2012 – Page 80 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Crazy

I’ll be curious to know if the motive for this staged shooting is ever discovered.

Indiana Conservation Officers don’t believe a Bloomington man’s story that he was shot by an unknown person while visiting McCormick’s Creek State Park on June 25.

Instead, Conservation Officers say evidence suggests Peter Raventos, 43, shot himself in a staged incident designed to portray him as the victim of a random shooting. …

On June 25, Conservation Officers and other agencies responded to a 911 call at 10:05 p.m. reporting that a man had been shot at McCormick’s Creek. The call was made by Raventos, who told Conservation Officers he was shot in the back by an unknown assailant while walking along a park trail.

Conservation Officers, McCormick’s Creek staff, the Owen County Sheriff’s Department, Spencer Police, and Indiana State Police conducted a thorough search of the park and nearby area for a possible suspect but found none.

Raventos, meanwhile, was taken to IU Health Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis, where he was treated for wounds inflicted by more than 20 shotgun pellets and later released.

From witness interviews and evidence found at the scene and at Raventos’ home, Conservation Officers have since concluded that Raventos rigged a shotgun so he could fire it at himself from some distance.

Witness statements led Conservation Officers to an area of the park where the shooting was believed to have occurred. There they found bungee cords, fishing line, a spent shotgun shell, an unspent shotgun shell, and a small piece of plywood embedded with shotgun pellets.

Conservation Officer K-9 units searching the area also found a shotgun wad-a small plastic cup inside a shotgun shell casing that separates the pellets from the gunpowder. When fired, the wad is expelled and falls to the ground.

Conservation Officer scuba divers searched the nearby White River and located a 20-gauge shotgun that was later linked to Raventos.

Search warrants for Raventos’ home, cell phone, and vehicle turned up additional evidence.

I’m very curious about the evidence from the cell phone. That seems like an odd place to find anything relevant unless it reveals some kind of premeditation that could disclose the potential motive.

I just can’t fathom why anyone would shoot themselves in an effort to make a park look bad.

Are Gun Owners Really Paranoid?

Canada has gun laws that our opponents in the gun control movement would no doubt love to see here, and yet a mass shooting still happened:

But society as a whole can do more by banning private ownership of handguns. Blair said pistols were obviously used in the devastation on Danzig St., with police recovering one at the scene. Indeed, itâ€™s hard to imagine how this could have happened at all if the shooters didnâ€™t have access to easily concealed handguns.

So do they really expect me to believe if we adopted Canadian style gun laws, and our numbers and political power were subsequently reduced greatly, major political figures would not also be calling for total prohibition? I can see the examples of what happens right before my eyes when gun owners are reduced to what they have been in Canada. No thanks. That’s why when gun control supports say “How can you be against it? It’s reasonable!!” Hell, I’ll admit, sometimes I think it is reasonable. But I’m not giving them anything that could strengthen their hand. I know what the end game is. You can see that end game being pushed in Canada.

The Corruption of Chief Ramsey

Anti-gun Philly police commissioner may have been guilty of some violations of the Uniform Firearms Act himself. It seems he was never sworn as a law enforcement officer in Pennsylvania until recently. An attorney alleges this constitutes a violation of Pennsylvania law, including gun laws, and demands that someone bring charges. The law… psssht… that’s only for the little people.

You’re Not Entitled To Your Own Facts

This ignorant editorial looks like it was penned by the VPC. The Fredrick News Post has to be getting pretty desperate if they are publishing dreck like this. but on the plus side, it seems to only be the real suckers in journalism that fall for this stuff this hard these days:

It was then that the NRA began to reinterpret the Second Amendment, thus giving birth to its political agenda, which eventually spawned the extremism of today.

