Snowflakes in Hell

This is a really odd story. Neighbor buys a new dog Keira, doesn’t like Coco, one of the other neighborhood dogs. Accusations fly around about which dogs are mean to the other and neighbors stop taking to each other. Keira apparently mauls Coco once, leaving Coco’s owner with 3000 in vet bills. Keira escapes and charges at Coco and his owner  shoots Keira dead through the head, and ends up facing animal cruelty charges and disorderly conduct:

“Why didn’t you pick up a shovel, a stick or pepper spray?” Assistant District Attorney Shannon Crake asked Menichini.

I find the ADA’s attitude here more than a bit disconcerting. It is not her place to evaluate the man’s chosen means of self-defense. What he had available is a pistol, not pepper spray. I think pepper spray is a wise choice, but it’s a choice. Does she really expect him to carry a shovel with him? To search frantically on the ground for a stick big enough for self-defense? Sorry Ms. Crake the statute itself says “A person commits a misdemeanor of the second degree if he willfully and maliciously kills, maims or disfigures any domestic animal of another person or any domestic fowl of another person.” The key words here is “maliciously” which means the actor would need to be acting with malice. If this is a case of self-defense, that’s not a malicious act and not animal cruelty. There very well may be facts not reported here that would indicate malice on the part of the actor, but from this article, it looks like the ADA is more interested in second guessing the means of self-defense the actor had available and used, rather than making an argument for willful malice on the part of the actor.

While  leading Democratic candidates for Governor in Pennsylvania are busy with the same old tired solutions to gun violence, namely passing more laws that restrict the law abiding, Tom Corbett is actually out there locking up straw purchasers using the laws we already have. We support Attorney General Corbett in this effort, and believe this is the way you fight straw purchasing.

… you can guess the rest. Thank God for California’s strict gun laws preventing this man from getting a gun. Someone could have gotten hurt.

Given that he reports he disposed of the firearm with New Hampshire police, it would seem that he might not be in trouble based on what the law actually says. In this case we’re talking about 18 USC 922(a)(3) which states that it shall be unlawful:

(3) for any person, other than a licensed importer, licensed manufacturer, licensed dealer, or licensed collector to transport into or receive in the State where he resides (or if the person is a corporation or other business entity, the State where it maintains a place of business) any firearm purchased or otherwise obtained by such person outside that State, except that this paragraph (A) shall not preclude any person who lawfully acquires a firearm by bequest or intestate succession in a State other than his State of residence from transporting the firearm into or receiving it in that State, if it is lawful for such person to purchase or possess such firearm in that State, (B) shall not apply to the transportation or receipt of a firearm obtained in conformity with subsection (b)(3) of this section, and (C) shall not apply to the transportation of any firearm acquired in any State prior to the effective date of this chapter;

So it does seem that he’s in the clear if he legally disposed of the firearm in New Hampshire. The question I would have is whether he disposed of it legally. It gets complicated that he’s a Massachusetts resident transferring a gun in New Hampshire, because for that we have 18 USC 922(a)(5):

(5) for any person (other than a licensed importer, licensed manufacturer, licensed dealer, or licensed collector) to transfer, sell, trade, give, transport, or deliver any firearm to any person (other than a licensed importer, licensed manufacturer, licensed dealer, or licensed collector) who the transferor knows or has reasonable cause to believe does not reside in (or if the person is a corporation or other business entity, does not maintain a place of business in) the State in which the transferor resides; except that this paragraph shall not apply to

(A) the transfer, transportation, or delivery of a firearm made to carry out a bequest of a firearm to, or an acquisition by intestate succession of a firearm by, a person who is permitted to acquire or possess a firearm under the laws of the State of his residence, and

(B) the loan or rental of a firearm to any person for temporary use for lawful sporting purposes;

He turned it into the police, but I would note the police are not a federally licensed dealer or collector. Ironically, he would probably have been in the clear completely had he just sold the gun to an FFL the next day at a gun show. For the act of purchasing the firearm, it would appear this student committed no crime, but the act of turning it into the police may have itself been a federal crime, since the police do not hold a federal firearms license, and are not residents of Massachusetts.

But I think that’s being hyper-technical. I doubt you’ll see any prosecution because the kid transferred it to police, even if it violated a technical letter of the law.

