What happens if someone tries to pull a gun out of a cop's holster?

In the United States, where it's protocol for officers to have guns on their person (if not two), it is not uncommon for a police officers to be disarmed and killed with his or her own weapon. A felony charge is commonplace as the minimal charge for theft of a weapon, and police forces are working to instate further penalties to ensure safety of police officers. Columbus, Ohio, for example, recently wrote language into a bill that would even penalize the theft of a taser, pepper spray, a baton, and other utensils with the same felony charge of taking a weapon to further protect officers from situations that might threaten their well-being. 

Abroad, it is less common for patrol officers to carry weapons. Chinese police officers, for example, only began carrying guns in April 2014 after a decade-long ban. Iceland, despite being the 15th most armed nation per capita, recently had their first fatal police shooting in 200 years. The United Kingdom and New Zealand tend to have special armed units to avoid loose triggers.

We asked legal and law enforcement professionals what happens if someone tries to grab a police officer's gun out of their holster.  READ MORE

Gun Control at NRA Convention?

While guns may be be great in churches, schools, universities, bars and sitting in handbags next to toddlers in Walmart shopping carts — the National Rifle Association (NRA) isn’t so keen on guns at their Annual Convention.

The convention (April 10-12 in Nashville) is expected to draw a crowd of 70,000 people.  Naturally all of them are do-gooders — there to ogle, stroke and cling to the “16 acres of guns” (according to an ad for the event).  Among the 555 Exhibitors (according to the NRA’s event website) are Smith & Wesson, SigSauer, Beretta USA and Remington Arms.  So will there be guns? — you betcha.  Will they work? — uh, no.  Sorry, but these guns won’t fire.

According to the security plan that was adopted by the NRA soon after Nashville was chosen to host their annual convention — all guns on the convention floor will be nonoperational with the firing pins removed.  In addition, any guns purchased during the NRA convention will have to be picked up at a Federal Firearms License dealer (near the purchaser’s home) and will require a legal identification (I expect they mean at the time of pickup of said merchandise.)

(See last item on this page.)

Speakers include Bobby Jindal, Jeb Bush (the white one, not the one of hispanic origin), Scott Walker, Mike Pence, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson and Lindsey Graham — and of course the perpetually-validation-seeking Sarah Palin and Donald Trump.  And for those with a nostalgia for treason, Oliver North will be making a booth appearance.  Ted Nugent is also scheduled because Freedom is not Free and We the People Must Keep It Alive! Well, true nothing stinks more than dead freedom -- except maybe rank hypocrisy.  READ MORE

Firearms have no place in sexual assault battle

Ten state legislatures are considering legislation to permit concealed firearms on college campuses. Supporters argue that firearms, especially in the hands of women, give potential victims of sexual assault the power necessary to prevent or stop a sexual assault. “If these young, hot little girls on campus have a firearm, I wonder how many men will want to assault them,” Michele Fiore, a Republican assemblywoman in Nevada, told the New York Times.

While the Editorial Board is wholeheartedly committed to preventing sexual assault on college campuses, we believe that this proposed legislation will do more harm than good. Concealed carry on college campuses not only misses many of the main points of sexual assault advocacy, it also places campus communities in grave danger.

Guns, as tools, do not have the ability to address the root problem of sexual assault: perpetrators. Arming potential sexual assault survivors puts the onus of their protection on the potential survivors, instead of on potential perpetrators to avoid committing sexual assaults and on bystanders to intervene. Both universities and policymakers alike should foster a campus culture where potential sexual assaults are recognized and stopped before they happen, not one in which students must rely on guns to ensure their own safety. 

Even if universities ultimately allow concealed carry, in reality, a potential sexual assault victim would find it impractical to carry around firearms for self-defense, especially considering who sexual assault perpetrators are. According to the National Institute of Justice, 90 percent of survivors in reported college sexual assaults knew their assailants. This indicates that many sexual assaults on college campuses occur in seemingly safe and ordinary situations, in which a gun would not be easily accessible. READ MORE

The Second Amendment was Ratified to Preserve Slavery

The real reason the Second Amendment was ratified, and why it says "State" instead of "Country" (the Framers knew the difference - see the 10th Amendment), was to preserve the slave patrol militias in the southern states, which was necessary to get Virginia's vote.  Founders Patrick Henry, George Mason, and James Madison were totally clear on that . . . and we all should be too.
In the beginning, there were the militias. In the South, they were also called the "slave patrols," and they were regulated by the states.

