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All About Guns Cops

Why Do Democrats Think They Can ‘Win’ the Crime Issue? Media bias misinforms the public about “gun violence.” by ROBERT STACY MCCAIN

A possible New York gun crime scene (Steve Sanchez Photos/Shutterstock.com)

Crime is a people problem. If you understand nothing else about crime, you must understand this — crime is committed by people. It is not committed by inanimate objects, and while data on criminal activity can be charted as a trend over time, trends don’t commit crimes, people do. There is a word for people who commit crimes; we call these people “criminals” and, if anyone is interested in investigating trends, one trend is fairly consistent — most violent criminals are repeat offenders, and will not stop this behavioral pattern unless they are locked up in prison.

Keep all these facts in mind the next time you hear Democrats or the news media (but I repeat myself) discussing “gun violence” as an issue. Democrats do not want to discuss crime as a people problem, but rather as a gun problem, because (a) most gun owners are Republicans and (b) most criminals are Democrats. Or, that is to say, the violent crime problem in America is largely concentrated in urban areas where Democrats get the majority of the vote.

If Democrats don’t want to prosecute actual convicted felons for illegally possessing firearms, why do they expect their demands to ban “assault weapons” to be taken seriously?

Research by John R. Lott Jr. highlights just how geographically concentrated the murder problem is in the United States. Of the more than 3,000 counties in the country, 52 percent had zero murders in 2020, while the 31 counties with the highest murder rates (the worst 1 percent) had 42 percent of the nation’s murders. Expand the focus to the worst 2 percent (62 counties), and these accounted for more than half (56 percent) of U.S. murders in 2020. Lott concluded: “Murder isn’t a nationwide problem. It’s a problem in a small set of urban areas …”

Yes, but what about “gun violence”? What about the inflammatory rhetoric of Democrats demonizing the National Rifle Association (NRA) as somehow to blame for America’s crime problem? Among other things, Lott took into account rates of firearm ownership, and found an inverse relationship between the prevalence of murder and rates of gun ownership: “According to a 2021 Pew Research Center survey, the household gun ownership rate in rural areas was 79% higher than in urban areas. Suburban households are 37.9% more likely to own guns than urban households. Despite lower gun ownership, urban areas experience much higher murder rates.”

So much for the correlation between gun ownership and crime. What do we know about the correlation between politics and crime? The five U.S. cities with the highest per capita murder rates are St. Louis (69.4 per 100,000 population), Baltimore (51.1), New Orleans (40.6), Detroit (39.7), and Cleveland (33.7). In the 2020 presidential election, Joe Biden got 82 percent of the vote in St. Louis, 87 percent in Baltimore, 83 percent in New Orleans, 94 percent in Detroit and 80 percent in Cleveland. In other words, the most dangerous cities in America are all Democratic Party strongholds.

These facts are not difficult to discover, if anyone is willing to do a few Google searches, but you would probably have no idea about any of this if your source for news was ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, PBS, the New York Times, the Washington Post or the Associated Press. The so-called “mainstream media” seem to operate as a cartel, doing everything in their power to prevent the public from learning the truth about crime in America. Consider the simple matter of what counts as a crime story of national interest. The cartel media love to go into 24/7 coverage mode on “mass shootings,” but are notably selective in their choices as to which ones deserve such attention.

For example, did you hear about the mass shooting in Philadelphia last week? One person was killed and four others were wounded in an incident in which more than 50 shots were fired in a garage in the city’s Kensington neighborhood. According to WPVI-TV, this was the 84th mass shooting in Philadelphia since 2020, but how many of those mass shootings got so much as one word of coverage on CNN? Pretty close to zero, I’m sure. The fact that Philadelphia has had more than 500 homicides in each of the past two years? CNN and other members of the media cartel ignore it, for the simple reason that the bloody carnage which has earned the city the nickname “Killadelphia” doesn’t help advance the preferred political narrative.

Most of the facts about crime in America don’t fit that narrative. According to the FBI, in 2021 there were about 23,000 homicides in the country and, based on data from 2019, about 54 percent of U.S. murder victims are black people, most of whom are killed by other black people. It is impossible to discuss violent crime in America without acknowledging that at least half of it involves black people, both as victims and perpetrators, despite the fact that blacks are only 14 percent of the U.S. population. The national media clearly doesn’t want to discuss this — for reasons that are fundamentally political — and so the picture of crime in America conveyed by the media is distorted beyond recognition. This political distortion produces a yawning chasm between the reality of crime and its portrayal in the news media.

Democrats are the intended beneficiaries of this warped coverage, and it is obvious that they never expect to be held accountable for their rhetoric about crime. Exhibit A is Joe Biden who, whenever any mass shooting attracts national attention, predictably repeats his call for banning so-called “assault weapons.” No reporter ever seems to question this response, as if it were self-evident that such a ban would eliminate mass shootings or, at least, reduce violent crime. However, this belief is not borne out by the data. According to the FBI, there were only 403 murders in 2017 in which the weapon used was a rifle of any kind, compared to 7,032 committed with handguns. In fact, more people were murdered with “blunt objects” (clubs, hammers, etc., accounting for 467 victims) and “personal weapons” (hands, fists, feet, etc., with 692 victims) than were killed by rifles. But because there is no simple legislative “solution” to such crimes, Biden has no pat response, and nobody in the press corps raises questions about the president’s formulaic demands for banning “assault weapons.”

We live in a nation where more than a thousand people a year are beaten to death with fists, hammers, etc., and you might imagine that at least one of these blunt-force murders would merit attention from the national media, but instead they are ignored, just like the 1,500 or so people stabbed to death in America every year. And why are these brutal crimes ignored? Because the media wish their audience to think of the crime problem as a gun problem, for which the solution is to elect Democrats who will enact stricter gun-control laws.

