St. Louis CofCC Blog

Washington Times:

D.C. to arm police with assault rifles

The Metropolitan Police Department has joined other major U.S. cities in arming patrol officers with assault rifles to protect them against criminals with high-powered weapons, weeks after being released from a federal program that monitors the use of excessive force.

Shows you how well D.C.’s gun control laws are working.  They worked to make the thugs better armed than the cops until now.

Time:

Australia’s Gun Laws: Little Effect

On the afternoon of April 28, 1996, Martin Bryant snapped. A striking figure with his long blond hair and milky skin, he had just eaten lunch at a cafÉ within the historic site of Port Arthur, a former prison in Australia’s island state of Tasmania. Described later by his sentencing judge as a “pathetic social misfit,” the 28-year-old then reached into his sports bag and, in the manner that others might pull out a sweater, withdrew two military-style semi-automatic rifles, which he used over the next eight horrifying minutes to kill 35 people - men, women and children - in what remains Australia’s worst mass murder.

Sharing the shock of his people, the newly elected Prime Minister, John Howard - just two months into his 11-and-a-half years in power - seized the chance to overhaul Australia’s gun laws, trampling all opposition to make them among the strictest in the developed world. “I hate guns,” he said at the time. “One of the things I don’t admire about America is their slavish love of guns . . . We do not want the American disease imported into Australia.” Howard argued the tougher laws would make Australia safer. But 12 years on, new research suggests the government response to Port Arthur was a waste of public money and has made no difference to the country’s gun-related death rates.

Though he’d acquired them illegally, Bryant used guns at Port Arthur that were lawful in Tasmania at the time. Howard argued there was no reason civilians should be allowed to own assault weapons - and under the 1996 National Firearms Agreement (NFA) these were all but banned. At huge cost, the government bought from their owners some 650,000 of the newly prohibited guns, which police destroyed. It also implemented mandatory gun licenses and registration of all firearms, helping to restrict to 5% of the population the number of Australian adults who owned or used guns last year, down from 7% in 1996.

But these changes have done nothing to reduce gun-related deaths, according to Samara McPhedran, a University of Sydney academic and coauthor of a soon-to-be-published paper that reviews a selection of previous studies on the effects of the 1996 legislation. The conclusions of these studies were “all over the place,” says McPhedran. But by pulling back and looking purely at the statistics, the answer “is there in black and white,” she says. “The hypothesis that the removal of a large number of firearms owned by civilians [would lead to fewer gun-related deaths] is not borne out by the evidence.”

A big reason for this is that Australia, like America, is importing a lot of something else. And like their American counterparts, words on paper mean nothing to them.

As a matter of history, Australia has always been anti-gun as a matter of tendency, both before and after 1996.  The reason is that Australia started as a penal colony, and one would no sooner want prisoners living in a penal colony to have guns than prisoners in real prisons to have guns.  In contrast, British gun control enforcement, among many other things, sparked the American independence movement.  Also, Australia’s indigenous population never put up a fight, unlike America’s, so guns weren’t needed to subdue the continent.

Blogging Stocks:

Wal-Mart starts strictly tracking gun sales

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) will soon be employing a new method to track gun sales in its stores. As part of a new measure in concert with the “Mayors Against Illegal Guns” group, Wal-Mart’s chief compliance officer J.P. Suarez went to D.C. with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to explain details on a new “10-point code” that will apparently thwart weapons from Wal-Mart from falling into criminal hands.

Wal-Mart will soon be video recording gun sales in its stores and then archiving the footage as part of being included in the “Responsible Firearms Retailer Partnership.” In addition, the world’s largest retailer will create a computer system to notify the company of a gun purchased in one of its stores is indeed used in a crime. If workers think they can get at guns from the inside, Wal-Mart will now perform screening and background checks on employees that will be handling and selling firearms in its stores.

In other words, if you’re a legal buyer that buys a legal gun legally at WM, and someone else winds up using it in a crime, it will somehow be your fault. I suppose the rationale is that WM is going to ferret out straw purchasers, and the assumption will be that if you bought it legally and someone else uses it in a crime, then you simply purchased it to give it to the ineligible person. What if your gun is stolen as part of a residential burglary, then used in a crime? (The more pressing problem, BTW.)  I can see it now — someone who buys a gun from WM has it stolen from him, and it’s used to murder someone.  He goes back to WM to replace it, and WM won’t sell him one.

