TAKING AIM

2011-09-26T02:28:00.000-07:00

Gun law author: Gun owners must act responsibly

Updated 02:57 p.m., Sunday, September 25, 2011

EVANSVILLE, Ind. (AP) — The lawmaker who wrote Indiana's new prohibition on most local gun restrictions says it wasn't designed to protect gun owners such as the one who is suing the city of Evansville after being evicted from a zoo, but he sees no need to change the statute.

Sen. Jim Tomes, R-Wadeville, said he was "furious" when a man refused to conceal a handgun holstered at his hip while at the Mesker Park Zoo earlier this month. Police said they escorted the man out of the zoo because he "started causing a scene."

"A responsible person doesn't do that," Tomes told the Evansville Courier & Press for a story Sunday (http://bit.ly/nhkjrK ). "We have our rights. We hear a lot about that. But we also have obligations and responsibilities, and that requires us to conduct ourselves in a manner that would not generate alarm out in public."

The man escorted from the zoo, Benjamin A. Magenheimer of Evansville, has sued the city, claiming police violated the new state law. He is seeking financial damages, a court declaration finding that the city's actions were illegal, and an injunction preventing future such actions by the city.

The law, which took effect July 1, prohibits local ordinances that ban firearms from most locations, such as libraries and parks. It exempts schools, public hospitals, buildings that house courts and those that have metal detectors and security officers at every entrance.

Tomes said he didn't intend for the law to increase the number of guns in public, but to allow gun owners to keep their firearms nearby without worrying whether they were breaking local laws.

"It's not that they want it in the zoo; it's that they want it with them when they travel. It's not that they need it in a city park or that they need it in the library; it's that they want it on their person when they're out and about," he said.

Rep. Gail Riecken, a Democrat who formerly served as Evansville's parks director, voted against the new law. She said the zoo incident did not surprise her.

"This is really going to come to bear on the community of people that enjoy firearms to make sure that they can educate people — to say that, 'Look, you have a duty and a responsibility to behave appropriately,'" she said.

She said if situations similar to the one that occurred in the zoo happen again, the new law could cause confusion for police officers who respond to an incident and can't tell "who's the good guy and who's the bad guy."

"I respect the rights of gun owners, but at some point you've got to respect the other people that are in the room," Riecken said. "The rest of us have rights, too. I think we have a right to feel safe and secure in our environment, especially when our children are around, and this law takes that away."

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Information from: Evansville Courier & Press, http://www.courierpress.com

2011-09-25T04:43:00.000-07:00

Think a gun makes you safer around Alaska bears? Think again.

Craig Medred | Sep 24, 2011

Think you're safer with a gun around bears, as many Alaskans do? Maybe you'd better think again.

The news out of Montana on Friday was that 39-year-old Steve Stevenson of Winnemucca, Nev., was not killed by the grizzly bear that attacked him near the Montana-Idaho border on Sept. 16. He died, authorities say, from a single gunshot to the chest.

An autopsy discovered the bullet, fired by a hunting companion who was trying to save Stevenson from the bear.

How well do your friends shoot? Better yet, how well do your friends shoot in stressful, combat-type situations?

Stevenson's hunting companion was a 20-year-old friend from Winnemucca. I don't know that I've met many 20-year-olds to whom I'd trust my life in a situation like this, and I say that -- let it be clear -- as someone who was attacked by a grizzly bear, clawed in the face and bitten in the leg, and who in the end shot the bear off his leg. I might be a whole lot uglier than I am now if not for a gun.
I might even be dead.

I am not embarrassed to say I like guns, either. Earlier this summer, I went to check on the remains of a full-grown moose that grizzly bears had killed up the valley from my Anchorage home. The bears were camped out in the middle of a trail and I packed a short-barreled shotgun with an extended magazine stuffed with slugs.
It is a weapon well designed for killing bears.

I have no doubts about the dangers bears can pose, or what it takes to kill one that's all pumped up on adrenaline. Neither do I have much doubt about my shooting skills. I grew up with firearms. I shot them regularly and still do, especially the shotgun, especially this time of year.

While tromping through the marsh the other day, I got to contemplating just what a great fall it has been. I've hit about 90 percent of all the waterfowl I've shot at, and most of the missed shots were difficult shots, sometimes very difficult shots at range.

Am I confident I could shoot a bear off a friend if I had to do so without hitting him or her? Yes. Am I confident all of my friends are capable of this? No. A couple, yes. Most of them, no.

Shooting is like any other skill. You've got to do a lot of it to get good at it, and it's best if you start young because if you start late you need to practice even more. Most of the people I know either didn't start young or didn't, and don't, practice enough.

They never quite got to that point where they act as if the gun was an extension of their body, and if you're going to be using a firearm in stressful situations -- any stressful situations -- this is the skill level you want and need. You ought to be as comfortable with your weapon as a four-star chef is with a frying pan.

If this is not the case, you might want to leave the gun at home. If this is not the case for your friends, you might want to tell them to leave the gun home, or bring some pepper spray in case they need to try to get a bear off you.

Pepper spray has a good track record for driving off bears. No one has, as yet, been killed using it. And it's unlikely you could kill someone else by using it.

Guns are wonderful tools, but only in the hands of people well-schooled in their use. In the hands of the unschooled, they are as dangerous as a chainsaw run by a fool. They can kill or maim the user or those around the user. The death of Stevenson ought to make everyone Alaskan stop and think seriously.

Guns aren't foolproof protection. Another Alaskan, 65-year-old Donald "Skip" Sanford of Anchorage, was mauled by a bear just this week. He had a gun. It didn't help.

There are a couple things worth noting about the attack: Though Sanford managed to shoot the bear, it still mauled him. He survived only because the bear later cut off the attack.

Most bears do. Scientist Tom Smith documented 515 bear attacks in Alaska involving brown/grizzly, black and polar bears between 1900 and 2004. Ninety-five percent of the people involved survived.

Smith, like other wildlife biologists, has noted the danger of using firearms in defense of others attacked by bears. He has also studied the effectiveness of bear spray. (The study is attached at the bottom of this story.)

Or you can indulge a lengthy analysis of bears, guns and spray written by Rick Sinnott, retired Anchorage-area wildlife biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, who entered the discussion after a group of students from the National Outdoor Leadership School were attacked by a bear in Alaska this summer.

Two of the students were seriously mauled. Many Alaskans thought afterward that the kids might have been better off with a gun. They might have been, or they might have been dead, like Steve Stevenson, instead of seriously injured.

Alaska Dispatch encourages a diversity of opinion and community perspectives. The opinions expressed herein are those of the contributor and are not necessarily endorsed or condoned by Alaska Dispatch. Contact Craig Medred at craig(at)alaskadispatch.com
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/think-gun-makes-you-safer-around-alaska-bears-think-again?page=full&print=yes

2011-09-23T02:34:00.000-07:00

Gun Collections Pose Special Estate Problems

Peter J Reilly, Contributor Forbes 9/22/11
Taxes are a heavy component of estate planning, but it is important to be alert for other issues. Even though much of my practice is in a right-to-carry state (Florida), it hadn’t ever crossed my mind that guns require special attention in estate plans until I received a heads up from Allen J. Margulis of Total Counsel Law Group. I asked Attorney Margulis if he would like to do a guest post on the subject of gun trusts and he was gracious enough to provide the following:

People may collect guns for self‐defense, target shooting or hunting. Guns may be investments or heirlooms. Many gun owners want their guns to be used responsibly and be passed on to those who appreciate them. Title II of the Gun Control Act of 1968 is known as the National Firearms Act or NFA. It regulates short‐barreled rifles and shotguns, suppressors, machine guns, weird contraptions (AOWs), and DDs (explosives). Certain firearms and accessories are federally restricted. A state may restrict them further. For example, short‐barreled rifles, automatic weapons, silencers and other such items, require a federal tax stamp to acquire as well as the approval of the local Chief Law Enforcement Officer (CLEO.) There are many regulations and issues surrounding passing guns down to one’s heirs that are not present with a bank account, chair, picture or other type of property. We must consider not only where the beneficiary lives, the laws of that state, the laws of the state where the items are located, the eligibility of the beneficiary to be in possession, but also:

(1) Is it a good idea to put a weapon in the hands of the beneficiary? Are they mature and responsible enough?

(2) If not, what will we do?

A Gun Trust is a special purpose revocable living trust. A Gun Trust is written to hold only firearms. The owner of the gun is the trustee and the beneficiary. The owner appoints successor trustees and lifetime and remainder beneficiaries. The trust can be amended or revoked at any time and the owner can name and remove beneficiaries. In the past, Gun Trusts were created primarily for NFA restricted firearms (Title II items ‐ silencers, short-barreled rifles, shotguns, and machine guns) but lately they have attracted the attention of those who own “assault weapons” (being redefined by the current legislation as anything with a removable cartridge).

Gun Trusts are used for two main reasons. The first is to expedite a transfer of a National Firearms Act firearm. Using a trust means you do not have to obtain the approval of your local Chief Law Enforcement Officer (CLEO) and the application can be sent directly to BATF. This saves a lot of time. Registration of a NFA firearm to an individual or corporation takes approximately one to three months to complete. The firearm cannot be handled or transported by any other private individual unless the firearm’s registered owner is present. However, NFA items owned by properly drafted trusts may be legally possessed by any Trustee and a beneficiary may use the item in the presence or under the authority of the Trustee. The second reason is to provide detailed instructions over disposition of one’s gun collection.

Many gun dealers make trust forms available. The problem is that they are usually just standard revocable living trusts, not specifically written about firearms ownership. They typically do not provide guidance or limitations for the Trustee who may find him or herself committing a felony in the way the items are used, held, transferred or sold. Some people cannot legally possess firearms. Some transfers are illegal. A properly written “Gun Trust” for NFA purposes is far more than a form. It helps the decedent’s loved ones deal with items that are problematic at best under both state law and federal law. Improper administration of regulated firearms can result in a criminal conviction and fines. Certain conduct constitutes a criminal offense, including receiving or possessing a firearm transferred to oneself in violation of the NFA; receiving or possessing a firearm made in violation of the NFA; receiving or possessing a firearm not registered to oneself in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record; transferring or making a firearm in violation of the NFA; or obliterating, removing, changing, or altering the serial number of the firearm. Penalties can include up to ten years in federal prison; forfeiture of all devices or firearms in violation, forfeiture of all rights to own or possess firearms in the future and a penalty of $10,000 for certain violations.

2011-09-21T02:17:00.000-07:00

Ind. gun owner sues city over removal from zoo

Updated 04:23 p.m., Tuesday, September 20, 2011

EVANSVILLE, Ind. (AP) — An Evansville man has sued the city, claiming police violated a new state law when they made him leave the Mesker Park Zoo for refusing to cover a gun on his hip.

An attorney for Benjamin A. Magenheimer said the man was singled out because he was carrying a gun, and police and zoo employees clearly violated a new law that allows local governments to ban guns only from buildings that house courtrooms. Local ordinances banning firearms from other locations, such as libraries and parks, are no longer allowed.

According to a police report, zoo officials called police Sept. 10 after several patrons complained about a man who was visibly carrying a handgun. When one of the officers asked him to conceal the weapon, the man refused and "started getting loud and causing a scene," the report said.

Officers asked the man to leave the zoo because he was frightening other patrons, the report said. He refused and police escorted him out. After he left, zoo staff reportedly told police that Magenheimer told them he could not be denied his right to bear arms.

Magenheimer has a license to carry a gun and had a copy on his person at the time, the suit said. Gun licenses do not require concealment, the newspaper reported.

Magenheimer's attorney, Guy Relford of Zionsville, disputed the police report's claim that Magenheimer was argumentative.

"At no point did he become disorderly in any way," Relford said.

But City Attorney David Jones said Magenheimer was removed from the zoo for causing a disturbance, not just for carrying a gun. He said the city would fight the lawsuit, which was filed Friday in Vanderburgh Circuit Court.

"To me, it's not about the gun. I don't think you have a right to intimidate or frighten people or create the disturbance he created. To go into a petting zoo area with a gun, where there are children, that's just idiotic," Jones said.

The lawsuit names Evansville and its Department of Parks & Recreation as defendants. It seeks financial damages, a court declaration finding the city's actions were illegal and an injunction preventing future similar actions by the city.

Jones said Evansville has no ordinances or policies that restrict firearms. He said city officials reviewed the issue after the law was passed this summer. The law took effect July 1.

Jones said the law doesn't give local governments much leeway.

"It's poorly written. I don't think it was given much thought as to situations such as this," he said.

Relford also is representing two clients in a similar lawsuit against Hammond that was filed after the city council rejected an ordinance that would have brought local laws in line with the state change. The city directed its police officers not to enforce Hammond's ban on carrying firearms in municipal buildings earlier this month, but the city's law against carrying guns in public buildings and parks remains in place.

Information from: Evansville Courier & Press, http://www.courierpress.com/

http://www.chron.com/news/article/Ind-gun-owner-sues-city-over-removal-from-zoo-2179917.php

2011-09-20T02:34:00.000-07:00

Mexico still waiting for answers on Fast and Furious gun program

Top Mexican officials say the U.S. kept them in the dark. One official was stunned to learn that the cartel hit men who killed her brother had assault rifles from Fast and Furious in their arsenal.

By Ken Ellingwood, Richard A. Serrano and Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times
5:00 PM PDT, September 19, 2011
Reporting from Mexico City and Washington

Last fall's slaying of Mario Gonzalez, the brother of a Mexican state prosecutor, shocked people on both sides of the border. Sensational news reports revealed that cartel hit men had tortured Gonzalez, and forced him to make a videotaped "confession" that his high-powered sister was on the take.

But American authorities concealed one disturbing fact about the case from their Mexican counterparts: U.S. federal agents had allowed AK-47 assault rifles later found in the killers' arsenal to be smuggled across the border under the notorious Fast and Furious gun-trafficking program.

U.S. officials also kept mum as other weapons linked to Fast and Furious turned up at dozens of additional Mexican crime scenes, with an unconfirmed toll of at least 150 people killed or wounded.

Months after the deadly lapses in the program were revealed in the U.S. media — prompting congressional hearings and the reassignment of the acting chief of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — top Mexican officials say American authorities have still not offered them a proper accounting of what went wrong.

Marisela Morales, Mexico's attorney general and a longtime favorite of American law enforcement agents in Mexico, told The Times that she first learned about Fast and Furious from news reports. And to this day, she said, U.S. officials have not briefed her on the operation gone awry, nor have they apologized.

"At no time did we know or were we made aware that there might have been arms trafficking permitted," Morales, Mexico's highest-ranking law enforcement official, said in a recent interview. "In no way would we have allowed it, because it is an attack on the safety of Mexicans."

Morales said she did not want to draw conclusions before the outcome of U.S. investigations, but that deliberately letting weapons "walk" into Mexico — with the intention of tracing the guns to drug cartels — would represent a "betrayal" of a country enduring a drug war that has killed more than 40,000 people. U.S. agents lost track of hundreds of weapons under the program.

Concealment of the bloody toll of Fast and Furious took place despite official pronouncements of growing cooperation and intelligence-sharing in the fight against vicious Mexican drug-trafficking organizations. The secrecy also occurred as President Felipe Calderon and other senior Mexican officials complained bitterly, time and again, about the flow of weapons into Mexico from the U.S.

Patricia Gonzalez, the top state prosecutor in Chihuahua at the time of her brother's 2010 kidnapping, noted that she had worked closely with U.S. officials for years and was stunned that she did not learn until many months later, through media reports, about the link between his death and Fast and Furious weapons.

"The basic ineptitude of these officials [who ordered the Fast and Furious operation] caused the death of my brother and surely thousands more victims," Gonzalez said.

Fast and Furious weapons have also been linked to other high-profile shootings. On May 24, a helicopter ferrying Mexican federal police during an operation in the western state of Michoacan was forced to land after bullets from a powerful Barrett .50-caliber rifle pierced its fuselage and armor-reinforced windshield. Three officers were wounded.

Authorities later captured dozens of drug gang gunmen involved in the attack and seized 70 weapons, including a Barrett rifle, according to a report by U.S. congressional committees. Some of the guns were traced to Fast and Furious.

Email traffic and U.S. congressional testimony by ATF agents and others make clear that American officials purposefully concealed from Mexico's government details of the operation, launched in November 2009 by the ATF field offices in Arizona and New Mexico.

In March 2010, with a growing number of guns lost or showing up at crime scenes in Mexico, ATF officials convened an "emergency briefing" to figure out a way to shut down Fast and Furious. Instead, they decided to keep it going and continue to leave Mexico out of the loop.

Communications also show that the U.S. Embassy, along with the ATF office in Mexico, at least initially, was also kept in the dark.

In July 2010, Darren Gil, the acting ATF attache in Mexico City, asked his supervisors in the U.S. about guns in Mexico but got no answer, according to his testimony before a U.S. congressional committee investigating the matter.

"They were afraid that I was going to either brief the ambassador or brief the government of Mexico officials on it," Gil said.

Part of the reason for not telling Mexican authorities, Gil and others noted, is the widespread corruption among officials in Mexico that has long made some U.S. officials reluctant to share intelligence. By late last year, however, with the kidnapping of Mario Gonzalez and tracing of the AK-47s, some ATF officials were beginning to tell their superiors that it was time to inform the Mexicans.

Carlos Canino, an ATF agent at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, warned headquarters that failure to share the information would have dire consequences for the U.S.-Mexican relationship.

"We need to tell them [Mexico] this, because if we don't tell them this, and this gets out, it was my opinion that the Mexicans would never trust us again," Canino testified to congressional investigators in Washington.

Atty. Gen. Morales said it was not until January that the Mexican government was told of the existence of an undercover program that turned out to be Fast and Furious. At the time, Morales said, Mexico was not provided details.

U.S. officials gave their Mexican counterparts access to information involving a group of 20 suspects arrested in Arizona. These arrests would lead to the only indictment to emerge from Fast and Furious.

"It was then that we learned of that case, of the arms trafficking," Morales told The Times. "They haven't admitted to us that there might have been permitted trafficking. Until now, they continue denying it to us."

In March, after disgruntled ATF agents went to congressional investigators, details of Fast and Furious began to appear in The Times and other U.S. media. By then, two Fast and Furious weapons had been found at the scene of the fatal shooting of a U.S. border agent near Rio Rico, Ariz.

As well, a second agent had been killed near the Mexican city of San Luis Potosi, sending the ATF hierarchy into a "state of panic," ATF supervisor Peter Forcelli said, because of fears the weapons used might have arrived in Mexico as part of Fast and Furious. So far, all the U.S. government has said in the latter case is that one of the weapons was traced to an illegal purchase in the Dallas area.

In June, Canino, the ATF attache, was finally allowed to say something to Atty. Gen. Morales about the weapons used by Mario Gonzalez's captors, thought to be members of the powerful Sinaloa cartel.

"I wanted her to find out from me, because she is an ally of the U.S. government," he testified.

Canino later told congressional investigators that Morales was shocked.

"Hijole!" he recalled her saying, an expression that roughly means, "Oh no!"

Canino testified that Fast and Furious guns showed up at nearly 200 crime scenes.

Mexican Congressman Humberto Benitez Trevino, who heads the justice committee in the Chamber of Deputies, said the number of people killed or wounded by the weapons had probably doubled to 300 since March, when he said confidential information held by Mexican security authorities put the figure at 150. The higher number, he said, was his own estimate.

A former attorney general, Benitez labeled the operation a "failure," but said it did not spell a collapse of the two nations' shared fight against organized crime groups.

"It was a bad business that got out of hand," he said in an interview.

Many Mexican politicians responded angrily when the existence of the program became known in March, with several saying it amounted to a breach of Mexican sovereignty. But much of that anger has subsided, possibly in the interest of not aggravating the bilateral relationship. For Mexico, the U.S. gun problem goes far beyond the Fast and Furious program. Of weapons used in crimes and traced, more than 75% come from the U.S.

"Yes, it was bad and wrong, and you have to ask yourself, what were they thinking?" a senior official in Calderon's administration said, referring to Fast and Furious. "But, given the river of weapons that flows into Mexico from the U.S., do a few more make a big difference?"

Still, Mexican leaders are under pressure to answer questions from their citizens, with very little to go on.

"The evidence is over there [north of the border]," Morales said. "I can't put a pistol to their heads and say, 'Now give it to me or else.' I can't."

ken.ellingwood@latimes.com

richard.serrano@latimes.com

wilkinson@latimes.com

Ellingwood and Wilkinson reported from Mexico City and Serrano from Washington.

2011-09-18T05:30:00.000-07:00

Gun seller who helped ATF had doubts about the sting

By TBO.com | Los Angeles Times

In the fall of 2009, ATF agents installed a secret phone line and hidden cameras in a ceiling panel and wall at Andre Howard's Lone Wolf gun store.

They gave him one basic instruction: Sell guns to every illegal purchaser who walks through the door.

For 15 months, Howard did as he was told. To customers with phony IDs or wads of cash he normally would have turned away, he sold pistols, rifles and semi-automatics. He was assured by the ATF that they would follow the guns and that the surveillance would lead the agents to the violent Mexican drug cartels on the Southwest border.

When Howard heard nothing about any arrests, he questioned the agents. Keep selling, they told him. So hundreds of thousands of dollars more in weapons, including .50-caliber sniper rifles, walked out the front door of his store in a Glendale, Ariz., strip mall.

He was making a lot of money, but he also feared somebody was going to get hurt.

"Every passing week, I worried about something like that," he said. "I felt horrible and sick."

Late in the night on Dec. 14, in a canyon west of Rio Rico, Ariz., Border Patrol agents came across Mexican bandits preying on illegal immigrants, authorities say.

According to a Border Patrol "Shooting Incident" report, the agents fired two rounds of beanbags from a shotgun. The Mexicans returned fire. One agent fired back with his sidearm, another with his M-4 rifle.

One of the Mexicans, Manuel Osorio-Arellanes, a 33-year-old from Sinaloa, was wounded in the abdomen and legs. Agent Brian Terry — 40, single, a former Marine — also went down. "I'm hit!" he cried.

A fellow agent cradled his friend. "I can't feel my legs," Terry said. "I think I'm paralyzed." A bullet had pierced his aorta. Tall and nearly 240 pounds, Terry was too heavy to carry. They radioed for a helicopter. But Terry was bleeding badly, and he died in his colleague's arms.

The Mexicans left Osorio-Arellanes behind and escaped across the desert, tossing two AK-47 semi-automatics from Howard's store.

000 firearms from the Lone Wolf Trading Co. store and others in southern Arizona were sold under an ATF program called Fast and Furious that allowed "straw purchasers" to walk away with the weapons and turn them over to criminal traffickers. But the agency's plan to trace the guns to the cartels never worked. As the case of the two Lone Wolf AK-47s illustrates, the ATF, with a limited force of agents, did not keep track of them.

Some 2,

The Department of Justice in Washington said last week that one other Fast and Furious firearm turned up at a violent crime scene in this country. They have yet to provide further details. They said an additional 28 Fast and Furious weapons were recovered at violent crimes in Mexico. They have not identified those cases either. Mexican government officials maintain that Fast and Furious weapons have been found at some 170 crime scenes in their country.

* * * * *Howard said he does not own a gun, does not hunt and does not belong to the National Rifle Association. His love is helicopters. A former Army pilot, he gives flying lessons. He said he fell into the gun-dealing business 21 years ago only to help support his career as a flight instructor. Howard spoke to a reporter for the first time in depth about why he cooperated with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

He said he supported law enforcement and never imagined a thousand weapons, or half of the entire Fast and Furious inventory, would "walk" out of his store. And when arrests were not forthcoming, "every passing week I was more stunned," he said.

According to a confidential memo written by assistant federal prosecutor Emory Hurley, "Mr. Howard had expressed concerns about the cooperation he was providing and whether he was endangering himself or implicating himself in a criminal investigation."

Other firearms dealers shared his concerns. At the nearby Scottsdale Gun Club, the proprietor sent an email to Agent David Voth. "I want to help ATF," he said, "but not at the risk of agents' safety because I have some very close friends that are U.S. Border Patrol agents in southern AZ."

Howard recalled that a chubby, bald and "very confident" man named Jaime Avila walked into the store on Jan. 16, 2010, and bought the AK-47s. Under the Fast and Furious protocol, agents were supposed to use the video cameras, surveillance, informants and law enforcement intelligence to follow the weapons and hope they led to drug cartels.

No agents were watching on the hidden cameras or waiting outside to track the firearms when Avila showed up. Howard faxed a copy of the sale paperwork to the ATF "after the firearms were gone," assuming they would catch up. They never did.