This simplistic attitude ignores the obvious question of why Democrats are against enforcing the gun-control laws already on the books. In New York City, where Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has been busy ginning up charges against former President Trump, his chief prosecutor sings the praises of her office’s “gun diversion” program that avoids sending criminals to prison on weapons charges. New York City saw a 22 percent increase in major crime last year, yet putting criminals behind bars is not a priority for Meg Reiss, Chief Assistant District Attorney in Bragg’s office, who has flatly asserted, “We know incarceration doesn’t really solve any problems.”

Joe Biden could order his Attorney General Merrick Garland to stop this turn-’em-loose approach to gun crimes in New York City. Under federal law (Section 922g), it is a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison “for a person convicted of a felony to ship, transport, receive, or possess a firearm or ammunition.” Yet neither Biden nor Garland has shown any inclination to interfere in New York’s “gun diversion” program that sets such offenders free to commit further crimes, preferring instead to demonize law-abiding citizens for owning “assault weapons” — by which they mean, for example, AR-15 type rifles, of which an estimated 20 million are legally owned by Americans. If Democrats don’t want to prosecute actual convicted felons for illegally possessing firearms, why do they expect their demands to ban “assault weapons” to be taken seriously?

Rhetorical questions aside, however, America’s crime problem is not just the fault of Democratic politicians, but also of Democratic voters. In Chicago, where crime has risen nearly 50 percent since 2019, voters recently had the opportunity to replace their soft-on-crime mayor, who placed third in the election, but in the subsequent runoff, they chose an even softer-on-crime candidate, Brandon Johnson. In an interview with CBS News last week, Mayor-elect Johnson said addressing Chicago’s crime problem requires “more money toward the areas of needs”:

“What we’re going to have to do is to find the revenue from individuals who have the means to actually contribute to a safer city,” he said.

“Look, the bottom line is this: We have large corporations, 70 percent of large corporations in … the State of Illinois did not pay a corporate tax. …

“And it’s that type of restraint on our budget that has caused the type of disinvestment that has led to poverty, of course, that has led to violence.”

Got that? “Large corporations” are to blame for Chicago’s crime problem, which is the craziest excuse we’ve heard out of Chicago since Jussie Smollett claimed he was attacked by Trump supporters shouting, “This is MAGA country!”

Democrats, and the people who elect Democrats, have no interest in doing what is necessary to reduce violent crime in America, namely sending criminals to prison. Yet because the news media are so completely in the tank for Democrats, the truth about America’s crime problem is being suppressed.

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California Cops

LA Times, The LAPD has lost nearly 1,000 officers. Now, Mayor Karen Bass wants to rebuild the force By David Zahniser, Libor Jany

Los Angeles, California-Sept. 9, 2021-Rep. Karen Bass speaks to supporters at Los Angeles Trade Tech College at the kickoff to her campaign for mayor in Los Angeles, California on Oct. 16, 2021. Representative Bass was born and raised in Los Angeles and has a new vision for the city. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)Mayor Karen Bass said she wants to boost hiring at the Los Angeles Police Department, which has lost hundreds of officers in the past three years. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

Ten years ago, the Los Angeles Police Department celebrated a historic hiring milestone, announcing the city had reached a target sought by at least two mayors and multiple police chiefs: 10,000 officers.

That achievement was the culmination of an expensive seven-year campaign waged by then-Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, much of it during a global recession that ravaged the city’s finances.

Now, within a three-year span, those gains have been erased. The LAPD is hemorrhaging officers, with more leaving the force than are joining it. Police Chief Michel Moore reported last week that sworn staffing had fallen to 9,103, down nearly 1,000 from 2019, the year that preceded the outbreak of COVID-19.

Mayor Karen Bass is looking to confront the issue head on by ramping up hiring and lifting barriers to recruitment. Her proposed budget, which will be released Tuesday, will call for the city to restore the department to 9,500 officers — an extremely tall order, given the ongoing staff exodus.

“I know that that is ambitious, but I think it needs to happen.” she said.

Bass will release her proposed budget, her first since taking office in December, amid a growing number of departures from the LAPD, not just by those nearing retirement age but also some of the department’s much newer officers.

In an interview, Bass said she fears the accidental release of photographs of LAPD officers, recently provided by the department in response to a public records request, could accelerate the outflow. If the city fails to fix its recruitment and retention problems, the LAPD could easily fall below 9,000 officers in the coming months, Bass said.

The call to rebuild the LAPD will almost certainly generate pushback from groups such as La Defensa, which advocates for alternatives to prisons and policing. Ivette Alé-Ferlito, the group’s executive director, said the city should take advantage of the drop in police staffing, by expanding the number of unarmed specialists who respond to residents experiencing mental health crises or other emergencies — and ensuring those workers are compensated at levels typically reserved for police.

“This is an opportunity to be able to start investments into alternatives to law enforcement responses,” Alé-Ferlito said.

A spokesperson for the Los Angeles Police Protective League, which represents rank-and-file officers, said his group welcomes the mayor’s efforts to “rebuild the LAPD after years of neglect.”

“This staffing decline didn’t start with Mayor Bass,” union spokesperson Tom Saggau said. “But we hope it ends with Mayor Bass.”

The LAPD has lost nearly 1,000 police officers since 2019.
The LAPD has lost nearly 1,000 police officers since 2019. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

On paper, Bass is proposing what looks like a minor adjustment to the LAPD’s authorized staffing. For nearly a year, the department has been budgeted for 9,460 officers, the amount approved by the City Council. Bass’ hiring target represents an increase of 40.

On another level, however, getting to 9,500 would be an incredibly tall order. The department is expected to lose about 600 officers in the coming year due to retirements and resignations. To reach Bass’ target, the LAPD would need to hire 1,000 officers over the next fiscal year, at a time when Police Academy classes are frequently half or two-thirds full.

