Tulsa Police Chief Wendell Franklin is calling for a 9/11 style response to gun violence and suggesting people may have to give up some of their freedom in exchange for gun control.
NPR posted an interview with Franklin on Sunday, noting he is critical of constitutional carry, wants more regulations on firearms that Democrats describe as “ghost guns,” and is open to a waiting period for the purchase of AR-15s and similar firearms.
Franklin said, “Law enforcement – we are the experts. We’re the subject matter experts at protecting America – right? – protecting our cities. And, you know, we should be utilizing that in that manner. So I am charged with protecting this community. And if there are better ways of protecting it, I think we should be looking at those better ways to protect it.”
Ultimately, I’m a Second Amendment guy…But I’m okay giving up some of that freedom, right? We had to give up some of that freedom after 9/11. I’m okay with waiting three days, five days, or whatever to get my firearm if I go out and purchase another firearm.
So I’m okay with a pause to allow for weapons to be purchased and allow the government and the gun companies to look at the background and do a thorough check before that gun goes to someone.
Franklin compared giving up some freedom in exchange for gun control to the process people went through in adapting to seatbelt laws when they were first enacted.
He said, “You know, we put seatbelt laws in place, I’m not exactly sure when, probably the 1980s, I think. And we mandated that everyone starts wearing a seatbelt, and it took some time for people to grab hold of that. But if you look today it is an automatic thing that people put on their seatbelt when they get into a vehicle. You feel uncomfortable not wearing that seatbelt. I think again, we give something up to get safety for, for something safe. I think that’s where we are today. We are going to have to give up some things. And I think there are some things that we can give up for a safer community.”
Franklin became Tulsa’s 40th police chief on February 1, 2020.
U.S. News & World Report lists Tulsa as No. 8 in a list of the “Top 25 Most Dangerous Places in the U.S.”
Lesson: The rule is, “You don’t have to be right, but you do have to be reasonable.” You can be cleared four times over in a shooting and still be criminally charged. If you’re a cop criminally charged, we hope you belong to a union or fraternal organization.
A furtive movement shooting occurs when someone appears to be going for a gun, gets shot for it and turns out not to be armed. Sometimes the movement is a deliberate faking of the menacing gesture — to intimidate a victim or to achieve “suicide by cop” — and sometimes, it is unintentional.
For peace officers and armed citizens alike, the green light to use deadly force normally turns on only in a situation of immediate, otherwise unavoidable danger of death or great bodily harm to oneself or some other innocent party. For that situation to exist, three criteria must be simultaneously present. They are most commonly known as ability, opportunity and jeopardy.
The ability factor, sometimes called means, translates as “power to kill or cripple.” The opponent must be reasonably perceived to be either armed with a deadly weapon such as a gun, knife or club or have such a great unarmed advantage over you as to constitute disparity of force. This might take the form of greater size and strength, force of numbers or known or obviously recognizable skill in unarmed combat. The opportunity factor means they are close enough to employ that power to kill or maim quickly. Finally, the jeopardy factor is the element of manifest intent: The opponent must manifest, by words or actions, what would be reasonably interpreted as intent to kill or cause great bodily harm.
The furtive movement goes to the ability element. It gives the defender reason to believe the opponent is armed with a deadly weapon. It must happen in such a way the reasonable person would construe it as going for a weapon and nothing else within what the courts call the totality of the circumstances. The opponent must still be close enough to harm you with the weapon you reasonably believe they are armed with and must still be manifesting an intent to hurt or slay.
For perspective, why is the charge “Armed Robbery” when the perpetrator robs a bank with a note that says, “I have a gun, give me all the money” or simply has a hand in a pocket making a “finger gun,” but turns out to have no actual weapon? It is because his actions have given the victim reason to fear being unlawfully shot. The same furtive movement principle is in play if the intended victim draws a gun and shoots the suspect making said movement.
Please bear all of this in mind as we look at the United States v. Richard Palmer case.
The Stage Is Set
Deputy Richard Palmer had served with distinction as a uniformed law enforcement officer for more than 20 years, most of it with the Lake County Sheriff’s Department headquartered in Tavares, Fla. The agency comprises more than 500 sworn deputies and some 260 non-sworn personnel. On the night of October 11, 2016, Palmer was on routine patrol when he received a call of a disturbance at a known drug house in a rural part of the town of Paisley. As he headed to the address, he remembered a brother officer who had been murdered near there not long before.
Approaching the narrow road which led to the house, Palmer saw a Mercury sedan with a lone female at the wheel approaching from that direction. She blew through the stop sign and came to a halt directly in front of his marked unit. His first thought was that she was fleeing the scene; he obviously needed to talk to her. Palmer already had his windows down so he could hear any danger signals as he approached, and he saw her window was down, too. As she gestured apologetically, he gestured back for her to pull over and told her so loudly.
Instead, she accelerated away from him.
Palmer spun the steering wheel and followed, carefully avoiding two bicyclists, the only other people in sight. The woman drove less than a hundred yards and then suddenly cut left, across the lawn of a house, and came to a stop in the yard. Palmer followed, throwing the patrol unit into park and making sure it was angled to the left to put the engine block between her and him.
