Archive for the 'Guns' Category

Greg Ellifritz:

I seriously doubt that the writer can name instances where it is legal but against policy and posting to carry weapons, whether an off duty LEO or a CHP holder.  And if it was legal for him to be there with a weapon, why did he have to hide it?  Oh, because they would have thrown him out.  Okay, why?  Because they posted and had corporate policy simply because they can, because it’s their property and not his.

The cop carried concealed, off duty, onto private property where it was against policy [and likely posted] for him to have a weapon.  And until proven to be legal, I assume that this is illegal.  I know of no exceptions that stipulate that it’s legal if you can get away with it.

Hey, I wonder whether this same cop, on duty, would turn his head and let someone go because they carried onto property where it was against policy and posted that no weapons were allowed?  Would this same cop turn a blind eye to the guy who just wanted to be able to protect himself like the cop wanted means of self defense at these concerts?  Or is he willing to risk this only because he is a LEO and gets special consideration?

And so even though he doesn’t specifically say so, he recommends breaking the law, but it’s all okay because he says he isn’t recommending that you break the law.  As for me, I am not weighing in on whether you should carry against policy and posting.  I’m saying that this dual standard turns me off.  It left a very bitter taste with me.  Comments are closed at his article.

WUSA9:

WASHINGTON – An officer in the Metropolitan Police Department’s first district “dry-fired” an unloaded weapon at the head of another officer during a roll-call meeting on Saturday afternoon, possibly under orders from a sergeant as part of a training exercise, four MPD sources tell WUSA9.

Those sources say a Sergeant later told officers in the room that they had secretly ordered the officer to unload his weapon and then pretend to fire on his colleague as part of a “training exercise” on situational awareness. The officer then pulled the trigger of the unloaded weapon while pointing it at the head of an officer until it audibly clicked, the sources say.

Both the officer who allegedly fired the weapon and the sergeant who allegedly ordered him are assigned to regular duties, pending an internal affairs investigation, MPD spokesman Sean Hickman tells WUSA9.

“I can tell you there are about seven different versions of the incident that are out there,” MPD Chief Cathy Lanier told reporters on Monday. “I’m not sure which or how many of those that you’ve heard, but I prefer to wait until I see some facts and some direct statements of what happened before I make a judgment.”

Several MPD personnel who have heard of the incident, which has been widely discussed in police circles online and elsewhere since the weekend, say they are furious that such a training exercise might have been ordered.

Another officer could easily have drawn their weapon and killed the officer who dry-fired at their colleague. Some sources say at least one officer did pull his weapon on the officer during the confusing moments surrounding the incident.

“You shouldn’t be doing that kind of training. This is police academy 101. You do not pull your weapon out of your holster and display it, especially in a roomful of cops,” said Michael Tabman, a former Fairfax County police officer and FBI special agent.

Tabman ticked off multiple ways the scenario could have turned deadly, such as a round accidentally left chambered in the officer’s weapon, or another officer in the room opening fire to preemptively protect a colleague with a gun pointed at him.

“You just don’t put people in that fear and sort of invite tragedy, and that’s what this was—it was inviting tragedy. Thank goodness nothing happened,” Tabman said.

The rules of gun safety, one of which is observation of muzzle discipline, are based on a safety philosophy called “defense in depth.”  Hundreds of articles can be found monthly where officers routinely point their firearms at citizens, many of whom are guilty of nothing at all.  They have the mistaken notion that only their safety matters, and thus it’s acceptable to muzzle flag another person as long as that person is not another law enforcement officer.  The same holds true for the idea of putting your finger on the trigger of the firearm.  This is routinely done by law enforcement while pointing weapons at other people, one problem that has developed from this being negligent discharges when they are armed with handguns with a lighter trigger pull than previous service arms, or when armed with a handgun that doesn’t shoot DA/SA (like their previous service weapon) where the initial cycling of the trigger is harder and chambers the round as well as shoots it.  See also here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and many other instances.

