This is Fascinating on Several Levels

SayUncle linked to this story in the Kentucky Post online edition:

NKU Awarded Grant For Patrol Rifles

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FRANKFORT, Ky. –Northern Kentucky University has been awarded $10,660 from the state Law Enforcement Protection Program (LEPP) to purchase patrol rifles, Gov. Steve Beshear announced Thursday.

Under the LEPP, administered by the Kentucky Office of Homeland Security (KOHS), appropriate agencies can seek financial help for certain defensive items essential in the course of their duties.

“These funds will help ensure that our law enforcement will not be out-gunned and increase security on campus,” state Sen. Katie Kratz Stine, of Southgate, said.

In conjunction with the Kentucky State Police (KSP), KOHS derives income from sales of confiscated weapons.

KSP conducts periodic auctions – only to federally licensed firearms dealers – which generate dollars for the LEPP initiative. The KOHS then assesses needs, and after prioritization, provides whatever funds are available in the acquisition of body armor, weapons, ammunition and electronic or muscular disruption technical devices often referred to as tasers.

“Although statewide appeals for financial support always exceed resources, we place the highest priority on personal safety of our law enforcement officers,” Thomas L. Preston, KOHS executive director, said.

“Decisions about other aspects of this program are based on several factors including absolute need for monetary assistance combined with overall effectiveness in combating crime through our grants,” he explained.

LEPP support goes to police agencies of cities, counties, charter counties, unified counties, urban-counties and consolidated local governments, sheriff’s departments and public university police departments.

First off, a college was just given a grant by the Kentucky Office of Homeland Security to buy EVIL BLACK RIFLES. These are the rifles that the Brady Campaign swears

…are equipped with combat hardware. Combat features like high-capacity ammunition magazines, pistol grips, folding stocks, and bayonets, which are not found on sporting guns, are designed specifically to facilitate the killing of human beings in battle.

These combat features include:
  • A large-capacity ammunition magazine which enables the shooter to continuously fire dozens of rounds without reloading. Many assault weapons come equipped with large ammunition magazines allowing more than 50 bullets to be fired without reloading. Standard hunting rifles are usually equipped with no more than 3 or 4-shot magazines;
  • A folding stock which facilitates maximum concealability and mobility in close combat (which comes at the expense of the accuracy desired in a hunting weapon);
  • A pistol grip which facilitates spray-fire from the hip without losing control. A pistol grip also facilitates one-handed shooting;
  • A barrel shroud which enables the shooter to shoot many rounds because it cools the barrel, preventing overheating. It also allows the shooter to grasp the barrel area to stabilize the weapon, without incurring serious burns, during rapid fire; (I thought that was the shoulder thing that goes up? No?)
  • A threaded barrel designed to accommodate a flash suppressor which allows the shooter to remain concealed when shooting at night, an advantage in combat but unnecessary for hunting or sporting purposes. In addition, the flash suppressor is useful for providing stability during rapid fire;
  • A threaded barrel designed to accommodate a silencer which allows an assassin to shoot without making noise;
  • A barrel mount designed to accommodate a bayonet which allows someone to stab a person at close quarters in battle.

What on EARTH does a COLLEGE need with weapons like THESE?!?!

As an aside, the Brady Campaign ranks Kentucky very low on its Gun Laws Scorecard, giving it a mere two (2) points because in Kentucky “Colleges are not forced to allow firearms on campus.”

Unless they’re in the hands of Only Ones law-enforcement personnel.

Which brings up the second fascinating point of this story, the fact that the University feels a need for these “patrol rifles” stating that they will help ensure that our law enforcement will not be out-gunned and increase security on campus”.

Out-gunned?

Out-gunned by whom? Isn’t NKU a “gun-free zone”? Aren’t there signs posted to let potential bad-guys know that they aren’t allowed to bring a gun onto campus? I mean, the Brady Campaign gave Kentucky a measly TWO POINTS because that’s the ONLY restrictive gun law that Kentucky appears to have on the books! Who are the campus cops so afraid of that they need these spray-firing bullet hoses designed only “to kill large numbers of human beings quickly and efficiently”? And then filet them with the bayonet?

