Month: January 2004

The Mechanisms of Oppression

KevinLeave a comment

The Geek with a .45 has a must-read post up entitled The Surreality of It All…. A taste:

We, who studied the shape and form of the machines of freedom and oppression, have looked around us, and are utterly dumbfounded by what we see.

We see first that the machinery of freedom and Liberty is badly broken. Parts that are supposed to govern and limit each other no longer do so with any reliability.

We examine the creaking and groaning structure, and note that critical timbers have been moved from one place to another, that some parts are entirely missing, and others are no longer recognizable under the wadded layers of spit and duct tape. Other, entirely new subsystems, foreign to the original design, have been added on, bolted at awkward angles.

—

Others pass by without a second look, with no alarm or hue and cry, as if they are blind, as if they don’t understand what they see before their very eyes. We want to shake them, to grasp their heads and turn their faces, shouting, “LOOK! Do you see what this thing is? Do you see how it might be put to use? Do you know what can happen if this thing becomes fully assembled and activated?”

If you don’t read anything else today, read this.

And I just corrected a terrible oversight. The Geek is now on my blogroll. My abject apoligies for not doing this much, much sooner.

KevinLeave a comment

But This Never Happens, or News the Networks Never Report

From Keepandbeararms.com, dateline McAlester Oklahoma (a shall-issue CCW state):

Combs Gets His Man

As Longtown resident Bruce Combs prepared to pull his pickup off Kiamichi Street onto State Highway 9, he noticed something unusual.

Combs had stopped to let a truck and trailer heading west on Highway 9 go by before he pulled on the road.

Watching the approaching vehicle through the early-morning darkness last Sunday, Combs started to wonder about the other driver.

“The driver had his lights off; I thought that was odd,” Combs said. He also thought the trailer looked kind of familiar.

Then, as the truck and trailer by him passed by, Combs suddenly realized why the trailer seemed so familiar to him.

“He drove by and I thought ‘Hey, that’s my trailer!'” Combs said.

Combs recognized the trailer as the C&C Quality Building trailer he had left parked at his store, Longtown Texaco.

Priority #1 – PAY ATTENTION

Already fed up after previous break-ins at the store, Combs swung his pickup behind the other driver. He tried to call 911, but wasn’t sure if there was a link to Longtown so he wasn’t surprised when that didn’t work.

He attempted to contact the police but was unsuccessful. HAD he contacted police, the response time would probably have been several minutes, as this was apparently a rural area.

As you can see, Longtown is pretty far from both Tulsa and OK City.

As the driver in front of him started to pick up speed, Combs threw the phone in his pickup seat, pulled into the passing lane and grabbed a pistol he carried with him.

“I pulled up next to him and yelled at him to pull over,” Combs said. When the other driver ignored him, the determined Combs hit the gas pedal and quickly swerved his pickup in front of the other vehicle.

“He pulled off the highway” and into the parking lot of a nearby restaurant, Combs said.

With both vehicles stopped, Combs said he jumped out of his pickup and leveled his pistol at the other driver.

“I said ‘Get out of your truck and keep your hands where I can see them,'” Combs recalled. He said he also ordered a woman who was with the driver out of the truck. He let a boy with them remain inside the vehicle, he said.

Note that Mr. Combs did not let the evil brain-melting rays from his handgun cause him to gun down the man, woman and boy. Nobody was shot. Nobody died. Mr. Combs performed his civilian duty to stop a crime in progress.

The other driver tried to negotiate, according to Combs.

“He said ‘I’ll take your trailer back,’ and I said ‘No, you won’t,'” Combs recalled.

“I told him to keep his hands up. He had on a long black leather coat and he kept putting his hands down and I couldn’t see his left hand, so I fired a shot into the ground” Combs said. “He quit doing it after that.”

Once again, Mr. Combs neither injured nor killed anyone. His handgun is obviously defective.

