Trick Or Treat

This is really bizarre. From the LA Times:

A 75-year-old dead man sat decomposing on his Marina del Rey balcony for days because neighbors thought the body was part of a Halloween display and didn’t call police.

Mostafa Mahmoud Zayed had apparently been dead since Monday with a single gunshot wound to one eye. He was slumped over a chair on the third-floor balcony of his apartment on Bora Bora Way, said cameraman Austin Raishbrook, who owns RMG News and was on scene Thursday when authorities found the body.

The poor guy caught it in the eye. Sitting on his balcony all by his lonesome and POW.
No one to miss him?
No one to check on a 75 year old man in four days? Very sad, very sad.
They must have smelled him from the street finally.

SOS for the USS ACORN

James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles have torpedoed the tramp steamer ACORN. They put four fish in her below the waterline and she is now dead in the water.

Big Government has the latest video of O'Keefe and Giles being entertained by an ACORN nutcase who admits to killing her husband and running a prostitution ring. If I was a cop (and I was) I'd be running this wacko's name through the wringer to see if there is any credence to her claims and sending my financial crimes investigators to seize their books.

And perhaps more high explosive fish are on their way to the beleaguered craft; the USS O'Keefe seems to have more torpedoes than originally thought. In addition, the republicans have launched their owm small task force that has ringed the ACORN with several salvos, the latest one from top Congressional leaders John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Dave Camp.

They wrote Obongo to ask that he immediately sever all ties between ACORN and the IRS. Seems that ACORN gets government funds to prepare tax returns for the po' peoples. In addition to that request, they are also asking that an investigation be commenced into whether or not ACORN is promoting tax fraud. This is the big one. This could truly put a lot of the ACORN crew deep in shark infested waters without life jackets as well as their clients.

The fireworks ain't over yet.

Texans, Ya Gotta Love 'Em

In San Antonio, TX, a would be robber met his match inside a pharmacy.

The robbery suspect entered the Babcock Square Pharmacy around 9 a.m. at 5824 Babcock Rd. Inside were the owner/pharmacist, his wife, and an employee. The employee saw the man had a gun and told the pharmacist, who then pulled out his own handgun.

Seeing this, the robber reportedly responded by saying “Let’s get it on.” That’s when the owner shot him. The man died inside the business.

He might as well have said, "Let's get dead."

Idiots with guns deserve to die.

Gun Control, Part II

Let's take a look at some numbers, the ones supplied by the FBI in the annual Uniform Crime Report.

This chart shows the nation's homicides from 1991 through 2005. The number of murders peaked in 2003 at 23,180; there were 16,136 murders committed by some kind of firearm.

The very next year the US experienced a downward trend in the incidence of murder.

By 1999 murders had decreased by 45% to 12,658. The number of firearm-related murders also decreased by 45% to 8,259. By 2005 the number of murders reported through the country had increased to 14,860 - a 17% increase from 1999, but still 36% lower than 1993 levels. Firearm-related murder also increased to 10,100 - a 22% increase over 1999 levels but still 37% lower than 1993.

Compare this to the Australian experience.

"There was a decrease of almost 30% in the number of homicides by firearms from 1997 to 1998."-- Australian Crime - Facts and Figures 1999.

Australian Institute of Criminology. Canberra, Oct 1999

This is what the Aussies reported after banning virtually all firearms after the 1995 Port Arthur incident. The US did even better by significantly increasing the availability of firearms after thirty states loosened former restrictions on firearms, particularly handguns. Eventually the Aussies got a handle on this and the number of robberies decreased, but violent crime on the whole has been troublesome for them. From the same source:

"Although armed robberies increased by nearly 20%, the number of armed robberies involving a firearm decreased to a six-year low."-- Recorded Crime,Australia, 1998. Australian Bureau of Statistics, Jun 1999

If this isn't hiding your head in the sand (or ramming it up some other orifice) I don't know what is. Since the Australian government has effectively disarmed the entire potential victim population, Aussie criminals no longer have to fear being shot, they can now rob their chosen victims at their leisure. Aussie criminals can use knives, bats, bricks, fists, anything they please.

In the US, violent index crime totals have decreased by 27% in the past fifteen years, 1991 to 2005 (from 1,911,767 to 1,390,695). Homicide is down by 32% (from 24,703 to 16,692), Forcible Rape is down by 12% (from 106,593 to 93,394), Robbery is down by 39% (from 687,732 to 417,122) and Aggravated Assualt is down by 21% (from 1,092,739 to 862,947). My source is the FBI UCR home page here.

With the exception of murder, the violent crime rate (rape, robbery and felony assault) in Australia has risen dramatically since they disarmed their civilians. The accompanying graph illustrates this point. For a better view pleaase go here. The solid dark blue line is England and Wales. The upper dotted line is Canada and the faded lower dotted line is the US. The very short light blue line is Australia.

These are the violent crime rates per 100,000 English speaking populations for the past thirty-eight years.

It shows that the US has considerably lower crime rates than England, Wales, Canada and Australia. What is really interesting is that Australia only gives violent crime rates since 1995. That's the Port Arthur incident.