He saw the driver’s door pop open. Alarm bells went off in his head. When a driver does that, it’s telling the officer behind them there’s something in their car they don’t want the cop to see. It is also, Palmer knew, one of the most common patterns of ambush murder during traffic stops.
There had been no time to radio in. Palmer quickly opened the door of his unit, stepping to the left for an angle to better see the driver. What he saw chilled him: She appeared to be putting a black semiautomatic pistol into the front pocket of her hoodie with her left hand.
She approached him rapidly, her hands now visible. Palmer’s department-issue GLOCK 22 was out and in hand, muzzle down, as he yelled at her repeatedly to stop. But she kept coming.
The Unforgiving Moment
The hands are where he can see them … and then suddenly they drop, the left hand appearing to be going for the hoodie pocket. Palmer raises the GLOCK, leveling on her chest, and fires. The woman jerks and then falls heavily to her right. The hands are visible again and empty. Palmer ceases fire.
He moves forward. GLOCK still pointed at her, the deputy tries to remove the gun from the hoodie pocket.
He finds only an iPhone. He tosses it to the side. It is at that moment he realizes she is unarmed.
Immediate Aftermath
The woman, whom we will refer to here as only RP — yes, she had the same initials as the deputy who shot her — survived. The bullet struck her right hip from about 20′, dropping her instantly. She would complain of permanent pain thereafter.
The dashboard camera had been set slightly to the right of center in the patrol car, several feet from where Deputy Palmer was standing when he fired the shot in question. Its time counter showed less than one minute from when she accelerated away from the patrol car at the intersection to when she was shot.
In the silent video, RP gets out of the car. She has an apologetic smile as she walks toward the patrol car and her hands are chest high. Suddenly, both hands dip down toward her waist. The hands rise again, and an instant later, she is seen to collapse down to her right from the gunshot. Palmer is seen approaching from the left, GLOCK still covering her, and immediately going to her left hoodie pocket. He is seen to withdraw the smartphone and toss it aside. He then holsters, attempts to handcuff her and finds it is causing her too much pain. He abandons the handcuffing and radios for paramedics and backup.
Investigative Aftermath
It was clearly a furtive movement shooting. We’ve all heard the term “justifiable shooting.” It means the shooter did the right thing by pulling the trigger. As the late Judge Roy Bean might have said, “That person needed to be shot.” Less widely known is the concept of the “excusable shooting.” That conclusion says, “With 20/20 hindsight and unlimited time, we now know that the person in question didn’t need to be shot. However, the circumstances were such that any reasonable person might have done the same as the shooter, and therefore, the shooter should be held harmless (i.e., not be convicted of, or punished for, the shooting).” This incident fits the latter profile.
The Lake County Sheriff’s Office concluded so. Rick Palmer was restored to duty and was later promoted to a supervisory position.
FDLE, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, also investigated the shooting. That agency has a reputation for not covering for bad cops. They found no wrongdoing on Palmer’s part.
The State’s Attorney’s Office reviewed the shooting and found no problem with it.
Indeed, a Grand Jury assessed the matter and returned No True Bill, which in essence is a finding that no crime has been committed.
However, much later, the incident came to the attention of an attorney in the United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. He thought otherwise. In September 2019, Palmer was indicted on Federal charges of violating RP’s civil rights and lying to investigators.
Trial
The trial was held in Federal Court in Tampa from the end of March through early April 2022. The competent Alan Diamond and Kepler Funk were co-counsel for the defense. Palmer had hired them out of his own pocket. Never thinking anything like this would happen to him, Palmer had never joined the Fraternal Order of Police. The prosecution’s theory was Palmer had become angry with RP for not pulling over and shot her for that reason.
Sheriff Payton Grinnell was called to the stand. On direct, he answered yes to the prosecutor’s questions that department regulations called for the officer to radio in the stop and turn on emergency lights that would activate sound recording on the dashcam, which Palmer had not done. However, on cross-examination, the sheriff explained the regulations in that regard were guidelines, not laws.
RP herself was not called by the prosecution to testify. Only the prosecution can say why. Had she taken the witness stand, she might have had to admit to the alcohol and narcotics in her bloodstream that night and that she’d had many arrests often involving methamphetamine and had done jail time. It would probably also have come out she had previously testified she had pulled into a stranger’s yard because she knew she was driving someone else’s car without their permission and without a driver’s license. She somehow believed the car wouldn’t be towed if it was on private property. This would have killed the Government’s insinuation she didn’t know she was being stopped by the police. Because Palmer didn’t know her background at the time of the stop, it could not be introduced by his defense attorneys.
The defense’s case was brief. As an expert witness for the defense and having intensively debriefed Palmer, it was easy for me to counter the prosecution’s assertions.