Also, what is this big obsession with Wal-Mart? There are probably a hundred “mom-and-pop” firearm dealers for every Monopoly Mart out there. I think this country deserves at least one industry that isn’t controlled by the Fortune 1, and if I were you, I would make my purchasing decisions with this opinion in mind. Monopoly Mart won’t miss your business, the small merchant around the corner needs it, and wouldn’t insult you and drive you away by spying on you.

One reason why I think Monopoly Mart is willing to do this, and pander to “Mayors Against Illegal Guns,” is to penetrate urban areas. At the moment, Monopoly Mart often faces stiff (and succesful) opposition when it wants to open a store inside a major city, because of its preference for non-union associates, and because it does sell firearms.

Philadephia Inquirer:

Nutter defiantly signs five gun laws

Mayor Nutter likened himself and City Council members yesterday to the band of rebels who formed this country as he signed five new gun-control laws that defy the state legislature and legal precedent.

“Almost 232 years ago, a group of concerned Americans took matters in their own hands and did what they needed to do by declaring that the time had come for a change,” Nutter said as he signed the bills in front of a table of confiscated weapons outside the police evidence room in City Hall.

Goofy better stop standing on his hands and brush up on his history. Paul Revere rode around Boston and proclaimed that “The British Are Coming” because they were “coming” to enforce the Crown’s gun control edicts. Mayor Nut would also do well to remember that many of those “concerned Americans” who “took matters into their own hands almost 232 years ago” would later frame a Constitution and then Amendments thereto, the Second of which says something about the right to bear arms shall not be infringed.

The conventional wisdom is that their decision this summer on DC vs Heller will profoundly affect the Second Amendment debate for a long time.  I don’t agree with that wisdom fully, for this reason:  Washington D.C. is a Federal territory.  If SCOTUS rules against DC and uses the Second in the reasoning, this might not apply to handgun-ban cities that are within states, like New York and Chicago.  Don’t forget:  States’ Rights.  Then again, there is the Incorporation Doctrine of the 14th.  Therefore, SCOTUS ruling the right way might not have profound legal ramifications outside of Ten Miles Square.

However, if they rule for DC, this means that SCOTUS has effectively erased the 2nd from the Constitution.  If a total handgun ban cannot be nullified by “shall not be infringed,” then “shall not be infringed” might as well not be there.

This leads me to another question.  Washington D.C. is a Federal territory.  The handgun ban could have been undone sometime during the six years that President Bush was President and the Republicans ran Congress, with a simple act of the latter signed by the former.  I think the reason why it never happened is because doing so would violate D.C.’s precious “home rule,” (read:  black government), and the Republican racial lassitude.

NYPD admits that every single homicide in their city where a gun was used since Michael Bloomberg became Mayor was a result of an “illegal gun” — i.e. the suspect posessed the firearm in violation of local, state and Federal laws.  Yet, Bloomberg’s solution is to extend NYC’s failed gun laws to the whole country.

KSDK:

Realtors take steps to keep from becoming the victims of an attack, after two alleged attacks on leasing agents.

Kim Carney has been a realtor for Coldwell Banker Premier for six years. After Carney learned of the alleged attacks, she decided to have her husband call when she’s dealing with a client for the first time.

(snip)

Former St. Louis County Detective Nancy Hightshoe teaches personal safety. After the alleged sexual assault of a realtor last year in Weldon Spring, Hightshoe held a security seminar for 175 realtors from Coldwell Banker Gundaker.

(snip)

Hightshoe encourages realtors to carry a personal safety alarm. When the pin is pulled, a 120 decibel siren goes off immediately. Hightshoe said the noise is enough to startle an attacker and possibly help a victim get away.

There’s something else they could carry to protect themselves.  I wonder what that could be, Nancy.  I’m sure it’s something you did carry when you were a St. Louis County Cop, then a Detective, and something that you can still carry even as a former cop.

Contra Costa Times:

On Feb. 9, Oakland police, led by state Sen. Don Perata, D-Oakland, offered to buy handguns and assault weapons for $250 each, “no questions asked, no ID required.” The “One Less Gun” buyback program attracted so many eager sellers that the money quickly ran out. But instead of closing up shop, the police handed out IOUs good for a future buyback. The Oakland police are now stuck with a bill for $170,000.

