2 Dead 1 Wounded in Washington State Murder / Suicide

The Seattle Times reports on the terrible tragedy which took place in Bellingham, Washington.

A man shot and wounded his girlfriend, killed her 14-year-old daughter and then took his own life at a home in Maple Falls.

Whatcom County Sheriff Bill Elfo did not immediately identify the man. However, The Bellingham Herald says others have identified him as the homeowner, 41-year-old Sean D. Wilson, a Whatcom County planning commissioner.

The sheriff said the woman ran to a neighbor's house to call 911 at 3:19 a.m. Thursday. When deputies arrived at the home about 20 miles northeast of Bellingham they found the bodies of the man and Felicity Boonstra, a student at Mount Baker Junior High. Her mother Rebecca Boonstra was taken to St. Joseph Hospital in Bellingham and is expected to survive.

Elfo said deputies have been to the home at least once before, in March 2008, for domestic violence.

According to The Herald, a few minutes before the shooting was reported, the girl posted on her Facebook page that it was the third night in a row of yelling and fighting in her home.

"I just want to leave this house and be with my (real) dad," she wrote.

I realize we have to have due process and all that, but don't you think something has to be done to prevent people like this from owning guns? It's the same argument against prohibiting people on the terror watch list, but public safety cries out for a solution.

Domestic abusers should not have guns, period. If we wait for them to commit serious enough crimes to be prohibited it's often too late for the family.

No guns for suspected terrorists and no guns for suspected spouse abusers.

The way it is now, in places where there are more guns, more women get killed. Just look at the stats.

What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.

Misleading Statistics

Tampa Bay Online has a wonderful article about the way statistics can be misleading when taken out of context. Brought to us by FatWhiteMan. Thanks.

More than 900 black males between the ages of 14 and 17 killed somebody in 2007. Should we be scared of young black guys?

Of course not. There are roughly 3 million black males in that age group in the United States. It would be horribly unfair to toss around the first statistic without mentioning the second; doing so would be misleading, if not malicious.

That's certainly a good example of how this can be done. The article goes on to discuss the ratio between murders committed by folks with concealed carry permits and the total number of people who have such permits. The results: "two one-thousandths of 1 percent."

It's hard to argue with that. And, let's not forget, no discussion of concealed carry permit holders would be complete without including the DGUs

Estimates of how often this happens vary wildly, from 108,000 times a year (the 1993 National Crime Victimization Survey) to 1.5 million (Department of Justice, 1994) to more than 3 million (a 1976 California study). Florida criminologist Gary Kleck may have produced the most scrupulous count, which he puts at 2.5 million annual defensive gun uses.

I wondered if, according to this author, the idea is that only gun control folks engage in the behavior of presenting misleading statistics.

What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.

Denis Henigan Suggests

The Huffington Post reports on Denis Henigan's advice to the Obama Administration.

I have a modest suggestion for the President. In the State of the Union address, demonstrate that national security trumps fear of the gun lobby.

Make no mistake about it, the gun lobby's influence has made the war against terrorists harder to fight.

He goes on to talk about the Tiahrt Amendment needing to be repealed and the "terror list loophole," which needs to be plugged.

Resistance to both seems to be the result of not trusting the federal government. Folks feel that the federal gathering of records of gun purchases, which the Tiahrt Amendment prohibits, would result in the dreadful gun registry. I think they're right, but I ask what's so wrong with that? I believe it's paranoia pure and simple that says this would be the first step to gun confiscation.

The problem with prohibiting folks on the terror watch list from buying guns is that, according to the gun enthusiasts, the government will abuse the power and put people on the list too easily. I say this is a reasonable concern, but it need not be the case. The maintenance of the list could be handled better, controls could be implemented, abuse could be avoided.

I agree that now is the time to stand up to the NRA and the gun lobbyists. By the way, when speaking of the gun lobby, everyone talks about their being paid by the powerful and rich NRA, or that they represent the people, as one HuffPo commenter erroneously stated, but no one seems to mention the gun manufacturers. Wouldn't they have the biggest stake in this? Aren't they the ones who are laughing all the way to the bank, as gun proliferation increases?

I say it's high time Obama stood up to the special interests, as he promised.

What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.

St. Louis: 4 Dead, 4 Wounded

CNN reports on the terrible shooting which took place earlier today.

An employee at a transformer manufacturing company opened fire on his co-workers Thursday, killing three people before turning the gun on himself, police said.

Five other ABB Inc. employees were wounded in the shooting in the company's factory in St. Louis, police said.

A law enforcement official identified the suspect as Timothy Hendron.

Hendron is among a group of ABB employees listed in a lawsuit filed in 2006 against administrators of the company's retirement plan. The suit, filed in federal court, accuses the administrators of, among other things, causing the plan to include "unreasonable and excessive" fees and expenses, paid by participants, without their knowledge and not used for their benefit or that of the plan.

No one seems to know if that was the motive. It doesn't sound to me like he was angry at the bosses or the company. It sounds more like he was angry at his colleagues, or that he just cracked up. Hopefully we'll hear more about that over the next days.

I wondered why no one shot back at him. Isn't St. Louis a gun-friendly place? Maybe some of the victims had guns too but with the element of surprise and all, the shooter got the jump on them. Or maybe he was just lucky and selected eight unarmed people.

What's your opinion? How can we keep people like this from having guns? Is this just the price we must pay for the "freedom" of exercising our god-given rights in America?

I'll tell you what, how about we tighten up the gun laws to the point that over say, a decade or so, we have about half the number of guns. The half that remain in circulation will be so strictly registered to their rightful owners that the flow of guns into the criminal world all but stops. Some gangsters will import them along with the drugs, sure, but the huge numbers that flow every year from the loose fingers of lawful gun owners dries up.

