Monthly Archives: February 2018

gun control, gun grabbers

[UPDATE] School Shootings

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So Shannon TWatts was mouthing off about school shootings again, after the LA middle school shooting. She claimed:

This is the 14th American school shooting in 2018

Someone replied, asking for a list of those shootings, And TWatts told her to Google “Everytown school shootings”. She couldn’t be bothered to provide a link.

So I searched it and found that “Everytown” list. It lists “school shootings” but doesn’t provide links. Per Everytown,

Consistent with expert advice and common sense, Everytown uses a straightforward, fair, and comprehensive definition for a school shooting: any time a firearm discharges a live round inside a school building or on a school campus or grounds, as documented by the press and, when necessary, confirmed through further inquiries with law enforcement or school officials.

I checked on the shootings they list.

Two suicides (one only coincidentally on school grounds), one negligent discharge by a cop, two shots from off campus that hit buildings with no injuries, two drive-bys from off campus with no injuries, one drive-by off campus with no injuries, one shot at 1AM at an “event venue” on an extended college campus, four under-age students shooting students, and one guy killed “near” a school.

So 29% of Everytown’s “school shootings” don’t even meet their own definition of “school shooting.” Some clearly had nothing to do with “school” other than happening on campus well after hours, typically by non-students entering the grounds. One was a freaking cop authorized to have that gun. They had to include a shooting that didn’t involve students, faculty, or school grounds; “near.” Of the shootings that met Everytown’s own definition, most shooters were breaking existing laws in even possessing firearms. Virtually all broke existing laws in bringing the gun on campus.

Real school shootings are a bad thing. They should be addressed, fixed, ended. But inflating the numbers with other incidents is panic-mongering, and shrouds and distorts the facts of real school shootings.

Added, 2/7/2018: They have a couple more! Let’s see what there is to see…

Maybe schools should be cop-free zones. That’s twice in a month.

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guns, hoplophobia, mindset, Politics, Schools and campuses

Hmm kind of things

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I ran across this story tonight, ‘I didn’t mean to’: Police reveal 12-year-old girl ACCIDENTALLY shot at classmates and injured five in LA middle school after dropping her backpack which was carrying a loaded gun Some of the bullet points in the article were

  • Police say the shooting at Salvador Castro Middle School in Los Angeles on Thursday morning was accidental

  • A 12-year-old girl was arrested and charged with negligent discharge of a firearm on school grounds

  • One of the girl’s classmates said she told him the gun was in her backpack and that it accidentally went off when she dropped the bag

  • Another classmate said the girl had said she thought it was a toy gun

  • Shooting left one teenager critically wounded and three other children injured

  • A 15-year-old male was shot in the temple and remains in intensive care, while a girl, 15, was shot in the wrist

  • Two other students, as well as a 30-year-old woman, were treated for non-gunshot wounds

A 12-year-old girl was arrested after gunfire erupted at Salvador Castro Middle School on Thursday morning.

Los Angeles police spokesman Josh Rubenstein says the girl has since been charged with negligent discharge of a firearm on school grounds.

The charge comes after one of the girl’s classmates, also 12, revealed he spoke to her moments after the gun went off and said she was sobbing and repeatedly saying: ‘I didn’t mean it.’

She told him the gun was in her backpack and that it accidentally went off when she dropped the bag.

Another classmate also said the girl didn’t mean to hurt anyone, saying she thought it was a toy gun.

The list of injured: A 15-year-old male who was shot in the temple,a girl, 15, suffered a gunshot wound to her wrist, an 11-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl were grazed and were treated and released from the hospital, and a 30 year old woman was also injured and treated in hospital.

This baffles me. Modern firearms are pretty reliable, and I understand it most modern firearms are unlikely to “go off” if dropped. I said most. I know I’ve certainly had a very stern talk with mine. Since people control advocates seem to feel guns have a mind of their own, I thought I’d cover all the bases and make sure mine realize that is unacceptable behavior. But back to my pondering.

The girl had the gun in her backpack. The story doesn’t say how she obtained it. Nor does it say why she had it in her backpack, or who she got it from. I’m actually not dogging the reporter on this, I just don’t think it was known. I am astonished she is being charged with negligent discharge and not the mountain of other crimes with which a normal concealed carrier would have been charged. We are talking about California #FutureVenezuela here. Or as my compatriot Bear calls it, “Occupied territory”.

But if she A) dropped the backpack B) the gun just went off. How many times did it go off that so many were wounded off of one cartridge? It’s making me think of the JFK assassination “magic bullet”. I’m not saying it couldn’t have happened that way, crowded hall and all, but, still.

