Statesman:

Continuing his efforts to champion law enforcement since five Dallas officers were shot to death in July, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick announced Wednesday that he will press legislators to provide all 59,000 Texas patrol officers with a bulletproof vest capable of stopping high-caliber rifle rounds.

Early estimates place the cost at $15 million to $20 million, Patrick said, vowing to fight for the money in the 2017 legislative session despite a tight budget thanks to depressed oil and gas prices.

Oh my.  Do you think he understands that he’s talking about sending every cop out every day with hard shell SAPI plates and tactical vest plate carriers?  Wouldn’t that be a sight in Texas heat?  Sort of like it was with Marines running around Fallujah in 120 degree weather with full body armor on.  We’d have officers passing out everywhere, unable to get into and out of their patrol vehicles, knees crumbling from the stress, and unable to pass the physical with the additional weight of the vests.

Do you think someone needs to talk to him in private?  Or perhaps not.  Let’s see how this little experiment goes, shall we?  Everyone in favor, say aye?

News from California:

A gang member used armor piercing-bullets and an AR-15 to kill two Palm Springs police officers in a planned “ambush” on Saturday, said Riverside County District Attorney Mike Hestrin in a press conference Wednesday.

John Felix, 26, shot an assault rifle through the front door of his house, killing Officers Jose “Gil” Vega and Lesley Zerebny and wounding a third officer – all of whom were wearing bulletproof vests. Felix was captured early Sunday morning after a 12-hour standoff with police and SWAT teams.

Felix has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder and three counts of attempted murder, with enhancement filed on each charge for the use of body armor and armor-piercing bullets.

Because most journalists write at the fifth grade level (intentionally and by design), we don’t know what this means.  I suppose it means that he used green tip ammunition.

But it really doesn’t matter.  I’ll wager that the cops were using SAPI plates, and so Kevlar won’t stop either green tip or frangible 5.56 mm ammunition.  But leave it to the police to make it sound like something other than what it is.  Someone killed cops.  The ammunition he used is irrelevant, and the cops know that.  This event was used to make an unrelated point.

And what’s the issue with the use of “body armor?”  What was he wearing – Kevlar or hard shell armor?  Is that illegal in California?

The Washington Times:

In the exchange, Mr. Halpin mocks media mogul Rupert Murdoch for raising his children in the Catholic faith and said the most “powerful elements” in the conservative movement are all Catholic.

“It’s an amazing bastardization of the faith. They must be attracted to the systematic thought and severely backwards gender relations and must be totally unaware of Christian democracy,” Mr. Halpin said.

“I imagine they think it is the most socially acceptable politically conservative religion. Their rich friends wouldn’t understand if they become evangelicals,” Ms. Palmieri responded.

“Excellent point,” Mr. Halpin wrote back. “They can throw around ‘Thomistic’ thought and ‘subsidiarity’ and sound sophisticated because no one knows what the hell they’re talking about.”

[ … ]

In another brief exchange, Mr. Podesta and Center for American Progress President Neera Tanden slammed Southerners and the Miss America Pageant.

“Do you think it’s weird that of the 15 finalists in Miss America, 10 came from the 11 states of the CSA?” Mr. Podesta asked, referring to the Confederate States of America.

“Not at all I would imagine the only people who watch it are from the confederacy and by now they know that so they’ve rigged the thing in their honor,” Ms. Tanden responded in a September 2015 message.

In another email, Mr. Podesta asked why CNN’s Mr. Tapper is “such a d—k,” one of a number of examples of Clinton allies verbally assaulting reporters — though other messages show close coordination with influential reporters.

Just for the record, and so my readers know, Thomas Aquinas was the Roman Catholic Church’s answer to Aristotle.  To wit, many of the works of Aristotle has been found around the time of Thomas, and those that were already available found a resurgence in study.  Scholars began to read them again, and the teachings of Aristotle even became popular within the laity.

