The Smallest Minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. – Ayn Rand
This one’s from SayUncle:
Two idiots tried to out idiot each other. One was successful.
Pretty much. Let me retract that. Zimmerman was doing his duty as a Neighborhood Watch member. The evidence indicates that Martin confronted him and attacked him. Everything prior to that is moot. Martin played a stupid game and won a stupid prize. Zimmerman did not maintain situational awareness. This doesn’t make Zimmerman an idiot.
Allapundit tweets the QotD:
No matter how much contempt you have for the media in all this, you don’t have enough.
Can I get an “AMEN!”?
Zimmerman found not guilty.
Here’s the story as I understand it:
Zimmerman, a Neighborhood Watch member after a recent string of burglaries in his neighborhood, sees a young male he doesn’t recognize. Young males are overwhelmingly the perpetrators of property crimes, regardless of race. Doing his volunteer job, he follows the suspicious person and calls 911.
Martin, fresh to the neighborhood because of personal problem – he’s staying with his father and his father’s fiance – notices that he’s being followed by a “creepy-ass cracker.”
Zimmerman is advised by the 911 operator that he “doesn’t need” to follow Martin. The police are on their way, but Zimmerman gets out of his truck and follows anyway. He’s Neighborhood Watch, remember? He loses sight of Martin.
Returning to his truck, he is confronted by Martin, who is younger, fitter, and probably stronger. The confrontation is violent. Zimmerman ends up on his back under Martin, getting beaten. His nose is broken and his head shows signs of trauma indicating that it was in contact with concrete.
In fear for his life or at least serious injury, Zimmerman draws his properly licensed concealed weapon and fires one shot, stopping the assault.
NOTHING prior to that next to last paragraph has any standing on the defensive shooting. Once the assault began, Zimmerman was justified in defending himself.
I’m glad the jury understood that.
Now we get to see what happens with the racial grievance crowd.
Pennsylvania teens chase down kidnapper’s car on their BIKES and save five-year-old girl
Two Pennsylvania teens are being hailed as heroes after they chased down a man in a car who had snatched a five-year-old girl from her grandmother’s front yard – on their bikes.
Jocelyn Rojas, five, was missing for two hours yesterday when Temar Boggs and a friend saw the child in a car near Lancaster Township and gave chase.
After Boggs, 15, and his friend had been tailing the vehicle for 15 minutes, the driver let the little girl out of the car and sped off.
Now that the little girl is safely back with her family, police are focusing on finding the suspect.Jocelyn Rojas was playing in the front yard of her grandmother’s home on the 100 block of Jennings Drive in Lancaster Township when she disappeared at about 4:35pm Thursday.
The family notified police and officers sprang into action, blocking off streets and scouring the area with canine units. Police showed Jocelyn’s picture around the neighborhood and Boggs and his friend joined more than 100 first responders searching for the girl.
Boggs spottted the girl in the abductor’s car and he and his friend began to follow the car.
The high school student said the little girl ran towards him when she got out of the car.
‘If he wasn’t going to stop, I was probably going to like, jump on the car,’ Boggs told ABC6.
Boggs said the suspect would turn around to see if they were still following him after they began to give chase.
‘As soon as the guy started noticing that we were chasing him, he stopped at the end of the hill and let her out, and she ran to me and said that she needed her mom,’ he said.
Boggs took the little girl to the police and they contacted her frantic mother and family.
Good on ya, kid young man sir! (Edited due to some excellent comments.) Here is someone who instinctively understands Robert Peel’s Seventh Principle:
Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
The 8th Annual Gun Blogger Rendezvous is fast approaching, September 4-8 at the Silver Legacy Resort and Casino in Reno, NV. Event organizer Mr. Completely has published the schedule of this year’s events:
Wednesday, September 4th.
6:15 Pm. For those arriving on Wednesday, KeeWee and I and some of the other early arrivers are planning on having dinner at the El Dorado Buffet Restaurant. The El Dorado is part of the same giant casino complex as the Silver Legacy and the Circus Circus. The El Dorado Buffet is at one end of the complex. The Silver Legacy is in the middle, and the Circus Circus is on the opposite end.
Thursday, September 5th8:30 am. Leave the Silver Legacy Hospitality Room for one of the restaurants for breakfast.
1:15 pm. Leave the Hospitality Room to car pool to Cabela’s.
2:00 pm – 4:00 pm. Guided tour Cabela’s and browsing/shopping. Buy ammo? Pick up munchies and soft drinks on way back to hotel.
6:00 pm. Leave the Hospitality Room to go to dinner. Location to be determined later.
Thursday Evening until midnight: Refreshments and conversation at the Silver Legacy Hospitality room. Bring your own refreshments and munchies.
Friday, September 6th.8:00 am. NRA Sponsored breakfast in our Hospitality room. NRA representative will be speaking to us over breakfast.
9:00 am. Leave the Silver Legacy Hospitality room to car pool up and head out to the Washoe County Shooting Facility, the Pyramid range for rifle and pistol target shooting out to 900 yards.