From November 2009 through June 2010, according to an ATF agent's email to William Newell, then the special agent-in-charge in Phoenix, Avila walked away with 52 firearms after he "paid approximately $48,000 cash. The firearms consisted of FN 5.7 pistols, 1 Barrett 50 BMG rifle, AK-47 variant rifles, Ruger 9mm handguns, Colt 38 supers, etc."
In spring or early summer 2010 — the exact date is unknown — U.S. immigration officers reportedly stopped Avila at the Arizona border with the two semi-automatics and 30 other weapons. According to two sources close to a congressional investigation into Fast and Furious, the authorities checked with the ATF and were told to release him with the weapons because the ATF was hoping to track the guns to cartel members.

In Washington, ATF officials declined to comment. In Congress, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House investigating committee, and Iowa Sen. Charles E. Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, asked the Justice Department why Avila was not jailed and the guns seized. They have yet to receive an answer.

The two semi-automatics would turn up again — at the scene of the Terry shooting. According to sources, they were hidden in backpacks and stashed in the desert, ready for Mexican bandits.

When weapons were recovered at the scene of the agent's slaying, ATF officials in Phoenix scrambled. "All these ATF guys were showing up," one law enforcement official recalled. "We were trying to catch suspects and rope up the crime scene, and all the ATF guys were saying they needed the serial numbers! They needed the serial numbers!"

Newell wanted an immediate trace on the semi-automatics, and that afternoon ATF agents showed up at the Lone Wolf store. Howard had heard of Terry's death. "I was scared to death," he said. They asked for his paperwork and matched the serial numbers. "Both of them were in shock, too," he said. "You could tell they were sick."

A little before 8 that night, the Phoenix ATF field office sent out an agency-wide bulletin: The suspect guns were Fast and Furious weapons. In Washington the next morning, then-ATF Acting Director Kenneth E. Melson prepared to notify the Border Patrol.

Avila was arrested and initially held for using a bad address on the purchase form. "This way," Voth emailed the ATF field office, "we do not divulge our current case (Fast and Furious) or the Border Patrol shooting case."

In a subsequent report for Fast and Furious classified "Law Enforcement Sensitive," agents said Avila was buying for a Phoenix-based gun trafficking group that hid the weapons in vehicle compartments and drove them over the border from Arizona and Texas. The trafficking group used cash from drug sales to buy the weapons. The AK-47 was their weapon of choice, bought after cocaine and methamphetamines warehoused in Baja California were shipped north and sold in this country.

Other Avila weapons from Howard's store wound up at a Glendale home and a Phoenix automotive business, both "firearm drop locations," according to the ATF report. Still more were recovered in Sonora, Mexico, not far from Rio Rico.

In January, Avila and 19 others were charged in the straw purchasing. It was the only indictment to come out of 15 months of Fast and Furious. Asked at the news conference touting the charges whether the ATF allowed guns to "walk," Newell, the ATF field supervisor, responded, "Hell no!"

His denial and the agent's death provoked a small group of ATF whistleblowers. They contacted Congress, and investigators asked the agency whether Terry was shot by Fast and Furious weapons.

The ATF replied that neither semi-automatic fired the fatal bullet.
In truth, an FBI ballistics report could determine whether one of the semi-automatics or a third weapon killed Terry.

Avila pleaded not guilty to the firearms charges, was released on bail and has yet to stand trial.

www2.tbo.com © Copyright 2011 Media General Communications Holdings, LLC. A Media General company.

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2011-09-17T05:04:00.000-07:00

Gun control bill in Gov. Brown's hands

A measure to bar Californians from openly carrying weapons is supported by Sheriff Baca and LAPD Chief Beck, but opposed by 2nd Amendment activists who pack heat in coffee shops and restaurants.

Patrick McGreevy, Los Angeles Times
September 17, 2011
Reporting from Sacramento

On Gov. Jerry Brown's desk is a bid to bar Californians from openly carrying firearms, legislation that could open a new front in the state's decades-old gun control debate.

The measure, aimed at an increasingly popular tactic used by 2nd Amendment activists, would make California the first state since 1987 to outlaw the controversial practice of publicly displaying a weapon.

The governor — a gun owner — has not taken an official position on the bill, passed by the Legislature last week. He has argued both sides of gun control issues in the past.
Existing law allows the open carrying of unloaded firearms. The measure before Brown would thwart activists who stage "open carry" demonstrations and want, ultimately, the right to legally display loaded guns. Such aficionados drew national attention last year when they walked into Starbucks outlets in the Bay Area and elsewhere, pistols holstered on their hips.

Participants in the open-carry movement, contending it is a way to show that normal people pack heat, take advantage of most states' relative silence about the practice. Only seven states, including Illinois and Texas, prohibit the open toting of guns, and most of their laws were adopted in the 1980s or decades earlier, according to the Legal Community Against Violence and other groups involved in the debate.

Gun control advocates hope that California will now pave the way for the rest of the country to outlaw the practice.

"Openly carrying a gun with [an ammunition] magazine in your back pocket into Starbucks and other establishments creates a culture of fear and intimidation,'' said Brian Malte, director for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. "It is irresponsible and dangerous.''

"People in other states look to see what California does,'' he said. If Brown signs the bill, "other states will follow suit.''

Open-carry proponents say that the practice is harmless and that California lawmakers are pursuing an agenda to disarm the public.

"There is no reason to do this other than a general dislike of gun rights," said John Pierce, a spokesman for OpenCarry.org, an online clearinghouse for the movement.
He said no crimes have been committed in the name of open-carry advocacy in recent years as the movement has gained national attention. And he noted that activists have enshrined the right to openly carry firearms in Alaska, Arizona and Wyoming.

If California prohibits the practice, he said, it will be going against the grain. "The national trend is exactly the opposite direction."

The Legislature's proposal, by Assemblyman Anthony Portantino (D-La Cañada Flintridge), would make public display of a firearm punishable by up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine, with some exceptions — for uniformed police officers, for example, and military personnel in parades. It would not alter citizens' right to obtain permits from local police agencies to carry concealed weapons.

Portantino said open-carry supporters don't realize how they complicate matters for police, who can have a hard time distinguishing between armed criminals and armed activists.

"Open carry puts law enforcement and families at risk on Main Street, California," the lawmaker said. "It wastes law enforcement time and attention dealing with unnecessary 911 calls about gun-toting men and women in coffee shops, restaurants and malls."

His measure was endorsed by Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, the California Police Chiefs Assn. and Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck.

"We need to limit the number of guns in public, not increase them by wearing them on our hips," Beck said. "This is not Dodge City…. We are a modern civilized community, and we should work on peaceful solutions to end criminal behavior."

This summer, former LAPD officer and county fire captain Gene McCarthy walked into Tony's Italian Deli in El Segundo with dozens of other open-carry advocates, wearing a holstered 9mm Glock and a magazine of ammunition. He said no patrons seemed disturbed by the display of firepower.

McCarthy contended that California will be safer if upstanding citizens can continue to display their guns, because criminals will be less likely to act if their potential victim is armed.

"I personally saw the grief and misery caused by violence," he said in a recent interview. "We have to protect ourselves and our families."

Brown has until early October to act on the bill, and his past comments and actions on the issue of guns have sent a mixed message. In April, he told a gathering of police officers that it is natural for people to have guns in their homes, and said he owned three firearms.

During a 1992 presidential debate, he argued for a moratorium on gun sales. In 2009, then-Atty. Gen. Brown filed a brief favoring the National Rifle Assn.'s attempt to overturn a gun ban in Chicago. "California citizens could be deprived of the constitutional right to possess handguns in their homes," he wrote.

Last year, when Brown was California's attorney general, his office filed a brief to uphold the Riverside County conviction of a man for breaking the law by carrying a loaded, concealed weapon in a vehicle, despite the man's argument that the law infringed on his constitutional right to bear arms.

Asked last year about a bill similar to Portantino's, Brown told the Contra Costa Times, a Bay Area newspaper, "I want to know how many abuses there have been" that justify the bill. He added, "I always look with some skepticism on changing the way things have been done."

Adam Winkler, a UCLA law professor who has written about the history of gun control in California, said there is an ironic parallel between the open-carry zeitgeist and the event that led to the state's first modern gun control laws.

In 1967, armed members of the Black Panthers marched through the state Capitol to protest police attempts to disarm them. A provoked Legislature responded by passing what was then one of the most sweeping gun control measures in the country, banning the carrying of a loaded gun in public.
patrick.mcgreevy@latimes.com

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-guns-20110917,0,7196292,print.story

2011-09-15T02:27:00.000-07:00

Federal Judge Bars Enforcement Of Doctor Gun Question Law

September 15, 2011

A new state law prohibiting health care providers from asking patients about guns cannot be enforced while the merits of the new law are being litigated, a federal judge in Miami ruled Wednesday in a temporary victory for physicians in the battle between the First and Second Amendments.

U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke granted a temporary injunction to a group of physicians who filed suit over the Firearm Owners Protection Act, which was passed by lawmakers in May and signed into law by Gov. Rick Scott.

In a 22-page ruling, Cooke dismissed the argument that allowing health care providers to query their patients on gun ownership violated the patient’s Second Amendment right to bear arms under the U.S. Constitution.

“A practitioner who counsels a patient on firearm safety, even when entirely irrelevant to medical care or safety, does not affect nor interfere with the patient’s right to continue to own or use firearms,” Cooke wrote.

The lawsuit was filed in June on behalf of a group of physicians who argued their First Amendment right of free speech was being violated if they could not speak freely with their patients about guns. Health care providers sometimes ask patients, especially those with young children, if they own guns and how those weapons are stored.

Witnesses testified during legislative debate that the queries were part of a battery of questions often given to patients to address potential health hazards in the home such as the storage of poisons or whether the patient owns a pool.

“It is hard to imagine that even legislators who voted for this bill thought that the state could legislate the doctor-patient relationship – in this case by imposing a gag order on doctors prohibiting them from asking about firearms and ammunition,” said Howard Simon of the ACLU of Florida, which opposed the law, following the ruling Wednesday.

The measure (HB 155) was backed heavily by the National Rifle Association and other gun rights groups.

Cooke said the law doesn’t just infringe on doctors’ speech rights, it restricts the right of patients to receive information about safety issues.

Rep. Jason Brodeur, R-Sanford, said he stood by the intent of the bill, which he said was to protect the privacy of gun owners. “Direct questions about firearm ownership when it has nothing to do with medical care is simply pushing a political agenda, which doesn’t belong in exam rooms,” Brodeur said. “If physicians are worried about safety then I encourage them to give the safety talk to all patients. It is important to note that firearm safety talks are not prohibited at all.”

That is a reference to the fact that bill was watered down considerably from its original language, allowing for doctors to discuss some safety issues if they believe someone might be in danger because of the presence of a gun. In some discussions of the legislation this year, the example of a suicidal patient who says he plans to use a gun to kill himself was used. A doctor might be justified in that case in asking if the patient actually has a gun.

Brodeur said he thought that if doctors were discussing gun safety with all patients, instead of only with those patients who they know have guns, it would likely make the state even more safe because more people would have that talk with a physician.

Marion Hammer, former NRA national president and executive director of Unified Sportsmen of Florida who lobbied extensively in favor of HB 155 didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. But through the debate over the measure, Hammer said the difference between discussion by doctors of guns as a potential safety issue and things like poisons or swimming pools is the constitutional protection afforded by the constitution to the keeping of guns.

By granting the injunction Cooke ruled that the physicians in the case have a substantial likelihood of success in their pending challenge and that granting the injunction would not harm the public interest.

“The state’s interest in assuring the privacy of this piece of information from practitioners does not appear to be a compelling one,” wrote Cooke, noting that states and the federal government already heavily regulate firearms ownership and sales.

“Information regarding gun ownership is not sacrosanct.”
By Michael Peltier
The News Service of Florida

2011-09-13T02:25:00.000-07:00

Bloomberg Presses Blueprint for Ending Gun Rights

by Raquel Okyay (more by this author)

Posted 09/13/2011 ET

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is on a war path against gun owners – again. This time he is exploiting an incident that occurred over Labor Day weekend between NYC police officers and one armed criminal gunman that resulted in the tragic shooting and death of an innocent bystander.

Bloomberg is calling for Federal involvement, regulation and enforcement of gun control rules in both NYC and in every city, state, in the Nation. Except he neglects to tell us that gun control rules does not reduce violent crime rates. Instead his real goal is to advertise and promote his personal project “A Blueprint for Federal Action on Illegal Guns” rather than addressing the task of reducing crimes in the city that elected him mayor.

“We cannot tolerate it; there are just too many guns on the streets and we have to do something about it,” he said. Bloomberg was very specific about what needs to be done to tackle the problem: “We need the federal government to step up. Both ends of Pennsylvania Ave., both sides of the aisle.” The New American

MAIG, the outfit created and funded by multi billionaire Bloomberg does just that – it seeks to circumvent Congress through Federal regulation of gun laws by means of 7 Federal agencies of enforcement. In their Executive Summary, they concede “the coalition has identified 40 opportunities in six areas where the Administration could enhance enforcement of existing laws without Congressional action.”

It means having the Obama administration monitor, restrain and prevent private gun ownership, sales, and production without the consent of the People via their representatives in Congress, and worse, with an ultimate goal of participating in a full-ledged gun grab from innocent Americans, arguing all along that criminal behavior is not the cause of violent crime – gun ownership is. We cannot kid ourselves; it can happen if we let our guard down.

Bloomberg’s plan is another level of bureaucratic censorship that places an additional burden on law abiding Americans who are in the business of owning or selling firearms. Under MAIG guidelines innocent Americans must prove their innocence and answer to unelected Federal agencies, which are making up rules as they go along. This is a clear infringement upon our right to keep and bear arms in the privacy of our own home.

Indeed in violation of the 2^nd and 4^th Amendments to the United States Constitution if enacted, not that Mr. Bloomberg pays much attention to the Constitution, as indicated by his constant bickering of how all Americans should conduct their lives. He is the perpetual gun hating, United Nations’ loving, Nanny-state Mayor.

Select recommendations included in ‘Blueprint for Federal Action’ and the Federal agencies that will enforce the rules:

-Improving gun background checks: Perform background checks on employees of federally licensed dealers during audit inspections -ATF, FBI. (Burden on innocent people.)

-Policing problematic gun shows: Investigate private sellers at gun shows who appear to be unlawfully engaged in the business - ATF. (Violation of 4^th Amendment.)

-Supplementing ATF Resources and Improving Its Structure: Establish an Interstate Firearms Trafficking Unit run by a Deputy Chief for Interstate Firearms Trafficking- ATF, DOJ, OMB. (Yet another layer of control.)

-More Effective Crime Gun Tracing: Create a new Office of Tactical Trace Analysis at the National Tracing Center to determine which dealers have a high number of traces compared to their sales volume - ATF, DOG, OMG. (Big brother watching You.)

-More Effective Partnerships Among Government, Law Enforcement, Community Groups and Responsible Gun Industry Representatives: Increase support for community programs that generate intelligence about firearms trafficking - DOJ, OMB. (Propaganda.)

-Enforcement of Existing Laws on Especially Dangerous Firearms: Resume enforcement of the ban on the importation of non-sporting purpose firearms- DHS, ATF, DOJ. (Violation of 2^nd Amendment.)

Gun control legislation serves one purpose: To limit the amount of guns that are manufactured and distributed to law abiding American citizens. Just because Mayor Bloomberg hates guns does not mean we put the Constitution to the side -- ignore its meaning. If he thinks with power and money he can bypass the Constitution, he is dead wrong.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?print=yes&id=46129

2011-09-12T02:39:00.000-07:00

Jeri Muoio's gun ban at West Palm Beach city hall draws fire

By Andrew Abramson

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Posted: 10:55 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 11, 2011

Mayor Jeri Muoio might negotiate on some issues, but when it comes to guns in city hall, she holds her ground: No weapons allowed.

She has even invoked a rare executive order to ban weapons in the building where the city carries out its business, citing the safety of residents.

"You absolutely cannot come into this building with a gun," Muoio said at a city commission meeting last month. "If you're coming into city hall, leave your guns or weapons at home or in your car."

Muoio's stance is drawing the ire of pro-gun-rights lawmakers and lobbyists, who say she's not abiding by a state law set to take effect Oct. 1.

The legislation says state gun laws override local regulation of firearms and ammunition, and that if any "county, agency, municipality, district, or other entity" doesn't abide by the laws, the official who is responsible can be fined up to $5,000 and removed from office by the governor.

On Tuesday, the West Palm Beach City Commission voted to change its ordinance to meet the state requirements. That meant taking out references to guns in city law and referring residents to state law. Final approval is set for Sept. 19.

Muoio said the city would comply but added, "I think the legislature got it wrong on this." And she and City Attorney Claudia McKenna said they don't believe complying with state law means allowing guns in city hall.

'Meetings' at issue

According to state statute, guns are banned in "any meeting of the governing body of a county, public school district, municipality or special district."

McKenna, at a meeting with commissioners last month, said state law clearly bans weapons in "meetings of government bodies." But she added: "Of course, we have continuous meetings in this building."

Commissioner Kimberly Mitchell said the law should apply to all public meetings in city hall, including citizen task forces, since they make recommendations to the commission. Mitchell said the city doesn't have the manpower to police residents roaming city hall with guns while keeping others out of meetings.

At the same time, Mitchell questioned Muoio's executive order banning guns, saying the mayor can't supersede state law.

"While that might be uncomfortable, if that's what the law is, that's what the law is," Mitchell said.

Marion Hammer, a lobbyist for the National Rifle Association in Tallahassee and a former NRA president, said that state law bans guns only in official meetings with the city commission - not typical day-to-day staff meetings that take place in city hall. A task force isn't a "governing body," she said.

Florida Atlantic University constitutional law professor Timothy Lenz said he's never seen the law interpreted, and he understands both sides of the argument.

Any public meeting in the state, for instance, has to be conducted in the sunshine, Lenz said. "That's not just like the policymaking bodies, but any official body (like a task force)," he said. However, he added, "whether that would be considered a governing authority, I don't know."

State Sen. Greg Evers, R-Baker, who co-sponsored the state law, said he interprets it to mean citizens can bring guns into city halls. What they can't do is walk into a room where a public meeting is being held, he said.

"When I go into city hall or the courthouse, I always leave my gun in the truck. I always err on the side of caution," Evers said. "But as long as you don't carry that gun into a meeting, they cannot restrict you from having it."

Concern over Giffords shooting

West Palm Beach officials became sensitive about guns in January, when then-Mayor Lois Frankel noticed that William McCray, an off-duty Palm Beach County sheriff's deputy and outspoken city critic, was carrying a gun. Frankel called a halt to the meeting, claiming there were technical difficulties, then ordered Police Chief Delsa Bush to remove McCray.

Asked about it afterward, Frankel cited the shooting at an Arizona political rally a few weeks earlier of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords as a reason for heightened concern. After that West Palm commission meeting, the city posted signs at the city hall entrance, banning guns in the building.

McCray contends state law allows him to have a gun at a city meeting, since he is a law enforcement officer.

Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Teri Barbera, however, said that while her agency allows off-duty deputies to be armed, its policy is to respect the wishes of city and county commissions, as well as courthouse judges, who often don't allow guns while in session.

State Rep. Mark Pafford, D-West Palm Beach, said "a lot of well-intended laws and ordinances are going to be wiped out because of the change in state law."

Guns allowed at Capitol

But Pafford noted that guns are allowed in the state Capitol in Tallahassee. Residents with a concealed weapons permit go through a metal detector, show their weapon and then are escorted by a law enforcement officer .

Pafford, who was an aide to Frankel when she was a state representative, recalled that she once received a death threat and an officer was stationed outside her legislative office.

Frankel said Friday she didn't recall that incident but didn't doubt it, because there was political heat over abortion then.

As for Muoio, Hammer wants her fined when the new law takes effect.

"The mayor is willfully and knowingly violating the law under the color of authority," Hammer said.

Muoio insists she's just protecting residents and city employees.

"Our intention," Muoio said, "is to keep the people in this building safe."

2011-09-11T05:10:00.000-07:00

Florida forces cities to pull local gun laws

State begins enforcing statute that bars firearms ordinances

By LIZETTE ALVAREZ New York Times

Published 12:01 a.m., Sunday, September 11, 2011 MIAMI -- \The signs -- "No Guns Allowed" -- are being stripped from many Florida parks, government buildings, libraries and airports. And local ordinances that bar people from shooting weapons in their yards, firing up into the air or taking a gun into an airport are coming off the books.

Since 1987, local governments in Florida have been barred from creating and enforcing their own gun ordinances.

Few cities and counties paid attention, though, believing that gun laws in places like Miami might need to be more restrictive than the state laws applicable in rural Apalachicola, for example.

But this year the state Legislature passed a new law that forces counties and municipalities to do away with, and stop enforcing, their own firearms and ammunition ordinances by Oct. 1. Mayors, council and commission members will risk a $5,000 fine and removal from office if they "knowingly and willfully violate" the law. Towns that enforce their ordinances risk a $100,000 fine.

To comply with the law, cities and counties are poring over their gun ordinances, repealing laws and removing gun-related signs.

In Palm Beach County, that means removing ordinances that ban people from taking guns into county government buildings and local parks and from firing guns in some of its most urban areas.

State lawmakers who supported the bill, which was backed by the National Rifle Association, said complaining local governments were overreacting.

"The notion that a city ordinance stops violence is patently absurd," said state Rep. Matt Gaetz, the Fort Walton Beach Republican who sponsored the bill. "People lawfully carrying weapons with permits are rarely part of the problem."

2011-09-10T06:44:00.000-07:00

Walgreens Pharmacist Fired for Shooting His Own Gun During Robbery

Everyone in Michigan thinks Walgreens pharmacist Jeremy Hoven is a hero for using his own gun to scare off two armed men during a late night robbery at the store. Well, everyone that is except for his employer, who has subsequently fired Hoven from his pharmacy job for violating the company's non-escalation policy. I can't even begin to imagine what the Walgreens' bosses could be thinking with such an idiotic decision. It's not every day that someone loses their job for saving his own life and the lives of his co-workers.

As if the story of an employee shooting a gun purely out of self-defense wasn't infuriating enough, here are some more details to rile you up: Hoven says the reason he even had the gun (and a concealed weapons permit) in the first place is because after the store was robbed back in 2006, Walgreens failed to improve security, and he felt unsafe.

In addition to inadequate security, there's this ridiculous business of Walgreens' "non-escalation" policy. If you watch the frightening video below, you can see exactly what occurred during the robbery. Two masked men enter the store and hold up an employee at gunpoint. That's when Hoven draws his own gun and fires several downward shots in their direction. He justified his decision to shoot this way: "I was reacting out of fear, and the adrenaline was taking over ... You could have probably taken my pulse from my breath because my heart was beating that much." I'd say that's a pretty convincing justification.

As you can see, the thieves are clearly shaken by the shots and run out of the store. No one was harmed; the robbery attempt failed. Far from "escalating" the situation, Hoven stopped it.

If you ask me, Walgreens should be giving this man a raise -- not the sack. Still, the company is maintaining that Hoven had no right to carry or discharge a weapon in their store at any time. Hopefully, Hoven will get what should be coming to him -- a promotion and/or reward! -- when his lawsuit is decided.

2011-09-08T02:13:00.000-07:00

Trying to track the IHOP gun's path from China

By Pete Williams, NBC News chief justice correspondent
The assault rifle used in the deadly shooting at a Nevada IHOP restaurant came from a Chinese company whose weapons imports have been banned since 1994, authorities say, but it’s unclear how the gunman acquired the AK-47 rifle.

Law enforcement officials say the man who fired the shots Tuesday in Carson City, Eduardo Sencion, had three weapons: two AK-47-style rifles and a handgun.

The officials say the actual shooting was committed with a Norinco Arms AK-47. Norinco, the Chinese company, is a global supplier of firearms and military weapons.

Since 1994, the United States has banned all imports of Norinco weapons into the United States (other than shotguns), but dealers were allowed to sell any stock they acquired before the import ban went into effect.

An attempt to trace where and how Sencion acquired the weapon has not come up with an answer. The dealer who originally sold the weapon has since gone out of business, which complicates the tracing effort.

Nevada IHOP shooter was 'gentle, kind man'
The gun could have been legally purchased. It could have been imported before the Norinco ban. The Clinton-era assault weapons ban applied to weapons like it, but the law expired in 2004. When Barack Obama first came into office, the administration suggested it would ask Congress to reimpose the ban, but that idea was quickly abandoned.

