The New York Times published the following article in August, 2006. Entitled States Expand Right to Shoot in Self-Defense, the article is a particularly trenchant example of media bias. Adam Liptak regularly reports on legal matters and covers many gun stories for the New York Times. We will be analyzing some of the bias and try to get the rest of the story when we have more time.
Meanwhile, please send us information that provides more objective factual background related to the impact of recent changes in the laws of self-defense cited below. Please note that every impact alleged to result from recent changes in the “duty to retreat” is presented in a manner most likely to put the armed citizen in a negative light.
“Stand your ground” laws are also called “shoot first” laws, according to Liptak. This is what antigun idealogues like the usual suspects at the New York Times and the media outlets that echo the NYT call them. In case you haven’t noticed, most of the regional newspapers reprint articles from the NYT, the Washington Post and a few other newspapers and the radio and television news broadcasts take their cues from newspapers of record, like the NYT.
According to Liptak, a prostitute in Port Richey, Fla., killed her 72-year-old client with his own gun and was not charged in 2006. A man shot a neighbor over putting out garbage. These facts are presented as though they are events that occurred because of changes in the law that remove the duty to retreat from an attacker before deploying deadly force.
A Florida law served as a model for others by giving people the right to use deadly force against intruders entering their homes. The article contains no arguments that provide a rationale for why a homeowner should be required to retreat from an assailant that has entered his home bent on committing a felony. Is there any legal rationale for requiring a homeowner to prove that he or she has reason to fear for the safety of himself or other memebers of her family? Are we to experience indignation that the new laws only require proof that that the slain trespasser had intruded unlawfully and forcefully?
The Florida law does away with an earlier requirement that a person attacked in a public place must retreat if possible. A person about to be victimized has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with lethal force when confronted with an imminent threat of death or grave bodily harm. Sounds like common sense to me
The author quotes Anthony J. Sebok, a professor at Brooklyn Law School, without explaining that Prof. Sebok has authored numerous articles about mass restitution litigation, including lawsuits involving tobacco, handguns, and slavery reparations.
The professor’s written works are important because they show that Sebok is a tort lawyer shilling for the anti-gun idealogues. If you doubt it look at his analysis, provided by the NYT without even a superficial effort to provide a balancing viewpoint. The duty to retreat has been eroding nationally through judicial decisions, according to the professor. But the new laws just “expand the right to shoot intruders who pose no threat to the occupant’s safety". How many intruders in your home would pose no threat to the safety of your family? It seems laughable when you think about it!
“In effect,” Professor Sebok states, “the law allows citizens to kill other citizens in defense of property.”
Sebok, who contributes to FindLaw, asks us to consider a ridiculous hypothesis. What if Bob is a panhandler who approaches Sue’s car and touches it against her wishes? Perhaps it would be obvious to most observers that he had no intention of entering the car, but what if Sue panics and thinks he is a carjacker?
The fact that the law was not designed to permit her to use deadly force under those circumstances would not alter the fact that Bob would be dead. The fact that Sue would face criminal and civil penalties, is not relevant to Sebok. Apparently the damage has already been done because the lawmakers sent Sue the wrong message!
Journalist Lipchak bemoans the fact that a cabdriver in West Palm Beach killed a drunken passenger in an altercation after dropping him off. The altercation, it turns out, was over whether the passenger would get out of the cab. When he had reached his destination and had to be ejected from the cab he allegedly pulled a knife on the cabdriver. The knife was not located but witnesses saw the passenger holding something that could have been a knife so the first jury deadlocked 9-to-3 in favor of convicting the driver.
“Mr. Smiley had a lot of chances to retreat and to avoid an escalation,” said Mr. Munnilal, a 62-year-old accountant. “He could have just gotten in his cab and left. The thing could have been avoided, and a man’s life would have been saved.”
It turns out that the cabdriver did not get the wrong message; all of events described in the NYT article transpired before the new law was passed and the case was appealed to the Florida Supreme Court on the issue of whether the old law or the new law should apply.
Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the N.R.A., was also concerned about people getting the right message. “If you’re going to empower someone, empower the crime victim,” he said.
Adam Liptak tells us that many prosecutors oppose the laws, saying they are unnecessary at best and pernicious at worst. “They’re basically giving citizens more rights to use deadly force than we give police officers, and with less review,” said Paul A. Logli, president of the National District Attorneys Association.
The State of Washington has a dual standard and the legislature has made a record of its intention that citizens have a slightly more relaxed standard for the use of lethal force than the standard to which police officers are held. Despite the fact that law enforcement officers have to meet a higher standard than untrained citizens in some states, aren’t there prosecutors that support empowering armed citizens?
The NYT article quotes Gary Kleck, a noted gun policy scholar. With the typical New York Times-style elitocentric assumption that Southerners have primitive legal institutions, Liptak quotes Kleck with very little context to help us understand Kleck’s intelligent approach to the subject of guns and society:
“In the South, they more or less give the benefit of the doubt to the alleged victim’s account.”
Gary Kleck, a self-avowed liberal democrat and professor at Florida State University, is author of Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America. When he started researching the issue of guns, he discovered that contrary to his original assumptions, violent crimes were prevented by firearms usage. The 1993 book was awarded the best book on criminology by the American Society of Criminology. Largely ignored by gun control advocates, most medical journals, the DOJ and the Center for Disease Control, the book has contributed a great deal to understanding the sociological implications of gun ownership and gun control laws.
It turns out that in the case of the Port Richey prostitute, the 72 year old man threatened to kill her and then kill himself. The man left a suicide note and other evidence supporting the conclusion that the slayer feared for her life. Before she used deadly force, the woman should have had to retreat (but for the new law). Under the new laws you don’t have to take a chance on getting shot in the back!
According to the NYT’s propaganda piece, Cliff Morningstar, the dead man’s uncle, was reportedly baffled by the killing. “He (the cabdriver) had a radio,” Mr. Morningstar stated. “He could have gotten in his car and left. He could have shot him in his knee.” Well how much more objective can you get than the victim’s uncle?
The NYT reporter apparently thinks that the man shot during an altercation over garbage illustrates the flaws in the Florida law. The NYT article states:
“I was no threat,” Mr. Rosenbloom said. “I had no weapon.”
The inference is that victimhood is being conferred on Rosenbloom, a very important mantle for the NYT’s regular readership.
The men exchanged heated words. “He closed the door and then opened the door,” Mr. Rosenbloom said of Mr. Allen. “He had a gun. I turned around to put my hands up. He didn’t even say a word, and he fired once into my stomach. I bent over, and he shot me in the chest.”
Mr. Allen, the man that shot his neighbor, claimed Rosenbloom had his foot in the door and had tried to rush into the house, an assertion Mr. Rosenbloom denied. The small amount of information that tends to explain what led to the shooting is presented in a context of skepticism towards the claim that the shooting was justified. Maybe the shooting was not justified. Without all the facts, however, such cases don’t tell us much about anything except the biases of the author and the New Yawk Times.
Permalink
Tacoma woman ‘prayed’ for her stalker.
A stalker waited for his victim outside Birney Elementary School in Tacoma, Washington. He had recently been released from Pierce County jail on $10,000.00 bail. He shot Jennifer Paulson as the 30 year-old teacher arrived at school in the morning. The victim and Jed Waits, the stalker, had met in a work situation in 2003. By 2008, Waits was obsessed with Ms. Paulson; they were never romantically involved, however.
Waits was killed in a subsequent shootout with a Pierce County Sheriff’s deputy. Ms. Paulson was known for devotion to faith, family and students
Jennifer Paulson was reportedly a caring, compassionate and selfless Christian. She tutored kids and volunteered to help inner-city youths. She even prayed for the stalker.
Wait’s unhealthy obsession began in 2003.
According to court documents, “he called at odd hours, sometimes 10 to 15 times per day.
He drove from his home in Ellensburg to Tacoma and showed up unannounced at her workplace, asking to see her even though she didn’t want to see him.”
He sometimes sat in his car and just watched her.