9:45 am – 2:00pm. At the range.
4:00 pm. – 5:45pm. Show-N-Tell at the Silver Legacy Hospitality room. Manufacturers and show new stuff, and attendees show neat things too!
6:00 pm. Leave the Silver Legacy Hospitality room to go to Dos Gecko’s Mexican Restaurant for dinner sponsored by Gunlawsbystate.com and Brian Ciyou.
7:15 pm. (Approx) Ray Carter from the Second Amendment Foundation and Brian Ciyou from Gunlawsbystate.com, will talk to us, and other industry, shooting sports, and legal aspect folks will follow.
7:45 pm. Double Elimination Pistol competition in Hospitality Room using the Optical Computer Aided Training Simulator from Outwest systems, using real guns shooting lasers instead of bullets. An OCAT System will be awarded to one of the competitors by random drawing!Friday Evening until midnight: Refreshments and conversation at the Silver Legacy Hospitality room. Bring your own refreshments and munchies.
Saturday, September 7th.
8:00 am. Gunauctions.com sponsored Breakfast in the Silver Legacy Hospitality room.
9:00 am. Leave the Silver Legacy Hospitality room to car pool up and head out to the Washoe County Shooting Facility, Western Nevada Pistol League Action Pistol bays at the Pyramid range for an introduction to Steel Challenge Action Pistol shooting, a demonstration of the live fire version of the OCAT system, and more.
9:45 am – 2:00 pm. At the range.
5:00 pm – 6 pm. Short presentation by the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
6:00 pm. NSSF all you can eat pizza feed at the Silver Legacy Hospitality room. After dinner will be the fund raiser raffle for Project Valour-IT and the drawings for the door prizes.
Saturday Evening until Midnight: Refreshments and conversation at the Silver Legacy Hospitality room. Bring your own refreshments and munchies.Sunday, September 8th.
8:00 am. Leave the Silver Legacy Hospitality room for one of the restaurants for breakfast
9:00 am. Leave the Silver Legacy Hospitality room to car pool up and head out to the Washoe County Shooting Facility, Western Nevada Pistol League Action Pistol bays at the Pyramid range for some fun with the Black Powder bowling Ball Mortar from Gunauctions.com, and some other surprises you won’t want to miss!
9:45 am – 1:00pm. At the range.
This year sounds like a real blast!
Wife killed husband in self-defense
A McMinn county man was shot and killed by his wife on Saturday within 15 minutes of leaving jail after he was arrested earlier in the day.
The McMinn County Sheriff said shortly before 8 am Saturday, Athens Police Officers received a report that Robert Vann Marshall, 34, was irate, suicidal, armed and threatening to kill his wife and children.
Officers stopped Robert Marshall shortly afterward at the Athens Super 8 Motel. The officers found he had a handgun and various narcotics pills in his possession.
Authorities found there to be an active order of protection against him and arrested him for the firearms and narcotics charges and took him to the McMinn County Justice Center.
While in custody authorities read and explained the order of protection to Marshall and gave him a copy of it. He was ordered to not contact his wife, or go to their residence, or else he would be charged.
Authorities said Robert Marshall made bond and was eventually released at approximately 1:27 p.m.
Then at approximately 1:38 p.m., 911 received a call from the Marshall residence where Melissa Marshall, stated that her husband, Robert Marshall was at the residence attending to get inside.
While authorities made their way to the residence, Ms. Marshall indicated that her husband forced his way inside and then she told dispatchers that she had shot him.
Athens Police Officers and McMinn Sheriffs Deputies arrived at the home and found the front door kicked in with Robert Marshall lying in a back bedroom with a fatal gunshot wound to his chest.
Unlike Claudia Pascal or Shennell McKendall or Yong Sun Park, her mother, father, and six year-old son.
Melissa Marshall will now live with the aftermath of having taken a life, but she’s alive to have that experience and not dead at her husband’s hands.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0he0cqHH20?rel=0]
A Republic no more.
Sorry I’m late. It was the shock.
General Assembly overrides governor’s veto of concealed carry bill
Now we just have to get those few “may issue” states to become “shall issue.”
Schlock Mercenary‘s author Howard Tayler reviews pans The Lone Ranger and gets this gem in comments:
What’s really important though is whether Disney is going to insist on shoehorning this big chewed-up wad of failure into the Kingdom Hearts franchise, when they SHOULD be taking advantage of their ownership of the Muppets, Marvel Comics and Star Wars to have the Beast (X-Men), the Beast (Beauty & the), Chewbacca and Cookie Monster having Jedi Lightsaber Duels with FFVII’s Sephiroth on the slopes of Chernabog (the big mountain demon from Fantasia), who has been relocated to the surface of the Death Star, while Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem Band provide their interpretation of his signature “Night on Bald Mountain”. Holy crap, Disney! HOLY CRAP!!!
…. what the heck were we talking about again?
Oh HELL yes! I’d pay to see that!
…when liberals argue, victory is determined by whoever can scream “I’m offended!” loudest….
From a recent post on a Science Fiction Writer’s of America kerfuffle.
