Tag: Law and Disorder

Aw Poor DEA, Viktor Bout won’t be Extradited

Viktor Bout is an accused weapons dealer who was arrested by INTERPOL last year in Thailand. The Drug Enforcement Agency has been fighting to get him extradited to the United States since then. Well the Thailand court finally ruled and said no extradition will occur.

The DEA wanted him arrested because they claimed he was selling ground to air missiles to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. According to the DEA these missile could be used to target their agents working on Columbia to wipe out cocaine crops. Well Thailand doesn’t care as it’s not their fight and according to their court Mr. Bout broke no Thailand laws:

“The US charges are not applicable under Thai law,” said the judge delivering the hour-long verdict at Bangkok’s Criminal Court. “This is a political case. The Farc is fighting for a political cause and is not a criminal gang. Thailand does not recognise the Farc as a terrorist group.”

The court “does not have the authority to punish actions done by foreigners against other foreigners in another country”, the judge said.

You mean the Thailand court isn’t willing to extradite a man who is be accused of working against a foreign force in a foreign land? Man I wish the United States would learn that lesson. But I’ve been hoping Mr. Bout wouldn’t be extradited since I heard of his arrest for two major reasons.

First of all we have no business sending our people into Columbia to wage our war on drugs. The war on drugs has been a costly failure since day one and only accomplished making drug lords rich and powerful due to the fact illegal substances command a much higher value. The second reason because I don’t think the United States has any business telling people who they can sell weapons to. We sell our weapons all the time to other countries such as Iran and China. We’re are being hypocrites by saying we can sell weapons to some countries but nobody can sell weapons to countries or factions we don’t approve of.

I guess both of those reasons can be summed up by saying we have no business telling anybody outside of the United States what they can and can not do period. Especially if that person isn’t a United States citizen.

Two Classes of Gun Owners

I found a good link off of the NRA ILA page. An article in the Newton Kansan says there will always be two class of gun owners, those who obey the law and those who do not:

No matter how many bills are considered in Congress, there always will be two distinct camps of gun-owners in America.

There will be responsible citizens who abide by the law, and there will be criminals whose actions will not be guided by the law. That’s just the way it is.

Truer words could not be spoken. No matter who many laws controlling guns are enacted there will be people who will ignore them. For instance felons can’t legally own guns in this country yet many felons have guns. It is illegal to shoot somebody with a gun outside of self defense situations yet there are people who do it. Making further laws isn’t going to help curb violence since those who will commit violent acts will also ignore laws claiming to curb it.

This article also talks about the recent national carry amendment:

We’re not sure of all the hullaballoo, however. Currently, if a Kansas gun-owner obtains a permit for concealed carry, that same permit allows them to carry in a number of other states, as well. If the same person obtains an identical permit from Utah, that permit covers the rest of the 48 states already allowing concealed carry.

So all this measure would have done was eliminate one of the two permits needed and, in the process, simplified the process. It wouldn’t have changed the fact each state — and each local jurisdiction, for that matter — can set its own rules for concealed carry. In some places, one has to have a gun in the trunk. Others allow it in the glove compartment.

Although claiming having a Kansas and Utah permit will allow you to carry in all 48 states that have carry laws. Some states won’t let you carry regardless of the permit you hold, that’s one problem national reciprocity would have cured. But he is correct in the fact the amendment would have gotten rid of the need to hold multiple permits. I currently have a Minnesota and New Hampshire permit. I need the New Hampshire one to travel to Wyoming through South Dakota. Furthermore I will have to obtain either a Utah or Florida permit to travel to many other states.

The amendment would have also allowed each state to continue enforcing their own set of rules. For instance New Mexico could still disallow carrying more than one gun (unless they overturned that particular law in recent history).

The massive number of gun laws are impossible to keep up on. I find that ironic since the Brady Bunch always say there are only a handful of gun laws on the books. If I travel to Wisconsin I can’t carry my gun unless I do so openly. On top of that the police will probably still arrest me and once I get in my car the gun is considered concealed and I must disarm again. When I disarm I must follow Wisconsin’s laws dealing with transporting a firearm. It’s a mess.

The truth of the matter is there shouldn’t be any laws controlling guns because we have a constitutional right to bear arms that is stated not to be infringed. Well I can tell you first hand there are a lot of infringements against that right, far more then against any other right.