In Georgia, for example, a generation before the American Revolution, laws were passed in 1755 and 1757 that required all plantation owners or their male white employees to be members of the Georgia Militia, and for those armed militia members to make monthly inspections of the quarters of all slaves in the state.  The law defined which counties had which armed militias and even required armed militia members to keep a keen eye out for slaves who may be planning uprisings.

As Dr. Carl T. Bogus wrote for the University of California Law Review in 1998, "The Georgia statutes required patrols, under the direction of commissioned militia officers, to examine every plantation each month and authorized them to search 'all Negro Houses for offensive Weapons and Ammunition' and to apprehend and give twenty lashes to any slave found outside plantation grounds."

It's the answer to the question raised by the character played by Leonardo DiCaprio in Django Unchained when he asks, "Why don't they just rise up and kill the whites?"  If the movie were real, it would have been a purely rhetorical question, because every southerner of the era knew the simple answer: Well regulated militias kept the slaves in chains.  READ MORE

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So we learn that the 2nd was not,  as claimed,  a necessity for the defense of either nation or state,  but merely a "quid pro quo" to get the slave states to ratify the bill.

What this means is that,  quite contrary to what people today are saying about the 2nd, in reality it was only meant as a way to preserve and protect the rights of slave owners to keep and hold slaves.  The fact that today's debates of the 2nd have focused on national and private security issues,  does nothing to change the fact that this was a "right" created for the sole purpose of keeping slave ownership viable.  In other words,  had there been no slavery,  the 2nd wouldn't exist.  Since the gov't and the several states already had whatever powers they needed to preserve,  either state or national,  security using either police or military powers.

Thus the 2nd is really just an anachronism,  meant and designed to preserve a social condition that is now completely illegal.  Those facts cannot be either hidden, changed nor erased. The 2nd is simply a slave ownership artifact in the U.S. Constitution and has nothing to do with a "well ordered militia" being needed to do anything more than keep (the now illegal) slavery viable. 

The Founding Fathers were very smart men,  and they knew that to keep this slave ownership "right" in the bill,  without raising protests from the other side of the slavery issue,  it had to be couched in language that belied it's true cause,  just like the "We hold that all men are created equal",  was conveniently believed not to describe people being held in captivity.  But,  while they chose their words very carefully,  the back stories  they wrote in missives,  letters,  and displayed in debates,  makes their true intentions abundantly clear,  so the 2nd was simply a slave ownership protection,  nothing less or more.

Could it be that the 2nd Amendment proponents are, merely seeking to keep their weapons,  for a day when slavery might return?  Well,  that would be anyone's guess,  but the fact remains that the 2nd Adm., has no state or national security issues at it's root.  I'll leave it to future debate about whether it should be done away with or "modernized" and how that might be accomplished.  But,  suffice it to say that the 2nd,  does not say,  or represent,  what people today seem to think that it does.  This is due to the all but "forgotten" back story issues that gave birth to it.

SC Proposes NRA Second Amendment Education Act For All Public Schools

PTR Industries, a manufacturer of semiautomatic weapons, moved their company out of Connecticut due to Connecticut's strict laws on assault weapons and large-capacity magazines. The moved their business to Horry County, South Carolina, an area with 8% unemployment. The result of creating 45 new jobs for the county has prompted South Carolina to further bend over for all gun manufacturers by adopting an NRA school course designed to indoctrinate kids with guns.

State Rep. Alan Clemmons is attempting to keep the pro-gun momentum going through legislation that would force the topic of guns into classrooms, front and center. The bill, the Second Amendment Education Act, would mandate a three-week National Rifle Association–developed Second Amendment curriculum in all public elementary, middle and high schools.

Gun control advocates say the measure, proposed in December, would use South Carolina children for the benefit of the gun industry.

For the gun industry, however, the bill could be considered a big carrot, one that demonstrates that level of support to other gunmakers considering relocating to South Carolina, Grabowski said. “It’s a big handshake,” he said. “It’s a big ‘hello.            READ MORE

There Goes the Boom - ATF

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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An amendment limiting the law enforcement powers of the ATF couldn't be worse if the NRA wrote it themselves -- which it did.

The Hitler gun control lie

Gun rights activists who cite the dictator as a reason against gun control have their history dangerously wrong

By Alex Seitz-Wald

This week, people were shocked when the Drudge Report posted a giant picture of Hitler over a headline speculating that the White House will proceed with executive orders to limit access to firearms. The proposed orders are exceedingly tame, but Drudge’s reaction is actually a common conservative response to any invocation of gun control.

