NCLR:

ORLANDO, Fla.—NCLR (National Council of La Raza) announced today that its Board of Directors has unanimously voted in favor of policies aimed at reducing gun violence in the nation. The position, a first in the organization’s 48-year history, was announced at the 2016 NCLR Annual Conference during the National Affiliate Luncheon, a gathering of the nation’s Latino leaders representing NCLR’s Affiliate Network of almost 300 community-based organizations. The announcement comes after the nation has experienced a series of mass shootings and other incidents of gun violence, most recently the horrific events in Orlando, Baton Rouge, St. Paul, and Dallas.

“Our announcement today comes as we hold our Annual Conference in Orlando, the site of the largest mass shooting in our nation’s history, which took the lives of 49 innocent people, most of whom were Latino,” said NCLR President and CEO Janet Murguía. “The tragic event at Pulse nightclub changed Orlando and it has changed NCLR. Today, by formally adopting this position, we join with the vast majority of Americans calling for an end to gun violence and we will urge policymakers to adopt common-sense measures to reduce mass shootings and gun violence, saving countless lives.”

The NCLR Board of Directors adopted a position to reduce gun violence that includes the following elements:

• Reasonable restrictions on the acquisition of firearms and ammunition consistent with the protection of the civil rights of all Americans, including support for universal background checks
• A ban on assault weapons.
• Collection and analysis of data related to gun violence to understand causes and develop prevention strategies.

Why should you care what La Raza advocates, you might be asking yourself?  Well, you should care a great deal.  It isn’t credible that an organization such as this one, who represents so many Latinos, would advocate a position that is out of accord with their own constituency.  In other words, they represent Hispanics and Latinos, and thus Hispanics and Latinos favor gun control.

This is entirely consistent with what we already know about Hispanics and Latinos and their tendencies concerning gun control.  Remember this when you consider open borders, amnesty and pathways to citizenship.

Prior:

Hispanics Have Again Said They Favor Strict Gun Control

Hispanics And Latinos Favor Gun Control

David Codrea:

“Here’s An Idea: Only Women Should Have Guns,” this new theme goes. “[S]ince it’s abundantly clear that they’ll commit less violence than men and be vulnerable to violence committed by men, let’s take all the guns away from men and give them to women.”

I recently heard another engineer complain that the engineering schools should be graduating at least as many women and men.  Why? I don’t really know.  Just because, I suppose.

I would rather people pursue their God-given talents and ambitions rather than be pigeonholed into a degree program just because they are a woman or man.  And as for guns, the fourth wave feminists just think men are dirty, unruly, loathsome creatures who need to be controlled by laws and regulations and requirements.  The true spirituality belongs to women.

Hey, now that I think about it, who would do all of this taking away of guns the feminists propose?  They might just have to turn to those nasty men with guns.  Do LEOs know what the feminists really think about them?  They would just as soon you be a woman, but if you must be a man, then at least you need to do their bidding until they can replace you.

Commonwealth Magazine:

Christopher Pinto, president of the advocacy group Massachusetts Gun Rights, Inc., of Worcester, claimed he bought an AR-15 for his wife on Wednesday to beat Healey’s directive and insisted he intends to keep it.

“What is she going to do, come to my house and get it?“ asked Pinto, who was in Cleveland as a delegate at the Republican National Convention.

A group of gun owners gathered at the State House Thursday evening to protest Healey’s action, with another rally planned on Saturday when the Legislature is in session. Many said Healey’s decision was not an enforcement of the law but rather stemmed from her interpretation based on what they say is her anti-gun stance. Most in attendance said they own the types of rifles Healey says are illegal. Even though she said she won’t take action against those who bought them before Wednesday, the protesters said they were concerned she could change her mind and arbitrarily confiscate their weapons in the future.

One of the comments is interesting.  We read, “I called the local gun shop around noon on Wednesday, while they had heard something in the news they had not received any directive to stop selling the firearms so they sold the remainder of their stock (they were out by 2pm). These directives require some form of legal notification not someone forwarding something from facebook. She had a press conference in the morning and posted it online but until the notification was officially delivered to the gun shops they had no duty to stop selling.”

