Articles by Herschel Smith

David Codrea observes that Obama’s views on guns are becoming more transparent as time waxes on.

A “tweet” sent out today by Gun Talk Radio host Tom Gresham reminded gun rights activists that, despite partisan rhetoric to the contrary, draconian gun control remains a stated goal of the Obama administration.

“Finally! The smoking gun!” Gresham posted. “Campaign confirms Obama wants to BAN GUNS, kill gun shows. Scroll down to ‘Crime.’”

The website he linked to was Obama’s Change.Gov site, created when he was President-Elect, and the page in question defined his “Urban Policy.”

In the administration’s own words under the section titled “Address Gun Violence in Cities” we see:

Obama and Biden would repeal the Tiahrt Amendment, which restricts the ability of local law enforcement to access important gun trace information, and give police officers across the nation the tools they need to solve gun crimes and fight the illegal arms trade. Obama and Biden also favor commonsense measures that respect the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, while keeping guns away from children and from criminals. They support closing the gun show loophole and making guns in this country childproof. They also support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent.

In short, the president wants to enact a measure opposed by the Fraternal Order of Police because it could compromise ongoing criminal investigations, he wants to end private sales, he wants to mandate nonexistent technology (“Only Ones” exempted, of course, even though the genesis of “smart gun” research and development was to mitigate police “takeaway” incidents), and he wants the federal government to withhold 19th Century firearm technology from “We the People.”

This column noted those goals back in January, 2009, when Obama first took office, noting that some key language had been deleted, with the reasonable assumption that it was done to mask intent and diminish alarm, specifically by someone at the administration’s direction deliberately editing out the words “such weapons belong on foreign battlefields and not on our streets” from the last sentence.

Yes, there is that so-called “assault weapons” ban being advocated.  I’ve already weighed in on this saying that it is not only unconstitutional, but immoral because it forces families to consider potentially inferior weaponry (i.e., magazine capacity limitations) for their own home defense.

But there is that other phrase – gun show loophole – that’s bothersome.  It’s bothersome because it’s a phantom.  It isn’t real.  It doesn’t exist.  There is no such thing as a gun show loophole.  That’s a ghost phrase invented by the gun control lobby intended to embed itself into the consciousness of the American public.

Guns sold by firearms dealers at gun shows go through the same process as if they were at their own store.  Form 4473’s are filled out and background checks are performed.  But the gun control lobby will say that individuals can still sell to individuals, and that’s right, just as they can outside of gun shows.

The real intent is to enact legislation to prohibit individual sales, forcing paperwork for every firearms sale, and thus creating the beginnings of a national gun registry.  A national gun registry is an evil thing because it is the first step to confiscation.

There are other definition problems in current news.  Wal-mart in South Bend, Indiana, is having some problems.  “A Wal-Mart in South Bend has pulled weapons marketed as tactical shotguns after the Common Council said it believed the sale of such weapons violated an agreement between the store and the city.  In a conference call between the council and Wal-Mart, the two entities also agreed to reduce the hours in which the store sells firearms in response to complaints from the public.”

There’s that dreaded word – tactical – sound and fury signifying nothing.  More shells in the tube magazine, apply a scary word to it, and the city council goes bananas.  But what’s the real problem here?  It gets interesting.

Reverend Greg Brown, a local minister on the city’s West side, became concerned about Wal-Mart’s gun sales after two of the kids in his youth group said they were offered $50 to steal ammunition from the store.

“A gentleman came to them with a gym bag and asked them to load it up with ammunition and come out where they get tires,” Brown.

ABC 57 went to the Wal-Mart off Ireland Road in South Bend. That is when we found a 12 gauge tactical shotgun in the display case, next to .223 high-powered ammunition.

So Reverend Brown’s youth group’s problems becomes Wal-Mart’s problems via a scary story in the news, a word grouping (“tactical” shotguns), and a progressive city council.  Good misdirect on Reverend Brown’s part.

Those same stories discuss the freedom Wal-Mart has to sell hunting rifles.  But take note.  If someone had purchased a really nice bolt action .308 with expensive glass, what would the press have done if this had gotten into criminal hands?  Perhaps call it a “sniper rifle?”

In the hands of the gun control lobby, hunting rifles become “sniper rifles,” home defense shotguns with shorter barrels for moving around corners become “tactical shotguns,” and rifles with a magazine capacity of greater than ten rounds become the extremely scary “assault weapon.”

