Home Invasion Stopped With Scary Black Gun...By A 15-Year-Old

Res Ipsa Loquitur!

What more needs to be said? Criminal Breaks into house....Kid grabs  Dads's "Scary black gun"....Shoots Criminal.   Sounds to me like a well-trained family member. Who will argue the criminals rights were violated?

Editorial Second Guessing And Blind Hypocrisy

"A liar begins with making falsehood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood."   —William Shenstone

The Keene Sentinel , last Thursday, featured an editorial, positing the question, "Could an armed citizen have stopped the shooter?  But they never really answer the question and instead make an argument that we should move toward more gun control. The opening paragraph states,

Anyone who has ever aimed and discharged a firearm knows that accuracy depends on a number of things — the eye of the shooter, the weapon in use, levels of training and experience. There’s also the matter of setting. Hitting a target at a shooting range, with pulse steady and trigger squeezed, is not the same as, say, taking down a gunman in a darkened theater that’s filled with tear gas and screaming, panic-stricken movie-goers.

Oversimplifying.  Reasonable people know that firearm use in self defense never presents any good or optimal circumstance. In fact it is the law-abiding firearm owner who is at the greatest disadvantage because he has to be concerned about shot placement and not hitting innocent bystanders...People willing to do others harm never give warning and will always choose a setting most ideal for them. And they never care much about who they injure or kill. So now the liberal crows are picking at Joe Zamudio...a guy who had a firearm in his possession and supposedly "intervened" in the Gabriel Giffords shooting case.  Zamudio, an armed citizen with no military experience or formal training, admits,

"I was very lucky.  Honestly, it was a matter of seconds.  Two, maybe three seconds between when I came through the doorway and when I was laying on top of [the real shooter], holding him down.  So, I mean, in that short amount of time I made a lot of really big decisions really fast. … I was really lucky.

Throughout the conversation, and all that was written, the focus on what Zamudio "almost" did overshadows what he "actually did." And it is telling Zamudio never took the time to think about and analyze why he didn't arbitrarily start shooting. Obviously Zamudio...is not the smartest guy ever interviewed.  Perhaps he was a bit star-struck in his quest for that 15 minutes of fame;

Zamudio says,

"I came out of that store, I clicked the safety off, and I was ready," he explained on Fox and Friends. "I had my hand on my gun. I had it in my jacket pocket here. And I came around the corner like this." (Zamudio demonstrated how his shooting hand was wrapped around the weapon, poised to draw and fire. As he rounded the corner, he saw a man holding a gun.) "And that's who I at first thought was the shooter," Zamudio recalled. "I told him to 'Drop it, drop it!' "

But the man with the gun wasn't the shooter. He had wrested the gun away from the shooter. "Had you shot that guy, it would have been a big, fat mess," the interviewer pointed out.

Zamudio allowed himself to be a willing dupe for the media to focus on the "almost" versus "what actually" happened.  Without realizing it, Zamudio effectively assessed the situation and reacted accordingly.  That is why the individual who had wrestled the gun from Jared Lee Loughner was not shot.  Most reasonable people are capable of making such assessments under such tense situations, but anti-gun liberals always seem to imply otherwise. The anti-gun agenda thesis finally emerges in this paragraph of the Sentinel Editorial:

"The mantra of gun lobby supporters is that guns don’t kill people; people kill people. Precisely. That’s why it’s appropriate for society to not merely wonder about how a person in Aurora came into possession of his remarkable arsenal, but also to actually do something about access to firearms. Likewise, it’s appropriate for society to take note of the possible dangers of armed vigilantism."

So there you have it; Advocacy for gun control, propped up by a huge leap to vigilantism. Vigilantism.  A very descriptive word.   Words mean things.   So it is appropriate to effectively define vigilantism.   The legal dictionary defines vigilantism as, 

"Taking the law into one's own hands and attempting to effect justice according to one's own understanding of right and wrong;(my emphasis) action taken by a voluntary association of persons who organize themselves for the purpose of protecting a common interest, such as liberty, property, or personal security; action taken by an individual or group to protest existing law; action taken by an individual or group to enforce a higher law than that enacted by society's designated lawmaking institutions; private enforcement of legal norms in the absence of an established, reliable, and effective law enforcement body."

