VA-ALERT: VCDL Update 11/20/15

[OakRidgeStars]

VA-ALERT: VCDL Update 11/20/15

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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. Donald Trump: CHP holders ‘have an obligation to carry'
2. Must watch gun-control song/video
3. Five teens arrested in connection to gun thefts
4. Obama drops the pretense
5. Dems ready sweeping new guns bill
6. Carson attacks prove media prefer schoolchildren helpless and dead
7. Clinton unveils gun-control plan
8. Would-be killers target gun-free zones
9. How to create a gun-free America in 5 easy steps [VIDEO]
10. September sees record gun sales
11. Washington Post lists mass shootings stopped by armed citizens
12. Homeowner stops 3 robbers by pleading for mercy...
13. People magazine calls for action against gun violence [VIDEO]
14. Zero correlation between homicide rate and gun laws
15. Guns are not the problem: My story
16. [NY] Correction: Family-meat cleaver killings story
17. [KS] Regents prepare to open universities to guns under new law
18. License bullet sales, and you'll reduce gun violence


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1. Donald Trump: CHP holders ‘have an obligation to carry'
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I carry everywhere I can legally do so. You should be doing the same, especially now.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government ... -violence/

or

http://tinyurl.com/pldseum

Exclusive: Donald Trump Says Concealed Carry Permit Holders ‘Have an Obligation to Carry’
by Michael Patrick Leahy18 Nov 20152,519

GOP Presidential front runner Donald Trump says the 13 million concealed carry permit holders in the United States have an obligation to carry, “but we must do it in such a way as to raise serious doubts in the minds of those who might be considering violence in America.”

In a statement on concealed carry responsibility released exclusively to Breitbart News Trump says:

There are nearly 13 million concealed carry permit holders in the United States who are part of the 100 million gun owners who defend the Constitutional right to “keep and bear arms.” This fundamental liberty is held closest by those who have gone through the process of vetting required to be entrusted with the ability to defend themselves, their families and their property with concealed weapons.

The concept of concealed carry is as much intended to deter criminal activity as it is to provide direct defense of those who have those permits. Not all concealed carry permit holders “carry” all the time. Thus, the deterrent value is that those who might contemplate criminal behavior will think twice when that doubt exists.

Carrying a weapon is not always feasible or appropriate. However, given the increased tensions that are the result of continued, escalating terrorism around the world, more legitimately armed individuals on the streets is a positive outcome. Each permit holder must make the decision to carry or not carry. I will carry more often than I have in the past, and I am sure other concealed permit holders will do the same. Do we have an obligation to carry? The answer is “yes,” but we must do it in such a way as to raise serious doubts in the minds of those who might be considering violence in America. Deterring violence is far better than dealing with the aftermath of an act of terror. Less blood, more security. That is what will make America great again.

On Saturday, Breitbart News reported that Nashville talk radio show host Ralph Bristol said “concealed carry permit holders have a duty to be armed” in light of the November 13 terrorist attacks in Paris.

Bristol’s statement came in Lebanon, Tennessee during the fifth stop of his “Second Amendment is Homeland Security” tour.


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2. Must watch gun-control song/video
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ROFL!

Thanks to member Donna Hurlock for the link:

http://dailycaller.com/2015/11/18/the-g ... old-video/

or

http://tinyurl.com/o8gfycd


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3. Five teens arrested in connection to gun thefts
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http://www.13newsnow.com/story/news/cri ... /73479972/

or

http://tinyurl.com/npbqfjz


Police arrest five teenagers in connection to gun thefts in Newport News
by Velma Scaife and Brian Farrell, 13News Now
October 7, 2015

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (WVEC) -- Police arrested five teenagers in connection with a gun shop burglary that took place on September 23.

Someone in the group drove a stolen car into The Marksman Firearms Training Center & Indoor Shooting Range. He and two other people grabbed 24 guns then ran out of the building.

Security cameras recorded the burglary which owner George McClain said took less than a minute.

Police arrested 18-year-old Robert Wayles Watkins IV, two 16-year-old boys, and two 15-year-old boys. Watkins is a convicted felon.

"Where's mom and dad? That was the first thing I thought about. When I see ages, where's mom and dad?" McClain said Tuesday.

"It makes you wonder if they didn't have someone much older, much more mature coaching them on what to do," shared McClain. "It was very well thought out. They had their time plan laid out, you know, in and out in 57 seconds."

Of the 24 guns that were taken, police recovered at least eight of them.

"The biggest thing is we don't want to see firearms on the street, you know, in the hand of the gangs, or in the hands of kids, or anyone that hasn't had proper training, or is a felon," McClain told 13News Now.

McClain said in making repairs, the building as will be fortified as well as the display cases inside the store.

"You expect something like this would be adults maybe on hard times, you know kids, you go home and enjoy life. You know everyone says you only live once. You live every day. You only die once," shared McClain. "It's a failure of parents. I mean, I have to put the blame back on that. If you're not raising your kids right, this is the circumstance that we find them in."

The suspects are charged as followed:

Watkins has been charged with one count each of burglary, grand larceny of a firearm, felony destruction to property, receiving stolen property and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, four counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor and three counts of conspiracy to commit a felony.

A 16-year-old Newport News male has been charged with one count each of burglary and grand larceny, receiving a stolen firearm, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and possession of a firearm by a juvenile and two counts of conspiracy to commit a felony.

A second 16-year-old Newport News male has been charged with three counts each of receiving a stolen firearm and possession of a firearm by a juvenile.

A 15-year-old Newport News male has been charged with one count each of discharging a firearm in a public place, receiving a stolen firearm and possession of a firearm by a juvenile.

A second 15-year-old Newport News male has been charged with two counts each of receiving a stolen firearm and possession of a firearm by a juvenile.

Watkins is currently being held at the Newport News City Jail, while all four juveniles are in the custody of the Secure Detention Center.


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4. Obama drops the pretense
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Member Montford Oakes emailed me this:


http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... private-a/
or
http://tinyurl.com/naz8von


Obama drops the pretense
He aims for confiscation of private arms, not ‘control’ of guns
By THE WASHINGTON TIMES
October 5, 2015

President Obama is finally out in open as an advocate not of gun control, but of eliminating guns in the hands of the people. The White House announced Monday that the president is working on executive orders to do what Congress won’t. Mr. Obama would eviscerate the Second Amendment to accomplish his goal of disarming ordinary law-abiding Americans. He is determined not to let the tragedy in Oregon go to waste.

In a few short sentences, he validates every fear of those who believe the president, who said earlier that he wanted only “common sense” restrictions on the ownership of guns, was actually advocating the first steps to confiscation. His critics argued that he and his congressional allies, particularly Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, were out to establish a federal gun registry, which would lead to confiscation here, as it has in other places. The president and his defenders scoffed, reminding everyone that Mr. Obama declared during the 2012 campaign that he not only believes in the right of Americans to keep and bear arms, but promising in paid advertisements, that he would “never take your guns.”

Now, exploiting the tragedy in Oregon and the mourning for the innocents everywhere, he makes his meaning clear. “We know other countries in response to one mass shooting have been able to craft laws that almost eliminate mass shootings,” he said last week. “Friends of ours, allies of ours, Great Britain, Australia, countries like ours. So we know there are ways to prevent it.”

