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Abbreviations used in VA-ALERT: http://www.vcdl.org/help/abbr.html
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1. URGENT! Volunteers needed for this weekend’s gun show in Doswell!
2. Annual VCDL Defensive Pistol Shoot on May 9th in Roanoke!
3. Senator Kaine gets a “mostly false” rating on gun comments
4. And speaking of Kaine - his response to removing DC gun control laws
5. Town of Louisa has illegal “no weapons” sign in park
6. City of Alexandria has illegal pneumatic gun ordinance - to be fixed
7. [MD] Reporter saved from rioting crowd by store owner with a shotgun
8. Who needs a 30-round magazine? Just look north
9. Junk science consensus on guns
10. [WA] Student ignores gun-free-zone and brings a gun to school and starts shooting
11. New permits for Loudoun, Rockingham and Harrisonburg Counties
12. Lori Haas squeaks out a “half-truth” rating from politifact
13. Senator says cops can own assault weapons, but anyone else only wants 'armed insurrection'
14. [FL] Florida appeals court rules for carry outside the home
15. [TX] Moms Demand Action loses: Gov. Abbott says Texas will be 45th open carry state
16. [WV] Another CC success story
17. Gun lobby misfires again with guns-on-campus, facts be damned!
18. Concealed carry's body count - overstating the case
19. NY Times laments "Woeful phenomenon of more citizens packing more guns" [VIDEO]
20. Good interview by pro-gun liberal [VIDEO]
21. Marines to upgrade rifles, investigate use of hollowpoint bullets
22. Shooting guns: It's rather fun, actually
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1. URGENT! Volunteers needed for this weekend’s gun show in Doswell!
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VCDL will have a table at the Doswell Gun Show on Saturday, May 2 and Sunday, May 3. We need volunteers for ALL shifts.
The standard shifts are:
Saturday, May 2: 9 AM to 1 PM and 1 to 5 PM
Sunday, May 3: 10 AM to 1 PM and 1 to 4 PM
We can be flexible if your schedule doesn't fit our blocks perfectly. So, please let Robert Herron know if you can help out. Your assistance will be greatly appreciated!
Robert can be reached by emailing him at:
gunshows.fredericksburg@vcdl.org
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2. Annual VCDL Defensive Pistol Shoot on May 9th in Roanoke!
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The Roanoke Rifle and Revolver Club (RRRC) will again host the RRRC--VCDL Defensive Pistol Shoot (IDPA)--on May 9, 2015.
The shoot is open to all RRRC members, VCDL members and any guests who wish to attend.
EYE and EAR protection required for all!
Shooter registration starts at 9 AM. NEW shooter's briefing at 9:30 AM. All shooter's briefing at 10 AM.
COST: $20.00 per shooter. AMMO REQUIRED: 100 rounds. SIX stages.
A FREE HOT DOG LUNCH--with all the fixin's--- will be served at the end of the shoot, furnished by VCDL.
PRIZES will be drawn using the shooter's numbers assigned at registration. Drawings at the end of the shoot. You MUST be present to win!!
Any businesses or individuals who wish to support this event with donated prizes, or other support, please contact al@vcdl.org. VCDL members wishing to assist in this event (registration, cooking, serving, clean up), please contact al@vcdl.org. LOCAL VCDL members may wish to bring a side dish--salads, cake, cookies or such.
RRRC ADDRESS:
1305 GUN CLUB ROAD
HARDY VA 24101.
roanokerifle.com
NOTICE: SPEED LIMIT ON GUN CLUB ROAD IS 10 MPH. This is strictly enforced to keep peace with the range’s neighbors. IF YOU SEE DUST BEHIND YOUR VEHICLE, SLOW DOWN!
Come out and enjoy a great day at the range and support VCDL!
[PVC: If you haven’t been to this shoot, your are missing a lot of fun! See you there.]
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3. Senator Kaine gets a “mostly false” rating on gun comments
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Lori Haas can take consolation in her “half-truth” rating in that she at least trounced Senator Tim Kaine (see item #12, below, for the article on Lori).
http://www.politifact.com/virginia/stat ... d-escape-/
or
http://tinyurl.com/m9amekd
SNIP
Our ruling
Kaine says "it’s estimated that 40 percent of all the guns that are sold in
the United States occur with no background records check."
His source is a small-sample survey that’s almost 21 years old. It counted
some firearms that were purchased before a law went into effect requiring
federal background checks for many gun sales.
The 1994 survey measured gun transactions, which included firearms that were
sold and those that were given as gifts or inheritances. When the results
were adjusted to guns sold -- the term Kaine uses -- only 14 to 22 percent
of the firearms were sold without background checks.
The researchers say they "don’t know" if their findings are relevant today.
There’s no updated national study.
Kaine did not acknowledge these points. So we rate his statement Mostly
False.
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4. And speaking of Kaine - his response to removing DC gun control laws
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A lot of you have been getting a response from Senator Kaine on backing a bill introduced by Senator Marco Rubio, “Second Amendment Enforcement Act”, that would vastly improve Washington, DC’s gun laws.
Kaine basically says that he won’t support it.
Why?
Because, "As a former Mayor and Governor, I believe it is important for cities and states to address gun violence at the local level. “
Yeah, that local gun-control has worked so well for DC (and Baltimore, Chicago, Newtown,…)
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5. Town of Louisa has illegal “no weapons” sign in park
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The Town of Louisa has an illegal “no weapons” sign in the Town Park. EM Ed Levine is working the issue currently.
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6. City of Alexandria has illegal pneumatic gun ordinance - to be fixed
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I contacted the City Attorney’s office for Alexandria to notify them that their pneumatic-gun ordinance (13-2-74) is not in compliance with Virginia law (15.2-915.4). Specifically the ordinance bans almost all discharging of pneumatic guns. Under state law, they cannot ban the shooting of a pneumatic gun on private property as long as reasonable measures are taken to ensure that projectiles do not leave the property.