So according to the Keene Sentinel Editors, if a person attacks me or another person with deadly force and I meet that threat with equal force sufficient to terminate the actions of the attacker, I am a vigilante.   That is little more than a smear on all law-abiding gun owners... I think we can sum this all up quite easily.  The Lame stream media focuses on the fact that Holmes purchased his guns legally, but glosses over the fact that he was allegedly under the care of  Psychiatrist Dr. Lynne Fenton, mental health services director at the University of Colorado.  It is also alleged that Holmes had articulated his thoughts of harming others in a notebook, e-mails, and in sessions prior to the attack.

I am not clear if Colorado has such a law, but in this state, shrinks are mandated by law to make a report to law enforcement where there exists any kind of threat to ones' self or others....be it violence or otherwise. Where is the lame stream media holding the shrink accountable? [insert crickets chirping].

 The right of self defense is a "natural" right and the lame stream media seeks to culturally recondition us to believe that meeting force with force is mere armed "vigilatism."  After all, "Only the Police should have guns."

Finally, the lame stream media continues in its' quest to reshape the cultural bias against the fallacious descriptor "assault weapon" merely because of a firearm's materials of construction, appearance, and form.  Under their description, an assault weapon is virtually anything they say it is. Liberals will likely continue to advance the thesis that even if an armed citizen was present, action would have been ineffective.  Liberals are willing to hang their hat on this thesis, but squelch and ignore all accounts where handgun-use has saved lives.

NRA President David A. Keene,  writes in the  American Rifleman, August 2012,

"In a very real sense (the anti-gun leftists) hostility to firearms and the Second Amendment isn't about guns or violence or crime; it's about values."

The Keene Sentinel is just one in the sea of progressive anti-gun liberal media mouthpieces chipping away at the second amendment rights of citizens.

CROSS-POSTED AT GRANITE GROK

And the Kool-Aid Drinking Gun Control Crowd Continues To Pile it On

"Anyone with a gun can go out and commit an act of terrorism, even without a political affiliation." —Aaron McGruder

James Holmes entered a movie theater and started "throwing shots," injuring fifty-eight people and killing twelve others.  I need not give a full narrative of the tragedy, given the ongoing coverage on television, radio, internet and print media. In the aftermath of this tragedy, the usual crowd quickly stepped up to politicize the event, calling for stricter measures on firearms ownership. The same old reliable liberal crows now grandstanding and blustering in the congressional well. Leading the charge is none other than NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

There really is no point in relitigating the whole gun control debate in this entry. I've written so many other entries arguing against gun control. I will simply say, I renew those arguments and assertions here and now. period. So my starting point is this.  More American citizens own firearms than ever before in History. When one compares the numbers of lawfully owned firearms by law-abiding citizens, to those illegally obtained and used by criminals, the numbers are miniscule. In the last twenty years, most of the states have adopted or expanded laws that acknowledge a citizens personal and natural right to self defense.  More people than ever before are carrying guns....law-abiding citizens, that is.

And ideas and beliefs not related to guns have changed. Attitudes about abortion, same-sex marriage,  gambling, cohabitation...the list goes on.  So what does this have to do with guns? Nothing. and everything.  

The lame stream media picks and chooses its own exclusive fare of high ground.  Notice that despite the marked increase in private gun ownership, citizens carrying guns and a whole cottage industries for everything guns is now busting at the seams, the lame stream media still beats the same old tired drum, giving ink, face time and digital space to the leftist, anti-gun pablum puking, Kool-Aid drinking whiners? These self-appointed moral compass guides of society.  You want to talk about digging the heels in? Since the context for this is James Holmes and massacres, Lets talk about the one that is little known and was grossly under reported.   

The Appalachian School of Law shooting on January 16, 2002.  Three people were killed and three others were wounded at the Grundy, West Virginia Law School. Former student, 43-year-old Peter Odighizuwa, a native of Nigeria (relevant because there existed a question of whether he could legally own and possess a handgun), opened fire in the school with a .380 auto handgun. When Odighizuwa left the building where the shooting took place, he was approached by two students with personal firearms. Armed students  Tracy Bridges and Mikael Gross yelled at Odighizuwa to drop his gun. He complied and was restrained by other students until police arrived. Until Police arrived.