I suspect the reason why they neglect to give this information prior to 1995 is it would show that the violent crime rate has skyrocketed since they banned handguns.

England only gives their crime rate since 1980. They may have serious reporting issues that make it difficult for them to carry over crime stats from earlier years and older systems. However, the Brits were accused of changing their reporting system in part to make it harder to track the increase in violent crime throughout the remnants of the Empire. In this most recent edition of the British Crime Survey, the government reports a total of 2,420,000 violent offenses in 2005/06. That is 74% higher than the 2005 violent index crime totals reported in the UCR (2,420,000 versus 1,390,695). However the reporting systems are not similar (surveys v. reported crimes to the police) so it is not wise to draw too many inferences from the disparities.

Moreover, according to a UN report, England, Wales and Scotland now enjoy the reputation as the most violent nations on the planet.

Both Australia and New Zealand had the next highest proportion of assaults among their population at 2.4%, exactly double the level reported for the United States.

And my point? Simply this.

In light of what has transpired in other coutries that have prohibited their civilian populations from possessing handguns and other firearms, we better examine more closely what the anti-gun lobby wants to do here in the US.

For my two cents I say "Hell no!"

If there is anyone who wants to see the raw data, just leave me your email address in the comments section. I'll send the Excel spreadsheets in the manner you determine best for your system resources.

Take A Breath Gun Wusses

The recent tragic events at Virginia Tech have re-energized the radical anti-gun factions in this country. Those who want to eliminate the availability of firearms to the general public will act upon the mistaken notion that more restrictive gun control measures would have prevented these murders.

They are wrong. And many of these anti-gun fanatics are lying to the public, particularly the press and their allies in the medical professions, by withholding information provided by a new independent generation of researchers. I have compiled some of these statistics from a book, “Armed: New Perspectives On Gun Control ,” coauthored by Gary Kleck and Don B. Kates, 2001 by Prometheus Books.

First, let’s examine a thirty year period of gun ownership in the United States and compare that to accidental deaths caused by firearms.

In 1968 there were 25,431,479 handguns and a total of 97,087,751 firearms in this ocuntry. This translates into 128.8 handguns and 491.7 firearms per 1,000 population.

By 1997 there were 94,890,222 handguns and a total of 254,512,056 firearms. This translates into 372.8 handguns and 942.6 firearms per 1,000 population.

In 1967 there were 2,896 accidental deaths inflicted by firearms. In 1997 there were 900.

In this thirty year period, handgun ownership increased by 273% and total firearms ownership increased by 162%. The number of handguns per 1,000 population increased by 191% and yet accidental deaths caused by firearms decreased by 69%. The availability of firearms, particularly handguns, had nothing to do with accidental deaths.
(Armed, pg 56)

National Safety Council Gun Accident Statistics.

In 1979 there were 2,004 firearm related accidents, by 1991 this had dwindled to 1,441. Gun accident statistics compiled by the NSC are not available prior to 1979 and after 1991. Probably because these numbers had decreased by almost 30%. And in order to access their library you have to become a member at $250 a year.

International Homicide and Suicide Rates by Firearms
Gun control advocates stress that stricter gun control will mean lower homicide and suicide rates. Using UN demographic data, we find that anti-gun researchers combine homicide and suicide rates for the US, but only report homicide rates in other countries. They do this to inflate the US numbers. The truth is, when combining international homicide and suicide rates as provided by the UN Demographic Yearbook, the US is below the median.

The Yearbook is not online, but is available from the UN at a cost of $100.

Here are the rankings:
1) Estonia (62.1)
2) Russia (41.9)
3) Latvia (35.2)
4) Lithuania (33.5)
5) Finland (30.6)
6) Ukraine (28.6)
7) Denmark (27)
8) Austria (23.8)
9) Switzerland (21.9)
10) France (21.3)
11) Belgium (20.7)
12) USA (18.8)
13) Sweden (18.5)
14) Germany (17.6)
15) Luxembourg (17.2)
16) New Zealand (15.8)
17) Canada (14.9)
18) Israel (8.5)
(ARMED, pg 61)

With the exception of Israel, the US had the lowest suicide rate of any of these countries. Israel, despite the fact that nearly everyone in the country is armed, has the lowest suicide rate (7.3) and almost the lowest homicide rate (1.2 - France and Switzerland were lower with 1.1).

Must be they don’t include terrorists in those stats.

The following information has been suppressed by the media:

Post-World War II American homicide rates peaked in 1979 and actually decreased over the fifteen years from 1980 to 1994. In this period the number of handguns in civilian hands increased from 51.7 million to 84.7 million, or by about 64 percent, while gun ownership overall increased by about 40.5 percent, from 167.7 million to 235.6 million weapons. In this time period there was no increase at all (much less a corresponding increase) in homicide rates. In fact, the rate declined from 10.2 per 100,000 population to 9.0 per 100,000 in 1994. (Armed, pg 67)

If we are to examine the data behind the availability and use of firearms in crime, let's at least take an honest look at the data. Stop foaming at the mouth and make rational public policy decisions based on facts rather than fervor.

