I’ve spent a fair amount of time in Argyle. Good people.
ARGYLE — It’s safe to say Argyle ISD is ready to start the school year with guns blazing. The district is on target to continue its new policy of allowing some teachers to pack heat on campus.
The posted sign on campus shoots straight, when it comes to the relatively new rule. It reads: “Please be aware that the staff at Argyle ISD are armed and may use whatever force is necessary to protect our students.” The signs are posted at all campuses within the district.
“I trust that the administrators of this school district will put my kid’s best interest at heart,” parent Lacey Fenoglio said.
Back in January, the district voted in favor of school marshals. Some Argyle teachers will act as the long arm of the law under the state’s Protection of Texas Children Act.
Two Milwaukee Dems went nose-to-nose in a Senate committee hearing for a bill that would set mandatory minimum prison sentences for some instances of firearm possession.
Dems Rep. LaTonya Johnson and Sen. Lena Taylor agreed Tuesday their districts in Milwaukee are suffering from gun violence. But they strongly disagreed over how to fight the problem.
Johnson testified before the Senate’s Judiciary and Public Safety Committee on behalf of AB 220, which she is co-authoring. The bill establishes the mandatory minimum sentences for people who were convicted of certain violent felonies and then violated prohibitions on firearm possession.
Those people face a minimum of three years in prison if they violate the prohibition and another five years if they are caught in possession while committing a violent crime.
A state appeals court on Thursday agreed with a Dane County judge who ruled last year that a Madison city policy banning guns on city buses does not violate Wisconsin’s concealed carry law.
Wisconsin Carry, a gun rights group, contended that state law preempted the policy. But the state 4th District Court of Appeals said that, as written, state law doesn’t bar the rule, which prohibits guns on Metro Transit buses.
“Applying the language of (the state statute) as written, we agree with the circuit court and the city that the statute plainly preempts only ‘ordinances’ and ‘resolutions,’ ” Judge Paul Lundsten wrote for the three-judge panel. “And, we agree, it is clear that the bus rule is not an ‘ordinance’ or ‘resolution’ under case law providing generally accepted meanings for those terms.”
The Appeals Court may be right. Clearly the Madison bus policy violates the spirit of the law, but it might not violate the actual language. But by that standard, any city could pass gun bans and just call them “rules” or “orders” or “policies” or whatever to get around the law. The legislature should take it up in the Fall to revise the statute to be more clear what the intent is. Perhaps something like, “public entities shall not take any action that has the effect of restricting the carrying of concealed weapons wherever state law allows.”
With a Republican legislature and governor, I would think this minor change should be quick and easy.
MILWAUKEE — The police showed up to deal with a group of people armed with guns at a public facility — and concealed carry advocates say what happened next is against the law.
The group of people showed up at a waste disposal facility on Lincoln Avenue in Milwaukee on Tuesday morning, August 4th to try to prove a point. They believe they should be able to go to the outdoor, city of Milwaukee-run center with their guns in tow.
Signs on city property warning people to leave their guns at home have become a common sight at places like the Milwaukee Public Library. There is a sign posted at the waste disposal facility on Lincoln Avenue — but concealed carry advocates feel they should be allowed to carry there, because it’s an outdoor, public facility.
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“The city is not allowed to ban concealed carry on this property,” Nik Clark, the chairman of Wisconsin Carry said.
A note to the reporter… it’s not that “they believe they should be able to go to the… center…” It’s the law.
Seems to me that we need more gun laws… or something.
Five years before he was shot to death in the failed terrorist attack in Garland, Texas, Nadir Soofi walked into a suburban Phoenix gun shop to buy a 9-millimeter pistol.
At the time, Lone Wolf Trading Co. was known among gun smugglers for selling illegal firearms. And with Soofi’s history of misdemeanor drug and assault charges, there was a chance his purchase might raise red flags in the federal screening process.
Inside the store, he fudged some facts on the form required of would-be gun buyers.
What Soofi could not have known was that Lone Wolf was at the center of a federal sting operation known as Fast and Furious, targeting Mexican drug lords and traffickers. The idea of the secret program was to allow Lone Wolf to sell illegal weapons to criminals and straw purchasers, and track the guns back to large smuggling networks and drug cartels.
Instead, federal agents lost track of the weapons and the operation became a fiasco, particularly after several of the missing guns were linked to shootings in Mexico and the 2010 killing of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in Arizona.