Children were not at school, when the special education teacher arrived.
“She was being bothered by this man, but she was still praying for him,” said the Rev. Dean Curry, pastor of Life Center of Tacoma.
Waits killed Ms. Paulson, who was 30 years old, outside the school at about 7:30 AM, February 26, 2010. According to the Tacoma News Tribune:
“Paulson’s devastated family and friends described her as woman of abiding faith who possessed a deep well of kindness and generosity. She focused her life on kids, teaching them at Birney during the week and then helping at-risk children through a church-sponsored program on Saturdays.”
“She was a kind, merciful, loving person,” Ken Paulson said this morning. “That’s probably why she was a special ed teacher, because she loved so much.”
According to the TNT, Paulson graduated from Life Christian School and Academy in 1998, a member of its inaugural class. She was on the honor roll every semester of her high school years.
“She took advanced placement classes, edited the school newspaper, worked on the yearbook and earned varsity letters in volleyball, softball and basketball.”
No one apparently counseled the strong Christian woman, who regularly attended Life Center, that carrying a gun does not conflict with faith.
Pastors and Bible teachers ought to be teaching folks what the Bible says about lethal force. The Great Commission includes deliverance from sin and every kind of oppression, healing, dominion over demonic powers and principalities and putting enemies to flight! That is the “full Gospel” that some folks teach was only for the early Apostolic church and the Old Testament- but not for today.
Those that counsel women like Ms. Paulson should be thinking about what it means to rely on Protection Orders when the stakes can be so high. Pastors, lawyers, family members and police should always remind potential victims that obtaining a Concealed Pistol License and carrying a pistol is an option. Women should also get training so the stalker does not disarm her. There is no conflict between great faith and being armed.
Do you lack faith when you have a fire extinguisher in your home or learn CPR? Think about it. Those of us that counsel women in domestic violence situations should be wise and prudent, not politically correct or deluded by false notions about what Christ taught.
Permalink
In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt signed a new law that eventually led to creation of the Director of Civilian Marksmanship. The purpose of this legislative initiative was, “That every facility should be offered citizens outside of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and organized militia [National Guard] to become proficient in rifle shooting, and that this purpose can best be accomplished by means of rifle clubs.”
Even today, federal law provides a definition for an organized and an unorganized militia. The unorganized militia are the able-bodied citizenry at large (traditionally men between certain ages) that are able to defend their country. Pres. Roosevelt believed that America’s military preparedness depended on having people of all ages involved in competitions and other firearms training.
Thus, civilians, the NRA, police & military shooting have all evolved together and there has been a constant interplay of innovation in technology, training techniques, competitions and personnel. Expert civilian competitors often compete right alongside expert military and police marksmen. Those with no police and military training succeed the same way that competitive soldiers, sailors and police succeed- by extra commitment, natural talent and a great deal of training.
The purpose of the DCM was to encourage this kind of interaction and military weapons were distributed from the U.S. surplus. The program almost died out in the Sixties because U.S. policy makers decided that small-arms were almost a thing of the past except for stopping waves of Soviets from crossing into Western Europe. The non-profit CMP was created at the last minute. There are still CMP competitions and reasonably priced WW II Garands and other excellent military weapons are available to folks that participate in competitions and other organized shooting activities.
I belong to Paul Bunyan Shooting Club in Puyallup and starting in February and throughout the summer, the Club will shut most of its facilities for certain days during which CMP practice and various rifle competitions are held. Normal rifle shooting at Paul Bunyan is at 200 yards or less. For me this is one of the few opportunities in which I can experience shooting at a target from 600 yards. In Service Match competition, all competition is with open sights and equipment that is standard for military rifles.
The preferred rifle for many is the semi-automatic version of the M-16 that most U.S. troops use in the field; i.e., semi-auto rifles (that means one shot with each pull of the trigger)that the media refers to as an “assault rifle” because they are usually black, accept magazines that are made to be easily removed and replaced with a fully loaded magazine and look like the full-auto weapons that our armed services deploy in times of war.
Many of the guys and ladies that shoot rifles either own one or would like to because they are accurate, easy to use and you can easily put a scope on many of them or other interesting equipment like lights and foregrips and things that make them no more threatening than much more powerful guns (that have more recoil and killing power) but those that want to take away guns- and our Constitution- want you to believe that they only want to ban the really evil guns with no legitimate sporting purpose “that are only made to be used for killing lots of people in a war“.
Once certain features (like foregrips) are banned it just becomes a matter of manipulating the definitions. The average member of the public that thinks the media is talking about full-automatic machine guns can hardly be expected to understand all the technical data on which federal and state gun restrictions hinge. It could easily be argued that a semi-automatic pistol is much more insidious than a military style rifle because pistols also hold quite a few bullets, are reloaded with removable clips and can be carried concealed.
Pistols were also designed for use in warfare and have killed many of America’s enemies along with innocent victims of crime. That is why the drafters of the Constitution saw fit to protect the use of such weapons! If they are militarily useful, the weapons can also be used to deter criminals, terrorists or even foreign enemies that might come to our shores.
Our club has some CMP Garands and the club occasionally lets members use them to participate in shooting events. The club’s Garands are semi-automatic 30.06 tack-drivers, modified with match-grade, free-floated barrels for more accuracy when the barrel heats up in competition. M-1 Garands hold eight rounds.
Hitting a six foot high target at 600 yards with iron sights is an accomplishment in itself! Hitting the X-ring is extremely gratifying. Many teenagers are very skilled in such competition. It takes the ability to go into an extreme state of focused quietude that is the opposite of football, video games and other activities to which many of us are habituated. Women of all ages are also devoted to various disciplines involving both rifle and pistol shooting- and shotguns.
Another amazing event is an Appleseed Shoot. This is a grueling weekend of training that is similar to boot camp. While you learn the techniques that “make every man, woman and child a Rifleman,” you also learn about our Revolutionary War heritage. Every kind of rifle is used and every age and background. This movement is nationwide and draws people from all over. I went back and attended in North Idaho because I lived there for many years. In Couer d’Alene at the Fernan Range and Gun Club, I met men and women from Montana, Seattle and many places in the Northwest.
The rifleman’s skills are just as important now as ever before in our history.
I have also shot Steel Plate competitions. At Paul Bunyan we have very young kids that participate with their moms and dads and the young ladies (and older ones) often outshoot grown men that have years of military experience.
There is also a group of guys that work in public maintenance for Sumner with whom I have competed in combat-style IPSIC shooting. You run through a maze of multiple targets while shooting for speed and accuracy (sometimes at moving targets). I mention the guys from Sumner because if anyone ever attacked the City of Sumner with guns, the SWAT team could arrive late and the bad guys might be in more trouble than the residents of Sumner. These guys have trained to hit when they shoot and they train to shoot fast. They reload and shoot rapid-fire with pistols while they sprint past targets. My approach is to learn to do what they do while walking with an occasional jog.
Everyone is helpful and one reason to be there is to learn to shoot and handle jams and other unexpected developments while you have gobs of adrenaline downgrading your fine motor skills. After you run through one course and shoot as many as ten or twenty- or sometimes thirty rounds- you begin to get a feel for how men trained in times past- like the Texas Rangers that learned to shoot from the saddle while riding past a target at full gallop.
A new sport that is becoming very popular is cowboy action shooting. The Renton Fish & Game Club hosts these colorful affairs. All the guns are copies or originals from before 1900 and people wear expensive cowboy costumes and assume fictional identities (often from favorite Western dramas). Ladies seem to be especially drawn to this and everyone shoots a shotgun, usually two six-shooters and lever-action rifles. The targets tend to pop up, roll on the ground or spin and often loom within mock-ups of saloons, mining shafts and stage coaches. There also cowboy events held on horseback
Another sport that is becoming just as popular as cowboy action shooting is three-gun IPSIC. Based on the multiple-targeted configurations discussed above, 3-gun competitors race through mazes with military-style carbines that are semi-auto versions of the weapons used by our U.S. military in warfare. Pistol and tactical shotguns are also part of the fun. Targets may be close or 500 yards away so many of the rifles hold more than one kind of sighting system in order to transition from close quarters combat to distances at which you can barely see a man-sized target.