The point isn’t to get into mechanical and tactical issues so much as it is to explain why police shoot their handguns when they shouldn’t.  They have been poorly trained, and their concern isn’t for citizens – it is only for themselves.  There is a problem with both training and intent.  But in this instance we see stupidity on display for all to witness.  Whoever ordered to this occur shouldn’t ever be allowed to own another weapon in his life, much less still be under the employ of a police department.

But the police are indignant in this case, their ox being the one that was gored.  We also saw this in the article entitled The second deputy pointed the weapon at the first deputy and – apparently unaware the weapon was loaded – pulled the trigger.

Examiner:

A rural Maryland sheriff on Tuesday blamed President Obama’s open-door immigration policy for a surge in gangland crime that included a retaliation murder and assault on an officer doing paperwork in his cruiser.

“Case by case amnesty, backdoor amnesty, DACA programs, and the Dream Act were pushed through by executive order,” said Frederick County Sheriff Charles Jenkins.

“Policy shifts by President Obama weakened and ruined Secure Communities, and did not allow action by ICE when Sheriffs and police departments ignored detainers, allowing criminal to be released back on the streets. In effect, criminal aliens that should have been deported have been allowed to remain and commit more serious crimes becoming violent offenders,” he told the House Judiciary Committee probing the criminal impact of illegals in the United States.

He was joined by family members of victims of illegal immigrant crime, a surging issue around the nation as Obama’s policies allow more unauthorized aliens to leave jail and remain in the country.

A rural Maryland sheriff on Tuesday blamed President Obama’s open-door immigration policy for a surge in gangland crime that included a retaliation murder and assault on an officer doing paperwork in his cruiser.

Frederick is north of Washington, D.C., but has become a haven for criminal “transnational” gangs, especially in high schools. Members of MS-13 and 18th Street gangs have become influential in the schools and county.

“Transnational alien gangs are structured criminal enterprises involved in drug and human trafficking, crimes of violence over turf, retaliation, money laundering, and other serious crime. As these gangs are recruiting locally and increasing in number, so does the associated crime within communities,” said Jenkins.

He gave some details on the crimes by immigrant gangs in his county:

— There are over 75 active known validated transnational criminal gang members in Frederick County, many more suspected of gang affiliation. We also believe that MS-13 and 18th Street alien gangs are recruiting, locally, in our schools, in the region, and out of country.

[ … ]

— 7 of 11 (64%) of the criminal alien gang members encountered in 2015 were unaccompanied juveniles when they entered the U.S and eventually located to Frederick County, Maryland. Now they are adults committing serious felonies.

— Crimes committed include; 5 occurrences Attempted 1st and 2nd Degree Murder, Armed Robbery, 1st Degree Assault, Home Invasion, Armed Carjacking, Kidnapping, Use of a Firearm in the Commission of a Violent Felony, Carrying Concealed Deadly Weapons.

If you think this is going away – if you think they will be deported by anyone – if you think you and your family won’t be affected by this – if you think you are immune to this problem – if you think they aren’t coming to your neighborhood – you are badly mistaken.

Prepare to defend yourself and your family.  Have weapons inside and outside the home, prepare for anything to happen at any time.  Always carry a gun.  All is not lost.  Don’t despair, and remember Herschel’s Dictum.

Via Townhall, this sad tale:

A San Francisco sheriff’s deputy accidentally discharged a non-duty weapon, a “baby Glock,” inside the Hall of Justice on Wednesday morning, apparently while trying to demonstrate the proper use of the weapon to a colleague.

The round narrowly missed the fellow deputy, but no one was injured.

San Francisco Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Eileen Hirst said the discharge occurred before court started and was under investigation. She was not able to provide details, pending the outcome of the probe.

“An accidental discharge of a firearm is a very serious matter,” she said. “We are all very grateful that no one was injured.”

Sources say that Rhonda Gaines, a 20-plus year veteran, brought the gun to work and that Sotero Santos accidentally fired it. Hirst would not confirm either identities but said that the person who fired the weapon is receiving a one-on-one refresher on firearm training, as is the deputy who brought the weapon to the courthouse.

