Posts Tagged ‘WA’
Seattle
SEATTLE HAS GANG PROBLEM, NOT GUN PROBLEM, SAYS CCRKBA
Seattle’s recent spike in violence and murder has more to do with gangs and the tolerance of a “thug culture” than it does with firearms ownership, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today, in response to a remark from a police official.
Seattle Deputy Police Chief Nick Metz is quoted in a newspaper asserting, “A person who has a gun is more likely to use a gun.”
But CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb retorted, “With all due respect, Chief Metz needs to say that to the more than 365,000 law-abiding gun owners who now possess active concealed pistol licenses and haven’t fired a shot in Seattle or anywhere else, except in self-defense. He needs to make that assertion to the estimated one million gun owners in Washington State who do not deserve being lumped in with a bunch of criminals who cannot legally own or carry firearms.”
Seattle’s homicide rate so far this year is about four times last year’s and that was before the recent rampage by Lee Stawicki in a “mellow cafe.”
Stawicki’s family described him as mentally ill and angry.
Mt. Rainier Shooting
Rummell note that some are Cashing In on shooting of a park ranger in Mt. Rainier National Park:
What really got my fur up was this quote from the news article linked to earlier.
It has been legal for people to take loaded firearms into Mount Rainier since 2010, when a federal law went into effect that made possession of firearms in national parks subject to state gun laws.
Bill Wade, the outgoing chair of the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees, said Congress should be regretting its decision to allow loaded weapons in national parks. He called Sunday’s fatal shooting a tragedy that could have been prevented. He hopes Congress will reconsider the law that took effect in early 2010, but doubts that will happen in today’s political climate.
So a disturbed young man who willfully gunned down four people in the city, someone who fired upon park rangers and killed one in order to make a mad dash into the woods, would have refused to enter the park if there was a law against bringing firearms there?
Why don’t they just allow guns in national parks but make shooting park rangers illegal?
Also, from a CNN story on the incident:
The suspect “pulled up, did a U-turn, jumped out and fired on the two ranger vehicles and shot them through their vehicles,” according to Bacher. Camiccia was not hit, but Anderson was shot in her vehicle. Anderson apparently did not have a chance to draw her weapon.
“If I was sitting in that car or anyone here, we would be dead. There’s nothing she could have done,” said Troyer, from the Pierce County sheriff’s department. “That guy had something … high-powered enough that, from any amount of distance, nobody is going to win that gunfight.”
I wonder what’s behind that “…” in “something … high-powered”? And if anyone is surprised that a gun can shoot through a car. Without knowing what editing was done, it’s hard to tell what the sheriff was really saying about “high-powered” weapons.
Meanwhile, a link from the CNN story’s page: Cops: Babysitter chops up girl, 9, w/hacksaw, Hides head in freezer.
I haven’t watched the video of the story, but I wonder if people are calling for hacksaw control.
(No, I don’t…)
Condolences to the family of the ranger. She was just doing her job.
Any Gun is Better than No Gun
10-year-old Wash. boy defends mom with BB gun
Police in Bellingham, Wash., say a 10-year-old boy defended his mother from an attacker by shooting him in the face with a BB rifle as many as four times.
The man accused of the attack rents a room in the woman’s home and came home drunk and angry Tuesday morning. Police say he kicked in a bedroom door and started choking the woman.
Dogs
Kirkland pit bull incident probably a ‘good shoot’
The weekend shooting of an aggressive pit bull at a Kirkland park appears to fall well within the guidelines of self-defense under this state’s statutes, and the incident has ignited a furious debate about dangerous dogs.
The case, according to Alan Gottlieb, executive vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation in Bellevue, underscores why his organization fought to nullify Seattle’s illegal parks gun ban. The State Court of Appeals is now mulling that case. Joining SAF in that lawsuit were the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, the National Rifle Association, Washington Arms Collectors, and five local residents.
The city lost the first round in King County Superior Court and appealed. Oral arguments before the State Court of Appeals were held in March.
It sounds like the gun owner was walking his dog in the park when it was attacked, apparently without provocation or warning, by three pit bulls. He and the pit bull owner repeatedly tried to get the attackers off the gun owner’s dog, but the pit bulls wouldn’t give up. One of them turned on the gun owner, and drew a legally-concealed handgun and shot it. It wasn’t killed outright, was taken to the vet, and is expected to survive.
Neither the gun owner’s dog nor the attacking pit bulls were on a leash, which is illegal.
Banning Not Smoking
King County wants to ban public e-cigarette smoking
Five years after Washington residents voted to ban smoking cigarettes, cigars and pipes in public places, King County wants to add one more thing to the list: Electronic cigarettes…
“The idea is that even though they’re not exactly identical to cigarettes, people see folks using e-cigarettes, and they think somebody else is smoking,” said Bud Nicola, a King County Board of Health member and affiliate professor with the University of Washington School of Public Health.
