SSCC #485 & #486 – Seattle

A witness who called police said she saw a woman driving a Nissan Altima away from the scene with front-end damage. According to police, the witness said a female driver stopped the car in the middle of the street and switched places with a man in the passenger seat.

Officers conducted a search of the area and found the car near the accident with its engine running. Officers contacted the couple in the car and immediately realized the occupants were two off-duty Seattle police officers. Each of the off-duty officers had been drinking, police said, and were arrested for DUI.

It’s the holidays and you constantly hear about the police cracking down on DUIs.  Evidently these officers felt they were exempt from that and hit and run.  Given the history of the Seattle PD this one goes on the count.

State Sponsored Criminal #485: Jane Doe
#486: John Doe

Because hit and run while drinking and driving is only bad if you don’t have a badge.

Quote of the Day – Robb Allen

So, take a quick, deep breath. Write, call, show up. But for Browning’s sake, clear  your head, focus your mind, and do not give an inch. We’re in the right, we are the good guys here, and there’s no room to compromise. Let them break against our wall, don’t preemptively open a door or two for them.

Robb Allen – You’re getting sunshine rammed down your throat whether you want it or not
December 20, 2012


[Make no mistake people, we’re in a fight and we must not get complacent.  Just because there are valid points being made about how we will survive doesn’t mean that it’s a done deal.  The points being brought up across the board are good news.  There is a pile of facts that indicates that no, the sky will not fall on us overnight.  We can fight and win, there is no question on this.  The problem is we need to act in a manner to guarantee our victory.

Bug every last gun owner you can, get them to write, call, or even meet in person with their representatives.  This is serious folks, the more active we are up front the less work it will take at the final push.  We need to take the initiative, we need to take control of the conversation.

Getting a bill through will take time and the American public is worse than a dog when it comes to their attention span.  Another squirrel is coming and ultimately this serves as a distraction for law-makers to avoid the more pressing and serious issues of the economy and government spending.  The case laid out by Chris is a decent one as well.

So yes, there is good news on the horizon, much like I talked about last night.  We must fight, we must win, we must brush our opponents into the dust bin of history!  We can seal Joe’s wish in one fell swoop, do not back down, do not cower, do not get angry or upset, merely fight, the deck is not stacked against us like our opponents would have you think. -B]

Quote of the Day–Chris S. (12/19/2012)

Even my grandma is calling to ask about guns!

Chris S. – After Answering a Phone Call


[On my way home tonight I stopped by to chat with Chris and see how things were doing at my local gun shop.  Here’s how it looked as I walked in:

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I walked in as the last AR on the shelf was being bought.  The few remaining that look like they are are really just dedicated .22 LR.  The one sole carbine on the right is a 9mm carbine which was also liberated by the same individual who bought the last AR.  Notice how there are no Glock mags, AR mags, or just about any other standard capacity magazine.  Yeah the last of the P-Mags were leaving as I arrived.  They moved, in the middle of no where mind you, in a store that’s mainly known as a golf shop, over 50 rifles in the past 4 days they were open for business. 

So here’s what it looked like as I left from the purchase of a single individual:

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To give you an idea of how serious this rush is, he was asked if he had any SCARs or other high end rifles and was offered cash for purchase.  Think about that for a second folks, people were arriving cash money in hand to buy these.

I don’t think our opponents have fully realized what they have done.  I can guarantee you that those who have bought rifles over the past weekend aren’t planning on turning them in if they’re outlawed.  I went through all the pistols he had left.  Most were single stack or revolvers.  Every other normal capacity Glock, S&W, and XD was gone.

People are seriously afraid and I cannot say that the fear is ungrounded.  But as piece of good news I do think that Sebastian is right in this following statement:

This is not our last stand, it is theirs. If we beat them back now, if we deny them their agenda and keep the lawmakers in line, we will sweep these people from the field. They will, like Custer, have underestimated our numbers and our ferocity. We will dog our lawmakers. They will be sick of hearing from us by the time this is over. Obama’s historical legacy will be a lousy economy, and an ineffective and bumbling second term. It is our time to show the weak and pitiful Republicans how this is done, and how you beat Obama.

