From the Colorado Springs Gazette comes this report:
El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa wants more guns - not for his deputies, but for citizens. “Offenders in the jail system tell me they avoid crimes against people because they know there is a very high concealed-carry rate,” Maketa told The Gazette.
Read the rest of the story here
HatTip to Say Uncle
Breaking news across the gun bloggosphere is that Cavalry Arms has been raided and its inventory seized. According to The War on Guns the warrant stated “Firearm law violations. Seize everything.” What kind of warrant is that? The 4th amendment is pretty damn clear -
… and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
“Seize Everything” certainly doesn’t look like they were particularly describing the things to be seized.
I fear that we are in for some dark times to come.
Joe Huffman has an update, apparently the ATF agent in charge is no stranger to the gun community.
I’ve just finished adding a RSS feed to GunBloggers.com, the feed is for the top 10 linked stories from the member sites. You can subscribe to it here.
GunBloggers uses the web.py framework, so it was simply a matter of creating a new class just for the top stories, and a new template to wrap the data in the RSS feed XML format.
On Saturday a homeowner shot a burglar when he surprised the scumbag in his home. Here is the local news story on the incident. It is wrong in so many ways that I thought we’d analyze it:
A Kent man who shot and killed a suspected intruder inside his home Saturday was armed with his own handgun when he walked in the door and found the stranger inside his home, police said.
Who else’s gun would he have? Its pretty hard to ‘take a gun away’ from someone else when you don’t have one yourself.
A man and woman came home to their condo on Kent’s East Hill at 6 p.m. Saturday to find another man inside. The 28-year-old homeowner used his own gun to shoot the suspected intruder, said Kent police spokesman Paul Petersen.
Suspected intruder? He caught the guy robbing his home — there is no suspected about it!
It’s unknown why the homeowner had a handgun, Petersen said.
Why? Its pretty damn obvious why! To protect himself against murders and thieves. Its a good thing he did, isn’t it? Otherwise you might have another unsolved murder to solve.
Police aren’t releasing the homeowners’ names. The dead man, believed in his mid-20s, has not been identified.
Neighbors reported four to five gunshots, but there were no witnesses other than the homeowners, Petersen said.
After the man was shot, he ran through a broken sliding-glass door and died in the backyard. He was carrying a bag that contained some stolen property from the couple’s home, Petersen said.
Nowhere in this article do they call the burglar what he is. They call him a ’suspected intruder’, and only at the end mention that he was carrying a bag with stolen items. Isn’t that the definition of burgling? I have a problem with the PI ‘reporter’ who wrote this, as well as with the Kent Police spokesman who wonders why the guy had a gun?
Well, the anti-gunner’s no-gun signs did their job — they disarmed the good guys and allowed a scumbag to wreak havoc at will.
Here is what one 1st hand witness to the shooting has to say:
Either way though, I could have drawn and taken a clean shot. However, in both cases, regardless of the laws, I am not allowed to carry a gun at all in Westroads Mall. If the laws did not oppress my rights, I would carry a gun most places (except work). I would certainly have had it in the mall as mall shootings have been on my mind since the incident at a mall involving a shotgun back in February.
Read the full account over at Joe’s Crabby Shack
What do I take away from this incident? That my right to defend myself takes precedence over anyone elses ‘property rights’ when they try to deprive me of the ability to save my own life from criminals bent on killing me and my family. I shall carry when and where I please and you shall be none the wiser — unless I am forced to defend myself.
Ted Nugent talks to Texas Monthly Magazine about gun control. He has to be one of the most articulate pro-gun speakers that I have ever seen. No nonsense, straight to the point and not apologetic in any way.
“Gaggle of Numbnuts”
“I don’t like repeat offenders. I like dead offenders.”
“The 2nd Amendment IS my Concealed Weapon Permit”
With the way ammo prices continue to climb, and the difficulty in finding some of the better quality factory ammo, learning how to reload is probably a useful and economic skill to have. The Smallest Minority has an excellent post on the equipment and basic techniques for getting started reloading several pisol and rifle calibers.
Say Uncle is reporting that he received a note from Google AdWords that they wouldn’t run ads on his site because it was primarily about guns. BEcause of this I have disabled the adword sharing on GunBloggers.com — I don’t want to be responsible for someone’s ads getting pulled.
