It’s a well worn category here, and that itself is a sad commentary on the state of affairs in Amerika.  Here is the first report we discussed just recently.

HENRICO, Va. (WTVR) –Ruth Hunter, a 75-year-old woman, said she was tied up while State Police invaded her Henrico apartment.

She said officers told her during the raid what they were looking for, and court documents also show the information. She said she had nothing to do with the investigation.

Virginia State Police said a drug investigation is what prompted a Henrico County magistrate to issue a warrant for an apartment in the 5600 block of Crenshaw road.

The woman claims that officers ultimately arrested a man who lives two doors down from her.

“I thought someone was breaking in to rob or kill me,” Hunter said.

Seconds after her front door flies open Hunter said she heard a voice yell “Police!”

“…Took my hands with a tie-thing and said ‘You’re under arrest’ and started asking questions,” she recalled. “The more I told them I didn’t know these people, the more he continued.”

Hunter said that police left her apartment and went two doors down, while she was left handcuffed with a zip tie.

The fiancé of the man arrested says she was there at the time, and asked CBS 6 to hide her identity

“Just so happened they came to the apartment and they got it mixed up,’ she said.

The team left her zip tied because as you know, seventy five year old women are such an ever-present danger to law enforcement.  She could have thrown down with the best of them while they were busy doing other things, like going to the right house rather than grandmother’s place.

Next up, police in Miami-Dade badly beat a young man with Down Syndrome for packing a Colostomy bag.

Gilberto Powell says the police were following him in their cruiser as he was walking home. The police report says the officers decided to stop Gilberto after they noticed a “bulge” in Gilberto’s pants. After an officer tried to conduct a patdown, the report claims Gilberto attempted to flee.

Gilberto denies trying to run away and says he did everything the officer asked him to do. What happened next resulted in the photograph above.

After Powell was finally handcuffed and questioned, the officers realized he was “mentally challenged, was not capable of understanding our commands, and that the bulge in his waistband was a colostomy bag,” the report said.

By that time, Gilberto had been hit, knocked to the ground and the bag had reportedly been ripped from his body. The father says by the time he and Gilberto’s mother ran outside to their son, the cops had removed Gilberto’s pants and had him out there in his boxer shorts.

The mother asked the officer, “Didn’t you know he was a Down Syndrome kid?” to which the cop responded, “I’m not a doctor, I didn’t know.”

The family’s attorney Philip Gold said that it should’ve been immediately obvious that Gilberto has special needs.

If you just look at Gilberto, he 5-foot-3, 130 pounds with Down Syndrome, it’s 100 percent obvious he has Down Syndrome,” he said. It’s impossible to believe [the police’s story] if you hear one word out of Gilberto’s mouth.”

Because even though Florida’s stop and identify statute applies only to prowling and loitering, 5 foot tall boys with Down syndrome and colostomy bags are such a danger to society.

Next up, news from Framingham.

A Boston television station reported Thursday night,  Framingham Police and members of the Massachusetts State Police raided the wrong apartment Thursday morning, when conducting a drug raid.

The police meant to raid 78A at 6 a.m. Thursday morning but instead raided 78B, which was occupied by a mom and her five children, ranging in age from 4 to 18.

Oh, what’s the difference, 78A and 78B?  The alpha-numeric characters are, after all, so similar.  I’m sure that officers pointed rifles at women and children just in case, you know, so they could be assured of going home safely at the end of their shift.  But don’t forget that we have history with the Framingham Police Department when innocent Mr. Eurie Stamps was shot to death by their SWAT team.

Finally, no door is safe with a SWAT team on the prowl.

Midland-A Midland family says they don’t feel safe in their own home after the Midland Police Department’s SWAT team kicked in their front door during last Friday’s tragic standoff.

The family is asking that the city fix the damages that were made to their door, but it could take several weeks before the city takes any action.

For the past four nights, Cesar Reyna and his girlfriend have not been able to sleep in peace knowing that at anytime someone could walk right through their front door.

“I worry for the safety of my son, anything can happen whenever,” said Reyna. “Anybody can just walk into my house, it’s just uncomfortable.”

When Reyna got home from work last Friday night, his front door was wide open and police officers covered his front lawn.

“I came out and talked to them [police officers] and they said they had kicked it in, but they wouldn’t tell me why,” said Reyna.

According to Sarah Higgins,  the Public Information Officer for Midland, the SWAT team knocked on the door several times before kicking it in. She said the team had to evacuate the home being that it was right across the street from were the standoff took place.

Reyna and his family were told to call the City’s Safety and Risk Management department to file a claim for the damages that were made to their door, but when they did make the call they were told their case wouldn’t be reviewed until May 13.

These folks weren’t just on some correct or incorrect raid party list.  They lived across the street from the raid party.  They had the misfortune of living in the wrong place, and the SWAT team decided to bust in their door, and are now guilty of breaking and entering, trespassing, violation of due process rights, violation of rights against illegal search and seizure, destruction of property, vandalism, and so on the list could go.  But hey, they got to go home safely at the end of their shift.

The saddest part about all of this is that no judge in America, local, state or federal, so much as gives a damn about any of this.  They all play for the same team.  And in anticipation of comments concerning the root cause of this sorry state of affairs, it isn’t either police or judges (or politicians, for that matter).  It’s not either-or.  It’s both-and.  All participating parties are culpable for the moral obscenity and the grotesque, twisted monster that has become our system of justice.  Let the fan boys from PoliceOne.com chew on these things for a while.