Why didn’t Palmer turn on the emergency lights or siren? Their purpose is to notify the target driver and others on the road a stop is taking place. The video showed clearly the two bicyclists saw Palmer and stayed out of his way and that RP could clearly see the marked car, the uniformed officer, and hear and see his directions to her. In the few short seconds of the interaction, he simply hadn’t had time to hit the now unnecessary toggle switch. The Government alleged he didn’t know the dashcam was running. In fact, Palmer had watched its installation and knew it was indeed operative. Why didn’t he radio in? He didn’t have time. He hadn’t been able to read the license plate, and the “chase” covered less than a hundred yards.
Part of the prosecution’s case theory was Palmer violated procedure by doing a routine traffic stop instead of proceeding to a more serious call for police service. I explained the woman blowing through the stop sign was the least of it: She appeared to be coming from the scene of the serious call, could be expected to provide critical information on what was happening there and might even be the perpetrator. Thus, stopping her was logical and a part of responding to the more urgent call.
The core question was, how could the shooting have happened? Despite access to top experts at the FBI and DEA academies and more, the Government hadn’t figured it out. RP’s sudden turn into the yard had given Palmer no time to radio for backup. Her emergence from the vehicle, appearing to put a pistol-like object in her pocket and her rapidly approaching him in defiance of his orders to stop all warranted taking her at gunpoint. Her hands coming down to where she had appeared to have stowed a gun triggered the shooting.
Timing
The Government’s video of the shooting, complete with a time counter, showed from the moment her hands started going down, they had reached the area of the hoodie pocket in 0.33 of one second. The movement caused Palmer to raise his gun, indexing on her chest. In an extended isosceles stance, his hands and pistol now blocked his view of her hands, which remained down for another 0.475 of a second. It took another 0.315 seconds for the rising hands to reach chest level — Palmer told me he never did see the hands come back up. By then, the 180-grain Gold Dot .40 bullet was on its way. She reacted to the bullet wound only a fifth of a second after the hands reached chest level. Overall, only 1.32 seconds had elapsed from the downward movement of her hands that triggered Palmer’s decision to fire to when she crumpled from the bullet strike.
Once it appeared she was going for the gun, even if he had seen the rising hands, it would have been an unanticipated stimulus to stop a trigger pull already under way. While reaction to anticipated stimulus averages about a quarter-second, the cognitive response required for a reaction to unanticipated response averages over a second for most people and will rarely happen quicker than seven-tenths of a second at best.
Why not wait to see the gun? Because if you wait that long you’ll see what comes out of it. I testified once the hand was on the perceived gun, a person in RP’s position could have drawn and shot the deputy in less than a second.
The prosecution harped on the hip shot, implying it was intentionally fired to torture and punish and emphasizing police are taught to shoot center mass. I was able to testify the officer had told me (and the initial investigators) he was trying to put the shot center chest. However, I explained right-handed shooters such as Palmer tend to shoot low left (and southpaws, low right) due to “milking” the gun under pressure, which I demonstrated to the jury with Mr. Diamond. In a previous questioning, Palmer had been discussing this when he blurted he didn’t want to kill her; the Government seemed to interpret that as an admission to having shot her to torture her. Their theory did not explain why a rogue cop who wanted to torture someone with a bullet wound would leave her alive to testify against him.
I took the witness stand at about 10:30 a.m. and was done with cross-examination at about 2:30 p.m. Cross is easy when the truth is on your side, and you can explain it. On my departure, I learned the testimony I had expected from the defendant and department use of force instructor Richard Rippy had not taken place. Diamond and Funk felt it looked like we had covered the waterfront, and the jury had “gotten it.” In a “strike, while the iron is hot” decision, the defense closed after I left the stand.
To make a long story short, Kepler Funk delivered a brilliant closing argument in which he pointed out something I had established in my testimony: In the years since the shooting, the Government had had millions of times longer to second guess Rick Palmer than Palmer had when he reasonably believed he was about to be shot to death in the dark.
The jury acquitted him on all charges.
Months later, a Google search showed nothing whatsoever about his acquittal but still showed his 2019 indictment.
Palmer was welcomed back at the Sheriff’s Department with open arms and given a much-appreciated appointment to Marine Patrol, where he is now working.
Lessons
Action-reaction paradigms must be taken into account when analyzing cases of this type. They were, insofar as the Sheriff’s Office, FDLE and the State’s Attorney’s Office … but apparently not by the U.S. Department of Justice.
The guiding light for police use of force is the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1989 decision in Graham v. Connor. It focuses on the standard of objective reasonableness. The Court said, “The ‘reasonableness’ of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight.”
The opinion also stated, “The calculus of reasonableness must embody allowance for the fact that police officers are often forced to make split-second judgments — in circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving — about the amount of force that is necessary for a particular situation.” Diamond and Kepler were able to get a jury instruction outlining this principle.
It is essential to have post-accusation support. Legal cases cost big money. I’ve always urged police officers to join their union or fraternal organization: It is the one entity that will likely pay for your legal defense if criminally charged. As much as the department might want to stand behind you, they’re not allowed to pay legal fees for people accused of crimes.