There’s no question though folks, this is going to be a fight.  Do not underestimate the power of our enemy, especially with emotions on their side.  Do not get cocky, do not think that magically we are just going to win this.  It is going to take work and effort.  Write or otherwise contact your legislators starting immediately.  If you’re not sure what to do, follow this write up from Robb.  Sadly again unlike our paid competitors I have to work for a living and I will be busy through the weekend.  My goal is to sit down Sunday afternoon or take the day off Monday and write up an improved form letter based off of Robb’s.  At the same time I’m going to work on creating a simple way to automate the whole process of contacting the necessary people.

Get everyone you can to start writing in as well.  We need to be heard and we need to show our voice.  There is no question that our opponents are dancing in the blood of the dead to merely further their political goals.  Their cards are shown when other politicians admit and explain that the laws they recommend wouldn’t actually prevent something like this from happening.

I offered my help to Chris on arming customers on the political front and got him hooked with with Sebastian’s primer.  My goal is to arm every last customer with the knowledge necessary to help win this fight.

Now is the time to fight.  To those that argue for a ban on assault weapons I say, “Molon Labe!” –B]

Ear Worm Wednesday – 12/19/2012

Given it’s that time of year, he’s a pile from Lindsey that all tie to the holidays.

SSCC #484 – Wicomico County

Kendall Elmer West, 44, Salisbury was indicted by a Wicomico County grand jury this week for second-degree assault and fourth-degree sex offense — just days after he quit his job of 13 years.

According to court documents, West met the victim when she was 15-years-old through his position at Parkside High School.

Remember though folks, in response to a horrible tragedy people are not only screaming to ban guns, but throw more officers into the schools.  While not every officer is evil, it does increase the probability for a predator to end up among the sheep.

State Sponsored Criminal #484: Kendall Elmer West

Because predators need easy access while in a position of authority.

And here come the Fudds…

So already I’ve seen comments and even got an email from a friend about a particular comment that was left, below is what the comment said (emphasis mine, spelling his).

We all here want to feel safe and do what we can to protect our families & loved ones: we are parents to our children, wives to our husbands, true friends to our friends. More than this we are neighbors and members of our community, in church, club, workplace and park.

I honor the Bill Of Rights and welcome the freedom the Second Ammendment gives me. I also recognize that this was written 221 years ago against the backdrop of our emerging nation. At this sad time and remembering past atrocities I will now seek a complete ban on assault riflesI will continue to proudly keep and carry my little Ruger.
While I dont know many of you here I know that you are no different to my own neighbors; good people living in difficult times. We all need to do the right thing and show leadership.

Here’s the thing folks, you either have a right to arms or you don’t.  There is no negotiating on this, we did that in 1994 and look what happened.  Further the current atrocity pulling at everyone’s heart strings happened within a state with an assault weapons ban!

If the ban didn’t stop him there what makes you think it would somehow work in the future?  Please inform me how “just one more law” would have altered the course of events given the litany of laws he broke before he even started shooting children.  Explain to me how the law-abiding gun owners are at fault and the sacrifice of their rights will somehow make the world a safer place.  Even law-makers admit that an assault weapons ban wouldn’t have changed anything, you must know something the rest of us don’t.

But lets destroy your BS regarding 221 years ago shall we?  At the time people owned cannon, artillery, and during the American Revolution the Kentucky Long Rifle was the AR-15 of the era.  Read that again, the Kentucky Long Rifle was the AR-15 of the era.  It was a military arm that was quite excellent at striking targets at long distances.  By todays standard our bolt-action rifles could be compared with muskets.  Muskets, lacking rifling, were less accurate but quicker to reload.  So there’s a trade-off yes, overall the technology was quite similar, however there was a considerable difference between the two.

Lets move forward not even 100 years to the civil war and the advent of the henry repeating rifle as well as the percussion-cap revolver.  Both of which greatly increased the available firepower of a single individual, yet by your argument we should have nothing more than what we had 221 years ago when it was written.  So no revolvers, no repeating rifles, this destroys cartridge firearms, thus kiss your bolt-action rifles and shotguns good-bye seeing as they couldn’t have conceived of this 221 years ago.

Because they couldn’t conceive of the advances in technology 221 years ago, because they didn’t see the immediate benefit of the printing press, you argue for a complete ban on an inanimate object, that you don’t use, thinking that will somehow stop evil. You are however more than happy to continue carrying your “little Ruger” which, by your argument, should be outlawed since we should only take into account what they had at the time.

