Vigilante Logger Takes Law Into Own Hands

A Rhinelander logger told authorities he may have wounded attackers who repeatedly fired shots at him while on a job site west of Tomahawk last Wednesday.

I dunno, Mr. Van Meter.

Did you clear it with Terry Hastings first?

This isn't the Old West, you know.

UPDATE: See "Comments" to this post--it appears this is an old story, that for some reason appeared on my news search--and now questions have been raised as to whether or not the account given was credible, including allegations that wounds may have been self-inflicted. I'll try to track this down when I get more time--meanwhile, if anyone has further relevant information, please feel free to add a comment.

We're the Only Ones Gunfighting Enough

A shooting Wednesday night raises new interest and concerns over concealed weapons permits.

Little Rock Police say 56 year old Samuel Mitchell shot and killed a man who was pointing a gun at him and demanding his truck...

But Lt. Terry Hastings with the Little Rock Police Department warns not all incidents turn out like the one Wednesday night, “This is not the Old West where we have quick draws...”

Since we're obviously too incompetent to know when it's appropriate to defend ourselves, we can count on you or some other "Only One" to be on scene to make that judgment for us, right, Terry?

[Thanks to HZ]

There Oughtta Be a Law...

Two parolees are in custody and police recovered suspected drugs and stolen driver's licenses from their vehicle after they led officers on a short chase...

Inside the vehicle, officers found a loaded handgun, a large amount of suspected methamphetamines and property from a recent burglary in Pittsburg. Police also found stolen checks, driver's licenses and identification cards belonging to residents from Antioch, Bay Point, Moraga, Lafayette and Pittsburg.

How can we keep stuff like this from happening again?

I know--let's disarm you and me!

The Negotiator

As long as the demands are reasonable, State Senator Michael Waddoups says he's willing to negotiate with the University of Utah over it's temporarily-suspended ban on guns. University officials say prohibiting students and faculty from carrying concealed weapons is crucial to safety and free expression on campus.

And since when are sovereign individual rights bargaining chips for you to negotiate with, Senator?

Promises, Promises...

In the end, "both men have our interests or agendas at heart," stated Bruce Knodel, a federation member who served as program moderator. Whoever wins the right to occupy the governor's office, he added, "sportsmen ... of the state of Ohio have scored a victory."

Yeah, right.

Gamebird hunting and sporting clays. And if growing up near where Roy Rogers did doesn't prove having voter interests at heart, I don't know what does.

Somehow, whenever I hear gun rights equated with "sporting purposes," my flesh crawls a little.

I know GOA supports Blackwell, and I tend to give their opinion weight when formulating my own, but I'm still waiting for candidates for a major public office to fill out a little questionnaire I developed some years ago...

Philosophy and Firearms

Preston Covey wheeled himself into his office, then made his way to his desk chair. The office had high shelves full of books, mostly concerning guns. On one shelf devoid of reading material he had perhaps as many as 40 pipes, one of which he lit a few minutes after he entered the room.

I found this article written last year about our friend in academia from Carnegie Mellon University.

An interesting man. I wish I'd had a professor or two like him when I was in college.

This Day in History: September 20

On the evening of September 20, 1777, near Paoli, Pennsylvania, General Charles Grey and nearly 5,000 British soldiers launch a surprise attack on a small regiment of Patriot troops commanded by General Anthony Wayne in what becomes known as the Paoli Massacre. Not wanting to lose the element of surprise, Grey ordered his troops to empty their muskets and to use only bayonets or swords to attack the sleeping Americans under the cover of darkness.

Yes, Let the Rationalization Begin

At a meeting of the House Judiciary Committee on an NRA-backed bill to restrict the release of crime gun trace data (H.R. 5005), [Debbie] Wasserman Schultz offered an amendment to the pro-gun bill to outlaw gun possession by individuals convicted of misdemeanor sex crimes against minors. What constitutes such a crime varies from state to state, but includes enticing a minor over the Internet, sexual exploitation of a minor, and criminal sexual abuse. Not to mention more serious sex crimes against children that are pleaded down to misdemeanors. Her amendment was quickly accepted by H.R. 5005's sponsor, Lamar Smith (R-TX), with no debate. So for those who ask, "Where do even pro-gun legislators draw the line?," the answer, apparently, is child sex offenders.

This is just a clever little bomb thrown under the bus by a committed subversive. But it's guaranteed to embarrass, and is therefore a formidable publicity ploy--after all, how could anyone be for armed sex offenders?

Also caught in this net could be a teenager one year older than their under-the-age-of-consent boyfriend or girlfriend, and their behavior wouldn't even need to include sex. For that, the antis rationalize a lifetime ban.

This is the problem when we allow anyone not institutionalized to be classified a "prohibited person," and it's where NRA management's logic of compromise proves paradoxical.