Note the position of the FFLs versus the AG.  The AG announced her decision in an opinion piece and over Facebook.  That’s not how legal orders get disseminated.  The commenter is right.

The AG is doing this, I surmise, because she knows her case is weak and unsupported by law, and is trying to effect law from her office anyway.  She is the kind of person who whispers in the ear of the playground bully in order to get someone else beaten up.  She isn’t going to do the work herself, but she will dispatch men with warrants and guns, and show up in court in order to prosecute what she believes is evil.  Or if she can’t, she’ll try to bully people into doing her will because of what might happen to them.  Compliance to avoid the unknown.

She’s what school girls call a “mean girl,” a totalitarian and control freak with an obsession.  She needs to be put back into her place.

CNN:

The mall shooting in Germany is being blamed on first person shooter games, because it certainly can’t be someone running through a mall shooting people shouting Allahu Akbar.  That doesn’t fit the narrative.  But to keep piling leaky buckets together in this chain of deplorable logic, it must be that the shooter was depressed and suffered from anxiety.

Documents found in his home confirmed that he suffered from mental illness, including depression and anxiety, Munich prosecutor Thomas Steinkraus-Koch said Sunday.

At SWJ one writer is advocating that the police conduct “three block war” over America.

There is more required for such a system to work than just an information operations cell. Police have to be trained to recognize what should be reported, be it good or bad. Twenty years ago, the Marine Corps began a training program to develop what it called “Strategic Corporals”. Marine leadership realized that a fire team leader engaged in the urban Three Block War must be trained to recognize that, in the media age, a local incident could have world-wide strategic impact near immediately (the Three Block War refers to situations where one can be involved in a humanitarian operation on one block, peacekeeping on another, and a full scale firefight on yet another in an urban environment). Junior Marine leaders were taught to recognize potential strategic incidents and act accordingly. In this age of social media, our police are engaged in a Three Block War domestically as was the case in Dallas and Baton Rouge; they need to be trained to react accordingly.

Expecting the police to perform COIN and stability operations is a testimony to just how badly the progressives have botched their urban, utopian dream.  But more on that later.  At any rate, it isn’t clear that there are any “strategic corporals” anywhere in any police department in the country.

There are thousands of examples every day, but let’s just focus on two recent ones.  First to the human interaction.

Video released Wednesday shows the moment before North Miami police shot an unarmed, behavioral therapist as he tried to calm a man with autism, according to WSVN.

Still recovering in a hospital bed, Charles Kinsey is now talking about what happened in that cellphone video recorded Monday.

“When I went to the ground, I went to the ground with my hands up,” he said. “And I am laying there just like this, telling them again there is no need for firearms.”

Police were responding to a 911 call about a disturbed man walking around with a gun, threatening suicide. Kinsey said that man was one of his patients, Rinaldo, who has autism. The reported gun, he said, was actually a toy truck.

The video shows Kinsey, with both hands held up in the air, telling officers “All he has is a toy truck. A toy truck. I am a behavior therapist at a group home.”

Kinsey was simultaneously trying to calm Rinaldo and explain what was happening to the police, he says, when an officer shot him.

“I thought it was a mosquito bite, and when it hit me I had my hands in the air, and I’m thinking, ‘I just got shot!’ Kinsey recalled. “I’m saying, ‘Sir, why did you shoot me?’ and his words to me were, ‘I don’t know.’”

Next, to the animal (via David Codrea)

WYNNEWOOD, Okla. (KOKH) — “There’s something wrong with Opie.”

Vickie Malone heard those words come from her young son as he stared outside the window of their Wynnewood home.

Malone had just taken in the children from outside where they had been playing while celebrating the birthday of her five-year-old son. Inside the birthday cake and ice cream hadn’t even been served when they heard the bang from outside.

That bang was the sound of a Wynnewood police officer shooting the family dog. Opie was a three-year-old American Bulldog and Pit Bull mix. To her son Eli, he was his best friend.

“I would have fun with him when he runned around and we played tag,” Eli told FOX 25.

The adults ran outside to see Opie near the fence that surrounds their yard.

“He [Opie] was over here kicking and gasping for air,” Vickie said.

The police officer used a high-powered rifle he retrieved from his police vehicle to put the dog down. He fired two more shots from the rifle in front of the children.

