Heller Postmorterm

On the St. Louis CofCC Blog.

New York, Chicago, D.C? Antonin Scalia Just Threw Down

On the St. Louis CofCC Blog.

Look Out for the Clingers

Paul Huebl describes his adolescence in Chicago:

In high school I had my own .22 rifle I carried on a CTA bus on days of ROTC rifle practice. Today that behavior would make any high school kid a national and infamous celebrity.

Not like the high school would have ROTC anyway these days.  If he were a teenager today, though, he might be able to have all the condoms he wants at school.

Why Won’t Max Motors Open Up a Dealership in St. Louis?

WND:

Forget free gasoline! Car buyers want free guns

BUTLER, Mo. – A Missouri car dealership is triggering interest by offering customers free guns or gasoline with any purchase, and despite the skyrocketing price of fuel, patrons are going for the guns.

“We are aware of the gasoline and crime problem in America,” states an ad on the website of Max Motors. It goes on to note it “wants to be part of the solution and not part of the problem.”

“What we’re doing is giving everyone who buys a new or used vehicle a free handgun,” said Mark Muller, the dealership’s owner. “We have guns to display, but we can’t actually give them a gun, so what we do is give them a coupon for a local gun dealer here in town so they can pick out any gun they want. We recommend a semi-automatic.”

The certificate is good for either $250 at Alton Arms or for $250 worth of gas. Muller told WND no one has chosen the gas so far.

And, if they are a Missouri resident that is legally allowed to buy the handgun, they can legally carry the handgun concealed in the car they buy from Max Motors within the state, and they don’t even need a conceal carry permit to do so.

When asked if Sen. Barack Obama’s recent comments about people clinging to guns and religion inspired the promotion, Muller said yes.

“My next promotion is to give away a free King James Bible to any Muslim that converts to Christianity,” he said.

Naw, go with a free Curious George T-Shirt.

Not Really Obama

AP:

Huckabee quips about gun aimed at Obama

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Republican Mike Huckabee responded to an offstage noise during his speech to the National Rifle Association by suggesting it was Barack Obama diving to the floor because someone had aimed a gun at him.

Hearing a loud noise and interrupting his speech, Huckabee said: “That was Barack Obama. He just tripped off a chair. He’s getting ready to speak and somebody aimed a gun at him and he — he dove for the floor.”

It wasn’t really Obama. We know because the audience didn’t hear any caterwauling from offstage about the evil gun lobby and how he’s going to sue the gun manufacturers.

Look on the Bright Side

P-D:

Lindenwood shooting range irritates farmers

ST. CHARLES COUNTY — An out-of-the-way stretch of Missouri River bottomland eyed by Lindenwood University for a new shooting range isn’t remote enough, say some area farmers.

Worried that the proposed facility would cause noise and road congestion and otherwise spoil the area’s rustic nature, they recently convinced the county Planning and Zoning Commission to oppose the idea. The County Council, however, will have the final say on the issue.

“We don’t want all the commotion and traffic it’s going to entail,” said Cliff Steinmann Sr., whose sons operate his family’s farm nearby. “It’s way out there in the middle of nowhere.”

Lindenwood officials say that’s why they chose the 65-acre site north of Wiedey Road and east of Highway 94, a few miles northeast of the school’s St. Charles campus.

The range would be the home base for the school’s national championship shooting team, which now travels five days a week to practice in Pacific.

You’re telling me that an educational institution has an official shooting team, that uses firearms?  Not only that, since they are national champions, this must mean that other schools do, too, and they compete with each other.

The Worst Defense is a Crappy Cell Phone

WCBS-2 New York:

MONTCLAIR, N.J. (CBS)

College students at Montclair State University are all talking about a new requirement that will require students to have a cell phone.

CBS 2 HD has learned more on this required feature that is forcing students to dig into their wallets.

At Montclair State, there is no excuse for being out of touch.

“‘School Phone’ I use for campus e-mail, different things like that,” freshman Angela Vuocolo said.

That’s right.

