Child Gun Permit Questioned
Numerous British papers are reporting on this story, but it was the take from The Times of India that caught our eye. Maybe the Indians have hard feelings when it comes to the British or something, but they took a rather biased line on how a British youth was able to acquire a gun permit. The paper noted:
“A 10-year-old in Britain cannot legally buy cigarettes or alcohol but it now turns out that a child has been issued a licence for a shotgun, the most used crime weapon in the country. In Bedfordshire county, the police issued 49 shotgun and other firearms licences to under-18s, including a child aged 10, in the last one year.”
While we’re not going to debate the British law, we will look at the bias. The difference here is that the child in question did get his parent’s permission. The paper notes that the shotgun is the most used crime weapon, which is likely true, but how many criminals actually apply for the license?
Moreover, how often do we see children “warriors” fighting in Africa and Asia, wielding AK-47s? All too often unfortunately. But the difference in this case is that the youth is a sporting enthusiast. There is no evidence that he is even playing at soldiers as they say in the U.K. In fact, while many teens have their youth stolen as they’re forced into arms, this child is doing it out of his own desires.
But clearly that point will be lost on most of the mainstream media.
Israeli PM Bodyguard’s Guns Go Missing
The conspiracy theorists who believe that President Obama doesn’t like Israel or the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will have more ammunition. According to various news reports, including those from The Associated Press and the BBC World News, four 9mm Glock handguns have gone missing from the Israeli security detail.
The guns were in checked luggage on a flight from Washington to New York, but somehow ended up in Los Angeles. Now stuff regularly goes missing from luggage unfortunately, but this is a rather disturbing turn of events. Let’s hope those handguns are returned.
Fourth of July Editorial From Brady Center Misses the Mark
If you believe the word from The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, the United States leads the world in gun related homicides. In a misplace Fourth of July editorial, which appeared on the Tauton Daily Gazette website, the Brady Bunch offered this thought:
“On this Independence Day weekend, as Americans reflect on the history of the nation’s founding and contemplate its future, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence has released the latest edition of its God Bless America poster, documenting that, in one year, guns murdered 17 people in Finland, 35 in Australia, 39 in England and Wales, 60 in Spain, 194 in Germany, 200 in Canada, and 9,484 in the United States.”
Where is Afghanistan or Iraq on this list? While maybe a very different picture of “gun homicides,” we question why these nations weren’t included? What about other wartorn nations in Africa and Asia? Why aren’t those nations included? Many experience violence every day? This is because those nations lack the freedom of the United States?
Where does China rank on the list? In China it is a capital offense to even be caught with a gun, yet gun violence happens. In Mexico it is hard to legally obtain a gun, yet here too we see regular violence that is all too common.
No, the picture that the Brady Center offered is not a good one of the United States, but it isn’t a fair one either. Are those deaths really because we have guns however, or because we have a criminal element? That’s the question that isn’t being asked enough.
Voice of America Offers Strange Take on SCOTUS Ruling
This has been a crazy week for reporting on guns following the SCOTUS ruling. But Voice of America has the strangest voice on the matter. It offers some choice quotes from only one side of the issue:
“Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said he expects criminals convicted of gun charges to use Monday’s ruling to challenge their convictions.”
Either we’re reading this wrong, or Voice of America is reporting this wrong, but does this even make sense? What does the ruling about gun ownership have to do with criminals? If someone broke the law, they broke the law.
And Voice of America also had a choice quote from Chicago Mayor Richard Daley:
“I don’t think America should be known for ‘we could kill more people than any other nation.’ We love to kill, we can kill overseas, we export more guns than anybody else, and we buy more guns than anybody else, and ammunition. That should not be known as a great country.”
Mr. Daley doesn’t speak for all of us obviously. We can respect that all Americans should have a right to decide what makes us a great country, but Daley is flat out wrong when it comes to the facts on the issue. While it is true that the United States is a large exporter of small arms, the United States is not even in the top five of small arms importers (source: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute). India, Singapore, Malaysia, Greece and South Korea are the world’s largest arms importers at the present time.
Maybe Mr. Daley and Voice of America should do a little more fact checking.
Oz Media Jumps on SCOTUS Ruling
Australia has very strict gun control rules, so no surprise that the reporters down under reacted as they did to the Supreme Court ruling. But this just shows how misunderstood gun laws are in America. The Sydney Morning Herald offered this take:
“The ruling was a blow to the mayor of Chicago, Richard Daley, who has long campaigned against the prevalence of guns on Chicago’s streets. The nation’s third-largest city passed its ordinance in 1982, the only blanket ban in the nation, seven years before Mr Daley was elected.”
Interesting to note that the authors took the side of Daley, a typical Chicago loud mouth politico rather than those would actually need guns to defend themselves from the type of scum that Daley can’t (or just won’t) get off the streets of the Windy City.
Dorchester Reporter Offers Rant Filled Editorial
While meant to be humorous, James W. Dolan’s rant about guns for The Dorchester Reporter is anything but funny. He is a retired Dorchester District Court judge who now practices law. We suggest to Mr. Dolan that he keep his day job because no amount of practicing with comedy is going to get him near Carnegie Hall – or even a local open mic night in Dorchester for that matter.
He writes, in response to pending Massachusetts legislation that would limit the number of guns that could be purchased each month by individuals in the state, that the United States has a strange fascination with guns. The problem with this type of humor (if you can call it that) filled piece is that he mixes facts with jokes. For example:
“Germany produces good cars. In France, it’s food. In Italy, it’s fashion. Here in America, it’s guns. We are the most ‘rootin-tootin,’ ‘gun-toting,’ ‘butt-kickin” ‘make-my-day’ country in the world.”