So far, we have let the horrible and dishonest gun control lobby dominate the dialogue, and they have used their control to invent scary slogans like “gun show loophole,” and words for weapons designed to scare any good mother.  We need to punch back twice as hard, lampooning and ridiculing each and every instance of such dishonest word gaming, from the media to the politicians and whomever else uses those stupid phrases.  It’s one way to bring some manly righteousness to the conversation.

UPDATE #1: Thanks to David for the attention.

The narrative changes yet again.

The size and “lethality” of the attack on the U.S. consulate compound in Benghazi, Libya, that left Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead was “unprecedented,” a senior State Department official said today.

Senior State Department officials today gave the most detailed account to-date of the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi on Sept. 11, which killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other diplomats. One official said the nature of the assault was unparalleled in recent history.

“The lethality and number of armed people is unprecedented,” one of the officials said. “There was no attack anywhere in Libya — Tripoli or Benghazi — like this, So it is unprecedented and would be very, very hard to find a precedent like that in recent diplomatic history.”

So there was no reason to have suspect such an event could have occurred, or so the State Department seems to want us to think.

I give you Jeddah in 2005.

It took only five seconds for al Qaeda terrorists to break into the U.S. compound in Jeddah in an attack that killed five people, according to tapes obtained exclusively by ABC News.

The terrorists entered the compound at 11:16 a.m. on a day when the compound was supposed to be at a critical threat level. As seen on tape, a white U.S. government consulate vehicle pulls up to a side gate where it waits for two security barriers to be opened. Chanting “God is great” over a cell phone to their accomplices, the terrorists pull up in their four-door sedan just as the consulate car is cleared.

“Obviously they’d done a surveillance action on this facility,” said Tony Deibler, a former State Department security officer, as he watched the tapes of the December 2004 attack.

The terrorists’ car is blocked, but they exit on foot and open fire. Within five seconds, they get through the security gates, including an expensive obstacle known as a Delta barrier.

As the terrorists run inside, the Saudi National Guard troops assigned to protect the consulate run in the opposite direction — away from the fight.

“Well, I hate to say it because I have a lot of friends who are on the Saudi National Guard, but they’re running away,” Deibler said. “At least, that National Guardsman took his weapon with him, although he’s going the wrong way.”

One minute into the attack, the terrorists have the run of the compound as employees run for their lives. The attackers open fire on several buildings. By 11:19 a.m., all Americans are safely secured inside the consulate’s main building after what is known as the “duck and cover” alarm. Meanwhile, the terrorists attempt unsuccessfully to get past security doors and rig an explosive charge. Four minutes later, the Marines release tear gas, but the State Department uses a weaker version than the military so it appears to have little effect on the attackers.

“You can see it’s dissipating already, and it’s not even, it’s not having any effect at all,” Deibler described, as he watched the tapes of the attack.

At 11:47 a.m., the terrorists take down the American flag in front of the consulate. After that, out of the sight of the cameras, they take four U.S. employees and a local guard hostage, all of whom are later killed. Ten others under the protection of the U.S. consulate will be injured.

And Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

The near-simultaneous bombing attacks on the US Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania took place on 7 August 1998. In Nairobi, where the US Embassy was located in a congested downtown area, the attack killed 291 persons and wounded about 5,000. The bombing in Dar es Salaam killed 10 persons and wounded 77.

As early as December 1993, a team of al Qaeda operatives had begun casing targets in Nairobi for future attacks. It was led by Ali Mohamed, a former Egyptian army officer who had moved to the United States in the mid-1980s, enlisted in the U.S. Army, and became an instructor at Fort Bragg. He had provided guidance and training to extremists at the Farouq mosque in Brooklyn, including some who were subsequently convicted in the February 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. The casing team also included a computer expert whose write-ups were reviewed by al Qaeda leaders.

The team set up a makeshift laboratory for developing their surveillance photographs in an apartment in Nairobi where the various al Qaeda operatives and leaders based in or traveling to the Kenya cell sometimes met. Banshiri, al Qaeda’s military committee chief, continued to be the operational commander of the cell; but because he was constantly on the move, Bin Ladin had dispatched another operative, Khaled al Fawwaz, to serve as the on-site manager. The technical surveillance and communications equipment employed for these casing missions included state-of-the-art video cameras obtained from China and from dealers in Germany. The casing team also reconnoitered targets in Djibouti.

