2012 – Page 164 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Obama is Addressing Important Middle Class Needs

There is nothing this nation needs more right now than the splashy new offerings from the official Fashion Designers for Obama campaign coalition group.

The 99% protesters who graduated college with tens of thousands of dollars in debt who can’t find jobs – they are absolutely looking to pick up the $55 tank top or the $95 silk scarf. The blue collar worker who got laid off in 2009 and still hasn’t found steady work can totally turn his life around with the Vera Wang campaign gear. And what single woman struggling to keep her job and balance the rising healthcare costs that are coming when her low-cost insurance is banned by Obamacare won’t see her life turned upside down with an $85 Diane von Furstenberg nylon totebag?

I’m not sure that tone deaf begins to adequately describe the campaign.

Where’s Lydia’s Candle?

Jennifer asks a poignant question. It’s a very good post, and one I expect our opponents will respond to with anger rather than thought. It’s all they have left, really.

Another Gun Running Scandal for ATF?

The LA Times is reporting there appears to be yet another gun running scandal involving ATF. This one is called White Gun. Some of the details of the investigation are startling:

According to the ATF documents, Guzman Patino told the undercover agent that “if he would bring them a tank, they would buy it.” He boasted he had “$15 million to spend on firearms and not to worry about the money.” He wanted “the biggest and most extravagant firearms available.”

The two met again outside a Phoenix restaurant, and the undercover agent showed Guzman Patino five weapons in the trunk of his vehicle, including a Bushmaster rifle and a Ramo .50 heavy machine gun. The undercover agent said he could get that kind of firepower for the Sinaloans.

Can someone from the other side explain to me how you’re going to keep an organization with a 15 million dollar arms budget disarmed?

The same undercover agent met the pair in February 2010 at a Phoenix warehouse. David Diaz-Sosa and Jorge DeJesus-Casteneda brought 11 pounds of crystal methamphetamine to trade for weapons. The undercover agent showed them shoulder-launched missiles, rocket launchers and grenades before ATF agents moved in and arrested them.

All of which you can surely buy at US gun shows. In ATF’s defense, it would seem that the guns lost in White Gun were accidentally lost, rather than deliberately lost, so this can at least be chalked up to incompetence, rather than malice.

Blaming Guns

Three teens are dead in Philadelphia (17 homicides in the first 12 days of 2012), and Mayor Michael Nutter is making headlines for strong words against the parents. He ranted that late on a Tuesday night, kids should have been in bed, getting ready for bed, or doing homework. They shouldn’t be driving around looking for fights and other trouble. A little shocked by his rant? Well, you won’t be shocked to know that the next thing he blamed was the lack of gun laws. But, that’s not actually the problem with why the shooter was on the streets:

Meanwhile, Eyewitness News has learned the suspect in the shooting, Axel Barreto, has a lengthy criminal record, including at least seven arrests since 2000, mostly for drugs. But on Saint Patrickâ€™s Day 2004, court records show Barreto was arrested for illegally possessing a gun, but those weapons charges didnâ€™t stick. …

They found him in possession of marijuana but also with a gun, which was illegal because he was already a convicted felon according to Tasha Jamerson, a spokeswoman for District Attorney Seth Williams.

Barreto was charged with five gun-related crimes, including trying to scrape off the serial number on the gun, but the charges were dropped six months later. His defense attorney at the time, Anthony Stefanski, says the judge ruled that police illegally searched Barreto that day without cause, so prosecutors were left with no evidence and little choice but to drop the charges. (emphasis added)

This guy committed at least five gun-related crimes in one incident. That’s not an indication of too few laws on the books. The reason this guy is on the street isn’t because the charges were too light, it’s because the police didn’t follow the law. There’s no gun law that will help Philadelphia if they conduct illegal searches so that all of the evidence of the search has to be thrown out in court. Hell, even an outright ban on possession by any civilian under any circumstance wouldn’t have put this guy behind bars since they found the gun in an illegal search.

Homicide No Longer a Top Cause of Death

This is certainly progress:

For the first time in almost half a century, homicide has fallen off the list of the nation’s top 15 causes of death, bumped by a lung illness that often develops in elderly people who have choked on their food.

And all this has happened while we’ve been liberalizing our gun laws, and selling more and more guns. Kind of puts a damper on the narrative of the gun control busybodies doesn’t it?

The Madness Deepens

CSGV took something I said out of context, and then we get a great example of how they don’t want to take our guns. In truth, I don’t worry that they will. They quite frankly don’t have the political power. I haven’t really been able to figure out if the folks at CSGV are genuinely mad and offended, or they are just poking their foaming at the mouth followers with a stick in hopes of making something happen.

Unfortunately this is what leads our country down the path to nasty discourse, and where we can no longer have reasonable people agreeing to disagree. How can you agree to disagree with someone who wants your friends and fellow citizens in jail and ruined, as we can see in the example here and here?Â These aren’t people who are just concerned citizens. They are hate filled people out to destroy lives. How are these people different from a bigot who would enjoy the idea if a black man got an ass beating because he was visiting Mississippi in 1954, and didn’t know certain fountains weren’t for his kind? I posit they are no different in terms of their corrupt character, only in the form of bigotry they have chosen.

First Plea Deal from New York City

Tea Party leader who was pinched in LaGuardia for transporting a firearm pleads to disorderly conduct. Gun charges are dropped.

Plea Deal for Meredith Graves

The Manhattan District Attorney is apparently working on a plea arrangement for Meredith Graves. If I were in the Manhattan DA’s shoes, offer her a plea to disorderly conduct, and she forfeits the gun. After a few years, she can probably get an expungementÂ for the disorderly conviction, so it won’t show up when employers do background checks. Given the amount of publicity this is getting, the only thing throwing the book at these folks is going to accomplish is to outrage Congress enough to pass HR822 even sooner. If I was the Manhattan DA, I wouldn’t want to poke that bee’s nest.

More on the Candles

I’ve noticed the Brady folks keep touting the picture of their vigil from Conowingo, MD. My guess is because it’s their biggest crowd at any of the events, and it photographed well. The rest of the pictures features your prototypical close ups, or one-off snapshots, probably to conceal the fact that there was very low turnout at most events. I mean, the Pittsburgh event featuring CeaseFirePA looks like a pretty decent house party. It’s no surprise that Heeding God’s Call turned out the usual suspects in Philadelphia. Reading wasn’t too bad a crowd.

I count about 33 people in the headlining event crowd in Conowingo. The unescapable fact for the Brady Campaign and other groups is these are pathetic turnouts. Dennis wants to know whether politicians are listening. They are not. They should not. At my club, we get a better turnout for air gun matches when Larry is making his famous New England clam chowder than the Brady’s got at Conowingo. My club this summer had a picnic that turned out four hundred, and that’s only because we capped it. The area gun shows on any given weekend draw thousands.

Whether the antis want to accept it or not, this is why we’re listened to, and they are ignored. There are simply a lot more of us than there are of you. Time to start facing facts.

Officer Harless of Canton, OH Fired

John Richardson notes that the City of Canton has decided to let this particular loose cannon go. I wish I could say this is a case of a town doing the right thing, but I suspect the primary reason is that Daniel Harless was a walking potential 1983 suit just waiting to happen, and I would point out that 1983 allows one to sue all the way up the chain of command.

I’d say justice served, but I have to agree with Uncle on this one. If I threatened to shoot someone dead, who was not threatening me in any way, while I was open carrying a pistol, I’d be in jail already.