Tag: Gun Rights

Something Doesn’t Quite Add Up Here

Via MNGunTalk I came across a story that really has me scratching my head. The story is titled The story of two guns that killed police officers. Right there I knew this story was going to be bad as no mention of the wielders of the firearms were mentioned. Of course it gets better… much better. First the hyperbole:

The compact stainless-steel .45-caliber pistol was forged in a factory in Brazil in the summer of 2006 – 4,700 miles and two years away from a fateful encounter on a narrow North Philadelphia street near Temple University.

The author is setting up the article to be about the gun right from the get go.

From there, the $250 firearm began a 680-day odyssey through at least four states, four owners and two crime scenes before ending up in the hands of a 27-year-old parolee who used it to kill police officer Patrick McDonald.

Oh the gunman is finally mentioned after two paragraphs of setting up the gun as the focus of the story.

As part of an investigation of the deaths of 511 police officers killed by firearms since 2000, The Washington Post took an in-depth look at the circuitous paths taken by two guns. One is the Taurus. The other is a .380-caliber FEG semiautomatic pistol used in the slaying of an Indiana state trooper.

They were going to follow the lives of the gunmen but found that story to be too dull. Everybody expects the gunmen to be lowlife criminals whereas you never can guess the story behind a rabid killing machine such as a firearm! The author also decided it would be a spot of fun to target one of the gun shops:

The two guns were initially sold by federally licensed firearms dealers, the Taurus at the South Carolina pawnshop, the .380 at a high-volume gun store outside Chicago. At least three guns sold at the Chicago area store, Chuck’s Gun Shop, turned up in fatal shootings of police, the most of any store in The Post’s review.

Because if I sell you something and you use it in a crime it would be best to imply it was somehow my fault for selling you the tool. This is very important because your moral fiber is instantly known to me when you walk into my store. Now we get into the meat of the problem:

The .380’s sale involved a “straw purchaser,” a person who buys a gun on behalf of someone else and falsely claims to be the intended owner. The Taurus’s sale looked like a straw purchase, with the man who first bought the gun quickly selling it to a felon for a $150 profit.

Straw purchases are illegal. What the author just stated here were the two guns the followed were legally purchased and then illegal sold to ineligible owners.

In one case, a 19-year-old felon acquires a handgun casually, as payment for a bet on a game of basketball, tucks it into his pants and later uses it to kill an Indiana trooper. In the other, a fugitive from a Philadelphia halfway house tries to escape from a pursuing officer and pulls the gun as they fight on the street. Both stories illustrate how firearms dramatically increase the danger in already tense situations, creating irrevocable outcomes from panicky decisions.

Really? I thought both stories demonstrated that violent criminals are dangerous and thus any situation involving them will be volatile. Violent people are violent regardless of the tool they have at hand.

Mack lied on the required federal paperwork, answering no to a question about whether he used illegal drugs. In fact, Mack, who worked as a laborer for a masonry business, later testified that he had smoked marijuana every day since he was 13. But he had no criminal record, and the required background check did not prevent him from buying a gun.

Oh my god! A person with no criminal history was able to purchase a firearm? HOLY FUCK IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD! We need to allow the government to take away the rights of people who haven’t been convicted in a court of law NOW! Seriously what a fucking tool the author must be.

On Sept. 9, 2007, the Taurus figured in a nonfatal shootout at a Sunoco gas station between two men in southwest Philadelphia. Both were injured and went to a hospital. Police responding to reports of gunfire found spent cartridges from .45-caliber and .22-caliber pistols, but no guns. The .45-caliber cartridges were later linked to the Taurus.

Just as a side note I want it known that if I’m ever attacked by a criminal with a gun the .45 caliber casings will most likely be from my gun. Glock 30SF for the win!

Giddings had been released from prison 36 days earlier after serving eight years of a 12-year sentence for aggravated assault. A judge had ordered him to report to a halfway house, but Giddings soon absconded in violation of his parole. When several police officers, acting on a tip that Giddings was at a house in the area, tried to arrest him, he fought with them and escaped. Now, he was wanted for aggravated assault on the officers as well as the parole violation.

So a criminal with a violent past attacked an officer? Why the fuck was he out of prison four years early is my primary question here. Oh that’s right we have to make room in the prisons for all the non-violent offenders our government seems to want put away.

Giddings then stood over the officer and pumped more bullets into him. He hopped back on the bicycle, but before he could get away, two officers arrived in response to McDonald’s call for assistance. At least one exchanged gunfire with Giddings, killing him with shots to the head and chest, according to the police report. One of the officers was shot in the hip. The other was not injured.

