The Arizona Rifleman

From the Brady Campaign:

America has seen an epidemic of horrific gun violence at churches and synagogues, workplaces, health clubs, high schools, universities, police stations and now Army bases.  This latest tragedy, at a heavily fortified army base, ought to convince more Americans to reject the argument that the solution to gun violence is to arm more people with more guns in more places.  Enough is enough.

Take a look at that list of places. Notice a common “feature” of these places?

• Churches, synagogues, and other places of worship are almost always listed as “gun free zones” in firearm-related legislation, overriding the choices of the individual attendees, the congregation as a whole, and the leader of that particular place.
• The majority of workplaces prohibit employees from possessing firearms on their property, under penalty of being fired.
• Health clubs, while perhaps not prohibiting firearms, are essentially “gun free zones” as people are more focused on exercise and carrying a gun while lifting weights or doing cardio can be impractical, if not dangerous.
• High schools and universities are near-universally declared, either in law or policy, to be “gun free zones”.
• It’s often illegal to carry a loaded firearm in a police station.
• The carriage of loaded arms on military bases is prohibited, except in very limited situations (e.g. MPs, soldiers undergoing training [and then, the guns are only loaded while at the range and soldiers are searched for ammo and brass prior to leaving the range], etc.). CCW is strictly prohibited.

Basically, all of the places where such horrific violence has taken place are places where it’s prohibited or extremely impractical for ordinary people to possess firearms for self-defense.

I noted the decided lack of violent crime at the NRA Annual Meeting, even though thousands of people were carrying guns. Violence at gun shows is essentially unheard of; I think there may actually be more violent crimes committed in courthouses than there are at gun shows.

Even so, violent crime can occur anywhere. Fortunately, a prepared person can fight back and defend oneself, even if they don’t end up firing their gun. An unarmed, unprepared person cannot.

To summarize,

1. Be prepared. No need to be paranoid, but being wary and prepared is key to staying safe.
2. So-called “gun free zones” are completely ineffective at stopping criminals. To put it bluntly, they Do. Not. Work.

Fortunately, I think that more people are catching on to the fact that gun control doesn’t affect criminals and helps enable these terrible massacres. When the only examples of terrible violence that the Brady Campaign can list are places where guns are already prohibited by lawful people, that says a lot about the effectiveness of their proposals.

The topic of machine guns used in crime came up in a conversation I had today. Specifically, the other person was saying that guns like the Glock 19¹, the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, and the G36 “enable these sorts of rampages” where “these sorts” evidently referred to the Ft. Hood and Florida shooting sprees.

I’m able to point out, from memory, the two cases since 1934 where a legally-owned machine gun was used in a crime. However, I’m not able to think of any noteworthy crimes committed with illegally-owned machine guns in recent history other than the North Hollywood shootout. Most references to machine guns used in crimes seem to relate to the prohibition era.

Anyone know of any more recent uses of machine guns, legally owned or not, in crime in the US?

1. I had no idea why they included this common pistol as an example. [↩]

The Daily Mail has more.

Honestly, the only good thing I see coming out of that raid is the picture where the cops are displaying good trigger discipline. Everything else seems completely outrageous.

They also show a picture of a “gun” found during the raid:

Correct me if I’m wrong, but that looks completely different from any Glock pistol I’ve ever seen. The finger grooves suggest that it’s a third-generation Glock (previous generations didn’t have the grooves), but everything else seems suspicious: there’s no metal rails on the receiver for the slide to run on, the barrel’s “breech block” is grossly oversized and looks to be made out of plastic, there’s no ejector, the spring and guide rod in the baggie don’t look anything like the type of spring (real Glocks have a flat, coiled spring instead of the round, coiled spring displayed here) or guide rod (real Glocks have a plastic guide rod that holds the spring captive), the texture on the grip looks wrong, and the flat “label” at the bottom of the grip doesn’t exist on the left side of Glock pistols. Additionally, there’s no “GLOCK” emblem on the grip.

I’d show a picture of my Glock 19, but it has a Hogue sleeve on the grip, and so conceals the left side of the grip. As such, I’ll present this image of a third-generation Glock 17 that I found from Google Image Search:

Note the differences?

If the police and newspapers can’t identify a fake pistol (probably an airsoft knockoff), dare I ask how accurate the rest of the claims made by the police are?

While I have no doubt that some of the boxes raided belonged to criminals, I’d suspect that many of the boxes belonged to ordinary, law-abiding people. Hopefully they can get their stuff back. Good luck getting anyone to keep stuff in safe deposit boxes in the future.

