The ones that I met in the Service were some mighty tough troops. That & they would always be welcome in my firing line! Grumpy
Category: Paint me surprised by this
Cochise County courthouse
A special agent with the U.S. Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) has decided to enter a plea deal in a Cochise County court to resolve an allegation he engaged in nonconsensual sexual contact with a bartender while off-duty at a Bisbee hotel in 2020.
But first, Joseph T. Davis wants most of the case documents sealed from the public, purportedly due to potential career and safety issues.
On March 14, an attorney for Davis asked Judge Joel Larson to remove the grand jury indictment as well as any plea agreement and sentencing records from public access. The motion is opposed by the prosecutor, who argues Davis appears to be using his federal agent status to seek special treatment.
The prosecutor, Deputy County Attorney Terisha Driggs, told Larson she spoke with a senior ATF agent before responding to the motion to seal. Driggs suggests Davis is exaggerating work-related safety concerns, and pointed the judge to a 2022 press release issued by the U.S. Department of Justice about Davis’s prosecution.
The DOJ announcement even included the city and state of where Davis worked for the ATF, Driggs noted.
“The Defendant’s actions caused his identity to be brought into the public domain,” Driggs wrote. “He is now attempting to limit the public’s access to his criminal record and prevent any further media reporting.”
The criminal case against Davis stems from a social trip he and three friends made to Cochise County on Dec. 4, 2020. A 911 call around 8 p.m. from the Copper Queen Hotel in Bisbee reported “an extremely intoxicated” Davis allegedly put his hands under the bartender’s skirt and touched her in a sexual manner.
The four men were gone by the time local officers arrived. It then took until May 2021 for an investigator to be assigned, with Davis eventually indicted on one count of felony sexual abuse.
Davis, who does not live in Arizona, is on administrative assignment while the criminal matter is adjudicated. Court records show he plans to enter a guilty plea with the agreement of the victim to a reduced charge of disorderly conduct, a Class 1 misdemeanor.
Once the case is resolved, Davis anticipates being reinstated to his regular job. Tucson-based attorney Bobbi Berry filed the motion to seal with Larson in advance of a change of plea hearing. The motion argues Davis has an overriding interest in limiting public access to several records due to his job and to protect his family.
“His career position includes undercover work and exposure to investigations, arrests and individuals involved in extremely violent global operations,” Berry argues. “He will also be potentially testifying in criminal matters related to those investigations.”
Berry further contends the public’s long-held right of access to court records in Arizona is “minimal” compared to Davis’s interests.
“He hopes that by sealing his records he can avoid any other media reporting of his case and his conviction,” the motion notes, adding that any exposure “creates a profound risk to his safety and ability to function in his career.”
It appears Davis’s superiors at ATF may not share his concerns.
Driggs noted in her objection to the motion that senior ATF agents she spoke with said Davis was previously involved in only very limited undercover work. They do not expect him to do any future undercover work.
In addition, Driggs noted she was told by ATF officials that Davis “has no outstanding trials or cases in which he is expected to testify.”
Arizona law makes most adult criminal case records publicly available for inspection. Driggs argued that the public “has a significant interest in knowing when public servants break the law, regardless of the level of the offense” and that Davis “should not receive special treatment” based on the fact he is a law enforcement officer.
Davis’s attorney has until early April to file a reply to the arguments made by Driggs. Larson can then rule on the motion based on the various filings or or he can set the matter for oral arguments.
Another federal agent is awaiting trial in connection with the same Bisbee incident.
James Christopher McFeely is a Special Agent with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service based in Arizona. He was indicted in February 2022 on charges of felony witness tampering and obstructing a criminal investigation for actions he allegedly engaged in after learning of Davis’s conduct at the hotel.
President Joe Biden called on Congress to pass an assault weapons ban after six people, including three children, were killed in a school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee on Monday, the White House said. “We have to do more to stop gun violence. It’s ripping our communities apart,” Biden said at the White House. “I call on Congress again to pass my assault weapons ban.”
The Nashville shooter, a 28-year-old woman fatally shot by officers at the scene, had at least two semi-automatic rifles and a handgun, police said.
Biden, a Democrat, has repeatedly called for a renewed assault weapons ban and stricter rules on gun sales, measures that need to pass Congress.
The House of Representatives is controlled by Republicans; and any new gun safety legislation is unlikely this year, key lawmakers say.
“How many more children have to be murdered before Republicans in Congress will step up and act to pass the assault weapons ban, to close loopholes in our background check system or to require the safe storage of guns?” White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters before Biden spoke.
