Blog
Testing
Are Carhartt Jackets Bulletproof?
This test was conducted because of the curiousity caused by the NYPD's May 2016 Officer-involved shooting wherein the officers reported that they hit someone with five shots, but four of those bullets bounced off the target's Carhartt jacket. Could this be true? Are Carhartt jackets bulletproof? Or bullet-resistant?
There are some old stories about heavy clothing stopping .38 wadcutter, but a person would need some designated body armor to stop a round of modern ammunition designed for self defense.
/fl
Law and Order
The Shooter Forecast
“We’re concerned about this,” said Karen Sheley, the director of the Police Practices Project of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois. “There’s a database of citizens built on unknown factors, and there’s no way for people to challenge being on the list. How do you get on the list in the first place? We think it’s dangerous to single out somebody based on secret police information.”
Is it the "no fly" list that Sheley is talking about?
Nope...
In a city of 2.7 million people, about 1,400 are responsible for much of the violence, [Chicago Police Department superintendent] Eddie Johnson said, and all of them are on what the department calls its Strategic Subject List.
So far this year, more than 70 percent of the people who have been shot in Chicago were on the list, according to the police, as were more than 80 percent of those arrested in connection with shootings.
So why are the left-wingers complaining about this list, while they advocate using the no-fly list to deprive citizens of a civil right?
/fl
Law and Order
Freedom Demands Accountability
Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke told an audience at the National Rifle Association-Institute for Legislative Action’s (NRA-ILA) Leadership Forum in Louisville, Ky., on Friday that when the Constitution is picked apart to fit a “leftist political agenda,” we are headed toward “government tyranny.” Read Full Story
In essence, this is a reiteration of what we (NRA et al.) have been saying for over a half century, but I'm glad that Sheriff Clarke is around to help lead the law enforcement community in the fight. The myopic mass of anti-constitutionalist's seems to be growing exponentially, fueled by the breakdown of wisdom that ties freedom to accountability.
/fl
Guns
Does pointless really need a counterpoint?
Tom Brokaw Tells College Students Owning Firearms Leads to Terrorism
On gun issues, Brokaw said common sense has to prevail. He mentioned the record number of homicides nearby in Memphis.
"I'm appalled by the determination of organizations and individuals to arm more people without any appreciation of the consequence of evermore lethal weapons in our midst," he said. "More guns and more firearm tolerance will mean more homegrown acts of terror.
While advocating for more gun control laws, Brokaw went on to tell the University of Mississippi graduates "the rule of law is inadequate if the rule of heart isn't an equal partner." Assuming that there is such a thing as "rule of heart", how can any person advocate for more law while believing that the rule of law is inadequate?
On the other hand....
Former Interpol chief Ron Noble on the Westgate Mall mass shooting
Ronald K. Noble served as assistant secretary, and then undersecretary for enforcement, at the Treasury Department during the first Clinton administration from 1993 to 1996. This made him the direct supervisor of the main federal gun control agency, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. As such, he played a major role in the Clinton administration’s very aggressive gun control program. This included changing BATF licensing practices for Federal Firearms Licensees to deny the majority of them license renewal.
After that, Noble returned to teaching law at New York University. In 2000, Noble was elected secretary-general of Interpol, the first non-European ever to hold the post. Noble went on to serve three terms as secretary-general, leaving in 2014. He now runs a global security consulting firm based in Dubai, RKN Global DWC LLC.
As Noble explains, his 14 years of close involvement in global counterterrorism changed his perspective on gun control. This week, he has published a video about the 2013 mass shootings at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi. The video, “Armed Citizens Can Help Stop Terrorist Massacres Like Nairobi and Paris,” shows graphic footage of the attack and of the response of armed citizens. During the lengthy and well-planned attack, more than 60 innocent people were murdered. As Noble explains, the death count would have been hundreds more if not for the armed citizens who intervened. As Noble puts it, “This is not an American argument, nor a political argument. In these horrific situations, law-abiding armed citizens have helped protect others and literally saved lives, and the world should be made aware of this reality. . . . In the hands of law-abiding citizens, guns can and do save lives.”
And that's the way it is....
/fl
Politics
And why nobody who values freedom should either
I'm referring to this recent article by Jack Cashill: Why George Zimmerman won't vote for Hillary
Hillary Clinton has actively embraced the falsehoods surrounding the 2012 shooting death of Trayvon Martin.