Combs called the Pittsburg County Sheriff’s Department. He said Deputy Dave Grider, who was in the area, made it to the scene in a few minutes.

Good thing. Though I imagine that when you reach the police and tell them “I’m holding a guy at gunpoint!” they tend to move just a bit faster than if you tell them “He’s driving away with my trailer!”

Grider arrested the other driver, identified as Everett Whittaker, 33, of Pryor, who has been charged with grand larceny and second-degree burglary.

The sheriff’s department then launched an investigation that led to the recovery of an estimated $75,000 in stolen property.

1 Alert, prepared citizen + 1 handgun = 1 crime-in-progress stopped + 1 multiple offender captured + $75k in stolen property recovered. Good job, Mr. Combs.

Combs and others are now thinking of beefing up a neighborhood watch program in Longtown.

“We’re going to see if we can get some people together,” he said.

And, I’d imagine, more than a few of the members will have firearms.

But, we’re told, guns are useless in the hands of citizens. We should give them up and instead rely on the State for our protection. This kind of incident never happens, or we’d hear about it on the nightly news.

SWEET FREAKIN’ JEEBUS!

KevinLeave a comment

Via Keepandbeararms.com comes this LA Times op-ed in approval of guns! (Registration required, use Newslinks for both user and password. And captialize the “N”.) But I’m going to quote it and comment throughout:

Skeptic Gives Guns a Shot

The firearms issue looks a little different from behind the trigger.

Yes, it does. And author Diane Wagman illustrates this beautifully. Continuing:

Guns are bad. All my life, it’s been that simple. At my son’s preschool, if a child pointed a banana and said “bang,” he was admonished to “use the banana in a happier way.” As far as I was concerned, the 2nd Amendment gave us the right to protect ourselves against invading armies, not the right to buy a gun and keep it under our beds.

So what would make someone like me change my mind? I met this gun enthusiast. As research for my new novel, I asked him many questions, all the while voicing my disgust. My character might use a gun, but I never would. “Come to the range,” the gun guy said. “I’ll teach you to shoot.”

I expected a dungeon full of men missing teeth and wearing T-shirts decorated with Confederate flags. Instead, I found a sunny, wood-paneled lobby and guys who looked like lawyers on their lunch break.

Point 1: She bought the knuckle-dragging, single-digit IQ’d racist white male stereotype the anti-gun forces have been selling for decades, hook, line and sinker.

The man behind the counter was as pleasant as a grandfather from Central Casting. “What would it take for me to buy a gun?” I asked him. He explained the California laws, some of the most stringent in the country. I would have to wait 10 days ? the “cooling off” period. There would be federal and local background checks. I’d have to take a safety class. I’d have to buy a childproof lock. I couldn’t purchase an assault weapon. I couldn’t buy more than one handgun per month. Of course, he said, if I didn’t want to wait, I could drive 10 minutes and buy an Uzi illegally out of someone’s car.

Thank you, thank you, thank you sir. And thank you, Ms. Wagman, for repeating it.

When my guide arrived, he gave me a choice of handguns. I went with the .357 magnum – I recognized the name – and a traditional target with a red bull’s-eye. I couldn’t imagine shooting at one shaped like a man.

First lesson, respect your firearm. I got a little talk about how powerful it was. I learned how to hold it. To load it. And finally to fire it. It was terrifying. The gun was so heavy, I couldn’t keep it steady. It took both index fingers to pull the trigger, and then there was a flash of flame, a loud crack, a substantial kick. It was much harder than it looked in the movies.

Point 2: The only experience most people – especially most anti-gun people – have with firearms is in the popular media. And they are horribly, horribly misinformed because that source never gets it right.

I occasionally hit the target, but I also managed to obliterate the metal hanger that held it.

I have to admit: I loved it. I had a fantastic time. The power of that gun for me, a 5-foot, 3-inch woman, was immediately, shockingly seductive. The thrill when I hit the bull’s-eye (once) was as great as making a perfect tennis shot. I felt like I was playing a careful game of darts in a small, alcohol-free bar.