So if you want to carry a defensive pistol and you want to carry on this argument, you will carry nothing more than a single shot flint-lock pistol.  For you see, you should only ever need one round!  If you need more than one, obviously you need to practice your aim more!  No one needs a 10 shot magazine, the size of the Ruger LCP, or even a six shot revolver, for our fore-fathers survived on 1 shot flint locks and that is what they had in mind when they wrote the 2nd Amendment, at least that’s what you claim.  You cannot have it both ways, you cannot just embrace technology you like and throw away that you dislike.

Our opponents would be happy to take away every semi-automatic pistol, who needs them right?  You can carry a revolver, it has six rounds, more than enough for anything you might encounter!  Then one day someone goes on a spree, reloading while the response takes 20 minutes and you hear cries that we need blanket revolver ban.  It’s a slippery slope my friend and the first assault weapons ban proved that along with another important fact.

The federal assault-weapons ban, scheduled to expire in September, is not responsible for the nation’s steady decline in gun-related violence and its renewal likely will achieve little, according to an independent study commissioned by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ).

“We cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence. And, indeed, there has been no discernible reduction in the lethality and injuriousness of gun violence,” said the unreleased NIJ report, written by Christopher Koper, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

Now you could say I’m over stepping and taking this too far to which I would reply, how do you set the bar then?  George Washington didn’t cross the Delaware to get to his duck blind and by god the Second Amendment was not written with the aspect of hunting in mind.  No, at the time the American public maintained it’s own supply of military arms and while some would say that is no longer necessary, I would point out that to this day the United States has an unorganized militia that can be called upon to defend her.  As well as the fact that our government has committed atrocities against her own people and you wish to give that same government a sole monopoly on force.  Merely ensuring that her own citizens cannot resist if they feel it necessary to do so.

Lastly your argument for an assault weapons ban also completely ignores the fact that the majority of the features banned are purely cosmetic and safety related.  Tell me, what good does it do to ban a collapsible stock?  You know that thing that allows you to adjust the length of pull for different sized shooters.  That thing you adjust to make sure the shooter doesn’t get scoped, or otherwise suffer injury.  The pistol grip, which is quite beneficial for disabled shooters allowing for a more natural grip angle and thus preventing further damage to the wrist because of recoil.  Also my personal favorite, banning a barrel shroud.  Really!? Banning an object who’s sole purpose is to prevent the user from burning themselves.  That’s like banning suppressors, because we all like hearing damage!

Your statement above is nothing but pure hypocrisy no matter how you cut it. You either support the individual right of self-defense, including their right to choose what they think is the best arm for them, or you don’t.  You cannot just say, well I don’t like evil black rifles so their bad but leave my pistols alone.  What happens to the disabled woman who cannot easily deploy a pistol but can a rifle?  Must she be stuck with a bolt-action rifle that she cannot effectively operate the bolt on?  Ok, so you’ve left semi-auto rifles now with the necessary features to aid in ease of use.  Now are you going to limit her to 10 rounds?  That operator as I said lacks normal dexterity so while you can quickly and easily reload a magazine you’ve still limited the disabled shooter.  And for what?  It’s not like the magazine bans really matter to a determined individual:

Remember it was 20 minutes for the police to respond, so short of banning metallic cartridges, people can reload guns, again and again, using them for evil.  The answer is to step up and stop evil when it appears, that is best done by allowing people to retain the best tools for doing so.  That is not done by banning the otherwise law-abiding and turning them into felons overnight.  I find it ironic though that you claim we should do the right thing and show leadership and you do so by blindly following the talking heads.  The right thing is stepping up and doing what needs to be done, even if it seems difficult.  The right thing is protecting the rights of others despite the actions of a lone mad man.  By the way sir, you lead from the front, not from the rear as you kiss the boots of your future masters begging forgiveness for something that wasn’t your fault.

In the words of Samuel Adams:

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace.

We ask not your counsels or your arms.

Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you.

May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.

SSCC #480-#483: McAllen

Federal prosecutors announced charges Thursday against four officers from a South Texas anti-drug task force who they say took thousands of dollars in bribes to guard large shipments of cocaine.

The officers — two from the Mission police department and two Hidalgo County sheriff’s deputies — were members of the “Panama Unit,” which is a joint task force between the two agencies that targets drug trafficking, according to prosecutors. Mission’s police chief said one of the officers was actually part of a different task force, but a prosecutor’s office official didn’t immediately respond to an after-hours seeking clarification.