Organizations like Armed Citizens Legal Defense Network (ArmedCitizensNetwork.org) serve a similar purpose for private citizens. (Disclosure: I’m on ACLDN’s advisory board.) Rick Palmer paid about $100,000 out of his own pocket and Diamond and company gave him a hell of a deal at that.
Be sure your instructors will speak for you. Cop or armed citizen, a jury told you did what you were trained to do (and what you were trained was, in fact, the right thing to do) can be enormously helpful. Retired deputy Richard Rippy stood ready to do so. In this case, Rippy had briefed me on the training, and I was able to get it in. Some instructors fail to do so, particularly in high-profile or politically motivated cases.
I would like to publicly recognize Alan Diamond and Kepler Funk for a great job of lawyering and Richard Rippy and Sheriff Grinnell for being stand-up, honest lawmen. I would also like to applaud the trial judge, James D. Whittemore, who did a very fair and impartial job in what turned out to be his final case before retirement from a most distinguished career. Finally, a hearty thanks to Rick Palmer’s family — including one son in the same department — who stood by him all the way through the unnecessary nightmare it took more than half a decade to end.
The surveillance video used in the police investigation shows the two vehicles involved in the car-to-car shooting just before 7 p.m. on Sunday.
A black SUV and white sedan travel east along Beach Street toward the Embarcadero. As the black vehicle is stuck behind another car, the passenger in the backseat of the white sedan suddenly climbs halfway out the window and shoots at the SUV. It appears the driver of the sedan also sticks out an arm to do the same.
The video also shows multiple civilians running away from the intersection of Beach and Stockton with two individuals diving and ducking for cover behind a grassy median.
SFPD have arrested one suspect and detained another individual from the black SUV and report the occupants of the white sedan are still at large. SFPD believe there is more cell phone video of the incident and ask anyone with information to come forward.
On Tuesday, it was announced the Department of Justice (DOJ) reached a plea agreement with Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, to avoid prosecution for illegally possessing a firearm as an admitted drug user.
Hunter Biden’s plea agreement to misdemeanor tax offenses allows him to avoid federal felony charges for lying on a background check form when he purchased a firearm. Hunter Biden was an illegal user of crack cocaine at the time, which made him ineligible to legally purchase or possess a firearm.
The punishment for the felony offense of lying on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Form 4473 is up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Not to mention, the firearm Hunter Biden purchased was later disposed of in a public trash can.
In a statement released by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the organization criticizes the agreement as it comes at the same time the Biden administration is punishing firearm retailers by revoking licenses and terminating livelihoods for minor clerical errors with its “zero-tolerance” policy.
“Under this administration’s ‘zero tolerance’ policy, licensed firearm retailers have had their lives destroyed for paperwork mistakes far less egregious than buying a gun when you are a crack addict,” said Lawrence G. Keane, NSSF’s Senior Vice President and General Counsel. “They are not serious about reducing gun violence, only scoring cheap political points. It is worth noting this announcement came today, after President Biden’s appearance in Hartford last Friday to call for gun control.”
During the appearance, President Biden once again called on Congress to pass unconstitutional gun control measures that would ban an entire class of commonly-owned semiautomatic rifles and allow for suing members of the firearm industry.
The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms released a statement in response calling the deal “an insult to the intelligence of the American people.”
“Why should anybody respect any gun laws if the president’s son gets a pass,” CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb questioned. “The American public should be outraged at what amounts to a deplorable double standard.
“It is important to note that none of the gun prohibition lobbying groups have uttered a word of condemnation,” he continued. “This fact alone shows what hypocrites they are, and what a hypocrite Joe Biden is. Their silence is deafening.”
Gottlieb noted how President Biden has spent his entire political career campaigning for strict gun control, including bans on so-called “assault weapons” and more recently, an acknowledged effort to prevent the sale of 9mm pistols. But the rules evidently change when the president’s son is involved in a federal gun crime that would result in fines and imprisonment for up to 10 years for anybody else who knowingly lied about not being a prohibited person, to obtain a handgun.
“If Joe Biden wasn’t president,” Gottlieb said, “Hunter Biden would be heading to jail. Looks like the biggest loophole of them all is to violate a federal gun law when you’re the president’s son.”
The CCRKBA chairman also said the gun ban lobby’s silence on this case should erase any influence they have on the nation’s gun law policies.
“The anti-gun-rights movement, from Joe Biden on down through all of the billionaire-backed gun control groups have just lost whatever credibility they ever had, and ever will have, by not immediately denouncing this deal,” Gottlieb stated. “These elitist anti-gunners must never again be taken seriously by the public, the media or members of Congress and state legislatures when they advocate for tougher gun laws, while remaining silent about the Biden gun crime loophole.”
A North Carolina dad took action on Father’s Day when he fatally shot an intruder who had threatened his young daughter, according to local Police.
After receiving report of a breaking and entering in progress and shots fired, Wilson Mills police officers and Johnston County sheriff’s deputies arrived at the scene shortly after 9 p.m.
Joco reports talked to Police Chief A.Z. Williams, who stated preliminary investigations have occurred.
It appears the suspect had entered the backyard of the residence. He encountered three children playing outside and he targeted the 11-year-old daughter.