$250 and no ID?  Talk about an incentive to steal guns.  They probably wouldn’t get close to that on Oakland’s black market.

These two pictures on Shorpy speak more than thousands of words.  Both look like they’re taking place at public high schools.  Notice what the girls are doing, and notice where the boys are racing.

Washington Post:

D.C. police are now watching live images from dozens of surveillance cameras posted in high-crime parts of the city, hoping to respond faster to shootings, robberies and other offenses and catch suspects before they get away.

Since August 2006, the city has installed 73 cameras across the city, mostly on utility poles, at a cost of about $4 million. But until recently, officers were using them mainly as an investigative tool — checking the recordings after crimes were committed in hopes of turning up leads and evidence.

Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier said she thought the department wasn’t making the most of the technology and was missing opportunities to more quickly solve crimes — or even stop them in progress. “I thought, ‘Why the heck aren’t we watching them?’ ” Lanier said.

(snip)

And so, for about 40 hours a week, a small team of officers in the department’s Joint Operations Command Center watches the live feeds from 10 to 15 of the cameras. They choose locations based on the latest crime trends — focusing, for example, on areas in Southeast Washington beset by gun violence.

(snip)

“All of [the cameras] should be monitored,” said community activist Sandra Seegars, who lives in Ward 8, which has the city’s highest rate of incidents of gun violence. “In my neighborhood, we’re not concerned about privacy — just keeping crime down and catching people who are committing the crimes.”

Okay, so “gun violence” is the problem, yet the DCPD is using the cameras to catch “suspects” and “people.”  Why not simply arrest the guns?

President Bush’s Solicitor General wants to keep the DC gun ban, while Vice-President Dick Cheney has signed a joint House/Senate/NRA amicus curiae brief against it.  In fact, the NRA’s press release states that it is “the largest number of co-signers of a congressional amicus brief in American history.”

Good going W — can’t even keep Cheney corralled.

Then again, maybe DC’s planning on a hunting trip in DC before he leaves office.

P-D:

Missouri ranked near the bottom and Illinois near the top of a national ranking of state gun regulations released Thursday by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a gun-control advocacy group.

“We make it too easy for dangerous people to get dangerous weapons,” said Paul Helmke, president of the Washington-based group.

The campaign survey puts Missouri tied for second-worst in the nation in terms of its laws governing ownership, sale and possession of weapons. Illinois ranked ninth best, it said.

California won the group’s praise as having what it considers the most comprehensive gun-control laws. Kentucky and Oklahoma tied for last place; Missouri shared the second-last ranking with Alaska, Louisiana, North Dakota and Utah.

Illinois is one of the few states that has no concealed-carry law, something the Missouri Legislature adopted in 2004 after statewide voters narrowly rejected it in 1999.

The Brady Campaign also scored Illinois higher because it doesn’t have a “castle doctrine” law, such as the one Missouri adopted last year granting a broader right to use a weapon in self-defense.

So, this means the Brady organization supports home burglaries.

World Net Daily:

Credit card company: No more buying guns

A major credit card company has issued a letter to a gun dealer canceling his payment processing services because of corporate concerns firearms were being sold to consumers in other states, in “a non face-to-face environment.” Now the move has raised the ire of the National Shooting Sports Foundation.

“Your anti-gun corporate policy is based on ignorance of the law applicable to the sale of firearms,” the NSSF wrote in response to the action taken by First Data Corp., which operates Citi Merchant Services.

The rest of the article details why the transaction is legal.

First Data Corporation is a major lobbying force for amnesty for illegal aliens, open borders, and the Latinization of America that those things portend.  The reason is that Western Union, FDC’s “flagship subsidiary,” has been until recently the most common transfer method used for USA-to-Latin America remittances, though the rise of telephone banking, online banking and debit cards is making Western Union superfluous for that purpose.

So the motto of FDC is:  Illegal aliens?  Yes.  American gunowners?  No.

Fox News:

LOS ANGELES —  A former gang member who founded an anti-violence group called No Guns has pleaded no contest to federal weapons charges.

Hector “Big Weasel” Marroquin, 51, and co-defendant Sylvia Arrellano, 25, entered pleas Thursday for three counts of manufacture, distribution and transport for sale of an unlawful assault weapon.