While I believe that Google is well within their rights to be as anti-gun as they want to be, I am disappointed that they are unable to make the distinction between legal and illegal activities. Makes you wonder just how Evil they could become…
Joe Huffman, over at The View From North Central Idaho was asked to show a couple of local reporters some gun basics. I’m glad they picked him — from reading his blog he is obviously thoughtful and patient pro-gun advocate who will make a good impression on them. Hopefully they absorb the knowledge that he presents to them.
This is the way to swing public favor to our side. Present the facts, familiarize them with with some basic weapons and training and help them overcome their fear of guns.
You may have seen this email being passed around. It has been falsely attributed to people other than its original author - Marko. You can read his original posting here, and his take on the plagarism in this post.
Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that’s it.
In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.
When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force. The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gangbanger, and a single gay guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.
There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the people who think that we’d be more civilized if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for a mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the mugger’s potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat–it has no validity when most of a mugger’s potential marks are armed. People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that’s the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly.
Then there’s the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser. People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don’t constitute lethal force watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level. The gun is the only weapon that’s as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weightlifter. It simply wouldn’t work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn’t both lethal and easily employable.
When I carry a gun, I don’t do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I’m looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don’t carry it because I’m afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn’t limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation…and that’s why carrying a gun is a civilized act.
When a neighbor screamed she’d been shot, Colin Bruley grabbed his shotgun, found the victim and began treating her bloodied right leg.
Tonnetta Lee survived Tuesday’s pre-dawn shooting at her Jacksonville apartment, and her sister and a neighbor praised Bruley’s actions. But his employers, the same people who own the Arlington complex where Bruley lives, reacted differently. They fired him.
Read the rest of the story here at the Florida Times-Union, hat tip to The Freehold
The Federal Government has taken it upon itself to insert itself into the employment process to such a degree that you can’t be fired if you’re an alcoholic in some cases. But this guy does a stand-up job and helps protect his neighbors and he gets fired for it? Typical. But should he get his job back? Should he sue? I don’t think so. Why would you want to work for someone who is going to treat you that way? I’m sure there are lots of Employers who would be happy to have an upstanding guy like Colin Bruley working for them. Working for someone is a temporary arrangement, it can be severed by either party for any reason at any time. I don’t believe an employer has the right to force you to continue to work and you don’t have the right to force an employer to continue to employ you. Its a two-way street. Or at least it ought to be.
This story from The Real Gun Guys has me kinda riled up this morning. Most of the article covers a brave teenager who saved him and his mom from a carjacking by grabbing the goblin’s gun and shooting him with it.
Its the police reaction that’s got me red in the face -
While acknowledging the gamble succeeded, authorities stressed that it’s safer to cooperate in such a case.
“Give them the money and give them the keys,” Sheriff Harry Lee said. “You make an insurance payment on your car, and nobody gets shot.”
Says who? I figure if some shithead it sticking a gun in my face he’s ready to take my life. In other words, I’m dead unless I take matters into my own hands and do something to save myself and my loved ones. If more people would react this way to criminals trying to terrorize innocent victims we would quite possibly have lower crime rates and more dead criminals.
It really pisses me off when the guys in blue say ‘nice job, but you should have just given in’. Are we giving in to the terrorists who want to annihilate our way of life? No. The same standard should be used for cowardly little punks sticking a gun in your face.
I’d like to welcome 2 new blogs to the blogroll at GunBloggers.com
Anti-gun nuts tout the benefits of having a ‘cooling off period’ after buying a gun, as if everyone who buys a gun is angry, or likely to use it in anger. You have already passed a background check and have skipped buying it from the corner drug and illegal arms dealer, so why impose an extra burden? Hell if I know, non of what they do makes sense to me.
To further illustrate the idiocy of a waiting period we have this story which comes to us from The Smallest Minority. The quick over view is an employer has an irate former employee threaten his and his family’s lives, goes and buys a gun, is subjected to a 3 day waiting period, and on day 2 is attacked in front of his house.
It isn’t clear from the story if any of the attackers were actually connected to the former employee, but it sure would be a strange coincidence if they weren’t.
This story comes from the Philadelphia Daily News, via Clayton Craymer -
BRIAN LEWIS was leaving his apartment, heading to a gig as a disc jockey in January 2005, when three guys jumped him.
Two of them pulled pistols.
The men wanted his gear, including two CD mixers worth $499 each.
They also wanted Lewis to turn around and go back inside his house with them.