The other two children rushed indoors to alert their parents.
Shots Fired
The suspect followed the children and attempted to force himself into the house, violently shaking the door handle. In response, the homeowner took action and shot the intruder.
The identity of the 23-year-old suspect has not yet been disclosed.
The suspect was attended to by emergency personnel, but NRAreports indicate he died. Williams emphasized that the family had no prior knowledge of the attacker.
The homeowner fully cooperated with the investigating detectives and was not taken into custody, the sheriff’s office confirmed. Fox Newsinforms us that this case is being viewed as a self-defense situation.
According to ABC11, Williams noted that this incident is one of the rare violent occurrences during his five-year tenure at the Wilson’s Mills Police Department.
Be Prepared – Even on Father’s Day
An article fromHager & Schwartz tells us that violent crimes are most likely to happen during the summer. This statement cites multiple reasons, including heat and increased drinking.
Next, another statistic from the US Department of Justice informs us that “3 out of 4 people will become victims of a completed or attempted assault.” In other words, citizens need to always be ready and capable of defending themselves.
This father was put in a position to defend his children. He had prepared himself by knowing how to use his firearm, and he definitely put it to use that day.
This Father’s Day incident serves as a reminder of how important the fathers – and the guns – in our lives are.
How likely is an American to die in a mass shooting? It really depends on which measure you use.
According to Gun Violence Archive (GVA), across 646 mass shootings in 2022, 642 people were killed. That fact alone should already give you some indication of how they count these things – GVA defines mass shootings as any incident where 4 or more are shot, not including the shooter. As a result, their list is mostly gang violence incidents, many of which involved no one being killed, just injuries. According to Excel, the average is .993808 deaths per GVA “mass shooting.”
Anyway, even taking that 642 figure, that means the average American had a 0.19 in 100,000 chance of dying in a mass shooting in 2022. In other words, about 1 in 500,000.
But let’s say you aren’t a gang member, and are more concerned with what people actually mean when they say “mass shooting”. I.e., some lunatic walks into your grocery store, school, movie theater, etc. and begins a rampage. How likely are you to be killed in an incident like that?
The Mother Jones database is an excellent tool for that question. It limits it to incidents (1) where three or more are killed, (2) involved a lone shooter (with some obvious exceptions, like San Bernardino), (3) were carried out in a public place, and (4) gang-related crime is excluded. To be sure, Mother Jones’s measure still isn’t perfect. I do think some incidents where less than three are killed are still mass shootings by the common understanding of such incidents. But Mother Jones’s definition comes close to what most people mean when they say “mass shooting.”
By the Mother Jones definition, 74 people died in mass shootings in 2022. That’s about 0.02 per 100,000. Or roughly one for every five million people.
Mass shootings are tragedies that get massive media attention. But they are a very unlikely way to die, especially if you aren’t involved in criminal activity.
“Each weapon recovered could mean one fewer victim of violence!” Price gushed about an L.A. “buyback.” Charges against him, including for embezzlement and perjury, may be indicators of how believable his claims about anything are. (Curren D. Price, Jr./Facebook)
U.S.A. — “Democratic LA city councilman charged with embezzlement, conflict of interest in latest political scandal,” Fox News reported Thursday. “Curren Price is the latest member of the Los Angeles City Council to be arrested in recent years.”
Price is accused of voting to approve projects “in which he had a direct financial interest,” with his wife receiving more than $150,000 in undisclosed payments from developers, and of “having the city pay for medical benefits for his now wife while he was still married to another woman,” the story elaborates. All in all, he’s “facing five counts of embezzlement, three counts of perjury, and two counts of conflict of interest.”
So naturally, he doesn’t trust his constituents with guns, exploiting a so-called “buyback” with the Los Angeles Police Department to gain himself some free publicity while not making a bit of difference in the violent crime Angelenos live under (and bafflingly, vote for with their choice of “leaders”). It wasn’t his first.
“Certainly in South L.A. I feel that gun violence is the No. 1 public health issue,” Price said at a press conference for a 2017 event. “Buyback programs like this really underscore the importance of getting guns off the street. It’s just amazing the number of weapons that are turned in.”
Not that they do anything but fraudulently make it look like city “leaders” are taking charge. No less an “authority” than the National Institute of Justice has admitted:
“Buybacks are ineffective unless massive and coupled with a ban… 1. The buybacks are too small to have an impact. 2. The guns turned in are at low risk of ever being used in a crime. 3. Replacement guns are easily acquired. Unless these three points are overcome, a gun buyback cannot be effective.”
“Price is fighting to ensure our justice system works for everyone, not just the wealthy and well-connected,” his campaign website advertised, hitting on all the right “progressive” buzzwords to gin up resentment and stir up support for doing everything but address the real issues behind criminal violence.
“He has fought to bring more accountability reforms at LAPD to stop racial profiling and police misconduct, especially against young Black and Latino men. He’s led efforts to crack down on guns and successfully secured funding for at-risk youth and foster programs, gang intervention, and crime prevention. And he’s fought for investment in mental health, addiction treatment, job training, and education – not more jails and incarceration.”
