It's a "Gun Free Zone " carnival!

This seems to be never ending today.

"Parents of students at Northeast High are up in arms over a gun found on the campus of the school.

There's a gun free zone sign on the school grounds, but police say one student at Northeast High School brought a gun onto the campus last Friday. They also say the gun was loaded."

The sign didn't work? Your kidding? Someone tell Larry Hincker and don't forget to blame the NRA!! And this:

"It could happen here, it could happen anywhere, you know. That's just, unfortunately, how it is now,"

Yes it can happen anywhere but school shootings are still rare and on the decline. Yet there are those still insisting that a sign will stop crime. Loosers.

Yet another shooting in a "Gun Free Zone"

Here is the link. Not a whole lot of information yet. A nursing student kills two classmates and then herself.

I wonder if the shooter was an NRA member. You would think so considering Reuters blames "the gun-ownership lobby" with mass shootings. Oooh, oooh, maybe she was a "gun nut" or had a concealed handgun permit!

The media sucks.

Excuses, Excuses

So a NYPD cop negligently shoots an 18 month old child while cleaning his pistol and Alison Gendar, Edgar Sandoval and Bill Hutchinson of the Daily News staff light him up for it, Right? Wrong! At least they post his name.

The off-duty cop, Patrick Venetek, 24, who has been on the force for less than two years, was in his second-floor Mayfair Drive S. apartment cleaning his service weapon when the accident occurred, a source said.

The cop had only natural light because he apparently was so broke his electricity had been turned off earlier this week, police sources and a Con Edison worker said.

Did you get that? He wasn't getting paid enough! He only had natural light! Actually it looks like he had plenty of Coors Light from the picture. Maybe he should refrain from buying booze until he can pay his electric bill. I think if you can't obey 4 simple rules when handling a firearm, maybe you shouldn't have alcohol anyways.

Why is it that cops are held so blameless? If it had been me I would have been run up the flagpole for that.

Do you smell that? It smells like...B.S.

I sent this in an email to a coworker over a month ago concerning media sensationalism:

"So my wife is watching the NBC news this morning, I can hear it as I’m in the room but I don’t normally watch the news as I don’t believe one damned word those people have to say, and they are showing a video of the “sniper” that shot at Benazir Bhutto moments before a bomber blew himself up and ultimately caused her death. That’s fascinating because a real Sniper is a highly trained marksman who traditionally fires a rifle from a distance and concealment, not with a handgun from 3 feet. It does sound much more exciting when they call regular gunmen a SNIPER though, kinda like these guys who were also just gunmen and not snipers (see Logistics and tactics).

After that educational clip, NBC showed a nice cheerful chart of the number of U.S. military deaths in Iraq for 2007, broken down by month, which is also fascinating, because nothing good happened there in 2007.

Nope, no BiaS or sensationalism here!"

Update: Now it seems that the gunman missed with the pistol but managed to still get the job done with a bomb. My point being that it is unlikely that a sniper would miss.

'I do know the shots didn't hit her. The Interior Ministry allowed me to be party to photos and other materials that showed it wasn't a bullet.'

Good Thing She Was Defenseless

A school shooting/stabbing in Ohio. A husband walked into a school with a gun and a knife and stabbed his wife who is a teacher at the school. She almost died. From what I'm reading it doesn't seem like he shot anyone.

PORTSMOUTH, Ohio - A teacher's estranged husband charged into her classroom Thursday morning, firing a gun before stabbing her as her fifth-grade students watched, police said. He later was found dead in his home after apparently shooting himself during a standoff with police.

He must not have known it was a "Gun Free Zone." It's a shame there is no waiting period for shotgun purchases in Ohio or this guy would not have been able to take his own life.

Also of note, the schools security procedures failed. I know, shocking..

Police said they were reviewing surveillance video from the school to determine how Layne entered the building. "The doors are locked. So people can't just walk into the school," said Larry Mullins, spokesman for the county's Emergency Management Agency.

Unless I'm reading this wrong, it would also appear that a cop was present at the school when all of this went down:

We heard gunshots, and we heard her yelling. I was scared," she told WSAZ-TV. "The police officer came and got us and she was still laying there and she was hurt really bad.

