PoliceOne:

We, as law enforcement officers, need to adopt the same mindset as that of the Marine Corps when it comes to job titles. In the Marine Corps, everyone, regardless of rank, is a rifleman first and foremost. The “job” he does in the Marines comes second. We’re civilian law enforcement, so our “job” to protect and serve comes first, but we need to have the mindset that each and every one of us is also a rifleman. We need to be equipped and trained as such.

You can feel free to peruse my category on the U.S. Marines as long as you wish.  I know a Marine, and you’re no Marine.  The last thing I want is for a cop to see himself as first and foremost a rifleman.  Because he’s not, and because he shouldn’t be, even if he has the skills.

What Mr. Rayburn wants to see is every cop carrying a patrol rifle at all times, and instead of raising a handgun or shotgun at people, he’ll have a rifle to make urban situations and CQB much worse due to increased range and muzzle velocity.

It’s sad, really.  All of that gun control hasn’t helped a bit, has it?  And that open border policy and family-destroying welfare have made matters much worse, haven’t they?

But I’m certain that Mr. Rayburn doesn’t support peaceable men like me openly carrying rifles with them everywhere they go, else he would have said so.  His solution is to super-arm the cops rather than address the situation at its root cause.

Because cops are just like us, only better, and more elite, with more rights and latitude.  Well Mr. Rayburn, if you want to be a U.S. Marine, join up, take the training, and fly across the pond.  On the other hand, with the way things are now in the Army and Marines, I’m not so sure I’m saying much compared to what it would have been ten or even five years ago.

The saddest part of all is that cops apparently listen to this goober.  It’s a long way and a lot of water over the dam since the days of peace officers, yes?  Steel yourself for what’s coming, folks.

The view in Wilson Canyon, Sedona, Az.

News from the great Northeast:

A New Jersey mother is demanding answers from the Newark Police Department after her 10-year-old son was chased by police with shotguns.

Patisha Solomon says her son, Legend Preston, was playing basketball outside their home when Newark PD officers mistook him for a 20-year-old armed robbery suspect.

Police approached Legend with guns drawn. At that point, Legend says, out of fear, he ran into an alleyway.

“I ran because they thought that I rolled the ball into the street on purpose, and they were just holding shot guns at me trying to shoot me,” Legend told ABC New York.

Neighbors who saw the commotion, quickly yelled for the police to stop — one neighbor reportedly “threw themselves in front of the guns to protect” Legend.

“He’s only 10 years old, how you all chasing him? He’s only a kid,” Jackie Kelly, a neighbor of the Solomon family told ABC News.

Goobers with guns.  It’s what they do, ma’am.  They’re dangerous to everything and everyone around them, including themselves.  You know, it might have been easier and more efficient if they had walked up to the kid and talked to the him.

The Trace:

The government takes making gun records difficult to search quite seriously. A Government Accountability Office report released August 1 concluded that in two data systems, the ATF did not always comply with “restrictions prohibiting consolidation or centralization” of records. The GAO, which is entrusted with ensuring that federal agencies follow the law, was essentially chiding the ATF for making it a bit easier for its hundreds of investigators to do their jobs.

Alarmed headlines from conservative publications followed. A Fox News pundit falsely claimed the report found the agency had “a list of every gun owner and every gun owned.”

Congress imposes conflicting directives on the ATF. The agency is required to trace guns, but it must use inefficient procedures and obsolete technology. Lawmakers in effect tell the agency to do a job, but badly.

Investigators scan and save them as digital image files. They are like online piles of paper, or PDFs, arranged by one field only.

Trick question: The system can’t really be considered a database. (There is a reason the ATF uses the phrase “data systems” instead). There is no ability to search the text of a file, and no effort is made to tag files with identifiers that could later be used to sort and search. “We compare it to an electronic card catalog system, where records are digitally imaged, but not optimized for character recognition,” ATF spokesman Corey Ray says.

The only thing better than obsolete technology would be nothing at all – no records, no cards, no PDFs.  Because, “shall not be infringed.”  Besides, one can quite easily turn this into a system capable of OCR.

I say trash all of the records in a gigantic fire, with celebratory partying and great fanfare.

The Washington Post:

Suddenly, the officer rapped on the rear passenger side window with his pistol. My daughter, who was sitting inches from the barrel of his gun, jumped with fear as the officer yelled at me to roll down the front passenger window, his service weapon pointed directly at me. I knew something was terribly awry and I tried to remain calm, keeping my hands visible as I slowly fumbled for the window controls in an unfamiliar car.