The RCC needed an answer, or so they thought (I think the Scripture stands on its own as capable of supporting a comprehensive world view without admixture with anything else), so they commissioned Thomas to read and answer the resurgent popularity of Aristotle, synthesizing the Scriptures with Aristotle when he needed to.  The result was what scholars call the “Thomistic Synthesis.”  Ultimately, the result was the Council of Trent, which today forms the doctrinal basis for the RCC.  For the record, I am a Calvinist so I do not follow the traditions of the RCC.

When anyone asks you now, you know the answer.  There is much more, and you can read it for yourself.  Take note of the dripping sarcasm, the hatred, the utter disdain for anyone who isn’t them.  And take note that they consider you – if you are one of my Southern readers – an ignorant redneck.

Never forget that.

Bearing Arms:

Uniformed security guards are hired by stores to provide peace of mind and serve as a deterrent to casual criminals, such as petty shoplifters and aggressive panhandlers. They are not law enforcement officers, do not generally have good training, and the physical and mental screening for security guards isn’t that high (which is perhaps why we’ve had two security guards go on terrorist killing sprees this year alone).

Aggressive predators are not deterred by either unarmed or armed security guards, but it is relatively rare to seen a criminal so callous that he would murder a guard just to acquire an additional handgun.

A man who would murder someone for a handgun would presumably have no problem doing the same with an open carrier who typically has even less training and general awareness than armed security guards.

We’ve noticed that there are generally only four kinds of open carry stories.

1. a group of people open carry as a form of political protest (generally without law enforcement involvement)
2. an individual open carries as a form of political protest (often with law enforcement involvement, including occasional arrests)
3. an individual open carrier who is oblivious to his surroundings has his/her picture posted to gun forums pointing out his/her utter lack of awareness and generally poor choice of gun and holster.
4. an open carrier is attacked for his weapon, with the criminal generally being successful.

We would love to report that open carry deters crime, but there is simply no data suggesting that this is a true statement. Folks, criminals laugh at open carriers. They view them as targets, no different than someone with a cash-filled wallet hanging out of their back pocket as they stand in the checkout line, nose buried in a smart phone and oblivious to the world.

I’ve seen Bob hate on open carriers before, but this is ridiculous.  This commentary is completely out of control (I hesitate to call it an “analysis” because nothing is being analyzed).

Bob doesn’t really know that all uniformed security is poorly trained.  He doesn’t know that open carriers are even more poorly trained than uniformed security.  He also doesn’t know that open carriers have poor situational awareness.

He doesn’t know that open carriers fall into only the four categories he lists.  He’s just referring (anecdotally, not analytically) to news accounts he believes he has read.

He especially doesn’t know that criminals laugh at open carriers.  In fact, I challenge Bob to supply me with one verifiable instance in public where a known criminal laughed at an open carrier.  I’ve open carried many times, and I’ve also been around people I knew to be gang members when doing so.  No one – no one – has ever laughed at me.  In one particular instance when multiple gang members were heading my direction on the sidewalk (it was four or five of them), they saw me open carrying and decided to cross the road, walk past me, and cross back over when they were clear of me.  They kept their heads down and studiously avoided making eye contact with me while walking on the other side of the road.

As I said, this commentary is completely out of control, and I simply have no earthly idea what Bob’s problem is with open carry.  There is no law requiring him to do it, so why the negative attention?  It’s legal, so what business is it of his to bash the practice?  How does a crime against uniformed security turn into open carry bashing?  I’m beginning to think this is a psychological issue that Bob has.

What is your malfunction, Bob?

Reason:

A Hennepin County (Minn.) drug squad — known as the Emergency Services Unit (ESU) — conducted a pre-dawn no-knock raid on a house in North Minneapolis one morning in November 2015. They were looking for Walter Power, who they suspected of being a marijuana dealer. To search the home they believed Power to be sleeping in, they brought a force of between 28-32 officers, most clad in riot gear and carrying rifles, accompanied by a sniper seated atop a Ballistic Engineered Armored Response (BEAR) vehicle.

