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Abbreviations used in VA-ALERT: http://www.vcdl.org/help/abbr.html
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Thanks to Matt Cuddy and EM Brandy Polinowski for compiling this update.
1. Congress looking again at taking way gun rights for a misdemeanor!
2. ROFL! Bloomberg’s anti-gun video gets some “makeovers”
3. Operation “Choke point” gets choked itself
4. Kansas becomes nation’s 15th Gold Star Open Carry state
5. Dept. of Agriculture orders body armor
6. The evolution of 3-D printed guns [VIDEO]
7. Propped-up gun control groups fading
8. Changing the nature of the gun control debate
9. Unfinished receivers under fire [VIDEO]
10. [CO] Car crash leads to gun confiscation
11. [MN] ATF agent brandishes gun, shuts down interstate
12. [GA] Why I carry: horrific crime spree
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1. Congress looking again at taking way gun rights for a misdemeanor!
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The intolerant anti-liberty bigots continue to look for ways to take away guns. They have been looking to do so for misdemeanors, which are minor crimes by definition and aren’t supposed to take away a person’s civil liberties.
It started with the unconstitutional Lautenburg gun ban in the late 1990s, which disarmed anyone for life if convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence.
Now they want to go after someone convicted of misdemeanor stalking and continue from there.
Again, by definition, we are talking a MINOR crime. Stalking can be as simple as some love-sick person who means no harm. Regardless, we dare not go down this slippery slope of treating misdemeanors like felonies when it comes to guns. If a crime rises to the point of disarming someone, then it should be a violent felony.
(BTW, in the last few years there have been proposals by the antis to take away guns from those who have ANY misdemeanor. Indeed that is their endgame, just like universal background checks was always their endgame when they started talking about “closing the gun show loophole.")
Here is the article:
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/5627330
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2. ROFL! Bloomberg’s anti-gun video gets some “makeovers”
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Bloomberg’s ad showing a helpless mother being unable to protect her child and being murdered by a spouse is teaching Bloomberg what a ricochet is. Instead of making people want to ban guns, it makes them want to have one so as to not end up like the mother and child in that video.
Well, some have taken the ad and “tweaked” it a bit.
I like this ad’s text at the end “Stop gun control against women.” Amen to that.From ijreview.com: http://tinyurl.com/knz5edd
Here’s another one, a merge of a Glock ad with the Bloomberg ad:
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=76f_1406858403
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3. Operation “Choke point” gets choked itself
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Victory! Gun dealers have been removed from the high-risk lending list put out by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). Recently, that list had kept a Northern Virginia gun dealer from getting a loan to expand his business.
From washingtontimes.com: http://tinyurl.com/kfjecz8
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4. Kansas becomes nation’s 15th Gold Star Open Carry state
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From examiner.com: http://tinyurl.com/k4ljhg9
SNIP
Kansans now enjoy a more simplified set of gun laws, thanks to new legislation effective July 1st of this year. The new gun law, HB 2578 generally bars localities from banning the carry of unconcealed firearms on foot and in vehicles; local government can still limit gun carry inside governmental facilities if it provides adequate security measures to protect the citizens it has disarmed.
Kansas is now listed as a ‘gold star’ open carry state by OpenCarry.org, a national gun rights community with over 33,000 registered members. According to John Pierce, co-founder of OpenCarry.org…
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5. Dept. of Agriculture orders body armor
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Member Ed Martin emailed me this:
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Agriculture department orders body armor day after ordering custom machine guns.
From Breitbart.com: http://tinyurl.com/q9dxvf4
DEPT. OF AGRICULTURE ORDERS BALLISTIC BODY ARMOR
by AWR HAWKINS
May 15, 2014
A May 7th solicitation by the U.S. Department of Agriculture seeks "the commercial acquisition of ballistic vests, compliant with NIJ 0101.06 for Level IIIA Ballistic Resistance of body armor."
According to the solicitation, "The U.S. Department of Agriculture, Office of Inspector General," seeks "Body Armor [that] is gender specific, lightweight, [having] trauma plate/pad (hard or soft), [and] concealable carrier." The order includes "tactical vest, undergarment (white), identification patches, accessories (6 pouches), body armor carry bag, and professional measurements."
"All responsible and/or interested sources may submit their company name, point of contact, and telephone number." The solicitation says those sources received in a "timely" manner "shall be considered by the agency for contact."