Bass acknowledged the difficulty, saying she’s “not super confident” the LAPD will reach her goal.

“But I think it’s very important to set that as a marker — very important,” she said. “There’s no way I would say, ‘I want to get to 9,200.’ Again, because I’m really worried about further attrition.”

Bass will send her budget proposal to a council that is ideologically further left, and more skeptical of police, than it was when she launched her campaign in 2021. Two of the council’s newest members, Hugo Soto-Martinez and Eunisses Hernandez, argued against police hiring during their campaigns.

A third, Councilmember Nithya Raman, ran in 2020 on a platform that called for transforming the LAPD into a “much smaller, specialized armed force.”

Hernandez said Friday she wants police staffing to continue on its downward trajectory. She and Soto-Martinez said they want money that goes unspent on LAPD staffing to be shifted into social services.

City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, pictured in December at City Hall.
City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, pictured in December, said she wants to see staffing levels at the LAPD continue to shrink. She has called for the city to shift money away from police hiring and into other social programs. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

“Our priority is to invest that money in programs that address some of the most common 911 calls, like homelessness, mental health and drug treatment, so we can alleviate the burden on police officers and improve public safety for the community,” Soto-Martinez said.

With the LAPD struggling to recruit, Raman is also making the case for expanded social services, such as after-school programs. “These programs are often easier to hire for, and are proven to make communities safer,” she said Sunday on Twitter.

The LAPD is not the only big-city law enforcement agency facing a shrinking workforce. According to FBI data, police department ranks in New York City and Philadelphia have decreased 8% and 9%, respectively, since 2019, while Chicago experienced an 11% drop.

That phenomenon can be traced, in part, to a shrinking labor pool and growing public scrutiny after a spate of high-profile police killings, said Niles R. Wilson, senior director of law enforcement initiatives for the Center for Policing Equity, which studies ways to reduce racism in policing. Many big-city agencies are losing officers to smaller, suburban departments that offer better pay and fewer risks, he said.

Wilson said younger people are less likely to go into a profession with longer hours and a high risk of injury. At the same time, he said, cities have begun sending mental health teams or other unarmed responders to calls once fielded by police.

“I think you’re going to start seeing [police] staffing levels are going to adjust, as jurisdictions start to adopt more alternative response models,” Wilson said.

In Los Angeles, Bass has begun moving in that direction, opening an office of community safety that does not involve police. Meanwhile, the LAPD has responded to the decrease in staffing by scaling back key operations.

The department has closed front desks at the vast majority of its police stations during nighttime hours and reduced the size of specialized units, such as those that pursue fugitives and investigate human trafficking, Moore said. The LAPD’s cold-case teams, which investigate unsolved murders, are staffed by reserve officers, he said.

“We’ve protected the uniformed patrol officers” who head out into neighborhoods, Moore said. “But we’ve downsized narcotics units in every area. We’ve downsized vice units in every area.”

LAPD Chief Michel Moore inspects a graduating class at Los Angeles Police Academy in June.
LAPD Chief Michel Moore inspects a graduating class at Los Angeles Police Academy in June. He says the department has dealt with a staffing shortage by downsizing narcotics units, vice units and other operations. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

The debate over police spending has been further complicated by a recent drop in crime. Homicides in L.A. were down 26% through April 1, compared with the same period last year. Robberies have declined 19% over the same time frame, while violent crime is down nearly 12%, according to department figures.

Raman recently highlighted the downward trend on social media. Moore, asked about those numbers, countered by saying crime has increased in many categories compared with 2019, the last pre-pandemic year.

Compared with four years ago, homicides are up 8% this year, while the number of shooting victims has climbed 30% and the number of vehicle thefts by 47%, LAPD figures show.

The Police Protective League, which is in contract talks with Bass and other city leaders, has argued in recent weeks that the city is not doing enough to persuade officers to stay. Union leaders said officers are experiencing low morale caused by rising anti-police sentiment, insufficient pay and difficult working conditions created by staffing shortages.

Saggau, the union spokesperson, said officers assigned to 10- or 12-hour days are regularly being ordered to work two to four additional overtime hours to meet minimum patrol levels, leaving them exhausted. Officers who specialize in gangs, narcotics or other subject areas are being pulled away from those duties to ensure that minimum patrol levels are maintained, Saggau said.

Moore said he attributes the rising number of departures to the “turmoil” of the last three years — COVID-19 and growing anti-police sentiment following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Some foes of policing have threatened officers on social media, he said.

Officers “are looking around the country and saying, ‘Wow, I could go someplace else and get a hiring bonus of 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 thousand dollars,'” Moore said.

Desperate to hire officers, city officials are looking to provide signing bonuses of $15,000 to $20,000 to new hires — a proposal heading to the City Council. The department has stepped up recruiting at historically Black colleges and East Coast universities. LAPD brass are looking at resurrecting the “bounce program,” which allows the chief to bring retired officers back for up to a year, in hopes of luring back as many as 200 retired cops.

The drop in LAPD staffing can be traced to 2020, the year City Hall was buffeted by a major budget crisis — one triggered by COVID-19 shutdowns — and massive street protests over Floyd’s murder. Demonstrators were demanding that city funds be shifted away from police and into social services.

Mayor Eric Garcetti and the council agreed to cut LAPD staffing to about 9,750, freeing up about $26 million. In the period that followed, the department kept shrinking, with officers leaving in larger-than-expected numbers.

Near the end of his term, Garcetti argued for a force of more than 9,700. Council members adopted what they said was a more achievable goal: 9,460 officers by June 30, the end of this fiscal year.