The NRA, Fox News, Fox News (again), Alex Jones, email chains, Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher, Gun Owners of America, etc., all agree that gun control was critical to Hitler’s rise to power. Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (“America’s most aggressive defender of firearms ownership”) is built almost exclusively around this notion, popularizing posters of Hitler giving the Nazi salute next to the text: “All in favor of ‘gun control’ raise your right hand.”

In his 1994 book, NRA head Wayne LaPierre dwelled on the Hitler meme at length, writing: “In Germany, Jewish extermination began with the Nazi Weapon Law of 1938, signed by Adolf Hitler.”
And it makes a certain amount of intuitive sense: If you’re going to impose a brutal authoritarian regime on your populace, better to disarm them first so they can’t fight back.

Unfortunately for LaPierre et al., the notion that Hitler confiscated everyone’s guns is mostly bogus. And the ancillary claim that Jews could have stopped the Holocaust with more guns doesn’t make any sense at all if you think about it for more than a minute.    READ MORE

Men tote rifles around town to 'educate'

The NRA Has a Head Start Against Newly Energized Gun Control

Protesters marching with the social activist group CREDO

by David Freedlander 
Dec 18, 2012 4:45 AM EST

Americans anxious to join the fight for stricter gun-control laws in the wake of the Newtown school shooting are finding there isn’t much of a fight to join—and the NRA is supremely organized. David Freedlander reports. 

Imagine you live in Connecticut, not far where the Sandy Hook massacre took place. Or, say, Oak Creek, Wisc., where a gunman shot and killed six at a Sikh temple in August. Or in Denver, Colo., near the Aurora movie theater, where 12 were shot in July.

 Fed up, and maybe a little scared for your safety, you decide that something needs to be done. But what? You check out the nation’s most prominent gun control group, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, hoping to find an organization to join or at least some simple steps you can take immediately to join the fight—a march to attend, a congressman to pressure, news of legislation coming up before key committees in your local state legislature. For each state, the website gives you a generic form to fill out to contact your state chapter, which may be several towns over, a button to donate money to the group, and a link to learn about local gun laws.

Compare this with the National Rifle Association, which for years has been reaching out aggressively to would-be supporters everywhere from college campuses to CPAC by culling conservative email lists and by catching people at the point of sale of a firearm. Indeed, if you are thinking about joining the NRA, it is probably because the group has already reached out to you.    READ MORE

 Note: There's a White House petition on gun control that's receiving runaway votes, HERE

'Stand your ground' laws: Do they put teens in greater danger?

Ron Davis, the father of Jordan Davis, is embraced as he arrives at the funeral home for the visitation and a memorial service for his son Jordan on Wednesday in Jacksonville, Fla.

Bob Self/The Florida Times-Union/AP

Ron Davis, the father of Jordan Davis, is embraced
as he arrives at the funeral home for the visitation and
a memorial service for his son Jordan on Wednesday
in Jacksonville, Fla.

Bob Self/The Florida Times-Union/AP

Three shooting deaths in the past week raise questions about whether prank-prone and reckless teens are particularly vulnerable under states' 'castle doctrine' and 'stand your ground' laws.

By Patrik Jonsson, Staff writer / November 29, 2012 

Atlanta

Recent events are raising questions about whether "stand your ground" and "castle doctrine" laws – which offer legal protection to people who hurt or kill someone in self-defense – could disproportionately harm teenagers.

During the past week, three teenagers in states with such laws were shot to death for doing things that, critics of the laws say, teenagers regularly get caught doing.

In Florida, unarmed 17-year-old Jordan Davis was allegedly shot and killed by 40-something Michael Dunn after an argument about a loud car stereo outside a convenience store.

RECOMMENDED: Trayvon Martin case: How 5 young black men see race and justice in US

And in Minnesota, retired State Department employee Byron David Smith allegedly wounded and then killed two teenagers, Haile Kifer and Nicholas Brady, who broke into his house on Thanksgiving, apparently on a hunt for prescription drugs.

This week also saw three teen boys charged with murder in Alabama after their friend, Summer Moody, was shot in April. When a man caught the four breaking into fishing cottages in the Mobile-Tensaw Delta, he allegedly fired a warning shot that killed Summer in what a district attorney called a "tragic accident." On Wednesday, a grand jury indicted the three boys, not the man who shot Summer.

