Saturday, December 6, 2014

OK, I may not like cats, but this is going a bit far....

Hunters shoot cats, post pictures on social media

Story here

Serious case of ailurophobia?

Zappadan 2014 - Day 2 - San Ber'dino



She lives in Mojave in a Winnebago...

Check out the Zappateers

Delaware Man Charged in Child Shooting

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Local news reports

A New Castle County man has now been charged in connection with the accidental shooting of a toddler back in September.

The little boy shot himself, when he found a gun.

34-year-old Anthony Graves is charged with unlawfully permitting a minor access to a firearm. He's also facing charges of endangering the welfare of a child. 

The shooting happened inside his home in the Valley Run development of Claymont. 

The 2-year-old shot himself in the head. 

He was originally in critical condition, but officials say he's expected to be discharged from the hospital later this month.

Another Texas Kid Shoots Himself

Local news reports

The shooting was reported at around 8:45 a.m. Friday at 807 Kern Rd. in Killeen.
Officers found the boy with wounds to his left thigh and chest area caused by a single bullet, police said Friday evening.
The boy’s mother told officers she was in the bathroom when she heard a loud bang. When she went to investigate, she found the injured boy in his bedroom, police said.
Officers at the scene said the boy shot himself after he found a .380-caliber handgun, which his mother said was on a shelf in a closet in the master bedroom.
Officers recovered several other weapons from the home, police said.
The victim and his 1- and 7-year-old sisters were removed from the home and placed in the custody of Child Protective Services, police said.
So, they can't charge the irresponsible gun owner for seven days but they can take the guns and the kids away immediately? Does that make sense to anyone.

Quote of the Day

“As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality.”

― George Washington: "Letter from George Washington to the Roman Catholics in the United States," May 15th 1790

Let's not forget:

Your love of liberty - your respect for the laws - your habits of industry - and your practice of the moral and religious obligations, are the strongest claims to national and individual happiness.
--George Washington, letter to the Residents of Boston, October 27, 1789

Thursday, December 4, 2014

The Problem with Open Carry of Long Guns

Local news reports

(Surveillance video still)

Utah (Gun Paradise) School Shooting Narrowly Averted

It took about four hours for officers to clear the 1,700 students from the school.

The NY Daily News

A Utah high schooler was prepared to gun down a former love interest and “open fire” on fellow students on a suburban Salt Lake City campus, but was caught when a hero teen spotted the loaded handgun stuffed in the suspect’s waistband, police said.
The 16-year-old junior at Fremont High School in Plain City admitted to detectives he wanted to kill a girl with whom he’d once had a relationship before unloading “on the rest of the school.”
“The quick response by law enforcement officers and school officials most certainly prevented this terrible tragedy from occurring,” police said in a statement.
The unidentified teen faces misdemeanor gun charges in juvenile court after his arrest Monday, police said. A fellow student saw the handgun around noon and alerted a school resource officer, who confronted the boy about the weapon in the farming community in Weber County, about 45 miles north of Salt Lake City.

Connecticut Fireman with Carry Permit Shoots Friend Unintentionally and Gets Light Treatment

Jose Medina
Hartford shooting victim Jose Medina after returning home from the hospital.


Local news reports

A city firefighter has been charged with unlawful discharge of a firearm and second-degree reckless endangerment after he accidentally shot a friend in the jaw while showing off a gun last month, police said.
Police said Justin Wood, 25, of East Hartford, turned himself in on the charges Wednesday.

Wood was showing the gun to friends at an apartment at 86 Webster St. Nov. 2 when it accidentally fired, striking Jose Medina, police said. Medina, 28, was transported to Hartford Hospital, where he initially was listed in critical condition.

After 17 days, the father of two, was sent home Nov. 19. His jaw had been broken into 100 pieces, and doctors had to wire it shut to allow him to heal, Medina's family told The Courant.

Medina's mother, Evelyn Flores, said on Wednesday: "My son is suffering. He is suffering big time with all the pain he has. He still has to go through more surgeries. Meanwhile, Justin is out like nothing happened."
Flores said that because Wood is a firefighter, she believes the incident was not taken that seriously by authorities. She said that if her son had shot Wood, her son would likely still be in jail.

Dead Deer Hunters in Ohio

Local news reports

Monday's accidental shooting of a 26-year-old Adamsville hunter was the state's first hunting fatality of the weeklong deer-gun season.
There have been six fatal shootings of Ohio hunters since the 2013 deer season began. All have been deemed accidental, and half occurred in Muskingum and Coshocton counties, according to Ohio Department of Natural Resources data.
Adam Shinn's death marks the third area hunting fatality in just over a year. It follows the deaths of a 63-year-old Coshocton County man who accidentally shot himself while maneuvering into a tree stand on his property last December and a 63-year-old Zanesville man who was riding his all-terrain vehicle last October when his shotgun discharged, authorities reported.
Shinn was reportedly shot in the chest by a member of his own hunting party behind his family's farm at 5475 French Road, said Bethany McCorkle, ODNR spokeswoman. Officials are investigating the shooting as "an extremely unfortunate accident" with no malicious intent, McCorkle said. No further details have been released.
Shinn was taken to Genesis Good Samaritan Hospital but later died of his injuries.
The five Ohio deer hunters killed during last year's deer season were the first killed since 2009, according to ODNR data. Although fatalities are relatively rare, local hunting accidents are more common, Muskingum County Sheriff Matt Lutz said.