Arrellano also pleaded no contest to machine gun conversion and possessing a silencer and acknowledged that the crime was committed for the benefit of a criminal street gang.

She was given until Tuesday to surrender for sentencing and would likely be sentenced to four years in prison, prosecutors said.

(snip)

Marroquin founded No Guns in 1996, ostensibly to reduce gang and gun violence. The group received $1.5 million from the city as a subcontractor on anti-gang efforts but its contract was canceled last year after authorities learned that Marroquin had hired relatives, including his son, Hector “Little Weasel” Marroquin.

The son is an acknowledged 18th Street gang member who pleaded no contest in June 2007 to home-invasion robbery and was sentenced to nine years in state prison.

It may seem hypocritical for “former” gang-bangers to come out against guns.  But it’s perfectly consistent for them to do so, when you consider that their “former” line of work is made a lot easier if you take their advice.

Every time we lampoon the left about what they want to do, thinking that we’re just speaking tongue-in-cheek, they wind up actually proposing such an idea.

Larry Suffredin, a Democrat candidate for State’s Attorney in Crook County, People’s Republic of Illinois, wants to “take on guns.”  So far, no gun has yet responded to Mr. Suffredin’s criticism.

He has now turned traitor on the one issue both his (few remaining) friends and (many) foes thought he would never turn on.  His JustUs Department is siding with the gun-banners and the city of Washington, D.C. in the case in front of SCOTUS relating to the constitutionality of their handgun ban.

It’s wishing for too much, but it wouldn’t bother me in the least if both Bush and Cheney were impeached tomorrow and convicted by the Senate the next day, in order to make Nancy Pelosi the President.  That way, we would have the enemy we can see instead of the enemy we can’t.  And with a Democrat in charge, membership in the Council of Conservative Citizens and the rest of the organizational right-wing would skyrocket.

I.O. writes in with this:

Hey this might be a stretch but hang with me on this.

If Dominos says they train their crew to “safely”(whatever that means) go through a robbery are they liable for lawsuit if the crew member is injured or killed in the robbery??  I worked at a Pizza Hut when I was 18 and had to watch a video that was about getting robbed and doubt they are too dissimilar.  I was told to turn my pocket inside out and not resist.

Now lets say i get robbed and follow their directions.  I turn out my pockets and don’t resist but am still beaten badly enough to go to the ER or shot and killed even.  Would my boss be liable because they told me if I did that, I wouldn’t be hurt, but was?  Could I sue because i was explicitly told by management if I don’t resist I wont get hurt?  Could I claim I had my right to defend myself taken away from me?  Lots of concern here.

This is in response to the news that came out of St. Louis that Domino’s Bugs-On-Crust does not allow its delivery drivers to carry guns.

Remember the pizza delivering hero from last week?  If he had followed Domino’s policy, he probably would be dead today.

It’s not as if I was ever going to order pizza from Domino’s anyway — the last time I did, which was almost a decade ago, the pizza was cold and full of bugs.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Employees sign an agreement in which they agree not to carry a weapon, Domino’s corporate spokesman Tim McIntyre said, a policy designed to protect both the public and employees …. (snip) …. Domino’s trains employees to minimize their risk, both before and during a robbery, McIntyre said.

Doesn’t sound like it protects the employees very well.  If they’re trained to “minimize their risk before a robbery” in that way, they won’t be here after the robbery.  Otherwise, redlining is the only solution.

San Francisco Chronicle:

Richmond police have found the vehicle that was carjacked at gunpoint from state Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata in North Oakland, authorities said Sunday.

The red 2006 Dodge Charger was found near the corner of Wiswall and Colette drives near Hilltop Mall in Richmond at about 11 p.m. Saturday, nine hours after the carjacking, police said. The car will be processed for evidence.

(snip)

But then the man began pulling a mask over his nose and pointed an automatic handgun at him “gangster style” - holding it sideways - before tapping it on his window and bellowing at him, “Get out of the mother- car.”

(snip)

Perata, who legally carried a concealed weapon for years because of threats against his life, said there was no firearm in his car when he was carjacked.

So, Tom Perata, among the biggest anti-gun blowhards in the Mexifornia state legislature (and that competition is fierce), has a CCW permit.