Violent crime in national “gun free zones” in both Britain and Australia has increased since these restrictions were put in place, leaving the unarmed Britons and Australians without guns to defend themselves. We could have a serious debate with the president and his allies, saying at last what they actually mean. Eviscerating the Second Amendment and confiscating the 350 million guns in private hands in this country as a cure for tragedy ignores the fact that since 1994, while gun ownership was increasing by 62 percent, homicide by guns was cut by half. The president would further exploit tragedy to deprive Americans of their constitutional right to hunt, shoot and defend their families with guns.

Hillary Clinton, to no one’s surprise, joins Mr. Obama’s scheme. She says the U.S. Supreme Court was wrong to uphold the right of Americans to own guns, and if she makes it to the White House she will see to it that the Supreme Court reverses its decision to uphold the Second Amendment.

All Americans are horrified by death visited on the innocent by lunatics with guns, and most Americans understand that it’s the lunatic and not the gun that must be held accountable. One of the survivors of the Oregon shooting observed that if the victims had been armed, lives might have been saved. Dismantling the government’s ability to deal with the seriously mentally ill is more to blame for recurring tragedy, not the innocent American who breaks no law and keeps a gun in the closet.


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5. Dems ready sweeping new guns bill
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And remember, the ONLY way they can do any of this, is with mandatory, Universal Background Checks and associated gun registration - and once they have that, our freedoms will soon be history. - member Paul Kent


Executive Member Dave Hicks emailed me this:


http://www.politico.com/story/2015/10/g ... ats-214530
or
http://tinyurl.com/pswpa98


Dems ready sweeping new guns bill
By BURGESS EVERETT and SEUNG MIN KIM
October 7, 2015

Senate Democrats will begin a campaign to combat gun violence on Thursday as party leaders prepare to unveil a sweeping package of legislation that builds on their failed 2013 attempt to require universal background checks for gun purchases, according to senators and aides.

The goal is to have the entire caucus, minus perhaps one centrist Democrat, backing a legislative package aimed at preventing guns from ending up in the hands of the wrong people.

In addition to background checks, Democrats are aiming to add new money for the Justice Department’s existing background checks system that has recently faltered and include provisions to prevent domestic abusers from buying guns, sources familiar with the package said. The measure is also expected to include a proposal from Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) intended to cut down on gun trafficking, sources said.

The package, which will be discussed at a Thursday press conference but is unlikely to be officially introduced this week, also aims to ensure that all key records are sent to a federal database and would make straw purchasing a federal crime.

“We want to solve the problem and not just talk. So we’re putting forward something that’s solid and is supported by 90 percent of the American people,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), a leading advocate for stricter gun laws. “The critics of the Congress are right: We’re not doing enough to protect against gun violence, so we’re stepping up to show that we can do it.”

The proposal is not likely to get a vote under the reign of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), but Democrats say the package is intended to show that Democrats are serious about reducing gun deaths but can’t make headway in a Republican Senate. Republicans, led by Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas, are pitching changes to the U.S. mental health system as a preferred way to deal with mass shootings.

Democratic leaders are wary that their rank-and-file could defect and begin supporting the Cornyn bill, which is backed by the National Rifle Association and is not viewed by Democrats as an effective way to combat day-to-day gun violence in big cities like Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore and St. Louis.

“I sense almost a seismic shift in public reaction. It may just be the aftermath of the Oregon shooting but I really do think it will happen,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), referring to the massacre at a community college in Roseburg, Ore., last week. “That point will come. And it may not be everything we want but there will be steps toward gun violence protection.”

Senate Democrats are rallying around three key points: Closing loopholes in the current background checks system, toughening up background checks in general, and shutting down the illegal pipeline of guns.

"All three of these principles would bolster the background check system by strengthening it and stopping those who try to evade it," according to a Dear Colleague letter obtained by POLITICO from Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, who lead the Senate Democrats' policy and messaging arm. "These principles will be a rallying point for a public that is eager for Congressional action, and will be the basis for future legislation that we will demand receive a vote."

Democratic leaders are wary of making the kinds of compromises they did during a 2013 effort to combat gun violence, only to see that measure fall in the face of bipartisan opposition. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid won’t be able to attend the press conference on Thursday morning on the East Front of the Capitol (he is attending a funeral for a former staffer), but he wrote his caucus on Wednesday to urge a strong turnout among Senate Democrats.

“It is within our power to reduce gun violence and prevent mass shootings. Inaction is not an option,” Reid wrote in a separate Dear Colleague letter obtained by POLITICO. “We will again introduce a series of proposals to prevent those who should not have access to a gun from getting one.”

Democrats said that all their members except for Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota are expected to ultimately back the effort. Heitkamp said in an interview she wasn’t familiar with what her colleagues were planning but hasn’t changed her stance since 2013.

“We’ll look at it but I made my position pretty clear on background checks and I don’t plan on changing it,” Heitkamp said.

Heitkamp did support cracking down on straw purchases — where one person buys a firearm for someone else in order to evade gun laws — and gun trafficking in 2013, despite opposing the background checks legislation alongside three other centrist Democrats, all of whom are no longer in the Senate. Another conservative Democrat, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, still supports the background checks proposal he devised alongside Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) in 2013, but was not yet familiar with the new, larger package, an aide said.

What’s not clear is whether any Republicans would support the measure or if it would be a purely partisan political exercise. McConnell said on Tuesday that he’d “be taking a look” at Cornyn’s suggestion but aides declined to speculate on any imminent action on the issue. Toomey said in a brief interview that he’s "pursuing all options” to combat gun deaths.

But Toomey, one of the most vulnerable incumbents in the Senate, has not yet reintroduced his proposal with Manchin -- which Democrats view as an opportunity. Now that they are taking the lead, they hope to coax out positions from GOP senators up for reelection, putting them on the defensive as gun violence across the country continues. In addition to Toomey, Sens. Mark Kirk of Illinois, John McCain of Arizona and Susan Collins of Maine supported the 2013 background checks legislation; Kirk and McCain are also up for reelection next year.

Democratic sources said they are unlikely to offer their package as an amendment to unrelated legislation, instead pushing Republicans to either have a wide open gun debate or risk continued Democratic attacks. Republican aides declined to comment on legislation that has not been introduced.


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6. Carson attacks prove media prefer schoolchildren helpless and dead
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Member Walter Jackson emailed me this:


http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism ... -and-dead/
or
http://tinyurl.com/potrfop


GUN CONTROL TRUTHERS: CARSON ATTACKS PROVE MEDIA PREFER SCHOOLCHILDREN HELPLESS AND DEAD
by John Nolte
October 7, 2015

In just three short years, after 12 mass murderers have targeted 12 schools, too many of them with tragic success, the national media’s position on this matter is painfully clear: the media wantsour schoolchildren helpless and dead.

The media won’t say that of course. What they do say is that the answer to stopping these tragedies is a unicorn called gun control.

Yes, the elite media is nothing more than a bunch of Gun Control Truthers.

After nearly a dozen test cases, we know for a fact that there is no gun control law that would have stopped a single one of these massacres and attempted massacres.

Despite the fact that we know this, despite all the Science proving this, the Gun Control Truthers in the national media continue to not only push Gun Control Trutherism, they attack any idea that involves any attempt to not stand there like a sitting duck as a madman with a firearm picks our children off one by one.

There are very real practical solutions to this very real epidemic.

1. Secure our schools:

Media won’t talk about that.

2. Put armed security guards in schools:

Media won’t talk about that. When it’s brought up, the media acts horrified at the idea of shattering the innocence of children with armed guards in schools. The media is a-okay with shattering the innocence of schoolchildren with sex education but not with a good guy carrying a gun who might save their lives.

3. Train, certify, and arm volunteer teachers:

Anytime someone brings this up, like Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson did this week, you’d think he suggested we teach first graders about homosexuality. Oh, wait.

