Tag Archives: gun control

“‘Astronauts with Shuttles’ can be dangerous, too”

‘Good guys with guns’ can be dangerous, too. Don’t gut concealed carry laws.
That day in Tucson, amid a gun tragedy, one of the heroes almost got shot.

…and proceeds to tell of a lawfully armed man using his training — and restraint — to not kill anyone. Apparently Mark Kelly believes that we are as thoughtless and impulsive as he is, buying a gun “on a whim” and publicizing that it is an illegal straw purchase.

I’m beginning to believe the “brain damage by hypoxia” theory.

Using his… reasoning, Mark Kelly was “a matter of seconds” from crashing STS-108 and STS-121, not to mention all those aircraft in his naval aviation days.

Facebooktwitterredditpinteresttumblrmail

Truth in advertising

Have you noticed the recent trend in arguments from the human/civil rights violators? If not, here are some hints.

“Why is gun control now equal to a restriction of liberties? Gun Control is not Gun erasure, it is not taking away the 2nd Amendment. Gun Control is not saying you do not have a right to own a gun for your protection, safety, and soundness of mind for you and your family.”
Anjeanette LeBoeuf, The Act of Gun Control

Ms. LeBoeuf, bless her heart, also demonstrates why she should have spent more time on history, and less on women’s studies.

“The challenge in bringing change is that the debate over gun rights isn’t really about guns at all. It’s about what they represent: cherished freedoms, a reverence for independence. ”
Philip Elliott, Haley Sweetland Edwards, Charlotte Alter; The Fight Over Gun Control Isn’t Really About Guns

Hold that thought.

“So how can we articulate the gun control message more effectively? What if instead of emphasizing gun control, there was a Movement for the Safety of All Americans? If the problem were framed as a domestic and public safety issue rather than a gun control matter, perhaps we could build greater demand for conquering this national epidemic.”
Bruce Berlin, Let’s Reframe Gun Control To Focus on Our Safety

Ah, safety.

“Take the phrase we often reach toward in the aftermath of a mass shooting: “gun control.” “It feels like there’s an American sense that responds quite well to the idea of ‘rights,’ and not so well to the idea of ‘control,’” Dust says. Dust believes that this small point could the origin of a new type of conversation–around how the right to carry arms is ultimately infringing on our right to peacefully gather.”
Eillie Anzilotti, Can We Redesign The Way We Talk About Gun Control In America?

The trend is to pretend there is no such thing as “gun control,” and the reason is because they finally realized it’s a non-finisher.

LeBoeuf wants people to believe that only total confiscation is “gun control.” Yet proposes… controls. She’s not alone in adopting that position, and it’s not new; there’s a reason Handgun Control, Inc. isn’t using that name anymore.

The rights violators are used to having money and near-exclusive media access, allowing them to push whatever message they wanted. In the Internet age, that access isn’t so exclusive (in the ’90s, merely getting an unedited pro-RKBA letter to the editor in an urban newspaper was a challenge; yet here you are reading this column now). The rights violators are forced to rephrase and hide their goal.

They think this is a winning gambit.

It might be. For us.

“Excuse me, Ms. LeBoeuf. If those laws preventing me from owning this type of firearm, or making me an ex post facto prohibited person without due process, requiring licenses to own, licenses to buy, licenses to carry, mandatory insurance, waiting periods, mental health evaluations, and so forth aren’t gun control, what are they?”

The answer being, as we’ve long known — but which the human rights criminals tried to deny — people control. Now, every time one of those smarmy SOBs plays the “not gun control” card, we can call them on it, and make them admit that the goal is to manipulate every aspect of every life, all the things they can’t do to an armed populace.


Carl is an unpaid TZP volunteer. If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in his tip jar.

paypal_btn_donateCC_LG



Ed. note: This commentary appeared first in TZP’s weekly email alert. If you would like to be among the first to see new commentary (as well as to get notice of new polls and recaps of recent posts), please sign up for our alert list. (See sidebar or, if you’re on a mobile device, scroll down). Be sure to respond when you receive your activation email!

Facebooktwitterredditpinteresttumblrmail

The Rules of the Gun [Control] Debate

David Frum, who has mastered the art of psychological projection, presents a an asinine parable and cynical “rules” for running the gun control debate. This man clearly has mental health issues.

