabbed the man standing at the Redbox, wounding him with the knife that was used.

The stabbing victim then pulled a gun and fired, striking the knife wielder in the chest and killing him.
More Here

Australian Police in Brighton Take Down Man for Walking with Minature Toy Rifle

On February 9th, 2019, Australian police officers swarmed a man walking along a busy, coastal, pedestrian walkway in Brighton, Australia. Police took down the man because of reports that he was armed with a rifle. 

In a video from 7 News Adelaide, you can see the toy gun next to a female officer's boot.  Use the tiles/bricks the officer is standing on for scale.

 Video link on facebook.com:

The toy appears to be about a foot long, less than one/third scale. No reasonable person could mistake it for an actual, functioning rifle.

Brighton is an upscale, urban, coastal suburb of Melbourne, Australia, in the state of Victoria. 

It is illegal in Victoria to own a replica or imitation firearm without a firearms license.

The following information is from the Victorian police website. The last update is given as 18 May, 2018.  From police.vic.gov.au:

Differentiating between an imitation firearm, replica firearms and other firearm paraphernalia and toys

There are a wide variety of firearm-themed items available on the market aimed at children or firearm enthusiasts. Depending on the overall appearance and function of these items, some may be classified as a registrable firearm, a replica firearm or an imitation firearm. These require an authority to possess, carry or sell in the State of Victoria regardless of the intent of the manufacturer.

The information contained within this page and downloadable Quick Guide to Imitation, Toy & Other firearm paraphernalia has been published to assist you to recognise the distinguishing characteristics of an imitation firearm as opposed to a toy or other firearm paraphernalia to assist you to comply with Victorian laws in this area.

Generally, if an item cannot be mistaken for a working firearm by a reasonable person and does not have the function of a firearm, it will be treated as a toy firearm or other firearm-themed paraphernalia and can be owned without a licence or other authority.

However, items that have the appearance of a working firearm, even where they do not function as one, are classified as imitation firearms. As imitation firearms can cause public alarm, only people with a Chief Commissioner's Weapons Approval or Governor in Council Exemption can possess, carry or offer them for sale in the State of Victoria.

Replica firearms are not the same as imitation firearms. They are working copies of an original firearm and anyone in possession of a replica must register it and be the holder of the appropriate firearms licence.

Not surprisingly, 7 News Adelaide gets the legal definition wrong.   They reported it was not a rifle, but a replica. It is not a replica because it is too small and is not a working copy. It is not an imitation firearm, because it is too small.

The man was not arrested on a criminal charge. It was reported he was taken in for mental health evaluation.

A citizen opined to the 7 News Adelaide reporter that

The public doesn't know if it is real or not. They have to assume that it is real. 

I disagree. If you are so ignorant about a technical matter, you probably should not be calling the equivalent of 911 about it.

Firearms have been successfully demonized in urban Australia, indeed, in much of the world. The demonization has been so complete that citizens feel no one can be trusted walking in a public area with a toy gun.  Australian media railed about a slightly larger, obvious toy AK being carried by a child, in 2015.

A soldier, training for a military exercise, in uniform, was caught up in the hysteria in Australia for carrying a very crude mock-up of a rifle, that would be impossible for a reasonable person to mistake for a working firearm.

Much of the purpose is to make the private carry of firearms socially unacceptable.  Australian crime has been exceptionally low for decades, both before and after their extreme gun laws.

In the United States, because of the Second Amendment, we are moving in the other direction. Open carry is becoming more and more acceptable. It was ruled as a core part of the Second Amendment in the Ninth Circuit, although the case as been appealed to the full Ninth Circuit, en banc.

I fear Australian, as with the English and Canadians, have allowed their traditional right to arms to be slowly and successfully legally ignored into nothingness.

As a consolation, the police in Australia were uniformly polite and easy to deal with when I was there, in 2017 and 2018.

As a foreigner, I earnestly worked at not breaking any laws.

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

Gun Watch

GA: 79-Year-Old Woman uses Pistol to Hold off Home Invader

It was just after noon on Feb. 12 when the woman called 911, and shot at the 20-year-old suspect twice - while she was still on the phone with 911. She was able to fend him off until deputies arrived to arrest him.