4. Fight back when confronted by a mad gunman:

Again, being proactive, Carson suggested that instead of waiting to die, students charge the gunman. Someone will probably die doing so but that approach will almost certainly lower the death count. It is a brave and risky thing to do. No one should be judged for not doing it. Carson is not judging anyone for not doing it. Nevertheless, he is being murdered in the media for daring to suggest such a thing and those who are the most self-righteous and sanctimonious, like MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, are laughably attacking Carson for “criticizing the victims.”

5. Stop advertising gun-free zones:

Put a sign out front of a journalist’s home that reads “GUN FREE HOME” and watch how quickly it is torn down. No journalist would advertise their home and family as helpless, but that’s what they want advertised outside of your child’s school. This is utter madness.

—

So what are we to glean from all this?

There is only one answer.

The media is terrified a solution mightl come along before Democrats have had an opportunity to exploit piles of dead schoolchildren into tougher gun control laws.

Like the Democrats, the national media knows that without dead schoolchildren chances are almost zero they will ever be able to pass federal laws that confiscate our guns. Therefore…

The national media and Democrats despise any idea that involves people standing up for themselves. In general, they loath the very idea of self-sufficiency and rugged individualism, but if applied to these school shootings, such a thing could undo all of their gun control dreams.

That’s why, unless the prescription is a bigger federal government, the media either ignores or attacks as crazy all ideas that are not a government solution.

That’s why the media is treating Carson as an extremist loon for daring to suggest we pro-actively secure our children and fight back rather than risk certain death.

The media’s Gun Control Truthers are not just anti-science, they are dangerous partisans who time and again prove they would rather see our children dead than protected.

None of the four solutions listed above are 100%, but at least they give our kids a fighting chance.

A[s]k yourselves: Why don’t the media and Democrats want out children to have even that?

Wanting everyone helpless and dead is no virtue.


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7. Clinton unveils gun-control plan
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http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/pre ... ntrol-plan

or

http://tinyurl.com/pdrz9ve


Clinton unveils gun-control plan
By Jesse Byrnes
October 05, 2015

Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton announced new gun-control measures on Monday in the wake of the mass shooting at a community college in Oregon.

Clinton's gun-control proposal, announced in New Hampshire, calls for closing the so-called gun show loophole on private gun sales, potentially through executive action, and allow victims of gun violence to sue weapon manufacturers by proposing a repeal of legislation.

During a pair of town halls in New Hampshire, Clinton also called for eliminating the "Charleston loophole," a reference to the June shooting at a church in Charleston, S.C., by barring those with felony records from buying guns if results of a federal background check aren't returned within three days.

"I really do want to push hard to get more sensible restraints on gun ownership in the wrong hands, and then to try and keep track of people who shouldn’t have guns," Clinton said during the first event aired on NBC's "Today Show."

"I want to work with the Congress – we got very close. There was a bipartisan bill, it didn’t go all the way, but I will also look for ways as president to tighten some of these checks, to get more of the background checks done on more of the sales at gun shows and online than we currently have," she added.

The measures Clinton announced Monday build on other measures she has already called for, including universal background checks, withholding guns from domestic abusers and renewing an assault weapons ban.

The measures come as Clinton seeks to shore up support among those on the left from rivals amid a surge for Sen.Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has yet to unveil a gun-control plan. Sanders continues to lead Clinton in the Granite State, according to a poll released over the weekend. Another Democratic candidate, former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, on Sunday touted a package of gun-control measures passed during his tenure and called on the two candidates leading the Democratic field to adopt initiatives on the national level.


Clinton called for new action on gun control following last week's shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore., which left nine people dead. The latest mass shooting has led to President Obama and many Democrats to renew calls for action. "This epidemic of gun violence knows no boundaries, knows no limits of any kind," Clinton said Monday.

"How many people have to die before we actually act? Before we come together as a nation?" asked Clinton, who later choked up when speaking about the grief felt by parents of those killed during the Sandy Hook shooting.

She also reiterated a challenge initiated last week to promote an alternative to the National Rifle Association, calling on gun owners to "form another organization and take back the second amendment from these extremists."

Many leading Republican presidential candidates have pushed back on calls for gun control following last week's shooting, instead focusing on issues such as mental health. Clinton bashed those responses as an "admission of defeat.”


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8. Would-be killers target gun-free zones
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Member Clay Rhoades emailed me this:


http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/thin ... zones.html
or
http://tinyurl.com/qayoel9


Would-be killers target gun-free zones
By John R. Lott Jr.
October 7, 2015

There has been another horrible crime committed and once again it is followed by calls for so-called universal background checks on private transfers of guns.

Hillary Clinton vows, if she becomes president, to use executive action to enact such rules. She is angry that Republicans “refuse to do anything” about mass shootings.

But gun-control advocates face a couple of problems.

First, the law that President Obama and other Democrats keep pushing wouldn’t have stopped Thursday’s shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon, where expanded background checks have been in place since August. It wouldn’t have stopped any of the other mass public shootings during Obama’s presidency.

Second, virtually all mass public shootings take place in gun-free zones, and Thursday’s attack was no exception. If the media more regularly reported when a shooting occurs in a gun-free zone, more people would realize that gun-control laws don’t deter criminals who are looking for select targets where people can’t fight back. More Americans would come to feel that gun ownership makes them safer.

Oregon law does allow permitted concealed handguns on school property. The New York Times, Media Matters, and others have been quick to pounce on this fact. What has been ignored, however, is that public educators in Oregon have undermined the law by putting bans in faculty and student handbooks.

There may be no criminal sanctions for violating the ban, but faculty face termination and students risk expulsion. Those are life-altering penalties. Faculty members undoubtedly won’t get another academic job if they committed a firearms violation. Expelled students are very unlikely to be admitted into another college.

Although Umpqua can theoretically provide written exemptions for the bans, school president Rita Calvin wouldn’t even let the college’s security guards carry guns.

Only people unaffiliated with the college can carry on campus. But even they are subject to a 2011 Oregon appeals court decision that allowed schools to ban guns in their buildings.

What all these rules mean is that no potential victims — students, faculty, or those unaffiliated with the college — were able to defend themselves in the classroom where the attack occurred.

Some point to the one student, a veteran, who news reports noted still carried his gun despite the college’s warnings, as evidence that the school wasn’t a gun-free zone. Unfortunately, he was far removed from the attack.

Mark Kelly, founder of the gun-control group Americans for Responsible Solutions, was asked on CNN last Sunday about the Oregon college being a gun-free zone that “might attract bad guys.”

Kelly claimed that less than 15 percent of mass shootings have occurred in a gun-free zone. But Kelly was relying on a study sponsored by anti-gun advocate Michael Bloomberg that based its numbers on whether newspaper articles mentioned if a shooting occurred in a gun-free zone. That isn’t very useful. The media haven’t cared about this fact. Determining a more precise number requires a lot more research.

What motivates mass public shootings is also quite different than gang fights, but Bloomberg’s study mixes the two together.

Since at least 1950, all but two public mass shootings in America have taken place where general citizens are banned from carrying guns. In Europe, there have been no exceptions. Every mass public shooting has occurred in a gun-free zone. And Europe is no stranger to mass shootings. It has been host to three of the six worst K-12 school shootings and by far the worst mass public shooting perpetrated by a single individual.

Still, Kelly said, “There’s no indication from other — from another study that any shooter intentionally went to a gun-free zone.”