Some of these competitions emphasize shooting from cover and attempt to recreate what happens in actual combat. Although recreationists and professionals often use simulated ammunition to conduct exercises against actual opponents that shoot back, you cannot substitute for training with real weapons.
Many attend schools like the Firearms Academy of Seattle (that I attended) where the skills of legal reasoning, sound tactical judgment and good decisions are provided. I announced a class on the LAW OF ARMED DEFENSE in January, 2010 and over forty people attended- many of them husbands and wives. All these activities are marked by prudence and the highest regard for safety and good citizenship. Even though more people have more guns than ever before, gun accidents are lower than ever before.
More people are carrying in public (judging by the increased number of CPLs issued across the U.S. recently) so it is good that so much education and training is available. Every state now has concealed carry except for Wisconsin and Illinois. A concealed carry law was passed in Wisconsin and then vetoed by the Governor a few years ago.
In all these competitions and training events there are some that will be going into the military or law enforcement, others that have already served and many that will go into other pursuits. After the Civil War, shooting sports became fashionable in colleges, the mansions of the wealthy and every part of American society from shooting ranges in working class neighborhoods to the White House. The U.S. may be experiencing another time like we saw in the early 1900s when shooting sports were integrated into American life- including the public schools. Justice Scalia tells how he would ride the subway in NY and take his .22 rifle with him for shooting practice afterw school.
A Ninth Circuit judge recently stated in a written appellate decision concurring with the majority opinion in the NORDYKE case that a terrorist attack like the Mumbai attack (in which 179 innocent people were killed by automatic weapon fire) would not get very far in the United States because of the Second Amendment.
But without the citizens that exercise their right to keep and bear arms, the Second Amendment would only be words on paper for lawyers to argue about. Incidentally, almost every Constitutional legal expert now concedes that the 2nd Amendment means what the Founders thought it meant when they drafted it. Pres. Roosevelt was right! Whatever goals people that shoot pursue, they add strength to our nation.
Permalink
We held our second class in Federal Way on Saturday, February 27, 2010. We had over forty students in our first class and about thirty in the February class. The February class focused on home invasions and some of the finer points of Washington law that we were unable to get to in the January class.
If you want to attend a class in Federal Way during the coming months or want to go to a shooting range and learn some of the self-defense shooting skills that we talk about in our classes, contact us and we will try to make arrangements. We can also meet with your neighborhood group, church or business and present a semiiar specially tailored to your needs.
We will customize a presentation for your group or business organization anywhere in Washington State. We can help you develop a threat response plan for your church and will provide legal training for your family members or volunteers. We also presented the class at Holmes harbor Rod & Gun Club on Whidbey Island in February and almost thirty people attended.
Our motto is think like a man of action and act like a man of thought. Speak cautiously and politely and only use deadly force after you have thought through everything carefully. Apply cautious reasoning powers to each situation but start doing so now, not when you are faced with a decision in which you may have seconds to save your own life or the lives of your loved ones!
We have a message and a curriculum that relates to overcoming threats of violence by a combination of intelligence, moral persuasion, physical courage and deadly force if necessary.
The cost for the classes is $59.00 but still only $79.00 for a couple.
Magna Charta
We emphasize development of good legal and tactical reasoning- reasoning that will allow you to understand your situation more accurately if you are ever faced with the necessity of confronting lethal force.
Remember, every principle must be applied by means of thoughtfully contemplating the moral, legal and tactical issues engendered by the subject matter. There are no answers that are always right in every situation.
There will be absolutely no handling of weapons during class or on the premises. Thus, your pistol, if any, should remain in a holster or other secure location while at the classroom building and site.
We are currently developing additional course material and fine tuning oujr power point presentation. Chad Hiatt, the owner of Active Computers, attended our classes and created the presentation.
Marty Hayes, the founder of Firearms Academy of Seattle was our guest speaker for February. Marty discussed the Armed Citizens Legal Defense Network, FAS and how training protects us legally from accusations that we are acting without knowledge of the legal rules pertaining to use of lethal force. Marty stayed for the whole three hour class and participated in our discussions, including almost an hour of informal discussion after class was dismissed. Marty has many years experience as an LEO, police instructor and as an instructor of armed citizens. Everyone, including me, learned a great deal from the time spent together.
Most classes will include but not be limited to:
1. Who should carry;
2. Concealed carry and open carry options, including Washington State case law pertaining to unlawful display of a weapon;
3. How to carry your weapon;
4. Deploying deadly force;
5. When and where to go with your weapon;
6. How to interact with law enforcement before, during and after an incident;
7. Threat response planning for home & business;
8. Stress psychology;
9. Preparing for the aftermath of a justified self-defense scenario.
We expect everyone to take notes! Keep your class notes and materials. Your firearms training materials may someday become necessary to document a life or death decision to use deadly force if you need to defend yourself in court. The stakes will be high- before, during and after a violent confrontation. After the gunfight, however, the thugs may be wearing suits and carrying brief cases!
Keep your class notes sealed in your gun safe or some other secure location so that you have documentation in court for every decision you make during a violent encounter.
Please go to www.firearmslawyer.net. There is an e-mail address on the home page where you can contact us to obtain a sign up sheet. Complete the sign-up and return it one week before class with your check.
We thank our students, too! The learning is facilitated primarily by asking the right questions and participating in lively and informative discussions. Most of the issues that arise do not have clear answers but in the event that you are confronted with a threat of death or grave bodily harm, the choices become fairly simple.
Permalink
Linda Pillo, Bellevue Washington’s police chief, was named chief in January, 2008. She bested five other candidates from around the nation. Pillo, 53, is the first woman chief in Bellevue. She told the local Seattle news media that running a police department was “something she never expected to do when she started police work on Mercer Island after graduating from Washington State University in 1978”. She aspired to be a supervisor, however.
At the Senate hearings on January 26, 2010, she showed the world how she rose so quickly through the ranks after joining the Bellevue department in 1986 and rising from lieutenant to captain, major, deputy chief, chief and now as a chief that chops wood and hauls water for left-wing trial lawyers like Adam Kline. Pillo sat in front of Washington State Senator Adam Kline’s judiciary committee and called everyone’s attention to studies conducted by the International Association of Chief’s of Police (IACP) and the anti-gun, Chicago-based Joyce Foundation. The two groups jointly sponsored “THE GREAT LAKES SUMMIT ON GUN VIOLENCE”.
Supposedly the evidence generated by the studies conducted via the summit provide proof that law enforcement is at great risk due to the lethality of semi-automatic military style weapons. Pam Roach asked Chief Pillo what makes the so-called “assault weapons” (i.e., rifles with detachable magazines and pistol grips) more lethal than the alternatives. Several times Pillo, obviously stumped, just muttered that she was only testifying about assault rifles.
Pillo could not even explain why ten rounds are more lethal than one round- they both are lethal. Kline had to run interference by fatuously pointing out that ten rounds can kill ten people. All Chief Pillo could answer is that she believes in the right to keep and bear arms. It is interesting how many politicians suddenly believe in the Second Amendment but claim that the HELLER decision “invites” supposedly common-sense restrictions on militarily useful weapons.
Sen. Kline squelched Sen. Roach several times when she tried to ask questions pertaining to things like how many people have been saved by military style weapons that fire ten rounds or more. Most officers on the street to whom I have spoken acknowledge that military style weapons are not more lethal than other semi-automatic weapons. Most of those that attended the hearing would agree.
In fact, the consensus is that it is the political appointees within law enforcement that normally take the position espoused by the Bellevue Police Chief.
Brian Judy from the NRA testified but not until after Kline took quite some time pompously stating the position of the bill’s supporters. Kline described how he visited the Black Diamond Range and shot assault weapons with Sen. Roach and seemed almost amazed at the measures taken to make the shooting range a safe envirinment.