First-year student Vuocolo said ‘School Phone’ — as in a Sprint-operated cell phone — is now mandatory for all students. It’s the first program of its kind in the country.

The cost: $420 a year for a base plan which is bundled into the tuition bill.

It includes just 50 peak voice minutes a month, but unlimited text messaging to any carrier, unlimited campus-based data usage, and student activated emergency GPS tracking.

“What it does is allow students to have an extra pair or group of people watching over them when they’re going from one location to another,” Montclair Police Department Chief Paul Cell said.

Another supposed reason for these phones is to give students a means of communication should another Cho pulls a massacre.  Though I think their gun could take the cell phones in a fight quite easily.

Now if you propose that the Montclair State University campus cops have guns, then that’s controversial — much less allowing students with New Jersey CCW permits to carry on campus.

Candidates, Guns and Washington

Though this New York Post article about SCOTUS deciding to hear the D.C. Gun Ban case, and deciding on its constitutionality probably in May or June of next year, a Presidential campaign year no less, does not mention the Presidential campaign in its text, it does have a prominent photo of the anti-gun former mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani.

Since this decision is probably coming down next May or June, the two parties’ nominees will have been settled by then. If Giuliani does win the Republican nomination, increased interest in the issue by NRA members and other pro-2nd Amendment activists might mean that enough of them refuse to vote for him (or the Democrat) such that the Democrat slides into the White House by default. But if RG tries to pander, this only opens him up to Democratic accusations of flip-flopping, ruining his reputation among people not so interested in 2nd Amendment issues, which would mean the Democrat wins.

One interesting aspect raised by this article states that whatever the High Court’s decision, it might not impact the 2nd Amendment issue and legality anywhere else. The reason is that the issue is D.C.’s Gun Ban, and the District of Columbia is a creation of the Federal government and the U.S. Constitution itself, and any action of the home rule D.C. city government (including the gun ban) is an ex officio action of the U.S. Congress. New York and Chicago have gun bans, but those are ex officio actions of the states of New York and Illinois, respectively. And when you have state actions (or implied actions), the 10th Amendment comes into play.

We could have a situation where SCOTUS strikes down the D.C. Gun Ban, using the reasoning that the D.C. city government (an ex officio appendage of the U.S. Congress) violated the 2nd Amendment in enacting the legislation. If they do that, then this does not automatically mean that the New York and Chicago bans are unconstitutional, or does it mean that the same SCOTUS would strike them down. However, the “incorporation doctrine” that is an interpreted element of the 14th Amendment would mean that SCOTUS might, and New York and Chicago might repeal their bans to head off a legal fight.

AP Profiles SCCOC

Students for Conceal Carry On Campus is gaining major momentum after the Cho Massacre at Virgnia Tech this past spring. There are these interesting paragraphs toward the end:

But advocates pushing for the campus concealed carry right say it’s not just incidents like the one at Virginia Tech that create concern.

Campuses in higher-crime urban neighborhoods also pose risks for students, said Michael Flitcraft, a 23-year-old mechanical engineering student at the University of Cincinnati.

He argues, like most gun rights advocates, that weapons-free regulations only deter law-abiding students, not thugs or mentally ill shooters.

This writer had a college roommate that was from the Cincinnati area, and in the mid-1990s, and probably still, the University of Cincinnati is in such a bad neighborhood that pizza delivery places won’t even deliver there. The campus might be okay, but getting there evidently requires going through some serious ghetto. Since the links between pizza and college is so strong that when archaeologists of the future start digging in the areas where American universities used to be, that they’ll hit the decomposing pizza boxes before they unearth actual structures, that tells you how dangerous the surrounding areas are for the restaurants to write off the money machine.

St. Louis University has gotten a lot of bad publicity lately for on- and near-campus violent crimes.

Related: Minnesota law school student suspended for advocating conceal-carry, opposing diversity

Nice Governor You Got There, Mexifornia

Reuters:

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed a bill whose backers say will better help police use shells from hand guns as evidence in criminal investigations, a spokeswoman said on Sunday.