“I am a firm believer in the control of guns, the restraint of guns, and the federal government’s proposal for the regulation of guns,” Curren told Our Weekly in 2013 in a report on the “Gun Culture on South L.A.”
But what about the other council members? The story says he’s “the latest” to be arrested:
“Mark Ridley-Thomas was found guilty of conspiracy, bribery, and fraud in March of this year… José Huizar pleaded guilty in January to one count of conspiracy to violate the RICO Act and one count of tax evasion [and] Mitchell Englander was convicted in 2021 of scheming to falsify material facts after he attempted to cover up lavish gifts and services he received from business interests.”
Are you ready to not be surprised?
“Ridley-Thomas also wants the group to explore options to better enforce existing and/or adopt stricter gun control restrictions and penalties… ‘especially related to sale or possession of semiautomatic guns and military-style assault weapons,’” The Daily Breeze reported. “He gave several examples of possible regulations, such as deeper background checks for gun sales, requirements for those who purchase guns to buy insurance to cover any taxpayer expenses incurred from the ‘injurious use of a gun’ or taxes on ammunition and firearms.”
“L.A. bans the POSSESSION of mags holding more than 10 rds. in city limits… People who currently possess such magazines, many for collectible firearms registered decades ago, have a 60-day window to remove them from the city, sell them to a legal gun dealer, or turn them into the Los Angeles Police Department.”
It’s really no wonder that such political predators don’t trust citizens with guns. Knowing you can’t be trusted means no one can be: It’s called “projection.” And it’s also called “survival instinct” when wolves demand “commonsense horn safety” laws.
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.
Bank of America Turns Over Information on Gun Owners to the FBI, iStock-471503379
WASHINGTON, D.C. —FBI whistleblowers have come forward with damning allegations against Bank of America (BoA). According to Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), the banking giant has been revealing information to the FBI about its customer’s gun purchases without a warrant. Now the pair has sent letters to other banks to see if they also violated the privacy rights of their customers.
After the protest at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, Bank of America provided the FBI with a list of customers who made transactions in or around Washington, D.C., purchased a flight to the Nation’s Capital, or booked a hotel room in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area. Most of Bank of America’s customers that attended the large rally never entered the Capitol Building, and the FBI did not have probable cause to allow the law enforcement agency to get a court order for the bank to surrender the documents.
When the FBI approached BoA about turning over the records, the bank complied without requesting a court order.
The megabank would put anyone in or around D.C. and purchase a gun on the top of the list. By simply being in or around D.C. on January 6 and purchasing a firearm using a BoA product, the FBI would mark you for investigation. The FBI investigated many BoA customers without a court order and with the full cooperation of Bank of America.
“In a transcribed interview, retired FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst George Hill testified that BoA, ‘with no directive from the FBI, data-mined its customer base’ and compiled a list of BoA customers who used a BoA product during a specified date range. Mr. Hill further noted that ‘on top of that list, they put anyone who had purchased a firearm during any date.’ Mr. Hill also testified that the list that BoA provided targeted transactions in Washington D.C., and the surrounding area,” the letter reads.
The letter was sent to JPMorgan Chase & Co, Citigroup, Truist Financial Corporation, Wells Fargo, U.S. Bancorp, and PNC Financial Services. The Congressmen are asking the banks to provide any documents or communications about the release of customer data from the January 6, 2021, timeframe to the FBI or any other federal law enforcement agencies.
This request is to see if the other major banks of similar size leaked the same customer information to the federal authorities that Bank of America released.
“Congress has an important interest in ensuring that Americans’ private information is protected from collection by federal law enforcement agencies without proper due process. The Committee and Select Subcommittee must understand if, how, and to what extent financial institutions, including PNC Financial Services, worked with the FBI to collect Americans’ private data,” the letter reads.
Many are concerned that the FBI is becoming overtly political and weaponized against anyone the Biden regime considers enemies. We have seen the weaponization of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) against conservative non-profits. The FBI has also used documents like the discredited “Steele Dossier” to get FISA warrants to surveil political opponents. Some of those concerned about the weaponization of government agencies are serving in Congress.
It should concern all Americans (not only gun owners) that big business is working hand and hand with big government. Instead of protecting its customers’ data, it turns it over to the surveillance state without a fight. Gun owners now know that Bank of America is not protecting their data from an ever-encroaching government. The only question now is how far the rot goes.
About John Crump
John is a NRA instructor and a constitutional activist. John has written about firearms, interviewed people of all walks of life, and on the Constitution. John lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and sons and can be followed on Twitter at @crumpyss, or at www.crumpy.com.
The American 180 was a drum-fed, selective-fire rimfire submachine gun originally intended for Law Enforcement applications. Note the empties pouring out of the bottom during this long burst.
It was November of 1974 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. While the weather in such places as North Dakota and Illinois was already abysmal, the legendary Florida sunshine still kept things warm and cheery. This day, however, there was some serious mischief afoot.
In the early seventies, the Chevrolet Camaro was the archetypal American muscle car.