If you can't be trusted with a gun, you can't be trusted without a custodian.

If you're unfit to live in a free society, you're unfit to live free.

Making Hay from Random Gun Crime

The other day, on a quiet suburban Toronto street, someone hacked a man to death with a machete. It's possible you missed the story, because it got barely a mention in the local media.

Machetes are not top of mind with the public. Nobody is demanding stricter controls on machete sales. On the other side, nobody is defending responsible machete owners from meddlesome bureaucrats.

Margaret Wente admits she personally hates guns, but she is at least intellectually honest enough to admit "tougher gun laws don't seem to make a difference," and that the arguments of the antis are not founded in logic.

Talk About Your Oxymoron

Police hold gun buyback in Liberty Square

Zombies Attack Switzerland!

A women's magazine has collected 17,400 signatures in a bid to rid Swiss households of more than two million weapons.

The petition comes amid discussions in parliament over whether to scrap the country's militia army tradition requiring guns and ammunition to be kept at home.

Staff at Annabelle handed over the signatures to a parliamentary committee in Bern on Tuesday.

The petition, "No weapons at home", is calling for a ban on shotguns at home, for army rifles to be kept in military storage instead of at home and for people not to be able to hold on to army guns after their period of service expires. It is also campaigning for a national weapons register to be created as soon as possible.

If I would suggest banning anything, it would be this subversive rag for pampered, self-indulgent cows from your home.

Their home page says all you need to know about them:

We Are What Obsesses Us

We Are What We Read

We Are What We Say

We Are What We Listen To

We Are What We Rent

We Are Actually Zombies

All this under the graphic banner of "Zeitgeist".

Crocodile Tears Dundee

Zoning permits were approved for the store, which also sells firearms, because it was classified as a sporting goods store, which is permitted by the East Dundee zoning codes. Firearm regulations are not specifically listed in the village's zoning codes...

Village Trustee Michael Ruffulo says he was caught by surprise that the sporting goods store was selling firearms. He said after permits were issued for the store, a picture of a gun was placed in the store's window, causing many residents to call the village hall to complain.

"It was a bit unsettling for everyone. It is along the bike path, where you have families that shouldn't have to see that," Ruffulo said.

Hide your eyes!

Oh my GOD, it was horrible!

This Day in History: September 19

In the early morning hours of this day in 1777, British General John Burgoyne launches a three-column attack against General Horatio Gates and his American forces in the First Battle of Saratoga, also known as the Battle of Freeman’s Farm.

Escaping the Village III: An Indictment on All of Us

The following is a guest editorial by Fight islam Now:

When one of your site visitors wrote that as an attorney he saw no modern basis for the second amendment it drew no agrument. The subsequest testimony you printed last week brought up the second amendment and dismissed the argument...and this does not produce strident comment???

You posted a letter positing that the second amendment had been rendered meaningless, that it had become a mere cynical fund raising ploy. That drew comments from 6 distinct individuals on a site that draws thousands a day? On the RKBA site when I log on for my daily news I am "one of 87 - 450 persons logged on at that time" - This translates to NO INTEREST IN THE TOPIC.

A million people may begin to have some voice but a hundred...a hundred is just a few more than the dead and forgotten at the Branch Davidian "compound" in Waco. You often bring up the possibility that people in numbers may have some effect and just this week in one of your postings you mentioned the 81 million gun owners and 400 showed up type thing. Our "side" shows no numbers.

Our "side" has enough persons with the willingness, interest, guts and foresight to stand up despite their comfort and not kiss the Pharaoh'’s ring to make us an easy and obvious scapegoat for totalitarian government and a super photo op for the coming "one world" infrastructure that is being built by the day.

Based on the numbers (81 million gun owners that can'’t / won'’t coalesce) against an apparent continental or international plan to open or erase our borders, average our laws with the countries of the continent and the world, create ever increasing webs of laws that can not be understood or abided by - can it be long before gun owners are out of favor and marginalized as a group?

Friends of mine who are police officers have been telling me for some time that there is a trend in law enforcement that the criminals are the "customers" and then there is everybody else. The theory being that the criminals drive the system and employment not the law abiding. The converse of this thinking is that a) check every citizen to see if they are a customer and b) Law abiding citizens are not customers and possible enemies. It'’s just good marketing to convert "citizens" to "customers".

Among the comments of posters on the topic (and we can admit it is a widely held sentiment) was that "when the time comes, I won'’t register my guns" or "I'’ll bury my guns" or "If they come for my guns we'’ll all be dead" ad nauseum and that is fine and I hold that sentiment myself in principal. HOWEVER, it is easy to hide your guns and be under the radar if you have 3 or 10 but if you have 500 or a thousand you won't be viewed as a collector you will be viewed as an enemy of the state and you will not hide or be hidden when they start compiling 4473's. Didn't the FBI kill Vicky Weaver and Sammy Weaver over one machine gun transfer?

