American Defense Enterprises

If you are sitting by your computer 9am this Friday and have free time, you probably should check out the Cato Institute’s premiere of “10 Rules for Dealing with the Police” produced by FlexYourRights.org.  FlexYour Rights is a great group doing good to help Americans understand their 4th amendment rights.  Remember, this is NOT about whether you have something to hide or not…  This is about preserving the freedoms our cultural ancestors died to secure for us.

Civil Forfeiture  is the ~legal mechanism by which a government agency can take away your possessions without due process if there is a suspicion that they were used in a crime.  Drugs found in your car?  Police take your car.  Lots of money found that they suspect is illegally obtained, police seize your money.

Here is a great story recently on the ACLU website talking about a recent case and Georgia’s abusive civil forfeiture laws..

Short summary:

• It is just pure cash to the polic — it is one of the reasons  why the war on drugs is fought so fiercely
• Story involves person that just sold a used car, they get stopped for some unspecified reason, cops take the money under suspicion that it was ill-gotten.
• Police ADMIT the money was taken unjustly, but, require the person to file an action to get it back — most people cannot afford the legal fees for such an action, and, frequently it would cost more in legal fees than the possession was worth.
• This is rampant abuse.

Police should NEVER have a monetary incentive to enforce the law.  No fees from tickets, no civil forfeiture, etc.  There is just too much room for evil…

When we receive testimonials like this, it makes all of our efforts worth while.  At the same time, it also makes it clear that the world we are living in is getting scarier, not safer.

> Hi bill,
>
> I hope you remember me, it’s ___. I took your classes for six
> months roughly 3 years ago and the skills you taught me saved my life
> only a few hours ago. I’m driving to LA from Austin and I stopped at a
> bar in ft. Stockton to watch the rest of the bcs championship game. I
> was cornered by two men and at first they were just talking to me, and
> something I said pissed one guy off and his buddy pulled a knife and
> told me to go outside, I did as I was told. The guy I pissed off then
> confronts me and tells me he runs this city and now I “fucked with the
> crazy cricket”. He told his buddy to go inside then he pulled a small
> 9mm semi auto on me and told me some bullshit about being the wrong
> person to mess with or something of that nature. He kept saying that I
> thought he wouldn’t shoot taunting me to provoke him. He then pointed
> it at my head from probably 6 feet away then raised it up higher and
> fired. As soon as he shot I heard the unmistakeable sound of a double
> feed and saw the slide was stuck half back so I tackled him and took
> the gun away. I dropped the mag into my hand and popped the slide to
> clear the second round. I pointed the gun at him and called my brother
> who was inside the bar and we ran to our car. I cleared the gun and
> took the mag and chambered round with me, and left the gun on the
> ground. I honestly believe that if it weren’t for you, I might be not
> be alive or at the very least would have been injured. I cannot thank
> you enough!!! I will be in la for a few weeks ,if you want to call me
> at ___________ or email me back.
>
> Thank you very very much,
> _________________
>

Here is a winner story for you… A high school kid was expelled because he had some shotguns in his car.  Of course, the fact that they were legal and that he was parked off of school grounds shouldn’t sway the decision of the school board, should it?

“Willows High Principal Mort Geivett and other district officials did not appear to dispute that the parking space was off school property, but they cited several justifications. One of them was the legal doctrine of in loco parentis — where school officials may act in place of a parent for school functions.”

Really?  Seriously….  REALLY???? So, my parents don’t care if I go duck hunting in the morning, but, my school as parent does care and doesn’t let me? Wow.

It’s not like it was this kid:

I had a conversation with a friend the other day about gun control.  He really liked the idea of banning guns because it would reduce murder.  I tried to point out that there were already laws against murder — still, he insisted, it had to so something…..

This morning I woke up, considering the pending Supreme court case against Chicago (no guns allowed), and that I will probably never visit my friend in New York because of their weird gun licensing issues and I wondered….  In LA, while it wont last, the gun laws are very permissive compared to New York and Chicago.. So..  What is the murder rate in these 3 cities?

I found this nice CBS  story which gave me some numbers for 2008…  I decided to make a table.

Hmm..  My exciting conclusion?  Gun control seems to not be the deciding factor in determining murder rates.

Nothing new here…  Here is a nice story from Gun Owners of America.  Here is a well written summary from that article:

“The reason that European nations with more guns tend to have lower violence is political rather than criminological. Gun ownership generally has no affect on how much violent crime a society has. Violent crime is determined by fundamental economic and sociocultural factors, not the mere availability of just one of an innumerable bevy of potential murder instruments. Politicians in nations with severe crime problems often think that banning guns will be a quick fix. But gun bans don’t work; if anything, they make things worse. They disarm the law-abiding while being ignored by the violent and the criminal. Yet nations with severe violence problems tend to have severe gun laws. By the same token, the murder rates in handgun-banning U.S. cities — New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C. — are far higher than in states like Pennsylvania and Connecticut, where handguns are legal and widely owned.”

Pretty much sums it up…  If you have high crime, restricting law abiding citizens makes things worse.  On the other hand (Consider the 1992 Kansas City experiment), if you focus on enforcing the laws that take guns from criminals — that can work.

DC is an interesting example.  They outlawed new gun ownership in 1976…  Homicide fell for 12 years against the US average — because of the restriction? Perhaps…  Then, perhaps due to drugs, it rapidly became the murder capital of the US.  Gun control reduce crime, or, did it make for a fertile soil for the criminal element to come in?  Here is the example of attempting to restrict law abiding citizens as well as criminals — of course the criminals don’t end up being very restricted in practice.

Man without hands can’t cash checks because he cannot provide a thumbprint.

Grandmother gets thrown in jail for purchasing too much cold medicine for her grandchildren.  It was obvious that she wasn’t making meth, but, the law is the law.

Clove cigarettes (and other flavored cigarettes) become outlawed.  Because kids like to smoke $8/pack lung-burning cigarettes rather than $4/pack smooth Camels (or just stealing them from their parents)?  Best law ever.  Our smoking president signed it, it doesn’t affect him.  Menthol cigarettes are specifically listed as still ok, presumably because it mostly kills black americans…

LAUSD spends $8300/student and is considered one of the worst public schools in the nation.  For $9100, we can send them to a community college.  $9k, also gets you into a decent private school — but you have to come up with that yourself.

I wonder why we are having a budget crisis…

Gotta love gun buyback programs.  They cost us money, make gun control people feel good about themselves and, unsurprisingly, dont seem to affect crime.

Story at the BradentonHerald.

“Though the sight of dozens of soon-to-be-destroyed guns might be comforting, multiple studies have shown that buyback programs probably don’t reduce gun violence.”

And my favorite quote:

““It’s highly unlikely that a person who would use guns for violence would turn them in,” said Gary Kleck, a Florida State University criminology professor who studies gun control.”

Really?  Who would have thunk?

I provide this link to a story… The 5 Reasons Men Like Crazy Women…

I identify with “liking to fix problems” personally…..

More examples I would use in that 9th grade social studies class of mine.

Here are 2 examples of photos+captions from mainstream media.  Do they represent truth?  If not, why not?