Archive for the ‘Crime’ Category
Fisking the Daily Star
The Arizona Daily Star published an article in their Sunday Edition that stood out to me when I was grocery shopping today: it had a large, above-the-fold headline entitled, “US makes it easy for gun traffickers.”
While their article is long and makes a weak attempt at appearing balanced, it has some absurdities that I really must point out. I’ve made a few statements in my response that are likely to be common knowledge to gunny folks, though I’d appreciate it if readers could point out where I might find good sources for such statements so I can cite them properly.
Also, I wrote this post rather late at night, so I’m likely to have a few spelling or grammar mistakes. Mea cupla. Read the rest of this entry »
You know what I love about the Brady Campaign?
They’re so out of touch with reality and naïve that it’s amusing to read their press releases. It reminds me of the North Korean Central News Agency and the “articles” that they publish.
I just stumbled across this release, which has the following gems about the Holocaust Museum shooter. It was written several days ago, so the mention of “yesterday” refers to the day of the shooting itself, not yesterday relative to this post.
Yesterday, a bigot took the life of a museum security guard because he thought the Government was coming to take his weapons. We can only wish that their guns had been taken away.
Wait, what? I read up a bit on this guy, and it seemed like his motives were “ZOMG JOOS!” and didn’t involve anything about gun control. Anyone have any confirmed info?
They continue with this:
I have to believe most Americans think that a man who spent time in prison for trying to assault the Federal Reserve Building and spread as much hate as this man did, who left a note saying ‘Jews captured America’s money’ and ‘Jews… are America’s enemies’ should indeed have had his guns taken away.
I also find it hard to believe that most Americans would believe that. Indeed, I think any reasonable person would agree that as a convicted violent criminal, he should be prohibited from owning arms. My understanding is that he was, in fact, prohibited from owning guns, and his ownership of said guns was illegal.
What do the Bradys propose? Making gun ownership by convicted criminals more illegaler1? We might as well put them on double-secret probation for all the good it’ll do.
That said, I don’t think that he should have his right to keep and bear arms infringed simply because he’s a flaming douchebag who promotes hatred and intolerance. Last time I checked, people have a right to free speech, and so long as one is merely speaking (as opposed to acting on their hate by committing violent acts or encouraging others to do so), I see no justification for disarming them.
In the end, though, he wasn’t allowed to own guns due to his previous convictions, he did act on his hatred and intolerance, he did commit acts of violence against the innocent, and he did end up murdering a security guard. I don’t think that making his illegal ownership and use of guns more illegal would have stopped him. The only thing that seems to have stopped him was bullets from the other security guard, yet the Bradys never seem to mention that.
Fortunately, the actions of the security guards kept him from killing others, he is likely to survive his wounds, and will have his day in court.
- ”Illegaler” is a perfectly cromulent word. [↩]
How’s the weather in bizarro-land?
The Brady Campaign extends sympathies to the innocent victims and others affected in today’s shooting at the Holocaust Museum. This shows that having even more guns in more places is the wrong answer to America’s gun violence problem.
- Brady Campaign Press Release
What the hell are they smoking, and where can I get some?
Sure, the nutjob had a gun, but he possessed it illegally; he served a prison sentence after taking various guns into the Federal Reserve in 1981, and thus is almost certainly prohibited from carrying guns. Furthermore, it’s illegal to murder people (like the museum security guard he killed), something he did anyway. The passage of more laws restricting the right of law-abiding citizens to own and carry private arms would not have prevented this incident.
In this case, the gunman was stopped by someone with a gun: another security guard. Clearly, having more guns (in the hands of good people, that is) was beneficial; I doubt that the shooter was interested in simply shooting a security guard and then leaving.
Of course, security guards are not everywhere, nor can they protect everyone all of the time. I trust that the lesson people will take away from this terrible incident is that no amount of laws can stop criminals from committing their heinous acts, but that an armed good guy can. To quote Breda, “Carry your gun – it’s a lighter burden than regret.”
In the aftermath of such a tragic event, I am reminded of the words of the late, great Jeff Cooper:
The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles.
While not armed with rifles, I’d say that the security guards at the museum should be counted among those good men.