I like how the author emphasizes the gun when the criminal uses it but emphasizes the officers when the police use them. Also I’d like to note that the police used those evil bad horrible guns to stop the violent criminal. Wait I’m sure the author will tell us that since the police are better than you and me trained extensively in the use of firearms they should be the only ones to have them. Now to the next story about the evils of firearms:

Jeter later said in an interview with The Post that he got the .380 from a friend, whom he refused to identify. The man owed him $350 from a bet over a game of pickup basketball. Jeter had bumped into him at Hook Fish & Chicken, a fast-food restaurant in Chicago, about nine blocks from where Vaughn said he sold the pistol.

Obviously this Jeter fellow is an upstanding citizen and the gun turned him into an evil man.

“I know it’s not legal to have guns in Chicago,” Jeter said. “But who doesn’t have a gun? That’s Chicago.”

Wait… so criminals are willing to ignore the law? Basically Jeter just made the best case against gun control you could ever make, he ignored the laws and had a gun anyways. When you ban guns only criminals will have guns is the correct phrase here.

He tucked the gun into the front pocket of his jeans and tossed his fast-food bag into a white 1993 Chevrolet Caprice that had been stolen six days earlier from a Sears parking lot in southwest Chicago. The thief passed the car on to Jeter, who used a screwdriver to start it.

Yup an upstanding citizen that the gun turned into an evil man. He certainly wasn’t hanging around criminals or anything previous to owning that evil gun.

Jeter took off to meet a 16-year-old girl in Gary, Ind.

Wait a minute…

19-year-old Darryl Jeter.

Huh. There’s something fishy about that but I can’t quite put my finger on it.

“I ask myself every day, ‘Why?’ ” said Jeter, now 26. “What was I thinking? . . . He didn’t deserve to lose his life.

“I was presented with a weapon I shouldn’t have had. I should have went home.”

See if this poor lawful individuals with absolutely no criminal history wouldn’t have been presented with that evil vile firearm he’d have never done anything wrong!

Seriously this story is so poorly written and bias I can’t even begin to tell you where to being.

Incorrect Diagnosis

It seems that 911 is getting with the times so to speak as the FCC is updating the 911 system to handle text messages. I can see it now we can have quality texts such as:

OMG SUM DOOD SHOOTIN DA SKOOL, SEE PIGS

I’m guessing a dispatcher will be wasting more time trying to decipher most peoples’ text messages than sending actual help to an emergency. What really puts the icing on the cake for this story though is the reason the FCC is updating the 911 system:

“The technological limitations of 9-1-1 can have tragic, real-world consequences,” the release said. “During the 2007 Virginia Tech campus shooting, students and witnesses desperately tried to send texts to 9-1-1 that local dispatchers never received. If these messages had gone through, first responders may have arrived on the scene faster with firsthand intelligence about the life-threatening situation that was unfolding.”

That’s an incorrect diagnosis if I’ve ever read one. The problem with Virginia Tech was the fact there was a gunman walking around killing people. There aren’t a lot of solutions prevent such a case, you can only strive to make the situation end quickly. I highly doubt being able to receive text messages would have allow the police to arrive any faster. What would have had potential to end the situation faster would be to allowed students and faculty to legally carry their firearms on campus. Even to this day if a student or faculty member has a carry permit they are not allowed to carry at Virginia Tech. This limitation means any guy walking around shooting people on campus has several minutes at the last until the police are able to arrive.

If the FCC wants to limit the impact of these types of situations they should be placing their support behind a law to abolish the concept of the “gun-free zone.” Obviously that’s not the FCC’s area of jurisdiction so it’s best if they just stay out of it all together but it’s the only real solution to the problem they’re claiming to address at the moment.

The ACLU

Many of the people I talk to bring up the ACLU as some kind of paragon of civil liberties defense. I’ve never bought into this line of thinking even through I fully acknowledge that the organization has taken on some very good cases. The problem with the ACLU lie in what they consider civil liberties.

This post is here because of a conversation I had with a friend last night. My friend was pointing out the fact that not a single Republican was given a 100% score on civil liberties from the ACLU. This struck me as odd because if there is one thing you can’t fault Ron Paul on it’s civil liberties, and he’s a Republican. I decided to look up their scoring and found Dr. Paul had a measly 42% rating (I chose Ron Paul because he’s a known and predictable quantity, there are other people on there that should be given much high ratings as well). This lead me to question what the ACLU considers civil liberties.

Their pages for the House and Senate list the criteria that is used to determine each politicians ratings. Before I continue I’d like to point out when you hover over the green check marks following a politician’s name the tool tip text states, “Voted right way” while hovering over the red xs states, “Voted wrong way.” I just find their terminology rather funny.