I got a call back today and I was told the City Attorney will bring that ordinance into compliance along with a general clean-up of other ordinances, and that they are not currently enforcing the ordinance. I will advise once the ordinance has been fixed.
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7. [MD] Reporter saved from rioting crowd by store owner with a shotgun
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I’m thinking the store owner who was guarding his store with a shotgun probably didn’t sustain any real damage to his business from rioters in Baltimore.
Lucky for the reporter the store owner was able to protect him.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government ... h-shotgun/
or
http://tinyurl.com/po3mcuq
Baltimore Sun Reporter Saved From Mob By Store Owner Armed With Shotgun
by AWR Hawkins, 27 Apr 2015
On April 27, Baltimore Sun reporter Justin Fenton was saved from a mob of rioters by a Baltimore business owner armed with a shotgun.
According to CNN, Fenton was on the streets of Baltimore and ran toward a location where an officer was reported to be injured by the rioters. He said, “I ran down and got in the middle of everything.”
Fenton said he was “inside of the area [of] Pennsylvania Avenue and North Avenue where a lot of [things were] taking place.” He was near a “cash checking place [that] had been broken into” and he was being protected by “a group of self-identifying Crips gang members.” But he turned away from them to take a photo, at which point he was approached by “a man with a hoodie pulled tight over his face.”
Fenton says the man was holding a container of mace.
The man in the hoodie allegedly demanded Fenton’s phone and shot him “in the head” with mace.
Fenton took off running and made it to a store where he was protected by a business owner who was guarding his property with a shotgun.
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8. Who needs a 30-round magazine? Just look north
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From now on when asked why anyone would need a 20 or 30 round magazine, I am just going to say “Baltimore.”
The videos of criminals viciously attacking outnumbered citizens spell out the need quite clearly.
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9. Junk science consensus on guns
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There’s an orchestrated move to get guns classified as a pathogen so they would subject to junk science from places like the Center for Disease Control (CDC). That was tried earlier during the Clinton administration.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch just ran a commentary titled, “The Scientific Consensus on Guns.”
That is a twist on the pathogen approach - to say that SCIENCE shows that guns are dangerous to their owner, especially when it comes to suicide.
To come to that conclusion the author, David Hemenway, who works for the the Harvard School of Public Health, cherry picks a few groups of scientists. These scientists had to have published articles on firearms to be considered, which seemly would give Hemenway the opportunity to read their articles and decide if they would be a “good" candidates to poll or not.
From what sciences does he select his “experts?” Politics, economics, and public policy. Political science and economics? Why would they know more about firearms issues than, say, a physicist, a logician, a mathematician, or a statistician?
Interestingly, Hemenway specifically EXCLUDED scientists who deal with psychiatric issues!
Hemenway writes, "A 2014 meta-analysis, conducted by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, of the scientific studies on guns and suicide concluded that access to firearms increases the risk of suicide.”
That explains why gun-free Japan has a much higher suicide rate than the United States! Hey, wait a minute…!
http://www.richmond.com/ap/commentary/a ... 5803e.html
or
http://tinyurl.com/olk3lun
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10. [WA] Student ignores gun-free-zone and brings a gun to school and starts shooting
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I thought that we we are all safe in a gun-free-zone?
A unarmed teacher tackles a student with a gun who had started shooting. Another example of the “first responder” not being the police, but regular citizens. First responders need to be armed.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/04 ... 2015-04-28
or
http://tinyurl.com/l76o7dx
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11. New permits for Loudoun, Rockingham and Harrisonburg Counties
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EM Ed Levine shared this:
New "hard plastic" (like Drivers License) CHP's (Concealed Handgun Permit's) are being issued in Loudoun by Clerk Gary Clemens. I belive Rockingham and Harrisonburg County also issue the same style. The back of the card has a signature strip like a credit card for applicant's signature. Loudoun used a technology grant to purchase the equipment and software and did not use one cent of local tax funding.
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12. Lori Haas squeaks out a “half-truth” rating from politifact
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I believe they were being overly generous, but here’s the article.
EM Dennis Fusaro emailed me this:
From www.politifact.com: http://tinyurl.com/o5dxzus
http://www.politifact.com/virginia/stat ... expanded-/
Haas says fewer women killed by guns in states with expanded background checks
by Sean Gorman
February 16, 2015
Closing a loophole in state law that allows some Virginians to buy firearms without going through a background check is a matter of life and death to women, according to Lori Haas, state director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence.
Haas was among a number of gun control advocates who spoke at a news conference last month in favor of a series of bills aimed at tightening state firearm laws. Haas has compelling experience with gun violence: Her daughter, Emily, was grazed twice in the head during the 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech that left 32 dead and 17 wounded.
Her brief remarks touched on background check laws. All states require licensed gun dealers to conduct a background check before selling a firearm to make sure the prospective buyer does not have a criminal record or disqualifying mental condition. But Virginia and 32 other states don’t require background checks for firearms bought through an unlicensed seller -- someone who isn’t in the routine business of selling guns. Haas backed a bill that would have narrowed that exception.
In states that run background checks for privately-sold handguns, "49 percent fewer women are shot and killed," she said.
Since Haas spoke, the General Assembly has scuttled major gun control bills, including the loophole closer. But background checks for all gun buyers is a perennial issue before the legislature and we wondered whether Haas’ statement was correct in terms of the number she used and the cause and effect of background check laws on women’s lives. She told us the figure came from Everytown for Gun Safety, an advocacy group founded by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
The numbers
The group issued a report last September examining firearm homicides of women by intimate partners -- current and former husbands, as well as boyfriends. It found that from 2008-2012, the rate of such murders was 46 percent lower in 14 states that had background checks for some or all private handgun sales when compared with the rest of the nation. Stacey Radnor, a spokeswoman with Everytown, said the group also found that the level of non-gun intimate partner homicides of women was much less stark -- only 4.3 percent lower in the states with private-sale background checks for handguns.