Protesters demonstrate against police brutality outside Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti's home in June 2020.
Protesters demonstrate against police brutality outside Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s home in June 2020. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

Those numbers also turned out to be unrealistic, with the department now more than 350 officers below the council’s goal.

While running for mayor, Bass promised to take the department back up to 9,700. She said she picked that number because it was the amount already authorized in the city budget.

Bass said she plans to spend the coming year determining the number of officers needed at the LAPD. Moore, for his part, said he would be satisfied with a return to 10,000.

“If we could have the workforce we had pre-pandemic, I think that we’d have a safer city,” he said

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Cops Fieldcraft

Tactically Focused – Edged Weapon Attacks

The scene after a terrorist knife attack in Paris, France on May 12, 2018

We all hear statistics regarding active shooter incidents. I would be surprised if the phrase ‘active shooter’ is not already in the urban dictionary. Well, that’s certainly not the complete picture. How many single- or multi-casualty incidents do not involve firearms? What about vehicles used as battering rams? Perhaps our terminology would be more accurately “Active Assailant.” 

 

Although I must admit that I have not seen any current assessments of objective data collected regarding the use of edged weapons in such attacks, I believe that the use of edged weapons as primary weapons is on the rise. 

Certainly, the ability of virtually anyone to acquire an edged weapon legally or casually is without restriction, save for those incarcerated – although that does not deter creative and motivated minds from making a shiv out of basically anything. 

We carry edged weapons on and off duty (what is your agency’s edged weapons policy?), at home, and everywhere else. We train on handgun retention, but what about retaining that large handled push knife on your duty belt? 

We have all heard the “21-Foot Rule.” It is more of an illustration of action vs. reaction and how quickly things can go wrong. Unfortunately, this was distorted into an absolute.  

Nearly every agency has a box of knives confiscated during subject contacts. Having no evidentiary value, they end up in the ‘knife box.’ Some of those things are testaments to what you can create with duct tape and something sharp.

Several videos have recently shown officers utilizing Tasers or other less lethal force against subjects with edged weapons. Many of those suspects were much closer than 21 feet. 

The ceramic knives used in the Paris attacks

I have several concerns, not the least of which is a growing trend for officers hesitating to appropriately use deadly force, fearing their agency will not fully back them, or just not wanting to be the next media target. 

The meat cleaver used in the terrorist attack on the Carlie Hebdo magazine office.

Terrorists and the Use of Edged Weapons 

Propaganda from several terrorist organizations has encouraged the use of readily available edged weapons, as they can often have fewer visible indicators, along with a reduced time of detection and disruption. 

The October 2020 publication of the pro-ISIS ‘The Voice of Hind’ by the Jund al-Khilafah urges using edged weapons against accused blasphemers. 

A pro-ISIS view on using edged weapons against non-believers.

This document highlighted the October 2020 knife attack in France on a teacher. The teacher was targeted after discussing freedom of expression and the Charlie Hebdo Muhammad cartoons. 

A few days later, another individual killed three people and injured several others with a knife inside a Nice, France church. At the French consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, both a guard and another individual were also stabbed. 

 

Responding officers may observe indications that an edged weapon attack is a terrorism-related incident. An attacker’s actions or statements during an incident may provide insight into potential motivations and possible follow-on tactics, techniques, and procedures used by the attackers. 

Consider that an incident may be part of a larger complex and coordinated attack, which may entail others targeting first responders.

A suspect motivated by violent ideology, especially martyrdom, may not comply with commands to stop the attack and disarm. 

You may see the following indicators: 

Pre-arrival – Information from 911 operators, such as reported behaviors or statements indicating allegiance to terrorist groups or a need for revenge. 

During Response – In addition to sizing up the scene and performing life-saving actions, try looking for visible or audible signs indicating violent extremist ideology, such as stickers, graffiti, and flags. 

Post-incident – Investigators can exploit social media, pocket litter, journals, interviews, financial transactions, and travel records for the investigation. 

Responders should be highly aware of their surroundings, which warn of an attempt to lure first responders into an ambush or follow-on attack. 

If someone approaches you, watch their hands for palmed items or suspicious movements, such as reaching for pockets, the waistband, or anywhere a weapon could be concealed. 

Attackers have modified innocuous items, such as lawnmower blades or wrenches, to conceal their appearance as edged weapons. 

Use of appropriate safety gear is recommended, such as ballistic vests. They may not be designed to protect against edged weapons but might provide extra protection. 

Training – Responders are encouraged to continue training for an edged weapon attack. Studies have established parity of force between holstered firearms and impact or edged weapons of 21 feet, based on reaction time and marksmanship changes challenges, with firearms gaining an advantage at increased distances. 

  • Update use of force policies and training to include edged and impact weapon attacks.
  • Teach self-aid for edged weapon injuries. Make sure officers have quick clotting bandages and tourniquets.
  • Develop and validate emergency response plans to improve mitigation tactics, increase rapid life-saving treatment, and assist with the transition to the investigation phase. Then train on them.

 

This Chief of Police opened his front door and was stabbed in the face by a suspect.

Berkeley County, South Carolina, September 7, 2020: A man accused of stabbing the Bonneau police chief in the face with an ice pick is in custody after a standoff with Berkeley County deputies. After stabbing Chief Franco Fuda under his left eye, investigators said Bowman ran to his mobile home and barricaded. Forrest Bowman was arrested shortly after 12:30 p.m. The SWAT team brought Bowman, who was naked and screaming, out of his trailer. According to Fuda, Bowman told him that he was “going to die today.”

A domestic violence suspect crashed his red truck into one patrol car – a deputy who was in it at the time survived.

Also, remember it’s not only firearms that can be used in ambushes – always be mindful of scene security. The red truck was the suspect in a domestic violence call who had left earlier but returned to the scene while Deputies were interviewing the victim. A deputy seated in one of the patrol vehicles was injured but recovered.