© 2023 Thomson/Reuters. All rights reserved.
Ukraine has demoted a top battlefield commander after he admitted his unit had been decimated in fighting around the city of Bakhmut.
Battalion commander, known by his call sign Kupol, gave an unusually frank assessment of Ukrainian losses in an interview – The Washington Post© The Washington Post
The battalion commander, known by his call sign Kupol, gave an unusually frank assessment of Ukrainian losses in an interview from the front lines earlier this week.
He revealed that all of the original 500 soldiers in his unit had either been killed or injured, a rare acknowledgement from inside the Ukrainian ranks, where losses are kept strictly confidential.
The Ukrainian high command is at pains to present a positive spin on the increasingly bloody defence of the east of the country. US officials have estimated that the Ukrainian army may have taken 120,000 casualties compared with 200,000 by the Russian army.
Kupol told the Washington Post this week that the Ukrainian army training was often poor and that some of the rookie replacements didn’t know how to throw a hand grenade or fire a rifle.
Others had abandoned their positions shortly after arriving at the front line, he said.
Members of a Ukrainian army tank crew check the vehicle at a military base in Zaporizhzhia – Kateryna Klochko/PA© Provided by The Telegraph
“I get 100 new soldiers,” he said. “They don’t give me any time to prepare them. They say, ‘Take them into the battle.’ They just drop everything and run. That’s it. Do you understand why? Because the soldier doesn’t shoot. I ask him why, and he says, ‘I’m afraid of the sound of the shot.’ And for some reason, he has never thrown a grenade. … We need Nato instructors in all our training centres, and our instructors need to be sent over there into the trenches. Because they failed in their task.”
Kupol said what was left of his unit was also facing ammunition shortages.
“You’re on the front line,” he said. “They’re coming toward you, and there’s nothing to shoot with.”
Thousands of Ukrainian soldiers are being trained by the British Army and other Nato countries but thousands more receive more rudimentary training in Ukraine.
Kupol said that he had been motivated to speak out to try to improve training levels but furious Ukrainian generals instead demoted him. The Washington Post said he had consented to have his picture taken but admitted he could face “personal blowback” for his honest assessment.
Kupol told the Washington Post this week that the Ukrainian army training was often poor – The Washington Post© Provided by The Telegraph
Valentin Shevchenko, a spokesman for the Ukrainian military, accused Kupol of “disseminating false information”. “The losses announced in the unit of which he had command are significantly overestimated,” she told Ukrainian media.
Shortly after his demotion, Kupol quit the Ukrainian army.
Within hours of his reassignment to a training camp, dozens of Ukrainian soldiers, politicians and journalists had voiced their support for the battalion commander.
“One of the armed forces finest commanders has just been removed,” Yuriy Butusov, a well-known Ukrainian war correspondent, wrote on Facebook.
“Instead of analysing mistakes that will defeat the Russian army, honest comments are suppressed and those who make them are punished.”
The leak on casualty numbers will be deeply embarrassing for the Ukrainian military which has diligently built up a narrative of its outnumbered but highly motivated and well-trained army taking on hordes of Russian soldiers and convicts.
It also undermines confidence in its much-talked-up counteroffensive planned for spring.
The attritional nature of the war in Ukraine has killed and injured hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Both sides have admitted that they are running out of artillery shells and ammunition.
Ukraine and Russia guard their casualty numbers closely, believing that they could undermine morale, although military commanders still hint at the high death tolls at their evening briefings when they boast of killing hundreds of enemy soldiers.
On Sunday, Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, said that Ukrainian forces had killed more than 1,100 Russian soldiers in the past week. Russia’s ministry of defence said that day that it had killed 220 Ukrainian soldiers in the past 24 hours.
It is not possible to independently verify these numbers. Thousands of Ukrainian civilians have also been killed.
On the battlefield, the British ministry of defence has said that Russian fighters led by Wagner mercenaries have broken over the river in the centre of Bakhmut, in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, but that their advance had stalled because they were exhausted.
Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s Security Council, said that Mr Zelensky was determined to defend the city despite growing pressure to withdraw.
“This is our land, and we have no right not to defend it,” he told Radio Free Europe.
NEWARK, N.J. — A man in New Jersey tried to board a plane with guns, multiple rounds of ammunition, and a fake United States Marshals identification card in his baggage, officials say.
In a news release, the United States Attorney’s Office, District of New Jersey, said that Seretse Clouden, 42, has been charged with unlawful possession of firearms and ammunition by a convicted felon and fraudulent possession of an identification document and authentication features of the United States.