But look at the bills they are using as judgment cases. I’ll just pull a single example otherwise this post will go on for pages. I’ll use the Probhibting Funding of Syringe Exchange Program which is stated by the ACLU as being:

On Friday, July 24, 2009, the House defeated an amendment offered by Representative Mark Souder (R-IN) to the FY 2010 Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act (H.R. 3293) by a vote of 211-218. The Souder Amendment would have prohibited federal funds from being used to support syringe exchange programs. The ACLU opposed the Souder Amendment as a rejection of evidence-based science, which would have harmful consequences for public health. Every scientific study of needle exchange programs has concluded that access to sterile injection equipment is a proven way to reduce the spread of deadly, infectious blood-borne diseases like HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C.

What the fuck does this have to do with civil liberties? This is a health care bill when you drill down to the basics. It has nothing to do with anybody’s rights in the slightest. I don’t care whether or not the ACLU stands for or against this bill, but grading politicians on it shows that they aren’t focused on civil liberties.

Beyond that another thing I hate about the ACLU is their stance on the right to keep and bear arms:

Given the reference to “a well regulated Militia” and “the security of a free State,” the ACLU has long taken the position that the Second Amendment protects a collective right rather than an individual right. For seven decades, the Supreme Court’s 1939 decision in United States v. Miller was widely understood to have endorsed that view.

The Supreme Court has now ruled otherwise. In striking down Washington D.C.’s handgun ban by a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in D.C. v. Heller held for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to keep and bear arms, whether or not associated with a state militia.

The ACLU disagrees with the Supreme Court’s conclusion about the nature of the right protected by the Second Amendment. We do not, however, take a position on gun control itself. In our view, neither the possession of guns nor the regulation of guns raises a civil liberties issue.

They don’t believe the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right. They also disagree with the outcome of Heller. What I find amazing is the fact that they don’t find possession nor regulation of guns a civil liberties issue. I can’t imagine what is more important to civil liberties than having a means of defending them.

So with a combination focusing on non-civil liberties issues and a willingness to ignore other civil liberty issues I must state I do not support the ACLU.

A Case for Resisting Your Assailant

Those of us advocating armed citizenry hear a common argument for those advocating a disarmed citizenry, if you just give the criminal what they want they won’t harm you. It’s an ignorant belief though because that’s not always the case. Take for example this incident:

Police say the two Iowa store clerks — one a mother of 11 — did exactly what Michael Richard Swanson demanded, his shotgun pointed at their faces.

But the 17-year-old St. Louis Park boy allegedly shot them anyway, plunging two north-central Iowa towns into shock and grief. It was unclear why Swanson, who has a history of assault and theft, would drive south and in the span of an hour allegedly become a cold-blooded killer.

About 9:05 p.m., Swanson put on a mask and entered the Crossroads convenience store in Algona, demanding cash and cigarettes. Clerk Vicky Bowman-Hall, 47, did what he said, but he shot her. The mother of 11 died at the Algona hospital.

Police say that about 10 p.m., Swanson entered the Kum and Go station in Humboldt, robbed it and shot Sheila Myers, 61. Myers was dead at the scene.

Even though the two clerks submitted to their attacker and gave into his demands he killed them. The idea of simply giving a criminal what they want and they’ll go away ignores the fact that crazy people are crazy. When you’re facing an armed attacker the situation is already volatile. You know one thing about your attacker, they’ve threatened your life.

In my book the second somebody threatens my life I no longer trust anything they say. Why should I believe somebody stating they are willing to kill me won’t do so if I simply give into their demands? What guarantee do I have that they’ll stick to their word? None.

Being armed gives you an option, a means of defending yourself. Obviously a gun isn’t a magical talisman that will ensure you walk away alive but it gives you far better chances than being completely helpless.

The Inconsistency of the ATF

Us gunnies spend a lot of time bitching about the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (AFT). We don’t bitch about the ATF because of their mandate so much as their inconsistency. For instance if I own a handgun it’s perfectly OK. The second I attach a vertical foregrip to the pistol’s front rail it becomes an Any Other Weapon (AOW) and falls under the regulations put forth in the National Firearms Act. Another case of inconsistency are rulings involving pistol grip shotguns. What is put forth in that link is a great article demonstrating the fact the ATF don’t really know what the fuck they’re doing and thus consistency isn’t their strong point.

Elections

I’m went early today to get my vote on and let me be very honest, there were far too many unopposed people running. Before you say anything I do realize the hypocrisy of making such a statement and not running to oppose any of these yahoos… but that’s not going to stop me from making the statement.