We should note, however, that Haas’ statement focused on a broader definition of victims. She cited "women" without any reference to whether they were domestic violence victims.
So to examine her exact statement, we needed to find figures on gun murders deaths of all women, which are not in Everytown’s report.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention compiles fatality data based on information from death certificates filed in each state. We looked at the 14 states that had background checks on private handgun sales during the 5-year period Everytown references. Those states are California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania. Three other states have in recent years added private-sale background checks: Colorado, Delaware and Washington.
We found those firearms homicide figures of women for all but three states with small populations -- Rhode Island (which requires a background check for private handgun sales) as well as Vermont and Wyoming (which do not). The CDC withholds the number of firearms homicides of women in those states because they are so few in number. But given the small size of each state’s population, it wouldn’t affect the overall trend line for the 47 other states where the information was available.
We found that in states with private-sale background checks, the rate of firearm homicides of females age 18 and over was 1.0 per 100,000 women. In the states that didn’t extend background checks to private handgun sales, the homicide rate was 1.6 per 100,000 women in that age group.
That means there were 38 percent fewer firearms homicides of women in the states with private-sale background checks for handguns than the rest of the nation, lower than Haas’ statistic but still a significant figure.
In Virginia, the rate was 1.4 per 100,000 women.
We should note some states without background checks on all handgun sales bucked the trend of lower firearms violence against females.
Minnesota, which has no requirement for background checks on private handgun sales, had a rate of 0.6 firearms homicides for every 100,000 women. That was one-third the rate of North Carolina, which requires a background check of anyone seeking to buy a handgun.
Cause and effect
Two analysts we contacted urged caution in interpreting a correlation in lower rates of gun violence to private-sale background checks.
"Making causal claims is always riskier," Jacquelyn White, a psychology professor at the University of North Carolina Greensboro, said in an email. "States that require background checks may also be more likely to support other efforts that contribute to the well-being of their residents. Remember, correlation is not causation. There may be other factors, such as a more enlightened commitment to creating healthy and safe communities, that result in an array of programs and policies that reduce domestic violence."
Gary Kleck, a criminology professor at Florida State University, said Everytown’s figure "takes no other account of any other factors that affect homicides."
"States do not randomly pass gun laws -- those that pass gun laws are different in many ways from those that do not," Kleck, who has studied the impact of background checks on homicide rates, said in an email. "For obvious political reasons, it’s easier to enact stricter gun laws in states with fewer gun-owning voters. Thus, states that extended background checks to private gun transfers had lower gun ownership rates even before those laws were passed. Likewise, states with stricter gun laws are more urban, less likely to be Southern or Western (and thus culturally different), more politically liberal etc. You can’t isolate the effect of a gun law without controlling for other violence-related factors."
Our ruling
Haas said in states with comprehensive background checks for handguns, "49 percent fewer women are shot and killed." She supports that statement by pointing to figures examining a narrower group of female firearms victims -- those killed in domestic violence situations.
But figures examining the broader group of victims she cited in her statement -- women in general -- show 38 percent fewer women were shot and killed in the states with private-sale background checks on handgun sales.
That’s not quite high as the figure she cited, but it still represents a lower rate of gun homicides of women in states with comprehensive background checks.
But experts cautioned against reading too much into that correlation. They noted that there may be other factors beyond background checks that led to that result.
We rate her claim Half True.
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13. Senator says cops can own assault weapons, but anyone else only wants 'armed insurrection'
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Member Walter Jackson emailed me this:
From politifact.com: http://tinyurl.com/kkfxv3t
http://www.mintpressnews.com/senator-sa ... on/202100/
Senator Says Cops Can Own Assault Weapons, But Anyone Else Only Wants ‘Armed Insurrection’
by Moreh B.D.K. for Counter Current News
February 12, 2015
In 2012, Cleveland, Ohio police officers fired 137 rounds into a car full of unarmed African Americans suspects who they had been pursuing. Not one person in the vehicle had threatened officers, or made any move that would indicate they were reaching for a firearm…
But Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy, who recently proposed a sweeping ban on gun magazines that hold over 10 rounds, has made it clear that he is not concerned about arming people like Sgt. Michael Donegan of the Cleveland Police Department, who was involved in the aforementioned shooting. Sgt. Donegan fired so many rounds from his high capacity magazines, that he actually had to stop shooting to reload and continue firing at the unarmed citizens in the car.
Senator Murphy had nothing to say about Officer Michael Brelo, who was also involved in the same shooting, who stood on the hood of the vehicle, firing at least 15 rounds into his unarmed victims, including some of the fatal shots.
The increasing militarization of police departments across the nation does not concern the Connecticut senator. He made that perfectly clear. Police officers, he asserts, can “legitimately” carry approximately 40 to 50 rounds on their person, per officer, just as they do all across the United States. Normal citizens, however, are essentially only interested in criminal activity and “overthrowing the government” if they want a magazine that holds more than 10 rounds.
Murphy recently made this bold statement, in pushing a proposed ban on magazines that hold more than this magic number of 10 rounds. He added that any and all who want guns that hold more than 10 rounds are only interested in “armed insurrection” and have essentially committed an act of treason.
The penalty for treason, is of course, death. The senator’s statements then would, whether he understands it or not, imply that wanting a standard or “high” capacity magazine for a gun should be considered an act of war against the federal government, and should be prosecuted accordingly.
Murphy explained that there is “no legitimate reason” for citizens to have a magazine such as the 11-round standard magazine for a Glock 27 pistol. A magazine with 10 round is perfectly fine (for now). But add so much as one more round and this is tantamount to “arming against the government.”
The bizarre statement was made in support of a bill recently proposed in Congress that would ban such magazines.
As with all of such policies, a special exception was given for police officers. Whether in a large metropolis, or a small village, police officers could carry magazines with no limits. Assault weapons in squad cars could continue to be a normal sight on our streets.
