VA-ALERT: VCDL Update 11/5/15
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Abbreviations used in VA-ALERT: http://www.vcdl.org/help/abbr.html
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VA-ALERT archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/727/=now
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1. Wrap up of McLean Citizens Association meeting last night
2. Stolen vehicle driven into gun store, firearms missing [VIDEO]
3. Federal government researchs tech to remotely track, disrupt, destroy guns
4. Dick Heller strikes again - illegal gun registration requirements
5. Trump announced his gun plan and it includes 3 huge national changes
6. Concealed carry and the right to remain silent - Part 1
7. Poll: Majority says 'NO' to federal control of guns
8. False claim: armed citizens have killed more Americans than all wars combined
9. Guns saving lives
10. NYPD bans off-duty cops from carrying at Pope events
11. [CA] Last gun shop in confirms closure due to new law
12. Professor: Paper exercised poor judgment in running pro-gun rights op-ed
13. Has the time come for plastic ammunition? [VIDEO]
14. Caution on gun modifications, light triggers and reloaded ammunition
15. U.S. adds nearly 200 million privately owned guns
16. Summer of bloodshed as US murder rates rise
17. “Study:" Stricter gun laws keep firearms out of hands of youth [VIDEO]
18. Comparing statistics government doesn't show you [VIDEO]
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1. Wrap up of McLean Citizens Association meeting last night
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Last night around 30 gun-owners attended the McLean Citizens Association (MCA) board meeting. A smaller number of antis were also present.
The ad hoc committee reported to the Board that the committee was continuing to work with all sides to try to find a resolution to NOVA Firearms being in close proximity to a school. The committee reiterated that the store was perfectly legal and had done nothing wrong. The committee said they were a neutral party trying to find a mutually acceptable resolution.
I thought the committee was supposed to report back whether it makes sense for the MCA to even be in the middle of this issue and, if so, to make some recommendations. But, apparently, they skipped that step and are now actively working on negotiations with NOVA Firearms.
VCDL’s position is simple: as long as NOVA Firearms is completely comfortable with any possible agreement (hopefully involving lots of dollars going to NOVA Firearms if they end up moving), then VCDL is comfortable, too.
Our goal in being involved is two fold:
1. To keep NOVA Firearms from being strong armed at any level
2. To stop any changes to Virginia law or to local ordinances that would be harmful in any way to gun stores generally.
The MCA also did not bring up any future gun bans at their meetings. Truth is once the NOVA Firearms situation is resolved, attendance will go back to normal levels for the MCA.
CORRECTION ON MCA NOTIFICATIONS
Turns out I had two things wrong in the last alert on the MCA meeting. The MCA President provided a copy of their bylaws and it turns out the information I had been given on the 10-day notice period for moving a meeting was wrong. That notice is only required for *membership* meetings and not *Board* meetings. Also, something I found quite surprising for an organization like the MCA, they have no requirement in their bylaws to notify members of proposed changes to bylaws. Bottom line, they have not broken their bylaws, as it first seemed.
WHAT’S NEXT?
Since this could drag on, I am going to wait for word from NOVA Firearms once an agreement has been reached or negotiations are abandoned. VCDL will then decide what to do next, if anything. For the time being, I don’t see any need to attend the next MCA Board meeting.
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2. Stolen vehicle driven into gun store, firearms missing [VIDEO]
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Member Billy Huckleberry emailed me this:
From wavy.com: http://tinyurl.com/pcck3dk
http://wavy.com/2015/09/23/guns-stolen- ... gun-store/
Stolen vehicle driven into gun store, firearms missing
by Sarah Hill
September 23, 2015
NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (WAVY) — Newport News Police and the ATF are investigating a gun store burglary that happened overnight.
Police said they responded to an alarm at The Marksman, a firearms training center, shooting sports retailer and indoor shooting range, located in the 500 block of Industrial Park Drive, just before 2 a.m. Officers said they found a car had been driven through the building and was completely inside. Several guns were taken, but no suspects were at the scene, police said.
The car is a 2006 Lincoln and it was stolen from the Kiln Creek area of Newport News between 6 p.m. on Monday and 6 p.m. Tuesday, police said. The keys were left in the car.
Business owner George McClain said surveillance video shows it all happened in minutes.
“They backed the car up to the curb there and then put black marks down. They floored it, and so when they hit the wall, they hit it full speed. Our security video shows the car penetrating the wall, and when it did, the front tires were in excess of 12 inches off the ground, so they were coming in pretty good,” he said.
McClain thinks the burglars planned the crime carefully, and took at least 25 guns, valued at approximately $450 each.
“It’s very obvious, looking at the videos, that they knew exactly where the guns were. They didn’t waste any time looking some place else or looking for the guns. They went right to them, so this is somebody that has been in the store and they were there for a reason…Everyone wants to talk about, you know, the guns are the problem. It’s not the guns. It’s these type of individuals,” McClain said.
The ATF’s industry operations investigators and Violent Crimes Task Force are also working on the case.
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3. Federal government researchs tech to remotely track, disrupt, destroy guns
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Member Billy Huckleberry emailed me this:
From bearingarms.com: http://tinyurl.com/p4yku3m
http://bearingarms.com/federal-governme ... troy-guns/
Federal Government Researchs Tech To Remotely Track, Disrupt, Destroy Guns
by Bob Owens
September 23, 2015
Scratch many people in the tech sector and you’ll find a totalitarian underneath. They sincerely think that technology can save the world… provided that they’re the ones controlling it, of course.
I guess it shouldn’t be surprising, then, that these high tech totalitarians are conspiring with the Obama Administration to undermine the Second Amendment.
The right to bear arms is hot topic in our society; many polls show a slight majority of the American public leaning towards the Second Amendment. So, for a moment, let’s take getting rid of guns off the table and think outside the box. Let’s turn off our pro- or anti-gun sentiments and click on our tech knowledge.
One idea slowly garnishing interest and influence is GPS tracking in guns. This is not a new idea. The federal government has been experimenting with using wireless Nano and GPS technologies to track, disrupt, and even self-destruct firearms for at least two years. The project – known as micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) – utilizes Nano devices created by engineers that can affect a weapon’s operation. MEMS capabilities could be built into U.S. weapons within three to five years and the market for this technology would be around $1.1 billion dollars, Bloomberg Businessweek reported.
The author amazingly doesn’t feel that giving government the ability to “track, disrupt, and even self-destruct” firearms is an “infringment” on the natural right to armed self-defense.
I’ll go ahead and make several predictions:
-anti-gun liberals will attempt to mandate MEMS technology for all new commercial U.S. firearms once the technology is in a working prototype stage. Some will demand that this technology be retrofitted to existing firearms.
-Some anti-gun liberals will attempt to force federal and state agencies to adopt MEMS. These agencies will resist out of fears that the needlessly complex technology is a threat to their officers, and the concept will die.
-any gun company that incorporates this MEMS technology into their firearms will be abandoned by a commercial market which dwarfs the much smaller government market.
-People will quickly find a way to hack the technology, for better or worse.
I’m a little surprised that this is the first I’ve heard of MEMS being used to disable the civilian firearms market, but then, it isn’t something they’d want to popularize, is it?
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4. Dick Heller strikes again - illegal gun registration requirements
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Member Walter Jackson emailed me this:
From breitbart.com: http://tinyurl.com/npvprfn
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government ... itutional/
DICK HELLER STRIKES AGAIN: COURT FINDS FOUR DC GUN REGISTRATION REQUIREMENTS UNCONSTITUTIONAL
by AWR Hawkins
September 20, 2015
On September 18, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that four of Washington DC’s gun registration requirements are unconstitutional.
The plaintiff in the case District of Columbia v. Heller was Dick Anthony Heller, who prevailed in 2008 when the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) struck down DC’s gun ban. In that same year, Heller filed suit against DC’s “gun registration scheme”—claiming it was “inconsistent with the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.” A district court sided with DC in the case, and Heller appealed.
In the course of the appellate process that followed, “the D.C. Council enacted the Firearms Amendment Act of 2012, D.C., …which repealed certain of the conditions for registration, such as the requirement that a pistol be submitted for ballistic identification as part of the registration process, and reduced the burden upon registrants imposed by other provisions.” But gun registration remained, so Heller augmented his suit to reflect the Firearms Amendment Act while continuing to appeal the decision upholding registration.
The DC Circuit’s ruling makes clear there were many facets to Heller’s case that included various requirements pertaining to registration; these differed between handguns and long guns and the processes related to both. In the end, the court upheld some of the requirements while siding with Heller in rejecting others.
The court upheld “the basic registration requirement as applied to long guns”; “the requirement that a registrant be fingerprinted and photographed and make a personal appearance to register a firearm”; “the requirement that an individual pay certain fees associated with the registration of a firearm”; and “the requirement that registrants complete a firearms safety and training course.”