Terror On Campus

My heart goes out to the families of the Virgina Tech murder victims. They should be in our prayers as we examine the events of the day and thank God that it did not happen in our community. But it could.

Here in NYS it is against the law to carry a weapon onto a campus. I remember back in the late 60's when I lived on campus that all of a sudden students had to leave their shotguns at the security office for deer season. Before then, 18 and 19 year old kids kept their shotguns right in the dorms. And no one got shot. No one was even threatened with a firearm.

I believe this happened in 1968 when the old Penal Code was revised into the new NYS Penal Law. Under Penal Law Article 256.01 it became a misdemeanor:

Criminal possession of a weapon in the fourth degree. A person is guilty of criminal possession of a weapon in the fourth degree when: [...] (3) He knowingly has in his possession a rifle, shotgun or firearm in or upon a building or grounds, used for educational purposes, of any school, college or university, except the forestry lands, wherever located, owned and maintained by the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, without the written authorization of such educational institution;

This means that even if you are a licensed gun owner with a legal handgun, you can be arrested and prosecuted for carrying your weapon into any educational facility in the State. And you'll probably lose your license also. This just sets the stage for another Virgina Tech here in New York.

When will these idiot liberals learn that the firearm is not the problem??

Another One Lost

As your kids grow up you see them learn from their experiences what the world is like and the decisions that people make that lead to tragedy. Sometimes it is an accident, a rare mishap, that ends a life. Other times it is a series of what the shrinks call bad behaviors (I call it character or lack thereof) that will cut short a life.

As I walked into the kitchen this morning to grab a cup of coffee, my daughter looked up from reading the paper and said, "He's dead. Someone shot Xavier." I couldn't even begin to guess who this was until she explained it to me.

Xavier Scott, 21, is a young black man that went to my daughter's high school. He did not graduate, instead finishing up at a center for troubled youth. My daughter knew him as he dated a friend of hers for several years.

Xavier's clueless mother, Shirely Mitchell, said that she had no idea that her son was having any trouble with anyone lately despite the fact that this is the second time that Xavier has been shot in the past four months. Last October he was shot in the leg.

Admiral Nevershit

U.S. Navy Commander and NASA space shuttle driver "Wild Bill" Oefelein has what it takes to drive women wild. Wild enough to have married (to another man) mother of three, Navy Captain Lisa M. Nowak go non stop from Houston, Texas to Orlando, Florida, to confront her rival for Wild Bill's affections at the Orlando airport. In true astronaut tradition, she wore diapers.

Mrs. Nowak apparently had quite a crush on Mr. Wild Bill. She armed herself with a pellet gun, pepper spray, a knife, a steel mallet and several feet of rubber tubing to confront her rival, an Air Force captain who also works for NASA. According to the Houston Chronicle:

Nowak, 43, remains in Orange County Jail without bail on a variety of charges arising from a confrontation with Colleen Shipman, an Air Force captain whom she allegedly assaulted in the parking garage during what police characterized as an attempted kidnapping.

[...] The purpose of the pistol was "to entice Shipman to talk with her," police were told. When they asked her how squirting Shipman with pepper spray was going to aid the conversation, Nowak replied, "That was stupid."

A Kuhlua and Cream would have worked better. She drives 900 miles without a break, and hopefully without a leak, dons a disguise and follows this younger woman to her car. There she

pounded on her window and tried to open the door. She then asked Shipman for help.

"My boyfriend was supposed to pick me up and he is not here," Shipman said she was told. "I've been traveling, and it's late. Can you give me a ride to the parking office?"

Shipman said she declined. The woman then asked to borrow her cell phone. Shipman told her the battery was dead. When the woman began to cry and said she could not hear what Shipman was saying, Shipman lowered the window a few inches. At that point, Shipman was pepper-sprayed, she said.

Eyes burning, Shipman managed to drive away and alert a toll booth attendant who called police. They found Nowak near a parking shuttle bus stop and watched her drop items into a trash can, the affidavit stated. She was arrested after Shipman returned to identify her.

Nowak acts like she had an interruption in her O2 line during lift off. What exactly did she do on a shuttle? Her NASA bio states:

"Nowak was responsible for operating the remote arm during scheduled EVAs. "

Great. She has both a Bachelors and Master's degree in Engineering and operates a giant phallic symbol with a guy attached to the end of it. Like a sticky marshmallow pinanta on a club.

She drove nine hundred miles to spray this chick with Dog-Be-Gone. Nine hundred miles! That long a distance even going 80 mph is gonna eat up some time. Like at least twelve hours. Didn't even a little clue creep in during this time? Or was she listening non stop to Bonnie Tyler?

Turnaround,
Every now and then all my brains turn to shit and my eyes start to glaze
Turnaround,
Every now and then I gotta drive a thousand miles in a brown funky haze
Turnaround,
Every now and then I get a great old diaper and a big pellet gun
Turnaround,
Every now and then I get a folding pocket knife and start looking for fun
Turnaround whack job,
Turn the freakin' car around!
Turnaround whack job,
I can't tell my ass from a hole in the ground!