This case received very little media attention. And given the night and day coverage of Columbine, Paducah, Virginia Tech, and now the Movie Theater Massacre, the media is not going to give news space to citizens who thwart gun crimes like this.

We cannot say for certain if more people would have died had those armed citizens not been present and I am certainly glad we cannot say. It is a tragedy when even one person dies at the hand of a criminal. This is one criminal, however, who was stopped in his tracks by armed citizens. But do not hold your breath waiting on the lame stream media to make accurate and timely reports when this type of intervention occurs....you'll pass out before that happens. So on and on and on goes the nay-sayers asserting, even if an armed citizen was present, nothing could be done.  That is just bread and circus in pursuit of a morally corrupt agenda.

CROSS-POSTED AT GRANITE GROK

Idiots And Cowards Who Complain About Gun Ranges

"Once you're able to look like an idiot and be OK with it, it opens up your potential." —Nicole Sullivan

Irascible Cowards are idiots willing to  spew their opinion as if it means something, is always a great source of amusement to me. And sometimes they do so anonymously. Such is the case with this silly anonymous e-mail message I received yesterday morning.

Such e-mails are instructive in helping the reader observe the depths of ignorance to which some have succumbed, in spite of  any tone, word usage or voice which might suggest otherwise. The e-mail received is errant on two levels: factually and conceptually.  

An argument could be made this particular entry is a waste of time...a, "suffering of fools," if you will. I do think its necessary because tom-foolery like this is reaching epidemic proportions.  And if conversations with idiots are the order, then we need to present at least one intelligent side.

The mystery e-mailer refers to my previous entry, Anatomy Of Gun Range Neighbors, and she states,

"I am sending you this e-mail anonymously because, I do not want to be slandered and spoken ill of in your writings like the way you did to Janet Luongo."

slan·der/slander/ —Noun: "The action or crime of making a false spoken (my emphasis, here) statement damaging to a person's reputation." The problem is, I did not "speak" about Janet Luongo. I wrote about her. Did he or she mean to infer that I committed libel? 

li·bel/libel/  —Noun:  "A published false statement that is damaging to a person's reputation; a written defamation." 

Libel  and Slander are "tortious actions at law." Publishing Luongo's publicly available  information....that is, information found in deeds and tax records, could hardly be characterized as positive or negative and is simply factual.

The fact pattern established in the writing was a) Janet Luongo stated she has a problem: The Range;  b) Luongo moved into her home (2009)  long after the range (1947) had originated; c) Her prior state residence would suggest a likely probability of Luongo's resistance  to shooting ranges and guns, given the adverse cultural, regulatory and legal environment toward guns and ranges, long-existing in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. When people line up to smear and denigrate shooting ranges, they people should have the courage to be accountable and not hide behind some less-obvious or hidden pretext, let alone withholding their names. Its one of the facets of citizenship. Next, the mystery e-mailer asserts,

"I would first like to say that it makes no difference how long people live at their homes [...] It makes no difference that the range was there first. Geography changes and that is what has happened here."

The fact is, it does make a difference. According to Peterborough Town Zoning maps, MRGC is zoned as Commercial-Industrial. "Public or Private Recreational Facilities," are a permited use, so the MRGC is a permitted use.

Second, we look within the, "Doctrine of Coming to a Nuisance." Character of the area predetermined. In In Gau v. Ley, 38 Ohio C.C. 235 (1916) "Even though the residential area was there first, the residents should have foreseen that the location was ideally suited for the nuisance." The character of the location was first determined by its' first use. In Mahlstadt v. City of Indianola, 251 Iowa 222, 100 N.W.2d 189 (1959) In that case, the court ruled, "There was nothing peculiar to the location making it particularly appropriate or inappropriate for housing or for a dump. Therefore the first activity determined the character of the location." The court held that the dump's "prior operation at that place should be given substantial weight in determining the character of the locality and the reasonableness or unreasonableness of operating it there." Therefore, It is reasonable to say, "who was there first" does have bearing on the club's  right to operate, irrespective of who moves in. The Doctrine of "Coming to a Nuisance" is clearly applicable here. The unnamed e-mail correspondent then opines.