/fl
Law and Order
What happens in Colorado will not stay in Colorado
In this nation, drunkenness has always been considered a counterculture. What happens if drunkenness (recreational impairment) becomes the culture? Ever watch one of those Russian car-crash compilations on YouTube? I call them the "Vodka Chronicles." If you have watched one of those video's, you could be looking at a preview of things to come if the "recreational" use of marijuana becomes widespread in the United States.
Consider this: when you are driving on a two-lane highway, meeting traffic, and have two vehicles meeting one another, each vehicle traveling at the speed limit, say 55 MPH; the relative speed between the two vehicles is 110 MPH. If, when you meet and pass one another, the distance between your vehicle and the vehicle that you are meeting is 20 feet, that 20 foot space represents 0.12 seconds. That's 0.12 seconds that separates you from instant death should there be a bobble. Can you react in time if the guy you are meeting is high on something and crosses the center line?
Watch the Vodka Chronicles, and you can get an idea of what to expect if recreational drunkenness becomes prevalent in our society. With government already salivating over potential tax revenue, it looks like we could be headed there.
Time to work on your reflexes!
/fl
Truth and Media
Truth has no agenda, but beware
I know for a fact that media reports are not always trustworthy; factual error is common, but untruth, even outright lying, are status quo when driven by an agenda. Beware.
In his final Afterburner edition, Bill Whittle touched on his work helping bring to light one of the most atrocious examples of media and prosecutorial misconduct that I have ever witnessed in my lifetime.
The Zimmerman "trial" should be cataloged as a landmark example of systematic corruption. It's worth reviewing as a reminder to every law-abiding citizen; the forces of evil lie in wait, and are more powerful than any one person.
/fl
Civil Rights
2nd Amendment: Subsidiary Activity
The Second Amendment, in protecting a right to have guns for self-defense, also protects the “right to acquire weapons for self-defense.”
If “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” is to have any force, the people must have a right to acquire the very firearms they are entitled to keep and to bear...
...there is no “categorical exception from Second Amendment scrutiny for the regulation of gun stores. If such were the case, the [government] could enact a total prohibition on the commercial sale of firearms.
Second Amendment may invalidate ban on opening new gun stores in a California county
9th Circuit opinion on rights of gun stores applies standard, rigorous Second Amendment doctrines
'Stand Your Ground' Laws
Reviewing The Elements
Here it is mid-year 2016 and I still see an occasional article in the news media that has someone protesting "stand your ground" (SYG) laws as being "shoot first, ask questions later", or some sort of "license to kill."
It takes quite a while to drill all the way to the bottom and get everyone educated, or so it seems. The term 'stand your ground' refers to one of the five legal elements of self-defense, and it applies only in jurisdictions where there is no duty to retreat.
What are those five legal requirements for using deadly force in self-defense? Innocence, reasonableness, imminence, proportionality, and (in a minority of state's), the duty to retreat — or avoidance. Avoidance is not always possible, or safe, even in jurisdictions that have no provision for SYG.
Time for a good review of the facts regarding what SYG is — and what it isn't...
None better than this:
If you want to learn more about the subject, Andrew Branca has just released the 3rd Edition of his excellent book The Law of Self Defense.
And, it's wise to be prepared for the aftermath of having to defend yourself.
/fl
Law and Order
Chicago — That Toddling Town
From Friday through dinnertime Sunday, we counted 50 shot, 8 of whom left this mortal world...
To date, 6 of the 1,245 individuals shot in Chicago have been by police, for a percentage of 0.0048192771 - four-tenths of one percent...
The number killed is 4 out of 212, for a percentage of 0.0188679245 - just under 2%.
Not just Chicago though. Since the summer of 2014, America has been confronted with an insurrectionist protest movement known as "Black Lives Matter", the inverse implication of which is 'White Lives Don't Matter', which claims that police officers are among the greatest threats—if not the greatest threat—to young black males. Heather Mac Donald challenges that narrative in the video below, explaining why proactive policing tactics, from stop-and-frisk to “broken windows,” constitute the greatest public policy success story of the last quarter century.
In addition to the proactive community policing, and maybe more importantly, a major contribution to the stability of our society has been the increase of the number of law-abiding citizens who are exercising their civil right to bear arms for the defense of personal safety and security.
/fl
Right to Bear Arms
Assault Weapon Bans: Can They Survive Rational Basis Scrutiny?
ABSTRACT: In the last two decades, legislatures and courts have been increasingly willing to argue that a certain class of firearms termed “assault weapons” are not protected by the Second Amendment, and may be regulated or banned even though functionally identical firearms are not generally subject to such laws. Do such underinclusive bans survive even the lowest level of scrutiny: rational basis?
Full report by Clayton E. Cramer