On Piracy
While piracy on the high seas has been an issue for years, the recent hijacking of the Maersk Alabama, a US-flagged ship, and its subsequent retaking by the crew and US Navy brought the issue a bit closer to home for Americans.
My understanding, such as it is, is that due to the variety of laws regarding weapons at all the various ports that these cargo ships stop at, it’s cheaper and easier for the company to simply not include any weapons in the ship’s equipment, and thus avoid any hassles with customs.
Personally, I don’t foresee (nor do I desire) merchant ships mounting fixed naval weapons to fend off pirates. That blurs the line between a “merchant ship” and a “warship,” and I can see that causing some issues in regards to international commerce. That said, I see no reason why some additional measures can’t be taken:
- Have sealed, for-emergency-use-only arms lockers on the merchant ships. Shotguns seem to be pretty well-accepted the world over, even in countries like the UK. Have them setup in much the same way one has the “in case of emergency break glass” locker for firefighting equipment on land. The seals would make it much easier for customs officials to inspect and verify that the arms are not being used for nefarious purposes, and the size of the shotguns means that it would be more difficult to smuggle such arms into a country (is that really a concern?). Put such lockers in key areas, like the bridge, crew quarters, and the engine room. There’s really no excuse for crew needing to defend themselves with firehoses because they are unarmed.
- Train the crews in self-defense. I don’t expect them to be Navy SEALs, I just expect them to know how to handle themselves in an emergency.
- Have passive defense around the ship. Many homes have fences topped with broken glass, for example. Could a similar means of defense be implemented on a ship? Obviously, there are numerous legitimate reasons for needing to interact with the edge of the ship (throwing lines and whatnot), so a permanent installation might be unreasonable. Surely there could be various things done that would make boarding a ship much more difficult.
- When traveling through pirate-infested waters, ensure that all exterior doors and hatches are locked. Even with RPGs, it’d be slow and time-consuming for pirates to blast their way through the heavy doors found on a ship.
- Arrange for convoys to escort ships through heavily-pirated waters. Unlike WWII, large convoys wouldn’t be needed — one or two small warships could escort a fairly large number of cargo ships with only a few minute response time, rather than being hundreds of miles away. A helicopter or two might help as well.
- Show the pirates we mean business. So far, the default course of action has been to pay the bounty. Such actions have only made the pirates bolder, as they think they can get big money from a relatively simple job. Whether it’s from crews being able to effectively defend themselves to warships escorting merchant vessels, showing the pirates that everyone opposes pirates and won’t let them easily take ships will (hopefully) go a long way to deterring pirate attacks.
That said, I offer a hearty “well done” to the US Navy and the captain and crew of the Maersk Alabama. Well done, indeed.
Internal Conflict
It must be that time of year: three police have been shot in Pittsburgh by a gunman. I offer my sincerest condolences to the friends and family of the fallen officers.
As expected, the Brady Campaign is dancing in the blood of the slain police officers with yet another press release.
According to the Bradys, the police were murdered by a…
“…man shooting ‘hundreds of shots’ who apparently believed the gun lobby propaganda that an ‘Obama gun ban’ would lead to his ‘rights being infringed upon.’”
They go on to say,
“It is time for the gun lobby to stop stoking fear among gun owners with false claims about the government [proposing some sort of gun ban].”
Further down on the page, they close with,
At the very least, require Brady background checks for all gun sales; restrict military-style assault weapons to the military and law enforcement and help law enforcement crack down on corrupt gun sellers.
I’m sorry, I don’t see how they can say that the “gun lobby” is making “false claims” about proposed gun bans when they then go on to advocate such bans in the form of “restrict[ing] military-style assault weapons.” Wouldn’t such a restriction be, by definition, a ban? I’m not sure how the Bradys can hold such conflicting viewpoints.
Thanks to Sebastian, it looks like the alleged1 killer, Richard Poplawski, was a prohibited person due to having been dishonorably discharged from the marines:
Perkovic [a friend of the alleged killer-AZR] also said that Richard Poplawski had received a dishonorable discharge from the Marines and that he has a history of domestic disputes.