Frum’s little parable, meant to represent the problem of “gun violence,” purports a town which has stupidly built itself in a locale guaranteed to suffer repeated natural disasters. The sensible folk of the town think everything should be raised up on stilts to avoid flooding, while the pro-gun reactionary do-nothings object to preparation because it won’t stop floods.

The reality of the “gun violence” problem is that 1) it’s man-made by a relatively few bad guys, and 2) the pro-gun folks don’t object to taking measures to protect themselves. In Frum’s water-logged village, we’d be the folks putting up our own houses on stilts, pilings, and mounds, while the anti-flood violence idiots like From pass laws designating the town a flood-free zone.

Frum’s “rules” illustrate the usual problems of irrationality on the part of victims disarmers.

Frum’s Rule 1. “The measures to be debated must bear some relationship to the massacre that triggered the debate. If the killer acquired his weapons illegally, it’s out of bounds to point out how lethally easy it is to buy weapons legally. If the killer lacked a criminal record, it’s out of bounds to talk about the inadequacy of federal background checks. The topic for debate is not, iWhy do so many Americans die from gunfire?’ but ‘What one legal change would have prevented this most recent atrocity?'”

My Rule 1a. If you are proposing a solution to a specific incident, the proposal should address characteristics of that incident.

My Rule 1b. General discussion of the many sordid causes of “gun violence” is a separate conversation.

Frum’s Rule 2. “The debate must focus on unusual weapons and accessories: bump stocks, for example, the villain of the moment. Even the NRA has proclaimed itself open to some regulation of these devices. After the 2012 mass shooting in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater, attention turned to large capacity magazines. What is out of bounds is discussion of weapons as in themselves a danger to human life and public safety.”

My Rule 2a. See My Rule 1a.

My Rule 2b. Any proposed solution must included a cost:benefit analysis, and not be based on the unicorn wishes of just one party.

My Rule 2c. Firearms are not a natural disaster; they are man-made tools, which must be manipulated by an external force — like a person — to do anything, good or bad.

Frum’s Rule 3. “The debate must always honor the “responsible gun owners” who buy weapons for reasonable self-defense. Under Rule 1, these responsible persons are presumed to constitute the great majority of gun owners. It’s out of bounds to ask for some proof of this claimed responsibility, some form of training for example. It’s far out of bounds to propose measures that might impinge on owners: the alcohol or drug tests for example that are so often recommended for food stamp recipients or teen drivers.”

My Rule 3. Since there are 55-120+ million gun owners, and the human race has not been rendered extinct in the US, one should start with the assumption that most gun owners are not murderous lunatics bound and determined to kill everything; if we were, you’d know… not know it because everyone would already be dead.

Frum’s Rule 4. “Gun ownership is always to be discussed as a rational choice motivated by reasonable concerns for personal safety. No matter how blatantly gun advocates appeal to fears and fantasies—Sean Hannity musing aloud on national TV about how he with a gun in his hands could have saved the day in Las Vegas if only he had been there—nobody other than a lefty blogger may notice that this debate is about race and sex, not personal security. It’s out of bounds to observe that ‘Chicago’ is shorthand for ‘we only have gun crime because of black people’ or how often ‘I want to protect my family” is code for ‘I need to prove to my girlfriend who’s really boss.'”

My Rule 4. Assume parties in the discussion mean what they say unless you have evidence to the contrary. An automatic assumption that ‘Chicago’ must be a racist codeword — in face of demographics of Chicago criminals — or that the only possible reason to have a defensive weapon is to abuse women says much more about the person who believes only that than it says about most lawful gun owners.

From there, Frum devolves into “discussion.”

“A requirement that gun owners carry insurance would not only protect potential accident victims—including gun owners, since many gun accidents are self-inflicted—against economic loss.”

We did that. You folks called it “murder insurance” and tried to stop it. Make up your minds.

As for preemptively-prove-your-innocence (“background”) checks: If they work, then lawful gun owners have already proved themselves “responsible gun owners” (FR3). If they don’t, then stop demanding something that doesn’t work and come up with something that would.

My Rule 5. There is no “gun violence” problem. There is a violence problem, most prevalent in certain economic/geographic demographics.

If a doctor conducted a study to determine if a chemical caused a certain cancer, and found that cancer in just 0.00124% of regular users of that chemical, he’d discard that hypothesis and go looking for another cause.