Categories
All About Guns Cops Darwin would of approved of this!

The word “Mississippi Man” should say it all

 

A Mississippi man was arrested Friday during a traffic stop after he attempted to hide a gun in a quesadilla from Taco Bell. Devin P. Mitchell folded the gun into the quesadilla when police in Picayune stopped him and driver Olivia Neff for a traffic violation.
Officers reportedly saw Mitchell stuffing the handgun into a Taco Bell bag, prompting them to conduct a search of the vehicle, where they found the gun hidden in the Mexican meal.
Mitchell found himself slapped with other charges after police also recovered methamphetamine, liquid heroin, and drug paraphernalia during their search.
Mitchell was taken into custody and charged with possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute while in possession of a firearm, possession of a controlled substance, tampering with physical evidence, possession of weapon by a felon, and possession of paraphernalia.
Categories
Cops Well I thought it was funny!

Not one of the High Points of the Naples Florida Cop Shop

Categories
Cops Real men

Albert Johnson: The Mad Trapper of Rat River by WILL DABBS

This place is undeniably gorgeous, but it’s a tough neighborhood in the wintertime.

I spent three years living in the Alaskan interior when I was a soldier. It was the prettiest place in the world…for about three months in the summer. The coldest it got while I was stationed there was 62 degrees below zero F. Because of the rugged inhospitable nature of the place not a whole lot of folks actually live there, relative to the rest of the country.

The arctic draws some fascinating characters.

Alaska is crawling with tourists during the summer. Tourism is one of the greatest sources of revenue for the state. However, in the winter the Alaskans pretty much have the place to themselves. Back when we called Alaska home there didn’t seem to be a great many old people living permanently in the interior, either. To thrive in the arctic one has to be hearty. The remote and desolate nature of the land tends to attract some fascinating personalities.

Nobody ever figured out what this guy’s story was.

Nobody to this day really knows who Albert Johnson really was. It was estimated that he was born between 1890 and 1900 and lived under a pseudonym. In the summer of 1931 Johnson arrived in Fort McPherson, Canada, after making his way down the Peel River. RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) constable Edgar Millen had reason to question the man and later reported that he had a Scandinavian accent. He subsequently described Johnson as clean-shaven, stand-offish, and well-funded.

These tiny little trapper cabins were typically kept small in an effort at making them more readily heatable in the winter.

Johnson plied the Mackenzie River Delta aboard a homebuilt raft before building himself a tiny 8×10-foot cabin on the bank of the Rat River. At the time anyone wishing to trap animals for their fur was required to obtain a trapper’s license from the government. Johnson neglected to do so. A great many outsiders had come to these remote spaces fleeing the destitution of the Great Depression. Native trappers frequently resented their presence in a land they had obviously long considered their own.

People are bad. I get it. Without laws folks would simply run amok. However, legislation is something that can be easy to overdo.

In December of 1931 local native trappers reported Johnson to the RCMP alleging that he was deactivating their traps and interfering with their livelihoods. A subsequent investigation determined that these allegations were unsubstantiated. When the natives had called on him in his cabin Johnson had run them off at the point of a gun. The guy apparently just really wanted to be left alone.

A lot of these guys just covet solitude.

The day after Christmas a pair of RCMP constables named Alfred King and Joseph Bernard trekked sixty miles to Johnson’s remote cabin to investigate the allegations. For his part Johnson ignored the lawmen, going so far as to hang a sack across the cabin window so they couldn’t see inside. The two policemen eventually returned home in frustration to obtain a search warrant.

Anybody who lives in something like this is not in the market for company.

Five days later the two Mounties returned with a warrant along with two other men for backup. Johnson still refused to speak to the cops, so Constable King tried to force his way into the cabin. Johnson shot him through the wooden door for his trouble. The Mountie team successfully evacuated Constable King to Aklavik where he ultimately recovered.

Once the cops got started they just couldn’t quit.

Albert Johnson had by now kicked over an anthill. Like governments everywhere, the one thing they cannot tolerate is insubordination. The Mounties therefore returned again, this time with a nine-man posse, forty-two dogs, and twenty pounds of dynamite. However, Albert Johnson had made good use of the intervening time.

Lamentably, government solutions to threats not infrequently devolve into the generous application of high explosives.

The Mounties surrounded the little cabin and demanded that Johnson come out. When he failed to do so they deployed their explosives. It was so cold the Mounties had to keep the dynamite in their coats to thaw it out.

This is a photograph of Albert Johnson’s cabin after the Mounties blew it to pieces with dynamite.

They threw the dynamite onto the roof of the cabin in an effort at flushing Johnson out. One report held that the roof was slightly damaged. Another claimed that the cabin was pretty much pulverized. Regardless, Johnson now opened fire from within a five-foot dugout he had excavated in the floor of his tiny dwelling.

Don’t let the pastoral beauty deceive you, this place will flat out kill you in the winter.

Johnson and the posse exchanged fire for some fifteen hours, during which, miraculously, no one was hurt. However, it was really cold out. At -40 degrees F the cops were growing weary of this exchange. They retreated once again to Aklavik to regroup. By now word of this tidy little war had filtered out to the World via radio.

These crazy guys typically have some mad survival skills.

On January 14, fully nineteen days after their first quasi-amicable encounter, the Mounties returned yet again only to find that Johnson was gone. Considering they had blown his tiny cabin to hell this really should have come as no surprise. Now with ample resources and manpower the Mounties struck out after the fugitive recluse. Roughly two weeks later on January 30, they caught up to him.

It can be tough to pin a man down in a place like this when he has the skill and will to thrive there.

