The gentleman forgot his wig, but I don’t have the guts to tell me. LOL
Monthly Archives: October 2013
Deputy who shot kid was a “gun expert.”
Remember the story about the cop who shot a kid with a BB-gun? Turns out he’s a bit cocky when it comes to guns, a deadly mistake:
(10-28) 14:32 PDT SANTA ROSA — The Sonoma County sheriff’s deputy who killed a 13-year-old boy after mistaking his toy AK-47 for a real rifle was identified Monday as a firearms instructor, hunter and war veteran who in the past has warned other officers that they may need to use lethal force to survive an encounter.
….
He once accidentally shot himself in the leg in 1995 while on duty with the sheriff’s office – reportedly while holstering a gun. However, officials said he has not fired upon a suspect in 24 years with the agency, where he serves as a field training officer for new recruits and trains colleagues to shoot at the department’s gun range.
Source: http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Deputy-who-shot-boy-with-toy-gun-ID-d-as-gun-4933421.php
Of course, some people are blaming the kid for having a BB gun.
It’s the fault of the air gun manufacturers and retailers, who fought a law that would have forced BB guns to be clear or brightly colored so they could easily be distinguished as fake – because the vendors were concerned sales would drop off if the fake guns didn’t look real.
The tragedy is that this bill was attempted 2 years ago in response to another similar shooting.
Why isn’t that mentioned anywhere in the article
It’s not mentioned because cops are supposed to follow procedures before they shoot. “Hey you, stop, put the gun down,” that sort of thing. The cop says he did.
Gelhaus got out of the vehicle and ordered the boy to drop the gun, which did not have an orange tip – a feature that toy guns must have under federal law. When he didn’t drop the gun and turned toward the deputies, Gelhaus fired, fearing for his life, officials said.
Source: Idem
So who do we believe? The cop? The kids’ defenders? Hard to tell. This is why some cops are wearing video recording devices, video doesn’t lie. Yet this cop was somewhat weird in other areas, as he told S.W.A.T. Magazine in 2008:
“Today is the day you may need to kill someone in order to go home,” he wrote. “If you cannot turn on the ‘mean gene’ for yourself, who will? If you find yourself in an ambush, in the kill zone, you need to turn on that mean gene.”
Source: Idem
Have you ever heard anyone else mention a mean gene? Clearly there’s something wrong with this guy. Shooting people in self-defense or defense of others isn’t about being mean, it’s about survival. George Zimmerman didn’t turn on his mean gene, he was scared to death that that little bastard was going to kill him. Let me make it clear, crminals are mean, law-abiding people are not mean. They’re good to themselves and good to their communities.
At a march Friday, some protesters carried fake guns, and “at least one person displayed the weapon to passing citizens,” Santa Rosa police said, adding that officers “were forced to respond to address the situation that created unnecessary risks for all involved.”
I don’t see how a fake gun creates unnecessary risks, the Black Panthers used to march with real guns and they didn’t shoot anyone during those marches.
25% Support Handgun Bans.
Townhall has an interesting story.
Only 25 percent of Americans support banning handgun ownership, according to a Gallup survey released Friday.
“The new poll also finds public opposition to banning handgun ownership holding at a record-high 74 percent….Recent attitudes on this are markedly different from the 1980s, when barely half of Americans opposed a ban on civilian handgun ownership. It is also a major turnaround from a half century ago, when only 36 percent opposed such a ban.”
Overall support for stricter gun control has also dropped nine percentage points since December 2012.
Source: http://townhall.com/tipsheet/sarahjeanseman/2013/10/28/poll-opposition-to-handgun-ban-at-record-high-n1732530
As long as the Bill of Rights are understood as individual rights not subject to collective mores, will be OK.
Captain Phillips: Unarmed Crews get Hijacked.
Tom Hanks is a great actor even if he’s a darned liberal in real life, this film was excellent. Mostly realistic although the former crew of Captain Philips have said things against him in their lawsuit.
What I like is that shipping companies are getting smart:
“Fast forward to today, and it’s hard to imagine those same pirates getting anywhere close to a ship like the Alabama. Since Phillips’s capture, there’s been a sea change (sorry) in how ships defend themselves against piratical assaults. Instead of relying solely on water cannons and evasive maneuvers, companies have taken to hiring private armed escorts of former Marines and Navy SEALs.”