0.00124% happens to be the estimated number of lawful gun owners who are murderers in any given year.

Clearly, while guns are used, they aren’t the cause. People kill with guns, knives, clubs, cars, fists, feet… If guns are removed, the cause will remain until addressed and fixed; murderers will simply use one of the myriad other methods available, as they have through history.

My Rule 6. If you ignore the underlying cause and only treat symptoms, you will never cure the disease.


* Note the original URL.


Carl is an unpaid TZP volunteer. If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in his tip jar.

paypal_btn_donateCC_LG



Ed. note: This commentary appeared first in TZP’s weekly email alert. If you would like to be among the first to see new commentary (as well as to get notice of new polls and recaps of recent posts), please sign up for our alert list. (See sidebar or, if you’re on a mobile device, scroll down). Be sure to respond when you receive your activation email!

Facebooktwitterredditpinteresttumblrmail

Informers

Jews learned several harsh lessons in the Holocaust. One of them was to beware of snitches. The problem has not gone away.

Pennsylvania: Couple Sues Over Police “Drug” Raid That Mistook Hibiscus for Marijuana
Last November, a Pennsylvania couple’s home was raided by police who mistakenly believed the couple’s hibiscus plants to be marijuana. The couple is now reportedly suing Buffalo Township and Nationwide Insurance for “excessive force, false arrest, false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress and invasion of privacy in their lawsuit.”

The couple’s ordeal began when Nationwide Insurance sent an agent out to assess a claim; the agent took pictures of the couple’s hibiscus plants and sent them to local police as evidence of the illegal planting and growing of marijuana. Buffalo Township police reacted by raiding the couple’s home and leading a partially-dressed and barefoot Audrey Cramer, 66, out to their patrol car. Her husband Edward Cramer, 69, was met with drawn guns and arrested upon returning home while his wife was still sitting, handcuffed, in the cruiser.

This police state worshipping “good citizen” narced on an elderly couple. An innocent elderly couple. A couple with whom he was in a business relationship to help. Instead, he exercised his ignorance to try to destroy their lives.

Perhaps you happen to believe the “War on Drugs” is a good thing. Maybe you think anyone using marijuana deserves whatever they get. I don’t, on either count.

But that’s beside the point.

What if this nasty little informer spotted a defensive firearm and reported that to police. What if he saw a semiautomatic AR-pattern rifle and decided — probably on the basis of lamestream muddia reporting — that it was an illegal machine gun?

Got grandad’s old deactivated WW1 artillery shell memento? Maybe he’d report an explosives stash.

I’m fairly careful who I let into the house. This is why.

Insurance agent/Stasi informant Jonathan Yeamans is scum; he abused a position of trust to violate that couple’s rights and his company helped. Fortunately, people are discovering that.

“Nationwide will run and hide.”

And the dangers abound. Victim-disarming harpy Shannon Watts encourages people to ask if friends and family are armed for the holidays. If they have to ask, they are not real friends, and you should be concerned what they’d do with that information.

If you want more information on protecting your privacy and life, I recommend Claire Wolfe‘s free ebook, RATS! Your guide to protecting yourself against snitches, informers, informants, agents provocateurs,narcs, finks, and similar vermin.

Hat tip to David Codrea.


Carl is an unpaid TZP volunteer. If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in his tip jar.

paypal_btn_donateCC_LG


In

Facebooktwitterredditpinteresttumblrmail

If they have a case, why do victim disarmers have to lie?

As you may have noticed from previous number-crunching, I’m quite analytically inclined. When I see or hear something that doesn’t sound right, it gnaws at me until I check it out. Like this:

Emotions run high during Politech’s gun control forum
“So it’s really a touchy issue on a sense of security. Also if you want to go to domestic violence, most women who are around guns, 50 percent of the time will be shot using their own weapon,” Gavran said. “So there are a lot of challenges with that.”

Really? 50% of women around guns will be shot with their own weapon?

My guess is that emotions ran high because lies like that were allowed.

According to a MarieClaire.com and Harvard Injury Control Research Center survey 32% of women live in households with firearm. I think that counts as being “around” guns. 32% of 162,000,000 women would be 51,840,000. 50% of those would be 25,920,000 women shot.