Police officers decked out like they are on a SWAT team, armed with machine guns, standing on New York City subways would continue to be an unregulated phenomenon. Murphy is unconcerned with the increasing militarization of police departments across the country. For him, the real problem is anyone who would want one round over ten in their magazines.
Representative Elizabeth Esty, who represents Newtown, where the Sandy Hook tragedy happened, said the number of co-sponsors for the bill has doubled in the last year alone.
“The support is growing,” she said to local media. “The momentum has not stopped.”
She joined Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) in addition to Connecticut’s Democratic Senate duo, Murphy and Senator Richard Blumenthal, in announcing the legislation.
Murphy leaned on the claim that he does not know “a single hunter or a single person who hunts for sport” who needs more than 10 rounds in a magazine. In leaning on this point, he demonstrated that he is unaware of the numerous Supreme Court rulings that the Second Amendment is about personal self-defense, and nowhere mentions anything whatsoever about hunting.
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14. [FL] Florida appeals court rules for carry outside the home
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I strongly disagree with Eugene Volokh’s statement below, "I also think the court was right to allow the state to limit such carrying to concealed carrying, precisely because such carrying doesn’t substantially interfere with the ability to defend oneself.”
So, using that logic, it would be OK for the government to say you have a First Amendment right as long as you don’t use a Macintosh computer or write using green ink.
NO - the government should have NO say in how any of us choose to carry our firearms. NONE. Concealed and open carry both have pros and cons. One size does not fit all. Concealed carry slows a person’s draw and could cause them to lose their life. So I’m not buying the blanket statement, “[concealed carry] doesn’t substantially interfere with the ability to defend oneself."
EM Greg Trojan emailed me this:
From washingtonpost.com http://tinyurl.com/kdwa5eo
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volo ... pen-carry/
Second Amendment protects carrying guns outside the home, but state may require concealed carry rather than open carry
by Eugene Volokh
February 18, 2015
So the Florida Court of Appeal held Wednesday in Norman v. State. It concluded that the Second Amendment applies to carrying for self-defense outside the home.
After Heller I, McDonald, and [recent lower court decisions], it is clear that a total ban on the public carrying of ready-to-use handguns outside the home cannot survive a constitutional challenge under any level of scrutiny….
“A blanket prohibition on carrying [a] gun in public prevents a person from defending himself anywhere except inside his home,” and as such constitutes a “substantial … curtailment of the right of armed self-defense.”
And the court rejected the view of some federal circuits (the Second, Third, and Fourth) that highly restrictive licensing schemes, under which applicants must satisfy law enforcement that they have particular self-defense needs (rather than just the normal self-defense needs of the public at large) before they can get a license:
We stress, however, that the Legislature’s discretion in this area is not limitless. For example, the [Second Circuit] in Kachalsky upheld New York’s prohibitive licensing scheme using an intermediate scrutiny analysis that gave too much deference to the legislature, without considering the fact that the licensing scheme in question rendered the right to bear arms outside the home virtually non-existent…. A right is essentially “destroyed [if the] exercise of [that] right is limited to a few people, in a few places, at a few times.” Peruta, 742 F.3d at 1170 [that’s the Ninth Circuit decision striking down California’s restrictive licensing regime -EV]. The degree of legislative deference exhibited in cases such as Woollard [Fourth Circuit], Drake [Third Circuit] and Kachalsky [Second Circuit] goes too far, and would serve to validate expansive restrictions inconsistent with those rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment and the Florida Constitution.
But the court upheld the restrictions on open carry, precisely because Florida lets law-abiding adults get licenses (relatively easily) to carry concealed:
The Legislature “has a right to prescribe a particular manner of carry, provided that it does not ‘cut[] off the exercise of the right of the citizen altogether to bear arms, or, under the color of prescribing the mode, render[] the right itself useless.’” The Legislature is permitted to regulate the manner in which arms are borne for the purpose of maintaining public peace and safety, so long as any such regulation leaves available a viable carry mode.
Therefore, under Heller, the Florida Legislature could properly choose to regulate either the open or concealed carrying of firearms, or choose to regulate neither open nor concealed carry. What is clear is that the state cannot enact legislation that effectively prohibits both open and concealed carry at the same time. Any complete prohibition on public carry would “violate[] the Second Amendment and analogous state constitutional provisions.”
The court also held the same under the Florida Constitution, which specifically authorizes regulations of “the manner of bearing arms”: “The right of the people to keep and bear arms in defense of themselves and of the lawful authority of the state shall not be infringed, except that the manner of bearing arms may be regulated by law.”
I think the court was quite right to recognize a right to carry guns in public for self-defense (for more on this, see here). I also think the court was right to allow the state to limit such carrying to concealed carrying, precisely because such carrying doesn’t substantially interfere with the ability to defend oneself. (That’s especially so because, if a situation arises in which a person reasonably perceives an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury, the person would be free then to display the gun in self-defense, as well as use it, if necessary.) For more on such matters, see my Implementing the Right to Keep and Bear Arms article.
The court might be faulted for the way it reached the result: It purported to apply “intermediate scrutiny” in upholding the open carry ban, but it applied it in such a deferential way that it wasn’t really offering much scrutiny at all. But it applied this deferential scrutiny only once it concluded that the restriction didn’t materially interfere with the right to carry for self-defense in public. If the restriction did materially interfere with that right (e.g., because it didn’t provide for shall-issue licenses for concealed carry), then it would have rightly been invalidated.
(Note that the opinion doesn’t discuss restrictions on carrying in particular places, such as government buildings, or on carrying on private property where the property owner prohibits such carrying. It is talking about broad restrictions on all or most carrying of guns outside the home.)