Officials say Sencion had two other weapons with him, apparently in the van he drove to the restaurant — a handgun and a second AK-47. The other AK-47 was a Romarm Cugir, made by a Romanian weapons company. The handgun was a Colt .38 revolver.
http://www.bobproctor-training.net/decision-by-bob-proctor/#

2011-09-07T02:30:00.000-07:00

Republicans refuse to confirm leader for ATF despite its troubles

Former officials say the agency, which ran a botched sting operation, needs a permanent director to guide it. But nominees to the post have met opposition from gun-rights groups.

By David G. Savage, Washington Bureau
8:27 PM PDT, September 6, 2011
Reporting from Washington

Congressional Republicans have been upset at the management at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which authorized a botched sting operation near the Mexican border that put guns in the hands of drug criminals.

But Republican leaders, responding to complaints from gun-rights lobbyists, have refused to confirm a director for the bureau since it was split from the Treasury Department eight years ago.

"They have had nothing but acting directors. Do you wonder why some things would go wrong there?" said John Killorin, a retired special agent from Atlanta and president of the ATF Assn. "This is a major law enforcement agency, and they need a confirmed director with the full responsibility and authority to run it."

President Obama's nominee, an ATF special agent from Chicago, has yet to have a Senate hearing.

President George W. Bush faced the same problem. His nominee, Michael J. Sullivan, was a well-regarded U.S. attorney in Boston and an ally of then-Atty. Gen John Ashcroft. But Idaho Sens. Larry Craig and Michael D. Crapo, both Republicans, blocked his confirmation in the Senate in response to complaints from an Idaho gun dealer.

"People said to me at the time that if Mike Sullivan can't be confirmed, then no one was going to be confirmed," recalled Sullivan, who served as acting ATF director while remaining as the top federal prosecutor in Boston. "The agency needs a full-time leader. People there say morale is very low. They have felt abandoned because they didn't have a leader who had the confidence of the people at the Justice Department and the White House."

Iowa Sen. Charles E. Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the failure to confirm the president's nominee to head the bureau did not explain the management failures at the bureau.

"While a Senate-approved director would be nice for the ATF, it wouldn't have stopped the disastrous mistakes made in the Fast and Furious strategy," he said, referring to the sting operation. "The acting director reported to the deputy attorney general who reports to the attorney general, so there should have been accountability."

The bureau has a long and colorful history. The first Congress imposed taxes on whiskey, and its agents were part of the Treasury Department. In the Prohibition era, its agents fought the illegal trade in booze, and they included Eliot Ness in Chicago. But more recently, its main duty has been enforcing federal gun laws.

Eight years ago, Congress removed the bureau from the Treasury Department and made it a separate law enforcement agency under the Justice Department. For the first time, lawmakers put its director under political control by requiring Senate confirmation of the president's nominee.

Since then, no one has been confirmed. Both nominees have drawn opposition from gun-rights groups, including the powerful National Rifle Assn. Obama nominated Andrew Traver, the ATF's special agent in Chicago, to lead the bureau, but his nomination has gone nowhere in the Senate.

"This president has consistently nominated hardened gun control advocates into positions that restrict the 2nd Amendment rights of Americans," Erich Pratt, communications director for Gun Owners of America, said in explaining the group's opposition.

Gun control advocates say these critics are opposed to the ATF itself.

"The bottom line is the gun lobby will oppose any nominee who promises to be a strong and effective director of the ATF," said Dennis Henigan, vice president of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. "Fast and Furious is what happens when you don't have a strong director," he said.

Two years ago, Kenneth E. Melson, an expert on forensic science, was named the acting director of the ATF. He stepped down last month in the aftermath of the failed sting operation. In his place, Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. named B. Todd Jones, the U.S. attorney in Minnesota, as acting director. Officials said he would commute from Minneapolis, where he continues to hold his prosecutor's post.

david.savage@latimes.com

2011-09-06T02:24:00.000-07:00

Gun Dean: Obama, DOJ Play Musical Chairs at BATFE

by John M. Snyder (more by this author)

Posted 09/06/2011 ET

The Gun Dean decried the Aug. 30 personnel changes in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Arizona U.S. Attorney’s office in the wake of the Fast and Furious scandal.

"The Obama administration has been reduced to playing musical chairs at the Justice Department," said John M. Snyder, who as the senior gun rights expert and advocate in Washington earned the moniker: The Gun Dean. Snyder is a former journalist for National Rifle Association publication and is a founding member of the Citizen’s Committee to Protect the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

He is also the author of The Gun Saint, the story of how St. Gabriel Possenti, in an incident not related to his cause for sainthood, used a pistol to protect peasants from robbers. Snyder is working to convince the Vatican to name the saint the official patron saint of handguns.

"This musical chairs charade is the Obama administration's response to the government's gun scandal, and it isn't going to wash," he said.

"In that scandal, conducted by the Justice Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the U.S. government allowed and even participated in the illegal transfer of thousands of firearms from the United States to Mexico," Snyder said. "Many of the guns were used in the commission of crimes in both countries, including in the murder of American law enforcement agents.

"The government called this Operation Fast and Furious under Project Gunrunner. Now Attorney General Eric Holder is shifting people around the department and even around the country in order to stamp out the bad publicity and the congressional investigation coming as a result of the scandal. However, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, apparently is not going to bite on this bone. He says he's going ahead with the investigation and will continue to hold public hearings on the government's gun mess."

Snyder said the keys players in the game of musical chairs is the reassigning of Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson to the position of senior adviser on forensic science in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Programs.

Despite pressure not to cooperate with Issa, Melson testified in a closed-door hearing before Issa on July 4—significant not only because it was a Sunday and the nation’s birthday, but also because Melson brought his own lawyers, not DOJ lawyers.

Snyder said he is pleased that Issa has announced that he will hold more Fast and Furious hearings in September. "It's good news indeed.”

"It would be a good idea to scrap ATF and perhaps launch a full scale investigation of the Justice Department. It also would be a good idea to deep-six some of the nonsensical federal firearm laws now on the books, and reassert the individual Second Amendment civil right of law-abiding American citizens to keep and bear arms without undue interference from nosy federal bureaucrats,” he said.

"In November of 2012, just a little over a year from now, American voters will have a chance to deep-six gun grabbing politicians in the White House and in Congress. It's not too early to get ready for a sea-change in American politics."\\
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?print=yes&id=45930

2011-09-05T05:30:00.000-07:00

Sellers prepare for gun silencers

Federal authorization required to purchase noise suppressor

Written by Trace Christenson The Enquirer

It will be several months before a Battle Creek gun shop owner said he will sell silencers, approved last week by Michigan's Attorney General.

"I don't have any suppressors in yet," said Joel Fulton, president of Southside Sportsman Club at 539 Capital Ave. S.W. "I placed an order last week and I have had several phone calls from customers."

Late last week Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, in a formal opinion, said Michigan law permits gun owners to obtain and use noise suppressors or silencers as long as they go through a federal permit process.

State law generally forbids sale or possession of the silencers but contains a specific exemption for those obtained with federal authorization, similar to permits required for automatic weapons.

Michigan becomes the 38th state to allow possession of gun silencers.

Fulton called the decision significant and delightful.

"It is no different than putting a muffler on a lawn mower," he said. "Once you shoot with the sound suppressed you won't go back. It is just so much better."

Fulton said the suppressors:

• Make shooting with friends more enjoyable because ear muffs won't be needed and with silencers people can talk to each other as they shoot which increases safety because of better communications among shooters.

• Allows shooting without disturbing neighbors. Hunters can sight their guns on land where they hunt without disturbing game.

• Will prevent ear damage if the gun owner is forced to fire in a room or other confined area.

Fulton said he believes criminals using silencers in movies and on television have tainted the public against the devices.

"We panic in the United States because in Hollywood only the assassins have silencers.

"The image is that every bad guy has a silencer,"he said.

Battle Creek Deputy Police Chief James Saylor said Sunday he has not fully analyzed the new opinion or possible implications but said he doesn't expect widespread problems.

"If it's legal to own and is obtained with the proper permits and the owner passes the screening qualifications and they can afford to own them, then with ability comes responsible ownership," Saylor said.

Applicants must undergo background checks including criminal and mental histories and obtain certification from local law enforcement.

Fulton said the silencers will cost $600 to $1,000 depending on the weapon used and buyers should expect to wait several months.

He said he ordered just over a dozen and hopes to have some in stock in a month.

Trace Christenson can be reached at 966-0685 or at tchrist@battlecreekenquirer.com

Trace Christenson can be reached at 966-0685 or tchrist@battlecreekenquirer.com.

2011-09-05T05:27:00.000-07:00

Glocks and such: Phony outrage is well-worn shoe in US

Posted: Monday, September 5, 2011 12:00 am
A gun, by any other name, is just a gun. Unless it's a Glock semi-automatic pistol raffled off by Republicans in Pima County, which just happens to be the same county where Democratic U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 19 other people were shot, six of them killed.

Then it's an outrage.

Or so we're supposed to believe.

The 24-hour news cycle, the blogosphere and the Twitterverse erupted last week when Huffington Post pointed out that the Pima County Republican Party was raffling off a Glock 23 pistol, saying it's the same pistol that Jared Lee Loughner used Jan. 8 to shoot Giffords in the head.

It's not the same. Loughner used a Glock 19.

Liberals immediately decided it was an affront to Giffords and the others shot that day and dubbed it an insensitive outrage, yet it's legal to purchase and own a gun in the United States and it's legal to raffle a gun in Arizona.

The politics of outrage is a well-worn shoe in America. One pol or another is always trying to fan the flames of outrage to gin up votes. It works so well that we're constantly barraged with outrages to the point that we're permanently outraged.

In a country where everyone is outraged, no one is. Yet there are some things happening in this country we should be angry about and one of them is our inability to come to terms with the Second Amendment.

Consider the fake fury by conservatives over the ATF Fast and Furious scandal, an attempted sting operation by federal agents who allowed "straw buyers" to legally purchase thousands of assault rifles from Arizona gun dealers so that the guns could be tracked to Mexican drug cartels. The ATF lost track of many of the guns and one of those guns ended up at the shooting scene where smugglers killed Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.

Conservatives say they are outraged about it and are desperately trying to pin the scandal on President Obama.

But in the three years prior to Operation Fast and Furious, several newspapers had written investigative stories about Mexican drug cartels smuggling tens of thousands of legally purchased American guns into Mexico.

Rather than be outraged by that fact, conservatives saw the stories as an insidious attack on the Second Amendment by attempting to conflate Mexico's drug war with America's gun laws. And that was outrageous, they said.

Thousands of Mexicans getting slaughtered with those American guns was not an outrage. Until a Democratic administration tried to do something about it and blew it. Then it was.

Since the Loughner shooting, people using guns of various makes, types and calibers have killed about two dozen people in Pima County.

Are Democrats outraged by that? Or are they only outraged when Republicans try to raise money raffling off a gun made by the same manufacturer of a gun used to shoot a Democrat?

By the way, Giffords owns a Glock.

Where's the outrage?
For a longer version of this editorial, go to http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/.

2011-09-03T10:23:00.000-07:00

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords AZ GOP Auctions Gun Like
The One Used to Shoot Her

http://www.tmz.com/2011/09/03/gabrielle-giffords-congresswoman-shooting-arizona-republican-gun-auction/
So far ... this wins craziest story of the weekend ....The Republican Party in Pima County, AZ is raffling off a gun almost identical to the one used to shoot the Congresswoman in that very same county ... Gabrielle Giffords.

The online newsletter (see below) went out last Friday and features on page 3 a chance to win "a Glock 23 .40 handgun for just 10 bucks." But hang on -- if your name is drawn, you don't just win the gun ... you get "three 12-round magazines, adjustable grips, and a case."

A Glock 19 handgun was allegedly used by Jared Loughner in an attack on January 8, 2011 that injured 13 (including Rep. Giffords) and killed six.

Michael McNulty, Giffords' campaign manager, told the Arizona Republic he was "struggling for the words to describe my reaction" to the raffle.

The interim chairman of the Pima County GOP told the paper he was surprised at the reaction, saying Rep. Giffords owned a Glock herself and was an outspoken supporter of the Second Amendment. He explained, "That Glock is no more responsible for those deaths and the congresswoman's injuries than a Number 2 pencil is responsible for cheating on a test."

Translation -- guns don't kill people, people kill people.

Real translation -- This guy doesn't have a clue.

2011-09-02T02:25:00.000-07:00

Report: Manufacturers lost track of more than 16,000 guns since 2009

Washington (CNN) -- Thousands of firearms have gone missing from manufacturers' inventories since 2009 "without a record of being legally sold," according to a report released Thursday by a gun control advocacy group.

The report by the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence put the number of missing weapons at 16,485.

"It is shocking that gun makers are so oblivious to public safety that they lose track of thousands of guns every year," Henigan, acting president of the Brady Center, said in a statement. "Given the lethality of its product, the gun industry has a special duty to act responsibly. Instead, it has a scandalous record of carelessness."

The Brady Center report suggests that some guns may never have had serial numbers stamped into them, making them virtually impossible to trace. The group says that the missing guns are often used by criminals precisely because they are so hard to trace.
The report does not mention which manufacturers are reported to having missing firearms. The Brady Center says the data was collected from a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives report that was presented to the gun industry last month.

But the report also states that ATF conducts their compliance examinations at only about 20% of gun dealers and manufacturers each year, and says as a result, "The 16,485 'missing' guns are likely a vast undercount of the total number of guns that disappeared from gun manufacturers in the last two and a half years."

Andrew Molchan, Publisher of American Firearms Industry Magazine, slammed the report in a statement to CNN.

"The Brady spin and implication that some manufacturers, whose names are not mentioned so we can't check the charges, are knowingly selling guns before they are logged into the manufacturer's records is absolutely ridiculous," Molchan said.

According to ATF statistics, more than 5 million firearms were made in the United States in 2008 by about 4,487 manufacturers. The federal law enforcement agency is in charge of inspecting companies that make and sell firearms to make sure they are in compliance with federal laws.

The ATF says about 600 agents did more than 10,000 inspections last year, but the Brady Center says the agency isn't able to do enough because it lacks manpower and money.

The ATF said it had not read the report and would not comment.

The Brady Center is an advocacy group for tightened gun laws and was named after Jim Brady, President Ronald Reagan's press secretary, who was shot in the head in the attempted assassination of Reagan in 1981.

http://cnn.site.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?expire=&title=Report%3A+Manufacturers+lost+track+of+more+than+16%2C000+guns+since+2009+-+CNN.com&urlID=459617937&action=cpt&partnerID=211911&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnn.com%2F2011%2FUS%2F09%2F01%2Fmissing.guns.report%2F

2011-09-01T02:45:00.000-07:00

Gunning for the truth

By Boston Herald Editorial Staff | Thursday, September 1, 2011 | http://www.bostonherald.com/ | Editorials

The man on whose watch the now infamous “Fast and Furious” anti-gun trafficking operation went afoul has now been sent off to where he will no longer be an embarrassment to the Obama administration.

Ah, we must be approaching another election season.

Kenneth Melson, acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms since 2009, will become a senior adviser on forensic science in the Office of Legal Policy, where presumably he won’t get into any more trouble.

Also being thrown under the Obama re-election bus was U.S. Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke, who oversaw prosecutions related to that same operation.

The idea behind Fast and Furious was to go after gun smugglers selling their wares to Mexican drug cartels. That was the idea, anyway. But the execution of the 15-month operation was flawed in the extreme. ATF lost track of at least 2,000 guns sold as part of the program. Two of the guns were found at the scene of a shootout in the Arizona desert last December in which a U.S. Border Patrol agent was killed. Other ATF-bought guns were found at crime scenes in Mexico and on our side of the border.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has been investigating the Fast and Furious operation. In the course of that probe they found e-mails indicating that Melson had been regularly informed about problems with the operation. The committee rather wisely isn’t abandoning its investigation just because Melson has been allowed to take the fall.

In fact, when questioned by congressional investigators Melson alluded to his frustration with Justice Department officials who had prohibited him from testifying before Congress for months.

“There are still many questions to be answered about what happened . . . and who else bears responsibility,” said Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.).

No kidding! The committee shouldn’t stop just when things are getting interesting.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/editorials/view.bg?articleid=1362827

2011-08-30T13:10:00.000-07:00

Obama shakes up gun agency over botched Mexico sting

By Jeremy Pelofsky | Reuters – 19 mins ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration announced on Tuesday a major shake-up of the U.S. agency that botched an attempt to track arms flowing to drug cartels in Mexico after weapons were allowed to flow freely across the border.

Kenneth Melson, who has been acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, was reassigned after admitting mistakes in the sting operation meant to try to crack down on weapons reaching violent drug gangs from U.S. gun stores.

In further fallout from the operation, the U.S. attorney for Arizona, Dennis Burke, has resigned effective immediately and the lead prosecutor on the case, Emory Hurley, has been reassigned too, according to an Obama administration official.

Another administration official said the shake-up at ATF was a chance for a "fresh start given everything they've gone through lately."

The sting operation, dubbed "Fast and Furious," has spawned congressional and internal Justice Department probes and put the Obama administration on the defensive about whether dangerous weapons were knowingly allowed to cross the border.

Authorities had hoped they would be able to follow the guns to cartel leaders, but ATF agents did not track the weapons after they were transferred from the initial buyer to others who smuggled them across the border. Some agents have testified that they were not allowed to continue the pursuit.

Attorney General Eric Holder and Melson both issued statements but steered clear of any comments about the controversy. Holder has referred the entire matter to the department's inspector general for an investigation.

Melson will be reassigned to the Justice Department's Office of Legal Policy as an adviser on forensic science, the Justice Department said. The U.S. attorney for Minnesota, Todd Jones, will serve as acting ATF director starting on Wednesday.

MEXICO COMPLAINS ABOUT GUNS FLOWING

Mexican authorities have complained bitterly about the flow of guns from the United States across the border where gangs have battled with each other and with the Mexican authorities, straining ties between the two countries.

Some 42,000 have died since 2006 as a result of the turf wars. The congressional investigation has turned up evidence that guns sold in the sting have been showing up at numerous crime scenes in the United States and in Mexico.

U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry died in a December 2010 shootout on the American side of the border and two guns found there have been traced to the sting. It is not yet known if those guns were used to fire the fatal shots.

Some of the weapons recovered at crime scenes include powerful AK-47s and .50 caliber rifles.

Republicans in the U.S. Congress have been demanding the Obama administration explain who knew what and when about the ATF program, which was conceived of and run out of the agency's Phoenix division.

"There are still many questions to be answered about what happened in Operation Fast and Furious and who else bears responsibility," said Republican Representative Darrell Issa, chairman of the House of Representatives' Oversight Committee which is probing the matter.

"But these changes are warranted and offer an opportunity for the Justice Department to explain the role other officials and offices played in the infamous efforts to allow weapons to flow to Mexican drug cartels," he said.

For years the ATF has been without a director confirmed by the U.S. Senate. The position has been the source of tension between advocates and opponents of gun control.

President Barack Obama has nominated Andrew Traver of the agency's Chicago office to the job, but the gun industry has opposed him. Melson is a career federal employee.

Obama will need to nominate someone to fill the U.S. Attorney post. Burke previously served as chief of staff to Janet Napolitano when she was Arizona governor. He was interviewed earlier this month by congressional investigators, a spokeswoman for Issa said.

Melson was interviewed on July 4 by congressional investigators. At that time he acknowledged mistakes had been made and other law enforcement agencies had had critical information that they did not share about their

http://news.yahoo.com/atf-chief-reassigned-botched-sting-161949768.html

2011-08-26T16:33:00.000-07:00

Dead Canadian Polar Bear Haunts Michigan Hunter

By Bill Singer | Forbes – 11 hrs ago

Don’t get me wrong, I love polar bears. Fact is, I have a Baccarat crystal polar bear on my desk (see photo to the right).

I also like panda bears, brown bears, and grizzlies.

Of course, on occasion, some of those furry fellas forget to stay on their side of the line and stray over onto ours and things don't always end well for the humans. On the other hand, a lot of those inter-species encounters are our fault and, unfortunately, things don't always go well for the bears.

The Trophy

As such, consider this oddball criminal case of 73-year-old Jenison, Michigan, resident Rodger Dale DeVries.

It seems that Mr. DeVries obtained a hunting license from the Nunavut Territory in Canada for the purpose of killing a polar bear from the Foxe Basin in November 2000. Hunter DeVries was apparently successful with his undertaking because he had the polar bear mounted as a trophy and stored in Canada.

Where In The World?: Sadly, I’m a bit geographically challenged. Where the hell is the Nunavut Territory? Ahh, I looked it up and learned that it's this big chunk of land that was separated in 1999 from the Northwest Territories. Hey, I used to watch Sgt. Preston of the Yukon when I was a kid. I remember the Northwest Territories and that wonderful dog King.

Okay, so I digress. (Like what else is new?)

Since May of 2008 when polar bears were listed under under the Endangered Species Act as “threatened", the Marine Mammal Protection Act (“MMPA”) automatically prohibited the importation of polar bear parts or trophies for personal use from any part of Canada. That's good news for polar bears because they like their parts and don't relish the thought of becoming a trophy.

The Secretary of the Interior can make a determination that a given region is capable of maintaining a sustainable population level -- which sounds to me like a green light to hunt down any animals so designated. Fortunately for polar bears but unfortunately for DeVries, the Secretary never made such a determination for polar bears from the Foxe River Basin. I guess that you can kill all the polar bears you can find in Canada as long as you don't import them as trophies or transport their parts back into the USA.
All of which may explain why DeVries stored his dead bear in Canada.

On July 3, 2007, DeVries traveled to Canada and picked up his polar bear trophy from a storage unit, and, along with his two minor grandsons, put the polar bear trophy in his own boat and traveled from Ontario, Canada, across the border to Raber Bay, Mich. Shortly after the July 4th holiday, DeVries again moved the bear trophy, this time to his home, and then sold the boat.

Long Paw of the Law

At the time, of all the motor boatin' of the dead bear trophy with the grandkids, DeVries allegedly knew that polar bears from the Foxe Basin could not be imported into the United States and that he was breaking the law.

Another Bill Singer Digression: I dunno about you but I was truly intrigued to read of the illegal boat transportation into the USA by a grandad and his two minor grandchildren of a polar bear trophy taken from a storage unit in Canada. You just don’t read things like that everyday in my rustic hometown of Manhattan Island.

At some point, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Office of Law Enforcement

investigated the comings and goings of DeVries’ polar bear trophy. Unfortunately for DeVries, that investigation prompted the filing of criminal charges by the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, Environmental Crimes Section.

On Aug. 22, 2011, DeVries pleaded guilty to illegally importing his polar bear trophy and is awaiting sentencing in September 2011. The maximum statutory sentence for this criminal violation is one year in prison and a maximum fine of $100,000.

I'm not sure what happens to DeVries' polar bear trophy. Maybe it gets extradited back to Canada? I do know that I'm keeping my Baccarat crystal polar bear no matter what!

http://news.yahoo.com/dead-canadian-polar-bear-haunts-michigan-hunter-120458583.html

2011-08-26T02:24:00.000-07:00

S.A. gun store sues ATF
Shop says agency has exceeded its authority.

jbuch@express-news.net

Updated 10:53 p.m., Thursday, August 25, 2011

A San Antonio gun shop is suing the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, arguing the agency exceeded its authority by ordering licensed dealers to report some rifle sales.

The store, 10-Ring Precision Inc. on Blue Crest Lane on the North Side, is challenging a policy ATF put into place last month requiring firearms sellers in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California to report the sale of two or more of certain rifles over a five-day period in an effort to reduce gun smuggling to Mexico, where drug-related violence killed 15,000 last year.

In the lawsuit, 10-Ring states that unlike handgun reporting requirements, which are required by Congress, the requirement to report the sales of semiautomatic rifles with detachable clips and larger than .22-caliber outside the scope of a criminal investigation goes beyond ATF's authority.

The company also claims ATF is violating its customers' privacy by keeping a database of arms sales, which will discourage purchases.

“The rub for them is that first of all, it's going to cost them time and money to implement this because these forms have to be filled out, they've got to set up systems to keep track of sales of rifles,” said Richard Gardiner, a Virginia lawyer and former counsel for the National Rifle Association. “That's an expense. And then if they don't do it, they're subject to license revocation.”

Two Arizona gun sellers, one of which Gardiner represents, and an Albuquerque, N.M., gun store are challenging ATF's policy as well.