The FBI’s 2016 Uniform Crime Report says there were only 1,217,400 violent crimes (male and female; murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault) last year. Yet ditz Gavran claims that just women shot is more than 21 times that.

But maybe Gavran meant 50% of the MC/HIRC reported 12% of women who own guns. That gets us down to 9,720,000 to about 8 times the number of total violent crimes for males and females alike.

Let’s stroll over to the CDC’s WISQARS and see what they say about it. 6,368 total nonfatal firearms assaults, and 1,950 fatal firearms assaults, for a total of 8,318. A far cry from 25,920,000 or even 9,720,000.

OK, I’ll be generous. Rather than what she said, maybe she meant to limit the population strictly to domestic violence cases; so 50% of female domestic violence victims.

Uh oh. It says here that females are the victims in 85% of 960,000 estimated annual domestic violent incidents, giving us 816,000 victims, half of which would be firearms by Gavran’s claim: 408,000. Only 49 times the number of fatal and nonfatal female firearms injuries the CDC reports.

Wait. 12% of women own guns. So .12 times 816,000 is 97,920. Half of that is 48,960. Only six times as many as the total the CDC reports.

Pure. Effing. B. S.

But as the man said, there’s more.

Perry was able to speak on what he considered naivety in regards to fears of students carrying guns around the campus. Gavran responded to Perry, saying there were accidental discharges around some universities in Texas.

She went on to say there is no way of knowing all of the effects of Campus Carry because the Clery Act legislation does not require reporting of accidental discharges.

I searched. I found one. More than a year ago. If the ditz has better data, she should cite it.

Or STFU.

Facebooktwitterredditpinteresttumblrmail

Complicity?

Complicity of current gun laws makes people guilty of slaughter
Are you complicit?

Re: the mindless slaughter of men, women and children in a church in Texas, at a hotel in Las Vegas and at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Ct. plus many others too numerous to mention.

You are complicit if you are an elected official voting to block adequate gun control laws! You have the blood of innocent individuals on your hands.

I should like to note that, by his peculiar standard of law, Mr. Blank is complicit in the murder of my brother who was disarmed by the sort of retroactive — ex post facto — gun control he likes.

By his standard, Blank is complicit in the murder of Carol Bowne, killed while waiting for her lawfully purchased defensive tool; mandatory waiting period gun control.

By his standard, Blank is complicit in the murders of 23 people in Luby’s Diner, where gun control had disarmed Dr. Suzanna Gratia.

Considering that Sandy Hook Elementary School was a “gun-free zone” by federal gun control, with lawfully possessed defensive arms banned, by his standard, Blank is complicit in those murders as well.

I’m sure guilt-stricken Blank will be contacting his representatives immediately to call for an end to victim disarmament.


Carl is an unpaid TZP volunteer. If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in his tip jar.

paypal_btn_donateCC_LG


Facebooktwitterredditpinteresttumblrmail

Assault Weapons Ban of 2017

Die-Anne Feinswine’s Assault Weapons Ban of 2017 is out. It’s worth a read. In some respects it’s much like its 1994 predecessor, only more so. Particularly in that it isn’t a ban. Hang on to that thought.

The first section sets up definitions. “Assault weapons” become pretty much any semiautomatic firearm with a detachable magazine and any 1 of several other features: pistol grip, pistol grip (specifically includes thumbhole stocks), forward grip, barrel shroud, adjustable stock, shoulder thing that goes up, threaded barrel, and so forth. Pistols specifically have their own characteristics, which you can guess from Feinstein’s previous ranting.

She got smart on one point. Back in the ’90s, manufacturers simply redesigned platforms to conform to the law (which she fein-whined was taking advantage of a “loophole”). This time she remembered to ban any variant of pages of specified firearms. So gun makers can’t take an AR-15 and saw off the pistol grip or weld the magazine in place and call it an AR-15PB (post-ban).

They’ll have to give it a new model number series. I suggest the UYDF-17. You can figure it out.

Then she gets to the ban-that-isn’t.

Section 922 of title 18, United States Code, is amended—
(v) (1) It shall be unlawful for a person to import, sell, manufacture, transfer, or possess, in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce, a semiautomatic assault weapon.

(2) Paragraph (1) shall not apply to the possession, sale, or transfer of any semiautomatic assault weapon otherwise lawfully possessed under Federal law on the date of enactment of the Assault Weapons Ban of 2017.

