Month: September 2024
Historical note about the artwork: it was damaged in the attack on the Pentagon September 11th, 2001. But was repaired and remains a valuable part of the Marine Corps Combat Art Collection.
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Das G43 Wunder-Gewehr ist Scheiße
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A Cooper M51
The Baker family was about to sell their property when a criminal hid in their home. They were not prepared for what came next.
KALISPELL, Mont.—Vicki Baker was ready to close the sale of her house in McKinney, Texas, in July four years ago. She and her new husband were settling into a new home in Montana. Her daughter, Deanna Cook, lived in the McKinney house pending the sale closing.
She said the future seemed as bright and boundless as the view from her Montana mountaintop home.
On July 25, 2020, the sale was canceled, the house had more than $50,000 in damage courtesy of the McKinney Police Department’s Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team, and a fugitive was lying dead in what had been Baker’s master bedroom.
Baker and the public interest law firm Institute for Justice have petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to hear her claim that the damage constitutes a taking under the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. As such, the city would be obligated to provide Baker just compensation for the damage.
The city of McKinney denies that it owes Baker anything because the police were legally exercising their power while responding to an emergency. McKinney appears to have legal precedent on its side.
“Our appellate counsel will be responding in opposition to Ms. Baker’s request to the Supreme Court to hear an appeal of her case,” Denise Lessard, McKinney’s senior media & public relations manager, wrote in an email to The Epoch Times.
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However, Jeffrey Redfern, who is representing Baker, said the lower courts got it wrong. He said those courts claim to have found exceptions to the takings clause where none are listed.
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He pointed out that when the Fifth Amendment was written, the United States had no professional law enforcement agencies.
“So I think the idea that, you know, James Madison, when he was drafting this would have thought that there was an unwritten sort of secret exception for a type of government officer, that he couldn’t have even imagined yet, is pretty far out there,” he told The Epoch Times.
Redfern said the Supreme Court has consistently ruled that the Constitution requires payment for property damage under the Fifth Amendment’s takings clause.
The takings clause states, “No person shall be … deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”
In its petition, the Institute for Justice stated that such compensation should be considered an expense of providing public safety.
“As a society, we pay for police salaries, training, equipment, and the cost of running a criminal justice system. We should also pay for the damage that the police must sometimes inflict on innocent property owners,” the Institute for Justice’s petition reads.
Vicki Baker looks through the almost $60,000 in receipts for repairs she had to make to her house after the 2020 raid by the McKinney Police SWAT team. Michael Clements/The Epoch Times
Redfern said the raid on Baker’s property was just as much a taking as if the city had demolished the house to make way for a road. This concept has been enshrined in Supreme Court decisions as far back as 1871, he said.
“The U.S. Supreme Court recognized in a pretty famous case involving the building of a dam that when the government destroys private property physically, that’s also a taking,” Redfern said.
Baker said her ordeal began when her phone rang on that Saturday afternoon in 2020. She was in Montana when her daughter, Cook, called to tell her that a SWAT team had surrounded the McKinney house.
Baker’s former part-time handyman, Wesley Little, had barricaded himself in the home with a 15-year-old girl. Cook relayed the seriousness of the situation to her mother with an ominous statement.
“She said, ‘Mom, you don’t know how bad this man is,’” Baker told The Epoch Times.
Little released the teen, who told police he was armed and in no mood to surrender. Little told police negotiators the same thing. Eventually, the SWAT team decided to go in after the fugitive.
Before it was over, windows were broken, the garage door was smashed in, and everything in the house—walls, floors, and furniture—was saturated with tear gas.
Little kept his promise not to be taken alive by shooting himself in Baker’s bedroom.
“On my beautiful, beautiful, beautiful bed,” she said.
Baker is not the only Institute for Justice client left holding the bag after a SWAT team raid, according to Redfern.