A spokesman for ATF said the bureau has authority under the 1968 Gun Control Act to collect data about firearms sales.

“ATF will vigorously defend its authority to collect information about multiple sales of certain rifles from (licensed dealers) in the four states along the Southwest border,” bureau spokesman Drew Wade wrote in an email.

Alex Hamilton, 10-Ring's president, said the lawsuit speaks for itself, but dinged ATF over the revelation that an investigation by agents in Arizona resulted in guns reaching criminals in Mexico.

“They're punishing dealers for their gun smuggling,” Hamilton said.

The ATF has reported that 70 percent of the 29,284 firearms Mexico submitted to the U.S. for tracing in 2009 and 2010 came from this country.

It's not clear how many more firearms were seized in Mexico during that time period.

2011-08-24T02:15:00.000-07:00


Obama's under-the-radar gun controlBy: Chuck Norris August 24, 2011 04:34 AM EDT
Not long ago, the gun control advocates Jim and Sarah Brady visited the White House. President Barack Obama reportedly told them that he was working on new gun control schemes “under the radar.” It’s been said that guns have two enemies – rust and politicians. Rust never sleeps, and neither do those who would seek to restrict our constitutional rights. So let me tell you about a meeting you weren’t invited to, where those people were planning an attack on our rights that’s very much “under the radar.” It happened in July at the United Nations headquarters in New York, at a meeting to draft of what they call the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty. An Arms Trade Treaty doesn’t sound bad in concept — isn’t that what the U.N is for? The problem, however, is what U.N. diplomats consider to be “arms.” To you and me, the word means tanks, fighter jets, missiles, that kind of thing. But look no further than the U.N. plaza to see what the silk-stocking set considers “arms.” There you will find a bronze statue of a simple .38 revolver — with its barrel tied into a knot. Remember no other country in the world enjoys America’s constitutional right to keep and bear arms. This is why the vast majority of U.N. diplomats believe that an arms trade treaty must reach into your gun safe and mine. There is little question that this treaty would require additional restrictions on our Second Amendment rights. Consider the comments of a spokesman from “Project Ploughshares,” a Canadian arms control group. “From a humanitarian perspective,” the spokesman told the Canadian Postmedia News “all firearms need to be controlled, and that’s the bottom line.” This attitude has spooked even Canada’s government, which typically embraces a disarmament agenda. During the meeting, Canada put forth a panicky petition for a hunting rifle exemption in the treaty. Mexico immediately objected. For an administration with a secretive itch for gun control, the situation is ideal. They can let the United Nations do the dirty work of drafting onerous new restrictions on civilian firearms, then package them inside a treaty with legitimate measures to control true military armaments. The U.N. has scheduled the treaty to be finished in July of next year — just in time to go to the Obama White House for ratification. That’s “under the radar” for you. But one risk of operating under the radar is that you can’t see the moves of your opponents. This is not the first U.N. gun-control rodeo for my friends at the National Rifle Association. They know treaty ratification requires a two-thirds vote in the Senate. Thirty-four senators would have to vote no to block the treaty. While the rest of Washington was fixated on the debt ceiling debate, the NRA quietly marshaled opposition to the treaty among pro-gun senators. Fifty-eight senators have now called out the president on his plan. Led by Sens. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.), 45 Republicans and 13 Democrats have written two strong letters —one from members of each party — to President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. All the senators have vowed to oppose any treaty that restricts civilian firearm ownership. What’s ironic is that the United States already has the world’s preeminent system for regulation of true military arms sales. If the rest of the world merely adopted the U.S. regulatory regime, there would be no need for an Arms Trade Treaty. But rather than harmonize other nations’ patchy regulations on arms transfers, the diplomatic crowd would rather force Washington to hew to its utopian vision of global disarmament. If this were only a partisan exercise in bashing Obama and the U.N., one could be forgiven for concluding it has no substance. But 13 Democratic senators clearly think otherwise — a sign that this debate is far from over. Chuck Norris, an actor, martial artist and author, is the honorary chairman of the National Rifle Association’s voter registration program, Trigger the Vote.
© 2011 POLITICO LLC

2011-08-22T02:38:00.000-07:00

Last Updated: August 21. 2011 10:52PM

Nolan Finley

Londoners die for want of a gun

Defenders of the Second Amendment couldn't have asked for a greater gift than the spectacle of unarmed policemen and defenseless citizens standing by helplessly while rampaging hordes of youths burned London and beat up and murdered innocent residents.

Europhiles endlessly remind us of the superiority, compassion and refinement of the European social democracies.

But the anarchy that raged in England couldn't happen in America. At least not in my neighborhood, where every third house contains a hunter with a gun safe full of pistols, shotguns and rifles.

We've ceded many or our liberties to the government, but so far we've hung on to the right to defend ourselves and protect our families and homes. We pay our cops to do the same.

Not so in England.

Police there are armed with little more than a smile. As demonstrated by the recent riots, they are virtually powerless to counter violence.

Even such nonlethal responses as water cannons and rubber bullets are debated in Parliament.

A shocking column last week in the Wall Street Journal by law professor Joyce Lee Malcolm detailed the ridiculous lengths to which the Brits have gone to level the playing field between criminals and law-abiding citizens.

It's part of the American DNA that if hit, you have the right to hit back.

But in England, crime targets risk prison for killing or injuring an attacker. Homeowners have been charged with murder for killing an intruder.

Burglars who hurt themselves breaking into a house can sue the owner.

Police called to crimes in progress can do little but shrug and wait until the carnage is complete to dust off the victim.

We have our flaws in America. But we have the common sense to recognize the difference between those who obey the law and those who break it.

Although a few places, most notably Washington D.C., have stripped their citizens of the best means of self defense, for the most part responsible gun ownership is still an acknowledged right.

Londoners had little more than cricket bats and frying pans to fend off the marauders. Private gun ownership is limited. It's even illegal to have a knife with a blade longer than three inches.

The gun-phobic in this country blame widespread legal gun ownership for violent crime.
But in England, where only the bad guys have guns, crimes committed with handguns have increased 40 percent since they were banned in 1997.

In the 10 years since Michigan liberalized its concealed carry law, more than a quarter million residents have received weapons permits, without the predicted rise in gun violence.

But there has been an increase in the number of citizens trained and prepared to protect their communities from falling into anarchy.
nfinley@detnews.com
(313) 222-2064
Nolan Finley is editorial page editor of the News. Read his recent columns and blog at detnews.com/finley and watch him at 7:30 p.m. Fridays on “Am I Right?” on Detroit Public TV, Channel 56.

From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20110821/OPINION03/108210306/Londoners-die-for-want-of-a-gun#ixzz1VkUgNG4h

2011-08-22T02:32:00.001-07:00

2011-08-21T05:11:00.000-07:00

In defense of women and guns

Among women, the fastest-growing group of concealed handgun license owners in Texas is African American

By Joshunda Sanders AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Updated: 8:43 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 20, 2011
My first encounter with a gun was when I was 6 years old. It was December 1984, and as my mother and I walked across a bridge from Harlem to the Bronx in New York City, two men came up behind us intending to take the faux mink coat she was wearing, which looked unfortunately real under the dull orange streetlights. One of them put a gun to my head and threatened to kill me if she didn't turn over the coat. I can still remember the quarters clanging on the concrete beneath our feet as they snatched the coat, let me go and took off into the night.

That sense of vulnerability and fear followed me into adulthood, when I found myself, as an African American single woman, working as a reporter in Beaumont in 2001.

In addition to the pressures of learning how to be a reporter, learning Texas and being far from home, I was warned in the newsroom about active clusters of Ku Klux Klan activity. It had only been a few years since James Byrd Jr., a black man, had been beaten by white men and dragged to his death in nearby Jasper.

It wasn't until the recent debates over concealed handgun licenses on campuses and my own curiosity about learning how to shoot that I decided it was time to apply for my own license. After a trip to Ladies' Day at Red's Indoor Range in Pflugerville, I almost reconsidered. Then a LivingSocial coupon for a Gunfighter's Clinic course showed up in my inbox, and I decided to go for it.

It surprised me to discover that I was part of a larger trend in Texas. Applications for concealed carry permits began rising in the state before the 2008 elections, an increase some attributed to concerns that anti-gun politicians would be voted in . Of the total number of licenses granted, women made up 21.9 percent in 2010, up from 17.7 percent in 2001, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety. For reasons that are unclear, black women are the fastest-growing group of women being issued licenses for concealed handguns in the state.

Academics, experts and gun safety instructors have disagreed for decades about how popular guns are with women. Part of the ongoing dispute reflects what The Atlantic wisely noted in its September issue as an ongoing and unresolved battle in American culture between gun control and gun rights activists. Nationwide, the National Shooting Sports Foundation reported that in 2009, the number of women buying guns for personal defense was up 83 percent.

University of Richmond professor Laura Browder, author of "Her Best Shot: Women and Guns in America" says that the visibility of female hunters such as Sarah Palin in popular culture has lifted some of the stigma of gun ownership for most women - whether they use those guns for personal defense or for hunting. "Palin has brought women's gun ownership back into the public sphere in a way that it hasn't been," Browder said.

But since the 1980s, professors across the country have argued that the media and gun industry have enlarged the scenario of unmarried women fearing for their safety in urban environments earning their licenses for protection against violent crime. Browder said in her 2006 book that women earning licenses "as a defense against anonymous violence" was in part because the gun industry uses the fear of violence to scare women into buying guns.

But my fear is grounded not just in my personal history, but in a collective one.
Adam Winkler, author of the forthcoming book, "Gunfight: The Battle Over The Right to Bear Arms in America," traced the birth of the modern gun rights movement to the Black Panthers in the September issue of The Atlantic. In it was a fact of history that I'd never heard: "Martin Luther King Jr. applied for a permit to carry a concealed firearm in 1956, after his house was bombed. His application was denied," Winkler wrote. "But from then on, armed supporters guarded his home."

Closer to my demographic was the historian Danielle McGuire's book, "At the Dark End of the Street," which fills out commonly told stories about Rosa Parks and other women of the civil rights movement who were subjected not just to racial intimidation but also sexual violence. Among the most jarring stories of black women attacked in the South, sometimes by police officers, was the story of Recy Taylor, a 24-year-old mother and sharecropper who in 1944, as she walked home after attending church at the Rock Hill Holiness Church in Abbeville, Ala., was snatched from the street by seven white men armed with knives and shotguns. They raped her and left her for dead. It was Rosa Parks, the president of the local NAACP branch office, who was sent to investigate Taylor's case.

Sure, both the robbery from my childhood and the rape of Taylor were decades ago. But as a homeowner who lives in the South and aspires to travel unfettered to places where I might be viewed more as a target than a benevolent visitor, earning a concealed handgun license seemed the best way to quell my personal fear.

And in order to get that license, I needed to spend at least 10 hours with Mathew Williams, an instructor with Austin-based Gunfighter's Clinic, and pass a state background check.

Part of Williams' class is a 200-slide presentation explaining Texas gun-ownership laws. There were four other women in the class. Among them was a thin blond woman named Chris, who asked me not to use her last name. She said she came to the class with her husband, Bruce, and their adult daughter mainly out of curiosity, after Bruce's pastor took the Boston native out hunting and got him thinking about applying for his concealed handgun license.

Chris and her daughter decided to join Bruce for the class.

"I'm not a very big woman myself," Chris said. "And so, if something happens to Bruce, I want to be able to protect my home. And because I'm not very big, a man could do whatever he wanted with me. A gun seems like it would level the playing field."

Williams, who seemed to regard less lethal methods of self-defense with a lot of skepticism, said that he had a 30 percent increase in the number of women showing up in his classes, which meet the state's public safety requirements for concealed handgun licensing. Generally, the courses cost upward of $100, and the application for the concealed handgun course is about $140, not including fingerprinting fees and the cost of passport photos. Williams' class, which is combined with a legal response program that includes information about what to do if you have to shoot someone, costs about $400, though it was $198 with the coupon.

Williams, a gunsmith, insomniac and father of two teaches the 10-hour training course four times a week, he said.

"Chivalry is dead," he said. "Male criminals think nothing nowadays of shooting a woman." At home, his two daughters are well-versed in marksmanship - the 7-year-old has a rifle and a handgun and his 5-year-old will soon have her own rifle, he said. It was the first time I had heard anyone mention children owning guns, but he says in the class that the best way to prevent children's injury with firearms is to educate them about how to use them. (And to keep them in locked cases.)

There are other things to consider. The personal injury rates for firearms in homicide and suicide in this country are higher than they are in any other industrialized nation. And violent crimes in America dropped significantly in 2010, to what appears to be the lowest rate in nearly 40 years.

While Chris and I, her daughter and Bruce braved the 106-degree heat with our other classmates in Hays County, a man starting to shoot his required 50 rounds cut his hand on one of the gun slides, and blood started dripping down his hand.

My heart racing, and sweat trickling into my eyes, I stood in a line behind a blue barrel and tried to focus when it came time for me to take the test. If I end up earning my license, I can only hope the shots fired there will be the last ones I ever shoot under that kind of pressure - or worse.
jsanders@statesman.com; 445-3630

Find this article at:

http://www.statesman.com/life/in-defense-of-women-and-guns-1768375.html

2011-08-17T19:04:00.000-07:00

If elected president, Rick Perry could still jog with his gun

When Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry goes for a jog in Texas, the governor doesn't just throw on a pair of gym shorts and tennis shoes before dashing out the door. He also packs a concealed .380 Ruger loaded with deadly hollow-point bullets, fully equipped with a laser-sight for precise killing. (What, you don't?)

He says he keeps it on him in case of an attack from wild animals. Last year, the Texas governor sent a coyote to canine heaven with a single shot while he was exercising in Austin, claiming it had threatened his dog.

But if he were elected president, could Perry hypothetically continue to pack heat on his morning run? You're damn right he could.

The Ticket asked several constitutional scholars and presidential experts if a sitting president would be allowed to carry a gun if he wanted to, even if it meant breaking local law. Since the White House is located in Washington, D.C.--a city that bans carrying firearms--the answer isn't perfectly simple. As presidential scholar Kenneth R. Mayer of the University of Wisconsin put it, the legal questions would get "big, fat, and hairy in a hurry."

The short answer is that if the president really wanted to run around Lafayette Park with a revolver strapped to his leg, the legal barriers would be easily surmountable.

In 2008, the Supreme Court struck down a decades-old D.C, law that banned gun ownership in the District of Columbia, but it is still illegal to carry a gun around the city. That second part doesn't sit well with Perry, who considers owning a gun a "fundamental right" enshrined in the Second Amendment to the Constitution.

"We Texans like our guns," Perry writes in his book, Fed Up!. "We don't like meddlesome statists who want to infringe on our right to keep and bear them."

Like it or not, the president would be breaking local law by carrying his gun in the city, but there are several ways he could get around it if he wanted to.

First, the president could easily sign an executive order that makes it legal for him to carry a weapon. Executive Orders are considered as good as law, so there would be little that could stop him, said Adam Winkler, UCLA law professor and author of the new book Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America.

"No man is above the law, not even the president. If applicable law bars him from carrying a gun, then he must obey," Winkler told The Ticket. "Of course, the president is powerful. He could probably just sign an executive order authorizing himself to carry guns wherever he likes."

If, however, the president didn't want to pursue his right to carry through an executive order, he could also take the argument to the federal courts.

The president would have to "persuade the court that carrying the gun was part of his official duties," said Eric M. Freedman, professor of constitutional law at Hofstra University. That wouldn't necessarily be easy, given that the president is already surrounded by a heavily armed team of Secret Service personnel, but then again, White House lawyers are notorious for legal arguments to justify presidential power. (Amiright John Yoo?)

The president could also request to be deputized in the District, which would allow him to carry a firearm via the same channels that members of law enforcement in the District use.

The gun-toting president could, of course, avoid all these sticky legal problems if he kept his outdoor exercise regimen out of DC. There are plenty of trails, foothills and paths a short drive away in Virginia, a state with loose gun laws, where the president could run freely with the wind blowing through his holsters.

The Secret Service, however, could make a very serious argument that the president shouldn't be carrying a weapon for his own protection. Remember, a spirited debate broke out in the days leading up to President Obama's inauguration over whether he would be forced to surrender his Blackberry for security concerns. (In the end, Obama got to keep his Blackberry, but under certain conditions.) If a Blackberry's almost off limits, you can imagine how the Secret Service might react if the president wanted to pack a glock. When contacted for this article, a spokesman for the Secret Service declined to speak on the record.

Of course, we won't really know how this would all come out until a president actually tries to pack heat on Washington's mean streets. Then again, we might not even get that far. When asked this week on the campaign trail if he was packing, Perry told Politico's Ben Smith, "I never comment on whether I'm carrying a handgun or not. That's why it's called concealed."
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/elected-president-rick-perry-could-still-jog-gun-190824495.html
And really, who would ever check?

2011-08-17T02:19:00.000-07:00

County Commission: new state gun law could create 'Wild West' Palm Beach

By John Kennedy and Jennifer Sorentrue Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Updated: 9:49 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2011

Palm Beach County commissioners may challenge a new state law that is forcing them to repeal at least seven local rules regulating guns and ammunition.

The commission directed County Attorney Denise Neiman to research whether the county can mount a legal challenge to the law, enacted this spring, which prevents local governments from regulating firearms and ammunition.

It takes effect Oct. 1. After that, local elected officials or agency heads could face civil fines of as much as $5,000 for trying to enforce ordinances they know are in violation of the state law. Gov. Rick Scott could also remove elected and appointed officials who violate the rules.

"We are sworn in to uphold the health, safety and welfare," Commissioner Burt Aaronson said. "And this certainly does not allow us to protect the health, safety and welfare of the people we serve."

County attorneys have spent weeks combing through the county's ordinances and laws looking for regulations that restrict firearms.

Commissioners have already overturned a provision that banned guns in county parks.

On Tuesday the commission took the final step to repeal a county rule that prevented people from bringing guns into child-care centers. Instead, gun owners must now keep their firearms in a locked box to bring them into the centers, Chief Assistant County Attorney Jim Mize said.

The commission also took preliminary steps to repeal several other gun regulations, including a provision that blocked people from discharging a firearm east of 20-Mile Bend.

Commissioners said the unanimous decisions were made "under duress."
"It is the Wild West here in Palm Beach County," Aaronson said. "West Palm Beach may become known as Wild West Palm Beach."

The National Rifle Association has disputed safety concerns, saying lifting local bans will allow people with state-issued concealed weapon permits to carry firearms into places where they should have been allowed all along.

Carrying firearms into schools or shooting in public places, which could include parks and other crowded areas, would still be banned under state law.

Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said Tuesday the repeal of local laws would not affect residents' safety.

"There is still a state statute," Bradshaw said. "What the public has got to understand is that you can't just go firing your gun off."

Palm Beach County leaders have spent years pushing for stronger gun regulations.
In 1999, the county signed off on a rule that required people buying firearms at gun shows or flea markets to undergo the same criminal background checks as those purchasing guns from licensed dealers.

The next year, county commissioners signed off on a local law requiring gun owners to lock their weapons while children were nearby or face a $500 fine. Gun owners opposed the ordinance and protested loudly at the meeting where the Palm Beach County Commission passed the law.

And in January, Aaronson called for a statewide ban on the sale of high-capacity gun magazines like the one used to wound U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and kill six others.

The new state law was among three measures pushed by the politically powerful NRA that were approved this year by lawmakers and signed by Gov. Rick Scott.

One measure restricts doctors from asking patients about gun ownership and another decriminalizes the accidental showing of a concealed weapon. Doctors' organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, sued Scott this summer over the gun ownership law.

But supporters of the law prohibiting local governments from passing stricter gun laws than the state say it was designed merely to force cities and counties to comply with a 1987 law that placed the right to impose gun regulations with the Legislature.

"There's been a steady creep, an erosion of gun rights by cities and counties," said Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Shalimar, who sponsored the law (HB 45) approved this spring, on a mostly party-line vote with Democrats opposed.

"All we're trying to do is enforce the existing laws," Gaetz added.

Richard Radcliffe, executive director of the Palm Beach County League of Cities, said that the county's 38 municipalities are also searching their laws for gun restrictions. The task is challenging because gun rules are often buried in other regulations, such as those dictating appropriate noise levels in an area.

It is unclear how many cities and towns will have to repeal local rules as a result of the new state law, Radcliffe said. "Everybody is in the process of going through all of their code books," he said.

Cragin Mosteller, a spokeswoman for the Florida Association of Counties, said that many county officials are unhappy with the Legislature's action. But none has stepped forward to challenge the measure. "I think we've always felt the government closest to the people is the one that governs best," Mosteller said.
Staff researcher Niels Heimeriks contributed to this story.

Find this article at:

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/county-commission-new-state-gun-law-could-create-1752280.html

2011-08-14T05:07:00.000-07:00

Florida cities, counties must take local gun laws off books

New state law bans local gun regulations

By Martin E. Comas, ORLANDO SENTINEL
8:02 PM EDT, August 13, 2011

Orange County employees have started removing "no firearms" signs at county parks, and soon they'll probably black out the same words on brochures. In Groveland, leaders recently erased from the books an ordinance that banned firing a gun into the air.

Across Florida, similar scenes are being played out as cities and counties scour their ordinances to get rid of gun regulations by Oct. 1. That's when a tough new state law, backed by the National Rifle Association, will forbid city and county governments from enacting or enforcing local gun-control regulations.

Local officials face individual $5,000 fines and even removal from office by the governor if they try to adopt or enforce local gun laws.

"The sanctions are rather draconian," said Robert Guthrie, Orange's senior assistant county attorney. "We're doing a complete inventory of which rules and regulations we need to repeal."

Since 1987, Florida has had a law giving the state the exclusive right to regulate firearms. But there were no penalties for local governments that took regulation a step further. The newly amended law adds "teeth," said Rebecca O'Hara, legislative director for the Florida League of Cities.

Supporters of the law, signed in June by Gov. Rick Scott, contend that it was needed to have consistent firearm regulations across Florida. By doing away with local restrictions, it allows people with state-issued concealed-weapons permits to carry firearms in places where they should have been allowed all along, according to the NRA. That includes, for example, Orange County parks, which have had a no-guns policy.

"The Constitution protects the right to keep and bear arms," said Marion Hammer, lobbyist for the NRA. "Local governments are not allowed to regulate the Bill of Rights."

But Dennis Henigan, interim president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a gun-control advocacy group in Washington, lambasted the law, calling it "shameful."

"The gun lobby is determined to force guns into every corner of our society," Henigan said. "That does not make us safer."

Nevertheless, local governments from Miami to Pensacola are purging their ordinances of "gun" references.

In Boca Raton, the "no guns allowed" sign has come down at City Hall.

In Lake County, commissioners recently deleted a provision in an ordinance that would have banned firearms on public lands, including its parks.

In Orange, Matt Suedmeyer, the county's parks-and-recreation manager, said he has had several meetings with county attorneys to discuss the new law, and "it does appear that we have to remove" any signs referring to guns. To save money, county employees probably will use markers to block out wording about guns in brochures.

"There is a little concern" about public safety, Suedmeyer said. "The bad guys that carry guns would bring them into the parks regardless."

State law already makes it illegal to fire into buildings, cars, across streets and in public places, except for self-defense. Though concealed-weapons-permit holders will be allowed to bring guns into most government buildings, state law doesn't allow firearms in meetings of elected officials.

But a one-size-fits-all approach doesn't work for gun regulations, Palm Beach County Commissioner Shelley Vana said.

Urban communities with more people living closer together should be able to have stricter gun rules than rural communities with more wide-open spaces, Vana said.

"It's a shame that there are people in Florida who love their guns more than children," Vana said. "Special interests have won out."

But Hammer, of the NRA, said local "gun haters" flouting the 1987 law for years prompted the addition of personal penalties for public officials who try to impose local rules.

Differing gun regulations across the state "made criminals out of law-abiding people who had no way of knowing what these local regulations were," she said.

Staff writer Andy Reid contributed to this report. mcomas@tribune.com or 352-742-5927.

orlandosentinel.com/news/politics/os-florida-local-gun-laws-20110814,0,5831647.story

2011-08-13T05:15:00.000-07:00

August 13, 2011
Del. to receive WWII-era gun barrel

66-foot long, 135-ton piece will be moved to Cape Henlopen State Park
By Jon Bleiweis
Staff Writer
LEWES -- With the help of the Fort Miles Historical Association, the state is hoping to move a World War II-era gun barrel, currently located at the St. Julien's Annex of Norfolk Naval Base, to Battery 519 in the Cape Henlopen State Park.