Caleb got mugged.

Threatening a competitive shooter with a knife is almost certainly a bad idea.

Fortunately, it ended with no shots being fired, Caleb being unstabbinated, and the bad guy suffering from HotCoffeeToTheFace Syndrome.

It also goes to show you that a Beretta Jetfire in .25 ACP is a “gun that you carry when you can’t carry a gun” — Caleb wears business casual to work, so concealing a full-size pistol is a bit difficult. Nevertheless, his Jetfire saved the day.

(Video courtesy of CBS News)

Evidently there was a gunfight in Toledo, Ohio on October 8th.

According to the police (as reported by CBS), there were five gunmen involved in a fight. The fight was evidently sparked when the barman asked a patron selling marijuana to leave.

I’ve made a few observations:

• Security cameras always seem to produce video inadequate to identify people depicted in the image.
• The barman rapidly produces his cellphone, presumably to call the police, after the first fight starts.
• Many people fled immediately. This is smart.
• Some people remained to engage in a gun battle. This is stupid, particularly if the police are on the way.
• Running back into the building to engage in further gun battle is really stupid.
• There were no observable weapon malfunctions. Whether this is due to regular maintenance by the gunmen, luck, or some other condition is unknown.
• It is illegal for people to carry firearms in establishments that serve alcohol in Ohio. They did so anyway. Clearly, criminals are not deterred by nor do they obey such laws.
• If you wish to hit your target, aiming is important. These individuals did not aim well.
• Very few objects in a bar offer cover, rather than concealment.
• All participants in the gunfight used semi-auto pistols, rather than revolvers. According to the police, 17 casings were found at the scene. This is a substantial amount of evidence for police.

Based on these observations, I’ll be bold enough to make  a few recommendations:

• Avoid gunfights wherever possible.
• This can usually be accomplished by staying out of seedy places and staying away from seedy people.
• You should be aware of the mood in a bar. If things start getting tense, seriously consider leaving.
• Once things go tits-up (e.g. a fight starts), it’s time to leave. Now.
• If, for some reason, you decide to stick around after the barfight, be aware of patrons drawing guns. Once this happens, there is no possible way that the situation will improve. Get out. Now.
• Gunfights are like fires: you should flee in the most expedient manner possible and remain out of harms way. I can’t think of a single reason why an everyday person should ever consider returning to a gunfight. You should absolutely not, under any circumstances, return to the gunfight to continue fighting.
• If you are deploying security cameras, get good ones. High-quality video and sound recording is very useful.
• If it is necessary to call 911, it’s preferably to do so from a landline phone. This has the advantage of immediately displaying the exact address of the phone that placed the call, which can speed police response considerably.
• Violent criminals do not obey the law, and violent crime can occur anywhere.
• If you are willing and able to carry in a safe and responsible manner, do so. While fleeing to safety is almost always the best thing to do (and fortunately seemed to be possible for every innocent bystander in this incident), it’s not always possible — a gun can give one a fighting chance of surviving and escaping if left with no other option.

Of course, the best advice of all is to simply avoid fights and, by extension, gunfights.

According to various sources, Melaine Hain has been murdered.

I know very little about the woman other than what others who knew her have said, but she seemed like a decent person.

My sincere condolences go out to her now-orphaned children, her family, and her friends.

Although I’m located in Arizona, if there is anything I can do to help, please let me know.

As this burglar discovered the hard way.

Of course, this happening in Maryland requires the following bit of hand-wringing:

Authorities are determining whether the student will face criminal charges, Guglielmi said.

He’d better not. According to the CNN article,

Police did not release the name of the suspect, who Guglielmi said had a long criminal history, or that of the student.

[...]

The burglary suspect had been released from prison Saturday, Guglielmi said.

and

Burglars had taken two laptops and a Sony PlayStation from the students’ home Monday[...]

Student with a sword has three witnesses, presumably a police report documenting Monday’s burglaries, and the burglar has a long list of priors. Sounds open-and-shut to me.

I can’t imagine the horrible mess that a sword-stricken burglar, suddenly sans left hand, would leave in one’s apartment. I can only hope the cops left the students a sponge.

Update: More information from the Baltimore Sun and the AP. Evidently the bad guy was a habitual criminal.

That’s the question asked by the Arizona Republic in this article.

Let’s go through their article, shall we?

