Under a Gibbous Moon

California has moved closer to destroying the last vestiges of gun rights to be found in the golden state. In a narrow victory, Assembly Bill 1934 passed the Senate Public Safety Committee, removing one of the last obstacles before it moves to a full vote.

In a complete lapse of common sense, California State Senator thinks that open carry is dangerous because it will all “gang-bangers” to carry weapons. Apparently, he thinks that if open carry is banned, then the criminals will disarm and everything will be roses.

It seems that California is home to the rare, law abiding criminal.

A fourteen year old boy was killed after the loaded .30-30 rifle that he kept on a peg in his bedroom (to shoot coyotes from his window) was knocked off, causing it to fire.

The family has decided that, instead of taking responsibility for negligence, they are going to sue everyone. They are suing the rifle manufacturer, claiming the safety was defective, Wal-Mart for selling the rifle, and the ambulance company for failing to save the boys life.

Hanging a loaded weapon by a shoulder strap on a peg in the wall is far and away not a safe way to store a firearm, particularly a loaded one. Allowing a fourteen year old to fire a rifle from his bedroom window strikes me as a lapse in judgement as well.

Firearms are weapons and need to treated with respect, not hanging from a peg on the wall. There are no such thing as accidental discharges, only negligent discharges.

This video has to be seen to be believed.

So this state trooper, who appears to be off duty, cuts in front of Anthony Graber, approaches him with a drawn pistol and screaming at him. Several seconds into the confrontation he finally identifies himself (though he just says he’s the police, he doesn’t actually produce a badge).

The police try to claim that he was on duty and just plain clothes, though I doubt it simply because why wasn’t his badge at hand and why didn’t he use his lights instead of just cutting the motorcycle off.

Since all this conduct is caught on film, they decide to charge Grabder with “wiretapping” for recording the confrontation. They claim that a police officer, a public servant in the performance of his duties (supposedly), is entitled to privacy when has contact with the people he is supposed to be serving.

This just strikes me as a massive case of district attorney CYA. The big giveaway is when the anchor reports that the DA is speculating that Graber had a camera on his helmet to incite a police officer. Nothing quite like releasing a completely unfounded statement to the press that could prejudice the jury pool.

In this op-ed, New York mayor, Michael Bloomberg urges voters to support legislation that will require firearms to have microstamping technology. A short version, microstamping is a technology that attempts to imprint each bullet casing with some type of serial number at the moment it is fired.

First, I shall disassemble Bloomberg’s premise. He starts off by listing victims of handgun violence and then claiming that, if only the spent casing had been stamped this litany of death could have been prevented. Yes, I know, it doesn’t make any sense. If that was true, the unique markings left on a bullet as it travels through the barrel would have ended handgun violence years ago.

Secondly, unlike the rifling marks left by the barrel (which in itself is easy to change), the tiny markings on a firing pin and ejector would be trivial to remove (and as with the barrel simple to replace).

Thirdly, microstamping would make it so that legitimate shooters would leave the equivalent of easily plantable DNA evidence whenever they fired their pistols.

Finally, according to the infographic provided in the article, about 1/4 of handguns recovered by the NYPD last year were revolvers which, since they don’t eject spent casings, would render microstamping useless (and undoubtedly drive up the usage of revolvers for gun crime).

I’m not opposed to reducing crime. I’m not opposed to keeping firearms out of the hands of criminals but there is no point in spending money on a “solution” that won’t work.

Drunk police officer discharges her weapon in squad car. Must be Texas.

What makes this story interesting is that this police officer, who was off duty at the time, was so drunk that two on duty police officers were summoned for her. They put her in the back of the squad car. She argues with them, pulls out her service pistol and fires it.

Luckily, no one was injured. It is, though, a double standard that because she was a police officer they didn’t attempt to find out if she was armed or, that if they knew or suspected, attempt to disarm her. If it had been anyone else that is one of the first thing the officers would have done and this whole even would never had occurred.

This is what happens when segment of the population is deemed to be above the law.

Bonus double standard. The suspects name is strangely withheld in the article.