Soofi’s attempt to buy a gun caught the attention of authorities, who slapped a seven-day hold on the transaction, according to his Feb. 24, 2010, firearms transaction record, which was reviewed by the Los Angeles Times. Then, for reasons that remain unclear, the hold was lifted after 24 hours, and Soofi got the 9-millimeter.
But it isn’t just what people say. They are clearly putting more stock in self-defense. Since 2007, the number of concealed-handgun permits has soared, from 4.6 million to 12.8 million. A new study by the Crime Prevention Research Center finds that a record 1.7 million permits have been issued in just the past year, a 15.4% increase.
Nationwide, 5.2% of adults have a permit.
But in five states, more than 10% of adults now have concealed-carry permits. In some counties around the United States, more than one in five adults are licensed to carry. In much of the country, someone among theater-goers or restaurant customers is likely to be legally carrying a permitted concealed handgun.
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These new permits seem to have worked well. Between 2007 and 2014, murder rates fell from 5.6 to 4.2 deaths per 100,000 (according to preliminary estimates). This 25% drop coincided with a 156% increase in the number of adults with permits. A similar drop occurred in other violent crimes.
The data have consistently shown that states with the biggest increases in permits also experienced the biggest reductions in murder rates. Dozens of academic papers have documented that allowing concealed carrying leads to a reduction in violent crime, and the Crime Prevention Research Center report shows that this pattern has continued over the last few years.
Permit holders are extremely law-abiding — even more law-abiding than the police, who are rarely convicted of crimes. The latest data from Texas and Florida continue to show that permit holders are convicted of misdemeanors and felonies at less than one-sixth the rate that police officers are.
(CNN)Rick Perry said in an interview Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that the shooting in Lafayette, Louisiana, earlier this week shows why gun-free zones are “a bad idea” and said he believes people should be able to take their firearms to the movies.
“I think that it makes a lot of sense to send a message across this country,” Perry said when asked by host Jake Tapper if the former governor believed a way to prevent such violence would be to allow moviegoers to take guns inside. “If we believe in the Second Amendment, and we believe in people’s right to protect themselves and defend themselves, and their families.”
John Russell “Rusty” Houser on Thursday shot 11 people, killing two, in a theater using a handgun he legally purchased from a pawn shop, authorities have said. Houser, who authorities say had a history of legal and mental problems, then turned the gun on himself.
“I believe that, with all my heart, that if you have the citizens who are well trained, and particularly in these places that are considered to be gun-free zones, that we can stop that type of activity, or stop it before there’s as many people that are impacted as what we saw in Lafayette,” Perry said.
(CNN) —Video of a handgun fired from a hovering drone into a wooded area has been posted on YouTube — where it has gone viral — apparently by an 18-year-old Connecticut student whose father says his son created the drone for a college class.
No one was harmed, nor has the teenager been arrested or charged. Still, the video has stirred fresh debate about the use of, and dangers posed by, drones.
While armed unmanned aircraft have long been in the government’s arsenal in targeting terrorists in distant lands, the idea of someone being able to fire bullets or other dangerous projectiles on a remote controlled flying object over the United States is something else entirely.
The gun drone in Connecticut appears to have been fired on private property and — so far, authorities said — it did not appear any laws were broken. There were no complaints from neighbors until after the “Flying Gun” video went viral with almost 2 million views as of Tuesday, authorities said.
If it was fired on private land and nobody was in danger or threatened, there’s nothing wrong with what the guy did. It does, however, bring to light the potential for drones in the hands of criminals or terrorists.
LAS VEGAS (AP) — The federal agency overseeing water and power is in the market for 52,000 rounds of ammunition for its officers at Hoover Dam and the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, raising questions about weapons for nonmilitary purposes.
The Bureau of Reclamation put out a bid in June for 41,600 rounds of hollow-point ammunition and 10,400 rounds of shotgun ammunition.
The ammo is paid for by revenue from utility companies that buy electricity from Hoover Dam, but the bureau won’t say how it will be used or offer details on its law enforcement plan at the popular tourist destinations. A 2008 review of federal law enforcement indicated 21 officers patrolled Hoover Dam, the Las Vegas Sun reported (http://bit.ly/1HiEhZp ).
These are vital parts of the area’s infrastructure that need to be defended from possible terrorist attacks, but that seems quite excessive. If the Hoover Dam is under an attack that warrants that kind of consumption of ammunition, one would think the military would get involved. Yes, they do need ammo to practice, but sheesh!
