I am following a case in Spain that is both sad and a perfect example of what happens when idiots are in charge of prosecuting crimes.

On May of 2010, Santiago Manjón Bermúdez bought a kitchen knife from a Madrid hardware store and set to find a police officer to commit “Suicide by Cop.” He manages to find an empty police car and proceeds to vandalize it in order to call attention to himself. Passerby’s notify the beat cops that somebody is beating the crap out of their car so the cops approach the Mr. Manjon who suddenly pulls the knife and confronts the cops while screaming “Shoot me in the head!”

Officer Israel Sánchez Vieco draws his HK Compact in 9mm and tells Manjon to drop the knife. Manjon charges Officer Sanchez who is then forced to use his weapon three times to stop Mr. Manjon by shooting him in the arm, abdomen and hip area. Officer Sanchez states that he deliberately shot low to stop Manjon and not to kill him (and from what I caught on a Spanish TV talk show, this is procedure for the Madrid P.D. who are not issued Tasers or other less than lethal devices.) The shot that hits Manjon in the arm over penetrates, ricochets off the pavement and hits a passerby, Antonio Castro Pimentel in the eye. Mr. Pimentel eventually  loses the eye as consequence of the wound.

Over a year later, the trial begins. The accused are: Santiago Manjón Bermúdez for Assault with A Knife upon a police officer and Officer Israel Sánchez Vieco for causing Grieving Injuries on one Antonio Castro. Manjon is facing 9 months in jail because he has been found to be mentally unstable and Officer Sanchez is facing two years in prison for shooting Manjon and accidentally wounding Mr. Castro in the eye causing its loss.

The prosecution is also demanding monetary compensation to Mr. Castro for the loss of the eye and to Manjon for being shot by Officer Sanchez. According to the prosecuting attorney, Officer Sanchez did not need to use his firearm to stop the attack because he could have used his night stick or talk the subject down or him and his fellow officers rush Manjon and subdue him.

I am not even going to try to explain Spain’s approach to Law here because not even the Spaniards can figure that crap out. I am not surprised that this case has gone the way it has: Spain has a tradition to eschew logic in favor of esoterically progressive thinking applied to the dispensation of “Justice.”  It is not uncommon for judges to set a very low bail or release confessed murderers on their own recognizance because the person they happened to murder was the wife and/or significant other. The “reasoning” is that the accused does not constitute present and ongoing threat to society because they only intended to kill one specific person and therefore they can be released. That suspect take this “vote of confidence” on their behavior and decide to flee is of no consequence to the court.

Back to our case. That the prosecution moron dismisses the real threat of a suspect with a knife reveals the amazing ignorance that Spanish Officers of the Court have about real life, specially in a country where the preferred method of killing people for centuries has been a bladed weapon. A dedicated bastard with a knife can inflict untold damage to anybody standing around him as I posted here back in May of this year. I am assuming that Mr. Prosecutor might have seen one too many Jackie Chan movies and thought that Officer Sanchez could have delivered a nice round-kick and brought the suspect under custody without any further damage.

And this would be reason 5,942 of why I do not care to even visit Europe to visit my relatives.

UPDATE: I just found out from another blog that Officer Israel Sánchez Vieco was found not guilty as he was defending himself and was on the line of duty. The blog does not cite source so I can’t confirm the news. The nutjob also did not get a time behind bars other than a couple of days in observation but he has to pay for the damages given to the police car in the amount 301,76 Euros (aprox. $385) and 2/5 of the court costs.

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CSGV Laddite complaining about Scottsdale Gun Club Santa Pics:

I bumped into a Venezuelan news article where the Presidential Commission for Guns and and Ammunition Control and Disarmament went to Brazil to visit CBC  (Companhia Brasileira de Cartuchos. Brazilian Ammunition Company) to learn about “ammunition marking and control of its usage” guided by CBC’s Director of Commerce Salesio Nuhs.

Since I am used to gun tech terminology in English only, I wanted to make sure if they were talking about micro-stamping. I googled “Companhia Brasileira de Cartuchos” and it led me to their English website where I find out that they are the manufacturers for Magtech ammunition, a brand well known in the US. I could not find a thing about micro-stamping or ammunition marking anywhere so I next Googled the name of Salesio Nuhs. It confirmed that the man works for CBC and also an article in Pravda’s Portuguese version where Mr. Nuhs explains how the company helps the Government. He said:

Brazil already has one of the world’s most restrictive laws on guns and ammunition. All weapons manufactured in the country have a serial number marking in several parts, also the ammunition that have an ID in the base that allows you to track the buyer in real time and via the online system….It allows the the Army to consult in real time, the ammunition sold, inventories in the stores and the amount of ammunition purchased by the consumer.

Where specifically is the ammunition marked was found in the Brazilian on-line publication O Cone Sul:

“The ammunition for the organs of public security  have a laser marking on the rim of the shell, which allows identification of its purchaser. From the information provided by industry was found that the ammunition from the PM’s armed gangs were supplying the German Complex, “explains Salesio Nuhs, vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers of Arms and Ammunition (Aniam).

Farther down in the article, Mr. Nuhs explains that the authority actually calls CBC to a crime scene where cases are present to trace the origin of the ammunition because it is CBC the one that created and maintains the micro-stamping technology.