More Here

FL: Armed Neighbor Stops Teens from Stealing Rifle

Ten minutes later, when Jeff went outside to smoke a cigarette, the sketchy teenagers were holding a rifle.

Police said the rifle was stolen from the home next door. That is when Jeff said he dashed back inside his house and retrieved his pistol.

“I was just watching them the whole time with the gun,” Jeff said. “Then, he looked back right there to see if I still had my gun on him… and I’m like drop the gun or I’m gonna shoot you!”
More Here

KY: Juvenile Shot as Group Attempts to Steal Car

The juveniles reportedly tried to steal a car, but the owner came out of his home and fired a gun -- grazing one of the boys.

LMPD says the kids sped off in the stolen car and crashed in a ditch at the intersection of Triplett and Noah Drives, about a half-mile from the house. The car was left running with visible bullet holes.

Mitchell says the investigation will continue, but police are still looking into what charges will be filed. He also could not say whether the juveniles could be charged as adults.
More Here

Followup NC: No Charges for Joseph Asis in Fatal Shooting of Silvestre Begley

The Davidson County District Attorney’s Office has ruled the fatal December shooting of a man trying to break into an Upton Street home a justifiable homicide.

Silvestre Begley, 21, died of a single gunshot wound to the chest. The shot was fired by homeowner Joseph Asis.

Asis will not face charges.
More Here

January 2019 NICS Check About the Same as the Previous two of the Trump Era

We have entered the third year of the Trump era of National Instant background Checks (NICS). It started with a January very similar to the last two years. National Instant background Checks (NICS) are the background check required for most sales of firearms by federally licensed firearm dealers.

There were 2,165,094 checks for January of 2019. In the first January of the Trump era, ihn 2017, There were 2,043,184 NICS checks. In the second January, (2018), there were 2,030,530. The three Januarys are remarkably similar, all within a range of only 134,564 checks.  The smallest number is in 2018. It is 93% of the largest, in 2019.

These numbers are tempered by the increasing numbers of NICS checks that are done for other purposes. The number of carry permits in the U.S.A continues to grow. That number is approaching 18 million. Permit checks and permit rechecks done in the NICS system are about half of all NICS checks.

In half of the states, this is offset because permit holders are able to purchase guns by using their permit to meet the background check requirement, instead of another background check. 25 States do not require an additional NICS check once the background check for the permit is done.

Here are the states where a NICS background check is not needed for purchasing a gun from a federally licensed firearms dealer, if you have a state carry permit:

Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Washington, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

There were 1,162,142 permit and permit rechecks done in January  of 2019, 1,041,255 permits and permit rechecks done in January of 2018, and 993,743 permit and permit rechecks done in January of 2017.

When we subtract the permit and recheck NICS, the numbers for January 2017, 2018, and 2019 are  1,049,441 in 2017, 989,275 in 2018, and 1,002,952 in 2019.

Those number are a little flatter than the total NICS checks.

Americans are still buying lots of guns. The rate has declined a bit from the feverish level of 2016, but is high by historical standards.

If private gun purchases continue at the current rate, the American private stock of firearms will reach five hundred million guns by the end 2024.

Determining the exact number of private guns in society is difficult. One assumption is that unofficial guns and illegally imported guns, offset guns that wear out or are destroyed.

Kits for making your own guns, including tooling and parts, have become common and popular.  While some guns are made from scratch, many are created using kits. Most kits can be purchased through the mail, without any special license.

In some jurisdictions with strong legal restrictions against firearms ownership, homemade guns are a significant number of the firearms in society. In Nigeria, 74% of the firearms confiscated are homemade.  In China, over 98% of guns owned in the country are illegal. Many of the estimated 50 million illegal guns in China are homemade.

Legal barriers to firearm ownership apply whether the firearm is homemade or produced by a factory.

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

Gun Watch

TX: Armed Resident Shoots, Wounds, Intruder

An apartment resident told police he shot at someone he discovered inside his home Tuesday night in east Oak Cliff.

