Alaska Man Who Shot Himself and his Daughter Not Charged with Recklessness

Local news

A Fairbanks corrections officer who accidentally shot himself and his daughter while they were at a physical therapy session last week will not be charged with reckless endangerment, according to District Attorney Mike Gray. 

“There was not enough evidence to indicate recklessness. I don’t know whether the gun malfunctioned or why it discharged. Negligent, perhaps, but not reckless by Alaska standards of recklessness, so the case was declined,” Gray said in a voice mail message to the News-Miner.

The man and his 12-year-old daughter were both patients at Adient Physical Therapy Monday in the Medical Dental Arts building when the incident occurred, according to Fairbanks police. The man was transferring his gun out of his holster to his jacket in preparation for his appointment when the gun discharged, according to police.

The bullet entered and exited the man’s forearm, grazed the girl’s right thigh and entered her left thigh, according to police. Both were taken to Fairbanks Memorial Hospital, where the man was treated and released.

The girl underwent surgery and was released the next morning, according to her mother. 

Alaska statute states that a person commits the crime of reckless endangerment if the person recklessly engages in conduct which creates a substantial risk of serious physical injury to another person.

The term recklessly is defined as a person acting with respect to a result or circumstance “when the person is aware of and consciously disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the result will occur.”

The code further states that “the risk must be of such a nature and degree that disregard of it constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of conduct that a reasonable person would observe in the situation.” 

Constitutional Carry Proposed in Indiana

via ssgmarkcr

 I came across this and to me at least it sounds like it might have potential for success, at least politically. 

"State Rep. Jim Lucas (R) has filed legislation that would repeal Indiana’s current concealed carry permit program in favor of free and lawful unlicensed carry.

The bill introduced would strike down the state’s popular handgun permitting scheme as enforced by the Indiana State Police, replacing it with language allowing unlicensed or so-called constitutional carry in the state of 6.5 million. Just four other states have similar laws."

"With some 570,712 permits issued, Indiana has one of the highest rates of lawful concealed carry in the nation. According to a 2014 report from the Crime Prevention Research Center, only South Dakota has a higher percent of the eligible population that has a permit. A large part of this is due to the state’s historically low cost for permits, ranging from $10-$50 that include an option for lifetime carry."

http://www.guns.com/2015/01/13/constitutional-carry-proposed-in-indiana-video/

A Message from the Dispossessed

Chris Hedges


Truthdig

The terrorist attack in France that took place at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo was not about free speech. It was not about radical Islam. It did not illustrate the fictitious clash of civilizations. It was a harbinger of an emerging dystopia where the wretched of the earth, deprived of resources to survive, devoid of hope, brutally controlled, belittled and mocked by the privileged who live in the splendor and indolence of the industrial West, lash out in nihilistic fury.

We have engineered the rage of the dispossessed. The evil of predatory global capitalism and empire has spawned the evil of terrorism. And rather than understand the roots of that rage and attempt to ameliorate it, we have built sophisticated mechanisms of security and surveillance, passed laws that permit the targeted assassinations and torture of the weak, and amassed modern armies and the machines of industrial warfare to dominate the world by force. This is not about justice. It is not about the war on terror. It is not about liberty or democracy. It is not about the freedom of expression. It is about the mad scramble by the privileged to survive at the expense of the poor. And the poor know it.

26 States Line Up in Opposition to San Francisco’s Gunlock Law

Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel is the latest to sign on to a friend of the court filing opposing San Francisco’s gun lock law, bringing to a total of 26 states asking the Supreme Court to intervene in the case. (Photo: Fox 11)

Guns dot com

Last week Wisconsin’s Attorney General Brad Schimel became the latest to file a friend-of-the-court brief urging the Supreme Court to throw out San Francisco’s law requiring guns to be locked up even at home.

The brief filed by Schmiel joins 25 other states, lead by Nebraska, who are seeking the intervention of the nation’s highest court to help overturn the California ordinance. This comes in the latest installment of the saga over Jackson v. City of San Francisco, which was unanimously rejected by a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals last March who upheld a district court’s ruling that the city’s gun lock law was valid.

“We must act, because if the decision by the federal Court of Appeals is not reversed, the precedent it sets could influence policy decisions and court holdings affecting the Constitutional rights of citizens within their homes, not just in the City of San Francisco, buy anywhere in America, including Wisconsin,” explained Schimel of his reasoning for joining Nebraska’s amicus curiae brief.

The case has been winding its way through federal courts since 2009. It challenged the city and county of San Francisco over local laws implemented in 2007 that compelled gun owners to secure guns either locked inside a container or disabled with a trigger lock.

Gun Deaths On The Rise For People Under 25 As Car Deaths Fall

Refinery 29

Car-related deaths for folks under 25 are down, according to a study by the Center for Disease Control. The C.D.C. attributes this decline to "improved technology, tougher laws and less driving by young people," according to The Economist. 

The bad news is that the rate of deaths related to gun violence for the under-25 set is increasing, and it's actually on track to exceed car-related deaths. The majority of these deaths are suicides, accidents or domestic violence. Back in 2012, Bloomberg News estimated that "by 2015, firearm fatalities will probably exceed traffic fatalities for the first time, based on data compiled by Bloomberg."

Although the number of gun owners is down, there are almost as many guns as there are people in the United States. Government regulations on vehicles are more stringent than gun laws, especially since the National Rifle Association (which has plenty of pals in Congress) opposes some suggested safety features.  

The Answer to Terrorism - The Second Amendment

Interracial Crime

Discover the Networks

But in fact, white-on-black crime is a statistical rarity. According to data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), an estimated 320,082 whites were victims of black violence in 2010, while 62,593 blacks were victims of white violence. That same year, according to the Census Bureau, the white and black populations in the U.S. were 196,817,552 and 37,685,848, respectively. Whites therefore committed acts of interracial violence at a rate of 32 per 100,000, while the black rate was 849 per 100,000. In other words, the “average” black was statistically 26.5 times more likely to commit criminal violence against a white, than vice versa. Moreover, blacks who committed violent crimes chose white victims 47.7% of the time, whereas whites who committed violent crimes targeted black victims only 3.9% of the time.

For many years and for a wide variety of crimes, this pattern has been among the most consistent findings of criminal-justice research. Nationwide in 2010, there were approximately 67,755 black-on-white aggravated asaults, as compared to just 1,748 white-on-black crimes of the same description. Thus, blacks committed acts of interracial aggravated assault at a rate of 181 per 100,000—fully 201 times higher than the white rate of 0.9 per 100,000. Moreover, blacks guilty of aggravated assault chose white victims 44.1% of the time, while whites who committed aggravated assault selected black victims only six-tenths of 1% of the time.
Also in 2010, there were approximately 13,463 black-on-white rapes and 38,744 black-on-white robberies. Blacks guilty of rape chose white victims 50.2% of the time, and blacks who committed robbery chose white victims 48% of the time. By contrast, the number of white-on-black rapes and robberies reported in the NCVS surveys were so infinitesimal, that in each case whites were estimated to have accounted for 0.0% of all rapes and robberies committed against black victims in the United States.