However, the DC Circuit struck down “the requirement that a person bring with him the firearm to be registered”; “the requirement that a gun owner re-register his firearm every three years”; “the requirement that [makes] registration of a firearm [dependent] upon passing a test of knowledge of the District’s firearms laws”; and the ban on registering “more than one pistol per registrant during any 30-day period.”
The DC Circuit’s decision was handed down in a 2-1 vote by a three-judge panel. DC has yet to decide if they will appeal to SCOTUS.
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5. Trump announced his gun plan and it includes 3 huge national changes
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Member Walter Jackson emailed me this:
From westernjournalism.com: http://tinyurl.com/pqmexzw
http://www.westernjournalism.com/trump- ... l-changes/
Trump Just Announced His Gun Plan, And It Includes 3 Huge National Changes
by Randy DeSoto
September 18, 2015 at 3:57pm
In his second policy position paper, presidential candidate Donald Trump called for an expansion of gun rights in America.
In the document published on his campaign website, Trump stated: “The Second Amendment to our Constitution is clear. The right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed upon. Period.”
He added: “It’s been said that the Second Amendment is America’s first freedom. That’s because the Right to Keep and Bear Arms protects all our other rights.”
In that light, the candidate called for at least three major changes:
National Right to Carry: “The right of self-defense doesn’t stop at the end of your driveway. That’s why I have a concealed carry permit and why tens of millions of Americans do too. That permit should be valid in all 50 states. A driver’s license works in every state, so it’s common sense that a concealed carry permit should work in every state. If we can do that for driving – which is a privilege, not a right – then surely we can do that for concealed carry, which is a right, not a privilege.”
Military Bases and Recruitment Centers: “Banning our military from carrying firearms on bases and at recruiting centers is ridiculous. We train our military how to safely and responsibly use firearms, but our current policies leave them defenseless. To make America great again, we need a strong military. To have a strong military, we need to allow them to defend themselves.”
Background Checks: Update the national background check system. “There has been a national background check system in place since 1998. Every time a person buys a gun from a federally licensed gun dealer – which is the overwhelming majority of all gun purchases – they go through a federal background check…
“Too many states are failing to put criminal and mental health records into the system – and it should go without saying that a system’s only going to be as effective as the records that are put into it. What we need to do is fix the system we have and make it work as intended. What we don’t need to do is expand a broken system.”
Trump also stated his opposition to gun and high capacity magazine bans. “Gun and magazine bans are a total failure. That’s been proven every time it’s been tried. Opponents of gun rights try to come up with scary sounding phrases like ‘assault weapons,’ ‘military-style weapons’ and ‘high capacity magazines’ to confuse people…The government has no business dictating what types of firearms good, honest people are allowed to own,” according to the plan.
Additionally, the candidate advocates reforming the nation’s mental healthcare system. “All of the tragic mass murders that occurred in the past several years have something in common – there were red flags that were ignored…We need to expand treatment programs, because most people with mental health problems aren’t violent, they just need help.”
“We need real solutions to address real problems. Not grandstanding or political agendas,” according to Trump.
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6. Concealed carry and the right to remain silent - Part 1
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Member Walter Jackson emailed me this:
From gundigest.com: http://tinyurl.com/pezw8y7
http://www.gundigest.com/concealed-carr ... ent-part-1
Concealed Carry and the Right to Remain Silent – Part 1
by Marty Hayes
September 9, 2015
When it comes to concealed carry, remaining completely silent following a defensive gun use may not be the wisest option.
It is common advice among lawyers and judges that when first confronted by the police after a self-defense shooting, you should say nothing. That’s because anything you say “can and will be used against you” in a court of law. That is true, of course. But the fact of the matter is, if you are tried for an alleged criminal act associated with your use of deadly force in self-defense, you are likely going to have to testify in court anyway.
I know, you don’t have a legal requirement to testify, and most if not all criminal defense attorneys would advise against a criminal defendant testifying. But here is the rub: The vast majority of criminal defendants are guilty of a crime, and if they testify, it simply gives the prosecution the opportunity to elicit more information about their criminal act.
In addition, if the attorney reasonably suspects that the defendant did in fact commit the crime, he must not put the defendant on the stand and solicit lies. It is called suborning perjury and that is a crime in itself. So, in the typical criminal case, the defendant remains silent (as is his right) and the prosecution must prove that he is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. It is the defense attorney’s job to poke holes in the prosecution’s case until the jury has too many doubts to convict. But the roles are reversed in a self-defense case. Let me explain.
Whenever one person shoots another, they have fulfilled the elements of the crime of either murder or assault, depending on whether the person lives or dies. When the police show up, they have “Criminal Law 101” which they learned in the police academy running through their heads. They look at the dead body with holes in it and they look at you holding a gun. They add up these factors and “murder” flashes up on the mental screen. I once asked a police academy instructor what they are teaching recruits about the armed citizen and self-defense law, and he said, “Nothing!”
At this time, there is only one way you may avoid going to jail. That way is to convince the police that there are extenuating circumstances that negate their conclusion of “murder.” But if they don’t know about those extenuating circumstances, you will be arrested. And once arrested, you will remain in jail until you can make bail, or a kind and friendly judge decides to release you. In many jurisdictions, you will be arrested anyway because you fulfilled the legal elements of the crime of murder or attempted murder, regardless of any mitigating circumstances.
The crime of murder encompasses the intentional killing of another human being. Only a defense to that crime will allow the shooter to walk free. If the cops have no information that you acted in legitimate self-defense, you are sure to be arrested.
And, if that isn’t bad enough, in court, when you are on trial for murder and your defense is that you acted in self-defense, you have to admit to the elements of the crime in order to invoke self-defense. In opening arguments, your attorney will tell the jury that you killed that man. All the prosecution has to prove is that you did not kill him in self-defense. If you don’t put on a legitimate case, the jury doesn’t have any choice but to convict you of murder. The burden has shifted to you to prove your act was a legitimate self-defense. How do you do this?
First, don’t act like a guilty man or woman. When the first words out of your mouth are, “I want my lawyer,” you have done a surprisingly good imitation of a street-wise criminal who has some experience in these situations. What is any self-respecting cop supposed to think? Dead body + gun + “I want my lawyer” = murder.
If, on the other hand, the officer hears, “My life was threatened, I had to shoot,” he forms a slightly different conclusion. In addition, if he first learned of the incident through a call you made to 9-1-1, in which you indicated that you were the victim of a robbery (or whatever crime caused you to believe your life was in danger) then he forms a different picture of the call before he even gets there.
If, instead, all he hears is: “Shooting occurred, suspect is still on the scene and armed,” called in by a witness, then you will be perceived immediately as a dangerous, nasty character needing to be dealt with aggressively.
You need to be the reporting party, if it is possible for you to do that safely. Win the race to the phone. Most criminal prosecutions start by playing a 9-1-1 dispatch tape, to set the mood for the jury. In your case, if you report the crime first, the jury gets to hear you telling dispatch, in your own words, that you were just attacked and had to defend yourself.
The 9-1-1 Call
There is another flaw in the advice to never speak to the police. After you are in a self-defense situation, who is going to call the police? Sure, an onlooker who heard the shots or saw the action, may call 9-1-1, but you can’t count on that. No, to best protect yourself, you are going to have to be the one to call the police. Your call is necessary if you want any hope that the legal system will view your act of shooting or killing another person as justified. If you believe you cannot effectively tell the responding officer that you felt your life was in danger, how on earth can you expect to call 9-1-1 and effectively report the same situation?
I can see it now.
Dispatcher: “9-1-1, what is your emergency?”
You: “Ahh, I would rather not say, but I really need the police.”
Dispatcher: “Sir, we are rather busy here at the moment, unless you are reporting a crime in progress, or some other emergency, I am going to hang up.”
You: “Wait. Don’t hang up. Someone has been sho.. er, injured.”
Dispatcher: “What is the nature of the injury?”
You: “He has a hole in his chest, and he is bleeding a lot.”
Dispatcher: “Okay, sir, how did he get the hole in his chest?”
You: “I would rather not say. In fact, could you do me a favor and call my attorney for me?”
Laughable? Sure, but you get the idea. Here is the deal: Society, made up of the very same folks who will be on your jury, expects other members of society to tell the truth to the police, to be good witnesses to crimes in progress, and to help out other members of society when possible. Your actions will be judged against those expectations, and to the standard of a reasonable and prudent person, knowing what you knew, and standing in your shoes. If you don’t believe me, ask any attorney.
Do you think the members of the jury will find it a little odd that instead of telling the police that you shot the guy who was attacking you, you whip out your 5th Amendment Rights “sure to go to jail” wallet card and hand it to the first police officer who asks, “What happened here?” Do you think that the members of the jury would have done the same thing under the same circumstances, or do you think perhaps they might simply tell the police that they were attacked and that man on the ground attacked them?