UPDATE: As a commenter points out, the definition of “person” in 18USC921 doesn’t include state agencies, like local police, only individuals, and a few other corporate entities. So there was no crime here.

One of the Sea Shepherd crew was captured by the Japanese after illegally boarding one of the whaling vessels. Apparently he was the guy who lent the crew the three million dollar boat that sank in the Antarctic seas.

I hope the Japanese whalers take him back to Japan and try him for piracy.

This Umass student committed a federal crime, namely buying a long gun out of state in a private sale. While you may buy long guns out of state in from a federally licensed dealer, any transfer between non-licenees has to happen through an FFL if the residents are of a different state.

If I did this, and bragged about it here, I’d get busted. Let’s see some justice. Ironically, the person who sold him the gun did not commit a felony, since he did not know he sold a gun to someone who wasn’t a New Hampshire resident. But the student here most definitely did commit a felony.

So what was that again about weak gun laws?

UPDATE: I should note this is a bit of “trying to make a point.”  I actually don’t think this kid’s life ought to be ruined because he violated an unjust law. What I’d like him to do is recognize the law is unjust. I do not think the US Attorney for Massachusetts should treat him any differently than he would any other gun owner in Massachusetts, but I think offering a plea deal to avoid jail time would be fair. He’ll have a federal gun felony on his record, but hey, I don’t make the laws, you know.

UPDATE: Also notice in the video he freely admits that no one would sell him a handgun. The best he managed is a break action double barrel bird gun.

UPDATE: Maybe not a crime. Some more confusion over our federal gun laws that ordinary people with no legal training are expected to follow or face multi-year prison sentences from the felony rap. Still want to argue that guns aren’t regulated enough Mr. Daniel Entrinkin?

It would seem the police have a program to do this in the UK, and end up scolding the homeowner for bad security practices.

The Philadelphia Inquirer is noting the growing momentum of the anti-gun movement in Pennsylvania, and taking shots at the only man who ever went after straw purchasers in a big way in Philadelphia: Tom Corbett.

So they are willing to cast aside someone who’s actually tried to do something about criminal misuse of firearms, by actually prosecuting criminals, and advocate replacing that person with someone who will just pass more laws the City won’t bother to enforce. Brilliant!

When they do catch people, and prosecute them, under the laws we have against straw purchasing, they don’t get any real punishment. Yet they scream louder and louder every year at Harrisburg that they need more laws they won’t enforce. How are more laws going to help when they aren’t even using the ones they already have?

As SayUncle is reporting, an executive at Smith & Wesson is facing a federal indictment, along with 22 others. I wouldn’t toss the suggestion that this could be politically motivated lightly, but what has my suspicious is what they are charged under:

The indictments charged the individuals, including Smith & Wesson vice president for sales Amaro Goncalves, with violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and conspiracy to commit money laundering involving the sale of items including guns and body armor, among other things.

The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act essentially makes it a crime to bribe foreign officials. My understanding from people involved in international business, is that bribery of foreign officials is pretty much par for the course if you want to do business in certain countries, like China, Russia, or most of the third world. That would lead me to believe that Smith & Wesson is hardly alone if some of their business practices involve bribing foreign officials. You can’t really do business in many places of the world without paying bribes.

Maybe I’m off base here, and prosecutions under the FCPA are a lot more common than I thought, which would mean this isn’t a case of selective prosecution at all. But it’s hard for me to believe this isn’t a commonly flouted law, which would cause me to wonder what, in particular, motivated the feds to bring charges in this case.

UPDATE: More info here, courtesy of The Firearms Blog. The arrests were made at SHOT? Not politically motivated at all! No, sir. It would appear to be that revenge may be at least a partial motivator, though:

As part of the FBI sting operation, an unidentified business associate who was a former executive for an arms manufacturer arranged a meeting between the arms sales representatives and undercover FBI agents who posed as representatives of an African country’s minister of defense.

And evidence this type of operation is indeed unusual:

Breuer said the investigation was the largest action ever undertaken by the Justice Department against individuals in an FCPA case. He also said it marked the department’s first large-scale use of undercover techniques in an FCPA investigation.

