Homeless in Arizona

It's not about protecting the children, it's about feeding Sheriff Joe's ego

Sheriff Arpaio sending armed posse to protect schools

by Jason Volentine

azfamily.com

Posted on December 28, 2012 at 6:24 AM

PHOENIX -- Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said Thursday that he plans to deploy his armed volunteer posse to protect Valley schools from the kind of violence that happened in the Connecticut shooting tragedy. Arpaio believes having armed law officers around schools will deter would-be criminals from trying anything violent and, possibly, stop them if they do.

“I have the authority to mobilize private citizens and fight crime in this county,” Arpaio said.

Arpaio first started using his posse to protect malls during the holiday shopping season in 1993 in response to violent incidents in prior years. Since then he said malls where his posse members are on patrol have had zero violent re-occurrences and patrols by his all-volunteer squad during the 2012 shopping season netted a record 31 arrests.

Arpaio said since the program has worked so well in malls he believes it will work just as well protecting schools.

“We're not talking about placing the posse in the schools right now but in the outlying -- the perimeters of the school -- to detect any criminal activity.”

The sheriff didn't talk logistics but said he'll use members of his 3,000 strong posse to patrol schools in towns that fall under sole jurisdiction of the sheriff's office – places like Cave Creek, Anthem, Fountain Hills, Sun City, Litchfield Park, Gila Bend, Carefree, Queen Creek, Guadalupe - which he said amounts to about 50 grade, middle and high schools.

“I don't know if they agree [to my plan] or not. I'll coordinate with them,” the sheriff said, admitting he has yet to talk it over with the schools.

Arpaio's plan came the day after his counterpart in Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu and Attorney General Tom Horne said they want to arm teachers and principals.

In response, Arpaio said he'd rather see armed resource officers back in all schools -- a program that's been largely de-funded in recent years. [armed resource officers is a politically correct word for cops or police officers that work in government or public schools]

“I support arming cops in the schools," Arpaio said. "If you have a cop that's armed you don't need a teacher that's armed." [Yea, but teachers are a lot cheaper to pay then cops!]

However, Arpaio stopped short of committing to a stance on arming teachers. [So it sounds like Sheriff Joe Arpaio is a gun grabber who only wants cops to have guns!!!]

“[Politicians] are going to be talking about the guns now for years. But I have certain resources at my disposal and I'm not going to talk about it. I'm going to do it,” Arpaio said about putting his plan into action without the need for political maneuvering.

Source

Sheriff Joe Arpaio aims to put armed posse at Phoenix-area schools

Associated Press Fri Dec 28, 2012 9:47 AM

PHOENIX — An Arizona sheriff has announced plans to deploy an armed volunteer posse to protect Phoenix-area students in the wake of the mass shooting at a Connecticut elementary school.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio tells KTVK-TV (http://bit.ly/WMVRwn) he has the authority to mobilize private citizens to fight crime but hasn’t talked to specific districts.

He says he doesn’t plan to put posse members inside schools but will have them posted around the perimeters.

Arpaio is known as one of the nation’s most high-profile supporters of strict U.S.-Mexico border policy.

His plan announced Thursday comes after two other Arizona officials released ideas for boosting school security.

Attorney General Tom Horne proposed firearms training for one person in each school. And Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu proposed training multiple educators per school to carry guns.

———

Information from: KTVK-TV, http://www.azfamily.com

Using the Connecticut shooting to create a jobs program for cops???

Source

Experts: Trained police necessary to protect schools

John Gastaldo

Rich Agundez

Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The student's attack began with a shotgun blast through the windows of a California high school. Rich Agundez, the El Cajon policeman assigned to the school, felt his mind shift into overdrive.

People yelled at him amid the chaos but he didn't hear. He experienced "a tunnel vision of concentration."

While two teachers and three students were injured when the glass shattered in the 2001 attack on Granite Hills High School, Agundez confronted the assailant and wounded him before he could get inside the school and use his second weapon, a handgun.

The National Rifle Association's response to a Connecticut school massacre envisions, in part, having trained, armed volunteers in every school in America. But Agundez, school safety experts and school board members say there's a huge difference between a trained law enforcement officer who becomes part of the school family and a guard with a gun. [Translation - He wants to create jobs for police officers, not armed guards who are not police officers.]

The NRA's proposal has sparked a debate across the country as gun control rises once again as a national issue. President Obama promised to present a plan in January to confront gun violence in the aftermath of the killing of 20 Sandy Hook Elementary School students and six teachers in Newtown, Conn.

Agundez said what happened before the shooting in the San Diego County school should frame the debate over the NRA's proposal.

After a shooting at another county school just weeks before, Agundez had trained the staff in how to lock down the school, assigned evacuation points, instructed teachers to lock doors, close curtains and turn off the lights. He even told them computers should be used where possible to communicate, to lessen the chaos.

And his training? A former SWAT team member, Agundez's preparation placed him in simulated stressful situations.

The kids in the school knew to follow his advice because they knew him. He spoke in their classrooms and counseled them when they came to him with problems.

In the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre, school boards, administrators, teachers and parents are reviewing their security measures.

School security officers can range from the best-trained police officers to unarmed private guards. Some big-city districts with gang and crime problems formed their own police agencies years ago.

Others, after the murder of 13 people at Columbine High School in 1999, started joint agreements with local police departments to have officers assigned to schools - even though that was no guarantee of preventing violence. A trained police officer at Columbine confronted one of two shooters but couldn't prevent the death of 13 people.

"Our association would be uncomfortable with volunteers," [Of course they are uncomfortable with volunteers, it means less jobs for police officers] said Mo Canady, executive director of the National Association of School Resource Officers - whose members are mostly trained law enforcement officers who "become part of the school family.' " [I think a better title for their group would be National Association of Police Officers who work in Schools. "Resource Officers" is just a politically correct word for cops that work in schools]

Canady questioned how police agencies responding to reports of a shooter would know whether the person with a gun is a volunteer or the assailant. [You can ask the same question and say how would the cops know if a person was a teacher or the assailant?]

Former Rep. Asa Hutchinson, who also was a top Homeland Security official and will head the NRA effort, said the program will have two key elements.

One is a model security plan "based on the latest, most up-to-date technical information from the foremost experts in their fields." Each school could tweak the plan to its own circumstances, and "armed, trained, qualified school security personnel will be but one element."

The second element may prove the more controversial because, to avoid massive funding for local authorities, it would use volunteers. Hutchinson said in his home state of Arkansas, his son was a volunteer with a local group "Watchdog Dads," who volunteered at schools to patrol playgrounds and provide added security.

He said retired police officers, former members of the military or rescue personnel would be among those likely to volunteer.

There's debate over whether anyone should have a gun in a school, even a trained law enforcement officer.

"In general teachers don't want guns in schools, period," said Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, one of the two large unions representing teachers. He added that one size does not fit all districts and said the union has supported schools that wanted a trained officer. Most teachers, he said, do not want to be armed themselves.

"It's a school. It's not a place where guns should be," he commented.

The security situation around the country is mixed.

• Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne proposed a plan to allow one educator in each school to carry a gun. [Isn't Tom Horne the guy who is trying to distract the public from his alleged affair with Carmen Chenal and the alleged hit and run accident he was involved in on his way to an alleged affair with Carmen Chenal???]

• Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio says he has the authority to mobilize private citizens to fight crime and plans to post armed private posse members around the perimeter of schools. He said he hasn't spoken to specific school districts and doesn't plan to have the citizen posse members inside the buildings. [ Sheriff Joe is just a publicity hound who is using the Connecticut shooting to get attention for himself]

• The Snohomish School District north of Seattle got rid of its school officers because of the expense.

• The Las Vegas-based Clark County School District has its own police department and places armed officers in and around its 49 high school campuses. Officers patrol outside elementary and middle schools. The Washoe County School District in Nevada also has a police force that was authorized about a decade ago to carry guns on campus.

• In Milwaukee, a dozen city police officers cover the school district but spend most of their time in seven of the 25 high schools. In Madison, Wis., an armed police officer has worked in each of the district's four high schools since the mid-1990s.

• A Utah group is offering free concealed-weapons permit training for teachers as a result of the Connecticut shootings.

Source

"I would select an experienced, tactically trained, on-duty police officer. I would have them in every school in the United States, preschool through college" - The author who is an ex-cop and owner of a police training school has a vested interest in hiring more cops.

Only armed guards can protect against shootings

Saturday December 29, 2012 4:39 AM

The discussion concerning active-shooter situations needs to remain productive and on-topic.

Some of that discussion involves the controversial option of arming teachers and other qualified concealed-carry-permit holders. Some politicians and media folks have attempted to hijack the narrative on the subject and offer nonsensical solutions. [So if you are not a cop, you are too stupid to be involved in this discussion???] Those of us in law enforcement must reinforce those who voice legitimate solutions. Our kids are being murdered in elementary schools. We have no choice but to make ourselves heard.

Law-enforcement professionals have done a pretty good job over the past 14 years in training and preparing for such situations. [Yea, but off hand I don't remember then stopping ANY shootings. The shooters usually commit suicide, or are arrested after they leave the scene] As a former police officer and co-owner of North American SWAT Training Association, I have been directly involved in this training and preparation for thousands of officers and educators throughout the United States since 1999. [So he has a vested interest in hiring more cops] In many cases, responding officers and educators have limited the number of casualties. This comprehensive approach to training and preparation must continue and be improved upon.

Historically, a homicidal-suicidal active shooter stops killing innocent people only when he or she is confronted by a responsible person carrying a gun. [Yes I remember a few of these incidents the cop were cowards and didn't confront the assailants. Columbine was one of them.]

Therefore, we must cause this confrontation to take place within seconds of when an active shooter starts his or her rampage.

The only way to ensure this is to have a responsible and armed person at the scene when the situation begins. Like most, I would prefer to hand-pick those individuals for this assignment. I would select an experienced, tactically trained, on-duty police officer. I would have them in every school in the United States, preschool through college. [And of course after those thousands of cops are hired I will make of buck off of training a few of them]

But I'm not convinced that we have enough sworn personnel or resources to accomplish that task.

Another option: Recruit off-duty and retired police officers, paid or volunteer. How many active and retired officers, former military personnel and other qualified gun owners already volunteer in their kids’ and grandkids’ schools? I would gladly volunteer for the assignment.

Another option: Arming responsible teachers who are proficient in the use of firearms. It has worked successfully in some school districts throughout Texas and other states. The Harrold School District in Texas has an excellent plan that includes all of the necessary selection, training and policy procedures.

Law enforcement would need to assist educators in establishing a safe and workable plan.

Like most officers, I want to be there when an active-shooter situation erupts. If I can't be there, I want a fellow officer to confront the shooter. If we can't be there in the first 30-90 seconds, I want someone else armed and prepared to end the situation. [If you ask me it's highly unlikely that a school cop will get their in 30 to 90 seconds]

When the lives of our children are at stake, we can't afford to take any solution off the table. [Translation I want to make a few bucks training cops, and I think you can afford to pay me] Politicians and celebrities are provided individualized, armed security 24/7. How can we justify depriving our children of at least one armed security professional per school?

JAMES J. SCANLON

General partner, North American SWAT Training Association

Westerville

Tucson gun buyback effort raises legal questions

As the article points out ALL the guns bought back MUST be returned to their owners or resold. Well if the city of Tucson follows Arizona law, and you can't count on that. Our royal government masters frequently think they are above the law.

Source

Tucson gun buyback effort raises legal questions

Associated Press Sat Dec 29, 2012 12:43 PM

TUCSON — An effort to raise money for a gun buyback program in Tucson is prompting questions about a change in state law.

Councilman Steve Kozachik is raising $5,000 so Tucson residents may have a way to dispose of unwanted firearms while making money in the process.

“With the success other cities have had with voluntary gun buybacks, I want to test the water to see how Tucson residents respond,” Kozachik told the Arizona Daily Star. “The rules are simple: Bring in your gun on a totally voluntary basis, no questions asked, and you’ll trade it for a Safeway $50 gift card.”

But Todd Rathner, a member of the National Rifle Association’s board of directors, said any buyback program would be meaningless since the police department would be required to return or resell the weapons under a change made earlier this year to state law.

“The police would have to take the guns and run them through the national database. If they are stolen, they are returned to the owner,” he said. “If they are not stolen, (the Tucson Police Department) is mandated by state law to sell them to the public.”

The police department checks every gun it receives to ensure they aren’t stolen or have been used to commit a crime. Spokeswoman Sgt. Maria Hawke said the department holds several “destruction boards” throughout the year to dispose of things such as illicit drugs and guns and the same process would hold true for guns purchased through a buyback program.

Hawke said the department is researching how the statute applies to its practices regarding the disposal of firearms.

Rathner contends that destruction of firearms would put the department in violation of the law.

“If they are in violation of state law, we will see them in a courtroom or we will change the law and have them sanctioned financially,” he said.

City Attorney Mike Rankin believes the law is intended to apply to guns seized by police, not those firearms voluntarily surrendered by their owners.

Kozachik said he doesn’t understand why the NRA would oppose a voluntary program like the one he’s proposing.

Ken Rineer, president of Gun Owners of Arizona, said he has reservations over losing guns committed during a crime, people unwittingly selling antique firearms and the legal issues regarding who is a licensed gun dealer when large numbers of weapons are purchased.

“I don’t know if these issues can be laid to rest if they follow the no-question policy,” Rineer said. He added that buyback programs work well as symbolism but have minor impacts in the real world.

Obama: Gun control ‘not something I will be putting off’

Obama: Gun control ‘not something I will be putting off’

Posted by Sean Sullivan on December 30, 2012 at 9:01 am

President Obama reiterated his commitment to passing new gun control measures in an interview broadcast on Sunday morning, saying he would like to get such legislation done in the first year of his second term. He also expressed skepticism about a proposal to put more armed guards in schools across the country.

“The question is are we going to be able to have a national conversation and move something through Congress,” Obama said on NBC News’s “Meet The Press.” “I’d like to get it done in the first year. I will put forward a very specific proposal based on the recommendations that Joe Biden’s task force is putting together as we speak. And so this is not something that I will be putting off.”

Obama, who recently established a task force led by Vice President Biden to offer recommendations for how to best curb gun violence, also pushed back against an idea the National Rifle Association put forth following the mass shooting earlier this month at a school in Newtown, Conn. As gun control advocates called for tighter restrictions, the NRA urged that armed guards be placed in schools to deter and defend against future acts of violence.

“I am skeptical that the only answer is putting more guns in schools. And I think the vast majority of the American people are skeptical that that somehow is going to solve our problem,” Obama said.

Obama reiterated his support for a ban on military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines that gun control advocates in Congress have said they will be pushing for.

“Here’s the bottom line. We’re not going to get this done unless the American people decide it’s important,” Obama added.

Reasonable Restrictions on your First and Second Amendment rights

Imagine that the First Amendment is subject to just a few 'reasonable restrictions.'

All you have to do, it turns out, is apply for a federal Churchgoing License, a federal Prayer Permit, a federal Publication Permit, or a federal Letter-to-the-Editor License, whichever is appropriate.

The forms are free! Of course, you have to submit to fingerprinting. You have to mail in with your application and your fingerprint card a signed letter from your local sheriff or chief of police, stating he has no objections.

The application fee is $200. The waiting period to hear whether you've been approved generally runs about six months.

If you ask me there are NO reasonable restrictions on your rights.

Syrian rebels make their own, fix tanks

Source

Desperate for weapons, Syrian rebels make their own, fix tanks

By Yara Bayoumy | Reuters

ALEPPO PROVINCE, Syria (Reuters) - At a converted warehouse in the midst of a block of residential homes in a northern Syrian town, men are hard at work at giant lathes, shavings of metal gathering around them.

Sacks of potassium nitrate and sugar lie nearby.

In a neat row against the wall is the finished product, homemade mortars. Syrian rebels say they have been forced to make them because their calls for heavy weapons and ammunition to fight President Bashar al-Assad have gone unanswered.

"No one's giving us any support. So we're working on our own to strike Bashar," said a bearded man spinning the metal to create the warhead.

Using the Internet, the workshop of about seven men work together to try and perfect the crude weapons. For explosives, they pick out TNT from unexploded rockets that Assad's forces have fired towards them and repackage them into their own weapons. Each gave different estimates of the mortars' range.

"We're volunteers, we were workers, we were never soldiers. They're locally made. They don't have the strength of the regime's rockets, but they are having good effects," said Abu Mohammed, who said the mortars created a 3-1/2 meter crater.

Another worker said the mortars, which take about a day to make, could reach a distance of 6 km (almost 4 miles).

Although the rebels, who are mostly Sunni Muslim fighters, have made big gains in the northern and eastern parts of Syria in the 21-month conflict, they are outgunned by Assad's forces.

Some rebel groups are receiving supplies from Gulf states, and Western countries say they are giving non-lethal aid. But many rebels say they have not received anything.

Colonel Abdel-Jabbar Oqaidi, who heads the rebels' military council in Aleppo province, told Reuters last week that his forces are fighting without any help from the Western and Arab governments which want Assad removed from power.

"We aren't able to get any weapons from abroad. We have nothing except for the rifle to fight with," said another man at the workshop.

OLD TANKS

The success rate of the weapons is questionable. Two men said the mortars hit 80 to 90 percent of the targets, but there have been problems. Sometimes the mortars do not detonate, other times they explode prematurely.

"The more we practice, the more experience we get," said one of the men, explaining how they discovered that if they let the propelling agent mixture set for too long it absorbed humidity, which in turn stopped the mortar from detonating.

At one of the Aleppo frontline positions, rebels fired the mortars from a homemade tube, fashioned from piping on a mount made from a car axle.

The rebels have also been working on refurbishing weaponry acquired during takeovers of Assad's military bases.

Parked in a residential street, a group of men have been working on fixing a T-72 tank whose gear box was blown.

Abu Jumaa, one of the mechanics working on the 1970s tank, said fighters had taken it from an infantry college in north Syria that had recently fallen to rebel forces.

"We have no tanks, no planes, no artillery. All we have is what we get in spoils and we go to war against him (Assad) with what we get. That's the reality. We're forced to do this," he told Reuters.

"These tanks are useless in the first place. It can't be called a tank, It's a lump of scrap iron," he said gesturing at the chipped army green metal.

Rebel fighters on the frontline consistently complain of shortages of weapons and ammunition that have forced them to stop advances and focus on keeping the ground they have gained.

"We get 3,000 bullets a month. No anti-aircraft missiles ... everything is from the military bases (we take over)," said one young rebel fighter from the Supporters of Mohammed Brigade, wearing a plaid yellow and black turban.

Even though the rebels have managed to seize large quantities of weapons from military bases, they struggle with a chronic shortage of ammunition and weapons to target Assad's fighter jets.

"You see how the planes are striking all of us, not differentiating between old and young ... God has helped us, we've made these rockets and we're using them to hit back at them all over again," said Abu Mohammed.

New York newspaper that reported gun permits using armed guards

Source

New York newspaper that reported gun permits using armed guards

Associated Press Thu Jan 3, 2013 7:22 AM

WHITE PLAINS, New York — A New York state newspaper that created a public outcry when it published the names and addresses of residents with handgun permits is being protected by armed guards.

Journal News publisher Janet Hasson told the New York Times, “The safety of my staff is my top priority.”

The newspaper last month published online maps with the names and addresses of pistol permit holders in two counties it covers. It sought the public records after the school shooting in nearby Newtown, Connecticut.

Critics say the publication is an invasion of privacy.

Boy, 6, suspended from Silver Spring school for pointing finger like a gun

Boy, 6, suspended from Silver Spring school for pointing finger like a gun

By Donna St. George, Published: January 2

The parents of a 6-year-old Silver Spring boy are fighting the first-grader’s suspension from a Montgomery County public school for pointing his finger like a gun and saying “pow,” an incident school officials characterized in a disciplinary letter as a threat “to shoot a student.”

The first-grader was suspended for one day, Dec. 21. The family’s attorney filed an appeal Wednesday, asking that the incident be expunged from the boy’s school record amid concerns of long-term fallout.

The boy “had no intention to shoot anyone,” said attorney Robin Ficker, who described the child as soft-spoken, with no propensity for violence. “He’s skinny and meek. In his words, he was playing.”

The suspension came in a week when the nation was reeling from the massacre that claimed the lives of 20 children and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. — and left elected leaders, educators and parents debating how best to keep schools safe.

But it also comes as leaders in Maryland and a growing number of states are working to reduce out-of-school suspensions, which have increased greatly in the past several decades and are linked in studies to lower achievement and students dropping out of school.

Ficker attributed some of the reaction by school officials to the widespread alarm that followed the Newtown shootings. But he contended that the school system’s portrayal of the episode could be damaging to the boy. The Washington Post generally does not identify juveniles accused of crimes or other wrongdoing.

“They took the worst possible interpretation of this little child’s actions, and five years from now, if he gets into a tussle, they’re going to look back and say, ‘This is one bad little kid,’ ” Ficker said.

Montgomery schools spokesman Dana Tofig said he could not discuss individual students for privacy reasons. But in a written statement, Tofig said the suspension “was not a kneejerk reaction to a single incident.”

In disciplining young students, Tofig added: “We always make sure there is clear conversation with the student and parents about any behaviors that have to change and what the consequences are if that behavior doesn’t change.”

School officials recognize that “suspending a student is a serious matter, and that is especially true of a student who is in our early grades,” Tofig said, adding that school officials must deal with behavior that affects a school’s sense of safety and security.

Across the Washington region, school systems have suspended thousands of students in the early grades, according to a 2012 Washington Post analysis that showed kindergartners and first-graders had been ousted for disciplinary offenses in nearly every local school system.

In Silver Spring, the 6-year-old’s parents received a Dec. 20 letter from Renee Garraway, an assistant principal at Roscoe Nix Elementary School, saying that their son “threatened to shoot a student” and that he had been spoken to earlier about similar behavior.

Responding to questions from the family’s attorney, school officials later offered more detail, responding in a letter that an assistant principal had warned one parent that the child’s behavior could lead to a suspension. At school, a counselor “had an extended conversation” with the child to emphasize “the inappropriateness of using objects to make shooting gestures,” and an assistant principal had talked to the boy about the “seriousness” of the issue, the letter said.

“Yet, after the meeting with the counselor and assistant principal, [the boy] chose to point his finger at a female classmate and say ‘Pow,’ ” wrote Judith S. Bresler, the school system’s attorney.

The boy attended school Wednesday, and school officials are considering the appeal, according to the family’s attorney.

The suspension comes as the Maryland State Board of Education is preparing for a final vote in the coming weeks on proposed regulations that would transform the use of out-of-school suspension for minor offenses. The new regulations ban zero-tolerance approaches and require school systems to adopt a rehabilitative philosophy toward discipline, with the goal of limiting suspensions and teaching positive behavior.

Steve Benson - Gun Grabber

Gun Grabbing Gabrielle Giffords

Recovering Giffords takes on new fight

By Shaun McKinnon The Republic | azcentral.com

Wed Jan 9, 2013 12:56 AM

Two years after being shot in the head, former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona still struggles to speak, even as she and her husband, Mark Kelly, add their voices to one of the more lopsided debates in American politics, pledging to take on the influential gun lobby.

On Tuesday, the second anniversary of the mass shooting outside Tucson that killed six and wounded 13, Giffords and Kelly offered a new glimpse into her steady but clearly frustrating recovery.

In an interview with ABC News, Giffords struggled at times to express herself, acknowledging that her ability to speak couldn’t yet keep up with her thoughts.

“Slowly, so slowly,” she said of her progress. She nodded eagerly when Kelly or Diane Sawyer, the ABC anchorwoman, helped her complete a sentence or an idea. Her one-word answer to a question about gun violence — “Enough” — lit up news accounts and social media in advance of the interview.

Giffords and Kelly, a former space-shuttle commander, used the ABC interview and a newspaper column to launch Americans for Responsible Solutions, a political-action committee that the couple said will support elected officials who want to pursue gun-control measures.

“Until now, the gun lobby’s political contributions, advertising and lobbying have dwarfed spending from anti-gun-violence groups. No longer,” Giffords and Kelly wrote in a column published in USA Today and The Arizona Republic on the second anniversary of the Jan. 8, 2011, shooting.

Speaking with Sawyer, Giffords and Kelly said they were moved to act after the December attack that killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. The couple met with victims’ families last week.

“When it can happen to children in a classroom, it’s time to say — ” Sawyer prompted.

“Enough,” Giffords said.

Sawyer asked Giffords about comments in an earlier interview that she wasn’t angry about what had happened to her. Do you still feel that way, Sawyer wanted to know.

“No,” Giffords said. She does get angry now. “Complicated.”

Giffords was shot in the head during the attack at a constituent event outside a grocery store near Tucson. The gunman, Jared Loughner, was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and was sentenced in November to seven life terms in prison.

Kelly used Loughner’s sentencing to criticize elected officials for ignoring gun violence. He issued a stronger statement after the Newtown attack and delivered the bluntest assessment yet in the newspaper column Tuesday, accusing Congress of failing to act even after one of their own was shot.

“Special interests purporting to represent gun owners but really advancing the interests of an ideological fringe have used big money and influence to cow Congress into submission,” the couple wrote.

The political-action committee is intended to help balance the power and money wielded by gun-rights organizations, such as the National Rifle Association. Gun-rights groups have in recent years outspent gun-control advocates by as much as 10-to-1, according to an analysis by the non-profit Center for Responsive Politics.

One of the nation’s most prominent gun-control organizations commended Giffords and Kelly in a statement Tuesday.

“Gabby and Mark have shown incredible courage and commitment since that tragic day in Tucson two years ago,” said Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. “They have increased their effort to ending senseless gun violence.”

The NRA and other gun-rights groups have said they will not back away from their position that attempting to control guns violates the Second Amendment to the Constitution. Some of Giffords’ former House colleagues remain opposed to sweeping gun legislation.

“We need to look at the cause of the problem,” said Apryl Marie Fogel, a spokeswoman for Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz. Even with gun control, “people with untreated mental illness would be committing the same types of crimes but with other weapons.”

Video from the interview showed Giffords walking alongside Kelly and a service dog named Nelson. They said Giffords has been able to ride a horse and could soon reclaim one of her favorite activities, riding a bicycle.

Giffords told Sawyer she works daily with “physical therapy, yoga, speech therapy.”

“Gabby works very hard in her rehab,” Kelly told Sawyer. “Now we intend to work very hard on this new project.”

Republic reporter Rebekah L. Sanders contributed to this story.

More on Gun Grabbing Gabrielle Giffords

Gabrielle Giffords takes aim at the NRA

For a woman who has difficulty speaking, Gabby Giffords came through loud and clear on Tuesday, calling for a national conversation about gun violence and taking direct aim at the National Rifle Association.

All of a sudden there is hope that something substantive might actually be possible in the wake of Newtown and Aurora and Tucson and too many other places where hideous attacks have gone unanswered by the people who claim to lead us.

Now there is Giffords, finding her voice.

“Special interests purporting to represent gun owners but really advancing the interest of an ideological fringe have used big money and influence to cow Congress into submission,” she and husband Mark Kelly wrote Tuesday, on the second anniversary of the Tucson massacre. “Rather than working to find the balance between our rights and the regulation of a dangerous product, these groups have cast simple protections for our communities as existential threats to individual liberties. Rather than conducting a dialogue, they threaten those who divert from their orthodoxy with political extinction.”

After Columbine, there were calls to plug the gun-show loophole that allows anybody – nut or not — to buy a gun from a private source, no questions asked. But in Congress, cue the crickets.

After Virginia Tech, there was a movement to flag would-be gun buyers with documented mental problems. But it never led to more rigorous background checks.

After Tucson, there was all-too-brief talk about outlawing high-capacity magazines. Since then we’ve seen Aurora and now Newtown, where extended magazines contributed to extended, heart wrenching carnage.

So what does the NRA suggest? Posting armed volunteers at the schools.

Not good enough, Mr. LaPierre. Not this time.

We need to have a calm, considered conversation in this country, about guns and about mental illness and about what we can do to at least try to prevent another massacre. (And yes, I’m aware that nuts can resort to putting bombs in their underwear and in their fertilizer. But I refuse to accept that as an excuse to do nothing.)

Rick Stein of Scottsdale, a longtime NRA member, says a ban on guns that resemble military assault weapons would be nothing more than feel-good legislation. “What we oppose,” he told me on Tuesday, “is any sort of effort to call the gun the problem.”

Stein believes the answer lies in better reporting of those with mental illness and in holding parents and others criminally liable when they know someone is a danger yet do nothing to prevent that person from getting a gun.

Stein makes an important point. The problem is guns in the hands of the wrong people.

But Sam Polito of Tucson, makes an important point as well. He, too, is a longtime NRA member, one who advocates plugging the gun-show loophole and banning extended magazines such as the 33-round affair that Jared Loughner used to shoot Giffords and 18 other people.

“If he had had a ten-round clip or an eight-round clip for that type of pistol,” Polito said, “he wouldn’t have harmed so many people because when he went to change magazines, you will recall they took him down.”

And saved lives.

Surely we can agree that we need to toughen laws that allow the mentally ill to legally obtain weapons – and even to get them back after the police confiscate them, as Kristi Stadler’s story on Sunday so sadly illustrated.

Surely, we can agree to have a rational conversation about what might work. Unfortunately, it’s a conversation the NRA and the politicians who reside in its hip pocket seem determined to thwart. Instead, they whip up citizens to believe the government is coming after grandpa’s hunting rifle.

But now comes Giffords, a gun owner and longtime Second Amendment supporter who seems determined not the let the conversation fade away. Not this time. Not when an entire class of first graders lies dead in their graves.

Giffords and Kelly have formed Americans for Responsible Solutions, a political-action committed aimed at balancing out the money that allows the NRA to control politics in this country.

“We can’t just hope that the last shooting tragedy will prevent the next,” they wrote. “Achieving reforms to reduce gun violence and prevent mass shootings will mean matching gun lobbyists in their reach and resources.”

It’s an ambitious plan, trying to break the hold of the NRA and inject some sanity into our gun laws. Others have tried and failed. An empty first-grade classroom demands that we try again.

It seems somehow fitting, almost ordained, that Giffords would lead the way.

Who better, after all, to pull off a miracle than the woman who is a miracle?

A rant from gun grabber EJ Montini

Posted on January 7, 2013 4:03 pm by EJ Montini

The only gun reform that will work

Gov. Jan Brewer says that she is willing to consider some form of legislation aimed at curtailing gun violence. Good for her.

The same is true of the federal government.

There no doubt will be a series of suggestions, but there is only one type of gun reform that has a chance to work.

Just one.

It is this: Every gun sale, EVERY ONE, whether from a dealer or from a private owner, must include a background check.

That’s it.

There are other areas of reform that will help in small ways (officers in schools, better mental health screening) but without requiring a background check for every transaction all of those reforms are more about what feels good rather than what actually DOES good.

It is estimated that roughly 40 percent of firearm purchases are made between two private individuals, not licensed gun dealers.

If that is allowed to continue, there is no reasonable way to prevent a mentally ill person from acquiring a weapon.

Or a criminal. Or a terrorist. Or a kid. Or anyone else.

We can close the so-called gun show loophole, which currently allows individuals at gun shows to purchase weapons without background checks when buying from private individuals.

But that wouldn’t prevent people from answering gun-sale ads online or purchasing weapons any number of other ways.

We need a universal background check for every sale.

Would requiring a background check for every single gun sale be a burden for private sellers and private purchasers?

Yes.

Would it prevent people from selling or buying weapons?

No.

A system could be worked out.

Would requiring background checks for every sale prevent all potentially dangerous people from getting weapons?

No.

There will always be those who break the law.

But that is true of every law.

A background check for every sale will make it more difficult for the wrong people to acquire weapons.

That’s the best we can hope for.

It’s the only strategy that has a chance to do good rather than simple make us feel good.

Although, honestly, would any of us feel good about a series of gun violence “reforms” that would still allow 40 percent of weapons sales to go on completely unregulated?

Obama wants to take our guns

White House tries to keep momentum on gun control

Associated Press Tue Jan 8, 2013 5:04 PM

WASHINGTON — Less than a month after a horrific elementary school shooting, the White House is fighting to keep the momentum for new gun legislation amid signs it’s losing ground in Congress to other pressing issues.

Vice President Joe Biden has invited the National Rifle Association and other gun-owner groups for talks at the White House on Thursday. On Wednesday, the vice president will meet with victims’ organizations and representatives from the video game and entertainment industries. The administration’s goal is to forge consensus over proposals to curb gun violence.

President Barack Obama wants Biden to report back to him with policy proposals by the end of January. Obama has vowed to move swiftly on the recommendations, a package expected to include both legislative proposals and executive action.

“He is mindful of the need to act,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Tuesday.

But as the shock and sorrow over the Newtown, Conn., shooting fades, the tough fight facing the White House and gun-control backers is growing clearer. Gun-rights advocates, including the powerful NRA, are digging in against tighter legislation, conservative groups are launching pro-gun initiatives and the Senate’s top Republican has warned it could be spring before Capitol Hill begins considering any gun legislation.

“The biggest problem we have at the moment is spending and debt,” Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said on Sunday. “That’s going to dominate the Congress between now and the end of March. None of these issues will have the kind of priority as spending and debt over the next two or three months.”

Tuesday marked the second anniversary of the Tucson, Ariz., attack that killed six people and critically injured former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Following that shooting, Obama called for a national dialogue on gun violence. But his words were followed by little action.

Giffords took a prominent role in the gun debate on Tuesday’s anniversary. She and husband Mark Kelly, a former astronaut, wrote in an op-ed published in USA Today that their Americans for Responsible Solutions initiative would help raise money to support greater gun control efforts “to balance the influence of the gun lobby.” Kelly has indicated that he and Giffords want to become a prominent voice for gun control and hope to start a national conversation about gun violence.

There was also little national progress on curbing gun bloodshed following shootings at an Aurora, Colo., movie theater, a Texas Army base or a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, all of which occurred during Obama’s first term.

Still, the killing of 6- and 7-year-olds at Newtown’s Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14 did appear to stir a deeper reaction from the White House and Capitol Hill. Obama pushed gun control to the top of his domestic agenda for the first time and pledged to put the full weight of his presidency behind the issue. And some Republican and conservative lawmakers with strong gun rights records also took the extraordinary step of calling for a discussion on new measures.

But other gun-rights advocates have shown less flexibility. The NRA has rejected stricter gun legislation and suggested instead that the government put armed guards in every school in America as a way to curb violence. A coalition of conservative groups is also organizing a “gun appreciation day” later this month, to coincide with Obama’s inauguration.

The president hopes to announce his administration’s next steps to tackle gun violence shortly after he is sworn in for a second term on Jan. 21.

Obama wants Congress to reinstate a ban on military-style assault weapons, close loopholes that allow gun buyers to skirt background checks and restrict high-capacity magazines. Other recommendations to the Biden group include making gun trafficking a felony, getting the Justice Department to prosecute people caught lying on gun background-check forms and ordering federal agencies to send data to the National Gun Background Check Database.

Some of those steps could be taken through executive action, without the approval of Congress. White House officials say Obama will not finalize any actions until receiving Biden’s recommendations.

Gun-rights lawmakers and outside groups have also insisted that any policy response to the Newtown shooting also include an examination of mental health policies and the impact of violent movies and video games. To those people, the White House has pledged a comprehensive response.

“It is not a problem that can be solved by any specific action or single action that the government might take,” Carney said. “It’s a problem that encompasses issues of mental health, of education, as well as access to guns.”

In addition to Biden’s meetings this week, Education Secretary Arne Duncan will meet with parent and teacher groups, while Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will meet with mental health and disability advocates.

The White House said other meetings are also scheduled with community organizations, business owners and religious leaders.

———

Associated Press writer Philip Elliott contributed to this report.

———

Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC.

FBI changes focus of firearms training

Source

FBI changes focus of firearms training

By Kevin Johnson USA Today Tue Jan 8, 2013 9:06 PM

QUANTICO, Va. -- The FBI has broken with its long-standing firearms training regimen, putting a new emphasis on close-quarters combat to reflect the overwhelming number of shootings in which suspects are confronting officers at point-blank range.

New training protocols were formally implemented last January after a review of nearly 200 shootings involving FBI agents during a 17-year period. The analysis found that 75 percent of the incidents involved suspects who were within 3 yards of agents when shots were exchanged.

The move represents a dramatic shift for the agency, which for more than three decades has relied on long-range marksmanship training. Apart from the new shooting regimen, agents are also being exposed to technology borrowed from Hollywood.

The technology helps agents apply skills acquired on the shooting range to virtual scenarios involving the pursuit of armed suspects in schools, office buildings, apartment complexes and other potential targets.

The virtual simulation technology, developed by Georgia-based Motion Reality Inc., won a 2005 Academy Award for technical achievement in character animation.

In its law enforcement adaptation, virtual scenarios are fed from computers in agents’ backpacks to viewfinders. This transforms an empty room into virtual worlds where agents are pitted against animated armed suspects — many of them in close-range encounters.

John Wilson, chief of the FBI’s virtual simulation program, says the system is also capable of “negatively rewarding” trainees’ bad decisions by transmitting jolts to their bodies that simulate gunshots.

FBI training instructor Larry “Pogo” Akin, who helps supervise trainees on the live-shooting range, said, “The thing that jumps out at you from the (shooting incident) research is that if we’re not preparing agents to get off three to four rounds at a target between zero and 3 yards, then we’re not preparing them for what is likely to happen in the real world.”

The FBI’s research predates more recent fatal shootings of local law enforcement officers, many of whom were victims of close-range ambush attacks while answering calls for service or serving warrants.

A Justice Department analysis of 63 killings of local police in 2011 found 7percent were ambush or execution-style assaults.

Bud Colonna, chief of the FBI’s Firearms Training Unit, said FBI Director Robert Mueller personally oversaw the live-firearm training changes, meeting with instructors at the bureau’s sprawling training facility here and taking part in the actual shooting drills.

Until last January, the pistol-qualification course required agents to participate in quarterly exercises in which they fired 50 rounds, more than half of them from between 15 and 25 yards. The new course involves 60 rounds, with 40 of those fired from between 3 and 7 yards.

The new live-fire training is separate from the virtual simulation unit, housed in a converted storage room in Quantico since its launch in February. But the missions of both training units underscore the new emphasis on armed confrontations in close quarters.

For now, the simulation system serves to teach agents the proper way to enter and clear rooms in search of potential suspects, confront armed assailants and determine when deadly force is appropriate.

“When you are in these exercises, people forget that these are virtual scenarios,” said Tom McLaughlin, Motion Reality’s chief executive. “The brain believes this is real. We make these to be as close as you would find in the real world.”

The system can build in blueprints and schematics of any known suspect hideout or hostage location.

Once built, the system would allow agents to train before launching operations against suspected targets. Until now, rehearsals for some major operations required the full or partial physical construction of target locations.

Last month, Wilson said, the FBI’s elite Hostage Rescue Team, began using the simulator.

“The possibilities are endless,” Wilson said.

More on gun grabbers Gabrielle Giffords and Mark Kelly

Can Giffords revive gun-control cause?

By Ronald J. Hansen The Republic | azcentral.com

Wed Jan 9, 2013 11:32 PM

Gabrielle Giffords’ decision this week to help raise money to promote gun control could test the financial limits of her appeal by directly aligning her with an issue that has floundered in politics for decades.

In the months after she was shot in the head on Jan. 8, 2011, a wave of support from sympathetic donors helped the then-congresswoman raise $1 million in campaign contributions, nearly all of which was spent that year. A vaguely centrist political-action committee that bears her name scarcely made a ripple in 2012, raising less than $30,000 since its August debut.

Now Giffords and her husband, former astronaut Mark Kelly, have created Americans for Responsible Solutions, an organization that includes a “super PAC” that can raise and spend unlimited funds for political messaging as long as it doesn’t coordinate with others.

