Month: July 2014

Wanted: a bit of common sense.

MIAMI-DADE, Fla. (WSVN) — A South Florida family is speaking out after their loved one was shot during an altercation over the recovery of a stolen gaming system.

According to the daughter of 55-year-old Orlando Cuperes, her son’s PlayStation had been stolen, along with a gun, by a neighbor. When her son and her father went to confront the suspect, an altercation took place. Sugely Cuperes, the victim’s daughter said, “He came over here and tried to knock on the door, so they come out, and they come out shooting, and they shoot my dad.”

via Family of man allegedly shot over video gaming system speaks out – WSVN-TV – 7NEWS Miami Ft. Lauderdale News, Weather, Deco.

An amazing amount of fail in this case. You are going to confront a criminal knowing there is already a gun in the mix instead of calling the cops? This was nothing more than an overdose of ego that almost became deadly.

Go stupid places, play stupid games with stupid people, win stupid prizes.

Gun Control 2.0 | Shall Not Be Questioned

And trying new things is what Shannon Watts is busy doing. She’s trying to make her own horizontal interpretive community to match ours. That’s clear as crystal with all the information she’s been gathering under various guises, and if she has decent data analysis tools, she’ll get an idea of which people are most ripe to push for further action and deeper involvement. She could also get a pretty effective GOTV (Get out the Vote) machine going with what she’s been collecting if she’s smart enough to mine the data in an intelligent manner. There’s a lot of options when you have money to burn, and have the technology to micro target in a manner similar to the methods that swept Obama into power.

via Gun Control 2.0 | Shall Not Be Questioned.

A sobering reminder that the Opposition ain’t done yet.  Not till we drive the political stake through its heart.

NYT GIGO

GIGO:
Stands for “Garbage In, Garbage Out.” It means that if invalid data is entered in a computer program, the resulting output will also be invalid.

A year and a half ago, after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., Joe Nocera, an Op-Ed columnist at the New York Times, asked me, an editorial assistant at the newspaper, to find out who gets shot in America every day.

Joe has a young child, and he was haunted by the fact that it could easily have been his own son in that classroom. We realized that we didn’t know who the majority of gun violence victims were, the people whose deaths didn’t make it onto a CNN broadcast.

Six weeks after Newtown, Joe wrote a column consisting of a few lines about shootings that had happened that week, presented without comment. He had a blog he wasn’t using, so starting the next day, I started writing at that blog by searching for America’s shooting victims.

The project began with just a couple of items unearthed during a Google news search, but after a few months I was searching ten pages deep — for “shooting,” “man shot,” “woman shot,” “child shot,” “teen shot” and “accidentally shot.” By the project’s end, the report featured 40 shootings a day. Of course, there were more, but I was only finding the ones reported in the news. This naturally limited my scope — most suicides aren’t reported at all.

via Who gets shot in America: What I learned compiling records of carnage for the New York Times.

Right out of the gate my first question was: So what the heck were you guys using as raw data? And the answer was obviously that they were just reprinting the  press releases of whichever Gun Control organization was flavor of the month.

Then it was sad to see that the journalists of The Gray Lady could not figure where to get data other than the same clique that reprints more press releases and the occasional crime story but only if it sells papers or commercial space on TV. Apparently the best and the brightest are unaware of the CC and  the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report which comes tabulated 17 ways from Sunday in more flavors than Baskin Robbins.

And we are the dumb ignorant hillbillies….

This bill is gonna be a bit hard to collect.

carl norman little
Click to enlarge

 

EMMET COUNTY — A fatal single vehicle crash occurred on I-75 south of Mackinaw City early Monday morning.

The Emmet County Sheriff’s Office reports that 64-year-old Carl Norman Little, Sr. of Gladstone lost control of his vehicle while travelling southbound on I-75 around 5:30 a.m. Officials believe that Little left the roadway and struck several trees before landing in a roadside ditch. Emergency personnel arrived and pronounced Little dead at the scene.

via Fatal single vehicle crash in Emmet County : News : UpperMichigansSource.com.
Apparently the wheels of  bureaucracy grind slowly and painful. It is obvious that Mr. Little no longer resides at his former residence nor he is among the living. His family is upset and quite so at the absolute lack of tact on this matter because you have to be some heartless sumbitch to send the bill to the deceased knowing that the family is gonna get it.

If I were a betting man, I’d say somebody forgot or lost the insurance information and finding him/herself in a bind, committed this act of sheer stupidity.

Brady Campaign freaking bad about Felons having rights.

Brady Felons SYG

It goes to a pretty well thought out article (give it a read first) from the Sun Sentinel, Broward County’s preferred bird dropping catcher.  As usual, Brady and followers make it all about guns but the central question is simple: Are felons allowed to claim Immunity From Prosecution for defending themselves? If the answer is yes, why not with a firearm?

IANAL so this is my interpretation: yes. Even though it is not legal for a felon to own or possess a firearm, this should not preclude him from using the best available means to save his life.  I would also interpret that he could be prosecuted later for possession of a firearm, but not for using it to defend himself.

Remember, we are talking Self-Defense which means a case where the felon (and anybody) covers the four principles: Innocence, Immediacy, Reasonableness and Proportionality (those in Non-SYG states must add Avoidance. Check this great article by Andrew Branca for ALL states.) For all intents and purposes, a felon would be in a situation same as any other citizen who would in good faith, demand a hearing of immunity for having to use deadly force.

So, do we impose an extra and very high level of punishment to a Felon possibly violating the 8th Amendment (I know, I am reaching) telling him that he could not defend himself or we face the fact that even a Felon has the right in this country to defend himself.

This case is gonna be fun to follow.

 

Rolling Stone Magazine: Wikipedia Journalism.

I guess stories about Lady Gaga & the latest Rappers releases does not drive enough for them to make a living, Rolling Paper Stones bring us this hard-hitting expose of The 5 Most Dangerous Guns in America (cue dramatic intro music.)

And the most dangerous guns are: Pistol, Revolver, Rifles, Shotguns and derringers … OK, you can stop laughing now.

Tune in for next month’s issue where they will do another expose on the number one item causing of death by drowning: Water.

I’ll take shooters any day: Davien Martinez will get his Service Dog.

Thanks to Tampa Bay Gun Runners and every other one of you who contributed, Davien will be on his way next week to select his Service Dog.  A total of  $14,200 was raised and a kid’s life will be made easier because all of you stepped up and did what was needed

Davien Martinez, 5, stands with 6-year-old Timothy Cribbs who donated his own gun to help fund Davien’s service dog.

Bless you all.