My daughter rolled down her window and I explained that we were in a rental car, that we had no weapons, and I was having trouble figuring out how to roll down the front passenger window from my driver’s side door. The officer didn’t listen, and kept yelling louder and more insistently, ordering me to comply with his request as he leered at me down the barrel of his pistol. My daughter panicked and tried to get out of her booster seat to reach forward to roll down the front window, and the officer screamed her at her not to move as he pointed his pistol at her.

Then, as I had my hands in the air, he yelled, at the top of his lungs, in a voice I will never forget, as my daughter looked on in terror, “Get your hands away from your waist or I’ll blow two holes through your back right now!” My hands were high in the air as he said this, and I was not in any way reaching for my waist. I was utterly terrified. I’ve heard stories of police yelling out false things like this before they unjustifiably attack someone as a way to justify the attack, and I thought this was what was happening to me. I braced for bullets to hit me and all I could think of was my daughter having to watch it happen and being left alone on the side of the highway with an insane, violent cop.

I would be terrified for my child too.  The report says that the officer thought it was a stolen car.  Whatever.  There is no excuse for this kind of behavior.  None.

With a child in the car, the officer should have immediately reassessed the situation and concluded that his information was likely incorrect.  It often is, witness so many wrong-home SWAT raids.  Furthermore, inability to figure out how a window works when under duress isn’t equivalent to being noncompliant with the officer’s commands.  The officer doesn’t know everything about the situation, and he shouldn’t have drawn his service weapon.

Finally, men like this give gun owners like me a bad name.  His trigger discipline and muzzle discipline are non-existent.  Even if it was a stolen vehicle like he thought, the presence of a child in the automobile should have made him stop and conclude that it wasn’t worth the risk of injury to the child, even if the driver drove away.  The driver will never actually get away.  He knows that.

Honestly, from my vantage point, I don’t worry so much about crime or assault.  My biggest worry is goobers like this who believe they are Mr. tactical, when their thinking more matches Barney Fife.  And I would bet every penny I had that if a negligent discharge occurred, killing the innocent man or injuring the child, the PD would have hired “experts” who testified that he did everything right.  He would have gotten away with it.

Here’s what Los Alamos, New Mexico looks like with a summer storm in the distance.

It’s called virga.

Houston Chronicle, the history of the open carry bill in Texas from Texas Senator Joan Huffman.

There is also a misconception that the Legislature did not listen to law enforcement or care about their input on open carry legislation. It is true some police had objections and opposed the law, and most made it clear that if open carry of handguns were to become law they strongly requested that a license requirement remain and that a holster requirement be made part of the law. Texans must still be licensed and can only openly carry a holstered handgun.

I fought hard in the Senate to remove a House amendment to HB 910 that law enforcement groups strongly opposed. This amendment would have prohibited a peace officer from making a simple investigatory inquiry or other temporary detention to see if a person openly carrying a handgun in fact has a license. I worked with law enforcement to ensure the amendment was removed before HB910 finally passed. It was removed, much to our relief.

The permissive, licensed open carry of handguns has been the law for almost a year now, and I believe there has been little or no effect on law enforcement. In fact, it appears so far the right to openly carry is rarely exercised. I am currently conducting a written survey of the heads of law enforcement around the state asking about their experiences regarding the open carry of firearms. The Legislature will continue to monitor these important policy issues to ensure that public safety remains at the forefront of our discussion. The causes of these tragedies will continue to haunt us. But there is no benefit in blaming a law, a political organization, a political party or a person – other than the killer. I think we can all agree that the answers are much more complex than that.

Well, Joan wants to straddle the fence and keep one foot in the liberty pasture, with another in the collectivist field.  But it’s good to know just who was responsible for what, yes?  It supplies you with better optics when the enemy self-identifies.

Her assertion that the open carry bill has had little or no effect seems to be tied to the notion that this is a rarely exercised right.  The corollary is that if people actually exercise their rights, then it would be unsafe and the police would be adversely effected.

We’ve covered this before in the context of the Dallas shootings.  The fact that an open carrier had his picture posted on Twitter is completely irrelevant and didn’t hamper law enforcement in the least.  The officers who responded were fighting for their lives as they engaged in CQB with the shooter.  What Twitter did or didn’t say wasn’t even remotely part of their thinking.  That was all done by different officers, and by the way, if a shooter was going to kill multiple police officers, do you think he would post his picture on Twitter?  Really, people.  Do I have to come teach LEOs basic common sense?

As for what law enforcement wants, I couldn’t care less.  Communist Art Acevedo (who assisted and supported federal agents conducting forcible, random blood draws at a DUI check) won’t be happy until everyone is in shackles and chains wearing the uniforms of slave labor except his own department.

News from Calais:

Maëva Mayla uploaded four photographs to her Facebook page showing the damage to the Audi vehicle and the post has been shared more than 6,000 times.

