Category: Uncategorized

Just ONE Reason to Read Ipse Dixit

This week’s Caption This Picture contest winner:

“Can you find the nine candidates for the Democratic nomination for President?” – Daniel Aronstein

THAT’s a classic!

Aren’t Sawed-Off Shotguns Illegal?

Police: Man shoots intruder

Two men armed with guns who burst into a home in the 400 block of Victoria Drive Wednesday and demanded money got a little surprise when one of the people inside the home had better aim, police said.

One of the intruders, identified by police as Rameek Neal, 22, of Lancaster, was hit and is now listed at the hospital as a quadriplegic. Police are still looking for the second man.

Quadriplegic, eh. I bet he now wishes he hadn’t done the home invasion.

According to police reports, Neal and another man knocked on the door of the home sometime before 10:30 Wednesday night.

After one of the home’s occupants opened the door, the two men forced their way in, baring guns and demanding money, police said. Reports said the man police have not yet arrested pointed what witnesses said was a sawed-off shotgun at the two people in the living room. Neal, meanwhile, left the living room and went to the home’s master bedroom, police said.

Think he had the NFA paperwork for that scattergun?

Nah. Me either.

What big-ticket item do you think they can confiscate from him?

Inside the bedroom, police said Neal threatened the two occupants who were in bed. According to police, Neal threatened to shoot or beat them with a pistol if they did not give him money.

Police said one of the bedroom’s occupants, Omar Reid, 25, reached out of bed, grabbed a pistol from the dresser and shot Neal as Neal shot at him.

Let’s see: A loaded gun kept in a dresser drawer next to the bed. That’s unsafe storage, isn’t it? Are there any children in the home? Does he have a permit for that firearm? Oh, wait, this is a suburb of Philadelphia, not New York City.

With Neal down on the ground at the foot of the bed, police said Reid left the bedroom and walked into the living room, where he encountered the second man.

Both men fired at each other, police said.

The man Reid fired at fled from the home. Police said Reid was not hit.

He has a sawed-off, they shoot at each other across the distance of a living room (couldn’t be more than seven or eight yards, tops) and he misses!

Neal, who was found by police still laying in the bedroom, was flown to Crozer-Chester Medical Center for his injuries.

Police are still looking for the second man, who they say may have a gunshot wound.

And probably has stained underwear.

It would be poetic justice if Mr. Reid hit his second target.

Police said Reid’s actions are being considered self-defense.

I should hope so!

&ltbradycenter&gtBut these people should have done what the criminals wanted! Then maybe no one would have gotten hurt! There’s a poor victim in the hospital who’s now a quadriplegic!&lt/bradycenter&gt

Good.

He was THIS Close!

It must make serving time a lot less dull…

Women’s jail prisoner admits he’s a man

A convicted marijuana grower has told prison authorities he is a man – after spending more than eight months locked up with women.

An inquiry has been launched after Billie Jo Hawks told wardens at Kentucky’s Correctional Institution for Women that a mistake had been made.

For eight months before that, Hawks, 43, had been held in the women’s section of a detention centre having been convicted of growing and trafficking marijuana.

He was then transfered to the jail, and it wasn’t until he faced a medical examination that he alerted wardens of the error.

I bet there are some red faces in the Corrections department, and it isn’t Mary Kay blush.

One More Dividend from the War on (some) Drugs™

Yup. The police raided a high-school, weapons drawn, and searched everybody in a hallway (that, of course, had Big Brother cameras installed.)

“They would go put a gun up to them, push them against the wall, take their book bags and search them,” Aaron Sims, 14, told CNN affiliate WCSC. “They just came up and got my friend, not even saying anything or what was going to happen. … I was scared.”

Sims said his mother was “a little angry,” but his father understood and “thought it was necessary.”

I’d be fucking outraged. Necessary my ass. The decades-long “War on Drugs” has brought us to this?

Police monitored video from school surveillance cameras for several days and “observed consistent, organized drug activity,” he said. “Students were posing as lookouts and concealing themselves from the cameras.”

Great. Then arrest those students. Instead we get Gestapo tactics.

Anytime narcotics and money are involved he said there is “the reasonable assumption that weapons will be involved. … Our primary concern was the safety of the students (and) everyone else involved.”

&ltsarcasm&gtBut, but guns are not allowed in school! How could any of the students be armed?&lt/sarcasm&gt

Jared Weeks, 14, told WCSC that police were aggressive.

“They kind of pushed us against the wall and started searching us,” Weeks said. “I didn’t think all that was called for.”

Weeks said he was “kind of nervous,” but not scared “because I didn’t have anything to hide.”

I have news for you, Jared: The State often doesn’t care whether you have anything to hide or not.

One more time: If there’s any way you can swing it – HOME SCHOOL

UPDATE: This incident reminded me of something. Back in May, shortly after I started this blog, I came across this video clip of a Las Vegas PD officer negligently discharging her sidearm, very nearly shooting either a suspect being restrained, the officer restraining him, or both. I checked. The link is still good.