Congress Slipped in a Book Ban, Clever Girl

As with many things I find Snowflakes in Hell has a link to an article on the book ban Congress passed. I know what you’re thinking, how could Congress pass a ban on books? The first amendment protects the freedom of speech.

Although that’s true Congress didn’t base the ban on a book’s content but on the ink. Remember last year when there was a panic over Chinese toys that contained lead? As a knee jerk reaction Congress passed the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008. This act in essence banned any amount of lead from childrens’ items and it was retroactive. We’re not talking simply lead paint on toys but lead in any products aimed for use by children.

So how does this ban books? Well before 1985 there was no law regulating the use of lead in dyes and inks used in children’s books. This means any children’s book printed before 1985 must first be tested for lead before it can be sold. Failing to to this means you a used book you sell can be an illegal item for resale and you could face up to a $100,000 fine or even prison time.

This law was appalling to begin with but is doubly so to me since I’m an avid reader with books printed before 1985. If I should allow a child to read such a book I can be brought up on charges. And this is how the government works people. If they can outright ban something they do it through regulations. Granted I don’t believe banning childrens’ books was the intention of this law but due to its poor wording that’s what it has accomplished.

But government does use regulations to ban items directly. The assault weapon ban of 1994 a perfect example. The government knew it would be hard to flat out ban specific guns so they regulated the features hoping that would accomplish the ban. They made a list of features which were not illegal when a certain number of them were on a single gun. Everything from bayonet lugs to pistols grips fell on this list. Furthermore any magazine with a capacity beyond 10 cartridges was now illegal to produce. Unlike the law this article primarily aims at the assault weapon ban was not retroactive.

The scary thing is anything can be regulated so long as it can be found to be bad in some way. Lead ammunition is being restricted more and more in the Peoples’ Republic of California because it’s “harmful to the environment.” The federal government could pull the same thing. Being you can still get ink poisoning it is possible to regulate anything that uses ink period. Granted that’s an extreme case but it is meant to be to show the extent unregulated government to reach.

This is why we need to fight pointless and knee jerk laws. They never accomplish solving anything and always accomplish harming people whom were not criminals before the passing of the law.

Further Research

The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008. (PDF)

Irony Defined

For some time now the Mexican gun canard has been raging across the gun rights scene. Mexico claimed the cartels were getting guns from American gun shows since we have such an abundance of fully automatic AK-47s in this country. Well it appears as if the BATFE is now worried that weapons from Mexico are coming into the United States. This story specifically covers grenades which apparently can cross the border as well as illegal immigrants. An interesting quote from the story:

The weapons are preferred by drug hitmen because they are cheap and easy to find. Many are left over from Central America’s civil wars and sold on the black market to drug cartels.

Something tell me that grenades aren’t the only weapons left over from those civil wars. And the same thing that is telling me that is also telling me that it’s possible those other weapons are also being sold to the Mexican drug cartels.

This Entitlement Feeling has to Go

You know this entitlement thing has to end. People seem to think they are entitled to everything from social security to health care. Well Trina Thompson thinks she’s entitled to a job. Of course she hasn’t found one in the whole three months she’s been searching so she’s doing what most people seem to think is logical and suing.

That’s right this lady is suing her college, Monroe College in New York, for $72,000. Her tuition was $70,000 and she’s adding another $2,000 to the bill to compensate for the stress she’s been experiencing in the three months she’s failed to find a job. What does this fine lady have to present an employer? Well a bachelor or business administration degree and a grade point average of 2.7. Oh yeah I also forgot to mention her solid attendance record.

So she’s competing in a market with high unemployment with thousands of people with work experience and much higher GPAs who have been laid off. After three months of searching she’s found nothing and it’s the school’s fault. That’s what she says:

They’re supposed to say, “I got this student, her attendance is good, her GPA is all right — can you interview this person?” They’re not doing that.

I don’t think Ms. Thompson’s current unemployment has much to do with the school. It probably has a lot to do with her attitude, subpar GPA, and her rather generic degree. I’m sorry but your college isn’t responsible for getting you a job, they are responsible for educating you well enough that you can got out and get a job. And (as of 11:42 CST on August 4th, 2009) currently the unemployment rate is at 9.7%.