Gary Wray, president of the FMHA, said the 16-inch barrel was the middle barrel of the first turret of the American battleship USS Missouri when the Japanese surrendered the war on the deck of the battleship on Sept. 2, 1945.

"Little Lewes is gonna get a piece from that big event," he said. "I'm proud that our state is getting this barrel donated to us by the Navy. It's a real catch for the state of Delaware."

Jim Hall, chief of cultural resources for Delaware State Parks, said bringing the 66-foot long, 135-ton barrel to Delaware is a big project that his agency will be taking on.
Transporting the barrel, preparing it for display and lproviding for ong-term maintenance are all key parts of the timeline, with the goal of having a safe, accessible plan in place to maintain the piece for future generations.

Hall said he submitted an application to the U.S. Navy's surplus department approximately two weeks ago in the hope of acquiring the gun barrel and was told that as long as there is a strong and logical transport plan, the barrel could be theirs.

There is currently no set timeline to get the gun to the park, but Hall has asked the Navy for one year to gather the funds necessary to transport the barrel via rail and rail barge to Delaware.

"It's quite a production just to transport (the barrel) to the site," he said. "It's not a slam-dunk proposition. The Navy wants to see a strong transportation plan, which we have. What we need to do now is lock up funds."

Wray said it will cost approximately $100,000 to transport the barrel. The FMHA has about half that amount already, and a fundraising committee has been established to collect the rest.

Nick Carter, a Realtor who lives in Lewes, is a 1970 Naval Academy graduate who served in the U.S. Navy for two tours in Vietnam and was the founder of the Delaware chapter of the Naval Academy Alumni Association. He said he will be involved with the FMHA's fundraising efforts.

"I think it's really exciting," he said. "To have the barrel at Fort Miles is a unique opportunity and I'm glad to be a part of it."

After the barrel arrives, Hall said it could be a year or two before it's displayed. It will join eight other guns currently located at Fort Miles.http://www.delmarvanow.com/print/article/20110813/NEWS01/108130334/Del-receive-WWII-era-gun-barrel

2011-08-10T02:29:00.000-07:00

August 9, 2011

States Pitch a Lifestyle to Lure Gun Makers From Their Longtime Homes

By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS

For more than a century, the nation’s firearms industry, including iconic brands like Colt, Smith & Wesson and Winchester, has been concentrated in Northeastern and Midwestern states that now have restrictive gun-control laws.

But recently, states like Idaho, Alabama and Montana have presented a novel argument as part of an effort to lure the firearms industry’s high-paying jobs south and west: Gun makers would be happier and more successful among citizens who regularly use firearms than they would be remaining in states trying to limit gun rights.

The approach is the latest twist in the interstate competition for scarce jobs, with hard-pressed states supplementing or even bypassing traditional enticements like tax breaks in favor of pitches that sell a lifestyle: greater personal freedom, low or no state taxes, minimal regulation, the absence of troublesome unions and of course, the unfettered right to bear arms.

“When we approach gun makers, we first make the cultural argument,” said Gov. Dennis Daugaard of South Dakota, a hunter who recruits firearms makers at gun shows.

“People in business want to feel their business is wanted and welcome in the communities where they are located. In South Dakota, the culture is there. We don’t regulate firearms businesses out of existence.”

Irv Stone, owner of Bar-Sto Precision Machine, which makes competition pistols, moved to Sturgis, S.D., from California last year because he said he found it increasingly difficult to operate in an environment where guns are shunned.

“The cultural thing is like night and day,” he said. “I felt like the bastard child in California. It is not a firearms culture. In California, it was like: ‘Eww, firearms. Really?’ Here, on the other hand, you are looked at kind of weird: ‘Oh, you don’t shoot or fish? What do you do?’ ”

The nation’s $3.8 billion firearms industry, which includes more than a thousand small companies as well as the famous brands, is not huge in terms of jobs. But because it employs 90,000 people amid the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, competition for those jobs has become fierce.

For the past several months, states vying for gun manufacturers have been making hay of legislation in Massachusetts, where some 10 percent of the nation’s small arms makers are based, that would limit the number of guns people can buy and require “micro-stamping” (placing a mark on the firing pins of handguns that could allow casings to be identified). And in Illinois, home to several large firearms manufacturers, a law would ban assault rifles and would prohibit manufacturers from selling guns to state residents.

“They are pitched by places like South Dakota, Alabama and Montana, and undoubtedly part of the sales pitch is: ‘We have a better environment. Our Legislature respects the Second Amendment,’ ” said Lawrence G. Keane, senior vice president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the industry’s trade group.

Gun manufacturers say proposed micro-stamping laws could drive Colt out of Connecticut and Remington out of New York, which are among more than half a dozen states where the legislation has been introduced. California, which employs more firearms industry workers than any other state, has already approved a micro-stamping law that is pending.

Carlton S. Chen, a vice president at Colt, said the company would have few qualms about leaving Connecticut if micro-stamping became law.

“At that point, we and other firearms manufacturers doing business in Connecticut would need to seriously consider whether we should completely move ourselves out of Connecticut and relocate to a friendlier state,” Mr. Chen said in written testimony to a state legislative committee in 2008. “The upshot would be a loss of thousands of jobs.”
In the South and the West, several states have recently sought to burnish their gun-friendly images by approving largely symbolic measures, like designating an official state firearm. Some states have also declared themselves exempt from federal gun policy by passing Firearms Freedom Acts, which maintain that guns made and kept within a state are not subject to the authority of Congress.

Last November, when the Olin Corporation announced that it would move an ammunition facility and 1,000 jobs to Mississippi from Illinois, it said it decided to do so because the company had failed to reach a deal with its main union and had received $25 million in incentives.

But an official in Mississippi said that what helped sway the company was most likely the state’s right-to-work culture and that unlike Illinois, it has no pending legislation that would require micro-stamping.

“They understood the culture, the work force, and the surroundings,” said Christy Knapp, an executive vice president of the Oxford-Lafayette County Economic Development Foundation in Mississippi.

Oklahoma, Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, among others, have also advanced the cultural argument.

“There’s no question that the culture in states like Montana, where people are comfortable with firearms, gives a comfort level to manufacturers in other states who are assaulted with anti-gun forces,” said Evan Barrett, chief business development officer for Montana.

But the attempted poaching of its gun makers is not being taken lightly in Massachusetts, which is home to Smith & Wesson, the nation’s largest handgun manufacturer (founded in 1852) and the Savage Arms Company (1894), or in neighboring Connecticut, where Colt (1836), the Marlin Firearms Company (1870) and O. F. Mossberg & Sons (1919) are located.

In 2005, this small region produced 1.8 million firearms, according to the Western Massachusetts Economic Development Council, about one-third of all firearms made in the country.

Pushing back, Massachusetts has published a brochure promoting its firearms makers that traces the state’s gun culture back to 1777, when George Washington chose Springfield as the site of the country’s first arsenal.

And last year, when Massachusetts sought to ensure that Smith & Wesson stayed in Springfield, the state gave the company $6 million in tax credits to relocate one of its New Hampshire factories there. While the factory employs a modest 225 people, Massachusetts wanted to make sure the company would not start shifting operations elsewhere.

“Although several states and cities have approached us to entice expansion into their locations,” Massachusetts had demonstrated “the commitment of both the commonwealth and the city to not only Smith & Wesson, but to our employees, the local community, and to manufacturing in Massachusetts,” the company said in a statement.

The quest for firearms jobs has made for some unexpected partnerships.
In New York, Senator Charles E. Schumer issued a news release in May praising Remington after it agreed to move a factory from Maine, bringing with it 40 to 50 jobs.

The release made no mention of Senator Schumer’s record supporting gun control.

Instead, it said Mr. Schumer had “led the effort in Congress to repeal the law that limited competition for small arms contracts, so that Remington can now compete for small arms contracts with the Department of Defense.”

But as an indication of how surreptitious some of the interstate recruitment has been, officials in Illinois, whose firearms businesses appear to be among the most sought after by other states, say they know of no attempts to lure their gun makers away.
In recent years, Illinois has lost Les Baer Custom Inc., a small company that moved to Iowa, as well as 1,000 Winchester jobs.

Marcelyn Love, spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity wrote in an e-mail, “I am not aware of an increased effort by other states to lure specific manufacturing sectors from Illinois.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/10/us/10guns.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

2011-08-09T02:17:00.000-07:00

Gun Query Off Limits for Doctors in Florida

August 8, 2011

By ERIN N. MARCUS, M.D.

As a primary care physician, I regularly ask patients questions that many people would consider rude, inappropriately nosy or just irrelevant in polite conversation.
Do you wear your seat belt? How much alcohol do you usually drink? Do you use recreational drugs? Have you ever injected yourself with anything? Do you have sexual relations, and if so, with men, women or both?

Questions like these have long been a standard part of medical interviewing, and for good reason. The answers may reveal clues about a person’s symptoms or physical findings on exam. If a person says he or she drinks heavily or has used intravenous drugs, I may be more alert to signs of liver problems when doing the physical exam and more inclined to order certain blood tests. The answers also help me know if the patient is at greater risk for common, yet preventable, causes of death, like H.I.V., car accidents and heart disease, so that I can counsel him or her.

There’s one customary question, though, that I’m no longer allowed to ask. In June, Gov. Rick Scott signed a law barring Florida doctors from routinely asking patients if they own a gun. The law also authorizes patients to report doctors for “unnecessarily harassing” them about gun ownership and makes it illegal to routinely document firearm ownership information in a patient’s medical record. Other state legislatures have considered similar proposals, but Florida is the first to enact such a law.

The law provides an exemption if the question is “relevant to the patient’s medical care or safety,” though it doesn’t specify what would qualify as relevant. Penalties for violating the law include disciplinary action by the Florida Board of Medicine, which could include citations, fines and “remedial education.”

The measure was introduced in the state Legislature after a pediatrician in Central Florida dismissed a mother from his practice when she angrily refused to answer a routine question about whether she kept a gun in her house. The doctor, Chris Okonkwo, said at the time that he asked so he could offer appropriate safety advice, just as he customarily asks parents if they have a swimming pool and teenagers if they use their cellphones when they drive. He said that he dismissed the mother because he felt they could not establish a trusting doctor-patient relationship.

Advocates of gun rights argue that routine questions about firearms violate their privacy, make them vulnerable to discrimination by insurance companies and the government, and “offend common decency,” as Marion Hammer, a former president of the National Rifle Association who lobbied for passage of the bill, put it in letters to N.R.A. members. Ms. Hammer said that gun-owning parents had complained to her for many years about pediatricians’ inquiries, which she believes are ineffective at preventing gun injuries.

She contends that such inquiries are part of a political antigun agenda by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

“You don’t go to a doctor to be interrogated or intimidated,” she said. “There’s a clear line between violating privacy rights and imparting safety information.”

The A. A. P. takes the position that guns are a public health issue and that pediatricians have a duty to ask about ownership because firearm injuries affect a large number of their patients. According to the group, firearms account for a third of all deaths from injury among teenagers and more than one in five deaths from injury among people ages 1 to 19.

The academy recommends that parents not have a gun in the home. When guns are present, it suggests they be kept unloaded, in a secure, locked place, with the bullets stored separately.

“There’s no political agenda — we’re talking about the safety of children,” said Dr. Lisa A. Cosgrove, president of the group’s Florida chapter. “The best way to protect them is to teach the parents how to protect them.”

Because the new law directly conflicts with accepted medical practices, some of my pediatrician colleagues have told me privately that they worry that not asking about firearms could put them at risk of a malpractice claim if the patient subsequently dies of or is injured by a gunshot. Psychiatrists routinely inquire about guns, too, and the law’s requirements potentially place them in a legal predicament.

As a general internist in South Florida, I often see the effects of gun violence. Many of my patients have been injured or disabled by a gunshot, or had a family member shot and killed. Shortly after the new law went into effect, local television stations broadcast a story about a 4-year-old in Miami who was accidentally shot by his 17-year-old half brother, who was playing with a .22-caliber rifle.

The Florida chapters of the A. A. P., the American Academy of Family Physicians and the American College of Physicians have filed a suit contesting the law as a violation of the First Amendment right to free speech. (Disclosure: I am a member of the A. C. P., the major professional organization for internists, but am not involved with the litigation.) The suit, which calls the gun inquiry rule a “gag law,” contends that prevention is a cornerstone of medical practice and that free discussions are key to the doctor-patient relationship and are protected by federal privacy rules.

At the moment, however, those of us working in a clinic or hospital will have to imagine we live in a place where gun injuries aren’t a public health issue and forget some of the questions we learned to ask in medical school. In doctors’ offices in Florida, prevention has its limits.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/09/health/policy/09guns.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

2011-08-08T02:25:00.000-07:00

Albuquerque gun store owner challenging ATF rule

The Associated Press

Posted: 08/06/2011 11:12:14 AM PDT

Updated: 08/06/2011 11:37:42 AM PDT

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.—An Albuquerque gun store has sued over a federal requirement that weapons dealers in four border states must report multiple sales of semi-automatic rifles.

Ron Peterson Firearms was among more than 8,000 gun dealers in New Mexico, Texas, Arizona and California that were ordered last month to report multiple sales of such weapons to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Peterson filed a lawsuit Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Albuquerque, asking a judge to prevent the order from taking effect Aug. 14. It is the third such lawsuit filed this week, all contending that ATF lacks authority from Congress to require the reporting. The suits do not seek money, only a stop to enforcement of the new requirement.

The requirement follows a controversial 2009 law enforcement operation in Arizona known as "Fast and Furious" that resulted in more than 2,000 high-powered weapons making their way to Mexico as authorities went after people directing gun buys on behalf of cartels.

The operation has been the subject of recent congressional hearings in which the ATF acknowledged making mistakes. Of the 2,000 guns that got into Mexico, only about one-fourth have been recovered, meaning the rest could still in the hands of drug smugglers.

Two of the recovered guns were found at the scene where Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was shot to death in southern Arizona on Dec. 14, although it's unclear whether the fatal

bullet came from one of those weapons or another gun.

ATF spokesman Drew Wade told The Associated Press on Friday that his agency will vigorously defend its authority to collect information from gun store owners.

Peterson's attorney, Richard Gardiner, told The Albuquerque Journal ( http://bit.ly/ng5NLC) that the intent of the rule doesn't justify the fact ATF exceeded its authority. Peterson's lawsuit contends that the requirement will damage his business by requiring him to "devote employee time to preparing the reports."

Two other lawsuits challenging the order were filed this week in a federal court in Washington, D.C. One was filed by Gardiner on behalf of two Arizona firearms dealers. The other was filed by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which represents the firearms industry.

An ATF letter dated July 17 said weapons dealers must report sales of two or more semi-automatic rifles to a single buyer within five business days. Weapons must be reported if they are larger than .22 caliber and if they can be fitted with detachable magazines.

Tom Mangan, an ATF special agent in Phoenix, said high-powered rifles, AK-47- and M-16-type weapons are included.

"We're seeing a greater use of that type of gun by the criminal element in Mexico," Mangan said.

The ATF plans to use the reported information to identify people who are filling a "shopping list" by purchasing weapons at several stores for shipment to Mexico.
Peterson's lawsuit claimed the rule would result in a "loss of business from both in-state and out-of-state potential purchasers" who will avoid buying rifles "because they wish to protect their privacy rights."

Mangan said the rule is simply an "administrative requirement" and doesn't prevent individuals from buying any number of semi-automatic weapons.
http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_18630531

2011-08-05T02:46:00.000-07:00

Law-abiding gun owners no source of fear

Aug 4, 2011

It was going to be a bloodbath. Disputes at soccer games were going to turn into shootouts. Michigan was going to turn into the Wild West — or worse.

Those were some of the more draconian claims made 10 years ago when state lawmakers in a lame-duck session slipped through a law that made it easier for Michigan residents to legally carry a concealed weapon.

The law did make getting a license easier. Before the law was passed, about 52,000 Michigan residents were authorized to carry concealed weapons. Since the law's passage, that number has mushroomed to more than 275,000.

Yet, as recounted in a recent Detroit Free Press story, there has been no appreciable impact on crime in this state. There certainly has not been an upsurge in gun violence traced to the increase of concealed-weapons permits.

In retrospect, that shouldn't have been a surprise. Many states already had more liberal concealed weapons laws than did Michigan — and they weren't experiencing the type of gun violence that worried the law's opponents, including many of the state's county prosecutors and police officials.

"We were all a little too caught up imaging what might happen," Ionia County Prosecutor Ronald Schafer told the Free Press.

Proponents of the more liberal law argued that the old method of granting concealed-weapons permits was tilted in favor of those who had connections with the county gun boards. Indeed, permits did seem to be limited to retired police officers and those who could demonstrate a need, such as businesspeople who carried cash.

Not only did the system encourage favoritism, but proponents of change said it also ran afoul of a state constitution that, they said, clearly indicates that carrying a weapon is a right, not a privilege to be granted.

That's pretty much how the law now works. To get concealed-weapons permit, an applicant basically must be 21 or older, be a citizen of Michigan for six months, successfully complete a handgun safety course, not have a recorded history of mental illness, not have a felony conviction in the last eight years and not have a dishonorable charge from the military.

Once someone has a permit, there are some limits. Even with a license, a person can't carry a concealed weapon in schools, day-care centers, sports arenas or stadiums, taverns, places of worship, hospitals, college living quarters or casinos.

Some have argued that the increase in concealed-weapon permits would actually create safer communities. Such positions are sometimes rooted in the belief that "an armed society is a polite society." Or, some would argue that armed law-abiding citizens are a defense against shooting rampages such as the recent outrage in Norway.

Such a position is debatable. What's not up for argument is that there have been no negative consequences now that 220,000 more state residents have the right to carry a concealed weapon.

Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard has a rational reason for that. He says that the people likely to cause trouble aren't the type of people who willingly go through the legal requirements to get a permit.

"My position was, and still is, that the people we have a problem with guns aren't the people who are willing to follow the law and go through the hoops and training," he told the Free Press.

That's a good point. Not everyone likes guns. Those folks have the right not to own one. Nor should their safety be jeopardized by others. But the evidence is so far clear that whatever risk there is from guns, it's not coming from the law-abiding people who have obtained concealed-weapons permits.
http://www.livingstondaily.com/article/20110804/OPINION01/108040312/Law-abiding-gun-owners-no-source-fear?odyssey=mod%7Cnewswell%7Ctext%7CFrontpage%7Cp

2011-08-04T02:16:00.000-07:00

N.R.A. Sues Over Bulk Gun Sales Rule

By CHARLIE SAVAGE

WASHINGTON — The National Rifle Association filed a lawsuit on Wednesday challenging a new federal regulation requiring gun merchants along the border with Mexico to report bulk sales of certain semiautomatic rifles, contending that the Obama administration exceeded its powers by imposing the rule last month without Congressional permission.

The N.R.A. is bringing the lawsuit in the name of two firearms dealers in Arizona. Its complaint asks a judge in the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia to issue an injunction barring enforcement of the rule by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

“N.R.A. has always viewed this as a blatant attempt by the Obama administration to pursue their gun control agenda through back-door rule-making, and the N.R.A. will fight them every step of the way,” said Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice president of the gun rights group.

But Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said the Justice Department would “vigorously oppose” the N.R.A. challenge.

“We think that the action we have taken is consistent with the law,” Mr. Holder told reporters on Wednesday, “and that the measures that we are proposing are appropriate ones to stop the flow of guns from the United States into Mexico.”

The rule requires licensed firearms dealers in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas to report within five days whenever someone buys more than one weapon like a variant of the AK-47 assault weapon. The rule covers any semiautomatic rifle capable of accepting a detachable magazine and ammunition larger than .22 caliber.

The rule is meant to make it harder for Mexican drug cartels to obtain military-style weapons and smuggle them to Mexico, where they are illegal to sell to consumers. American weapons — often bought by “straw buyers” who have a right to buy them for themselves — have been flooding across the Southwest border for years, fueling drug violence in Mexico.

Firearms dealers across the United States have long been required to report similar bulk sales of handguns. But the N.R.A. suit notes that the reporting rule for handgun sales was enacted by Congress as part of the statute that sets rules for licensed firearms dealers. That statute also says dealers shall not be required to report information “except as expressly provided by this section,” and the N.R.A. contends that the firearms bureau has no authority to impose a reporting requirement on long guns.

But Scot Thomasson, a spokesman for the agency, said the N.R.A. was wrong. The licensing statute requires dealers to keep records about gun sales generally, he noted, and it also says that the attorney general may require dealers to report to the government whatever information from such records as he “may specify.”

Mr. Thomasson said the courts had upheld similar regulations in the past, and noted that the rule requiring dealers to report bulk handgun sales had been imposed by the firearms agency for several years before Congress, in 1986, passed legislation codifying it as a statute.

While the suit is being paid for by the N.R.A., it is being brought in the name of the two Arizona dealers, J&G Sales of Prescott and Foothills Firearms of Yuma. The complaint said that about 8,479 licensed dealers were in the four states affected by the rule.

The two dealers had received a letter from the director of a federal firearms tracing center directing them to start reporting bulk long gun sales made after Aug. 14. But the court complaint said that complying with the rule would be costly and that the dealers could lose business from customers who would be deterred because of the loss of privacy.

The complaint also contended that the tracing center, in compiling the reports of bulk sales, might violate a separate prohibition imposed by Congress that prevents the Justice Department from keeping a centralized database of gun purchase records.

The dispute over the regulation comes at a time when the firearms bureau’s efforts to investigate straw purchasing and smuggling across the border have come under sharp Congressional scrutiny related to Operation Fast and Furious, an effort by the agency’s Phoenix division to uncover a large network of cartel-linked gunrunners.

In that operation, federal agents monitored straw buyers who bought about 2,000 guns, but did not intervene to arrest them or seize the weapons because they were trying to identify higher-ups in the network. But the bureau then lost track of many of the guns, some of which were smuggled into Mexico and two of which later turned up at the scene of a shootout in Arizona where an American Border Patrol agent was killed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/04/us/04guns.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

2011-08-03T02:58:00.000-07:00

Miranda Lambert upset over being asked about views on weapons

By Zev Singer, Ottawa Citizen

Texas country singer Miranda Lambert was already slated to open for Carrie Underwood at the Capital Hoedown a week from Friday. The unexpected part is that now, in a different way, she's serving as an opening act for the fall Parliamentary session and the reopening of the great Canadian debate on gun ownership.

Lambert, a Grammy winner and major star of the country music scene, is an outspoken gun enthusiast. Her logo, tattooed onto her arm, is a pair of winged pistols.

No stranger to publicity, she has graced the cover of Garden and Gun magazine and has been honoured by Field and Stream magazine for her deer hunting hobby; she has at least three stuffed heads mounted at home.

But over the past few days, country music news websites have been running stories about a run-in Lambert is reported to have had with a Canadian journalist over her views on guns.

The stories grew from a couple of tweets of Lambert's last week: "Dear mr writer at the Ottawa Citizen: next time u interview me, let's keep it about the music and not about your view on my stance on guns ... I don't talk politics period. I'm Not sure all Canadians would like to Be put in your category. Speak for yourself not your country.

Thx!"

Few were as surprised by the growing media sensation as Patrick Langston, the freelance music writer for the Citizen who interviewed Lambert last week.

Langston, whose story on Lambert will run in the paper this weekend, said he was "totally surprised" by the tweet and the avalanche it caused after what he described as a friendly interview mostly about her music and her development.

Langston said he asked her about her cover version of Time to Get a Gun by Canadian singer-songwriter Fred Eaglesmith, which is on her third album, Revolution.

Eaglesmith's lyrics describe a man who hears about crime close to home and ponders getting a gun. Critics have spoken about the way Lambert's version strips the irony from the Canadian song and makes of it a straightforward gun anthem.

Langston said he asked Lambert about that and Lambert, a self-described "lifetime member of the NRA" said she did mean it without irony.

"It's time to get a gun," she told Langston, explaining her message.

It was at that point that Langston says he asked her about her views, and she said she didn't want to get political.

Then the web lit up, with country music media on the story and Langston doing a radio interview on Y1010 this morning.

Meanwhile, Fred Eaglesmith himself, reached by the Citizen Tuesday night in Kindersley, Sask., where he was readying to play a 100-seat community centre, said he was fine with the Lambert version of his song, even if it is different from his.

Eaglesmith said his mid-'90s song is not anti-gun, but it does come from a place in the Canadian psyche.

He explained that the song reflects a real moment he had where he contemplated the idea of getting a gun. He said the feeling behind the song, though, was the surprise he felt when he arrived at the point where such a thought actually entered his head.

