OK, not so much, really.
Record rise in number of burglars using guns
The number of armed burglaries has risen to record levels, new crime figures show.
Latest statistics from the Home Office reveal 645 cases of burglars using a firearm in the year ending April 2006, a 46 per cent rise on the previous year.
The figures were published in the British Crime Survey, an annual assessment of households that is considered the most accurate indicator of crime as it includes incidents not reported to the police.
It showed overall, guns were used in 4,120 robberies in England and Wales in the year ending April 2006 – a 10 per cent increase on the previous 12 months.
The total number of crimes involving a firearm – 11,084 – had not risen significantly from the previous year. But in a fifth of the crimes the victim was injured and just under 3 per cent resulted in a serious injury or death.
And because I’m feeling particularly giving today, here is another surprise that really isn’t
Congress pushes anti-gun Brady Law expansion bill
The first major anti-gun bill of the new Pelosi-led Congress has already been introduced, and it could prove to be the most serious threat yet to Second Amendment Rights.
On the first full day of the new Congress, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy introduced H.R. 297, the most massive expansion of the Brady law since it passed in 1993. This is a bill that was quashed last year but under the new Pelosi House leadership, the Bill has a higher likelihood of getting passed this time.
(snip)
This draconian Bill also seeks to computerize records of persons merely indicted for a crime, before they even have a fair trial! Under this awful Bill, such persons, though not even convicted of the crime in question, are prohibited from possessing a firearm!
The gun grabbers are seeking to force the states to provide the federal government all of these indictment records, updated quarterly. Given the maxim among those in the legal profession that prosecutors can get a grand jury to “indict a ham sandwich,” this, too, is a gun prohibition that should be repealed, not expanded.
As if that wasn’t enough, here is the absolutely worst part of this bill
Mental health records are also covered under the McCarthy bill. To some, this may sound like a great idea. After all, who could argue with the premise of keeping guns away from bona fide paranoid schizophrenic prior offenders who are loose on the streets?
But the insidious part of this proposed Bill is that it could forbid American servicemen from carrying firearms, even though they are trained to use them. Why? Because many servicemen take well meaning advice to see some type of psychiatric care, particularly for those who faced some degree of post-traumatic stress. Under this Bill, these soldiers can kiss their guns goodbye.
I’ve written about this here before in past posts about things people may have forgetton about the original Brady Law.
Are you a Vietnam vet who gets or has gotten PTSD help from the VA. If this passes, please let me know when, where and how much you want for your firearms because they will declare you unfit even though you’ve been hunky-dory for 35-40 years. No appeal, no nothing. You are the equivalent of a felon. Have a nice day and thank you for your service.
Or mayhaps you go off to Iraq or Afghanistan to serve your country and kill jihadis. Upon the end of your deployment, you answer the “Theater Exit Questionaire”. Some stuffed shirt reads it and decides that you need to be diagnosed with PTSD.
Bang!
You are no longer allowed your Second Amendment rights. Have a nice day and thank you for your service.
Returning soldiers are being diagnosed with PTSD at an alarming rate. Most of them are able to turn down the official declaration, but some are being suckered into accepting it with disability bennies.
You might be saying to yourself “But some of them really need the help.”, and I am sure that some of them do. But if you remember, “Baghdad Jim” McDermott was a military head shrinker in San Diego during Vietnam whom I’m sure tagged as many servicemen with PTSD as he could, whether they needed it or not.
Local talk show host on 570 KVI, Bryan Suits, had a head shrinker try and stick him with PTSD when he got back. During the appointment where he told the doc to kindly shove it, the doctor learned that he worked for a right-wing talk radio station and proceeded to berate him about it.
Don’t think that there aren’t more McDermott’s working in the VA today.
Help! Bloodpressure dangerously high.
Steve, I wouldn’t admit that in public any more: most doctors consider high blood pressure to be involved with or caused by stress, which is one of those conditions under which you could lose your Second Amendment rights.
On a more serious note of history, my oldest daughter served in the USMCR and was sent off to the Gulf War. When she came back (she actually went north into Kuwait with the 2MEF, dispite what the Marines said about having no women in combat), they asked her if she had any symptoms of Gulf War Syndrome, and she said no. They wouldn’t believe her, and sent her to the hospital three times for evaluation, but she resisted getting on the “list”.
My guess is that if this bill passes (and Bush signs it, which he probably would), every Gulf War vet who is on the GWS list will be put out to pasture, 2A-wise.
I say good. If we who tirelessly fight for the 2A gave ALL the verteran’s organizations on our side hollering, as well as the NRA and GOA, we might actually be able to hold the (D)onk’s feet to the fire on their promise of “no new gun control legislation”, at least when the bill gets to the full House. About a dozen of those new (D)onk Reps are Gulf or Iraq war veterans, and you can bet that they will hear from constituent veterans. If the GOP reps stick together, and more than a couple of the non-veteran new (D)onk Reps remember their promise, the bill doesn’t have the votes to pass.
The indictment part is probably unconstitutional, anyway. The only precedent for it is Domestic Violence Orders. Expanding that principle to ALL indictments is a very large jump of legal logic. When this clause gets debated, maybe the cooleer heads will see just how illegal the disarming orders are in DV cases.
Where’s the ACLU on this one? Any bets that they will rise to defend 2A rights here?
OK, mind you I went to public school, but I vaguely recall some legal concept called presumption of innocence, where you actually have to be convicted of a crime to be punished for it. It would also seem to set a legal precedent that is so fucking scary I would rather not think about it. I wish the GFWs would have the balls to just try to ban all guns here, (except for the cops and soldiers, of course) this death-of-a-thousand-cuts shit is lame. I also wish for whomever wrote this unconsitutional turd to have their hands cut off with a rusty chainsaw to perhaps keep them from writing more.
Ha!
Just did said questionairre yesterday.
“No”
“No”
“Never”
“No”
“No”
“Yes” (were you exposed to dust)
“No”
“No”
“No”
…