On May 15th Breitbart News reported on a Dept. of Agriculture solicitation for "the commercial acquisition of submachine guns" with 30-round magazines.
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6. The evolution of 3-D printed guns [VIDEO]
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Member James Durso emailed me this:
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From wired.com: http://tinyurl.com/kgrqy62
How 3-d Printed Guns Evolved into Serious Weapons in Just One Year
by Andy Greenberg
May 15, 2014
A burgeoning subculture of 3-D printed gun enthusiasts dreams of the day when a lethal firearm can be downloaded or copied by anyone, anywhere, as easily as a pirated episode of Game of Thrones. But the 27-year-old Japanese man arrested last week for allegedly owning illegal 3-D printed firearms did more than simply download and print other enthusiasts’ designs. He appears to have created some of his own.
Among the half-dozen plastic guns seized from Yoshitomo Imura’s home in Kawasaki was a revolver designed to fire six .38-caliber bullets–five more than the Liberator printed pistol that inspired Imura’s experiments. He called it the ZigZag, after its ratcheted barrel modeled on the German Mauser Zig-Zag. In a video he posted online six months ago, Imura assembles the handgun from plastic 3-D printed pieces, a few metal pins, screws and rubber bands, then test fires it with blanks.
“Freedom of armaments to all people!!” he writes in the video’s description. “A gun makes power equal!!”
It’s been a full year since I watched the radical libertarian group Defense Distributed test fire the Liberator, the first fully printable gun, for the first time. Imura is one of a growing number of digital gunsmiths who saw the potential of that controversial breakthrough and have strived to improve upon the Liberator’s clunky, single-shot design. Motivated by a mix of libertarianism, gun rights advocacy and open-source experimentation, their innovations include rifles, derringers, multi-round handguns and the components needed to assemble semi-automatic weapons. Dozens of other designs are waiting to be tested.
The result of all this tinkering may be the first advancements that significantly move 3-D printed firearms from the realm of science fiction to practical weapons.
“With the Liberator we were trying to communicate a kind of singularity, to create a moment,” says Cody Wilson, who founded Defense Distributed and hand-fired the first 3-D printed gun in May, 2013. “The broad recognition of this idea seemed to flip a switch in peoples’ minds…We knew that people would make this their own.”
Even as the DIY community has refined and remixed 3-D printed guns, it’s left legislators and regulators in the dust. Congressional efforts last year to place restrictions on printed, plastic weapons within the renewed Undetectable Firearms Act fell flat. That said, the legality of 3-D printing a gun in the United States remains unclear, which explains why most of the gun designers contacted by WIRED declined to comment or wished to do so anonymously.
Despite that legal ambiguity, it took only weeks for digital gunsmiths to improve upon the first fully 3-D printed gun. Defense Distributed printed the first Liberator in May, 2013, using a second-hand refrigerator-sized Stratasys 3-D printer it bought for $8,000. Later that month, a gun enthusiast in Wisconsin riffed on the Liberator to produce a working firearm for far less, using a $1,725 Lulzbot printer with less than $25 in plastic. It fired eight .38-caliber bullets without damage.
Two months later came the first fully 3-D printed rifle, built by a Canadian gunsmith identified only as Matthew. The gun, which he calls the Grizzly, fires .22-caliber bullets. In the video below, it fires three shots. Another clip, since pulled from YouTube, shows him hand-firing it 14 times. Wilson calls the Grizzly the “best, first improvement on the Liberator.”
The Grizzly, like the Liberator, requires removing the barrel to load a new round after each shot. But less than a month after Matthew unveiled the Grizzly, another gunsmith who calls himself “Free-D” or “Franco” test-fired a five-shot derringer revolver he calls the Reprringer. It shoots low-power .22-caliber rounds. Though the tiny revolver isn’t entirely 3-D printed–it uses 8mm metal tube inserts in each barrel and several screws–its metal components seem to allow for a far more compact design, making the the Reprringer the smallest working 3-D printed gun publicly tested.
The blueprint for that miniature six-shooter, along with dozens of other firearms, gun parts and even explosives like grenades and mortar rounds, are hosted online by FOSSCAD, the Free Open Source Software & Computer Aided Design. The group spun out of Cody Wilson’s online gun printing community known as Defcad.