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7. Poll: Majority says 'NO' to federal control of guns
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From examiner.com: http://tinyurl.com/p2px7fv
http://www.examiner.com/article/poll-ma ... y-saturday
Poll: Majority says ‘No’ to federal control of guns; Nat'l H&F Day Saturday
by Dave Workman
September 23, 2015
[SNIP]
A new Rasmussen poll released today says that a majority of American voters are opposed to the federal government being the final authority on who can own guns.
This comes on the heels of a Gallup survey, discussed earlier by this column, that shows nearly half of Americans think the federal government is a threat to their liberty. The new Rasmussen poll was taken with 1,000 likely voters Sept. 20-21.
According to Rasmussen, only 34 percent of likely voters think the federal government should have responsibility for gun laws, while 36 percent think this is a state government responsibility. Eighteen percent believe local government should have that authority, and 12 percent were not sure, the poll said.
Many states have preemption statutes which prevent local governments from setting their own gun laws. This includes Washington, where there is currently a lawsuit against the City of Seattle for having adopted a “gun violence tax” on the sale of firearms and ammunition to finance anti-gun programs. The Second Amendment Foundation, National Rifle Association and National Shooting Sports Foundation are all parties to that lawsuit.
Not only do many states have preemption laws, which place firearms regulation solely in the hands of the state legislature, many also have right-to-bear arms in their state constitutions. These state constitutional protections frequently contain stronger provisions on the subject of individual citizens’ rights than the Second Amendment.
The Rasmussen survey also revealed that most Americans do not like the idea of only allowing police and military personnel to have firearms. This is the same result Rasmussen got with a December 2014 survey. At that time, according to Rasmussen, “voters strongly believe it would be bad for the country if only police and other government officials were allowed to have guns.”
The survey was conducted by Pulse Opinion Research LLC. It has a plus/minus sampling error of three percentage points.
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8. False claim: armed citizens have killed more Americans than all wars combined
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Member Clayton Rhoades emailed me this:
From breitbart.com: http://tinyurl.com/peoz879
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government ... -combined/
GROUP CLAIMS ARMED CITIZENS HAVE KILLED MORE AMERICANS THAN ALL WARS COMBINED
by AWR Hawkins
September 26, 2015
On September 21 Americans for Responsible Solutions–the gun control group founded by Gabby Giffords and Mark Kelly–tweeted numbers from the Center for American Progress Action Fund (CAP) claiming armed citizens in America have killed more people since 1989 than all wars since 1776 combined.
The tweet contains a meme which says, “The number of deaths from gun violence just since Reagan’s presidency is higher than the number of soldiers killed in combat in all of U.S. history.”
CAP then claims “gun-related deaths in the United States from 1989 to 2014 [were] 836,290,” and claims the “total U.S. military killed in war from 1776 to 2015 [was] 656,397.” The problem with the way CAP presents this–and Americans for Responsible Solutions rewteets it–is not that the gun deaths are exaggerated, but that the military deaths are much, much higher than CAP reports.
In fact, gun deaths are actually dwarfed by military deaths.
Think about it–the figure for gun deaths represents a rough average of slightly more than 10,000 fire-related homicides a year and 20,000 firearm-related suicides a year over a 27-year period. This gives CAP a figure of 836,290 firearm-related deaths from 1989 to 2015. To make that number appear more pronounced they quote military deaths since 1776 at 656,397 without explaining how they overlooked the fact that approximately 600,000 were killed in the Civil War alone.
In fact, if we take deaths from the Civil War–600,000, and add the deaths from World War I–approx. 115,000, World War II–418,000, Korea–35,000, and Vietnam–58,000, we are already at 1,226,000 American deaths and we haven’t even added the deaths from the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Spanish / American War, Desert Storm, Afghanistan, Iraq, and others.
The bottom line–gun deaths in America do not come close approaching the number of deaths our men and women in uniform have suffered while fighting for our freedom. The figure CAP provided for all military deaths from 1776 to 2015 barely covered the deaths in the Civil War alone.
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9. Guns saving lives
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http://bearingarms.com/category/guns-saving-lives/
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10. NYPD bans off-duty cops from carrying at Pope events
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I keep telling police officers that even their off-duty guns are on the chopping block ultimately. Here is a sampling of what the anti’s agenda:
EM Greg Trojan emailed me this:
From thetruthaboutguns.com: http://tinyurl.com/o4qxjxx
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2015/0 ... pe-events/
NYPD Bans Off-Duty Cops from Carrying at Pope Events
by Robert Farago
September 24, 2015
“Off-duty cops who plan to see the pope during his tour of the Big Apple ?are being warned to leave their guns at home — or face being ?sent away and ?reprimanded by NYPD brass,” nypost.com reports. “‘All members of the service who plan to attend a papal event while off-duty are hereby advised that firearms will not be permitted’ read a message sent to police officers on Wednesday.” Wouldn’t you know it? The po-po are p.o.ed. “How dare they disarm us!” cry the Only Ones ™. Check it out . . .
Despite ?heightened concerns about an assassination ??attempt? or act of terror?, off-duty cops will ultimately have to abide by the very same rules that civilians are asked to — a move that is not sitting well with members of the force.
“This is our city and we should be able to carry,” a police source said, describing the policy as “very offensive.”
“God forbid something happens,” he explained. “You’re going against the patrol guide which says you’re required to be armed at all times while in New York City. ?If? something bad happens and you’re not armed, you’re not able to protect yourself, your family, friends and the public. You have the leader of the biggest religion in the world and the potential for violence is there. I’d like to be able to protect myself if something, God forbid, does happen.”
“I’m not sure that quote wasn’t made up,” a media source tells TTAG. But it’s wonderful to see the Post – the anti-gun New York Post! – publish an argument for armed self-defense. Not one argument. Two!
Another source added, “?I??n cases like this, it’s always better to have your gun and not need it, than to not have your gun and need it. Obviously, in the case of the pope, we’re all worried about an assassination attempt.
?”?It would be better to have a professional NYPD cop with his sidearm because that adds another layer of security for the pope. We want to protect him in every shape or form. If a cop is walking to one of the vents and sees something and needs to engage with his weapon, you’re going to want that gun on you.”
Let me see if I’ve got this straight. If a law-abiding civilian (a group that includes police officers) carries a firearm he or she may be able to use it defend innocent life? A law-abiding civilian carrying a gun is a good thing? Who knew! Certainly not the Powers-That-Be in the City That Never Sleeps, bodyguarded burghers who created and enforce a de facto ban on concealed carry for anyone who isn’t politically connect or a law enforcement officer (LEO).
Sarcasm aside, the next bit makes my blood boil.
Ed Mullins, president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, also blasted the no-gun protocol — calling it “insulting to all members of the NYPD.”
“This makes no sense,” he said. “The NYPD has stated the Papal Detail is a high-risk security event and then prohibits the very same members of the NYPD from carrying their department-issued firearms off duty while attending a papal event with their families. I guess someone forgot law enforcement members are being targeted and killed across the nation.”
I guess someone forgot that armed non-LEO civilians protect police officers – just like off-duty police officers could protect the Pope. Myopia and hypocrisy make perfect bedfellows. It just goes to show: if you’re not part of the solution you’re part of the problem. I’m looking at you NYPD blue.
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11. [CA] Last gun shop in confirms closure due to new law
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Member Walter Jackson emailed me this:
From guns.com: http://tinyurl.com/q2ehujt
http://www.guns.com/2015/09/23/last-gun ... o-new-law/
Last gun shop in San Francisco confirms closure due to new law
by Chris Eger
September 23, 2015
The mood is somber at High Bridge Arms as the shop is closing following introduction of a law to video all gun and ammo sales and transmit data to the police department.
In July, Supervisor Mark Farrell asked city attorney’s office to draft legislation increasing restrictions on gun stores operating in the city to mandate the recording of sales, storing the videos for at least five years, and transmitting data on buyer and firearms to police at least once a week.
With the proposal’s planned introduction, owners of High Bridge Arms — the sole gun shop in the city of 830,000 — had feared the new regulations would mean the end of the shop over requirements to hand over personal information to include names, addresses and birth dates to city officials in conjunction with gun and ammo sales.
With the ordinance formally introduced earlier this month, High Bridge made it official and is having a going out of business sale.
“Dear friends and family, it’s with tremendous sadness and regret that I have to announce we are closing our shop,” the shop posted to their Facebook page. “It has been a long and difficult ride, but a great pleasure to be your last San Francisco Gun shop.”
The store is has confirmed they will clearance out their inventory in preparation to close the doors for the last time at the end of October.
“Orders for any items we don’t have must be placed before the 15th of October,” reads another notice.