(snip)

Activists had called for the legislation, which requires new models of semiautomatic handguns sold in California to have internal parts that “microstamp” shell casings with codes that identify the guns when they are fired. Revolvers are exempt.

Now that’s the way to end crime.  I get Jill Levoy is shaking in her pumps today, worried that this new bill, which will surely end all crime in Mexifornia, will put her out of a job.

Inaccurate AP Headline

AP Headline:

Giuliani, Bloomberg disagree on guns

Wrong.  They agree on guns.  The only reason they wouldn’t seem to is that the former wants to be President, but first must win the nomination of a political party of which gunowners are a major single-issue constituency.

Oooh, a Gun Question

Wallace asks Giuliani about students carrying guns on campus.  He doesn’t answer the question, and reverts to states’ rights on the issue.  The fact that he can’t answer yes to this question in front of a conservative audience (who cheered when the question was asked) means to me that Giuliani would be a staunchly anti-gun President.

Of Shotguns, Weddings, and Shotgun Weddings

Really, long guns aren’t an issue here; I just needed a cute title to grab attention.

Today, two new laws take effect in Missouri. First, the “permit to transfer” paperwork to transfer a “concealable firearm” (handguns) is gone, (as I thought it was repealed in a May 20 post in this space), replaced by the Federal instant background check that is the norm in most other places. Gun shows were never successful in Missouri because of the now-dispatched system; the Permit to Transfer paperwork and mandated waiting period was up to seven days. Now I imagine that there will be more and increasingly successful gun shows in the state.

Second, the three-day waiting period between applying for a marriage license and actually receiving it is now gone. The purpose of the “old gin law” was to deter hasty and intoxicated marriages, though legally speaking, since marriage is a contract, and being drunk or high precludes genuineness of assent into any contract, therefore any contract (including marriage) would be declared null and void if any one party was proven to be intoxicated.

So this means that, starting today, a shotgun wedding could happen on the same day that the old man gets mad.

Otherwise, in the immortal words of Johnny Cash:

We got married in a fever, hotter than a pepper sprout,
We’ve been talkin’ ’bout Jackson, ever since the fire went out.
I’m goin’ to Jackson, I’m gonna mess around,
Yeah, I’m goin’ to Jackson,
Look out Jackson town.

Man With Gun Will Almost Always Beat Man Without Gun

There’s a lot of talk from anti-gun left wingers that you don’t need a gun or a CCW permit to protect yourself from gun-wielding criminals, that all you need to do is learn self-defense and martial arts techniques.

Yahoo Sports:

CHICAGO (AP) — Two hulking NBA stars were bound with duct tape and robbed of cash and jewelry by masked gunmen in separate holdups that have Chicago-area detectives wondering whether someone is targeting professional athletes.

New York Knicks forward Eddy Curry — 6-foot-11, 285 pounds — was tied up along with his wife and an employee at his mansion in suburban Burr Ridge on Saturday.

Miami Heat forward Antoine Walker, who is 6-foot-9, 245 pounds, was similarly robbed along with a relative at his $4 million townhouse in Chicago’s exclusive River North section on July 10.

The odds are that the gunmen were all smaller and less physically imposing than the professional basketball players they robbed. And both players, even in the absence of formal training in self-defense maneuvers, could have probably improvised, ceteris paribus. But ceteris was not paribus; the robbers had a gun in their immediate possession, and Messrs. Curry and Walker did not.

St. Michael Was Surely Watching Over Him

AP:

TAFT, Calif. - A former Bakersfield police officer turned pastor helped nab a man who allegedly stole a car from his church’s parking lot.

James Kilgore, pastor at Taft Free Will Baptist Church, said he always keeps a gun and handcuffs in his fanny pack. They came in handy on Tuesday, when one of his elderly parishioners left Bible study to find his car had vanished.

Kilgore and Walter Brenton, 72, drove around looking for Brenton’s 1986 Ford Crown Victoria, and spotted the alleged thief driving it a few blocks away.

The pastor followed the driver until he crashed, tackled him as he crawled out of the car and then handcuffed him until police arrived on the scene.