Most of FOSSCAD’s designs haven’t been publicly tested, and its loose-knit members are reluctant to reveal their identities. But one anonymous member summed up the group’s motivations: “First, I like guns,” he wrote via instant message. “And second, I think you should be able to 3-D print virtually anything you want.”
Aside from the Reprringer, the anonymous FOSSCAD member noted another new, proven design that may be far more practical–and have far more serious implications–than fully-printed guns: a key part of a semi-automatic weapon called the lower receiver. That part, which comprises most of the body of a gun, is the most regulated element of a firearm. Print a lower receiver, and you can buy the rest of a gun’s components off the shelf without an ID or waiting period.
FOSSCAD members have printed and test fired AR-15 lower receivers, including one designed to be the lightest available, another that includes a printed stock and grip, one designed for a Czechoslovakian semi-automatic pistol called the Skorpion, and another designed for the SKS, a semi-automatic rifle that fires the same ammunition as an AK-47. The last two of those designs are test fired in the videos below.
Those partially printed semi-automatic weapons are powerful, military-grade firearms, and because their lower receivers were printed, they are largely unregulated. The FOSSCAD member who spoke to WIRED says it’s only a matter of time until fully-printed guns are equally durable and deadly.
“Before the Liberator, if you would have asked someone if plastic guns were possible, they would have laughed at you,” he says. “They aren’t practical, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t be. Hence the desire to improve.”
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7. Propped-up gun control groups fading
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Member Dave Knight emailed me this:
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From bearingarms.com: http://tinyurl.com/o67jtsh
The Long, Slow Death of the Gun Control Cult
by Bob Owens
May 15, 2014
The citizen control movement is a movement that has slowly been asphyxiating over the past 40 years.
Most of the “old-line” gun control groups have faded out of existence, and those that do remain are shadows of their former selves. The Brady Campaign, Violence Policy Center, and Coalition to Stop Gun Violence exist almost entirely on handouts from a handful of deep-pocketed progressive political groups, and are largely irrelevant as political forces. They merely exist now to serve up soundbites for lazy mainstream media journalists, and even these journalists are starting to recognize that citing these groups damages their credibility instead of helping their stories.
For all intents and purposes, the citizen control movement was flat-lining when it was recently be revived—however temporarily—by Michael Bloomberg’s infusion of $50 million from his personal coffers to bankroll his fourth attempt at imposing gun control on the American people, via Everytown for Gun Safety.
“Everytown” is the second attempt to re-brand of the tattered remains of the membership-hemorrhaging Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG), and the new, but brand-damaged Moms Demand Action for Gunsense in America.
Bloomberg first attempted to re-brand the combine MAIG/Moms Demand mash-up as the still-borne”Demand Action,” but that attempt proved to be as popular as a super-group composed of Nickleback and Coldplay.
Still in diapers, “Everytown” appears to be quickly heading down the same road to obscurity.
Just 156 tired souls answered Bloomberg’s call to counter-protest the NRA Annual Meeting in Indianapolis held just miles from Moms Demand founder Shannon Watts’s home.
I know how sad of a protest it was, because I was there. I’ve attended wakes with more enthusiasm.
Moms Demand Action From Illegal Mayors in Everytown and the few foundation-supported groups still exist at all only because they practice two kinds of deception.
They lie (repeatedly) to the mainstream media and the public, which the media doesn’t seem to mind in the slightest since they are equally anti-gun and anti-liberty. The public, however, has caught on to the fact that the Michael Bloombergs, Shannon Wattses, Ladd Everitts and the Joshes (Sugarmann and Horwitz) of the citizen control movement are pathological, egotistical, and well, crazed.
Even sadder than their attempts to lie to the public, however, is the tendency of these groups to lie to themselves about their own power, influence, and impact.
Power
None of the gun control groups can support themselves with paid memberships. There simply aren’t enough Americans that desire to gut the Second Amendment for these groups to self-fund. In opposition, the National Rifle Association, Gun Owners of America, Second Amendment Foundation, and other liberty-minded groups protecting the Second Amendment gun rights of Americans are not only self-funded, but they are expanding rapidly and flush with cash from dues-paying members.