This idea that the standard model of the Second Amendment was single handedly created by the NRA in the 1970s is one of the more insidious and persistent lies of our opponents. People like Patricia Weller, the author of this editorial, and “semi-retired legal assistant” is either willfully misleading people, or woefully uneducated on this issue. This is especially true given how much of the debates surrounding the ratification of the 14th Amendment were concerned about protecting the Second Amendment rights of newly freed blacks:

There are, however, many sources contemporary to the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment that indicate the framers and ratifiers thought the Amendment supported an individual right to bear arms. As Professor Amar points out, ironically both abolitionists Joel Tiffany and pro-slavery activist Roger Taney reached the same conclusion: â€œif free blacks were citizens, it would necessarily follow that they had a right of private arms bearing.â€ Judge Timothy Farrar specifically included the right to â€œkeep and bear arms,â€ as one of the rights protected under Article IV that could not be â€œinfringed by individuals or States, or even by the government itself.â€

And that’s hardly the only source out there. Professor Akhil Amar and Steven Halbrook both have thorough scholarship in this area. This is generally accepted as fact everywhere except in the heads, thoroughly buried in the sand, of the anti-gun people. The anti-gun folks don’t get a pass on this. If you believe that the Second Amendment, as a fundamental, individual right, was an invention of the NRA in the 1970s, I’m here to say unequivocally you’re either delusional or poorly educated. You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.

Good Ad for Gun Owners

From John Richardson, who says “I think it is an effective and well done advertisement.”

I agree. I think it’s a lot more direct, and cuts to the real issue this November. I like it better than the “All In” rhetoric NRA’s PR firm came up with, which I think is cheesy.

Gun News is Slow

Looks like we’re hitting that summer news dry spell for the gun issue. Happens every year. So expect we’ll be taking some brief excursions into other topics as they come up. I’m a bit behind today, because I had a dentist appointment this AM, this time a routine cleaning. Dentist says it’s now time to crown the tooth he’s been bugging me about for a while, along with the usual bit about flossing more. So that’s going to cost me. I also just signed a contract for painting and other repairs on the outside of the house. I think it’ll make the house look much better, as well as protect it from further damage. I’m happy to finally be getting ahead of stuff, but I get nervous when I’m spending a lot more than I’m taking in.

I guess the lesson is to take better care of your teeth, and your house. I can blame previous owners for a lot of the house, but I’m afraid no one else has owned my teeth. That one is on me.

Wishing She Had a Gun

An English Professor takes does some hiking in Alaska, and gets into a dangerous encounter with a grizzly:

“All I could think about was this bear is so close to me I can see its teeth. I could have kissed it. I wished I had a gun.”

Some bear spray would be a prudent addition to her kit as well.

No Knock Gone Wrong

Cops knock on the wrong house, a man answers with a gun, and the man ends up dead. I feel fortunate to live in a good neighborhood where SWAT raids are not a regular occurrence, because if someone breaks down my door early in the morning, without announcing their intentions, I’d probably be found in the same position: SWAT team in the living room with me visibly armed. I’d likely suffer the same fate unless I can ascertain they are indeed police officers quickly enough.

I would point out, if it wasn’t for the War on Drugs, we’d have relatively little need for this kind of military tactic. No knock warrants are generally used to prevent destruction of evidence, which if you’re going to do, you had better be sure the crime warrants putting people’s lives at risk. I don’t think preventing people from getting high is worth that, personally.

Camel’s Nose in Wisconsin Carry Requirements

The DOJ in Wisconsin is busy adding on more requirements to obtain a concealed carry license. Having this be in the hands of bureaucrats is certainly not a good thing. While training is a good idea, I’ve never been convinced states that mandate training have measurably better results than states that do not mandate training. A moron is going to be a moron no matter how much you train them, and someone who isn’t a moron is going to seek out information and training on their own. Given that we can’t have moron tests for exercising rights, I tend to think mandated training only serves to discourage people from exercising their rights, rather than serve any serious public safety purpose.

Stratfor Analyst on Fast and Furious

Obviously he is not someone who is serious into the RKBA issue, but nonetheless seems to find the notion that the cartels will be disarmed as absurd as the rest of us:

The premium prices Mexican cartels are paying for guns mean that even if the U.S.-Mexican border could somehow magically be sealed tomorrow, arms merchants from elsewhere would be able to fill the void. Indeed, there are some weapons that the cartels simply cannot buy from the United States due to a lack of availability. Such weapons include hand grenades, 40 mm grenades, M60 machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and M-72 anti-tank rockets. Instead, the cartels buy such items from members of the Mexican military, militaries in countries such as Guatemala and El Salvador, or international arms dealers.

Interesting note in the article that cartels are apparently using 80 lower receivers. How far do you go before you’re legally regulating blocks of aluminum? As we have demonstrated, it’s not hard to make a gun, so it’s not surprising the cartels are machining their own from 80 stock.