KNXV-ABC-15 Phoenix:

ATF says more guns sent illegally south of the border

Spread across a conference table at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Phoenix are enough weapons to equip several car loads of drug runners.

Agents said Thursday they found the 42 weapons in a storage locker about 10 days ago. The guns were worth $250,000 in all: Belgian-made “FN” handguns, semiautomatic AK rifles and other pistols. They also found four olive boxes loaded with 50-caliber bullets — ammunition that’s big enough to take out an airplane.

“These are, quite frankly, weapons of war,” ATF special agent Tom Mangan said as he picked up an assault rifle and examined it.

(snip)

ATF officials said gun runners typically gather large caches of weapons anonymously through “straw” purchases. They might give someone $100 to go into a gun show or a Wal-Mart and buy a few rifles at a time. They might buy guns over the Internet.

You’re still obsessed with straw purchases, aren’t you?  You can’t put your minds around the fact that a lot of them, and probably most of them, are stolen in residential burglaries.

Some of those guns end up in the hands of California gangs or with coyotes herding illegal immigrants into the U.S. But Mangan said a majority of the guns are smuggled into Mexico for use by drug dealers.

Mangan said this year the ATF Phoenix office learned that about 300 assault-type weapons were brought south on one occasion, and another 200 assault-type weapons were smuggled on a separate occasion.

(snip)

The Mexican government has called on the United States to stop the flow of guns into the country, he said, but America’s firearms laws make it hard to stop gun running.

No, what makes it hard is America’s virtual open border, which the Mexican government seems to want.  The border that is open for south-to-north migration is just as open for north-to-south gun trafficking.  So they have no moral authority to complain.

However, that won’t stop them from complaining — the arrogant regime in Mexico City knows that it will get almost everything it wants from its northern neighbor, thanks to a series of successive pro-Mexican stooges in the White House.  As Vincente Fox recently said that, “Where There Is a Mexican, There Is Mexico,” the arrogant regime in Mexico City simply thinks that the new portions of Mexico north of the fiction formerly known as the USA-Mexico border should adopt Mexican gun laws.

KSDK-NBC-5, on yesterday’s “Gun Buyback“:

“We want to take away the opportunity to steal a weapon and use it against someone. Bad guys don’t go out and purchase guns, we know that. They go out and acquire guns by stealing them so if we can get them out of people’s homes, we serve two purposes. We take it out of the bad guys’ homes and take it out of homes where people have children,” said St. Louis Police Sgt. Perri Johnson.

Really?  Tell that to the ATF, which is still obsessed with straws.

By the way, is anyone really buying the notion that there were “long lines” outside the buyback facility yesterday?  And is anyone buying the notion that people in “bad guys’ homes” turned in any guns?

While the real Edward Moore Kennedy didn’t become President in 1980, the only year he ran, and he lost badly to Jimmy Carter in the race for delegates in his own party’s primaries and caucuses that season, it seems as if he is running the current White House in too many ways.

Remember that the No Child Can Get Ahead (NCLB) Education Act was mostly written by Kennedy’s staff, and now it looks like President Bush has leaned on Teddy to find him the next head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE).

And predictably, Kennedy found a real anti-gun goose.

With Michael Sullivan perhaps becoming an anti-gun head of the ATF, perhaps he and Julie Myers, the open-borders nominee to head ICE, will become best of friends.

Just when I wrote about St. Louis’s “gun buyback program” failure, it’s happening again.

I was watching KPLR-11’s news tonight, and during a break, a local PSA came up, announcing that Channel 11, in conjunction with KATZ-FM-100.3 (”100.3 The Beat, Blazin’ Hip-Hop and R&B”), and they’re co-sponsoring a gun buyback program. A cop was in on the PSA commercial, along with Channel 11’s Rick Edlund, and a KATZ personality, so I presume the SLPD is in on it, too. Though I can’t find anything about it on KPLR’s or KATZ’s websites. I did catch that it’s happening on December 15, and that one gets $50 for a handgun, or $100 for an “assault” style rifle. I was not able to catch where it was happening.

If you have more details, contact us (see the tab above).

Why is KATZ-FM a sponsor? Curious that KEZK-FM (”Soft Rock 102.5″), or KFUO-FM (”Classic 99, Bach Around the Clock”), or WIL-FM (”Today’s Country”) isn’t sponsoring.

