What’s al Qaeda? It’s a ghost enemy, and has only grown, that has been elevated to some sort of major world force over the past decade {bin Laden and friends are in constant smile in their caves and thanking those who elevated them, every day, giving him everything he wanted}. Anyone who espouses to criminal terrorism of others and wants the stature that name now brings to other like minded individuals or groups take the label readily. Those that commit violent criminal terrorist acts are readily labeled as members of or offshoot groups on the fringes of. Except of course here in the United States, do domestic criminal terror, or planning same, you’re not only Not Labeled As Such some actually Embrace What You’ve Done or are Planning and that you have every right to terrorize your communities or country! Recent acts have proven that out, i.e. Austin Texas, Killings in Churches, Militia Raids, and we can go back for only a few of the many, Oklahoma City Bombing, Eric Rudolf, Branch Dividians in Waco, many many examples, not only in recent history but our entire history as a Nation.
Tag: guns
Oct 15 2009
Too Sad for Words
.
I don’t know if this (reported last Saturday) has already been covered here, but if so I dare say it’s worth taking another, sad look at:
Florida Man Kills Fiance on Eve of Wedding
WINTER SPRINGS, Fla. – A man who thought there was an intruder in his house shot and killed his fiancee the day before they were to be married, police said Friday.
“Right now everything points to a tragic accident,” Police Chief Kevin Brunelle told The Associated Press, adding investigators were awaiting forensic results.
John Tabutt, 62, told investigators he got his gun when he thought he heard an intruder, then fired at a figure in the hallway, according to Brunelle. It was Tabutt’s live-in fiancee, 62-year-old Nancy Dinsmore, who family members say he was going to marry Saturday. Tabutt told authorities he thought she was next to him in bed the whole time.
.
“Over three quarters (76.3 percent) of the homicide victims knew their assailant. Nearly one third (31.7 percent) of the homicides occurred during a family argument, 15.4 percent during a robbery, 4.1 percent during a drug deal, 0.2 percent during an abduction, and 44.1 percent for other unspecified reasons. In 4.5 percent of the homicides, multiple circumstances were reported. . . .”
From the American Journal of Epidemiology.
Alas.
Mu . . .
Sep 06 2009
Is Mount Vernon, Washington about to become the epicenter of hate?
Mount Vernon, Washington is now apparently soon to become the PROUD home of native son Glenn Beck. In fact, their mayor has recently scheduled an event during which he will be presenting Beck with the key to the city later this month. Some of those who are outraged have suggested changing the locks. The following newspaper article provides additional detail: http://www.seattlepi.com/local…
Just in case you might need a refresher regarding Babyface Beck:
Mount Vernon is a regional trade center, a county seat (Skagit County), and a logical stopping off point between the Greater Seattle area and many popular tourist destinations (i.e., the San Juan Islands, Whidbey Island, North Cascades National Park, and is approximately halfway between the Seattle metro area and the Canadian border). The area also hosts the annual Tulip Festival every spring, which provides a reliable financial bonanza for the Mount Vernon-La Conner area.
Aug 21 2009
Idaho GOP official pulls gun on citizen, arrested on felony charges.
Crossposted at Daily Kos
Meet Ron Paul supporter, tea party organizer, Idaho GOP official and now facing felony charges Challiss McAffee.
Idaho resident Challiss McAffee has been “charged with felony aggravated assault after police say he pulled a handgun on a resident whose home he told police he was photographing as part of a foreclosure investigation.” When the resident began questioning McAffee about what he was doing, the confrontation escalated, culminating in McAffee brandishing his gun. McAffee is a member of the Ada County Republican Central Committee and “one of 231 voting members of the state Republican Central Committee.”
More batshit and paranoid wingnut delusions below the fold.
Aug 20 2009
Right Wing Militia’s, Out Of Control? The Vipers!!
Two short discussions, reports, about the Domestic Terrorist within, the known and unknown Militia’s, and the connection to those packin in Phoenix and elsewhere, in the large crowds for a Presidential Visit. With Children in that crowd! Incompetent gunowners misusing their interpretation of the Laws, and their total lack of common sense and civility in a civil society, as well as using those Children and the Crowd of Innocent Civilians as Human Shields should anything happen, making the possibility of that easier, looking an awful lot like Insurgents and Criminal Terrorist in our Wars of Choice, or those label as Terrorist anywhere!!