Point 3: Shooting is fun, and anti-gun people always find this amazing. Or fear it as a corrupting influence on “right-thinking” people.

Later, I was surprised to discover that some of my closest friends owned guns. People I never would have suspected confessed that their guns made them feel protected.

Point 4: Many, many people own guns. Far more than anti-gunners want to admit to themselves. After all, if the UN estimate is correct, there’s almost a 1:1 parity of firearms to population in this country, and that doesn’t mean 10% of the population owns ten guns each. (The pikers.)

Still, most of my friends thought handguns should be outlawed, completely, in every circumstance.

Point 5: Yet we’re told constantly by the organized anti-gun forces that they’re not interested in banning guns, only in regulating them. They’re only interested in gun safety. And they can’t imagine why we’re so paranoid as to think that the ultimate motive is the disarmament of the American public, “completely, in every circumstance.” We have to be brainwashed by the extremist NRA.

I no longer was so sure. I did some research – there are countless testimonials about guns saving someone’s life. I looked into shooting as a sport. I spoke to a woman who had found a wounded deer and shot it, ending its agony. I changed my mind: Guns aren’t bad.

Point 6: If you actually look at the facts with a fair, open mind, this is the conclusion any reasonable person will come to. And I applaud Ms. Wagman for making the effort.

Which leaves gun violence. At least in California, we don’t need more laws – we just need to enforce the ones we have. What else?

Here Ms. Wagman and I disagree – I don’t think California needs most of the laws it already has, but she’s new at this, so I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt.

The answer has to be education: teaching people to deal with anger, to solve problems, offering them brighter futures, but also Gun 101. Maybe if teenagers were given computer-generated pictures of their own bodies, post-gunshot wounds, it would help them understand the enormity of firing a weapon. Maybe if everyone spent an afternoon at the shooting range, forced to follow the rules, they would respect the power of a gun.

Point 7: Except that the anti-gun forces have done everything they can to ensure that the only exposure most kids from the cradle have to firearms is through the media that never gets it right. (See the preschool banana incident above) Or unsupervised; in criminal activity or in “playing” with the guns that she didn’t know that people like her friends owned. Yet these very same organizations are flying behind a banner of “gun safety.” The media teaches that either you’re shot dead, or “it’s only a (painless) flesh wound.” They’re taught that guns have incredible, attractive, nearly magical powers – and that they’re so evil they should never be touched. But they’re never taught the reality. After all, if they’re exposed to the truth they might become knuckle-dragging, single-digit IQ’d racists. You know: gun-nuts.

The anti-gun forces aren’t interested in “safety with guns” but “safety from guns.”

Now she sees, even if dimly, that down this path lies disaster.

I confess, I don’t know exactly how to solve the problem, but at least now I know I don’t know. Firing guns as a sport is great fun. Having a gun because it makes you feel safer seems understandable. Changing the way people behave? If you thought gun control was a distant dream – it could take centuries.

That’s the first step – admitting ignorance. Changing the way people behave? It only took us a few decades to get to where we are now, but…

Meanwhile, my 15-year-old has asked me to take him shooting. And I’ve agreed.

Ms. Wagman’s behavior has already changed, and for the better.

One at a time…

And a reminder: Don’t forget my invitation over there on the left side of the page.

KevinLeave a comment

Well, if “Congress Shall Make No Law…” Doesn’t Mean What it Says,

Then yesterday’s District Court Decison on DC’s handgun ban is no surprise.

(T)he Court notes that even if it could conclude that the Second Amendment applies to the District of Columbia, plaintiff Hailes would nonetheless be unable to assert that she has a right to possess her firearm in her residence in the manner in which she desires (i.e., assembled and without a trigger lock) because she has failed to assert any form of association with a militia. See Silveira, 312 F.3d at 1060 (describing the school of thought that limits the right to bear arms as conditioned on membership in a militia as the “limited individual rights” model); Emerson, 270 F.3d at 219 (describing this school of thought as the “sophisticated collective rights” model).