Just like I said here, a police officer or any security guard can not guarantee your safety. The "it won't happen here" mantra doesn't work either because as this one person put it:

You think in a small town, a small Christian school, you send your children there to kind of protect them from things like this," Sammons said. "But you just never know when or where things are going to happen.

Be prepared.

Update: The wounded wife, Christi Lane, had a restraining order against her husband, and for what it's worth, an alarm system. The next time someone tells you that such measures will protect you, point them to this.

Years ago I used to install alarm systems in residential homes. They are easily defeated on their own, but can be usefull in combination with other things like a dog (yappy dogs are the best alarm system because they will often let the homeowner know of danger before they even try to enter the house), a gun, and a plan for implementing them together in an emergency. None of this mattered in this situation mind you because the woman was at a school.

City Hall Shooting in Missouri

Why would you need a gun in city hall? Oh wait, don't they have armed security and cops at city halls and other government buildings to protect you? Yup! That didn't stop Charles Thornton from killing 2 police officers, 3 city officials, someone else that the story doesn't identify, and wounding a reporter and the mayor.

Panus said the gunman killed one officer outside City Hall, then walked into the council chambers, shot another and continued pulling the trigger. A witness said the gunman yelled "Shoot the mayor!" as he fired shots in the chambers, hitting Swoboda.

One individual tried to defend himself but sadly, the high capacity chair did not stop the gunman.

..the shooter fired at City Attorney John Hessel, who tried to fight off the attacker by throwing chairs. The shooter then moved behind the desk where the council sits and fired more shots at council members.

At this time the gun is not to blame, however the local government is:

The only way that I can put into context that you might understand is that my brother went to war tonight with the people, the government that was putting torment and strife into his life," Thornton's brother, Gerald Thornton, told St. Louis' KMOV-TV.

It is not known if there were "No Guns" signs posted or if they were obstructed from the gunmans view as that would have surely stopped this tragedy.

There was talk about banning Thornton from city hall but I doubt that would have made a difference either considering he killed an officer before even entering the building.

One thing for sure, Charles Thornton was going to murder people in that building, laws be damned. I'm not saying everyone should carry a gun in public buildings, or even everywhere for that matter, but I am saying that if a madman is on the loose you are responsible for your own safety. This sort of incident is exactly why I don't trust my life to security guards or even cops. There is no guarantee that they can successfully intervene when your life is on the line. On the flipside, there is also no guarantee that I can successfully defend myself no matter what I'm carrying, but the point is that I can try without having to resort to throwing chairs and hiding under a desk. If you have ever been in a public building in DC and seen the overweight, bored 20-something security guards armed with .38's and not paying attention to their suroundings you would know what I'm talking about.

Update: Here is a Yahoo news video of Alan Hopfl who was in the meeting when the shooting started. He said that "Cookie" Thornton had a "large, silver revolver" and that he knew Cookie and this came as a "complete surprise to me." What I find interesting is that Hopfl saw the gunman pull out the revolver and gun someone down. Think about that the next time someone tells you that police officers are trained to know who the bad guys are and that is why only they should be the ones armed. It doesn't take a genious to see who the threat is.

It's a good thing Cookie didn't have a super deadly assault thingy or things could have gotten out of hand.

Lies from the other side

Over at Huffington Post, anti-gunner Paul Helmke takes another shot at spreading misinformation. See here. He's praising the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownerships annual scorecard that rates sates by how many silly gunlaws they pass. VA is number 14 with 18 points out of 100 possible. My main concern is microstamping which Kalifornia just passed into law.

Basically, a serial number is machined onto the firing pin to stamp the cartridge when the gun is fired. This law is bad for the law-abiding because:

1. The law-abiding pay the cost when they buy a gun
2. They can potentially be felons when the number wears out (altered serial number)
3. What happens when the firing pin breaks? Do you have to order a new one from the factory? Who pays for this?
4. A firearm registry is kept on the gun owners

Now, this technology is easily defeated by:

1. Changing the firing pin which takes minutes and costs about $7.00
2. Removing the number with a file or sharpening stone
3. Picking up shell casings from the crime scene
4. Dropping shell casings previously picked up from a shooting range on the crime scene
5. Using a revolver

I left a comment but I don't know if it will make it onto the board. I hear they moderate the comments to push out the opposition, but there seems to be a pretty strong voice as of right now. Updates to follow.