I suppose that we could attribute the ignorance to young State Department employees, recent graduates of international studies programs, who have no personal recollection of these attacks and believe that we are going to solve all of the world’s ills by dialogue.

But does anyone at State use Google?  Do these clowns scrutinize anything before they release it?

I’m sorry for the scatterbrained post title, but there are several things we need to cover.

First, note what Lara Logan says about Afghanistan (and the more sweeping issue of the state of Islamists in Asia and Africa).

Eleven years later, “they” still hate us, now more than ever, Logan told the crowd. The Taliban and al-Qaida have not been vanquished, she added. They’re coming back.

“I chose this subject because, one, I can’t stand, that there is a major lie being propagated . . .” Logan declared in her native South African accent.

The lie is that America’s military might has tamed the Taliban.

“There is this narrative coming out of Washington for the last two years,” Logan said. It is driven in part by “Taliban apologists,” who claim “they are just the poor moderate, gentler, kinder Taliban,” she added sarcastically. “It’s such nonsense!”

[ … ]

Our enemies are writing the story, she suggests, and there’s no happy ending for us.

It must come as a shock to hear a main stream reporter say these things to the Obama administration.  I’m sure those in attendance were shocked.  Lara Logan (reporting on Afghanistan) and Sharyl Attkisson (on Fast and Furious) working for CBS have done good work (although David Codrea and Mike Vanderboegh were the sources for Sharyl’s work and haven’t received enough credit for it).  Jake Tapper with ABC is also a very good reporter, but there aren’t many in the MSM that have earned the respect they demand.

But I have a problem with Lara’s account.  She says, “Our enemies are writing the story,” as if the Taliban are some sort of honorable warriors who have outwitted the U.S. with all of its heralded might.

No, we have abandoned the battle space.  The Taliban are a bunch of ignorant child molesting abusers and seventh century vandals and ne’er-do-wells.  Our loss is our fault and we beat ourselves, and as long as Lara’s prose is interpreted that way, she has added to the conversation.

But of course, readers of The Captain’s Journal didn’t have to wait on Lara to give us this information.  I have been singing this song for five or more years now, calling Generals McChrystal, Rodriguez and others on the carpet for their failures and propaganda (recall where I called out Rodriguez and his stupid claim that the Taliban weren’t able to launch a spring offensive in 2008).

Speaking of things that my readers already know, it’s almost amusing to see how the administration and their detractors have done this kabuki dance over who knew what when on the Benghazi attacks.  This was all totally unnecessary and so much wasted time.

All one must do to figure out what happened is visit this web site and study the educated comments posted in reply to the articles.  For example, study the comments from Dirty Mick and Jean from one month ago (right after the attack happened) and you will learn about a complex ambush, the use of combined arms, no real QRF, enemy fighters already in position, etc.  We knew then that this was a preplanned attack whether they admitted it or not.  The only thing that wasn’t clear at this point was that the existing security team included contract employees (former SEALs), and that more security had been requested.

Again, you know it from reading it here almost as soon as the smoke clears.  You don’t have to wait on the spin.

From Politico:

“There’s been a strong grassroots outcry over the attacks on Big Bird. This is something that mothers across the country are alarmed about, and you know, we’re tapping into that,” Psaki told reporters aboard Air Force One on Tuesday.

While some have questioned the campaign’s seriousness and intent to put money behind the ad in swing states, Psaki maintained that it is running on cable networks – albeit during comedy shows – that swing-state viewers watch.

“The larger point… is, aside from our love for Big Bird and Elmo, as is evidenced by the last few days, the point that we’re making here is that when Mitt Romney… was given the opportunity to lay out how he would address the deficit, when he said ‘I will take a serious approach to it,’ his first offering was to cut funding for Big Bird,” Psaki said. “And that is absurd and hard to take seriously his specific plan.”