Malone said the officer initially told her the dog had lunged at him through the fence. According to the Wynnewood police chief, the dog charged the officer. While he declined our multiple requests for a recorded interview, Chief Ken Moore said the officer told him the dog was vicious and attacked him by coming around the corner of the house. Moore said the officer tried to kick the dog off him once and then shot him.

However, the chief said he had not seen video of the aftermath of the shooting which was provided to FOX 25. The video shows the dead dog with a gunshot wound to his head lying near the fence, not near the house.

The police chief said the officer was serving a warrant, which gave him legal authority to be on the private property. However, the Malones said they were never shown any warrant. They were only told the officer was looking for someone who had listed that address as his ten years ago.

“He said he was checking to see if a guy name Shon McNiel lived here and no one here has heard of talking about,” Malone said. The warrant for McNiel was from a 10-year-old case and the police chief said the Malone house was his last known address.

However the police chief said the department was aware the Malones had lived there for the past year. He also told FOX 25 the address was a “rent house” and that multiple people had “moved in and out” in the past decade. Moore defended the officer’s presence there saying he “had to start somewhere” in his effort to serve the warrant.

Yea, he had to start somewhere.  Just like that cop who shot the therapist.  How else would you find out what’s going on?  Kill ’em all and let God sort them out, right?

There you have it.  That’s what three-block-war looks like in America.

UPDATE: Cop’s union.  I was aiming at autistic patient, not therapist.  I don’t believe you.  Besides, you shouldn’t have been aiming at anyone, idiot.

WLFI.com:

WOODBURN, Ind. (WANE) — The chief of the Woodburn Police Department pledged to never take away city residents’ guns in the improbable event martial law would be declared.

In a Facebook post late Monday, Chief Randall Duhamell posted on the Woodburn Police Department’s Facebook page that his department has fielded requests for information about martial law.

“LET ME BE CLEAR….We Will NEVER take your weapons…no matter who tells us too!” Duhamell wrote in the post.

“All of our officers swore an oath to protect our community against all enemies. We may use those citizens that legally carry as helpers in times of emergency.”

As of 10 a.m. Tuesday, the post was shared more than 2,200 times.

[ … ]

“We will never come and take your guns from your house or your vehicles,” the chief told News 18’s sister station, WANE, in an interview. “That’s not what we’re about, and I just wanted to share that with the community and let them know that we support the Second Amendment.”

I want to state up front that I appreciate the sentiment, and I also appreciate Chief Duhamell’s stated commitment to the second amendment.  I also appreciate the fact that he came out and said something to the community when he knew it was a salient issue and needed to be addressed.  I don’t want to be a jerk in the things I’m about to say.

The second amendment doesn’t justify my right to own weapons.  It is a covenant by which men agree to live together under certain stipulations.  They presence or absence of bearing arms in that covenant doesn’t affect in its essence the real basis for my bearing of arms.

That comes from God alone.  Furthermore, the intended use of carriers for times of emergency by the Chief is affirming, but irrelevant.  If gun owners are never any use to anyone but themselves and their families, that doesn’t affect one iota the real justification for the bearing of arms.

Finally, while I note that the Chief was probably speaking about intent rather than action, I would rather he had said that he and his officers would never attempt to confiscate weapons because that would be immoral.  Or more to the point, no sir, you never will take my weapons, and you don’t get the last say-so in the matter.

I would have been more affirmed and much more approving if the Chief had said not only would his officers never attempt to confiscate weapons, he would expect justified resistance if his officers attempted to do so.

The Boston Globe:

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey said Wednesday she was cracking down on the sale of guns that, she said, were designed to skirt a state law banning assault weapons.

Healey said she had put gunmakers and sellers on notice that they were not allowed to sell the guns, which she said were intentionally designed to circumvent the ban by incorporating “small tweaks that do nothing to limit the deadliness of the weapon.”

The attorney general said at a morning news conference that the law remained the same, but her office would change the way it enforced it.

While manufacturers have deemed certain weapons in compliance with state law, she said, her office had looked at the issue and concluded that they weren’t.

“The gun industry does not get to decide what’s compliant,” she said during the event, where she was flanked by law enforcement officials, community leaders and anti-violence activists. “We do.”