Influence
As previously noted, most of the nation’s gun control groups have faded into obscurity, and the handful that do remain do so at the behest of anti-liberty “progressive” foundations that value government power far more than individual liberty. These gun control groups have little significant influence outside of their spoon-feeding of propaganda to the media, and that influence can be countered and perhaps destroyed if gun rights advocates chose to donate to John Lott’s campaign to fund the Crime Prevention Research Council, which hopes to counter anti-gun “research” with real research into the causes of crime.
Only Everytown, funded entirely by billionaire Michael Bloomberg, has any influence at all, and even that influence is seriously compromised because of Bloomberg’s poisonous ego and Shannon Watts’s inability to tell the truth.
Impact
Though gun control groups thought that they’d be able to use the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary to change national policy and eviscerate the Second Amendment, they failed on the national level, had only limited success on the state level, and instead triggered the largest firearms and ammunition buying spree in the history of the United States.
Their continued efforts to undermine the constitution have only caused the pro-Second Amendment movement to grow and spread to the wider culture, as an article today discussing the easing of the national ammunition shortage revealed:
The rise in demand for guns and ammunition dates back about a decade, said Mike Bazinet, director of public affairs at the National Shooting Sports Foundation. Some Americans decided to become gun owners after the 2008 Supreme Court case District of Columbia v. Heller affirmed the right to keep guns in the home, he said.
Also, shooting has become more popular as a hobby, with retailers reporting that 25 percent of their customers buying guns are first-time owners.
“Ranges have become more friendly. They’re becoming more of a destination,” Mr. Bazinet said. “People go to ranges and share their experiences with friends on social media.”
Citizen control activists can indeed continue scare those who are by nature fearful and distrusting, but that is a relatively small percentage of the overall population, and most of these people can be educated past their fears.
Selling fear via serial dishonesty simply isn’t a viable model when it is going up against something that is fun, intellectually stimulating, physically-challenging, and emotionally fulfilling as shooting.
Michael Bloomberg can afford to throw tens of millions of dollars into his anti-liberty vanity project in his waning years… he can’t take his billions with him when he goes.
What he can’t do, at any price, is change the enjoyment and feeling of accomplishment that a new shooter feels the first time they go to the range with family or friends, and because of that, his efforts to undermine the Second Amendment, like all previous attempts by others that would restrain essential liberty, are doomed.
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8. Changing the nature of the gun control debate
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Typical of the antis. Rather than just accepting that no one believes in their gun-control message, they think that all they need to do is to reframe their message or change the name of their group, etc. They are counting on the public being stupid and not seeing through the thin veneer they are putting up.
Member Bob Greene emailed me this:
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I hope having a firearm makes my house a much more dangerous place for certain people.
From washingtonpost.com: http://tinyurl.com/l29xg8a
Framing the danger of guns as a public health risk will change the debate over gun control
by Danny Franklin
May 2, 2014
When Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal signed his state’s so-called guns everywhere law, it marked the latest in a string of legislative defeats for gun-control activists. Since the December 2012 Sandy Hook murders, 20 states have loosened gun laws . Georgia has now upped the ante with a bill that allows people to carry concealed weapons into bars, churches, schools and airports and prohibits law enforcement from requiring someone to show their gun owner’s license .
To be sure, there have been meaningful successes for gun-safety advocates. But since Sandy Hook, the majority of gun laws passed in state legislatures around the country have loosened restrictions. How did this happen? Why did the nation respond to such a heinous crime by relaxing gun laws?
For progressives, there’s an easy answer — the money and lobbying clout of the National Rifle Association. This has an obvious appeal and even a modicum of truth. But as a Democratic strategist who looks at the relationship between public opinion and political reality, I fear that this answer has become a crutch: a comforting story progressives tell ourselves to avoid facing the fact that the country trusts the NRA more than us on this issue. After Sandy Hook, advocates expected a mighty backlash against legislators standing in the way of common-sense gun laws. But the opposite has happened: Only those legislators supporting stricter gun laws are at risk.
The problem is that supporters of new gun restrictions have traditionally approached the issue of gun violence as a political problem to be answered by changing laws. Instead, we need to start looking at guns as a public health problem to be answered by changing minds and habits. Until we change how we frame the debate through our messaging and strategy, the landscape for common-sense gun laws will only become increasingly hostile.