Aug 18 2009
Guns, Afghanistan, the VFW and Obama
Today President Obama spoke at the VFW convention in Phoenix, Arizona. He highlighted the need to continue the fight in Afghanistan against those would like to bring back the Taliban as rulers of that war-torn country.
Afghanistan, as we all know, is the cradle of the Taliban whom gave shelter to Osama bin Laden during the 1990s and up through the attacks on September 11th, 2001.
Many of us felt a personal connection to those attacks for a variety of reasons. We may have lost someone in one of those flights, in the World Trade Center towers, or one of the many rescue and police personnel who died as a result of those towers collapsing.
More importantly, President Obama was speaking before an organization that is held in high esteem by US servicemen and women across the globe.
More below the fold…
May 29 2009
living with weapons consciously
This weekend I went to a place where EVERYONE was armed. Not just armed; although everyone was carrying deadly weapons, some people were literally festooned with them. And we’re talking DEADLY weapons; not meant for hunting, but meant for KILLING. Killing people.
I myself was armed, of course; although I didn’t go there for the weapon side of it, I wouldn’t dream of showing up at this event unarmed. I wouldn’t feel completely dressed, you know?
Strangely enough, not a single person was hurt by these deadly weapons. Not a scratch. And I doubt that anyone was hurt going to or coming from this event. Nor do I believe that many people will be hurt by these deadly weapons.
And besides, I LIKE weapons. There, I’ve said it. You ain’t going to get my fifteenth-century Muramasa longsword without a stiff argument.
Follow me after the fold, as I attempt to explain why I felt safe in the middle of an armed society.
Aug 16 2008
More Gun Nuttery
The state of Texas, ever the testing ground for horrendously bad policy, has in one of its school districts decided to allow teachers to carry guns in the classroom.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080815/ts_nm/texas_guns_dc
Texas school district to let teachers carry guns
Fri Aug 15, 3:32 PM ET
HOUSTON (Reuters) – A Texas school district will let teachers bring guns to class this fall, the district’s superintendent said on Friday, in what experts said appeared to be a first in the United States.
The board of the small rural Harrold Independent School District unanimously approved the plan and parents have not objected, said the district’s superintendent, David Thweatt.
School experts backed Thweatt’s claim that Harrold, a system of about 110 students 150 miles northwest of Fort Worth, may be the first to let teachers bring guns to the classroom.
Thweatt said it is a matter of safety.
“We have a lock-down situation, we have cameras, but the question we had to answer is, ‘What if somebody gets in? What are we going to do?” he said. “It’s just common sense.”
Teachers who wish to bring guns will have to be certified to carry a concealed handgun in Texas and get crisis training and permission from school officials, he said.
Recent school shootings in the United States have prompted some calls for school officials to allow students and teachers to carry legally concealed weapons into classrooms.
The U.S. Congress once barred guns at schools nationwide, but the U.S. Supreme Court struck the law down, although state and local communities could adopt their own laws. Texas bars guns at schools without the school’s permission.
(Reporting by Jim Forsyth in San Antonio; writing by Bruce Nichols in Houston, editing by Vicki Allen)
Here’s an accompanying link courtesy of SmirkingChimp.com:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/16482
Nearly any time we put on any kind of public event, the NRA would send its hired-gun “PR firm,” the Mercury Group, to stake out our press conferences, report releases, or fundraisers with their camerapeople. And just like Bill O’Reilly’s ambush producers, they would try and disrupt the event by shouting leading questions based on studies from their favorite researchers. Quite often they would yell things like, “Considering John Lott’s study that the availability of guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens reduces crime, why do you . . . ?” And then the president of our organization, at the time a savvy guy named Bob Walker, would have to sidetrack the issue at hand in order to point out how Lott’s studies had been discredited by legitimate academic researchers, and that, as Matt Bai of Newsweek once wrote, Lott had “been shown the door at some of the nation’s finest schools.”