Judy finally got to explain that the percentage of crimes committed with the notorious ARs (that others testifying for the ban stated killed 25% of LEOs slain between 1998 and 2001) is less than one percent.
Despite such startling statistics, the four officers slain at the same time by the same assailant, Maurice Clemmons, in Parkland were shot with eight rounds from pistols- one a thirty-eight revolver. When Mr. Judy pointed out that SB 6396 provides that present owners of such weapons will be required to submit our homes to annual police inspections, Kline abruptly interjected to declare that “such language was included in the Senate bill by accident!”
Bill Pierce, a concerned citizen, was interrupted and silenced when he pointed out that law abiding gun-owners are offended that Kline, a former SDS activist (and apparently proud of it), is implying that gun-owners are dangerous while he has supported left-wing groups affiliated with the most extreme forms of violence against society. Kline’s biography that he maintains with the Washington Senate Democrats states:
“I was a foot-soldier in our generation’s battles, and the experience seems to have set the tone for the rest of my life. Back to college at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and still in the spirit, I decided to take that year off from study and work in an SDS-sponsored organizing project in East Baltimore’s slums. (Remember SDS–Students for a Democratic Society? We were radical, we were belligerent, and sometimes we were self-righteous. But you know something? By and large, we were right.) It was a year well spent for a young man interested in social policy, and the lessons I learned are still with me.”
Pierce was immediately shouted down by more than one of the Democrats on the judiciary committee. Kline, the sponsor of the proposed legislation, allowed his witnesses to argue and stonewall, all the while that he was helping their testimony and running interference against Pam Roach. Kline is a board member and chair of the political-action committee of NARAL, the pro-choice advocacy group and a member of the Legislative Committee of the Washington State Trial Lawyers Association.
There is enough information to see how the lines are drawn in Olympia. The Seattle Times, stated that “2009 ended in a hail of high-profile gun violence” and pointed out that the bill could may not get reported out of Kline’s committee, which has five Democrats and three Republicans. Sen. Jim Hargrove of Hoquiam, a Democrat, says he will vote no. Gun-control groups like Washington Ceasefire (they now believe in the Second Amendment, too) are frustrated by an apparent lack of political support for an assault weapons ban.
Nevertheless, the anti-gun activists are warning that the state will likely face more deadly shootings without it. And they call gun-owners paranoid! According to the Seattle Times:
The bill has been endorsed by groups such as Washington Ceasefire, the International Association of Police Chiefs, the Jewish Federation of Seattle and the United African Political Action Committee, among others. Seattle police spokesman Mark Jamieson said the department has not taken a position on the bill.
Such groups also raise the specter of Seattle police officer Timothy Brenton’s execution in his patrol car on Halloween. Police allegedly found an assault rifle at the apartment of Christopher Monfort, the man charged with killing Brenton. So which guns are lethal and which ones are not? Sen. Pam Roach knows that they all are.
Permalink
In the initial stage of testing police ammo (1972 to 1973), we recommended that Dallas replace its lead roundnose (LRN) ammo with a then-new Winchester load that pushed a 158-grain lead hollowpoint (LHP) bullet at what today would be +P velocities.
We based our decision largely on a military method of measuring temporary wound-cavity volumes in ordnance gelatin that we modified for handgun ammunition. The program’s success led to the lab obtaining better chronographs and formulating a plan to evaluate as much commercial handgun ammo as we could.With the chronograph upgrades, we could make simultaneous readings of a bullet’s entrance and exit velocities by placing independently wired chronograph screens on either side of the gelatin block. The new setup also let us gather more data, and we crunched them in a number of ways.
As with the .38 Spl., we tested other police cartridges by first evaluating the original load for each. For the .357 Magnum, it was the old 158-grain lead semiwadcutter; for the .45 ACP, we used the 230-grain FMJ roundnose.
We used test firearms that were common to police carry, not unrealistically long test barrels. You can see these “baseline” wound volume numbers in the accompanying chart plus a range of newer loads we tested. Remember that the 10mm and .40 S&W cartridges didn’t exist then.
Don’t be surprised that we included the .41 and .44 Magnums. A fair number of Texas cops packed the big revolvers in those days.As we moved to newer ammo types, we continued to review officer-involved shootings to sharpen our ability to predict the success or failure potential of a load.
Some of the newer .357 Mag.HP loads posted very high numbers in our tests, with temporary wound cavities often six times larger than the baseline .38 Spl. LRN could manage. And this, good reader, is where reality clashed with theory as we discovered that the military wounding standards we borrowed were too narrow for expanding handgun bullets.
Typical Scenario: A single incident will suffice to illustrate our problem; many others had similar elements:Two patrolmen asked a man for identification. Instead, the suspect produced a .25 ACP pistol and dropped one officer with a bullet to the kneecap. The second officer quickly emptied his .357 Mag. revolver at close range, only to watch the suspect stroll away as if nothing had happened, still holding the little pistol at his side.
The uninjured officer managed to fumble three or four fresh cartridges into his revolver and ran after the
suspect. He yelled to turn the man and was taking up the trigger slack when the suspect’s eyes rolled back in his head and he fell.
He had been hit hard in the first volley, but the effects were delayed. The injured officer recovered uneventfully, but the shooter remained comatose and died about a week later.The medical findings were eye-poppers. In the initial flurry of .357 Mag. bullets, one fired parallel to the plane of the shoulders struck the suspect in the left armpit and traveled across the left lung and lodged lightly in the heart muscle. The officer had purchased a 110-grain JHP load with very fragile bullet construction; the jacket appeared to have been designed for .38 Spl. velocities. The wound-cavity volume the load produced in gelatin was about 51⁄2 times that of the baseline .38 Spl. and very high among wound volume producers, yet it failed to stop a dangerous man.
By Allan Jones
The following are more notes on terminal ballistics:
One of the benefits of working in a morgue is that I get to see what works and what doesn’t. Ballistic gelatin is good as far as it goes, but there’s nothing like seeing what a bullet actually does once it strikes bone, flesh, and organs. Suffice it to say, it doesn’t always mimic ballistic gelatin.
The other is that I get to hear some great CCW stories. Here’s one of them: A recently-married couple living in one of the less desirable sections of Atlanta decided that for safety purposes they should get a handgun and learn how to shoot it. They bought a Glock 27 in .40, CCW permits, and made regular trips to an indoor range.
One evening, having just come back from the range, they cleaned and loaded the Glock and had left it on the coffee table in the living room, intending to put it up later. Shortly thereafter they heard a knock at the door and, expecting company, opened it without looking through the peephole.
A crazed male entered the apartment brandishing a handgun yelling, “Give it up, give it up!” The husband said that it was obvious the individual was high on drugs and there was absolutely no question in his mind that both he and his wife were going to die. Knowing this, he decided that his only option was to go down fighting.
The BG forced them both down a narrow hallway into the living room, screaming all the while. The husband was in the lead, followed by his wife, and then the BG, whose view of the living room was being blocked by the husband and wife.
The husband reached down, grabbed the Glock, pushed his wife aside, and fired one shot at the BG, striking him dead center in the middle of the chest. Although knocked to the floor, the BG still made a feeble attempt to retrieve his own gun. At this point, the husband let him hold another one to the chest. That ended that little problem.
Upon talking to the still-shaken husband, the police said he could remember little of what all the BG had said. As he recalled it, “All I can remember is that his first words were ‘Give it up!” and his last words just as he saw the Glock were “Oh, (fill in the blank)!”
I see an average of 8.2 autopsies per day/365 days per year, and I can tell you that when the chips are down, there’s nothing that beats a 12-gauge. As for handguns, the name of the game is not only shot placement but how a properly-placed bullet acts once it gets there. I’ve seen folks killed by a bb to the eye and others survive after being hit by several well-placed rounds with a 9mm.
As for me, I’ll take a slow-moving .45 to a gun fight any day. I absolutely despise a 9mm for defensive situations (yes, they will eventually kill but often not quickly enough to prevent the BG from doing you in first)and a .380 as well. These are probably the two calibers I see most often on the autopsy table.