“We’re steadily pushing this unacceptable practice out of the business playbook by prosecuting companies and individuals who ignore the law, as well as by working with our international counterparts in their efforts to prevent and prosecute foreign bribery,” Breuer said.

He said the Justice Department currently has 140 open FCPA investigations. Kevin Perkins, assistant director of the FBI’s criminal investigative division, said 20 agents were working on FCPA cases full time.

I wonder if this was a way to go after the firearms industry in a way that we couldn’t rightly complain, because they are breaking the law, after all. Unfortunately just about everyone is a federal criminal these days. Perhaps this marks the feds cracking down on this practice in general. I’m sure it will do wonders for the economy and job creation if our corporations are unable to do business in large chunks of the globe because the feds won’t let them pay bribes.

Once again in Finland, as GunPundit reports. Finland is has more guns per capita than many European countries, but handguns are pretty heavily restricted, especially after several high profile school shootings, which caused Finnish authorities to deny permits for handguns larger than .22 caliber. Apparently the gunman used a 9mm pistol. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

UPDATE: Interesting commentary by Claude Cartaginese, who says the gun was illegally obtained:

This time, however, politicians in Finland, instead of focusing on how Shkupolli—who had a criminal record—was able to obtain an illegal handgun in a country that already has strict gun-control laws, are now considering a further tightening of those restrictions.

Finnish politicians will now begin to debate how these “deranged loners,” under the hypnotic spell cast by the “Americanization of Finnish society,” can be prevented from carrying out such attacks in the future.

Ah yes, the American gun-culture rears its ugly head once more, this time shattering the peace in a bucolic Finnish town which would have been spared the carnage caused by Mr. Shkupolli, if only the gun-control laws had been made even stricter.

You can’t make something more illegal.

Via RideFast, it looks like the California ban on possession of Body Armor by convicted felons has been tossed out by a California appeals court.  You can find the ruling here. It’s largely a problem of how California defines the term “body armor.”  The federal standard is probably better for those purposes, which can be found in 18 USC 921:

(35) The term "body armor" means any product sold or offered for sale, in interstate or foreign commerce, as personal protective body covering intended to protect against gunfire, regardless of whether the product is to be worn alone or is sold as a complement to another product or garment.

Now, in this case, the federal law might not apply, since the jacket in question was a flak jacket, and stated clearly it didn’t protect against small arms fire. But the federal definition only hinges on how the product is marketed, not on its actual capabilities. This would prevent an absurd result, such as possession of boiler plates by felons being unlawful, under the theory that they can stop some bullets, and could possibly be worn underneath clothing.

If you’re going to have a snowball fight in DC, I would recommend doing it near the Capitol, where the Capitol Police, who are generally professional, have jurisdiction. Apparently at least one D.C. Metro Police officer thinks it’s fine to draw their piece in response to his car getting hit with a snowball. See here:

Glenn has some good coverage of this event, including some comments from Ann Althouse. I wouldn’t blame the cop for calling in on the radio and getting the crowd dispersed, once they were bombing passing cars with snowballs, but drawing the gun is unacceptable. It is brandishing, because he had no cause to present deadly force to the crowd. Glenn is absolutely correct that an ordinary citizen, in this situation, would be prosecuted, and rightly so. I think this officer should be fired, and prosecuted.

Monica Yant Kinney, my favorite Inquirer editorialist, lays out a pretty textbook case of building and eventually prosecuting a case against a guy who was buying a gun from lawful dealers, and then selling them on the streets. Eventually he was prosecuted, convicted, and served 4.5 years in federal prison for the crime. Isn’t this an example of the laws working? From Yant Kinney’s editorial:

Watching the news, Jerome knows he’s partly responsible for the city’s crisis of violence. But he thinks there’s blame to go around.

“I knew it would come to an end for me. I just wish those gun dealers were held accountable.”

No, “Jerome,” you don’t get to assuage your guilt by trying to shift the blame onto the dealers you deceived about the legality of the sale they were making. You’re the one that swore to the dealer and federal authorities you were the actual buyer of the firearm when you signed off on 4473. You’re the piece of shit that took the guns and opened up your trunk and sold them to criminals. It’s all on you my friend. You served your time, not nearly enough in my opinion, but if you’re living the straight life now, congratulations. I hope you learned something. But if you really want to convince us you’re reformed, and not that bleeding heart Inquirer columnist, you need to start by accepting full responsibility for what you did.