Kelly might be surprised to learn that killers have frequently talked about their desire to attack where guns are banned. The suspect in the Charleston, S.C., shootings in June originally aimed to attack the College of Charleston. He chose a church instead because the college had armed guards.

The diary of the Batman movie theater killer, James Holmes, was finally released just a few months ago. He decided against attacking an airport because of the “substantial security.” Out of seven theaters showing the Batman movie premiere within 20 minutes of the suspect’s apartment in 2012, only one banned permitted concealed handguns. That’s the one he attacked.

Or take a couple of cases from last year. Elliot Rodger, who fatally shot three people in Santa Barbara, Calif., explained his reasoning in his 141-page “manifesto.” He ruled out various targets because he worried that someone with a gun would cut short his killing spree. Justin Bourque shot to death three people in Canada. His Facebook page made fun of gun bans, with pictures of defenseless victims explaining to killers that guns are prohibited.

Americans seem to understand these points. A June Rasmussen Reports survey found that 68 percent feel safer in neighborhoods where guns are allowed, while just 22 percent would feel less safe. A Gallup poll last December found by a whopping 63 to 30 percent margin that Americans thought guns in their homes made them safer.

If you don’t think deterrence works, ask yourself if you would post a sign in front of your home saying it is a “gun-free zone.” It’s very likely that such signs aren’t going to be going up in any neighborhoods soon.


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9. How to create a gun-free America in 5 easy steps [VIDEO]
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=2&v=bnoFKskvSq4


How to Create a Gun-Free America in 5 Easy Steps
by Austin Bragg, ReasonTV
October 7, 2015

Want to create a gun-free America in 5 easy steps?

Here's all there is to it:

Step 1: Elect. For a gun-free America, the first thing you'll need is two-thirds of Congress. So elect a minimum of 67 Senators and 290 Representatives who are on your side.

Step 2: Propose. Then, have them vote to propose an amendment to the Constitution which repeals Second Amendment gun rights for all Americans.

Step 3: Ratify. Then convince the legislators of 38 states to ratify that change.

At this point, the Second Amendment is history, but you've done nothing to decrease gun violence. All you've done is remove the barrier for Congress to act.

Step 4: Legislate. You need to enact "common sense" reform.

You can try to do what Australia did and...ban all guns? That's not at all what they did, but whatever, f**k it. Go big or go home, right?

It will have to be passed by Congress and signed by the president.

Great! The law is passed and guns are now illegal. The only thing left to do is...

Step 5: Enforce. Guns won't just disappear because you passed a law. You need to confiscate some 350 million guns scattered among 330 Million Americans.

Sure, you can try a buy-back program like Australia, but like Australia that will still leave behind anywhere from 60 percent to 80 percent of privately owned firearms.

The rest you have to take.

You'll need the police, the FBI, the ATF or the National Guard—all known for their nuanced approach to potentially dangerous situations—to go door-to-door, through 3.8 million square miles of this country and take guns, by force, from thousands, if not, millions of well-armed individuals. Many of whom would rather start a civil war than acquiesce.

So inevitably gun violence, which is currently at a historic low, will skyrocket.

But that is how you get a gun-free America in five easy steps.


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10. September sees record gun sales
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And the record sales are still continuing as I write this…

Member Doug Kinney emailed me this:


http://freebeacon.com/issues/september- ... gun-sales/
or
http://tinyurl.com/nj9w7fw


September Sees Record Gun Sales
Some see Democrats’ calls for executive action to restrict guns as cause
by Stephen Gutowski
October 7, 2015

The Federal Bureau of Investigation processed a record number of background checks in the month of September, indicating that gun sales were at an all time high for the month.

The FBI’s National Instant Background Check System processed 1,795,102 firearms related applications in September. That represents a new record: 335,739 more checks than the previous September high set in 2012, or a 23 percent increase.

The number of checks done in a particular month is considered a reliable gauge of how many gun sales have occurred since background checks are required on all sales made through licensed firearms dealers. The actual number of sales is likely higher since multiple firearms can be sold to the same person by a dealer under a single background check. The numbers also do not account for sales between private parties that do not require a background check.

September is the fifth month in a row to set a record for background checks. May, June, July, and August all produced record numbers. The summer of 2015 has seen the most gun sales on record.

The summer has also seen an increase in calls from some Democratic presidential candidates, including frontrunner Hillary Clinton, for new gun control laws. Clinton has said she would use executive orders to implement certain forms of gun control.

The Second Amendment Foundation said Democratic efforts to impose new gun control measures were fueling the sales increases. “We are seeing new record highs in gun sales due to the increased anti-gun rhetoric from Democratic candidates like Hillary Clinton,” said Alan Gottlieb, the group’s founder. “Their push for new restrictions on gun ownership is fueling gun sales.”

“If they really want less guns in private hands they should consider what happens every time they open their mouths.”


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11. Washington Post lists mass shootings stopped by armed citizens
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Member Walter Jackson emailed me this:


http://gunsnfreedom.com/washington-post ... izens/5839
or
http://tinyurl.com/nughsup


Washington Post Lists Mass Shootings Stopped By Armed Citizens
by Tim
October 7, 2015

It seems that the general public is looking to disprove Obama and his dismissal of armed response to active shooters. The hot topic of the day is, “has anyone armed ever stopped a mass shooting from happening?”. While statistics will never give the entire view of what could have happened, there are multiple reports of mass shootings being stopped by law abiding citizens as reported by the Washington Post:

1. In Chicago earlier this year, an Uber driver with a concealed-carry permit “shot and wounded a gunman [Everardo Custodio] who opened fire on a crowd of people.”

2. In a Philadelphia barber shop earlier this year, Warren Edwards “opened fire on customers and barbers” after an argument. Another man with a concealed-carry permit then shot the shooter; of course it’s impossible to tell whether the shooter would have kept killing if he hadn’t been stopped, but a police captain was quoted as saying that, “I guess he [the man who shot the shooter] saved a lot of people in there.”

3. In a hospital near Philadelphia, in 2014, Richard Plotts shot and killed the psychiatric caseworker with whom he was meeting, and shot and wounded his psychiatrist, Lee Silverman. Silverman shot back, and took down Plotts. While again it’s not certain whether Plotts would have killed other people, Delaware County D.A. Jack Whelan stated that, “If the doctor did not have a firearm, (and) the doctor did not utilize the firearm, he’d be dead today, and I believe that other people in that facility would also be dead”; Yeadon Police Chief Donald Molineux similar said that he “believe[d] the doctor saved lives.” Plotts was still carrying 39 unspent rounds when he was arrested. [UPDATE: I added this item since the original post.]

4. In Plymouth, Pa., in 2012, William Allabaugh killed one man and wounded another following an argument over Allabaugh being ejected from a bar. Allabaugh then approached a bar manager and Mark Ktytor and reportedly pointed his gun at them; Ktytor, who had a concealed-carry license, then shot Allabaugh. “The video footage and the evidence reveals that Mr. Allabaugh had turned around and was reapproaching the bar. Mr. [Ktytor] then acted, taking him down. We believe that it could have been much worse that night,” Luzerne County A.D.A. Jarrett Ferentino said.

5. Near Spartanburg, S.C., in 2012, Jesse Gates went to his church armed with a shotgun and kicked in a door. But Aaron Guyton, who had a concealed-carry license, drew his gun and pointed it at Gates, and other parishioners then disarmed Gates. Note that in this instance, unlike the others, it’s possible that the criminal wasn’t planning on killing anyone, but just brought the shotgun to church and kicked in the door to draw attention to himself or vent his frustration.