And while we’re on the subject of KATZ-FM, remember that a few years ago, two of their personalities, “D.J. Kaos” and “Syllli Asz,” were canned because the joked around about knocking off cops. And this station thinks that the old, broken, useless and inoperable junk you’re going to hand over for money will preclude one crime in St. Louis.

UPDATE 12/7:  I saw the commercial again.  The St. Louis City Police Department website has a PDF flyer and the commercial itself.

As you can see, SLPD Maj. Alfred Adkins begins the Channel 11 PSA by stating that the “SLPD wants to get guns out of the hands of the wrong people, so they’re bringing back the popular gun buyback program.”  When it was around the first time, it was popular alright, but unfortunately it wasn’t popular with the “wrong people” — it was popular with old white widows who wanted to ditch their late husband’s hunting shotguns for a store coupon, and middle-aged white men who would have thrown away their inoperable junk anyway but they found a sucker who gave them something in return.

Being as this buyback will be in far north city on December 15, I get the feeling that the cops, the KATZ jocks and the Channel 11 personalities would be more occupied watching paint dry.

First off, even though the shooter’s name has been mentioned numerous times in other sources, I’m not going to repeat it here. I will say that he was a 19-year old white man. This shooting, like many other similar ones before it, happened because the shooters wanted to be famous, as this one admitted. Stating his name is only what he wants, and if we all one day put our collective common sense together and decide not to give these nutball shooters the publicity they want, maybe these shootings will stop.

Omahans are wondering how and why it could happen. The fact that he wanted to be famous is one reason (and how else would a convicted felon, a high school dropout, a drug addict, a common thief, and a disgraced and dismissed McDonald’s burger jockey that was such a screw-up that his girlfriend ditched him like the bad habits that he had, become famous?) — and the mall at which these shootings took placed enabled the deed by making itself a conceal-carry free zone; remember Nebraska only recently adopted CCW, and it is likely the case that, like Missouri had to, Nebraska’s unicameral state legislature had to grease the skids by allowing businesses to establish “gun-free zones.“

UPDATE 5:30 PM:  Stole the AK-47 from his stepfather.  MSM are also reporting that this is the worst shooting massacre in Nebraska history.  That’s probably true, but need I remind you about Norfolk, Nebraska in September 2002?

KPIX-CBC-5 San Francisco:

A man carrying a semiautomatic handgun approached a group of San Francisco police officers Saturday afternoon and, with a smile, handed over the pistol in exchange for $150 in gift cards.

“I used to fire it at bottles or do some plinking in the woods,” said the gun’s owner, 48-year-old Bruce Bourne. “But I have a 6-year-old daughter now and my wife was uncomfortable with it being in the house.”

For a few hours on a sunny yet brisk Saturday, San Francisco police officers accepted 100 guns from about 80 people in the city’s second “Gifts for Guns” event. The first event in July brought in 117 handguns and 2 shotguns.

The idea is to make the streets seem a little safer when the city’s murder rate has risen in recent years — San Francisco has had at least 89 homicides so far this year.

Yes, I’m sure all those empty bottles Mr. Bourne used to shoot will now feel a “little safer.”

But not everyone participating in the gun program Saturday believed it was helpful.

Peter Buxtun, a 70-year-old gun advocate, turned in two pistols Saturday that he said were worthless. He collected $300 in gift cards.

“You can buy junk guns for $10 and then use the gift cards to buy new guns,” he said. “I saw a half-dozen uniformed SF police officers taken off the street to sit for hours in a City Hall photo-op, instead of patrolling certain drug-ridden and gang-infested neighborhoods.”

And that’s the purpose — symbolism and photo-ops.  St. Louis tried the same thing in the early 1990s, with the same disappointing results.  Then again, St. Louis’s many failed schemes when it comes to “gun control” never seem to sink in to certain people’s thick skulls.

A World Series, a Super Bowl, several Stanley Cup Finals, a gaggle of NBA Finals, and now a gun search program.

Boston Globe:

Boston police are launching a program that will call upon parents in high-crime neighborhoods to allow detectives into their homes, without a warrant, to search for guns in their children’s bedrooms.

The program, which is already raising questions about civil liberties, is based on the premise that parents are so fearful of gun violence and the possibility that their own teenagers will be caught up in it that they will turn to police for help, even in their own households.