Actually, Mr. Dolan Germany has a large arms industry as well. I mean (to take a cue from you) this is Germany – the nation that celebrated by building up an empire with a World War! Germany created one of the most popular bolt-action rifles ever, which was essentially copied by everyone! Germany invented the first assault rifle with the MP-44, a gun widely noted for looking a heck of a lot like the later AK-47. Today many nations used H&K small arms. H&K is as German as strudel and Volkswagen.
Italy might also be a fashion hub, but Beretta isn’t just an old TV show from the 1970s. It is also one of the world’s oldest gun makers – and it is as Italian as spaghetti and Fiat. France… OK, you got me. France makes crappy guns. They always have, they probably always win. But in fairness, I think their food sucks too.
But in all seriousness, the problem with rants such as Dolan’s is that they don’t really explain the facts. Clearly Mr. Dolan is an anti-gun zealot who has no facts to back up his argument. So instead he tries silly humor. The problem is that it isn’t funny. Let’s hope for the sake of his clients that Dolan is a better lawyer than comedian.
Asia Times Offers Insight on Chinese Gun Laws
The usual argument by liberals and other anti-gun zealots is that if you get rid of the guns, crime will follow. After all, the argument is made, without guns there can be no way to shoot each other. So close the gun show loopholes, ban handguns, tax ammunition, make it impossible to own a gun. But time and time again the anti-gun zealots are wrong. Gun sales are up, crime is down should be proof enough. But alas, it isn’t.
So let’s look at the situation in China. As reported by the Asia Times Online, it is noted that since 1966 China has banned the sale, private manufacture, possession and even import and export of bullets and guns. The exception is for government owned companies that can export firearms. But the point is that individuals in China, the land that invented gunpowder by the way, cannot own guns. The news site offers this statement on the harshness of the penalties for those who break the law:
“Possessing a single gun can yield a three-year prison sentence, while perpetrators of gun crimes are often executed.”
We would stress that this is a three-year prison sentence in China, not some country club jail either. A three-year sentence would likely be a hellish time indeed. So clearly gun crime must be non-existent, but alas this isn’t the case. Asia Times Online notes:
“Yet despite harsh penalties, China’s Ministry of Public Safety (MPS) has said it increasingly faces armed suspects. In the most recent high-profile case last month, a security guard in Hunan province in southerly China, apparently upset by a court-imposed divorce settlement, shot and killed three judges and wounded three others before turning the gun on himself.
“It was not an isolated incident. In early 2007, a man in northeast China killed five family members and neighbors in a rampage with a homemade pistol. In September 2007, a man in Guangzhou city in southern China was sentenced to 19 years after using a replica gun to rob a bank customer. And in December 2008, a guard at a munitions depot shot and killed a colleague over a chess match, and was shot to death himself by police two days later.”
The news site further notes that guns are routinely smuggled into China, even as the nation is one of the largest gun manufacturers in the world. So the point of all this is that criminals will always find a way to get guns, and law-abiding citizens shouldn’t be punished as a result. Guns are not the problem; it is the criminals with those guns that are the real problem, and tackling crime should be where energy is spent. Not making new laws or trying to turn law-abiding citizens into criminals.
Who Guards the Guards: Soldier Ships Guns From Iraq
While the media continually notes the “iron pipeline” to Mexico, where American guns supposedly end up in the hands of the drug cartels, or the other “iron pipeline” in which guns from the south end up in New York City, there is another “iron pipeline” that gets far less attention. This is the importation of illegal guns into the United States from Iraq. This week GoErie.com reported that James Lewis Bindeman, a sergeant in the Army National Guard, had been shipping guns home while serving overseas.
According to the report this included 11 weapons in total. The story noted that the weapons were in a crate with a false bottom:
“The cache contained an AK-47, a rifle with a 50-round drum, five 9 mm pistols and four other handguns, according to court records.”
What is interesting is that Assistant U.S. Attorney Christine Sanner was quoted as saying the secret compartment was “pretty clearly the wrong way to bring firearms back to the United States.” In fact, we can’t agree more… but to add that special permits are required for the importation of guns! So it comes as a shock that Bindeman has plead guity to one felony count of entry goods by means of false statements! The news posted added this choice bit too:
“With the plea, Bindeman, a sergeant in the Army National Guard, admitted that while he was deployed in Iraq, he hid the guns in the crate and shipped them from Iraq to the Readiness Center in Cambridge Springs.
“Why he shipped the guns and what he intended to do with them was not explained at the hearing.”
We’ll be watching closely to see what fines or penalties Bindeman faces, but this clearly is another example of how illegal guns do come into this country.
Border Crisis: Did Mexican Soldiers Point Guns at US Officials?
While we have recently heard that NPR has found that the Mexican Army maybe supporting one side over another in the country’s showdown between drug cartels, now comes word that Mexican soldiers may have pointed guns at American law enforcement. The Dallas Morning News reported:
“Mexican security forces pointed their rifles toward U.S. authorities investigating the shooting of a 15-year-old Mexican by a U.S. Border Patrol agent on the banks of the Rio Grande, the FBI and witnesses said Wednesday.”
We’ll be watching this story as it unfolds, especially to see if Mexican President Calderon offers any commentary.
NPR Report: Mexican Army May Be Colluding With Drug Mafia
While it sounds like something out of a movie or a TV, the truth is scarier than fiction. This story almost slipped under the radar, but when we heard about it this news made us stand up and take notice.
“A four-month investigation by NPR News uncovered evidence that Mexico’s army takes a side in this bloody conflict, and backs one drug cartel over its rivals.”
If this is true, and we sadly believe that NPR is right on this one, it brings up an interesting point. Why was Mexican President Filipe Calderon blaming American guns for the crime south of the border when it is likely his own military that is supplying the guns to the Mexican cartels?
