LAPD Gun Buy Back

The Contra Costa Times reports

"It's a little incentive. I have no use for a gun anyway," said North Hills resident Ron Domash, who got $200 for an SKS semiautomatic rifle that belonged to his brother, who was living in St. Louis and couldn't transport the weapon across state lines. "I'm going to buy groceries, I guess."

That's just one of the stories behind the guns that are turned in.

I think the reason gun rights guys object so strenuously to these buy back programs is becuase the programs highlight how damaging gun availability actually is. What could be clearer than the case of this North Hills guy who had no use for a gun that his brother left behind. Imagine how many young hoodlums leave a gun behind when they go to jail. These programs are a good way to clean up some of that mess.

Another interesting aspect of this year's event was the competition.

The city faced some competition this year, as a local gun-rights activist group sent members to refer those in line with functioning guns to take their firearms to their affiliated gunshops that would pay them more for their guns.

It was unclear how many were enticed by the offer, but a number did leave the buyback lines, said Bruce Boyer of Sons of Liberty L.A.

The guns will then be donated to women, who will be trained to defend themselves, said Boyer, who called the city's buyback a dangerous initiative.

"This is a one-day amnesty for criminals," Boyer said. "If a criminal uses a gun for a crime and it's turned in to an anonymous buyback, that's crazy. But regardless of what you do, the criminals are always going to have guns."

"Criminals are always going to have guns" no matter what we do, is one of the most popular and self-serving lies of the gun rights movement. Criminals will continue to enjoy easy access to guns as long as the gun owners from whom the criminals acquire their guns keep making it easy. Until strict gun control laws are applied, not just in isolated states like California, but nation-wide, the problem will persist. That's what gun owners want. That's what they're getting.

There's a tricky criticism of the gun buy back programs that murder weapons may be anonymously destroyed. Well, I'm not so sure that's the case, but what are the complainers suggesting that it's better to leave those guns on the street?

What's your opinion?  Please leave a comment.

Poughkeepsie, New York - 3 Dead

The Poughkeepsie Journal has the story about the horrible 5 minutes of chaos.

Gallup Poll on Gun Laws

They offered an open-ended question about what are the most important things that could prevent mass shootings.

1. Stricter gun control
2. Better mental health screening

The third one about education contains a little something the pro-gun crowd will like.  But you know what's missing completely, perhaps they asked the wrong sampling of people, but nowhere on the list is More guns among the law-abiding.

What do you think that means?  Do you think only extremists and fanatics believe in that as a remedy? That's what I think.

Please leave a comment.

Shootings in the News

In Cleveland there were two dead and one shooter arrested. To me it sounds like a domestic situation that spilled over into the workplace.  It could have been anything though.

In Juarez, though, just over the border, the bodies were so many they were hard to count. Some reports say eleven and some say twelve.  Probably drug related, wouldn't you say.

You know what they have in common, right?

Murder - Suicide in Georgia

The Times-Journal reports on the tragic story.

According to investigators with the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department, the 29-year-old mother allegedly shot her daughter with a high-powered rifle, and then turned the gun on herself.

“It was a tragic thing,” said Chuck Phillips, chief deputy with the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department.

Phillips said it’s believed there had been problems between the woman and the child’s father.

The apparent murder-suicide happened sometime before 9 p.m. Thursday in the back yard of one of the mother’s family members, at a home on Jackson County Road 705.

The only one I don't blame for this, besides the gun control advocates, of course, is the child's father. I blame the sick mother, I blame the owner of the gun, I blame the State of Georgia and I blame all the gun owners who support lax or non-existent gun laws.

Could she have drowned the kid and cut her own wrist? Yes of course. But what she did was to pick up the most efficient killing tool around. And, like often happens, we'll never know if she would have used another means if no gun had been available, or if she did resort to some other means if she would have been successful.

That's why gun availability is a major factor in cases like this.

What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.

Domestic Violence - Female Shooter

The Baltimore Sun reports on a rare case of the estranged wife killing the husband. From the daughter's testimony, we have this description.