The city ordinance, as outlined by Farrell, would mandate that all sales of firearms or ammo in the city limits be recorded on video and stored for a minimum of five years. Further, it directs a list of personal data be collected from any buyer and transmitted to the SFPD within a week of the sale.
To news that his legislation may force the shuttering of High Bridge, Farrell was candid.
“Prioritizing the public safety of our City’s residents always comes first, and trumps all else,” posted to his Facebook page in reference to the store’s possible closure. “My gun control reforms are intended to close known loopholes that exist in state and federal law. And, the facts don’t lie — jurisdictions with the strictest gun control laws on the books have less gun crime compared to those who don’t.”
The most high-profile recent murder in the Bay Area city, that of Kathryn Steinle, 32, has been tied to an illegal gun wielded by an undocumented immigrant with a criminal record who allegedly used a gun stolen from a Bureau of Land Management ranger’s car.
Steinle’s family are currently perusing claims for damages from the BLM, San Francisco Sheriff’s Department and U.S. Department of Homeland Security, claiming the ranger’s weapon was left loaded and in plain view in his car.
While city lawmakers may see the closing as a win for public safety, Bay Area gun owners see otherwise.
“With other gun shops right outside city limits, the closing of Highbridge Arms will only result in inconveniencing law-abiding folks who will now have to drive a little extra out of their way for their firearms needs,” said Chris Cheng, Top Shot winner, NRA Commentator and city resident, to Guns.com. “I’m confident the criminals will still be able to acquire firearms through the trunks of cars and other nefarious sources within city limits.”
“I visited the shop often and there would always be regulars there hanging out and socializing,” he said. “It’s terribly sad that San Francisco will no longer have a gun shop.”
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12. Professor: Paper exercised poor judgment in running pro-gun rights op-ed
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EM Greg Trojan emailed me this :
Here is a professor that thinks that gun owners shouldn't even have access to first amendment rights. How dare you publish an opinion from those insurrectionists they are as bad as the Taliban. But professor we just want to have a conversation about guns.
From pressherald.com: http://tinyurl.com/ooa6uml
http://www.pressherald.com/2015/09/20/a ... hts-op-ed/
Another View: Paper exercised poor judgment in running pro-gun rights op-ed
An NRA official's column unfairly blamed underfunded mental health programs for tragic firearm deaths.
by Bruce L. Rockwood
September 20, 2015
It is unseemly for the Press Herald to run an op-ed piece by Chris Cox, the National Rifle Association’s hatchet man for gun rights, seeking to pass the blame for recent and continuing tragic gun deaths on to the underfunded mental health programs of the state and nation (“Commentary: Exploiting tragedy to demand more gun control impedes real solutions,” Sept. 15).
From kids shooting their siblings with parents’ guns found in pocketbooks or lying around, disgruntled ex-employees shooting broadcasters on live television, to mass shootings in schools and movie theaters, it is the easy availability of weapons in our society, unlike every other democratic country, that is the cause of gun violence.
Addressing mental health service cutbacks is an important national goal, but I don’t see the NRA standing up for the Affordable Care Act or universal health care.
In fact, their primary reason for being is to fund right-wing politicians who protect gun manufacturers from tort liability for the inevitable consequence of their products, while repeatedly seeking to kill the ACA.
You might as well run an op-ed piece by a Taliban spokesman blaming terrorism on lack of mental health care in Afghanistan as run this piece.
Shame on you for giving Cox this chance to spread his disinformation.
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13. Has the time come for plastic ammunition? [VIDEO]
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Member Billy Huckleberry emailed me this:
http://bearingarms.com/time-come-plastic-ammunition/
Has The Time Come For Plastic Ammunition?
by Bob Owens
September 21, 2015
If you asked military, law enforcement, and “regular Joe” shooters in the late 1970s if they’d trust their lives to a gun that made extensive use of plastics, they would have likely laughed you out of the room.
Here in 2015, plastic-frame guns dominate law enforcement and commercial sales, and are popular in military units both domestically and overseas.
If you asked most military, law enforcement, and “regular Joe” shooters in 2015 if they’d trust their lives to a bullet that made extensive use of plastics, they’d likely laugh you out of the room… but should they?
Polycase Ammunition is betting that their polymer/copper injection-molded bullets may one day be as ubiquitous as Glocks, and based upon what we’re seeing in early tests from their Inceptor ARX line of self defense bullets, they may be on to something.
Those who have shot the Inceptor ARX note that it is low-recoiling*… which typically translates into faster and more accurate follow-up shots for the average shooter.
The Inceptor ARX is unique not just for its use of a polymer/copper bullet composition and its lighter weight/lower recoil, but for the shape of the bullet itself.
Instead of a now-traditional hollowpoint design for defensive ammunition, the Inceptor ARX presents the silhouette of a round-nose bullet, but with three distinct angled scallops molded into the bullet’s face.
The lightweight polymer/copper bullet (compared to traditional lead or increasingly common all-copper bullets) is delivered at a higher-than-normal velocity and the flutes in the bullet seem to radiate bodily fluids outward as it bleeds off energy for roughly the first six inches of penetration. In gelatin tests, it creates initial wound channels that can be imagined as a boat propeller slicing through the gel, and then the bullet begins to tumble for an additional 6?-12? (depending on caliber) with considerable disruption before coming to rest base-forward.
Here are several videos of the Inceptor ARX being reviewed.
The bullet design seems to perform consistently in ballistics gel. Only time will tell how it performs in incidents involving targets made of flesh, fat, organs, and bone.
If the performance in living bodies is acceptable—and the design becomes commercially viable/successful—I suspect that you’re going to see a number of companies attempt to bring their own polymer and metal blended bullet formulations to market, as well as their own bullet shapes.
In 30 years, perhaps polymer bullets will be as ubiquitous as Glocks, M&Ps, and other polymer-frame guns are today… but it has to start somewhere, and Polycase’s Inceptor ARX might be that product that starts the shift in mindset on what ammunition can be.
* We have 250 rounds of 9mm Inceptor ARX for a "shootability" review.
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14. Caution on gun modifications, light triggers and reloaded ammunition
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Member Craig Shelton emailed me this:
Item #16 in tonight's Alert {September 20, 2015} caught my eye, because I recalled a well written article on the subject of modifying self-defense guns at the Armed Citizens Legal Defense Network two years ago.
I recommend reading Marty Hayes's 2013 article, to include comments form a number of experts including Massad Ayoob.
My interpretation of the advice in that article is that any modifications to self-defense firearms may open the owner up to major problems in any court case related to use in a self-defense shooting, both criminal and civil suit.
From armedcitizensnetwork.org: http://tinyurl.com/nhn5hos
https://www.armedcitizensnetwork.org/gun-modifications
Gun Modifications, Light Triggers and Reloaded Ammunition
This article first appeared in the Network's September 2013 journal.
by Marty Hayes, J.D.
Gun enthusiasts often challenge authoritative advice to avoid radically modifying their self-defense gun, reducing trigger pull weight or carrying it with hand-loaded ammunition for self defense. As gun lovers, as well as self-defense practitioners, many who argue these points find it difficult to separate the features of a gun that is fun to shoot from one that is difficult if not impossible to defend in court.
The Big Picture
If you are involved in a self-defense shooting, your gun will be seized as evidence early in the criminal investigation. Responding and investigating officers do not know what occurred, and until they thoroughly investigate the incident they will not know that you fired in self defense. In a perfect world, all the evidence relating to the shooting is collected for later scrutiny, evaluation, testing, argument and use in court. Your gun will be a major piece of evidence at trial. Before trial, it will be checked for fingerprints, photographed, tested for DNA evidence, and possibly fired during gunshot residue and stippling testing. It will be inspected by firearms experts from the state crime lab, to make sure that the gun functions, that all the safeties work, and the trigger pull weight tested to see if it meets factory specifications. Any anomalies, some caused by modifications, will be noted in the crime lab report. If we were writing a movie script, the gun would have its own role, and if the movie was good enough, the gun itself might win a “best supporting actor” award.
The ammunition fired will play a supporting role, too, but since the average person does not understand the field of ballistics as well as they do guns, the ammunition used is often, although not always, glossed over. I do remember testifying in a case in which the ammunition played a huge role in the trial, when my testimony explained the nuances of .38 Special v. .357 Magnum, hollow point v. round nose and wad cutter bullet design. Ammunition also plays a major role if the distance between the muzzle and the wound is an issue, as it often is.
When distances are contested, both the prosecution and the defense will likely conduct gunshot residue and stippling testing, trying to determine how far the muzzle was from the inflicted wound. This was recently illustrated in the George Zimmerman prosecution.