Carlos Pena has owned and operated NoHo Printing and Graphic Design for more than 30 years. On Aug. 3, 2022, he was in the shop that he had leased in North Hollywood, California, for 13 years when he was confronted by a man running from U.S. Marshals, court records state.
Carlos Pena shows some of the damage done to his business by a Los Angeles SWAT team. Courtesy Institute for Justice
The fugitive knocked him to the ground and then ran into the shop. Stunned, Pena got up as the Marshals ordered him away from the building, according to court records.
“I didn’t realize exactly what was going on,” Pena told The Epoch Times. “I was out of it because you never think that this is going to happen to you.”
The Los Angeles police SWAT team was called to assist. The team raided the business using tactics similar to those used in McKinney.
Pena said that when it was over, his business had holes in the ceiling and walls. There were footprints on some of his equipment, and boxes of supplies were torn open, exposing the contents to tear gas that flooded the building. In court, he claimed that there had been $60,000 in damage.
“I saw all the work of my life thrown away,” Pena said.
The fugitive escaped, court records state.
Pena and Baker contacted their respective insurance companies and city officials for help with repair and cleanup costs.
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Baker’s home insurance provider, which she says was very sympathetic, said there was little she could do other than pay for cleaning up the blood from Little’s suicide. Most homeowner policies don’t cover damage sustained through government action.
The city’s insurance carrier, the Texas Municipal League, sent an Aug. 20, 2020, letter advising that neither the city nor any of its employees were responsible for the damage.
“The officers have immunity while in the scope and course of their job duties. For this reason, we must respectfully deny this claim in its entirety,” Yvonne Cantu, a claims specialist for the Texas Municipal League Intergovernmental Risk Pool, wrote in the letter.
Interior damage sustained to Vicki Baker’s house in Texas during the 2020 raid by a SWAT team. Courtesy Deanna Cook
On March 3, 2021, Baker and the Institute for Justice sued the city in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.
Redfern said that after Judge Amos L. Mazzant denied the city’s request to dismiss Baker’s suit, the city offered her $50,000 to settle.
“Vicki was willing to settle the case, but only if the city adopted a policy to ensure that anyone in Vicki’s situation in the future would also be compensated,” Redfern said. “The city refused.”
Ultimately, Mazzant ordered the city to pay Baker $59,656.65.
The city appealed, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed that ruling on Oct. 11, 2023.
“The city recognized the unique effects on Ms. Baker when it offered her the full amount of her damages. Regrettably, she rejected the city’s offer. However, we are pleased with the Fifth Circuit’s ruling,” Lessard wrote in her email to The Epoch Times.
Redfern agreed that police sometimes must damage property in emergency situations, as the Fifth Circuit court outlined in its ruling. However, he said violence is engaged in to protect society, not just the individual property owner.
“It’s not about wrongdoing [by police] … but what’s the fair way to allocate that [financial] burden? Is that something that society as a whole should bear? Or is it something that we dump on one random, innocent, unlucky homeowner?” Redfern asked.
Pena said that after the raid, he lost the lease on his store, most of his big clients, and almost all of his walk-in business. He now works from his garage doing whatever jobs he can get with second-hand equipment. His wife, who had retired, has gone back to work.
Los Angeles Police Department’s SWAT team and K9 officers prepare to rescue hostages on Dec. 13, 2017. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times
“I’ve lost about 80 percent of my income,” Pena said.
In July 2023, Pena sued the city of Los Angeles over the raid. According to court records, city officials ignored his claims for compensation. In March, the court denied his claims on the basis that the police were engaged in a legitimate law enforcement action.
Pena said he hasn’t decided whether to appeal the ruling.
Ivor Pine, deputy director of communications for the Los Angeles City Attorney’s office, declined an interview request.
“We do not comment on pending litigation,” Pine wrote in an email to The Epoch Times.
Pena, like Baker, doesn’t dispute the legitimacy of the police operation.
“The judge denied it, alleging that the SWAT team is immune because they were doing their job. So, in other words, it’s Carlos Pena’s [property], and so he has to pay. It’s ridiculous,” Pena said.