But then, I’ve seen most everything. I’ve seen a guy killed by a .416 Rigby, as well as a suicide to the head with a .44 Mag that didn’t penetrate the skull on the other side.
The long and short of it is that you just don’t know how ANY bullet will react to tissue and bone until you open them up and take a look. I’ve seen hardball fragment and hollowpoints act just like hardball. That said, shoot what you’re comfortable with and place your shots well whatever caliber you use.
The .357 is gloriously effective. It’s just that semi-autos are much more common than they used to be, so we see far more 9mm and .380 rounds on the autopsy table than we do the .38 and .357. Particularly among the gangbangers, the 9mm and .380 are the weapons of choice. The .357 is a wonderfully effective round for self-defense from what I’ve seen, but it’s rare that we get them in anymore.
Again, this is from experience that I’ve made my calls on what works and what doesn’t. I have no use for mouse guns like the .32, although it’s a lot better to have a mouse gun than nothing at all. Personally, I’ll never carry anything smaller than a .40 and prefer the .45. Day in and day out, results from the autopsy table show me that the .45 is the gun to have in a gun fight, provided you can shoot it well. If not, it’s better to have something you can shoot well, even if it’s a mouse gun, than something you can’t.
I spent most of my life in Knoxville, TN and absolutely loved it. But then, my job is working in the Medical Examiner’s Office, and, as you said, this is a target-rich environment. Having a job in an Atlanta morgue is job security at its best.
I’ll take slow and heavy to light and fast any day. What I want is a round that plows through bone and tissue and expends ALL of its energy in the body. That said, the 125-grain .357 is marvelously effective.
Yes, the 9mm and .380 are the rounds I most often see on the autopsy table, but they’re also the rounds that usually require multiple hits to make the kill. The standing joke in the morgue is to guess the caliber by looking at the x-rays. If multiple rounds show up on the x-rays more often than not it’s a 9mm or .380 (or .32 or .25 or some mouse gun caliber). If only one round shows up, it could be an inordinately good hit with a .380 or 9mm, but more likely it’s a .40 or .45.
Yes, the .380 and 9mm will do the job, but usually multiple hits are required as opposed to single hits with a .40 or .45.
First, ballistic gelatin, being all that’s available for most bullet testing, is good as far as it goes but it’s often far different from what we see in the morgue. A far more realistic scenario would be to dress up ballistic gelatin with a heavy coat of denim to mimic blue jeans, embed some bones obtained from a butcher shop, and throw in a few objects of varying densities to mimic organs. Try it again, and I think you’ll see that this impressive wound cavity that’s so often seen in ballistic gelatin goes down the tubes. The human body isn’t just composed of one density as ballistic gelatin is, and the bullet does various things to various parts of the body as it passes through.
And that’s why I think observations from a morgue are so important. Day in and day out, I get to see what works and what doesn’t. More than that, I get to see what the same caliber does with various bullets weights and designs and how it reacts to different parts of the body. The best of all are when the gangbangers use the mix and match technique and shoot a variety of bullets in the same magazine and these bullets wind up in the same victim shot from the same gun. Hardball and hollowpoints in the same body from the same gun give a great comparison on the effectiveness of each.
To be continued. Please e-mail your comments to
XML:
. Permalink
According to William F. Jasper in an August, 2009 New American article entitled TERRORIST TARGETING OF POLICE, law enforcement should expect attacks to intensify around the world. The article cites statistics from another article by Lieutenant Raymond E. Foster (Los Angeles Police Department, retired) showing that “as of August 14, 2005, world-wide, there have been 554 terrorist attacks targeting police officers. These attacks resulted in 2,546 injuries and 1,327 fatalities.”
Many of the attacks (on the increase since 2005) against police are the work of “Islamic extremists”. But many “Islamicists” maintain open cordial relations with non-Islamic governments, including Putin’s Russia. Jasper notes the history of Islamicist back-channel relations with the Russian KGB-FSB and GRU. Such channels provide arms, munitions, and explosives.
The Mini-Manual of the Urban Guerrilla(a Communist text), authored by Brazilian Communist Party member Carlos Marighella, has been translated into many languages and has become a handbook for Islamic terrorists. The Mini-Manual instructs terrorists to focus on police commissaries, police stations, jails, and military and police vehicles:
The roads followed by the police vehicles must be mined at key points along the way and at forced stopping points. When the mines explode, the vehicles will fly into the air. The police will be caught in the trap and will suffer losses or will be victims of ambush.”
Jasper explains the reason for concerted attacks on the police:
In a free society, the police are indispensable agents for protection of the rule of law; both for protection of the citizen against aggression by criminal elements, and even more importantly for protection of the citizen against aggression and abuse by government officials. In the totalitarian society that the terrorists hope to create — whether modeled on Iran, Cuba, Russia, or post-Soviet Kazakhstan — the police are purely instruments of oppression for the central government, whose power is unrestrained by constitutional checks and balances. Although the urban guerrilla and his street demonstration accomplices vociferously denounce what they claim is oppression and brutality, their true aim is to escalate violence to a level that will provoke the government and the police to suspend civil liberties, invoke emergency powers, and dismantle the constitutional structures that protect against the concentration of power.
Thus, the goal is to alienate the government from its own people. As Marighella’s Mini-Manual states:
The government has no alternative except to intensify repression. The police roundups, house searches, arrests of innocent people make life in the city unbearable…. The armed forces, the navy and the air force are mobilized to undertake routine police functions….
Rejecting the “so-called political solution,” the urban guerrilla must become more aggressive and violent, resorting without letup to sabotage, terrorism, expropriations, assaults, kidnappings, and executions, heightening the disastrous situation in which the government must act.
Marighella did not originate the strategy, however. A 1980 book, THE TERROR NETWORK, by Claire Sterling explains that Marighella was part of Brazil’s pro-Moscow Communist apparatus for forty years.” Castro’s DGI and the Soviet KGB provided the techniques from which Marighella developed the MINI-MANUAL.
A 1948 event occurred at the Pan-American Conference in Bogota, Colombia that became a prototype from which Marighella’s text would draw. The Soviet and Cuban game plan included assassination of Colombian politician George Gaitan. The city of Bagota was full of Western leaders. Urban guerrillas directed by a few handfuls of hand-picked operatives, including Fidel Castro, generated violence that overwhelmed law enforcement.
THE COMMUNIST ATTACK ON U.S. POLICE, by W. Cleon Skousen, showed how more than more than 1,000 corpses were left lying in the streets. Many of the people associated with the Weather Underground, the Black Panther Party and other radical groups associated with the 1960s are still active in radical politics. Jaspers cites Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn as two examples. Most of the public does not understand that solid evidence has linked Bill Ayers to the murder of San Francisco Police Sergeant Brian McDonnell on February 16, 1970:
Larry Grathwol, a former FBI undercover informant inside the WU, says that Ayers admitted to him that Dohrn had planted the bomb for him. Ayers and Dohrn, who are friends and supporters of President Barack Obama from his Chicago “community activist” days, have never repented of their revolutionary activities, and in fact, Ayers is still actively involved with the communist government of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.
Fred Burton and Ben West describe in Stratfor Global Intelligence how a Greek police officer, Nektarios Savas, was shot and killed while guarding a witness in Athens on June 17, 2009:
Savas was parked in an unmarked vehicle outside the residence of Sofia Kyriakidou, the wife and key witness in the trial of Angeletos Kanas, a convicted member of a defunct Greek militant group. At 6:20 a.m., shortly after sunrise in Athens, Savas had just gotten coffee and was settling in for his shift when two gunmen approached his vehicle and fired 24 rounds into it, hitting him 18 times and wounding him fatally. The assassins then sped away on motorcycles driven by two other accomplices. Savas was never able to draw his weapon.