The cops surrounded Johnson in a thicket, and a firefight ensued. Johnson shot Constable Edgar Millen, the officer who had first interviewed him some weeks before, through the heart and killed him. The Mounties present at the time reported that Johnson laughed heartily when he realized he had connected with the law officer. In the resulting chaos the cops retreated and Johnson escaped yet again.

Wilfrid “Wop” May was the combat multiplier the Mounties needed to pin down Albert Johnson.

By now things were clearly getting out of hand. The Mounties enlisted the assistance of local trackers as well as the services of Wilfrid “Wop” May, a post-war aviator of some renown. May arrived with his ski-equipped Bellanca airplane to help coordinate the search from the air. The Mounties blocked the only two passes through the Richardson Mountains only to have Johnson scale a peak and escape.

Airplanes were still fairly rudimentary in the 1930’s, but they nonetheless offered a global perspective that was tough to beat.

The airplane turned out to be Albert Johnson’s undoing. Johnson was a skilled woodsman who would trek along caribou trails to conceal his footprints. This allowed him to move on the compacted snow quickly without snowshoes. Wop May could see that Johnson only left the track to make camp in the evenings. He coordinated with the ground team via radio and directed them along a river to Johnson’s position. By February 17 the Mounties had their man.

Who the heck was this guy?

The posse encountered Johnson at a range of roughly two hundred yards. Johnson attempted to run, but he wasn’t wearing his snowshoes and got bogged down. In the resulting exchange of fire one Mountie was badly wounded. The law enforcement officers quickly narrowed the distance and killed Johnson at close range.

Albert Johnson had some interesting physical deformities.

One round struck the fugitive in the left side of his pelvis, severing a significant artery. Johnson bled out in short order. Subsequent forensic analysis of his corpse showed him to have a fairly severe case of scoliosis as well as asymmetrical feet, one being markedly larger than the other. Over the course of 33 days, this gimpy little man had trekked 85 miles through the arctic wastes. Throughout the exchange, the only sound the officers had heard Johnson make was when he laughed after shooting Constable Millen.

This is some of the gear found on Johnson when he was killed.

When officers searched Johnson’s body they discovered $2,000 in American and Canadian currency (about $43,000 in today’s money), a small compass, some gold, a knife, a razor, a few nails, some fish hooks, a dead bird, a dead squirrel, and a few human teeth with gold fillings that they suspected were his own. He also had an ample supply of Beecham’s Pills, a type of laxative commercially available at the time. Despite widely circulating photos of the dead man no one ever determined his identity.

The Guns

Some of Johnson’s weapons were heavily customized.

Albert Johnson had three firearms on him when he died. They included a cut-down Winchester bolt action .22, a Savage lever-action Model 99F in .30-30, and a sawed-off 16-gauge Iver Johnson shotgun. Though his identity was never definitively established, Johnson was clearly adept at running a gun.

The Winchester Model 04 .22 rifle was a reliable survival arm.

Johnson’s Winchester .22 was likely a Model 04 single shot with the buttstock cut into a pistol grip. Winchester offered a variety of these simple single-shot starter rifles over the first several decades of the 20th century. They would have made solid survival arms for securing small game.

The Savage 99F lever-action rifle represented the state of the art for its era.

The Savage Model 99F was a radically advanced sporting rifle for its day. Available in sixteen different chamberings, the 99F was a hammerless lever-action design that fed from a six-round rotary magazine. This made the 99F one of the world’s first lever-action rifles that could safely feed spitzer (pointed) bullets. Most rifles sporting tubular magazines can be dangerous if filled with pointed bullets that could inadvertently precipitate an unintentional discharge.

Sawed-off shotguns aren’t really good for much tactically, but at close range, they can be fearsome.

Johnson’s single-shot 16-gauge shotgun was mercilessly pruned into a tiny little handgun. Even in a modest 16-gauge chassis, this thing would have sported some impressive recoil. At under-the-table ranges, however, it would have reliably done the deed.

Ruminations

Governments of all stripes have profound intolerance for those who choose to ignore their authority.

Why the heck couldn’t they have just left this poor guy alone? He lived in a cabin about the size of a large dinner table some sixty miles from civilization. He clearly just wanted to be by himself. Yet the Canadian government just couldn’t stand it. They had to hunt the man, blow his hand-built cabin to pieces, and eventually shoot him down like a dog. It’s a safe bet that no law enforcement officers would have been harmed had they just given the man some space.

The Randy Weaver debacle was a blight on American democracy. It looks like Weaver had a lever-action Savage as well.

This is a ubiquitous government disease. The US government killed Randy Weaver’s wife and teenaged son over the length of a shotgun barrel. They gave him a $3 million settlement afterward, but that pile of money is likely pretty poor company on a cold winter’s night.

Regardless of your particular political bent, we have a responsibility to remain active in government.

In a representative democracy such as ours, the only reason stuff like this ever happens is if we allow it to. We are never more than one headline away from such a tragedy even today. I love my country, but I distrust my government. Live responsibly, love your neighbors, pay your taxes, and practice responsible citizenship. However, never tolerate government overreach or abuse. The line demarcating freedom and tyranny is indeed fine. If my opinion counts for anything, sometimes I think we may already have a few too many rules.

The tale of the mysterious Mad Trapper is part of arctic lore in the frozen north.
Categories
All About Guns Born again Cynic! California Cops Gun Fearing Wussies You have to be kidding, right!?!

CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’ A JUDGE STRIKES DOWN HANDGUN REGS, BUT WAIT WRITTEN BY DAVE WORKMAN

California gun owners recently won a significant victory from a federal court
judge who declared major parts of the state’s “Unsafe Handgun Act”
unconstitutional because it doesn’t allow newer pistols to be sold in
the state. Don’t party too hardy, as this was likely just the first round.