[…]

Sources told NBC Bay Area that Gaines brought the handgun, a 22-caliber “baby” Glock, to work and was apparently not familiar with how it operated. She handed it to Santos and asked him about its use, sources said. The second deputy pointed the weapon at the first deputy and – apparently unaware the weapon was loaded – pulled the trigger. The round missed her, piercing an equipment storage cabinet, before lodging in the office wall.

I don’t do Glocks, but even so, I know that unless it’s had the conversion kit applied to it, there is no .22 Glock.  The department may have been referring to a Glock 22, which is a .40.  Either way, it’s a good thing this happened among people so well trained in the science of firearms use and tactical applications (unlike us ignorant civilians).  Otherwise, someone might have been hurt and the other sent to prison.

Nate with Haley Strategic gives us his version of unique carry options.

Hartford Courant:

Superior Court judge has denied a motion to dismiss a lawsuit accusing gun makers and sellers of liability in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, saying the broad immunity granted to the firearms industry does not strip the court of jurisdiction to hear the claim.

While the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act generally insulates gun companies from liability, Judge Barbara Bellis said the law could be used to attack the legal sufficiency of the plaintiffs’ claims, but not to have the case thrown out at this early stage.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs – nine victims’ families and an administrator who was shot and survived – declared the ruling a major win, as victories against firearms companies are extremely rare. But the ruling does not preclude the defendants from reasserting their claims of immunity under federal law in a future motion.

The lawsuit accuses the Remington Arms Co. and other defendants of negligently selling to civilians a weapon the plaintiffs claim is suitable only for the military and law enforcement. At a hearing in February, Bridgeport lawyer Josh Koskoff argued against dismissing the case, saying the lawsuit’s claim of “negligent entrustment” is an exception to the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.

But Bellis ruled on a narrower issue, agreeing with the plaintiffs that she has jurisdiction to continue with the case, but not ruling on whether the federal law blocks the plaintiffs from pursuing their claim.

“At this juncture,” Bellis wrote, “the court need not and will not consider the merits of the plaintiffs’ negligent entrustment theory.”

Well, there may be a little more to what the judge concluded than that.  According to the AP, she concluded that the law “does not prevent lawyers for the families of Sandy Hook victims from arguing that the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle is a military weapon and should not have been sold to civilians.”  Selling an AR-15 to civilians is their equivalent of “negligent entrustment.”  The judge found that the lawyers may indeed argue that, and that she shouldn’t rule at the present on the appropriateness of said argument.  But since this is all covered by a law, let’s see what the law says.

(5) Businesses in the United States that are engaged in interstate and foreign commerce through the lawful design, manufacture, marketing, distribution, importation, or sale to the public of firearms or ammunition products that have been shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce are not, and should not, be liable for the harm caused by those who criminally or unlawfully misuse firearm products or ammunition products that function as designed and intended.

(6) The possibility of imposing liability on an entire industry for harm that is solely caused by others is an abuse of the legal system, erodes public confidence in our Nation’s laws, threatens the diminution of a basic constitutional right and civil liberty, invites the disassembly and destabilization of other industries and economic sectors lawfully competing in the free enterprise system of the United States, and constitutes an unreasonable burden on interstate and foreign commerce of the United States.

(7) The liability actions commenced or contemplated by the Federal Government, States, municipalities, and private interest groups and others are based on theories without foundation in hundreds of years of the common law and jurisprudence of the United States and do not represent a bona fide expansion of the common law. The possible sustaining of these actions by a maverick judicial officer or petit jury would expand civil liability in a manner never contemplated by the framers of the Constitution, by Congress, or by the legislatures of the several States. Such an expansion of liability would constitute a deprivation of the rights, privileges, and immunities guaranteed to a citizen of the United States under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

(8) The liability actions commenced or contemplated by the Federal Government, States, municipalities, private interest groups and others attempt to use the judicial branch to circumvent the Legislative branch of government to regulate interstate and foreign commerce through judgments and judicial decrees thereby threatening the Separation of Powers doctrine and weakening and undermining important principles of federalism, State sovereignty and comity between the sister States.