The wounded man was hospitalized, but he was expected to recover, Dallas police said.
More Here

MO: Armed Victim Fires at Carjacker

A woman was in the driver’s seat of the car and a man was loading the groceries into the trunk when an unknown man approached them with a gun.

The woman got out of the car. The man who was loading groceries was armed - he fired at least one shot toward the car as the suspect drove it away.
More Here

OR: Armed Neighbor Holds Extended Tresspassers/squatters for Police

An Oregon man helped local law enforcement detain two Idahoans accused of trespassing in a Baker County residence on Monday, according to a news release.

More Here

TX: Armed Victim Shoots, Kills, Robbery Suspect in Scam Sale of I-Phone

GALVESTON COUNTY, Texas — A man who police said just wanted to buy an iPhone ended up shooting and killing a would-be robber in rural Galveston County.
More Here

TX: Armed Father and Neighbor hold Junked-up Man for Police

The father came out with his gun and told Davis to leave.

At some point, Davis threw a ring at the the father and his neighbor who was armed as well. He told them he was trying to return it,

The men called police and held Davis at gunpoint.
More Here

Followup GA: Roger Thomas found Not Guilty of all Charges in Shooting Death of Half Brother

A Columbus jury found Roger Thomas not guilty of murder Monday in the 2015 fatal shooting of his half-brother during a birthday party at Thomas’ 435 Bernard Drive apartment.

Thomas also was acquitted of all other charges, including aggravated assault and using a firearm to commit a felony.

“The crux of the whole case was really him and whether or not the jury believed ... by the evidence, which would include his testimony, that he was really in fear of receiving a serious bodily injury, or potentially death, when he fired that fatal shot,” Jackson said.
More Here

The US ‘Has the Most Mass Shootings’—and Other Bogus Gun Research

A few years ago, much of the media claimed that the U.S. has “the most mass shootings of any country in the world.” Then-President Barack Obama added it’s “a pattern now … that has no parallel anywhere else … .”

CNN and the Los Angeles Times wrote about “Why the U.S. Has the Most Mass Shootings.” (“The United States has more guns.”)

But the U.S. doesn’t have the most mass shootings, says Lott. It’s a myth created by University of Alabama associate professor Adam Lankford, a myth repeated by anti-gun media in hundreds of news stories.

“Lankford claimed that since 1966, there were 90 mass public shooters in the United States, more than any other country,” says Lott. “Lankford claimed ‘complete data’ were available from 171 countries.”

But how could that be? Many governments don’t collect such data, and even fewer have information from before the days of the internet.

A shooting in say, India, would likely be reported only in local newspapers, in a local dialect. How would Lankford ever find out about it? How did he collect his information? What languages did he search in?

He won’t say.

“That’s academic malpractice,” says Lott in my video about the controversy.

I’m not surprised that Lankford didn’t reply to Lott’s emails. Lott is known as pro-gun. (He wrote the book “More Guns, Less Crime.”) But Lankford also won’t explain his data to me, The Washington Post, or even his fellow gun control advocates.

When Lott’s research center checked the data, using Lankford’s own definition of a mass shooting—“four or more people killed”—the center found 3,000 shootings around the world. Lankford claimed there were only 202.

Lankford said he excludes “sponsored terrorism,” but does not define what he means by that. To be safe, Lott removed terrorism cases from his data. He still found 709 shootings—more than triple the number Lankford reported.

It turns out that not only did the U.S. not have the most frequent mass shootings, it was No. 62 on the list, lower than places like Norway, Finland, and Switzerland.

There was also no relationship between the rate of gun ownership in different countries and the rate of mass shootings.

If journalists had just demanded Lankford explain his study methods before touting his results, his “more mass shootings” myth would never have spread.

So if Pelosi, Harris, and Warren ever follow through on their threat to declare gun violence a “national emergency,” be sure to check their math. Or just remember the wisdom of the Second Amendment.