6. In Winnemucca, Nev., in 2008, Ernesto Villagomez killed two people and wounded two others in a bar filled with 300 people. He was then shot and killed by a patron who was carrying a gun (and had a concealed-carry license). It’s not clear whether Villagomez would have killed more people; the killings were apparently the result of a family feud, and I could see no information on whether Villagomez had more names on his list, nor could one tell whether he would have killed more people in trying to evade capture.

7. In Colorado Springs, Colo., in 2007, Matthew Murray killed four people at a church. He was then shot several times by Jeanne Assam, a church member, volunteer security guard and former police officer (she had been dismissed by a police department 10 years before, and to my knowledge hadn’t worked as a police officer since). Murray, knocked down and badly wounded, killed himself; it is again not clear whether he would have killed more people had he not been wounded, but my guess is that he would have (UPDATE: he apparently went to the church with more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition).

8. In Edinboro, Pa., in 1998, 14-year-old Andrew Wurst shot and killed a teacher at a school dance, and shot and injured several other students. He had just left the dance hall, carrying his gun — possibly to attack more people, though the stories that I’ve seen are unclear — when he was confronted by the dance hall owner James Strand, who lived next door and kept a shotgun at home. It’s not clear whether Wurst was planning to kill others, would have gotten into a gun battle with the police, or would have otherwise killed more people had Strand not stopped him.

9. In Pearl, Miss., in 1997, 16-year-old Luke Woodham stabbed and bludgeoned to death his mother at home, then killed two students and injured seven at his high school. As he was leaving the school, he was stopped by Assistant Principal Joel Myrick, who had gone out to get a handgun from his car. I have seen sources that state that Woodham was on the way to Pearl Junior High School to continue shooting, though I couldn’t find any contemporaneous news articles that so state.


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12. Homeowner stops 3 robbers by pleading for mercy...
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Just kidding.

Member Walter Jackson emailed me this:


http://bearingarms.com/homeowner-stops- ... ding-shot/
or
http://tinyurl.com/njajuco


Homeowner Stops Three Robbers By Pleading For Mercy. Just Kidding. He Shot Them.
by Bob Owens
October 6, 2015

Last week I saw a tweet from a muscular 20-something martial arts fan in Washington D.C. who haughtily said that guns are for “losers.” He asserted that a “real man” could handle an opponent with empty hands.

That’s great… if you are young, healthy, trained in martial arts, and only face a single unarmed opponent willing to play by your dojo-approved rules.

In the real world, where bad guys aren’t interested in fighting fair, Mr. Ego wouldn’t fair so well.

Bad guys set up ambushes. Thugs attack in numbers, and with weapons, attempting to overwhelm their victims before they can prepare themselves to fight. Many times these crude tactics work.

These tactics don’t work all the time, however, because some people refuse to be victims.

A suspected robber is on the run and three others are in the hospital after a homeowner opened fire this afternoon.

“Almost like fire crackers but louder,” said neighbor Felicia White.

According to police, three men went into a home on the 6900 block of Rolling Creek Lane and attacked the homeowner. They said one of the men stole something from his house during the struggle before the homeowner grabbed a gun.

Neighbors reported hearing five gun shots. Police said that bullets hit all three suspected robbers. They said the suspects jumped into a Silver Dodge Avenger driven by a fourth man, and that the suspects stopped at an intersection by nearby Duncanville High School.

The three men who suffered gunshot wounds were arrested and taken to the hospital.

If the homeowner had not been able to acquire his firearm, how do you think this three-on-one attack would have panned out?

I’m going to guess it would have wound up with the homeowner seriously injured or killed, with four criminals on the loose.

Because the homeowner was armed, he survived, and three injured criminals are facing criminals charges.


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13. People magazine calls for action against gun violence [VIDEO]
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Executive Member Dave Hicks emailed me this:


http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/08/media/p ... ney_latest

or

http://tinyurl.com/pvhhaen


People magazine calls for action against gun violence
by Brian Stelter
October 8, 2015

The next edition of People magazine comes with a call for action against gun violence and contact information for every member of the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives.

The highly unusual step by People, one of the best-known magazines in America, is the product of severe frustration among the editors.

In a video for People.com, editorial director Jess Cagle said that as the staff geared up to cover the shooting spree at a college in Oregon last week, it occurred to him, "We're doing the same thing that we always do."

"One thing is very, very clear," Cagle said, "and that is, as a country, we are not doing enough about gun violence."

The coverage of the Umpqua Community College massacre is accompanied by stories about victims of other mass shootings and the directory of congressional contact information.

.@people magazine publishes full spread urging readers to call Congress and #StopGunViolence http://t.co/mtoTBLJ8YH pic.twitter.com/XpMN2Qy8DE
— CAP Guns (@CAPgunsandcrime) October 7, 2015

On People.com, the House and Senate phone numbers are listed along with email addresses and Twitter handles. The nonprofit Sunlight Foundation helped with the data.

"We need to know that our representatives in Washington, D.C., are looking for solutions and not giving up, and they need to know if we agree or disagree with their strategies," Cagle wrote in a letter from the editor.

He added, "Let's make sure they know that from now on, 'routine' responses just won't cut it."

His letter was published online on Wednesday afternoon; the full issue will come out on newsstands across the country on Friday.

On Wednesday night a spokeswoman for the magazine said no traffic data for the story was immediately available but said there would be "great interest" in it.

Some of the interest was decidedly positive — the famed ABC producer Shonda Rhimes tweeted out the contact information and said "love this."

Love this. @people published phone #s of all 535 Congress members - contact ur reps about preventing gun violence. https://t.co/LsaRV7rqyb
— shonda rhimes (@shondarhimes) October 8, 2015

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence thanked People "for taking a stand on this issue and showing you've had enough."

But the magazine also anticipated accusations of advocacy journalism. Cagle said in an interview with the Associated Press that People was not trying to insert itself into politics.

"All we're saying is, 'Hold your representatives' feet to the fire,'" he told the news outlet. "'Let them know what you're thinking.' That's all. But everyone sort of projects their own baggage onto [the issue.]”


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14. Zero correlation between homicide rate and gun laws
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/vol ... -gun-laws/

or

http://tinyurl.com/ouecheq


Zero correlation between state homicide rate and state gun laws
By Eugene Volokh
October 6, 2015

There’s been much talk recently — including from President Obama — about there being a substantial correlation between state-level gun death rates and state gun laws. Now correlation obviously doesn’t equal causation; there may be lots of other factors that are the true causes of both of the things that are being measured. But if we do look for now at correlation, it seems to me that the key question should focus on state total homicide rates, or perhaps (for reasons I describe below) total intentional homicide plus accidental gun death rates. And it turns out that there is essentially zero correlation between these numbers and state gun laws.

To begin with, here’s why I focus on total homicide, rather than gun homicide or all gun deaths. First, few people care much about whether they are stabbed to death or shot to death. And even if gun restrictions do decrease gun homicides, that effect may well be offset (or more than offset) by an increase in other homicides:

1. Some killers would kill with knives or other weapons instead of guns.
2. To the extent that today some attempted killings are stopped by defenders who have guns, those attempts might succeed if the guns become harder enough for defenders to get.
3. To the extent that today some potential killings (or attempted robberies, rapes, or burglaries that lead to killings) are deterred by attackers’ fear of running into a gun, it might be that fewer will be deterred if guns become harder enough for defenders to get.

If — put together — these effects mean that tighter gun laws will mean 100 fewer gun homicides in a state but 100 more homicides with knives or other weapons, the net result would hardly be a gun law success.

