38 Super? Really?

Apparently this is the menace we’re exporting South of the Border:

– An AK-47 and .38-caliber Super pistol with diamond-encrusted grips found after the Nov. 2 killing of the police chief of the northern state of Sonora as he walked into a hotel about two miles south of the Arizona border.

– A .38-caliber Super pistol seized a year ago when Mexican special forces captured a top Sinaloa cartel lieutenant, Alfredo Beltran Leyva, and three members of his security team in Culiacan.

– Three assault rifles recovered after patrolling federal police officers were fired upon and responded by killing four gunmen from the Beltran Leyva drug gang on July 2 at a house in Culiacan.

This is a rare caliber in the United States.  Go into most gun shops, and they typically won’t have anything in this caliber.  Even at a gun show, you’d probably be lucky to find more than one or two.  But here’s a clue:

Drug smugglers seek out guns in America because gun laws in Mexico are more restrictive than in the United States. Mexicans must get approval for a gun purchase from the Mexican defense department and are limited to guns with a caliber no higher than the standard .38-caliber. Larger calibers are considered military weapons and are off-limits to civilians.

So, .38 Super is legal in Mexico, and tends to be a higher powered smaller diameter cartridge.  Doesn’t it stand to reason that they might be more common there, while they are relatively uncommon here?  Could it be possible that .38 caliber firearms turning up in Mexico did not originate in the United States?  I have no doubt that there are straw purchasers working for people smuggling guns to Mexico, but the only way to deal with that is to make it illegal for anyone to buy a gun, and that’s not going to happen.  You know how else we could deal with this?  Securing the border.

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Another Mayor Indicted

This time it’s the Mayor of Hartford, Connecticut, Eddie Perez:

Mayor Eddie A. Perez will be arrested on bribery charges at a state police barracks this morning, theresult of a 15-month grand jury investigation into possible corruption at Hartford City Hall.

Perez and his attorney, Hubert J. Santos, said Monday that they believe the charges are related to $20,000 in kitchen and bathroom renovations done on the Hartford mayor’s home by contractor Carlos Costa.

Well, at least this time we don’t have one of Bloomie’s mayors trying to touch children.  Bribery charges are at least a bit more respectable if you’re a politician, and definitely more expected.  So who wants to start Gun Owners Against Illegal Mayors?

Hat Tip to American Manifesto for the e-mail tip.

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It’s a Serious Problem, It Deserves Serious Solutions

VPC highlights the fact that Pennsylvania tops the rankings for black-on-black violence.   We haven’t seen much from VPC in a while, but what they are highlighting is a real problem, but it deserves real solutions, not VPC solutions which dismiss the problem as a gun problem, no doubt attributable to our states “weak ” gun laws.

Don’t expect VPC to tell you the real numbers though, and they indicate something very clearly: violence is not a Pennsylvania problem, it is a Philadelphia problem.  Statewide, our violent crime rate in 2007 was 416 per 100,000.  Take Philadelphia out of the equation, and Pennsylvania’s crime rate is 278 per 100,000.  That puts us on par with Idaho, Hawaii, Iowa, Montana, and much of Western Europe.  Philadelphia represents 12% of Pennsylvania’s population, but it creates 41% of Pennsylvania’s violent crime.

We’ve documented at great detail the kind of people that the Philadelphia criminal justice system allows to roam the streets terrorizing the city, and African American communities in particular. Until urban communities are willing to face that problem, the bleeding will continue, no matter what gun laws we pass in the rest of the state.  Bad things happen when you let dangerous and violent people roam the streets.  Crime reaches every aspect of quality of life, and makes it nearly impossible to have normal family life.  You can dump all the money into education, opportunity, and jobs you want, but it won’t amount to a hill of beans if the only example of success a lot of inner city adolescents know is from criminal enterprise.

Public order is one of the primary functions of government, and Philadelphia has been failing its citizens for years.  That must be dealt with before this problem can even begin to be solved.  That’s hard to do when your mayor thinks cutting the police and fire departments is a good first step.  Philadelphia residents deserve better, but they aren’t going to get better until they start voting for it, and stop voting for people who will scapegoat guns while failing to address the real problems.  VPC is only enabling that scapegoating to continue, and are doing a real disservice to the citizens of Philadelphia by doing so.

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Get on Board GOP, Fast Eddie Needs Money

Ed Rendell has a message for Republicans:

Governor Rendell said he hoped Republicans wouldn’t oppose the stimulus bill in order to appeal their base:

“These are extraordinary times and it’s not the time to be redefining the party or staking out political ground. It’s time to rally around the needs of the country.”

Except that most of this bloated piece of crap is nothing but a Democratic Party wish list all crammed into one big steaming pile of debt we’ll leave to our kids.  But Ed needs money to pay his cronies he’s putting into high profile positions.  Otherwise, he might have to lay off state workers.  This is clearly no time for the GOP to act like an opposition party!

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“Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste”

The Republicans need to oppose this stimulus like their futures depend on it, because quite honestly, it does.  This stimulus plan is no such thing, and it has to be stopped.  Truth is, it really can’t be stopped, but Republicans have to make a good showing of it if they want to stand for something.  This is the time to put Bush behind us.

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Layoffs at Federal During the Great Obama Gun Rush?

I have to share SayUncle’s puzzlement over Federal Cartridge letting some workers idle.  I bought TD’s FAL not too long ago, and have yet to shoot it because I can’t find anyone who will sell me .308 at a reasonable price (other than the steel jacketed crap I can’t shoot at my club), and I’ve checked a few places online, and a gun show.  I say they need to hire those folks back and get loading.

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Skeptical of Stimulus

Megan McArdle is skeptical the stimulus proposed by Congress is going to do much, and pretty much represents an excuse to push multiple Democratic spending priorities:

Though you wouldn’t think it from the really quite shocking incivility emanating from the pro-stimulus side, the empirical evidence that this works in a large industrial economy like ours is basically nonexistant.  The problem is, we have very, very few examples to test on:  America during the Great Depression, and Japan in the 1990s.  And neither America nor Japan managed to stimulate their way out of their troubles.

Meanwhile, it looks like Boehner is getting the GOP to start acting like Republicans again.

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Catch and Release in DC

Women tries to rob a police officer of his gun (stupid move number one), pulls the trigger, gun goes click.  Police end up arresting her, find drugs.  Charged with assaulting a police officer, and carrying without a license.  What does this person get as a sentence?  Three years supervised release.

I should note that Fred asks why she wasn’t charged with attempted murder.  The answer is probably the same Mens Rea thing we talked about a few days ago.  Attempted murder requires proving intent, whereas assault on a police officer, which is a felony carrying a maximum penalty of 10 years under DC Code, is easier case to prosecute.  Of course, it could also be that it was part of her plea deal, to avoid having to take the case to court in the first place, that she would plead guilty to assault on an officer.  Assault on an officer in the DC Code is the same penalty as assault with a deadly weapon, or what would be aggrevated assault in other jurisdictions.

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