And I need a clue tonight
And I a clue more than ever
But I' must be wound too tight
I'll probably die in this forsaken slammer
There's no way I'll ever be contrite!
I shoulda turned around in Alabama!
I'll entice her with my pepper spray!
If I scream at her she will obey!
I 'm screaming like a moonbat and I'm always in the dark!
I'm pounding on her window and I'm giving off farts!
I really need a clue tonight
My ass'll be in jail tonight
My ass'll be in jail tonight

Once upon a time I was flying through space
But now I shit alone in the dark.
There's nothing I can do
But sit here and count my stretch marks.

Once upon a time orange spacesuits were my style
Now I wear orange jumpsuits in the pen.
There's nothing I can do
I really screwed up again.

As upset as I have gotten, I generally come to my senses after a bit. I think that would be especially so after you've just almost a thousand miles. Must be her training.

NYC Plans To Honor Cop Killer

On December 9th, 1981, a 25 year old Philadelphia police officer by the name of Daniel Faulkner pulled over a Volkswagen driving the wrong way on Locust Street. In a few minutes, Officer Faulker was dead.

As Danny attempted to handcuff William Cook, Mumia Abu-Jamal ran from across he street and shot the officer in the back. Danny turned and was able to fire one shot that struck Abu-Jamal in the chest; the wounded officer then fell to the pavement. Mumia Abu-Jamal stood over the downed officer and shot him four more times at close range, once directly in the face.

Mumia Abu-Jamal was found still at the scene of the shooting by officers who arrived there within seconds. The murderer was slumped against the curb in front of his brother's car. In his possession was a .38 caliber revolver that records showed Mumia had purchased months earlier. The chamber of the gun had five spent cartridges. A cab driver, as well as other pedestrians, had witnessed the brutal slaying and identified Mumia Abu-Jamal as the killer both at the scene and during his trial.

It's not as if there was a lot of confusion over identifying the suspect, or questions of violating his constitutional rights during a rigorous interrogation. The dude was there, he shot the cop and was himself shot in return. More on the specific actions of Officer Faulkner's killer.

Officer Faulkner was able to draw his gun and fire one return shot at his assailant, Mumia Abu-Jamal. This bullet was later extracted from Mr. Jamal's upper abdomen. Having fired this shot, Officer Faulkner fell to the sidewalk. While the wounded officer lay helpless and unarmed on his back, Mr. Jamal was seen by four individuals standing over the Officer with his five shot, .38 caliber Charter Arms revolver in his hand. From approximately 3 feet, Jamal began to fire at the officer's upper body.

That's four witnesses who testified that Abu-Jamal (real name Wesley Cook, he was the older brother of the man Officer Faulkner was trying to arrest) shot Officer Faulkner. If four people who by coincidence happen to be in the same approximate location and witness a crime, it behooves any cop in his right mind to slam the cuffs on whomever they point their finger at.

Officer Faulkner is believed to have been conscious at this point and to be looking up at his assailant, who was later identified by several people at the crime scene as Mumia Abu Jamal. It's believed that in an attempt to save his life, Faulkner began to roll from side to side as Jamal fired at him. Jamal missed his first several shots. He then moved closer to Faulkner and bent down over him. Mr. Jamal put the muzzle of his gun within inches of Officer Faulkner's face, and squeezed off the final, and fatal, shot. The bullet entered the officer's face slightly above the eye and came to rest in his brain, killing him instantly.

This is death penalty territory. No need to go any further. Please go here to sign the petition against naming a Harlem street after this piece of unrepentant filth.

There is no reason whatsoever for this waste of oxygen to still be alive today. Yet there are those who disbelieve witnesses and a court reviewed sentence.

Mumia Abu-Jamal was arrested at the scene.
He couldn't flee, he had been shot in the chest.
Sucking chest wounds discourage flight.
The weapon was recovered at the scene.
He bought the gun.
He registered the gun.
The gun was his.
Officer Faulkner was shot five times.
The gun was fired five times.
Four witnesses testified that Abu-Jamal shot Officer Faulkner.
Four witnesses testified that Officer Faulkner shot Abu-Jamal.
One witness, Robert Chobert, was directly behind Officer Faulkner's car.
Bullet fragments were "consistent" with the Charter Arms that Abu-Jamal was carrying.

Sometimes all you get are fragments, depending on the type of ammunition, distance to the target and what the slug passes through before coming to rest. The notion of a perfectly formed (or deformed into a "mushroom") bullet is not that common. I was a crime scene specialist, an evidence technician, for eight years. I've recovered quite a number of bullets under many different circumstances. Sometimes even a bullet that seems remarkably whole to the naked eye is difficult to impart to a specific firearm due to irregularities in the rifling striations.

If the bullets passed through Officer Faulkner's body and hit the pavement or other hard object (see the crime scene map here, remember it is not a sketch and is not draw to scale), there could be sufficient damage to the projectiles as to render them useless for a 100% certainty match to the firearm.