Pre-trial legal procedures play a big role leading up to trial or dismissal of charges. Whether or not you are prosecuted for murder or manslaughter or whether your shooting is deemed justifiable by reason of self defense, can hinge on the prosecution’s opinion of whether or not firearms or ammunition issues could lead a jury to convict or acquit. I would like to think that most prosecuting attorneys do in fact want to see justice served, and if a person is innocent of a crime, they should chose not to prosecute. The sad reality, though, is that many people are prosecuted despite overwhelming evidence of justifiability, as was George Zimmerman.
Many prosecutors have a good understanding of issues relating to self defense. In deciding to pursue a case, they must weigh whether or not they can argue convincingly that you were somehow negligent or reckless based on the type of gun you used or what you had done to your gun prior to the shooting. The prosecutor knows the jury pool and knows if a jury can be swayed by their spurious arguments and accusations of negligence, recklessness or just plain maliciousness.
The Jury Weighs the Evidence
Your guilt or innocence will be determined in court by the evidence presented, which is weighed by the experiences, knowledge and education of the members of the jury. Do not expect jurors to possess the same level of knowledge as you do about self defense. If you live in a gun-friendly community, the jury should include gun owners, as well as non-gun owners. Your jury will usually contain a mix of people who have all been “trained” by TV and the movies, who are likely not NRA members, and who may or may not already have a bias against guns and armed self defense.
Because the prosecution and defense have pre-emptory challenges during jury selection, at least you should not have rabid anti-gunners on your jury, nor will you have people who have used a gun in self defense or are admittedly pro-gun. You are not guaranteed a jury of your peers, just a jury of fellow citizens.
These jurors have to judge both the prosecution’s accusations and the defense’s explanations about modifications, light triggers and reloaded ammunition used during a self-defense shooting in order to reach a verdict of guilty or not guilty. Let us next study those issues in detail.
Gun Modifications
When a forensic firearms examiner for the state examines a gun used in a shooting, any external modifications made to the gun are listed on the crime lab report given to the prosecutor. If the prosecutor believes that any of these modifications may paint you, the defendant, in a bad light, these findings will be heralded in court. The prosecutor asks the forensic firearms examiner to explain during testimony what they found when they examined the gun, and then asks the examiner to compare your gun to an unaltered, factory stock gun. If you installed different sights, an extended magazine release, an extended slide lock/release, or cut the frame down so you could conceal the gun easier, that will be discussed.
The prosecutor will then ask the purpose of these modifications. If your defense attorney is savvy, he or she will object at this point, because your purpose is outside the knowledge of that witness. Only the defendant can testify why he or she made those modifications. An argument will ensue between attorneys with the judge as referee. If the judge is sympathetic to the prosecution (most are, being former prosecutors themselves), the objection will be overruled and the examiner allowed to opine why those modifications may have been made. The questions might go something like this:
Q: Why do people put different sights on guns?
A: To make it easier to kill people.
Q: Why do people put extended magazine releases on guns?
A: Because on some guns, the factory magazine release is too small to make it easy to quickly reload the gun and continue firing.
Q: Why might a person put an extended slide release on a gun?
A: For the same purpose of an extended magazine release. If the person just got done shooting all the bullets in the magazine and he wanted to quickly get the gun reloaded to continue killing, an extended slide release will save them a whole second as opposed to racking the slide manually. A good shooter can shoot 4 or 5 more bullets in that extra second.
Now, put yourself in the place of a 65-year-old grandmother serving on a jury. She has never shot a gun in her life and sympathizes with the “gun victim” mantra as reported by the anti-gun media and perhaps she even voted for our anti-gun president and vice-president. Do you think this line of questioning might create in her mind a negative opinion about you, the defendant?
Many readers are retorting, “But, Marty, those things are easily explained!” I agree, but must now ask, “Who is going to explain them?” Are you a firearms expert who is accustomed to testifying in court? Do you know how to educate your defense team so they can effectively cross-examine the prosecution’s witness? Probably not. The good news is that if you are a member of the Armed Citizens’ Legal Defense Network, Inc. we can provide those experts to help, but even for our Network members, the best for which we can hope is to neutralize the state’s argument, but the prosecution’s smears upon your character will linger in jurors’ minds.
Up to now, we’ve discussed modifications to gun function only not appearance or style. Adorning your firearms with cutesy little illustrations can only work against you. The only visual modification I support would be to hard chrome or apply another tougher finish than the rust-prone blued finish your gun may have come with.
A carry gun should be all business, not an art project.
What’s the bottom line on gun modifications? Make them sparingly and for a specific purpose that is easily explainable. Other modifications pose such problems as to seriously jeopardize your plea of self defense.
Reduced Weight Trigger Pull
Modifications to trigger pull weight on your defensive firearm deserves detailed discussion. Earlier in the month I received the following e-mail from a Network member, Charles in South Carolina, asking–
“I’ve read all the advice against making any modifications to triggers on self-defense weapons but it seems to caution against making the trigger lighter. Does this include ‘combat action trigger’ or duty/carry modifications performed by the manufacturer? The trigger pull on a striker fired weapon remains at 4.5 pounds but the reset and slack are significantly reduced to improve accuracy (reduce user induced deviation in sight alignment through less trigger movement).”
I don’t believe modifying the trigger without reducing the trigger pull weight will create an issue, because firearms examiners will likely just measure the trigger pull weight, not the quality of the trigger. If it is lighter than factory standard, an issue may arise.
I recently spoke by phone with another Network member, Scott in Nevada, who took exception to my recommendation that a defensive firearm’s trigger pull weight be at least 5 pounds. He owns a Wilson Combat 1911 with a 3-pound trigger. He is committed to carrying that firearm on a daily basis, and trains a lot with it. After a phone conversation, he e-mailed:
“Marty’s (and the entire industry’s) standard is rapidly moving towards being archaic, or ‘old-school.’ Before too long, inevitably, ACLDN will be called by one of its members with that dreaded phone call for help, and your team will be faced with what will on the surface, appear to be an issue, or what you might consider, a problem…that being, your customer just might be a guy like myself.
“So please, consider my words carefully. Please do some research into this and I’m certain you will find that I speak the truth. Times are changing. I think the courts are way behind the curve here and that mentality would do well to reconsider. Thank you for taking time to chat with me earlier today. I enjoyed every minute of it.”
I want to respond with facts:
The weight of the trigger pull will be established by the state’s firearms examiner and included in his or her report. If the trigger pull weight is appreciably less than standard, as would be true in Scott’s case but not Charles’, the prosecutor can choose to make an issue of it just as they can with the other modifications discussed earlier. Any of these issues can feed accusations of recklessness or negligence.
Assuming that the defendant can testify that he purposely aimed the gun at the deceased and purposely pulled the trigger, the weight of the trigger should not matter without a claim of negligence, accident or inadvertent discharge of the firearm. In the real world, though, the prosecution can argue that it was negligent for you to have such a light trigger in your self-defense gun. The prosecution can forward the theory that you negligently discharged the weapon into the body of the deceased without cause to do so, and because of your negligence, you are criminally liable for his death. If the jury buys this argument, you go to prison for manslaughter.
The very same argument would then be used in a civil suit against you for negligence. The level of proof to win a negligence suit is merely a preponderance of the evidence. This single detail, two pounds difference in trigger pull weight in your self-defense firearm can tip the scales of justice ever so slightly against you. You lose the civil suit, despite the testimony of expensive expert witnesses, despite your claims of innocence. And dear Network members, even though we help you fight that unmeritorious lawsuit, we cannot help you pay the damages. That is on your shoulders alone.
When Scott and I were discussing trigger pull weight, I asked him a simple question.
“Will Bill Wilson come to court and tell the jury, on your behalf, why it is acceptable to put a 3-pound trigger in a defensive handgun?” If I carried this gun, I would want to know the answer. I thought that it was prudent to find out what custom 1911 makers believe is a responsible trigger pull weight, so I checked out some websites and called other gun smithing businesses that didn’t list trigger pull weight specifications on their websites. Wilson Combat pistols come with a 3.5 to 3.75 pound trigger pull. When I phoned Wilson Combat, I learned they would increase trigger pull weight if the customer stipulated, in other words, you can order a Wilson Combat gun with a 5-pound trigger pull.
Others sellers of custom 1911s specified–
Heirloom Precision, 4 pounds
Les Baer, 4 pounds
Nighthawk Custom, 3.75 pounds, but they will customize pull weight upwards if requested
Kimber, 4 pounds
Smith and Wesson 4 pounds
Springfield Armory 4 pounds
Para Ordnance, 4 pounds
These are the specifications of either custom gunsmiths, or the custom shops at the larger gun manufacturers. When I called to ask Colt about the topic, they refused to tell me over the phone.
Wondering what is the norm for a non-custom, stock 1911 trigger pull, I weighed some single-action semi-automatic pistol trigger pulls from my family collection.