According to court documents, on Dec. 30, 2022, Clouden went to Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey for a flight to Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
During the screening process, Transportation Security Administration agents found ammunition along with a ballistic vest with “Deputy Marshal” in one of the bags, according to court documents obtained by The Associated Press.
After agents retrieved more of Clouden’s luggage, they found an AR-15 rifle, another rifle, a handgun, a taser, a knife, a baton, a “United States Marshal” badge, and U.S. Marshal credentials with his name and his photo on it, FBI agent Christopher Granato said, according to the AP.
Granato also told the AP that Clouden was convicted in 2016 of unlawful possession of a weapon in New Jersey.
One of the rifles that were found “meets the definition of a machine gun,” according to officials.
The U.S. Marshals Service confirmed that Clouden is not and was never employed with them, according to authorities.
If convicted, Clouden could face up to 15 years in prison for unlawful possession of firearms and ammunition by a convicted felon. Fraudulent possession of an identification document and authentication features of the United States has a maximum of five years in prison along with a $250,000 fine, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of New Jersey.
———————————————————————————- Here is what Einstein looks like according to Google. Grumpy
You cannot make this up, and even if you could, the actual facts would read like something out of a really strange movie script about good versus just plain dumb.
When Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker last month rushed to sign a brand new gun control bill before the Legislature adjourned (only to re-convene about 24 hours later), something happened nobody saw coming. County sheriffs up and down the Prairie State loudly declared they would not enforce the new law, which banned so-called “assault weapons” and “high-capacity magazines.” It requires current owners to register their guns with the Illinois State Police.
How this may play out is ripe for speculation. By the time you read this, at least one federal lawsuit involving the Illinois State Rifle Association, Second Amendment Foundation and Firearms Policy Coalition will have been filed. There could be more. It all means that the new Illinois law might be headed for a collision with the Constitution’s Second Amendment.
This certainly appears to be what the sheriffs of at least 80 Illinois counties were thinking when they posted letters saying essentially the same thing.
“As your duly elected Sheriff,” the letter says, “my job and my office are sworn to protect the citizens … This is a job and responsibility that I take with the utmost seriousness. The right to keep and bear arms for defense of life, liberty and property is regarded as an inalienable right by the people of this country …”
“Therefore, as the custodian of the jail and chief law enforcement official, I proclaim that neither myself nor my office will be checking to ensure that lawful gun owners register their weapons with the State, nor will we be arresting or housing law-abiding gun individuals that have been arrested solely with non-compliance of this Act.”
Published reports, and reliable sources, confirm Pritzker was furious when the sheriffs went public with their opposition. When he intimated the lawmen would lose their jobs, at least two different Illinois sources told me between laughs that the governor does not have the authority to fire elected sheriffs.
Meanwhile, Out West
When sheriffs in Washington State got wind of the gun control package put forth by Gov. Jay Inslee, which also involves a ban on semi-auto rifles, the Washington State Sheriff’s Association circulated a letter signed by Kittitas County Sheriff Clay Myer —president of the group — and it was not congenial.
“Governor Inslee,” Sheriff Myers wrote, “has announced plans for significant new restrictions on the ownership of firearms by law-abiding Washingtonians. We, members of the Washington Sheriffs’ Association, believe the proposed restrictions will serve to erode constitutionally protected rights without addressing the root causes of violent crime. We are particularly concerned with the proposed so-called ‘assault weapons ban’ and ‘permit to purchase’ laws.”
A few paragraphs later, Myers put it bluntly: “The rise in violent crime that so concerns citizens has happened even as regulations and restrictions on firearm ownership have grown. Of course, this is because the people who commit violent crimes simply don’t concern themselves with obeying rules about guns.”
Murder and mayhem is up in Washington, and so is the number of concealed pistol licenses. As the year wrapped up, there were just short of 697,000 active CPLs in circulation, according to data from the state department of licensing.
It’s not the first time county sheriffs have “just said no.” Back in 2018 and early 2019, many Washington sheriffs announced they would not actively enforce provisions of Initiative 1639, an extremist gun control measure passed by voters.
Some sheriffs in New York State say they will not “aggressively” enforce that state’s new gun law, which is being challenged by at least two federal lawsuits. A few sheriffs in Oregon have said essentially the same thing about provisions of Measure 114, the gun control initiative passed there last November.
A Good Man Gone
The problem with being an old gun guy is that it becomes more frequent we must say “goodbye” to a good friend, who happens to have also been just a plain good person.