It makes my head hurt, but I sometimes try to understand how a convicted murderer like Abu-Jamal attracts such a freakishly dedicated flock of jackasses who maintain his innocence despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. But this is standard operating procedure for moonbats. Any means that will revoke or weaken the rule of law, specifically laws that they don't like, is to be pursued.

Wild assed conspiracies seem to be the mother's milk of liberals. They just happened to latch on to this insane Mumia titty and are working it for all it's worth. The efforts to have a street named after Abu-Jamal are an attempt to legitimize his protestations of unfair treatment at the bar.

This is a list of the lunatic conspiracies that the liberals insist denied their murderous poster child a fair trial. Some of them are:

1) The bullet that killed Officer Faulkner was a .44 caliber bullet, while Jamal's gun was a .38 caliber.

Wrong, just.... so wrong. There was never any evidence that another weapon was used. Police backup was there in minutes as Officer Faulkner had previously called in for assistance. Mumia's revolver was recovered at the scene with the spent cartridges still in the gun.

2) Several "eyewitnesses" saw someone else shoot Officer Faulkner and then escape up an alley.

Where are these witnesses? Obviously the Philadelphia Police Department's "Witness Intimidation Unit" has successfully kept these people silenced for over 25 years. These cops are amazing. Long after they are retired or dead they continue to scare the crap out of people.

3) Mumia Abu-Jamal was denied his right to self representation, in violation of his Constitutional Rights. Mumia Abu-Jamal's court appointed attorney was admittedly incompetent and incapable of mounting a defense on Jamal's behalf.

Can't have it both ways. Either mount your own incompetent defense or let the State do it for you.

4) The ballistics evidence used to convict Mumia Abu-Jamal was flawed. The police failed to test Jamal's hands to see if he had recently fired a gun and they never "sniffed" Jamal's gun to see if it had been fired.

This one is actually funny. Of all the guns I remanded to the crime lab, I never sniffed a one because I didn't want to get my sniffer blown all to hell. You treat every gun as if it is loaded. That means keeping your nose and all other body parts well away from the business end of the thing.

The whole ridiculous mess needs to be flushed. Just like Mumia's internal organs after the prison doctor performs the post-execution autopsy.

UPPDATE:
Last December, Michelle Malkin ran a memorial page for Officer Faulkner here.

Last year, a street in the Paris suburb of St. Denis was named after the murderer of Officer Faulkner. The April 29 ceremony was hosted by the city of St. Denis and its mayor, Didier Paillard. It appears that this was an attempt to placate the seethin' heathen hordes of Muslims who trashed this suburb in the riots of 2005. From Fox News, November 3, 2005:

In a seventh consecutive night of skirmishes, young people threw rocks at police Wednesday in six suburbs in the Seine-Saint-Denis region north of Paris — about a 40-minute drive from the Eiffel Tower. In one of them, Le Blanc-Mesnil, about a dozen cars burned and curious residents, some in slippers and bathrobes, poured into the streets.

So who in Harlem is being placated now?

Answer: What Are Clinton's Chestnuts?

Question: What was Sandy Berger trying to protect when he was snagged for stealing national security documents?

Cashill.com has a piece on what Sandy Berger, Clinton's National Security Advisor, was really after when he stole and destroyed national security documents.

If not the most skillful of embezzlers, Samuel “Sandy” Berger is a far more formidable character than the media would have us believe. When he made his now storied sorties into the National Archives, he risked his career and his reputation in so doing, and he knew it. Rest assured, he would not have done so were the secrets to be preserved not worth the risk of pilfering them.

Burglar was portrayed as a bumbling, absent minded professor type by Clinton. Everyone knows that absent minded professors cram their pants with top secrets documents. It's right in their CV. This ridiculous allegation was never questioned by the press.

In his first term, Clinton had hired this millionaire trade lawyer and lobbyist to be deputy national security advisor, not because of Berger’s foreign policy experience, which was negligible, but because of his political instincts, which were keen and reliable. Clinton entrusted Berger with some very sensitive assignments, particularly in relationship to China, and rewarded him for his trust with the job of National Security Advisor in his second term. This job does not require Senate confirmation. It is unlikely that Berger could have gotten any job that did.

Many of Clinton's advisors never passed security clearance. Remember John Huang and Chinagate?

Based on the testimony of a retired USAF Lt. Col. who was assigned White House duties, Cashill states:

At that time Col. Buzz Patterson carried the "nuclear football" for President Clinton. Given his security clearance, Patterson was entrusted with any number of high security assignments. One morning in "late-summer,” Patterson was returning a daily intelligence update from the Oval Office to the National Security Council when he noticed the heading "Operation Bojinka."As Patterson relates, "I keyed on a reference to a plot to use commercial airliners as weapons." As a pilot, he had a keen interest in the same. "I can state for a fact that this information was circulated within the U.S. intelligence community," Patterson writes, "and that in late 1996 the president was aware of it." The President’s hand written comments on the documents verified the same.

The Philippine police had uncovered plans for aerial assaults as early as January 1995 and shared those plans with the FBI almost immediately. The man responsible for those plans was Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing and very possibly an Iraqi contract agent. His accomplice was Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9-11 and allegedly Yousef’s uncle.