Here are the results:
Para Ordnance, 5.25 pounds
Springfield Armory EMP, 6.5 pounds
Detonics Combat Master, 6 pounds
Colt Defender, 5.25 pounds
While, my survey of gunsmiths showed that a 4-pound trigger is the norm for a custom 1911, the stock guns will likely average over 5 pounds. This is important, because if a prosecutor argues this issue to a jury, he or she is trying to portray you as behaving recklessly or below normal standards of care. You want the jury to see you as normal, like one of them.
Expert Opinions
One of the best things about being part of the Armed Citizens’ Legal Defense Network is the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of its members, some of whom have worked for decades providing expert witness testimony on exactly these questions. Wanting this article to reach far beyond my own opinion as just one expert witness, I posted the question to several members of our advisory board.
Their thoughts on the topic follow.
JOHN FARNAM
At a 3-gun program here in Colorado earlier this week, a female student was with us, sporting an expensive, custom 5-inch 1911 from a well-known manufacturer, for whom I have a great deal of respect. However, the trigger, crisp and breaking-glass-like as it was, was far too light for a serious, carry pistol. It broke at 3 pounds, and I indicated to her that it was too light for a defensive pistol, in my opinion. She graciously accepted my comments, but she clearly loved her beautiful pistol!
She loved it a little less after a high-stress exercise in which she was required to transition from her rifle (which had just run out of ammunition), to her pistol, and engage a close threat. She smoothly made the transition, drew her pistol, and fired 3 rounds at the immediate threat.
The first 2 were carefully aimed and struck the target in the center, as planned and intended. The third shot was an AD (accidental discharge). The pistol was in full recoil from the second shot and it discharged while still angled upward. It startled her. The round struck the top of the berm, a good distance over the target. She recovered nicely and finished the drill. She transitioned back to her rifle, reloaded it, and then immediately used it to engage several more targets.
Afterward, I asked her about the AD. She was trying to catch the link after the second shot, and it just caught her by surprise. No harm done, but here is the point:
The industry standard for pull-weight on triggers of production pistols is currently 6 to 7 pounds. I think that is about right. I’m sure it’s too heavy in the minds of some, too light for others. While I think 12-pound triggers exhibited by the NY2 Glock Trigger Modification are needlessly heavy. I’m not comfortable with triggers any lighter than 6 pounds, owing to the foregoing.
I consider myself a reasonably competent operator, and I carry routinely. All my carry pistols comply with the foregoing industry standard. 3-pound, or lighter, triggers have no place in my life!
The term, “hair trigger,” has an inherently malignant and unsafe ring to it, particularly among the ignorant. It is predictable that a prosecutor or plaintiff’s attorney will use that term, ad nauseam, when doing his best to establish your “reckless disregard” for the safety of others, when he is able to show that your firearm has a significantly lighter trigger than it did when it emerged from the factory, a modification for which you arranged, not the manufacturer.
In addition, during a real fight, the fine motor coordination necessary to realize what scant speed/accuracy advantage of which a light trigger may be capable, will likely all be a moot point anyway!
My conclusion is that over-tuning of serious guns is folly, dangerous folly! When an out-of-the-box pistol has a trigger that is too heavy for your taste, the best strategy is to look at something else, rather than tinker with what the factory produced.
These comments on the subject were sent to me from a colleague:
“I put an aftermarket, 3.5 pound connector on my Glock, and really liked it. Then one day, shooting in cold weather, with gloves, I realized I could hardly feel the trigger. I have since come to my senses, put the original connector back in, and re-learned to use it properly.”
My friend and colleague, Pat Sweeney, puts it best, as he usually does!
“In writing ‘The 1911: the First Hundred Years’ I had a chance to handle some very early 1911s, pre WWI! They are startling, in that they all have (at least by some standards) ‘heavy’ triggers, 6 to 7 pounds, but crisp and clean. You press the trigger to take up the slack. The trigger stops. Keep pressing, and 6 to 7 pounds later, the hammer falls. You can put a lot of bad guys in the ground, with a trigger like that!”
You bet you can, and all with no ADs, even when in a cold, muddy ditch, at night, in the rain, with bullets whizzing by your ears. That’s what pistols are for!
MASSAD AYOOB
While more training helps with lighter pulls, it also makes lighter pulls less meaningful to performance, and I don’t see training making any difference on this particular issue in court.
Pull weight goes gun by gun, and seems to come down to manufacturer spec, common custom and practice, or both. If Walther puts a 4.5 [pound trigger] into their new striker-fired pistol and calls it good, the user will be more protected than if he put a factory-forbidden 4.5 in his Glock, and the same 4.5 pound pull is well within spec by any standard for the 1911. Go figure.
EMANUAL KAPELSOHN
I have worked in many cases, both civil and criminal, in which trigger pull weight has been an issue, including at least two cases in which the opposition sought to argue that a handgun had a “hair trigger,” a sensational term lacking any technical definition. I’ve also worked in a good number of cases in which the phenomenon of involuntary muscular contraction as a possible cause of unintentional discharge has been an issue, and I have written several articles and taught widely on that topic for over 20 years. I’m currently working on a police shooting case where the deceased had an AR-15 with a 2.5 pound trigger pull that seems to be the result of home gun smithing, to the point where the rifle is unsafe to use for that and several other reasons.
One can extrapolate from my Glock recommendations to other brands of striker-fired and double action only (DAO) pistols; a pistol with no manual safety, a healthy amount of trigger travel, and a pull weight in the range of about 5.5 to 8.5 pounds is fine for a defensive handgun of these action types. Single-action/double-action semi-autos with double action (DA) pulls of 8 to 11 pounds, and single action (SA) pulls in the 4 to 6 pound range are fine. Revolvers with DA pulls of 8.5 to 11 pounds are fine. The DA revolver’s SA trigger pull weight doesn’t concern me much, because I think revolvers should rarely ever be fired single action in defensive use, but 3.5 pounds is the industry’s minimum standard here. When I carry a revolver, it’s usually a double action only.
As to whether a highly trained individual can reasonably use a lighter, shorter trigger pull, my opinion is that almost none of us are as highly skilled as we like to think we are. Keep the game guns (and the tactics that go along with them) separate from the serious weapons.
About 400 years ago, Miyamoto Musashi cautioned us, “Weapons should be sturdy, not decorative.” Words to live by. I am willing, however, to have a trigger pull lightened, within reason, for use by an individual whose hand size and strength don’t allow a heavier pull to be used effectively. But before lightening the pull for such a shooter I would try to find a handgun with a shorter reach to the trigger, smaller grip circumference, etc., even as a custom option if necessary.
JAMES FLEMING
Network board member and trial attorney James Fleming did some research for us into court cases in which the question of light triggers arose. This is what he wrote:
Boy, is this not an easy question to work with. Good luck on the article. Gleaning nationwide cases, here is one illustrative case from California from 2008, a civil action:
Max Birchfield died after a handgun he was holding discharged, apparently accidently, and shot him in the chest. This happened in the bedroom of Leandra Sweatt, Max’s girlfriend, who had been given or lent the gun by her father, Charles Sweatt, to use for self defense. When he gave Leandra the gun, Charles knew it had a hair trigger-it could be fired with substantially less pressure on the trigger than an average gun of its type.
The court found–
“We will begin by assuming some outer boundaries for the sake of argument. We will take it as given that the donor of a well-maintained, properly functioning handgun with an average trigger pull weight has no duty of care to persons injured by accidental discharges occurring after the gun passes out of the donor’s control, so long as the donee is competent. On the other hand, we will assume for the sake of argument that if a donor of a gun knows it is defective and has a tendency to blow up in the user’s hand, causing injury, then he has a duty of care to persons foreseeably injured.
“The hair-trigger gun at issue here is somewhere between these outer boundaries. According to plaintiffs’ expert, the trigger pressure necessary to fire the gun was less than one pound, which was less than half of the pressure typically required for guns of its type. In addition to saying, as we have noted, that this was similar to the amount of pressure needed to click a ball-point pen, the expert also opined as follows:
“That trigger pull is considered to be extremely light, and is dangerous in function. [¶] One pound of force could have been easily applied to the trigger of the weapon accidentally, e.g., one could have inserted a finger into the trigger guard area and applied that amount of force by brushing the finger against the trigger without an intent to discharge the weapon. (The trigger guard is a band of metal which encircles the trigger.) [¶] Also, a weapon which can be discharged with such little force is subject to other types of accidental discharge.
In effect, the light trigger pull renders the trigger guard less effective; a glancing blow, an unintentional touch could cause the weapon to discharge. Normally, the trigger guard will prevent many of those types of accidents.”