First off, this picture:

What’s with the media and not including actual pictures of Chris? It’s almost as if they don’t want to reveal the fact that he’s a well-dressed, tie-wearing, bespectacled black man, not some frothing-at-the-mouth nutjob. Of course, the color of one’s skin is irrelevant, but I can’t help but suspect that the media isn’t showing those pictures because it might cause some people to reconsider their worldview.

Just as local and state tourism officials tried to shed Phoenix’s unbecoming title as the “kidnapping capital of America,” another national moniker has emerged: gun-crazy.

I’m not sure that Phoenix was ever labeled the “kidnapping capital of the world” — maybe in the US, and maybe if you’re involved in the illicit narcotics trade, but certainly not for everyday persons.

As for the “gun-crazy” thing, says who?

A man carrying a pistol and semiautomatic rifle outside the Phoenix hall where President Barack Obama spoke this month ignited a media firestorm, reinforcing the stereotype of the Grand Canyon State as a gun-loving vestige of the Wild West.

Being a “gun-loving vestige of the Wild West” is a bad thing…why, exactly? The Old West was not nearly as “Wild” as movies make it out to be.

The firearms display, later revealed to be a publicity stunt, was legal under an Arizona law that allows most citizens to openly carry guns in public without a permit.

ZOMG! People can lawfully carry arms, and some choose to do so openly!

While this may come as a shock to some people, particularly urban New Englanders, almost every state in the union allows their citizens to carry arms, mostly concealed. Several states, including Arizona, don’t prohibit the open carriage of arms so long as the gun itself is not concealed (e.g. secured in a holster on the waist).

But the spotlight cast by cable-news pundits, newspaper editorials and blogs – including censure from a world-renowned travel writer – raised questions about whether Arizona’s lax gun laws make it safe to travel and do business in the state.

I can’t imagine how having law-abiding persons carrying arms makes the state any less safe.

“We’re an urban city, and there are individuals trying to hold on to the old ways of the Wild West,” said Phoenix Councilman Michael Nowakowski, himself a gun owner. “We’re going to lose a lot of conventions because of one knucklehead.”

While I admit that carrying a rifle to a public event may not be in the best of taste, what’s the big deal? Rifle or pistol, a huge number of Arizonans — many in Phoenix — carry arms on a regular basis.

I seriously doubt that Phoenix will lose many conventions or tourism: unless one is an activist or enthusiast of some sort, a state’s gun laws are not likely to enter into one’s thoughts when planning a convention. I’d suspect that location, number of nearby hotels, proximity to an airport, cost, and city life will be much higher priorities for convention planners and goers.

Before the gun stunt, tales of Mexican drug cartels abducting rival smugglers and immigrants and holding them for ransom in Valley homes had already painted Phoenix as a city under siege.

See, those are criminals. Chris, and others like him, are law-abiding citizens. Big difference.

The most visible [armed protester -AZR] was Phoenix resident Christopher Broughton, who verbally sparred with Obama supporters and gave media interviews with an AR-15 rifle strapped to his back and a pistol holstered at his side. A libertarian radio host, also sporting a pistol, said later that he and others cooked up the media stunt to draw attention to Second Amendment rights and Arizona’s open-carry law.

While I’ve said that such a stunt is probably not in the best of taste, what’s the big deal?

National news outlets, however, portrayed it as a disturbing trend, given America’s history of presidential assassinations.

Obama was inside the convention center, surrounded by a veritable army of Secret Service agents and police, behind a cordon of metal detectors and x-ray machines. I sincerely doubt that anyone meaning the president harm would be able to get within visual range of him. Chris, and the other protesters, were outside, on a public street, with a few cops and a Secret Service agent in the immediate vicinity.

“It is hard to know what is more shocking: the sight of a dozen Americans showing up to flaunt guns outside the venue for President Obama’s speech in Phoenix on Monday, or the fact that the swaggering display was completely legal,” the New York Times wrote Aug. 20.

How is any of this shocking? Outside of New York, there’s a (mostly) free country.

Don’t get me wrong — I’ve visited New York (both the City and the State) several times and enjoyed my visits, but urban New Yorkers tend to be rather insular and unaware of the goings-on in much of the rest of the country. I’d imagine that for someone who was born and raised in a highly-urbanized area where restrictive gun-control has been the norm for several generations, the sight of ordinary citizens with guns could be shocking…but so what?

Founder of the Frommer’s series of travel guidebooks, Frommer wrote that he would no longer visit Arizona, fearing for his personal safety after reading accounts of protesters carrying loaded weapons on the streets of Phoenix.

Frommer’s an idiot.