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Zappadan Eve 2014 - "No Not Now" from the Drowning Witch Album

The True Meaning of Zappadan

Why Do So Many Americans Live in Mobile Homes?

BBC News

Trailer in Yucca

Bar chart showing states with most mobile homes

Bar chart showing poorest states

Four Unnecessary Wars and One Nuclear Standoff Avoided

No Mother Should Have to Fear

Southern Beale's Tennessee Gun Report

Southern Beale's Report

Here's my favorite

A man suffered non-life-threatening injuries about 4:30 p.m. Friday when he was struck by flying metal after shooting at a lawn mower, sheriff's Deputy John Stills said in a report.
Jerry Holt, 70, of 156 Troy Morelock Lane, told deputies that he shot himself with a .22 caliber rifle.
"He states he needed to put a hole in a lawn mower blade and he shot the blade with the rifle," the report said.
Metal from the blade "hit both legs and scratched his forehead," the report said.

West Virginia Man Kills 5 Including Himself


Jody Lee Hunt

Washington Post

Police in West Virginia said on Monday night that the suspect in a series of fatal shootings has been found dead.
The body of Jody Lee Hunt, a 39-year-old man from Westover, W.V., was discovered in his truck, hours after a shooting spree left four people dead and prompted police to launch a manhunt.
Hunt was found dead “with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head off of U.S. Route 19 near the Monongalia and Marion County border.”
Police had spent hours Monday searching for Hunt after, they say, he apparently killed four people in a series of shooting incidents in the north-central part of the state.
Sharon Kay Berkshire, 39, and Michael David Frum, 28, were killed in one incident in the Cheat Lake area, the Charleston Gazette reported. Police said two other shootings occurred in the Westover area, the Associated Press reported.
Berkshire had filed a domestic violence case against Hunt last month, the AP reported citing court documents, but no current protective orders were found.

The Gunfight in Cyberspace


I bought it because it looked cool,” explains Amanda Gailey, a professor at the University of Nebraska, about the Magpul Industries iPhone case she purchased from Amazon in June. “It looked pleasantly utilitarian. It never occurred to me that a company that makes a phone case could be involved in the gun industry.”

Gailey is a vocal advocate for tougher gun laws. She avoids shopping at some local retailers that allow customers to openly carry weapons in their stores. So she was mortified when her husband pointed out that her new iPhone case was manufactured by a company that also makes components for high-capacity semiautomatic rifles.

Gailey didn’t want to support the weapons industry, even accidentally. So she packed up the iPhone case and mailed it back to Amazon. She left a strongly worded review, advising potential buyers to be aware that this product is made by the same company that produced some of the ammunition magazines used in the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary, and that, when Colorado legislators were considering magazine capacity restrictions in the wake of the Aurora theater massacre, Magpul threatened to close its Colorado factory and move production (and jobs) elsewhere. Gailey titled her review “Magpul feeds on death.”

Gailey knew that she was weighing in on a controversial issue. “I anticipated some negative comments and down votes,” she says. But she never expected her brief product review to trigger the massive online harassment campaign that followed. “I got concerned when I saw comments about beating my head in with a sledgehammer.”

The REAL reason for the season

As we get close upon "Christmas", we will get people whining about the "reason for the season".

Got news for you--it ain't got nothing to do with the Bible or Christianity.


And the holiday doesn't make as much sense in the Southern Hemisphere as it does in the Northern.

Tuesday, December 2, 2014

California Attorney General and Brady Group to Appeal Peruta Shall-issue Case

California State Attorney General Kamala Harris really wants to be a part of the challenge to Peruta. (Photo: Lea Suzuki/The San Francisco Chronicle)
California State Attorney General Kamala Harris

Guns dot com

The California attorney general, along with a national gun control group, will push for a federal court to further review the state’s landmark concealed carry case.
Kamala Harris, coupled with the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, moved for a full en bancrehearing by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals of the recent decision by a 2 to 1 panel that neither had grounds to intervene in the Perutacase.
“The Second Amendment allows people to enact reasonable regulations to protect families from guns in restaurants, parks, streets, and other public places,” said Brady attorney Jonathan Lowy in a statement.
“The people of California have rejected the gun lobby’s ‘guns everywhere’ vision and sensibly decided to keep their communities safer by keeping dangerous people like the killers of Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis from carrying guns virtually anywhere,” Lowy said. “California’s gun laws are strong, sensible, and effective at reducing crime, and Brady will continue to fight to defend their constitutionality.”