Now of course you might think this won’t happen, and the 100 fewer gun homicides will be only slightly offset by, say, 20 extra knife homicides. But to determine whether that’s true (to the extent that correlations can determine such things), you’d want to see how gun laws are correlated with total homicides, not with gun homicides. If you’re right that the stronger gun laws will yield this net 80-homicide decline, that should show up in stronger gun laws being correlated with total homicide rates.

Second, suicides are quite different from homicides. Morally speaking, restraining people’s liberty, and in particular their ability to defend themselves, to prevent murder of unwilling victims deaths is quite different from restraining that liberty to prevent others from willingly killing themselves. It is no accident, I think, that the calls for gun restriction are usually specifically tied to murders — whether mass killings or the aggregate of individual killings — and not to suicides.

Suicide is also likely to be driven by many factors related to culture and the person’s living situation, factors very different from those involved in homicide. The age-adjusted suicide rate among blacks in the U.S., for instance, is less than 40% of the suicide rate among whites, while the homicide rate is much higher for blacks than for whites — and that’s just one of many examples.

Beyond that, if you really want to commit suicide (and there’s good reason to think that people who use a gun to try to commit suicide — as opposed to, say, pills — really do want to commit suicide) but can’t get a gun, it’s not hard to find alternate reliable means of killing yourself. (On the latter point, see the National Academies’ Firearms and Violence report, which concludes, as of 2004, that “Some gun control policies may reduce the number of gun suicides, but they have not yet been shown to reduce the overall risk of suicide in any population.”) And, finally, even if some gun laws could decrease suicide, those would often be very different gun laws than those intended to decrease homicides. For instance, even total handgun bans or sharp restrictions on handgun purchases, which have been urged as means of reducing homicides, would be highly unlikely to affect suicides, which could just as well be committed with shotguns (a la Kurt Cobain or Ernest Hemingway). Same for bans on so-called “assault weapons,” bans on large capacity magazines, restrictions on carrying guns in public, and more.

The careful reader might be asking, “What about accidents?” The substitution effects I describe above (e.g., reduction in gun homicides might be offset by increase in knife homicides) are indeed highly unlikely for accidents, so it makes sense to look at total intentional homicides plus fatal gun accidents. Indeed, that’s what my counts of “homicides” below will refer to below. But if you want to exclude fatal gun accidents, and focus only on intentional homicides, the results are virtually identical, since fatal gun accidents are so much rarer than homicides — for instance, in 2012, there were 548 fatal gun accidents but 16,688 homicides, according to CDC’s WISQARS database. (Note that I used an average of three years’ worth of accident data, 2011 to 2013, because there are very few gun accidents in any given year in most states.)

So, given this, let’s look at how jurisdiction-level homicide rates (i.e., homicides per 100,000 people) correlate with jurisdiction-level gun laws, counting the 50 states and D.C. (I use 2012 Justice Department homicide data, from the Proquest Statistical Abstract of the United States, 2015. I use the 2013 gun law scores and grades from the Brady Campaign, with low scores meaning a low level of gun restrictions and high scores being a high level. And I use an estimate of my own for D.C. based on the Brady Campaign’s criteria, since the Brady list didn’t include D.C.; I think my estimate is if anything an underestimate of D.C.’s tight gun laws, at least as of 2012-13.) I have also run the analysis using the data from the National Journal article that has recently been in the news, and the result is virtually identical.

First, the ten lowest-homicide jurisdictions, again including both intentional homicide and accidental gun deaths:

Jurisdiction Homicide rate Brady score Brady grade
New Hampshire 1.1 5.5 D-
Vermont 1.3 -4.0 F
Iowa 1.6 14.0 C-
Massachusetts 1.8 60.5 B+
Utah 1.8 -2.0 F
Minnesota 1.9 19.5 C
Maine 1.9 3.0 F
Hawaii 2.1 58.5 B+
Idaho 2.2 0.0 F
Wyoming 2.4 -5.0 F
Now the ten highest-homicide ones:

Jurisdiction Homicide rate Brady score Brady grade
Arkansas 6.3 1.0 F
Maryland 6.4 66.5 A-
Tennessee 6.4 2.0 F
Missouri 6.8 -0.5 F
Michigan 7.1 15.0 C
South Carolina 7.3 1.0 F
Alabama 7.5 3.5 D-
Mississippi 8.1 -4.0 F
Louisiana 11.6 -2.0 F
D.C. 13.9 50.0 B

And a scatter-plot:


The correlation between the homicide rate and Brady score in all 51 jurisdictions is +.032 (on a scale of -1 to +1), which means that states with more gun restrictions on average have very slightly higher homicide rates, though the tendency is so small as to be essentially zero. (If you omit the fatal gun accident rates, then the correlation would be +.065, which would make the more gun-restricting states look slightly worse; but again, the correlation would be small enough to be essentially zero, given all the other possible sources of variation.) If we use the National Journal data (adding the columns for each state, counting 1 for each dark blue, which refers to broad restrictions, 0.5 for each light blue, which refers to medium restrictions, and 0 for each grey, which refers to no or light restrictions), the results are similar: +0.017 or +0.051 if one omits the fatal gun accident rates. You can also run the correlation yourself on my Excel spreadsheet.

Now of course this doesn’t prove that gun laws have no effect on total homicide rates. Correlation, especially between just two variables, doesn’t show causation.

Perhaps there are other confounding factors (such as demographics, economics, and so on). Perhaps even controlling for those factors, there will be other missing factors that are hard to control for — for instance, maybe as the crime rate increases, calls for gun controls increase, so high crime causes more gun restrictions, or maybe calls for more freedom to defend oneself increase, so high crime causes fewer gun restrictions (e.g., liberalized concealed-carry licensing rules). And of course when small changes in the model yield substantial changes in results (e.g., if you calculate the state gun scores differently, the results will likely be different), you know how little you should credit the output. Figuring out the actual effect of government actions, whether gun laws, changed policing rules, drug laws, or anything else, is devilishly difficult.

But since people have been talking about simple two-variable correlations between gun laws and crime, I thought it would be helpful to note this correlation — or, rather, absence of correlation.


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15. Guns are not the problem: My story
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Member Rick Evans emailed me this:

Good story ... a typical story that is, unfortunately, rarely reported. She's lucky - thanks to her husband and his baseball bat, she was able to learn a valuable lesson without being harmed. The important thing is, she not only learned her lesson, but she followed through.


http://hotair.com/archives/2015/10/06/g ... e-problem/
or
http://tinyurl.com/op5wcpe


Guns are not the problem: My story
by Kristina Ribali
October 6, 2015

Every time a tragedy like the recent one in Roseburg, Oregon takes place there is a knee-jerk reaction to blame the gun. Right on cue there are calls for more gun control, more background checks, and more arguments by politicians aiming to convince you that disarming law abiding citizens will stop senseless acts of violence. What you rarely hear in the media are the stories of people who have used guns to protect themselves.

Not “gun nuts” as some would like to call them, but regular, average, everyday people. People who at one time believed because they lived in a small town they were safe. People who grew up with a dad as a police officer and believed the police could always protect them. People who never really even wanted a gun in their home. People like me.

Yes, it’s true; as a new mom I never really even wanted a gun in my home. That all changed several years ago.

I was preparing for bed in our master bathroom. It was incredibly hot outside, and we didn’t have air conditioning so I cracked the window open slightly, just trying to get what little cool air there was into our room before retiring for the night. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary: our infant son was asleep in his crib down the hall, the late night edition of the local news could be heard from the living room TV, and my husband was making his nightly rounds to check windows and doors before turning out the lights.