Consider: In 2000, an ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 51 percent of those surveyed believed having a gun in the house made it a more dangerous place to be, while only 35 percent believed it made a house safer. In a poll of 800 voters I conducted recently, opinions were almost perfectly reversed: Fifty-three percent now believe a gun makes a house safer and 35?percent more dangerous.
It should be noted that the new majority is wrong. A gun is 12 times more likely to be used on a household member than on an intruder. But in politics, perception is often more important than reality. For most Americans, the lesson of Sandy Hook is not “guns are dangerous.” Rather, it is, “the world is dangerous and I need to protect myself.”
The political approach to gun control has only aggravated many Americans’ sense of helplessness. By connecting gun laws to high-profile tragedies, we remind people that current laws are failing to prevent those tragedies, undermining our own argument.
What would a public health approach look like?
First, it would avoid divisive efforts to pass laws that compel behavior and instead focus on persuading people of the inherent risks of guns by highlighting the more than 600 fatal gun accidents that occur each year. Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety movement, for example, has a new video featuring a young girl coming across her parents’ gun by accident. This is representative of the day-to-day tragedies we should be focused on stopping.
Second, it would point toward solutions that might appeal to both sides in the debate — such as incentives for gun buyers to choose a weapon designed so it cannot be fired by anyone other than its owner. Positioned as a way to reduce accidents and thefts, this could appeal to responsible gun owners. To be sure, pro-gun activists have opposed even the availability of such technology — but this is the kind of fight gun-safety advocates should relish, because it puts the NRA in the position of saying people shouldn’t be able to choose a gun they believe could keep them and their families safe.
Third, it would focus on successes, not failures. Since 1993, the rate of gun homicides has dropped by a third while the number of nonfatal gun crimes has dropped by 69 percent, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. On every metric that matters, we are safer from guns today than we were 20 years ago. When it comes to public health, success breeds momentum. Drops in the rate of smoking led to smoke-free bars and higher cigarette taxes, reducing smoking further. After the first wave of laws setting blood-alcohol limits reduced drunk driving deaths in the ’70s and ’80s, advocates successfully fought for even tougher limits. By building a narrative of success, progressives can restore confidence in law enforcement and show that new laws are worth the effort and can be applied without restricting the rights of responsible gun owners.
It should be noted that none of this is going to change the minds of extremists within the NRA. But that’s not necessary. The key is creating a narrative of shared values and meaningful progress. If the NRA opposes that agenda, it will — over time — lose trust, and its followers in Congress will lose elections.
Messaging matters in every political issue. On the issue of guns and violence, its importance is measured in lives saved or lives lost. The last year has shown conclusively that from a messaging perspective, progressives are losing the gun debate. By reframing the debate, it is possible to choose a winning message and make Americans safer.
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9. Unfinished receivers under fire [VIDEO]
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When you are doing what the law allows, that is normally called “obeying the law.” When gun owners do it, the antis call it “getting around the law.”
From washingtonpost.com: http://tinyurl.com/ma6atc9
‘Unfinished receivers,’ a gun part that is sold separately, lets some get around the law
By Sari Horwitz
May 13, 2014
SAN FRANCISCO — It was John Zawahri’s failure to pass a background check that prevented him from buying a firearm in California several years ago.
So the 23-year-old obtained an “unfinished receiver,” the metal piece that holds the critical mechanisms that allow guns to fire, and built an assault rifle himself. Last summer, he went on a rampage at a college in Southern California, firing about 100 rounds and killing five people before police fatally shot him.
Zawahri’s assault became one of the most notorious cases involving unfinished receivers, which are unregulated and have become readily available for purchase online and at some gun stores. Officials from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives view the spread of the receivers as an effort to get around strict gun-control laws, particularly in California. They also acknowledge that they have no idea how many of the components have been made and sold.
“That is the million-dollar question,” said Joseph M. Riehl, the special agent in charge of the ATF’s San Francisco office. “We know for sure there are tens of thousands, just in California.”
The sale of unfinished receivers, also called “blanks” or “80 percent lower receivers,” is one of the most daunting challenges for law enforcement officials tasked with enforcing firearms regulations. There are no sales records of unfinished receivers, as there are for ordinary gun sales, which means the ATF cannot check with stores for information about buyers when a gun is used in a crime. And because the receivers bear no serial numbers or other markings that would indicate where they were manufactured, guns made with them can’t be traced back to their owners if they are found at a crime scene.