Although I doubt the Brazilian Army is somewhat tracking the lots of Magtech ammunition sold in the US, it is alarming that such capabilities are not only available but running somewhere else. Still the idea that micro-stamped ammunition is already flowing through our commercial pipelines is disturbing. I confess that I do not have Magtech ammunition with me so this is all speculation on my part (so far), but it would be nice to see if the cartridges sold here do have some sort of markings in the cases or even the bullets themselves.

I sent an email to CBC and I will be expecting an answer sometime next week. Withe any luck I’ll try to find not only if they do see if I can get a description of their micro-stamping techniques and tracing system.

PS: CBC also produces a limited amount of firearms (The site shows what appears to be a clone of a Ruger 10-22) and they admit in the article that RFID chips are embedded and that they provide the tools for their tracking. Chiappa all over again.

Sean Sorrentino corrects rightfully:

I think that you are using the term incorrectly. “Microstamping” has always been used to refer to the idiot idea that you could modify guns to stamp a serial number in the case as it was fired in order to ID the gun from which it was fired. Since only a moron would believe that this was possible, it hasn’t gotten far.

What you are talking about is ammo serialization/ammo registration. That’s expensive and wasteful of resources, but technically possible. It requires that all ammo sold be “registered” at the point of sale. That type of registration has been outlawed in the US. That’s why the gun grabbers are trying to argue about how many serial numbers can dance on the head of a firing pin.

Courtesy of Linoge I got his Team Patch, yeah!
East Tennesee MHI are also known as the Tritium Gang (Glow in the dark joke.) Since 1944, the team are the experts in radiation-mutated monsters for the whole world. Based out of Knoxville, they are tough as they come. They drink lemonade made with  Heavy Water and use graphite for combat make-up. There is the persistent rumor that one Ronnie Barret used to be a Hunter before he decided to retire and dedicate himself to the design and creation of weapons that can reach out and touch monster where they hurt the most.

The link takes you to a media press release. Some excerpts:

Washington, D.C. – Eighteen years ago today, on November 30, 1993, President Bill Clinton was joined by Jim and Sarah Brady and many others in the White House for the signing of the Brady Law, the landmark legislation that instituted criminal background checks on firearm purchases from federally licensed gun dealers and created the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). The bill signing in 1993 was an emotional capstone for Jim and Sarah Brady, who fought bravely and tirelessly to pass the Brady law after Jim was severely wounded in the 1981 assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan.

On February 28, 1994, the law started blocking handgun purchases by felons and other legally prohibited buyers, such as fugitives from justice.   For the first five years of the law, authorities had up to 5 business days to complete background checks while the FBI built the computerized system to conduct the checks.

Let’s go over the whole thing again: Brady Campaign is telling you straight to your face that the NICS check and the Five Day Waiting Period would have stopped John Hinckley. Stop. Nothing and nobody can argue that….except the facts: Hinckley was not a Felon, had not been determined mentally incompetent before the shooting and the gun was bought six months before the assassination attempt.

One more thing on the media press release:

Through the end of December 2009, the latest year for which data is available, the Brady law had blocked over 1.9 million attempts to purchase a gun by legally prohibited purchasers at gun dealers

And that is an outright lie. Brady fails to inform that immense majority (way over the 90 percentile) of those “blocks” were false positives by either data input error at the time of purchase or other mistakes. If truly 1.9 million felons were stopped from buying guns, it means 1.9 million federal cases that had either be taken to trial or pleaded for violating 18 U.S.c. §§ 92] et. seq., are punishable by up to 10 years imprisonment and/or up to a $250,000 fine as printed on top of ATF form 4473 which is done in every firearms transaction with a Federal Firearms Licensee.

At the first anniversary of the Brady Bill, Then president Bill Clinton said:

Well, now we know that, as the Secretary said, over 40,000 convicted felons, fugitives, drug dealers, gang members, stalkers, were prevented from purchasing handguns in the Brady law’s first 11 months. I should point out that the real national number is bigger than that because, as you know, there are some States that have companion laws that go along with that. And the estimates are that, nationwide in the States with Brady-like laws and the Brady law, the total is more like 70,000.

Amazingly so, there were only four prosecutions for violation of the Brady Bill during the same time period with a grand total of zero convictions.In fact during CYs 2002 and 2003, only 154 (less than 1 percent) of the 120,000 persons who were denied during the NICS background check were prosecuted.

But wait, there is more! The press release said that the Brady Law helped block 1.9 million attempts to to purchase a gun by legally prohibited purchasers at gun dealers. Yet the FBI reports that between November 30, 1998 to October 31, 2011 there was a grand total of 882,447 denials. This is half the number Brady Campaign is touting, why the need to inflate them?The reason is simple: The Brady Law was heavily advertised by both Government and the Media as the solution to all gun problems and pushed through Congress.The moment it was signed by president Clinton, they changed the tune to “A good first step” indicating that more gun control measures were on the way. Yes, they lied. Then  statistics started to come in and

The Review of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ Enforcement of Brady Act Violations Identified Through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. Report Number I-2004-006. July 2004 states the following:

Our review also found that few NICS cases are prosecuted. During CYs 2002 and 2003, only 154 (less than 1 percent) of the 120,000 persons who were denied during the NICS background check were prosecuted.

You want to know the total number of NICS checks for 2002 and 2003? 16,935,910. If my math is not too bad, that means only 0.0009% of the total NICS checks for those years were prosecutable.

There is more to the Brady Law, but this should suffice for now. If you are not convinced by now of the capability of the Brady Campaign to lie through their teeth and their desire to treat Law Abiding Citizens like criminals, I don’t know what else can.