Something caught his eye as his passed by the main hall bathroom. Across the patio he could see a man peering into my bathroom window – watching me prepare for bed (while also fondling himself). I heard my husband scream something unintelligible and I saw him run out the back door with a baseball bat. I had no idea what had actually happened until my husband returned moments later.

My heart sank. I was physically ill. I felt so violated. In my home I had always felt safe, but that safety and security was now gone. A million thoughts raced through my mind. But the one that kept repeating itself over and over was the thought that I couldn’t protect myself or my son. All we owned was a baseball bat. What if my husband wouldn’t have been home?

We called the police, and immediately after describing the events and the man at my window, the officer had a good idea who had been in our yard. He fit the description of a known peeping Tom in the area. A man who had an extensive record of criminal trespassing, methamphetamine use, robbery, and a slew of other offenses.

Later that night he was arrested just a few blocks down the street and charged with trespassing.

I wish I could report that the offender learned his lesson, served his time, and never bothered me again, but I can’t. Unfortunately, that night was just the beginning of a very long ordeal that would change me forever. He didn’t stop preying on me. In fact, he returned to our home at least four more times.

The last time was once again on a summer evening – but this time he couldn’t see me through the newly installed obscured glass windows. I was tipped off to his presence by the motion detector lights that had been put up just days before. I saw his shadow through the glass in the back patio door. As he approached, I grabbed another new addition to our home – a shotgun. I chambered a round next to the door and the unmistakeable sound sent him running.

My husband was out of town that evening on National Guard duty, and I knew no one else should be in my yard. It was just me and my son – and my shotgun. I can’t imagine how differently things might have turned out that night if I had no way to stop him from entering. Knowing what I know now about this man’s drug use and criminal record I have no doubt he would have entered my home if allowed.

This man wasn’t going to be easily deterred. Even after serving multiple jail sentences, his pattern continued and his crimes escalated. He repeatedly trespassed and stalked other women, but he never came into my backyard or near me again. Later, during a court appearance, I let the judge and the offender know that I would protect my home, myself, and my children with deadly force if necessary.

I’m a supporter of the Second Amendment and a legal gun owner not because I want to be, but because I have to be. I have realized that no matter what laws are passed ‘to protect’ me, no one is responsible for my protection and the protection of my kids but me.

For those advocating for more laws, ask yourself why all the laws on the books didn’t stop my stalker from trespassing, entering my backyard, and peering into my window. Laws didn’t stop him, but a shotgun did.

My stalker simply didn’t care about breaking the plethora of laws on the books, and neither did the gunman that shot up Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon killing nine innocent victims and also himself. It was already against the law to commit murder. It was already against the law for him to bring a firearm into a gun-free zone. Even the gunman said himself that it couldn’t have been prevented. Laws didn’t stop him, and likely nothing will stop someone who is hellbent on destroying lives.

Continuing to focus on the gun sends the wrong message. We depend on guns to protect our President, our military, our first responders, and our celebrities. And many, including me, have had to depend on guns to protect our own life and family.

Evil exists. It is real. And while my heart breaks for those in Roseburg who are suffering unimaginable loss, we need to point the blame solely at the shooter and not his weapon of choice. Guns, like every other tool, when used improperly can cause great harm, but they can also save lives. I’m living proof.


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16. [NY] Correction: Family-meat cleaver killings story
**************************************************

I guess this was a full-auto, assault, meat cleaver.

Member Mark Shinn emailed me this:


http://wtop.com/national/2015/10/man-pl ... t-cleaver/
or
http://tinyurl.com/ppdomfd


Correction: Family-Meat Cleaver Killings story
by Michael Balsamo
October 8, 2015

NEW YORK (AP) — In a story Oct. 7 about the guilty plea of a man who killed five relatives with a meat cleaver, The Associated Press erroneously transcribed a quote said during sentencing and attributed it to the wrong person. The quote was, according to a trial transcript, “The burning question is why these things happen, but in the sum total of things it really doesn’t much matter,” not, “The question is why he’d do these things. It really doesn’t much matter.” It was said by Assistant District Attorney Mark Hale, not State Supreme Court Judge Vincent Del Giudice.

A corrected version of the story is below:

Man pleads guilty to killing 5 relatives with meat cleaver

Jealous man pleads guilty to killing 5 relatives, including 4 children, with meat cleaver

By MICHAEL BALSAMO
Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — A Chinese immigrant who butchered five relatives, including four small children, with a meat cleaver in a fit of jealousy pleaded guilty on Wednesday to murder and manslaughter charges and must serve at least 125 years in prison.

Mingdong Chen admitted that he killed his cousin’s wife, 37-year-old Qiao Zhen Li, and her children, 9-year-old Linda, 7-year-old Amy, 5-year-old Kevin and 1-year-old William Zhou in October 2013.

The 27-year-old Chen showed no reaction as he entered his plea. Under a deal with prosecutors, he must spend at least 125 years in prison before becoming eligible for parole.

Prosecutors said Li called her mother-in-law in China on the evening of Oct. 27, 2013, saying Chen was in the house with a knife and threatening the family. When the mother-in-law heard children crying in the background, she called other relatives in New York, and they rushed to the home in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park neighborhood. By the time they arrived, the five relatives were dead and Chen was dripping in blood.

Police said the family had been slaughtered, each of the five repeatedly stabbed and slashed in the throat and neck. Their bodies were found strewn about the house, where Chen had been staying for about a week.

When detectives questioned Chen, he told them he was jealous of the success of his fellow Chinese immigrants, police said. Relatives said he had been fired from different restaurant jobs.

But what set off Chen’s rampage remained a mystery to family members, prosecutors and the judge.

“The burning question is why these things happen, but in the sum total of things it really doesn’t much matter,” said Assistant District Attorney Mark Hale.

Hale said prosecutors offered Chen the deal because it would spare Li’s husband and other relatives from having “to relive the worst day of their lives.” Hale said they also wanted to ensure that Chen would publicly admit the killings.

Li’s husband was in court on Wednesday but declined to comment.

In 2014, a judge ruled that Chen was not competent to stand trial because he had exhibited signs of mental illness that made him incapable of being able to assist in his defense.

State Supreme Court Judge Vincent Del Giudice said Wednesday that Chen appeared to “be clear, lucid and competent.” He said he accepted the plea deal under the condition that Chen would “be incarcerated until the day he dies.”

Chen’s attorney, Danielle Eaddy, declined to comment.


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17. [KS] Regents prepare to open universities to guns under new law
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Texas is also on track to allow guns in their universities next year.

Member John Wilburn emailed me this:


http://www.kansas.com/news/local/educat ... 00224.html
or
http://tinyurl.com/psdhlfz


Kansas regents prepare to open universities to guns under new law
by Dion Lefler, The Wichita Eagle
October 5, 2015

As the nation mourns those killed in last week’s mass shooting at an Oregon community college, Kansas universities are preparing to implement a law that will allow most people to carry concealed firearms without a permit on campus.

Kansas public universities have authority to ban guns on campus. That will change on July 1, 2017, when they’ll be required to open their institutions to concealed weapons.

The Kansas Board of Regents, which sets policy for the state university system, is studying where and how guns can be controlled without violating the law, said board chairman Shane Bangerter.

Rep. Jim Ward, D-Wichita, said allowing guns on college campuses is a terrible idea that should be repealed in next year’s legislative session, before it has a chance to take effect.