I’m sure math isn’t Ms. Thompson’s strong suite but that means for every 100 people 10 are unemployed. The (as of the same date mentioned above) current population of the United States is 304,059,724. That means there are roughly 30,405,972 unemployed persons in this country. Many of those people have degrees which they obtained with a higher GPA and years of work experience, which in of itself is far more valuable than the degree or GPA.

Another issues I don’t think Ms. Thompson is considering is she’s probably going to have a much harder time getting a job in the future now that this story has gone public. See employees don’t like liabilities and hiring somebody who is willing to sue a college for not finding her a job is probably going to sue any company that employes her for any number of reasons. Really she’s probably not going to win this court case (then again this is in New York) not only because this suit is stupid but because she’s representing herself (a good setup for failure when going against an entity with lawyers). On top of that she’s also making herself undesirable due to her behavior and willingness to admit she feels entitled to things she’s not.

Further Research

The court filing. (PDF)

Australia’s Restrictive Gun Control Doesn’t Stop Straw Purchases Either

And interesting story I saw on Snowflakes in Hell…

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/criminal-are-telling-lies-to-buy-guns/story-e6freuy9-1225755343569

Australia has some very draconian gun laws put in place in the hopes of making it’s citizens wholly dependent on the government for protection controlling violent crime. One of these laws is the requirement of obtaining a firearm license to purchase a gun. The theory goes that running massive checks and making people jump through many hoops will prevent criminals from buying guns. Unfortunately Australia is finding out what some American states already know, criminals will ignore the law and obtain their guns illegally.

Members of an organized crime gang were able to build up a small cache by performing straw purchases in Australia. Of course instead of admitting they were wrong members of the Australia government are calling for even more strict gun control laws. Now some magistrates are calling for finger printing and DNA checks on the country’s gun owners.

These magistrates apparently are missing the lesson, which is criminals will get guns because they are willing to break the law to obtain the tools they need to break laws. No amount of gun control can prevent this. Britain is a perfect example of a country having stringent gun control laws and a high rate of gun related violence.

Source: http://www.snowflakesinhell.com/2009/07/29/straw-purchasing-in-australia/

American Civil Liberties Union Filing Suit Against New Orleans

And you’re not going to believe this but it’s for a good cause…

http://www.wwl.com/ACLU-files-suit-over-gun-rights/4728222

From the article…

A New Orleans man is suing the city and its district attorney for refusing to give back a gun that police seized when he was arrested on drug and firearms charges.

The American Civil Liberties Union on Thursday filed the federal suit on behalf of Errol Houston Jr., who was arrested last year following a traffic stop.

The suit says the district attorney’s office declined to prosecute Houston but has refused to return his .40 caliber firearm.

So they confiscated Mr. Houston’s gun when he was arrested. But the police then didn’t charge him but refused to give his gun back. I guess this is the same thing we can expect from a city who seized every citizens’ guns during Hurricane Katrina because people might defend themselves.

Harold Fish to Get New Trial

I found this on The Great One’s (Massad Ayoob for those of you not in the know) blog…

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2009/06/30/20090630selfdefense30-ON.html

Harold Fish is the man who had the bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was out walking a trail and was attacked by a man and two dogs. Mr. Fish did what he had to do and shot the dogs and the man. He was told by the police afterwards that he didn’t have anything to worry about since it was obviously a self defense shooting.

Fast forward to after the following trail. Mr. Fish was found guilty of murder. Fortunately the murder conviction has been overturned and he is getting a retrial.

Source: http://backwoodshome.com/blogs/MassadAyoob/2009/07/01/good-news-from-arizona/

Environmentalist are Dicks

Via Random Nuclear Strikes I found an article that’s just terrible. The city of Seattle is being sued this fourth of July…

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2009400018_gasworks30m.html

From the article…

The city should conduct a thorough environmental review before letting thousands of people watch fireworks from the partially remediated toxic-waste site that is Gas Works Park, an environmental activist says.

A Lake City man has sued to stop Fourth of July events at the park at the north end of Lake Union until the state shows that gathering to watch fireworks there is safe for viewers, the park and surrounding wildlife.

That’s right some jack ass environmentalist wants an environmental study done to determine the effects of launching fireworks on the fourth of July. Not only is senior Douchbag suing but he’s trying to stop the celebration from occurring. Patriotic he is not.

Source: http://www.softgreenglow.com/wp/?p=7814