Ronald Lee Allen, 46, of Taft, was arrested on suspicion of grand theft auto and being in possession of stolen property, said Kern County sheriff’s Sgt. Martin Downs.

(snip)

Kilgore said he was glad to put his law enforcement training to use, but said it was likely God had a role in helping him restrain the suspect.

If you’re getting a sense of deja vu about a story about guns and the city of Taft, California, you’re right: In 1998, ATF or FBI agents summarily executed a town gun dealer by the name of Darrel Howell, because they believed (falsely, in all likelihood) that he was trading guns banned by the 1994 Crime Bill.

“Live Free or Die” Often Includes Some of the “Free” Part

Why can’t all the Republican Party organizations be like this one?

Reuters:

A planned Republican fundraiser in New Hampshire aims to promote gun ownership in America by letting supporters fire powerful military-style weapons — from Uzi submachine guns to M-16 rifles.

The Manchester Republican Committee is inviting party members and their families to a “Machine Gun Shoot” where, for $25, supporters can spend a day trying out automatic weapons, said organizer Jerry Thibodeau.

“It’s a fun day. It’s a family day,” said Thibodeau of the August 5 event. “It’s quite exciting.”

(snip)

Thibodeau said he invited all the Republican candidates in the 2008 presidential race to the event at Pelham Fish and Game Club outside of Manchester, the state’s largest city, but he said they declined. He said all shooters would undergo training.

I bet I can think of someone who would like to show up at this, and would if it were not a Republican Party fundraiser — New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, a Democratic candidate for President. He is NRA-friendly, and by far the most pro-gun Democrat running for President, and about on par with the non-Giuliani Republicans running.

BHO Bemoans “Epidemic of Violence,” Then Blames Guns

MyWay/AP:

CHICAGO (AP) - Standing before a church congregation that has witnessed inner-city violence firsthand, Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Sunday that more must be done to end a social ill that is “sickening the soul of this nation.”

Obama told churchgoers at the Vernon Park Church of God on Chicago’s South Side that too many young lives are being claimed by violence and more must be done to combat the problem.

“From South Central L.A. to Newark, New Jersey, there’s an epidemic of violence that’s sickening the soul of this nation,” the Illinois senator told the crowd. “The violence is unacceptable and it’s got to stop.”

Nearly three dozen Chicago students have been killed this year, according to Chicago Public Schools. Obama said that figure is higher than the number of Illinois serviceman who’ve died in Iraq in 2007.

(snip)

He said the government needs to permanently reinstate an assault weapons ban and close regulatory loopholes that protect unscrupulous gun dealers.

He also said government should support and fund more after-school programs to keep kids off the streets. But some of the burden must also be shouldered by residents who need to do more to raise and protect at-risk children, he added.

Remember, the definition of insanity is electing liberal Democrats over and over again and expecting a different result.

New Jersey vs Toy Guns

WABC-ABC-7 New York:

(New Jersey- WABC, July 11, 2007) - A New Jersey senator wants to make it illegal to sell or give to anyone under age 18 toy guns that look so realistic they can be mistaken for a real firearm.

That’s great. New Jersey is about to create another rite of passage. That’s just what every man thinks about on or near his 18th birthday, the right to buy and own a toy gun. Actually, they’re much more likely to be thinking about real guns rather than toy guns.

Perhaps Mr. Scutari’s bill is half-baked, but at the very least, toy firearms should come in colors that make it obvious that they aren’t real, and the real guns should be made to avoid using those colors. Also, I personally am not fond of the concept of a “toy gun,” because the phrase is a contradiction in terms. Guns are not toys, and any children of mine would not be allowed to be conditioned into thinking that they are.

Rabbi At Yeshiva in New Haven, Connecticut Starts Chapter of Minuteman Project

While it doesn’t have anything to do with illegal immigration per se, it’s objective being to keep a lid on crime in and around the yeshiva in New Haven, I get the feeling that illegal immigration is a reason for the crime and thus the patrols.