But in a few short years, she went on, the family's harmony dissolved into mistrust and recriminations, her parents separated, and Mary Koontz went to live in Florida. A year ago, after being gone for 19 months, she returned with a silver revolver and sneaked into her former home in Glen Arm while her estranged husband and daughter slept, prosecutors say. Once inside, they say, she shot her husband four times as he lay in bed and then went into Kelsey's room and fired at the girl. The bullet missed its mark.

Did you notice she used a gun? I suppose she could have used any number of tools, but she used the preferred killing instrument.

Where do you think it came from? Probably even a middle-aged mentally unstable woman could pick one up in gun-friendly Florida, don't you think?

So, in a reverse twist on the old theme, guns are still bad news for women.

What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.

Chicago's Bloody Weekend

The Chicago Sun-Times reports on another bloody weekend in The Windy City.

A bloody weekend of gun violence spilled into Monday, leaving 10 dead and nearly 60 men, women and children wounded all around the city.

Investigators tied some of the shootings in the Gresham and Englewood neighborhoods to stepped-up in-fighting among Gangster Disciple gang members.

And some of the violence on the West Side was attributed to retaliation over the slayings of three men found shot dead early Saturday in the 2300 block of South Springfield.

But the remainder of the shootings followed no pattern and were not being tied together, leaving emergency rooms busy, investigators with scores of open cases -- and national newcasts focusing on Chicago violence.

The youngest victim was a 1-year-old girl who suffered a graze wound to her neck when shots rang out at a barbecue about 12:15 a.m. Monday on the Near West Side.

The 10 dead included a man dressed in women's clothing found dead on a sidewalk in the 7500 block of South Halsted Street, two naked men found dead near railroad tracks in the 900 block of South Holland and the three men found in and around a car on South Springfield.

Instapundit made his usual sarcastic remark, which fails to take into account that every one of the guns use had previously been the property of a lawful gun owner.

Alan Gottlieb played with the truth, in his usual fashion. In this latest article which contains a list of each victim you can plainly see what a distorted version Gottlieb tried to sell.

What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.

Busy Baltimore

The Baltimore Sun reports.

At least six people were shot in four separate incidents, including one fatal shooting, Saturday night, police said.

A man was shot in the stomach in the 400 block of N. Luzerne Avenue in East Baltimore at about 5 p.m., Detective Jeremy Silbert, a police department spokesman, said.

Several hours later, at about 9:30 p.m., and less than three miles away, another man was shot in the chest and killed in 1900 block of Washington Street, Silbert said.

At about the same time, another man was shot in the Northwest area of the city at Park Heights and Woodland avenues, several blocks south of Pimlico Race Course. The victim was shot in the back.

A half hour later, about 10 p.m., police were called to the 1300 N. Montford Ave. in East Baltimore, where Silbert said three people were shot. He did not have any information about their conditions but said police are looking into the possibility of a fourth victim who walked into an area hospital.

Shouldn't gun owners feel a slight twinge when they read stuff like this, knowing that all those guns started out legally owned and somehow slipped into the hands of criminals?

What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.

Bullet-ridden Road Signs

What is it with these shot-up signs? I've seen them a hundred times, and I'm a city boy. In rural parts of North Jersey and Pennsylvania, these bullet-ridden signs are ubiquitous. I imagine if you add up all the blasted road signs in all the rural areas in America, we'd be talking about hundreds of thousands or rounds of ammunition, or millions, perhaps.

Who do you think is doing all that shooting? Is it ghetto kids who like to get out of the big city for a country drive? Is it illegal gun owners, perhaps drug dealers or mafia guys? I don't think so. I think these are your regular lawful gun owners, usually the hunting types. I picture them drinking beer, hanging out the passenger side of moving vehicles, shooting at signs or anything else that strikes their fancy.

Most of these signs are indeed in rural areas, far removed from other roads or homes, but not all. I'll bet a certain percentage of these poor signs are within shooting distance of a parallel road or even a residence. Of course, there could always be other people in the background. Is this what the gun apologists call responsible behaviour? Does this comply with the Four Rules of gun handling?

What percentage of gun owners occasionally engage in this kind of diversion, do you think? It must be higher among hunters, wouldn't you say? Does this kind of thing represent a danger? Is it OK to do it?