Source: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/10/blackwater-at-sea-the-legacy-of-capt-phillips.html
Even the liberal New York Mag had to admit it’s working:
“Despite worries that having gun-toting contractors onboard may cause confrontations to escalate, they seem to have worked as a deterrent. Since 2011, the number of pirate attacks around Somalia has plummeted, from 237 that year to just 10 so far this year, according to the International Maritime Bureau. And the number of vessels held by pirates has dropped from 47 in 2010 to only 1 today.”
Source: Idem
Even if a security team of four men with M4 and sniper rifles can cost $50,000, it’s a lot cheaper than a $10 million ransom. Of course, it might be even cheaper to just buy a few guns for the crew, but that’s probably not going to happen.
NBC takes on Guns in the Workplace.
Don’t expect NBC to be fair and balanced, even if they did Interview some pro-gun people in their article: Guns in the workplace: A safety issue or a nightmare?
Here are some highlights:
In more than half of states in the U.S., an employer is legally required to let employees bring their guns to work and keep them in their parked cars.
True. Not as great as keeping it with you, but we’ll take it.
“Gun-control advocates say permitting firearms at the workplace gives disgruntled, possibly unhinged employees easy access to a deadly weapon.”
Sure, because a disgruntled employee can’t drive home, get his gun, and go back to work.
Dudley Brown, executive vice president of the National Association for Gun Rights, characterized a gun in the parking lot as a tool for an employee’s self-defense. “Why would someone who installs cable be denied the right to have another tool for their job? How about guys who work on a rural basis, where law enforcement is 30 minutes away at best?”
Not a bad argument, Dudley, but even if the LEO is 5-minutes away, I rather have a gun that’s 2-seconds away. Rural gun ownership is great, but we need to promote URBAN gun ownership since urban areas are growing faster than rural ones.
Workplaces were five times as likely to experience a homicide when they allowed guns compared to those that prohibited all weapons, even after adjusting for other risk factors, according to a 2005 workplace study by the University of North Carolina.
They don’t list the source of the study, so I can’t verify it. Knowing how liars used statistics, I doubt it’s accuracy.
According to January data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, just over 550 people are killed every year, on average, in work-related homicides (which includes guns as well as other weapons). In 2010, more than 10 percent of all workplace fatalities were homicides, 78 percent of which were shootings. That year, the most recent for which the BLS has data, 405 people were shot and killed at work.
Did the BLS count self-defense shootings as work-related homicides? Gunssavelives.net has more than 999 stories of armed self-defense, plenty of them occurring in the workplace
Letke said these laws put pressure on supervisors to recognize red flags that could escalate to violence, without infringing on employees’ right to privacy. “The gun laws have created for us and our clients a source of frustration,” she said. “You’ve got to balance that right to bear arms with the safety of the workers and the workplace.”
If safety is greater than freedom, there would be no coal miners, no fishermen, no soldiers, no loggers, and no smoking in Casinos. Besides, what about my right not to die because you decided to create a gun-free zone the crazies won’t respect? The 2nd Amendment is clear, don’t like it? Move to another country. The other day I read a female sheriff in Mexico is seeking asylum in the United States. See? That’s what gun control gets you, a country where the criminals aren’t afraid to issue death threats and actually shoot the private residence of a cop.
“It’s difficult to balance the rights of the business owner, in this case, with the rights of a citizen,” Brown acknowledged. “If you really consider the second amendment as a property right… the property right to own a gun is the same as a property right for a business owner to decide what happens on their property.”
Why is it that business owners only have “rights” when it comes to gun on their property? You never see liberals advocating for the right to pollute, the right to discriminate on the basis of race or sexual orientation, the right not to pay minimum wage? Yet when it comes to the 2nd Amendment, suddenly businesses have “rights.” This is laughable considering how many of them have benefited from corporate welfare, Volkswagen and Amazon had roads built for them as an incentive to set up shop in Tennessee. The guns in parking lot bill TN passed was a compromised, employers can still fire you if they discover you’re keeping a gun in your car, so you have to be discrete.
Companies in more states could confront this issue in the future. Legislators in Pennsylvania, South Carolina and West Virginia are considering similar bills.
There’s no guarantee any or all will become law at this point, since the bills are at fairly early stages in their respective states, said Smith, Gambrell & Russell, LLP attorney Nicholas Andrews. He pointed out that pro-gun sentiment is high in West Virginia, where six other gun-related pieces of legislation have been proposed this session.
And that is one reason I’m smiling. Folks, in spite of everything, we are winning.