From the New Haven Independent:

A longtime ally of Mayor John DeStefano, [Rabbi] Greer did not alert City Hall in advance of plans to announce an armed patrol. Greer did communicate, repeatedly, his dissatisfaction with Police Chief Francisco Ortiz. Monday he called Ortiz the “Donald Rusmfeld” of the police department.

(snip)

Asked about the armed patrols right before the press conference, DeStefano said he had no comment yet because he hadn’t known about them.

After the press conference, DeStefano backed Ortiz and disagreed with the patrol idea.

“The chief has my full support. Chief Ortiz is doing a good job,” DeStefano said.

That’s the same Mayor John DeStefano that wants to legalize essentially the illegal aliens in his city. Perhaps the Rabbi needs to find new allies.

That’s Not How the Joke Goes

An op-ed in the Springfield News Leader details the changes to Missouri’s law now that the “Castle Doctrine” bill has passed. However, Miss Overstreet gets the joke wrong, when she says:

But in Missouri now, the old joke I’ve heard from some of my law-enforcement friends, “If you shoot him, be sure you drag him back out in the yard so they won’t think you shot him in your house,” is gone.

Actually, it goes, “If you shoot him, be sure to drag him inside the house, so they think you retreated as far as you could.”

With that having been said, the Castle Doctrine for immunity from criminal prosecution has always existed; the only thing this bill did was add civil lawsuit immunity.

Adding to the Theses

Let’s see: (1) Open borders mania. (2) Anti-gun fanaticism. Once I get this list to 95, I’ll have to find a hammer.

Rev. Michael Pfleger, a white pastor of a black Catholic parish in Chicagograd, People’s Republic of Illinois, announced that gun dealers and gun control opponents are Satanic, and should be killed.

If one of his fanatical parishioners takes him up on his advice, I would be surprised if the Cook County State’s Attorney actually files any charges against him. Therefore, the ball is in Benedict XVI’s Court. We’re all waiting for the news that there was a call made from Vatican City to Chicagograd, when someone asked for someone else’s figurative badge.

Par for the CCW Course

We are coming up on the first renewals of Missouri CCW Permits, and the P-D has this feature that states that crime has neither increased or decreased because of it.

The former was predictable, and I knew that it wouldn’t result in a dramatic drop in crime, but I’m not willing to believe that it hasn’t precluded, deterred or stopped no crimes.

Everyone who was intellectually honest with themselves and supported CCW knew that it was the solution for some people, but not for the typical person. Therefore, to squelch violent crime once and for all, more will need to be done, and newer and fresher ideas will need to be formulated.

From the article:

In Jefferson County, Sheriff Oliver “Glenn” Boyer said permits were issued to a wide array of people — young and old, men and women, doctors and real estate agents. He said women are heavily represented among renewals.

Boyer suggested that his initial qualms about ordinary people with guns had settled. “I feel a lot more comfortable now that we haven’t seen the ‘John Wayne syndrome’ in effect.”

I except that any sheriff of Metherson County would be most acutely concerned with and involved with his or her own county, but I wouldn’t expect such a person to be so parochial and dense that they wouldn’t have known that such a disastrous scenario would have never occurred, thanks to prior experience of CCW laws in other and nearby states.

Am I Reading This Correctly?

Scroll to the bottom of this laundry list of General Assembly accomplishments of the 2007 session. It looks like that, in the “Castle Doctrine” bill that passed, that removed criminal and civil penalties for using deadly force for self-defense in one’s own home, it also looks like they repealed the silly “permit to purchase” requirement for handguns in Missouri.

If that’s true, then the process to purchase a handgun in Missouri will be simply filling out the form for a instant background check, and the wait will be no longer than about one day, instead of the five- to seven-day wait that certain jurisdictions in this state made you go through.

The “permit to purchase” system, legally known as “Permit to Transfer a Concealable Firearm,” has existed in Missouri for quite a long time, and is not the same as a permit to carry a concealed weapon; the paperwork makes that clear. It applied to those who wanted for handgun purchases, loans and gifts. And it does not apply to long guns.