 READ MORE

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SYG laws will eventually,  if left to their own devises,  make us effectively our own jailers,  afraid to even walk the streets for fear of one another.  This intolerable situation will lead us to beg our authorities to take absolute power,  to remove guns from our society,  as the only way we can survive as a nation.  How ironic is it that the 2nd Amendment is leading us back into dictatorship?

Sign the anti SYG petition here;   and spread the word so that others can do so as well.  Sure it's not going to overturn the laws that many states have already passed,  but it will make the showing needed to empower others to move on this important matter.  Thanks for all that you do.

White house petition to overturn Stand Your Ground Laws

Why Isn't the Gun Nut Lobby Saying Trayvon Martin Should Have Been Armed?

Now here's a good question:

Think about it. Every other situation in which an innocent person gets gunned down there is a cacophony of gun nuts screeching that if only this person had been armed he could have defended himself. It's been the basis of every concealed and open carry argument for the last couple of decades.

And yet, in this case, nothing. No impassioned appeals for loosening the gun laws so that ordinary Americans could go to the store in the evening to buy some candy and an iced tea without getting stalked and shot by some unhinged vigilante. No solemn op-eds about the dangers for average Americans when venturing unarmed into the streets of their own neighborhoods. No fiery speeches from Wayne LaPierre insisting that if only everyone in the neighborhood had been armed with submachine guns they could have run outside and started firing immediately upon hearing the screams for help. Nada. Why do you suppose that is?

Update: Last night I saw Zimmerman's friend on CNN defending him in a very revealing way:

Florida shooting triggers parents' nagging fears: 'Don't forget you're black ...'

 

Zbigniew Bzdak, Chicago Tribune
Paul and Jeanne Miller with their son, Jeremy, 16,
in front of their home in Flossmoor, Ill., on Friday,
March 23, 2012.

Published: Saturday, March 24, 2012, 9:15 PM     

Updated: Saturday, March 24, 2012, 9:26 PM

By McClatchy-Tribune News Service   

CHICAGO -- When their son was about to enter his teens, Paul and Jeanne Miller of Flossmoor, Ill., decided it was time to have the talk.

As a black male, they told him, some people will make judgments about you and view you with suspicion based solely on your race.

Recently, as Jeremy, 16, was preparing to get his driver's license, his father told him what to do if he were ever stopped by police: Keep your hands visible on the steering wheel at all times.  And when he asked to take part in "Assassins," a popular suburban game where teens stalk each other with air soft guns, his parents' answer was an unequivocal no, lest someone mistake the toy that fires plastic bullets for a real weapon.

The story of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin's death in Sanford, Fla., a suburb of Orlando, has struck a particularly sensitive chord with black parents such as the Millers, many of whom said they live with a nagging fear that their teenage boys could be harassed or attacked.

"We live in a fairly affluent interracial neighborhood with fantastic people who don't see color, but I know there are people out there who do," said Paul Miller. "I constantly tell him 'Don't forget you're black.' I don't want him to run into that guy who does see color one day when he's walking down the street."

Martin was shot to death last month by a man on a neighborhood watch patrol who confronted the black teenager because he thought he looked suspicious in the gated community. Martin, who was unarmed, was walking back to his father's house after going to the store for a can of tea and candy.

George Zimmerman claimed he acted in self-defense when he shot Martin, and was not charged in the shooting.  READ MORE

Latin American leaders assail U.S. drug ‘market’

Leaders of Latin American and Caribbean states
pose for a photo during the 33-member Celac summit
in Caracas. Photograph: Reuters

By William Booth, Published: December 19

MEXICO CITY — Latin American leaders have joined together to condemn the U.S. government for soaring drug violence in their countries, blaming the United States for the transnational cartels that have grown rich and powerful smuggling dope north and guns south.

Alongside official declarations, Latin American governments have expressed growing disgust for U.S. drug consumers — both the addict and the weekend recreational user heedless of the misery and destruction stemming from their pleasures.

“Our region is seriously threatened by organized crime, but there is very little responsibility taken by the drug-consuming countries,” Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom said at a December meeting of Latin leaders in Caracas. Colom said the hemisphere was paying the price for drug consumption in the United States with “our blood, our fear and our human sacrifice.”

With transit countries facing some of the highest homicide rates in the world, so great is the frustration that the leaders are demanding that the United States and Europe consider steps toward legalization if they do not curb their appetite for drugs.