In the next two weeks, Boston police officers who are assigned to schools will begin going to homes where they believe teenagers might have guns. The officers will travel in groups of three, dress in plainclothes to avoid attracting negative attention, and ask the teenager’s parent or legal guardian for permission to search. If the parents say no, police said, the officers will leave.

If officers find a gun, police said, they will not charge the teenager with unlawful gun possession, unless the firearm is linked to a shooting or homicide.

If “gun violence” is the problem, then of course you wouldn’t charge the juveniles with any crime, because the gun did it all by itself, and seduced the juvenile into going astray. All kidding aside, what use are the “unlawful gun possession” laws if such juveniles won’t be charged? Other than keeping non-thugs in Massachusetts SSR disarmed.

The program will focus on juveniles 17 and younger and is modeled on an effort started in 1994 by the St. Louis Police Department, which stopped the program in 1999 partly because funding ran out.

(snip)

St. Louis police reassured skeptics by letting them observe searches, said Robert Heimberger, a retired St. Louis police sergeant who was part of the program.

“We had parents that invited us back, and a couple of them nearly insisted that we take keys to their house and come back anytime we wanted,” he said.

But the number of people who gave consent plunged in the next four years, as the police chief who spearheaded the effort left and department support fell, according to a report published by the National Institute of Justice.

Support might also have flagged because over time police began to rely more on their own intelligence than on neighborhood tips, the report said.

Heimberger said the program also suffered after clergy leaders who were supposed to offer help to parents never appeared.

“I became frustrated when I’d get the second, or third, or fourth phone call from someone who said, ‘No one has come to talk to me,’ ” he said. Residents “lost faith in the program and that hurt us.”

Actually, the SLPD has a very good intelligence unit, and I would rely on it far more than “neighborhood intelligence” (an oxymoron for the most part). Not only that, the “neighborhood” is no more likely to talk to the cops about illegal guns than they are about actual murders — fear of gang retribution, hatred of white authorities.

The reason this gun seizure program failed in St. Louis, and why it will fail in Boston, is that the guns will be taken, but not the wayward juveniles, who will then simply go out and procure another stolen gun.

Philadelphia Inquirer:

Gun incident cancels school game
Spring-Ford officials called it off last night after a fight in which the weapon appeared.

Spring-Ford Area High School officials called off last night’s football game after a gun incident stemming from an after-school fight over a girl.

The dispute erupted yesterday afternoon near the high school in Royersford, Montgomery County, shortly after students were dismissed.

Damn this gun for just showing up and inserting itself in between two young men feuding over the same girl.

CBS:

Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani said Thursday that he hopes to “clarify” his views on the right to bear arms when he speaks to the National Rifle Association on Friday.

I can “clarify” it right now.  He’s anti-gun, and would be an anti-gun President — he might talk differently in order to get votes, but his administration and bureaucracy would lobby for anti-gun policies, and his Federal law enforcement structure would be similarly abusive of their power in this stead, behind the scenes of the rhetoric for outward consumption.  A leopard does not so easily change its spots.

Anything that makes Bob Lowery look bad can be nothing but good.  It looks like the people of Florissant is finally beginning to recognize what a creep and cretin he is — We knew that all long.

For those of you “Friends of Florissant” who are going to collect signatures to have the state audit the city within the city limits of Florissant, be careful:  You’re dealing with a two-faced, megalomaniac who once promised that nobody would be allowed to carry concealed guns in his town in spite of state law, even as he prodded his wife to do the same.  Don’t be surprised if Lowery sends his goons cops to torture you.

Smith and Wesson is raking in record profits.

I think I know why — other than the reasons stated in this article, S&W was shunned by the domestic American gun market for a long time, because their British-based conglomerate owner, Tompkins PLC, was all too ready and eager to sell out to the anti-gun political crowd and the Clinton Administration’s “Justice” Department. S&W got so bad off, that Tompkins sold it to an Arizona-based firm that makes gun locks and safes for $15 million just a few months after Clinton left the White House, after it had bought out S&W for $112 million in 1987. This makes their $74.4 million profit for their May-June-July accounting quarter emblematic of an impressive comeback.

Since we have a relatively pro-gun White House, very few credible domestic threats to the 2nd Amendment, and S&W is safely in friendly hands, it was going to turn around, notwithstanding anything else.