Good.  While the world burns Obama in effigy, the “Arab Spring” turns out to be a ruse by the Muslim Brotherhood, we flee the failure that Afghanistan has become (and recently returned Tim Lynch tells me it will get a lot worse), the dollar crashes because we’re printing so much of it trying to pay our debts, Greece and Spain go into austerity measures, Iran figures out how to block the Strait of Hormuz, the ATF sends high powered rifles to the Mexican cartels in an effort to create a crisis to limit our second amendment rights, we go into ever more debt that our children and children’s children will have to repay, and we throw that borrowed money away on failed solar companies and other unnecessary entitlements – genius Obama talks Big Bird.

Every minute his campaign spends talking about Big Bird is a win for Romney and his campaign.  He is appearing the more serious candidate, and while the attacks at Benghazi, Libya, have Romney talking about personally meeting one former Navy SEAL who perished in the attack, Obama still hasn’t responded to the attack and has gone no further than to say that it is “under investigation.”  Who knew Obama would take the bait?

But the bait is spoiled.

President Obama has ruffled some feathers at PBS by putting Big Bird in a TV ad attacking Mitt Romney.

“We have approved no campaign ads, and as is our general practice, have requested that the ad be taken down,” Sesame Workshop, the PBS-affiliated non-profit behind Sesame Street, said today in a statement.

When Big Bird gets pissed at you, there is deep trouble afoot.

As precursors to my analysis, take note of the following inconsistencies and contradictions.  First, Dr. Steve Metz, Professor at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in response to Sharia is coming, left this comment: “Should we worry about the creeping influence of the Boy Scout laws? More people follow that in the United States than sharia.” Note well.  Steve is comparing Boy Scout law with Sharia law.  This Boy Scout law – compared to this sharia law.

On the other hand, because of political correctness, in the Spring of this year, US Army Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Dooley was condemned by the Joints Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and relieved of teaching duties at Joint Forces Staff College for teaching a course judged to be offensive to Islam.  The course he taught, Perspectives on Islam and Islamic Radicalism, was an elective course that Lt. Col. Dooley’s superiors judged as presenting Islam in a negative way. His superiors were persuaded to come to this conclusion after receiving an October 2011 letter in which 57 Muslim organizations claimed to be offended by the course.  The fact that Lt. Col. Dooley is a highly decorated combat veteran with  nearly 20 years of service under his belt apparently held little or no sway with the JCS.  As a matter of fact, JCS Chairman General Martin Dempsey “personally attacked” Lt. Col. Dooley on C-Span on May 10, 2012, during a Pentagon News Conference.

Next, take note of the fact that females are now matriculating at infantry officer training at Quantico.  This is certainly in line with Andrew Exum’s counsel concerning his own branch of the service: “I see no compelling reason why women should not be allowed to attend Ranger School. As far as I am concerned, if a woman really wants to run around a sawdust pit at two in the morning screaming “Ranger!” while periodically stopping to low-crawl for 50 meters, we have a constitutional — nay God-given — responsibility to allow her to do so.”

But now consider what Former Spook observes concerning women in combat MOS.

Almost 20 years ago, columnist Fred Reed published results of an Army study, comparing fitness levels among male and female soldiers. The data reaffirms that most women simply lack the upper body strength and endurance required by an Army infantryman, a Marine rifleman, or most special forces MOS’s.

The average female Army recruit is 4.8 inches shorter, 31.7 pounds lighter, has 37.4 fewer pounds of muscle, and 5.7 more pounds of fat than the average male recruit. She has only 55 percent of the upper-body strength and 72 percent of the lower-body strength… An Army study of 124 men and 186 women done in 1988 found that women are more than twice as likely to suffer leg injuries and nearly five times as likely to suffer fractures as men.

The Commission heard an abundance of expert testimony about the physical differences between men and women that can be summarized as follows:

Women’s aerobic capacity is significantly lower, meaning they cannot carry as much as far as fast as men, and they are more susceptible to fatigue.

In terms of physical capability, the upper five percent of women are at the level of the male median. The average 20-to-30 year-old woman has the same aerobic capacity as a 50 year-old man.

Finally, take note of the undercurrents in the suicide prevention department of the DoD.  We can trust our men with the most lethal weapons known to mankind, but the desire now is to give commanding officers authority over personally owned weapons.  As one commenter has noted, the concept of “at risk” is subjective, which is the same reason that such medical assessments cannot ever be allowed to preclude the right to own firearms in the civilian community.