When asked whether he is concerned that a victory in Baker’s case could chill police responses to situations that may result in property damage, Redfern said he expects the opposite effect.
“When we’ve talked to police officers who’ve been involved in these cases, they have generally told us that they were under the impression that the property owner was going to get compensated,” he said.
“I think they would be more likely to hesitate if they knew that they were going to be visiting financial ruin on an innocent septuagenarian retiree who has no idea where she’s going to get the money to fix her house.”
SWAT teams advance through a parking lot after a gunman opened fire at a King Sooper’s grocery store in Boulder, Colo., on March 22, 2021. Chet Strange/Getty Images
8/23/2012
Though every Englishman should hear what this particular rifle has to say about the Olympics, England and individual rights, I didn’t set out to embarrass this particular English journalist. It’s just that he had it coming.
Let’s just call him Stephen Grey, as that’s his real name. He’s not a bad sort. Grey was educated at England’s famed St. Alban’s School and studied philosophy at Oxford. He has outsized ears and somehow seems too tall for his boyish face. These features give him a look of young innocence you soon find is matched by sincerity.
Then you run into his intellect and really like him. He wrote his last book, Into the Viper’s Nest, after being imbedded with soldiers in Afghanistan. He saw firsthand what the Taliban did to women. He knows all about the barbaric things al-Qaeda has done to a few of his colleagues. He knows jihadists consider civilians to be fair game. He knows about much uglier things than these. Nevertheless, he doesn’t think people should have the right to have firearms for self-defense.
Grey was seated across a table from me at a small dinner party some months ago in Washington, D.C., saying things like, “Americans need to give up their guns. They must become responsible citizens of the world.” Meanwhile, the other writers around the table—people who know my background—were glancing at me, bracing for the counterattack.
I stayed quiet as he described his utopian vision of a disarmed world like John Lennon singing “Imagine no possessions … I wonder if you can … .” I wanted him to be fully committed before I engaged.
Minutes later, as he paused to view the effect of his anti-gun offensive on a table full of Americans, I opted for an attack he likely hadn’t encountered before. I didn’t think he’d be swayed by crime statistics. And if I cited the dramatic English history of individual rights—and the loss thereof—he’d probably quote Friedrich Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil to contend there is no absolute right and wrong and therefore no real individual rights. That philosophical discussion, as interesting as it might be, would be a smokescreen for his retreat. What I needed was a way at the truth he hadn’t encountered before, so I drew him in with the true story of a particular Springfield Model 1903.
“Stephen,” I began, “I understand that a world without guns in private hands, and therefore a world where a 110-pound woman can no longer shoot down a 200-pound rapist, is appealing to you. But let me tell you about a very special rifle. Its story just might make you rethink your views.”
He eyed me over his whiskey and soda.
This particular rifle, I explained, is chambered in .30-’06 Sprg. It was built in 1905 or 1906 in Springfield, Mass. It’s a bolt-action Springfield Model of 1903 with the serial number 264631. Major John W. Hession (1877-1961), an American long-range competition shooter, purchased the rifle. He likely bought it in 1906. He topped it with a J. Stevens Co. riflescope and took it to the range. He found the rifle was so accurate that he took it to England to compete in the Olympics in 1908 at the Bisley Range. Then, in 1909, he used the rifle to set a world record at 800 yards at Camp Perry. At the time, The Piqua Leader-Dispatch (a newspaper that went out of business in 1919) ran the headline “World’s Record is Broken By Hession” on its front page. The feat made him a star. So much so that the June 1911 issue of Forest and Stream reported that when Hession competed at the DuPont Gun Club they were “especially pleased to have Mr. Hession with them. He is regarded by critics as the foremost long-range rifle shot in the world. His most remarkable performance, and the one which brought him the most fame, was at Camp Perry during 1909. At this time he made 67 consecutive bullseyes at 800 yards, a record never before equaled nor since broken.”