"I sort of went, 'Wow, I am thinking this.' "

Although he's had a long gun at his farm at various times in the past, he did not have one at the time that he wrote the song and writing it did not lead to his going out to buy one.

"Oh, no. Of course not," he said.

At the same time, Eaglesmith said he thinks Canadians are often much too smug about American gun culture.

"We think we're sort of above that."

He said when he plays in Texas, he sometimes asks how many people in the crowd have a gun with them. The count has been as high as 12 at a small venue.

"You know when you go to a concert, like at the Black Sheep (in Wakefield) or somewhere in Ottawa and there's that rude guy talking in the back and yelling and screaming and heckling the artist, you know that? You never see that in Texas."

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/story_print.html?id=5196424&sponsor=

2011-08-02T02:29:00.000-07:00

At 16, Fowlerville shooting champ is a top gun

By FRANK KONKEL
Livingston County Daily Press & Argus (Howell)
12:20 PM CDT, August 1, 2011
MARION TOWNSHIP, Mich.

Jason Jonckheere is a surgeon with his shotgun.

Only 16, the Fowlerville resident broke 198 out of 200 targets with his trusty Beretta 12-gauge shotgun at the Michigan Trap Association's state shoot in early July, earning himself a junior state championship.

Set to enter his junior year at Howell High School, Jonckheere spends most every day shooting, either with the Monroe Pride shooting team, at the Howell Gun Club in Livingston County's Marion Township, where he built his shooting skills, or on his own, which he prefers.

"Shooting is something that doesn't require a team to do; it's something I can push myself to do," Jonckheere said. "It's something I have to make myself work to do, and that's what makes me enjoy it. That way, when I do succeed, I know it's my work that's gotten me there and nobody else's. I like that."

Jonckheere's work has taken him to a lofty position as one of Michigan's best young trap shooters.

In winning the title, Jonckheere hit 99 percent of the clay targets. By almost any standard, even those of professional marksmen, Jonckheere is a heck of a shot.

In trap shooting, 5.25-inch-wide targets are launched from a machine a minimum distance of 48 feet away from a shooter. By Jonckheere's estimation, he fires his shotgun when the airborne target reaches a distance of about 120 feet from him.

That means each time Jonckheere readies, aims and fires, he's attempting to hit a moving circular clay target just over 5 inches wide at a distance of 120 feet with a bunch of pellets that spread out "3 to 4 feet" in width at that distance, Jonckheere said.

"It's a sport that people think you don't have to be that precise, but you really have to be spot on if you want good scores," Jonckheere said. "I try to calm myself, clear my mind and focus on what I'm doing. If I miss, I try to calm myself because when you're mad, you make mistakes."

Jonckheere's approach to minimizing mistakes is simple: Treat every 15-minute round of shooting like a life-or-death situation, then relax when it's over.

"It only takes 15 minutes to get through a round," Jonckheere sad. "All I need to do is focus for that long."

Chances are, if Jonckheere's not shooting, he's reloading shells, a cost-effective method for someone who blows through 100 shells or more per day.

It does take some time, though; Jonckheere spends three hours reloading a day's worth of shells.

On bad-weather days or when he's bored, Jonckheere will hole up in the basement with his Dryfire electronic practice system, which helps him hone his aim.

Jonckheere doesn't play high school sports and he doesn't participate in extracurricular activities, but give him his gun and some shells, or some time to fish out on Bishop Lake or to hunt in a local woods, and he's happy.

Jonckheere holds professional marksman Leo Harrison III, who made a living shooting guns and teaching marksmanship, as a role model.

Jonckheere is not sure if he'll go to college after high school or what he plans to study, but he does know one thing: He wants to see where shooting takes him.

He plans to continue competing in regional, state and national shooting tournaments, and said his results could go a long way toward what he does in the future.

"It would be really cool if I could make a living off (shooting)," Jonckheere said. "Pretty much all my time is devoted to this."

------

Information from: Livingston County Daily Press & Argus, http://www.livingstondaily.com/

AP-WF-08-01-11 2006GMT

2011-08-01T02:35:00.000-07:00

More gun licenses, more debates
Right to carry concealed weapons revisited
-- The right to carry a concealed weapon in Michigan -- 10 years ago a red-hot topic -- is pretty much uncontested. No one is talking about rolling back the CCW changes of 2001, or enacting new gun restrictions.

But the argument over whether authorizing more people to carry concealed guns was a good idea continues unabated. The number of CCW permit holders has quintupled to nearly 276,000 in Michigan in 10 years. Advocates of gun rights and gun control don't agree on the facts.

"The case is clear," said Dennis Henigan, interim president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. "The premise that (so-called 'shall issue' CCW laws) would make you safer is false. Those laws have been an abject failure."

Hardly, counters John Lott, an economist and author of "More Guns, Less Crime."

The number of permit holders committing crimes is tiny, he said. And the evidence that jurisdictions like Michigan with permissive laws experience a lower incidence of violent crime is "pretty overwhelming," he said.

Data inconsistent on CCW's effects on crime, violence

Some of what passes for research and analysis of the effect of permissive concealed weapons laws on crime and violence is pretty crude.

Take, for instance, the anti-gun Violence Policy Center's Web page called "Concealed Carry Killers." ( www.vpc.org/ccwkillers.htm )

It purports to tally the carnage that results when states, such as Michigan, authorize ordinary citizens under most circumstances to be licensed to carry concealed guns.
Concealed carry licensees "routinely" kill cops, perpetrate mass murders and other gun homicides, writes VPC. The center counted 308 "Private Citizens Killed By Concealed Carry Killer" since 2007. A lot of them -- 78 -- were Michiganders.

A closer look at VPC's data doesn't necessarily confirm a CCW crime nightmare scenario. The overwhelming majority of Michigan victims the center cites (62) were licensees who committed suicide. Michigan's concealed weapons law requires the State Police to report annually on deaths by suicide of license holders.

But the reports contain no information about how the licensee died or whether a firearm was involved.

Several other "victims" in the VPC report appear to have been criminals themselves, shot attempting to rob legally armed citizens. But with 276,000 concealed pistol license holders, even the unscrubbed VPC numbers hardly establish evidence of a crime wave.
One of the few pieces of relative consensus about concealed weapons and crime is that licensees, who in most states, including Michigan, undergo background checks and training, tend to be more law-abiding than the adult population at large.

Dennis Henigan of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, no fan of permissive CCW laws, concedes as much.

But on the broader question of whether such laws make the wider society more or less safe, nothing close to consensus exists.

Henigan said Michigan and other states were sold a bill of goods by the National Rifle Association about how criminals would modify their behavior when they couldn't be sure which potential victims were armed.

"Criminals don't act that way," Henigan said, "They're not cowering in fear about running into someone else with a gun. There is blood in the streets."
But has the amount of blood been affected by a change in concealed weapons licensing?

Henigan said academic research nationally shows "no downward effect" on crime rates in jurisdictions with liberal concealed carry regulations. Further, he said, the evidence of an increase in aggravated assaults in such jurisdictions is "very clear." Claims to the contrary, he said, have been "thoroughly debunked."

Not surprisingly, the leading claimant to the contrary, economist John Lott, thoroughly disagrees.

During the past 15 years, more than two dozen peer-reviewed analyses of the effect of right-to-carry laws on crime have been published in academic journals, Lott said.

Sixteen found that concealed carry reduced crime; 10 suggested no discernible impact. None showed crime to have increased in right-to-carry jurisdictions, Lott said.

Lott recently published the third edition of his 1998 book "More Guns, Less Crime," in which he addresses many of the attacks made upon it in the last decade. But the difficulty of sorting the effects of permissive concealed carry from hundreds of other factors (some of them unquantifiable) that affect crime will remain.

Washtenaw County Prosecutor Brian Mackie, who opposed the 2001 CCW reforms, said it has worked out better than he expected. But maybe, he said, that is because changing the law did not change the number of guns on the street as much as it changed the number of people licensed to carry a gun on the street.

"I wonder how many of them actually carry," Mackie said "Hauling a gun around with you everywhere can be a real pain."
Maybe. Just don't look for a consensus on it.
Contact Dawson Bell: 517-372-8661 or dbell@freepress.com

http://www.freep.com/article/20110801/NEWS06/108010323/Part-2-More-gun-licenses-more-debates?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Ctext%7CFRONTPAGE

2011-07-29T02:27:00.000-07:00

Norway massacre spurs calls for new U.S. gun laws

By Stephanie Condon

Anti-gun violence activists in the U.S. are renewing their push for new gun laws in the wake of the revelation that the alleged Norway shooter claims to have purchased high-capacity ammunition magazines from a United States retailer.

Anders Behring Breivik, the alleged lone-wolf terrorist accused of shooting and killing 68 people at a youth camp in Norway and killing eight in an Oslo bombing last week, details purchasing the ammunition in his 1,500-page manifesto.

Under the section titled, "December and January - Rifle/gun accessories purchased," Breivik wrote that he purchased 10 30-round ammunition magazines from a U.S. supplier who mailed the devices to him.

Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., said the detail should give new urgency to her bill to prohibit the sale and transfer of high-capacity ammunition magazines.

"The easy availability of high-capacity ammo magazines in the U.S. has once again helped enable a large-scale massacre, this time with a shocking 68 people killed," McCarthy said in a statement. " How many more innocent people need to die before we realize that some simple, commonsense gun safety laws in the United States could actually save lives?"

High-capacity magazines became available for purchase in the U.S. when the federal assault weapons ban expired in 2004. McCarthy has repeatedly introduced legislation to bar the sales of the ammunition and re-introduced the bill this year in the wake of the Tucson shooting that killed six and injured 13, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz.
In his manifesto, Breivik talks of his attempts to legally buy weapons and writes, "I envy our European American brothers as the gun laws in Europe sucks ass in comparison."

Other anti-gun violence activists agreed that Breivik's claims strengthen the case for McCarthy's bill. "From Arizona to Norway, America's shamefully weak gun laws are costing innocent lives," Dennis Henigan, the acting president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said in a statement.

Kristen Rand, the legislative director for Violence Policy Center, added: "America's militarized gun industry is now in the business of exporting U.S.-style gun violence."

At his arraignment on Monday, Breivik took responsibility for the shooting and the Olso bombing but pleaded not guilty because he thinks he's in state of war, his defense lawyer Geir Lippestad said.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20085056-503544.html

2011-07-26T02:43:00.000-07:00

Report: ATF Guns Recovered At Mexican Crime Scenes

12amJuly 26, 201:02 by Carrie Johnson

Weapons traced to a failed U.S. law enforcement operation that sought to take down violent Mexican drug cartels have been recovered at more than 48 different crime scenes in Mexico, including bloody kidnappings and gun battles that left more than a dozen Mexican police and cartel members dead last May, according to a new report by Republican congressional investigators.

In one of the earliest discoveries, in 2009, authorities found more than three dozen AK-47s along the Southwest border in Sonora only one day after a straw buyer under surveillance by agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had purchased the weapons at an Arizona gun shop, the report by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) said.

(Straw buyers purchase guns and fill out government paperwork stating the guns are intended for their own use; but later, those purchasers hand over the weapons to others, including criminals and drug gang members.)
The heavy volume of U.S. weapons found across the border, many in the hands of members of the Sinaloa cartel, alarmed ATF staff members stationed in Mexico, who were allegedly "kept in the dark" about the ongoing law enforcement operation known as "Fast and Furious," the report said. When the staff members raised questions, they were allegedly told by senior officials in Arizona and Washington that "everything is under control."

But agency whistle-blowers say the operation instead was veering out of control as AK-47s, sniper rifles and .38-caliber revolvers bought in Arizona kept turning up in Mexico. Members of Congress say as many as 1,000 guns remain unaccounted for.

One agent, scheduled to testify at a House Government Reform and Oversight Committee hearing Tuesday in Washington, told committee investigators the operation known as "Fast and Furious" was "the perfect storm of idiocy ... nobody was thinking here." Another senior official stationed in Mexico, since retired, told investigators from Congress that he engaged in "screaming matches" with his bosses about the need to intervene and stop the flow of weapons.

Authorities shut down the operation in December 2010, only after the death of U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent Brian Terry shortly before Christmas in a shootout with cartel members. Two weapons found near his body were later traced to a straw buyer who purchased hundreds of guns in Arizona and passed them to violent drug gangs. Terry's family has hired a lawyer to pursue a possible wrongful death claim.
William Newell, who oversaw the operation as a senior ATF official in Phoenix, is scheduled to testify Tuesday as well. His lawyer, Paul Pelletier, told NPR that "public safety was paramount" in the investigation. ATF officials had been under pressure to stop making small cases against small players — the people who buy guns — and instead to target higher-ups in the drug cartels themselves.

"They understood the best way to ensure public safety was to take out the full operation," Pelletier said. "Merely arresting straw purchasers has proven to have no effect on the flow of guns going south."

Justice Department officials in Washington have acknowledged that mistakes were made in the "Fast and Furious" operation. But they're resisting arguments by Issa that Attorney General Eric Holder may have known about the strategies at work in Arizona. Issa has signaled he will hold more hearings this summer on the case.

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released their own memo before the hearing, including excerpts from a closed-door interview with ATF acting Director Ken Melson earlier this month. Melson told committee staff members he had been briefed on "Fast and Furious" a few times but he didn't know about guns crossing the border under the agency's watch until news reports in January 2011. Melson said senior officials at ATF and the Justice Department in Washington didn't develop or oversee the tactics. He and another high-ranking ATF official told the committee after reviewing investigative materials that they now believed some lower-level defendants in the case could have been charged and arrested months before the death of agent Terry.

In the meantime, Issa and Grassley say they worry the loose guns will have a deadly legacy along the Southwest border. One of the ATF agents told congressional investigators that in his opinion, large numbers of .50-caliber rifles that crossed the border "could change the outcome of a battle" between rival drug cartels and police.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/07/26/138692477/report-atf-guns-recovered-at-mexican-crime-scenes

2011-07-25T02:46:00.000-07:00

In Norway gun ownership is common; violence and homicide are not

The nation of about 4.9 million residents reports one of the lowest per-capita homicide rates in Europe.

July 23, 2011|By Ann Simmons | Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

The shooting rampage that left at least 85 dead at a youth camp near Oslo stunned Norway, a nation of about 4.9 million residents who are far less accustomed to gun violence than the U.S.

Authorities have described the 32-year-old man arrested in connection with the shootings, as well as a bombing in downtown Oslo that left at least seven others dead, as a far-right Christian fundamentalist. A chilling manifesto attributed to the suspect, Anders Behring Breivik, that was discovered Saturday contains an image of him pointing a weapon toward the camera.

Homicide -- whether gun-related or otherwise -- is rare in Norway, which reports one of the lowest per-capita homicide rates in Europe.

Photos: Norway attack
A report released last year by the Norwegian Ministry of Health and Care Services examined the role of mental illness in the actions of known perpetrators there, and also noted that in more than 80% of the killings the victims were known to the assailant.
Gun ownership in Norway is common, although strict gun regulations and limitations are in place on ammunition for certain kinds of guns.

According to GunPolicy.org, an Australian university-based website, the estimated number of guns held by civilians in Norway was 1.4 million in 2007, the most recent year for which the site has such statistics for Norway.

Citing the "Small Arms Survey 2007: Guns and the City," published by Cambridge University Press, the website give the rate of private gun ownership in Norway as 31.32 firearms per 100 people, less than the reported rate in the U.S. of 88.82 firearms per 100 people.

Five homicides committed with a gun were reported in Norway in 2005, the latest year for which the site has data confirming firearm-related murders in the country. In comparison, the U.S., which has a population more than 50 times greater, had 10,158 gun-related murders the same year, or 2,000 times that of Norway.

A report last year by the Norwegian Broadcasting Co., or NRK, estimated that there are more than 1.5 million firearms in Norway, being used not only for hunting but also for shooting, one of Norway's most popular sports.

The Norwegian Rifle Assn. has 32,000 members in 520 clubs, according to NRK, and Norwegian athletes are perennial favorites in international biathlon competitions, which combine skiing and target shooting.

In addition to guns held legally, the NRK estimated another half a million had been smuggled into the county illegally.

The rules for having a gun at home have been tightened in recent years, with gun safes becoming mandatory, according to local Norwegian news reports, The end cap of guns must be removed before storage, and those without a gun safe must remove components of the weapon before it is stored, essentially disabling it. In addition, Norwegians have been told the vital parts of the weapon should be locked up separately.
Photos: Norway attack
ann.simmons@latimes.com
http://articles.latimes.com/print/2011/jul/23/nation/la-naw-norway-gun-policy-20110724

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2011-07-22T02:38:00.000-07:00

NRA Beats Back Gun Control Measures

By Paul Bedard

Posted: July 21, 2011

Bracing for a wave of expected gun control measures, the National Rifle Association and supporters in Congress pushed back hard this month to derail the initial efforts. At least five antigun efforts were killed for now.

"Though none of these votes settle the respective issues," said the NRA, "all are setbacks for gun control supporters who have been encouraged by talk of the Obama administration planning to bypass Congress and implement a variety of gun control schemes under the radar."

The key vote came last week to bar a new rule that would require gun dealers in Southwest border states to report the sales of two or more semi-automatic rifles larger than .22 caliber. The NRA also was able to stop the administration from blocking the importation of shotguns that have various features not liked by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, like extended magazine tubes and adjustable stocks. Those features are typical on guns used for competition.

Also blocked in House committee was a ban on the sale of firearms to those on the FBI's terror watch list and funding to enforce the Army Corps of Engineers ban on gun possession in the 11 million acres the oversee. The NRA says that 95 percent of those on the terror watch list are already banned from buying guns and that hunters need protection on Army Corps land because there isn't adequate law enforcement on Corps land.

Here's the NRA's latest lobbying letter:

Five Big Wins for Gun Owners In House Spending Votes

This week, the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee approved amendments blocking the use of federal funds to implement two controversial schemes by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and it rejected amendments proposing two of gun control groups' other top priorities. In addition, the full House adopted a provision protecting gun possession on Army Corps of Engineers land.

First, on Wed. July 13, by a vote of 25 to 16, the committee approved Rep. Denny Rehberg's (R-Mont.) amendment to the 2012 Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies appropriations bill, prohibiting the BATFE from requiring firearm dealers in states bordering Mexico to file reports on certain rifle sales. The Justice Department had announced earlier in the week that the BATFE would soon begin requiring dealers to file the reports on individuals who buy two or more detachable-magazine semi-automatic rifles larger than .22 caliber within a period of five business days.

"For more than a decade, efforts to track rifle purchases and create a national gun registry have failed to gain support in Congress, so the ATF is working to implement these regulations using rules written by unelected bureaucrats," Rep. Rehberg said. "I'm going to keep this government accountable to the people."

By a vote of 28-19, the committee also approved Rep. John Carter's (R-Texas) amendment to stop BATFE from prohibiting the importation of shotguns that have one or more various features disliked by the BATFE, most of which are common to firearms used for protection or sport. Such features include adjustable stocks and extended magazine tubes. Rep. Carter, like Rep. Rehberg, is a member of the Congressional Sportsmen's Caucus, and believes that "federal gun regulations often create burdens for law-abiding citizens and infringe upon constitutional rights provided by the Second Amendment."

Anti-gun Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) was not so successful with her amendment to authorize the Attorney General to prohibit the possession of firearms by anyone whose name appears on the FBI's secretive terrorist watch list. Her proposal failed by a vote of 27-18, indicating that a majority on the committee understands the many problems with this idea. Chief among those is that 95 percent of people on the watch list are already prohibited from possessing firearms in the U.S. because they are not citizens or legal residents of the United States. In March, a similar amendment pushed by Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) was rejected by the House Judiciary Committee by a vote of 21-11.

Joining Lowey in defeat was Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), whose amendment to gut the law that limits BATFE firearm trace data to law enforcement agencies failed by a vote of 27-20. Schiff alleged that the law—the Tiahrt Amendment, hated by gun control groups—had impeded the congressional investigation of BATFE's "Fast and Furious" debacle. However, members of Congress leading that investigation disagreed. In a letter to House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform, and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said, "the Tiahrt provision has not impeded our investigation. The provision has not been cited by anyone from whom we have sought information as a reason to deny our requests."

Next, in a Thurs. July 14 voice vote on the House floor, the House adopted an amendment to the Energy and Water Appropriations bill (H.R. 2354—which passed the House on July 15) prohibiting expenditures to enforce the Army Corps of Engineers regulation that bans gun possession on the 11 million acres of land and water the Corps manages. he amendment, sponsored by Reps. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), Bob Gibbs (R-Ohio) and Jason Altmire (D-Pa.) will enhance self-defense rights for law-abiding Americans who hunt, camp and fish on Corps property. (Rep. Gibbs, joined by the other lawmakers, has previously sponsored H.R. 1865, the "Recreational Lands Self-Defense Act," to overturn the Corps' anti-gun rule.) Commenting on the amendment, Rep. Altmire noted, "It is important for sportsmen to be able to defend themselves while they legally hunt and fish on property that the Corps owns and operates, much of which is in rural areas without adequate law enforcement."

Though none of these votes settle the respective issues—the pro-gun amendments will still have to pass the Senate, and more anti-gun amendments are always possible—all are setbacks for gun control supporters who had been encouraged by talk of the Obama administration planning to bypass Congress and implement a variety of gun control schemes "under the radar." The Brady Campaign also hoped the rifle sales reports requirement would be followed by a new "assault weapon" ban and a law prohibiting private sales of firearms, the latter of which President Obama alluded to in March. As all of these issues move through the legislative process, we'll keep you informed of new developments; in the meantime, if your U.S. Representative voted to support gun owners' rights on these votes, please be sure to say "Thank you."

http://www.usnews.com/news/washington-whispers/articles/2011/07/21/nra-beats-back-gun-control-measures_print.html

2011-07-21T02:28:00.001-07:00

New A.T.F Rule Put In Place To Crack Down on Multiple Gun Sales

Originally printed at http://www.pro8news.com/news/local/New-ATF-Rule-Put-In-Place-To-Crack-Down-on-Multiple-Gun-Sales-125928689.html

By KGNS News
July 20, 2011

The war on violence across the border continues. But a new rule has been put in place to stop the sale of multiple guns. Our Lauren Kendrick has the story.

To stop illegal trafficking of firearms into Mexico, gun store owners will now be required to report anyone who buys two or more semi-automatic weapons within five days.

" It's gonna stop multiple sale sales immediately until they figure out a way to get around it."

This new rule was just announced by the bureau of alcohol, tobacco, and firearms. One of the main members of the zetas drug cartel announced that they would get most of their guns from the U.S The A.T.F. has wanted this rule to be in place for years.

"I think it's a good idea. i mean given the location we're at, given the circumstances that we're undergoing right now. the situation in Nuevo Laredo and in Laredo. it's not just Nuevo Laredo. i definitely agree it's a good thing to do and we should respect it and go forward with it."

However, one local man feels more needs to be done to stop the violence.

"I don't think that will stop anything. weapons and stuff goes across and come back this way will never be stopped. that's my opinion cause they're not really trying."

Another man says the ones selling the guns are to blame for the guns getting to Mexico.
"If they don't punish the gun dealers then it won't have any effect because they'll continue to do it without worrying too much about the results of what's gonna happen when they get that gun into Mexico."

But local business owner of Jacaman Guns and Ammo, says the drug cartels have other ways of getting their firearms.

"They don't get them from mom and pop stores like us. they have other sources to buy multiples somebody that sells them 30,40,50 they're doing something illegal."

This new rule was recently put in place, but there's no doubt this will continue to stir up controversy on both sides.

2011-07-20T02:36:00.000-07:00

Dirty Hairy? Maybe a chimp can shoot a gun

They blast away in new 'Planet of the Apes' movie, but experts have doubts

By Natalie Wolchover

updated 7/19/2011 4:38:52 PM ET

In a viral ad campaign, producers of the upcoming film "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" have released a series of videos showing weapon-wielding apes. Stylized to look like documentary footage out of Africa, one video features a chimp shooting an AK-47 at a group of off-duty soldiers who had been taunting it. Another clip shows a chimp hacking a carcass to bits with a machete.

The shocking footage is most likely intended to make the premise of the new film (intelligence-enhanced apes rising up and taking control of Earth, enslaving humans in the process) frighteningly plausible. But can chimps really wield weapons?

According to experts: yes. Though the footage in the videos is staged, the chimps involved are merely "actors," and the underlying message — that apes could rebel and use the advanced weapons we've developed against us — is extremely unlikely, chimps are indeed capable of being trained to use a diverse armory of weapons.