“It makes it very difficult for inspectors.”
So the answer, of course, is to ban not smoking.
Reminds me of the open carry debate in California: It’s legal to openly carry an unloaded gun, but it’s too hard to know whether or not the gun is unloaded, so unloaded guns are a threat to the ban on loaded guns.
What should be done with these incremental increases to bans is to rescind the original ban and then vote on a new ban with the original and the additional restrictions in place.
Want to ban e-cigs based on the cigarette ban? Cancel the cigarette ban and start over with a new ban on both. If you can get that passed, you’ve got what you want. If you can’t, I guess you’re reaching too far.
(For the record, Murdoc likes eating in restaurants without any smoke in the air. He also thinks a government ban on smoking in those restaurants is out of line.)
Except as Permitted
Murdoc is guessing that shooting the No Shooting sign is not permitted.
ATF Can’t Tell Toys from Machine Guns
Agents of Incompetence: ATF Dodges FOIA, Still Has Seized BB Guns
Somehow I’ve managed to miss this story until now. It appears that the Customs and Border Protection guys seized some airsoft guns in Washington back in February and claimed that they were real machine guns disguised as toys. They turned them over to the BATF who agreed.
When a Freedom of Information Act request was filed, they provided information about a different case from 2004.
Dracula with a Pipe Bomb
Self-proclaimed vampire brings out Seattle SWAT
My guess is that the girls won’t be swooning over this cat.
Lack of support for Washington state AWB
The bill was named in honor of 18-year-old Aaron Sullivan, who was shot and killed by a SKS 7.62-caliber rifle in Seattle in July. The legislation focuses on “military-style” assault weapons, which can fire rapidly and carry large magazines of ammunition.
The SKS? Large magazines of ammunition?
And I won’t even mention “7.62-caliber,” which would be the main armament of a World War 2 heavy cruiser.
Washington state felons should have voting rights, federal court rules
Just yesterday I posted a story about a Washington state ex-felon who is going to prison because his wife owns guns and he’s not allowed to “possess” firearms.
Now a federal court has ruled that the state cannot bar incarcerated felons from voting.
Can vote while in prison but can’t live with someone who has a gun years after getting out?
The ruling is going to be appealed.
Possession
Bremerton man faces prison sentence for wife’s guns
Luke T. Groves was convicted of a felony in 1990. In 2008, he called police after his home was broken into. His wife owns two guns (and owned them since before they were married, I understand) so the guy goes to prison for being a felon in possession of guns. 31 to 41 months.
This is brilliant:
During closing arguments, Deputy Prosecutor Giovanna Mosca painted a simple picture for jurors: Groves had the guns in his “dominion and control,” and that was enough for a conviction.
Mosca used a metaphor to make her case: When you rent a movie or check out a book from the library, “you don’t own it, but you possess it,” she said.
But Groves didn’t “rent” the guns or “check out” the guns, did he? His wife did.
I will admit that I guess I didn’t realize this worked like this. The comments are full of people saying things to the effect of “c’mon, everyone knows felons can’t have guns” and even some who defend him say “he didn’t hurt anyone, he only wanted to protect his family.” Neither of these have any bearing on the case.
What matters is if guns owned by his wife were “possessed” by him. Apparently, the fact that he knew where they were made a big difference. If she had hid the guns from him, would he still have been in possession of them?
It’s not said whether the guns were secured, only that he led police to them and that they were in the couple’s bedroom.
I certainly am in favor of making people follow the rules. If the rules are bad, get the rules changed. Don’t break them.
But I’m not sure I’m buying the idea that a man who committed a crime when he was 17 can marry a gun owner when he’s 31 and she has to get rid of her guns. If that’s accurate (and it apparently is) I think it needs to be looked at again.
The story is short on details that may affect my opinion. Besides not telling us how the guns were stored, it doesn’t tell us what plea bargain he turned down and what evidence he wanted to use that was not allowed.
They plan to appeal the ruling.
A Right with Limitations
Via Random Nuclear Strikes, we find this Seattle Times editorial concerned with recent shootings of police officers:
A constitutional right to own a gun does not carry a subsequent right to put others at risk, or to amass a personal armory with a lethal capacity beyond some hypothetical need for household defense.
Got that? The Seattle Times editorial staff thinks that A) household defense is “some hypothetical need” and B) the right guaranteed legally by the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution should be limited to the absolute bare minimum for personal safety.
I wonder if they believe that other “constitutional rights” should be so severely limited. Say, for instance, the one about freedom of the press from government abridgment. Should the 1st Amendment be interpreted to mean that the press does not have a capacity to print stories beyond some hypothetical need for household safety?