“I’ve been on TV the last two years saying guns have no place in schools, churches or courthouses,” Ward said. “I don’t know how you could support that (guns on campus) unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last five years.”

Sen. Michael O’Donnell, R-Wichita, voted in favor of gun-friendly colleges. He said he might entertain the idea of supporting some tweaks in the law at the request of the university regents, but he thinks the core concept of allowing guns on campus is sound.

“I just know responsible gun owners make the public safer,” he said.

Mass shooting aftermath

The Kansas Board of Regents has been studying how to accommodate firearms on campus for months, but it’s taken on added urgency in the aftermath of the deadly shooting spree Thursday at Umpqua Community College near Roseburg, Ore.

There, 25-year-old student Christopher Harper-Mercer opened fired on classmates, killing nine and wounding seven. Harper-Mercer also died after exchanging fire with police, although his death was ultimately ruled a suicide.

A student conduct rule generally banned weapons on the Umpqua campus, although Oregon law and a court decision prevented that rule from being enforced against people with concealed-carry permits. National reports have quoted some students as saying they were armed during Thursday’s shooting spree but didn’t try to intervene because they were afraid of being mistaken for the gunman and shot by police responding to the emergency.

In Kansas, two significant laws have passed in recent years that, when combined, will open campuses to concealed carry with or without permits.

In 2012, the Kansas Legislature passed the Personal and Family Protection Act, overriding local gun ordinances statewide and requiring that concealed-carry permit holders be allowed to carry their weapons in almost all public buildings.

Under that law, guns “shall not be prohibited in any state or municipal building unless such building has adequate security measures to ensure that no weapons are permitted to be carried into such building.”

Adequate security is defined in the law as “use of electronic equipment and personnel at public entrances to detect and restrict the carrying of any weapons” into the facilities, “including, but not limited to, metal detectors, metal detector wands or any other equipment used for similar purposes.”

Earlier this year, the Legislature passed a follow-up measure, allowing anyone who can lawfully own a gun to carry it loaded and hidden without a permit.

Overwhelmingly pro-gun

Given the overwhelmingly pro-gun majorities in the Kansas House and Senate and a pro-gun governor, the policy of opening campuses to guns in 2017 is unlikely to change, said Bob Beatty, a professor of political science at Washburn University.

He said Kansas is solidly welded to a view of “allow guns everywhere, and if somebody does start shooting the place up, hopefully someone will have a gun and shoot them.”

He said President Obama’s angry speech in reaction to the Oregon shootings shows frustration with a nation that has divided itself into “parallel universes” on gun control.

“In some places, people want to engage on an issue like the shootings and explore possibilities of what can be done to prevent it or reduce it,” Beatty said. “Then there’s the other universe, which I think Kansas is in, where if it stops anyone from getting a gun, anytime anywhere, we don’t want to talk about it.”

Universities are currently operating under a four-year exemption to the protection act, which started July 1, 2013, to allow them to plan and prepare for opening campuses to firearms.

While courthouses, city halls and some other public buildings can ban guns because they have armed guards and metal detectors at the entries, that’s been determined to be impractical at the universities that have hundreds of buildings with several entrances each, Bangerter said.

Bangerter said current thinking is that guns could be banned from secured laboratories and other buildings where entry requires a key, card or code.

The biggest question is what to do about dormitories, he said.

Many dorms do require a key for resident students to enter but also act as a kind of quasi-public gathering space for the campus community.

“Obviously, we have thousands of students in the dorms at KU and K-State and other universities coming and going all the time,” Bangerter said. “Is that enough restricted access? Lawyers, maybe the attorney general, will have to figure that out for us.”

Sports question

Another major question revolves around sporting events. Guns currently are banned at state universities’ stadiums and arenas.

Stadium attendees generally now go through a light screening process, with gate checkers primarily looking in purses and bags for banned items. People with bulky coats are asked to unzip them.

Bangerter said that won’t be enough to satisfy the requirements of the Personal and Family Protection Act. Universities will probably need to make that a more deliberate process, funneling fans in through fewer entrances where they can be screened with metal detectors, as the law requires.

That could mean some significant changes at large events like Wichita State basketball, which sells out about 10,000 seats for every game at Koch Arena, and Kansas State football, which routinely draws 50,000-plus fans to Bill Snyder Family Stadium.

In terms of searching fans entering the stadium, “we aren’t very intrusive yet,” said Brad Pittman, associate athletic director for facilities at WSU.

Implementing metal screening can be done – the Intrust Bank Arena in Wichita and NFL football stadiums do it all the time, Pittman said.

But he said it will “cost a lot of money” and “it will add some time” getting fans into the arena.

Fans may have to change their habits and get to their seats earlier, he said.


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18. License bullet sales, and you'll reduce gun violence
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"A focus on ammunition wouldn’t infringe on the rights of law-abiding gun owners.”

ROFLMAO!

No, and putting people in chains won’t enslave them, either. <eye roll>

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... story.html

or

http://tinyurl.com/qx7qtb6


Get the NRA to license bullet sales, and you’ll reduce gun violence
By Jeffrey Zalles
October 6, 2015

Jeffrey Zalles is president of the Marin County, Calif., chapter of the Brady Campaign. The views expressed are his own.

In August, the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof noted that gun violence claims one life every 16 minutes in the United States. Think about it. Every day, more than 90 American families are broken by gun violence. If you’re like most people, you have come to feel that achieving any significant reduction in this disturbing statistic is hopeless. Because there are more than 300?million guns in private hands in the United States. Because the gun lobby is just too strong. Because gun-control proponents have fought for years with little to show for it at the federal level.

But this can’t go on forever. We will eventually reach a tipping point whereby a majority of Americans, fed up and fearing for their safety, will finally work their will in the form of strict gun-control measures or even a rewrite or repeal of the Second Amendment.

There is a way to end the standoff before we reach that tipping point, to wipe the slate clean by quickly and drastically reducing gun violence without infringing on gun rights. But first, those who support gun rights must recognize that the biggest threat to those rights lies in the pervasiveness of gun violence, while those on the other side must accept that 300 million guns aren’t going away anytime soon.

The late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said that in the United States there was a 200-year supply of guns but a four-year supply of ammunition. So what if we stopped worrying about the guns and instead focused on the bullets? Two steps would work wonders:

First, license buyers of ammunition. This license would take the form of a photo ID, and obtaining it could be as easy as watching a video, answering some gun-safety questions, paying a small fee and passing a background check.

No doubt, gun owners would scream that such a requirement represented a big-government intrusion into their privacy and constitutional rights. But what if the National Rifle Association, and not the government, was responsible for issuing licenses? Such a role would simply represent a return to the organization’s roots. The NRA was founded in 1871 to advance marksmanship, promote gun safety and provide training to gun owners. It’s only recently that it became political.

Second, mark the shells. All bullets could be stamped with a serial number, and stores could scan a buyer’s license and a barcode on the box. Since shell casings recovered at a crime scene could easily be traced back to stores and buyers, there would be a powerful incentive to see that bullets were handled responsibly.

How might the country benefit from this system? Almost immediately, it would become increasingly difficult for those who shouldn’t have ammunition to acquire it. After a while, the guns in the possession of criminals would become virtually useless. Of course, this wouldn’t put an end to all gun violence, but my guess is that thousands of lives would be saved every year. A reduction that large could be enough to end once and for all the battle between pro- and anti-gun forces.

A focus on ammunition wouldn’t infringe on the rights of law-abiding gun owners. Instead it would guarantee the protection of those rights — while saving many lives.




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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/]