—

(T)he Court finds that plaintiff Hailes’ challenge to the requirement that she maintain a trigger lock on her shotgun is legally distinct from the plaintiffs’ other claims and therefore the Court had to analyze the scope and purpose of the Second Amendment to determine whether the D.C. Code § 7-2507.02 is unconstitutional. Having done so, the Court finds that Ms. Hailes’ Second Amendment challenge to D.C. Code § 7-2507.02 must also be dismissed, as the text of the Second Amendment, the history surrounding its enactment and Supreme Court precedent that have addressed the Amendment all lead the Court to the conclusion that Ms. Hailes’ claims are not only lacking on the merits, but that the Second Amendment does not apply to the District of Columbia.

Again, 9th Circuit Judge Kozinski’s words come immediately to mind:

Judges know very well how to read the Constitution broadly when they are sympathetic to the right being asserted. We have held, without much ado, that “speech, or . . . the press” also means the Internet…and that “persons, houses, papers, and effects” also means public telephone booths….When a particular right comports especially well with our notions of good social policy, we build magnificent legal edifices on elliptical constitutional phrases – or even the white spaces between lines of constitutional text. But, as the panel amply demonstrates, when we’re none too keen on a particular constitutional guarantee, we can be equally ingenious in burying language that is incontrovertibly there.

It is wrong to use some constitutional provisions as springboards for major social change while treating others like senile relatives to be cooped up in a nursing home until they quit annoying us. As guardians of the Constitution, we must be consistent in interpreting its provisions. If we adopt a jurisprudence sympathetic to individual rights, we must give broad compass to all constitutional provisions that protect individuals from tyranny. If we take a more statist approach, we must give all such provisions narrow scope. Expanding some to gargantuan proportions while discarding others like a crumpled gum wrapper is not faithfully applying the Constitution; it’s using our power as federal judges to constitutionalize our personal preferences.

—

The Supreme Court reached the Second Amendment claim and rejected it on the merits after finding no evidence that Miller’s weapon – a sawed-off shotgun – was reasonably susceptible to militia use. We are bound not only by the outcome of Miller but also by its rationale. If Miller’s claim was dead on arrival because it was raised by a person rather than a state, why would the Court have bothered discussing whether a sawed-off shotgun was suitable for militia use? The panel majority not only ignores Miller’s test; it renders most of the opinion wholly superfluous. As an inferior court, we may not tell the Supreme Court it was out to lunch when it last visited a constitutional provision.

And the toboggan picks up just a bit more speed…

And, of course, the Supreme Court will pass on this one as well.

KevinLeave a comment

Clayton Helriggle (deceased) Might Get His Day in Court

I covered the case of Mr. Helriggle (briefly) back in November in a piece I titled The War on (some) Drugs™ Claims Another Victim. Unfortunately, the first of the earlier links is broken, but the second works.

Well, it appears that his family hasn’t given up, and the local prosecutor is considering convening a grand jury to review the case.

Helriggle death may be revisited

Greene County Prosecutor Bill Schenck said he intends to meet with investigators Feb. 2 to discuss possibly reconvening a Preble County grand jury to revisit the Sept. 27, 2002, shooting death of Clayton Helriggle by a police officer.

Helriggle was killed when, carrying a handgun, he came down the stairs of the home where he was living, surprising officers during a drug raid. One year ago, a grand jury declined to hand up any indictments in the shooting. Schenck, Greene County prosecutor, was appointed as a special prosecutor in the case, which was investigated by the Montgomery County Sheriffs Office.

“Some cases beg for their day in court. This case needs to be aired,” Schenck said Monday. He and Suzanne Schmidt, a Greene County assistant prosecutor who also worked on the case, are concerned about a public perception that Helriggle was a drug dealer. They and investigators will look into possible perjury charges against Kevin Leitch, whose grand jury testimony in January 2003 conflicted with what he earlier told Eaton and Preble County law officials.

