American Defense Enterprises

I can just imagine the marketing campaign for bullet proof breast implants.

Bulletproof Boobs … Now with Kevlar! … well, not quite.

You might remember the shooting at a Simi Valley dental office on July 1 of lost year.  A man upset about an impending divorce shot and killed his soon to be ex-wife and wounded three others including Lydia Carranza.  It seems that Carranza’s artificially well endowed chest may have saved her life.  The bullet apparently hit her size D saline implant and fragmented allowing only pieces of the bullet to enter her body and saved her life.

An LAPD firearms instructor told the Times it’s possible the implant interrupted the velocity of the bullet.

“I don’t want to say a boob job is the equivalent of a bulletproof vest,” Scott Reitz told the Times. “So don’t go getting breast enhancements as a means to deflect a possible incoming bullet.”

You may recall a recent shooting in a Richmond, CA church.  Three men entered the church and paced up and down the aisles with hooded sweatshirts on looking for two church going young men.  Upon finding the two men they fired several shots that wounded the two men and left several bullet holes in the church interior.

In response to the shooting City Councilman Nat Bates stated “he will try to restore a long-abandoned local ordinance allowing police to randomly search vehicles for weapons and contraband. Had it still been in place, he said, the men might have thought twice about carrying a gun.”

It is amazing that people would respond to having their safety violated by further violating their rights protected under the 4th Amendment.

Per CNN (thanks Slashdot), DHS has lost something like 243 guns.  75% of them because the officers did not secure the weapon — you know, front seat of an unlocked car, etc.

“Im sure it will be fine — Ill only be in 7-11 for a moment….”

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,
> _________________
>

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.

As the Jewish High Holy Days approach, there have been some stories about synagogues proactively training with guns for defensive purposes.

Perhaps the most outspoken has been Rabbi Gary Moscowitz.  Here is a link to the story at the NY Post, “Go ahead, make my high holiday” .

The story’s focus on extremist Muslims is justified, there is a genuine threat there (here is a current example and the impetus for Moscowitz), but, do any of us really believe this is limited solely to Jewish synagogues or to Muslim attackers?

AB962 will:

• remove mail order ammunition sales
• add cost to sales because vendors will be required to record personal information and fingerprint every purchaser and keep records for inspection
• force vendors to redesign stores to keep ammunition in locked cabinets or out of public consumer areas.

This will not reduce crime (obviously). This will create unnecessary burdens on ammunition vendors and firearm range owners. This is a waste of money and effort and only serves as a form of harassment against law abiding citizens. As CK mentioned, this now moves to the Governer’s desk for a signature or veto. If he does not act in 30 d, this will automatically become law. In the past, he has always signed or vetoed such legislation after waiting until the last minute to hear comment from the community — usually signed ( .50 cal ban, microstamping).

Please contact the Governor now…

Email him here.

Or, if you are a little less lazy, consider calling/faxing or writing him here:

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger

State Capitol Building

Sacramento, CA 95814

Phone: 916-445-2841

Fax: 916-558-3160 ( new number )

Heck…. Just do all four.

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?

Probably many of you heard this story over the weekend.  Short summary: a wheelchair man was sexually assaulted in the bathroom of a supermarket.  WTF.  Anyway, there was a nice perspective on this from the  Examiner (via TheWaronGuns blog) written by a paraplegic confined to a wheelchair…

“The rape of a handicapped man is, of course, just one example of the strong preying on the weak: an adult abusing a child, a large, strong man assaulting a smaller, generally physically weaker woman, and a gang attacking an individual are a few others.  I chose to write about this today because of the incident’s personal relevance to my situation.“

If I were a 9th grade teacher I would use this as an example.

Regarding the story we posted about the 72 year old that shot at 4 suspects during an attack.

Here is the MSNBC story we already posted.

Compare that to:

This NY Post Story.