But would the apes know what to do with an AK-47, or use one to cause intentional harm? Probably not.

Friendly fire

"I wouldn't doubt that you could train a chimp to wield a gun in the manner shown," said John Mitani, a primatologist at the University of Michigan who specializes in chimp aggression.

Likewise, Steve Ross, a chimpanzee primatologist at Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, agreed that chimps are cognitively and physically capable of operating weapons, and said they even use them in the wild. "Chimpanzees have been seen to use rudimentary weapons (such as projectiles, clubs and spears), so they have the capability of understanding that a tool can be used to cause harm or do damage," Ross told Life's Little Mysteries. "Whether or not they would understand a gun is more difficult to say."

Any chimp gunplay would most likely be restricted to mimicry. Mitani believes actor chimps would likely learn to operate machine guns to please their trainers and receive rewards, but he doesn't think the apes are capable of using them to purposely do harm. "When shooting the gun, I'd be hard-pressed to think that the chimp can really understand (the consequences of) what he's doing."

That said, chimps are indeed aggressive animals, the experts explained — both toward humans and each other. But they typically stick with primitive tools of aggression. They have been observed throwing rocks at humans, but their primary weapons are their hands, feet and teeth. If push comes to shove, those are what an angry chimp is most likely to use against a human.

The real story

"Inappropriate and inaccurate portrayals of chimpanzees have a number of harmful consequences, including … animal welfare concerns that arise from their treatment both on and off the set," Ross wrote in an email. The plot of the Planet of the Apes films might also lead people to believe apes aren't endangered, he said.

Mitani echoed that concern. "Well before humans showed up on Earth, the planet was literally filled with apes. It was the planet of the apes, 20 (million) to 50 million years ago before humans came on the scene," he said. "Since then, that ape diversity has been lost to the point that we only have five different kinds."

Not only has ape diversity been lost, but there probably aren't enough apes left to overrun humans anyway.

"There's a story going on here, but it's one in which humans have taken over the planet and have driven apes nearly to the point of extinction," Mitani continued. "That's the story that needs to be told, rather than this fictitious one about how they're taking over the planet."

Mitani has worked on quite a different film about chimps, called " Chimpanzee " (to be released by Disney in 2012) that follows a young chimp as it explores its natural environment — "a motion picture that will, with luck, show chimpanzees as they truly are," he said.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43813914/ns/technology_and_science-science/#

2011-07-19T02:33:00.001-07:00

Justice Department trying to shield officials in guns scandal, ATF chief says

Kenneth Melson, the ATF's acting director, claims Justice Department officials refuse to release a telling internal report on the Fast and Furious operation.

By Richard A. Serrano, Washington Bureau
July 19, 2011
Reporting from Washington

The Justice Department is trying to protect its political appointees from the Fast and Furious scandal by concealing an internal "smoking gun" report and other documents that acknowledge the role top officials played in the program that allowed firearms to flow illegally into Mexico, according to the head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Kenneth E. Melson, the ATF's acting director, also told congressional investigators this month that the affidavits prepared to obtain wiretaps used in the ill-fated operation were inconsistent with Justice Department officials' public statements about the program. Justice Department officials advised him not to raise his concerns with Congress about "institutional problems" with the Fast and Furious operation, Melson said.

"It was very frustrating to all of us," Melson told congressional investigators in a private meeting over the Fourth of July holiday, "and it appears thoroughly to us that the department is really trying to figure out a way to push the information away from their political appointees at the department."

Not only was the department slow to react, Melson said, but Justice Department officials indicated they did not want him to cooperate with Congress.

A transcript of his comments was released Monday by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Melson said he wasn't attempting to shield his agency from its share of the blame. He acknowledged an instance in which his agents failed to intercept high-powered weapons when they could have.

"The deputy attorney general's office wasn't very happy with us" at the ATF, Melson said, "because they thought this was an admission that there were mistakes made. Well, there were some mistakes made."

Justice Department officials denied they were stonewalling the congressional investigation. They said they were cooperating and had been providing thousands of pages of documents and other material to investigators.

"Any notion that the department has failed to cooperate with the investigation is simply not based in fact," said Tracy Schmaler, a Justice Department spokeswoman. She added that the department's inspector general's office was reviewing the Fast and Furious operation.

"The department, like the committee, is interested in determining whether Operation Fast and Furious was appropriately handled," Schmaler said.

The intent of Fast and Furious was to allow illegal straw purchasers to buy guns so ATF agents could follow the weapons and ferret out gun-smuggling routes into Mexico. But many of the approximately 1,700 weapons eluded tracing — some even before they were shipped over the border.

Nearly 200 of the weapons were later found at crime scenes in Mexico, and two were recovered at the scene of a U.S. Border Patrol agent's slaying in Arizona in December.

Melson said the Justice Department repeatedly thwarted his attempts to tell investigators about the failures of Fast and Furious, which was run out of the ATF's Phoenix field office. When the ATF reassigned managers in Phoenix, he said, "the department resisted" his offer to tell Congress about the changes. Melson said he was told not to issue any news releases about Fast and Furious and was instructed not to brief rank-and-file ATF agents about the growing scandal.

When Grassley sought to meet with Melson this year, the Justice Department blocked that interview too, Melson said. "This is really just poking [Grassley] in the eye," Melson said he told Justice Department officials. "He's going to get it through the back door anyway, so why are we aggravating this situation?"

Melson said he felt "very torn" when he learned after the operation went awry that some of the Mexican drug cartel leaders targeted in the program were paid informants for the FBI.

"Let me say that I am frustrated and disappointed in the way the whole thing has been handled, unfortunately," he said.

richard.serrano@latimes.com

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-na-guns-scandal-20110719,0,1205155,print.story

2011-07-18T02:32:00.001-07:00

Family of U.S. agent slain in Mexico demands to know gun source

The lawyer for Jaime Zapata's family says U.S. officials refuse to answer questions about whether the weapons used were linked to the Fast and Furious gun-tracking operation.

By Richard A. Serrano, Washington Bureau
5:27 PM PDT, July 17, 2011
Reporting from Washington

Five months after U.S. immigration agent Jaime Zapata was shot to death by a Mexican drug cartel, his family is demanding to know whether the weapons were purchased in the United States and smuggled into Mexico under the now-defunct Fast and Furious operation.

The family complains that U.S. authorities in Washington and Texas have refused to answer crucial questions about the Feb. 15 ambush on a four-lane highway in northern Mexico.

"What happened with Jaime needs to come out," the family's lawyer, Raymond L. Thomas of McAllen, Texas, said in a telephone interview Sunday. "And the likelihood that these were Fast and Furious guns is certainly plausible."

Mexican authorities have announced nine arrests in the high-profile case. Among them was Jesus Rejon Aguilar, a Zetas cartel leader who was captured near Mexico City this month.

In Washington, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is seeking information on the Zapata slaying.

Nelson Peacock, assistant secretary for legislative affairs for the Department of Homeland Security, which includes the immigration and customs agency, told Issa in a letter Friday that investigating Zapata's killing was a priority.

"Like you, the department wants to ensure that his murderers are brought to justice," Peacock wrote.

Issa and Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, are leading a broader investigation into who in the Obama administration approved and monitored the anti-gun-running operation, which was run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives field office in Phoenix.

Started in November 2009, the operation was intended to track U.S. weapons smuggled across the border so that law enforcement could disrupt the cartels' gun-running networks and ease the drug violence in Mexico.

Instead, nearly 200 of the firearms were found at crime scenes in Mexico. Two AK-47 assault rifles purchased during the operation were recovered after Brian A. Terry, a U.S. Border Patrol officer, was shot and killed in December in Arizona.

Zapata, a 32-year-old Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agent, was based in Laredo, Texas. He and fellow agent Victor Avila were on the Pan-American Highway in Mexico when they were stopped by at least eight men in two vehicles. The Americans identified themselves and the attackers opened fire, killing Zapata and wounding Avila.

In March, ATF officials in Texas told reporters that one of the weapons believed to have been used in the assault — a Romanian-made AK-47 — was bought in October at a Texas gun shop. The shop purportedly sold 40 firearms that wound up with the Zetas cartel.

On June 14, Thomas, the Zapata family lawyer, asked the FBI, the U.S. attorney's office and Homeland Security agents for FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration documents on the Zetas cartel and the slaying, and for an inspection of the bullet-riddled vehicle.

"Where did the guns come from that were used in his murder?" he wrote. "Who provided the guns?"

Federal officials said they could not discuss it, he said.

Thomas said he asked to speak with the wounded agent, Avila, but was turned down. He also wants to know whether Zapata was armed.

Thomas said Zapata's father was a Vietnam veteran awarded two Purple Hearts, and that several of the slain agent's siblings work in law enforcement.

"They are all patriots who have dedicated themselves to protecting our country," he said. "So it's very hard for them to be pushed into a position that the U.S. government is stonewalling them."

richard.serrano@latimes.com

2011-07-15T02:39:00.000-07:00

Felons busted for gun possession to be federally prosecuted under new initiative
Published: Thursday, July 14, 2011, 5:19 PM Updated: Thursday, July 14, 2011, 5:32 PM
By David Harris | Flint Journal The Flint Journal
FLINT, Michigan — More felons who get caught with guns in Genesee County could be looking at doing time in a federal penitentiary.

Federal and local law enforcement officials on Thursday announced a plan to use federal courts to prosecute felons arrested with guns.

Under state law, those charged with felon in possession normally get just probation, said U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade.

Taking those cases federal could result in prison sentences upwards of seven years, she said.

"We want to the criminals to know that they will do serious federal time," McQuade said.

The Genesee County Prosecutor’s office handled 161 felon in possession of gun cases last year and has had 64 so far this year, said Prosecutor David Leyton.

“Because we are faced with such a difficult situation in Flint, we have to do things differently than in the past,” said Leyton. “Today, let the word go forth that we will be getting more criminals off the streets.”

McQuade said she estimates the U.S. Attorney’s office will handle about 100 such cases a year.

In cases where there are additional charges to the felon in possession charge, such as a home invasion, county and federal prosecutors will work together to see which court will give “the biggest bang for the buck,” said Leyton.

Leyton said he will lend some assistant prosecutors to handle federal cases.
There will not be any additional federal prosecutors, just shifted responsibilities, said McQuade.

The initiative is a compliment to what’s already been going on with the increased state police presence and cleared jail space, said Flint Mayor Dayne Walling.

Flint has been riddled with crime, topping the nation in violent crime.

The crux of many of those crimes deal with guns and drugs, said Flint police Chief Alvern Lock.

“You’re hearing how law enforcement is preparing to work together to ensure the penalties are as stiff as possible under state and federal law,” said Walling.

2011-07-14T02:41:00.000-07:00

Will new gun laws backfire?

Owners OK with Markell's legislation, but fear its usage
By ESTEBAN PARRA
The News Journal
Gun owners agree that four pieces of legislation signed into law Wednesday make sense but they are concerned about how at least one of them will be interpreted by police.

Among the laws signed by Gov. Jack Markell is legislation making it illegal to possess a firearm in public while under the influence of alcohol or drugs. A person would be charged with a crime if found with a gun while having a blood-alcohol level of 0.08 or higher.

"You do not want to be out here on the skeet field with a beer in your pocket and shooting," said 76-year-old Richard Kane, a state and national skeet champion.

"But behind the lines, then I think that's a different story," because of how officers interpret the law, the Newark resident said.

"He can interpret it any way he wants," he said. "He can bend it to suit the situation and I don't agree with that."

Under the law, a first offense is a misdemeanor. Further convictions would be a "G Felony," punishable by up to two years in prison. It also prohibits those convicted from legally owning a weapon.

"It's another way in my mind to take guns away from people," Kane said.
But state police Col. Robert M. Coupe said that is not the intent of the law.

"What the law is targeting is someone who is actually in possession of a firearm when they are intoxicated, not so much ownership," Coupe said. "It's about possessing it in a public place."

Markell's office worked with the National Rifle Association (NRA) and Delaware sportsmen to ensure the definitions of "possess" and "readily operable" were narrowly focused so the bill applies only to those whose intoxication presents an immediate threat.

So if an intoxicated person is found in a vehicle with their weapon nearby, they would be violating the new law. But if the weapon was not loaded or locked in a case or the trunk, the person would not be in violation of the law because the gun is not readily operable.

Other laws Markell signed Wednesday:

» Allow police to dispose of weapons they seize during civil cases, such as in protection-from-abuse orders, if the owners do not come back for their weapons. Before the law, Delaware prohibited state police from disposing of these weapons unless the owner agreed. As a result, state police have more than 2,000 weapons seized over the years.

» Require Delaware to provide more information to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), which is used by federal firearms licensees to instantly determine whether a buyer is eligible to buy firearms or explosives. Delaware is not required to provide certain background information about people to the federal program, such as whether someone has a history of mental illness. Federal law bans those who have been committed to mental institutions from owning firearms. One bill would require the state to report such information.

» Create a community gun buyback program. The one-year "gun buyback" pilot program would offer $100 to anyone who turns in a firearm to participating authorities.
Sen. Robert Marshall, D-Wilmington West, who sponsored the bill, said different jurisdictions would be allowed to implement the program their own way, by buying weapons back with cash or other things such as food certificates.

"What the senator sponsored here was common sense," said Wilmington Police Chief Michael J. Szczerba, who was among several police officers at the signing. Szczerba said the program allows each jurisdiction to decide what its best approach will be in its community.

"He didn't put in a one-size-fits-all," Szczerba said. "He left it up to the professionals ... the people who deal with it every day."

Markell said it was a tough fight to get the laws passed.

"When we introduced them, people didn't really expect us to get these done," said Markell, adding that after the February news conference where he introduced the bills, people were saying he was trying to take their guns away. "That's not what this is about. This is about common-sense measures."

The laws were an important step in promoting public safety, but there are other issues that need to be looked at, including education, jobs and housing, he said.

Markell outlined a slate of gun-control measures during his 2008 campaign. With the exception of Marshall's bill, the other three were among the first he helped draft and recruit lawmakers to sponsor. One bill he announced in February that would have closed the "gun-show loophole" did not pass this session. That bill would have required all vendors, even hobbyists, to have a licensed firearms dealer perform a background check prior to the sale, delivery or transfer of any firearm at a gun show.
Markell said he was disappointed it did not pass but said he will push for it again.
Although gun owners interviewed Wednesday at the state's Ommelanden Firing Range agreed the new laws make common sense, they added there is always a concern when lawmakers consider gun control legislation.

"You don't want to be hindering the honest, law-abiding citizen for something that criminals are going to do anyway whether there is a law there or not," said 59-year-old Bruce Chamberlin of Wilmington.

Chamberlin said he was OK with the four laws, but is concerned about how police will enforce the one about possessing a weapon while intoxicated.

"Guns and alcohol of course don't mix," he said. "But you're talking about after the event and the guns are safely stored in the vehicle -- I don't see why that should be a problem."

But Robert Kocivar, 59, of Wilmington, has doubts about how the new laws will impact crime.
"I don't see how any of that effort is going to reduce crime overall statewide," Kocivar said. "I have a feeling their effort and resources could be used a little bit more effectively just trying to get some of the bad people off the streets instead of getting the guns off the streets."

Additional Facts

2011-07-13T02:42:00.000-07:00

Little impact locally from latest gun rule

By SILVIO J. PANTA
Imperial Valley Press Staff Writer
1:55 AM PDT, July 13, 2011

Not one to mince words about the federal government, Robert Hayes expressed dismay over a program requiring gun retailers to provide officials with information about the sale of high-powered rifles.

There’s only one problem, Hayes explained Tuesday. Such weapons of the kind drug cartels use cannot be bought or sold in California, said Hayes, owner of The Gun Shop in El Centro.

Furthermore, said Hayes, the new policy announced this week by the U.S. Justice Department won’t have much of an impact locally because the weapons legally sold in this state don’t fall under the category of a high-powered, assault rifle.

“Basically, it has no effect on us whatsoever,” Hayes opined. “It’s a huge tempest in a teapot and has virtually no impact on sales in California.”

Gun retailers in California and in three other states are being required to alert federal officials about the purchase of more than two semi-automatic rifles to anyone in a five-day period. The program is intended to help the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives stem the tide of gun-trafficking south of the border.

The three other states involved in the effort are Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. Authorities with the U.S. Border Patrol and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection declined to say anything publicly and deferred all comments about the merits of the program to the ATF.

Christian Hoffman, ATF spokesman, was not able to respond to questions about the gun retailer program.

While the federal program is aimed at retrieving information about the multiple sales of semiautomatic weapons, it comes after mounting criticism over the federal government’s Operation Fast and Furious gun tracing program which was aimed at combating gun-trafficking along the Arizona border with Mexico.

But congressional testimony revealed that under Operation Fast and Furious an estimated 1,800 guns were unaccounted for and roughly two-thirds of them are probably in Mexico, according to an Associated Press news story.

California law already requires gun retailers to report “long gun” sales of shot guns and rifles to the state government, said Bill DuBois, operator of Border Tactical indoor shooting range.

In addition, state law forbids anyone from purchasing more than one handgun every 30 days, DuBois said. Perhaps complicating matters, is that the state’s definition of an assault rifle differs from that of other states, DuBois said.

Gun retailers want to cooperate with the law, but DuBois said, “any new law has to be careful that it has any actual impact on crime.”
http://www.ivpressonline.com/news/ivp-news-little-impact-locally-from-latest-gun-rule-20110713,0,6938545,print.story

Staff Writer Silvio J. Panta can be reached at 760-337-3442 or at spanta@ivpressonline.com

2011-07-11T02:38:00.000-07:00

Guns in Arizona: Concerns over safety, rights shape gunslinger attitude

Dan Nowicki and Dennis Wagner - Jul. 11, 2011 12:00 AM

Guns and the debate over whether the weapons need regulation has long been a mainstay of the political conversation in Arizona, where firearms violence spawned a counterculture long before statehood.

In the Old West, some of the wildest and woolliest Arizona towns wound up with local gun-control ordinances. The argument over guns came up again as the state's founding fathers drafted the Arizona Constitution. And in the aftermath of President John F. Kennedy's assassination on Nov. 22, 1963, Arizona's political leadership mobilized in opposition to calls for more firearm restrictions.

A gun-friendly political climate for decades has both reflected and supported Arizona's firearm lifestyle that started in the untamed territorial days and remains an element of the state's culture, economy and image.

Pioneer towns such as Phoenix and Tombstone were founded by tough men who always carried two guns and a knife, said Bob Boze Bell, executive editor of Cave Creek-based True West Magazine.

At one point, Bell said, Tombstone had 10,000 such residents and 66 bars, yet only 14 homicides over several years. Still, as women and children moved in, and as municipal governments took root, local anti-gun ordinances were adopted. Even in Tombstone, Arizona's legendary "town too tough to die."

The most famous gunfight in the state's history was, partly, a dispute over guns. An attempt by Wyatt Earp, his brothers and their ally Doc Holliday to disarm a group of cowboys led to the deadly 1881 shootout near the O.K. Corral, a confrontation immortalized in Hollywood Westerns.

"The laws are looser now than they were in the Old West," said Bell, a writer and illustrator whose books include "Bad Men: Outlaws and Gunfighters of the Wild West" and three volumes of his "Classic Gunfights" series. "You could not carry a gun in Tombstone."

Gun-control advocates will sometimes argue that Arizona's Wild West days are long over and that a different attitude toward guns is overdue. That call for increased regulation of firearms in the state actually is more than 100 years old.

During the pre-statehood 1910 constitutional convention, Arizona's founders included a special protection for individual gun rights in the state constitution that went beyond the language of even the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

"The right of the individual citizen to bear arms in defense of himself or the state shall not be impaired," the draft constitution said.

It was not without controversy, minutes of the proceedings show. A motion to scratch the provision was made on the grounds that "we are no longer a frontier country" and guns, in addition to being dangerous, weren't needed anymore.

The motion was watered down to give the Legislature the power to regulate the carrying of weapons "to prevent crime" but was narrowly rejected on a 23-22 vote.

Decades later, Arizona would allow legally carried concealed weapons, a reform that has expanded in one form or another to nearly every state, and for the past 20 years generally has been at the forefront of expanding gun rights on the state level.
Alan Korwin, the author of the definitive guide to Arizona gun statutes and operator of the website www.gunlaws.com, said the gun-control ordinances adopted by Tombstone and some other Arizona towns were tossed as Second Amendment violations after Arizona became a state in 1912.

But over the past half-century, federal gun restrictions ballooned out of control, Korwin said. In his book, he says U.S. gun laws now contain 83,000 words, with more than half of those adopted after 1970.

Strong feelings of tradition

For decades, the gun-control action was centered in Washington, D.C. The Arizona Legislature's emphasis on gun bills is a relatively recent phenomenon. Several longtime Arizona elected officials on both sides of the debate told The Arizona Republic that they don't recall state lawmakers spending much, if any, time on gun legislation in the 1960s or 1970s.

However, Arizona political leadership's support of gun rights and antagonism toward federal gun control date back at least to the dawn of the modern era of firearm regulation.

Long-serving U.S. Sen. Carl Hayden, D-Ariz., was a former territorial Maricopa County sheriff and an expert marksman who kept historic guns in his Senate office. A little more than two months after JFK's death, Hayden made headlines by holding up a .38 revolver at a Senate Commerce Committee meeting on legislation to ban the mail-order sales of guns. Hayden, who was born in 1877 and was then 86, found the pistol on a witness table along with other confiscated firearms.

"Who shall I shoot?" Hayden mischievously asked, according to an account that appeared in the Jan. 31, 1964, edition of the Washington Post.

Hayden and a contingent of Arizonans appeared at the meeting to oppose the gun-control measure, some on grounds that an armed citizenry was a necessary safeguard against a lawless government or an invading army. Others warned that the measure would hurt ranchers and farmers who lived in rural areas and relied on the mail to buy guns.

Arizona Gov. Paul Fannin, a Republican who would win election to the U.S. Senate later that year, turned in a statement that implored Congress "not to be carried away by the hysteria of our president's assassination." Lee Harvey Oswald had purchased the Italian-made, Carcano rifle he used to kill Kennedy through the mail, but Fannin suggested that a better strategy would be to crack down on the importation of "worthless, cheap foreign weapons."

"Coming from the West, there is no doubt that Western feelings are strongly imbedded in the American tradition of the right to keep and bear arms," U.S. Rep. George Senner, D-Ariz., told the committee in a statement.

Mail-order gun sales eventually were outlawed under the Gun Control Act of 1968, landmark legislation signed by President Lyndon Johnson after the subsequent assassinations of civil-rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, D-N.Y. The law also made it illegal to sell guns to anyone indicted or convicted of crimes punishable by more than one year in prison, people who have been determined to be mentally ill or dishonorably discharged from the military, as well as drug addicts and illegal immigrants.

Hayden and Fannin, Arizona's two senators at the time, voted against it.
"Since '68, it's been one fight after another," said Bob Corbin, a former Arizona attorney general who served as National Rifle Association president in the early 1990s.

Battle over the Brady Bill

The 1968 bill was the first major gun legislation since the 1930s, when gangland warfare prompted Congress to regulate fully automatic machine guns and sawed-off shotguns. Decades later, Congress banned ownership of machine guns that were not registered as of May 19, 1986.

Federal gun-control momentum returned to Capitol Hill in the 1990s, and again Arizonans played key roles in the legislative drama. President Bill Clinton signed the Brady Bill, more formally known as the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, in 1993. It was named for Jim Brady, the White House press secretary wounded in gunman John Hinckley Jr.'s attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan outside a Washington, D.C., hotel in 1981. The following year, lawmakers included a 10-year ban, which has since lapsed, on certain semiautomatic assault weapons in an anti-crime bill.

U.S. Sen. Dennis DeConcini, D-Ariz., had led the way on the assault-weapon ban, introducing the legislation several years in a row. Back home, DeConcini was targeted by an unsuccessful recall campaign in 1989 and in 1993 was marked for defeat by Corbin and the NRA. He ultimately decided not to seek re-election in 1994.
Pro-gun activists and lobbyists decried the Brady Bill and the assault-weapon ban as unconstitutional.

In 1994, an Arizona sheriff challenged the constitutionality of the Brady Bill's provision that required state and local law-enforcement officials to conduct five-day criminal-background checks on gun buyers. U.S. District Judge John Roll, who was slain in the Jan. 8 mass shooting near Tucson that also wounded U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., agreed with Graham County Sheriff Richard Mack that the requirement was a federal violation of states' rights under the 10th Amendment.