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15. [TX] Moms Demand Action loses: Gov. Abbott says Texas will be 45th open carry state
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EM Greg Trojan emailed me this:
From breitbart.com: http://tinyurl.com/momlhpj
http://www.breitbart.com/texas/2015/02/ ... -into-law/
Moms Demand Action loses: Gov. Abbott says he will sign open carry into law
by AWR Hawkins
February 17, 2015
Governor Greg Abbott (R) handed Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America another loss on February 17 when he announced that he will indeed sign open carry into law, thereby “[making] Texas the 45th state to allow Open Carry.”
Abbott made these comments during his 2015 State of the State Address.
Breitbart Texas reports that it was toward the end of the address when Abbott said:
Let me briefly follow up on a word I mentioned a moment ago–liberty. In a single word, it encapsulates what the country stands for, what Texas symbolizes. I will expand liberty in Texas by signing a law that makes Texas the 45th state to allow Open Carry.
With one fell swoop, Abbott handed Moms Demand Action another loss to add to their recent losses against Kroger, Fred Meyer, and Harris Teeter. And because Abbott won the office of Governor of Texas during the 2014 mid-terms, his refusal to cower down to Moms Demand Action and reject Open Carry offers another reminder of the numerous losses Moms Demand Action suffered throughout the country on November 4. [PVC: It is fortunate MDA is already accustomed to losing, as they will be handed many more defeats as time rolls on.]
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16. [WV] Another CC success story
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Rob a pharmacy and get shot. I think that somewhere in that simple statement there is a lesson for criminals.
Member Sue Ward emailed me this:
From bearingarms.com: http://tinyurl.com/m3llz5s
http://bearingarms.com/concealed-carryi ... -virginia/
Concealed Carrying Pharmacist Saves Multiple Lives In West Virginia
by Bob Owens
February 18, 2015
A pharmacist in West Virginia reacted to an armed robber threatening his staff this morning by pulling his concealed handgun and firing “several” shots at the gun-toting robber, dropping the violent suspect in his tracks.
The robbery occurred about 9:45 a.m. Wednesday at the Good Pharmacy on North Pinch Road, according to a news release from the sheriff’s department. Deputies said a masked male suspect entered the pharmacy and pointed a firearm at the staff. The pharmacist on duty pulled his own firearm that he was carrying concealed and fired the weapon at the suspect. The suspect was struck and fell onto the pharmacy floor. Staff at the pharmacy then began to perform lifesaving measures on the suspect.
The suspect was transported to Charleston Area Medical Center General Hospital where he was taken into surgery. The suspect did succumb to his injuries and was pronounced dead at the hospital.
Deputies said the name of the deceased will be released at a later time pending notification to the family. Currently, based upon witness interviews and video evidence charges will not be filed against the pharmacist, deputies said.
You’ll note something in this story, I hope.
Those who spend their time and money to become proficient at self-defense pistolcraft tend to be hard-working professionals with a strong sense of family and community, who desire nothing more than to keep others safe from human predators that walk among us. They have no desire to hurt others, and only pull their weapons to save the lives of the good people in their homes, places of business, and community.
After shooting this suspect twice, the pharmacist didn’t attempt to finish off the suspect, nor did he or the staff stand around and watch him die. As soon as the robber was no longer a threat the staff called 911 and began attempting emergency medical procedures in an attempt to save the robber’s life.
I would love for people—especially people who are afraid of law-abiding concealed carriers—to really stop and think for a few minutes about the very different kinds of people represented in this story.
On the one hand, we have a violent predator who was attempting to take either cash or drugs (or both) through violent criminal acts. He was threatening to end the lives of innocent people for a small amount of money or a temporary narcotic high.
On the other hand, we had a pharmacist who willingly to take the inherent risk of going for his own weapon, making himself a target, in hopes of saving the lives of the other people in the store.
Once the robber dropped to the floor and ceased being a threat, the people who had just had their lives threatened over nothing shrugged off their shock and fear and resentment in order to attempt to save a human life, because they felt it was the right thing to do.
The right to bear arms for self-defense of ourselves and others is the most basic of all human rights precisely because we know that predators like this armed robber will always exist.
People who care about protecting their families and communities from violent predators will arm themselves against the eventuality of evil intruding into their lives.
You have the option of having options, or of being a victim.
Choose wisely.
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17. Gun lobby misfires again with guns-on-campus, facts be damned!
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How’s this for a sweeping statement with no facts to back it up: “...eight states currently allow concealed weapons on campuses but often ban them from such areas as dormitories. Even those rules are too permissive.”
Really? Where in any of those eight states has their been a problem with lawful concealed carry on campus?
The answer is that there haven't been any issues. But facts on firearms have never mattered to the LA Times Editorial Board before, why should they now?
Their elitist, bigoted attitude towards adult college students is disgusting.
From latimes.com: http://tinyurl.com/prh4me9
http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/ar ... -82867648/
Gun lobby misfires again with guns-on-campus proposal
by The Times Editorial Board
February 19, 2015
What's the dumbest idea of the season? Backed by the National Rifle Assn., state legislators across the country have been pushing laws to let students carry concealed weapons on college campuses.
What's the lame excuse? Gun-toting young women would be armed to defend themselves in the event of sexual assaults.
We shouldn't be surprised by this. These are the same crackpots who argued in favor of more guns on campuses after the Virginia Tech shootings in 2007. And who held out the 2012 massacre of 26 students and educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School as an argument in favor of arming teachers. Of course they're cynically twisting the latest painful, high-profile issue into an argument for more guns.
As one Nevada Assemblywoman told the New York Times: “If these young, hot little girls on campus have a firearm, I wonder how many men will want to assault them. The sexual assaults that are occurring would go down once these sexual predators get a bullet in their head.”
Americans have a 2nd Amendment right to own guns, but it's not an absolute right. Government has a responsibility to protect public safety through reasonable gun control laws. That's proved difficult. California law generally bans guns on college campuses but exempts people with a concealed weapon permit (eligible to those over 21), according to the state attorney general's office; colleges may have their own rules barring students from possessing guns.