California authorities struggled to figure out how Zawahri had obtained his AR-15-style semiautomatic assault rifle.
Unfinished receivers generally are formed pieces of metal, available for purchase for $60 to $250. They’re legal, but there is no real use for them other than as the lower part of a firearm.
Converting them into firearms is relatively simple: use a drill press to create holes in the receivers, well out certain areas and then combine the pieces with other parts to make a fully functioning semiautomatic rifle. The process can take one to seven hours, depending on skill level.
ATF officials say gun enthusiasts are effectively exploiting a loophole in the law designed to regulate firearms. Under the Gun Control Act of 1968, it is illegal for an unlicensed person to make a firearm for sale or distribution. Vendors, however, say that because the receivers are not finished, they are not firearms and therefore are legal to sell and distribute.
“It is absolutely the right of every American to defend themselves and to keep and bear arms,” said Dimitri Karras, who sells unfinished receivers over the Internet and at his store in Oceanside, Calif. “This is a channel for them to do that.”
Karras, a former Marine who was stationed at nearby Camp Pendleton, opened his store after serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. He sells combat packs, slings, tactical belts and carriers for wearing armor. He is not licensed to sell firearms and points out that no guns in his store are for sale — only the parts to make them, an experience with edgy appeal that he says is “very cool” and represents the difference between buying a house or building your own.
But Karras acknowledged that there is something else that attracts customers: They don’t have to submit to a background check and their gun won’t have a serial number that could be traced.
“In the current day and age we live in, the NSA receives files on almost everyone in our country,” Karras said. “This is a way for people to maintain their privacy.”
Law enforcement officials say their inability to trace the firearms is becoming a major problem. Firearms built with unfinished receivers are increasingly being found at crime scenes and being purchased from suspected gang members by undercover ATF agents.
Local police, officials say, often don’t contact the ATF about the guns because they know they can’t be traced, which makes estimating how many are out there that much more complicated.
The ATF is trying to crack down on the trade in the makeshift guns by targeting shops and individuals who offer to turn the unfinished receivers into functional pieces for firearms.
In February, undercover agents in California bought seven AR-15-style firearms from two brothers who allegedly offered to finish receivers and assemble them into guns. The brothers, Luis Cortez-Garcia and Emiliano Cortez-Garcia, have been charged with operating illegal shops in Sacramento and Fresno and making and selling pistols and rifles. The brothers did not have a license to sell firearms, didn’t conduct background checks and didn’t require customers to fill out paperwork required by federal regulations, according to court documents.
“The unregistered, untraceable firearms created and sold by these defendants included multiple AR-15-style assault rifles, similar to the guns used in shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, and Aurora, Colorado,” said U.S. Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner of the Eastern District of California, who said in an interview that he expects to charge more people involved in the alleged scheme.
Law enforcement officials said there’s reason for concern beyond the sale of the receivers over the Internet or in stores. Gun enthusiasts have started gathering for “building parties” to work together to add firearms components to their unfinished receivers. Sometimes they are joined by a skilled machinist who can do high-end milling on the receivers and convert them quickly.
On the Web site for his store, Ares Armor, Karras once advertised such events: “No Serial Numbers, No Registration, No Big Brother .?.?. We Host Build Parties.”
He said he doesn’t have the parties anymore but added that his goal is to get as many of the unfinished receivers on the streets as he can. He predicts that he’ll sell about 75,000 this year, mostly from his Web site, and that there are already hundreds of thousands of unfinished receivers nationwide.
“An armed society is a civil society, and it is my belief that the better armed our society is, the more civil it will be,” Karras said. “Most government agencies get upset when people find a way to maintain their privacy. This is a way for people to maintain their privacy.”
In March, the ATF raided Karras’s store and seized about 6,000 unfinished receivers made out of polymer, saying they too closely resembled finished receivers. Karras, who is in a legal battle with the ATF to get his polymer stock returned, said the plastic pieces can be converted into finished receivers more easily than the metal ones and can be finished at home using everyday tools.
Despite the raid, the ATF left the metal receivers at Karras’s store. He’s still in business, selling them and thumbing his nose at the government. At the entrance to his store is a life-size cardboard cutout of one of the ATF officials involved in the raid.
Nearby, Karras sells a rack of black T-shirts emblazoned with the words: “Keep Calm and Build On.”
Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.
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10. [CO] Car Crash Leads to Gun Confiscation
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A woman has an accident and has to be taken to the hospital. She’s OK, but her gun fell into a legal black hole in Colorado, possibly never to be seen again.
It gets better. When the police took possession of her gun, they broke Colorado’s new gun laws because they didn’t have a background check run on themselves first.
Member Walter Jackson emailed me this:
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From the wnd.com: http://tinyurl.com/lgf9kwh
HALF-COCKED: CAR CRASH TRIGGERS GUN CONFISCATION
by Dan Cannon
May 11, 2014
The radical Colorado gun restrictions that were put into place a year ago – following lobbying from the White House – remain under challenge in court.
But in real life, their application is causing major issues.
For example, a legal handgun belonging to a woman who was in a car crash was taken into custody by police as she was taken to the hospital.
Officers now say there’s no legal way for them to return it to her, even though she’s permitted to carry it. Even though it belongs to her. Even though police don’t really even want it.
The stunning development was reported by the Loveland Reporter-Herald, which noted that Jim Szakmeister, a deputy police chief in Fort Collins, said the city and district attorneys advised the gun could not be transferred back to the owner without a Federal Firearms License check. No one is qualified to do that from the police agency, the paper said.
It was during the 2013 legislative session in Colorado that majority Democrats adopted a long list of gun rules, restrictions and regulations.
Sheriffs around the state almost immediately sued, saying the laws were unenforceable. They argued the limits on transferring weapons would make it illegal for someone at a shooting range to hand a gun to an instructor to check and make it illegal for a shooter to take a gun component from another person for repair.
Colorado officials admitted they were doing the bidding of the White House. In February, Vice President Joe Biden flew to the state to strong-arm Democratic lawmakers who were feeling pressure from their constituents to vote against the bills.
“He (Biden) said it would send a strong message to the rest of the country that a Western state had passed gun-control bills,” Tony Exhum, a Democratic lawmaker from Colorado Springs, told the Denver Post.
House Majority Leader Mark Ferrandino, an open homosexual who also pursued a “civil unions” agenda even though the state Constitution forbids same-sex marriage, admitted the gun-control bills introduced by fellow Democrats had national implications.
“I was shocked that he called. He said he thought the bills could help them on a national level,” Ferrandino said.
As WND previously reported, the case against the state over its gun rules listed 54 of the state’s 64 sheriffs as plaintiffs.
Weld County Sheriff John Cooke had said: “Some in the media … asked me if I think it’s a good idea or if it’s appropriate for [a] government official to sue another government official. My response is unequivocally yes. It is our duty and responsibility as sheriffs to protect the people who elected us and whom we serve.”
The legal wording that grandfathers existing magazines holding more than 15 rounds apparently applies only as long as the holder “maintains continuous possession” of it. Cooke and other sheriffs have pointed out that based on the wording of the law, anyone who gives his magazine to a gunsmith for repair or asks for help on a shooting range with a jammed magazine is now violating the law.
That’s the crux of the issue in the Fort Collins dispute.
The Herald reported Sara Warren, who works as a maid and carries a Ruger compact SR9 handgun for protection as she enters the homes of strangers, was in an auto accident March 28.
She went to the hospital. Her weapon was turned over to Fort Collins Police Services, where it stays.
Authorities say the law requires a background check on her before it can be returned, and there’s no procedure.
“I’m told there are other people in this situation,” Sheriff Justin Smith said. “It’s terrible when a law-abiding citizen gets caught up in something like this and it causes them to lose faith in their government.”
Szakmeister said opinions from the city attorney and district attorney agreed – the firearm could not be “transferred” without an FFL check.
“I’m a lawful citizen. I use my gun legally. I need my gun … this is ridiculous,” Warren told the newspaper.
“There are people out there who can’t get their guns back. They haven’t done anything wrong.”
Authorities said they were trying to set up a meeting time with an FFL so that the necessary background checks could be done to return guns to owners who already had been cleared.
Smith told the newspaper the law technically states that if a gun is seized by an officer as evidence, an FFL background check is required on the officer, who would take “transfer” of the gun, as well as the evidence custodian, to whom the weapon also would be “transferred.”
“As written, it is simply not workable,” Smith said.
A recent poll showed public support for the Democrat agenda plunging, with 56 percent opposing and only 39 percent supporting the gun laws.