It’s difficult to imagine a clearer statement than that.  The Congress intended for all judicial actions against firearms manufacturers to fail, excepting what they called “negligent entrustment.”  Further into the law, one reads just what that means, and it is obviously intended only to apply to known cases of sales to criminals who intended to perpetrate crimes with those weapons, instances where the seller knew or should have known the intent (presumably because he heard it directly from the buyer).

It doesn’t include all sales of certain categories of firearms to certain categories of the population, such as AR-15s sold to civilians.  Additionally, the notion that because one wants to purchase an AR-15 means that he wants to perpetrate some sort of crime is prima facie absurd.  We’ve discussed the fact that there is virtually no distinction between civilian and military firearms.  AR-15s are currently ubiquitous in America, and rarely are they used to perpetrate crimes.  Pistols on the battlefield and in the homes of America look the same because they are the same, unless one wants to point out that most of the time civilians own better weapons.

The U.S. Marine Corps took Benelli shotguns into Now Zad for house clearing, and the same Marine Corps took Remington 700s and Winchester bolt action guns into Iraq as designated marksman and sniper rifles.  Excluding fully automatic crew served weapons (along with the fact that M4s are selective fire), the only firearms I can find still in considerable use among the civilian population that isn’t in use in the military is the revolver, which is a shame given the beautiful wheel guns being made at the Smith & Wesson performance center.

The case is absurd, and the judge should certainly have dismissed it with prejudice.  And take note of one of the very reasons stated by the Congress for protection of firearms manufacturers, i.e., maverick judicial officer[s].  Judge Barbara Bellis is a maverick judicial officer (which I take to include both prosecutors and judges).  She is allowing her political views to cloud her judgment.

Uncle thinks this argument is a losing argument.  I guess I have to disagree.  In a dysfunctional judicial system, anything can happen.  It should be a losing argument.  David French thinks we should watch this one carefully.  I agree.  Right along with impeaching the judge (or if you wish, tar and feathers is a good approach too).

David Codrea gives a thorough fisking to the folks at Politifact.  Sorry, but I almost can’t type or say the word “Politifact” without belly laughing.  I put them in the same category as Snopes.  Ignore all of it.

Alabama Senate on guns in cars.  Well, it’s a start.  Let’s see what the governor does with this.

Nice review of the Springfield Armory Range Officer.  It’s affinity for light ammunition and occasional FTF/FTE is troubling, but then again, the notion of a 9mm 1911 is troubling too.  If I ever got one, it would certainly be .45 ACP like God and John Moses Browning intended them to be.  I’ve been thinking about getting a RO compact for IWB carry.  Then again, Sig makes a nice desert tan Cerakote small/medium 1911 that’s on display at Gander Mountain right down the road.  Oh, life is filled with such hard choices.  What to do, what to do?

Why the U.S. Navy didn’t shoot down that Russian fighter that buzzed our ship.  I rather think it has to do with being pussies.

Only a bigot would be offended by the sight of another woman’s penis.

Beaten for being white.  This is partially why public schooling sucks.  Home school.  Your children will be better off, and so will you.

Remember just eight short months ago Senator John Cornyn tried to get his bipartisan guns and mental health bill passed?  Well, the worm is at it again.

The Hill:

The fight over gun control is threatening to scuttle a bipartisan mental health reform effort in the Senate as lawmakers rush to get the issue to the floor.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) is in talks with leaders of the Senate health committee to combine his mental health bill with one that passed the committee last month.

But Democrats object to certain sections of Cornyn’s bill that they say would make it easier for mentally ill people to acquire guns, and the controversial provisions could shatter Democratic support for the bill.

Provisions in Cornyn’s bill would require a full judicial hearing to ban someone from buying guns due to mental illness and would allow people previously committed for mental illness to purchase a gun as soon as a judge’s commitment order expires.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), one of the sponsors of the health committee’s bill, said such provisions would prevent him from supporting the bill.