If you’ve never bought a handgun in California, good for you because the state law has been a train wreck, at least until recently when a federal judge struck down provisions in the law he found unconstitutional.

In the process, Judge Cormac J. Carney granted a preliminary injunction to the plaintiffs but granted a 14-day grace period during which the state could appeal the ruling. By the time you read this, the appeal should be in the works.

But Judge Carney’s 22-page ruling contained some gems, and he was blunt about the problems with a handgun “roster” law that has plagued Golden State gun owners for years. As any California can attest, the law has prevented new pistols from being marketed in the state unless they meet some strict standards which, upon reflection, seem deliberately engineered to keep new handgun models out, and perhaps ultimately eliminate handguns altogether.

Hang on while we take you through the word salad of California’s handgun ownership (prevention) law. “UHA” refers to the state law, known as the “Unsafe Handgun Act.” “CLI” refers to “chamber loaded indicator.” And, finally, MDM refers to “magazine disconnect mechanism.” Got it? Good, because here’s a bit of Judge Carney’s wisdom:

“Californians have the constitutional right to acquire and use state-of-the-art handguns to protect themselves,” Judge Carney observed. “They should not be forced to settle for decade-old models of handguns to ensure that they remain safe inside or outside the home. But unfortunately, the UHA’s CLI, MDM, and microstamping requirements do exactly that.

“California’s Unsafe Handgun Act (the “UHA”) seeks to prevent accidental discharges by requiring handguns to have particular safety features,” the judge acknowledged. “First, the UHA requires certain handguns to have a chamber load indicator (“CLI”), which is a device that indicates whether a handgun is loaded.

“Second,” he explained, “the UHA requires certain handguns to have a magazine disconnect mechanism (“MDM”), which prevents a handgun from being fired if the magazine is not fully inserted.

“Third,” Judge Carney concluded, “the UHA requires certain handguns to have the ability to transfer microscopic characters representing the handgun’s make, model, and serial number onto shell casings when the handgun is fired, commonly referred to as microstamping capability. No handgun available in the world has all three of these features.” Right, we’re talking about “microstamping,” and as noted by the judge, “The microstamping requirement has prevented any new handgun models from being added to the Roster since May 2013.”

Who Is Judge Carney?

Cormac Joseph Carney was chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California until he stepped down in 2020 over an incident involving alleged insensitive remarks to Kiry Gray, clerk of the Court.

He was born in Detroit in 1959, but was raised in Long Beach, Calif., graduating from high school there and going on to UCLA, where he played wide receiver for the Bruins football team. He practiced law in Los Angeles and was appointed to the California Superior Court. From there, he was nominated to the federal district court by former President George W. Bush and was confirmed by the Senate in April 2003.

He and his wife have three children, according to an online biography.

Enter the Double Standard

If it weren’t for double standards, California anti-gunners would have no standards at all.

To the point: In Judge Carney’s ruling, he notes, “The UHA’s prohibition on sales of ‘unsafe’ handguns is subject to exceptions as well. It does not apply to sales to law enforcement personnel, personnel from agencies including the California Highway Patrol, the Department of Justice, the Youth and Adult Correctional Agency, and the district attorney’s office, or any member of the military.”

He later adds, “if Off-Roster firearms were truly unsafe, California would not allow law enforcement to use them in the line of duty, when the stakes are highest. But the substantial majority of California’s law enforcement officers use Off-Roster handguns in the line of duty.”

And he points to another inconsistency in California bureaucratic reasoning when he notes, “The government argues that the balance of the equities weighs in its favor because an injunction would ‘permit unsafe handguns to be sold in California prior to trial, creating public safety risks.’

But the government’s safety concern rings hollow. Every single semiautomatic handgun available for sale in California at this time is a grandfathered handgun—one the government ostensibly considers ‘unsafe.’ 800 of 832 handguns on the Roster today lack CLI and MDM features. The government cannot credibly argue that handguns without CLI, MDM, and microstamping features pose unacceptable public safety risks when virtually all of the handguns available on the Roster and sold in California today lack those features.”

Can you say “oops?”

California attorney Chuck Michel is also president of the California
Rifle & Pistol Association. (Image courtesy Chuck Michel

Wise Counsel

Enter Chuck Michel, a California attorney with years of experience dealing with, and challenging, state gun control laws. With all the laws facing gun owners, Michel has had lots of practice.

The day Judge Carney handed down his ruling, I traded email with Michel, who also happens to be president of the California Rifle & Pistol Association, one of the plaintiffs in the case. His summation of the ruling was unsympathetic to the state.

“For decades this ‘roster’ law has deprived law-abiding citizens of the right to choose a handgun appropriate for their individual needs,” he observed about the Carney ruling. “The loaded chamber indicator, magazine disconnect, and microstamping requirements were impossible to satisfy, so the number of different models of approved handguns available to buy dropped to barely 200.

“And,” he added, “that’s how the politicians who would love to ban handguns entirely wanted it. If we can hold on to this great Second Amendment win, people will be able to choose from among thousands of the latest, greatest, and safest handguns made today.”

I’ve known Michel for about 20 years, and he earned this win, along with every Californian who has ever been victimized by the state handgun laws. Hopefully, the good guys will prevail.

CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb wants Republicans to block funding for the ATF until Democrats and Biden administration bureaucrats show some respect for the Second Amendment.

CCRKBA Says Unfund ATF

The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms recently did something to raise eyebrows. The group called on congressional Republicans to block funding for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

There’s a condition, of course. CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb said money should be held up “until Democrats and federal bureaucrats publicly recognize Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens, and stop their attacks on legal gun ownership.”

“We’ve seen attacks on Second Amendment rights under previous Democrat presidents,” Gottlieb said in a news release, “but the Biden administration has pulled out all the stops. Joe Biden has publicly declared his desire to ban modern semiautomatic rifles and 9mm pistols, the most popular firearms in the nation.