The group believed to be responsible, according to the authors, was thought to be an ideological spinoff from the Greek terrorist group November 17 (N-17). The ideology shared by many such “left-wing” groups in Europe is also common to Islamic operatives; i.e., the adherents to such ideologies reject democracy, capitalism and outside influence — especially from the United States. EA also rejects EU policies in Greece that it claims hurt the working class.
Stratfor Intelligence warned in the July, 2009 article that N-17 has a history of assassinating police officers, diplomats and industrialists by using small arms at close range:
Periodic attacks by anarchists and left-wing militant groups in Greece date back to 1975, when the emerging N-17 shot and killed CIA Station Chief Richard Welch in Athens. In 2009, however, militant attacks have become more frequent and lethal. There have been 16 attacks so far in 2009, compared to 10 in 2008 and 4 in 2007, and Savas was the first casualty linked to EA or similar groups since 2004.
Burton and West delineate a pattern of such assassinations aimed at police in Greece over the course of several years:
On Jan. 5, 2009, during protests in Athens following the police shooting of a 15-year-old boy in December 2008, gunmen shot and seriously wounded a policeman standing watch outside the Culture Ministry building (EA claimed responsibility). Then on February 3, three gunmen on motorcycles fired on and threw grenades at a police station in an Athens suburb (claimed the next day by a group calling itself the “Sect of Revolutionaries”). And in December 2004, a policeman was shot and killed while guarding a British diplomat by a man believed to be linked to EA.
Such groups may initially place warning calls before detonating bombs. At first they may conduct attacks at night to lessen the potential for loss of life. Early EA attacks seemed to be more the acts of vandals than terrorists- like the environmentalists in the Northwest:
“Recent NEA attacks, however, are clearly intended to kill. Due to this escalation, EA has begun to look more like N-17, and its recent attacks appear to be borrowing from N-17’s playbook.”
N-17 was responsible for assassinating 22 people over 25 years. Although its small cadre of operatives targeted corporations and other symbols of capitalism, it employed simple attacks with firearms in making targeted attacks.
One single .45-caliber automatic pistol was linked by ballistics to five different attacks over a 20-year period. N-17 attacked the U.S. Embassy in Athens in 1996 and assassinated U.S. Navy Capt. William Nordeen in 1988.
Small-arms attacks against foreign diplomats and Greek businessmen were N-17s stock in trade. The targets were hit entering or exiting vehicles or stopped in traffic.
N-17 operatives shot a CIA station chief outside his home as he was coming back from a Christmas party. In 1983, N-17 killed Navy Capt. George Tsantes while he was in his vehicle at a traffic light. N-17 seems to favor drive-by motorcycle executions which work well when the targeted vehicle follows routine schedules.
In 2007 and 2008, militants detonated a series of improvised incendiary devices made with camping gas canisters under vehicles belonging to Saudi, Turkish, Philippine, Italian and Bosnian diplomats. Note that such attackers began like Christopher Monfort began- by planning attacks that destroyed vehicles but caused no physical harm to anyone!
Low-level attacks require surveillance and provide practice in following the basic attack-cycle. The budding terrorist conducts preoperational surveillance to determine where a car is parked at night. By determining where an individual parks his or her vehicle, the terrorist begins moving through a learning curve but he or she still needs additional intelligence in order to conduct an assassination that targets an individual.
Another aspect of N-17 and EA that has similarities to Monfort’s lone-wolf assassination is the accusation of police brutality to justify acts of terror against police. Economic crisis may also be used to justify terrorist attacks. Foreign companies and governments or fat-cat bankers may get the blame. In Greece, international banks and investment houses are in the crosshairs. Are attacks on Citibank in Greece harbingers of what we can expect in the U.S.?
Countersurveillance, using a team of individuals trained to detect surveillance, can interrupt surveillance of a target before an operation ever begins. A team that detects surveillance while an operation is still in the planning stage may cause would-be attackers to move to another less challenging target.
If you are a police officer or public official, you are a high value target! A single officer often must keep herself safe while watching another person or location. It is difficult to remain alert when nothing seems to be happening. Complacency becomes your biggest enemy! Burton and West noted that danger is amplified in the age of iPhones, Blackberries and laptop computers. The lack of situational awareness can be very deadly, even for trained security personnel.
According to Jasper there is “extensive evidence that Putin and company are orchestrating the terror offensive. It is the same terrorist offensive experienced during the 1960s and ’70s, but in a new phase, under a new guise; instead of the ‘anti-colonialism’ and ‘national independence’ movements, Communists used as covers in that earlier period, they have adopted and co-opted Islam to serve their purpose.”
During the last three months, Seattle-Tacoma area has experienced several shocking attacks against police officers. None of them have involved Communist or Islamic terrorism. Except for the strange case of Christopher Monfort, apparently a loner who allegedly ambushed two Seattle law enforcement officers, there is very little in the way of ideological baggage that is apparent in these incidents.
Despite the lack of apparent connectedness, there are cultural factors that should not be ignored. Note that there have been many scholars over the years that have identified the way in which social forces create a “Spirit of the Age”.
The Bible speaks of this concept in spiritual terms and German philosophers like Hegel and Nietsche have also identified the concept of social forces that link up with individual world views. The spirit of the current age tends toward larger and more powerful government. Many people now identify with various social movements that call for more government power. Terror is becoming an over-arching social issue and a force that divides our society and that could even create a split between law enforcement and the rest of us. That is the goal of the socialist “politicization” strategy. Keep in mind that local law enforcement is the first line of defense against totalitarian tyranny. Nevertheless, the first line of defense against garden-variety criminals and totalitarian activism is a vigilant and well-armed citizenry.
A recent Socialist Worker article about the attacks against police officers is an example of the socialist mentality toward such violence. Socialists inveigh against the cynicism of the media and cops’ so-called law-and-order agenda when it comes to Monfort and Clemmons:
Despite his political passions, no friends or acquaintances from his past believed that Monfort would resort to violence to get his views across.
Whoever killed Officer Brenton, his death, along with those of the Lakewood officers, is being used to mount a right-wing, law-and-order campaign. Law enforcement agencies and their political supporters have seized the opportunity to claim a greater share of public resources at a time when budget cuts are forcing cutbacks of vital government services.
Rather than recognize our law enforcement officers for the safety they provide, socialists (including many in the “mainstream” media) minimize the violence directed toward law enforcement and argue that law enforcement officers systematically victimize minority members like Monfort and Clemmons!
Know who your local LEOs are and make yourself known to them. You and I should and do appreciate what LEOs do. The job of being a policeman (or police woman) gets much more difficult in a society where lawyers and media second-guess every move and crazed individuals are waiting for LEOs to drop their guards in order to gun them down! Even though the recent killings seem random, there are forces and powers and principalities at work even in heavenly places- for good and evil. So be vigilant!
“A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.”
Friedrich Nietsche
For the weapons of our warfare are not those of the world. Instead, they have the power of God to demolish fortresses. We tear down arguments.
2 Corinthians 10:4
See Fred Burton and Ben West Stratfor Global Intelligence
Permalink
According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, Ciudad Juárez is ground zero in Mexico’s war against drug cartels.
After gunmen blasted away at a taxi and killed two men and a woman, the army and police were unable to obtain information from any of the witnesses:
Capt. Velásquez scrambled to the site of the killings, where the gunmen had already vanished. He and his men yelled questions at dozens of eyewitnesses: How many killers were there, what kind of car did they drive? “Not one person said a word. Not even what direction they had gone,” says Capt. Velásquez, 42. “Executions here happen at any time, at any place. That terrifies the population. They don’t trust anybody. And they don’t talk.”
Mexico’s powerful drug cartels and affiliated gangs are battling for control of the city and President Felipe Calderón has sent 7,000 soldiers and 2,000 federal police to stop the urban warfare. The residents of Mexican war zones like Juarez are helpless as murder rates soar in Mexico, a nation where all guns are illegal:
In 2008, 1,600 people were killed in drug-related hits. This year, more than 2,500 have died. By some estimates, Juárez’s approximately 165 deaths per 100,000 residents make it the murder capital of the world. That compares with 48 violent deaths per 100,000 residents of Baghdad.