Here’s the process:

(1) One has to agree in principle with a gun dealer or an individual on the handgun that one wants to purchase.

(2) Go to the county sheriff’s office (or the County Police Headquarters in St. Louis County), and get the “Permit to Transfer” forms.

(3) Take the forms and yourself back to the seller.

(4) You fill out your half, the seller fills out his or hers, which includes serial number of the gun, make, model, caliber, etc., not to mention personal information about yourself and the seller.

(5) You take the paperwork back to the county sheriff’s office.

(6) Wait five business days, probably more in certain jurisdictions.

(7) Return to the sheriff’s office, and if you passed the background check, your permit will have been approved.

(8) Take the approved paperwork back to the dealer, and then you can legally take possession of the gun. You keep a copy, the dealer keeps a copy, and the sheriff’s office keeps a copy.

(Meanwhile, if you wanted to make an illicit purchase, just go to the wrong part of town and throw down fifty or a hundred bucks.)

If you want a conceal-carry permit, that’s a whole other universe, which involves another background check on you, and up to a 45-day waiting period, not to mention the safety training, the cost of that, the cost of the permit, and the paperwork.

If SB 62 does repeal the “Permit to Transfer” scheme, it says nothing about changing the CCW permit process. Nor does it seem to address the double background-check issue for purchasing the handgun then getting the CCW permit; legally speaking, the check has to be done both times, but I would imagine that in rural Missouri counties, the sheriff only required the first one, which was good enough for him for both processes, wink wink. Of course, anti-gun jurisdictions can and do make you get both background checks. Now that the “Permit to Transfer” system seems to be a thing of the past, both checks will be required everywhere without exception, because the “instant check” system for gun purchases is run by the Federal ATF agency.

Overall, I’m not knocking it. Half the headache has been repealed.

Going Back to My Old School

AP:

ANNANDALE, Va. - Openly armed firearms enthusiasts packed a normally sedate government building, hoping to win a pistol or rifle and at the same time send a defiant message to gun-control advocates, especially New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

The Virginia Citizens Defense League, a gun-rights group, organized the “Bloomberg Gun Giveaway” in large part to thumb its nose at Bloomberg, who accuses some shops of allowing illegal purchases of firearms that later were used in crimes in his city.

Another good idea would have been for the VCDL to write and print various letters to the U.S. Justice Department, where participants in this raffle could have signed their names to the letter, and mailed the letter to the DOJ, asking them to consider actually charging Bloomberg with Federal law violations for his overenthusiastic so-called “stings.” TV news coverage of the ATF giving Bloomberg the perp walk would send a stark message to other big city mayors.

Though California will crumble to the sea before the ATF walks Bloomberg out of Gracie Mansion in cuffs.

Two Strikes And You’re Out

I think this story is mistitled.

City Pages of Minneapolis-St. Paul:

Gun Shy
After the Virginia Tech tragedy, even talking about concealed carry is grounds for suspension

(snip)

Scheffler had a different opinion of how the university should react. Using the email handle “Tough Guy Scheffler,” Troy fired off his response: Counseling wouldn’t make students feel safer, he argued. They needed protection. And the best way to provide it would be for the university to lift its recently implemented prohibition against concealed weapons.

“Ironically, according to a few VA Tech forums, there are plenty of students complaining that this wouldn’t have happened if the school wouldn’t have banned their permits a few months ago,” Scheffler wrote. “I just don’t understand why leftists don’t understand that criminals don’t care about laws; that is why they’re criminals. Maybe this school will reconsider its repression of law-abiding citizens’ rights.”

If one would stop reading the article there, one would think that he was suspended only for his conceal-carry advocacy. But read on:

After stewing over the issue for two days, Scheffler sent a second email to University President Linda Hanson, reiterating his condemnation of the concealed carry ban and launching into a flood of complaints about campus diversity initiatives, which he considered reverse discrimination.

