Mikeb302000

Monday, August 5, 2013

Lawful Colorado Gun Owner Shoots Step-daughter and her Boyfriend Because he Disapproved of their Dating

Fredy Cabrera

Local news reports

A Roaring Fork Valley restaurant owner may face first-degree murder charges after allegedly shooting his stepdaughter and her boyfriend, who later died, because he didn’t want them dating.

He probably had a concealed carry permit since they're so easy to get, but no one is checking. Who cares when a gun commits murder.

What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.

Airport Gun Seizures on the Rise

A 380 Ruger LCP pistol, loaded. Seized May 28 from a Tennessee salesman, 45.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/08/03/3080823/gun-seizures-on-the-rise-at-rdu.html#storylink=cpy

The News Observer

More and more gun owners this year are trying to board airliners with weapons tucked in their pockets and carry-on bags, the Transportation Security Administration says. TSA screeners at airport checkpoints across the country seized 894 guns, most of them loaded, during the first six months of 2013 – 30 percent more than in the same period in 2012.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/08/03/3080823/gun-seizures-on-the-rise-at-rdu.html#storylink=cpy

“We’ve become such an armed society that people actually aren’t thinking about the fact that they’re carrying weapons with them,” [Wake County prosecutor] Willoughby said. “That’s a little bit sobering, to think that we are so accustomed to carrying a firearm with us that we often don’t think about it or realize that we have it.”

That, plus the fact that the downside is not all that severe. If these oversights were treated more seriously, like gun misuse should, we'd see a dramatic decline in these reports.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/08/03/3080823/gun-seizures-on-the-rise-at-rdu.html#storylink=cpy

Chris Christie Pressured By Gun Rights Group In Key Primary State

SAYREVILLE, NJ - JULY 08: Governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie attends the Hurricane Sandy New Jersey Relief Fund Press Conference at Sayreville Borough Hall on July 8, 2013 in Sayreville, New Jersey. (Photo by Bobby Bank/WireImage)

Huffington Post

A gun-rights group in the bellwether presidential primary state of New Hampshire has warned New Jersey Governor Chris Christie that signing gun control bills passed by his state's Legislature could have consequences if he runs for president in 2016.

The Pro-Gun New Hampshire coalition urged its members this week to call and email Christie to ask him to veto the proposed laws, posing a political dilemma for Christie as he seeks re-election in November in the Democratic-leaning state while also eyeing the national stage.

Christie has a September deadline to sign a number of firearm-related bills seen by their supporters as necessary for tackling gun violence, and the gun rights group is targeting four of those measures.

One bill would ban .50 caliber rifles, another would require police to report lost and stolen firearms to a federal database, a third would create a system for instant background checks during gun purchases and a fourth bill would ban gun sales to anyone on a watch list of militants.

"This is an acid test," said Sam Cohen, executive vice president of Pro-Gun New Hampshire, which describes itself as the state's largest gun rights group.

"If he decides to support these horrible bills, then we in New Hampshire are going to do everything we can to tell our voters not to vote for him in the New Hampshire primary," Cohen said.

What do you think? Will he succumb to the pressure and threats. That certainly isn't his persona. He nurtures the public image of a tough guy who dances to his own tune. Besides, as our commenter Alabaman pointed out the other day, maybe it's about time for a national Republican candidate to come out for reasonable gun control laws.

What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.

New Study Identifies The Sadness Belt - Guess Where?

Huffington Post

Which way to happy? Geographically speaking, it's the route to Hawaii, Maine or one of the clusters of blissful cities in California and Colorado.

The map below is based on results from a study of geotagged tweets published earlier this year in PLoS ONE by researchers at the University of Vermont. The team scored more than 10,000 words on a positive-negative scale and measured their frequency in millions of tweets across the country, deliberately ignoring context to eliminate experimental bias. What emerged was significant regional variation in happiness by this calculation, which correlates with other lifestyle measures such as gun violence, obesity and Gallup's traditional wellbeing survey. A sadness belt across the South includes states that have high levels of poverty and the shortest life expectancies.

Sunday, August 4, 2013

Arkansas School District's Plan to Arm Teachers Nixed by AG

USA Today

A plan by a small Arkansas school district to arm 20 teachers and staff with 9 mm handguns has run aground after the state attorney says the program is not covered by state law.

The Clarksville School District was trying to mount its program using a little-known state law that is meant to apply to licensing private security agencies.

A state lawmaker requested the opinion a day after The Associated Press reported on a plan by the school district in western Arkansas to use more the teachers and staff as volunteer security guards armed with concealed handguns.

"Simply put, the code in my opinion does not authorize either licensing a school district as a guard company or classifying it as a private business authorized to employ its own teachers as armed guards," Attorney General Dustin McDaniel wrote.