The move underscores and tries to build on Giffords’ status as perhaps the most visible face of the gun-control movement, which has gained renewed energy since a spate of mass shootings, including the murder last month of 20 elementary-school students and seven adults in Newtown, Conn.

Patrick Egan, an assistant politics professor at New York University, said Giffords will pay at least some political price for her activism, but she is well-positioned to bring new resources to the issue, which has been dominated for years by gun-rights groups that are far more organized and well-funded.

“It’s clear she’s spending political capital. Whenever anyone does that ... inevitably it’s going to make them a less nonpartisan figure,” he said. “You’re not going to find a more sympathetic person for this cause than Gabrielle Giffords. She’s a likable person and comes across as very reasonable.”

Giffords’ reputation as a moderate from the West also can help broaden the group’s appeal, Egan said. Besides, a few wealthy benefactors can sustain it.

Underscoring that point was a report Wednesday by USA Today that a wealthy Texas lawyer who is treasurer of Americans for Responsible Solutions donated $1 million and that online donations had reached $400,000 in a single day.

“I think the PAC will do all right financially. With a super PAC, you don’t need a lot of people giving. You just need a few people giving a lot of money,” said Clyde Wilcox, a government professor at Georgetown University who researches money in politics and public opinion. “But raising money and changing the framework of the debate is a different matter. In the long run, it takes a lot of money to drive public opinion.”

Campaign-finance records show that outrage over the massacre near Tucson has had only a modest longer-term financial benefit on Giffords’ broader political aims.

The committee that funded Giffords’ campaign activities raised $1 million from the time she was shot through the end of 2011. Nearly half of it came from PACs as her supporters tried to keep her financially viable if she sought another term. Throughout the year she remained a member of Congress, her campaign committee stayed busy, spending more than $500,000 on operations. Most of that went to consultants and staff salaries.

After Giffords resigned her seat in January 2012 and with no campaign to manage, her committee transferred more than $300,000 to the national and state Democratic Party in 2012. It also refunded $130,000 to individuals and PACs last year.

In August, Giffords formed Gabby PAC, an organization to support border and veterans’ issues. Records show it raised less than $30,000 and spent less than $15,000 during the election season. Giffords’ candidate committee still has $333,000, though it’s unclear whether that money can be transferred to her newest endeavor.

Generally, the Federal Election Commission prohibits campaign funds from going to organizations that benefit the candidate or their family. Last year, the FEC permitted Texas Gov. Rick Perry to convert his presidential committee to a PAC and use any funds the donors didn’t want back. Records show Giffords created a new super PAC rather than amend her existing candidate committee.

Before Giffords, the gun-control movement’s most powerful symbol had been James Brady, President Ronald Reagan’s press secretary, who was among those wounded in a 1981 assassination attempt against Reagan.

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, the gun-control organization that bears his name, is linked to legislation passed in the 1990s but hasn’t managed to compete with gun-rights groups in political contributions.

The decline in the gun-control movement is reflected in the Brady Campaign’s flagging fundraising. In 2005, the organization reported $5.7 million in revenue, according to its tax records. By 2010, that had fallen to $2.9 million.

By comparison, the National Rifle Association, the most well-known gun-rights group, raised $164 million in 2005, peaked at $332 million in 2007 and dipped to $228 million in 2010. Its political arm has poured millions into congressional races each campaign cycle.

Experts say the NRA might see another surge of financial support from gun enthusiasts concerned by the renewed push for gun-control legislation.

Ray La Raja, an associate political-science professor at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst who studies interest groups, said Giffords’ creation of a super PAC rather than a push for legislation signals a long-range plan that is a departure from other gun-control efforts.

“She wants to make this a part of her legacy,” he said.

Egan said Giffords’ group may have its biggest impact by providing financial support in select races involving moderates from either party who support gun-control measures and face reprisals from gun-rights groups.

“If they can help those kinds of candidates — and it may just be a handful — survive strong electoral challenges, then I think it can declare a victory,” he said.

By early Wednesday, Giffords’ organization claimed to have nearly 24,000 supporters on Facebook.

Reach the reporter at ronald.hansen@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4493.

Politicians use Connecticut murders to demand more cops and gun control

Arizona lawmakers to begin session split over solutions

By Alia Beard Rau The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Jan 9, 2013 11:35 PM

Gun control and school safety are emerging as hot-button issues for Arizona’s 2013 legislative session, which begins Monday. But with conflicting proposals among even members of the same party, the conversation is likely to become divisive rather than reassuring in the wake of December’s massacre at a Connecticut elementary school.

In general, Republicans are pushing to put more armed individuals in schools, while Democrats want to toughen state gun laws. But some common ground is emerging in the area of funding school-resource officers and services for the seriously mentally ill.

There is also a move afoot at the national level, but various proposals are also swirling there. Vice President Joe Biden kicked off a week of meetings Wednesday to gather input on the best way to prevent gun violence. Among the participants was Arizonan Hildy Saizow, president of the grass-roots group Arizonans for Gun Safety.

Arizona House Minority Leader Chad Campbell on Wednesday introduced his $261 million Arizona Safer Schools, Safer Communities Plan, which includes more money for school-resource officers and school counselors, increased state funding for services for the mentally ill, and gun-law reforms.

His bill is the latest in a series of measures proposed by politicians throughout the state in response to the Connecticut shooting.

“It’s time to have an adult conversation and avoid the partisan nature this conversation has had in the past couple of years,” said Campbell, D-Phoenix.

Today, Senate Assistant Minority Leader Linda Lopez will unveil details of her proposal to reform state gun laws. Her plan includes requiring background checks for all private and gun-show gun sales and banning high-capacity ammunition magazines.

Both plans face an uphill battle in the Republican-dominated Legislature, which in recent years pushed for some of the loosest gun laws in the nation, including successfully passing a measure to allow Arizonans to carry concealed weapons without any training or a permit. The Legislature also passed bills to allow guns on college campuses and in public buildings, but Republican Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed them.

Brewer this week said she is open to addressing school-safety issues, including possibly providing more state funding for school-resource officers.

Brewer spokesman Matthew Benson said the governor will introduce a plan of her own in the coming days.

“The governor is the leader,” Benson said. “She recognizes the importance of making sure our kids have a safe place to learn. She’s been studying the issue and has held off on coming forward with a plan until she felt she was ready.”

Benson declined to comment on the specific gun proposals.

“Governor Brewer is a strong supporter of the Second Amendment, but she does recognize that there is a balance with public safety,” he said. “We have safe zones like public buildings and schools where we don’t have guns.”

Republican lawmakers will also introduce plans of their own.

No related bills have been officially filed yet, but state Attorney General Tom Horne has proposed allowing each school to train and arm its principal or another staff member.

Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu has voiced support for arming school employees.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio wants to put armed volunteer Sheriff’s Office posse members near schools.

Senate President Andy Biggs said his party is still developing a plan, which will include additional safety measures for schools.

“We haven’t yet narrowed it down, but one of the things we need to really focus on is the seriously mentally ill,” he said. “It seems to me that’s where the bulk of these problems seem to be coming from.”

Biggs said state leaders need to avoid any knee-jerk response and provide a structure for leaders and the community to talk about a rational solution.

“I have a sense that everybody in the public has a different answer, everything from seize all guns and melt them down to arm everybody in schools, and everything in between,” he said. “This is a very sensitive and emotional issue. It’s going to require some deep thought and discussion and dialogue.”

Charles Heller, spokesman for the Arizona Citizens Defense League, a gun-rights group behind many of Arizona’s prior efforts to loosen gun laws, said he’s not interested in any new laws regulating guns.

“More school-resource officers are not a bad idea if they’re not stuck in a classroom teaching DARE classes. And the idea of studying security circumstances in every school is brilliant, ” he said. “But we don’t need a single new law.”

He said he supports training gun users, but not as a state law. He said background checks don’t work. He supports allowing retired law-enforcement and military personnel to work as armed security in the schools.

“What we can do is be vigilant and be armed,” he said.

Lopez said the debate over funding mental-health care should be a separate budget discussion from gun-law reform.

“You need a multipronged approach, but if we can’t get the funding in place right away, if we can’t get the services, we at least need to do something to impede access to high-capacity magazine clips and make sure we have a universal background check on every gun sale,” Lopez said.

Lopez said she’s skeptical that Republicans will support any gun reforms and dismissed their argument that they need to focus on the budget.

“That’s a cop-out,” she said. “Yes, the budget is important. But this is an important issue, as well.”

Sen. Steve Gallardo, D-Phoenix, criticized Campbell’s plan, saying the House leader is wasting an opportunity by trying to do too much. He said Democrats should focus on pushing through a few key issues that can realistically succeed. He is pushing to focus on gun safety, including requiring individuals to report any lost or stolen gun, and reinstating gun-training requirements.

“Over the last 10 years that I’ve been here, I’ve introduced a firearms bill every year, and we’ve never had a real discussion,” he said. “I think, because of Connecticut, we’re at a point where the public wants to have a real discussion. But too many ideas muddy up the water.”

BATF makes up imaginary gun laws

Arizona gun dealers challenge rifle-reporting requirement

Associated Press Wed Jan 9, 2013 11:25 AM

WASHINGTON — A lawyer for two Arizona gun dealers argued Wednesday that the Obama administration in trying to halt the flow of U.S. guns to Mexican drug gangs overstepped its legal authority when it required dealers in Southwestern border states to report when customers buy multiple high-powered rifles.

Attorney Richard Gardiner told a federal appeals court panel Wednesday that the directive requires gun dealers to create a records system and the government has no authority to do that.

At issue is a requirement that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives imposed in 2011 on gun sellers in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. The requirement, issued in what is known as a demand letter, compels those sellers to report to the ATF when anyone buys — within a five-day period — two or more semi-automatic weapons capable of accepting a detachable magazine and with a caliber greater than .22. The ATF says the requirement is needed to help stop the flow of guns to Mexican drug cartels.

Judge Harry T. Edwards, an appointee of Democratic President Jimmy Carter, asked Gardiner if the model number on a rifle would indicate whether it was covered by the ATF requirement.

“It might,” Gardiner replied, but added that the person doing the record-keeping might not be able to tell that.

“Oh, come on, that can’t be right,” Edwards said, suggesting that the person who owns the federal license to sell firearms would know.

Gardiner, who is representing J&G Sales, Ltd., of Prescott, Ariz., and Foothills Firearms, LLC, of Yuma, Ariz., said that nothing in the law allows for the presumption that the federal licensee would have that knowledge.

Judge Judith W. Rogers, an appointee of Democratic President Bill Clinton, asked if the types of rifles covered by the demand letter were unusual.

Gardiner said they were not: “There are probably 100 million of them in the United States — if not more.” Gardiner said that the definition is so broad it covers rifles for everything from target practice to hunting wolves, deer or bear, or even smaller game.

Justice Department lawyer Michael Raab said sellers should be able to determine by the manufacturer and model number if a particular rifle is covered by the requirement. He also said that sellers were told they can call the ATF’s firearm’s technology branch if they have any questions.

“We’re not aware of any requests or confusion,” he said.

The third judge on the panel, Karen LeCraft Henderson, who was appointed by Republican President George H.W. Bush, asked Raab about al measure Congress passes every year banning the ATF from establishing a national firearms registry. Raab noted that the ATF already requires sellers nationwide to report when someone purchases two or more pistols or revolvers within five days, which is not being challenged in this case. The ATF demand letter at issue here, Raab said, is “much narrower.”

The appeals court is reviewing the case as the Obama administration works to meet a self-imposed Jan. 31 deadline for proposals to curb gun violence in the wake of last month’s massacre of 20 children and six adults at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school. President Barack Obama has already called on Congress to reinstate a ban on military-style assault weapons, close loopholes that allow gun buyers to skirt background checks and restrict high-capacity magazines.

Last year, U.S. District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer rejected a challenge to the ATF requirement by the two Arizona gun sellers and the firearms industry trade group, the National Shooting Sports Foundation. In court papers, the trade group argues that the agency didn’t have the legal authority to issue the requirement, and even if it did, its decision to impose it on every retailer in the border states was arbitrary and capricious.

“There is no rational law enforcement connection between the problem ATF sought to address — illegal firearms trafficking from the United States to Mexico — and merely conducting a lawful retail firearms business from premises located in one of the border states,” the trade group wrote in its appeal brief. It also said that Collyer’s review was “at best perfunctory,” and claimed that she “rubber stamped” the ATF’s policy. Collyer is an appointee of Republican President George W. Bush.

U.S. Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick is a gun grabber!!!!

Kirkpatrick now more receptive to gun control

Associated Press Thu Jan 10, 2013 10:24 PM

FLAGSTAFF -- U.S. Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick was a staunch supporter of gun owners’ rights when she first served in Congress, but the Flagstaff Democrat is not making blanket statements supporting all such rights since the December school shooting in Connecticut.

Kirkpatrick wrote in a recent guest column for the Arizona Daily Star that “everything should be on the table,” including assault-weapon laws.

“The mass shooting in Connecticut has launched our nation to a new level of grief and outrage. It’s all painfully familiar to southern Arizonans. As a former prosecutor and congresswoman — and as a mother — I know we must act. Our children’s safety is at stake,” Kirkpatrick said in the column.

Her mention of southern Arizonans was an apparent reference to the 2011 mass shooting outside Tucson in which several people were killed and then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was gravely wounded.

Kirkpatrick served one term in the U.S. House before losing a re-election bid in 2010 to Republican Paul Gosar. Gosar ran for re-election in a different district in 2012 following redistricting, and Kirkpatrick beat Republican Jonathan Paton in November to return to Congress.

Kirkpatrick represents the largely rural 1st Congressional District, which runs from Flagstaff and the Navajo Nation on the north to the outskirts of Tucson on the south.

Kirkpatrick said in 2010 that she opposed bans on some types of weapons, and she called firearm ownership a fundamental right. [Like most politicians she will say anything to get elected]

“I think people should be able to legally purchase and carry the gun that they want,” she told a caller to a radio show in 2010.

During a public call-in meeting she held in 2010, Kirkpatrick said she opposed bans on some types of firearms, opposed District of Columbia and Chicago laws barring private ownership of some types of guns, and supported allowing guns in national parks.

“It may be more important than ever to protect the right to bear and keep arms, because too many people in Washington right now do not share or understand our values,” she said in a 2010 prepared statement.

Mesa Police Officer Bill Richardson is a gun grabber???

To take the emotions out of the article whenever Bill Richardson asks if you would buy a "gun", change the word to "used car".

Source

Richardson: Arizona cities shouldn’t be turned into gun supermarkets

Retired Mesa master police officer Bill Richardson lives in the East Valley and can be reached at bill.richardson@cox.net.

Posted: Saturday, January 12, 2013 8:31 am

Guest commentary by Bill Richardson

How would you like to buy a gun [or a used car] that killed an Arizona police officer?

Would you like to be the owner of the gun that delivered a fatal bullet into a police officer and took away a spouse, a father, mother or a someone’s child?

If a cop killer gun isn’t available how would like to buy the military grade rifles that were taken from the scene of a Gilbert mass murder that was carried out by an avowed white supremacist?

Or what about guns [or used cars] that were used to murder two Arizona State University students in Tempe?

The .22 pistol that was used to execute five women and children at a Mesa beauty school might still be available for purchase?

How about the rifle [or used car] that was used to murder nine people at the Wat Promkunaram Buddhist Temple in western Maricopa County? The dead included six monks and an elderly nun.

All of the murder weapons I mentioned and thousands more could end up in a gun store for sale if a new Arizona law that went into effect in August is interpreted in a manner that would force police departments, sheriff’s offices and the Arizona Department of Public Safety to sell all seized firearms used in crimes.

The guns that were used to seriously wound a Phoenix police officer on Monday and a Maricopa County Sheriff’s deputy on Tuesday could soon be in a gun store near you.

Should the guns used to murder three police officers from Chandler and Gilbert be sold to the highest bidder?

The law designed to prevent police agencies from destroying seized guns, Arizona Revised Statutes 12-941, was pushed through the legislature last year on the premise that it could raise money for the communities where the weapons were seized following the commission of a crime.

On Jan. 5, the Arizona Republic reported that the Citizens Defense League told the State Senate Judiciary Committee last year that local agencies were “leaving money on the table” by not selling the weapons. The story went on to say the Citizens Defense League “could provide no estimate of how much the bill could save taxpayers, nor could any law-enforcement agency that currently trades weapons or is preparing to do so.”

Maybe a cop killer’s gun might bring high dollar in a less than scrupulous gun store, weirdo memorabilia auction or on eBay, but most of the guns I’ve seized and seen police in police custody aren’t in the best of shape. Some were even potentially dangerous.

I can see it now: police are forced to sell an unsafe weapon to a gun dealer who in turn sells it to a citizen who has the gun blow-up and who then sues the police agency that was forced by the legislature to sell it.

While our legislature is fixated on taking guns seized by officers and forcing police agencies to sell them, I have yet to hear a peep from the law and order crowd at the state capital on the issue of funding a statewide law enforcement effort to target those who sell weapons to the felons and careers criminals who keep committing new crimes, including murdering police officers and innocent citizens.

Police officers I’ve spoken with have told me Arizona is a wide open supermarket when it comes to illegal guns that flow easily into the hands of criminals.

The legislature’s move to turn cities into gun dealers is a misguided role for state government.

What might work in Show Low could be a far cry from what’s needed in the East Valley and metro Phoenix.

Instead of making local governments gun dealers, creating potential liability for mayors, city councils and police chiefs, the legislature needs to make Arizona streets safer by targeting illegal sellers of guns to career criminals.

Retired Mesa master police officer Bill Richardson lives in the East Valley and can be reached at bill.richardson@cox.net.

Jan Brewer wants to create a jobs program for cops in schools?

Also this is again a case of the government being the cause of the problem, not the solution to the problem.

If our government masters in all 50 states had not passed unconstitutional laws banning guns on schools, criminals would not have schools that are gun free zones where they can kill people knowing that no one has a gun to defend themselves.

Last but not least putting a cop in every classroom is a solution to a non-existent problem.

These shootings are so rare that it is not economically justifiable to put a cop in every class room for a crime that probably won't happen.

It would be much more cost efficient to let the teachers and other school employees carry guns in case one of these rare incidents happens.

Source

Brewer in favor of officers on AZ campuses over arming educators

Posted: Friday, January 11, 2013 7:41 am

By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services

Parting ways with some other Republicans, Gov. Jan Brewer said Thursday she does not want armed teachers, principals and volunteers in public schools.

In an interview with Capitol Media Services, the governor said she is instead leaning toward the idea of restoring at least some of the state funds that schools used to hire trained police officers.

Cash for these "school resource officers'' has been cut sharply in prior years to help the state balance its budget. But Arizona now is looking at a possible $600 million surplus for the coming fiscal year.

Her stance puts her in the same camp as House Minority Leader Chad Campbell who advanced his own plan for more school resource officers earlier in the week.

"I believe in safe areas,'' she said.

"We need to make sure that our most precious resources are safe,'' the governor continued. "I will do what it is I can do moving forwards in regards to school safety.''

But Brewer said that, given all the demands on state funding, she cannot agree to the $100 million price tag on Campbell's plan for more officers. She called that unrealistic.

Details of her own plan will come Monday when she gives her State of the State address.

Brewer acknowledged that some of her Republican colleagues believe the best way to protect children is to have more people with guns in schools to offer protection.

Attorney General Tom Horne proposed having each school designate a single individual who would have access to weapons that presumably would remain locked up until needed. Horne offered to make his 36 investigators, all of whom are sworn peace officers, available to provide training to those who are designated.

And earlier this week, Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery said he sees no reason why individual teachers who own guns should not be able to bring them to work.

Brewer said she's not interested in anything like that.

"I guess they're entitled to their opinion,'' she said. "I'm not a supporter of that.''

Brewer also has to make a decision soon on whether the state will expand the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, the state's Medicaid program, to cover everyone up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level. That's about $25,400 a year for a family of three.

Arizona currently provides care up to the federal poverty level. But even there, there are exceptions as the state, in a budget-cutting move, stopped enrolling single adults even if their income put them below the federal poverty level.

While the main focus is providing health coverage, with the federal government picking up most of the cost, the governor's decision is also linked to the question of gun safety.

That is because an expanded program would also mean more people who could get mental health coverage. And there is evidence that some people involved in mass shootings, including Jared Loughner in the 2011 Tucson incident that left six dead, had fallen through the cracks and not received treatment that might have precluded their action.

Brewer, though, reiterated her stance that additional restrictions on weapons are not appropriate. And she chastised those who are making such calls.

"You know, some people want to make this such an exaggerated issue,'' she said.

"But the bottom line is that it's part of the Constitution,'' the governor continued. "It's the Second Amendment of the land.''

New York tyrants to pass more gun control laws???

The Second Amendment was created to allow people to kill well armed government tyrants.

In 1776 that meant allowing the people to have swords, flintlock rifles and canons. Now it means allowing the people to have machine guns, rocket launchers, anti-tank guns and all the other weapons the well armed government tyrants have.

Sadly the Second Amendment has been flushed down the toilet and the people are more or less defenseless against the well armed American government which spends more on weapons then all the other countries of the world combined.

Source

NY poised to be 1st to pass post-massacre gun bill

Associated Press Mon Jan 14, 2013 9:55 PM

Days after calling for an overhaul of gun control in New York following the Connecticut school shooting, Gov. Andrew Cuomo worked out a tough proposal on gun control with legislative leaders who promised to pass the most restrictive gun law in the nation.

The measure passed the Senate 43-18 on the strength of support from Democrats, many of whom previously sponsored the bills that were once blocked by Republicans.

The Democrat-led Assembly gaveled out before midnight and planned to take the issue up at 10 a.m. Tuesday. It is expected to pass easily.

“This is a scourge on society,” Cuomo said Monday night, one month after the Newtown, Conn., shooting that took the lives of 20 first graders and six educators. “At what point do you say, ‘No more innocent loss of life.’”

“It is well-balanced, it protects the Second Amendment,” said Senate Republican leader Dean Skelos of Long Island. “And there is no confiscation of weapons, which was at one time being considered.

“This is going to go after those who are bringing illegal guns into the state, who are slaughtering people in New York City,” Skelos said. “This is going to put people in jail and keep people in jail who shouldn’t be out on the street in the first place.”

“This will be the toughest gun control package in the nation,” said Sen. Jeffrey Klein, leader of the Independent Democrat Conference that shares majority control with Republican senators. “All in all, it is a comprehensive, balanced approach that will save lives,” Klein said in an interview.

Cuomo said he wanted quick action to avoid a run on assault rifles and ammunition as he tries to address what he estimates is about 1 million assault rifles in New York state. He made it a centerpiece of his progressive agenda in last week’s State of the State address.

Republican Sen. Greg Ball called that political opportunism in a rare criticism of the popular and powerful governor seen by his supporters as a possible candidate for president in 2016.

“We haven’t saved any lives tonight, except one: the political life of a governor who wants to be president,” said Ball who represents part of the Hudson Valley. “We have taken an entire category of firearms that are currently legal that are in the homes of law-abiding, tax paying citizens. … We are now turning those law-abiding citizens into criminals.”

The governor confirmed the proposal, previously worked out in closed session, called for a tougher assault weapons ban and restrictions on ammunition and the sale of guns, as well as a mandatory police registry of assault weapons, grandfathering in assault weapons already in private hands.

It would create a more powerful tool to require the reporting of mentally ill people who say they intend to use a gun illegally and would address the unsafe storage of guns, the governor confirmed.

Under current state law, assault weapons are defined by having two “military rifle” features spelled out in the law. The proposal would reduce that to one feature and include the popular pistol grip.

Private sales of assault weapons to someone other than an immediate family would be subject to a background check through a dealer. Also Internet sales of assault weapons would be banned, and failing to safely store a weapon could be subject to a misdemeanor charge.

Ammunition magazines would be restricted to seven bullets, from the current 10, and current owners of higher-capacity magazines would have a year to sell them out of state. An owner caught at home with eight or more bullets in a magazine could face a misdemeanor charge.

In another provision, a therapist who believes a mental health patient made a credible threat to use a gun illegally would be required to report the incident to a mental health director who would have to report serious threats to the state Department of Criminal Justice Services. A patient’s gun could be taken from him or her.

The legislation also increases sentences for gun crimes including the shooting of a first responder that Cuomo called the “Webster provision.” Last month in the western New York town of Webster, two firefighters were killed after responding to a fire set by the shooter, who eventually killed himself.

Legislators wouldn’t comment on the tentative deal or the provisions discussed in closed-door conferences.

“It’s a tough vote,” said Senate Deputy Majority Leader Thomas Libous of Broome County. “This is a very difficult issue depending on where you live in the state. I have had thousands of emails and calls … and I have to respect their wishes.” He said many of constituents worry the bill will conflict with the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms while others anguish over shootings like at Newtown, Conn., and Columbine, Colo.

A vote Monday would come exactly one month after a gunman killed 20 children and six educators inside Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown.

The closed-door meetings prompted about a dozen gun workers to travel more than two hours to Albany to protest the legislation they say could cost 300 to 700 jobs in the economically hard-hit Mohawk Valley.

“I have three small kids myself,” said Jamie Rudall, a unionized worker who polishes shotgun receivers. “So I know what it means, the tragedy … we need to look at ways to prevent that, rather than eliminate the rights of law-abiding citizens.”

In the gun debate, one concern for New York is its major gun manufacturer upstate.

Remington Arms Co. makes the Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle that was used in the Connecticut shootings and again on Christmas Eve when the two firefighters were slain in Webster. The two-century-old Remington factory in Ilion in central New York employs 1,000 workers in a Republican Senate district.

Assemblyman Marc Butler, a Republican who represents the area, decried the closed-door meetings by Senate Republicans and the Democratic majority of the Assembly as “politics at its worst.”

The bill would be the first test of the new coalition in control of the Senate, which has long been run by Republicans opposed to gun control measures. The chamber is now in the hands of Republicans and five breakaway Democrats led by Klein, an arrangement expected to result in more progressive legislation.

Former Republican Sen. Michael Balboni said that for legislators from the more conservative upstate region of New York, gun control “has the intensity of the gay marriage issue.” In 2011, three of four Republicans who crossed the aisle to vote for same-sex marriage ended up losing their jobs because of their votes.

———

AP Writer Michael Virtanen contributed to this report from Albany.

Obama to announce expansive gun-control agenda

Source

Obama to announce most expansive gun-control agenda in generations

By Philip Rucker, Published: January 15

President Obama on Wednesday will formally announce the most aggressive and expansive national gun-control agenda in generations as he presses Congress to mandate background checks for all firearms buyers and prohibit assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips.

The announcement will set off a fierce confrontation with Congress over an issue that has riven American society for decades. Obama’s far-reaching firearms agenda has at best tepid support from his party leaders and puts him at loggerheads with Democratic centrists.

Days before his second inauguration, Obama is seeking to drive the gun debate in a way that contrasts with the accommodating approach he often took during his first term. In the weeks ahead, he will attempt to rally popular support to bend the will of lawmakers to vote for what he considers the ideal, not merely the possible.

“Yes, we can reduce gun violence, but it’s something we have to do together,” White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters Tuesday. “It’s something that cannot be done by a president alone. It can’t be done by a single community alone or a mayor or a governor or by Congress alone. We all have to work together.”

Obama will begin this effort Wednesday in the presence of children who wrote him letters after last month’s mass shooting at a grade school in Newtown, Conn., and who have been invited to Washington to attend the rollout.

In addition to background checks and restrictions on military-style guns and ammunition magazines, Obama is expected to propose mental health and school safety initiatives such as more federal funding for police officers in schools, according to lawmakers and interest group leaders whom White House officials briefed on the plans.

Bruce Reed, Vice President Biden’s chief of staff, told liberal activists late Tuesday that Obama’s package would also include a federal gun trafficking measure to stop straw-man purchases and crack down on trafficking rings after a number of mayors raised the issue, said a person familiar with the plan.

Obama also is expected to present up to 19 executive actions that his administration will take, the lawmakers and advocates said. These steps include enhanced federal scientific research on gun violence and a modernized federal database system to track guns, criminals and the mentally ill.

Most of these actions are relatively narrow in scope, however, and experts have said that without accompanying legislation they will do little to curb gun violence, at least in the near term.

Asked about the constraints on Obama’s executive powers, Carney said, “It is a simple fact that there are limits on what can be done within existing law.”

After Biden led a month-long task force, Obama decided to push an expansive agenda that in many ways represents his liberal base’s wish list rather than proposals that may be more politically viable to a divided Congress.

Obama’s proposals amount to the most comprehensive federal regulations of the firearms industry since 1968, when President Lyndon B. Johnson acted in the aftermath of high-profile assassinations.

“My starting point is not to worry about the politics,” Obama said. “My starting point is to focus on what makes sense, what works, what should we be doing to make sure that our children are safe and that we’re reducing the incidents of gun violence.”

Lawmakers, he added, “are going to have to have a debate and examine their own conscience.”

Already, there are warning signs about the hurdles Obama’s agenda may face on Capitol Hill. Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said it would be exceedingly difficult to pass an assault-weapons ban, which appears to be the most polarizing of Obama’s proposals.

“Let’s be realistic,” Reid told a Nevada PBS affiliate last week. “In the Senate, we’re going to do what we think can get through the House, and I’m not going to go through a bunch of these gyrations just to say we’ve done something.”

House Democratic Whip Steny H. Hoyer (Md.) echoed that calculation on Tuesday by acknowledging the difficulties that gun-control legislation would face in the Republican-led House.

“That’s been the case based on past history,” Hoyer told reporters.

More than half of all Americans say the Newtown shootings have made them more supportive of gun control, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released Monday. An assault-weapons ban has the support of 58 percent of Americans, the poll shows.

In New York on Tuesday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) signed into law what he called the most comprehensive package of state gun measures in the nation. The centerpiece is an expanded ban on assault weapons that would prohibit semiautomatic pistols and rifles as well as ammunition clips holding more than seven rounds.

Congress will take up the federal proposals next week — first in the Democratic-controlled Senate and then the House.

Gun control will be only one point of friction between the White House and the Capitol. Policy fights loom over raising the nation’s debt ceiling as well as overhauling immigration laws.

Obama’s gun control proposals are sure to face stiff opposition from the National Rifle Association, which released a video Tuesday on its Web site calling Obama an “elitist hypocrite” for having the Secret Service protect his daughters at school while voicing skepticism about an NRA effort to place armed guards in all schools.

Even some of the administration’s allies on Capitol Hill, including some rural Democrats, have criticized parts of Obama’s agenda.

“An assault-weapons stand-alone ban on just guns alone, in the political reality we have, will not go anywhere,” Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said Sunday on CNN.

Lawmakers who have been part of Biden’s discussions said the White House is well aware of the political difficulty it faces in advancing this agenda.

“I think there’s a commitment to do the big things,” said Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.). “I also think that they’re realists, and in addition to doing the big things, they want to make sure that they do as many of the effective things that we can find some level of consensus on.”

Consensus appears more possible around universal background checks and a ban on magazines capable of carrying more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.) said she has spoken discreetly with several Republican lawmakers who may be open to backing a ban on high-capacity clips. “What I said to them is, ‘Do your own press conference. Come out as a group. There’s power in numbers,’ ” she said.

Some gun-control advocates say universal background checks could do more to stem gun violence than an assault-weapons ban because they would keep more firearms — including handguns used in most shootings — out of the hands of criminals or those with mental illnesses.

Matt Bennett, a senior vice president at Third Way, a centrist think tank consulted by Biden’s task force, said of the assault-weapons ban: “We support it, but we don’t think it will be easy to do. And we’re not sure that it is worth the expenditure of a tremendous amount of political capital to get.”

The long-dormant debate over gun laws was revived in December after the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown.

Obama and his allies plan to pressure Congress from the outside, just as they did in the recent “fiscal cliff” negotiations that resulted in tax increases for the wealthiest Americans.

“The president can play a vital role in rallying the public support that already exists,” said Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. “It’s not a question of muscling anything through. It’s a question of changing the political calculus on this issue.”

Ed O’Keefe, Rosalind S. Helderman, Sari Horwitz and Peter Wallsten contributed to this report.

Worlds largest gun show is in Las Vegas

SHOT Gun Show - Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade Show

Their web site is here: www.nssf.org

You can register for the show here: www.shotshow.org and here

Source

Defiance, discretion at Vegas gun show

Justin Berton

Updated 7:26 am, Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Las Vegas -- A month after the elementary school massacre that threatens to change the American gun industry, a group based where that atrocity took place mixed defiance with discretion Tuesday in opening the doors to the world's largest gun show.

More than 60,000 gun dealers, retailers and apparel makers are in Las Vegas this week for the annual Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade Show, hosted by the National Shooting Sports Foundation of Newtown, Conn.

The four-day "SHOT Show" is not for the public - it's for those who sell to the public. With the killings of 20 schoolchildren and seven adults in Newtown prompting the Obama administration to move quickly on proposing changes in federal gun laws, the attitude in Las Vegas this week is a combination of aggressiveness, attention to image and adaptation to a new environment.

"You didn't cause the monstrous crime in Newtown and neither did we," Steve Sanetti, president and CEO of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, told members in opening-night remarks. A new product

On the floor of the Sands Expo and Convention Center, browsers gripped sleek new AR-15 rifles, such as the latest version of the Bushmaster Predator, which has an automatic option and can fire 30 rounds in a few seconds. Retailers showed off new inventions, including the iPhone case that doubles as a stun gun, a woman's bra that can holster a handgun - and a product from a Florida company designed to protect schoolchildren from a killer with a gun.

Unlike in past years, the SHOT Show isn't going out of its way to attract attention. Foundation officials declined interview requests from non-trade outlets and denied credentials to mainstream media a month before the trade show opened. A spokesman said a large media presence would be a distraction for people trying to do business at the show.

Gun control proponents interpreted the silence as an attempt to limit coverage of the convention, where assault weapons are on display and the latest military-style weaponry is geared up to amaze potential clients. Not 'puffed up' now

Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center, said industry executives were "puffed up" last year and happy to be interviewed on the convention floor after they reported record sales and estimated the value of the sporting gun industry at $4.1 billion.

"This industry is circling the wagons now," Sugarmann said. "The last thing the industry wants America to see and to think about right now is that these are the very guns the industry is promoting. Most people today would be shocked by what the gun industry has become - primarily marketing military-style weapons because that's the profit center."

Sanetti, the SHOT Show organizer, was among industry leaders who met Thursday with Vice President Joe Biden, who is leading an administration group that will recommend changes in federal gun laws.

On Monday, Sanetti issued a statement saying, "A prerequisite to any dialogue involving our industry and its products is an honest recognition of the legitimacy of what we do and the important part of the national culture we represent. Hunting and the recreational shooting sports are here to stay. And so are we."

The national debate dominated the concerns of conventioneers on the first day of the SHOT Show.

Gregg Thompson, co-owner of Crye Precision of Brooklyn, N.Y., which makes camouflage-pattern apparel including vests and helmets, said foot traffic appeared to be light.

"We are not in a good environment for what we do," said Thompson, whose sales team wore T-shirts that took a dig at the Obama administration: "Freedom Was Awesome 1776-2008."

Thompson added, "We should be looking for the solutions that give us more freedoms, not take them away."

Bad rap for rifle

For others, the trade show was an opportunity to network and try to put a new face on the gun industry.

Chris Cheng, a San Francisco resident and winner of the History Channel's reality marksman competition, "Top Shot," said he hoped to show that competitive shooters come from diverse backgrounds.

Cheng, an Asian American who left a job at Google to pursue his career as a marksman, uses the AR-15 as his primary rifle. It's the same gun that was used by Newtown killer Adam Lanza, which AR-15 fans say has given it a bad rap.

"Not only do thousands of other competitive shooters use the AR-15, but it is also the most popular modern sporting rifle in America," Cheng said. "That's an important piece of information to understand why talk of an 'assault weapons' ban is resonating with many gun owners."

Cheng was mindful of presenting a positive picture of gun owners. He answered questions through e-mail after his responses were vetted by his History Channel sponsors, and he declined to be photographed next to a poster of hunting rifles at the show.

School market

With the gun control debate focusing on the elementary school killings, Mike Hengstebeck was earning a lot of attention at his booth with a new item for schoolteachers called the LAD - Lockdown and Defend.

The $795 device resembles a fire extinguisher when it's not in use. If a teacher hears gunshots, Hengstebeck said, he or she can unfurl a bullet-resistant 2-by-4-foot sheet from LAD. The device also has two doorstops, which can be used to try to bar a gunman from breaking into the classroom.

Hengstebeck said the teacher can also hang the canvas over the window to protect the class or use it as a shield while students huddle behind it.

He said his company, SRT Supply of St. Petersburg, Fla., had just completed the product days before the show started and had already won the attention of local lawmakers.

"Unfortunately, a lot of times the people who get killed in school shootings are in the hallway," Hengstebeck said. "They hear the shots and they go running. With LAD, we're telling them to lock it down and defend themselves to give them a chance."

Justin Berton is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: jberton@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @justinberton

NRA hits Obama over ‘hypocrisy’ of armed guards for daughters

I suspect most government tyrants don't like guns because they know the Second Amendment was created to allow "The People" to protect themselves against government tyrants.

But it sounds so much better to say they want to take our guns away from us to protect innocent children from violence, rather then to protect themselves from "The People".

Source

NRA hits Obama over ‘hypocrisy’ of armed guards for daughters

By Olivier Knox, Yahoo! News | The Ticket

In a sign of how brutal, emotional and deeply personal the coming battle over gun violence is likely to be, the National Rifle Association on Tuesday accused President Barack Obama of hypocrisy for having the Secret Service protect his daughters even as he opposes the NRA's call for armed guards in schools.

The Web video, first obtained by The Blaze, opens with a narrator asking, “Are the president’s kids more important than yours? Then why is he skeptical about putting armed security in our schools when his kids are protected by armed guards at their school?”

The 35-second video makes no effort to hide the tension and animosity between the NRA and Obama, even stepping into the recent "fiscal cliff" debate.

The video continues, “Mr. Obama demands that the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes but he’s just another elitist hypocrite when it comes to a fair share of security” as an altered image of the president peers over a stack of dollar bills, followed by images of “Meet the Press” host David Gregory, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Vice President Joe Biden.

A White House official declined to comment on the video. However, spokesman Jay Carney did announce that Obama would outline his administration’s plan to address gun violence on Wednesday.

Eric Pfeiffer contributed to this report.

Gun grabbing Obama unveils $500 million gun violence package

Obama unveils $500 million gun violence package

By Julie Pace and Erica Werner Associated Press

Wed Jan 16, 2013 10:43 AM

President Barack Obama on Wednesday launched the most sweeping effort to curb U.S. gun violence in nearly two decades, announcing a $500 million package that sets up a fight with Congress over bans on military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines just a month after a shooting in Connecticut killed 20 school children.

Obama also signed 23 executive actions, which require no congressional approval. But the president, speaking at the White House, acknowledged the most sweeping, effective actions must be taken by lawmakers.

“To make a real and lasting difference, Congress must act,” Obama said. “And Congress must act soon.” He added, “I’ll put everything that I’ve got into this.”

Obama was joined by children who wrote him letters about gun violence in the weeks following the Connecticut shooting. Families of the children killed in the shooting, as well as survivors, were also in the audience.

The president appealed to the nation’s conscience, but his announcement promises to set up a bitter fight with a powerful pro-gun lobby that has long warned supporters that Obama wanted to take away their guns.

The U.S. has the highest rate of gun ownership of any country in the world, and pro-gun groups see any move on gun restrictions as an offense against the right guaranteed by the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Critics counter that the country’s founding fathers never could have foreseen assault weapons more than two centuries ago, when guns were intended for the common, not individual, defense, guns were often stored in community areas and rifles fired one shot at a time.