My son routinely hauled 120 pound(+) kit off the line as a fleet Marine, including his time in Fallujah, Iraq, between body armor (including SAPI plates), backpack, weapon, SAW drums plus ammunition, hydration system, and so on and so forth.  Recall this picture from the assault into Helmand in the summer of 2009?

This Marine is carrying his kit plus a mortar plate.  He is probably crossing the line at greater than 150 pounds.

My son trained as a fleet Marine before the age of political correctness.  Strong, male Marines – not reserve Marines, but hard core regular duty infantry Marines – would need to take several shots of whiskey and 1000 mg of Ibuprofen to kill the pain prior to their twenty miles humps with full kit on 100 degree F (+) days at Camp Lejeune.  Negligent discharges brought a season in the so-called “room of pain.”  Laying back on the humps brought time in the room of pain.  Failing to qualify well on the range brought time in the room of pain.

Fun time involved laying down to sleep in the swamp overnight at Camp Lejeune (as ordered) and having to strip naked the next morning so that your buddies could burn the leeches off with cigarettes.  Or, how about that extended time at Fort A.P. Hill when the NCOs gradually removed everything the Marines had, from tent, to sleeping bag, to food, to winter clothing.  Then, it was time to sleep one winter night on that outing, and there was no way to stay alive unless Marines huddled, hugged, laid down together, shivered and threw leaves over themselves for the night.

You get the picture.  But my son left the U.S. Marine Corps because, in his own words, “the Corps is changing.”  He couldn’t train his boot Marines the same way he was trained.  He wasn’t allowed.  He had initially intended to extend so that he could go to Afghanistan with his boot Marines because he felt responsible for them.  But he believed that a lot of good men would perish in Afghanistan, and that he couldn’t make a difference in that.  So he left, along with all of the other Marines who had experience from Iraq.

If you have some sort of androgynous, genderless vision for the armed forces – if you believe that Navy Corpsmen should be able to treat the field diseases of both men and women and understand what mud and parasites in the various different cracks and crevasses and holes of men and women do, if you believe that men and women are on equal footing pertaining to physical abilities, if you believe that machines like the ridiculous Army future combat systems robotics and the silly machines like the big dog can ever replace mules and the backs of infantry Marines, if you believe that men and women will be able to interact socially as a cohesive fighting unit without the behavior that attends the opposite sexes – I think you’re weird and creepy.  Not that we can’t be friends, but just that you’re weird and creepy, at least to me.  Machines cannot replace strong men, and even the Russians found out in Afghanistan that women had a higher number of lower extremity injuries than men, causing severe under-manning of forces.  Exum believes that we have a constitutional and God-given duty to allow women in Ranger school.  I’m a constitutional aficionado with seminary training, and I don’t think Exum can prove either of those assertions.

As for Steve Metz, he isn’t stupid, he has just let his political and religious bigotry cloud his scholarship, leading to the stupid things he said about Sharia law.  But it’s okay to have Steve Metz saying those things as long as we don’t let contrary positions be taught.  We wouldn’t want to offend anyone, would we?

As for the personal possession of guns by Soldiers and Marines, how about this proposition.  We remove the ridiculous rules of engagement under which they operate and give them a coherent strategy, and see how our fighting men respond.  If not well, then I would be willing to spend some extra dollars to help assess PTSD.  But I’m betting I won’t have to spend a dime of that money.

As for the Army, I kind of expect this sort of thing.  But the Marines were supposed to be different.  They’re not, and political correctness proves it.  It’s a sad thing to watch the diminishing of the U.S. Marine Corps, once the greatest fighting and strike force on earth, to political hackery.  I hold the Commandant of the Marine Corps responsible, at least in part.  I also hold responsible a public who allows this kind of thing without pulling the plug on the absurdity of the use of our armed forces for every social engineering experiment that appeals to the self-professed intellectual elites.  And finally, it’s a shame that I have to mention the Commandant of the Marine Corps and the nations “intellectual elite” in the same breath.  How very sad is all of this?

From The Washington Free Beacon, there is this article on intelligence officials being angered by the Obama administration cover up of intelligence on Iranian and al Qaeda surge in Egypt and Libya.  But there is this interesting discussion up front.

Weeks before the presidential election, President Barack Obama’s administration faces mounting opposition from within the ranks of U.S. intelligence agencies over what career officers say is a “cover up” of intelligence information about terrorism in North Africa.