The third fascinating point is that the money to purchase these engines of destruction came “from sales of confiscated weapons.” It seems that the Kentucky State Police periodically auction off – “only to federally licensed firearms dealers” – the firearms they confiscate from bad guys. In Brady parlance, these guns go “back on the street!” Horrors! You mean they don’t get melted down and turned into anti-gun sculptures?

Huh. No wonder Paul Helmke and Josh Sugarmann are sad pandas.

And now the National Shooting Sports Foundation is out educating the public (and what little of the media that will pay attention) about these newfangled “Modern Sporting Rifles”.

What is the world coming to?

Its senses, one would hope.

Nah. Too much to ask.

UPDATE, 3/3: Over at The Ultimate Answer to Kings, Joel points out one more fascinating point that I completely missed:

. . . my personal favorite is this:

“Although statewide appeals for financial support always exceed resources, we place the highest priority on personal safety of our law enforcement officers,” Thomas L. Preston, KOHS executive director, said.

See, there’s not a single word in the whole piece about student safety.

Excellent point. And thanks for catching that.

I Bet He was a Closet Teabagger

I Bet He was a Closet Teabagger!

Isn’t this interesting:

The Strange World Of Dr. Anthrax

After the Department of Justice last month formally closed its probe of the 2001 anthrax attacks, the FBI released the first batch of documents detailing the years-long investigation that ended with officials concluding that Bruce Ivins, a government scientist who committed suicide in July 2008, was responsible for the mailings that killed five victims. The records, released pursuant to Freedom of Information Act requests, portray Ivins as becoming increasingly unhinged as it became clear that he was the principal target of the FBI’s “Amerithrax” probe. Additionally, the memos–a selection of which you’ll find on the following pages–reveal how agents examined every aspect of Ivins’s life, monitored his e-mails, searched his trash, and were even surveilling his Maryland home at the exact time he was inside overdosing. Despite being an FBI target, Ivins was often forthcoming about the details of his strange obsessions and private life. For example, as seen below, when agents executed search warrants in late-2007, an FBI supervisor asked Ivins if he was worried about those raids. Ivins said he was, noting that he did things a “middle age man should not do,” adding that his actions would “not be acceptable to most people.” He then noted that agents searching his basement would find a “bag of material that he uses to ‘cross-dress,'” according to an interview report.

And:

Ivins wrote that “Dick Cheney scares me. The Patriot Act is so unconstitutional it’s not even funny.” He added, “I’m voting for Obama!”

Yup, another member of “the Base!” I can’t wait for the New York Times’ Paul Krugman to opine!

UPDATE: Reader “el coronado” comments:

what’s most interesting to me about the FBI “closure” of the matter by blaming everyhting on the dead guy, ivins – dead men can’t defend themselves, and besides, he was an odd duck – is the timing of that annoucement. teh WSJ published a devastating obliteration of the FBI’s “case” against ivins on 25 january of this year, written by edward jay epstein. here are the huglughts:

1) the anthrax in question waa aerosolized by means of attaching the spores to silicon, “according to the US armed forces institute of pathology. (…) if so, then somehow silicon was *added* [my emph.] to the anthrax. but ivins, no matter how weird he may have been, ***had neither the set of skills nor the means*** to attach silicon to anthrax spores.” {again, my emph.]
2) “at a minimum, such a process would require highly specialized equipment that did not exist anywhere in ivins’s lab – or, for that matter, anywhere at (where he worked).”
3) the FBI was oddly releuctant to inform congress of the precise percentage of silicon contained in the anthrax used in the attacks. this was apparantly because…
4) (finally) “according to the FBI lab, 1.4% of the powder in the leahy letter was silicon. ‘this is a shcokingly high proportion’, explained stuart jacobson, an expert in small particle chemistry.’it is a number one would expect from a deliberate weaponization of anthrax.'”
5) the FBI stuck to their story: hadda be ivins. maybe he did it at home! so, “to back up their theory, the FBI contacted scientists at the lawrence livermore national labs to conduct experiments in which anthrax is accidentally absorbed from a media heavily laced with silicon. [the results of those tests) effectively blew the FBI’s theory out of the water. the livermore scientists had tried 56 times to replicate the high silicon content without any success. (…) they never came close. most results were an *order of magnitude lower* [me again] with some as low as .001%.(!)”
6) therefore, “since ivins had neither the equipment or skills to weaponize anthrax with silicon, the some other party MUST HAVE done it.”