Why did law enforcement officials feel they needed to display a show of overwhelming force that would be intense even in a foreign occupied city? Because the primary resident of the house, Michael Delgado, was a registered gun-owner with a license to carry.

Convinced of the potential danger posed to officers when raiding a house with an armed occupant, Hennepin County District Judge Tanya Bransford signed off on the no-knock raid, but later told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that she did not know a platoon of up to 32 officers would be deployed to search the house, or that they’d throw flash bang grenades through the windows in addition to knocking down doors.

The raid resulted in the arrest of Power — the suspected marijuana dealer — for “fifth-degree drug possession,” the lowest possible drug charges on the books. Even this modest charge would be dropped after Judge Bransford declared the raid unconstitutional in a ruling last summer, arguing that Delgado and Power had been subject to unreasonable search and seizure in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Bransford wrote in her ruling “that the types of militarized actions used in this case seem to be a matter of customary business practice,” which she found troubling.

Like most of the U.S., Hennepin County has increasingly relied on SWAT teams to serve warrants. According to the Star-Tribune, its ESU deployed 71 times last year, which is more than double its annual usage from a decade prior. A 2014 study by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) found that on a national basis, SWAT teams were only used “for hostage, barricade, or active shooter scenarios” in seven percent of all deployments, while 62 percent of SWAT raids were to search for drugs.

The executive director of the Minnesota Sheriff’s Association, Jim Franklin, was quoted by the Star-Tribune as saying of Bransford’s ruling, “My question to her is: Are you going to attend the dead cop’s funeral?” Franklin’s argument is essentially that without the use of such violent and destructive tactics, officers’ lives would be at risk.

Why didn’t uniformed officers go up to the door in the day time and knock?  Oh yea.  They wanted that “evidence.”  Okay, so why didn’t they stake out the home and wait until he left, go into the home to get their evidence, and then arrest him in the driveway?

Because they wanted to be all tacticool and bad ass.  They wanted to play soldier-boy without the commitment.  As for the judge, she knew.  She knew everything.  She’s throwing a red herring in your face now because it looks bad.  She could have asked the same questions I’m asking.  It makes no difference whether they used 30 officers or three.  They conducted an armed invasion of another man’s home and are at a minimum guilty of breaking and entering, as well as reckless endangerment.

Jim Franklin is also lying.  If he was concerned about officer safety, he wouldn’t be advocating these kinds of ridiculous raids to begin with.  He would be advocating exactly what I did, i.e., stake the home out and arrest him in the driveway.

Both judge Bransford and Jim Franklin are liars.

OUDaily:

I am a retired police officer. I’m also a gun owner, but I am weary of the “guns-solve-everything” mentality. I’m tired of the proliferation of open carry proposals that increase the visibility of firearms in public places — particularly in schools, colleges and universities. I am not convinced more firearms on campus will deter or stop active shooters.

Frankly, people who openly carry sometimes make me nervous. Some of them seem smug, over confident, even demonstrative — wanting people to notice they are indeed carrying a loaded weapon. It is a political statement, a warning and a boast. I watch them strutting into stores, sitting in restaurants and walking down the street fairly oblivious to the burden of carrying a firearm in full view.

Except for him.  You see, he isn’t tired of LEOs carrying guns, just you.  And by God, make sure that no one sees that you’re carrying.  He is a LEO, just like you, only better.  Only he can be seen carrying a gun.

As for the part about making a political statement, I’ve never done any such thing (not that it would necessarily be a bad thing to make a statement), and only open carry when it’s hot and I sweat my weapon when I carry IWB.  Here in North Carolina – a traditional open carry state – I’ve never had a problem with LEOs giving me a hassle about open carry.  And blood doesn’t run in the streets around here, and women and children don’t run down the road screaming.