Yes, existing gear is grandfathered. As before, her “assault weapon ban” doesn’t ban a single firearm, and — gun owners having learned the lesson of her last attempt — have far more “assault weapons” on hand than they did in 1994.

Standard capacity magazines are next to not-go, with similar language merely banning future manufacture or importation of detachable magazines with capacity greater than 10 rounds, existing magazines grandfathered.

Government entities are all exempted, of course.

Up next, “safe storage.” Yeah, if you aren’t carrying it, or have it within arms reach, lock it up. Unloaded. Ammunition elsewhere. Feinstein really hates children.

“High capacity” magazines for government are going to get more expensive, but hey: taxpayers have deep pockets. New “assault weapons” and magazines must be serial-numbered and marked with date of manufacture.

She then inserts 90-some pages of specific firearms that are exempted from this law’s restrictions, which strikes me as stupid because the ones I recognize don’t fit her “assault weapon” definition anyway. She never was that bright.

Transfers of grandfathered “assault weapons” would have to go through an FFL. A private seller has to turn it over to the FFL, who has to enter it into his inventory records. The buyer will have to fill out a 4473, just as if the firearm were being purchased from the FFL, and be run through NICS. There is no exemption for gifts or loans, even between family members.

She’ll graciously allow you to let the buyer handle it for pre-purchase inspection without the FFL and NICS check. Oh, goody.

Now back to that thought I started with; why a ban that isn’t a ban? She did that before, and we know how that turned out.

  • Strictly by the numbers, crimes committed with firearms fitting the ’94 definition of “assault weapon” did go down. But it was statistically meaningless because those firearms were always rarely used by criminals. It’s like a town that saw one case of measles one year, then had 100% percent increase the next when two siblings get the measles. Statistically meaningless in a town of a couple hundred thousand or more.
  • Overall, firearms crime remained roughly the same. A few more hand gun crimes compensated for “assault weapons.”
  • A frickin’ huge number of evil, wicked “assault weapons” were transferred in panic-buying before the ’94 ban went into effect. So the imminent law had the effect of a subsidy for firearm manufacturers and dealers.If Feinstein — or her staffers/handlers — have a brain amongst them, they know this. They know every time someone makes serious banning noises (Obama election sound familiar?) sales skyrocket. “Gun Salesman of the Year.” Prices go through the roof.

    We know Feinstein isn’t bright. But is she crazy? Or is she taking brib campaign contributions from the evil gun industry?


    Carl is an unpaid TZP volunteer. If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in his tip jar.

    paypal_btn_donateCC_LG



    Ed. note: This commentary appeared first in TZP’s weekly email alert. If you would like to be among the first to see new commentary (as well as to get notice of new polls and recaps of recent posts), please sign up for our alert list. (See sidebar or, if you’re on a mobile device, scroll down). Be sure to respond when you receive your activation email!

Facebooktwitterredditpinteresttumblrmail

We don’ need no steenkin’ due process

“Extreme risk protective orders” (ERPO) are the latest fad of the victim disarmers who snidely assure that one more law will save us from “gun violence.”

They don’t care about violence inflicted by any other means.

The TL;DR if you didn’t follow those links is that ERPOs allow — variously in assorted state implementations; typically family, friends, co-workers, cops — people to petition the courts to have someone’s firearms taken away because they fear that person is at risk of harming herself or others. And who could possibly be in favor of hurting people?

What they don’t tell you is that protective orders are already available. The tricky part is “due process.” Now, a judge can issue an order for a potentially violent person to stay away from the allegedly threatened person. A judge can call the potentially violent person in to see if, just maybe, he should be sent in for a mental health evaluation. The first isn’t too big a deal, and the second incorporates constitutional due process because the one who may be confined is in court to have his say.

As I said, ERPOs lack that due process, by deliberate intent. The accused isn’t told about the hearing until afterwards, when the cops show up to confiscate firearms. Conventional initial protective order hearings may or may not include the accused; ERPOs codify that lack in law.

Ex parte is a legal fiction that claims that, in certain emergency situations, there’s no time for due process, or that tipping off the accused could allow her to do something bad before she’s served with the order. That’s a good thing, right?

No. A conventional protective order amounts to a preliminary emergency injunction, and the accused will get a hearing. ERPOs make no allowance for hearings until after property is taken, and then the burden is on the accused to prove his innocence. No due process; problem.