“I think it’s fair to say there was no drug dealing by Mr. Helriggle,” Schenck said. “To have that (testimony) circulating bothers me and Suzanne, and it bothers the officers in Montgomery County, who spent months investigating the raid. If I knew my child was not a drug dealer, I would want that to be known,” he said.

Helriggle’s mother said she has dogged the prosecutors to consider charges against Leitch. “I think he should pay for lying,” Sharon Helriggle said. “I don’t think he should be able to get away with it.”

Mrs. Helriggle said prosecutors told her they wanted to shield her from having to appear again before a grand jury. “They said they didn’t want to open my wounds. I had to laugh when I heard that. My wounds haven’t closed; they probably never will.”

Michael and Sharon Helriggle in September filed a federal civil lawsuit, seeking damages for what they allege was the wrongful death of their son.

Schenck said he would like to know what caused Leitch to change his testimony. “Was he just confused? If he was lying, why?”

The warrant to search Helriggle’s farmhouse at 1282 Ohio 503 North was based solely on Leitch’s information that his girlfriend purchased a small amount of marijuana there and that she told him up to 13 pounds of pot would be on the premises the day of the raid. Police found only a small amount of marijuana in the raid.

Leitch, who was awaiting sentencing on more than a dozen Preble County convictions of forgery, theft, burglary, breaking and entering and safecracking, told officers and deputies that one of Helriggle’s roommates was dealing marijuana from the house. At the grand jury, however, Leitch, now serving a three-year term at Lebanon Correctional Institution, contradicted his earlier statements and said Helriggle was the drug dealer.

Four days before the raid on the Lanier Twp. farmhouse Helriggle shared with four roommates, Eaton Police officer Jeff Cotner told investigators he heard from a confidential informant that Leitch planned to break into the farmhouse and steal the marijuana. The day before the raid, police stopped Leitch’s car, found a cache of stolen weapons, and took him in for questioning. It was then Leitch told officers about the alleged 13 pounds of marijuana. Authorities then went to a local judge for a search warrant, and the raid was hastily planned.

A subsequent investigation by the Dayton Daily News found the officers had little or no training for such a SWAT-type raid; little or no intelligence was gathered about the layout of the farmhouse; the number of people inside; and what, if any, weapons might be inside. As officers were nearing the gravel drive to the farmhouse, the original plans for the raid were changed.

As the raid unfolded, the wrong entry team entered the house first; shots were fired by police at two dogs inside the kitchen; and a flash-bang grenade added to the confusion. One officer, hearing the shots behind him and thinking he had been shot, saw a figure coming down a back stairway — which officers did not know was there — and fired a single round from his shotgun, striking Helriggle in the chest. He died at the scene.

Schenck said he and Schmidt will speak to the Montgomery County investigators who put together an 800-page report on the shooting and subsequent administrative review. On the advice of their attorneys, the officers involved in the raid did not cooperate in the administrative review, which was intended to see if procedures and policies were followed.

Schenck praised the the grand jury and Montgomery County investigators, and “quite frankly, even the Preble County officers, for the most part, who were out there. They were just doing their job.”

He said, however, questions remain unanswered.

“The whole scenario, for whatever reason, just leaves you wringing your hands,” he said. “All of us who spent time on this case feel a tremendous amount of pain.”

Understand this: due to the War on (some) Drugs™ agents of the State can get a search warrant on the word of one known criminal, perform a no-knock raid on your house, shoot your pets, and kill an innocent family member.

And suffer no penalty for it.

It’s “just doing their job.”

And people say the War on (some) Drugs™ is a good thing.

Sorry. I don’t agree.