Do concealed-carry gun owners approve of this kind of shooting? Do these country "cowboys" who shoot up the road signs give the rest of you a bad name? What do you think?

What motivates someone to do this anyway? It's hard for me to be objective, of course, but I think this kind of behaviour indicates a mental problem.

What do you think?

Another School Shooting - Kauhajoki Finland

For once we can discuss a school shooting that did not occur in the USA. Yahoo News reports on the incident that took place today in Kauhajoki, 180 miles northwest of Helsinki. Nine people are reported dead and an undetermined number wounded. The gunman shot and killed himself. (Big hat tip to Il Principe)

The shootings happened almost a year after another gunman killed eight people and himself at a school in southern Finland, an attack that triggered a fierce debate about gun laws in this Nordic nation with deep-rooted traditions of hunting in the sub-Arctic wilderness.

With 1.6 million firearms in private hands, Finland is an anomaly in Europe, lagging behind only the United States and Yemen in civilian gun ownership, studies show.

Last year's shooter was named Pekka-Eric Auvinen, described as a bullied 18-year-old outcast. He opened fire at his high school in southern Finland on Nov. 7th, killing six students, a school nurse and the principal before ending his own life with a gunshot to the head.

Proponents of gun ownership naturally are reluctant to accept that proliferation of guns and their availability seem to go hand in hand with gun violence. Media coverage probably precludes the possibility of confirming if Yemen suffers from the same ills as Finland and the US, but I'll bet they do.

After Auvinen's rampage, the government said it would raise the minimum age for buying guns from 15 to 18, but insisted there was no need for sweeping changes to Finland's gun laws.

No need for sweeping changes, heaven forbid.

Here's the CNN take on it.

What's your opinion? What do you make of the Youtube connection? What about the bullying factor?

Here's the CNN update.

Cities Can't Ban Guns From Public Parks, Ohio Says

In the Cleveland Plain Dealer there's an article about an important and fascinating ruling. It seems the Ohio Supreme Court has decided that local municipalities cannot ban guns from public parks. Naturally, as with any gun legislation, this is an extremely controversial ruling. From the juridical standpoint, it's all about local legislators being subject to the larger government, in this case the State government. The fact that the ruling favors gun owners makes it somewhat ironical, I think. Aren't the gun owners the ones who usually disparage big government? Aren't they the ones who usually support individual rights to self governance? I'm really not being sarcastic with these questions; I find this situation somewhat complicated.

Two of the local residents summed up the opposing viewpoints pretty well, though.


"People should be able to carry guns wherever they like, as long as they're registered and within the limits of the law," Mike Marx, 42, of North Royalton, said while eating lunch at Lakewood Park. "Parks, public places - if someone feels the need, they should have one."

Across the table, Lisa Herhuth, 28, had the opposite view. "I don't believe anyone should carry guns at all," the North Olmsted resident said. "I don't want to see them in public places or parks, either, especially where children are playing."

Tennessee School Shooting

Boston Herald.com covers the story of another fatal shooting, this time in a small school in Knoxville Tennessee. Chief Deputy Bill Roehl reported that the teenage suspect was taken into custody minutes after the incident.

"This wasn’t a shooting that was a random act," Roehl said. "It was an individual directing his aggression toward another individual, not the school or the students inside the school."

I guess that's an important distinction. A personal one-on-one murder on school property is certainly preferable to a shooting spree aimed vaguely at the school itself or the student body.


Yahoo News also reports on this tragic killing. Knox County School System Superintendent Bill McIntyre must have attempted to alleviate the tension with this incredible statement.


"I want to assure parents and others in this community that despite this tragic ... and isolated incident that our schools are safe," the superintendent of the 52,000-student system said. Those not attending would get an excused absence.

At this point the names of the juvenile actors have not been released, nor have many details of the case. Where did the gun come from, for example? Are teenagers in Tennessee in the habit of going around with guns? What was the problem between these two schoolmates? And my favorite question of all, is this shooting simply an isolated incident as the Superintendent said, or is it another example of the too frequent situations that arise from our insistence that the availability of guns is good and should not be curtailed.

Please tell me what you think.