In a chestnut shell, Berger was trying to hide Clinton's knowledge of a possible airborne attack on the US five years before 9/11. And there's more. A lot more...

This Is Not A Tragedy

The following article is an example of just how screwed up our legal system's thinking is (hat tip to Maxxdog).

The Wright County attorney's office will not charge a Rockford, Minn., man who fatally shot his girlfriend's ex-boyfriend as he broke into the couple's barricaded bedroom. Eric M. Cegon, 30, shot and killed Erik A. Richter, 35, about 3:30 a.m. Dec. 13. Richter had broken into the apartment Cegon shared with Richter's ex-girlfriend, Samantha Simons, 21. It was the second time Richter had violated a court order not to contact either of them.

And here's the money quote:

"In this matter, you have a justifiable use of deadly force," County Attorney Thomas Kelly said Wednesday. "As tragic as it is, that's how it comes down."

The justifiable use of deadly force is tragic? It's tragic that no innocent victim was killed or arrested? A violent perp has been sent to his final reward. What's tragic about that?

This is not a tragedy. This is a Good Thing™ .

There should be a party. The perp, Erik A. Richter, 35, was:

armed with a loaded, half-cocked semi-automatic handgun and four additional magazines when he broke into the couple's Rockford apartment. Richter also had leg irons and handcuffs with him,

Sounds like he had a good time all planned out for his ex-girlfriend, no? What a tragedy he didn't get to enjoy himself. This County Attorney Kelly appears to be more concerned about political correctness then the lives of innocent people who were spared from God knows what atrocities by the judicious use of a firearm.

What Was She Thinking?

We lose about a half dozen teens every year to fatal MVA's, many of which are alcohol related. Drive anywhere in this county and there is a good chance you'll encounter a small cross surrounded by a withered flower arrangement stuck in the ground at the base of a tree or off the road in a culvert; a small, sad memorial for a lost loved one.

Kids just don't have the maturity, the judgement, to realize when they are placing themselves in a dangerous situation. That's why adults are supposed to supervise them and speak our minds when we see them doing stupid stuff. And it usually works, except for this piece of work, 45 year old Kelly Lobrutto.

The drink orders were placed early in the week for Saturday night's party at the LoBrutto house on Rippleton Road. For malt-based alcoholic beverages like Smirnoff Ice, the teens paid $15 a head, while beer drinkers paid $5 to $10 each.

And it is not the first time this woman is making a major mistake by getting these kids ripped.

The festivities began Dec. 9, the same night as the Cazenovia High School winter dance, so many of the two dozen revelers didn't show up until after 10 p.m. By that time, rum, vodka and beer were flowing, according to statements the teens later gave to state police investigators. And by 3 a.m., teenagers were staggering around drunk, vomiting and passing out, according to the statements filed in Cazenovia Town Court.

Sworn statements from 23 high school students who were at the party, including LoBrutto's 17-year-old daughter, Melissa, paint a frightening picture of teenagers bingeing on alcohol that they say was purchased by their friend's mother, who partied with them. Several students interviewed said it was the fourth such party at the LoBrutto house, a detail that will be part of the prosecution's case, said state police Investigator Dennis Dougherty.

This is so wrong. Binge drinking kills over fourteen hundred young people, mostly college students, every year. Read the last link, it is heart breaking. Daniel Reardon speaks about his nineteen year old son, a college freshman who drank himself to death.

Daniel was in the hospital bed for a week before we took him off of life support. And no parent, as I did, should have to get up on a hospital gurney, and just hold his son and cry for hours that he's dead, never. Sending a child to college to die, no parent should have to go through that.

The earlier a teen starts to abuse alcohol, the more likely he will follow this destructive lifestyle as he gets older.

REYNARD KINGTON, Acting Director, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism: We've known for many years that there was a problem, and we have evidence really dating back for decades that there's been a problem with drinking on college campuses, but we've never been able to really describe the parameters of the problem, how big of a problem it is. And I think that even the researchers who were involved from the very beginning were surprised by some of the conclusions. Just the magnitude of the problem is really enormous.

If 1,400 hippies were maced at a Grateful Dead concert we'd never hear the end of it. But back to Lobrutto.

By 10:30 p.m., the kids who had gone to the dance began to wander in. In some cases, Dougherty said, parents were dropping off their children at the LoBrutto residence, but had no idea alcohol was part of the gathering. Inside, teens were playing beer pong (a drinking game), doing shots and downing Long Island iced teas, a drink made with about five kinds of hard liquor, sweet and sour mix and a splash of cola. Kelly LoBrutto was in the kitchen, pouring shots and mixing drinks for the guests.

The partygoers had a variety of alcoholic drinks to choose from, some of which the teens brought with them. There was a case of Smirnoff Ice; a 30-pack of Keystone beer; a case of Bud Light; and bottles of Jagermeister; Bacardi rum; tequila; and Ice 101, a peppermint schnapps.

This is a disaster waiting to happen. It was only by the grace of God someone wasn't seriously hurt.