The names of the two bad guys have been lost to history, though I have read that they were originally wanted for burglary. We know that they were stopped by Officers Mike Gilo and Gary Jones of the Fort Lauderdale Police Department while driving a flashy Chevrolet Camaro. In 1974 the gas crisis had not yet castrated American muscle cars, so the Camaro still had ample spunk.
Everything fundamentally changed when one of the suspects produced a handgun and began firing at police officers.
Things got tense, and Officers Gilo and Jones retrieved their long guns. In a veritable fit of stupidity, the passenger side perp produced a handgun and fired. Shooting at well-armed police officers seldom ends well.
With 11 million copies in service, the Remington 870 is the most popular shotgun ever produced.
Officer Jones leveled his issue slide-action 12-gauge shotgun and cut loose with a load of buckshot. The resulting cloud of 0.33-inch lead balls tore up the hot rod but otherwise failed to connect. Officer Gilo, however, wielded something else entirely.
The American 180 .22-caliber submachine gun was a unique weapon marketed primarily to Law Enforcement users.
Mike Gilo hefted his fully automatic American 180 .22-caliber submachine gun, jacked the bolt to the rear, and took a bead on the car. Squeezing the trigger he unlimbered a fusillade of zippy little 40-grain lead bullets at some 1,200 rounds per minute into the vehicle’s rear window.
The American 180 Submachine Gun
The philosophical similarities between the American 180 and the WW1-era Lewis gun are obvious.
The American 180 was an open-bolt, selective-fire .22-caliber submachine gun loosely patterned upon the American-designed and British-produced Lewis machinegun of WW1 fame. The father of the American 180 was Richard “Dick” Casull. His original Casull Model 290 was a semiauto .22 rifle that fed from an enormous drum magazine located atop the weapon.
The Casull Model 290 was an exquisitely well-made firearm. The receivers were cut from a big chunk of steel, and the parts were hand-fitted. Original 290’s are coveted collector’s items today.
The 1960’s-era Model 290 was both expensive and cumbersome. Eighty-seven hand-built copies saw the light of day before the project died a natural death. Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos owned one. However, by the 1970s other manufacturers in the US and Austria took up and built upon the design.
The massive .454 Casull was a ludicrously powerful handgun.
Dick Casull was a gunsmith from Utah who also developed the monster .454 Casull cartridge along with the big-boned revolver that fired it. The .454 Casull was basically a grotesquely up-engineered .45 Long Colt round that developed nearly 2,000 foot-pounds of muzzle energy.
North American Arms mini-revolvers are undeniably adorable. These are the guns you can always have on you.
Casull along with Wayne Baker also pioneered Freedom Arms in 1978 to develop miniature single-action revolvers. Eventually, North American Arms acquired the production rights and covered the country in a thin patina of these adorable well-built compact stainless steel wheelguns.
Technical Details
American 180 drums come in a variety of sizes and mount atop the weapon via a sliding catch. This is the view of the drum from the bottom.
The American 180 SMG weighs 5.7 pounds empty and 10 pounds loaded with a 177-round drum. Original magazines carry either 165 or 177 rounds, though larger capacity drums of up to 275 rounds are still in production today. 275-round drums effectively occlude the weapon’s sights. However, E&L Manufacturing, the current producer of American 180 drums, includes an elevated front sight along with your first 275-round drum purchase.
The drum magazine spins as it empties. The American 180 ejects out the bottom of the receiver.
The American 180 bolt incorporates a series of grooves in the sides to channel crud out of the mechanism. The British L2A3 Sterling submachine gun features similar stuff. The body of the drum spins on top of the receiver as it empties, which is kind of weird.
The American 180 shares any number of common characteristics with the M1928 Thompson submachine gun. The detachable buttstocks on both weapons function similarly.
There is a captive screw underneath the forward aspect of the receiver that allows the gun to break down quickly into two handy components. The stock removes with the push of a button like that of the M1928 Thompson submachine gun. The bulky pan magazine produces a cluttered sight picture, but the gun is just a ton of fun on the range.
The spring-powered motor for the drum is removable and must be wound properly before use.
You can die of old age while loading these drum magazines. There is supposedly a mag loader available, though I’ve never seen one. The process really is spectacularly tedious and is best executed in front of some Netflix. A single common spring-powered motor (the detachable mechanical bit in the center) can be used on multiple drums.
This ungainly monster reflected the state of the art in laser sights back in the day.
The American 180 was originally designed to be used in conjunction with a primitive bulky helium-neon gas laser designator. These early laser sights were enormous contraptions that ran about two hours on a single set of batteries. Oddly, there was also the option of operating the sight off of wall power. That would, of course, presuppose an exceptionally cooperative target.
This is the result of a single fifty-round burst fired from twenty meters.
A single .22LR round isn’t particularly awe-inspiring, but twenty of them in a single second will absolutely rock your world. Even at 1,200 rounds per minute recoil is inconsequential, so the gun is easy to control. The original marketing literature claimed that the American 180 would munch through concrete walls, car doors, and body armor. To eat through body armor with a full auto .22 necessitates a remarkably open-minded miscreant. The gun’s manufacturers claimed that you could place the contents of an entire 165-round magazine within a three-inch circle at twenty yards in the span of eight seconds. Wow.