Meanwhile, locals living near the French port city have also warned drivers to avoid the area and have reportedly said migrants are not checking whether children are inside the vehicles before they attack them.

Ms Mayla posted photographs of her brother-in-law’s vehicle and wrote that it sustained more than £435 worth of damage when it was set upon by ’15 migrants’ who carried out the attack ‘just for fun’.

One woman that commented on her post, Marine Gabrielle, said she no longer uses the roads around Calais as she is ‘so scared’.

The damage to Ms Mayla’s brother-in-law’s vehicle comes just weeks after lorry drivers warned that it is just a matter of time before someone is killed.

Earlier this month a migrant armed with a chainsaw threatened a driver.

But it get’s even better.  They are using trees to stop motorists.

If you believe the police will stop this, or a prosecutor in America will prosecute this and thus be your protection, you’re beyond naïve.  You’re out of your mind.

Steel yourself now for what is coming, and what you must do in response.  And by the way, I deny that any of this is “just for fun.”  The person who said that doesn’t understand the nature of the conflict.  Every engagement has a purpose, and is part of the larger campaign to subjugate the people to Sharia.

American Hunter:

I have been guiding brown bear hunters and fishermen and bear photographers from our homestead within Becharof National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska for 33 years and have had numerous close encounters with bears. Until now, I have never had to shoot an unwounded bear to protect either myself or clients, but the other week an event occurred and my good fortune changed. When it happened, I was fully aware of what was going on and how big the bear was. I also managed to stay aware of where my clients were, even when the bear was directly between us. The woman I was guiding said that while she did not remember smelling the bear’s breath, it was close enough to her face that it could have bitten her!

I have killed enough bears to know how important shot placement can be, even with large-bore rifles. I was well aware of the limitations of my 9mm pistol, even with Buffalo Bore ammo. I was aiming for a vital area with each shot; because it all took place between 6 and 8 feet, they were not far off. But hitting the head and brain of a highly animated and agitated animal is a difficult shot.

You can read his justification for leaving home with a single stack 9mm.  I’m glad everything worked out for him and everyone except the bear.

But I have to tell you, I just wouldn’t carry a 9mm on any kind of expedition into the Alaskan wilderness.  That just seems like you’re asking for trouble.  What if his shot placement wasn’t so good?  On the other hand, I suppose you could ask that about any cartridge.

Report from Germany:

“Toys of Christian children are being destroyed, Christian asylum seekers are told not only to wash their dishes after eating but also that they must clean the entire kitchen as it would otherwise be ‘unclean’. Many Muslim asylum seekers call all Christians unclean. Church services are held in secret, bibles and crucifixes have to be hidden,” she explained.

Ms Mousapour, pastor of the Evangelical Free Church, disclosed that even converts who no longer live in migrant housing attract Muslims’ ire, and recounted her experience of being threatened at knifepoint on the street.

The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) politician called the anti-Christian hate crimes “horrific attacks on our fundamental values and our Constitution.

“This kind of crime weighs on me more heavily than shoplifting. If we do nothing about it we will lose our foundations in this country,” she added.

Dear, Germany is already lost.  What you see as future tense in a fantasy world is present tense in reality.  Germans have been disarmed by their rulers, and so you have no means of self defense, and your country doesn’t believe what you’re calling “our foundations” enough to save it.  It is at best a weakly held system of beliefs.  The land of Luther is now home to Islamists.

But this could not happen in America, could it?

As Father Josiah Trenham prepared to read the Gospel, several parishioners discreetly scooped up their babies, retreated up the aisles of St. Andrew Orthodox Church and out into the spring air, so as not to allow the crying of little ones to disturb the divine liturgy.

The time-honored tradition was shattered when a car passed by the Riverside, Calif., church, slowing down as the front passenger leaned out of his window and bellowed menacingly through a bullhorn, according to witnesses.

“Allahu Akbar!” the unidentified man repeated several times as the unnerved parents drew their infants close and exchanged worried glances.

Witnesses were able to give Riverside police a description of the green Honda Civic, but not of the three occupants. Some told police they believed one or more of the men may have been taking photographs, according to Officer Ryan Railsback. Although Trenham insisted multiple congregants heard the Arabic phrase, Railsback noted no mention of it was in the police report.

[ … ]

“We have guards now; we never used to have guards,” said St. Andrew attendee Solomon Saddi, a Syrian-American Christian. “They keep an eye on everyone and talk to the faces that aren’t familiar,” he continued, referring to the aftermath of the April incident. “It is a very dangerous time for us even in America.” …

Forget the guards.  They are no good for protection.  Be your own protection, and if things in America become like they are in Germany, it will have been lost.  Heed the warnings.  And always remember Herschel’s Dictum.  I will never hide my Bible.