[ … ]

Healey spoke after penning an opinion piece in Wednesday’s Boston Globe, in which she said the gun industry was taking advantage of a legal “loophole of potentially horrific proportions.”

She said her office had begun looking at the law in the wake of the deadly Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, where a gunman killed 49 people.

Healey said the recent killing of police in Baton Rouge and Dallas, along with the fatal shootings of black men at the hands of police, have only added to the urgency.

She described her action as “a step” toward reducing gun violence.

“It is not a total panacea, I recognize that, but it is a step,” Healey said.

She said her office had notified dealers in the state that they cannot sell guns whose “operating system is essentially the same as a banned weapon.”

Operating system.  Got that?  That means semi-automatic weapons of all kinds.  She doesn’t mean DI systems as designed by Eugene Stoner for the AR-15.  All semi-automatic weapons can discharge one round for every pull of the trigger.

Ms. Healey has declared herself the only sovereign potentate who gets to adjudicate on everything and anything she wishes.  She’s queen.  And gun owners should willingly bypass, smuggle, and disobey this edict however and whenever they can.

His name is Elliott Summey.

Charleston County Council Chairman Elliott Summey, a guns rights advocate who said he owns “a pile of guns,” now has said he mistakenly voted in favor of a resolution last week calling for state and federal authorities to outlaw the very type of firearms he owns.

Summey said there was some confusion at last Thursday’s vote because the resolution, as originally presented in writing, called for laws “banning all assault-style weapons” in South Carolina. Summey said he took that to mean fully automatic machine guns that fire hundreds of rounds, as were depicted in a video shown to council.

The council action had no force of law — a resolution is a statement of opinion — but it’s passage was noted by the National Rifle Association and websites such as Firearmslife. Summey, who switched political affiliations in 2012 and joined the Republican Party, issued a statement Monday disavowing his days-earlier support of the resolution.

“I’m not voting to take away guns that I already own,” Summey said Tuesday. “That’s insane.”

No, what would be insane is to believe you didn’t mean your vote.  A real gun owner and gun rights supporter wouldn’t have been hoodwinked by words, and would have voted against any new gun control law anyway.

What happens down in Charleston anyway?  Where do they get these people?  It was the Charleston lobby that persuaded the now defrocked Larry Martin to kill open carry because of all that tourism that would certainly have shut down if someone had seen a gun.

Good grief.

The author of this article at The Boston Globe, Akilah Johnson, is obviously trying to show the human side of gunsmiths and mechanics at Smith & Wesson as opposed to the ugly, boogeyman portrait the progressives paint.  But it reminds us (1) that Smith & Wesson has no business whatsoever still being ensconced in Springfield, and (2) this would never have to be done in most other locations in America (can you imagine a journalist having to show the human side of gunsmithing in, say, Charlotte, N.C., or Greenville, S.C.?).

Furthermore, this article isn’t really very friendly to Smith & Wesson or the place they live for the discerning gun owner.  Consider.

… to many, including US Representative Richard Neal of Springfield, who participated in that demonstration on the House floor, it is the hometown company.

“My own position has always been: Be helpful in that every police officer or patrolman in America ought to use a Smith & Wesson, and I think the American military ought to use a Smith & Wesson,” Neal said in an interview. “At the same time, there will be disagreements as it relates to guns.”

Their own member of the House participated in that juvenile sit-in, and would presume to mention firearms ownership within the context of LEO and the military, but noticeably didn’t mention anyone else.  What a horrible place for Smith & Wesson to do business.  Just horrible.

“It’s a good job,” co-worker Marc Holland called out from across the bar at the neighborhood watering hole early one morning last month.

Holland, 54, retired after 25 years at a paper mill and was looking for a way to stay busy. Six years ago, a friend at Smith & Wesson told him about an opening. Now, he works the machines that make triggers among other things.

“I can do like 3,600 triggers in a shift, over 10,000 in a week,” he said.

Excuse me, but I wouldn’t be bragging about how many triggers I could push out to the next mechanic if I were you.  Instead, I would be bragging about how I focused my time and effort on quality and craftsmanship.  Listen to me, Smith & Wesson gunsmiths and mechanics.  There are so many pistols, revolvers and rifles out there that competition will run you into the ground if you begin to work the line in order to maximize production instead of quality.  Gun owners will notice.  You’ll be shut down not because you can’t produce enough, but because we’ll be calling your stuff shit, and we’ll do it over forums, in blogs, and at the range.