The whole thing is just sad. And without knowing any other background the one thing that is front in my mind is that if firearms education were allowed in schools perhaps this would never happen as the girl, who’s life is bound to be a mess now if it wasn’t before, would have known the difference between a toy gun and a real one. She would have known safe gun handling practices if she had stumbled upon one, and she sure as heck would have known you don’t play with them.

But no, California would never allow firearms education in schools, after all, it’s for the children.

But had this been a real school shooting, with gun fire “erupting” as the column stated I’m quite sure the toll would have been far higher. After all, schools are Gun-free zones, to keep everyone “safe”. That’s “for the children” too.

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gun control

Vegas Warrants: More questions than answers

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Redacted warrants and affidavits for the Mandalay Bay shooting have been published. Sadly, the data dump is only from local Vegas LE. It does not include federal investigation information. That’s important because federal agents would be investigating violations of federal law like the reported fully-automatic weapon(s) that fell out of the official narrative once victim-disarming politicians decided bump-fire was a good target for new gun people control laws. I still want to see ballistics reports that show what weapons were used, and what those weapons were.

Part 1
Part 2

Multiple warrants appear to use identical copy/pasted portions of the affidavits. This appears in quite a few:

Upon breaching the door, officers entered and located a deceased male suspect with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
[…]
Despite this suspect being neutralized, several other callers at various locations along The Strip continued to report active shooters inside of hotels and sightings of people with firearms.

Due to the mass casualty event that was still very dynamic and multiple other callers reporting other ongoing incidents, it appeared there may be several other suspects involved.

He’s dead, but someone else is still shooting? And note: they found the dead body.

Um… Maybe not.
SW-17-971C&D, October 2, 2017, Telephonic Search Warrant, Sgt. Jerry MacDonald

SWAT officers arrived on the 32nd floor and pinpointed the shooter’s location to be in room 32-135. As SWAT officers breached room 135, they observed Stephen Paddock place a gun to his head and fire one round. (emphasis added-cb)

A local Fox5 report leaves open the possibilities that MacDonald misspoke, although that sounds like an oddly specific way of misstating that they found a dead body. “Sorry; I accidentally said they witnessed the dead guy put a gun to his head and kill himself.”

By Wednesday afternoon, after I drafted the above paragraph, MacDonald pretty much said just that:

“He absolutely killed himself before anyone got into the room,” Sgt. Jerry MacDonald told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
[…]
“That night was crazy. You get information coming in. It’s fluid, and none of it is confirmed,” he said. “And that’s par for the course when you’re doing telephonic search warrants. You base those search warrants based on what you believed up to that point.”

I could see telling the judge, “Yeah, officers saw him shoot himself” or “Subject killed himself on entry.” But specifically, “As SWAT officers breached room 135, they observed Stephen Paddock place a gun to his head and fire one round.”?

Two other affidavits put it this way:

Tactical entry was made into the room in order to preserve life under exigent circumstances and law enforcement located a deceased male with a gunshot wound.

and

Tactical entry was made into the room in order to preserve life under exigent circumstances and law enforcement located a deceased male with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.

“Apparent.” In light of the photo (warning: graphic) showing expended brass on top of the seemingly coagulated blood, we’re left with more questions: If he died on entry, how did brass end up on top of the blood, if the shooting in the suite had stopped an hour before? If he died earlier, and they found the body, how did brass end up on top of the blood?

There are other little oddities in the warrant info. Why did he need two “personal massagers”? Different types, for different applications? Two people? The fact that he had his passport with him might be significant or not. While in the US, most folks I know leave their passport secured at home. But reports indicate the Mandalay bay shooter was enough of a world traveler that he might have kept his in a go bag out of convenience.

What’s up with the vase and flowers?

Where did the missing hard drive go?

Then there’s the other redacted (except for the one instance a clerk initially missed) “person of interest,” which law enforcement claimed as a reason not to unseal the warrants, as revealing him would compromise the investigation. Only, due to said clerical error, we learn that Douglas Haig apparently did nothing but sell a box of a tracers at an Arizona gun show. Is he somehow significant, or was he a convenient excuse to keep the records sealed, hiding the oddities we’ve just seen?

Two entrees, two pair of gloves, two rooms, two shooting postitions, two personal massagers, ballistics calculations and scoped rifle and spotting scope, other rifles with no sights and bump-fire stocks…

One shooter.

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

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