This isn’t the first time the enforcers in the “War on Drugs” were personally profiting off of it.  But remember, it’s necessary for our safety and protection.   Since prohibitions are wonderful things and all and don’t have any negative effects.  Yes, that last sentence was seeping with sarcasm, just to make sure I’m clear.

State Sponsored Criminal #480: Rigoberto Espinoza
#481: Jonathan Trevino
#482: Fabian Rodriguez
#483: Gerardo Duran

Because the real reason to join the police is to abuse the law abiding while taking bribes to protect the criminals.

via Bob S.

Quote of the Day – A Girl (12/18/2012)

When I was mugged I blamed only 2 people. My attacker and myself. I can’t control him, so I looked at myself to figure out what I could do to put myself in a better position for survival should the element I couldn’t control decided to come after me again. I took responsibility. I didn’t blame the cops or the grocery store parking lot or even my parents. They had some influence as did society, but it was me who stood there and did nothing. It was me. I did not come after you or anyone else. I didn’t go to congress and ask for new laws to protect my lack of action. I took action. Law abiding, legal action and I took responsibility for my part in that day. I can tell you none of it felt good. I didn’t feel good after I picked myself up off the ground, I didn’t feel good as I hid in the bathroom and took care of my scraped up arms and back. I didn’t feel good when my so called friends turned their backs on me. I didn’t feel good when my daughter looked me in the eye and told me she didn’t feel safe because I didn’t stop the and guy. It didn’t feel good when I showed up in the park to learn how to defend myself. I felt anything but good. I felt sad and lonely. I felt lost and broken. I felt ashamed and confused. I felt scared and and hopeless. And I fought all of that everyday for over a year in order to take responsibility. In order to feel good again.

A GirlFeeling Good
December 18, 2012


[First, go read the whole thing, it’s worth it and there were a few other quotes I almost put up first till I hit that one.

Now when I read that my immediate thought was, “No one ever said doing the right thing was the easiest route.”  I did a previous rant in the immediate wake and honestly her post and mine are intertwined together.

Feelings are driving the conversation for a lot of people right now, they want to do something, anything.  As I said before:

They want to be able to look at a physical object and blame it for what as happened.  They want to destroy the physical object and blame it for their grief.

They don’t want to admit that ultimately there was a person behind the gun.  They don’t want to admit no matter how hard they tried, they wouldn’t be able to control him.  They don’t want to admit all the efforts they took in advance to feel good in the wake of things like Columbine and other mass shootings in the end did nothing.  Not only did they do nothing, but the may have made it worse.

To them though that last thought is an impossibility   It is impossible that the actions they took to satisfy their feelings could have been counter productive.  How could they?  Their responses felt right to them in a previous time of emotional tragedy.

People currently forget that 11 years ago a group of men brought this country to its knees with a set of box cutters.  The tool is a tool and nothing more.  It’s use for good and evil rests entirely with the person holding the tool.

The principal, Dawn Hochsprung, gave her life ultimately trying to protect her students.  She was forced, by law, to be unarmed in that encounter.  The aggressor however broke numerous laws and had to actually steal the firearms to carry out his crime.  Think about that for a second, objectively.  We, as a community, trusted that woman, as well as the staff with the care and protection of our children.  We trusted that they would do what is necessary to keep them safe and educate them for the future.  We trust them enough to send our children there for a decent part of their young lives.  Yet we refuse to allow them the choice of carrying a firearm to defend our children should evil come before them.

We refused to allow the people immediately on the scene to respond to the threat posed against the children.  Instead the shooter was given 20 minutes to perpetrate his crimes.  He was given 20 minutes with defenseless victims.  Victims who were in the charge of responsible adults.  Those responsible adults, responsible for the children in their charge, were forcibly disarmed under the law.

The law in this case guaranteed the outcome.  We will never know what the outcome would have been had just one teacher been able to choose to be armed.  We can hypothesize given previous events, such as the Pearl High School incident in 1997.  But we can never actually know, all we can do is wonder.

It’s time to stop passing laws based on irrational emotion and examine a very simple and harsh fact.  When evil finally shows up, how can we react.  We focus too much on stopping evil out right and preventing it from ever happening.  While definitely a worthy goal, it is almost impossible to achieve since you cannot actually control the aggressor.  All you can do is react as quickly as possible and try to minimize damage.   What you can control to achieve that goal is yourself and your response, except in many cases the law has neutered that ability from the victims. -B]