Government’s desire to control us—and to lie to make its case—is the real emergency.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2019/02/20/the-us-has-the-most-mass-shootings-and-other-bogus-gun-research

Second Amendment, Supreme Court, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, February, 2019

For eight years after the McDonald v. Chicago decision, the Supreme Court refused to enforce the Second Amendment.

President Trump has appointed two constitutionalist and originalist Justices, Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh. After those appointments, the  Supreme Court agreed to hear the first Second Amendment firearms case since McDonald:  New York Rifle & Pistol Association v. NYC. The official decision to accept the case was on 22 January, 2019.

The next question was, when will the oral arguments for the case be heard?  The possibilities began in April in 2019. If oral arguments were not heard in April, they would be heard in October or later.

Second Amendment supporters are justifiably frustrated with the slow pace of judicial enforcement of Second Amendment rights. Many believe some courts have been deliberately slowing down the process, hoping for the election of a president hostile to the Second Amendment.

The oral argument calendar for the Supreme Court for April has been published. New York Rifle & Pistol Association is not scheduled for April.

This could be significant because the oldest justice on the Court is Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Justice Ginsburg has been hostile to the Second Amendment. She believes it does not apply to the modern world, because it is old.

 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 real argument, because she believes it has no purpose in modern society. The fallback position is that the Second Amendment does not apply to individuals. That is the essential Progressive position on the entire Constitution. It is old, therefore we can ignore it.
Justice Ginsburg has been recovering from cancer surgery that removed on of the lobes of one of her lungs. She is said to be recovering satisfactorily.

The next oral arguments are on Tuesday, 19 February, 2019. Reuters has reported that Justice Ginsburg was at the Supreme Court on Friday, 15 February, 2019,  for a private conference to decide whether or not to take a case deciding if the Executive Branch can add a question to the 2020 census that has been on the census before.

The plantiffs claim the question, about citizenship, might incentivize minorities to avoid being counted on the census. From reuters.com:

Friday’s conference proved highly significant, with the justices agreeing to decide the fate of a bid by President Donald Trump’s administration to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, which opponents say will scare immigrant communities from participating, leading to an undercount.

No pictures of Justice Ginsburg, in private or public, taken since December 15, 2018, have been published, that I have found.

Update: Justice Ginsburg attended the oral arguments on 19 February, 2019, and appeared to have recovered from her surgery. 

Justice Ginsburg is the oldest Justice on the Supreme Court. Her birthday is  on 15 March. Next month, she will be 86 years old.

Eight months from now is the earliest oral arguments will be heard for New York Rifle & Pistol Association. When you are 86, in failing health, eight months is a long time.

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

Gun Watch 

FL: Armed Samaritan Fires Shot to Stop Knife Attack

DAYTONA BEACH — An armed good Samaritan intervened to stop a man trying to stab another person near a business Sunday night, police said.

“Some guy was going crazy with a knife trying to stab someone and a good Samaritan fired a shot to stop it,” said Daytona Beach police Capt. Scott Goss.
More Here

WA: Gunfire Stops Attack in Parking Lot

Two men were fighting with another man at the Walgreen's on 85th Street NE, according to Sgt. Eric Karp with Kirkland Police. The man being attacked pulled out a gun and fired multiple shots.

It doesn’t appear he hit anyone, but the other two men ran over to their car and drove off.
More Here

PA: Armed Robbery Suspect Shot, Killed by Armed Victim

The men, who had their faces partially covered, forced open his car door and demanded money.

Shane Gesnaker, one of the men, was holding what was described as a black pistol. Gesnaker struck Santiago in the left side of his face.

Santiago said the men had sprayed him in the face with pepper spray or mace.

Santiago then grabbed his 9mm handgun and fired one shot at the men, who then fled. Gesnaker was struck by a bullet and fell to the ground about 50 feet from Santiago's vehicle.

Santiago was a licensed gun owner with a permit to carry.
More Here

NC: Gunfight Outside Bar, Man Arrested

According to the police report, a large fight broke out inside the bar and then moved outside.

After the crowd dispersed, a victim told officers they heard gunshots coming from a vehicle. The victim fired back, the police report stated.
More Here