Robert E. “Bob” Hodgdon, whose family name is part of the fabric of American metallic cartridge reloading, passed away Jan. 13. Having been born in August 1938, Hodgdon had a good run that covered a lot of ground. He and his brother, J.B. helped build the company founded by their father, Bruce Hodgdon, and today that name is iconic in the industry for the variety of reloading propellants for rifles, shotguns and handguns. According to an obituary the family posted, he “also assisted with the design and lead the team constructing the Pyrodex Plant in Herington, Kan. in 1979 and helped to design and build The Bullet Hole, a 44-station indoor shooting range in 1967.”
I served with Hodgdon on the NRA board of directors more than 20 years ago, and you could not find a more devoted fellow where perpetuation of the shooting sports, and protection of the Second Amendment, was concerned. He was a kind and gentle soul, a person you’d be delighted to share a campfire with, and someone who was as devoted to his family as his professional pursuits. He was father to four children, Chris (Adele) Hodgdon, Heidi (Erwin) Rodriguez, Stacie (Bryant Larimore) Hodgdon and Alisa Hodgdon — and grandfather of 11 and great-grandfather to eight.
A native of Kansas, he grew up in suburban Kansas City. He attended Baker University in Baldwin City, Kan., and graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of Kansas. He served in the U.S. Air Force and the Air Force Reserves.
He served as president of Hodgdon for more than 20 years and then as board chairman from 2014 to 2017.
Hodgdon volunteered in several civic organizations, and was a member of the Westside Family Church in Lenexa, Kan.
Additionally, he was a founding member of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a member of the Kansas State Rifle Association, and founding member of the Kansas Sportsmen’s Alliance.
Men like Bob Hodgdon are very rare.
The bill would also ban anyone younger than 21 from having a permit to carry their gun concealed and would require all permit holders to have more training, including on how to safely store and transport guns.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to limit where people can carry concealed guns after multiple mass shootings left dozens dead across the state in January, calling for more restrictions in a state that already has some of the nation’s toughest gun laws.
He endorsed legislation Wednesday that would ban people from carrying concealed guns into churches, public libraries, zoos, amusement parks, playgrounds, banks and all other privately owned businesses that are open to the public. The rule wouldn’t apply if the business owner puts up a sign that says concealed guns are allowed.
Democratic state Sen. Anthony Portantino, the bill’s author, called that exception “a legal nuance that I think helps it with constitutional muster.”
“This is not window dressing. This is to put a strong bill on the governor’s desk to withstand a legal challenge that is sure to come,” Portantino said.
It would also ban anyone younger than 21 from having a permit to carry their gun concealed and would require all permit holders to have more training, including on how to safely store and transport guns.
California and half a dozen other states previously had laws that required people to give a reason if they wanted to carry a concealed gun in public — like citing a direct threat to their public safety.
But a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year struck down those laws, making it easier for people in those states to get a permit to carry a concealed weapon.
California Democrats tried to pass new rules last year — and they would have succeeded, had it not been for a strategic blunder requiring a two-thirds vote of the Legislature so the bill could take effect immediately. Democrats could not round up enough support, and the bill died.
“That’s not going to happen this year,” Newsom said. “I will be signing this legislation.”
Newsom and legislative Democrats vowed to double down on passing a new law this year. Their cause came with renewed urgency, after mass shootings in Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay left 18 people dead and 10 others wounded. In total, the state had six mass shootings in January and at least 29 people were killed.
When asked by a reporter if there is evidence that recent mass shootings are linked to the state’s concealed carry process, Newsom said investigators are still analyzing the specifics of the shootings.
“None of us came up here today asserting that this was in response to them,” Newsom said of the concealed carry proposal.
“Then what’s the point?” said Republican Assemblyman and former Riverside Deputy District Attorney, Bill Essayli. “He’s pandering, this is all politics and we’re tired of politics, we want solutions for Californians.”
Essayli and other Republicans have said the state needs to do a better job of enforcing gun and public safety laws already on the state’s books.
“This bill goes after law-abiding concealed carry weapons owners who we know are the safest and most responsible gun owners in society, we need to be going after the people who should not be having guns,” Essayli said.
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Here is a look at some firearm-related bills state lawmakers will consider this year:
AB 97: Makes possession of an unserialized, or ghost gun, a felony.
SB 2: Sets new limits for concealed carry permit holders
AB 303: Requires the state attorney general to create an online database for the state’s Armed and Prohibited Persons System.
AB 328: Would reinstate harsher penalties for those who use a gun in the process of committing a violent crime.
AB 28: Creates a new tax on firearms and ammunition to fund gun violence protections.
–KCRA 3’s Ashley Zavala contributed to this story.