If this is the case, Poplawski would have been legally prohibited from possessing firearms. The “history of domestic disputes” might also have been sufficient to make him a prohibited person. Since the killer seems to have had no problems with violating existing laws2, I’m not sure what the Bradys hope to accomplish with the addition of more laws.
Update: Turns out it wasn’t a dishonorable discharge. My mistake.
- Innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, of course. [↩]
- Such as those against murder, in addition to less serious crimes like possession of firearms by a prohibited person, discharge of firearms within city limits, etc. [↩]
Uh-Oh
Various news organizations are reporting that a gunman shot some people and took hostages in Binghamton, New York.
Details differ depending on which source I read. More info as I get it.
My best wishes are with the victims of this crime and the emergency responders who have to deal with it.
Update: Various sources say that a “man reportedly entered the building with a high-powered rifle” and started shooting. No citations on who actually said he had a rifle. The AP cites the city mayor as saying that the gunman had a “high-powered rifle”1, but no mention of where he got that information.
Update: Now that the dust has settles, the AP and other sources report that the shooter didn’t, in fact, have a rifle, but rather had two handguns (a 9mm and a .45).
- Quoting the AP article, not the mayor directly. [↩]
Stupid Thieves
I received an email this afternoon from Bank of America letting me know that I owed about $300 on my Visa card.
This is surprising, as the last purchase I made with it was in December (and that was an annual recurring billing thing which I failed to cancel a while back — it’s now moved to my primary card) and was completely zeroed out two days after that charge went through. The card is physically in my safe, so it would not be possible for it to have been physically stolen without my knowledge.
I checked my online statement to see what charges were made. Hmm, let’s see: five different charges for paid, premium Yahoo Mail accounts, three charges for Yahoo Personals, and three charges for a reunion website. The hell? I didn’t make any of those charges.
[several minutes pass as I call the bank]
All right, my credit card account has been closed and the charges have all been reversed. A new account has been created and a new card should be here in a few days. I don’t really care that much, as I rarely use the account (it’s strictly a backup/legacy account) for anything, preferring my USAA Rewards MasterCard.
The criminals must have somehow acquired my card information or generated it, as the card has been in my possession this entire time. Go figure.
Why can’t criminals be smart? The last time someone stole my credit card info (but not the card itself) it was my CapitalOne card, and they used it to buy $200 worth of gasoline. This one buys subscriptions to an email service some personals/reunion sites. If I were a thief (and I’m not, but I’m just speaking hypothetically) I’d buy some good durable goods, maybe a new washer/dryer set, dishwasher, or maybe some gold. Definitely not something ethereal like a service (which can be cancelled at a moments notice) or consumable like gasoline.
See, if a thief manages to pull something off like a major diamond heist, I’m impressed. That takes some serious skill, planning, and effort to pull off. They’re still doing something illegal, but they’re good at it and I can respect that, even if I am strongly opposed to thievery. But simple credit card thieves? Stupid and annoying.
Folks, be sure to double-check your credit card statements and ensure that everything’s good.
On Mexico
The BBC, like many other new organizations, recently ran an article about the ongoing drug-related violence going on in Mexico.
In the article, a particular quote stood out to me:
Mexico’s gun laws are tight, but in the US it is far easier to get weapons. The Mexican government says lax US gun laws help arm the cartels and fuel the violence.
While US gun laws are far less strict than Mexico, I seriously doubt that the US is responsible for most of the weapons being used by the drug cartels. While I won’t say that US-sourced weapons haven’t been found in Mexico (they clearly have), I’m saying that the bad guys are getting most of their weapons from other sources. The ATF seems to agree.
First off, straw purchasing — where someone buys a gun for a prohibited person, which is illegal — doesn’t scale well. It’s one thing for a gang member to get his girlfriend to buy a gun or two, but it’s a different thing entirely for drug cartels to hire enough straw purchasers in cities all over the country to buy hundreds of thousands of guns and get them over the border without being noticed. It’s made worse when gun stores are routinely out of popular semi-auto guns like AR-15s and AK variants which, the news organizations claim, are the guns being smuggled.