Hession was a top long-range competitor well into the 1940s. He won the Wimbledon Cup in 1932. And that wasn’t his first victory there. The Chicago Daily News Almanac and Year-Book for 1921 lists Hession as the winner of the Wimbledon Cup in 1919 as well. In fact, a Remington ad in Arms & The Man in 1914 boasted that Hession used Remington ammunition to win the Marine Corps Cup Match in 1913.
His impact on competitive shooting earned him a parting tribute in the April 1962 issue of American Rifleman. His obituary ran just after one for Col. Townsend Whelen. It reported that “one of his major achievements was to set four world records in one day. This he did on July 3, 1925 while competing in the Eastern Small Bore Championships at Sea Grit, New Jersey. In accomplishing this he fired 102 shots all of which, including sighting shots, were bullseyes.”
Clearly Hession was a renowned rifleman. He also had an understandable attachment to this particular 1903 Springfield. Such a profound attachment, in fact, that he later did something even more remarkable with the rifle.
World War II Gun Drive
After World War I, England passed gun-control laws that mostly disarmed its citizenry. The belief that there should be “a rifle in every cottage,” as proposed by England’s Prime Minister, Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, in 1900 was finished. According to the 1689 Bill of Rights “subjects which are Protestants may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law.” This changed with England’s Firearms Act of 1920. Its restrictions on the private ownership of firearms was partly sold to a war-weary public by politicians fanning fears that a surge in crime might occur because of the large number of firearms available following the war. Another justification for severely restricting firearm ownership was to fulfill a commitment to the 1919 Paris Arms Convention.
Whatever the rationale, the Firearms Act of 1920 passed and required an English citizen who wanted to own a firearm to first obtain a firearm certificate. The certificate, which was good for three years, specifically listed the firearm a person was approved to own and listed the amount of ammunition he or she could buy or possess. The police even had the power to exclude anyone who had “intemperate habits” or an “unsound mind.” Applicants for certificates also had to convince the police they had a good reason for needing a certificate. The 1920 law did not affect those who owned shotguns, but it gave government officials complete control over who could own handguns and rifles.
In 1933 the English Parliament next passed the Firearms and Imitation Firearms Bill. It increased the punishment for the use of a gun in the commission of a crime. Possession of a real or imitation firearm was also made an offense unless the person could show he had the firearm for “a lawful object.” A few years later England passed the 1937 Firearms Act. It extended restrictions to shotguns and granted chief constables the power to add conditions to individual firearm certificates. Clearly the power was in the hands of the state, not the individual.
Predictably such restrictions reduced the number of firearms in law-abiding citizens’ hands. Then came the Battle of Dunkirk in 1940. As the German war machine advanced, the British Expeditionary Force evacuated back across the English Channel. The retreat was costly. In their haste British troops abandoned most of their equipment. The massive loss of military arms, combined with the fact that the English people had been mostly disarmed, left the British people almost helpless before the advance of the Third Reich.
Luckily, they had gun-owning friends across the Atlantic. In 1940 a group of Americans, headed by C. Suydam Cutting, moved quickly to help rearm England’s citizens. They established the “American Committee for Defense of British Homes” and ran an ad in the November 1940 issue of American Rifleman that read in part: “British Civilians, undergoing nightly air raids, are in desperate need of Firearms – Binoculars – Steel Helmets – Stop-Watches – Ammunition.” The ad then said, “If you possess any of these articles you can aid in the battle of Britain by sending these materials to American Committee for Defense of British Homes.”
Hession, who was then working for Winchester Arms, decided to make a statement. He sent his prized Springfield Model 1903 to the American Committee for Defense of British Homes. Before he did, he had two plates attached to its stock. The one on the rifle’s butt read: “This rifle was used by Major John W. Hession” and was used “in winning Olympics Bisley England 1908 – Grand Aggregate Camp Perry 1908 – Worlds 800 YD. Record Camp Perry 1909 … .” A plate placed on the rifle’s fore-end read: “FOR OBVIOUS REASONS THE RETURN OF THIS RIFLE AFTER GERMANY IS DEFEATED WOULD BE DEEPLY APPRECIATED.”