“Cases from other jurisdictions dealing with accidental discharges allegedly caused by light trigger pull weights can also help give an idea of how dangerous the hair trigger here was. In DeRosa v. Remington Arms Co., Inc. (E.D.N.Y. 1981) 509 F.Supp. 762, a products liability case, Judge Weinstein ruled that a police shotgun with a trigger pull weight of 4.5 pounds, which was within the industry guideline of 3 and 3.25 pounds to 6.5 pounds, was not unreasonably dangerous. (Id. at pp. 764, 768.) By contrast, in Hines v. Remington Arms Co., Inc. (La.App. 1993), reversed in part on other grounds in Hines v. Remington Arms Co., Inc. (La. 1994) 648 So.2d 331, another products liability case, the court held that a competition target-shooting rifle with a 2-ounce trigger pull weight was unreasonably dangerous per se. (Hines v. Remington Arms. Co., Inc., supra, 630 So.2d at pp. 813, 814.)
“All this, of course, provides only a rough approximation of how dangerous the gun was and leaves us with a judgment to make. Helpful for this purpose is the series of California cases dealing with when a vehicle owner who leaves the keys in the ignition has a duty to third parties injured by negligent operation by a thief or other unauthorized person who uses the vehicle. These cases provide a scale of degrees of dangerousness against which we can measure our case by analogy.” (Which is utter bull poop, of course, but is an example of how courts can twist reality to arrive at the desired decision. Car thief, and light trigger pull weight are analogous?)
Consider this from Louisiana:
Willy shot Taffy, his girlfriend, and tried to claim it was an accident. (Actually he shot her with a .40 cal. and then told her father she was “just faking it” as she lay on the floor of the garage bleeding out, so we are not dealing with a rocket scientist here).
“Again, the evidence established that Ms. Hargrove was in a defensive posture at the time of the shooting and that the bullet did not ricochet off of any other object or surface prior to hitting her, indicating a straight-on shot. Mr. Hargrove testified that Defendant fled the scene immediately, which further allows for an inference of guilt. Testimony was introduced to the effect that .40 caliber weapons generally have a trigger pull weight which greatly reduces the chances of accidental discharge and that, generally, an individual has to have intent to pull the trigger of a .40 caliber weapon.** Finally, Ms. Hargrove stated that Defendant ‘just shot me.’ This evidence as a whole indicates that the gun was not discharged by accident.
**Corporal Walls allowed that it would be possible for a .40 caliber weapon to accidentally discharge. He also noted, however, that “pull pressures” are normally assigned to triggers in order to prevent accidental discharge and that, absent another object having lodged on the trigger (such as a tree branch), an individual would “have to have intent” to pull the trigger of a .40 caliber weapon.
There are 3 or 4 others, all of them accidental discharge defenses. I found no reported appellate cases where any discussion on this issue occurred in the context of a self-defense case, nor would I expect to. In order to claim self-defense, you must admit that you purposefully shot an assailant. If you intended to do so, the pull weight of the trigger and the extent of one’s training are largely irrelevant. (“Pull weight schmull weight, it would not have mattered if it had a 15-pound trigger pull. I shot the SOB until he stopped trying to kill me...”) It won’t keep some enterprising prosecutor from bleating about it in court, creating an issue to confuse a jury already drowning in facts and bullets and blood, which is never a good idea. And there is no way of knowing how many cases at the trial level there are out there where this precise thing has happened.
So, personally, if anyone asks me, I tell them never to screw around with the pull weight on a self-defense trigger, or if they simply must, have it done by a professional gunsmith, and keep it within factory recommendations.
CLINT SMITH
Lastly, I reached out to my friend Clint Smith, of Thunder Ranch fame. When asked what the trigger pull weight of a 1911 should be, he responded succinctly, “4 pounds, clean break.”
Hand Loaded Self-Defense Ammunition
Although most well-educated armed citizens have over time come to understand the arguments against using hand loaded ammunition for self defense, the question still comes up from time to time. In over half of the firearms-related cases on which I have worked as an expert, I ended up doing some type of ballistic testing involving either a recoil/ejection pattern test or a gunshot residue/stippling test.
The protocols for these tests are outlined in shooting incident reconstruction textbooks, all of which indicate that the very same type of ammunition must be used to render the tests credible. If I am the expert witness on a case that requires ballistic testing, I hope that the ammunition needed is readily available. If you are using your own hand loads, any testing I might do would be suspect, because even if you supplied hand loads from the same batch as that of the subject ammunition, the question could be raised as to legitimacy of that testing. A skilled reloader could even fashion a hand load to show the same stippling pattern as that discovered as evidence at the scene, but fired from a different distance.
Consequently, it is very important for the paid expert of an innocent defendant in a criminal prosecution to be able to perform ballistic tests with the same ammunition as was used in the shooting. This is the real argument against using hand loads for self defense.
Summary
How can members of the Network prevent falling prey to the misleading and distracting accusations a prosecutor may make about their defense gun or ammunition? To summarize–
1) On a production gun (not a custom gun), leave the trigger pull weight alone.
If you want a lighter trigger, get a different gun, but don’t lighten the trigger below the factory settings. Smoothing the trigger pull and eliminating over travel should be fine, as long as you don’t lighten the pull weight.
2) If using a high-end custom pistol, a 4-pound trigger pull weight is the industry standard, and anything lighter could be argued as unreasonable. For folks like Scott, why not set up another Wilson Combat 1911 pistol with a 4- to 5-pound trigger and use that one for self-defense, and the other for the range? What a great excuse to buy another gun!
3) If you modify your gun it is best to have that modification performed by a competent gunsmith, one who will be willing to go to court and testify why he performed the modification. You had better be personally prepared to logically explain why that modification was done, too.
4) Never deactivate a safety device on a gun you use for self defense. If you just cannot live with whatever safety device you want to deactivate, then simply change to a different weapon type that does not have that feature.
5) Use only factory ammunition for self defense and buy it in sufficient quantity that if exemplars are needed for testing, they are available.
6) Leave the cute, custom paint jobs, engraving and cartoon logos off your serious self-defense guns. The place for those affectations is at the range, not in the courtroom.
In closing, when pondering any question about self-defense equipment, use your God-given common sense. When I was in a position to command law enforcement officers, I would tell them, “If whatever you are thinking of doing is possibly a bad idea, then it probably is a bad idea. Don’t do it.”
To apply that logic to self-defense gun modifications, I’d say, “If you have to ask whether a modification or alteration to your pistol will hurt you in court, it probably will.”
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15. U.S. adds nearly 200 million privately owned guns
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More guns, less crime. Who’da thunk it?
Member Bill Albritton emailed me this:
From breitbart.com: http://tinyurl.com/np2ynla
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government ... decreases/
U.S. ADDS NEARLY 200 MILLION PRIVATELY OWNED GUNS, FIREARM SUICIDE RATE DECREASES
by AWR Hawkins
September 20, 2015
From 1981 to 2013 the U.S. added 195 million privately owned firearms and the firearm-related suicide rate fell by five percent.
This is significant when one considers that firearm-related suicide is actually the category that drives gun violence numbers used by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and the various gun control groups funded by Michael Bloomberg. In fact, “with firearm murder and firearm accident death rates…at historic lows,” Bloomberg’s Center for Gun Policy at John Hopkins University has set it sights on pushing gun control as a solution to suicide. The problem they face is that Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) numbers show that a decrease in the firearm-related suicide rate correlated with an increase in the number of privately owned firearms.
According to the NRA-ILA, CDC numbers “[covering] years 1981 through 2013? show “the firearm suicide rate (the number of suicides per 100,000 population) decreased five percent” at the very time that the U.S. added nearly 200 million privately owned guns.
It is interesting to note that while “the firearm suicide rate” fell 5 percent, “the non-firearm suicide rate increased 27 percent.”
It is not uncommon to see the number of firearm-related suicides run 80 to 100 percent higher than the number of firearm-related homicides for a given year–see CDC numbers for 2012, 2013 for examples–and gun controllers see these figures as fertile ground for anti-gun policy promotion. But the hard numbers show that sharp increases in gun ownership were accompanied by a decrease in “the firearm suicide rate” over the time period 1981-2013.
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16. Summer of bloodshed as US murder rates rise
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Anybody think our murder rates are rising just by happenstance?
Member Brendan Mooney emailed me this:
From yahoo.com: http://tinyurl.com/p86m462
http://news.yahoo.com/summer-bloodshed- ... 34837.html
Summer of bloodshed as US murder rates rise
by Sébastien Blanc
September 20, 2015
Washington (AFP) - Dre, who turns 15 this month, has been unable to walk or talk since he was shot in the head, his plight a sad example of the toll taken by worsening US gun violence.
Deandra Yates, Dre's mother, felt her world collapse in February 2014 when an unidentified youth -- aged 17 or 18, she says -- fired 22 shots into a birthday party her son was attending.
"They told me he would die or he'd be a vegetable but that's not true," she told AFP, reaching into her handbag for a photo of her son at a rehab center.