UPDATE, 1/21/04: More links to stories about the incident:

Family, friends of man killed by police dispute authorities’ account

War on Drugs Can Claim a Deadly Victory

(Not specifically related to this case:) EXPLOSIVE DYNAMIC ENTRY

From this op-ed:

The most telling aspect of Montgomery County Sheriff Dave Vore’s investigation into the Preble County sheriff’s now disbanded regional SWAT team was its members’ refusal to cooperate.

All four of these links and many others can be found here.

KevinLeave a comment

Bald, Boldfaced Moral Equivalence

In a recent comment exchange at another blog, an (unsurprisingly anonymous) respondent said this, directed at me:

Under Communism man exploits man. Under Capitalism its(sic) the other way around.

Also Capitalism has transmuted into Corporate Fuedalism.(sic)

There’s a tremendous, horrifying moral equivalence to that first two-sentence quip. Certainly “man exploits man” in each system, but the underlying snarky implication is that both systems are equally flawed merely because “man exploits man.”

What unmitigated horseshit. What a puerile, half-witted thing to say, especially if one actually means it.

I thought about firing off an irate response, but I figured A) it would have been useless because the poster probably was ignorant and didn’t really understand the reality behind that first little agitprop quip, and B) it was better to make a point for anyone else reading who thought, “Yeah, Man! Tell it like it is!” or whatever the modern vernacular is. (I believe it condenses down now to the single syllable: “WORD!”, but I could be mistaken. Modern vernacular changes so fast these days.)

So I replied:

Hmm..Under communism man slaughters man (to the tune of around 100,000,000 souls last century.) Under capitalism (in a democratic government), some people are poor but nobody starves to death. Particularly, nobody starves to death because somebody in the government thinks it’s necessary that they do.

Makes the choice a bit easier, doesn’t it?

Corporate feudalism? And just who is bound to the corporation as master? Examples?

The poster and I have mutually agreed to not clog another blogger’s comments with our discussion, but as of yet I have received no response to my invitation to continue either here or in email.

I am not surprised about that, either.

KevinLeave a comment

I STAND CORRECTED!

And pleased about it! Esme of word gets around informs me in a comment that you can see individuals fighting crime in England.

Homeless heroine foils robbers

A BRAVE Big Issue seller foiled a bank robbery by wrestling one of the attackers to the ground.

Kerry Crank, 35, held the thug in a bear hug as he fled with £2,000 from Birmingham Midshire building society as terrified customers looked on.

A female student then leapt on the man and helped Kerry pin him to the pavement.

Other shoppers, including an elderly woman, joined in as police raced to the scene.

Kerry said today: “I saw the first man run off and then the other robber ran past me. I just grabbed him.

“He was struggling because he had the cash and was shouting at me. Another girl, a student who was American, was helping me keep him there and in the end there was me and a load of other women holding onto him.”

He managed to break away but was trapped by two police who arrived at the scene.

Kerry, who has been homeless for around four years, said: “We were all really shocked afterwards but I just acted in a split second.”

There’s more to the story, but that’s the heart of it. There is, of course, the obligatory “citizens shouldn’t do this” warning, but still.

Ms. Kerry most probably need have no fear of a civil suit for use of excessive force.

It’s nice to know they’ve still got it in them. At least the ladies do. (They tend to be more pragmatic and less likely to put up with idiocy, I’ve found.)

KevinLeave a comment

More Guns, Less Crime

In a bit of reciprocal linkage, I found this interesting post on Les Jones Blog concerning the number of guns in America.

Seems according to the BATF’s Annual Firearms Manufacturing and Exportation Report for 2001 a bit over 3 million new guns entered the American market that year, and about one million were handguns. Note, please, that this is about average.

Yet crime, including violent crime, has continued its decade-long drop. (Three million firearms per year over ten years is a net increase of 30 million firearms, ten million of which would be handguns.)

Wheras last year, regardless of the UK’s complete ban on handguns, violent crime continued to increase there, especially crimes committed with handguns.

Draw your own conclusions.