Watch that and tell me that the kids in that school hall were in no danger.

Here’s Another

Via Acidman comes this story of someone apparently being railroaded by an overzealous prosecutor:

The news of Dixon’s arrest for rape, statutory rape, aggravated assault, false imprisonment and sexual battery seemed to take those who knew him by surprise. It seemed totally out of character for this near-4.0 student, who scored greater than 1,200 on his SAT and planned to major in education at Vandy. In the end, the jury found no basis for any of the “forcible crimes” charges, and found him not guilty on all of them. They also concluded that, as was Dixon’s claim all along, the sex was completely consensual.

However, John McClellan, the Floyd County District Attorney on the case, also brought the charge of Child Molestation against Dixon. This charge was proven through a technicality, as Dixon was two years and seven months older than the girl, and Dixon had just turned 18. Even though the sex was consensual, under Georgia’s relatively new Child Protection laws, this conviction carries a mandatory 10-year prison sentence without parole. According to Gumbel via the law firm representing Dixon’s appeal, and not disputed by McClellan, this is the first time in Georgia’s history that a high school teen was prosecuted for a felony for having consensual sex with a classmate.

And, in what by the evidence seems another indication that we haven’t yet ended our problem with institutionalized racism, comes this bit:

The conviction — in legalese, for “statutory rape and aggravated child molestation” — at the time received little attention outside of the local media. However, an attorney in Atlanta — David Balser, of McKenna Long and Aldridge — just happened to read a small newspaper report in the Rome News-Tribune on the decision, and it piqued his interest. The deeper Balser dug, the more troubled he became with the case.

Last fall, Balser gathered his facts and called a meeting of a few friends at his firm. When he showed them what he believed had happened — that Dixon had committed a crime that in all previous cases had never resulted in any jail time, and it appeared was prosecuted in large part because Dixon was black and the girl was white — his firm gave him permission to pursue an appeal on a pro bono basis to the Georgia Supreme Court.

Georgia. Makes me wonder how much starch District Attorney McClellan likes when he has his pointy hood drycleaned and pressed.

And I await breathlessly the appearance of Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, et. al. I hate those self-aggrandizing rabble-rousing fuckers, but sometimes the rabble needs rousing. And they will point a spotlight at the cockroaches responsible for this travesty.

I just hope they don’t grandstand in the spotlight so much that the cockroaches end up hiding in their shadows.

More Benign Government Action

This has been making the rounds since Drudge posted it, but it goes along well with my recent theme.

Seems 89 year-old Helen Shue managed to miss one (1) tax payment on her 41 acre farm – appraised at a value of $800,000 – and it wasn’t because she didn’t try to pay, but because she didn’t pay with a certified check or money order. (Coincidentally, that’s the way you have to pay when you apply for a gun permit in NYC, too.)

So they sold her farm at auction to cover the tax liability.

Eight-hundred thousand dollar appraised value.

It went for $15,000.

To a developer.

The payed but not accepted tax?

$572.00

Only through the actions of an anonymous informant was anyone in her family notified before the Sheriff came to evict her.

Yup, government for the benefit of the governed. As long as the governed keep a gimlet eye on them.

We appear to have fallen down on the job. Isn’t it past time to pick ourselves up and go back to it?

OK, I Can’t Resist

Some people have far too much time on their hands. Thus, the Church Sign Generator.

Here’s mine (and I’ve lived in the Baptist South, so I know whereof I speak!)

I finally got around to downloading the (few) pictures I took at last week’s AR15.com shoot at the Casa Grande public range. Here’s the guns I took:

From the top (though you can barely see the pistols):
XP-100, Kimber Classic, AR-15, Enfield No. 5 Mk I Jungle Carbine, Mossberg 590, and my 1917 Enfield.

This is what was on the bench next to me:

In case you don’t recognize it, that’s an 18″ barrelled single-shot .50BMG rifle.

With a suppressor.

Thank Jebus.

It’s actually pretty damned quiet for what it is. It’s maybe as loud as my .45. But it kicks like a freaking mule.

If he’d removed the can and put the muzzle brake on it, all my stuff would have been blown off my bench.

Here’s a shot looking downrange.

The far berm is (by laser rangefinder) 285 yards. The mountain makes a quite effective backstop.

This shot is from about 100 yards downrange back towards the shooting positions.

About 50 people or so showed for this one, but the weather was excellent and we all had a good time. What I didn’t know was that one of the Class III dealers had brought an FN P90 and was letting people shoot it. I missed out. Bummer!

Maybe at the next shoot…

Edited to add: This is a picture taken by another attendee of someone shooting the P90:

(Envy, envy, envy….)

Shouldn’t That be a Crow on the Plate?

Robert Arial, South Carolina’s The State

Here’s Larry Wright’s (Detroit News) take on it:

And Mike Thompson’s (Detroit Free Press)

Chip Bok of the Akron Beacon-Journal comments too:

On a different note, he has apparently read Henry Louis Mencken:

The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can’t get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods.

That’s going to be it ’till much later. Way too much to do, and not enough time to do it in.