The issue also prompted the voter recall of two Democrats who supported the gun laws. They were replaced by Republicans. And a third Democrat legislator, state Sen. Evie Hudak, D-Westminster, hurriedly resigned as she was facing a recall because that allowed the Democrat Party to name her replacement, and maintained an 18-17 advantage in the chamber. A successful recall against Hudak would have shifted the majority to the Republican Party.
Senate President John Morse and Sen. Angela Giron earlier were thrown out of office over their support for the gun laws.
WND also reported when Hudak was following the White House line on gun control and sparked controversy with her comments.
In a legislative hearing, she scolded a witness opposing a gun restriction.
Amanda Collins, 27, of Reno, Nev., told her story of being assaulted and explained that had she been carrying a concealed weapon, the incident might have ended differently.
Hudak told Collins: “I just want to say that, actually statistics are not on your side even if you had a gun. And, chances are that if you would have had a gun, then he would have been able to get that from you and possibly use it against you.”
Hudak continued, speaking over the committee witness, and said woman often are killed when they use a weapon in self-defense.
Finally able to resume her testimony, Collins said: “Senator, you weren’t there. I know without a doubt [the outcome would have been different with a gun].
“He already had a weapon,” she told the meeting of the Senate State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee. “He didn’t need mine.”
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11. [MN] ATF agent brandishes gun, shuts down interstate
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Member Walter Jackson emailed me this:
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Typical action of an ATF Agent.
From thetruthaboutguns.com: http://tinyurl.com/p85ag2w
ATF Agent Brandishes Gun, Shuts Down Interstate
by Dan Zimmerman
May 13, 2014
“Authorities partially closed a downtown Minneapolis freeway briefly Tuesday morning as they executed a “high risk” traffic stop to detain a motorist who allegedly brandished a gun at another driver.” Uh oh. Road rage! “The incident began about 6:40 a.m. on eastbound I-694 in Brooklyn Park, where a motorist called police to report that another driver was displaying a gun.” The cops finally nabbed the irresponsible motorist, shutting down half of I-94 in Minneapolis for safety while they made the arrest. See? This is why civilians can’t be trusted with guns! They just don’t have the training or capacity to handle the responsibility. How many times do we have to make the point that . . .
Uh. Hold on.
The State Patrol took the man with the gun into custody. He was questioned and released after officers learned he was an ATF agent who was carrying proper credentials.
According to the startribune.com story, Minnesota law prevents the release of his name as it would blow his cover. Strangely, the Strib article makes no mention of any charges that were filed against the angry agent. But don’t worry, the matter is reportedly “under investigation” so it’s all good.
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12. [GA] Why I carry: horrific crime spree
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Member Walter Jackson emailed me this:
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From the gunssavelives.net: http://tinyurl.com/mnmy8g6
Why I Carry: Four Masked Home Invaders Murder Baby and Shoot Three Women
by Dan Cannon
May 11, 2014
Occasionally, we have to take a break from our normal self defense stories and take a look at what happens when unarmed innocent people meet very, very bad armed people.
In this recent case out of Georgia, four masked suspects killed a nine month old baby and shot three other women during the commission of a home invasion.
According to the Atlanta Journal of Constitution,
Police said three or four men with their faces covered with bandanas kicked in the back door of the home on To Lani Farm Road sometime after 10:30 p.m. Saturday. Three terrified women inside grabbed the baby, ran upstairs and tried to lock themselves into a bathroom, but the gunmen kicked it in and fired at them multiple times.
The victims’ names were not released. The women are 36, 23, and 21, police said. The 21-year-old is thought to be the baby’s mother.
The home invasion and shooting are thought to possibly be connected to a previous murder on May 3rd and a second murder on Saturday of a possible witness to the first murder.
Police are seeking two persons of interest in the crime, according to the AJC,
Police are looking to arrest Cutrez Johnson, 16, also known as “Lil Red,” and Oslushla Smith, 19, also known as Budda or Boo, in connection with the May 3 shooting of Michael Phillips, 29, at a party in south DeKalb. Another man, Kemontay Cullins, 18, was arrested early today in connection with the May 3 killing.
Regardless of motive or previous association, if one of those women had a firearm with a standard capacity magazine, carried on their person, things could have turned out very differently in this case.
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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/]