How's that sound? Please leave a comment.

Daddy's Guns Are Bad News for Kids

Chicago Boy, 12 years old.

The boy was arrested at Bethune Elementary School at 3:25 p.m. local time and was charged as a juvenile with unlawful use of a weapon, police were cited by MyFoxChicago.com as saying.

Students alerted the school’s dean that the boy had a handgun in his bag, according to the police report, MyFoxChicago.com reported.

Police said the dean found a 9mm Ruger handgun inside the boy’s backpack, MyFoxChicago.com reported. Three live .380 caliber rounds of ammunition, which did not match the Ruger handgun, were found in the boy’s pants pocket, police said according to the site.

Police are investigating the incident.

Griffin, Georgia, eighth-grader.

Students at Carver Road Middle School apparently saw the gun during a P.E. class and reported it to the resource officer, according to school officials.

The student was isolated while school administrators found the unloaded .25-caliber gun and a clip in the student's book bag. School officials reported the incident to the Spalding County Sheriff's Department.

Alhambra, California high-school student.

A California school is on lockdown Wednesday afternoon after a dog found a gun in a student's backpack and on him, local radio station KPCC reported.

Police arrested the Mark Keppel High School junior and are searching all the classrooms the student attended, as well as talking to his friends. They are also at his home in Monterey Park, Calif.

The radio station reports that the school district contacted a local canine company to do a random search.

This is the gun culture in America today, or I should say this is just a slice of it. These three "anecdotal" stories are among the scores of such reports that make the news every single day. Is this what the lawful gun owners who support NRA policies and fight tooth and nail to eliminate gun control laws say they have no responsibility for?

Is this the "freedom" the gun enthusiasts are always talking about? While ensuring that they'll have the means to fight tyranny in 21st century America, normal people cannot send their kids to school without worrying about guns.

Or should we just keep increasing the number of guns, making sure everyone can protect themselves from all the lethal threats, as long as we send our kids to do the Eddie Eagle training?

What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.

Badger Guns Back in the News

The Milaukee Journal Sentinel published an article about the latest problems facing Badger Gun Shop. We've discussed them before.

Milwaukee County's district attorney and the city's police chief want all documents on violations found by federal investigators at a West Milwaukee gun store, saying the paperwork could contain evidence of criminal activity, according to a letter released Wednesday.

Also Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Milwaukee) sent her own letter to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives demanding answers about the agency's regulation of the store.

The moves come in reaction to a Journal Sentinel investigation that on Sunday reported federal investigators recommended revoking the license of Badger Outdoors after a 2006 inspection - a rare move that could have closed the store.

But there was no revocation and the store remains open, operating as Badger Guns. Federal records show the license recommended for revocation was relinquished voluntarily, the players inside the operation took on new roles and a new license was issued to the son of a previous owner, creating what one federal official called a "clean slate."

That's just what they do, isn't it? The "players inside the operation" simply change roles and it's business as usual. What I can't understand is how pro-gun folks who are generally letter-of-the-law guys when it comes to other criminals, excuse this behavior and support people like this who give the entire gun owning world a bad name. The folks at Badger Guns, as well as Iknadosian and let's not forget Bull's Eye, make a mockery of the law and hypocritical gun owners who are otherwise law abiding citizens themselves, turn a blind eye. Why?

The changes not only halted the recommended revocation but also erased violations found by federal regulators over 17 years at Badger Outdoors, which at one time was known as Badger Guns and Ammo, according to documents obtained by the newspaper under the Freedom of Information Act. Many details, including the violations themselves, were blacked out by ATF because of a federal law that applies only to gun dealer license paperwork.

This is the result of decades of lobbying and NRA influence which more than anything is responsible for the gun violence in America. I never tire of pointing out the average gun owner's share of this responsibility, but the real criminals are the NRA and gun manufacturers who sponsor the lobbyists who achieve such obviously detrimental laws concerning guns.

What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.

Red Dawn

When Patrick Swayze died I was reminded of the film, Red Dawn. I read a few comments by pro-gun folks about how great it is. Well, I finally got around to seeing it again, and although I like movies with shooting and violence, this one was terrible. That's my considered opinion, terrible. Critics must have agreed, according to the IMDB site there was only one award nomination. And they list everything under the sun for films with merit. Wikipedia had an interesting notation, "National Review Online has named the film #15 in its list of 'The Best Conservative Movies'"

What's your opinion? Did you like the movie? What did you like about it?

While watching the film last night, I could see the appeal it might have for the libertarian-minded and the ultra-patriotic viewer. If anything it reinforced my opposing stand to the gun rights movement usually embraced by those types.

I must admit though, I love the action scenes in movies, even in this one where they weren't all that convincing. For example when the girl was mortally wounded and asked for a hand grenade to kill herself so she wouldn't be captured and interrogated. Then you realize she's going to take out one of the bad guys when he comes for her. I love that stuff. But, it's a movie.

The folks who prepare for something like this by stockpiling weapons and encourage others to do the same, in my opinion, are mistaken. I believe they're operating out of some mental disorder or other, there are probably several, but they have lost touch with reality. My term for what many of them seem to have is "grandiose victimism."

Some have responded, in proper macho fashion, that they don't plan to be victims. I guess their thing would be "grandiose vindication," that's living in the fantasy of coming out on top in the "life and death" struggle for rights and survival.

The film "Red Dawn," is the classic tale of "grandiose victimism," Patrick Swayze's and Charlie Sheen's characters heroically sacrificed their lives for the cause and all they had to show for it was an anonymous plaque in their honor.

What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.