Refocus on quality.  Tell me something about how you wake up in the morning and can’t wait to work that trigger to ensure its smooth action for that working-man buyer who is just like you, earning a living by the sweat of his brow.  Don’t tell me how fast you can do it.  I suppose that’s why I buy from the S&W performance shop if I buy S&W.  I know somebody has put some knowledge, skill, effort and craftsmanship into it.  I want to know that somebody left part of his soul in that machine when I pay that kind of money for it.  I leave my soul at work many a night when I leave.  It’s all I’ve got, and I’ve given it to a job I consider a blessing, with professionalism and excellence.  I want you to do the same thing, and if you can’t do it I want to know because I’ll never send another penny your way.

Neal said House Democrats were left with little recourse besides the sit-in to get the attention of US House Republicans, which after mass shootings in Orlando and San Bernardino, Calif., and Aurora, Colo., he figured would be easier to do.

“This highlights how difficult it is in America today to have a conversation about these sorts of things,” he said. “The majority in the House makes no effort to accommodate the concerns of the minority. That was true when we were in the majority, and it’s true now.”

Neal said he supports background mental health checks, closing gun show loopholes, and keeping those on the government’s no-fly list from being able to purchase firearms.

“I think those are reasonable positions by any standard,” he said.

The barber shop owners’ late father once worked for Smith & Wesson. Ralph Ricciardi, 45, said when his father first emigrated from Italy, he needed steady work before he could become a citizen. At the time, authorities did not consider being a barber secure employment.

“So my father actually made guns, from ’70 to ’74,” he said while cutting a client’s hair. “He opened up his shop in ‘74.”

“It’s just like a business. It’s just like a store or something,” said David Tancrati, 58, as he waited to sit in Ralph’s chair.

“We don’t even think about it. It employs a lot of people.” Ciro Ricciardi, 47, Ralph’s brother said.

Well, you should think about it, about the Puritan work ethic that brought you this kind of industry to begin with, and about the good weapons do for mankind.  If the only thing you can be proud of is a paycheck, and you have to ignore the product you’re making, you’re unworthy of the industry that calls Springfield home.

And to Congressman Neal, it’s easy to have conversations about guns.  We do it every day here.  And not one more law.  And I’ll converse with you about that until your eyes turn red and your heart stops, but conversing won’t change my mind.  Just as Springfield is unworthy of S&W, you are unworthy of the trust the people of your state have placed in you.  You should be ashamed, and I only hope that in the future, you get to look at the shuttered doors of the Springfield S&W plants as they have shut down and moved.  May your precinct turn into a ghost town.

News from Cleveland:

“We are sending a letter to Gov. Kasich requesting assistance from him. He could very easily do some kind of executive order or something — I don’t care if it’s constitutional or not at this point,” Stephen Loomis, president of Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association, told CNN. “They can fight about it after the RNC or they can lift it after the RNC, but I want him to absolutely outlaw open-carry in Cuyahoga County until this RNC is over.”

So-called “open carry” gun laws in Ohio allow for licensed firearm owners to wear their weapons in public. With the exception of a small “secure zone” inside and around the Quicken Loans Arena, residents, delegates and protesters are legally permitted to walk around the city — including within its 1.7 square mile regulated “event zone” — with any firearm not explicitly banned by the state.

Kasich, responding to the request, said: “Ohio governors do not have the power to arbitrarily suspend federal and state constitutional rights or state laws as suggested.”

That’s interesting, yes?  It isn’t what you expect to hear from a cop.  Oh, they may think it about any number of issues, that is, not caring whether something is constitutional.  But you don’t expect to hear them say it.

This reference to the easy executive order Loomis is talking about might just be indicative of a changed perspective of having lived nearly eight years under a federal executive who couldn’t have cared less what the law said and issued dictatorial decrees as they saw fit to press their agenda.

It changes the expectations of people, huh?  Reeducation of the ignorant and valueless masses through lawlessness by the federal executive.  It’s a sorry-ass world isn’t it?