“This is the land of the free and the home of the brave, and always will be,” Obama said, acknowledging the right to possess and bear firearms. “But we’ve also long realized … that with rights come responsibilities.”

Emotions have been high since the Connecticut shooting, which Obama has called the worst day of his presidency. He largely ignored the issue of gun violence during his first term but appears willing to stake his second term on it now. He’ll have to contend with looming fiscal issues that have threatened to push whatever he proposes aside, at least for a while.

Gun control advocates also worry that opposition from the powerful National Rifle Association and its allies in Congress will be too great to overcome. The NRA released an online video Tuesday that called Obama an “elitist hypocrite” for having armed Secret Service agents protect his daughters at school while not committing to installing armed guards in all schools. The NRA insists that the best way to prevent more mass shootings is to give more “good guys” guns.

The White House called the NRA video “repugnant and cowardly.” [What's cowardly about calling a hypocrite a hypocrite?]

The public appears receptive to stronger federal action on guns, with majorities of Americans favoring a nationwide ban on military-style rapid-fire weapons, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll. Three-quarters of Americans said they reacted to the Connecticut shooting with deep anger, while 54 percent said they felt deeply ashamed it could happen in the United States.

The poll also shows 51 percent said they believed laws limiting gun ownership infringe on the public’s right to bear firearms.

White House officials, seeking to avoid setting the president up for failure, have emphasized that no single measure — even an assault weapons ban — would solve the scourge of gun violence. But without such a ban, or other sweeping Congress-approved measures, it’s unclear whether executive actions alone can make any noticeable difference. [It will certainly take the guns away from the good guys. Of course criminals who never do obey the law will continue to have guns!]

The president asked Congress to renew the ban on high-grade, military-style assault weapons that was first signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1994 but expired in 2004. Obama also called for limiting ammunition magazines to 10 rounds or fewer, and he proposed a federal statute to stop purchases of guns by buyers who are acting for others.

The president also called for a focus on universal background checks. Some 40 percent of gun sales take place without background checks, including those by private sellers at gun shows or over the Internet, according to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

The president’s framework is based on recommendations from Vice President Joe Biden, who led a wide-ranging task force on gun violence. Beyond the gun control measures, Biden also gave Obama suggestions for improving mental health care and addressing violent images in video games, movies and television.

States and cities have been moving against gun violence as well. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday signed into law the toughest gun control law in the U.S., and the first since the Connecticut shooting. The law includes a tougher assault-weapons ban and provisions to try to keep guns out of the hands of mentally ill people who make threats.

The NRA criticized the bill, saying in a statement, “These gun control schemes have failed in the past and will have no impact on public safety and crime.”

In Washington, it’s unclear how much political capital Obama will use in pressing for congressional action.

The White House and Congress will soon be consumed by three looming fiscal deadlines, each of which is expected to be contentious. And the top Republican in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, has warned the White House that it will be at least three months before the chamber considers gun legislation.

Congress, in any case, can move slowly. The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Wednesday he’ll begin hearings in two weeks on gun safety proposals. Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, a gun owner, said he envisions a series of hearings examining violence in popular media and how to keep guns safe, among other topics.

Leahy’s plan could take more time than Obama has urged.

Obama’s long list of executive orders includes the following:

— Ordering tougher penalties for people who lie on background checks and requiring federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background check system.

— Ending limits that make it more difficult for the government to research gun violence, such as gathering data on guns that fall into criminal hands.

— Requiring federal law enforcement to trace guns recovered in criminal investigations.

— Giving schools flexibility to use federal grant money to improve school safety, such as by hiring school resource officers. [Wow! Looks like President Obama is going to implement the dumb NRA suggestion of putting a cop in every school - I guess Obama loves jobs programs for cops!!!!]

— Giving communities grants to institute programs to keep guns away from people who shouldn’t have them.

New NRA ad denounces Obama as a hypocrite

New NRA ad denounces Obama as a hypocrite

By Morgan Little and Melanie Mason This post has been updated. See below for details.

January 16, 2013, 8:34 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Denouncing President Obama as an “elitist hypocrite,” the National Rifle Assn. released a new video attacking the president for opposing universal armed guards in schools while his own daughters are protected by the Secret Service.

“Are the president’s kids more important than yours?” the ad asks, “Then why is he skeptical of putting armed security in schools, when his kids are protected by armed guards in their school?”

NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, during the organization’s controversial response to the shootings in Newtown, Conn., called for armed guards to protect students in schools nationwide, and previewed the organization’s line of attack against the president.

“We care about our president, so we protect him with armed Secret Service agents. Members of Congress work in offices surrounded by Capitol police officers,” LaPierre said in December. “Yet when it comes to our most beloved, innocent and vulnerable members of the American family, our children, we as a society leave them every day utterly defenseless. And the monsters and the predators of the world know it and exploit it. That must change now.”

Obama had previously declared his skepticism over the NRA’s idea during an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” in December.

“I am skeptical that the only answer is putting more guns in schools, and I think the vast majority of the American people are skeptical that that somehow is going to solve our problem,” he said.

[Updated, 9:02 a.m. PST Jan. 16: The ad was roundly critiqued Wednesday morning, with former Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs calling it “stupid” and “disgusting” on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

“This reminds me of an ad that somebody made about 2 o'clock in the morning,” he said.

And David Frum, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, said the ad falls “beyond the pale.”

"Generally speaking, a president’s family should not be subject to political criticism," he said.

The White House swiftly condemned the NRA’s ad.

"Most Americans agree that a president’s children should not be used as pawns in a political fight,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said in a statement. "But to go so far as to make the safety of the president’s children the subject of an attack ad is repugnant and cowardly."]

NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said that those criticizing the commercial for pulling Sasha and Malia Obama into the political debate are “completely missing the point” and that the ad is about ”keeping our children safe.”

“There is a double standard when the president said that he’s skeptical about having policemen in school yet his family is the beneficiary of multiple armed law enforcement officers,” Arulanandam said.

Arulanandam said the ad is currently running on the Sportsman Channel, as well as on its online site NRAstandandfight.org. He said the ad foreshadows an increased television presence from the NRA as the debate over gun laws moves over to Capitol Hill.

On the other side of the debate, Americans for Responsible Solutions, a group established by former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her husband Mark Kelly to counteract the NRA’s well-documented influence in Washington, is looking to comb supporters for possible solutions to the country’s gun violence.

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melanie.mason@latimes.com

President Obama’s 23 gun grabbing policy

You will have to click here to view the actions, because it's a PDF file and I can't include it here.

Source

President Obama’s actions on gun policy

Pres­id­ent Obama de­clared Wed­nes­day 23 ex­ec­ut­ive ac­tions his ad­min­is­tra­tion would be tak­ing in re­sponse to a series of shoot­ing sprees over the past year. In­cluded in the list are broad­er back­ground checks on gun buy­ers, the nom­in­a­tion of a new ATF dir­ect­or and more.

Sen. Rich Crandall wants a cop in every classroom in Arizona???

Of course if you are a police chief or elected county sheriff it's a great way to expand your empire. Same goes for the police union officials, I bet they love this idea.

But if you are a taxpayer who has to pay for this stupid plan it really sucks.

Do really need several armed police officers in every one of Arizona's 2,042 public schools, to protect us from an event that happens once every 5 or 10 years in the USA???

Source

Ariz. lawmaker, sheriff propose armed officers in schools

By Alia Beard Rau The Republic | azcentral.com Tue Jan 15, 2013 4:23 PM

A Republican state lawmaker and an influential Republican sheriff have jumped on the bandwagon of state political leaders proposing plans to improve school safety in Arizona by hiring more armed officers.

Sen. Rich Crandall, R-Mesa, and Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu announced at a joint news conference Tuesday a $30 million plan they propose to introduce into the Legislature, which appears to be a melding of some of other recent plans to boost security in schools in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., shooting.

They propose spending $24 million to hire 300 more school resource officers, as well as $4.5 million on mental health services and $1 million for additional training for school counselors.

They said they also will support legislation to allow school districts to arm school staff if the district chooses to do so and if the staff gets sufficient training, but Crandall didn’t go so far as to say he will be the one to sponsor such a bill. Babeu has been a strong supporter of this idea in recent weeks.

Unlike prior plans that either don’t yet have legislative support or are being pushed by the minority Democratic party, Crandall and Babeu said they believe this one actually has a chance of success.

“A lot of ideas have been discussed, but we’re trying to bring something today that has a chance of being funded and moving forward,” Crandall said.

The Crandall/Babeu plan is also unique in that it proposes to find a funding source other than the general fund. They are proposing three possibilities: using excess Clean Elections funds, which would require a 2014 ballot referendum; create a transfer tax for private party auto sales; or increase the tax on alcohol sales.

Crandall said the most likely possibility is using Clean Elections funding. He said he will ask the governor and Legislature to fund the plan for the first two years until they can get it on the ballot.

NRA begins pushback with Web ad criticizing Obama

NRA begins pushback with Web ad criticizing Obama

Associated Press Wed Jan 16, 2013 3:50 PM

WASHINGTON — In a sharp pushback against any new gun regulations, the National Rifle Association posted a Web video that labels President Barack Obama an “elitist hypocrite” for allowing his daughters to be protected by armed Secret Service agents while not embracing armed guards for schools. [Oddly one of Obama's proposals is to fund armed police officers for schools like the NRA suggested. Of course I think that is a really dumb idea.]

“Are the president’s kids more important than yours?” a male narrator asks in the video. “Then why is he skeptical of putting armed security in schools, when his kids are protected by armed guards in their school?” [Again one of Obama's proposals is to fund armed police officers for schools like the NRA suggested]

The spot, posted even before Obama unveiled his gun policy proposals on Wednesday, drew an indignant response from the White House.

“Most Americans agree that a president’s children should not be used as pawns in a political fight,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said in a statement. “But to go so far as to make the safety of the president’s children the subject of an attack ad is repugnant and cowardly.” [What's the problem??? Obama is clearly a hypocrite on this issue. He has armed Secret Service police officers guard his children, while he wants to take away our guns]

The group’s confrontational video bore the hallmarks of a conventional political attack ad. It uses grainy, unflattering visuals of Obama, has a grim-sounding narrator and ominous music. It also invokes a seemingly unrelated issue, Obama’s insistence on a tax increase for the wealthiest Americans, as it argues that Obama is hypocritical because he’s expressed skepticism about putting armed guards in schools in response to the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. [For the third time one of Obama's proposals is to fund armed police officers for schools like the NRA suggested]

The ad equates Secret Service protection provided to Obama and his family with a proposal by NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre to put armed guards in schools after the Newtown shootings. LaPierre suggested that would have prevented the shootings that ended 26 lives.

“Protection for their kids,” the narrator says, “and gun-free zones for ours.”

The video is part of what’s expected to be an aggressive NRA lobbying push to thwart new gun regulations. The group has been raising money in response to the outcry for new gun laws. The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that a fresh fundraising appeal, circulated this week by LaPierre to the group’s membership, calls the current debate “the fight of the century.”

“I warned you this day was coming and now it’s here,” LaPierre wrote. “This is the fight of the century and I need you on board with NRA now more than ever. My strength, and the strength of our entire NRA organization, comes from you and your strong commitment to our membership. I need you in our corner TODAY.”

The group’s formal response to Obama’s announcement of legislative proposals and executive actions on Wednesday was more muted but still skeptical. “The NRA will continue to focus on keeping our children safe and securing our schools, fixing our broken mental health system, and prosecuting violent criminals to the fullest extent of the law,” the statement said.

“We look forward to working with Congress on a bipartisan basis to find real solutions to protecting America’s most valuable asset - our children,” it said. “Attacking firearms and ignoring children is not a solution to the crisis we face as a nation. Only honest, law-abiding gun owners will be affected and our children will remain vulnerable to the inevitability of more tragedy.”

Obama takes on gun extremists

In this editorial the author labels people that believe in the Second Amendment as "gun extremists" in an effort to paint them as nut jobs.

I wonder would he think it was unreasonable to require journalists who want to exercise their First Amendment right of free speech to first buy a $200 First Amendment permit, like people that want to exercise their Second Amendment right of owning a machine gun have to??

Source

Obama takes on gun extremists

This time, the moderate is willing to fight

By E.J. Dionne Jr., Published: January 16

President Obama went big in offering a remarkably comprehensive plan to curb gun violence, and good for him. But his announcement Wednesday is only the beginning of a protracted struggle for national sanity on firearms. Extremists have controlled the debate on guns for many years. They will do all they can to preserve a bloody status quo. The irrationality of their approach must be exposed and their power broken.

Far from acting as if his work was now done, the president made clear that he is fully invested in seeing his agenda realized — and fully prepared to lead a national movement to loosen the grip of resignation and cynicism in the face of brutality and carnage. Gun violence is not some “boutique” issue, as it is occasionally called. We are in danger of having mass shootings define us as a nation. As a people, we must rise up against this obscenity.

This fight is especially challenging for many who view themselves as “moderates” or “centrists.” Moderation is a thoroughly honorable disposition, and Obama’s proposals are moderation incarnate. By international standards, they are very cautious. The president did not call for registering all guns or confiscating assault weapons. He strongly endorsed the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Second Amendment right to bear arms. He is operating within a broad consensus about what is possible and what can work.

An assault-weapons ban received 38 Republican votes in the House in 1994 and is backed by 58 percent of Americans, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll. Were those Republicans outside the mainstream? And what about that 58 percent of Americans? The poll also found that 65 percent favored a ban on high-capacity magazines, another part of the Obama plan, and 86 percent favored closing the gun-show loophole, part of the effort to make sure there are background checks for all gun purchases.

But the lobbies that purport to speak for gun owners (while actually representing the interests of gun manufacturers) don’t care what the public thinks. They tried to pretend the president’s ideas are radical. And it shows how perverse our national conversation can become when those who speak in the name of civility, reason and bipartisanship give in to timidity.

Too often, moderation has become a synonym for cowardice. Too often, moderates lack the guts to define the sensible middle of the road themselves — as Obama has done on the gun issue — and then to defend it. Instead, they yield to the temptation to calibrate where everyone else stands before deciding what they believe. This allows extremists who lack any shame to drag our discourse off the road entirely, into a ditch of unreason, fear and invective.

After the NRA’s vile new advertisement that uses Secret Service protection for the president’s daughters to make a small-minded political point, can anyone take the organization’s arguments seriously again? Aren’t politicians who continue to bow low before the NRA complicit with a crowd that lacks any sense of decency?

It tells us all we need to know, that the gun lobby is deeply afraid of the facts and the evidence. This is why one of the most important actions the president took was to end the ban on research into gun violence by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which the weapons lobby had forced through a compliant Congress.

Yet Obama and Vice President Biden also worked hard to find middle ground in their anti-violence program in drawing on concerns raised since the Sandy Hook tragedy by gun rights advocates. Obama thus addressed not only firearms issues but also the imperative to improve school security and our mental health system, as well as the need to know more about the impact of violent video games.

Most heartening of all was the tone the president took. He did not cast himself as an evenhanded umpire far above the fray, handing down ideas that all people of good will would inevitably accept. He acknowledged that the battle ahead would be difficult. He predicted he would have to fight the lie that his plan constituted “a tyrannical assault on liberty.” And he sought to mobilize a new effort to counteract the entrenched power of those who have dictated submissiveness in the face of bloodshed.

“Enough,” Obama declared, insisting that change would come only “if the American people demand it.”

Will we?

Read more from E.J. Dionne’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.

Obama’s far-reaching gun-proposals face uncertain fate in divided Congress

Of course the White House hypocrites had Obama pose with a bunch of children in the photo used for this this article.

Source

Obama’s far-reaching gun-proposals face uncertain fate in divided Congress

By Philip Rucker and Ed O’Keefe, Published: January 16

The gun-control agenda that President Obama unveiled with urgency on Wednesday now faces an uncertain fate in a bitterly divided Congress, where Republican opposition hardened and centrist Democrats remained noncommittal after a month of feverish public debate.

By pursuing an expansive overhaul of the nation’s gun laws, Obama is wagering that public opinion has evolved enough after a string of mass shootings to force passage of politically contentious measures that Congress has long stymied.

Yet there was no indication on Wednesday that the mood on Capitol Hill has changed much. Within hours of Obama’s formal policy rollout at the White House, Republicans who had previously said they were open to a discussion about gun violence condemned his agenda as violating the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms.

“I’m confident there will be bipartisan opposition to his proposal,” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said in a statement.

The Senate plans to begin taking up Obama’s proposals next week, with the House waiting to see what the Democrat-controlled Senate passes first, congressional aides said. The Senate is likely to take a piecemeal approach, eventually holding up-or-down votes on the individual elements of Obama’s plan rather than trying to muscle through a single comprehensive bill, aides said.

Obama, in an emotional White House ceremony, outlined four major legislative proposals aimed at curbing what he called “the epidemic of gun violence in this country”: universal background checks for all gun buyers, a crackdown on gun trafficking, a ban on military-style assault weapons and a ban on ammunition magazines holding more than 10 bullets.

Obama also signed paperwork initiating 23 executive actions that include steps to strengthen the existing background-check system, promote research on gun violence and provide training in “active shooter situations.” He also nominated Todd Jones, acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, to become the agency’s permanent director.

As important as the executive actions are, Obama said, “they are in no way a substitute” for the legislative proposals he sent to Congress.

“We have to examine ourselves in our hearts and ask yourselves: What is important?” Obama said. He added, “If parents and teachers, police officers and pastors, if hunters and sportsmen, if responsible gun owners, if Americans of every background stand up and say, enough, we’ve suffered too much pain and care too much about our children to allow this to continue, then change will — change will come.”

But on Capitol Hill, where two decades of gun-control efforts have landed in the political graveyard, leaders of Obama’s own party do not necessarily share his views.

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) stopped short of embracing Obama’s proposals, calling them “thoughtful recommendations” and saying that he would “consider legislation that addresses gun violence and other aspects of violence in our society early this year.”

In contrast with his role in the major policy debates during Obama’s first term, Reid is likely to step back on guns, according to Senate Democratic aides. He will leave it to Sens. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) to shepherd the legislation, at least for now.

Reid is concerned about the potential political impact on fellow Democrats representing rural or conservative states, and he believes gun control could become a significant issue for at least 10 of the 23 Democratic Senate seats up for grabs in 2014, aides said.

The four measures Obama presented — which, taken together, rank among the most ambitious legislative projects of his presidency — appear to have varying levels of support in Congress.

The White House and Democratic lawmakers have calculated that the assault-weapons ban — a version of which passed in 1994 but expired a decade later — has the toughest odds, according to gun-control advocates in regular contact with administration officials. Also in jeopardy, they said, is the proposal to prohibit high-capacity magazines.

But a broad consensus seems more likely to build around universal background checks, which senior administration officials said is Obama’s top priority. Schumer said the idea is “at the sweet spot” of what is politically possible.

The gun trafficking proposal, which would impose new penalties on those who buy multiple firearms and hand them off to criminals, also could find majority support.

“If you are left in a position of having to oppose universal background checks and a firearms trafficking statute, that’s tough for responsible Republicans,” said Matt Bennett, a senior vice president at Third Way, a centrist think tank.

House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) adopted a wait-and-see approach Wednesday. His spokesman, Michael Steel, said House committees will consider Obama’s proposals and “if the Senate passes a bill, we will also take a look at that.”

But the statements from many other Republicans at both ends of the Capitol were far tougher. Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Tex.), who has threatened to initiate impeachment proceedings against Obama, condemned what he described as Obama’s “anti-gun sneak attack” and promised a legislative battle to protect “the God-given right to keep and bear arms.”

A potential presidential candidate, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), said: “President Obama is targeting the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens instead of seriously addressing the real underlying causes of such violence.”

And Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), who last week said he would be open to some form of gun control, said on Wednesday that Obama’s executive actions amounted to a “power grab” to “poke holes in the Second Amendment.”

No Republican lawmakers attended Wednesday’s White House ceremony. The only vestige of bipartisanship came when Obama invoked former president Ronald Reagan. He noted that Reagan, “one of the staunchest defenders of the Second Amendment,” wrote to Congress in 1994 to urge support for the assault-weapons ban.

Obama acknowledged that getting his proposals through Congress “will be difficult,” making a veiled reference to powerful lobbying groups such as the National Rifle Association.

“There will be pundits and politicians and special-interest lobbyists publicly warning of a tyrannical, all-out assault on liberty — not because that’s true, but because they want to gin up fear or higher ratings or revenue for themselves,” Obama predicted. “And behind the scenes, they’ll do everything they can to block any common-sense reform and make sure nothing changes whatsoever.”

In its official response, the NRA adopted a more muted tone than it has in recent weeks, saying it would work with Congress “on a bipartisan basis” to develop solutions that secure the nation’s schools and fix broken mental health systems. The statement did not specifically address Obama’s proposals, which include a $150 million school-safety initiative to help communities hire 1,000 new school resource officers.

But at a huge annual gun show in Las Vegas, the NRA said its opposition to Obama’s plans was “the fight of the century.”

“I warned you this day was coming, and now it’s here,” NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre wrote in a fundraising letter circulated at the trade show. “It’s not about protecting your children. It’s not about stopping crime. It’s about banning your guns . . . PERIOD!”

Gun-control advocates say their strategy will be to highlight popular support for most of Obama’s proposals and rally voters across the country to press their representatives in Congress to act.

“There’s an extraordinary disconnect between what the American public wants — including gun owners and NRA members — and what our elected officials are doing about it,” said Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. “It is going to be up to us, the American public, to close that disconnect.”

Obama vowed Wednesday to “put everything I’ve got into this.” In a moving event one month and two days after a gunman killed 20 small children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., Obama was flanked by children who wrote him letters in the days after the massacre, pleading with him to do something to curb gun violence.

The president urged Americans to put pressure on their members of Congress and “get them on record” on whether they support universal background checks on gun buyers and renewal of the bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.

“And if they say no, ask them why not,” Obama said. “Ask them what’s more important: Doing whatever it takes to get an ‘A’ grade from the gun lobby that funds their campaigns, or giving parents some peace of mind when they drop their child off to first grade?”

Vice President Biden, who headed the task force that developed Wednesday’s proposals, said “we have a moral obligation” to reduce the chances that tragedies such as the one in Newtown could happen again.

“I have no illusions about what we’re up against,” Biden said. But he added: “The world has changed, and it’s demanding action.”

Sari Horwitz in Las Vegas and William Branigin, Scott Wilson and Lyndsey Layton in Washington contributed to this report.

The latest shooting victim - The Bill of Rights

I Went After Guns. Obama Can, Too.

I Went After Guns. Obama Can, Too.

By JOHN HOWARD

Published: January 16, 2013

SYDNEY, Australia

It is for Americans and their elected representatives to determine the right response to President Obama’s proposals on gun control. I wouldn’t presume to lecture Americans on the subject. I can, however, describe what I, as prime minister of Australia, did to curb gun violence following a horrific massacre 17 years ago in the hope that it will contribute constructively to the debate in the United States.

I was elected prime minister in early 1996, leading a center-right coalition. Virtually every nonurban electoral district in the country — where gun ownership was higher than elsewhere — sent a member of my coalition to Parliament.

Six weeks later, on April 28, 1996, Martin Bryant, a psychologically disturbed man, used a semiautomatic Armalite rifle and a semiautomatic SKS assault weapon to kill 35 people in a murderous rampage in Port Arthur, Tasmania.

After this wanton slaughter, I knew that I had to use the authority of my office to curb the possession and use of the type of weapons that killed 35 innocent people. I also knew it wouldn’t be easy.

Our challenges were different from America’s. Australia is an even more intensely urban society, with close to 60 percent of our people living in large cities. Our gun lobby isn’t as powerful or well-financed as the National Rifle Association in the United States. Australia, correctly in my view, does not have a Bill of Rights, so our legislatures have more say than America’s over many issues of individual rights, and our courts have less control. Also, we have no constitutional right to bear arms. (After all, the British granted us nationhood peacefully; the United States had to fight for it.)

Because Australia is a federation of states, the national government has no control over gun ownership, sale or use, beyond controlling imports. Given our decentralized system of government, I could reduce the number of dangerous firearms only by persuading the states to enact uniform laws totally prohibiting the ownership, possession and sale of all automatic and semiautomatic weapons while the national government banned the importation of such weapons.

To make this plan work, there had to be a federally financed gun buyback scheme. Ultimately, the cost of the buyback was met by a special one-off tax imposed on all Australians. This required new legislation and was widely accepted across the political spectrum. Almost 700,000 guns were bought back and destroyed — the equivalent of 40 million guns in the United States.

City dwellers supported our plan, but there was strong resistance by some in rural Australia. Many farmers resented being told to surrender weapons they had used safely all of their lives. Penalizing decent, law-abiding citizens because of the criminal behavior of others seemed unfair. Many of them had been lifelong supporters of my coalition and felt bewildered and betrayed by these new laws. I understood their misgivings. Yet I felt there was no alternative.

The fundamental problem was the ready availability of high-powered weapons, which enabled people to convert their murderous impulses into mass killing. Certainly, shortcomings in treating mental illness and the harmful influence of violent video games and movies may have played a role. But nothing trumps easy access to a gun. It is easier to kill 10 people with a gun than with a knife.

Passing gun-control laws was a major challenge for my coalition partner: the rural, conservative National Party. All of its members held seats in nonurban areas. It was also very hard for the state government of Queensland, in Australia’s northeast, where the National Party was dominant, and where the majority of the population was rural.

The leaders of the National Party, as well as the premier of Queensland, courageously supported my government’s decision, despite the electoral pain it caused them. Within a year, a new populist and conservative political party, the One Nation Party, emerged and took many votes from our coalition in subsequent state and federal elections; one of its key policies was the reversal of the gun laws.

For a time, it seemed that certain states might refuse to enact the ban. But I made clear that my government was willing to hold a nationwide referendum to alter the Australian Constitution and give the federal government constitutional power over guns. Such a referendum would have been expensive and divisive, but it would have passed. And all state governments knew this.

In the end, we won the battle to change gun laws because there was majority support across Australia for banning certain weapons. And today, there is a wide consensus that our 1996 reforms not only reduced the gun-related homicide rate, but also the suicide rate. [He conveniently forgot to say if the gun control laws reduced crime. I read that crime actually increased] The Australian Institute of Criminology found that gun-related murders and suicides fell sharply after 1996. The American Journal of Law and Economics found that our gun buyback scheme cut firearm suicides by 74 percent. In the 18 years before the 1996 reforms, Australia suffered 13 gun massacres — each with more than four victims — causing a total of 102 deaths. There has not been a single massacre in that category since 1996.

Few Australians would deny that their country is safer today as a consequence of gun control.

John Howard was prime minister of Australia from 1996 to 2007.

Who Says You Can Kill Americans, Mr. President?

Gun control won't stop Obama from committing more drone murders!!!!

Who Says You Can Kill Americans, Mr. President?

By VICKI DIVOLL

Published: January 16, 2013

WASHINGTON

PRESIDENT OBAMA has refused to tell Congress or the American people why he believes the Constitution gives, or fails to deny, him the authority to secretly target and kill American citizens who he suspects are involved in terrorist activities overseas. So far he has killed three that we know of.

Presidents had never before, to our knowledge, targeted specific Americans for military strikes. There are no court decisions that tell us if he is acting lawfully. Mr. Obama tells us not to worry, though, because his lawyers say it is fine, because experts guide the decisions and because his advisers have set up a careful process to help him decide whom he should kill.

He must think we should be relieved.

The three Americans known to have been killed, in two drone strikes in Yemen in the fall of 2011, are Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric who was born in New Mexico; Samir Khan, a naturalized American citizen who had lived in New York and North Carolina, and was killed alongside Mr. Awlaki; and, in a strike two weeks later, Mr. Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who was born in Colorado.

Most of us think these people were probably terrorists anyway. So the president’s reassurances have been enough to keep criticism at an acceptable level for the White House. Democrats in Congress and in the press have only gingerly questioned the claims by a Democratic president that he is right about the law and careful when he orders drone attacks on our citizens. And Republicans, who favor aggressive national security powers for the executive branch, look forward to the day when one of their own can wield them again.

But a few of our representatives have spoken up — sort of. Several months ago, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, began limply requesting the Department of Justice memorandums that justify the targeted killing program. At a committee hearing, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., reminded of the request, demurred and shared a rueful chuckle with the senator. Mr. Leahy did not want to be rude, it seems — though some of us remember him being harder on former President George W. Bush’s attorney general, Alberto R. Gonzales, in 2005.

So, even though Congress has the absolute power under the Constitution to receive these documents, the Democratic-controlled Senate has not fought this president to get them. If the senators did, and the president held fast to his refusal, they could go to court and demand them, and I believe they would win. Perhaps even better, they could skip getting the legal memos and go right to the meat of the matter — using oversight and perhaps legislating to control the president’s killing powers. That isn’t happening either.

Thank goodness we have another branch of government to step into the fray. It is the job of the federal courts to interpret the Constitution and laws, and thus to define the boundaries of the powers of the branches of government, including their own.

In reining in the branches, the courts have been toughest on themselves, however. A long line of Supreme Court cases require that judges wait for cases to come to them. They can take cases only from plaintiffs who have a personal stake in the outcome; they cannot decide political questions; they cannot rule on an issue not squarely before them.

Because of these and other limitations, no case has made it far enough in federal court for a judge to rule on the merits of the basic constitutional questions at stake here. A pending case filed in July by the families of the three dead Americans does raise Fourth and Fifth Amendment challenges to the president’s killings of their relatives. We will see if the judge agrees to consider the constitutional questions or dismisses the case, citing limitations on his own power.

In another case, decided two weeks ago, a federal judge in Manhattan, Colleen McMahon, ruled, grudgingly, that the American Civil Liberties Union and two New York Times reporters could not get access, under the Freedom of Information Act, to classified legal memorandums that were relied on to justify the targeted killing program. In her opinion, she expressed serious reservations about the president’s interpretation of the constitutional questions. But the merits of the program were not before her, just access to the Justice Department memos, so her opinion was, in effect, nothing but an interesting read.

So at the moment, the legislature and the courts are flummoxed by, or don’t care about, how or whether to take on this aggressive program. But Mr. Obama, a former constitutional law professor, should know, of all people, what needs to be done. He was highly critical when Mr. Bush applied new constitutional theories to justify warrantless wiretapping and “enhanced interrogation.” In his 2008 campaign, Mr. Obama demanded transparency, and after taking office, he released legal memos that the Bush administration had kept secret. Once the self-serving constitutional analysis that the Bush team had used was revealed, legal scholars from across the spectrum studied and denounced it.

While Mr. Obama has criticized his predecessor, he has also worried about his successors. Last fall, when the election’s outcome was still in doubt, Mr. Obama talked about drone strikes in general and said Congress and the courts should in some manner “rein in” presidents by putting a “legal architecture in place.” His comments seemed to reflect concern that future presidents should perhaps not wield alone such awesome and unchecked power over life and death — of anyone, not just Americans. Oddly, under current law, Congress and the courts are involved when presidents eavesdrop on Americans, detain them or harshly interrogate them — but not when they kill them.

It is not just the most recent president, this one and the next whom we need to worry about when it comes to improper exercise of power. It is every president. Mr. Obama should declassify and release, to Congress, the press and the public, documents that set forth the detailed constitutional and statutory analysis he relies on for targeting and killing American citizens.

Perhaps Mr. Obama still believes that, in a democracy, the people have a right to know the legal theories upon which the president executes his great powers. Certainly, we can hope so. After all, his interpretation might be wrong.

Vicki Divoll is a former general counsel to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and former deputy legal adviser to the C.I.A.’s Counterterrorism Center.

Gun-friendly Arizona may feel bigger impact than other states

In 2011 32,367 people died in auto accidents. Almost all of those deaths were accidental and could have been prevented.

In 2010 31,672 people died from guns. I suspect only a few of those deaths were accidental and preventable.

Source

Gun-friendly Arizona may feel bigger impact than other states

By Dennis Wagner The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Jan 17, 2013 7:45 AM

If President Barack Obama’s proposed gun-control measures are enacted by Congress, the impact on firearms access and public safety may be more pronounced in Arizona than almost anywhere else in America, say experts on both sides of the debate.

The Grand Canyon State is among the nation’s worst or best when it comes to firearms regulation, depending on where one stands on the polarizing issue.

Put simply, Arizonans can buy, own and carry guns with few limitations, whether the weapons are concealed or not.

Obama’s 23-point plan outlined Wednesday calls on Congress to adopt measures that already exist in some states — but not in Arizona.

Among the key proposals: mandatory background checks on all firearms purchases, a ban on military-style assault weapons and a limit on high-capacity magazines.

The prospects for passage are uncertain, but reaction in the state made famous by Wyatt Earp’s gunfight at the O.K. Corral was predictably passionate.

Charles Heller, co-founder of the Tucson-based Arizona Citizens Defense League, said Obama is trying to undermine a fundamental right to bear arms.

“The idea of the Second Amendment was so we could shoot the cops and the soldiers ... who are trying to overthrow the U.S. Constitution,” Heller said. “The Founding Fathers wanted the citizens to be armed with the same equipment as the government.”

Mari Bailey, president of the Greater Phoenix Million Mom March, which is affiliated with the national Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said Arizona and the nation must reflect on the damage done because of unfettered access to assault-style weapons.

“We’ve already seen that allowing these things isn’t working,” said Bailey, whose 21-year-old son was slain by a gunman in 2004. “I know it will make a difference. ... It will show a decline in mass shootings.”

Arizonans for Gun Safety President Hildy Saizow, who met with Vice President Joe Biden last week to discuss the public-safety plan, said Obama’s proposals are “fabulous.”

“His plan mirrors the recommendations I gave to Vice President Biden,” Saizow added. “He’s taking a very comprehensive approach by looking at not only the mass shootings and what we can do to prevent those, but what we can do to reduce gun violence generally.”

The National Rifle Association does not maintain a ranking list for states, but its website shows Arizona conforming to nearly every NRA barometer for Second Amendment support.

On Wednesday, the nation’s largest gun lobby responded to Obama’s plan with a news release that said: “Attacking firearms and ignoring children is not a solution to the crisis we face as a nation. Only honest, law-abiding gun owners will be affected, and our children will remain vulnerable to the inevitability of more tragedy.”

Heller, the Tucson gun-rights advocate, said he sees little chance of Obama’s firearms legislation passing congressional muster. He scoffed at the idea of limiting magazines to 10 rounds of ammunition when some can hold three times that number. “Are they saying it’s moral to shoot 10 people but not 30?” he asked.

The California-based Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence gave Arizona an F for firearms-safety regulation. “Out of 50 states, Arizona came in 49th behind only South Dakota,” said Lindsay Nichols, an attorney who worked on the report card. “It has some of the weakest gun laws in the country.”

Nichols noted that Arizona does not require background checks for private or gun-show transactions and the state does not limit certain semiautomatic weapons. When asked if a federal law mandating those regulations would affect firearm accessibility and lethality more in Arizona than other states, she said, “Yes, and it might cause a larger reduction in the number of gun deaths.”

An online scorecard issued by the Brady Campaign ranks Arizona last (with Utah and Alaska) for firearms-safety provisions. The state received a “0” score.

Bailey said it seems absurd that Americans need licenses to drive cars and buy prescriptions for drugs, but they can walk into Walmart and purchase an assault-style gun with the groceries. [Wrong!!! To buy a gun at Walmart you need a government issued photo ID, like a driver's license to start the process and then you need to pass a Brady Bill check.]

“We’ve done nothing as a gun-culture nation for long enough,” she added. “Let’s try something.”

Randy Gardner, a Tucson man who was shot in the foot during gunman Jared Loughner’s shooting spree two years ago, said Obama came up with reasonable policies that don’t jeopardize Second Amendment rights.

“Why can’t we make an attempt to have a safer society?” asked Gardner, 62. “It’s all common-sense stuff for those of us who were involved in gunplay here.”

There are more than 10,000 firearms homicides in the United States annually, and Gardner said a reduction of even 10 percent would be significant.

“No one is naive enough to think this will be the end of mass slayings,” he added. “But just one person being killed tears at the fabric of a whole family, and then it goes out to friends. We’re talking millions of people affected.” [If you really want to make America safer make cars illegal!!! In 2011 32,367 people died in auto accidents. In 2010 31,672 people died from guns.]

Arizona’s congressional delegation responded to the president’s plan along predictably partisan lines.

Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said he will consider “common-sense legislation” to keep guns away from criminals, but Obama’s plan “goes too far.”

Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., said the president launched an “attack on personal gun ownership, the Second Amendment and our God-given rights.”

Rep. Ed Pastor, D-Ariz., said Obama came up with a common-sense plan to combat violence, especially in schools. “This is the right thing to do, now more than ever,” he added.

At the Republican-controlled Legislature in Phoenix, Obama’s ideas present a dramatic contrast to gun-rights bills enacted in recent years.

Sen. Don Shooter, R-Yuma, criticized Obama for using executive orders in a quest to increase firearms regulation.

“He’s governing like Caesar Augustus or Adolf Hitler,” Shooter said. “This is just more insanity and tyranny from Washington, when what we need to be doing is taking a real, hard look at our mental-health system.”

House Speaker Andy Tobin, R-Paulden, said in a news release that Obama has “shown his unwillingness to develop real solutions to ensure the safety of our children and has instead opted to infringe on the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens for his own political aggrandizement.”

Democrats in the Legislature, meanwhile, welcomed Obama’s public-safety initiative as a plan that includes mental-health initiatives and school protections along with gun control.

Sen. Robert Meza of Phoenix said he plans state legislation to complement the plan by outlawing the possession of an unregistered firearm.

House Minority Leader Chad Campbell, who introduced a bill last week with proposals similar to Obama’s, applauded the presidential initiative.

Reporters Alia Beard Rau, Erin Kelly and Mary K. Reinhart contributed to this article.

The Second Amendment is not about killing unarmed children!!!

Dear Editor:

Lets face it the Founders didn't create the Second Amendment to allow people to kill defenseless, unarmed school children.

The Second Amendment was created to allow people to kill well armed government tyrants.

In 1776 that meant allowing the people to have swords, flintlock rifles and canons.

In 2013 it means allowing the people to have machine guns, rocket launchers, anti-tank guns and all the other weapons the well armed government tyrants have.

Mike Ross
Tempe, Arizona

Using kids as props limits the gun debate

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Using kids as props limits the gun debate

By Doug MacEachern, columnist The Republic

Thu Jan 17, 2013 8:18 AM

As a former gun owner — my inherited 20-gauge antique shotgun was, ahem, stolen in a burglary — I’m nevertheless sympathetic to the national furor calling for more serious gun control.

Not that I have much hope anything proposed Wednesday by President Barack Obama will accomplish much. I simply respect the fact that there is a growing (and, yes, passionate) national desire to keep weapons out of the wrong people’s grip.

More to the point, though, I’m anxious to take the debate out of the control of the zealots.

I don’t like policy discussions being controlled by unreasonable lots like Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association any more than I like public-education discourse determined by agitprop experts from the National Education Association. Let’s have a real discussion, eh?

That is what was most discouraging about Obama’s event on Wednesday advancing his executive orders on gun control. It was staged agitprop using children as foils — not as a means of engaging in a national-policy debate over effective gun control, but simply for browbeating the other side.

Politicians don’t use children as stage props to talk policy.

They use children to shut up their political opponents. I’m for the children, and you’re not. I find that reprehensible.

Politicians have been using “regular people” as sympathy magnets for exactly 30 years. In the circle of political stage-managers, they are known as “Lenny Skutniks.”

Lenny Skutnik was the heroic regular guy who flung himself into the icy Potomac to save survivors of the crash of Air Florida Flight 90. Reagan wanted to honor him, so he brought him to Congress for his 1982 State of the Union address.

Acknowledging Skutnik was nice, of course, but it begat the habit of presidents and other pols becoming ever more inventive at involving sympathetic non-public figures for ever-more-dubious purposes.

