Nevada LP Senate candidate shot by police

Via LRC, this sad story:

I was pulled over for driving straight through an intersection in a right turn only lane. I did signal for my lane changes to the left.

After exiting the vehicle at the officer’s request, I was standing with my back to the vehicle. The car’s open door was to my right. My hands were raised above my head. I was calmly speaking to the cop attempting to talk my way out of being taken to jail over an unpaid High Occupancy Vehicle ticket.

With my hands raised above my head, the cop shot me with a taser in the chest.

Duensing has a heart condition, so he freaked, pulled the electrodes, and ran.

Various figures have been discussing whether Jim was “resisting arrest”. What they haven’t addressed is this: why did the cop taze Duensing, presuming this is an accurate account of what happened? He wasn’t going anywhere or being threatening. They knew who he was. And in the midst of all kinds of finger pointing, this was one of the few commenters to nail it:

Brian S // Nov 2, 2009 at 3:35 pm

Let’s not lose sight of the real issue here – the cops shot a senatorial candidate multiple times, immediately before an election. How coincidental can this be, really?

I wish Jim a speedy recovery.

Trouble in Windham Twp.

…”and that starts with a T, and that rhymes with Soinski…”

The Outdoor Heritage Preservation Association is Dale Soinski’s DBA. He has 1500 acres (including an old quarry) devoted to shooting, hunting, off-road vehicles, and wildlife appreciation.

Unfortunately, there are a group of people who don’t like Dale to enjoy his land and share it with his friends. One woman, who my wife described as “somebody used to getting what she wants”, showed up at the township trustee meeting last week and waxed hysterical about “fireballs over my soybeans” and not knowing where she can walk without being shot, and the sheriff can’t do anything because “they all have guns there” (and the sheriff doesn’t have a SWAT team?) and “people (kids?) have been putting firebombs in our mailboxes”. (They just used a baseball bat on ours.) They got little comfort from the trustees though.

The hassles have been going on for some years (before 2003 anyway) The new fit has been playing out in the Villager (the local paper), first here (p. 12), and now in this week’s issue (not yet online). One of the odder claims made there was that the Ohio National Guard couldn’t shoot .50 BMG at the RTLS (“Ravenna Arsenal”) because there wasn’t room per military regs. I tried to get a confirmation of that from the ONG Public Affairs office, but never got called back. I finally did find an army manual that suggested that it was at least possibly true, in the configuration the site is in now, given that the largest training area is 1421 acres or 5.75058 km² and the Army requires 6.5km straight-ahead safe distance for .50. But the average Joe will think, “It’s too dangerous to shoot this stuff on 20,000 acres, and they’re doing it on 1500? Divided by a road yet??

Of course I couldn’t resist stirring the pot. Here is the letter I just sent to the Villager:

After the recent letter by “Concerned residents”, I’d like to write in support of Mr. Soinski’s operation. I love to work on my property and hear the music of automatic weapon fire. I feel safer knowing that my fellow citizens are “sharpening their liberty teeth”. My friend, music professor and birder Dr. Lisa Rainsong, was recently there on a field trip, and was amazed at the variety of birds, insects and plants present. Granted, I live east of Colton Rd. , and it may be different on Frazier Rd. Certainly I haven’t heard any ground-rumbling explosions or seen plumes of smoke, and I was here on the Fourth.

The problem as I see it is that everyone wants control of other people’s property and lives. That’s why we have excessive zoning laws in this township, with the threat of worse, and the rabid government we have in Columbus and D.C.. That’s why “concerned residents” are invoking a whole alphabet soup of agencies, in order to stop somebody from doing something they don’t like. Now, there might be a tort here. If bullets are flying onto your property, if “fireballs (tracers?) are burning my soybeans”, if smoke from burning tires drifts through your windows (and you don’t burn plastic in your backyard burn barrel — should we turn those folks in to the EPA too?), then you are being trespassed against, and have an absolute right to legal redress in a court of law, where matters of fact can be weighed and where Mr. Soinski can confront his accusers. That “concerned residents” haven’t united in a lawsuit suggests to me that they have no actual legal grounds for complaint, just a wish to live in a perfectly controlled environment. Well, if I wanted to live in Shaker Heights, I’d live there, and save myself 2 hours commute per day. I value guns; others may value French-manicured toenails. If we get to vote on each others’ values, where does it all end?

And why the obsession with “.50 caliber ammunition”?. Our military snipers use rounds far narrower than that, and they kill from quite far away. At a minimum of $4/round, I doubt Dale and friends are shooting much of that. If they’re enjoined from using .50 ammunition, what’s next? .45? .40? 9mm? A .22 will do if you hit the right place. Is this really about noise, nuisance and danger, or is it just hoplophobia? It is claimed that the 2nd Amendment and the 5th/10th Amendment right to property are trumped by the “constitutional right…life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Those words appear nowhere in the Constitution, but rather in the Declaration of Independence, which, inspiring though it may be, is not and never was a controlling legal document.