At a regional summit this month in Mexico, attended by the leaders of 11 Latin American and Caribbean countries, officials declared that “the authorities in consumer countries should explore all possible alternatives to eliminate exorbitant profits of criminals, including regulatory or market options.”
“Market options” is diplomatic code for decriminalization.  READ MORE

Mystery Company Buying Up US Gun Manufacturers

By Natasha Singer, The New York Times 04 December 11 Lined up in a gun rack beneath mounted deer heads is a Bushmaster Carbon 15, a matte-black semiautomatic rifle that looks as if it belongs to a SWAT team. On another rack rests a Teflon-coated Prairie Panther from DPMS Firearms, a supplier to the U.S. Border Patrol and security agencies in Iraq. On a third is a Remington 750 Woodsmaster, a popular hunting rifle. The variety of rifles and shotguns on sale here at Cabela's, the national sporting goods chain, is a testament to America's enduring gun culture. But, to a surprising degree, it is also a testament to something else: Wall Street deal-making. READ MORE

Is Andrew Breitbart Encouraging Domestic Terrorism?

I'm under attack all the time. They call me gay, there are death threats... There are times where I'm not thinking as clearly as I should, and in those unclear moments, I always think to myself, 'Fire the first shot.' Bring it on. Because I know who's on our side. They can only win a rhetorical and propaganda war. They cannot win. We outnumber them in this country, and we have the guns... I'm not kidding. They talk a mean game, but they will not cross that line because they know what they're dealing with. READ MORE


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I'm afraid this man has lost touch with reality! Most people are trying to earn a living and put something away for retirement, not out "gunning" for some political radical, no matter how much of a lunatic he may be.

The people he's helped "dis empower"... News Flash---they come from both sides of the aisle! The news just reported that 54% of Americans are living in homes they can no longer afford. Not many homeless people can afford guns, in fact, not many of them are even thinking about them. Their time is occupied with trying to reverse their dire situations. While he supports a party that is trying to bring on disaster, in the hopes that it can be blamed on Obama!

The last resident in the white house wrecked the economy so badly, that many economist were recommending that we let it fail, sweep it away and start rebuilding from scratch. Nobody wanted that to happen, so we elected someone to try and fix it. Now that we're begining to discover, the damage done was so bad, that those economist who wanted to start over, were probably right, we're supposed to blame the man who tried to fix it and failed? Put the people who wrecked it back in office? Why? They made wrong guesses, lied about it to sell it. Did not know what they were doing, but ensured that they got paid well, for whatever it was they were doing. They left the laws, that underlay economic stability, in ruins. They mangled the rules, that underlay social stability, so badly they scarcely function. It is only anyone's guess, how long we can continue to follow the old themes by rote, before they too fail to function as expected.

There's a big difference between what it took to recover in the aftermath of '29 and what it will take to recover today. That difference is the very same widely spread automation, that allows so much productivity from so few workers. The problem with that is this: Those complex and costly machines, can only be profitably employed, if there are large numbers of consumers to uptake the sheer volume of merchandise they're able to turn out.

Sales of 500,000 cars might seem like a lot, but a half million car sales, would not sustain a profitable, modern and automated, General Motors! Worse, many of the parts suppliers who serve GM, also sell parts to other companies as well. But, without GM they couldn't survive, so those other companies would have to close, if GM's parts suppliers failed. So, as the economy gets worse, if those companies are doing more business off shore, they'll have little choice but to move.

In the meantime, the in-ability of Congress to set fair ground rules, for how the people and companies should interact -- the meat and potatoes of what we need government for -- creates a level of uncertainty, that gives companies and investors, too many trepidations about where or what to invest in.

The financial pages keep pointing to rising prices, as evidence of a healthy recovering economy. But there's another way to view the same data; that perhaps prices are rising because the consumer base is shrinking. Such that higher prices for the remaining customers are necessary, to provide the same level of service. Because it's either that or bankruptcy. Recovery?!? Really?!? I don't see where there are more people buying. No more "shop till you drop", anywhere in sight. Just historically high levels of unemployment, under employed and people who can't afford to live in their homes. All while wealth continues to concentrate at the top and move off shore.

Say what you will about how the economy is doing, you can't fool your bank accounts (if you still have them), you can't fool your 401k's either, when they're empty, they're empty. So, there's some one million millionaires out there still buying stuff? Try to figure out how long an economy, structured to serve some 300 million people, can survive on roughly 1 million sales! And I repeat: These companies that are going towards idle, are running automated equipment that costs millions to operate.