According to the pro-gun control Armed Campuses project, eight states currently allow concealed weapons on campuses but often ban them from such areas as dormitories. Even those rules are too permissive. College students by and large are immature young adults who often exercise poor judgment. Adding weapons to a keg party is a bad idea, which even the NRA should be able to figure out. Arguing that guns would deter campus sexual assaults also misunderstands the nature of the problem.
A 2007 report by the National Institute of Justice found that most campus sexual assaults are committed by acquaintances when one or both have been drinking or taking drugs, and the victim often is incapacitated. That's a scenario in which it's hard to see a gun playing a positive role.
The gun lobby is showing yet again that it doesn't belong in a serious conversation about ending the scourge of gun violence.
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18. Concealed carry's body count - overstating the case
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Member Walter Jackson emailed me this:
From nytimes.com: http://tinyurl.com/qb2g3n5
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/11/opini ... count.html
Concealed Carry's Body Count
by The Editorial Board
February 11, 2015
In America’s endless debate about gun rights versus public safety, there should be no disputing the hard facts in a new report on gunshot fatalities showing that at least 722 nonself-defense deaths since 2007 were attributable to individuals with legal permits to carry concealed weapons. Concealed carry by citizens has been a soaring phenomenon as states liberalize laws in the name of lowering crime that allow more permits and easier gun access in public places, even schools, churches and restaurants.
There is no central tally of the effects, with states often barring release of concealed-carry data and Congress hewing to the gun lobby’s opposition to research on guns’ effects on public health. But a methodical gleaning of eight years of news accounts by the Violence Policy Center, a gun safety group, found that in research involving 722 deaths in 544 concealed-carry shootings in 36 states and the District of Columbia, only 16 cases were eventually ruled lawful self-defense — even though this has been a major gun rights selling point for the new laws.
More gravely, the study found that the fatalities included 17 law enforcement officers shot by people with legal permits along with 705 slain civilians. There were 28 mass shootings (involving three or more victims) in which 136 people were killed — even though concealed carry has also been sold as a defense against massacres like the one in Newtown, Conn. [PVC: so the Violence Policy Center is arguing that citizens with concealed carry permits are committing mass shootings? Really?]
In studying the 544 shootings, the center found 177 cases where people with gun licenses were ultimately convicted of crimes, including homicides, and 218 cases where the permit holder used the gun to commit suicide [PVC: 218 is the lion’s share. And what does concealed carry have to do with suicide? You don’t need to carry concealed at all to kill yourself.] There were 44 total lives taken by licensed individuals who first murdered others, then committed suicide. [PVC: Out of 12 MILLION CHP holders nationwide over a 7-year period? If only driving a car or climbing a ladder were anywhere near that safe.]
The full death toll attributable to concealed carry is undoubtedly larger because the center’s study did not cover all 50 states. Lawmakers dare not allow a national tally, so badly needed, to be kept by the government. No one is sure how many citizens now legally carry guns, but estimates run beyond 11 million nationally with many statehouse agendas pursuing even more permits.
Whatever the full toll, the policy center’s gathering of just some of the hard facts of gun deaths at the hands of licensed shooters is more than valuable. It should be received as an alarming check on all the swagger about the woeful phenomenon of more citizens packing more guns.
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19. NY Times laments "Woeful phenomenon of more citizens packing more guns" [VIDEO]
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Member Walter Jackson emailed me this:
From gunsamerica.com: http://tinyurl.com/mj4dkt3
http://www.gunsamerica.com/blog/ny-time ... king-guns/
NY Times laments: 'Woeful phenomenom of more citizens packing more guns'
by S.H. Blannelberry
February 12, 2015
In a recent article, the New York Times editorial board lamented the fact that more law-abiding citizens in this country are opting to carry firearms for self-defense outside the home.
While exact numbers are not known, estimates suggest that upwards of 11 million citizens have valid concealed carry permits. For the NY Times this is a troubling development because it appears it believes licensed permit holders are a threat to public safety.
Where did it come up with this ass-backwards position? Where else but the Violence Policy Center, the rabidly anti-gun think tank that continually spews forth propaganda and manipulated crime data to justify its mission of disarming America.
Citing information the VPC has gathered since 2007, the editorial board writes:
There is no central tally of the effects, with states often barring release of concealed-carry data and Congress hewing to the gun lobby’s opposition to research on guns’ effects on public health. But a methodical gleaning of eight years of news accounts by the Violence Policy Center, a gun safety group, found that in research involving 722 deaths in 544 concealed-carry shootings in 36 states and the District of Columbia, only 16 cases were eventually ruled lawful self-defense — even though this has been a major gun rights selling point for the new laws.
More gravely, the study found that the fatalities included 17 law enforcement officers shot by people with legal permits along with 705 slain civilians. There were 28 mass shootings (involving three or more victims) in which 136 people were killed — even though concealed carry has also been sold as a defense against massacres like the one in Newtown, Conn.
In studying the 544 shootings, the center found 177 cases where people with gun licenses were ultimately convicted of crimes, including homicides, and 218 cases where the permit holder used the gun to commit suicide. There were 44 total lives taken by licensed individuals who first murdered others, then committed suicide.
We know that the VPC, and by extension the NY Times, is bullshitting us because, well, that’s just what they do. But truth be told we have more than just our suspicion to refute their lies, we have have the work of economist John R. Lott Jr., the president of the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) and the author of “More Guns, Less Crime.”
I reached out to Lott about this NY Times editorial. He told me in an email that his organization, the CPRC, is currently drafting a rebuttal (I’ll post a link to it once it’s up on the site). In the meantime, however, he directed me to several articles he wrote that addressed this very issue. One was published by Fox News, the other by the National Review.
In the National Review article, which was published in April of 2014, he was responding to a VPC report called “Concealed Carry Killers,” which no doubt contains much of the same information the NY Times used in its piece. At the end of the article, Lott writes:
All in all, the VPC has managed to triple-count claimed cases of permit holders killing people, and the vast majority of cases it includes in its list — such as legitimate self-defense shootings or suicides not related to permitted concealed handguns — shouldn’t be counted to begin with.