The Brady Bill case eventually got to the U.S. Supreme Court, which also sided with Mack on the point. The sheriff became a cult hero to gun-rights enthusiasts, writing a book titled "From My Cold Dead Fingers: Why America Needs Guns."

Mack lamented that no armed citizen was able to shoot the gunman once he opened fire on Giffords and Roll and others attending the congresswoman's constituent event outside a grocery store.

"I wish I'd been there to protect him," Mack said of Roll.

Bold steps and controversy

The year 1994 also marked Arizona's passage of its original law allowing concealed weapons to be carried by state-permitted gun owners. The decade saw the start of the Legislature's more aggressive defense of gun rights and the national controversy it inevitably brings.

In 2000, Arizona House Speaker Jeff Groscost, R-Mesa, sparked a negative reaction by inviting actor Charlton Heston, then the NRA president, to deliver the invocation at the opening of the Legislature. Heston would speak even as then-Gov. Jane Dee Hull and some lawmakers were hoping to pass a bill that would upgrade the celebratory firing of guns in the air, a dangerous New Year's Eve practice in Arizona, to a felony. Gun-control advocates called Heston's appearance a slap in the face, even though Heston endorsed "Shannon's Law," named for a 14-year-old Phoenix girl who was killed by a falling bullet.

"I think that firing a gun in the air is about as stupid an undertaking as I can imagine," Heston told reporters at the Arizona House of Representatives. "Certainly no responsible gun owner would ever do that."

Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/07/11/20110711arizona-guns-special-report-history.html#ixzz1RmuibANo

2011-07-08T03:06:00.000-07:00

Controversy could kill the ATF By: Josh Gerstein July 8, 2011 04:42 AM EDT
The unfolding scandal over a gunrunning investigation allegedly botched by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives could do what years of criticism of the long-beleaguered agency never quite accomplished — result in its demise. That, at least, is the view of some former ATF employees and advocates on both sides of the gun control debate who have watched the agency struggle to contain the damage from an operation intended to trace the traffic of illegal guns to Mexico that has reignited the harsh criticism often directed at the ATF in the past. The agency, which moved from the Treasury Department to the Justice Department in 2003, has been without a permanent director for nearly five years. Nominees offered by Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama have languished without approval from the Senate after drawing strong opposition from the National Rifle Association, which for years has been the agency’s loudest critic. Now, with ATF Acting Director Kenneth Melson hobbled by the scandal over Operation Fast and Furious and by indications he’s at odds with senior Justice Department officials, many are saying a breakup of the storied agency could just be a matter of time. “I think something like that is likely to happen,” said Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. “Unless they take some action to give it a director, it’s inevitable it’s going to have to get to that stage. It cannot continue the way it’s going now. … Right now, ATF is so weak it’s amazing.” Christopher Cox, legislative director for the NRA, the agency’s longtime nemesis, also said arguments for shuttering or breaking up ATF are building. “Their criminal investigation tactics are going a long way to proving that point,” Cox said. “If they cease to be an effective law enforcement organization, they will cease to be legitimate, and the calls for restructuring or abolishing of ATF are going to become more and more valid.” Some experts said the ATF, a successor to Treasury’s Prohibition Unit that once counted crimefighter Eliot Ness among its ranks, has outlived its usefulness. “Even the name of the organization, it’s from the black-and-white movie era,” said Jim Kessler of Third Way, a centrist Democratic group. “I don’t think it should exist. The investigations should be subsumed within the FBI, and the licensing could be done by Treasury, which is a tax-collecting agency.” But the idea of disbanding the agency or folding it into the FBI is rejected by Bradley Buckles, ATF’s director from 1999 to 2004. “It’s the same [question] as why does the [Drug Enforcement Administration] exist or the Marshals Service. You could make an argument that all federal law enforcement could be collapsed into the FBI, I suppose, but I’m not sure anybody thinks that’s a good idea, to concentrate that much power in one agency,” said Buckles. “There are arguments that specialized agencies can carry out those functions better than an agency that has too full a palette with everything else to do.” “I don’t see them merging with another agency,” said Ronnie Carter, another former ATF official. “Whatever agency you merge them with is going to have the same problems. … A lot of it is weakness in the law. ATF can do the job. They just have to be allowed to do it.” But even those officials who favor keeping the agency said lawmakers need to put an end to the years of limbo, one way or another. “I know it’s tough to get things through Congress, but this is ridiculous. … Quit treating the ATF as a bastard child,” Carter said. “You can’t run an agency or a police department or anything without having a leader. … It’s a traumatic thing for ATF. They don’t think anybody cares, and nobody’s following through.” “You can’t have any kind of organization and expect it to run well without some kind of leader,” Buckles said. “It’s just unimaginable in any other environment.” For decades, the ATF director job did not require Senate confirmation. But after a financial scandal involving the last permanent director in 2006, Congress decided at the NRA’s urging to make the post subject to Senate approval. Since then, presidents have been slow to nominate directors and senators reluctant to accept nominees opposed by the powerful NRA. “I point the finger at Congress. You made it confirmable, so confirm somebody. If not, restructure it. … If this structure doesn’t work, let’s get a structure that does,” Helmke said. In 2007, Bush nominated Michael Sullivan, a federal prosecutor from Massachusetts, as director. He served as acting director for more than two years, but his confirmation was opposed by the NRA and never came to a vote. Obama waited nearly 22 months before nominating Chicago ATF supervisor Andrew Traver in November 2010. Traver has yet to have a hearing or a vote. A Senate aide said Traver’s full paperwork was not received until earlier this year, and no hearing is presently scheduled. “The ATF has been without a confirmed director for years — predating this administration — and our hope is that, given the important mission of the bureau, we will soon have Senate-confirmed leadership there,” said White House spokesman Eric Schultz. Not surprisingly, the NRA also opposes Traver. “What we’ve insisted on is that the agency that is tasked with enforcing gun laws not be headed by someone who is rabidly anti-Second Amendment,” Cox said. “That’s not an unreasonable position for the National Rifle Association to take. “It’s unfortunate, but not surprising, that’s exactly the kind of candidate President Obama has put up in Andrew Traver. We will continue to strongly oppose not only Andrew Traver’s nomination but any nomination [advancing] a political agenda directed at the rights of law-abiding gun owners,” Cox said. Advocates said they doubt there will be any hearing or vote for Traver until the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the Justice Department Inspector General complete probes into what went wrong in Operation Fast and Furious. Guns tracked as part of the operation have shown up at crime scenes north and south of the border, including a December shootout in Arizona that left a U.S. Border Patrol agent dead. Recent developments in the congressional investigation could also intensify calls for bringing ATF personnel into the FBI. Melson told congressional investigators in recent days that ATF was kept in the dark about FBI and DEA dealings with some of the people encountered in the course of the gunrunning probe. “We have very real indications from several sources that some of the gun trafficking ‘higher ups’ that the ATF sought to identify were already known to other agencies and may have been paid as informants,” House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) wrote Tuesday in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder. The Justice Department’s official response to the lawmakers’ letter did not explain any connection between the ATF operation and other agencies, but one official said it was unclear whether any connections to the FBI or DEA would have altered ATF’s handling of its investigation. Aides to Issa said he’s not currently considering the fate of ATF as an agency. “We’re focused on the investigation at this time,” Oversight Committee spokeswoman Becca Watkins said. “At this time, Sen. Grassley has not indicated a desire to make changes to the structure of the ATF,” Grassley spokeswoman Beth Levine said Thursday. Despite the talk of folding ATF into the FBI, gun control advocates also said they suspect that the NRA and pro-gun lawmakers actually prefer a hobbled ATF to the possibility of a forceful director or vigorous enforcement of gun laws by the FBI. “They like a weak ATF,” Helmke said. “They don’t want any part of this at the FBI.” “Congress made this a confirmed position to make sure there will never be an ATF director. There will never be an ATF director in our lifetime,” Kessler added. http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=3F9196D4-B777-42A3-B6A1-7DDCC2910830
© 2011 POLITICO LLC

2011-07-07T02:42:00.000-07:00

Chicago Plays Tricks With Gun Rights

July 05, 2011 11:40 PM EDT /by Robert Flynn

The Chicago City Council is up to their old tricks again as they passed an ordinance that allows for gun ranges in the city, but only in very limited places. The ordinance restricts gun ranges to areas zoned for manufacturing, but also prohibits gun ranges within 1000 feet of a school, park, place of worship, day care center, liquor store, library, museum, or residential district.

Despite spending millions of the taxpayer's dollars on fruitless attempts to prohibit guns in the city, the mayor and aldermen of Chicago are inviting another round of lawsuits and court battles. Todd Vandermyde, the Illinois legislative liaison for the National Rifle Association (NRA), condemned the city's blatant attempt to undermine the decision of the courts stating, "obviously they haven't learned anything from court rulings and our tenacity."

The City of Chicago recently lost a major case before the U.S. Supreme Court which overturned the city's handgun ban. Despite this ruling, the mayor and city council have done everything they can to undermine that decision by throwing as many roadblocks as they can in the way of law-abiding residents owning guns.

The city council requires that any resident who wants to obtain a permit to own a gun undertake a gun safety class, but then makes it all but impossible to build a gun range to give that class.

The mayor and the city council have no intention of obeying the spirit of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling; that it is perfectly legal for residents of Chicago to own guns. Because of their extreme prejudice and intolerance toward gun owners and their guns, the city council, along with Mayor Emanuel, will do anything they can to deny the people this fundamental right.

This type of ignorance and backwardness is an embarrassment to the entire state of Illinois, and the country in general. When a few tyrannical politicians can impose their small-minded views on the majority of the people, the world must wonder if there is still freedom in America.

Well, if Mayor Emanuel and the city council wants to spend millions of dollars of taxpayers' money on an attempt to interfere in their citizen's right to own guns, let them. The NRA will take the city to court, and after several years and millions of dollars, the courts will most likely force the city to allow gun ranges without undue restrictions.

In the meantime, Mayor Emanuel and the city council have found a legal way to get around the Supreme Court's recent decision, and the citizens of Chicago will continue to be unable to obtain a gun.
http://politics.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474979569784

2011-07-06T05:08:00.000-07:00

Gun Sting Surprise

Embattled ATF director Kenneth Melson gave a surprise July 4 interview to Congress, disclosing new lapses in a bungled gun sting that allowed U.S. guns to be trafficked to Mexican drug gangs, John Solomon reports exclusively.

In a secret deposition on the Fourth of July, the embattled head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives confirmed to congressional investigators new potential lapses in a bungled U.S. gun trafficking sting that has stirred controversy on both sides of the Mexican border, according to people familiar with the interview.

While many Americans celebrated over barbecues and fireworks, acting ATF director Kenneth Melson arrived Monday with a private attorney on Capitol Hill for the interview, the sources said, speaking only on the condition of anonymity.

During hours of questioning, Melson told investigators for the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that he has recently learned that other federal agencies may have withheld crucial information about possible drug cartel connections to the gun trafficking ring that his agency had tried to crack during a 15-month operation that used controversial tactics, the sources said.

Melson is the highest-ranking official to testify in the congressional inquiry into why an ATF gun trafficking operation codenamed “Fast and Furious” let suspected straw buyers purchase semiautomatic weapons at U.S. gun stores with the expectation they would flow south of the border into Mexico’s raging drug and gun wars.

His testimony about possible lapses in information sharing among the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and ATF in the war on drugs sounded eerily similar to communication breakdowns that hampered the government’s ability to piece together prior warning signs before the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the sources said.

Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), the ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, and House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) sent a letter late Tuesday to Attorney General Eric Holder laying out concerns raised by Melson’s testimony, the sources said.

And amid rumors and media speculation that Melson could soon be removed from his job, the two Republican lawmakers told Holder they thought any immediate personnel action against the acting ATF chief would be imprudent given the nature of information he has just disclosed, the sources said.

A longtime career federal official, Melson serves in a political appointment as the acting head of ATF and thus does not enjoy the same whistleblower protections as civil servants. The lawmakers’ letter was designed to serve notice that Congress now considers Melson a key witness in their investigation of the bungled gun sting, the sources said.

The ATF boss had agreed late last month to be interviewed by congressional investigators and a deposition was slated for mid- to late July. But in conversations over the long holiday weekend, Melson agreed to move up the interview, the sources said.

Frontline agents have already told Congress they strongly objected to instructions to let the straw buyers walk off with gun purchases without interdicting the weapons, but they were overruled by superiors in the Phoenix ATF office.

Over 15 months, ATF allowed more than 1,700 weapons to flow into the hands of suspected straw buyers for the Mexican drug cartels, and nearly 800 showed up in subsequent criminal activity on both sides of the border, including two at the slaying of a U.S. border agent in December and more than 300 at Mexican crime scenes.

The tactics used in the sting have been decried by Mexican authorities angry that U.S. officials knowingly let weapons flow into their country, and President Obama has said it appears some serious mistakes may have been made.

Holder, the attorney general, has ordered an internal investigation into the tactics and ordered ATF to interdict all weapons involving suspected straw buyers going forward. Dual investigations in the House and Senate have added to the political pressures.

On Tuesday, White House press secretary Jay Carney was repeatedly pressed by a reporter for ABC News about what action Obama might take in the matter. Carney acknowledged that “obviously it’s a matter of concern and that’s why there’s an investigation” but declined to be more specific.

“I think you could assume that the president takes this very seriously,” Carney said.

Congressional investigators have long wanted to talk to Melson to determine who above him knew about the investigation or approved of the tactics.

In his interview, Melson said most of the operational decisions for the Fast and Furious operation were approved by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Phoenix, which was leading a special strike force on gun trafficking, and that even he didn’t know about the specific orders to let straw buyers walk off with guns until after the controversy erupted, according to the sources.

He told the investigators he has subsequently learned that ATF agents during the operation did observe straw buyers transferring guns they had purchased to third parties, a possible legal violation, but did not interdict the weapons at the instructions of their immediate supervisors, the sources added.

Under questioning, Melson confirmed information the congressional investigators had received elsewhere that DEA and FBI had information about possible cartel connections to the gun trafficking ring under investigation but did not share it with ATF at the time. He expressed his own concerns about the flow of information from other agencies during a critical time in the war against Mexican border violence, the sources said.

Congressional investigators now want to know whether any of the players belatedly disclosed to the ATF had been working as assets or informants for other federal agencies, the sources said.

Melson also disclosed the existence of documents about the ATF case that have not yet been turned over to congressional investigators, the sources added.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/07/06/gun-running-sting-surprise-atf-director-melson-talked-to-congress-july-4.html

2011-07-04T07:28:00.000-07:00

Illinois Governor Signs Bill Banning Release of Firearm Owners Names

Published July 03, 2011/ Associated Press

CHICAGO -- Gov. Pat Quinn on Saturday signed into law a measure barring the public from knowing who holds a firearm owner identification card in Illinois.

The bill, passed overwhelmingly by Illinois lawmakers in May, was a victory for gun owners who say they have a right to privacy over open-government advocates who say such records should not be secret.

Quinn, who has said he agreed that the information should remain confidential, offered no immediate public comment Saturday, quietly announcing the bill signing by email to news outlets.

In a 42-1 vote, the Senate passed a measure overturning a ruling by Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s office that said the names are public under the state’s open records law. Madigan’s office issued the decree earlier this year after the Illinois State Police refused to release to The Associated Press the names of 1.3 million people who are registered to own firearms.

The AP’s request set off howls of protests from gun owners and the state police, who said they feared criminals would use the information to steal guns or target those who weren’t armed.

Madigan’s office said the State Police had given no proof to back up claims that releasing the names would endanger gun owners. She said the opinion applied only to permit holders’ names and the expiration dates on their permits, while addresses and phone numbers would remain private. The AP did not ask for cardholders’ addresses and sought the records to, among other things, review governmental action.

By prohibiting the names’ release, Illinois follows the lead of Florida and Tennessee, which shut off access to information about people with permits to carry concealed firearms after newspapers revealed significant lapses.

A newspaper investigation in south Florida published in 2007 found that 1,400 people given concealed-carry licenses in the first half of 2006 had earlier pleaded guilty or no contest to felonies. In Memphis, Tenn., a newspaper found at least 70 people in the metropolitan area with carry permits despite violent histories.

Brian Malte of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence has said that if cardholders’ names are shielded from public scrutiny, “there needs to be assurances by government officials that they will audit the system to make sure it’s working as intended.”

“What is the mechanism, then, for Illinois state government to ensure the citizens that the permitting system is working as intended and that people aren’t slipping through the cracks?” Malte said.

Todd Vandermyde, the Illinois lobbyist for the National Rifle Association, said neither the media nor the general public has right to information on gun owners and suggested that lawmakers should not even have required FOID cards.

“It’s nobody’s business what I keep in my home,” he said. “It’s not my fault the state of Illinois requires me to get a license to exercise a constitutional right. Just because I choose to exercise it is no reason for the news or anyone else to be prodding around in my rights.”

2011-07-03T04:52:00.000-07:00

Mental patients are regaining gun rights

By Michael Luo

New York Times / July 3, 2011

His family figured French had gone off his medication for bipolar disorder, and a judge ordered him involuntarily committed - the fourth time in five years he had been hospitalized by court order.

When French’s daughter discovered that her father’s commitment meant it was illegal for him to have firearms, she and her husband removed his guns and kept them after French was released in January 2010 on a new regime of mood-stabilizing drugs.

Ten months later, he appeared in General District Court - the body that handles small claims and traffic infractions - to ask a judge to restore his gun rights. After a brief hearing, in which French’s lengthy history of relapses never came up, he walked out with an order reinstating his right to possess firearms.

Across the country, states are increasingly allowing people like French, who lost their firearm rights because of mental illness, to petition to have them restored.

A handful of states have had such restoration laws on their books for some time, but with little notice, more than 20 states have passed similar measures since 2008.

The intent of these state laws is to enable people to regain the right to buy and possess firearms if it is determined that they are not a threat to public safety.

But an examination of restoration procedures across the country, along with dozens of cases, shows that the process for making that determination is governed in many places by vague standards and few specific requirements.

States have mostly entrusted these decisions to judges, who are often ill-equipped to conduct investigations from the bench. Many seemed willing simply to give petitioners the benefit of the doubt. The results often seem haphazard.

At least a few hundred people with histories of mental health issues get their gun rights back each year. The number promises to grow, since most of the new state laws are beginning to take effect.

The issue goes to the heart of the nation’s complicated relationship with guns, testing the delicate balance between the need to safeguard the public and the dictates of what the Supreme Court has proclaimed to be a fundamental constitutional right.

In case after case examined by The New York Times, judges made decisions without important information about an applicant’s mental health.

The difficulty of assessing risk emerges in places like Los Angeles, where the Superior Court conducts a relatively thorough review of firearms rights requests.

The Times found multiple instances over the last decade in which people who won back their gun rights went on to be charged with or convicted of violent or gun-related crimes, including spousal battery, negligent discharge of a firearm, or assault with a firearm.

Then there are the nightmare cases - like that of Ryan Anthony, 35, a former Emmy Award-winning animator at Disney who was involuntarily hospitalized in mid-2001 after losing his job and separating from his wife.

Anthony filed a petition to get back his gun rights in early 2002, telling a court-appointed psychiatrist that he wanted to go skeet shooting.

A few weeks after the court granted his petition, Anthony bought a Remington 870 12-gauge shotgun, holed up in a Holiday Inn in Burbank, Calif., and committed suicide.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2011/07/03/mental_patients_are_regaining_gun_rights/

2011-07-01T02:23:00.000-07:00

After man illegally sold guns, some went south

Posted Thursday, Jun. 30, 2011

By Darren Barbee

dbarbee@star-telegram.com

A Fort Worth man illegally sold dozens of guns to "almost anybody" and some were recovered across the border in violence-plagued Mexico, a federal official told the Star-Telegram.

Before it was over, Myron McPhate, a security alarm installer, had guns drawn on him by police officers who pulled him off Interstate 20.

"They're all laid over the hood with guns drawn saying, 'Get out of the car! Get out of the car!'" McPhate said in an interview. "Everybody's freaking out in the van. I told my wife ... just sit still."

Now, after pleading guilty to dealing in firearms without a license, he faces up to five years in federal prison.

McPhate, 53, said he didn't realize his sale of firearms was illegal. He says he sold them at gun shows, and he didn't have a license. While under surveillance by authorities, McPhate was also photographed selling guns, including semiautomatic rifles with large-capacity magazines, at a Jack in the Box restaurant in Grand Prairie. Those arms eventually made their way south.

"I did not intentionally know these guns were going to Mexico," he said.

Evidence shows that many of the firearms fueling Mexican drug violence have come from the United States, including a growing number of increasingly lethal weapons from gun shops and shows in Texas, California and Arizona, according to federal reports.

Even small dealers are contributing to the problem, experts say. A professor who has studied violence in Mexico says the right kind of gun can fetch thousands of dollars from gang and cartel members.

McPhate said the charge against him was based on his selling about 100 guns. In addition to prison, he faces a fine of up to $250,000 when he is scheduled to be sentenced later this month.

Some of the guns have been recovered locally, others at the U.S.-Mexico border and in Mexico, said the federal official who had some knowledge of the case.

McPhate said agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives recovered 38 of his guns and "none of them, according to their records, was ever used in a crime, thank God."

McPhate also forfeited 15 firearms stored in a gun safe at his home, including a .223-caliber rifle, two .45-caliber pistols, shotguns, six 9 mm pistols, a .44-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver and several others pistols.

A court document known as a factual résumé also shows that McPhate sold a Masterpiece Arms MPA 45, described as a .45-caliber pistol, to an undercover ATF agent. The pistol was not part of his personal collection, nor were any of the guns he resold from January 2009 to September, the document says.

Gun owners may legally sell guns from their personal collection; however, a federal firearms license is required to engage in the business of selling guns.

McPhate said he started selling guns he had owned for years for extra money after gaining custody of his four grandchildren from Child Protective Services. He sold the weapons at a gun show, saw other dealers' success and then started buying arms and selling guns himself. He said he did it mostly for the "fellowshipping" and making a little money.

Over two years, he said, he bought about 200 guns.

McPhate said he bought used guns for $300 that might have retailed new at $500. He said he sold those for $325.

Robert Taylor, professor of public affairs and justice administration at the University of Texas at Dallas, said the resale can be much more lucrative. Something that costs $1,200 here can end up selling for $5,000 in Mexico.

"If you've got a fully automatic weapon and you're selling to folks down there, you can get a tremendous amount of money," Taylor said.

In October, McPhate said, ATF agents contacted him and "ransacked" his home. They told him they wanted him to be an informant, gathering evidence at gun shows to implicate other dealers.

McPhate told the ATF agents that he wanted immunity and his family in witness protection because "some of the guns went to Mexico. ... If they find out that I snitched them out, I said they're going to have retaliations."

The agents wouldn't do that, he said. "You're still going to jail when it's over," he said an agent told him.

McPhate eventually agreed to cooperate to keep his wife out of trouble, he said. But as the months passed, he said, the agents didn't feel he had kept up contact with them.
On Valentine's Day, McPhate and his family were going to look at a home when four police cars pulled in behind him on the interstate.

McPhate was handcuffed and taken to jail. He was released and immediately taken into custody by ATF agents. He pleaded guilty, believing he might get probation. However, the selling of guns at the fast-food restaurant added an element of gun trafficking to his crime, he said.

He said he doesn't think he'll get the maximum sentence.

"Now I'm looking at 24 to 48 months in the federal pen," he said, adding that he believes his grandchildren will be taken by authorities and split up because his wife does not have custody of them. McPhate, who said he served in the Marines, said his only previous legal trouble was for writing a hot check, which he paid off.

McPhate says he wishes he had known what he was doing was wrong. "I feel bad," he said. "I did not intentionally know these guns were going to Mexico."

U.S. and Mexican government officials have said that Mexican drug organizations arrange for the trafficking of most guns into Mexico, according to a 2009 report by the Government Accountability Office.

ATF eTrace data showed that between fiscal years 2004 and 2008, more than 20,000 firearms, or 87 percent, that were seized by Mexican authorities and could be traced had originated in the United States.

Taylor, the UTD professor, said some gun sellers are quick to report suspicious activity to authorities. But other gun sellers, he said, clearly know that their guns are headed to Mexico for use in violent crimes.

During his regular visits to the border, Taylor said, he has seen 15 or 20 bodies, hands bound behind their backs, of people assassinated on a street.

"It's pretty ugly," he said.
Darren Barbee, 817-390-7126

http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/06/30/v-print/3192648/after-man-illegally-sold-guns.html