I thought the practice had hit a crescendo when Obama pointlessly surrounded himself with “middle-class taxpayers” at his Republican-baiting press event on New Year’s Eve at the end of the fiscal-cliff crisis. As if his GOP opponents could not have used the same group of people as props to show how Obama’s deal would be hiking their payroll taxes, which it did.

But Wednesday’s shameless use of children was still worse.

You may not like LaPierre’s idea of putting armed guards in schools to protect against the madmen out there. I’m not crazy about it. (Although Obama’s “school-resource officers” seems like a soft-soap, politically correct version of the same thing.)

But can you imagine the Vesuvian uproar if he had proposed it while surrounded by a group of kids backed up by a squad of well-armed toughs?

Same goal as Obama, after all. He wants to protect the kids.

Not all cops are gun grabbers who want to disarm you!!!!!

Sheriffs, state lawmakers push back on gun control

By JEFF BARNARD | Associated Press – 23 mins ago

GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) — From Oregon to Mississippi, President Barack Obama's proposed ban on new assault weapons and large-capacity magazines struck a nerve among rural lawmen and lawmakers, many of whom vowed to ignore any restrictions — and even try to stop federal officials from enforcing gun policy in their jurisdictions.

"A lot of sheriffs are now standing up and saying, 'Follow the Constitution,'" said Josephine County Sheriff Gil Gilbertson, whose territory covers the timbered mountains of southwestern Oregon.

But their actual powers to defy federal law are limited. And much of the impassioned rhetoric amounts to political posturing until — and if — Congress acts.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, said recently it's unlikely an assault weapons ban would actually pass the House of Representatives. Absent action by Congress, all that remains are 23 executive orders Obama announced that apply only to the federal government, not local or state law enforcement.

Gun advocates have seen Obama as an enemy despite his expression of support for the interpretation of the Second Amendment as a personal right to have guns. So his call for new measures — including background checks for all gun buyers and Senate confirmation of a director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — triggered new vows of defiance.

In Mississippi, Gov. Phil Bryant, a Republican, urged the Legislature to make it illegal to enforce any executive order by the president that violates the Constitution.

"If someone kicks open my door and they're entering my home, I'd like as many bullets as I could to protect my children, and if I only have three, then the ability for me to protect my family is greatly diminished," Bryant said. "And what we're doing now is saying, 'We're standing against the federal government taking away our civil liberties.'"

Tennessee Republican state Rep. Joe Carr wants to make it a state crime for federal agents to enforce any ban on firearms or ammunition. Carr instead called for more armed guards at schools.

"We're tired of political antics, cheap props of using children as bait to gin up emotional attachment for an issue that quite honestly doesn't solve the problem," Carr said.

Legislative proposals to pre-empt new federal gun restrictions also have arisen in Wyoming, Utah and Alaska.

A Wyoming bill specifies that any federal limitation on guns would be unenforceable. It also would make it a state felony for federal agents to try to enforce restrictions.

"I think there are a lot of people who would want to take all of our guns if they could," said co-sponsor Rep. Kendell Kroeker, a Republican. "And they're only restrained by the opposition of the people, and other lawmakers who are concerned about our rights."

Republican state Sen. Larry Hicks credited Wyoming's high rate of gun ownership for a low rate of gun violence.

"Our kids grow up around firearms, and they also grow up hunting, and they know what the consequences are of taking a life," Hicks said. "We're not insulated from the real world in Wyoming."

In Utah, some Republicans are preparing legislation to exempt the state from federal gun laws — and fine any federal agents who try to seize guns. A bill in the Alaska House would make it a misdemeanor for a federal agent to enforce new restrictions on gun ownership.

While such proposals are eye-catching, they likely could never be implemented.

"The legislature can pass anything it wants," said Sam Kamin, a constitutional law professor at the University of Denver. "The Supremacy Clause of the Constitution makes that clearly unconstitutional. Where there's a conflict between state and federal law, the federal government is supreme."

Kamin and other legal experts said such disdain of Obama's proposals is reminiscent of former Confederate states' refusal to comply with federal law extending equal rights for blacks after the Civil War.

The National Sheriff's Association has supported administration efforts to combat gun violence after the Sandy Hook Elementary shootings. President Larry Amerson, sheriff of Calhoun, Ala., said he understands the frustrations of people in rural areas with the federal government. But he feels his oath of office binds him to uphold all laws.

"Any sheriff who knows his duty knows we don't enforce federal law, per se," said Amerson, a longtime firearms instructor and hunter.

Some rural sheriffs view the federal government as an adversary, with gun ownership at the core of that belief.

In Minnesota, Pine County Sheriff Robin Cole sent an open letter to residents saying he did not believe the federal government had the right to tell the states how to regulate firearms. He said he would refuse to enforce any federal mandate he felt violated constitutional rights.

The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, based in Fredericksburg, Texas, encourages that point of view. Founder Richard Mack, a former sheriff of Apache County, Ariz., speaks regularly at gatherings of Tea Party groups and gun rights organizations.

"I will tell Mr. Obama and everybody else who wants to impose gun control in America, that whether you like it or not, it is against the law," said Mack. "Now we have good sheriffs who are standing up and defending the law against our own president."

___

Associated Press writers contributing to this report: Nicholas Riccardi in Denver, Ben Neary in Cheyenne, Wyo., Erik Schelzig in Nashville, Tenn., John O'Connor in Springfield, Ill., Amy Forliti in Minneapolis and Emily Wagster Pettus in Jackson, Miss.

Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton and Mesa Mayor Scott Smith are a gun grabbers???

The Second Amendment was create to allow the PEOPLE to violently overthrow the government should the government become tyrannical. And of course any tyrannical government is going to use a background check as a way of keeping their enemies from having guns.

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2 Valley mayors agree on need for better background checks

By Erin Kelly Republic Washington Bureau Thu Jan 17, 2013 11:27 PM

WASHINGTON -- If Congress wants to find consensus on reducing gun violence, universal background checks on everyone who wants to buy a firearm may be the best place to start, the mayors of Phoenix and Mesa said Thursday.

Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton, a Democrat, and Mesa Mayor Scott Smith, a Republican, disagree on many of President Barack Obama’s proposed gun-control measures but agree on the need for better background checks to keep guns from criminals and the mentally ill.

The two addressed the issue while attending the annual winter meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors here.

Stanton supports the president’s wide-ranging approach, which includes a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Smith says he believes such bans infringe on Americans’ Second Amendment rights.

But both support the idea of ensuring that everyone who buys a gun should undergo a background check. Currently, those checks aren’t done on buyers who purchase firearms at gun shows and other private sales. The president’s plan, unveiled Tuesday, would change that.

Smith said he wants more details about how the background checks would work, but supports the general idea.

“There is wide support among gun owners — of which I am one — to make sure guns don’t end up in the hands of the wrong people,” said Smith, who is vice president of the mayors’ group. “I think most everyone can agree that convicted criminals and people with serious mental illness should not have guns.”

David Keene, president of the National Rifle Association said Thursday on “CBS This Morning” that the organization is “generally supportive” of strong background checks.

Stanton said passing legislation to require universal background checks is the least that Congress can do in the wake of last month’s mass shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.

“I think America is saying it’s time to take reasonable measures to reduce gun violence,” Stanton said. “If we can deal with the issue of background checks, that’s part of a good consensus approach.”

While the issue of gun violence dominated the news coverage of the first day of the mayors’ three-day meeting, Stanton and Smith said the federal fiscal crisis still tops their list of concerns.

When Congress reached a last-minute deal on New Year’s Day to stop middle-class tax increases from taking effect, lawmakers postponed for two months a decision on what to do about $1.2 trillion in automatic, across-the-board cuts in federal spending on defense and domestic programs.

Arizona stands to lose 50,000 jobs if Congress does not stop the cuts from taking effect on March 1, Stanton said.

“It’s not acceptable that we’re still facing this looming threat,” he said. “We understand that some federal budget cuts are coming, but this is too much. This would throw us back into recession.”

Smith agreed, calling the automatic cuts “a dumb idea.” He said he is especially concerned that some lawmakers are talking about eliminating the tax-exempt status of municipal bonds.

“Those bonds are our lifeblood for financing our local projects,” Smith said.

With gun violence and fiscal issues dominating Washington, Stanton also said he fears that comprehensive immigration reform will once again be pushed aside by Congress.

“Congress should be able to multi-task and address gun violence and immigration at the same time,” Stanton said.

Senator Dennis DeConcini is a gun grabber???

Gun-control debates of past show political risks

By Dan Nowicki The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Jan 18, 2013 7:55 AM

One of the driving forces behind the last federal ban on “assault weapons” and high-capacity magazines believes President Barack Obama and gun-control allies have a chance at getting an updated version passed in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Newtown, Conn.

Former Sen. Dennis DeConcini, D-Ariz., acknowledged that Second Amendment advocates and the gun lobby are poised to put up fierce opposition, just as they did nearly 20 years ago, when Congress adopted similar curbs after a hard-fought and politically costly battle on Capitol Hill.

As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, DeConcini took up the cause against assault weapons in 1989, after one of the guns was used to shoot children during a schoolyard killing spree in Stockton, Calif. Back home in Arizona, critics organized a short-lived recall effort against him.

“The reality is it takes a lot of courage,” said DeConcini, who sat on the joint House-Senate conference committee that considered the 1994 ban. “It wasn’t telling people they can’t own guns. It was just restricting some guns.” [And that is nothing more then double talk saying I was telling people they can't own guns!!!]

However, the legislation banning the manufacturing, transport and possession of certain types of guns, which was included as part of a sweeping anti-crime bill, contained loopholes that allowed gunmakers to sidestep the law by changing some of the physical features of the weapons. The 10-year ban expired without congressional reauthorization in 2004.

DeConcini previously had sponsored assault-weapon legislation that passed the Senate but couldn’t get out of the House. He credits development of the ban to then-Judiciary Committee aide Dennis Burke, the future U.S. attorney for Arizona who years later was at the center of the “Operation Fast and Furious” gun-trafficking scandal.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., took the lead on the issue in 1994 because the three-term DeConcini was preparing to retire. Even though Democrats controlled the House at the time, conservative Democrats such as powerful House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jack Brooks, D-Texas, were antagonistic toward gun-control legislation. The 10-year sunset clause was included as part of a deal to win support from skeptics such as Brooks, DeConcini said.

“That was the compromise — the only way you could have passed it,” DeConcini told The Arizona Republic on Wednesday, hours after President Barack Obama unveiled his plan.

Brooks, who died Dec. 4, lost his House seat in the 1994 election as part of a backlash to the assault-weapons ban that is believed to have contributed to that year’s “Republican Revolution.”

Other political casualties included one-term Rep. Karan English, D-Ariz., whose vote for the ban likely was a factor in her loss to GOP challenger J.D. Hayworth. English’s district included part of rural Arizona, where many voters cherish gun rights.

Ten years later, there was little political interest in renewing the ban or in pursuing any new gun-control measures in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The 1994 ban’s definition of assault weapons also proved problematic in practice. In addition to targeting specific types of guns such as AK-47s, AR-15s and TEC-9s, the measure extended the definition of “assault weapons” to semiautomatic rifles with detachable magazines in conjunction with at least two other features such as a pistol grip, a bayonet mount or a flash suppressor.

Semiautomatic pistols also could be assault weapons if the guns had a certain combination of features. Gun manufacturers started making cosmetic alterations to get around the ban.

It is unclear how new legislation would define assault weapons.

“On one of them, they changed the grip, and it qualified as a different weapon,” DeConcini recalled.

Assault weapons manufactured before 1994 were exempt, which caused some to question the ban’s effectiveness. Pre-ban models remained in circulation and could still be sold. In 1997, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s posse attracted national criticism for offering one such pre-ban semiautomatic AR-15 rifle as a raffle prize.

“There were loopholes that obviously mitigated some (of the impact) of the ban,” said veteran Rep. Ed Pastor, D-Ariz., who voted for the 1994 legislation and would support a 2013 version, although he is pessimistic one could pass.

Although gun control has more momentum than it has had in years, another political expert agreed that a new assault-weapons ban is unlikely to make it out of the Republican-run House.

“It seems to me right now that the politics of this issue are just really, really difficult,” said William Dixon, a professor of political science at the University of Arizona.

Obama's gun grabbing won't prevent crime???

A political fight over gun violence that won’t make much difference

Let’s assume everything President Obama has proposed regarding gun violence were adopted. How much would it reduce the likelihood of future mass killings such as at Newtown?

The only honest answer to that question is: Hardly at all.

This is not an argument that gun control cannot be effective. If the United States adopted Australian-style gun control, in which guns were not only banned but confiscated, the incidence of gun violence in the United States might very well go down.

But the United States is not going to discuss, much less implement, Australian-style gun control. There’s virtually no political support for it and it would require amending the U.S. Constitution.

So, Obama is proposing a prospective ban on the sale of some rapid-fire rifles and high-capacity magazines. The United States had such a ban for ten years, beginning in 1994. The incidence of gun violence generally and mass killings specifically did not subside materially.

A prospective ban leaves an ample supply of such weapons in circulation. And if the ban were left in place for a longer period of time, it would primarily fuel a black market in such weapons. Current owners are unlikely to simply accept the federal government rendering their property worthless in terms of resale.

And even what Obama proposes is politically unlikely. Senate Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid says he doesn’t want to force his members to vote on gun control measures that won’t be passed by the House. Republican House Speaker John Boehner says he will be happy to consider gun control measures that pass the Senate. You can read between the lines.

Even the proposal for which there is widest support – universal background checks – is likely to run into political difficulty once people start concentrating on the details.

A large portion of gun sales are between individuals. A hunk of them occur during organized gun shows but a hunk of them are truly private transactions.

There are only two options for implementing a universal background check. Either everyone with Internet access is given the ability to check the eligibility of any other resident of the United States to purchase a gun; or private guns sales have to be essentially outlawed and all gun purchases required to go through federally licensed dealers. Both options will have political problems.

Other than the gun control components, the president’s plan consists of small-scale federal initiatives that won’t make much of a difference. This is best illustrated by the proposal regarding school resource officers and counselors.

Obama proposes that the federal government spend $150 million to put 1,000 cops or counselors in American schools. But there are 100,000 schools in the United States. So, the initiative would reach about 1 percent of all schools.

The Obama plan is stuffed with similar proposals of highly limited reach. The federal government is not only broke, it is dangerously broke – broke in a way that endangers the U.S. economy. This is not a time to be throwing federal money at problems so that politicians can say that they are doing something.

In reality, meaningful initiatives regarding school safety and mental health screening will have to take place at the state and local level. But even there, what is being proposed is more about doing something than about accomplishing something that will actually make a difference.

Mass killings are rare and highly random events. Since 1980, there have been about 20 such incidents a year in the United States, resulting in an average of about 100 deaths each year.

The pace of such incidents has not been increasing, nor has the homicide rate generally. In fact, the homicide rate in the United States today is not materially different than it was in 1900.

What is different is the saturation media coverage mass killings receive. And that changes the political dynamic.

I understand it. The Newtown massacre, and similar slaughters, stun the senses and stir the soul. The desire to do something to stop them is universal. And politicians have to respond.

It’s just sad that we are going to have such a wrenching and emotional political fight over things that aren’t really going to make much of a difference, if any at all.

Kindergartner suspended for bubble GUN remark

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Kindergartner suspended for bubble-gun remark

Associated Press Fri Jan 18, 2013 2:49 PM

MOUNT CARMEL, Pa. — A central Pennsylvania family has hired an attorney to fight their 5-year-old daughter’s 10-day suspension from kindergarten for telling another girl she was going to shoot her with a bubble gun.

Attorney Robin Ficker says Mount Carmel Area School District officials labeled the girl a “terrorist threat” for the remark made as both girls stood waiting for a school bus on Jan. 10. The girl was referring to a device that shoots out soap bubbles — which she didn’t even have with her at the time.

Ficker says the girl has never shot a real gun and “is the least terroristic person in Pennsylvania.”

School district solicitor Edward Greco tells pennlive.com that officials are looking into the incident, but says he and school officials aren’t at liberty to discuss disciplinary actions.

Australia's gun control: Success or failure?

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Australia's gun control: Success or failure?

Steve Chapman

4:55 p.m. CST, January 18, 2013

After a mass shooting in 1996, Australia enacted a sweeping package of gun restrictions far more ambitious than anything plausible here -- including a total ban on semiautomatic weapons, a mandatory gun buyback, and strict limits on who could own a firearm. John Howard, who was prime minister at the time, wrote the other day that his country "is safer today as a consequence of gun control."

You would think such dramatic new restrictions were bound to help. But the striking thing is how little effect they had on gun deaths.

It's true the homicide rate fell after the law took effect -- but it had also been falling long before that. A study published by the liberal Brookings Institution noted that the decline didn't accelerate after 1996. Same for lethal accidents. Suicide didn't budge. At most, they conclude "there may" -- may -- "have been a modest effect on homicide rates."

Researchers at the University of Melbourne, however, found no such improvement as a result of the new system. "There is little evidence to suggest that it had any significant effects on firearm homicides or suicides," they wrote.

Howard says the country has had no mass shootings since 1996. But mass shootings are such a tiny share of all homicides that any connection may be purely a matter of chance.

We learned from the 1994 assault weapons ban that modest gun control measures don't work. What Australia suggests is that even if radical ones could be passed, they wouldn't work either.

Alcohol kills 10 times as many people as guns do!!!

The CDC reports for every gun related death, there are ten alcohol related deaths.

On the other hand we already did that and the Prohibition was a dismal failure, just like the insane and unconstitutional "War on Drugs"

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Turley-Hansen: Time to get real about the world’s addiction to alcohol

Posted: Friday, January 18, 2013 9:45 am | Updated: 10:43 am, Fri Jan 18, 2013.

Guest Commentary by Linda Turley-Hansen | 11 comments

She’s young, tall-model-slender, beautiful and with a song bird voice. I’ll call her Annie. And, today she sits in jail, serving a lengthy term for her history with drugs. Like so many others, her road to trouble started with alcohol.

So, we all want our children safe, right? Few debates elicit unity in the way child protection issues do. Here in the East Valley we’re a family community and we work hard at providing every opportunity for the next generations. But still many are not willing to provide safety at adult expense. Case in point: the world’s addiction to alcohol.

Did you know Arizona ranks at the top nationally in regards to youth drinking (U.S. Center for Disease Control, June 8, 2012)? Arizona high schools surveyed rank No. 1 “for alcohol use and binge drinking” and No. 2 “for cocaine use and drinking alcohol on school property.”

We yip and carry on about gun dangers, yet right in our own homes are the roots of not only death, some of them slow and torturous, but also the collapse of marriages, endless lost jobs and more sorrows than can be recounted in one little column. Just ask Annie.

It’d be a wonderful world if there were no killing machines, but humans have proven we’ll still find a way to do ourselves and others in. It’s when we lead our kids down destructive paths that we really stand condemned. Yet we remain complacent because we don’t binge and are not addicted — so what’s the big deal, right?

I’ve harped on this before, but when we see news reports about high school students binging, and dying, and involved in alcohol related rapes and other violence, the topic cries to be revisited with the same passion as gun control, infant car seats and fast food.

Experts tell us in today’s culture, teens feel extreme social pressure to drink. Then, as their youth/adult crossroads overflow with confusion they discover alcohol suppresses feelings. Without adults to show them a better way, their choices are predictable.

Still not convinced?

Think about this: Women are the fastest growing segment of the alcohol abusing population. Yet, women’s bodies are less tolerant to alcohol than men. Further, “binge drinking can increase a woman’s risk of breast cancer, heart disease, unintentional pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and auto accidents” (CDC).

Of 23,000 annual deaths attributed to excessive alcohol use among females, binge drinking accounts for more than half (CDC).

One other small fact: The CDC reports for every gun related death, there are ten alcohol related deaths. Yeah. Let’s “get the guns.”

Politics drive this issue; we know that, while one of the biggest killers ever is sitting right in children’s homes, used by their parents, night after night “just to relax,” or as a primary social beverage.

Not your problem? Really? This is one monster failure of society. The affects touch everyone from taxes to spiritual deprivation. Ask Annie and all the others.

Why wait for social norms to change? As just one parent, your example and educated outreach might save a child, or dozens. One of them might just belong to you.

East Valley resident Linda Turley-Hansen (turleyhansen@gmail.com) is a syndicated columnist and former Phoenix veteran TV anchor.

Kyrsten Sinema pretends to be a big fan of the Second Amendment???

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Arizona delegation seeks common ground on gun reform

By Dan Nowicki and Rebekah L. Sanders The Republic | azcentral.com Sun Jan 20, 2013 12:19 AM

If Arizona’s split delegation is a barometer of Congress on the issue of gun control, there may be a path forward for at least one proposal put forth last week by President Barack Obama: universal background checks.

Echoing many of his lower-chamber colleagues on Friday, Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said he likely would have a hard time supporting a new federal ban on “assault weapons” and high-capacity magazines but suggested there may be common ground on universal background checks.

“I’ve always said we’ve got to do a better job of keeping guns out of the hands of those who shouldn’t have them,” Flake said. “There have been some technological issues with gun shows, and you want to make sure that people can legally buy guns for protection or recreation or collection without untimely delays. But I think technology has moved so that we can better deal with that issue and have broader background checks.”

He noted that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has expressed misgivings about revisiting the assault-weapons ban that was in place from 1994 to 2004.

“That’s a heavy lift in both bodies,” Flake said. “It’s a tough case to make that this would change the dynamic of gun violence very much.”

Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., who represents southern Arizona’s 3rd District, said the Senate will be able to find compromise more easily than the House, where Republicans hold a majority and leadership has not indicated an appetite for a debate.

“What is doable and what should we have are two different things,” Grijalva said.

Obama’s executive orders, including ending the freeze on research into gun-related violence, were “low-hanging fruit,” he said. The heavy lifting, on controversial bills such as a renewed assault-weapons ban, will have to be done by Congress.

Grijalva has heard the argument that it would be victory enough for Democrats to drop the assault-weapons ban as a bargaining chip for other measures such as ammunition magazine-size restrictions and universal background checks.

“Is it a step in the right direction? Yes. Is it the comprehensive change that we need? No,” Grijalva said. “Many people would vote for a third of a loaf, instead of no loaf at all. But I think it’s still cowardly to not confront the whole issue.”

One national political expert told The Arizona Republic that he has talked to many lawmakers and staff members about the issue and said a compromise is possible but not necessarily probable.

Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, said a compromise package would include certain gun reforms with some measures sought by the National Rifle Association.

“The consensus is that if anything passes, it would be universal background checks, or at least closing the gun-show loophole, combined with some mental-health reforms and perhaps some money for hiring guards at participating school districts,” Sabato said. “And maybe something about violent movies: It looks like, because of the First Amendment, about the only thing they can do is strengthen warning labels.”

Rodolfo Espino, an associate professor of political science at Arizona State University, said the Congress of 2013 and the Congress of 1994, when lawmakers adopted the now-expired 10-year ban on assault weapons, are much different. Because it has been so long since Congress tackled gun control, it’s unclear whether either side is willing to compromise.

“The last time that gun-control legislation was introduced or talked about at this level ... polarization in Congress was much lower,” Espino said. “It’s much higher now, and that also affects the ability to compromise.”

Unlike in 1994, the House is controlled by Republicans, and “it’s a much more conservative GOP,” he said.

A divisive topic

On other issues in Obama’s gun-control plan, there is far less agreement among the state’s members of Congress.

Some Republican members say they won’t even entertain talk of a law that would touch the Second Amendment. Others say there may be room for compromise on certain issues. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has been out of the country and could not be reached for comment.

Rep. Ed Pastor, D-Ariz., told The Republic that he thought Democrats and Republicans might be able to come together on background checks, some mental-health measures and school-safety improvements.

“But I think limiting the number of bullets in a magazine or any type of ban on assault weapons or anything to do with registration will be very difficult,” said Pastor, who supported the 1994 assault-weapons ban. “The NRA and their supporters are not going to go for that.”

Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., suggested that any compromise on Second Amendment-related issues might be elusive. He said he was offended that President Barack Obama included children in his news conference to announce the gun proposals.

“The thing that is apparent to me is that the Obama administration’s motto that one should never let any crisis go to waste certainly is in vogue here,” said Franks, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on the Constitution. “The administration is using one of the most tragic things to ever happen to families here to promote a policy, using them as props, that will not protect them.”

When Obama unveiled his proposals last week, he was joined by children who had written him following the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., urging him to take action against gun violence.

Given the potential Second Amendment implications, Franks said his subcommittee may have some jurisdiction on gun issues.

“One of my deepest desires is to protect the lives and the constitutional rights of all Americans,” he said. “I want to search for solutions that really will protect children, rather than use them to posture politically.”

Mental health

Freshman Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., said because she has been in Congress only for a couple of weeks, it is somewhat difficult for her to say which proposals have a realistic chance of attracting bipartisan support.

“There is a shared concern about finding a balance that protects the Second Amendment,” Sinema said. “Particularly those of us in Arizona, we believe very strongly in the Second Amendment. We believe that it provides an individual right for people to bear arms and own weapons, but we also are concerned about having folks who are mentally ill or have a violent history getting access to firearms. So, I do think that there is room and there is opportunity to have a discussion to find that right balance.”

Sinema said she is particularly interested in the mental-health aspects of the debate. “That’s a difficult issue to address — it’s very complex — but I think it’s also the most important in this conversation,” she said.

Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., who represents rural northwest Arizona’s 4th District, was traveling and unavailable for comment. In a written statement, he said experience has shown tough gun restrictions have not reduced gun violence.

“When you limit an individual’s ability to lawfully purchase or carry firearms you are allowing only those with the intent to break the law to have weapons,” he said.

However, Gosar agreed with Obama on two points: the need for greater school-safety measures and improved mental-health services.

It’s unclear how much money House Republicans like Gosar, many of whom are focused on cutting the nation’s deficit, are willing to spend to support those objectives.

Background checks

Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, D-Ariz., who represents the rural northeast Arizona 1st District, said she is a strong supporter of the Second Amendment, as are many in her district.

“But we also have to do something,” she said. “It’s a balancing of those interests, and I’m listening to people in the district about what makes sense to them.”

She plans to talk to police chiefs, sheriffs, mayors and residents from Flagstaff to near Tucson over the next few months to get their input.

But some proposals are no-brainers, she said. Kirkpatrick said she could easily get behind Obama’s request to stiffen penalties for gun traffickers and require universal background checks, which she has heard support for already.

“I hope that we can work across the aisle to find a consensus around this issue,” she said.

Sinema said she also has long supported closing the gun-show loophole that allows firearms to be purchased from private sellers without the background screening that buyers must submit to at a gun store.

“It doesn’t make sense that someone who would fail a background check can easily, knowingly and legally buy a cache of weapons at a gun show when this is a person that we know would not be able to get one otherwise,” she said.

GOP reaction

Rep. Matt Salmon, R-Ariz., who represents the East Valley’s conservative 5th Congressional District, was not available for comment. But on his Facebook page, he said he was disappointed in Obama’s response to the Sandy Hook tragedy.

Salmon said the proposals would “limit the Constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens.” He argued that the Columbine High School shooting in 1999, which occurred when the assault-weapons ban was in place, proved that renewing such a ban would “not stop individuals from committing horrific crimes.”

He told a Maricopa County GOP meeting last weekend, according to a YouTube video: “We have a president that believes that because of some very cataclysmic events over the last few months, it’s time to erode some of our freedom.”

Rep. David Schweikert, R-Ariz., who represents the northeast Valley’s 6th District, was unavailable for comment. But in a fundraising e-mail to campaign supporters Friday, Schweikert called Obama’s moves a “gun grab.”

“They may say otherwise, but we know the truth,” the e-mail said. “The liberal left has never been shy about hiding their real intentions — the elimination of most Americans’ right to own a firearm.”

Hopeful survivor

Rep. Ron Barber, D-Ariz., who represents southern Arizona’s 2nd District and is a survivor of the shooting near Tucson that wounded Gabrielle Giffords, said he thinks three proposals can make it through Congress: improved mental-health services, size limits on ammunition magazines and universal background checks.

Barber recently introduced a bill to provide training to teachers, firefighters and the general public about spotting and helping people with mental illness get treatment.

As for Obama’s executive orders, Barber believes the president did not overstep his authority. The orders put in motion things such as emergency safety plans for schools, reviewing standards for gun locks and gun safes, and launching a national dialogue on mental health.

But on the proposals Obama asked Congress to take up, so far, Barber said he has not heard support from any of his Republican colleagues.

Arizona’s delegation is deeply divided, as well, though Barber wouldn’t talk specifically.

“We’ve had some conversations,” he said. “Hopefully, we will continue to do so until we can find common ground.”

Las Vegas cop murder wife and son

Las Vegas officer, wife and son dead in murder-suicide

You can always trust a cop to be a law abiding honest citizens. Well at least that's what the cops tell us!!!!

Source

Vegas officer, wife and son dead in murder-suicide

By KEN RITTER, Associated Press

Updated 12:17 am, Tuesday, January 22, 2013

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A police lieutenant, his wife and son are dead after an apparent double murder, suicide and arson at their home, authorities said.

Clark County Sheriff Douglas Gillespie and other officials didn't immediately identify the police officer or the family members on Monday. Identifications would probably be made sometime on Tuesday.

"There was an incident today involving one if Metro's lieutenants," a somber Gillespie said in brief statement to reporters. "Several bodies were discovered."

Gillespie, the elected head of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, said the lieutenant was a 20-year veteran of the force. Gillespie spoke of "untold grief" for family members, friends and co-workers. He took no questions.

The sheriff said the investigation in Boulder City, about 20 miles southeast of Las Vegas, was being handled by police in neighboring Henderson.

Henderson police spokesman Keith Paul said a man called 911 at about 8:20 a.m. Monday and told a dispatcher he killed his wife and child, set his house afire and would shoot anyone who approached.

The home is owned by Hans Walters, according to Clark County assessor records. Many know Walters as a Las Vegas police lieutenant married to a former Las Vegas police officer, Kathryn Walters. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that she left the department in 2005.

Boulder City police arrived to find the homeowner with a handgun in the doorway of the burning house before he retreated inside and apparently killed himself, Paul said.

No shots were fired by police or SWAT officers from Henderson and North Las Vegas who later found the bodies of a 52-year-old man, a 46-year-old woman and a boy inside, Paul said. Officials said the boy was believed to be about 7.

"We're investigating the incident as a murder-suicide at this time," Paul said.

Source

Police: Officer kills wife, son, himself in Boulder City

By Mike Blasky AND Antonio Planas

LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

Posted: Jan. 21, 2013 | 10:38 a.m.

Nothing seemed unusual with Lt. Hans Walters on Saturday night.

"He didn't seem out of the ordinary at all," said one Las Vegas police officer, who asked to be anonymous. "Cops are pretty intuitive. They can tell when something's wrong with someone.

"He seemed totally fine."

But two days later, something clearly changed.

Authorities said Walters killed his family, set his Boulder City home ablaze and then killed himself Monday morning.

"You just wonder how and why this could happen," the officer said.

Sheriff Doug Gillespie acknowledged "it's human nature" to speculate but asked the public to reserve judgment.

"I urge you to wait and allow the facts to come forward first," Gillespie said at a brief, morose news conference Monday afternoon.

Boulder City police responded to a call at 8:20 a.m. Monday from a 52-year-old man at 1313 Esther Drive who said he had killed his wife and son and was setting his house on fire. The man also threatened to harm responding officers, Henderson police spokesman Keith Paul said. Henderson police are handling the investigation for the Boulder City department, which lacks resources for such major investigations.

Paul would not confirm that Walters was the man who called police but said the caller was an "off-duty Las Vegas police officer."

The home is owned by Walters and his wife, Kathryn Michelle Walters, 46.

Gillespie confirmed that the incident involved a Las Vegas police lieutenant with more than 20 years of experience. Hans Walters, 52, was hired in 1991.

When officers responded, the man was outside the house carrying what appeared to be a handgun. He ignored officers' commands and returned to the burning house, where he apparently killed himself.

Clark County Coroner Mike Murphy confirmed that three bodies were found in the house but did not release the names of the dead.

Walters supervised patrols in the department's Enterprise Area Command, which serves the southwest valley.

Kathryn Walters also was a Las Vegas police officer. She received a community service award in 1999 and a lifesaving award in 2004. She left the department in 2005.

At the news conference, Gillespie deferred to the Henderson police investigation and refused to take questions out of respect for the victims' families.

"We will stand by your side and move through this unspeakable grief and support you any way we can," he said in remarks intended for the families.

The murder-suicide sent shock waves through the Metropolitan Police Department on Monday morning as rumors began swirling.

"Terrible," one veteran supervisor said.

"I can't think of a reason for this, where something can get so bad that you'd do this," another officer said.

The incident also rattled Boulder City.

A neighbor who asked not to be identified said, "It's horrific. It's hard to understand what would drive someone to do something like that."

Authorities took down crime tape blocking off Esther Drive shortly after 5 p.m. The smell of smoke lingered on the block of ranch-style homes.

Neighbor after neighbor told the same story: Gunshots weren't heard; the family was reclusive, so much so that several neighbors didn't know a child lived in the house.

Some neighbors said Hans Walters would give them the occasional hello as he went to his mailbox.

"He was normal. He was nice," said Alyssa Gossard, 21. "He would wave to us every now and then."

Much of the roof of the family's house caved in because of the blaze, and the portion of the roof above the garage collapsed. A charred sport utility vehicle sat inside the garage.

Three women, who declined to comment or give their names, placed a vase with yellow and white flowers on the sidewalk in front of the Walters' home. They also placed a red stuffed animal next to the vase.

They said a prayer for the family. "Please let (Kathryn) Michelle hold onto Max in their next journey," a woman said.

Patrick Brewer was getting coffee about 8:45 a.m. when he looked outside and noticed smoke coming from his neighbor's house.

He was startled when he saw that first responders were not firefighters but Boulder City police officers carrying rifles and moving with caution.

SWAT units with Henderson and North Las Vegas police also responded to the burning house.

One neighbor said he heard an officer yell to "put your gun down" two or three times.

Brewer, 44, said he moved his family to the bedroom.

Firefighters arrived soon after the officers and began dousing the flames, even as the officers continued to circle the house with guns drawn.

"The house was definitely not secure, let's put it that way," he said. "I realized I was looking at something that was definitely not normal."

Brewer said he heard a person yell, "I did not do this," as authorities circled the house, but he wasn't sure who spoke.

Karlee Kovacevich, 18, lives four houses away. She said that shortly after 9 a.m. she saw flames 15 feet high shooting from her neighbor's roof. The house was surrounded by police and firefighters.

She said she later saw what appeared to be the body of a child under a white sheet beneath a canopy set up in the street.

In the five years Brewer lived next to the family, he never had a real conversation with them.

He didn't know Walters was a police lieutenant. He also never saw children around the house.

"If I saw him in person, I could say, 'Yeah, that's my neighbor,' but I couldn't even describe him to you right now," Brewer said. "It's a pretty friendly, warm neighborhood, but I've never spoken to him."

David Gossard, Alyssa's father, said that after an officer told him a neighbor might be armed and suicidal, he called his family, prompting some of them to run out of their house without shoes.

Gossard said that despite the tragedy, life goes on. He said Boulder City is no different than anywhere else because murder-suicides happen everywhere.

"You just never know when people are going to snap," Gossard said.

Boulder City Review editor Arnold M. Knightly and Review-Journal staff writer Brian Haynes contributed to this report.

Contact reporter Mike Blasky at mblasky@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0283.

Coroner IDs Vegas officer who killed family, committed suicide

Some how I don't feel any safer with nut jobs like Las Vegas police lieutenant Hans Pieter Walters protecting our children from gun nuts.

Source

Coroner IDs Vegas officer who killed family, committed suicide

By Marisa Gerber

January 22, 2013, 7:57 p.m.

The Las Vegas police lieutenant who killed his wife, son and himself was Hans Pieter Walters, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, the Clark County Office of the Coroner/Medical Examiner said in a statement Tuesday.

Walters told a dispatcher Monday that he had shot his family and threatened to set his home on fire and harm any officers who responded, authorities said. When police arrived, they found the family’s Boulder City, Nev., home partially engulfed in flames and Walters in the doorway with a gun. He ignored police commands and went back into the house, authorities said.

When a SWAT team entered the home, they found Walters, his 46-year-old wife, Kathryn Michelle, and their 5-year-old son, Maximilian, all with fatal gunshot wounds to the head.

Walters joined the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department 21 years ago and was promoted to lieutenant in 2010. His wife worked for the department 13 years before leaving voluntarily in 2004, officials said.

During a brief news conference Monday, Clark County Sheriff Douglas Gillespie -- the elected head of the police department -- spoke of the loss: “Anyone who has been in law enforcement for any amount of time is usually prepared for any scenario. No one, however, can prepare us for something like this.”

Fontana school police are armed with semiautomatic rifles

Fontana school police are armed with semiautomatic rifles

By Stephen Ceasar, Los Angeles Times

January 23, 2013, 7:26 p.m.

Police officers in the Fontana Unified School District were armed recently with semiautomatic rifles, drawing sharp criticism and sparking an effort to ban such weapons on school campuses.

The Colt military-style rifles, which cost about $1,000 each, are kept in safes when officers are on campus and will be used only in "extreme emergency cases" like the massacre in Newtown, Conn., Supt. Cali Olsen-Binks said.

The district purchased the rifles in October and received them in December, before the tragedy in Newtown, where a gunman killed 26 people — 20 of them children — at an elementary school. The shooting sparked debate on whether armed school guards could prevent these types of tragedies.

The purchase was not spurred by a specific event, Fontana Unified School District police Chief Billy Green said. The rifles are designed to increase shooting accuracy and provide the 14 officers with more effective power against assailants wearing body armor, Green said, adding that those capabilities are necessary for officers to stop a well-armed gunman.

"If you know of a better way to stop someone on campus that's killing children or staff members with a rifle, I'd like to hear it," he said. "I don't think it's best to send my people in to stop them with just handguns."

"I hope we would never have to use it," Green said. "But if we do, I'd like them to be prepared."

Several other school districts have similar weapons but policies differ on whether they are brought on campus or left in patrol car trunks or administration buildings.

Fontana school police bought the guns for about $14,000, which fell below the threshold that requires school board approval. School board members were not informed until after the purchase.

Board member Leticia Garcia said the police chief and superintendent should have alerted the five-member board and held a public hearing on the issue. She said arming officers with such weapons is a policy matter and should have been decided by the entire school district community, especially in light of the ongoing debate around the country.

Garcia, whose son attends Fontana High School, said she is working with local state legislators to draft a bill that would keep school police departments from taking these types of weapons onto campuses.

"We're turning our schools into a militarized zone," she said.

But the Fontana school superintendent said she believes it's a necessary evil to have the guns on campus to keep the 40,000-plus students and staff members safe. Officers have gone through training for the weapons, Olsen-Binks said.

"It balances providing that community-oriented openness at schools without compromising any kind of security for students and employees," she said.

Although she stopped short of saying the matter should have been put before the board, Olsen-Binks said doing so might have helped ease concerns.

"Having an opportunity for more community discussion is always a good thing," she said.

The rifles are kept either in the trunk of the police officer's vehicle or in a safe on campus.

Still, Garcia worries that bringing such a weapon on campus could lead to it falling into the wrong hands. An officer could be overtaken or someone could gain access to the safe, she said.

"Teenagers can get creative," Garcia said.

Green, however, dismissed that concern as unrealistic.

The Los Angeles Unified School District's police department has issued "patrol rifles" to officers on an as-needed basis, the district said in a statement. The department does not disclose the number of rifles given to officers.

Most San Diego Unified School District police officers have AR-15 rifles, Lt. Joe Florentino said. But the department did not buy the weapons; rather, officers were allowed to purchase their own — which many did, he said.