Yet, put aside all these problems for a moment. Assume, for the sake of argument, that the Violence Policy Center’s claim that concealed-handgun permits were responsible for 636 deaths in seven years is correct. One has to note that there are over 11 million concealed-handgun permits in the U.S. right now. With an annual number of deaths of 90, that means 0.00083 percent of concealed-carry permit holders were responsible for a shooting death each year. Removing suicides from the total reduces the rate even more, to 0.00058 percent.
In other words, statistically speaking concealed carry permit holders are not a scourge on society.
What should also be mentioned is that we shouldn’t only emphasize the net negative effect of concealed carry no matter how small that figure is relative to other populations. We need to also emphasize the positive aspects of gun ownership, specifically instances of defensive gun use, in which a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun (Lott does this in his book, “More Guns, Less Crime”). DGUs are common. More common than one might imagine. While we don’t have a specific tally as it relates to the number of DGUs that CCW permit holders are responsible for in a given year, we do have a general idea of how frequently guns are used by the aggregate gun community to protect lives, property and liberty.
As a CDC Study pointed out in a recent study, “Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year, in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008.”
The Times, however, does not wish to dig into the actual numbers. It does not look at the positive effects concealed carry permit holders have on society. It does not but its biases aside and examine the issue with an open mind. Instead it resolutely chooses to disseminate the disinformation of the VPC.
The editorial board concludes:
Whatever the full toll, the policy center’s gathering of just some of the hard facts of gun deaths at the hands of licensed shooters is more than valuable. It should be received as an alarming check on all the swagger about the woeful phenomenon of more citizens packing more guns.
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20. Good interview by pro-gun liberal [VIDEO]
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As everyone should know by now, not all liberals are anti-gun and not all conservatives are pro-gun. But the number of pro-gun liberals is very small. It’s a number that would be great to increase. VCDL has some pro-gun liberal members and they are extremely passionate about protecting our right to keep and bear arms. Here is an interview of a pro-gun liberal from Michigan.
Member Milton R. Clary emailed me this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5cm91dFXJo
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21. Marines to upgrade rifles, investigate use of hollowpoint bullets
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What I found interesting in the article is that apparently the U.S. military can use hollow-point ammunition! I thought they were prohibited under the Geneva Convention, much like a lot of people...
Member Jay Minsky emailed me this.
From bearingarms.com: http://tinyurl.com/pepzqkm
http://bearingarms.com/marines-upgrade- ... t-bullets/
Marines To Upgrade Rifles, Investigate Use Of Hollowpoint Bullets
By Bob Owens
February 17, 2015
According to the Marine Times, the Corps is considering a number of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) upgrades to enhance the combat accuracy of Marine riflemen. The Marines will also be investigating a continued shift away from full metal jacket (FMJ) rounds to open-tip (rifle) and hollowpoint (pistol) ammunition for combat.
The rifle upgrades to the existing Marine Corps M16A4 assault rifle will use many upgrades that civilian AR-15 users have preferred for years for hunting and competition on their semi-automatic-only rifles.
Perhaps the most important single upgrade is the adoption of a free-floating barrel, so that Marines shooting the rifle using a sling or bipod doesn’t experience a significant point-of-aim/point-of-impact (POA/POI) shift. The Corps is also considering a new and more consistent trigger, and a shift in reticle designs for the preferred Marine optic, the Trijicon ACOG, which will obscure less of the target.
The rifles will also get an ambidextrous charging handle and bolt catch releases to make them more suitable for left-handed fire.
The most controversial upgrade being considered to the M16A4 is switching from a flash suppressor to a compensator on the muzzle of the gun. AR-15 competition shooters in time-based events have long preferred compensators to enable faster followup shots.
The “knock” against compensators is that they are much louder to those Marines to the left and right of the shooter because they direct burning gasses to the back and side, and they typically generate more muzzle flash in low-light conditions. This would potentially betray the shooter’s firing position and possible generating enough flash to also degrade a shooter’s night vision.
The development in the upgrade program that may shock most readers is that the Marines are looking to build upon the use of open-tip and hollowpoint ammunition. It has long been an accepted myth that the Geneva conventions outlaw the use of hollowpoint ammunition in combat, a statement which has never been true.
There were four Geneva conventions and two additional protocols devoted to the humane treatment of civilians, POWs, and wounded or sick soldiers during wartime, but none of them discussed the use of certain kinds of ammunition.
It was instead the Hague Convention of 1899 that included a treaty between signatory nations that they would abstain from using “bullets which expand or flatten easily in the human body.” The United States never signed nor agreed to this treaty, and has regularly used small arms ammunition designed to yaw, fragment, flatten, or expand.
The Marines have been using the “open-tip” (hollowpoint) MK318 rifle round in Afghanistan for the last half-decade, and are now looking to adopt it as the general issue round, replacing the under-performing M855 round. If accepted, the existing supplies of Corps M855 will be expended during normal training over the next ten years before the Marines transition fully to the Mk318 round. The Marine Times refers to the MK318 by its less common name (the AB49 Special Operations Science and Technology 5.56mm cartridge) throughout the article, for reasons we have yet to discern.
Perhaps of more interest than the increased acceptance of MK318 (which is an additional development to an old story) is the possible adoption of hollowpoint pistol ammunition by the Marine Corps.
Traditionally, the U.S. military has paid nominal lip-service to the Hague Convention of 1899 and had issued FMJ pistol bullets, with only special operations forces currently using hollowpoint handgun ammunition. The Marines have been closely watching the FBI’s decision to drop the .40 S&W and shift back to 9mm pistols with modern hollowpoints.