After a TV appearance, Lott once chased my immediate boss down a hallway, shouting at her that she’d have “blood on her hands.” He has been famously exposed as his own sock-puppet. He logged onto Amazon.com under a pseudonym, “Mary Rosh,” and gave his own books five-star ratings, claiming that Lott was “the best professor I ever had.” But what do you expect from a guy who has published articles that claim that crime goes up when there are more black officers on a city police force, and that allowing teachers to carry concealed handguns in schools will deter school shootings?
How much do you want to bet that the Harrold Independent School District based its decision in large part on the basis of Lott’s deceptive and unsubstantiated claims? Here’s another bit from the Smirking Chimp column:
You see, no matter how much the NRA spends each election season to tilt the scales, or how many politicians whose offices it can “work right out of” (as it said about Bush in 2000), all it takes is one loon with a lot of firepower, and the NRA retreats back inside its bunker and offers “no comment.”
When 58-year-old Jim Adkisson got tired of all the liberals he felt were taking away jobs and wrecking society, he allegedly loaded up with 76 shells and a shotgun he bought at a pawnshop and headed for a liberal Unitarian church in Knoxville, Tenn., to shoot it up. It’s the sort of crime the NRA, months from now, will argue that could be prevented “if you let law-abiding citizens carry guns to church.” I’m sure even Mary Rosh would agree.
Anyone care to disagree?
Jun 27 2008
Sneering Scalia: The right to bear whatever arms I say
Well, after the Supreme Court’s stellar 5-4 decision today in D.C. v. Heller (PDF file), I am saving all my pennies for the day when Antonin Scalia decrees that I can legally possess a TOW missile – because, as his majority opinion makes clear, he gets to decide what weaponry I get to own.
Jun 26 2008
Scalia Summarized
(cross-posted at orange under my nom du orange)
Writes Scalia in District of Columbia v. Heller:
“We are aware of the problem of handgun violence in this country… [but, you see, as Right Wing fucktards, we really don’t give a shit. In fact, not only are we going to strike-down DC’s ban on a kind of firearm technology that didn’t exist when the Bill of Rights was ratified, we’re going to strike down trigger-lock requirements!]”
Why? What was Scalia’s and the majority’s reasoning and rationale? I quote and paraphrase:
“The historical narrative [is that insane gun fanatics own the Republican Party, and the Republican Party owns me. Besides, I simply don’t give a shit if Saturday Night Specials flow like a flooded Potomac into the lower elevations of the District of Columbia. What’s it to me?”
Sorry for the short diary “essay”, but here we have, in a 5-4 decision, another legacy of Republican Presidents putting hacks and goons on our Supreme Court.
Mu . . .
Apr 22 2008
Preemptive Sandbox Invasion.
(Since the progress-o-sphere is about to go primary-day-crazy, here’s something to possibly counter all the primary talk from the state of Maine! Ohio? Mississi– Um, which state is it again?)
Mar 09 2008
Submitted without comment
The body of a young woman found Wednesday morning was identified as Eve Marie Carson, the student body president of UNC Chapel Hill, police said Thursday.
Carson, 22, of Athens, Ga., was found shot several times, at least once in the head, around 5 a.m. Wednesday at the intersection of Hillcrest Drive and Hillcrest Circle. Carson was a Morehead scholar and a senior at the university.
Stanford University called about Jamiel Shaw a week or so ago, intrigued by the slight but speedy running back for Los Angeles High School, the Southern League’s most valuable player last year. Rutgers University called a few days later.
The Shaw family already had reason to be proud. Jamiel’s mother, Army Sgt. Anita Shaw, was on her second tour of duty in Iraq.
On Sunday night, it was Jamiel’s father on the phone and then his son’s girlfriend, Chrystale Miles. Jamiel Sr. called to tell him to hurry home from the mall. The 17-year-old boy was three doors away when someone shot him to death while he was still talking on his cellphone to Chrystale, friends say.
Jamiel Sr. heard the shots almost as soon as he hung up. He ran out of the house, raced around the corner and found his son lying on the sidewalk, bleeding.
“She’s over there trying to protect us from guns and bombs, and then she has to hear that her son is dead over here,” he said of Anita on Monday. “I’ve got my own personal Iraq now.”