The rifles are kept in the trunk of the officer's vehicle and are not brought into school buildings. Although there is no policy yet, bringing the rifles into buildings is something the department is looking at, Florentino said.

"From a safety standpoint, we have police officers that want the weapons close by," he said. "If we keep them in the vehicle trunk, they would have to run to the car and grab it if they need it."

stephen.ceasar@latimes.com

Government rulers protect themselves from us serfs!!!

Elgin puts safety — of its City Council — first

Elgin puts safety — of its City Council — first

Bulletproof dais and individual panic buttons part of $75,000 package

By Kate Thayer and John Keilman, Chicago Tribune reporters

9:53 p.m. CST, January 23, 2013

The streets of Elgin are as safe as they've been in 40 years, but government leaders aren't taking any chances when it comes to City Hall.

The City Council voted unanimously late Wednesday to spend nearly $75,000 to bolster security as part of a remodeling of the 45-year-old building. The new features will include a staffed metal detector at the entrance, a bulletproof dais and panic buttons in the council chamber and several new surveillance cameras.

City officials said no specific threat was behind the planned changes. It simply made sense to beef up security during the remodeling, they said, especially because the council chamber also serves as a branch of the Kane County court.

"Most people who walk into a government building, they expect to be on camera somewhere, they expect to be protected," said Councilman John Prigge. "In this world we are surrounded by video cameras. We are a normally high-tech world. In the council chambers, it's fair to say we're not."

Strong security measures have long been in place in courthouses, police headquarters and federal buildings, but city halls and school boards have remained relatively open. Across the country, though, that's starting to change as well-publicized acts of violence convince elected officials that it's time to turn their buildings into hard targets.

They're installing metal detectors, having police officers stand guard during public meetings and, in some cases, adding features to their meeting rooms meant to protect officials from gunfire.

Albuquerque, N.M., is one of numerous cities that have lined their meeting room daises with bulletproof material, providing a chance for City Council members to duck out of harm's way should a shooting break out. The Board of Supervisors of Santa Clara County, Calif., spent $77,000 to create what the local media referred to as a "panic room" behind its meeting chamber. (A county spokeswoman described it as a reinforced conference room, without offering details.)

Officials with Bay District Schools in Panama City, Fla., decided to add a bulletproof dais and an armed sheriff's deputy after a disturbed man showed up at 2010 board meeting with a gun. He fired several times at Superintendent Bill Husfelt and several board members as they dropped behind their plywood dais, missing them, before being shot by the district's security chief and taking his own life.

"I feel safer now than I did before, but I think it's a mental thing we did mainly for our employees," Husfelt said.

Barbara A. Nadel, a New York architect who writes frequently about building security, said new features alone aren't enough to ensure safety in public buildings. She cited a 2003 incident in New York City in which a gunman evaded a metal detector by entering City Hall with a councilman who didn't have to pass through security.

The gunman, a political opponent of the councilman, shot him dead in the council chamber before being killed by a police officer.

"We can put in all kinds of bells and whistles, but if people aren't following policies and procedures, security can be breached," Nadel said.

The security changes at Elgin's City Hall come as the growing suburb — its population is now about 109,000 — is poised to add two seats to its City Council after the April municipal election. The council now has six seats, plus the mayor.

City officials said the expanding council prompted a remodeling plan, budgeted at $374,000, and security quickly became part of the discussion. Mayor David Kaptain said last month's mass school shooting in Newtown, Conn., did not affect the city's plan, which had been under discussion for more than a year.

Although police recently reported that Elgin's crime is at a 40-year low, the city best known for its Grand Victoria Casino has had its share of violence compared with other suburbs. City Council meetings often draw a crowd, and sometimes a heated discussion.

City Hall has kept a metal detector at the entrance to the council chambers, but visitors have only had to pass through it when the room hosts satellite sessions for the Kane County court. It hasn't been used for council meetings, but the city now plans to put it at the building's front entrance so all visitors are screened.

As for bulletproofing, the council chamber's dais already has a single panel that protects the spot where the judge (or mayor) sits. The city's plan calls for outfitting the entire dais with similar material.

City Manager Sean Stegall said Elgin tried to strike a balance between security and open government; that's why no one considered topping the dais with bulletproof glass, he said.

But he added that installing more bulletproof panels is a wise precaution should anyone get past the metal detector with a weapon. Council members would be the likely target in such a scenario, he said.

Other features to be added include panic buttons for each council member that, when pressed, would alert a police dispatcher to trouble. City Hall also will get new security cameras in the council chamber, the lobby and stairwells.

The city also plans to upgrade its audiovisual equipment and audience seating. Stegall said that is meant to make for better viewing of council meetings, whether in person or via the local cable TV access channel.

kthayer@tribune.com jkeilman@tribune.com

Phoenix, Mesa, Tempe and Chandler Mayors are gun grabbers????

Source

Southeast Valley mayors cautiously tuned to debate on guns

By Maria Polletta The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Jan 25, 2013 8:50 AM

Mesa Mayor Scott Smith, a former National Rifle Association member and a gun owner for most of his life, took safety classes from the NRA as a youngster and later put his children through the same program.

Chandler Mayor Jay Tibshraeny is not and has never been a member of the NRA.

Though their personal histories with guns differ, all Southeast Valley mayors have adopted a measured approach when it comes to the public gun debate sparked in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., school shooting. They say they’re following the federal conversation closely, offering starting-point suggestions in the meantime rather than definitive solutions.

Most have held off on membership in gun-control organizations. Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton was the only Valley mayor in the Mayors Against Illegal Guns coalition, for example, until Tempe Mayor Mark Mitchell recently joined.

“There’s just a lot of dialogue right now, and it’s hard to bring it all together,” said Gilbert Mayor John Lewis, who is not a member of the NRA.

Lewis said he prefers to wait and weigh in on specific legislation rather than sign on to efforts like the mayors’ initiative or other groups.

Last year, for example, Lewis said he opposed a bill that would have allowed guns on university campuses and used his connections at the state level to voice his opinion.

“I think that’s the approach I’ll take, as the ideas and thoughts are starting to come more on the basis of what the proposals are,” he said.

Smith said he refuses to “jump on the gun-control bandwagon,” lamenting the U.S. tendency to seek knee-jerk solutions after major crises such as 9/11 and recent financial scandals.

“To me, it’s not a sound-bite issue,” he said.

Smith believes that there must be some way to keep guns out of the hands of the wrong people and has said he is open to the idea of closing background-check loopholes. He says there should be stern punishments for what he called poor stewardship with guns, such as allowing them to fall into the hands of children.

Smith also said the law has a legitimate role in forbidding the willful sale of guns to criminals and in forbidding “straw buyers” who would channel weapons inappropriately.

But overall, he said, gun violence is “a complex issue that involves a culture of violence, involves society, involves mental health.” In particular, he says that the country is devoting inadequate resources to mental-health issues.

“I believe we should strengthen our gun laws,” Smith said.

But whatever is done must be within the context of the Second Amendment, which the courts have ruled confers the right to individual gun ownership.

“I don’t think someone who is an honest person who owns guns legally should have their rights infringed,” he said.

Tibshraeny said he believes in Second Amendment rights, “but I also believe in making sure our citizens can live a full and productive and safe life.”

“We need a legitimate debate without people being so entrenched that you can’t have any meaningful dialogue,” he said. “That’s what I’m going to be looking for as we move forward.”

Tibshraeny echoed Smith’s mental-health-related concerns, saying, “A lot of these folks that have done this (mass shootings) are seriously mentally disturbed” and mental-health-care funding is “a factor that I look at on this issue.”

“At the state level, better reporting of mental-health records would be good,” he said. “We’ve got folks that are unstable and applying to get guns. A lot of their health history is on record, and it needs to go into a database that is checked as they’re applying.”

Tibshraeny said Chandler has been focusing on doing what it can at the local level, with public-safety officials sitting down to talk safety policies and procedures with Chandler schools.

Mitchell also has experience with local efforts to combat gun violence, an issue thrust into the Tempe spotlight last year when a March shooting at a club during a rap concert injured 16 people.

“First and foremost, for any elected official, the public safety and well-being of our residents is at the forefront,” he said. “Whether it’s working with the police chief and Police Department to make sure they have the necessary resources, it’s important that we work together collaboratively for the public safety of children as well as adults.”

Mitchell, who is not an NRA member, said he considered joining the Mayors Against Illegal Guns coalition a responsible decision, but he declined to say whether he would support additional gun restrictions, including an assault-weapons ban.

He said he would need to further research a sweeping package of federal gun-control measures proposed by President Barack Obama, as well as similar policies to limit gun violence recently approved in New York, before making a decision.

“That’s something I need to look at,” he said.

Republic reporters Gary Nelson, Parker Leavitt, Dianna Náñez and Erin Kelly contributed to this article.

Miranda rights in Mexico???

Fifth Amendment rights in Mexico???

Of course the cops always tell me I don't have any stinking 5th Amendment rights and make all kinds of nasty evil threats on what will happen to me if I don't answer their questions.

I suspect the Mexican cops will behave the same way.

Believe it or not the Mexican Constitution has it's own version of the 5th Amendment which is Article 20 and allows people charged to remain silent.

Artículo 20

II. No podrá ser compelido a declarar en su contra, por lo cual queda rigurosamente prohibida toda incomunicación o cualquier otro medio que tienda a aquel objeto;

Second Amendment rights in Mexico???

Artículo 10

Los habitantes de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos tienen derecho a poseer armas en su domicilio, para su seguridad y legitima defensa, con excepción de las prohibidas por la ley federal y de las reservadas para el uso exclusivo del Ejército, Armada, Fuerza Aérea y Guardia Nacional. La ley federal determinara los casos, condiciones, requisitos y lugares en que se podrán autorizar a los habitantes la portaron de armas.

Mexican suspects to get Miranda-style warnings

Associated Press Sat Jan 26, 2013 2:02 PM

MEXICO CITY — Reading suspects their rights is something most Mexicans have only seen in American movies.

But authorities say they are starting a program to require police to read suspects their rights or risk letting them go free.

The assistant secretary of the interior says all federal police will have to advise detainees of their right to remain silent and the right to a lawyer.

Eduardo Sanchez says the warning will also advise foreigners they have a right to consular assistance and Indians that they can have translators.

The Interior Department said Friday that suspects could appeal to win their release if they are not read their rights, but that would not necessarily void the charges against them.

The United States has required so-called “Miranda Rights” warnings since the 1960s. [Yea, but the police routinely ignore your Miranda Rights. About the only place you will ever see a cop read somebody their Miranda Rights is on a TV show. As I said at the beginning I always tell the cops I am taking the 5th and refusing to answer their questions. And they have always threaten to harm me if I didn't answer their questions.]

More government money won’t solve school safety problem

Source

Patterson: More government money won’t solve school safety problem

Posted: Saturday, January 26, 2013 10:03 am

Guest Commentary by Tom Patterson

In American political culture, we prove we’re concerned about something by spending money on it. Americans are obviously concerned about protecting schools from more mass shootings after Newtown. But in this case, the best response may not be the most expensive.

It’s not clear why Newtown would be seen as a mandate to devote more resources to crime prevention. Yes, it was an horrific act. Our hearts went out to the young victims and their families.

Yet violent crimes have fallen in America over past years. There has been no uptick in gun violence and the incidence of mass shootings is stable. Still, the debate over guns and school safety has dominated our political discourse for over a month now.

As always, the assumption is that it’s going to take some money. “The responsibility of the Legislature is now clear: fully fund school safety” said one public commentator, evidently speaking for many.

But more government money doesn’t always solve problems. Sure, we went to the moon, we discovered how to treat AIDS and we ameliorated the misery of old age. Yet we spent trillions trying to eradicate poverty and all we have to show for it is a permanent, dependent underclass. We shoveled money by the boatload into dysfunctional schools but achievement levels haven’t budged. We’ve pumped billions into politically popular green energy schemes that seem no closerthan before to supplying real energy needs.

Have we learned from our misspending? State Senate Minority Leader Chad Campbell has stepped up with a plan to spend a lot more on school safety. His $261 million Arizona Safer Schools, Safer Communities Plan would include more money for “school resource officers”, more money for video equipment and security gates and even more money for counselors.

That seems like a lot to prevent school mass shootings, since statistically they don’t exist in our state. A more sensible solution would be to permit each principal to authorize one (or two) school employees with a concealed carry permit to bring firearms to school, a variation on AG Tom Horne’s idea. They would be trained, of course, and anonymous.

It’s at least arguable that this plan would be a more effective deterrent to mass shooters then an identifiable guard. Shooters know that once they have neutralized the guard, they are effectively back in their desired “gun free zone”. But an unidentified, invisible heat packer or two would be harder to account for.

The cost would be modest. Concealed carry permit holders would probably provide this public service for minimal reimbursement, since most of the weapons carriers would never bring out their firearm in the course of a career.

Ironically some of the criticism of Horne’s idea is that it doesn’t cost enough money. “We can’t protect our children on the cheap”, you know.

Others argue that it’s too risky to add more guns to our school environment. But the record of concealed carry holders has been remarkably positive. They tend to be stable individuals with strong feelings about using guns responsibly. They virtually never use their weapons in road rage situations or nonviolent personal disputes. On the contrary, the strong statistical evidence is that crime rates fall when there are more carriers around.

But can armed citizens stop mass shootings? Like most questions around gun-control, both sides claim mounds of statistics support their position. Ed Schultz of MSNBC recently reported that “we’ve never had a civilian stop a mass shooting”.

It’s a little more complicated. His definition of a mass shooting is four or more deaths. But there are scores of incidents where armed citizens have stopped shootings in theaters, restaurants, churches and schools before four people were killed – two in last December alone. The take-home is that our children would be safer with a trained, armed adult on the premises.

Obviously, we want our to be as safe as possible at school, but our efforts to prevent mass shootings should be appropriate and, yes, cost-effective. We’re in a lot of trouble now from our habit of spending public money as if it were limitless. It just doesn’t make sense to spend hundreds of millions so politicians can appear to be doing something.

• East Valley resident Tom Patterson (pattersontomc@cox.net) is a retired physician and former state senator.

Hitler & Mussolini were great guys????

Of course "It CAN happen here" and this article shows there are lots of people that still love Hitler and Mussolini and would love for it to happen here again.

Source

Berlusconi defends backing of Hitler

Associated Press Mon Jan 28, 2013 12:21 AM

ROME - Former Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi praised Benito Mussolini for “having done good” despite the Fascist dictator’s anti-Jewish laws, immediately provoking outrage as Europe on Sunday held Holocaust remembrances.

Berlusconi also defended Mussolini for allying himself with Hitler, saying he likely reasoned that it would be better to be on the winning side.

The media mogul, whose conservative forces are polling second in voter surveys ahead of next month’s parliamentary election, spoke to reporters on the sidelines of a ceremony in Milan to commemorate the Holocaust. In 1938, before the outbreak of World War II, Mussolini’s regime passed the so-called “racial laws,” barring Jews from Italy’s universities and many professions, among other bans. When Germany’s Nazi regime occupied Italy during the war, thousands from the tiny Italian Jewish community were deported to death camps.

“It is difficult now to put oneself in the shoes of who was making decisions back then,” Berlusconi said of Mussolini’s support for Hitler. “Certainly the (Italian) government then, fearing that German power would turn into a general victory, preferred to be allied with Hitler’s Germany rather than oppose it.”

Berlusconi added that “within this alliance came the imposition of the fight against, and extermination of, the Jews. Thus, the racial laws are the worst fault of Mussolini, who, in so many other aspects, did good.”

More than 7,000 Jews were deported under Mussolini’s regime, and nearly 6,000 were killed.

Outrage, along with a demand that Berlusconi be prosecuted for promoting Fascism, quickly followed his words.

“It is the height of revisionism to try to reinstate an Italian dictator who helped legitimize and prop up Hitler as a ‘reincarnated good guy,’” said Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which monitors anti-Semitic incidents worldwide. Berlusconi’s praise of Mussolini constitutes “an insult to the democratic conscience of Italy,” said Rosy Bindi, a center-left leader. “Only Berlusconi’s political cynicism, combined with the worst historic revisionism, could separate the shame of the racist laws from the Fascist dictatorship.”

Ex-cop, federal mole charged with extortion, selling guns to felons

Ex-cop, federal mole charged with extortion, selling guns to felons

By Annie Sweeney Tribune reporter

7:17 p.m. CST, January 28, 2013

A former Chicago police officer whose undercover work led to charges in separate public corruption probes was himself charged Monday with extorting a tow truck operator and selling firearms to a convicted felon.

Ali Haleem becomes the 11th Chicago police officer charged in a tow truck scandal in which officers steered business to drivers for kickbacks, federal prosecutors said

According to court records and sources, Haleem worked undercover after federal authorities confronted him about the extortion in 2008, secretly recording conversations. His cooperation led to charges against a onetime campaign treasurer for former state Sen. Ricky Hendon, and six others on charges they paid kickbacks in the hopes of securing thousands of dollars in federal grants. Hendon was not charged.

Haleem’s undercover work also resulted in charges against two tax analysts for the Cook County Board of Review who allegedly pocketed a $1,500 cash payoff after agreeing to reduce property tax assessments.

Court documents in both those public corruption investigations identified the cooperating witness as a Chicago police officer who had been arrested in July 2008 as part of a probe into public corruption and gun trafficking.

The charges on Monday against Haleem alleged that in addition to extorting the tow truck operator, he also sold three firearms to the driver, who was a convicted felon who could not legally purchase weapons. Haleem resigned last September from the Police Department.

asweeney@tribune.com

After gun crime, weapon history takes time to find

And of course you have to remember, just because something is illegal doesn't meant the police won't break the law and do it. In fact the police routinely commit crimes in the process of tying to find, arrest and convict criminals.

Source

After gun crime, weapon history takes time to find

By ALICIA A. CALDWELL | Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — In the fictional world of television police dramas, a few quick clicks on a computer lead investigators to the owner of a gun recovered at a bloody crime scene. Before the first commercial, the TV detectives are on the trail of the suspect.

Reality is a world away. There is no national database of guns. Not of who owns them, how many are sold annually or even how many exist.

Federal law bars the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from keeping track of guns. The only time the government can track the history of a gun, including its first buyer and seller, is after it's used in a crime. And though President Barack Obama and numerous Democratic lawmakers have called for new limits on what kinds of guns should be available to the public and urged stronger background checks in gun sales, there is no effort afoot to change the way the government keeps track — or doesn't — of where the country's guns are.

When police want to trace a gun, it's a decidedly low-tech process.

"It's not CSI and it's not a sophisticated computer system," said Charles J. Houser, who runs the ATF's National Tracing Center in Martinsburg, W. Va.

When police trace a gun, the search starts by sending all the information they have about the gun — including the manufacturer and model — to an office worker in a low-slung brick building just off the Appalachian Trial in rural West Virginia, about 90 miles northwest of Washington.

ATF officials first call the manufacturer, who reveals which wholesaler the company used. That may lead to a call to a second distributor before investigators can pinpoint the retail gun dealer who first sold the weapon. Gun dealers are required to keep a copy of federal forms that detail who buys what gun and a log for guns sold. They are required to share that information with the ATF if a gun turns up at a crime scene and authorities want it traced. Often, gun shops fax the paperwork to the ATF.

That's where the paper trail ends.

In about 30 percent of cases, one or all of those folks have gone out of business and ATF tracers are left to sort through potentially thousands of out-of-business records forwarded to the ATF and stored at the office building that more closely resembles a remote call center than a law enforcement operation.

The records are stored as digital pictures that can only be searched one image at a time. Two shifts of contractors spend their days taking staples out of papers, sorting through thousands of pages and scanning or taking pictures of the records.

"Those records come in all different shapes and forms. We have to digitally image them, we literally take a picture of it," Houser said. "We have had rolls of toilet paper or paper towels ... because they (dealers) did not like the requirement to keep records."

The tracing center receives about a million out-of-business records every month and Houser runs the center's sorting and imaging operations from 6 a.m. to midnight, five days a week. The images are stored on old-school microfilm reels or as digital images. But there's no way to search the records, other than to scroll through one picture of a page at a time.

"We are ... prohibited from amassing the records of active dealers," Houser said. "It means that if a dealer is in business he maintains his records."

Last year the center traced about 344,000 guns for 6,000 different law enforcement agencies. Houser has a success rate of about 90 percent, so long as enough information is provided. And he boasts that every successful trace provides at least one lead in a criminal case.

"It's a factory for the production of investigative leads," Houser said of the tracing center.

A 1968 overhaul of federal gun laws required licensed dealers to keep paper records of who buys what guns and gave ATF the authority to track the history of a gun if was used in a crime. But in the intervening decades, the National Rifle Association and other gun rights groups lobbied Congress to limit the government's ability to do much with what little information is collected, including keeping track on computers.

"They (lawmakers) feel that the act of amassing those records would in essence go a step toward creating an artificial registration system," Houser said.

What the ATF can do is give trace information to the law enforcement agency that asked for it and in some cases uses the data to help point them in the direction of other crimes.

Houser said the "manually intensive process" can take about five days for a routine trace. In some cases, completing the trace can mean sifting by hand through paperwork that hasn't yet been scanned.

In more urgent situations, including the immediate aftermath of a mass shooting in Connecticut last year, ATF agents run a trace within about 24 hours. Oftentimes, that involves sending agents to the gun dealer that first sold the weapon to quickly find the paperwork listing its original buyer.

Despite having access to millions of records about gun purchases from dealers that have gone out of business, the ATF isn't allowed to create a database of what guns were sold to whom and when.

ATF does keep tabs on how many guns are manufactured and shipped out of the country every year, but only gun makers and dealers know for sure how many are sold. There are also strict limits on what the agency can do with the gun trace information. And that's just the way the gun lobby and Congress want it.

Various laws and spending bills have specifically barred the ATF from creating a national database of guns and gun owners. And due to the efforts of lawmakers, including former Rep. Todd Tiahrt of Kansas, ATF agents who trace the history of a gun can't share that information with anyone but the police agency that asked for it.

As it stands now, local law enforcement doesn't have access to regional data about gun traces. So if the police commissioner in New York City is trying to figure out where the guns are coming into the city from — whether they're going to New Jersey first or upstate New York, for example — that data is not available because of an amendment introduced by Tiahrt, said Mike Bouchard, a former ATF assistant director for Field Operations. ATF can tell police where most crime guns are traced from, by state. But it does not release information on gun shops or purchasers.

If police chiefs want that, they have to reach out to individual chiefs at other departments and ask.

"It's pretty ridiculous when we have an automated system that will do it for the chiefs," Bouchard said.

Tiahrt said he first proposed limiting access to trace data to make sure the information wasn't available under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. It was an issue of keeping undercover police, informants and innocent gun buyers and sellers out of the public eye, Tiahrt said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.

Knowing who legally buys guns won't prevent gun violence, the former Republican congressman said.

"We're chasing these wisps of smoke that won't solve the problem," Tiahrt said. "Get to the root cause. Put out the fire. Deal with mental illness. Deal with situational awareness."

Houser said he would prefer the tracing center's operations to be expanded and a center built that would use some technologies to help more easily trace a gun. But until the law changes, his staff will continue removing staples, turning pages right-side-up and taking digital pictures of records.

"Our job is to enforce the laws that are passed to us," Houser said. "What they give us is what we are required to work with."

___

Associated Press reporter Eileen Sullivan contributed to this report.

___

Follow Alicia A. Caldwell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/acaldwellap

Papers please!!! This isn't Nazi Germany, but Peoria, Arizona!!!

It is illegal for the police to stop people with out having "probable cause" and force them to prove they are not a criminals.

It is a violation of the 5th Amendment for the police to force someone to give then identification.

And of course this isn't Nazi police thugs rounding up Jews, but rather Peoria, Arizona police thugs rounding up Mexicans.

Of course in this case the Police in Peoria, Arizona said f*ck the law we are going to do this because it makes it easier for us to catch criminals. Government tyrants always use the "public safety" card of "catching criminals" to flush our Constitutional rights down the toilet.

And of course in the case the Peoria Police are the criminals.

Source

Peoria police set up traffic stop, ask for licenses

By Domenico Nicosia The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Tue Jan 29, 2013 11:11 PM

Peoria police officials constructed a vehicle stop in Peoria on Tuesday evening to check commercial vehicles and ask for licenses and registration for all non-commercial vehicles.

Amanda Jacinto, a public-information officer with Peoria police, said the stop involving multiple agencies was set up near Grand and Peoria avenues. But the purpose of the operation was unclear.

Prominent Latina activist Lydia Guzman, who went to the stop, said that officers were funneling traffic in from side streets. She believed the traffic stop may have been set up to get people driving back to the Valley from Las Vegas, where President Barack Obama spoke about immigration reform that could lead to the legalization of millions of undocumented immigrants.

Guzman said many young people attended the speech in Las Vegas.

“This was just a way to antagonize the activist groups,” she said.

Jacinto didn’t specify the reasons. When asked about what officers were going to do with any drivers without licenses, she said that officers are required to contact federal immigration agents.

Kyrsten Sinema - U.S. Representative, Arizona, District 9

If you are a police officer, a fan of the drug war, hate medical marijuana, love taxes, or hate guns you will probably love Kyrsten Sinema.

Kyrsten Sinema - U.S. Representative, Arizona, District 9

Source

Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.)

U.S. Representative, Arizona, District 9 (Since 2013)

Kyrsten Sinema was born in Tucson, Ariz., and has lived in Phoenix since 1995. She attended Arizona State University where she earned a master's in social work, a law degree and a doctorate in justice studies. She practices criminal defense law in Phoenix and also is an adjunct professor at ASU's School of Social Work. Sinema served three terms as a representative in the Arizona Legislature and was the assistant leader to the House Democratic Caucus from 2009 to 2010. She was elected to the state Senate in 2010 but resigned in early 2012 to seek a seat in Arizona's newly created 9th Congressional District. Sinema ran unsuccessfully for the state Legislature in 2002 and for the Phoenix City Council in 2001, both times as an independent candidate. She is single.

Birthday: July 12, 1976

Hometown: Tucson, AZ, United States

Alma Mater: JD from Arizona State University; MA from Arizona State University; PhD from Arizona State University

Web site: http://kyrstensinema.com/

Focus on Mental Health Laws to Curb Violence Is Unfair

Politicians railroad the mentally ill to prove they are tough on crime???

I suspect their main goal is to pass ANY law which they can use to tell voters they are tough on crime.

Of course it doesn't matter if the law works or not. All that matters is that they can say the voted for the law and use it to get reelected.

And of course the article points out that the mentally ill folks don't have a strong lobby to protect themselves against bad laws like the NRA protects gun owners against bad laws.

I suspect this is why we have all the insane, irrational and unconstitutional drug laws. Politicians vote for them to prove they are tough on crime, mainly as a line to help them get reelected.

And of course there is there really isn't a "drug users lobby" group to protect people against these insane and unconstitutional drug laws.

Source

Focus on Mental Health Laws to Curb Violence Is Unfair, Some Say

By ERICA GOODE and JACK HEALY

Published: January 31, 2013 35 Comments

In their fervor to take action against gun violence after the shooting in Newtown, Conn., a growing number of state and national politicians are promoting a focus on mental illness as a way to help prevent further killings.

Legislation to revise existing mental health laws is under consideration in at least a half-dozen states, including Colorado, Oregon and Ohio. A New York bill requiring mental health practitioners to warn the authorities about potentially dangerous patients was signed into law on Jan. 15. In Washington, President Obama has ordered “a national dialogue” on mental health, and a variety of bills addressing mental health issues are percolating on Capitol Hill.

But critics say that this focus unfairly singles out people with serious mental illness, who studies indicate are involved in only about 4 percent of violent crimes and are 11 or more times as likely than the general population to be the victims of violent crime.

And many proposals — they include strengthening mental health services, lowering the threshold for involuntary commitment and increasing requirements for reporting worrisome patients to the authorities — are rushed in execution and unlikely to repair a broken mental health system, some experts say.

“Good intentions without thought make for bad laws, and I think we have a risk of that,” said J. Reid Meloy, a forensic psychologist and clinical professor at the University of California, San Diego, who has studied rampage killers.

Moreover, the push for additional mental health laws is often driven by political expediency, some critics say. Mental health proposals draw support from both Democrats and Republicans, in part because, unlike bans on semiautomatic weapons or high-capacity magazines — like the one proposed in the Senate last week — they do not involve confrontation with gun rights groups like the National Rifle Association.

“The N.R.A. is far more formidable as a political foe than the advocacy groups for the mentally ill,” said Dr. Jeffrey A. Lieberman, chairman of psychiatry at Columbia University and president-elect of the American Psychiatric Association.

Indeed, the N.R.A. itself, in response to the massacre in Newtown, argued that mental illness, and not the guns themselves, was at the root of recent shooting sprees. The group called for a national registry of people with mental illness — an alternative that legal experts agree would raise at least as many constitutional alarms as the banning of gun ownership.

For mental health groups, the proposals under consideration are tantalizing: By increasing services for those with mental illness, they raise the possibility of restoring some of the billions of dollars cut from mental health programs in recent years as budgets tightened in the financial downturn. The measures also hold out hope for improvement of a mental health system that many experts say is fragmented and drastically inadequate. And some proposals — those to revise commitment laws, for example — have the support of some mental health organizations.

But some mental health and legal experts say that politicians’ efforts might be better spent making the process of involuntary psychiatric commitment — and the criteria for restricting firearms access once someone has been forcibly committed — consistent from state to state. And some proposals have caused concern, raising questions about doctor-patient confidentiality, the rights of people with psychiatric disabilities and the integrity of clinical judgment.

Especially troublesome to some mental health advocates are provisions like New York’s, which expand the duty of practitioners to report worrisome patients — a model likely to be emulated by other states. New York’s law, part of a comprehensive package to address gun violence, requires reporting to the local authorities any patient “likely to engage in conduct that would result in serious harm to self or others.” Law enforcement officials would then be authorized to confiscate any firearm owned by such a patient.

John Monahan, a psychologist and professor of law at the University of Virginia, said that such laws are often superfluous.

Although many mental health practitioners mistakenly believe that federal laws like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act forbid them to disclose information about patients, such statutes already include exceptions that permit clinicians to give information to the authorities when a patient presents a threat to others, Dr. Monahan said. National Twitter Logo.

Most states also have laws requiring mental health professionals to notify the authorities and any intended victim when a patient makes a direct threat.

New York’s provision, Dr. Monahan said, differs from virtually every other state’s laws in allowing guns to be taken not only from those committed against their will but also from patients who enter treatment voluntarily.

“The devil is in the details,” he said of New York’s new law. “The two fears are that people will be deterred from seeking treatment that they need or that, once they are in treatment, they will clam up and not talk about violence.”

Most mental health experts agree that the link between mental illness and violence is not imaginary. Studies suggest that people with an untreated severe mental illness are more likely to be violent, especially when drug or alcohol abuse is involved. And many rampage killers have some type of serious mental disorder: James E. Holmes, accused of opening fire in a movie theater in Colorado in July, was seeing a psychiatrist who became alarmed about his behavior; Jared L. Loughner, who killed 6 people and injured 13 others in Arizona, including former Representative Gabrielle Giffords, was severely mentally ill.

But such killings account for only a tiny fraction of gun homicides in the United States, mental health experts point out. Besides the research indicating that little violent crime can be linked to perpetrators who are mentally ill, studies show that those crimes are far more likely to involve battery — punching another person, for example — than weapons, which account for only 2 percent of violent crimes committed by the mentally ill.

Because of this, some criminal justice experts say it makes more sense to pass laws addressing behavior, rather than a diagnosis of mental illness. In Indiana, for example, firearms can be confiscated from people deemed a potential threat, whether or not they have a mental illness.

Proposals in a number of states seek to redefine the threshold for involuntary commitment to psychiatric treatment. But in doing so, they have reignited a longstanding debate about the role of forced treatment.

In Ohio, lawmakers are expected to consider a proposal to increase access to outpatient commitment instead of hospitalization, while also doing away with language requiring people with mental illness to show a “grave and imminent risk to substantial rights” of themselves or others before they can be committed.

In Colorado, where legislators are undertaking a broad overhaul of the state’s mental health system proposed by Gov. John W. Hickenlooper, a Democrat, the proposal also includes changing the criteria for involuntary commitment.

Under the state’s current laws, caregivers can place patients on 72-hour mental health holds only if they are believed to pose an “imminent danger” to themselves or others. The governor’s plan would allow caregivers to commit people if they believe there is a “substantial probability” of harm. Virginia and some other states already have standards based on “substantial probability.”

But some mental health advocates are wary about lowering the threshold. “The evidence that we have tells us that that’s not an appropriate solution, it’s not an effective solution to this problem,” said Jennifer Mathis, deputy legal director at the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, an advocacy group for people with psychiatric disabilities.

But Cheryl Miller — whose 21-year-old son, Kyle, was shot by the police last June after he pointed a toy gun at them — believes that a revised law might have saved her child.

Two weeks before Kyle was killed she took him to an emergency mental health clinic to get him hospitalized. But the staff refused to commit him.

“I said, ‘I don’t want to take him home; he needs to go to the hospital,’ ” Ms. Miller said. “They didn’t think so. It goes back to, was he an imminent danger to himself? And it was ‘No.’ ”

Italy court convicts 3 Americans in CIA kidnapping

This was also ordered by Obama or perhaps Bush, who is the same Presidents who wants to take our guns away from us and tell us the Second Amendment will never be needed because it is impossible for the American government to become tyrannical enough that it needs to be overthrown by the people???

Source

Italy court convicts 3 Americans in CIA kidnapping

Associated Press Fri Feb 1, 2013 7:53 AM

MILAN — A Milan appeals court has convicted a former CIA station chief and two other Americans in absentia in the 2003 rendition kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric.

The court on Friday sentenced former CIA station chief Jeff Castelli to seven years, and handed sentences of six years each to Americans Betnie Medero and Ralph Russomando.

All three had been acquitted in the first trial due to diplomatic immunity.

Italy’s highest court last year upheld the convictions of 23 more Americans in absentia in the abduction of an Egyptian terror suspect from a Milan street as part of the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program.

The appeals process for Castelli and the other two was separated for technical reasons.

70 percent of Phoenix's general fund is spent on the police!!!!

"70 percent of the city’s general fund is spent on public safety"

Councilman Michael Nowakowski

I think when you consider the total budget as opposed to the general budget the figure is about 40 percent of it. Most city fire departments grab the next 20 percent of the total budget, with all other departments combined grabbing splitting up the final 40 percent of the budget up.

Now considering that two thirds of the people in prison are there for victimless drug war crimes, you could easily tell the police to stop arresting pot smokers and not affect public safety at all!!!!

And of fire a whole bunch of unneeded cops at the same time and save a whole bunch of money.

Of course the war on drugs is a jobs program for cops and the police union would hate that!!!! Even if those jobs are 100 percent unneeded the police union is not going to let them go without a fight!!!

Repeal the stinking sale tax. We don't need those cops!!!

Source

Food-tax repeal may hit Phoenix hard

By Dustin Gardiner The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Feb 1, 2013 10:38 AM

As political pressure builds to repeal Phoenix’s food tax, city officials have outlined several financial obstacles that could complicate such a move.

City Manager David Cavazos this week sent a memo to the mayor and City Council listing major budget constraints to ending the tax, including concerns that it could affect the city’s perfect credit rating or result in a loss of revenue needed to help support police and fire services. [screw the credit rating, I want lower taxes. and it certainly wouldn't hurt to fire a bunch of cops who mainly arrest people for victimless drug war crimes]

The update comes as some council members have renewed calls to repeal the tax this spring, roughly two years before its 2015 sunset. The 2 percent tax on residents’ grocery bills is shaping up to be a contentious point of spring budget negotiations.

Mayor Greg Stanton, who pledged during his 2011 campaign to repeal the tax by April, has been a focus of much of the debate. He has yet to take a definitive position on the issue and could provide the crucial fifth vote needed to abolish the tax early.

“We still have significant challenges,” Stanton said, describing the city’s murky budget picture. “The economy is not bouncing back as quickly as people had hoped.”

He said Cavazos’ memo points out the “stark circumstances” Phoenix faces as it weighs the food-tax repeal: revenue for the current budget year is less than projected. Stanton said he hopes the city can still eliminate or reduce the tax but that he plans to review detailed spending-cut options before making a decision.

Two of the council’s more fiscally conservative members, Jim Waring and Sal DiCiccio, said the city could immediately repeal the tax without affecting public-safety services. DiCiccio has questioned why the city spent tens of millions of dollars on employee raises and bonuses these past few years, costs that are fixed as part of the city’s contracts with unions.

“Delaying the promised repeal of the food tax is the kind of tactic that hurts the middle class and working families,” DiCiccio said. “If the food tax is to be removed by April 1, the public needs time to consider the details of how that will be done without affecting public safety, as promised.”

Council members created the emergency food tax in February 2010 as Phoenix was facing an unprecedented $277 million general-fund shortfall. The tax was proposed as a way to prevent large layoffs of public-safety personnel and keep libraries and senior centers open. [really the expense of libraries and senior centers is insignificant compare to the cops of paying police officers who account for 70 percent of Phoenix's budget] So far, it has generated about $127 million in additional revenue, or about $50million per year.

Although some council members hoped to remove the tax by April, Cavazos’ proposed time line makes that appear unlikely. He plans to present options for cutting the tax on March 26, along with the rest of his trial budget for the next fiscal year, which starts July 1. The council would have months to make a final decision.

City officials said two primary challenges will be maintaining the city’s AAA bond rating and continuing to provide support for public safety.

Phoenix has relied on money from the food tax to help pay for about $30 million in general-fund expenses per year, most of which goes toward public safety and court expenses. On top of that, $8 million goes to help support specialty police and fire funds that have run a negative balance.

“Because 70 percent of the city’s general fund is spent on public safety, I am concerned about how it would be affected by a possible repeal of the tax,” Councilman Michael Nowakowski said recently. “Phoenix’s leaders must consider that and all other consequences in the process.”

A loss in revenue from the food tax could also hurt how credit-rating agencies evaluate Phoenix, Cavazos said. A lower credit rating would require the city to pay higher interest rates when it borrowed money.

Cavazos and city budget staff will spend the next several weeks outlining the council’s specific options, including a budget with recommended service levels and another with cuts to compensate for the loss of the food tax. He said both options will be shown to residents at numerous public meetings.

“I think it’s pretty clear that we have lots of constraints, ” Cavazos said. “We have to work very carefully with our departments and listen very carefully to the public before we can fully identify what those consequences are.”

Gun Grabbing Phoenix Area Mayors

Most of them pretend to support the Second Amendment, and say "I support the 2nd Amendment but ... " and of course the but is followed by a whole bunch of reasons that show they don't support the Second Amendment.

Remember their names, and when you vote throw these tyrants who want to flush the Second Amendment down the toilet out of office.

Source

Valley mayors weigh in on gun reform

By Maria Polletta The Republic | azcentral.com Sat Feb 2, 2013 11:23 PM

Valley mayors have joined the national chorus of officials saying when it comes to gun violence, something has to give.

But there’s no consensus on what that something is.

The mayors, who range from avid hunters and National Rifle Association members to those who have never owned a firearm, have suggested tentative solutions as diverse as their backgrounds.

Some have hesitated to offer any sort of directive, and most have held off on membership in gun-control organizations. Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton for a time was the only Valley representative in the Mayors Against Illegal Guns coalition until Tempe Mayor Mark Mitchell recently joined.

“There’s just a lot of dialogue right now, and it’s hard to bring it all together,” said Gilbert Mayor John Lewis.

Lewis said he prefers to wait and weigh in on specific legislation, such as a 2012 guns-on-campus bill he opposed, rather than sign on to more sweeping efforts.