Trigger Time
All civilian-legal automatic weapons are getting pretty long in the tooth. The last transferable machinegun was produced in 1986.
I found the gun to be finicky. However, the youngest civilian-legal machinegun in the registry is some thirty-four years old by now. None of these things were designed to last for generations.
The safety is a rotating lever on the right side of the receiver. The fire selector is an unmarked pushbutton located behind the safety. Pushing the peg to the right sets the gun on full auto.
The spring-driven motor for the drum magazine has to be tuned a bit. Too little tension and the gun chokes. Too much and the gun chokes. Get it just right, however, and the American 180 is every bit as cool as you might think it would be.
The non-reciprocating charging handle is located on the left aspect of the receiver.
Burst management requires a bit of discipline, but the onerous loading cycle serves to motivate. Given an adequately expansive piece of paper, you really could write your name with the thing. Take your time and hold your protracted bursts on a single spot, and the American 180 will indeed eat through some of the most remarkable stuff.
Both of these guns cycle at about 1,200 rounds per minute. The tiny little subgun on the left is an RPB MAC-11 in .380ACP.
Running the gun intimates an element of precision that is likely illusory at best. The lack of over-penetration in urban areas, when compared to centerfire offerings, was one of the biggest selling points for the gun. However, a gun that cycles at 1,200 rounds per minute is the stuff of nightmares if wielded in a slipshod fashion in a congested area. Truth be known this might not actually be markedly more hazardous than a 12-bore chucking buckshot, but both guns do demand a lot of practice for safe employment.
The Rest of the Story
A quick two-second burst chewed the back window out of the Camaro.
Though the 12-bore failed to connect, the 180 reliably did the deed. Officer Gilo unleashed a 40-round burst that took all of two seconds. These forty little rimfire bullets chewed through the back window of the car, and the car crashed in short order.
For certain narrow applications like neutralizing armed felons at close range in an automobile the American 180 was a superb tool.
One of the bad guys was already toasted, his critical bits thoroughly rearranged courtesy the prodigious swarm of little 40-grain slugs. His partner in crime fled the scene but was apprehended soon thereafter sporting an unhealthy collection of small caliber bullet wounds of his own.
The American 180 is a controllable little bullet hose. The backstop in this photograph is 65 feet tall and safe.
In the 1970s there were apparently not quite so many lawyers as is the case today. In an era wherein folks sue cops over some of the most inane stuff, I suspect a .22-caliber machinegun that rips along at twenty rounds per second would likely not satisfy any modern Law Enforcement agency’s risk management department.
Ruminations
The Utah Department of Corrections used the American 180 for a time as a prison weapon.
The American 180 was produced for a time in Utah and was formally adopted by the Utah Department of Corrections. The Utah DOC bought quite a few laser units as well. When wielded from a guard tower at their state penitentiary I suspect these puppies reliably kept the cons in line.
The American 180 inspired the Slovenian MGV-176 that became a fairly popular combat weapon.
The Rhodesian Special Air Service used a few of these weird little weapons operationally in Africa. A similar gun produced in Slovenia and titled the MGV-176 was purportedly fairly popular in the sundry wars that took place thereabouts.
There’s really not much an American 180 will do that a decent 9mm subgun might not do better, but it was undeniably novel.
It’s tough to imagine what the American 180 might bring to the table that a proper 9mm subgun might not, but it is nonetheless a thought-provoking concept. I personally wouldn’t be comfortable relying upon the cumbersome drum feed system in an austere environment.
Most of the commercial American 180 submachine guns went to Law Enforcement users.
The company’s marketing efforts focused on LE sales, and I recall their advertisements in gun magazines back in the Dark Ages. Like all legal machineguns, transferable examples command a premium these days. Many of the guns available to civilian shooters today were traded out of LE arms rooms as departments grew weary of them.
There was even a quad mount designed for the American 180 that produced some 6,000 rounds per minute. The gun’s advocates envisioned such a rig for perimeter defense.
The American 180 is one of the most unusual combat weapons ever imagined. Under controlled circumstances as our hapless Florida burglars discovered, the American 180 can indeed be devastatingly effective. At this point, however, the American 180 is little more than an historical footnote and recreational range beast.
With the stock removed the American 180 was almost compact. The bulky top-mounted drum prevents the gun from being readily concealable.
Loading drums would befuddle Job the prophet, and the gun eats ammo like a monkey after Sugar Babies. However, you’d be hard-pressed to conjure a more delightful way to turn .22 rimfire ammo into noise. Novel, unique, and oddly effective within its admittedly narrow applications, the American 180 is an artifact of the golden age of gun design.
Sound suppressed Austrian-made American 180 submachine guns were procured by the Rhodesian SAS during their sundry bush wars. There is at least one documented instance wherein a pair of these weapons was used to successfully engage FRELIMO terrorists at close range during an operation in Mozambique in 1979.