Intelligence held back from senior officials and the public includes numerous classified reports revealing clear Iranian support for jihadists throughout the tumultuous North Africa and Middle East region, as well as notably widespread al Qaeda penetration into Egypt and Libya in the months before the deadly Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.

“The Iranian strategy is two-fold: upping the ante for the Obama administration’s economic sanctions against Iran and perceived cyber operations against Iran’s nuclear weapons program by conducting terror attacks on soft U.S. targets and cyber attacks against U.S. financial interests,” said one official, speaking confidentially.

The Iranian effort also seeks to take the international community’s spotlight off Iran’s support for its Syrian ally.

Note to the administration, and a future Romney administration.  Are you sure that you don’t want to take my advice and reverse executive order 12333, and assassinate General Suleimani?  It would make life a lot easier.

Not three days ago I linked and discussed a SWAT raid on the wrong home in Delaware.  In yet another installment in the war on common sense, it has happened again in Salt Lake City.

Salt Lake City Police Chief Chris Burbank has issued an apology after narcotics detectives raided the wrong home and pointed a gun at its 76-year-old female resident.

Burbank said the woman was not injured when the search warrant was executed late Wednesday night, but one officer was placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of an internal investigation.

“She’s certainly had the event of a lifetime, and one that I am very sorry that she had to experience at all,” Burbank said.

“This was a mistake. It should not have happened,” he added.

A police task force used a battering ram to knock down the door and execute a “no-knock” search warrant.

Burbank said his department has protocols in place to prevent such mistakes, but officers did not follow them. He declined to elaborate.

The chief said he met with family members, apologized and assured them the department would repair all damage to the home.

The woman’s adult son, Raymond Zaelit, told The Salt Lake Tribune that a police officer pointed a gun at her, then asked if she had a gun or drugs. His mother, who was home alone, answered no to both.

“She was petrified. She didn’t know what to think,” Zaelit said. “This was traumatizing for her.”

Stephen Cook, an attorney representing the woman and her family, told the Deseret News that they remain focused “on helping her deal with the consequences of the traumatic incident.”

The family is reviewing the official account of the events provided Friday by police and will make a statement when appropriate, Cook added.

Paul Fracasso, a next-door neighbor of the woman, watched as police raided the wrong home.

“I saw them going through the door, crashing through the door,” he recalled. “There were guns and flashlights going everywhere, (and police) telling them: ‘Get down. Get down. Get down.'”

Fracasso said he knew immediately that police had made a mistake.

“I knew they were there for no reason,” he said. “She’s a sweet old lady, just like my grandma. I think they should have done their homework. I can’t believe it actually happened.”

Burbank declined to comment on the actual target of the warrant other than to say it was “very close” to the woman’s home. Detectives did not go there after the erroneous search, feeling they had lost the element of surprise, the chief said.

As I’ve remarked many times, these tactics are voluntary.  They don’t have to utilize them, and they do so because they choose to, not because it makes it safer for the law enforcement officers.

This raid is “yet another example of poor muzzle discipline, and the incident may have included poor trigger discipline.  When anyone who doesn’t happen to be a law enforcement officer does something like this, it’s called trespassing, brandishing a firearm, and assault with a deadly weapon (a felony offense that generally includes ”the intentional creation of a reasonable apprehension of imminent bodily harm”).  And bodily harm often does result, as with the case of Mr. Eurie Stamps, prone on the floor after his home had been mistakenly invaded, and who was shot dead by an officer who had his finger on the trigger of his weapon and stumbled, firing as a sympathetic muscle reflex.

I’ve also remarked that based on my own friends who are law enforcement officers, one who is a Captain and who has effected hundreds of felony arrests, it just isn’t that difficult to ensure safety.  A little OC spray makes the worst offenders very compliant while officers maintain stand-off distance.  Furthermore, a little investigative work goes a long way.  Stake out a home, effect the arrests in driveways, ensure that it’s the correct address, and so on.

It’s not only the reasonable and sensible thing to do, it’s the moral approach.  Invading homes (when as far as the homeowner knows, the invader is posing as a LEO and intends his family harm) is the immoral approach, and pointing weapons at women and children is the behavior of cowards.”

It will continue as long as the courts defend these tactics, or as long as we tolerate judges exonerating such behavior, and as long as we hire LEOs who want to do this, and as long as we elect city councils and county commissioners who back this kind of behavior with policy statements and money.