“We’re still talking to [Cornyn] about whether we can move forward without those provisions,” Murphy said. “Obviously I can’t support a bill on the floor that has those provisions in it.”

Cornyn disagrees with Democrats’ argument, calling the position “unrealistic.” But he said he is open to discussing changes.

“I’m certainly open to discussing it, but I mean this whole idea that we’re not going to have a fulsome discussion about mental health and [the] problems it creates with the criminal justice system, housing and the healthcare field seems kind of unrealistic to me,” Cornyn said.

Still, he added: “I’m more interested in getting a solution and advancing the ball than I am trying to make a point.”

Murphy is one of the Senate’s strongest proponents of gun control, representing the state where the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting took place in 2012.

Asked if Cornyn has been open to dropping the problematic provisions, Murphy indicated the talks are still in an early stage.

“We haven’t gotten there yet,” he said.

Also involved in the talks are Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and health committee leaders Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.).

Both sides are still hopeful that some agreement can be reached. Mental health reform is seen as one of the few issues on which a meaningful bipartisan bill could pass this year.

About one in five adults, or 44 million people, experience a mental illness per year, but the number of available psychiatric beds has declined 14 percent in recent years, and families are often prevented by privacy laws from accessing crucial information to help care for family members with mental illness.

But gun politics has long been an obstacle for mental health reform.

Republicans argue for mental health reform as a response to mass shootings, while Democrats contend that mental health reform, while important in its own right, is no substitute for new gun control laws.

“The two work in tandem, not one as a substitute for the other,” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said at a hearing in February in which he denounced the gun-related sections of Cornyn’s bill. “If we did gun legislation, we’d need mental health legislation with real dollars. If we did mental health legislation with real dollars, we’d need gun legislation.”

One fear is that if Cornyn’s gun-related provisions made it into the final bill, it could spark a back and forth with Democrats putting forward their own gun-control amendments, disintegrating the bipartisan calm that would be crucial to passing the bill in an election year.

Murphy is trying to convince other Democrats not to introduce gun-related amendments of their own.

Even so, a Senate Democratic aide said that moving forward with a clean mental health bill is more likely now than it seemed a few weeks ago.

Murray said in a statement she is proud of the bipartisan bill that passed committee last month.

“I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to move our bill to the floor and continue building on that bipartisan foundation as soon as possible,” she said.

Will the GOP ever learn?  We don’t want any of this.  I don’t care what kind of protections Cornyn has in the bill, or what he claims are protections.  The court system is corrupt, and appeal to mental health professionals is the twenty first century equivalent of appeal to the village witch doctor.  I don’t want bipartisan cooperation.  I don’t want kindness and collegiality.  I don’t want both sides to come to agreement.  And I really, really don’t care if the NRA supports this bill or not.  I want war.  Not one more gun law, not a single one, not even a hint of one.  The only gun legislation that should be passed should be to undo the past obscenities such as the Hughes amendment.

And remember what reader Menckenlite said about psychiatry?

Control freaks love psychiatry, a means of social control with no Due Process protections. It is a system of personal opinion masquerading as science. See, e.g., Boston University Psychology Professor Margaret Hagan’s book, Whores of the Court, to see how arbitrary psychiatric illnesses are. Peter Breggin, Fred Baughman and Thomas Szasz wrote extensively about abuses of psychiatry. Liberals blame guns for violence. Conservatives blame mental illness. Neither have any causal connection to violence. The issue is criminal conduct, crime. Suggesting that persons with legal disabilities are criminals shows the nonsensical argument of this politician and his fellow control freaks. Shame on them.

Mental health, if it can be consistently defined by the village witchdoctor, has no causal bearing on or connection to the perpetration of evil.  The perpetration of evil is done by those with mental maladies and those without alike.  It has to do with federal headship in Adam, the first man, and whether that fallen nature has been redeemed.  Leave the issues of morality and the soul to the doctors of the church, Johnny boy.  Your doctors aren’t good enough and don’t really understand.

Stamford Advocate:

A city man cleaning his revolver Thursday night was charged with reckless endangerment after the gun accidentally went off and blew a hole through his apartment wall, police said.