In case anybody is curious I voted for Emmer. Since getting the nomination Emmer has been kind of alienating me by pandering to the neocons but at the same time he’s pro-gun, anti-tax, and for the most part pro-liberty. What put me over though is the fact he’s not Mark Dayton (who will probably win because the majority of votes in this state seem to like pain).

I left quite a few spots blank. When I was first old enough to vote I believed that somebody who was running unopposed deserved my vote for just being willing to run. I no longer believe that and have decided if you’re running unopposed I won’t vote for you.

Because I’m an idiot I forgot to post the Minnesota Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance Political Action Committee (GOCRA) endorsement link. I really do like how GOCRA does their endorsements because they explain why they are behind the people they endorsed.

Hey President Calderon I Have a Solution

It seems the President of Mexico is once again trying to tell us what to do:

Mexican President Felipe Calderon has told the BBC the US should do more to reduce the demand for drugs that is fuelling violence in Mexico.

You want us to do something to reduce the demand for drugs? Sure thing we’ll legalize it all and end the war on drugs. Much like Portugal we should see a drop in drug related violence once they’re legitimized. Of course that’s not acceptable:

Mr Calderon and his counterparts from Colombia and Costa Rica, Juan Manuel Santos and Laura Chinchilla, said legalisation of cannabis in California would send a contradictory message.

God damn it! We offer a solution and you spit on it. What the fuck are we supposed to do?

“It is confusing for our people to see that while we have lost lives and we invest vast resources in the drug war, in the consumer countries they promote proposals like the Californian referendum to legalise the production, the sale and the consumption of marijuana,” said Mr Santos.

I understand that potential freedom and liberty may be confusing to you as presidential equivalent of Columbia but trust me it works. You’d be surprised how popular the idea of liberty really is.

He reiterated his long-standing view that the problem of organised crime would remain as long as the US remained the biggest consumer of drugs in the world.

If it’s no longer criminals to grow, possess, and use the stuff then organized crime will no longer profit from it. Once organized crime no longer profits from it their power base will be knocked out and thus become much less of a problem. A similar thing happened when we ended prohibition in this country many decades ago. But no story about the troubles of Mexico would be complete without the mention of the Mexican gun canard:

Obama administration officials have acknowledged that the US shares responsibility for the drug violence, on account of the demand for illegal drugs and its inability to stop weapons flowing south.

I will give the BBC one thing though, they usually do a good job of covering both sides of a story:

However, US gun rights groups question whether the US is the source for the vast majority of the illegal guns turning up in Mexico.

The majority of guns confiscated by Mexico and submitted to the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) for tracing do originate in the US.

However, a large number of seized weapons are not sent for tracing.

There is your reason so many guns submitted for tracing are found to originate in the US, not many guns are being submitted. For instance there really is no point is submitting a fully automatic AK-47 to the US for tracing being finding such weapons for a reasonable price (as any such weapon made after 1968 1986 is illegal) is practically impossible.

EDIT 2010-10-27 21:05: Had the wrong date posted. It’s corrected now thanks to Jeff.

Need Support

What is the Brady Campaign to do? They’re fighting a losing battle but the heads of their organization was to continue receiving pay checks to they keep trying to make themselves appear relevant. They need supporters but nobody seems to be willing to acknowledge them. So what can they do? Create sock puppet Internet accounts of course!

Yes the Brady Bunch are back to drumming up grassroots efforts… but making up multiple Internet accounts and using their copy and paste capabilities (obviously they’re not running Windows Phone 7, ZING!).

Trying to be Relevant

How cute the Brady Campaign is trying to be relevant again. This time Paul Helmke is saying the way to get women votes is to support gun control. Strangely enough I don’t know many women who support stronger gun control and I know more who are bleeding-heart liberals than not. Of course the Brady Campaign have no bias on the matter because they get their data from polls:

Similarly, a poll done of voters nationwide for the Brady Campaign by Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, Inc. in the November 2008 election found that 83 percent of female voters supported “the passage of laws placing reasonable restrictions on guns” (something that 68 percent of male voters supported). Eighty six percent of women supported criminal background checks on all gun sales (79 percent of men supported this).

Women voters’ desires for tighter restrictions don’t stop there. Seventy three percent of women (and 63 percent of men) supported registration and licensing of gun owners. Seventy percent of women (60 percent of men) supported restrictions on military-style assault weapons). Sixty seven percent of women (63 percent of men) supported a waiting period of five days for handgun sales. And, 60 percent of women (46 percent of men) supported limiting the number of guns that can be bought at one time.