But will you take to the hills? Hell, the Weavers were in the hills!

The second amendment has seemingly been rendered entirely symbolic. If you look at McCain-Feingold (limits on the most fundamental first amendment protected speech), Kelo (eminent domain expansion) and increasing narrowing of the fourth amendment, a reasonable person can conclude that the constitution as a whole is on a path toward meaninglessness.

Those us of that believe (romantically) in the constitution and that the second amendment secures all other rights are being sold out and screwed by absolute lowest common denominator traitors at every level of government installed by a comfortable and illiterate population of easily manipulated TV watchers. MY CHILDREN ARE BEING SCREWED!

"We" have built a welfare mommy state and we vote our own entitlement. I am losing faith that the government is acting in the best interest of the US and not the un. I am starting to fall to the one worlders' conspiratorial views because I can not see freedom or sovereignty as the basis for anything going on legislatively or in the courts. AND TO GET THERE THEY WILL HAVE TO TAKE OUR GUNS. If not from you and me then from our children. Let's call a spade a spade now and not wait to be told.

I am not ordinarily a pessimist.

Our children need guts. We have to actively counter the indoctrination they get at school and on TV (we don't allow TV). We need Paul Revere again...but that is just...the rest of the story...

I refuse to be a party to raising "villagers". Let's fight and stop embarrassing ourselves.

I am not a prisoner, I'm a free man. Period.

---------------------

A few clarifying notes:

I wish this site drew "thousands a day." Hundreds is more like it. Sorry, but most gun sites/blogs don't ( or won't) link to me, and I won't beg anyone for links. If WarOnGuns readers think this site has merit, I'll let them be the ones to spread the word on their own initiative--if I have to ask them to do this, it apparently does not.

In re the testimony that specifically excluded talk about 2A, that did not trouble me as it apparently has some--we need to be able to attack the problem from various angles and with various strategies. Prof. Covey wasn't dissing 2A--in fact, he specifically stated it was an individual right. He was simply applying an original approach that may produce results on its own merit, and certainly bolsters all other arguments. Think of it as one more tool in the kit, and a pretty useful one at that.

--David Codrea

[More "Escaping the Village"]

Gun Violence Kills Again

Two more men lost their lives in Philadelphia early Sunday morning, victims of gun violence.

I guess you can do more politically with that than just saying they were victims of killers. I mean, if these acts are the responsibility of individuals, then politicians will have a harder time exploiting them with public policy proposals.

Maybe Philly should try "Project Exile."

You know, "Make my day"...

Man Arrested After Fatal Limerick Shooting

There once was a man from a gang...

Sorry.

Canada's Gun Laws Must Be Tougher

One intriguing proposal worthy of serious discussion is for Ottawa to allow each community across Canada to hold a referendum on becoming gun-free zones, much as they once could declare themselves alcohol-free zones. Big cities, such as Toronto, where gun crime is a major concern, might want to go this route, while rural communities might not.

Firearms in gun-free communities could possibly be stored at secure depots that would double as firing ranges. Collectors could visit their guns there. Handgun owners could practise target and competitive shooting. And hunters could check out rifles and shotguns in season.

What an idiot.

This Day in History: September 18

On this day in 1776, General George Washington writes to the president of the Continental Congress, John Hancock, reporting on the Battle at Harlem Heights and relaying the unfortunate news of the death of Captain Thomas Knowlton.

Global Gun Rights?

Then the Brazilian gun lobby, which previously had emphasized the desirability of gun ownership, began running advertisements that instead suggested that if the government could take away the right to own a weapon (though Brazilians have no constitutional right to bear arms), it could steal other civil liberties. This argument took gun-control advocates by surprise, and on voting day, 64 percent of Brazilians voted against the gun ban. “We gun-control groups failed to anticipate this idea of focusing on rights,” admits Denis Mizne of Sou da Paz, a Brazilian public-policy institute.

The demand for sovereign individual rights generally does take socialists by surprise--they're just not conditioned to give that any credence, other than to decry it when they're out of power, and crush it when they're in. But writer Joshua Kurlantzick missed one other critical determinant: fear of the police, which I explored, along with other factors, in "Brazil Nuts."

I'm a Gun Owner BUT...

But next week, with a change in state law, that course will no longer be required and that bothers Tucson resident Millie Layton.

Layton says, "I definitely don't agree with that at all."

Layton has a gun. It's at home, and that's where she says it stays.

"We've got enough protection." I don't feel guns are necessary, I really don't," the gun-owner says.

Aside from stupidly broadcasting your publicly disarmed status to every reptile in the Tucson area, I think Mr. Adams would like a word with you, Millie...