By midnight, one of the partygoers, a 17-year-old training to be an emergency medical technician, told police he realized some of his friends were in trouble. They were vomiting, and one friend was passed out on the bathroom floor. He and another friend carried their classmate upstairs and put him to bed. The EMT-in-training found more classmates upstairs who were sick. He stayed with them while they vomited, and began a vigil, going upstairs every 10 to 15 minutes to make sure his friends were OK.

He might have been the only one with a lick of sense at this party. And all he did was babysit some drunks. If those kids were really in trouble he would have been overwhelmed. And they could have been brain damaged or dead. Checking someone every 10t o 15 minutes to see if they are still breathing means they could be dead for nine minutes before he returns.

Throughout the evening, Kelly LoBrutto watched as students came and went. Some were picked up by parents, who didn't know what was going on inside the house; others drove themselves to and from the party. One teen told police Kelly LoBrutto woke some partygoers at 7 a.m. and ordered them out of the house. She scolded one of the girls for ruining the party by getting sick.

Melissa LoBrutto told investigators hat she spent the money she collected for the party on Christmas gifts at Carousel Center. "My first priority is my mom and protecting her," Melissa LoBrutto told police. "In the morning my mom wasn't mad at me; she was mad at everyone else."

Who's the kid here? A set of ovaries does not automatically qualify someone to be a mother. And what's with these parents? Can't they smell the booze on their children as they stagger into the car???

Kelly LoBrutto, 45, was charged with a handful of misdemeanors, including endangering the welfare of a child, unlawfully dealing with a child and criminal nuisance. She has pleaded not guilty to all the charges and is scheduled to appear in Cazenovia Town Court on Feb. 13.

Perhaps a stretch in the slammer will impart some smarts.

Fun With Numbers: Part II

After the Aussie gun debacle, I wandered over to see how our British cousins are faring after disarming their citizenry. I was in for a surprise. The British Home Office reports that Violent Crime is tumbling down to it's lowest level in twenty years; in fact all crime is down.

Well, I figured I was wrong. Taking guns away from law-biding citizens indeed does the trick.

But then I read this, and I got an incredible warm, gushy feeling, you know, the kind you get when you pick up a loveable, squirming puppy and it pisses all over your chest:

"Note: Violent crime, as measured by the BCS, includes common assault, wounding, robbery and snatch theft. It does not include homicide (as the victims cannot be surveyed) and other types of violent crime, like firearms offences."

Note to reader: BCS is the British Crime Survey

So what's going on? This report at News Max (March 2001) begins to peel back the facade of civility surrounding England's anti-gun laws.

To the great consternation of British authorities concerned about tourism revenue, a June CBS News report proclaimed Great Britain "one of the most violent urban societies in the Western world." Declared Dan Rather: "This summer, thousands of Americans will travel to Britain expecting a civilized island free from crime and ugliness ... [but now] the U.K. has a crime problem ... worse than ours."

Thousands of Americans also traveled to CBS for an unbiased story from Gunga Dan and have come away disappointed. But he got it right this time...

Not surprisingly to many observers, the violent crime rate has risen dramatically and steadily since gun bans have been instituted. That's a trend seen wherever strict gun control laws have been implemented. And that's the part of the story British officials have tried to keep under wraps.

A headline in the London Daily Telegraph back on April 1, 1996, said it all: "Crime Figures a Sham, Say Police." The story noted that "pressure to convince the public that police were winning the fight against crime had resulted in a long list of ruses to 'massage' statistics," and "the recorded crime level bore no resemblance to the actual amount of crime being committed."

The coppers know Barbara Streisand when they smell her.

For example, where a series of homes were burgled, they were regularly recorded as one crime. If a burglar hit 15 or 20 flats, only one crime was added to the statistics.

This is what is known as cooking the books. All that needs to be done is "reclassify" the crime or simply refuse to report a specific type of incident. I have seen it done recently at the local level.

More recently, a 2000 report from the Inspectorate of Constabulary charges Britain's 43 police departments with systemic under-classification of crime – for example, by recording burglary as "vandalism." The report lays much of the blame on the police's desire to avoid the extra paperwork associated with more serious crimes.

Britain's justice officials have also kept crime totals down by being careful about what to count.

It gets better.

"American homicide rates are based on initial data, but British homicide rates are based on the final disposition." Suppose that three men kill a woman during an argument outside a bar. They are arrested for murder, but because of problems with identification (the main witness is dead), charges are eventually dropped. In American crime statistics, the event counts as a three-person homicide, but in British statistics it counts as nothing at all. "With such differences in reporting criteria, comparisons of U.S. homicide rates with British homicide rates is a sham," the report concludes.

What a concept! Give Misha the credit at AIR... this is merely an "Undocumented DOA!" Case closed, let's say we hit the pub for a pint, no?

Explaining away the disparity between crime reported by victims and the official figures became so difficult that, in April 1998, the British Home Office was forced to change its method of reporting crime, and a somewhat more accurate picture began to emerge. In January 2000, official street-crime rates in London were more than double the official rate from the year before.