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) plans to sign two new laws on Wednesday that expand the rights of gun owners by removing a 48-hour waiting period for those looking to purchase a firearm and allowing off-duty or retired police officers to carry concealed weapons at public schools. This action will come one week after a suspected gunman shot and killed nine people in an African American church in South Carolina, yet again prompting a national discussion about gun laws in the U.S.
Walker plans to sign the two pieces of legislation — Senate bills 35 and 70 — at a ceremony at the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office on Wednesday afternoon, according to a Tuesday evening press release from the governor’s office. Laurel Patrick, a spokeswoman for the governor, said this bill-signing was scheduled and announced about two weeks ago, several days before the shooting occurred in South Carolina.
The reporter’s bias is telling. The assumption underneath the article is that it is somehow a scandal that Walker is signing laws expanding gun rights after a shooting that has prompted “a national discussion about gun laws in the U.S.” Why? If it is truly a discussion, couldn’t the result of that discussion be that we need to permit the wider spread of firearm possession by stand-up folks? Clearly the report doesn’t think so. She assumes that the “discussion” should result in stricter gun laws, in which case, Walker’s actions would be considered scandalous.
In any case, good for the legislature for passing these laws and for Walker for signing them.
TURIN, Italy (Reuters) – People who manufacture weapons or invest in weapons industries are hypocrites if they call themselves Christian, Pope Francis said on Sunday.
“We don’t have all the facts, but we do know that once again, innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun,” Obama said in the White House briefing room, Vice President Joe Biden standing at his side.
So we don’t know all of the facts, but we can conclude that the cause was easy access to guns? The bodies weren’t even cold yet.
This story is amusing. It’s in the campus paper for my alma mater and is about the fact that Texas will allow people to carry a concealed weapon on campus starting in August of 2016. Then we run into this sentence:
State University of New York Cortland Political Science Chair, Robert Spitzer, Ph.D, said the bill will not generate a feeling of safety on Texas campuses.
So the reporter for a university newspaper in Texas has to go aaaaaaaaaaall the way to New York to find a professor to speak out against it. Apparently none of the tens of thousands of professors in Texas would suffice.
“In all of our schools it is illegal to have guns on campus, so again and again these guys go and shoot up these f***ing schools because they know there are no guns there,” he said. “They are monsters killing six-year-olds.
“You think the politicians that run my country and your country don’t have guns in the schools their kids go to?” he asked. “They do. And we should be allowed the same rights.”
Banning guns won’t stop criminals, he said. “Banning guns is like banning forks in an attempt to stop making people fat. Taking away guns, taking away drugs, the booze, it won’t rid the world of criminality.”
AUGUSTA — A bill that will allow Mainers to carry a concealed handgun without a permit moved another step closer to becoming law Monday when it cleared a key vote in the House of Representatives.
The 83-62 vote increases the likelihood that Maine will join only seven states that allow individuals to carry a concealed handgun without a permit. The bill has the backing Republicans and Democrats, including 13 Democrats in the House. The bill has 96 co-sponsors, more than half the members of the Legislature, and the blessing of some members of the Republican and Democratic leadership.
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas lawmakers on Friday approved carrying handguns openly on the streets of the nation’s second most-populous state, sending the bill to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who immediately promised to sign it and reverse a ban dating to the post-Civil War era.
But they still have a little way to go.
Gun owners would still have to get a license to carry a handgun in a visible holster.
Honestly, I thought that you could open carry in Texas. I mean… c’mon… it’s Texas.
AUSTIN, Texas – Texas is closer to becoming the most populous state to allow licensed open carry of handguns after Republicans pushed through a key vote in the state House.
The Democratic mayor called for policy action, in the form of more state resources to combat gun crime in Milwaukee. “I don’t want to lock up more people who are carrying a nickel bag of marijuana, but I do want to lock up more people who get involved in gunfights in parks, on streets, outside taverns,” the mayor said.
I’m sorry, but it is now legal for people to get in gunfights in parks, streets, and outside taverns (apparently gunfights inside taverns are taboo)? Last time I checked, that was already illegal. How would more gun laws help?
Barrett is also railing against concealed carry, but I haven’t seen it reported that a single one of the Milwaukee murders was committed by someone legally carrying a gun and illegally using it. One of the most egregious, the murder of a driver and teen, was allegedly committed by a felon who was on parole. He was breaking several laws by possessing a gun.
There might be a few tweaks to our gun laws that make sense, but they are not going to fix the violence in Milwaukee. The mayor of that city, Tom Barrett, is failing in his job to protect the citizens of his city and he is desperately seeking to deflect blame elsewhere.