Millions of honest citizens own semiautomatic rifles for all kinds of uses, including home defense, competition, predator control, recreational shooting and hunting, and they have never harmed anyone. Likewise, millions of men and women own and use 9mm pistols for personal and home protection, training, target shooting, competition, business protection, and other legitimate uses.

“But under Joe Biden,” he continued, “the ATF has been weaponized against law-abiding citizens, and his budget proposal includes $1.9 billion for the agency to expand operations and increase regulation of the firearms industry.

“Clearly,” Gottlieb said, “Biden and the Democrats have decided that American gun owners are their enemy.”

Categories
All About Guns Born again Cynic! California Cops

California Dem “Red Flagged” Gets “Special Treatment”. The Hypocrisy Is Real

Categories
All About Guns California Cops You have to be kidding, right!?!

California man arrested over 19th century pistol By Tom Knighton

California man arrested over 19th century pistol
Daylight! Hangover! #facepalm
Ages ago, my family got into Civil War reenactment. As a result, we had tons of catalogs laying around that had all manner of stuff from around that time.

Obviously, I liked the guns.

Perhaps my favorite, based purely on aesthetics, was the pepperbox revolver. If you’re unfamiliar with it, think of a Gatling gun in your hand and you’ve got a good idea of what it looked like, though the operation was very, very different.

The guns aren’t really a thing in this day and age, yet apparently, you can still get arrested for having one in California.

Just after 8 p.m. on Tuesday night, officials with the Redding Police Department said their officers were called to the Burger King off of Eureka Way for a report of a man seen walking around with a handgun on his bag. Officers said they responded to the area and contacted the suspect, identified as Ryan Battles.

After searching Battles’s bag, police said they found an antique black-powdered pepperbox revolver, black powder and iron pellets.

Of course, the media called it a “musket-style pistol,” which makes little sense.

Battles was arrested for carrying a concealed weapon without a permit.

Now, with all that said, yes, there is more to the story. For one thing, police believe Battles stole the gun in the first place. Apparently, he’s not much of a history buff or something. Either way, if the gun is in fact stolen, I’m all for putting Battles under the jail, metaphorically, of course.

I cannot abide a thief, but especially not a gun thief.

Yet I can’t help but chuckle about someone ultimately being arrested for carrying an 18th-century revolver, something not that different from what anti-gunners routinely tell us the Second Amendment is really protecting.

Again, Battles isn’t actually charged with having a stolen gun. They just think it’s stolen. While they’re probably right, they still arrested a man for carrying an antique, muzzle-loaded revolver that apparently wasn’t even loaded.

Only in California.

OK, not just in California, of course, but you know what I mean.

Still, if they believe it to be legitimately stolen, they need evidence that it wasn’t his gun. I don’t know that they have that, which also means it’s possible that Battles is innocent of that accusation.

Either way, though, this looks like it could be a surprisingly interesting case. I clicked on it because the headline looked weird and I’m a fan of pepperbox pistols, so seeing the picture made it obvious that I’d talk about this one.

But there are a lot of layers to this one that hasn’t really been uncovered as of this writing. I’d say it’ll be interesting to see how all of this shakes out, but it’s California. Even if the gun belonged to Battles lawfully, he’s still getting prosecuted for not having a carry permit at a minimum. As such, we know how it will ultimately shake out. It should still be pretty fascinating to watch in that trainwreck kind of way.

Categories
All About Guns Cops

ATF releases first report on U.S. gun crime in 20 years by: Tori Gessner

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) released data on guns used in crimes from 2017 to 2021, including the ages of those who originally purchased the guns, in its first report on firearms in 20 years.

The ATF calls guns used in crimes “crime guns”, and more than half the time, the person who originally bought the weapon was not the person using it during the crime, according to the data. Oftentimes, the gun purchaser and the criminal using the gun didn’t know each other.

More than 1 million firearms were reported stolen from 2017 to 2021, according to the ATF.

In Nashville, 269 guns have been stolen from cars so far this year, according to the Metro Nashville Police Department. There is some concern those firearms could be used to commit future crimes.

Community activist Clemmie Greenlee, founder and CEO of Mothers Over Murder, told News 2 that statistic is worrisome.

“If I have allowed my gun to be somewhere unsafe and someone got ahold of it, a 12-year-old, 13-year-old, and they went and committed a crime, I’m just as guilty as they are,” Greenlee said.

In addition, the ATF found 3% more guns used in crimes from 2019 to 2020 were originally purchased by people ages 18 to 24. During that same time, 5% fewer guns purchased by 35-year-olds and up were used in crimes, the data showed.

Regardless of the age of the gun purchaser, if a firearm gets into the wrong hands, it can contribute to the gun violence problem, which Dr. Kelsey Gastineau, a Vanderbilt pediatric hospitalist, considers a public health crisis.

“Firearms are the leading cause of death for our kids in Tennessee and the United States, so wherever the firearm is coming from is a huge issue,” Gastineau said. “When we’re thinking about firearms that come from, (if they’re) stolen, whether they come from vehicles or things like that, we need to think about solutions that will work to help reduce those, because those will eventually reduce injuries for children and teens in this state.”

Greenlee told News 2 she wants to see the gun-purchasing age requirement increase. In addition, she is advocating against a bill she said would loosen gun restrictions.

“You think the data is speaking now; we’re going to be in trouble,” Greenlee said. “I always call it a bloody summer; it’s going to be a triple bloody summer if we don’t get ahold of these guns.”

In addition, the ATF has seen a new problem over the years involving privately made firearms, or ghost guns, which cannot be traced. According to the feds, ghost guns are being used more often in crimes.

To read the full report from the ATF, click here.