Over at Slate:

What’s the point of holding a gun sideways?

To look Hollywood, of course. Journalists and gun experts point to the 1993 Hughes brothers film Menace II Society, which depicts the side grip in its opening scene, as the movie that popularized the style. Although the directors claim to have witnessed a side grip robbery in Detroit in 1987, there are few reports of street gangs using the technique until after the movie came out. The Hughes brothers didn’t invent the grip, though. In 1961’s One-Eyed Jacks, Marlon Brando used it, as did Eli Wallach in 1966’s The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. Directors may prefer the style because it makes it easier to see both the weapon and the actor’s face in a tight camera shot.

I wonder what else Hollywood can do to make criminals continue to choose style over function?

The Philadelphia Inquirer seems to be on to something:

Philadelphia defendants walk free on all charges in nearly two-thirds of violent-crime cases. Among large urban counties, Philadelphia has the nation’s lowest felony-conviction rate.

Only one in 10 people charged with gun assaults is convicted of that charge, the newspaper found.

Only two in 10 accused armed robbers are found guilty of armed robbery.

Only one in four accused rapists is found guilty of rape.

The data also show that people charged with assaults with a gun escape conviction more often than those who use fists or knives. Of people arrested for possession of illegal handguns, almost half go free.

Nationally, prosecutors in big cities win felony convictions in half of violent-crime cases, according to federal studies. In Philadelphia, prosecutors win only 20 percent.

So does the Inquirer want to explain how more gun laws are going to help if we’re not even enforcing the laws adequately against rape and robbery? This is scandalous, yet the Inquirer’s editorial board will continue to blame guns and the NRA, and shame Harrisburg for not passing more laws. Can we try locking up criminals first?

China is a gun-free society with a totalitarian government that offers no protection against unreasonable search and seizure, which gun control advocates would probably think means this could never happen.

Remember the 84 year old veteran who scared an attacker out of his house after a brief gunfight? Looks like Ridley Township Detectives caught the woman:

“This guy’s a World War II vet, 84, a member of the Field and Stream Gun Club where he shoots every day,” said Detective Lt. Scott Willoughby. “He lives by the NRA motto that he’s not going to be a victim. Thank God, no one was injured in this case.”

Makes me proud to have grown up there, or at least in the neighboring borough of Ridley Park. What’s even better is they know who she sold the gun to. Unfortunately they did not recover the guns, but this was good work on the part of the Ridley Township Police.

It looks like the Philadelphia media is rather fascinated that criminals straw purchase guns in other states and traffic them back to Philadelphia. In this case, the feds are prosecuting because a police officer was killed with the gun. Straw purchasing is a state crime too. How often do run of the mill, non-cop-killing criminals end up getting let go because the authorities ordinarily don’t care?

Through the course of any given day I get a lot of editorials coming across my inbox that advocate for gun control. I ignore the vast majority of them, unless I see a new pattern, a new angle, or it’s exceptionally well done. If it’s just your standard tripe, which is most of them, I tend to ignore it. But occasionally, you’ll find an op-ed that is not so standard tripe. This turd glistens and gleans like few others:

Columbine High School in Colorado. Thirty-two killed at Virginia Tech. Last month, it was the shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, where investigators questioned whether a better system for background checks could have averted the killings.

It came up again last week, when four police officers were gunned down at a diner in Washington State.

The Columbine kids broke a number of federal gun laws to get their guns. They used a straw purchaser, who could clear the background check, to buy their guns and transfer to them. That is what is known as a felony. How would making it more illegal help? The killer at Virginia Tech cleared the background check too, but that problem is already been fixed. Hasan was not on the terror watch list, and had no criminal background. How would any changes in the law have prevented that? The killer in Washington State was a convicted felon. It’s already a 10 year felony for him to possess a firearm. How can we make it more illegal?

At the same time, we wonder why anyone needs a handgun, which exists simply to kill people. And, for the most part, handguns are in the possession of people bearing bad thoughts and bad attitudes. Almost three-quarters of gun homicides in our country are committed with handguns.