Hession’s rifle was shipped to England. Before the end of the war the NRA alone sent more than 7,000 private firearms to England. The U.S. government, of course, sent many more. Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act in March 1941. Almost immediately, quantities of “U.S. Rifle, Cal. .30, M1” and others were headed across the Atlantic.
Winston Churchill was appreciative. He wrote in Their Finest Hour: “When the ships from America approached our shores with their priceless arms, special trains were waiting in all ports to receive their cargoes. The Home Guard in every county, in every village, sat up through the night to receive them … . By the end of July we were an armed nation … . Anyhow, if we had to go down fighting … a lot of our men and some women had weapons in their hands … .”
England, of course, was victorious after American troops entered the war and made the difference. And wonderfully, after the war, Hession’s rifle found its way back from England to Hession. It can now be seen in the NRA’s National Firearms Museum in Fairfax, Va.
Flash Forward to the 2012 Olympics
By this time, Grey had finished his whiskey and soda and was staring at the melting ice at the bottom of his glass. Even though he was dry, I wasn’t going to let him off without bayoneting the last of his anti-gun point of view. So I said, “Perhaps it is too obvious at this point to use the old axiom ‘those who don’t know their history are bound to repeat it,’ nevertheless today, sadly, Britain is again a disarmed nation.”
So disarmed, I pointed out, that law-abiding residents were helpless when Tottenham’s gangster youth decided to loot stores, mug residents and vandalize automobiles in August 2011 after police had shot and killed a person following a car chase.
Tottenham’s High Road was ground zero for the riots, which have an interesting tie-in to the history outlined here. The “Tottenham Outrage” of 1909—yes, the same “Tottenham” where the 2011 riots took place—was a famous gunfight that exhibited a very different English character.
Two men in Tottenham, armed with semi-automatic handguns, attempted to rob a payroll truck, but when the guards fought back the robbers fled on foot. The chase lasted two hours and covered about six miles as officers and armed civilians pursued the robbers. In the end one of the thieves committed suicide and the other later died in surgery. One officer and one civilian were also killed. The bravery of the officers and civilians prompted the creation of the Kings Police Medal and the funeral processions for the slain officer and the civilian passed through streets lined with mournful Londoners.
Yes, a lot has changed since the English people gave up their right to bear arms.
These days, to obtain a firearm certificate in England the police must be convinced that a person has “good reason” to own a firearm, and that he can be trusted with it “without danger to the public safety or to the peace.” English firearms licenses are only issued if a person has legitimate sporting, collecting or work-related reasons for ownership. And no, since 1946, self-defense has not been considered a valid reason to own a firearm—nor has national defense. So those armed civilians who helped the police in the Tottenham Outrage would, at best, only be bystanders today and at worst be victims.
Indeed, England’s Firearms Act of 1997 banned the private ownership of handguns almost completely. The ban is so restrictive that even England’s Olympic pistol team had to go abroad to practice. That became such a national embarrassment that the English government passed a special dispensation to allow the shooting events to be held in England during the 2012 games.
It’s also worth noting that at the opening ceremonies for the 1908 Olympics held in England—the one Hession had competed in—the USA team noticed there was no American flag among the national flags flying in the stadium. As a result, team USA’s captain and flag-bearer, Martin Sheridan, refused to dip the Stars and Stripes as he passed King Edward VII’s box during the parade of athletes. “This flag dips to no earthly king,” Sheridan later explained.
After relating all of this history to Grey, I ended with the moral of the story: “Now don’t you fret, Grey. If your people ever need to protect their freedom again from threats, domestic or foreign, thanks to the NRA, Americans will be there to help rearm your populace all over again.”
He didn’t even attempt a retreating volley.