Mesa Mayor Scott Smith, a former NRA member and a gun owner for most of his life, also worries that acting too quickly on the gun issue would lead to an inadequate or ineffective solution. He said he refuses to “jump on the gun-control bandwagon,” lamenting what he described as the U.S. tendency to seek knee-jerk solutions after major crises.

Still, Smith and other mayors have said they’d support or at least be open to certain measures to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people, in effect limiting firearm privileges to responsible citizens.

Glendale Mayor Jerry Weiers, a hunter, NRA member and gun-safety instructor, said he supports efforts to curtail the spread of illegal guns, for instance. “If it’s an illegal gun, it’s an illegal gun,” he said. “Why wouldn’t everybody support trying to stop (that)?”

Smith also believes the law has a legitimate role in forbidding the willful sale of guns to criminals and forbidding “straw buyers” who would channel weapons inappropriately.

Other mayors, such as Phoenix’s Stanton, have looked to the types and grades of weapons people are allowed to own. President Barack Obama recently unveiled a broad set of proposed gun-control measures that include bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.

Stanton has described requiring universal background checks as a “good, commonsense approach.” Checks are not done now on users who purchase firearms at gun shows and through other private sales.

Glendale’s Weiers and Peoria Mayor Bob Barrett have said training is a key component of responsible gun ownership. Weiers argued that gun-safety classes for youngsters make for “better citizens and … less problems.”

Barrett, a gun owner, has opposed legislation to allow guns in schools and city buildings and said training should be required to carry a concealed weapon.

“When you are under stress, when you are under fire … you’re more likely, A, to miss or, B, to hit somebody else,” Barrett said. “The idea of people walking around with concealed weapons and no training is not a good thing.”

Barrett contends that any initiative focused solely on how and which guns are obtained will help little if the country does not start placing a greater emphasis on mental-health care. Changing that, he said, would go further than trying to eliminate extended magazines and military-style weapons.

“What I think we need to do as a society is make mental-health treatment regarded the same way physical-health treatment is,” he said. “There is a sense of shame connected with getting counseling and getting help.”

Chandler Mayor Jay Tibshraeny said that “a lot of these folks that have done this (mass shootings) are seriously mentally disturbed” and mental-health-care funding is a “a factor that I look at on this issue.”

“At the state level, better reporting of mental-health records would be good,” Tibshraeny said. “We’ve got folks that are unstable and applying to get guns. A lot of their health history is on record, and it needs to go into a database that is checked as they’re applying.”

All Valley mayors said they believe a balance between protective measures and Second Amendment rights is vital as the gun-control debate moves forward, especially in Arizona, with the state’s historically pro-gun culture.

“I am a gun owner and a supporter of the Second Amendment,” said Surprise Mayor Sharon Wolcott. “But my right to own and carry a gun does not trump your right to live in a safe and civil society.”

Republic reporters Gary Nelson, Parker Leavitt, Dianna Náñez, Allie Seligman, John Yantis,Jen Kuhney and Paul Giblin contributed to this article.

Mayor's for Knife Control???

How many of these mayors think you should have to pass a Brady Bill test before buying really a sharp steak or cooking knife.

Or perhaps a $200 tax on the purchase of any weapons grade knives which would include steak and cooking knifes.

Or have a two week waiting period before picking up the steak or cooking knife you just purchased.

Or banning minors from using anything but dull table knives.

Source

Stabbed Scottsdale bouncer dies, played ASU football

By By D.S. Woodfill and Paola Boivin Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Sat Feb 2, 2013 10:24 PM

Those who remembered a former Arizona State University football player who died a week after he was stabbed at Scottsdale nightclub described their friend as a gentle giant.

Tyrice Thompson, a former tight end and wide receiver, passed away surrounded by friends and family at about 8:30 a.m. Saturday at Scottsdale Healthcare Osborn Medical Center.

Thompson, a 27-year-old former tight end and receiver for ASU from 2003 to 2007, was working as a bouncer at Martini Ranch in Scottsdale at 1 a.m. on Jan. 27 when a scuffle started between patrons, police said.

Although details of the investigation are still not clear, police said at some point during the scuffle, someone stabbed Thompson 5 times in the back hip and arm.

In a statement released Saturday, Martini Ranch said Thompson had become a member of the family who had a “remarkable ability to connect with people and will always be remembered for his warm smile, sense of humor and positive attitude.”

The business has created a Facebook page to help raise money for his loved ones. That can be found at https://www.facebook.com/remembertyrice

It was sadly ironic way for such a good-natured person to die, said Marques Elliott, a friend of Thompson’s since college.

“He always was a very calm, kind individual,” Elliott said. “He’s always been extremely humble, soft spoken (and) has always had a very clear head on his shoulders. (He was) a very good human being.”

Doug Yazzie, a close friend Thompson who was with his family when he passed away, said Thompson was a kind and positive man.

“He could fill any room with light,” Yazzie said.

Yazzi, who said he is the godfather to Thompson’s 2-year-old son Takai, would likely have forgiven his attacker.

“He didn’t have an angry bone in his body,” he said.

Dennis Erickson, Thompson’s coach during his senior year of school, was heartbroken over the death of his former player.

“He was an unbelievable guy, so coachable,” Erickson said. “Everything we asked, he did. It's so sad.”

Police reported that no one at the bar the night of the attack, including employees, identified who stabbed Thompson and no knife was found at the scene.

Police on Tuesday arrested, but then released pending further investigation, a 26-year-old Tempe resident Ian MacDonald.

“During interviews, Mr. MacDonald admitted to fighting with the bouncers, but denied stabbing Mr. Thompson,” a police statement said.

“Police have questioned all those we believe were witnesses or involved in the incident,” said Sgt. Mark Clark in a statement. “MacDonald remains the sole suspect at this time.”

“We are waiting for lab results to forward charges to the MCAO,” he added.

Thompson, a Laveen resident, played with 13 games his senior year as a Sun Devil, catching 15 passes for 272 yards. He was a key special teams player his final two seasons at Arizona State.

Thompson was signed as an undrafted free agent by the Indianapolis Colts, but did not play an NFL game.

Stan Ogwel mentored Thompson, who was a sophomore at South Mountain High School in Phoenix, as part of public service work he performed with his ASU fraternity.

Ogwel said Thompson was alert before he died, but unable to talk because he was on a respirator.

“I held his hands and prayed with him,” he said. “ I was able to at least spend about 10 minutes with him in the room.”

ASU Associate Athletic Director Mark Brand released a statement that said “the Thompson family is in the thoughts of everyone in the Sun Devil Athletics family.”

“The words of his teammates, our fans and media who came in contact with him are true measures of how much his smile was appreciated,” the statement said.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.

Obama loves HIS guns????

Like Obama, most government rulers love guns. They love guns, because guns allow them to stay in power. Ask Hitler, Stalin and Mao if they loved guns and they will all say yes.

The only people that rulers like Obama, Hitler, Stalin and Mao don't want to have guns are the serfs they rule over.

Source

White House photo shows Obama firing shotgun

By Zachary A. Goldfarb and Howard Schneider, Published: February 2

On his 51st birthday last August, President Obama hit the links with a group of buddies and then flew by helicopter to Camp David. There, he changed into jeans and picked up a shotgun. And then, before it got too dark, he started a round of clay target shooting.

You’d be forgiven if you didn’t think this was headline-worthy news. But on Saturday morning, the White House released and promoted a photograph of Obama shooting skeet at the presidential retreat in Maryland.

White House aides were trying to end a growing distraction just as the president plans to make a fresh push to rally public support behind his ambitious agenda to tighten gun laws, traveling to Minnesota on Monday.

The photo, taken by White House photographer Pete Souza, depicts a sunglasses-wearing Obama firing what appears to be a Browning Citori 725, the shotgun wedged against his left shoulder, a pillow of white smoke emerging from the barrel.

The photo was published a week after Obama claimed in an interview with the New Republic that he routinely shoots skeet at Camp David. The surprising assertion — Obama’s golfing and basketball hobbies are far better known — instantly stirred the political zeitgeist.

Jay Carney, Obama’s press secretary, was asked for evidence in the White House briefing room. “The Daily Show’s” Jon Stewart poked fun at the president’s apparent hobby. Gun-rights activists dismissed it, and some were skeptical that Obama was a routine skeet shooter.

A Republican congresswoman even challenged the president to a shooting contest.

“I’m sure they released the photo because there were folks raising questions about his answer, and those questions are a silly distraction in the midst of a serious debate,” David Axelrod, a longtime adviser to Obama, said in an e-mail.

“I know him pretty well. He doesn’t embellish,” Axelrod added. “If he says he’s done some shooting up there on occasion, I’m sure he has. He’s not a hunter or marksman and doesn’t pretend to be.”

The White House did not say how often Obama has gone shooting.

In the interview with the New Republic, Obama was asked if he had ever shot a gun.

“Yes, in fact, up at Camp David, we do skeet shooting all the time,” he said.

Asked if his whole family goes shooting, Obama replied: “Not the girls, but oftentimes guests of mine go up there. And I have a profound respect for the traditions of hunting that trace back in this country for generations. And I think those who dismiss that out of hand make a big mistake.”

But while the White House made clear Saturday that the president has shot skeet at least once, the release of the photo seemed more likely to inflame passions around the issue than douse them.

Current and former advisers to Obama compared skeptics of Obama’s skeet-shooting prowess to a group of conservatives, known as birthers, who cast doubt on whether Obama was born in the United States and kept exerting pressure until the president released a long-form birth certificate showing he was born in Hawaii.

“Attn skeet birthers. Make our day — let the photoshop conspiracies begin!” David Plouffe, Obama’s senior adviser until last week, wrote on Twitter early Saturday. Later in the day, he wrote, “Day made. The skeet birthers are out in full force in response to POTUS pic. Makes for most excellent, delusional reading.”

Dan Pfeiffer, Obama’s senior adviser, coined a term for those who didn’t believe Obama had gone shooting: “skeeters.”

On the other side, Obama’s critics in the gun-rights community were not impressed by the photo.

“One picture does not erase a lifetime of supporting every gun ban and every gun-control scheme imaginable,” said Andrew Arulanandam, a spokesman for the National Rifle Association.

Ladd Everitt, a spokesman for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, regarded the whole episode as a sideshow.

“If that’s something the president enjoys doing, God bless him,” he said. “I’m no more offended by this photo than by one showing him throwing a Frisbee.”

The White House would not confirm what firearm Obama used. But gun dealers and enthusiasts said that from the picture, it appeared to be a Browning Citori, a model popular among those involved in the sport.

The “over and under” design features two barrels, one on top of the other, allowing the gun to hold and fire two shotgun shells.

The smoke in the photo is emanating from air vents in the barrel, a feature known as “porting” that reduces recoil shock and allows for steadier aim.

Gun dealers said the shotgun appeared to be a stock model of the Browning, which retails for $2,000 to $3,000. According to the Browning Web site, some of the Citori models are made in a left-handed version, with a slight bend near the butt — though it was not apparent from the photo whether the left-handed president was using one of those.

“It looked like he was shooting regular American skeet,” said Michael Hampton Jr., head of the National Sporting Clays Association. “It’s a gun that is used for this discipline — a good middle-of-the-road gun, very functional and very standard.”

The sport originated early in the 20th century when hunters were looking for ways to practice and improve their marksmanship.

Over time, the activity developed as a sport of its own. There are several variations, all involving a shooter attempting to down a roughly three-ounce clay disk that has been launched from a spring-loaded machine.

In skeet shooting — the activity the White House said Obama was pursuing at Camp David — the clay targets are launched at different heights and travel across the shooter’s field of vision.

Hampton said that even novices can get quick satisfaction. In a 100-target session, he said even beginners will hit 25 or 30 targets and quickly develop 50-50 proficiency.

Christopher Broughton at Bike Saviors????

Chris Broughton the guy with the AR-15 at the Obama event

Christopher Broughton is the guy who had the AR-15 when Obama came to Phoenix. He works there.

I told him I thought it was a pretty good public stunt.

Nude photos of Tucson cop Lt. Diana Lopez

I wonder when these cops ever have time to hunt down real criminals.

Now I said real criminals, and I meant real criminals, not busting harmless pot smokers and other victimless drug war criminals which account for two thirds of the people the police send to prison.

I don't have a problem if Tucson cop Lt. Diana Lopez wants to shoot naked photos of her self and send them to her co-workers, but maybe she should limit these activities to her off time and not do it at work.

And the same for here boyfriend cop. I don't have a problem if he and his buddies look at naked pictures of Lt. Diana Lopez, but they shouldn't be doing it at work.

Source

Tucson policewoman demoted after explicit videos

Associated Press Mon Feb 4, 2013 7:47 PM

TUCSON — A Tucson police lieutenant has been demoted after allegedly taking sexually explicit photos and videos of herself wearing her police uniform.

Police said Monday that Lt. Diana Lopez used her personal cellphone to send videos and photos to a subordinate officer with whom she was in a relationship. They say Lopez was reduced to the rank of sergeant following an investigation that began last August.

The Arizona Daily Star (http://bit.ly/WMXjxM ) says anonymous letters sent to the police department about Lopez prompted the probe.

A police report says Lopez’s boyfriend apparently showed the videos and photos to other officers from May 2011 through August 2011.

Police say Lopez violated several department regulations, code of ethics and professional standards. They say a recommendation was made to reduce her in rank.

Source

Tucson policewoman demoted over sexually explicit photos, video

Carmen Duarte Arizona Daily Star

A Tucson police lieutenant was demoted after officials said she took sexually explicit videos and sexually provocative photos of herself wearing her police uniform and sent them to a subordinate officer with whom she was in a relationship, department officials said Monday.

Lt. Diana Lopez, a former public information officer for the department, was reduced to the rank of sergeant following an investigation that began in August 2012. Anonymous letters sent to the department about Lopez prompted the probe, according to a report that was released Monday.

The department did find that Lopez took sexually explicit videos and at least one provocative photo where she was wearing a Tucson police uniform shirt. She sent those images and videos using her personal cell phone to the subordinate officer.

That officer then apparently showed the videos and photos to other TPD officers, the report said. This happened between May 2011 through August 2011, the report said.

Lopez violated several department regulations, code of ethics and professional standards and a recommendation was made to reduce her in rank from lieutenant to sergeant, the report said.

"Justice Dept justifies killing Americans if they pose ‘imminent threat

Of course you have to remember that MSNBC reports the news as objectively and unbiased as the FOX network reports it so you have to take that with a grain of salt.

Here is a link to the 16 page document is titled “Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a U.S. Citizen Who Is a Senior Operational Leader of al-Qaeda or An Associated Force.” which was released by NBC. [http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/020413_DOJ_White_Paper.pdf ]

Source

Justice Dept. document justifies killing Americans overseas if they pose ‘imminent threat’

By Karen DeYoung, Published: February 4

The United States can lawfully kill a U.S. citizen overseas if it determines the target is a “senior, operational leader” of al-Qaeda or an associated group and poses an imminent threat to the United States, according to a Justice Department document published late Monday by NBC News. [http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/020413_DOJ_White_Paper.pdf ]

The document defines “imminent threat” expansively, saying it does not have to be based on intelligence about a specific attack since such actions are being “continually” planned by al-Qaeda. “In this context,” it says, “imminence must incorporate considerations of the relevant window of opportunity” as well as possible collateral damage to civilians.

Guiding the evolving U.S. counterterrorism policies: White House counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan is compiling a “playbook” that will lay out the administration’s evolving procedures for the targeted killings that have come to define its fight against al-Qaeda and its affiliates.

The memos outline the case for the targeted killing of U.S. citizens in counterterror operations overseas.

It says that such determinations can be made by an “informed, high-level official of the U.S. government.”

NBC said the document was provided by the Obama administration last summer to members of the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary committees as a summary of a classified memo on targeted killings of U.S. citizens prepared by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.

The memo was written months prior to a September 2011 drone strike in Yemen that killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born Muslim cleric accused of helping al-Qaeda’s Yemeni affiliate plan attacks against the United States. Three other Americans, including Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, have also been killed in U.S. strikes in Yemen.

The Obama administration, in decisions upheld in federal court rulings, has repeatedly denied demands by lawmakers, civil rights groups and the media to release the memo and other information on targeted killings — or even to acknowledge their existence. Senators are expected to closely question John O. Brennan, President Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser, on drone strikes, the memo and the Awlaki killing during Brennan’s confirmation hearing Thursday on his nomination to become Obama’s new CIA director.

Justice officials could not be reached for comment on the document, which NBC posted on its Web site. The 16-page document is titled “Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a U.S. Citizen Who Is a Senior Operational Leader of al-Qaeda or An Associated Force.”

In announcing Awlaki’s death, Obama described him as the leader of “external affairs” of Yemen-based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

The American Civil Liberties Union on Monday night called the document a “profoundly disturbing” summary of “a stunning overreach of executive authority — the claimed power to declare Americans a threat and kill them far from a recognized battlefield and without any judicial involvement before or after the fact.”

The ACLU sought the original Justice Department memo as part of a case dismissed last month by a federal judge in New York. Last Friday, the ACLU filed a notice of appeal in that case.

“Needless to say, the white paper is not a substitute for the legal memo. But it’s a pretty remarkable document,” ACLU Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer said. [http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/020413_DOJ_White_Paper.pdf ]

Source

Justice Department memo: Drone strikes on U.S. citizens can be legal

By Cheryl K. Chumley

The Washington Times

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

The U.S. Justice Department finds it legal to target American citizens with drone strikes under certain circumstances, according to a memo that just surfaced.

The undated memo, titled “Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a U.S. Citizen who is a Senior Operation Leader of al Qaeda or An Associated Force,” was obtained by NBC News. The memo defines as legal drone attacks on U.S. citizens who were involved in violent attacks, according to United Press International. [ The memo can be viewed here http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/020413_DOJ_White_Paper.pdf ]

Specifically, the memo states: “The condition that an operational leader present an ‘imminent’ threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future,” according to UPI. Citizens who present such “imminent threats” were defined as those who participated in violent acts — and maintained the views that led to their violent acts, according to UPI.

In those instances, a fatal drone attack would be considered a “legitimate act of national self-defense that would not violate the assassination ban,” according to the memo.

The memo was distributed to various members of Senate and House intelligence committees.

Source

Drone strikes on Americans on U.S. soil are LEGAL, says confidential Justice Department memo

By Damian Ghigliotty

PUBLISHED: 23:58 EST, 4 February 2013

The U.S. government can order the killing of American citizens if they are believed to be ‘senior operational leaders’ of the Islamic terrorist organization Al Qaeda or ‘an associated force,’ according to a confidential Justice Department memo leaked on Monday.

The U.S. government can do so even if there is no clear evidence that the American targeted is engaged in an active plot to attack the U.S.

The news was first reported by NBC’s Open Channel, which obtained a copy of the 16-page document and released it to the public.

The undated memo, which is not an official legal document, sheds new light on the reasoning behind a reported increase in the number of drone strikes used against Al Qaeda suspects in recent years -- including those aimed at American citizens -- under the Obama administration.

The memo, ‘Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a U.S. Citizen who is a Senior Operational Leader of Al Qa’ida or An Associated Force,’ was reportedly provided to members of the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary committees in June by unnamed administration officials.

It was provided on the condition that authorities keep the memo confidential and not discuss its contents publicly, according to NBC.

‘The condition that an operational leader present an “imminent” threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future,’ the memo states.

Insight: The document sheds new light on the legal reasoning behind a reported increase in the number of drone strikes used against al-Qaida suspects in recent years, including those aimed at American citizens

Insight: The document sheds new light on the legal reasoning behind a reported increase in the number of drone strikes used against al-Qaida suspects in recent years, including those aimed at American citizens

The Justice Department told MailOnline that it would not comment on the news.

The Obama administration has remained relatively hush about reports of increased drone strikes carried out since 2008.

The Long War Journal reports that the U.S. has been conducting a covert program to target and kill Al Qaeda and Taliban commanders in Pakistan's northwest region.

‘The US ramped up the number of strikes in July 2008, and has continued to regularly hit at Taliban and Al Qaeda targets inside Pakistan,’ the non-profit news outlet writes.

‘There have been 332 strikes total since the program began in 2004; 322 of those strikes have taken place since January 2008.’

The New York Times reported in November that the Obama administration had been mapping out a strategy weeks before the presidential election to develop definitive rules for the targeted killing of terrorists by drones, so that a new president would ‘inherit clear standards and procedures’ if Obama was not re-elected.

The secrecy surrounding such strikes may soon be unraveled, as indicated by the release of the 16-page Justice Department memo.

Proponent: John Brennan, Obama's pick for CIA director, has called drone strikes 'consistent with our inherent right of national self-defense'

John Brennan, a White House counter-terrorism adviser, one of the leading architects behind the government’s drone policy and Obama’s pick to become the country’s new CIA director, is expected to face tough questions about his involvement in Obama’s drone program during his Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday.

Brennan was the first administration official to formally acknowledge drone strikes in a speech he gave at the Woodrow Wilson Center in April 2012, calling drone strikes ‘consistent with our inherent right of national self-defense.’

A bipartisan group of 11 senators wrote a letter to Obama on Monday asking his administration to provide its legal justification for its use of drone strikes over the past four years.

‘We ask that you direct the Justice Department to provide Congress, specifically the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, with any and all legal opinions that lay out the executive branch's official understanding of the President's authority to deliberately kill American citizens,’ the senators lead by Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon wrote in their letter.

Political blogger Marcy Wheeler, who says she has closely tracked the group’s repeated requests, writes that it was at least the 12th time Congress had asked for those documents.

Among the overseas attacks that have killed U.S. citizens with terrorist ties on Obama's watch, a September 2011 missile strike in Yemen took out alleged Al Qaeda members Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan.

Both men were U.S. citizens who had never been indicted by the U.S. government or charged with any specific crimes.

Read the full Justice Department white paper released on Monday night here. [http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/020413_DOJ_White_Paper.pdf ]

U.S. drone use could set dangerous example for rogue powers

U.S. drone use could set dangerous example for rogue powers

By Carol J. Williams

February 7, 2013, 2:00 a.m.

Imagine if North Korea or Iran or Venezuela deployed thousands of unmanned surveillance aircraft in search of earthbound enemies, a swarm of robotic hunters armed with lethal weaponry and their governments’ go-ahead to exterminate targets.

It’s a frightening scenario but far from an unimaginable one, given that dozens of nations now build, program and deploy their own drones.

Newly disclosed U.S. guidelines on drone warfare appear to authorize a more permissive practice of targeted killings in the global fight against terrorism than previously articulated. And the Obama administration’s embrace of a right to strike those it has identified as threats to U.S. security has prompted warnings from rights advocates and international security experts that the White House is setting a dangerous precedent that rogue nations could follow.

The U.S. military and intelligence communities have increasingly turned to drones for precision strikes against terrorism suspects in Pakistan and Yemen, executing more than 300 remote-controlled attacks during President Obama’s first term. That is a sixfold increase from the Bush administration’s use of drones, according to the British nonprofit Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

Muting any serious debate on the morality and legality of targeted killings is the U.S. public’s positive response to the arm's-length attacks that eliminate terrorism suspects without putting troops at risk in a more conventional offensive. More than 80% of Americans expressed support for the administration’s drone policy in a Washington Post-ABC News poll a year ago. A Pew Research Center survey in June showed similarly high regard among Americans questioned but majority disapproval among respondents in 19 other countries surveyed.

Escalating U.S. drone use in counter-terrorism is both hurting the country’s image and raising the stakes in what promises to be a protracted war to defeat the global network of militants bent on doing America harm, security and legal experts argue.

“Technological capabilities are developing far faster than the laws and international frameworks to regulate their use,” said Amy Zegart, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and former National Security Council staffer under President Clinton.

Drone use was a rare and almost exclusively U.S. military capability a decade ago, Zegart said, yet today at least 70 countries have unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, as drones are called in security parlance. Although most of that use is aimed at reducing the costs and risks of intelligence-gathering and search-and-rescue missions, the increasingly affordable and versatile aircraft can be programmed for combat as easily as for peaceful civilian uses.

Despite a credible threat of spreading drone warfare, there is little interest among the nations employing the devices to yield to any agreed rules of engagement, Zegart said.

“The question is, can the United States lead by example? Can we realistically put forward policies and ideas” that would establish permissible uses and prevent a perilous free-for-all, she said, intimating that such self-imposed restraint is unlikely.

Avner Cohen, a professor of nonproliferation policy at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, agrees there is little incentive for countries making the most aggressive use of drones -- the United States and Israel first among them -- to impose restrictions on themselves.

He points to what he sees as “seductive” elements of drone use as a danger for both international security and thoughtful decision-making.

Israeli drone surveillance pinpointed Hamas militia leader Ahmed Jabari in the Gaza Strip in November, encouraging the Israeli leadership to order a targeted killing in a likely streamlined analysis of potential consequences, Cohen recalled. Jabari’s death set off eight days of fighting between Israel and the Palestinian enclave that ended with a cease-fire seen as having strengthened Hamas and Palestinian cohesion.

“The temptation to use it is so high that it can obscure and overpower all kinds of other considerations,” Cohen said of drones’ offensive capabilities.

Human rights and international law advocates have expressed growing concern that Washington’s expanding use of targeted killings by drones violates its obligations to treaties guaranteeing protection of civilian life and prohibiting extrajudicial killings off the battlefield.

Ben Emmerson, the U.N. special rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights, announced two weeks ago that he was investigating U.S. strikes on suspected terrorists to evaluate their compliance with human rights treaties and the international law of armed conflict.

Rights groups contend the U.S. actions stray far beyond the limited circumstances under which international accords allow the use of preemptive lethal force.

“When the U.S. government violates international law, that sets a precedent and provides an excuse for the rest of the world to do the same,” said Zeke Johnson, director of Amnesty International USA’s Security with Human Rights Campaign.

“We have now seen, under two administrations, the emergence of a claimed global war framework in which the U.S. tries to treat the whole world as a battlefield, to the exclusion of human rights law,” Johnson said.

“I sincerely doubt most members of the U.S. government would be happy with China or Russia or North Korea using drones and lethal force the way the U.S. government is doing, which is outside the bounds of international law,” said Johnson.

“Everyone should be concerned by the idea that any government can basically deny its human rights obligations,” he warned. “That puts all of us at greater risk in the long run.”

Gun-licensing mandate an affront to our rights

Gun-licensing mandate an affront to our rights

Mon Feb 11, 2013 1:14 AM

Comparing guns to cars is a common and seductive but subtle error of logic.

If it makes sense to license drivers and register cars, then it would make sense to license pilots and register airplanes. And we do. That’s parallel logic.

However, if it makes sense to license gun owners and register guns, then it would make sense to license writers and register printing presses. That would be parallel logic, too. But we don’t do that, because that doesn’t make sense. That’s because those are rights, and government has no legitimate power to license your rights.

So, why would an honest writer object to having a license? Most reporters I know can’t answer that question, which explains why so many support “universal registration” — they understand the issue very poorly. I’ll answer it for you.

If you must pass a government test, pay a tax called a “fee,” get fingerprinted, photographed, listed in the criminal database and carry around your card with an expiration date to publish an article, or else go to prison, that’s flat out wrong. Licensing and registering freedom is tyrannical, assaults the innocent and serves no legitimate purpose in America. That’s why.

—Alan Korwin, Scottsdale

The writer is author of “The Arizona Gun Owner’s Guide.”

Cops over react to trivial comments as they always do.

Police take precautions for trivial Dobson HS bomb threat

But don't think of it as a waste of our tax dollars. I am sure the cops who do this view it as a jobs program to justify the high pay they receive.

And of course H. L. Mencken had it nailed perfectly with his comment:

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

Incidents like Dobson HS bomb threat force schools, police to take extra precautions

Posted: Saturday, February 9, 2013 8:12 am

By Michelle Reese, Tribune

Just one day after schools in Tempe were put into lockdown, Mesa’s Dobson High School was partially evacuated Friday following a bomb threat.

School and police officials said they collaborate to determine when to ask school principals and teachers to lock their doors and keep students away from potential harm.

“We work together with the schools to try to determine, for the safety of the students and staff, when it would be best to lockdown a school, depending on the situation,” said Mesa Police’s Det. Steve Berry.

Friday’s lockdown of Dobson High was prompted after a student made a comment about a bomb during class, Berry said. It was heard by students and his teacher, who contacted the school resource officer — a licensed Mesa Police officer — who was on campus.

“The boy was detained. The wheels were set in motion to make sure this was not a credible threat,” Berry said. “Once he realized he was going to be taken serious, that this was not a joke, he tried to recant. That’s not going to stop us from moving forward to assure everything is safe.”

After students were evacuated from parts of the school — and other parts were put on lockdown — police determined it was safe to return to class.

Since December’s tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., East Valley school officials say they are fielding more calls and questions from parents about safety.

“Since December, many people are on heightened alert mode,” Tempe Elementary School District spokesperson Monica Allread said. “Parents want to know anything that happens at the school that’s out of the ordinary. We’re working hard to make sure they know that.”

Mesa Unified School District spokesperson Helen Hollands said there are a few reasons for lockdowns in a school.

“There are lockdowns that happen because of an external incident. That would be if police are dealing with a suspect in an area. Those are always called by the law enforcement agency,” she said. “The other would be if we go into a lockdown for a campus related or internal reason. Most of the time, it’s a collaboration between the school district and the police or law enforcement agency to decide if it’s appropriate to go into lockdown.”

A school principal may also put a school in lockdown if there is an active situation, she said.

“If the event is active and there is an immediate threat or danger, the site administrator would call the lockdown immediately and then notify police,” she said.

After the Sandy Hook shooting, the Mesa school district decided to move up plans to do a campus-by-campus safety analysis. The Mesa school district governing board will hear that report Tuesday during a work study session that begins after an executive session at 5 p.m.

“That will look at what we need to do to make our sites physically more safe for students and staff,” Hollands said.

The district is also looking at the policies, procedures, practices and protocol that are used on campuses.

“That’s underway right now. That will be a report that could change protocol. Sometimes it’s helping to close a gap between practice and protocol,” she said.

Tempe’s Allread said during the last two school years, she sent out three letters each year notifying parents that a lockdown took place. This year, including Thursday’s incident, she has already sent out five.

A handful of schools in Tempe were put on lockdown while police searched an area for a suspect from a road rage incident.

Mesa didn’t have a count of the number of lockdowns used so far this school year as of press time.

Allread said the Tempe Elementary School District looked at its safety and security measures last summer.

“But we’re always looking a safety and security and certainly after what happened in December, we took a look at what they had in place and tried to learn any lessons we could,” she said.

The 16-year-old student detained by police could face charges, Mesa Police’s Berry said. The student could also face punishment from the district, from a short suspension to expulsion, depending on the circumstances, Hollands said.

“At this point, without having any due process evaluation, I couldn’t say where within this guideline it would fall. It has a range, because you need to take into account all the mitigating circumstances,” she said.

Contact writer: (480) 898-6549 or mreese@evtrib.com

Cop pulls gun in washing machine dispute

I guess this is one good reason the police should NOT be allowed to be the only people allow to have guns. Although I don't think in the case the cop was legally allowed to have the gun she pulled.

Us serfs need weapons to fight against government tyranny!!!!

Source

Cops: Washing machine dispute lands deputy in hot water

By Melissa Jenco Tribune reporter

6:59 p.m. CST, February 10, 2013

A Cook County corrections officer is facing felony charges after authorities say she displayed a weapon during a dispute over a washing machine, according to court records.

Sonjia L. Dennis-Brown, 36, of Dolton, got into an argument with another woman over a washing machine in the 1100 block of East Sibley Boulevard, Dolton, about 4:34 p.m. Feb. 8, according to a police report.

During the argument, she removed a 9 millimeter semi-automatic handgun from her purse and said, "This is all the protection I need," the report says. Dennis-Brown denied to police she displayed the weapon.

She was charged with aggravated unlawful use of a weapon and possession of a firearm without firearm owner identification. She appeared in court Sunday where Cook County Judge Israel Desierto set her bail at $25,000.

The Sheriff's Office of Professional Review is investigating the charges, said Sheriff's Spokesman Frank Bilecki. The officer is currently on maternity leave and until the investigation is complete she has been dedeputized, Bilecki said.

mjenco@tribune.com

Dorner manhunt: Officers opened fire on mother, daughter

Look I will trust the teachers with a gun any day of the year, but I wouldn't let these trigger happy cops get anywhere near the school campus

Source

Dorner manhunt: Officers opened fire on mother, daughter

February 9, 2013 | 7:47 am

In their pursuit of a fugitive ex-cop, at least seven officers opened fire on what turned out to be a mother and daughter delivering newspapers on a quiet residential street, law enforcement sources told The Times.

It was "a tragic misinterpretation" by officers working under "incredible tension," LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said Friday in an interview with The Times. Margie Carranza, 47, and her mother, Emma Hernandez, 71, were the victims.

Early Thursday morning, Christopher Jordan Dorner, 33, allegedly shot three police officers, one fatally. And, in an online posting authorities attributed to him, Dorner threatened to kill more police and seemed to take responsibility for the slaying over the weekend of the daughter of a retired LAPD captain and her fiance.

Then around 5 a.m. Thursday in Torrance, police from nearby El Segundo saw a pickup truck exit a freeway and head in the general direction of the Redbeam Avenue residence of a high-ranking Los Angeles police official, which was being guarded by a group of LAPD officers.

A radio call indicated that the truck matched the description of Dorner's gray Nissan Titan. As the vehicle approached the house, officers opened fire, unloading a barrage of bullets into the back of the truck. When the shooting stopped, they quickly realized their mistake. The truck was not a Nissan Titan, but a Toyota Tacoma. The color wasn't gray, but aqua blue. And it wasn't Dorner inside the truck, but Carranza and her mother delivering copies of the Los Angeles Times.

Beck and others stressed that the investigation into the shooting was in its infancy. They declined to say how many officers were involved, what kind of weapons they used, how many bullets were fired and, perhaps most important, what kind of verbal warnings — if any — were given to the women before the shooting began.

"How do you mistake two Hispanic women, one who is 71, for a large, black male?" said Richard Goo, 62, who counted five bullet holes in the entryway to his house.

Glen T. Jonas, the attorney representing the women, said the police officers gave "no commands, no instructions and no opportunity to surrender" before opening fire. He described a terrifying encounter in which the pair were in the early part of their delivery route through several South Bay communities. Hernandez was in the back seat handing papers to her daughter, who was driving. Carranza would briefly slow the truck to throw papers on driveways and front walks.

As bullets tore through the cabin, the two women "covered their faces and huddled down," Jonas said. "They felt like it was going on forever."

Hernandez was shot twice in her back and is expected to recover. Her daughter escaped with only minor wounds from broken glass.

Beck said he had not yet received a detailed briefing, which typically occurs a few days after officer-involved shootings to give investigators time to collect evidence and put together the basic summary of what happened. But he did say that the gunfire occurred in two bursts: The first came from an officer positioned down the block from the LAPD official's residence, and the second when Carranza accelerated away from the gunfire and toward other officers.

After the investigation is completed, Beck and an oversight board will decide if officers were justified in the shooting or made mistakes that warrant either punishment or training.

Arizona AG Tom Horne wants his hit and run case tossed

Source

Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne wants traffic case tossed

Associated Press Wed Feb 13, 2013 5:10 PM

PHOENIX — Lawyers for Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne asked a judge Wednesday to dismiss a misdemeanor hit-and-run case against him, arguing he’s being singled out for prosecution and FBI agents who witnessed the incident while tailing him are refusing to answer questions.

A court filing obtained by The Associated Press accused the FBI’s top agent in Arizona of personally calling Phoenix Police Chief Daniel V. Garcia and asking him to investigate after FBI agents tailing Horne saw him back into another vehicle and leave. Horne’s lawyer, Michael D. Kimerer, wrote in his court filing that police did so even though it violated their own written policy of not investigating cases involving less than $5,000 in private property damage.

Kimerer wrote that singling out Horne for prosecution violates the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection clause. The only logical explanation for doing so when others are not investigated or prosecuted for similar crimes is that Horne is an elected official.

Horne is accused in Phoenix city court of not stopping or leaving a note after he backed a borrowed car he was driving into another vehicle. FBI reports released by Phoenix police in October say he left the scene because he was having an affair with a female employee who was in the car and he didn’t want their relationship to be reported.

Horne has declined comment on allegations of an affair and repeatedly said he didn’t know he had caused any damage. He declined comment Wednesday, referring instead to the court filing.

The agents who were following Horne in March 2012 had apparently been doing so during the course of a campaign finance investigation, although agents interviewed by Kimerer refused to say that was the case.

The FBI waited seven months before notifying Phoenix police, until after the Maricopa County attorney’s office filed civil charges in the campaign finance case.

“It just shows animus the way they pursued this,” Kimerer said in an interview. “They were just rabid to get him.”

In the campaign finance case, Horne and employee Kathleen Winn are accused of illegally coordinating with an independent expenditure committee during the 2010 election. Horne is appealing Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery’s findings that Horne illegally coordinated his 2010 campaign with a group that was supposed to be operating independently. The group aired television advertising critical of Horne’s general election opponent.

Montgomery is demanding that Horne’s 2010 campaign and the other group, Business Leaders for Arizona, return up to $513,000 of contributions. There also could be large civil fines.

Because of the alleged coordination, the contributions made to a group headed by a Horne ally who now works in his office actually were contributions that exceeded campaign finance limits on money given to candidates, Montgomery said. Candidates aren’t allowed to discuss strategy or other matters with so-called independent expenditure committees, but there’s evidence that Horne was involved in both raising money and deciding how to spend it on advertising by Business Leaders for Arizona, Montgomery said in October.

Horne, a lawyer who is the top-elected law enforcement official for the state, denied any coordination. He had been considering running for governor but now says he’ll seek re-election in 2014.

Sassing a cop is constitutionally protected free speech!!!

Sassing a cop may be unwise, but it’s constitutionally protected

Talking back to a police officer while you’re under arrest is usually not the smartest move, a bit like tugging on Superman’s cape, or spitting into the wind. But it’s legal, according to a federal appeals court — and if the officer retaliates in some way, like hauling you off to jail instead of giving you a ticket and letting you go, you might be entitled to damages.

“Police officers may not use their authority to punish an individual for exercising his First Amendment rights,” the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said in a 2-1 ruling Feb. 8 that reinstated a lawsuit against the city of Yakima, Wash., and two of its policemen.

Eddie Ford, an African American who grew up in the central Washington community, was driving to his night-shift job at a bottling company in July 2007 when a police car came up from behind and stopped him, apparently for playing his stereo too loud. As Officer Ryan Urlacher approached, Ford got out of the car shouting that the stop was racially motivated. Urlacher told him to get back in the car, then said he would arrest Ford for violating a city noise ordinance, and commented, according to the court, that “he might only get a ticket if he cooperates.”

Ford kept talking for awhile after Urlacher handcuffed him, put him in the patrol car and threatened to jail him unless he shut up. He quieted down, but the officer drove him away and booked him at the suggestion of a superior officer, telling Ford that “your mouth and your attitude talked you into jail.” Urlacher later testified that he jailed Ford because of “his rageful … behavior towards the law enforcement,” which, the officer said, put public safety at risk.

Ford went to trial on the noise-violation charge, was found not guilty, and then sued for damages. A judge dismissed the suit, ruling that Urlacher had acted reasonably and had not punished Ford for freedom of speech, but the appeals court said a jury might conclude otherwise.

The Constitution protects “a significant amount of verbal criticism and challenge directed at police officers,” the court said, quoting a 1987 Supreme Court ruling. Even if police had reason to arrest Ford in the first place, they were not entitled to jail him in retaliation for speaking his mind, said the court majority, Judges Procter Hug and Dorothy Nelson.