9mm pistols using modern hollowpoints create wounds indistinguishable from those of modern .40 S&W and .45 ACP ammunition using similar bullet designs, with the additional benefits of having lower recoil and high magazine capacity. Modern hollowpoints create larger wound channels and transfer their energy better to targets than FMJ rounds.
These relatively inexpensive “off the shelf” solutions come at a time where defense budgets are shrinking.
Update: MARSOC has just officially adopted the Glock 19 9mm as an authorized individual weapon.
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22. Shooting guns: It's rather fun, actually
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Interesting article. But the author is pretty naive when it comes to politics and has clearly been fed a lot of baloney by gun-grabbers. My comments are embedded below.
Member Walter Jackson emailed me this:
From www.economist.com: http://tinyurl.com/omf7oqx
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democrac ... oting-guns
Shooting guns: It's rather fun, actually
by D.K.
February 13, 2015
SHOOTING a handgun at a target is a thrill; don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. You load bullets into a clip, push it up into the gun, turn off the safety catch, take careful hold of the gun with two hands, aim and shoot. The thing jumps in your hand and you see the bullet knock a hole in the target and spark off the floor at the back of the range. There is an extraordinary rush and then you do it again. Another spark; perhaps this time the hole in the target is a little closer to the centre. Soon you have fired the whole clip and you’re loading the deadly weapon in your hand again.
That is just to preface a more obvious point. To a liberal European reporter, from afar, American gun culture appears utterly insane. Americans are far more likely to murder someone or to kill themselves than people in almost all Western European countries, largely because guns make it easier. That almost 33,000 people are killed with firearms each year in America (including three Muslims in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, earlier this week) is a colossal and largely unnecessary waste of life. That people celebrate these deadly devices and carry them around while shopping, picking up their children from school or working, seems monstrous.
Yet shooting is fun. And what Europeans—and liberal Americans—often don’t realise is that these deadly weapons are also an accessible, affordable and interesting hobby for millions of people. My experience of firing a pistol took place at a shooting range in the Maryland suburbs, about half an hour’s drive outside of Washington, DC. I had until then never visited a shooting range and I had no idea of what to expect. But the experience was actually oddly familiar. This place was not a temple to violence. Rather, it mostly closely resembled the golf driving range that my father would occasionally take me to as a child.
Most of the building’s space was given over to sales. Punters could buy all manner of guns, from something that resembled a sniper rifle to a pink pistol around the size of a mobile phone. But they could also buy clothes: camouflage hunting jackets; bright high-vis jackets; Smith and Wesson baseball caps and T-shirts. Much of the gear was police-themed, since police officers are apparently loyal customers (which is also true of driving ranges). T-shirts commemorating dead cops, bullet-proof jackets and leather badge holders sat a little awkwardly alongside more conventional sporting gear.
In the range people fired guns gleefully at targets. Some were white, male, middle-aged and so fit the stereotype. But not all. Across from where I fired my pistol, two black women, one with a small son, were taking turns (the child heavily supervised). Shooting targets was a fine family day out. At a practice target outside of the range, plenty of people were learning how to hold a weapon for the first time, without pointing it at anyone, dropping it or injuring themselves as it recoiled. Again, it resembled a driving range: people hitting targets for fun.
And the truth is that in the range, the violence that guns inflict on America felt extremely remote. A few stickers here and there made political points (“My right to own a gun is what protects your right to tell me I can’t”, said one). But mostly, the idea of guns as a means to kill somebody was absent. And so it is for most people who fire guns. The most dangerous neighbourhoods for gun violence in America are in poor cities, not in the suburban areas where most gun owners live. Most of the 21,000 or so suicides in which guns are used take place behind closed doors. And the numbers, while devastatingly high, are not so high that most Americans will know someone who was killed with a gun.
For the majority of gun owners, being told that their harmless hobby is somehow responsible for the deaths of other people must be deeply unpleasant. Worse still is when they are told it by metropolitan types with more money than them. Michael Bloomberg, for example, New York’s billionaire ex-mayor. Or possibly me. And it makes me wonder whether one of the problems—certainly not the main problem, but one of them—with attempts to control guns is precisely that the people making the loudest case for reform are people like Mr Bloomberg and me.
My evidence for this is this advert, put together by the NRA, in which the viewer is warned that Mr Bloomberg, guarded by armed men (a hypocrite as well as a snob!), wants to take away your safety. The NRA is an extremely nasty organisation. [PVC: What??] Supported by the money of gun manufacturers [PVC: A drop in the bucket compared to the dues of 5 million members], it has created a machine whereby politicians must take stances on gun control that are more extreme than most of their voters believe, because otherwise they will be punished with attack adverts. [PVC: Oh, no! Those poor politicians and that evil NRA lobbying on behalf of their members! <eye roll>]
But the NRA is not the voice of most gun owners. Poll after poll shows that solid majorities of gun owners would prefer stricter background checks. [PVC: Baloney. You can get a poll to say whatever you want, depending on how you word the question.] The NRA, however, gets its support by convincing gun owners that their hobby is under threat from metropolitan liberal elitists. [PVC: I thought you said it was those monstrous gun manufacturers that were calling the shots? As for who is attacking our gun rights, for the most part it actually IS metropolitan liberal elitists. Others are part of the problem (including some Republicans, independents, and even Libertarians), too, but are dwarfed in comparison.]
But keeping guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill is not incompatible with widespread gun ownership. And bringing about the changes that will make America safer means convincing people who routinely use guns safely that they are not the enemy. Perhaps what gun control needs is a few advocates who are a little more visibly familiar with the sheer fun of holding a pistol and pulling the trigger. [PVC: If they do that, they’ll begin to realize the stupidity of gun control.]
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VA-ALERT is a project of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, Inc.
(VCDL). VCDL is an all-volunteer, non-partisan grassroots organization
dedicated to defending the human rights of all Virginians. The Right to
Keep and Bear Arms is a fundamental human right.
VCDL web page: http://www.vcdl.org [http://www.vcdl.org/]