But it’s a terrible emergency. The guy is dangerous. Really, really so dangerous we don’t have time for due process, or to worry about prior restraint.

But apparently not so dangerous as to justify taking him into custody. A judge could require that in his order. Or not.

And there’s my problem: if the accused is so dangerous that he must be preemptively disarmed of firearms without notice, then he shouldn’t left free to walk the streets…

…say, with a crowbar, to the home of his accuser, who is now relying on a shield of paper. But who cares about crowbar — or knife — violence? After all, it’s a lot tougher to take out an oath-breaking, bodyguarded politician with a crowbar — or knife — than with a rifle at a distance.

Or maybe the — improperly? — accused is left on the street weaponless to defend himself against a — baseless? — accuser with a grudge, who manipulated the system into rendering his victim harmless. Maybe ERPOs should disarm both parties until it’s sorted out.

Rights and property should never be taken without real due process.


Carl is an unpaid TZP volunteer. If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in his tip jar.

paypal_btn_donateCC_LG


Facebooktwitterredditpinteresttumblrmail

Ancient Mysteries

While the current news cycle churns out reports about multiple bills to ban bump-fire stocks and other accessories, or to ban nearly all semiautomatic rifles, let us cast our minds back to the ancient — in lamestream media time — history to the event that prompted this round of Second Amendment infringements.

Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas, where the uninformed world discovered “bump-fire.” You know the narrative: A multimillionnaire dragged a couple dozen semiautomatic weapons to his 32nd floor suite. A dozen of them were equipped with evil bump-fire stocks. He broke out two windows and used those bump-fire “fully automatic” weapons of mass destruction to hose down a crowd of 20,000+ country music fans who probably deserved it because they’re nasty NRA gun owners themselves.

So our heroes in Washington, DC were forced to protect us by offering legislation to deny stuff to the 55 to 120 million gun owners who didn’t do it. “Bump stocks” must go! Bump stock manufacturers must pay for their crimes!

Whoa. Like I said, cast your minds back in time. To… say, October 2, 2017.

Did you see that? At least one fully automatic weapon and weapons equipped with bumpstocks.

The LA Times reported that other weapons were being examined to determine if they had been converted to full auto.

The Weekly Standard reported at least fully automatic weapon as well.

Dennis Michael Lynch noted it, too.

But the automatic weapon(s?) vanished from the narrative. Perhaps I overlooked it, but my searches turn up no “correction” that, “Oh, we didn’t mean full auto,” or, “That person was mistaken; we were talking about two different bump-fire devices and he thought we meant bump-fire and full.”

They just stopped talking about it.

Then they just stopped talking.

Well, why not, when you have powerful senators and congresscritters who need a lawful accessory to demonize in the interest of creating a gun control slippery slope?

Was one (or more) of the shooter’s weapon fully automatic? Personally, I thought at least one recorded burst sounded so regular (as opposed to other stuttering bursts) that I took it for full-auto fire.

The shooter had a clean record, so he’d have been eligible to purchase an NFA item. Certainly a multimillionnaire could afford one even at the inflated prices driven by the FOPA of 1986. But if he’d bought one legally, that would be just another example of the law not working as advertised. If he purchased one unlawfully, or converted a semiautomatic to full, well, then he’s just another criminal. Our protectors need something unregulated to… regulate. Gotta get that slippery slope.

So our ancient media mysteries are:

  • Was there one or more fully automatic weapons as reported in multiple outlets?
  • Did inspection of the weapons found in the hotel suite show which had been fired?
  • Has ballistics testing determined which were used to kill and wound the victims?

This is fairly important, really. The Mandalay Bay massacre is being used to justify a whole new set of infringements of human/civil rights, starting with bump-fire. Are they justifying legislation by something that didn’t happen per the script? (Note to nutcases: I’m not saying the incident was staged/faked; I’m questioning which weapon(s) was used.)

But shooters — aside from a few Mom’s Basement Army keyboard commandos and mall ninjas — consider bump-fire stocks to be nothing more than fun ammo-wasters. Granted, I can’t really wrap my head around mass murder, but it seems to me that if I were a wealthy guy intent on the murder of as many people as possible in ten minutes, and I had one or more automatic weapons handy, I don’t think I’d look over the selection and say, “Nah, the toy is the better tool for the job.”