"If you put on music he dances in his wheelchair, he smiles at you, he looks at you."
Her son's assailant has never been apprehended and the incident is just one more such case in a country where 88 deaths a day, including suicides, are caused by firearms.
After years in decline, the pace of homicides is on the rise in some 30 big American cities.
As of Friday, homicides in the capital Washington were up 40.5 percent from a year ago at 111, police said.
The situation is also worrying in St Louis and Milwaukee, which saw the number of murders go up 60 percent and 76 percent respectively year-to-date from August 11 to August 31, The New York Times reported recently.
On September 2, Chicago recorded nine dead by gunfire -- eight homicides and the accidental death of an infant -- the most in a single day in a decade.
In Cleveland, police chief Calvin Williams exclaimed last Wednesday that "enough is enough" after a three-year-old died of a gunshot wound, just days after the fatal shooting of a 5-year-old.
- Armed for $280 -
Other big cities worried by the rising murder curve are New York, Philadelphia, Dallas and New Orleans.
Experts have trouble explaining exactly what is happening and say different factors are at work that vary from city to city. Drugs, gang wars and the proliferation of arms are cited.
"In my state, Indiana, our gun laws are very lax, so a lot of people have access to them and they are flooding the streets with them," said Yates.
"Teenagers would tell you they can get a gun for $280 and sell it, circulate it or use it."
Conservative officials have recently pointed to a so-called Ferguson effect.
Their notion is that the police are more reluctant to do their jobs because of the massive criticism unleashed by the police shooting of an unarmed black teen in Ferguson, Missouri last year.
The result, they contend, is that criminals have become emboldened.
Another city that has become a symbol of urban violence is Baltimore, which was rocked by riots in April over the death of a black man, Freddie Gray, from injuries suffered while being transported in a police van.
Baltimore had more murders in the first eight months of this year than in all of 2014.
Confronted with the worsening trend, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake fired the city's police chief and has since announced she will not run for re-election.
Rawlings-Blake attributes her city's rising murder rate not to random violence but score-settling by gangs.
"The victims and the alleged perpetrators, the suspects in these cases are known to each other," she said in a recent interview with MSNBC.
"In the violence that we've seen in the late spring and through the summer, there was very little random violence," she said. "What we saw was people affiliated, either loosely or closely, with organized gangs or groups retaliating back and forth."
- 'It's almost like genocide' -
Meanwhile, the innocent have paid heavily in a summer of bloodshed that included the massacre of nine black worshippers at a church in Charleston, South Carolina and the shooting deaths of five members of the US military in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
On September 10, Yates traveled to Washington to demand tougher controls on gun sales in the United States.
With her on the steps of the US Capitol was Andy Parker, whose daughter Alison, a 24-year-old journalist, was gunned down last month during a live TV news broadcast in Virginia.
"Too many members of Congress remain in the pockets of the gun lobby and that has got to change," a grieving Parker said.
Nardyne Jefferies, who also was present, told AFP she lost her only daughter, a 16-year-old, in a burst of automatic rifle fire after attending the funeral of another youth who had been shot to death.
Margaret Eaddy came to Washington with a sign covered with pictures of her son, killed at 28.
"Gun violence is affecting our community really bad," she told AFP. "It's an epidemic, it's almost like genocide.”
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17. “Study:" Stricter gun laws keep firearms out of hands of youth [VIDEO]
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Would you trust a fox to design a hen house? The Brady Campaign is providing the data used by CDC to call for more gun control. Nothing could possibly be wrong with that.
Member Bill Albritton emailed me this:
More BS from the Centers for Disease Control.
From cnn.com: http://tinyurl.com/p9wglnb
http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/21/health/gu ... index.html
Study: Stricter state gun laws keep firearms out of hands of youth
By Carina Storrs, Special to CNN
September 21, 2015
(CNN)Teens who live in states with less restrictive gun laws may be more likely to carry guns, according to a study. They're able to access them because more adults in those states own guns, researchers said.
The researchers focused on high school-aged teens and found that youth from states with the least restrictive gun laws were more likely to have a gun while outside the home. Among 38 states studied, 5.7% of high school students from states with stricter laws carried a gun in the past 30 days. In states with weaker laws, 7.3% of students carried a gun in that time.
The data on youth came from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System. Data on gun laws came from the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a gun control advocacy group that scores states on gun laws, such as controls of firearm trafficking, measures to ensure child safety and restrictions on guns in public places. Researchers looked at data from 38 states in 2007, 2009 and 2011.
For every 10-point decrease in a state's gun law score, a teen was 9% more likely to report having carried a gun at least once in the last month.
"We were able to demonstrate for the first time that across all the states (in the study) that gun laws reduce youth gun carrying by limiting or reducing adult gun ownership," said Ziming Xuan, assistant professor of community health services at Boston University School of Public Health. Xuan is the lead author of the study, which was published on Monday in JAMA Pediatrics.
Easier access to guns means more teens carrying
The researchers also found that states with low gun control scores were also more likely to have high rates of adults who owned guns; this appeared to be the main reason for the increase in youth carrying guns. Previous research found that about a quarter of U.S. adolescents said they can easily access guns in their home.
The national minimum age to buy a handgun is 18 and some states require people to be 21. Some states also have laws on the minimum age to possess a firearm, but may make exceptions for activities such as hunting and target practice.
Although the study did not address whether fewer teenagers carrying guns could lead to less youth gun violence and death, it is a "reasonable conclusion," Xuan said. Guns are involved in 83% of murders committed by youth and 45% of suicides, according to CDC data.
The states with the lowest scores, meaning least-restrictive gun laws, were Utah (1.3), Alaska, Kentucky and Oklahoma (all 2.0), whereas those with the highest scores -- meaning more restrictive gun laws -- were California (79.7), New Jersey (69.3) and Massachusetts (57.7). The Brady Campaign uses a 100-point scale.
The researchers found an overlap between the states with the lowest scores and those with the highest prevalence of adult gun ownership. For example, in Utah and Alaska, 52% and 63% of adults had guns, respectively, compared with 40% and 29% in California and New Jersey.
Although the study suggests that gun laws indirectly affect teen gun carrying by limiting adult gun ownership, laws that focus on youth gun safety may have direct effects as well, Xuan said. For example, laws that require adults to keep handguns locked or inaccessible to children, and laws that put age restrictions on the purchase of guns, could help, he said.
"The important message in this paper is that gun control really involves comprehensive laws from both dimensions," both to make sure gun ownership among adults is safe and to restrict ownership and use in youth, Xuan said.
Understanding why young people carry guns
Gun laws have less effect on whether some groups of youth carry guns, according to the study: All teens in grades 9 and 10, and black and Hispanic teens. Black and Hispanic teens in particular "deserve very special attention" because of the high rates of gun carrying in those groups, Xuan said.
Finding out why should be the subject of further research, said Michele Cooley-Strickland, research psychologist in the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California Los Angeles, who was not involved in the research. "If we understand the why, we can work to prevent it."
The study is a "good first start," she said. But adults are going to continue to own guns, so youth will continue to have a way to get these weapons -- researchers need to determine the reasons that teens want to pick them up in the first place, Cooley-Strickland said.
To answer the question, researchers will need to look at gun culture and attitudes in different areas of the country, she said.
In states such as Wyoming, which has a gun law score of 8.3 and where 66% of adults own guns, children might be more interested in carrying guns for hunting, Cooley-Strickland said. Her research in the Baltimore area, however, suggests that children carry guns, knives and other weapons because they are in high-crime areas and want to protect themselves and their loved ones, she said.
"I think it goes back to the reasons that youth are carrying weapons, and African-American and Hispanic youth are more likely to live in inner city areas in which there's higher violence. ... So these youth might feel more at risk for harm.”
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18. Comparing statistics government doesn't show you [VIDEO]
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Member Walter Jackson emailed me this:
From freedomoutpost.com: http://tinyurl.com/ps3ok6v
http://freedomoutpost.com/2015/09/compa ... isarm-you/
Comparing Statistics Government Doesn't Show You in Order to Disarm You
by Tim Brown
September 18, 2015
Apparently, the federal government will use any ridiculous statistic to further their agenda of disarming people. With the statistics they provide, is it any wonder that they don't ban knives, cars and other inanimate objects that people are killed with?
A short video from Crush The Street delves into violence in America and reveals the statistics which are being used to justify complete disarmament of the American people. Of course, it is sarcastic in nature and follows the progressive socialist ideology to its logical conclusion.
Last year 285 people died from a rifle according to FBI crime statistics. This includes the deadly assault rifles. It’s a shocking number.
But upon further investigation we learned that 1,490 U.S. citizens died from a knife attack…
The media has had us focused on guns for too long…
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VA-ALERT: VCDL Update 11/5/15
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OakRidgeStars
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