Perhaps everything could be worked out with a little neighborly discussion and compromise. Maybe they don’t need to blow up cars there, but if they just do it on the 4th, maybe neighbors don’t need to take offense either. History has taught us that when basic principles like the right to property are compromised, they cease to exist. If people really can’t stand living in my neighborhood, houses are cheap now, especially in places with lots of laws and lots of lawlessness.

A gun buyback I can get behind

Sig Sauer is offering a $200 trade (with their own money) on your clunker handgun.

No, this isn’t Bradyland; you don’t get to turn in your garbage. Clunker must be in working order, and .38/9mm or larger.

H-S Precision: as of May, still dickwads

Via Breda, a link to this oldish Atomic Nerds piece about an interaction with the folks at H-S Precision, who I discussed here. Good piece, but the money quote is in the comments:

Hyman Roth:

Leave aside the whole murder/manslaughter issue.

I just read Jess Walter’s “Ruby Ridge”. Dead-eye Lon shot at Randy Weaver under the shoot-on-sight R.O.E., and only wounded him.

Then Lon shot at Kevin Harris, resulting in a wound instead of a kill.

Later, he claims to have been firing at Kevin Harris when he shot Vicki Weaver in the head.

That’s 0 for 3.

From a shooting skills perspective, how does this performance justify an endorsement for a precision-marksmanship product?

I looked around the Net a little to see if there was any more recent bad news, but I didn’t find any. As Billy said, they might as well torch the place.

Bedwetter travel writer: don’t let the door to Arizona hit you on the way out

Arthur Frommer (the name means “pious” in German) has decided that the state of Arizona is just too nasty and dangerous to enter, because the people there are allowed to carry guns in public, oh the horror! You’d think he could deal with it, given that Uncle Sam himself trained Frommer in their use. But that was pre-AR15, and he doesn’t seem to have realized that the civilian-use version is not auto-fire and thus not in any accurate sense an “assault rifle”. And those civilians were carrying somewhat in proximity to Frommer’s Lord, which only compounds the horror.

“I am not yet certain whether I would advocate a travel boycott by others of the state of Arizona,” he says, thus advocating a boycott while giving himself plausible deniability. Well, “I am not yet certain whether I would advocate a boycott of certain travel writers.” But if Frommer actually thinks that AZ is more dangerous than NYC (where he has lived, and perhaps lives now), one has to question the accuracy of any information on personal safety that he would give to a traveller. And Arizona is, I’m sure, better off without anyone who would follow his advice.

“Check” says Carson W. Carroll to Montana, Tennessee

The Bad-Attitude-Toward-Freedom-Everywhere (BATFE) has fired its first volley against the Firearms Freedom Act. Basically, their take is that Federal law supersedes state law…which is what one would expect from them. The problem as I see it is that FFL licensure is the tool by which they will attempt to make the law ineffective. No FFL is going to risk license forfeiture by selling a Montana gun without papers. This is not “checkmate”, however, because a MT gunmaker could develop alternative distribution channels under the FFA, selling factory-direct to Montanans.

Pop some corn and wait for the action…

Fibbie plan for job security

Oh, alas, it’s true! Americans are selling high-powered rifles in .50 and .308 caliber to Mexican drug cartels. At least, that’s so if you consider FBI agents to be “real Americans.”

Some cheese with that whine, Chief Comey?

Thomas J. Comey, the Jersey City police chief, said of the gunman, Hassan A. Shakur, 32, “This individual came fully ready to go to war with us.” Mr. Shakur was killed, along with his companion, Amanda Anderson, 22. The chief said the assailant’s weapon, a pump-action 12-gauge shotgun with a retractable stock and a sling lined with slotted shells, was “a gun meant for nothing other than to hunt a man.”

Funny, Miller declared that such a weapon had no military purpose and thus wasn’t covered by the 2nd Amendment, even though they were used in WW I. As for war, if cops didn’t act like an occupying army, people would be a whole lot less likely to declare war on them.

TX to legalize guns on campus?

AUSTIN — A bill to allow college students and employees to carry their concealed handguns on campus won final passage today on a 19-12 vote in the Senate.

Not yet law, but maybe soon.

How about it ,Ohio? Or are you thinking like this chucklehead?

“When there is an alcohol-related tragedy on campus, you don’t hear claims that giving students a 12-pack is the solution,” [Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston] said.

Fantasy gunners

Here’s a real idiot gun-grabber:

The guilty are the congressmen who even now are planning to stop a renewal of the federal ban on assault weapons and ammunition magazines capable of semi-automatic fire (one trigger pull per shot but with magazines enabling the user to fire hundreds of rounds in a minute).

Hundreds. As in “at least two”.

I told a friend, “I’d like some of those multi-hundred-round magazines. And I’d like to see somebody pull a trigger over three times a second for a whole minute.”

Said Friend, ” I’d like to feel him do it on my clit.”

(Linked from Confederate Yankee via Ace.)