I might transition to a bump-fired weapon if everything else jammed or broke, but who would start with that?

The cable news attention span has expired, so we may never learn the answers to my questions.

Facebooktwitterredditpinteresttumblrmail

Timing is everything, but one more gun law will fix it

The First Baptist Church shooter had an interesting history. Pulling this together from assorted news reports:

  • He was reportedly on “high doses of ‘psych’ meds” in 6th through 9th grade.
  • As an adult, he dated a 13 year-old girl.
  • The police were called because he stalked the girl when she dropped him.
  • In the Air Force, while in pre-trial detention, he was committed to a psychiatric hospital (from which he escaped) because he was deemed a threat to himself and others. Somehow, the Air Force never reported the committal to NICS.
  • In a General Court Martial, he was convicted of multiple counts of domestic violence (including cracking a child’s skull). Somehow the Air Force failed to report the felony-equivalent domestic violence conviction to NICS.
  • There was an open sexual assault investigation of him that police dropped in late 2013 because they thought he’d left the state.
  • Then the police responded to another complaint against him (domestic abuse) at the same address in early 2014. Yet somehow the police couldn’t figure out that he was still in state.

That an adult was dating a 13yo is concerning enough (and where were her parents?). Was it a sexual relationship? If so, then he committed sexual assault. Where were the police?

But one more gun control law will fix it.

The timing of the asshole‘s military and civilian legal interactions raises more questions. In June 2012, he was facing charges in the at Holloman AFB in New Mexico. He was committed to a New Mexico psychiatric hospital in June. He escaped — that’s desertion –and was recaptured on June 13, 2012. He was sent to a Miramar Navy brig for pre-trial confinement, presumably after his escape and recapture; otherwise I have to wonder why he’d be sent from California back to New Mexico for committal.

In November 2012, he was convicted and sentenced to a year confinement, which he served in the Miramar brig until June 2013. Clearly, he was credited with pre-trial time served despite having escaped custody. For three counts of felony-equivalent assault, including breaking a child’s skull?

An appeals court upheld the conviction in 2013. When in 2013 isn’t clear.

Upon release from the brig “in early June of 2013”, he was placed on unpaid leave, apparently through the end of his term of enlistment in early 2014. Well, it’s not like the Air Force wanted him back (and oddly enough, I was stationed at Holloman AFB in the ’80s, and was detailed to maintain custody of another deserter, whom we didn’t want either).

Almost immediately — June 17, 2013, just seven months after his initial conviction — he was under investigation in New Braunfels, Texas for alleged rape. I would expect the police to run a background check on him, but since his committal and conviction were never logged, he would come up clean. Perhaps if the Air Force had done its job, the police would have seen a history of violence towards women and taken this case more seriously and arrested him.

In early 2014, the police were called to the same address again, on a complaint against him. They failed to notice that he was the same person they assumed had fled the state during another investigation. Since the Air Force never reported his committal and conviction, and the police hadn’t arrested him for the rape complaint, apparently he still looked clean. So he was allowed to roam the streets.

On August 1, 2014 he was cited for animal cruelty. With no other apparent criminal record (thanks, USAF and New Braunfels PD) a judge fined him and gave him deferred probation.

On November 13, 2014, he registered to vote in Colorado. He was able to do this because no one had bothered to record his committal and felony-equivalent crimes.

All we know about the next few years is that he lived in Texas and Colorado and bought guns. Because no one recorded his committal and conviction in NICS, or investigated other complaints more carefully… because he seemed to have a clean record each time. He tried to get a Texas carry license but was denied because they apparently noticed his Bad Conduct Discharge (my reading of Texas law is that anyone with less than an Honorable discharge is ineligible). At least someone did his job.

On November 5, 2017 — reportedly angry with yet another woman — killed 26 men, women, and children, and wounded 20 more. Because various authorities failed to apply the laws they expect all of us — who didn’t commit these crimes — to obey. The authorities failed to notice his criminal record, mental health record, and his history of of disturbing and criminal behavior with women.

But more bans, limits, and background checks for us — who didn’t commit these crimes — will fix it.


Carl is an unpaid TZP volunteer. If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in his tip jar.

paypal_btn_donateCC_LG


Facebooktwitterredditpinteresttumblrmail