When you cook the crime books like this you create a potentially very dangerous situation. Policy decisions are supposed to be data-driven, that is, you establish a statistical basis that will support your policy recommendations. When the statistical base you create only exists in the fevered imaginations of liberal politicians, your policies are going to go right down the crapper. And that is exactly what has happened in Merry Ole.

When the United Nations sees the train wreck, you know it's a doozy. This from the September 19,2005 London Times:

A UNITED Nations report has labelled Scotland the most violent country in the developed world, with people three times more likely to be assaulted than in America. England and Wales recorded the second highest number of violent assaults while Northern Ireland recorded the fewest.

The study, based on telephone interviews with victims of crime in 21 countries, found that more than 2,000 Scots were attacked every week, almost ten times the official police figures. They include non-sexual crimes of violence and serious assaults.

Violent crime has doubled in Scotland over the past 20 years and levels, per head of population, are now comparable with cities such as Rio de Janeiro, Johannesburg and Tbilisi.
Based on a crime survey of the world's top industrialized countries, the U.N. report indicates that a resident of the United Kingdom is nearly 3 times more likely to become a victim of violent assault than is a citizen of the United States. The report reveals that Scotland is the most violent country in the industrialized world with over 2,000 Scots attacked every week, which amounts to about 3 percent of the population on an annual basis. England and Wales are close behind with 2.8 percent of the population falling victim to violent assault. By comparison, Americans are victimized by violent offenders at a rate of 1.2 percent.

Case closed.

Fun With Numbers: Part I

Anti-Gun BS Alert
I came upon an Aussie site "proving" how the tough Australian 1996 anti-gun legislation has been a boon to the Australian people. The old adage comes to mind:

"Figures never lie but liars never figure."

Latest official data from Australia shows a marked reduction in gun-related crime and injury following recent restrictions on the private ownership of firearms. Twelve days after 35 people were shot dead by a single gunman in Tasmania, Australia's state and federal governments agreed to enact wide-ranging new gun control laws to curb firearm-related death and injury. Between July 1996 and August 1998, the new restrictions were brought into force. Since that time, key indicators for gun-related death and crime have shown encouraging results.

What is not so encouraging is that law-abiding Australian citizens were disarmed. And now they are paying for it.

"There was a decrease of almost 30% in the number of homicides by firearms from 1997 to 1998."
-- Australian Crime - Facts and Figures 1999. Australian Institute of Criminology. Canberra, Oct 1999

People were using swords, spears, clubs and rocks loooong before firearms were invented. And guess what? They'll use them again if need be.

Those who claim that Australia suffered a "crime wave" as a result of new gun laws often cite as evidence unrelated figures for common assault or sexual assault (no weapon) and armed robbery (any weapon). In fact less than one in five Australian armed robberies involve a firearm. "Although armed robberies increased by nearly 20%, the number of armed robberies involving a firearm decreased to a six-year low."

I'm sure that every Aussie who had a Ginzu held to his throat or had the snot beat out of him is now rejoicing. What's "unrelated" about being robbed or raped? What is "related" is that you have been disarmed.

"A declining firearm suicide rate, a declining firearm assault rate, a stable firearm robbery rate with a declining proportion of robberies committed with a firearm and a declining proportion of damage to property offences committed with a firearm suggest that firearm regulation has been successful in Tasmania."
-- Warner, Prof K. Firearm Deaths and Firearm Crime After Gun Licensing in Tasmania. Australian Institute of Criminology, 3rd National Outlook Symposium on Crime in Australia. Canberra, 22-23 Mar 1999.

The operative expression is "committed with a firearm" because everything else is going to hell in a hand basket. And why not? Criminals don't need a gun anymore thanks to the gubmint. Just walk right up and take it, thank you.

Let's cut to the chase. Here are the Australian crime stats from 1996 to 2003. I couldn't use the 2004 numbers as they are obviously incomplete. The numbers tell us this:

In 1996 Australia reported 354 murders, 114,156 assaults, 14,542 Sexual Assaults, 16,372 Robberies for a total of 145,424 Violent Crimes.

In 2003 Australia reported 341 Murders (-4%), 158,629 Assaults (+39%), 18,237 Sexual Assaults (+25%) and 19,709 Robberies (+20%) for a total of 196,916 Violent Crimes (+35%).

This is the Aussie Anti-gun Miracle, 13 less murders in a nation of 20 million people.

Now examine the violent, evil, gun loving Americans.

In 1996 the FBI reported 19,645 murders, 535,594 assaults, 96,252 Rapes, 1,037,049 Robberies for a total of 1,688,540 Violent Crimes.

In 2003 the FBI reported 16,528 Murders (-19%), 895,030 Assaults (-21%), 93,883 Rapes (-3%) and 414,235 Robberies (-29%) for a total of 1,383,676 Violent Crimes (-22%).

There were 304,864 fewer Violent Crimes committed in the United States during the same period of time. Australia had 51,492 more Violent Crimes. We also have a population almost 15 times the size of Australia's (295,734,134 v 20,090,437 July 2005 est.) as well as a swelling illegal immigrant population.

Not bad.