Update: It seems my comment did make it after all.

Definitely an old argument but what I find interesting is why we are still having it. Paul thinks microstamping is going to help land bad guys in jail. Paul doesn't know the first thing about how microstamping works and just takes it at face value. Regular law abiding folks are the only ones affected by this law. When that little serialized number on the firing pin wears out, which it will quickly, the owner of the firearm will be a felon just as if they removed the number with a file. Criminals will either not use a microstamped gun, file off the number, replace the firing pin for $7.00, pick up their casings from the crime scene, drop fired casings they picked up from a range, or just use a revolver. Meanwhile the 'law abiding citizen' will pick up
the tab for the extra cost of the gun and suffer the consequences of a silly law.

Play cops and robbers, do some time

This is pretty strange. 10 year old robs 6 year old of pokeman cards with either a "foam gun" as it's first called, or an "airsoft gun" as it's later called. An airsoft gun could hurt someone, the severity depends on who made it. Some of the airsoft guns you get at wal-mart are not that powerfull. Either way, this kid is in serious trouble for something that souds pretty trivial.

The fourth-grader has been suspended, school officials are considering whether to expel him.

Expeling him over this is pretty unreasonable. And check out some of the comments:

Lock up the kid AND lock up the lousy parents! The parents are just as responsible for raising a 10 year old sociopath.

Lock the kid up? Lock the parents up? Some people just fly off the handle with stuff like this.

Lovely

Ya gotta love the U.K.

“Gun woman.” They couldn’t come up with anything more clever? She fired a PELLET gun at a gang and they brand her as a menace.

She said she wanted to deter the gang who she thought had caused her months of harassment, crime and vandalism.

Not having a more effective tool, she resorted to the pellet gun. Good thing those guys didn’t smash her face in. They must have been held back by the ever harsh rule of law, no doubt.

Mrs Walker taught children with behavioural problems at New Park High School in Eccles, Salford, when the gun incident happened.

It was a PELLET gun! "Gun incident" does sound much more intimidating than "woman defends home from gang using pellet gun."

She was jailed for six months for possessing a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence, and affray.

Notice it was not a pellet gun, it was a firearm. And why did she get branded as the criminal? I guess to make a statement to the proletariat that self defense will not be tolerated. And the little bastards who gave her so much fear, harassing her with crime and vandalism? I guess they 'Learnt there lesson' too huh? Pathetic.

A gun walked by and all of a sudden...

This story is tragic but once again the blame is misplaced. Link here. In short, this 15 year old kid killed his family; father, mother, and two brothers aged 14 and 11. Apparently Nicholas Browning was minding his own business and a gun talked him into massacring his family. Just like that.

Slayings of relatives by teenagers "are usually spontaneous sorts of things," Schlesinger said. "With the brooding, depressive male adult, it's not spontaneous, it's much more thought through, with obsessive rumination prior to it. With a teenager, it's almost always impulsive, spontaneous, and there happens to be a loaded gun around."

Emphasis mine. What should I do today? Hmmm. Oh look! A gun! Maybe I should kill my family! Yeah right. This kid has problems but of course, no one had any idea.

Browning, who turns 16 on Saturday, had no history of violence, mental health problems or drug problems, according to court documents. His father was a highly regarded business attorney, and the family lived in an affluent suburb. Browning played golf and lacrosse, was active in his church and was close to becoming an Eagle Scout.

Also of interest:

The gun belonged to John Browning and was kept inside the home.

1911? A5? BAR? That’s probably wrong of me. And here’s some more posturing the blame onto stuff instead of a crazy 15 year old:

Experts said easy access to guns was a common thread in cases where children kill their parents.

"The biggest risk factor that was not prevented was his access to firearms, and I think that's the biggest tragedy," said Dr. Anandhi Narasimhan, a Los Angeles-based child psychologist.

Once again, a gun did not make this kid kill anyone. A 7” kitchen knife of 5 gallons of gas and some matches will work just fine.

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