In the Philippines, possession of guns is much more highly regulated than in the U.S. Nevertheless, well-armed rebel groups, bandits, politicians and ordinary people obtain all kinds of weapons, including home-made military style weapons that are often just as effective as those possessed by police and military personnel anywhere in the world.
Last November, a Maguindanao politician’s son, Andal Ampatuan, Jr., allegedly participated in a massacre in Ampatuan township. Local gunmen, allegedly including six officers and the Maguindanao provincial police chief and his deputy, diverted vehicles containing journalists and the wife, two sisters, an aunt and several supporters of Ampatuan’s rival. The Ampatuan clan has previously provided heavy political support to Philippine President Arroyo.
Ampatuan’s political opponent, Vice Mayor Esmael Mangudadatu of Maguindanao’s Buluan township, sent several female family members along in the convoy in the belief they would not be harmed. The convoy was forced to a secluded location where fifty-seven were hacked, raped and shot, then buried in a brave that had been prepared with earth moving equipment in advance. At least thirty journalists were among the dead.
The point of these anecdotes is to show that an armed citizenry is always in a more powerful position when armed. Keeping and bearing arms makes citizens disciplined, vigilant and alert to danger whether it is from domestic political factions, criminal organizations or foreign enemies.
Mexico’s government has waged war with the drug cartels by militarily occupying many areas within Mexico:
Mr. Calderón’s war on drug gangs has defined his presidency so far. Within months of his 2006 inauguration, he dispatched the army to states where drug-related violence was on the rise, calling powerful drug cartels a threat to national security. Three years later, some 45,000 troops—about a quarter of the army—patrol areas ranging from Ciudad Juárez to Mr. Calderón’s home state of Michoacán.
Jorge Tello, Mexico’s National Security adviser, stated that Mexico has done more to fight drugs and violence in Ciudad Juárez than any other place in Mexico. Many residents of Ciudad Juárez are demanding an end to the military occupation. Soldiers cover their faces with black balaclavas in order to conceal their identities from the narcotistas. The government deploys .50 caliber machine guns during patrols.
Despite machine guns and constant patrols, the local Juárez Cartel, the Aztecas and a cadre of corrupt cops and ex-cops called La Linea oppose rival gangs acting on behalf of Joaquin Guzman that aim to take over the drug trade in Juarez; namely the Artistic Assassins and the Mexicles. The gangs simply observe the timing of the patrols and then change the time and locations of their attacks accordingly.
The drug gangs have diversified and extortion has provided a new motivation to increase the body counts:
The extortion wave has spread to funeral homes. Last month, an assassin and his driver parked in front of the Funeraria del Refugio, a squat, yellow building on a crowded street. The killer walked in, interrupting a funeral, and locked mourners in the bathroom, yelling that he had come to collect a protection payment. He then executed the funeral home’s manager, police and eyewitnesses say. The next day, the men returned and burned down the funeral home.
Former soldiers, known as “Zetas” are the Gulf Cartel’s enforcers. They decapitate rivals and law enforcement officers. Another deserter from the Mexican army is Manuel Aponte. A former lieutenant in the army, he deserted in 2004 and is now a top lieutenant for Joaquin Guzman, the cartel leader.
Another example of dysfunctional government intervention is the United Nations. The UN is allegedly involved with joint military operations in the eastern Congo that have resulted in the deaths of 1,400 civilians. The United Nations urgently needs “a new approach to protect civilians,” according to a Human Rights Watch report.
Human Rights Watch researchers describe “girls being summarily killed after being raped, and other victims being tied together before their throats were slit”.
The presence of about 19,000 United Nations peacekeepers has not only failed to protect women and children from rape, torture and murder but actually may have aided and abetted the slaughter, according to a number of reports, including one report in the New York Times.
According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, Ciudad Juárez is ground zero in Mexico’s war against drug cartels.
After gunmen blasted away at a taxi and killed two men and a woman, the army and police were unable to obtain information from any of the witnesses:
Capt. Velásquez scrambled to the site of the killings, where the gunmen had already vanished. He and his men yelled questions at dozens of eyewitnesses: How many killers were there, what kind of car did they drive? “Not one person said a word. Not even what direction they had gone,” says Capt. Velásquez, 42. “Executions here happen at any time, at any place. That terrifies the population. They don’t trust anybody. And they don’t talk.”
On December 21, 2009, cartel hit men carrying AK-47 and AR-15 assault rifles burst into a house in eastern Mexico killing several relatives of a slain Mexican Naval Special Forces officer named Melquisedet Angulo. Angulo, 30 years old, was recently killed in a firefight with the Beltran Leyva cartel that controlled smuggling routes in central and southern Mexico and the Mexican capital. The cartel was allied with the Gulf cartel. The Gulf cartel and the notorious Zeta hitmen, control northeastern Mexico.
Arturo Beltrán Leyva, the head of the Beltran Leyva cartel and other members of the cartel were also killed. The attack against the mother and other members of the slain Mexican hero’s family is a message to the government that things are leading to a new level of terror in the war between the Mexican government and the cartels. The leaders of the cartel are intent on intimidating any opposition and can and do extend their reign of terror across the border into the United States.
Mr. Angulo’s mother, aunt, a sister and a brother were killed in the attack Tuesday. A sister was badly wounded. According to the Wall Street Journal:
The shooting came just hours after the enlisted sailor was buried with a military honor guard for his role last week in a Navy Special Forces operation that killed Mr. Beltrán Leyva, the highest-profile drug lord taken down in Mexico since Osiel Cárdenas, former head of the Gulf Cartel, was arrested in 2003.
Mexico’s powerful drug cartels and affiliated gangs are battling for control of the city and President Felipe Calderón has sent 7,000 soldiers and 2,000 federal police into the urban warfare. The residents of Mexican war zones like Juarez are helpless as murder rates soar in Mexico, a nation where citizens that are not members of the police and armed forces are prohibited from owning guns:
In 2008, 1,600 people were killed in drug-related hits. This year, more than 2,500 have died. By some estimates, Juárez’s approximately 165 deaths per 100,000 residents make it the murder capital of the world. That compares with 48 violent deaths per 100,000 residents of Baghdad.
In the Philippines, possession of guns is much more highly regulated than in the U.S. Nevertheless, well-armed rebel groups, bandits, politicians and ordinary people obtain all kinds of weapons, including home-made military-style weapons that are often just as effective as those possessed by police and military personnel anywhere in the world.
Last November, a Maguindanao politician’s son, Andal Ampatuan, Jr., allegedly participated in a massacre in Ampatuan township. Local gunmen, allegedly including six officers and the Maguindanao provincial police chief and his deputy, diverted vehicles containing journalists and the wife, two sisters, an aunt and several supporters of Ampatuan’s rival. The Ampatuan clan has previously provided heavy political support to Philippine President Arroyo.
Ampatuan’s political opponent, Vice Mayor Esmael Mangudadatu of Maguindanao’s Buluan township, sent several female family members along in the convoy in the belief they would not be harmed. The convoy was forced to a secluded location where fifty-seven were hacked, raped and shot, then buried in a brave that had been prepared with earth moving equipment in advance. At least thirty journalists were among the dead.
The point of these anecdotes is to show that an armed citizenry is always in a more powerful position when armed. Keeping and bearing arms makes citizens disciplined, vigilant and alert to danger whether it is from domestic political factions, criminal organizations or foreign enemies.
Mexico’s government has waged war with the drug cartels by militarily occupying many areas within Mexico:
Mr. Calderón’s war on drug gangs has defined his presidency so far. Within months of his 2006 inauguration, he dispatched the army to states where drug-related violence was on the rise, calling powerful drug cartels a threat to national security. Three years later, some 45,000 troops—about a quarter of the army—patrol areas ranging from Ciudad Juárez to Mr. Calderón’s home state of Michoacán.