Secondly, why would the cartels risk such high-level detection by straw purchasing from gun shops in the US? US gun dealers are regulated by the ATF, all retail purchasers must undergo FBI background checks, fill out forms, etc. Cars crossing the border are routinely searched for contraband. Seems like a lot of hassle for a marginal gain. It’d be far easier for the cartels to bribe Mexican military members or port authorities to overlook a container or two of smuggled arms than to buy guns — where they’re available — at retail prices in the US.
Thirdly, many of the guns being found in Mexico are machine guns, not their semi-auto lookalikes commonly available in the US. Machine guns are tightly regulated in the US and usually quite expensive. Legal, transferable M16s in the US tend to cost in excess of $12,000 and require both local and federal approval for purchase. Since the registry for privately-owned machine guns was legislatively closed in 1986, the number of legal machine guns has remained constant (or possibly declined slightly, as guns are damaged, destroyed, stolen, etc.). With actual machine guns being so expensive and uncommon, it would be incredibly unwise for the cartels to attempt to smuggle American-owned machine guns into Mexico.
With some skilled machine work, one can convert semi-auto guns into full-auto guns (doing so would be considered making a post-1986 machine gun, and it is generally illegal for private citizens to make or own such a conversion), but again this has problems scaling. Converting a gun or two is plausible, but converting enough guns to arm hundreds of thousands of cartel members? Unlikely, considering the number of machinists and equipment needed to do so.
Fourthly, Mexico has numerous porous borders, whether it’s the large amounts of relatively unpatrolled shoreline or the border with Guatemala. Why would cartels risk detection smuggling arms over the US-Mexico border when they could simply smuggle arms from other sources into the country by land or sea? Bribing a port official to let a container of guns in isn’t that hard, nor is unloading one’s own ships (whether with smaller boats onto a beach somewhere, or into a cove).
Fifthly, the cartels pay a lot more than the Mexican police or military does, so it wouldn’t surprise me at all if guns were given or sold to the cartels from police or military armories. Since the US often trades, legally, in arms with Mexican government authorities, this may be why captured guns are being traced back to the US.
Sixthly, there are numerous international arms dealers and nations who would gladly exchange arms for currency. Why risk the wrath of the US government when the cartels could simply buy from a willing foreign government or dealer by the containerload?
Basically, I’m applying Occam’s Razor here: it’s far more simple and plausible that the cartels are getting their guns from the Mexican police and military, from international arms dealers, or from another state (say, Venezuela) than them buying machine guns at vastly inflated prices in the US or straw-purchasing semi-auto guns and then converting them to machine guns.
Unsurprisingly enough, the news media doesn’t consider this (or if they do, they don’t print it), preferring to parrot the same story over and over. The ATF says it isn’t happening. Border Patrol says it isn’t happening. Why, then, does it keep coming up again and again?
Tragic Irony
Over the last day or so, I’ve been having a civil discussion with a gentleman in Germany about violent crime in the US and how — in his opinion — our lack of gun control contributes to said crime.
He went on to say that Germany’s relatively strict gun control makes violent crime much less common than in the US, particularly in the context of school shootings.
Just today, however, there was a tragic school shooting in Germany. In the gentleman’s own words, the shooting “sure takes some wind out of my sail saying those things happen because there are too many guns…”
Dammit. I hate it when things like this happens.
Who watches the watchmen? These guys.
From Reason:
KopBusters rented a house in Odessa, Texas and began growing two small Christmas trees under a grow light similar to those used for growing marijuana. When faced with a suspected marijuana grow, the police usually use illegal FLIR cameras and/or lie on the search warrant affidavit claiming they have probable cause to raid the house. Instead of conducting a proper investigation which usually leads to no probable cause, the Kops lie on the affidavit claiming a confidential informant saw the plants and/or the police could smell marijuana coming from the suspected house.
The trap was set and less than 24 hours later, the Odessa narcotics unit raided the house only to find KopBuster’s attorney waiting under a system of complex gadgetry and spy cameras that streamed online to the KopBuster’s secret mobile office nearby.
The attorney was handcuffed and later released when eleven KopBuster detectives arrived with the media in tow to question the illegal raid. The police refused to give KopBusters the search warrant affidavit which is suspected to contain the lies regarding the probable cause.
There’s no excuse for the police’s behavior. I’m glad to see that someone is “watching the watchmen”, and hope these cops get slapped hard by a judge.