Capt. Richard Conklin said Hadrian Gardner, 24, was in his Tresser Boulevard apartment cleaning the revolver when he pulled the trigger, thinking there were no bullets in the chamber, about 8 p.m. Thursday

The bullet went through the wall and entered the adjacent apartment where his neighbor dove to the floor for cover, Conklin said.

Gardner checked on his neighbor and found him unharmed and then reported the shot to police.

Gardner was charged with illegal discharge of a weapon within city limits and two counts of reckless endangerment.

Conklin said Gardner’s pistol permit was seized and will be sent to state police, who will hold a hearing to consider revoking his license to carry the gun. Two other handguns were also seized from Gardner.

It “went off.”  Because he pulled the trigger.  Good grief.  Listen man, this isn’t even a semiautomatic where you have to cycle and lock the slide to observe the chamber.  This is a revolver, smart guy.  Open the cylinder, look for empty spaces in each of the chambers.  It’s that simple.

There is no excuse.

College students are supposed to be getting world class educations on everything from the STEM courses to liberal arts and rhetoric and logic.  No, I’m just kidding, they really don’t study any of that today, except STEM in some of the more technical universities (thank God for that), but the fees they charge would hint that they must learn something.  Right?

Well, let’s put that to the test.

Imagine yourself sitting in class. It’s been a long day, and you’re not paying attention to your professor. Instead, you’re planning your evening. Maybe you have an exam the next day and you want to go study in the library. Maybe you have to go down to the KAC at 4 for practice. Maybe all you want to do is sit with your friends and eat.

Then you hear gun shots. Not from the shooting range nearby, but on campus. The school goes on lockdown. Your professors instruct you to stay in the classroom, turn off the lights, cover the windows on the doors, lock the doors from the inside and hide. The room is absolutely silent. Eventually, Campus Safety comes to tell you you may all go back to your dorms.

“Were there any casualties?” you ask. “We are not at liberty to discuss that information right now,” the officer replies. You call your parents to tell them you’re OK and then you call all your friends to make sure they are as well. One of them doesn’t pick up. You try again. Still no answer. The next day the president’s office sends out an email explaining the incident and those affected. Your friend is in critical condition.

This hypothetical situtation is similar to what the families and friends of the first graders at Newtown, the high schoolers at Columbine and the college students at Virginia Tech have experienced. I am not willing to allow my school to be added to that list. House Bill 48, Concealed Carry-Affirmative Defenses-Carrying Firearm in Certain Vulnerable Areas, or the “Guns Everywhere Bill,” which is currently in committee in the Ohio State Senate, would allow people to carry weapons on college campuses across the state.

This is a recipe for a disaster. College students are under a tremendous amount of stress, are often impulsive and inevitably have access to alcohol. The combination of these factors would produce a dangerous and potentially disastrous situation if guns were added to the mix. But it is more likely that impulsive students will hurt themselves, rather than their peers.

So her thesis is this.  Students will “inevitably” get access to alcohol.  Inevitably, says she.  And perhaps she’s right.  Prohibition never works.  But she advocates gun control that looks just like prohibition, thinking that rules against them will keep them off of campus if someone really intends to bring one on anyway.  Moreover, she advocates control over peaceable, law abiding students rather than the criminals she purports to control (by the way, more rapes, burglaries and assaults occur on our local campus – UNCC – than anywhere else in the metro area of my home city, that campus being a “gun free zone”).

But she switches midstream in order to move the target.  By the end she advocates all of this under the rubric of safety for students should they get access to guns in a panicked, diminutive or pathological state.  And yet getting access to alcohol and getting behind the wheel of a car doesn’t so much as grab her attention, even though others besides the student stand to be injured or lose their lives in an accident cause by inebriated driving.

She moved the goalposts in order to redirect your demurral, and when she did, she left unaddressed the perfect analogy to guns (in terms of laws of prohibition), simply assuming that such laws won’t and can’t work.  So there you have it.  The current state of scholarship in American universities.