Wow, you know, all those matches we run at my club with handguns must be a figment of my imagination, then, if they are only “meant to kill.” Also, if killing in all circumstances is wrong, and a stain on society, then why do we allow police to carry handguns? The police aren’t murdering thugs, are they?

One common excuse is regular folks need handguns to protect themselves from the bad guys. Did being armed protect those four police officers in Tacoma?

So by that logic, we should strip firearms from all police officers, right? Since they are completely and obviously useless for self-defense. This one situation obviously proves it!

Governments have tried. The attempts include: restricting firearms purchasing by youths; setting waiting periods for firearm purchases; establishing gun “buy-back” programs; restricting gun shows; issuing stiff sentencing of gun law violators and educating everyone about firearm safety.

None of these efforts has worked.

As tough economic times add to the stresses on everyone, it might be a good time to revisit the handgun issue. There are laws in place — in Michigan and across the country. It is time to make those laws tougher — before someone gets killed in the Quay Street parking lot.

We’ve tried all these things, and none of them have worked, so clearly we just need to redouble our efforts. Some of those things have clearly not worked, but some of them have. We know that cracking down on criminals lowers crime. We know adding police officers to the streets lowers crime. We also know that gun safety education works, since we’ve seen gun accidents decline while the number of guns has gone up.

The op-ed says they want to find a way to preserve the Second Amendment, but seems to be open to the idea of a handgun ban to accomplish that. How does the Times Herald reconcile that? How do they reconcile that with DC v. Heller? You can’t just say “make the law stricter.” How is this going to work? There’s a lot questions the editorial board is clearly not thinking seriously about, at the least, and at worst isn’t thinking about at all.

I grow tired of seeing Canadian crime rates presented as evidence for the effectiveness of gun control, such as in the LA times article from yesterday. I meant to address this, but it was one of those things that took more time to put together than I had. International comparisons are always going to be suspect, because of the different ways that different countries count and categorize crimes. However, since the other side is fond of these comparisons, we can’t just summarily dismiss it. It seems reasonable to me that we should do as much as possible to compare like populations, and contain our variables to just the differing law as much as possible. It seems reasonable in this case to compare American states with their nearest Canadian providence in that regard. For this I will use statistics from the FBI, as well as some Canadian statistics.

Rates here are per 100,000, and I tried my best to make the Canadian and American violent crime statistics use the same types of crimes. You will notice on the Canadian stats, there is a “Violent Crime” stat which is way way higher than any US state, because the Canadian government counts many crimes as violent that we do not. But the Canadian government lists statistics for crimes which are very similar to what the FBI uses. I also did not include Ohio, Wisconsin or Pennsylvania, even though they technically share a border with Canada, because it’s a lake border, and our respective peoples would not reasonably travel without transiting through another state/province. Nova Scotia is counted because there’s ferry service from Maine.

When you break them down like that, it looks pretty different, eh? What conclusions can be drawn? For one, the US states that compare least favorably to their nearby Canadian provinces are the ones with the strictest gun laws (New York & Michigan). Interestingly, it shows that rural Western Canada, which has a stronger gun culture than the east, shows an opposite pattern from the US, with higher violent crime rates and murder rates. Yukon and Alaska are both more violent than average, probably due to the fact that the industries in these respective jurisdictions tend to attract young males, who are more prone to criminal activity.

Overall, Ontario compares favorably to New York and Michigan. But most of the other states have lower violent crime rates and murder rates to their respective Canadian provinces. Whatever conclusions you might want to draw from the numbers, I don’t think that gun control laws is a major factor here can be among them.

The Obama Administration is taking the position that the now expired “assault weapons” ban can no longer be considered for the purposes of sentencing enhancement.

… sadly the rest isn’t really a joke.

It seem this case could use some. If the guy is otherwise law abiding, does it really make sense to spend federal resources on prosecuting a guy like this? I know a US Attorney would probably say that if we took that attitude, the law would have no meaning, but I think I’d still be willing to cut a guy a break. It’s not like he robbed a bank, you know.

Via Thirdpower, Apparently there are mass raids on safety deposit boxes over in the UK. This kind of thing shouldn’t go on in a free society.