A report from Delaware:

MIDDLETOWN, Del. — Steve Tuppeny was in the garage having a smoke at 6:15 a.m., Thursday his wife and daughter asleep inside, when the Wilmington SWAT officers made their move.

Dressed in black, several officers rushed Tuppeny, ordered him to lie face down on the ground and handcuffed him. Other SWAT officers smashed the storm door in the front of the Tuppenys’ two-story colonial-style home, then used a battering ram to break through the red front door.
Jennifer Tuppeny, an elementary school teacher, said she was asleep upstairs when officers threw open the door to her darkened bedroom and ordered her at gunpoint to get up.

The couple’s 8-year-old daughter was awakened out of a “dead sleep” by “men dressed in black with guns shining flashlights in her face,” Jennifer Tuppeny said.

Police carried out the early morning raid in search of a man whom they called a “person of interest” in a homicide. The man, in a Sept. 19 court appearance, had said he lived at the Tuppenys’ address. Police had a search warrant authorizing them to obtain a DNA sample.

The man was located later Thursday in Smyrna, given a DNA swab and released, said Wilmington police spokesman Officer Mark Ivey. Police did not release his name, and Ivey said late Thursday afternoon that the man is neither a defendant nor a suspect.

“The person of interest had resided at the residence and provided court officials with this address within the last month indicating he currently lived there,” Ivey said in a statement released Thursday afternoon. “In compliance with standard operating procedure, officers verified that the person of interest was no longer residing at the home and did not search the residence any further.”

By that time, Steve Tuppeny said, his family had been terrorized.

“I’m lying on the garage floor at gunpoint and they are invading my home terrorizing my family,” said Tuppeny, a line chef and general contractor. “This is America. We’re innocent people here.”

Jennifer Tuppeny said her family has lived in the home for four years. They purchased it from the father of the man who was the target of Thursday morning’s raid.

Analysis & Commentary

Make no mistake about it.  Ms. Tuppeny said that she was at “gunpoint” by the officers, and the child had lights pointed at her.  These lights weren’t cheap hand carry lights, they were tactical lights, just like I have, and they were attached to picatinny rails on weapons, just like mine are.  In other words, they were pointing their weapons at an eight year old child in bed.

As I’ve observed before, “this is yet another example of poor muzzle discipline, and the incident may have included poor trigger discipline.  When anyone who doesn’t happen to be a law enforcement officer does something like this, it’s called trespassing, brandishing a firearm, and assault with a deadly weapon (a felony offense that generally includes ”the intentional creation of a reasonable apprehension of imminent bodily harm”).  And bodily harm often does result, as with the case of Mr. Eurie Stamps, prone on the floor after his home had been mistakenly invaded, and who was shot dead by an officer who had his finger on the trigger of his weapon and stumbled, firing as a sympathetic muscle reflex.

I’ve also remarked that based on my own friends who are law enforcement officers, one who is a Captain and who has effected hundreds of felony arrests, it just isn’t that difficult to ensure safety.  A little OC spray makes the worst offenders very compliant while officers maintain stand-off distance.  Furthermore, a little investigative work goes a long way.  Stake out a home, effect the arrests in driveways, ensure that it’s the correct address, and so on.

It’s not only the reasonable and sensible thing to do, it’s the moral approach.  Invading homes (when as far as the homeowner knows, the invader is posing as a LEO and intends his family harm) is the immoral approach, and pointing weapons at women and children is the behavior of cowards.

Prior:

What Does A SWAT Team And Eight Children Have In Common?

SWAT Raids A Snake Shooting

SWAT-Capades

Continuing SWAR Raid Errors And Pranks

DEA SWAT Raid And Ninth Circuit Ruling

ATF SWAT Failure

D.C. Police Bullies

One Police Officer Dead And One Wounded From No-Knock Raid

Judges Siding With SWAT Tactics

The Moral Case Against SWAT Raids

Department Of Education SWAT Raid On Kenneth Wright

The Jose Guerea Raid: A Demonstration Of Tactical Incompetence

From Emily Miller:

After getting a message from someone who threatened to kill me, I was scared. I found myself in the ten-day waiting period before I could get my first gun for self-defense in my home. When the waiting was finally over, I felt a little safer.

Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) Detective Kim, who had taken my case, called once a week to check on me. One week I told her that Verizon refused to give out the blocked phone number. She called Verizon’s law enforcement line to get the number, but the phone company refused without a subpoena.

The next few weeks I was a bit more relaxed but kept a careful vigilance, avoiding being caught anywhere alone. I scanned my street every morning and night to see if anyone was hiding. I’m not the only one in Washington who wanted carry rights for self-defense outside the home.

A few weeks after the call, Mary Cheh, who represents Ward 3 in the city council, happened to hold a public safety hearing about the enormous spike in crime in her ward. At the meeting, a woman stood up and said that she had been targeted by a criminal on the street.

The D.C. resident said that she was walking home on Military Rd., N.W. when a man came up to her and tried to rob her. Thinking quickly,  she claimed to be armed. “Just because I said, ‘I have a gun and will shoot,’ he ran,” she reported at the community meeting.

If there were ever a perfect example of why having the right to concealed carry is a deterrent to crime, that was it.

“So I can’t have it on the street?” the resident asked, turning to her neighbors in the rows of chairs. Someone said, “No.” The woman turned back to Ms. Cheh. “You said, ‘You can go ahead and keep it at home,’ but [this resident] answered the questions directly — you cannot have it on the streets.”

She also added, “I understand the power behind a weapon, but by the same token I think law-abiding, tax-paying citizens, we need to have some other recourse.”

I would like to say that the ultimate solution to this outrage is simply to leave Washington, D.C., and head to a location that doesn’t adhere to communist doctrine.

But the problem runs deeper than that.  My solution is too easy, and people everywhere have a right and duty to self defense.  That’s the fundamental issue with Ms. Cheh’s counsel.  There is no other recourse, since the mission of the police is not to prevent crime, but to respond to it.

Ms. Cheh’s counsel involves, quite literally, forcing law-abiding citizens to disarm (a gun in the domicile is an expensive paperweight when the threat is on the street), while only the criminals – by definition – have the guns.

It isn’t simply silly, or confusing, or wrongheaded, and it isn’t merely a policy difference between otherwise well-intentioned people.  It’s immoral, because the D.C. legal framework is forcing people to abdicate their God-given responsibilities to prevent harm to themselves in favor of the social engineering visions of utopia so precious to people like Ms. Cheh.

If your state has a similar legal framework, your mission is to get it changed.

Prior:

Christians, The Second Amendment And The Duty Of Self Defense

The Rabbi Would Take My Guns Away

David Codrea notes that there is a way for Romney to score big in the first debate.

The Brady Campaign has asked Jim Lehrer, moderator of tonight’s debate between President Barack Obama and GOP challenger Mitt Romney, to deviate from the announced agenda and ask the candidates questions about “gun violence,” a press release issued yesterday by the group announced.

“Splendid idea,” Seattle Gun Rights Examiner Dave Workman agreed. “Romney’s first and best answer to such a question would be that within 24 hours after taking office, he would order his attorney general to enforce the contempt of Congress citation against Eric Holder. And, Romney could add, he would also order his attorney general to fire those responsible for Operation Fast and Furious, and if warranted, pursue criminal charges against them.”

That’s consistent with an open letter question asked a month ago in this column of Romney:

Will you pledge and commit, that if elected in November, you will rescind Obama’s executive privilege order and direct your Attorney General to fully cooperate with and assist the Committee in document production and whatever else it needs to finally determine and tell the American people the truth?

It’s also consistent with a question asked of some prominent Romney boosters in the gun rights community.

It seems especially appropriate now that Romney’s campaign is using Fast and Furious to raise funds (although The Washington Times should know better than to refer to the operation as “botched,” and the assertion that “Holder was not aware” is a gross misstatement of OIG report findings of “no evidence” in an investigation where key witnesses with administration and Justice ties refused to be interviewed, and the White House itself reminded the OIG of its restricted authority).

Yes to all of the above, but Fast and Furious isn’t the only issue, and the first debate isn’t the only time.  As I’ve noted before, Romney is better than Obama on gun rights, but the difference isn’t stark enough.  If there are questions on gun rights in the wake of recent events, Romney can go on the offensive rather than sit or stand blithely and rehearse talking points as if to apologize for our rights.  It’s what I would do.

Romney needs us, but does he understand how much?