the FBI later responded in a WSJ letter to the editor in which they argued, paraphrased, “huh-UHHH!!!!”. they offered no other details.

and now, a mere month later, the “case” is “closed”. so who do we believe here? a large federal bureaucracy well-known for its belief that maintaining its image supercedes all other priorities, including “truth” and “law enforcement”? or a man respected worldwide as a meticulous and accurate researcher? and if you choose to believe the FBI is lying, as i do, for whatever reason, what else might they have lied about? hm…..think, think…..coughhoriuchicough….

Interesting . . .

As commenter “TheSiliconGraybeard” notes,

There seems to be an attitude that shows up in law enforcement, something along the lines of “we got somebody for it”. It sometimes doesn’t seem quite so important that they got the right somebody, just that they got a warm body arrested and/or jailed.

I’ve noted that in this blog. We don’t have a “justice” system, we have a legal system, and the metric seems to be “did we get a conviction or at least close the case?” So if the WSJ is correct, it would appear that the FBI hounded a not-very-stable man into suicide, and then said “HE DID IT!”

I guess it MUST’VE been one of us “cultists!”

Quote of the Day – Ann Colter Edition

Quote of the Day – Ann Coulter Edition

“Isn’t food important? Why not “universal food coverage”? If politicians and employers had guaranteed us “free” food 50 years ago, today Democrats would be wailing about the “food crisis” in America, and you’d be on the phone with your food care provider arguing about whether or not a Reuben sandwich with fries was covered under your plan.”—Ann Coulter

From John Hawkins’ new Self Help Quotes page.

OK, THAT’S Done

I sat down this afternoon, put the latest issue of Vicious Circle on WinAmp, and plowed through the last of my .30 Carbine components. I ran out powder with 50 cases left to load. So now I’ve got the better part of 920 rounds of 110 grain .30 Carbine softpoints (950 total minus the thirty or so test rounds I fired) either loaded in magazines, or loose in a cardboard-lined .30 caliber ammo can.

A heavy .30 caliber ammo can.

I’ve got 1,000 155 grain Lapua Scenar .30 caliber bullets coming from Graf & Sons, and 500 M118 LR 7.62 cases waiting for half of ’em. I may be picking up another 500 cases from GI Brass if he still has those in stock next month. These go along with the 300 155 Scenar bullets and 300 Lapua .308 cases I already have, plus I’ve got a couple hundred 175 SMK’s. I managed to score about 10 lbs. of Reloder 15 a while back, and I’ve got a couple thousand CCI Large Rifle Benchrest primers, so I’m set there.

I’ve got 1250 .45ACP cases, and I’m planning on ordering a couple thousand Ranier Ballistic 200 grain .45 caliber hollowpoints from Midway next month, too. Primers I’ve got, but now I need to find an 8lb. jug of Unique. I’ve got maybe a pound left, which is about enough for 1,000 rounds, but then I’m out.

I’m short of .223 brass, but I’ve got 1,200 75 grain Hornady HPBT Match bullets, plenty of Varget, and a couple thousand CCI #41 military small rifle primers. I’ve got about 600 loaded rounds, so fresh brass can wait until April, I think. Scharch is carrying Lake City, new unprimed and uncrimped brass for $200/1000 which is a helluva deal. I may not be able to wait.

I haven’t played with my .38 Super much since I got it, but I have 200 147 grain Gold Dots, and I think I may pick up 500 Ranier Ballistics 147 grainers when they become available. Brass is available locally, and I’ve got a couple hundred already. Don’t know about powder for this one yet, and from what I’ve read, small rifle primers are advised.

In short, I have a LOT of reloading to do, and then I need to take some trips to the range. I think I’m almost set for the rest of the year, anyway.

Damn it’s nice to be working again.