“In fact, three out of three students just in my class that are ‘minorities’ are planning on returning to Africa and all three are getting a free education on my dollar,” Scheffler wrote with thinly veiled ire. “Please stop alienating the students who are working hard every day to pay their tuition. Maybe you can instruct your staff on sensitivity towards us ‘privileged white folk.’”

I think that’s what did it. He insulted affirmative action and the whole racial pandering and preferences system. If he only said this, and nothing about conceal-carry, I think he would have been suspended. This after his e-mails about the guns, and university creeps probably started worrying that they had another Cho on their hands.

We will probably never know if he was liable for a “third strike” of being a serious fundagelical Christian who proselytized on campus.

How We Weasel

Despite my earlier snark about New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg going to Federal prison for his alleged violation of Federal law in his overenthusiastic “stings” of Virginia gun shops, I knew I was just being glib, and that the chances of his actually being sent to prison (much less charged) were almost nil.

Now it looks like he has found a way to weasel out of scrutiny.

CNS News:

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is under federal investigation regarding “rogue sting” operations against gun dealers in five states outside his jurisdiction, has agreed to abide by Virginia law when undertaking any future operations in that state.

“We will continue to use creative and aggressive strategies and, in Virginia, that would include contacting the Virginia State Police,” said Jason Post, a spokesman for Bloomberg, after a clash with the state’s attorney general, Robert McDonnell, over the mayor’s practice of using undercover agents to root out dealers who sell guns illegally.

In a news release Friday, McDonnell said he was pleased that the mayor’s office “is now fully committed to contacting the Virginia State Police with public safety concerns in Virginia.” That, he said, “is the traditional and appropriate course of action.”

The Virginia attorney general added that such cooperation will also be “the only legal course of action” after the July 1 implementation of HB 2653, a new state law that passed the House of Delegates unanimously and the state Senate by a vote of 30-10. It was later signed into law, without amendment, by Gov. Tim Kaine.

That legislation makes it a felony “for any person, except for a law enforcement officer in the performance of his official duties or other person under the direct supervision of the law enforcement officer, to attempt to solicit or otherwise entice a firearms dealer to transfer or otherwise convey a firearm other than to an actual buyer.”

What worries me about this law is that there are private groups that entrap pedophiles over internet chatrooms, and send the chat logs to authorities for potential prosecution. This kind of e-activism might be prohibited in the future using the spirit of the Virginia law that just passed.

Besides, that wasn’t the proper response to Bloomberg’s “sting.” The only crime was committed by the straw purchasers and by the unqualified buyers. The gun shops did nothing wrong, and they would have no way of knowing the perfidy behind the purchase. The proper response would have been to harp on the crimes committed by the unqualified buyer, the willing straw purchaser, and (more importantly) the never ending stream of New York City criminals.

Don’t expect Bloomberg ever to complain about the latter.

What? No Knock on the Door from Federal Law Enforcement?

Here is a story from CNS News, that I have adapted into a fake story. The following block quote is the fake story.

(FNN) — Joe’s Gun Shop is being criticized after one of its employees was recorded encouraging a student - who was posing as a minor - to lie about his age and to obtain false identification papers and cards in order to purchase a handgun on apparently legal terms.

John Doe, a 21-year old senior at State University, visited the gun shop, posing as a 17-year old seeking to acquire a pistol. The visit was part of an investigation on the part of the State University chapter of Handgun Control, Inc., a nationally recognized gun control group formed by Sarah Brady.

State and Federal law requires that handguns cannot be sold to anyone under the age of 21.

In a covertly-filmed video betwen Mr. Doe and the unnamed employee of Joe’s Gun Shop, the staffer is heard to tell Doe: “If you’re 17, we can’t sell this piece to you. If you’re not, if you’re really 21, then I could.”

“Okay, but if I just say I’m 21, then it’s different?” Doe asks.

“You could say 21,” the staffer replies, later adding, “But you’ll have to show proof. I can call some people that can help you with that kind of thing. And I don’t know anything.”

Other parts of the video shows similar machinations on the part of employees and owners of other gun shops in the city.