Dissenting Judge Connie Callahan looked at the case through the other end of the telescope, the viewpoint of the officers. Once someone is under arrest, she said, that person’s free-speech rights are reduced, and police are entitled to jail someone like Ford based on what he says, which might indicate he posed a danger to himself or others. In this case, Callahan said, Urlacher may have simply been trying to give Ford “an opportunity to change his attitude,” and the court oversteps its bounds when it tries to “impose such etiquette upon peace officers.”

Robert Christie, a lawyer for the city and its police, said they agreed with Callahan and were considering whether to ask the full appeals court for a rehearing. Ford’s lawyer, William Pickett, said the court had reaffirmed a basic constitutional principle.

“Citizens have an absolute right to be critical of law enforcement, and they can vocalize that criticism without any fear of being retaliated against,” Pickett said.

The ruling can be viewed here.

Let the police decide which rights we have???

Vanessa Goldberg thinks the police should decide which rights we are allowed to have

And of course the police are the arm of government that tyrants use to force their will on us.

So if we let the "police" pick and choose which "rights" we get to keep, we will soon have no rights.

Source

Listen to police, not NRA

Wed Feb 13, 2013 9:08 PM

Listen to the police on the weapons issue!

Who would know the weapons issue better than the police, who are on the front lines of combating gun-related crimes and dealing with the horrific aftermaths? Should we not therefore listen to what they have to say about the question of gun control?

Should we not be made thoughtful by the fact that the International Association of Chiefs of Police has historically backed gun-control measures?

Their IACP website recently stated: “Our membership was, and remains, a leading proponent of universal background checks for gun purchases, the ban on military-style assault weapons, high-capacity magazines, and ensuring that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (and Explosives) has both a permanent director and sufficient resources to enforce our nation’s gun laws.”

I ask my fellow readers: Should we listen to police chiefs or to the NRA?

— Vanessa Goldberg

Scottsdale

Drones will be coming to the "drug war" in Arizona???

Of course later on in the article it says there will be exceptions for cops in the "drug war".

When you consider that two thirds of the people in American prisons are their for victimless drug war crimes, that means the police will be allowed to use drones in two thirds of police work they do which is about drug war crimes.

I am a little bit more negative on this issue, and my question is when will the police begin using drones to murder suspected "drug war" criminals, like the American government uses drones to murder suspected "terrorists" in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other countries throughout the world.

Source

Arizona seeks to be a key player in drone work

By Alia Beard Rau The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Feb 13, 2013 11:35 PM

Arizona lawmakers are bidding to make the state a center for aerial-drone research, but they also want to make sure local police don’t use the unmanned surveillance aircraft to spy on Americans.

As the sophisticated eye-in-the-sky technology deployed by the military in the war on terror in Afghanistan and against drug cartels on the Mexican border becomes a Pentagon fixture, state lawmakers have introduced several bills this session to ensure that the state is part of the high-tech revolution, without turning Arizona into a “police state.”

The U.S. military has used drones around the world for more than a decade, patrolling hot spots, gathering evidence and launching airstrikes. The unmanned craft are nothing new to Arizona, either.

The federal government has used them within the state to help fight forest fires and patrol the border. The Fort Huachuca Army base in southern Arizona houses the largest unmanned-aircraft-system training center in the world, according to the Army, employing hundreds of private contractors and civilian instructors and training more than 1,300 students a year.

Arizona-based defense contractors are cashing in on what has become a $4 billion-a-year investment for the military alone, not to mention the growing private and foreign government uses.

And local universities are pushing to develop the necessary workforce. Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, the University of Arizona and Arizona State University offer programs related to drones.

Arizona lawmakers are doing their part via legislation to prepare for greater growth.

House Concurrent Resolution 2009, sponsored by Rep. Tom Forese, R-Chandler, reinforces Arizona’s push to be selected by the Federal Aviation Administration as one of six national drone- testing sites.

The National Defense Authorization Act, which President Barack Obama signed in 2011, authorized the establishment of sites where officials could test drones in civil airspace near commercial air traffic. The sites were scheduled to be chosen in December, but the FAA delayed a decision indefinitely, saying it needed to address safety and privacy concerns.

Arizona officials said they are hopeful the state will still be chosen. HCR 2009 has passed the House Public Safety, Military and Regulatory Affairs Committee with unanimous bipartisan support. It now awaits a vote of the full House.

Officials are also preparing for what they fear could be a worst-case scenario in the future of drone technology.

House Bill 2574, sponsored by Rep. Jeff Dial, R-Chandler, makes it illegal for state or local law-enforcement officials to use a drone to collect information unless they have a search warrant.

It also makes it illegal to monitor individuals inside their homes or places of worship. It has exceptions for law-enforcement officials investigating human trafficking or drug smuggling as long as they are doing so on public property or with permission on private property.

Dial said he is working on the bill and expects to make some changes. It has been assigned to the House public-safety committee but is not yet scheduled for a hearing.

Rep. Carl Seel, R-Phoenix, also introduced a bill that would forbid the state and local governments from assisting in any way with enforcing portions of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 that allows the military to detain a U.S. citizen. But Seel said he is putting his support behind Dial’s bill.

The bills come amid controversy surrounding a White House legal argument justifying drone-missile strikes against U.S. citizens who are part of terrorist groups overseas.

“We need to protect something called the Fourth Amendment,” Seel said, adding that he has heard “unverified” reports of drones being used to survey citizens in Arizona. The Fourth Amendment protects citizens from unreasonable searches.

He said the bills restricting drones are not intended to limit the federal government’s use of drones to protect the border.

Dial said his bill is intended to be pre-emptive.

“What I want to do is protect citizens’ rights,” he said. “We don’t want to live in a police state. We don’t want to have drones everywhere in society.”

Dial also supports the resolution seeking to make Arizona a test site and efforts to promote drone research and business opportunities in the state. “I want the jobs here, and there are definitely uses for drones,” he said. “But I don’t want civil liberties and privacy invaded.”

He said the two bills address separate issues and can work together.

“The problem isn’t technology,” Dial said. “It’s how humans use the technology.”

Assistant House Minority Leader Ruben Gallego, D-Phoenix, a former Marine who serves on the House public-safety committee, said he wants to see the final details of Dial’s bill but supports the effort in general.

“Technology is always advancing, and we have to put safeguards in place to protect people’s civil liberties while still allowing drones to be used as a law-enforcement tool,” he said. “As long as we can find that balance, I don’t have any problem with the bill.”

Legal Loophole Could Hold Up $1M Christopher Dorner Reward

Legal Loophole Could Hold Up $1M Dorner Reward

By RUSSELL GOLDMAN | ABC News

A legal loophole could prevent good Samaritans, instrumental in ending the manhunt for a fugitive ex-cop accused of killing four people, from claiming more than $1 million in reward money because Christopher Dorner died and was not captured.

Last weekend, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa pledged $1 million, sourced from private individuals, companies and unions, "for information that will lead to Mr. Dorner's capture."

The L.A. City Council followed up with its own promise of a $100,000 reward, for information "leading to the identification, apprehension and conviction of Christopher Dorner."

But Dorner, accused of killing four people and threatening the lives of several dozen more, was never captured, apprehended or convicted. Instead, he died following a standoff with police near Big Bear, Calif., when the cabin in which he was barricaded burned down with him inside.

The mayor's office has not yet determined if the reward could still be paid out given Dorner died.

"At this time, no decision has been made on the reward," Villaraigosa's spokesman Peter Sanders told ABC News.com in an email.

So far, none of the privately sourced "funds have been deposited into the City's 'Special Reward Trust Fund,'" according to the Frank T. Mateljan, spokesman for the city attorney.

That still leaves an additional $100,000 that the city council could pay with municipal money, but there legal questions there, as well.

"The reward is definitely still on the table," said Jessica Tarman, spokeswoman for Councilman Daniel Zine.

But there are still plenty of questions.

The council ultimately decides how and to whom the reward will get paid. If its members are feeling generous, they could interpret the language of the original offer to make sure a worthy recipient gets paid.

"Arguably, city law is broad enough to allow payment to persons who assisted in the "identification, apprehension OR arrest and conviction" of a suspect," Metaljan said in an email [emphasis his].

If the city decides to honor the reward, there are still multiple steps before a claimant can be paid.

Anyone who thinks they are worthy must apply in writing. That claim would then be reviewed by the LAPD robbery and homicide division, and a recommendation would be made to the police commissioner. The commissioner would tell the council to consider the claim, and the council would vote on it.

So far, no one has come forward to ask for the reward. More than 1,000 leads were called to a city hotline

One couple seems most deserving, if they decide to seek the reward. Jim and Karen Reynolds, a couple in whose Big Bear, Calif., home Dorner is believed to have hidden for days, called in the tip Tuesday that ultimately put police on the trail to Dorner's final location.

On Tuesday, the couple found Dorner at their home. He briefly held them captive, but they managed to escape and call in their tip.

California program to seize illegal guns gaining notice

California has the nation's only program to confiscate guns from people who bought them legally but later became disqualified.

The job requires a mixture of force and finesse. The agents show up in heavily armed teams, wearing black jumpsuits bulked up by bulletproof vests. But they don't have warrants and, unless their subject is on probation, they need permission to enter homes to search for guns.

Source

California program to seize illegal guns gaining notice

California has the nation's only program to confiscate firearms from people who bought them legally but are now barred from having them.

By Jessica Garrison, Los Angeles Times

February 18, 2013, 6:56 p.m.

By law, Alexander Hernandez should have surrendered his gun to the state of California three years ago after a judge issued a restraining order against him for alleged domestic violence.

He didn't.

So one night recently , when the 26-year-old was at home in Whittier with his toddler, eight armed agents from the California Department of Justice banged on his door and took it from him.

Agents found the loaded .45-caliber handgun in a safe by his bed. Hernandez, who told the agents he had forgotten that he was supposed to turn in the weapon, was arrested on suspicion of illegally possessing a handgun, records show.

After assuring that the child had a baby-sitter, the agents drove off into the night in search of more illegal guns. Their quest took them across the San Gabriel Valley, from a retirement home to a gated community to a small house with rosebushes in front. In the living room of that house, a mother wept as agents arrested her son. A conviction for misdemeanor battery made it illegal for him to continue possessing his four guns.

California has the nation's only program to confiscate guns from people who bought them legally but later became disqualified. During twice-weekly sweeps over the last five years, agents have collected more than 10,000 guns.

But there are still more than 19,700 people on the state's Armed Prohibited Persons database. Collectively, they own about 39,000 guns. About 3,000 people are added to the list each year.

Clearing the backlog would cost $40 million to $50 million, according to Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris. She estimated that once the backlog is cleared, fielding teams large enough to keep up with people added to the list would cost about $14 million a year.

"This is about prevention," Harris said. "This is about taking guns out of the hands of people who are prohibited from owning them, and are known to be potentially some of the most dangerous people walking around.... It's just common sense."

As gun control has moved to the forefront of national debate, California's program is being studied as a potential model.

The list of prohibited owners is compiled by analysts who track gun sales back to 1996 and match them against databases listing criminal convictions, restraining orders and mental health detentions.

Sometimes the guns are used in killings before the state can retrieve them, according to state Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), who last month introduced legislation that would provide funding for more agents to conduct sweeps.

For example, Roy Perez had been on the list for three years before he shot and killed his mother, his neighbor and his neighbor's 4-year-old in Baldwin Park in 2008, officials said.

Until recently, the gun apprehension teams had received little attention in the five years they have been sweeping through neighborhoods. But they suddenly have become a topic of intense interest — so much so that when agents rolled through Southern California earlier this month , their big, unmarked trucks were joined by two agents in a rented minivan large enough to carry journalists and camera crews.

The job requires a mixture of force and finesse. The agents show up in heavily armed teams, wearing black jumpsuits bulked up by bulletproof vests. But they don't have warrants and, unless their subject is on probation, they need permission to enter homes to search for guns. Obtaining a search warrant typically requires a reasonable suspicion that the gun would be on the premises, a difficult standard to meet based solely on information from a database, officials said.

Instead, they must talk their way in and coax gun owners into turning over their weapons.

Often, they come away empty-handed.

As the sun was setting, they arrived at the home of a man who had a domestic violence restraining order and was living in a Whittier neighborhood of small ranch homes and backyard stables. As agents walked to the door, neighbors came by on horseback, staring.

The man told the agents he didn't have the gun anymore; it was at his brother's house.

The agents went on their way — in the absence of the gun, they had no proof of a crime, and thus no cause for arrest.

"They'll keep going until they find that gun," Special Agent Supervisor John Marsh said. "You exhaust every lead."

On one occasion, he said, the team tracked a gun owned by mentally ill person to a remote cabin in the mountains in Northern California, where it had been sealed into a wall.

Sometimes the addresses they have are wrong, as was the case that same night when armed teams strode into a retirement community in Whittier, startling residents.

Other times, they don't find the gun they are seeking, but come across others that are possessed illegally. In Oakland last fall, Marsh said, his team entered a house and found a stash of assault weapons with the serial numbers ground off.

Marsh said he once felt a little twinge when taking a gun. The man had been disqualified from ownership because of mental illness. Agents found him living in compound without electricity in a rural area near Crescent City. He was using his guns to shoot game to feed himself.

A more common scenario played out at the Whittier home of Gerardo Naranjo, the young man who had been convicted of misdemeanor battery.

As Naranjo's mother wept, agents recovered the two guns they knew about and two more, including a semiautomatic rifle.

"I know I've saved lives," Marsh said as he cracked open an energy drink and drove the minivan to the next location. "We're taking guns from people that shouldn't have guns."

jessica.garrison@latimes.com

Mandatory Gun Insurance??? A round about way to disarm Americans???

I suspect this so called "mandatory gun insurance" is designed to do the same thing.

Requiring people who own guns to purchase insurance which will be made unaffordable to prevent people from legally buying and owning guns by making the insurance too expensive.

And of course after the government passes a law requiring mandatory gun insurance, the next step would be to pass laws that make it impossible for insurance companies to sell the mandatory gun insurance, effectively making guns illegal.

This isn't a new trick by our government rulers. They did the same thing when they made drugs illegal.

The "1914 Harrison Narcotic Tax Act" and the "1937 Marihuana Tax Act" effectively made drugs illegal by slapping a tax on them, while at the same time the government stopped issuing the tax licenses.

Source

Latest Front in the Gun Debate Is Mandatory Insurance

By MICHAEL COOPER and MARY WILLIAMS WALSH

Published: February 21, 2013 609 Comments

In a nation sharply divided over efforts to curb violence and the right to bear arms, both sides of the gun debate seem to agree on at least one thing: a bigger role for the insurance industry in a heavily armed society.

David P. Linsky is a Democratic state representative in Massachusetts who wants to require gun owners to buy insurance.

But just what that role should be, and whether insurers will choose to accept it, are very much in dispute.

Lawmakers in at least half a dozen states, including California, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania, have proposed legislation this year that would require gun owners to buy liability insurance — much as car owners are required to buy auto insurance. Doing so would give a financial incentive for safe behavior, they hope, as people with less dangerous weapons or safety locks could qualify for lower rates.

“I believe that if we get the private sector and insurance companies involved in gun safety, we can help prevent a number of gun tragedies every year,” said David P. Linsky, a Democratic state representative in Massachusetts who wants to require gun owners to buy insurance. He believes it will encourage more responsible behavior and therefore reduce accidental shootings. “Insurance companies are very good at evaluating risk factors and setting their premiums appropriately,” he added.

Groups representing gun owners oppose efforts to make insurance mandatory, arguing that law-abiding people should not be forced to buy insurance to exercise their constitutional right to bear arms. But some groups, including the National Rifle Association, endorse voluntary liability policies for their members. And as several states pass laws making it easier for people to carry concealed weapons and use them for self-defense, some gun groups are now selling policies to cover some of the legal costs stemming from self-defense shootings.

The United States Concealed Carry Association recently began selling what it calls Self-Defense Shield. “If you’re forced to justifiably use your gun in self-defense,” its Web site says, “Self-Defense Shield will help pay for your expert pro-2nd Amendment lawyer by reimbursing your legal-defense expenses following your acquittal — an ingenious system critical to the arsenal of any responsibly armed citizen.”

Premiums for such insurance range from around $200 to $300 per year; in general, the coverage is narrowly written and excludes cases where a gun is used to commit a crime.

Some specialized underwriters are reviewing what their policies cover when it comes to shootings, and weighing whether they should offer new types of coverage for gun owners. And as more states pass laws allowing people to bring guns to public venues — including restaurants, bars, churches and the parking lots of their workplaces — some business groups have expressed concerns that they could be held liable for shootings on their properties, which could drive up their insurance costs.

On Thursday, when Gov. Dannel P. Malloy of Connecticut outlined his proposals to reduce gun violence — which included universal background checks, a ban on large-capacity ammunition magazines and a stronger assault weapons ban — he called for officials to study “whether owners of firearms should be required to carry additional insurance.”

The insurance industry is wary of some of the proposals to require gun owners to buy liability coverage — and particularly of bills, like one that was filed in New York that would require coverage for damages resulting not only from negligence but also from “willful acts.”

Robert P. Hartwig, the president of the Insurance Information Institute, said that insurance generally covered accidents and unintentional acts — not intentional or illegal ones. “Insurance will cover you if your home burns down in an electrical fire, but it will not cover you if you burn down your own house, and you cannot insure yourself for arson,” he said.

Some claims stemming from shootings have been covered by homeowners’ insurance — even by policies that said they did not cover illegal acts.

The families of the two students responsible for the 1999 killings at Columbine High School in Colorado were able to use money from their homeowners’ policies to settle a lawsuit brought by families of most of the victims. In 2001, a California court ordered an insurance company to defend a policyholder whose 16-year-old son shot and killed a friend with a Beretta handgun that he had found in his mother’s coat. But the year before, a North Carolina court ruled that an insurance company did not have to cover the expenses of a policyholder who had shot and wounded a prowler on his property.

Christopher J. Monge, an insurance agent and gun owner in Verona, Wis., recently wrote a book, “The Gun Owner’s Guide to Insurance for Concealed Carry and Self-Defense,” which he sells at gun shows. Mr. Monge said that the problem with most liability insurance is that it promises coverage only in cases of a gun owner’s negligence, or an accidental shooting — and not if the gun owner shoots someone intentionally in self-defense. “A negligent act is covered by your liability policy, but if you intentionally shoot somebody, it could be excluded,” he said.

So as more states pass self-defense laws, Mr. Monge said that he found several insurance companies that would specifically offer liability coverage in cases of self-defense, usually in the form of an “umbrella” policy that added a higher level of coverage than the routine coverage for negligence in a homeowners’ policy. An umbrella policy adds coverage for unusual, but potentially expensive, incidents.

But he opposes proposals to make liability insurance mandatory. “They’re barking up the wrong tree, if you ask me,” he said. “Ninety-nine percent of gun owners are going to be safe and not go crazy.”

States have been considering mandatory gun insurance bills for years, but no state has passed one yet, said Jon Griffin, a policy associate at the National Conference of State Legislatures. When Illinois considered a bill in 2009, the National Rifle Association wrote that it would “put firearms ownership out of reach for many law-abiding Illinoisans.” The N.R.A. endorses a policy that offers excess liability coverage — “because accidents do happen no matter how careful you are” — and another that offers “self-defense insurance.”

The recent trend of allowing guns in more public places has alarmed some business groups. When Ohio enacted a law allowing guns in bars in 2011, the Ohio Restaurant Association opposed it, writing officials that restaurant owners “expect that this law would be perceived by insurance companies as increasing the risk of injury in establishments that sell alcohol, which of course would result in increased liability insurance costs.” Owners have not reported higher premiums because of the new law, said a spokesman for the association, Jarrod A. Clabaugh, but some worry that a shooting could drive up their insurance costs.

The current debate over mandatory liability laws is being watched with interest by Nelson Lund, the Patrick Henry professor of Constitutional Law and the Second Amendment at George Mason University School of Law. Professor Lund proposed the idea of mandatory insurance in a 1987 article in the Alabama Law Review, seeing it as a form of gun control that could be consistent with the constitutional right to bear arms. But he said that he had not studied any of the current proposals, and noted that it made a great deal of difference how they are written.

“If this were done, the private insurance market would quickly and efficiently make it prohibitively expensive for people with a record of irresponsible ownership of guns to possess them legally,” he wrote in the 1987 article, “but would not impose unreasonable burdens on those who have the self-discipline to exercise their liberty in a responsible fashion.”

Sen. Rich Crandall wants to create a jobs program for cops???

The law doesn't apply in Phoenix, Tucson, Flagstaff, Prescott or any other Arizona cities and only applies to rural areas.

The law would continue to create a jobs program for cops in schools, because only cops would be allowed to carry guns.

Source

Arizona bill to arm teachers returns to Senate for public hearing

By Alia Beard Rau The Republic | azcentral.com Mon Feb 25, 2013 10:17 PM

Efforts to arm teachers in schools and to “sweep” public-campaign finance revenue to hire more school-resource officers were among 15 Senate bills granted special permission on Monday to move forward with public hearings.

Although Friday was the deadline for bills to get hearings, Republican leadership usually gives some bills an extra week, and the Senate Appropriations Committee will today hear the Senate bills granted an extension.

Senate Bill 1325, introduced by Sen. Rich Crandall, R-Mesa, would allow school governing boards to authorize a teacher or administrator to carry a concealed gun on campus if the school has fewer than 600 students, is more than 30 minutes and 20 miles away from the closest law-enforcement facility, and does not have its own school-resource officer.

A proposed amendment would allow any school governing board to allow a retired law-enforcement officer who is an employee of the school to carry a gun on school grounds.

Crandall’s bill was thought to be dead. A similar bill pushed by Attorney General Tom Horne that would have allowed school districts to arm any teacher or administrator went nowhere.

But Crandall said late last week that he worked with Senate leadership on the amendment and convinced them to give the bill a hearing.

Senate Concurrent Resolution 1017, also introduced by Crandall, would ask voters to allow the state to use excess Clean Elections money to help schools pay for resource officers, counselors and behavioral-health services.

The program’s sources of revenue include a surcharge on civil penalties and criminal fines, $5 donations collected by candidates, and taxpayer donations. Currently, Clean Elections money not used to fund participating candidates goes into the state’s general fund.

Arizona Education Association President Andrew Morrill said his organization opposes SB 1325.

“I think Sen. Crandall is trying to be about as reasonable as anybody down there and I know he’s trying to look at some of the unique rural needs,” he said. “But we have drawn a pretty firm line to say there is no substitute for the school-resource officer program.”

He said he’d rather see lawmakers focus on helping schools make their campuses safer, whether that’s by hiring school-resource officers or better securing a school’s perimeter with fencing.

But Morrill said there may be a compromise in allowing retired law-enforcement officers to help schools with safety, especially if they were required to go through the school-resource officer training.

“That’s one of the few suggestions I’ve heard down at the Legislature that could actually work and would have the effect of increasing school safety,” he said.

He said the AEA supports increasing funding for the school-resource officer program but hasn’t researched SCR 1017 enough to know if it may be a viable solution.

Arizonans for Gun Safety President Hildy Saizow, whose group worked with the Obama administration earlier this year on its gun reform proposals, said she has concerns about both bills.

“We don’t agree at all that teachers or administrators or any civilians in the school should be carrying weapons,” she said, saying she even has concerns if the bill does limit who can carry weapons. “There are just too many variables that can lead to a bad outcome.”

She said the organization supports creating a safe environment in schools and supports school-resource officers, but said it does not believe that boosting funds for the schools addresses the issue of gun violence.

“If you look at the 900 gun deaths that took place (in Arizona) last year, not one of them occurred on school grounds,” she said.

She said it would be more helpful if the Legislature would toughen background-check requirements for gun buyers or take weapons away from individuals with mental illnesses.

The Citizens Clean Elections Commission is not opposed to Crandall’s bill to use excess funds to help schools.

Executive Director Todd Lang said Crandall has introduced an amendment that would remedy an administrative problem the Clean Elections bill would have caused. “So in that case ... we’re fine with it,” he said.

Other bills to be heard today would give more adopted children access to behavioral-health services, give the Legislature more oversight over Arizona Department of Transportation highway construction projects and establish a performance-based funding program for schools.

Wednesday, the House Appropriations Committee will hear seven bills granted extensions in that chamber. They include efforts to expand mental-health services funding.

'Truth serum' may be used to assess Holmes' sanity

Like lie detector tests I suspect getting a doped up person to talk MIGHT uncover some truths, but I also suspect that like a lie detector test the results are pretty unreliable.

Source

'Truth serum' may be used to assess Holmes' sanity, court says

By Dan Elliott and P. Solomon Banda, The Associated Press

Posted: 03/12/2013 09:29:49 AM PDT

DENVER -- The defendant in the deadly Colorado theater shooting could be given "truth serum" under a court order issued Monday to help determine whether he is insane if he pleads not guilty by reason of insanity.

Suspect James Holmes could be required to submit to a "narcoanalytic interview" as part of an evaluation to determine if he was legally insane at the time of the July 20 shootings, Arpahoe County District Judge William Sylvester said.

A narcoanalylitic interview is a decades-old process in which patients are given drugs to lower their inhibition. Academic studies have shown that the technique has involved the use of sodium amytal and pentothal, sometimes called truth serum.

The prospect of such interviews that may ensue under such a plea alarmed defense attorneys, who filed documents opposing the technique.

Holmes, 25, is scheduled to enter a plea Tuesday to multiple counts of murder and attempted murder. He is charged with killing 12 people and injuring 70 at a midnight showing of "The Dark Knight Rises" in the Denver suburb of Aurora.

If Holmes pleads not guilty by reason of insanity, he would be examined by doctors at the state mental hospital.

In an advisory that Holmes would have to sign if he enters an insanity plea, Sylvester didn't specify what type of drugs would be used but said the examination could include "medically appropriate" ones.

Sylvester said Holmes also could be given a polygraph examination as part of the evaluation.

After reading a draft of the advisory, Holmes' lawyers objected, saying a narcoanalytic interview and a polygraph would violate their client's rights.

In the final version of the advisory, Sylvester said he had incorporated some suggestions from the defense and the prosecution, but he did not address the defense objections to a narcoanalytic interview and polygraph.

Karen Steinhauser, a former prosecutor who is a law professor at the University of Denver and a defense attorney, said she could not find any case law about use of the narcoanalytic interview.

"It comes up so rarely," she said, adding she knows nothing about it.

She noted the technique is clearly allowed by Colorado law.

------

Associated Press writer Nicholas Riccardi contributed to this report

Gabrielle Giffords' husband, Mark Kelly buys AR-15

More of the old "Do as I say, not as I do" from our government masters???

Our royal government rulers and bureaucrats like former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and astronaut Mark Kelly seem to think it's OK for them to have guns, but want to prevent the rest of us serfs from having guns.

Sorry guys, but I am sure the reason the Founders created the Second Amendment was to allow us serfs to protect ourselves from royal government rulers.

Source

Giffords' husband buys assault weapon to make point

By Catalina Camia USA Today Mon Mar 11, 2013 1:54 PM

Retired astronaut Mark Kelly, husband of former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, recently purchased an assault weapon to make a point about the ease of background checks for gun owners.

Kelly posted on his Facebook page on Friday that he bought an AR-15, one of the 157 military-style weapons that would be banned under a bill pending before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The panel is set to consider three gun bills Tuesday, including the proposed assault weapons ban authored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

"Even to buy an assault weapon, the background check only takes a few minutes," Kelly said. "Scary to think of people buying guns like these without a background check at a gun show or the Internet. We really need to close the gun show and private seller loophole."

Kelly, who is also a retired Navy captain, and Giffords are both gun owners who have been outspoken about the need for new gun-control measures. Americans for Responsible Solutions, their super PAC, has been running ads featuring Giffords that tout the proposed assault weapons ban and universal background checks.

Kelly said on his Facebook page that he plans to give the AR-15 to the Tucson Police Department when he receives the weapon.

Giffords was shot in the head January 2011 in a Tucson rampage that left six people dead. President Obama and others have been pushing for new gun legislation in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn., in December that left 20 students and six of their educators dead.

How do you spell hypocrite - Gun grabber Mark Kelly

Source

Mark Kelly’s purchase of rifle draws criticism

Associated Press Tue Mar 12, 2013 4:50 PM

The husband of former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords generated nearly 4,000 comments on Facebook from people on both sides of the gun debate after he posted a photo of himself buying a military-style rifle — a purchase he made to demonstrate how easy it is to obtain the kind of firearms he’s lobbying Congress to ban.

A background check took only a matter of minutes to complete, Mark Kelly said in the Facebook post, adding that it’s scary to think people can buy similar guns without background checks at gun shows or on the Internet.

It didn’t take long for gun-rights supporters to accuse Kelly of being a hypocrite for buying an AR-15-style rifle and a 45.-caliber handgun. Many of the Facebook comments focused on his motivations and the rules for purchasing such guns.

Kelly and Giffords started a gun control advocacy group, Americans for Responsible Solutions, amid the wave of recent mass shootings. They have been touring the country in recent months in support of expanded background checks for gun purchases.

Kelly bought the guns at a Tucson shop the day before he appeared with his wife at the supermarket where she was wounded during a shooting rampage that left six dead and 12 others injured two years ago.

The public event last week was the first time the survivors had come together since the January 2011 shooting.

Giffords resigned from Congress last year as she continues to recover from her injuries.

The AR-15 is among 157 military-style weapons that would be banned under a bill pending before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. Kelly, a former astronaut, said he intends to eventually hand in the rifle to Tucson police.

Doug MacKinlay is the owner of Diamondback Police Supply, the shop where Kelly bought the guns. He said Kelly bought the rifle on March 5 but couldn’t immediately take possession of it because the shop had bought it from a customer. As a result, the store is required by a Tucson ordinance to hold the gun for 20 days to give the city enough time to make sure the weapon wasn’t used in a crime, MacKinlay said.

MacKinlay said Kelly never revealed to the store’s staff why he was buying the guns and added that it would be wrong to refuse to sell a gun to someone because of their personal views.

“He is a U.S. citizen, an Arizona citizen and expressing his Second Amendment right to purchase and own a firearm,” MacKinlay said.

Todd Rathner, a lobbyist for the National Rifle Association’s affiliate in Arizona and a national NRA board member, questioned the point that Kelly was trying to make in buying the guns, saying a model citizen such as Kelly should be able to buy a gun relatively quickly. He also noted that such a purchase could have been a good investment as the value of those types of weapon soars amid heightened demand from gun owners.

“If you believe him, it’s a cheap publicity stunt,” Rathner said. “If you don’t, then he was speculating on the value of the rifle because he knew the prices would be inflated.”

The advocacy group started by Giffords and Kelly had no immediate comment Tuesday on Kelly’s gun buys.

But the group released a statement from Kelly on the Senate Judiciary Committee’s approval Tuesday of a proposal to expand federal firearms background checks to nearly all gun purchases. Kelly said the 10-8 vote was a huge step in keeping guns out of the hands of criminals and mentally ill people. Kelly’s statement didn’t address the controversy over his own gun buys.

Kelly, a former astronaut who plans to keep the handgun, told CNN on Monday that it was important for him to have firsthand information on the ease of buying guns such as the AR-15 and that he looks forward to buying a firearm at a gun show in the future. Kelly and Giffords have long been supporters of gun rights and owned handguns themselves.

Background checks on knife purchases????

And perhaps limit knife sales to knives with blades under 2 inches in length with dull blades. Society will be a safer place if people can only have dull butter knives, and only cops and government rulers are allowed to have sharp steak and other assault knives.

I'm just joking, but I wouldn't be surprised if some phoney baloney Arizona Libertarians I know try to say I actually believe that rubbish.

Source

Student charged in Texas college stabbing attack

Associated Press Wed Apr 10, 2013 7:54 AM

CYPRESS, Texas — A 20-year-old man from suburban Houston has been charged in a stabbing spree at a Texas community college that injured at least 14 people.

Sheriff’s officials say Dylan Quick is charged with three counts of aggravated assault in the Tuesday attack at Lone Star Community College in Cypress. The city is about 20 miles from Houston.

The Harris County Sheriff’s Office says in a statement that Quick used a “razor-type knife” to cut his victims, and pieces of the blade were found at the scene.

The sheriff’s office says Quick told investigators he’d had fantasies about stabbing people to death since he was in elementary school.

Investigators also say Quick indicated he’d been planning the attack for some time.

Rep. Bob Thorpe tries to protect his fellow crooks from us serfs???

The only good news about this article is that the crooks at the Arizona State Legislator seem to realize that they are crooks and need to protect themselves from the people they pretend to serve while they rob us blind.

Last if Rep. Bob Thorpe really is a "Tea Party" members who wants to protect us from the other government crooks, why is he trying to help protect his fellow crooks???

I suspect Rep. Bob Thorpe isn't really a "freedom fighter" and just ran on the "Tea Party" platform because it would help him get elected.

Source

Posted on April 9, 2013 3:30 pm by Laurie Roberts

Rep. Bob Thorpe looking for protection — and not just from bullets

In the wake of Sandy Hook, the state of Connecticut last Thursday enacted some of the strongest gun laws in the country, including limits on the size of magazines, a ban on armor piercing bullets and universal background checks.

Meanwhile, in the state of Arizona, a legislator on Thursday offered a response to our own massacre.

“In the wake of Tucson shooting, I have been researching body armor in order to inform our members about the costs and options for those wishing to purchase a vest for their personal use, for example, at town halls, parades and other public events,” Rep. Bob Thorpe, wrote, in an e-mail to fellow legislators. “These vests have prices ranging from about $600-$800, and options that include their weight and comfort, bullet stopping ability and colors.”

You’ve heard of Tupperware parties? Thorpe invited the Arizona Legislature to a body armor party. On Wednesday, a salesman from Arizona Tactical was supposed to be on hand in the House basement to offer discounts and take orders on the latest in tactical fashion.

Alas, legislative lawyers put the kibosh on Thorpe’s sale-a-thon. It’s seems you’re not supposed to use the state Capitol to sell bulletproof vests. Or anything else.

Now Thorpe is apparently steamed that his “internal” e-mail invite – the one sent out on his public e-mail account — wound up in the hands of the media.

“I’d love to know who leaked my email to the press, because I want to present them with a ‘Members Only’ jacket, as a reminder that some things, like my internal e-mail invitation, are intended for members only,” the Flagstaff Republican wrote in an e-mail on Tuesday.

Like his first e-mail, this one made it to my inbox within 15 minutes of his sending it.

Thorpe is a freshman legislator who made headlines earlier this year for his bill to require students to sign a loyalty oath before they could graduate from school — a bill he withdrew once somebody explained to him that it was blatantly unconstitutional. He’s a Tea Party guy who ran on a platform of protecting the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law.

Including, presumably, the law that says the Arizona Legislature is a public body – not the Augusta National Golf Club. And the one that says e-mail sent out on a government account is government business.

Or put another way: the public’s business.

Thorpe didn’t return my call to discuss public records and body armor and such. Pity, as I would have liked to ask him if that Members Only jacket would be outfitted in Kevlar.

In his Tuesday e-mail, Thorpe takes a shot at Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego — whom he suspects of “leaking” his e-mail – and notes that he arranged to have the body armor salesman come to the Capitol after a Democratic legislator told him she’d requested a police presence at a recent town hall meeting.

“She was concerned about her personal safety,” he wrote. “By the way, I sent out my e-mail invitation to all the House and Senate legislators, both Democrats and Republicans, because of my concern for the safety of all our members.”

Given his concern for safety, Thorpe might want to take up the cause for banning the sort of ammunition that would blast right through those bulletproof vests he’s hawking.

Sadly, his Senate colleagues rejected a ban on armor piercing bullets last week, along with a ban on high-capacity magazines and a call for universal background checks.

The irony wasn’t lost on Democrats.

“There are just so many other things that we should be working on and not just focused on our own personal safety but the personal safety of the public and for the children in our schools,” said Gallego, D-Phoenix.

“It’s is sad to see that we are almost at the 100th day of our session and yet we have not had a comprehensive discussion on gun violence for our constituents of Arizona,” Sen. Anna Tovar, D-Tolleson, told me.

For his part, Thorpe has provided his fellow legislators with the name and number for his body armor salesman. “His store is about a 10-minute drive from the Capitol and he’d like to try and arrange a time where perhaps 5 (or more) legislators can come in at a time for a joint briefing in one of their classrooms,” he wrote.

No doubt, Thorpe’s pal will have plenty of takers.

In addition to strafing other gun bills last week, the state Senate also rejected a bid to require basic firearms-safety training before you can carry around a concealed weapon.

Thus, the need, I suppose, for legislative body armor — to protect our leaders from the public.

Now, if only there was a way to protect the public from our leaders…

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan is a liar who will say anything to get elected!!!

Source

Quan flubs crime stat, again

Post has been updated as of 5:50 p.m.

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan has gained a reputation for citing crime statistics that don’t always add up or making statements to the press she later says were taken out of context.

It’s happened again.

In an interview with KCBS radio broadcast on Monday, Oakland’s mayor said the following:

For the last 2 months, violence in Oakland has been way down. It seems to come in these spurts. So like for six weeks there had been no murders east of High Street in East Oakland.

Problem is, there have been seven homicides east of High Street over the past six weeks, according to Shine in Peace, an online journalism project launching soon that’s tracking shootings and homicides in Oakland and noticed Quan’s statement.

“There’s no six-week period in 2013 where there were no homicides east of High Street,” said Susie Cagle, the project director.

Cagle said the homicides over the past six weeks included the following:

• Lionel Ray Fluker, 54, killed on April 4 near MacArthur Boulevard and Seminary Avenue.
• Qiunn Boyer, 34, died on April 4, two days after being shot near Keller Avenue and Hansom Drive.
• John Sunny Davis, 31, killed on Mar. 31 near 68th Avenue and Avenal Avenue.
• unidentified, killed on Mar. 31 near 70th Ave. and Hawley Street.
• unidentified, killed Mar. 31 on the 8900 block of International Boulevard.
• Noe Garcia, 28, killed on Mar. 2 near Apricot Street and Blenheim Street.
• Trisha Forde, 34, killed on Mar. 2 near Apricot Street and Blenheim Street.

Sean Maher, Quan’s spokesman, said the quote to KCBS was taken out of context in two important ways. Quan was only talking about gang-related homicides because she was discussing the effectiveness of Ceasefire, an anti-gang prevention program, Maher said.

Secondly, the mayor was talking about a specific period of time, Feb. 22 through Mar. 30. During that period, only the Mar. 2 double homicide killing Forde and Garcia occurred east of High Street in East Oakland — the target area of the gang-prevention efforts, Maher said. Police have said that homicide was not gang-related, he said.

Maher acknowledged that the period of time Quan referred to was only five weeks.

“Unfortunately, the KCBS report cuts their interview in a way that can be misleading,” said Maher. “Obviously, the mayor is aware of the recent spate of homicides that began on Easter Sunday.”

Cagle said her project’s data corroborates what Maher said. But she noted that there were five homicides east of High Street on Mar. 31 through Apr. 4. She said that hardly conveys success in reducing homicides.

“It seems like an odd thing to even be publicizing,” she said.

BP murdered 16 year old Jose Rodriguez????

Source

New details in Mexico teenager's death by Border Patrol

By Bob Ortega The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Apr 11, 2013 12:18 AM

A new witness and new evidence seem to bolster the case that a Mexican teen shot to death by the Border Patrol in October in Nogales, Sonora, was walking down the street at the time he was killed — not, as the Border Patrol has maintained, throwing rocks over the fence at agents.

The new information also suggests that more than one agent may have opened fire on Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez, 16. That information arrived as the family of the youth held a march on Wednesday in Nogales to protest what they called the FBI and Border Patrol’s “veil of silence” about the killing.

Both the bureau and the patrol have declined to comment on the boy’s death, citing an ongoing FBI investigation. They have declined to identify the agent or agents involved and have declined to release a surveillance video of the incident, shot by cameras mounted above the border fence.