The War on Christmas is real!

Pa. Man Fires Rifle At Neighbor Hanging Christmas Lights

Story here

Ohio Man Shoots Himself in the Head - Thought the Gun Was Unloaded

Local news reports
A man has died following an accidental shooting Saturday night in an apartment, according to Middletown police.
According to a press release, officers found Dimetrian Wright, 21, in the kitchen with a single gunshot wound to the head.
A revolver was recovered in the kitchen, police said.
Lt. Scott Reeve said Wright’s girlfriend reported hearing the clicking of a revolver and told him to stop playing with the gun.
“He said it is not loaded, putting it to his head and pulled the trigger,” Reeve said. There was one round in the gun.

I'm Just Sayin'

Monday, December 1, 2014

Quote of the Day

"No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by his assassin's bullet.
No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders.

A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of the people.
Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily - whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence - whenever we tear at the fabric of life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.
'Among free men,' said Abraham Lincoln, 'there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and those who take such appeal are sure to lose their cause and pay the costs.' " - Bobby Kennedy

Utah Cop Cleared in Shooting of Unarmed White Man

video link

Oklahoma Woman Wounded With her Own Gun Trying to Fend Off Robbers

Local news reports

A Tulsa resident has been hospitalized with a gunshot wound after she tried to fend off two people who tried to rob her at her north Tulsa home.

Tulsa police said she was outside having a yard sale in the 1600 block of North Evanston Avenue on Saturday afternoon when a man and woman approached her. Police said they aren't sure how at this time, but the trio somehow ended up inside the home's kitchen. 

According to TPD Sgt. Dedlorn Sanders, while the suspects began gathering up the victim's belongings, she produced a gun to defend herself. Sanders said the male suspect tried to wrangle the gun away from her, and the victim accidentally shot herself in the hand during the struggle.

Sunday, November 30, 2014

Answer to the hypothetical

The situation I used for the hypothetical was the Boston Massacre.

The only two responses I read showed that the two people who responded had no real idea of what is going on and confirmed that you people really are idiots, but... (I did try to dumb down the questions after that though).

Actual outcome of the Boston Massacre was that deadly force was used and the soldiers were tried (with John Adams being their legal counsel).

The Colonists still saw themselves as British at this point and were demanding their rights as Britons.  One of those rights is due process of law.  This concept goes back to chapter 39 of Magna Carta, in which King John promised that “[n]o free man shall be taken or imprisoned or disseized or exiled or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him nor send upon him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.”

The Constitution states only one command twice. The Fifth Amendment says to the federal government that no one shall be "deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law." The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, uses the same eleven words, called the Due Process Clause, to describe a legal obligation of all states. These words have as their central promise an assurance that all levels of American government must operate within the law ("legality") and provide fair procedures.

If you were inclined to say that deadly force was justified, then you happen to side with the redcoats!  In fact, you are saying that there was no reason for any of the further unrest which was the war for independence.

You wouldn't have prosecuted them because the Redcoats did the right thing.

Think about that.

BTW, if I were able to go back in time I would use modern crowd control methods to deal with this situation--NOT DEADLY FORCE.

Anyone who thinks that I would condone the use of deadly force against UNARMED Civilians clearly is not paying too much attention to what I am saying.

Or incapable of understanding what I have said.

Texas Off-Duty Cop Shoots Woman In Head During Road Rage Incident

Austin Shooting Suspect Dead After Firing On Downtown Buildings


Larry McQuilliams


Huffington Post

A gunman fired more than 100 rounds at downtown buildings in Austin and tried to set the Mexican Consulate ablaze early Friday before he died during a confrontation with police, authorities said.
Some of the targeted buildings are near the popular Sixth Street entertainment district, where bars close at 2 a.m., about the same time the shootings began. Thousands of people are typically on the street at that time, Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo said.
"Many, many rounds were fired in downtown Austin," Acevedo said. "With all the people on the streets, we're very fortunate. I give thanks that no one but the suspect is injured or deceased."
Investigators identified the shooter as 49-year-old Larry McQuilliams of Austin. Police said he had a criminal record but didn't release details, and said they were still trying to determine a motive.
Mexico's Foreign Relations Department issued a statement expressing "profound concern and condemnation" of the attack, but also said "there is no evidence the shots were exclusively directed at our facility."
The gun-rights fanatics love to differentiate themselves from any gun owner who has a criminal record, as if that's some kind of anomaly. The fact is many of them do. And frequently many of them, those with clean records and those without, lose it and misuse their guns. 

UN Report Criticizes U.S. Record On Torture

Huffington Post

Darren Wilson Resigns



The report I just watched on TV was much longer, spending several minutes about the precautions former officer Wilson has to take to ensure his safety.

This is the network that one of our lying commenters insisted is just as biased as Fox. We have this all the time.  Fanatical gun-rights commenters claim to believe things that are absolutely and obviously not true.  They know there's no way to prove that they're lying, so they lie at will - it's they're opinion, right?