Jorge Tello, Mexico’s National Security adviser, stated that Mexico has done more to fight drugs and violence in Ciudad Juárez than any other place in Mexico. Many residents of Ciudad Juárez are demanding an end to the military occupation. Soldiers cover their faces with black balaclavas in order to conceal their identities from the narcotistas. The government deploys .50 caliber machine guns during patrols.
Despite machine guns and constant patrols, the local Juárez Cartel, the Aztecas and a cadre of corrupt cops and ex-cops called La Linea oppose rival gangs acting on behalf of Joaquin Guzman that aim to take over the drug trade in Juarez; namely the Artistic Assassins and the Mexicles. The gangs simply observe the timing of the patrols and then change the time and locations of their attacks accordingly.
The drug gangs have diversified and extortion has provided a new motivation to increase the body counts:
The extortion wave has spread to funeral homes. Last month, an assassin and his driver parked in front of the Funeraria del Refugio, a squat, yellow building on a crowded street. The killer walked in, interrupting a funeral, and locked mourners in the bathroom, yelling that he had come to collect a protection payment. He then executed the funeral home’s manager, police and eyewitnesses say. The next day, the men returned and burned down the funeral home.
Former soldiers, known as “Zetas” are the Gulf Cartel’s enforcers. They decapitate rivals and law enforcement officers. Another deserter from the Mexican army is Manuel Aponte. A former lieutenant in the army, he deserted in 2004 and is now a top lieutenant for Joaquin Guzman, the cartel leader.
Another example of dysfunctional government intervention is the United Nations. The UN is allegedly involved with joint military operations in the eastern Congo that have resulted in the deaths of 1,400 civilians. The United Nations urgently needs “a new approach to protect civilians,” according to a Human Rights Watch report.
The presence of about 19,000 United Nations peacekeepers has not only failed to protect women and children from rape, torture and murder but actually may have aided and abetted the slaughter, according to a number of reports including the New York Times.
Human Rights Watch researchers describe “girls being summarily killed after being raped, and other victims being tied together before their throats were slit”.
Many governments are working under the auspices of UN programs to disarm citizens. Even some Western Washington politicians seem to look to a nebulous UN agenda in their attempts to violate state gun laws, ban assault weapons and create sanctuaries for illegal aliens.
In some under-developed countries, governments have virtually declared war on their own people in efforts to ban guns. Uganda is one example of extreme violence perpetrated by the Ugandan government against selected tribes that hold onto their guns as protection in the midst of appalling ethnic conflict that is all too often enmeshed with governmental policies.
Many of the worst human rights violators around the world sit on UN committees that condone violence against Israelis or those of other ethnic and national origins. You could almost say that the world has become a mirror image of Chicago in the days of Al Capone- or today, for that matter!
The dictators around the globe are like Chicago aldermen that receive favors for keeping their neighborhoods in line. Every now and then, we hear about genocides (sometimes after the UN disarms the victims as it did in Rwanda) that remind us of the Valentine’s Day massacre, when gangsters dressed like cops gunned down Capone’s Irish rivals on the North Side. The best antidote to the tyranny of crime-related violence or political gangsters is a disciplined, trained and well-armed citizenry.
Permalink
Seattle is known as a congenial, outdoorsy city. When I was coming of age in Chicagoland, Eliott Ness still symbolized the forces of reform standing in the gap against 1930’s gangsters like Al Capone. The story that was often missed by television viewers was that gangsters in Chicago joined forces with corrupt public officials during Prohibition. They even bought and paid for the police! Prohibition spawned vicious killers like Al Capone. The banning of alcohol also spawned early attempts at gun control:
The repeal of Prohibition in 1933 ended most of the gang violence. But without waiting to evaluate the effects of the repeal of the alcohol ban, Congress passed the National Firearms Act of 1934.
As introduced, the National Firearms Act requirement would have strictly regulated not only machine guns and sawed-off shotguns, but also pistols and revolvers. Attorney General Homer Cummings conceded that the Second Amendment precluded an outright ban on possession and instead sought registration of these firearms under the guise of a tax measure, in a ploy similar to the Harrison Anti-Narcotic Act, which mandated doctors’ prescriptions and justified that by saying it was the only way the government could keep track of narcotics sales for tax purposes.
It is not like that in Seattle but we do have corrupt groups like ACORN that are still making inroads in Washington state and Washington, DC! Despite a consent decree that keeps ACORN operatives from being involved in most election activities, a representative of King County Elections told me that ACORN is nevertheless being allowed to engage in some local election activities.
As a kid in Chicago, I read the true story of “The Untouchables”. I wondered why honest merchants and others cowed by murder and mayhem did not join together and stand against corruption. Many merchants and working people enjoyed Al Capone’s products, services and largesse. Some honest folks were too terrified to speak out or busy trying to hold onto jobs controlled by the Chicago machine, just like some more or less honest politicians that were forced to make compromises. It almost sounds like modern times!
Pervasive corruption exists today in the modern Windy City. In fact, the more “progressive” a city’s politics become, the more corrupt the politicians seem to get! I think of Mayor Daley’s father standing on the steps and giving the finger to Martin Luther King when the Freedom Marchers passed City Hall. Well-connected contractors got rich while poor black people lived in mile after mile of rat-infested high-rises without elevators that worked. Many of the projects were made out of substandard concrete.
But white contractors, white trade-unionists and white bag-men got rich along with an assortment of Mayor Daley’s other cronies. All the graft ensured that garbage was collected in some neighborhoods in Chicago’s black Southside- the precincts where certain preachers returned the vote to Daley’s Machine. Northern industrial cities like Chicago, with a history of segregation, also seem to be the cities that enact aggressive gun control laws and maintain the highest murder rates.
The picture above is Cabrini Green on the Chicago’s North Side. I often walked past it when I was a kid:
Cabrini-Green was so feared by the Chicago Police during the 1990s that many refused to enter the complex for fear of their lives. Several officers reported that once inside the complex they had been verbally abused and spat upon, and had rocks smashed through their patrol car windows. Many others had been shot.
An unanticipated result of the steel fencing installed to secure the previously open gangways was that it became difficult for police to see through the steel mesh from outside; in 1970, two policemen were killed by snipers.
Anti-gun cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco also have a shameful history of crimes against minorities resembling the pattern of racism in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and other big cities. Some of the earliest widespread efforts at gun control were Jim Crow laws enacted in the Deep South to disarm black people. Meanwhile, whites continued to exercise the constitutional right to own guns.
Many governments are working under the auspices of UN programs to disarm citizens. Even some Western Washington politicians seem to look to a nebulous UN agenda in their attempts to violate state gun laws, ban assault weapons and create sanctuaries for illegal aliens.
In some under-developed countries, governments have virtually declared war on their own people in efforts to ban guns. Uganda is one example of extreme violence perpetrated by the Ugandan government against selected tribes that hold onto their guns as protection in the midst of appalling ethnic conflict that is all too often enmeshed with governmental policies.
Many of the worst human rights violators around the world sit on UN committees that condone violence against Israelis or those of other ethnic and national origins. You could almost say that the world has become a mirror image of Chicago in the days of Al Capone- or today for that matter! The dictators around the globe are like the aldermen that receive favors for keeping their neighborhoods in line. Every now and then, we hear about genocides (sometimes after the UN disarms the victims as it did in Rwanda) that remind us of the Valentine’s Day massacre, when gangsters dressed like cops gunned down Capone’s Irish rivals on the North Side.
In November, over 57 people campaigning against an incumbent were shot, raped and hacked to death- see Massacre in Philippines- including at least 30 journalists. Although there is no evidence of UN involvement, the alleged perpetrators are the incumbent’s family, friends and local police that supported President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. See also how the UN aids and abets atrocities in East Congo.
The mob or your friendly UN representative may one day come to your town to persuade you that they just want to “make your place safe from unfortunate accidents.” Do you believe them as they give your child a stick of gum and assure you, “It sure would be a shame if anything happened to such a cute kid?”
Do you trust politicians in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and the UN to make decisions about your ability to defend your family? For that matter, how many of the politicians in King County would you trust with your life?
Permalink:: Next Page >>