But apparently it’s even worse in Connecticut.

In an effort to cover up their unconstitutional actions, Connecticut State Police made up charges against a young open carry activist last year.

The state eventually dismissed all charges when they heard Michael Picard’s recording of cops plotting to trump up charges against him to “cover our ass.”

Now Picard is suing Connecticut State Police with the help of the ACLU for trumping up fabricated charges against him as well as violating his First and Fourth Amendment rights under the United States Constitution.

The September 2015 incident was all caught on video after State Troopers John Barone, Patrick Torneo, and John Jacobi illegally seized Picard’s camera and inadvertently left it on, all while their illegal actions were plotted. The video can be seen at the bottom of the page.

“Let’s give him something. We can hit him with creating a public disturbance. We gotta cover our ass,” Barone was recorded as saying.

Picard was in West Hartford protesting a DUI checkpoint by holding a big sign that alerted drivers. After an hour of protesting, police approached Picard and knocked the camera out of his hand, noting that Picard didn’t have a First Amendment right to record the trooper.

It was then that the troopers illegally search Picard and discovered he was open carrying a gun, which is legal in Connecticut. The troopers confiscated the camera along with the gun to run a permit check, only to find out that Picard’s gun permit is valid, all while violating the young man’s Fourth Amendment right to protection against illegal search and seizure.

“Oh crap we gotta punch a number on this guy,” a trooper can be heard saying.

“What we say is that multiple motorists stopped to complain about a guy waving a gun around, but none of them wanted to stop and make a statement.”

But then one of the troopers noticed that Picard’s camera was still on.

“Oh shit!! I think the camera is on, it says it is still recording.”

There you go.  It’s that pesky constitution thing again.  If LEOs just didn’t have to mess around with things like law and rights everyone would be safer.

Connecticut.  Oh yea, that’s the home of communist and traitor Barbara Bellis.  I’m kind of getting bad vibes about that place.

News Miner:

“At least it’s sunny out,” Dybdahl recalled telling his hunting partner while the pair were waiting for a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter to find them.

Dybdahl, 30, knew he was losing a lot of blood, he knew that there was a chance the helicopter might not find him and he also knew there were more bears in the brush circling them. But none of that mattered. He had already made up his mind that he was going to live.

Sitting up in his hospital bed Tuesday, Hoonah resident Dybdahl went over the surreal mauling he had suffered just three days prior while on a hunting trip near Port Frederick bay with his friend Anthony Lindoff, 36. The two had taken a boat out to an area just 10 miles southwest of Hoonah to look for deer. As they were getting ready to make deer calls, Lindoff said, he heard something. He hoped it was a deer, but then he turned and locked eyes with a sow brown bear running straight toward him.

“It didn’t get the memo that it was supposed to bluff charge, this was serious,” Lindoff said. “It chased me first, and as I was running, backing away, I was trying to swing at it with my trekking poll because my rifle was in my sling on my backpack. I immediately thought that was the biggest mistake I could have made. . I felt like the worst hunting partner.”

Dybdahl threw off his pack and headed farther down the hill, trying to get his rifle in position to help out his friend. Unfortunately, Dybdahl didn’t know that the same direction he was moving in was where the sow bear had left two of her cubs behind. In what Dybdahl said seemed like a single moment, the bear changed direction and Dybdahl was on the ground. His rifle no longer in his hands, he screamed for his friend to shoot the bear as it pinned him down, and had its teeth in his flesh.

Dybdahl said he had never been more “in the moment,” able to see, hear, and smell everything so intensely. Everything he knew about bears went racing through his head. He realized quickly he was angering the bear more by moving and screaming. His body went limp and he was silent. But even though he made himself appear harmless, the sow didn’t stop. For the next 10 seconds, he said, his whole body could feel the bear’s ferocity and rage.

“When she bit down on my leg, my thigh, she ripped so hard. . I could hear everything,” Dybdahl said. “It sounded like paper ripping and she pulled my thigh. I felt my whole thigh muscle move away from my leg bone.”