"I am not opposed to guns. I grew up in a family where the men hunted and fished. But I fail to understand why in this day and age people own guns, with all the crime surrounding them. The right to bear arms in not an individual right, after all."

I always laugh when people assert, "I am not opposed to guns..." Yet, as the discussion drills down even further, that opposition is heard laced throughout the conversation. That is a liberal's way to remove the helmet before hitting one over the head with the proverbial lead pipe.

"The right to bear arms in not an 'individual' right'..." Really?  District of Columbia, et al. v. Dick Anthony Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008) says otherwise. SCOTUS stated in that case, "the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution protects an individual's (my emphasis) right to possess a firearm for traditionally lawful purposes in federal enclaves, such as self-defense within the home. It was decided for the states in,  McDonald, et al. v. City of Chicago, Illinois, et al., 130 S. Ct. 3020 (2010).

But I get it. A prime example is Rowe v. Wade.  Liberals defend that case as valid precedent-setting law, yet Heller and McDonald are, invalid junk rulings, so they all say.  That hypocrisy lives on daily. The cowardly, unnamed e-mailer then quips,

"Our right to quiet enjoyment is being infringed by this organization. Quiet enjoyment, quality of life and peace are compelling public interests sought by the majority of people. Shooting guns is not."

First, a right to quiet enjoyment.  RSA 159-B:1, as discussed in my last article on this very issue, deals with quiet enjoyment regarding shooting ranges . (See also, Coming to a nuisance) While most will agree that, quality of life and peace are compelling public interests, the mystery e-mailer is wrong  because the Legislature has said that providing ranges are a compelling public interest. When the law was enacted in 2004, The general court identified this general purpose as sufficient reason to enact the statute.

"The General Court recognizes that maintaining safe shooting ranges within the state is essential to provide places for the training of law enforcement, safety programs for youth, competitive shooting, hunter's safety training, self defense training for private citizens, and safe affordable shooting environments. The general court encourages shooting range owners and operators to exhibit reasonableness in applying the provisions of this exemption."

—as cited in Sara Realty v. Country Pond. 

My friends who operate shooting ranges, please remember these things at town hall when these sycophants  blather on before the Select Boards about nuisance noise. Ranges have both the law, facts and precedents on thier side. That does not mean they won't call out the lawyers. It only means they are beginning from a position of absolute weakness.

CROSS-POSTED AT GRANITEGROK

Armed Citizen: 1, Criminals and Anti-gun Liberals "0"

"Gun bans disarm victims, putting them at the mercy of murderers or terrorists who think nothing of breaking the gun laws." — Michael Bednarik 

This past Monday at approximately 9:30 AM, an unknown person kicked in a locked door of an apartment residence in Merrimack As reported in the Union Leader... A forced entry. The female resident of that apartment, alone...was awoken by the intrusion. She consequently confronted the intruder, armed with a handgun. The intruder fled. The intruder fled.

The intruder was not shot. The "victim" was not disarmed. Nothing was stolen. The victim was not raped or assaulted. The victim was not raped or assaulted.  So lets recap the facts here for the anti-gun pablum pukers:  (1) Assailant broke down the door of an apartment; (2) The woman, a lone occupant, was awoken by the break-in and retrieves a handgun; (3) Upon entering the woman's bedroom, the assailant is confronted by the woman with the handgun; (4) The assailant flees.

Oh but I can hear the counter-arguments now. "There is nothing in the article that he was there to do any harm."  There was nothing to indicate he was not there to do anything but commit a crime. The very act of forcible entry is a crime. "perhaps he was confused or mentally unstable and needed help" Mentally confused and unstable people are often very capable of great harm and do commit crimes.

For all the liberal hand-wringing, supposition and pontification anti-gun liberals undertake, the bare raw fact is the outcome here was positive, save for the fact the criminal has yet to be caught. But don't worry, liberals...the likelihood of him being caught increases when he commits a violent crime against another who will likely be unarmed and lacking the ability to defend ones' self under the pretext of the anti-gun template.

To this woman I say, "Bravo!" and to the anti-gun liberals you can all pat yourselves on the back and take credit for the countless others who have suffered violent attacks from having bought into your bullshit anti-gun arguments.

Gun Facts 6.0   Guy Smith

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cross-posted at GraniteGrok