One man relates that having himself defended himself against an armed robber when he was 17, 16 years ago, with a handgun he legally was not supposed to possess, the decision saved his life and his future educational and career ambitions. “If I had to do it again, I would get my hands on a gun any way I could,” said the man.

Doe told FNN that he wants to hold gun dealers accountable for how they handle potential illegal sales to minors, and that “handguns aren’t sold like blenders at Sears.”

“The public’s eyes need to be opened to the fact that they’re not really to be trusted in the way they handle minors who want to buy guns, or even in the way they counsel in a pro-gun way,” said Doe.

Joe Smith, Owner of Joe’s Gun Shop, criticized Mr. Doe’s tactics, but told FNN that his staff has been notified of store policy and Federal and State laws about selling to minors.

“We believe the individuals behind this are doing this not out of a motivation to protect teenagers, but in fact to smear Second Amendment rights,” Mr. Smith said of Mr. Doe and his production assistants. “They went in with an objective to manipulate our staff, and they succeeded.”

Now, if this kind of sting happened in reality, Joe Smith wouldn’t be available to give an interview to the media, and whine about how his employees were entrapped. The BATF would have raided his gun shop, carted him and his employees off to jail, where they would sit forever without bond, and the gun shop would be boarded up.

Meanwhile, the media, far from giving sympathy to Mr. Smith and his “entrapment” contention, would be bloviating about a dangerous, conspiratorial gun merchant being removed from society, and how his actions (and presumably, we’re made to think, the actions of them all), are solely responsible for violent crime in urban centers.

Now, here’s the real CNS News article. After the first two paragraphs, you will get my point.

Was This a “Gun-Free Zone?”

KC Star:

Two people were shot to death and others injured this afternoon when a man began firing shots at the Ward Parkway Center.

Police were notified shortly before 4 p.m. that a man was firing shots at the center at 8600 Ward Parkway and that several people had been hit. Initial reports indicated that as many as four people may have been shot.

Shortly before the reported shootings at the shopping center, a Kansas City police officer was shot in the arm at the Valero station at 1331 E. Bannister Road as he was conducting a car check. As the officer walked up to the car the man inside fired multiple shots at him, hitting him once in the arm. He was not seriously injured.

The officer returned fire but the man was able to drive off in a maroon Oldsmobile. Police believe he is the man who drove to the Ward Parkway Center and began firing at people there.

This event barely qualifies as being classified as “Missouri.” The western boundary of this shopping center is State Line Road, which is itself the boundary between Missouri and Kansas for a long stretch south of downtown Kansas City.

UPDATE 4/30: The suspect is white. From the Dallas Morning News:

Target employee Caffie Bradshaw, 19, said she was in a break room with two other people when they heard shots. She said co-workers saw a white man with a rifle who was “spraying bullets.”

Also, John Lott confirms that Ward Parkway Center banned conceal-carry.

An Ounce of Deterrence Beats a Pound of Victim Advocacy

This week is National Crime Victims Rights Week.

From this article, the professional crime victim advocacy industry seems to be concerned with matters relating to those who have already been victims of crime.  I see nothing on here about actually deterring crime, such as encouraging qualified individuals to earn conceal-carry permits, and lobbying politicians to reform civil rights laws in the spirit of racial realism, so that the criminal justice system can better combat black and Hispanic crime.

I suppose they wouldn’t want to make a dent in their own business.  That would be silly.

Adjudicated Nut

ABC:

A Virginia court found that Virginia Tech killer Seung-Hui Cho was “mentally ill” and potentially dangerous. Then the state let him go.

In 2005, after a district court in Montgomery County, Va., ruled that Cho was either a danger to himself or to others — the necessary criteria for a detention order — he was evaluated by a state doctor and ordered to undergo outpatient care.

If the legal label would have stuck, this means that he wouldn’t have been able to buy legal firearms. Those adjudicated mentally insane are not allowed to purchase, own, posess firearms. If he could have been thrown in a nut house, then none of this would have ever happened.

However, even if this would have happened, he probably still would have scoured the black market. He was that intent on doing this.