[ … ]

Although he flinched when Dybdahl recreated the sound of flesh tearing, Lindoff was not as unsettled on Saturday. When he saw the bear on Dybdahl, he went through six motions in approximately 10 seconds, never skipping a beat. He slung his rifle in front of him, took the gun sleeve off, took off the scope cover, chambered a round, aimed and fired.

“I’ve never de-slinged my rifle that quickly,” Lindoff said.

Josh was very blessed.  If you’re going to be in the bush, carry your rifle in hand, regardless of whether it’s comfortable or not.  Or if you don’t want to do that, carry a sidearm for self defense.  I think most Alaskan’s will tell you to carry a wheel gun, .44 Magnum or .454 Casull.  That’s probably good counsel for the entire Northwest.  Down South here, carrying .45 ACP is just fine.

Greenwich Time:

NEWTOWN – The judge in the lawsuit brought by 10 families against the maker of the gun used in the Sandy Hook massacre has denied Remington’s latest request to forego the exchange of pre-trial evidence.

The order by Judge Barbara Bellis is another in a series of incremental victories for the Sandy Hook families, who argue that Remington is liable for negligently entrusting an AR-15-type rifle to a civilian, resulting in the deaths of 20 first-graders and six educators.

Bellis’ ruling on Friday is the second time in as many months that the judge has denied a request by Remington to forego the exchange of evidence. In mid-September, the judge said she would hear Remington’s argument about why the case should be dismissed in December 2017, and not before.

The judge’s Friday order follows an objection filed by the families earlier in the week, which called gunmaker’s request to rearrange the pre-trial schedule and avoid the exchange of evidence ‘impractical,’ ‘unfair’ and ‘self-serving.’

In other words, Remington went back to the same judge that illegally asserted her authority before, and begged again to keep from having to open their books to the communists.  But since judge Barbara Bellis is a communist and traitor herself, she once again denied Remington’s request.

Another way of saying it is that she is willing to postpone the date of hearing the question of whether the case should even be in court to begin with until December, but unwilling to delay “discovery,” or in other words, she will happily help along harm of Remington before it’s even decided whether there should be a case.  And clearly when she decides that question, it won’t go in Remington’s favor.

We used to do things with traitors that judge Barbara Bellis deserves herself.  But we’re too civil for that these days, so we let traitors live among us and even adjudicate illegal cases.  Let’s be clear.  Even something like impeaching her could have stopped this abortion, but the state senate and house don’t have the balls to do something like that.

Our country is in one hell of a fix.

Prior:

Discovery In The Sandy Hook Families Versus Remington Case

Judge Barbara Bellis: Update On The Sandy Hook Families’ Lawsuit Of Remington

Judge Barbara Bellis Says Sandy Hook Families’ Lawsuit Against Remington Goes Forward

Daily Herald:

The Chicago Police Department for the first time will ask the public to comment on proposed changes in how officers may use force against people suspected of crimes — proposals that already are worrying some officers, such as restrictions on when to draw a weapon.

Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson has sent a memo to officers giving them highlights of the changes.

Among the most controversial proposals among the rank-and-file is for officers to keep their guns in their holsters “unless there is a reasonable belief that such action is necessary for the officer’s safety or the safety of others,” several officers told the Chicago Sun-Times on Friday.

One sergeant said he was worried the restriction could prompt officers to second-guess themselves in potentially dangerous situations in which they might have drawn their guns in the past.

I would have thought that this would have been fairly uncontroversial, but then again I guess I just have an exaggerated sense of equity and fairness.  If I can’t do it, and I expect that others can’t unholster their weapons towards me, then cops shouldn’t be able to do it either.  And there is that whole Tennessee versus Garner thing.

Kyle does a nice job with this.  I saw that Count Dracula concealed carry draw and thought it was rather goofy.