B.B. King: Rest in Peace
I was incredibly lucky to see him play twice in small venues which mad it almost like a personal concert. He would talk to the audience, joke around, tell stories…
The Thrill is Gone.
Listen to the Sheriff
KATC.com | Continuous News Coverage | Acadiana-Lafayette
I think the message was succinct. I got nothing else to add 🙂
Hat Tip to Jason K.
Stand Your Ground as Journalistic “Squirrel!”
Trying to keep track with the comings and goins about guns, I have several terms on my Google Alerts, one being “Stand Your Ground. This one was on my last list:
So I click on the link and I found this instead:
The URL still contains the original “local stand your ground conviction overturned” so, What the hell happened? It turns out to be that the conviction was overturned because bad jury instructions.
One instruction said that if Helton was not engaged in illegal activity and was attacked in a place he had a right to be, “he had no duty to retreat and had the right to stand his ground and meet force with force, including deadly force.
However, another instruction read to the jury said deadly force was only justifiable if Helton believed “he was in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm and had exhausted every reasonable means to escape the danger, other than using deadly force.”The appellate court ruled that the conflicting instructions about Helton’s duty to retreat constituted a fundamental court error and ordered that Helton receive a new trial for the aggravated assault charge.
Source: Life sentence in pipe attack overturned
The jury instructions mention Stand Your Ground, but they are standard for all cases where Deadly Force is used….even if they do not apply to a case. But since the words are there, there is this Pavlovian reaction to somehow find fault with them instead of whatever went wrong in the case.
Now, is there a case in where wording “he was in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm and had exhausted every reasonable means to escape the danger, other than using deadly force” is used? Yes, when the defendant initially provoked the use of force against himself and:
The force asserted toward the defendant was so great that [he] [she] reasonably believed that [he] [she] was in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm and had exhausted every reasonable means to escape the danger, other than using deadly force.
The Jury Instructions were revised and published back in May of 2006 by the Florida Supreme Court and it seems that some judges have not gotten the memo yet. This and the apparent need by the media to demonize every single mention of Stand Your Ground keeps giving us these Jewels of Fair Journalism.
You can make money by being legally armed.
WICHITA FALLS, Texas – The victim of a burglary turned down an offer of $10 from an intruder to not call police — and the result was a high speed chase Tuesday afternoon in eastern Wichita County.Sheriff David Duke said a resident was at home in the 2000 block of Highway 79 when two men came in and began taking things. The homeowner confronted them with a gun and the suspects put the property down. One of them threw a $10 bill at the homeowner, told the resident to not call police, then the intruders fled. The homeowner had already dialed 911 and a deputy spotted the getaway vehicle and gave chase.
And we can add, “From the comfort of your own home!”
I figure the $10 bill would become evidence and be retained by the police, otherwise if I were the owner, I would frame it and hang it as a trophy.
See? No need for stupid Hollywood-Type operations.
CEDAR RAPIDS — Four members of a Cedar Rapids family conspired to hide caches of guns and ammunition bound for Beirut among boxes of goods collected in a company’s clothing drive for Syria and Lebanon, authorities said Tuesday.
Federal officials said they intercepted two shipments that had originated in Cedar Rapids, seizing more than 152 guns and ammunition.
It was not disclosed who the weapons were intended for in Lebanon.
A federal complaint examined by The Gazette paints a picture of a conspiracy that came to light last year when an unnamed firearms dealer in Eastern Iowa became suspicious of large purchases of handguns, rifles and ammunition and tipped off authorities.
When you treat people like decent human beings instead of suspects or coerce them into “helping” because you want to be in front of the news cameras or are looking for political brownie points, you get results.
The New Austro-American Jihad.
Even the NSA issued an emergency report after the chatter surpassed ISIS’ “Sexy Goat of the Week” traffic. Salman Rushdie made the comment that “Bob Owens is fu***. I rather walk alone in the middle of Tehran at noon than being chased by that crowd.”
IDPA will get you killed….wait.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Gunmen boarded a bus and killed dozens of members of a minority Muslim sect in Pakistan’s largest city Karachi on Wednesday, in what officials said was an act of terrorism.”Targeting a peaceful community shows the evil intent of the attackers,” said Qaim Al Shah, the chief minister of Sindh province where the attack took place.The death toll had climbed to 44, he added, promising to “not back down and get” the perpetrators.
Source: Pakistan Massacre: 44 Ismailis Shot Dead on Karachi Bus – NBC News.com
IDPA is accused of coming up with “silly” stages that have no “reflection on reality” and that only “real” training is valid. Then again, it is rare to see shooting schools offering a variety of ever-changing scenarios to their clientele as it is not profitable.
In IDPA I shot a stage precisely like the awful situation mentioned above, and it even had a suicide bomber to boot which you had to take first without hitting the vest. Other versions of the bus scenario and variations of the Air Marshall Test have been shot at IDPA Sanctioned matches.
And yes, the picture above is silly in the sense that you are not allowed to carry inside the plane, but boy! you learn how difficult is to shoot from a sitting position with a bunch of crap and people in front of you blocking the shot.
And at the end of the day, we are here for the learning. You go where you can get the most for less since the average gun owner cannot drop a couple of thousands every month to attend established schools.