Frommer, who sold his company decades ago, was unavailable for comment. But he told NPR last weekend he was disturbed police officers stood around “like scared rabbits” while armed protesters tried to “threaten” and “intimidate” Obama supporters.

Fortunately Frommer doesn’t speak for the company that bears his name, so I’ll have no problem purchasing their excellent travel guides.

The police were certainly not “scared rabbits” — they were there to ensure the public order. Since the armed protesters previously informed the police that they’d be showing up, so as not to needlessly surprise and alarm the police, and were peaceable and law-abiding at all times, it’s hardly an issue.

I’ve seen videos of the event, and I can’t find a single example of armed protesters threatening or intimidating anyone. Anyone care to provide such evidence?

“Open-carry laws have to take second place to public order and to life,” said Frommer, a New York Democrat and Obama campaign contributor.

The lawful carriage of arms, including doing so openly, can help preserve and defend life.

When NPR host Guy Raz suggested Frommer was making Arizona sound like war-torn Mogadishu, Frommer responded: “Well, it’s getting that way. . . . The number of guns that are now being carried by citizens in Arizona is becoming frightening.”

Really? Law-abiding people carrying legal guns in a safe, legal manner is somehow “frightening”?

To quote Sgt. Hulka from Stripes, “Lighten up, Francis.”

Mayor Gordon has pointed out that Arizona is just one of 11 states where citizens don’t need a license to carry a firearm in public as long as it is visible. In fact, there are only seven states where openly carrying guns is unlawful.

In short, the majority of states allow open carry. Hardly a big deal then. Why, then, is this a huge news story?

But this year, Republican Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law three major bills that expanded gun rights, a step proponents said makes the state a safer place. Beginning Sept. 30, one of those laws will allow people with a concealed-weapons permit to carry guns into restaurants and bars, though they can’t pack heat while consuming alcohol.

Sounds good to me.

Another new law will restrict property and business owners from banning guns from parking areas so long as the weapons are kept out of sight in locked vehicles. A third allows gun owners to display their weapon when they feel threatened by unlawful force.

Again, a step in the right direction. The law that clarified when it was legal to display firearms in self-defense was a big deal.

“Every time we loosen gun laws to make it easier for citizens to carry guns in Arizona, we see a drop in the crime rate,” said Tucson resident Todd Rathner, a lobbyist for the National Rifle Association. “These people have to get over the emotional, ignorant and insane reaction to law-abiding citizens with firearms.”

Well-said, sir.

If Mr. Rathner wishes to contact me, I’d be glad to buy him a drink of his choosing. (Within reason, of course. My budget is not unlimited.)

Tourism officials said crime has already been on the wane.

The number of violent crimes across the Valley fell in 2008 to 16,832, a 6 percent drop over the previous two years, according to FBI statistics.

The number of law-abiding persons carrying arms is increasing, yet crime is dropping? Shocking.

According to that link, there was an 18.4% increase in the number of permits issued from 2007 to 2008 and a 16.4% increase from 2006 to 2007. From 2006 to the present, there’s been a 58.9% increase in the number of concealed carry permits issued.

Basically, there’s no direct correlation between the number of law-abiding people with guns and the amount of crime? (If there was, you’d see crime numbers increasing as the number of law-abiding armed citizens increases.)

Awesome.

“We have a great, positive story to tell,” said Arizona Tourism Office Director Sherry Henry, who took part in last week’s meeting. “We just need to reassure the general public that loves Arizona and is interested in Arizona that it is safe to be here, that it is beautiful.”

Arizona is indeed a safe, beautiful state. I highly encourage people to come visit and explore.

If you choose to visit and lawfully openly carry a firearm whilst exploring this great state, more power to you.

Isn’t freedom grand?

According to the news, a suicidal man — said to be armed with a handgun — has barricaded himself inside his house three blocks from my apartment.

Of course, TPD decided to do a full SWAT callout, evacuate ~15 houses around the guy, and cordon off a few blocks around the house.

What the hell is wrong with people?

It’s one guy, suicidal, with a gun. Put a cop outside the front and back of the house in a concealed position and get a crisis counselor to call the guy on the phone. If he doesn’t come out, wait him out.

To me, SWAT seems more suited for a hostage situation, active shooter, or some other situation that requires (here it comes) Special Weapons And Tactics, not a lone suicidal guy. What the heck are they going to do against a suicidal guy, shoot him?

I guess they need to justify the expense, huh?

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. Continue reading ‘Fisking the Daily Star’ »