Agents, along with Nogales, Ariz., police, were chasing two men they believed were fleeing back to Mexico after climbing over the fence to the U.S. side with drugs. The agents said rocks began flying over the fence at them as they tried to arrest the men climbing back over the fence.

The new witness, Isidro Alvarado, a private security guard, said on the night of Oct. 10, he was walking about 20 feet behind Elena Rodriguez down Calle Internacional, which runs parallel to the border fence, when two other youths suddenly ran past them. Then, he said, he heard gunshots from two separate places by the fence and saw Elena Rodriguez fall.

Alvarado said his brother, a Nogales police officer, persuaded him to come forward and speak to the Sonora Attorney General’s Office. Alvarado’s statements were first reported by Nogales radio station XENY. He also spoke at a news conference Wednesday in Nogales, Sonora.

Luis Parra, a Nogales, Ariz., attorney representing the Elena Rodriguez family, said he recently interviewed Alvarado and then confirmed with an attorney from the Sonora Attorney General’s Office that the first call to Nogales police reporting the shooting, immediately after it happened, came from Alvarado’s cellphone.

“But what has made the family even more distraught,” he said, “are the indications that two agents were involved in the shooting and that he (Elena Rodriguez) had to have been lying on the ground when five bullets penetrated his back.”

In a forensic scene-analysis report, investigators for the Sonora Attorney General’s Office concluded that at least five shots into Elena Rodriguez’s back must have hit him while he was lying on the sidewalk. This jibes with findings in an autopsy, previously reported by The Arizona Republic, that all but one of the bullets that hit the boy entered from behind and most at an angle suggesting he was prone when hit.

In their forensic report, investigators also describe how they climbed the story-and-a-half-high bluff on which the border fence sits and looked through the fence as Border Patrol agents and Nogales, Ariz., police conducted their investigation on the U.S. side of the fence.

They describe an area next to the fence, cordoned off with police tape, where they counted 11 shell casings, and another taped-off area, about 28 feet away, where they could see three more casings. This seems to suggest, Parra said, that agents fired from two different spots along the fence.

A Sonora ballistics report, meanwhile, describes the nine bullets recovered by Mexican police — six from the boy’s body, and three from the street — as hollow-point, .40-caliber slugs fired from one or more polygonal-rifled guns.

Michael Haag, a forensic scientist and ballistics expert based in Albuquerque, reviewed the report. He said this is a relatively uncommon type of rifling, a type used in the Heckler & Koch P2000 handgun, among others.

That is the standard-issue Border Patrol sidearm, a spokesman confirmed.

The ballistics report said polygonal rifling, which leaves a much smoother barrel than conventional rifling, makes it harder to distinguish whether all the bullets were fired by the same gun or different guns.

“Because it leaves no good marks on the bullets, it’s very rare by forensic science to identify the bullets back to a specific gun,” Haag agreed. He added, “You can ID it sometimes, so it should be attempted.”

He also noted that each Border Patrol agent should have told the FBI whether he or she fired shots that night.

The Sonora ballistics report identified the bullets as Starfire hollow points, but Haag said the poor-quality photocopies of the bullets show cannelures — a ring that runs around the circumference of the bullet — that are not found on Starfire rounds but are consistent with the similar Federal Premium HST .40-caliber rounds.

Those are standard-issue ammunition for the H&K P2000 handgun, a Border Patrol spokesman confirmed.

The Department of Homeland Security expects shortly to complete a review of the Border Patrol’s use-of-force policy, which allows agents to fire at rock-throwers, Secretary Janet Napolitano said in an interview with The Republic last week.

There have been eight incidents in the past three years in which agents have shot and killed alleged rock-throwers, among 20 deaths caused by agents since the beginning of 2010. In all but three of those cases, the FBI investigations remain open and the Border Patrol and the DHS have declined to release any information, including the names of the agents involved.

Reach the reporter at bob.ortega@arizonarepublic.com

NRA - Worlds largest gun control organization???

Some people like to say that the NRA is the worlds largest gun control organization.

I think this editorial cartoon by Steve Benson on April 11, 2013 gives credibility to that.

In the cartoon NRA leader Wayne LaPierre is picture on TV saying

We think it is reasonable to provide instant criminal background checks for every sale at every gun show. No loopholes anywhere for anyone.

Who is that idiotic bobblehead.

It's you Wayne, don't you remember.

Testimony before House Judiciary Committee on Crime, 27, May 1999

Know the enemies of the Second Amendment!!!

Source

Gun reform needed now

Wed Apr 10, 2013 6:59 PM

Regarding “Arizona’s gun divide” (Republic, Friday):

As leaders of grass-roots gun-safety groups, we must address some false impressions that may have been left by the article.

First, Maricopa Gun Club President Lisa Durst represents a small minority. Only 15 percent of women — and just 34 percent of households — own guns. Background checks are supported by 91 percent of Americans, including 88 percent of gun owners. [Yea and 90 percent of Americans are Christians, but that wouldn't make it right to round up the 10 percent of Americans that are atheists and force them to believe in the silly Christian god!!!]

Second, the term “assault weapon” was defined in the Assault Weapons Ban of 1994 and is refined in AWB 2013. Under NRA lobbying pressure, Congress allowed the 1994 ban to expire in 2004. “Modern sporting rifle” is an industry marketing term. [Yea, and “assault weapon” is a scarey sounding term used by people who want to flush your Second Amendment rights down the toilet and take your guns!!!]

There were 8,583 firearm murders in the U.S. in 2011, excluding thousands of suicide and accidental gun deaths. Gun deaths now exceed traffic fatalities in Arizona and four other states. [So it is time to ban automobiles in those 45 states???]

We stand with the majority of Americans, including Arizonans, for change. There were bipartisan victories last week in Connecticut and elsewhere.

On Friday, we delivered two petitions with more than 150,000 signatures to Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake, demanding universal background checks, assault-weapon and high-capacity magazine bans, and federal prosecutions of gun trafficking. [John McCain, Jeff Flake didn't they both support invading Iraq and Afghanistan in which the American government murdered thousands, and probably millions of innocent civilians with American GUNS!!! Asking John McCain and Jeff Flake to protect you is like asking Hitler to protect the Jews]

— Kara Pelletier, Scottsdale
(Moms Demand Action, Phoenix)

— Hildy Saizow, Phoenix
(Arizonans for Gun Safety)

— Mari Bailey, Phoenix
(Greater Phoenix Million Moms March)

— Ellen Davis, Phoenix
(Arizona People Acting for a Safer Society)

You get a fair trial??? Don't make me laugh!!!

The government views you as either an enemy that belongs in prison, or a source of cash with a big wallet they want to steal. And in both cases they ain't going to let a fair trial get in their way of putting you in prison and stealing your wallet.

Source

Guantanamo dogged by new controversy after mishandling of e-mails

By Peter Finn, Published: April 11

The military justice system at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which has been dogged by charges of secret monitoring of proceedings and defense communications, became embroiled in a fresh controversy Thursday when it was revealed that hundreds of thousands of defense e-mails were turned over to the prosecution.

The breach prompted Col. Karen Mayberry, the chief military defense counsel, to order all attorneys for Guantanamo detainees to stop using Defense Department computer networks to transmit privileged or confidential information until the security of such communications is assured.

Army Col. James Pohl, the chief judge at Guantanamo, also ordered a two-month delay in pre­trial proceedings in the military-commission case against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who is accused of organizing the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen. Defense attorneys in the trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammed , the professed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and four co-defendants filed an emergency motion — via a handwritten note — seeking a similar pause in proceedings.

Pretrial hearings in both cases were set to resume this month.

“Is there any security for defense attorney information?” said James Connell, attorney for Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, one of the Sept. 11 defendants. “This new disclosure is simply the latest in a series of revelations of courtroom monitoring, hidden surveillance devices and legal-bin searches.”

The inappropriate transfer of the e-mails follows other questions about government intrusion and secrecy that have undermined the legitimacy of a judicial process that has struggled to establish itself as an effective forum for the prosecution of some terrorism cases.

In February, a military lawyer acknowledged that microphones were hidden inside devices that looked like smoke detectors in rooms used for meetings between defense counsel and their clients. The military said the listening system was not used to eavesdrop on confidential meetings and had been installed before defense lawyers started to use the rooms. The government subsequently said it tore out the wiring.

That same month, Pohl learned that the soundproofed courtroom at Guantanamo was wired with a “kill switch” that allowed an unknown government entity, thought to be the CIA, to cut audio feed of the trial to the public gallery. Pohl ruled that in the future only he could turn off the audio feed to protect classified information. But defense lawyers questioned whether the audio equipment in the courtroom had been manipulated to allow the government to monitor attorney- client conversations.

In the latest controversy, the prosecution gained access to about 540,000 e-mails from defense teams. It is not clear which cases or lawyers the e-mails concerned; a Pentagon spokesman declined to comment, citing ongoing litigation.

Defense attorneys said prosecutors told them that they stopped looking at the e-mails as soon as they realized that the messages contained confidential defense information.

The mishandling of the e-mails was detected when IT specialists were conducting a search of the government’s computer system on behalf of prosecutors in a particular case. When they did so, they came across not only the e-mails they were seeking but also those between defense lawyers.

Defense attorneys said military IT personnel unsuccessfully tried to refine their search parameters two more times — and in each case discovered more confidential defense material.

In another controversy, defense counsel recently complained that huge volumes of work files were lost when the Defense Department tried to upgrade its network and mirror at Guantanamo the computer system that is available to defense lawyers handling detainee cases in the Washington area.

“Entire files, months of work was just gone,” said Navy Cmdr. Stephen C. Reyes, an attorney for Nashiri. “I have no evidence of any nefarious conduct, but it demonstrates again that we don’t have confidence that our files and communications are secure.”

Reyes noted that a prosecution file also was recently found in the defense computer system.

The latest delay in the commission hearings comes as the Obama administration faces a widening hunger strike among the detainees at Guantanamo.

Attorneys for the detainees and the military have clashed over the number of participants in the protest. The Pentagon said Thursday that 43 of the 166 detainees were on hunger strike, of whom 11 are being force-fed, while defense attorneys said the overwhelming majority of the 120 or so detainees in Camps 5 and 6 are on hunger strike.

The military has refused requests from the media, including The Washington Post, to allow reporters to observe conditions at the camps. Human Rights groups also have requested unfettered access to the camps.

A team from the International Committee of the Red Cross is visiting the camp, but the organization does not make its recommendations public.

ICRC President Peter Maurer said Thursday in an interview at The Post that the hunger strike is born of detainees’ frustration at being held indefinitely without any further review, even in cases in which they have been cleared for transfer out of Guantanamo.

With Police in Schools, More Children in Court

Let's face it, it's not about the kids. It's about high paying, cushy jobs for cops.

Well at least that is probably how the cops and police unions feel about it.

Source

With Police in Schools, More Children in Court

By ERIK ECKHOLM

Published: April 12, 2013 175 Comments

HOUSTON — As school districts across the country consider placing more police officers in schools, youth advocates and judges are raising alarm about what they have seen in the schools where officers are already stationed: a surge in criminal charges against children for misbehavior that many believe is better handled in the principal’s office.

Since the early 1990s, thousands of districts, often with federal subsidies, have paid local police agencies to provide armed “school resource officers” for high schools, middle schools and sometimes even elementary schools. Hundreds of additional districts, including those in Houston, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, have created police forces of their own, employing thousands of sworn officers.

Last week, in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., shootings, a task force of the National Rifle Association recommended placing police officers or other armed guards in every school. The White House has proposed an increase in police officers based in schools.

The effectiveness of using police officers in schools to deter crime or the remote threat of armed intruders is unclear. The new N.R.A. report cites the example of a Mississippi assistant principal who in 1997 got a gun from his truck and disarmed a student who had killed two classmates, and another in California in which a school resource officer in 2001 wounded and arrested a student who had opened fire with a shotgun.

Yet the most striking impact of school police officers so far, critics say, has been a surge in arrests or misdemeanor charges for essentially nonviolent behavior — including scuffles, truancy and cursing at teachers — that sends children into the criminal courts.

“There is no evidence that placing officers in the schools improves safety,” said Denise C. Gottfredson, a criminologist at the University of Maryland who is an expert in school violence. “And it increases the number of minor behavior problems that are referred to the police, pushing kids into the criminal system.”

Nationwide, hundreds of thousands of students are arrested or given criminal citations at schools each year. A large share are sent to court for relatively minor offenses, with black and Hispanic students and those with disabilities disproportionately affected, according to recent reports from civil rights groups, including the Advancement Project, in Washington, and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, in New York.

Such criminal charges may be most prevalent in Texas, where police officers based in schools write more than 100,000 misdemeanor tickets each year, said Deborah Fowler, the deputy director of Texas Appleseed, a legal advocacy center in Austin. The students seldom get legal aid, she noted, and they may face hundreds of dollars in fines, community service and, in some cases, a lasting record that could affect applications for jobs or the military.

In February, Texas Appleseed and the Brazos County chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. filed a complaint with the federal Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights. Black students in the school district in Bryan, they noted, receive criminal misdemeanor citations at four times the rate of white students.

Featured in the complaint is De’Angelo Rollins, who was 12 and had just started at a Bryan middle school in 2010 when he and another boy scuffled and were given citations. After repeated court appearances, De’Angelo pleaded no contest, paid a fine of $69 and was sentenced to 20 hours of community service and four months’ probation.

“They said this will stay on his record unless we go back when he is 17 and get it expunged,” said his mother, Marjorie Holmon.

Federal officials have not yet acted, but the district says it is revising guidelines for citations. “Allegations of inequitable treatment of students is something the district takes very seriously,” said Sandra Farris, a spokeswoman for the Bryan schools.

While schools may bring in police officers to provide security, the officers often end up handling discipline and handing out charges of disorderly conduct or assault, said Michael Nash, the presiding judge of juvenile court in Los Angeles and the president of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges.

“You have to differentiate the security issue and the discipline issue,” he said. “Once the kids get involved in the court system, it’s a slippery slope downhill.”

Mo Canady, the executive director of the National Association of School Resource Officers, defended placing police officers in schools, provided that they are properly trained. He said that the negative impacts had been exaggerated, and that when the right people were selected and schooled in adolescent psychology and mediation, both schools and communities benefited.

“The good officers recognize the difference between a scuffle and a true assault,” Mr. Canady said.

But the line is not always clear. In New York, a lawsuit against the Police Department’s School Safety Division describes several instances in which officers handcuffed and arrested children for noncriminal behavior.

Many districts are clamoring for police officers. “There’s definitely a massive trend toward increasing school resource officers, so much so that departments are having trouble buying guns and supplies,” said Michael Dorn, director of Safe Havens International, in Macon, Ga., a safety consultant to schools.

One district in Florida, Mr. Dorn said, is looking to add 130 officers, mainly to patrol its grade schools. McKinney, Tex., north of Dallas, recently placed officers in its five middle schools.

Many judges say school police officers are too quick to make arrests or write tickets.

“We are criminalizing our children for nonviolent offenses,” Wallace B. Jefferson, the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, said in a speech to the Legislature in March.

School officers in Texas are authorized to issue Class C misdemeanor citations, which require students to appear before a justice of the peace or in municipal court, with public records.

The process can leave a bitter taste. Joshua, a ninth grader who lives south of Houston, got into a brief fight on a school bus in November after another boy, a security video showed, hit him first. The principal called in the school’s resident sheriff, who wrote them both up for disorderly conduct.

“I thought it was stupid,” Joshua said of the ticket and his need to miss school for two court appearances. His guardian found a free lawyer from the Earl Carl Institute, a legal aid group at Texas Southern University, and the case was eventually dismissed.

Sarah R. Guidry, the executive director of the institute, said that when students appeared in court with a lawyer, charges for minor offenses were often dismissed. But she said the courts tended to be “plea mills,” with students pleading guilty in the hope that, once they paid a fine and spent hours cleaning parks, the charges would be expunged. If students fail to show up and cases are unresolved, they may be named in arrest warrants when they turn 17.

In parts of Texas, the outcry from legal advocates is starting to make a difference. Jimmy L. Dotson, the chief of Houston’s 186-member school district force, is one of several police leaders working to redefine the role of campus officers.

Perhaps the sharpest change has come to E. L. Furr High School, which serves mainly low-income Hispanic children on the city’s east side. Bertie Simmons, 79, came out of retirement 11 years ago to try to turn around a school so blighted by gang violence that it dared not hold assemblies.

“The kids hated the school police,” said Ms. Simmons, the principal. They arrested two or three students a day and issued tickets to many more.

Ms. Simmons searched for officers who would work with the students and build trust. She found them in Danny Avalos and Craig Davis, former municipal police officers who grew up in rough neighborhoods, and after years of effort, the campus is peaceful and arrests and tickets are rare. Discipline is usually enforced by a principal’s court with student juries, not summonses to the criminal courts.

“Writing tickets is easy,” Officer Avalos said. “We do it the hard way, talking with the kids and coaching them.”

With new guidelines and training, ticketing within the Houston schools was reduced by 60 percent in one year. Citations for “disruption of classes,” for example, fell to 124 between September and February, from 927 in the same period last year.

“Our role is not to be disciplinarians,” Chief Dotson said in an interview. “Our purpose is to push these kids into college, not into the criminal justice system.”

Cop pulls gun on McDonal's customer for taking too long in line????

Source

Posted: 4:39 p.m. Wednesday, April 17, 2013

DeKalb cop arrested for alleged assault at McDonald’s

By Alexis Stevens

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A sergeant with the DeKalb County police department was arrested Wednesday morning following an alleged assault against a teenager at a McDonald’s, according to police.

Scott A. Biumi, 48, of Cumming, was charged with aggravated assault for the April 9 incident at the McDonald’s on Old Atlanta Road, the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office said.

Biumi was in the drive-through of the restaurant at 10:30 p.m. when he allegedly became upset with another customer, according to police.

“He exited his car, and following a verbal exchange with the customer, Biumi drew a gun and pointed it at the victim,” Deputy Courtney Spriggs with the Forsyth sheriff’s office said in an emailed statement.

Video footage from McDonald’s and released by the sheriff’s office shows a man, identified as Biumi, lunging into a pickup truck at the drive-through window. The alleged teenage victim, Ryan Mash, told Channel 2 Action News that Biumi got mad because it was taking too long to get his order.

“He grabbed me on my right shoulder and pinned me against my driver’s seat, and the next thing I know, I have a gun in my face,” Mash told Channel 2. “He goes, ‘Do you know who you’re messing with,’ and ‘You shouldn’t be holding up the line’ and all this and that.”

While investigating the incident, deputies determined Biumi was employed as a detective sergeant with DeKalb police, Spriggs said. At the time of the alleged incident, Biumi was driving a department-issued, unmarked Chevrolet and had a department gold star badge on his belt.

Biumi’s bond was set at $22,000 and he was in the process of bonding out of the Forsyth County jail Wednesday afternoon, Spriggs said. Biumi’s court date was set for May 23.

At an afternoon press conference, DeKalb County police Chief Cedric Alexander said he is awaiting the outcome of the Forsyth County investigation, but does not tolerate this type of behavior.

Source

Frustrated by delay, Georgia cop allegedly pulled gun in McDonald’s drive-thru line

By Michael Walsh / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Thursday, April 18, 2013, 3:17 PM

Food, folks and fun? More like gall, grouch and gun.

A young Georgia man was not "lovin' it" when a hold up in the drive-thru lane at McDonald's allegedly led to an armed holdup with an off-duty officer Tuesday night.

Student Ryan Mash, 18, was waiting for his order at the drive-thru window of a Forsyth County McDonald's when he was taken by surprise — and it was not a Happy Meal toy.

It was a gun allegedly brandished by Sgt. Scott Biumi, 48, a member of the DeKalb County Police Department for more than 20 years, authorities suspect.

Biumi apparently grew frustrated that the fast food experience was not faster, so he stepped out of his car and yelled, "Stop holding up the drive-thru line," according to Mash.

Mash claims Biumi thought his sincere apology was sarcastic. Then witnesses reported hearing Biumi scream, "You don't know who you are (messing) with!"

"And that's when he pulled the gun on me," Mash said, "and kept on yelling at me for about 30 more seconds. And then walked off."

A McDonald's security camera recorded the incident.

One of Mash's friends saw that the man had a police badge on his belt. The high school students also wrote down the man's license plate number.

Forsyth County Sheriff Duane Piper linked the license plate number to Biumi and the DeKalb County Police Department. The teenagers identified Biumi from a photo lineup, and he was arrested Wednesday, reported Atlanta station WXIA.

"It's a betrayal of a trust to the public," said Piper. "We're expected to handle ourselves correctly in high-stress situations, and it's very disappointing that an officer would snap like this. It's a break in judgment that can't be excused."

Biumi was booked at the Forsyth County jail and released the same day on a $22,000 bond.

"I'm just not going to stand for any behavior that goes outside that of the scope of the law," said DeKalb County Police Chief Cedric Alexander.

He is on administrative leave with pay from his job as the investigation proceeds. Mash, however, thinks Biumi should be stripped of his gun and badge permanently.

"He shouldn't be serving in our community," Mash said, "because you never know, he could get angry at somebody for speeding, and pull a gun on him."

Criminalizing Children at School

Basically the government schools have become a jobs program for teachers, administrators, and cops and are run for the sake of the teachers, administrators, cops and unions, not the parents and children.

Now the cops seems to want to use recent shootings to turn the schools into a bigger jobs program for police officers. And this article addresses some of that.

Source

Criminalizing Children at School

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Published: April 18, 2013 13 Comments

The National Rifle Association and President Obama responded to the Newtown, Conn., shootings by recommending that more police officers be placed in the nation’s schools. But a growing body of research suggests that, contrary to popular wisdom, a larger police presence in schools generally does little to improve safety. It can also create a repressive environment in which children are arrested or issued summonses for minor misdeeds — like cutting class or talking back — that once would have been dealt with by the principal.

Stationing police in schools, while common today, was virtually unknown during the 1970s. Things began to change with the surge of juvenile crime during the ’80s, followed by an overreaction among school officials. Then came the 1999 Columbine High School shooting outside Denver, which prompted a surge in financing for specially trained police. In the mid-1970s, police patrolled about 1 percent of schools. By 2008, the figure was 40 percent.

The belief that police officers automatically make schools safer was challenged in a 2011 study that compared federal crime data of schools that had police officers with schools that did not. It found that the presence of the officers did not drive down crime. The study — by Chongmin Na of The University of Houston, Clear Lake, and Denise Gottfredson of the University of Maryland — also found that with police in the buildings, routine disciplinary problems began to be treated as criminal justice problems, increasing the likelihood of arrests.

Children as young as 12 have been treated as criminals for shoving matches and even adolescent misconduct like cursing in school. This is worrisome because young people who spend time in adult jails are more likely to have problems with law enforcement later on. Moreover, federal data suggest a pattern of discrimination in the arrests, with black and Hispanic children more likely to be affected than their white peers.

In Texas, civil rights groups filed a federal complaint against the school district in the town of Bryan. The lawyers say African-American students are four times as likely as other students to be charged with misdemeanors, which can carry fines up to $500 and lead to jail time for disrupting class or using foul language.

The criminalization of misbehavior so alarmed the New York City Council that, in 2010, it passed the Student Safety Act, which requires detailed police reports on which students are arrested and why. (Data from the 2011-12 school year show that black students are being disproportionately arrested and suspended.)

Some critics now want to require greater transparency in the reporting process to make the police even more forthcoming. Elsewhere in the country, judges, lawmakers and children’s advocates have been working hard to dismantle what they have begun to call the school-to-prison pipeline.

Given the growing criticism, districts that have gotten along without police officers should think twice before deploying them in school buildings.

U.S. uses the Bible as “an excuse for invading other countries.”

While I think it is wrong to murder innocent people like the people that planted the bombs in the Boston Marathon, I think that Tamerlan Tsarnaev quote is correct.

If the American government would stop terrorizing people in other countries these terrorist acts would stop overnight.

Also from this quote it sounds like the American police force have a double standard of justice. They seem to think it's OK to flush our Constitutional rights down the toilet to help them catch alleged criminals.

U.S. officials said a special interrogation team for high-value suspects would question him without reading him his Miranda rights

Source

Final shootout, then Boston bombing suspect caught

Associated Press Sat Apr 20, 2013 7:26 AM

WATERTOWN, Mass. — For just a few minutes, it seemed as if the dragnet that had shut down a metropolitan area of millions while legions of police went house to house looking for the suspected Boston Marathon bomber had failed.

Weary officials lifted a daylong order that had kept residents in their homes, saying it was fruitless to keep an entire city locked down. Then one man emerged from his home and noticed blood on the pleasure boat parked in his backyard. He lifted the tarp and found the wounded 19-year-old college student known the world over as Suspect No. 2.

Soon after that, the 24-hour drama that paralyzed a city and transfixed a nation was over.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s capture touched off raucous celebrations in and around Boston, with chants of “USA, USA” as residents flooded the streets in relief and jubilation after four tense days since twin explosions ripped through the marathon’s crowd at the finish line, killing three people and wounding more than 180.

Will cops torture Boston Marathon bombing suspect to get answers???

President Barack Obama said there are many unanswered questions about the Boston bombings, including whether the two men had help from others. He urged people not to rush judgment about their motivations.

Dzhokhar and his brother, 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, were identified by authorities and relatives as ethnic Chechens from southern Russia who had been in the U.S. for about a decade and were believed to be living in Cambridge, just outside Boston. Tamerlan Tsarnaev died early in the day of gunshot wounds and a possible blast injury. He was run over by his younger brother in a car as he lay wounded, according to investigators.

During a long night of violence Thursday and into Friday, the brothers killed an MIT police officer, severely wounded another lawman during a gun battle and hurled explosives at police in a desperate getaway attempt, authorities said.

Late Friday, less than an hour after authorities lifted the lockdown, they tracked down the younger man holed up in the boat, weakened by a gunshot wound after fleeing on foot from the overnight shootout with police that left 200 spent rounds behind.

The resident who spotted Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in his boat in his Watertown yard called police, who tried to persuade the suspect to get out of the boat, said Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis.

“He was not communicative,” Davis said.

Instead, he said, there was an exchange of gunfire — the final volley of one of the biggest manhunts in American history.

The violent endgame unfolded just a day after the FBI released surveillance-camera images of two young men suspected of planting the pressure-cooker explosives at the marathon’s finish line, an attack that put the nation on edge for the week.

Watertown residents who had been told Friday morning to stay inside behind locked doors poured out of their homes and lined the streets to cheer police vehicles as they rolled away from the scene.

Celebratory bells rang from a church tower. Teenagers waved American flags. Drivers honked. Every time an emergency vehicle went by, people cheered loudly.

“They finally caught the jerk,” said nurse Cindy Boyle. “It was scary. It was tense.”

Police said three other people were taken into custody for questioning at an off-campus housing complex at the University of the Massachusetts at Dartmouth where the younger man may have lived.

“Tonight, our family applauds the entire law enforcement community for a job well done, and trust that our justice system will now do its job,” said the family of 8-year-old Martin Richard, who died in the bombing.

Queries cascaded in after authorities released the surveillance-camera photos — the FBI website was overwhelmed with 300,000 hits per minute — but what role those played in the overnight clash was unclear. State police spokesman Dave Procopio said police realized they were dealing with the bombing suspects based on what the two men told a carjacking victim during their night of crime.

The search by thousands of law enforcement officers all but shut down the Boston area for much of the day. Officials halted all mass transit, including Amtrak trains to New York, advised businesses not to open and warned close to 1 million people in the city and some of its suburbs to unlock their doors only for uniformed police.

Around midday, the suspects’ uncle, Ruslan Tsarni of Montgomery Village, Md., pleaded on television: “Dzhokhar, if you are alive, turn yourself in and ask for forgiveness.”

Until the younger man’s capture, it was looking like a grim day for police. As night fell, they announced that they were scaling back the hunt and lifting the stay-indoors order across the region because they had come up empty-handed.

But then the break came and within a couple of hours, the search was over. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured about a mile from the site of the shootout that killed his brother.

A neighbor described how heavily armed police stormed by her window not long after the lockdown was lifted — the rapid gunfire left her huddled on the bathroom floor on top of her young son.

“I was just waiting for bullets to just start flying everywhere,” Deanna Finn said.

When at last the gunfire died away and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was taken from the neighborhood in an ambulance, an officer gave Finn a cheery thumbs-up.

“To see the look on his face, he was very, very happy, so that made me very, very happy,” she said.

Authorities said the man dubbed Suspect No. 1 — the one in sunglasses and a dark baseball cap in the surveillance-camera pictures — was Tamerlan Tsarnaev, while Suspect No. 2, the one in a white baseball cap worn backward, was his younger brother.

Chechnya, where the brothers grew up, has been the scene of two wars between Russian forces and separatists since 1994, in which tens of thousands were killed in heavy Russian bombing. That spawned an Islamic insurgency that has carried out deadly bombings in Russia and the region, although not in the West.

U.S. uses the Bible as “an excuse for invading other countries.”

Also, the FBI interviewed the older brother at the request of a foreign government in 2011, and nothing derogatory was found, according to a federal law enforcement official who was not authorized to discuss the case publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The official did not identify the foreign country or say why it made the request.

Exactly how the long night of crime began was unclear. But police said the brothers carjacked a man in a Mercedes-Benz in Cambridge, just across the Charles River from Boston, then released him unharmed at a gas station.

They also shot to death a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer, 26-year-old Sean Collier, while he was responding to a report of a disturbance, investigators said.

The search for the Mercedes led to a chase that ended in Watertown, where authorities said the suspects threw explosive devices from the car and exchanged gunfire with police. A transit police officer, 33-year-old Richard Donohue, was shot and critically wounded, authorities said.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev ran over his already wounded brother as he fled, according to two law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation. At some point, he abandoned his car and ran away on foot.

The brothers had built an arsenal of pipe bombs, grenades and improvised explosive devices and used some of the weapons in trying to make their getaway, said Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., a member of the House Intelligence Committee.

Watertown resident Kayla Dipaolo said she was woken up overnight by gunfire and a large explosion that sounded “like it was right next to my head … and shook the whole house.”

“It was very scary,” she said. “There are two bullet holes in the side of my house, and by the front door there is another.”

Tamerlan Tsarnaev had studied accounting as a part-time student at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston for three semesters from 2006 to 2008, the school said. He was married with a young daughter.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was registered as a student at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Students said he was on campus this week after the Boston Marathon bombing. The campus closed down Friday along with colleges around the Boston area.

The men’s father, Anzor Tsarnaev, said in a telephone interview with the AP from the Russian city of Makhachkala that his younger son, Dzhokhar, is “a true angel.” He said his son was studying medicine.

“He is such an intelligent boy,” the father said. “We expected him to come on holidays here.”

A man who said he knew Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Krystle Campbell, the 29-year-old restaurant manager killed in Monday’s bombing, said he was glad Dzhokhar had survived.

“I didn’t want to lose more than one friend,” Marvin Salazar said.

“Why Jahar?” he asked, using Tsarnaev’s nickname. “I want to know answers. That’s the most important thing. And I think I speak for almost all America. Why the Boston Marathon? Why this year? Why Jahar?”

Two years ago, the city of Cambridge awarded Dzhokhar Tsarnaev a $2,500 scholarship. At the time, he was a senior at Cambridge Rindge & Latin School, a highly regarded public school whose alumni include Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and NBA Hall of Famer Patrick Ewing.

Tsarni, the men’s uncle, said the brothers traveled here together from Russia. He called his nephews “losers” and said they had struggled to settle in the U.S. and ended up “thereby just hating everyone.”

———

Sullivan and Associated Press writers Stephen Braun, Jack Gillum and Pete Yost reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Mike Hill, Katie Zezima, Pat Eaton-Robb and Steve LeBlanc in Boston, Rodrique Ngowi in Watertown, Mass. and Jeff Donn in Cambridge, Mass., contributed to this report.

Phoenix City Council members are gun grabbers

Source

Phoenix police to hold gun-buyback event Saturday

New law soon will hinder similar efforts

By JJ Hensley The Republic | azcentral.com Fri May 3, 2013 10:11 PM

Three months before a new state law goes into effect requiring police to sell any weapon they receive, Phoenix officials plan to destroy as many guns as residents bring them.

Those efforts begin Saturday with a gun buyback at three churches in the city, and two more events are scheduled later this month.

After that, gun buybacks coordinated with Phoenix police will likely cease.

A law Gov. Jan Brewer signed this week requires police to sell any weapons they receive, whether the guns are abandoned, lost or forfeited to the agency through a court order. A bill with the same intent — requiring agencies to sell weapons instead of destroying them — was approved last year, but officials in Phoenix, Tucson and other cities took a literal reading of that legislation and determined that it applied only to weapons that departments receive through court-ordered forfeiture.

Police have until the new law takes effect to continue their current practices. In Phoenix, that means destroying weapons.

“There’s been no emergency clause indicating that (the law) is going to go into effect immediately,” Phoenix police Sgt. Steve Martos said of the legislation.

The checks that police want to run on each weapon, which include records queries to ensure that the gun was not reported stolen and a ballis-tics test to determine if the weapon was used in a crime, will take additional time, Martos said.

“Obviously, there’s a little bit of pressure,” said Martos, a department spokesman.

The buyback is anonymous, with no information collected on the donor, and police ask that weapons arrive unloaded and in a trunk or pickup bed where officers can safely remove the guns.

As long as the guns are functioning, they can be exchanged for gift cards.

“It’ll almost be like a drive-through process,” Martos said.

The buybacks should not result in additional costs for police personnel.

The events will be staffed with Phoenix’s neighborhood-enforcement team officers who would already be on the clock and do not typically have “first-responder” duties, Martos said.

A group called Arizonans for Gun Safety donated $100,000 to purchase grocery-store gift cards that will be given out in exchange for weapons, including $200 for assault weapons and $100 for handguns, shotguns and rifles.

That’s far more than police have offered at similar past events, Martos said.

Phoenix police brought in a little more than 200 weapons at the city’s last buyback in 2011, when they had $10,000 worth of gift cards.

“We almost had to start turning people away because we were running out of gift cards,” Martos said.

An event in Tucson in January produced similar results — about 200 weapons for $10,000 worth of grocery gift cards — but came with an unanticipated wave of controversy.

Tucson City Councilman Steve Kozachik organized the event, which was paid for through private donations he coordinated in about two weeks.

Charles Heller, spokesman for a Tucson-based non-profit that promotes gun rights, said the event was a self-gratifying effort put on by people who want to believe that removing a few hundred weapons from circulation could somehow impact the crime rate.

The new legislation has spurred Tucson residents into action, Kozachik said.

He added that there is no shortage of ideas about how to get around the new law, including suggestions that the weapons be auctioned with a minimum bid of $100,000 to thwart buyers or sold for 1 cent to artists who will melt them down and use them in installations.

He applauded Phoenix’s effort to beat the legislative clock.

The buyback events will be held at from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Southminster Presbyterian, 1923 E. Broadway; Sunnyslope Mennonite Church, 9835 N. Seventh St.; and BetaniaPresbyterian, 2811 N. 39th Ave.

For more information, call 602-547-0976 or go to www.azfgs.com.

San Jose cop frames man for rape with phoney lab report!!!

Next if you are naive as a 3 year old you probably think San Jose Police officer Sgt. Matthew Christian was fired and sent to prison for his crimes. Again don't make me laugh!!!

However, the police officer, Sgt. Matthew Christian, remains on the job and is now assigned to the Traffic Investigations Unit, said SJPD spokesman Albert Morales.

In hopes of extracting a confession, Christian created a "ruse" crime report indicating that Kerkeles' semen had been found on a blanket, while the actual report revealed no semen. Such a tactic is legal -- at that stage of a case.

If you read up on the "9 Step Reid Method" you will discover it is a modern variation of the old "beat em with a rubber hose" method used to get confessions by the police.

Only the physical rubber hose is replaced with a "mental rubber hose", and the physical beating is replaced by a "mental beating".

The "9 Step Reid Method" routinely gets false confessions.

Source

San Jose poised to settle case involving cop and phony lab report

By Tracey Kaplan

tkaplan@mercurynews.com

Posted: 05/06/2013 06:12:00 PM PDT

SAN JOSE -- A local man who was held over for trial on the basis of a phony lab report cooked up by a police officer and presented in court by a prosecutor is poised to win a legal settlement with the city for $150,000.

On Tuesday, the San Jose City Council is expected to approve the settlement with Michael Kerkeles of San Jose. Under the agreement, the city must also pay Kerkeles' legal fees, which could be at least $1 million because the federal civil rights case dragged on for six years and included a hard-fought appeal.

Kerkeles declined to comment, but one of his lawyers said the case has taken a major toll on him. Not only was Kerkeles at work when the sexual assault of a developmentally disabled woman supposedly occurred, the lawyer said, but his wife also was in her home office, steps from where the alleged rape took place.

"It's a significant sum, but Mr. Kerkeles certainly wouldn't trade the money he got for what he went through," lawyer Matt Davis said.

Fake crime report

The evidence that Kerkeles' rights had been violated was bolstered last year when prosecutor Jaime Stringfield admitted she misled the court about the lab report. She was suspended for a month by the state Supreme Court, based on a recommendation by the State Bar, which licenses attorneys. She had already resigned from the District Attorney's Office to pursue a teaching career, but is currently licensed to practice law.

However, the police officer, Sgt. Matthew Christian, remains on the job and is now assigned to the Traffic Investigations Unit, said SJPD spokesman Albert Morales.

The injustice unfolded after Kerkeles was accused in 2005 of sexually assaulting the developmentally disabled neighbor with the mental acuity of a 7-year-old.

In hopes of extracting a confession, Christian created a "ruse" crime report indicating that Kerkeles' semen had been found on a blanket, while the actual report revealed no semen. Such a tactic is legal -- at that stage of a case.

Kerkeles asked for an attorney, so the report was never actually used as a ruse. Instead, it was presented in court after the District Attorney's Office lost two preliminary hearings in the case.

'Huge mistake'

On both occasions, the judge found the woman was not a competent witness and there was insufficient evidence to hold Kerkeles over for trial on charges.

But at the third preliminary hearing, then-prosecutor Stringfield elicited testimony from officer Christian regarding the contents of the ruse report. The officer's testimony was that semen had been found on the blanket, prompting the court to find there was probable cause to hold Kerkeles over for trial.

"In our view, that was a huge mistake," San Jose City Attorney Rick Doyle said, referring to the presentation of the phony document in court and Sgt. Matthew Christian's testimony about it.

There were several indications that the report was false. For one thing, the officer used a phony name for the crime lab analyst. It was also dated within a day of the evidence being seized -- contrary to normal DNA examinations, which take considerably longer to complete. Stringfield had in her file a real report that did not find semen on the bedspread.

"It's a good number ($150,000) to settle the case for," the city attorney said, "given the (legal) risks."

Contact Tracey Kaplan at 408-278-3482. Follow her at Twitter.com/tkaplanreport.

Police officer accidentally shot in leg by fellow cop

Source

Police officer accidentally shot in leg by fellow cop

By Rosemary Regina Sobol and Adam Sege Tribune reporters

7:33 a.m. CDT, May 7, 2013

A Chicago police officer was shot in the leg by a fellow officer who had fired at a charging dog Monday night in the Englewood neighborhood, authorities said.

The shooting happened about 9 p.m. in the 1200 block of West 72nd Place as Englewood District officers were responding to a call of a burglary in progress, according to a police statement.

Two officers and a supervisor went to the second-floor landing of the building, where they were confronted by a "vicious dog," according to police.

When the dog charged toward them, an officer fired a single shot that struck the dog and also hit another officer in the thigh, according to a police source. It was unclear if the bullet struck the officer or the dog first, the source said.

Paramedics took the 42-year-old officer in good condition to John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County, where he was treated and released, authorities said.

Investigators from the Chicago Independent Police Review Authority responded to the scene, spokesman Larry Merritt said.

chicagobreaking@tribune.com

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