What the robbers didn’t know was that Lewis had a gun, and a permit to carry it.
Lewis reached for his gun, telling the robbers he was pulling out the key to his door.
Lewis aimed across his body, drawing a bead on the head of one man aiming a pistol at his back.
Click.
The gun was loaded, but there was no bullet in the chamber.
The two robbers heard the pistol’s dry fire and blasted away, shooting Lewis in the back.
You can read the rest of the story here. But that’s the most important part. If you carry a concealed weapon, always remember that you cannot predict when you will need it. You will neve have the time to ‘rack the slide’ when trouble comes calling. Part of being prepared is being fully prepared, have your weapon ready to use at a moments notice — you may not get another chance. This guy is very lucky to be alive, and I hope he has learned from the experience.
The Press Enterprise is reporting this disgusting case of CA laws run amok -
Thomas Lee McKiernan, who was arrested earlier this month when his house caught fire and exposed his arsenal to authorities, remains in jail awaiting a sentence that could range from probation and psychological counseling to five years in prison.
The prosecutor said the reduced charges are appropriate given the circumstances of the case.
“He isn’t a bad guy,” said Mayman. “This guy has no criminal history, and nobody was hurt.”
Most of McKiernan’s guns were collected over decades, and they include collector’s pieces such as pre-World War II guns. His illegal assault rifles were bought before they were outlawed in 2000, indicating that McKiernan was at least trying to be a law-abiding collector, Mayman said.
Ok, so you say he’s not a bad guy. So then why are they trying to ruin his life after the poor guy’s house burned down?
The problem, said Mayman, is that McKiernan’s stockpile of gunpowder was a threat to the community. He had more than 185 pounds of gunpowder — dozens of times the legal limit. One container of gunpowder exploded during the fire, he said.
Ok, so storing that much gunpowder is dangerous. Write him a citation and tell him not to do it again. But throw him in prison? Make him a felon? You couldn’t pay me enough to live in the Peoples Republic of California.
Clayton Cramer is reporting that the DC Court of Appeals has struck down Washington DC’s ban on having a loaded handgun in your home, and has recognized that handguns are protected by the 2nd Amendment!
Its nice to see some sanity in a city overrun by criminals.
Say Uncle, Volokh, Kerr, Cato Institute and Instapundit also have coverage.
The blogs are aflame with opinions about Jim Zumbo’s betrayal of his fellow gun owners a few weeks back. Smoke on the Water has a couple of good posts here and here, Geek with a .45 weighs in here with a decent summary of Zumbo’s apologies. Michael Bane asks the question ‘where do we go from here?’, and Snowflakes in Hell says Zumbo’s sincerity doesn’t matter.
It looks like folks are ready to give Zumbo a chance to redeem himself. It looks like he is on the path to redemption, but I’d rather sit back and watch him for a bit before allowing him back into the fold. What he wrote was very wrong, I was among those that wrote to his advertisers and demanded his head, and I am willing to forgive but only after I see some action from him that earns it. So far it looks like he’s taking the right steps.
This comes in from The Tennessean, more women in TN are signing up for concealed weapon permits than ever.
“Why should we not have something to protect ourselves?” said Oonk, the Tennessee representative for the Second Amendment Sisters, a national organization promoting female gun ownership. “Why should we let someone else have their way, when you could protect yourself?
Real Estate Agent Kim Hoard says -
“I have strangers in my car every day, I meet strangers in empty houses all day long. For me, it seems like the logical step to protect myself.”
Its good to see that some people are understanding the utility of carrying a concealed pistol. It is especially important for women, who are often preyed upon by stalkers and criminals with no protection other than calling 911.
Hat Tips to Say Uncle and Of Arms and the Law
According to this TBO.com story Georgia lawmakers are considering changing their no-knock warrant rules. A Bill, SB 259 has been introduced to:
A BILL to be entitled an Act to amend Article 2 of Chapter 5 of Title 17 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, relating to searches with warrants, so as to change provisions relating to issuance of search warrants by judicial officers; to provide that no-knock warrants shall not be issued in this state except under limited circumstances; to provide for related matters; to provide for an effective date; to repeal conflicting laws; and for other purposes.
This change of direction has come about because of a recent tragedy where the homeowner, a 92 year old woman, shot at the invading officers and was killed by them. The warrent was issued on the word of an informant that there were drugs in the house. None were found.
Hat Tip to Say Uncle for this story.