Yes I removed the link from the quote because it goes to the Brady Bunch’s website and I’m not giving them any traffic. If you want to think you can copy and paste it:

http://www.bradycampaign.org/media/press/view/1085

Let me see if I can find their bias here. Oh there it is, “Similarly, a poll done of voters nationwide for the Brady Campaign…” If you pay a polling company to do a poll they will get you the results you want. That’s just good business. They also play the fear card:

With more than 100,000 getting shot or killed by guns each year in this country, voters — particularly women voters — are looking for candidates who will work to reduce gun violence. Since the U.S. Supreme Court has made it clear that near-total gun bans are off the table, now is the time for candidates to propose and support common sense restrictions that make it harder for dangerous people to guns. This would be good policy — and good politics — particularly for those seeking to widen the “gender gap.”

Once again the link was removed because of my strict rule of not giving those fuckwits referrals. Here’s the link you can copy and past into your browser:

http://www.bradycampaign.org/facts/gunviolence

You’ll notice it’s under the subcategory /facts which is an oxymoron coming from gun control advocates as anybody who’s read this site for any length of time knows. Notice how the quote says, “With more than 100,000 getting shot or killed by guns each year…” That’s important because they are including accidents and suicides in their statistics.

I think politicians will find the quickest way to get voted out is by supporting gun control. I’m sure most of the politicians still remember what happened the last time they supported the Brady Campaign’s agenda.

The Great Meme Machine

Wow, I can’t even begin to count the number of anti-gun memes in this article. Let’s count them shall we?

First we have the title which brings up the “big scary evil gun lobby that kicks puppies:”

ATF’s oversight limited in face of gun lobby

See that? The ATF’s oversight is limited because of the puppy kicking “gun lobby.” Those irresponsible lobbyists! How dare they work to defend a right confirmed in the Constitution this country was founded on! Meme two is the fact that there is no central database of gun purchases:

The government is prohibited from putting gun ownership records into an easily accessible format, such as a searchable computer database.

Most anti-gunners will claim such a database wouldn’t count as registration but it most certainly does. Any system that has a list of firearms sold and who purchased them is a registration system by default. Meme three is the claim that the ATF hasn’t the resources to complete this mission:

The agency still has about the same number of agents it had nearly four decades ago: 2,500. The firearms bureau inspects only a fraction of the nation’s 60,000 retail gun dealers, taking as much as eight years between visits to stores. By law, the ATF cannot require dealers to conduct a physical inventory to determine whether any guns have been lost or stolen.

Oh no! Not only can the ATF not handle the workload they already have but many guns are purchased from private entities (bonus points to the story writer who didn’t directly say “gun show loophole:”

Depending on how well a dealer keeps records, a firearms trace can take hours or weeks. But one-third of all gun traces come from the records of out-of-business gun dealers. In those cases, there is no one to call.

I’m going to just pull over for a side note and bring up this quote:

“Katrina was a mess,” Houser said.

Damn right it was! Katrina was a classic example of gun confiscation. The National Guard actually went in to New Orleans and stole peoples’ means of self-defense. Shit like this is a classic example of why gun owners are afraid of any registration system, then the government knows where to go to confiscate firearms. Of course this article wasn’t talking about that fact when they quote somebody saying Katrina was a mess. Oh no:

Gun dealers all over the Gulf Coast region were driven out of business by the hurricane, and they sent their wet and mildewing records to Martinsburg. For months, paper files sat in the center’s parking lot, drying in the sun.

The Mexico meme made a guest appearance in this article as well:

The difficulties at the tracing center have slowed efforts to trace guns seized from crime scenes all over the country – as well as in Mexico, where most of the seized weapons come from U.S. gun dealers, according to congressional reports.

Traces are most useful within the first few days, but it took the ATF an average of about two weeks to complete traces of firearms recovered in Mexico between 2004 and 2008, according to a congressional report last year on the ATF’s efforts to combat arms trafficking to that country. In addition, the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General said the ATF doesn’t have enough Spanish-speaking personnel and has been slow in developing a tracing system in Spanish.

I wonder if the author was getting paid by the meme for this article. And yet again the author brings up the meddling gun lobby:

Meanwhile, the change requiring Senate confirmation for an ATF chief allowed the gun lobby to have a say on Capitol Hill about the agency’s leadership.

Yet another meme is the ATF doesn’t have the legal authority to fulfill its mission:

The ATF’s hands are often tied when it comes to regulating dealers, according to interviews with current and former agency officials, as well as thousands of pages of internal files obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests.

Yes those bastards have to follow the letter of the law! How horrible!

It’s impressive that the author was able to fit all that bullshit into one article. The only thing missing was a blurb about children.