Mike Vanderboegh:

As an aside, weapons handling in Jerry’s camp was terrible and I observed numerous unsafe practices about muzzle discipline with loaded rifles. It was a wonder that no one was killed or injured by a negligent discharge during my stay. As they say, if I may paraphrase, God takes care of drunks, little children and the American militia. I counseled some of these safety scofflaws personally and privately. Eventually I gave it up as wasted effort and just tried to stay out of the line of potential fire. The sight of a newbie clerk sitting at the check-in table in the CP wearing a loaded FAL on a sling in front of his body muzzle-up while he filled out new arrival cards was as comical as it was appalling. That this was apparently with the tacit approval of Jerry, whose life was also endangered thereby, can only be excused by extreme sleep deprivation, which as I have mentioned is itself a command failure.

This is a very serious issue.  Negligent discharges happen, and if trigger discipline doesn’t do the job to keep people safe, muzzle discipline is supposed to fill the gap.  The concept is “defense in depth.”  This is why we learn, practice, correct each other, discipline ourselves at the range and at home, and in general think of the rules of gun safety in nearly religious dimensions and proportions.  People can be maimed and die as a result of our lack of discipline.

For those who haven’t been trained in the discipline of firearms ownership and use, they should not put themselves in a position to harm other people.  Untrained people should have been sent home, and this should have been done without remorse and without prejudice.  There is no room for emotion or hurt feelings.  For those who have been trained in the discipline of firearms use and still refuse to practice safe handling practices, this is a moral issue.  The weapon owner is in effect saying, “I don’t care about you or even your life.  I am willing to disobey worldwide respected firearms safety practices for the sake of my own convenience, or just because I am an ass – or who knows why.  Maybe I’m just too lazy to to care.  For whatever reason, I’ve decided that my life matters, and yours does not.”

Those people are even more dangerous than the first kind.  The Marine Corps makes it clear that it won’t be tolerated.  They go to what my friend Tim Lynch calls the “room of pain.”  And extended stay in such a place changes things, and if not, discharge is the next step.  Since no one at the Bundy ranch could be taken to the room of pain, sending them home was the best option.  I don’t know who should have taken the responsibility to do that.  Perhaps Bundy’s sons should have taken a larger role in the control of people on their property.

But perhaps they weren’t in a position to do that.  In either case, for the folks at the ranch to be called “militia” and behave this way is a sad commentary on the state of militia.  Apparently, folks need to go back to the basics before they are assigned to larger jobs.

And for us, the mission is clear.  Practice, read, stay at the range, train, and imbibe the rules of gun safety and proper behavior protocol for gun owners until they are so second-nature that it comes before everything else.  The kind of behavior Mike observed at the Bundy ranch is totally unacceptable.  Muzzle flagging individuals and muzzle sweeping crowds is for losers.  If this offends your sensibilities, and even if you were there at the Bundy ranch, that’s just too bad.  I don’t care.  We’ve got to do better than this.

Last 3-shot group of the day.

Shooting at the range in Pickens, S.C., with the Tikka T3 Hunter, 0.270, Walnut stock, Weaver scope.  Yes, that’s a double-punch at 100 yards.  Between the three shots, 1 MOA.

David Codrea:

“Establishment press has virtually ignored DOJ’s pernicious ‘Operation Choke Point’ for over a year,” financial writer Tom Blumer shows in a Friday Newsbusters analysis of the program, its timeline, and its overreaching tentacles into 30 ostensibly “high risk industries” the government is now targeting. Blumer lists those industries, linking to the FDIC’s “Managing Risks in Third-Party Payment Processor Relationships.”

Hmmm.  Suddenly the BoA abuse of gun manufacturers and companies makes better sense.  David also gives us a good article at JPFO:

“In reality, most police departments only train about two times a year, averaging less than 15 hours annually,” a Tactics & Training article on Police One admits.

This is similar to what a Captain of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department told me once: “Most of our officers pull their weapons out and qualify once a year.  Beyond that, they don’t train with them.  I had to join the Charlotte Rifle and Pistol Club to learn gun safety.”

Kurt Hofmann quotes Dr. Ben Carson:

On the other side of the argument, there are reasonable people who look at the tens of thousands of people who are killed each year in this country by guns, and they do not feel that we are doing enough to stop the carnage.

Many of them want to see significant restrictions on the distribution of firearms in our nation, and others want to restrict types and quantities of ammunition. Some would be happy just to make sure that all guns and gun owners are registered, and most reasonable people certainly are not in favor of allowing criminals and mentally unstable individuals to purchase firearms.

Oh, I don’t think they’re reasonable at all.  I disagree with his premise, and so I’ll disagree with his conclusions.  That’s logic for you.  Kurt does a good job of laying out the time line and details of Dr. Ben Carson’s position on guns.  Another thing I’ll observe is that this points once again to the difference between the collectivist tendencies in the Northern states versus the Southern states.

I smile every time I see some outlet pick up the Wolverine speech by Mike Vanderboegh.  Mike links to a WND and Huffington Post piece.  Make sure you pick up Mike’s speeches here, here and here.

What’s that concerning a Mongolian Goat Rodeo?