Category: Crime

Police Chief Daniel Thompson has stated: “It is unknown if the incident has any nexus to terrorism” which is legalistic non-answer. No name has been released, so all I’ll say right now is that running a car into a Christmas Parade sure makes one think from the past attacks on Christmas celebrations, that there’s a ‘nexus’. When a person is charged, and then named,  we’ll be in better position than only being able to speculate.

Multiple fatalities, more than 20 people hurt after car drives through crowd at Waukesha Christmas parade

UPDATE 8:04 p.m. — Waukesha police have said that they have a suspect in custody. [actually they say they have a ‘person of interest’ in custody, and there is a major legal difference]

They added that of the victims, 11 are adults and 12 are children. Police also said multiple people are dead but did not say how many. The shelter in place order has been lifted. An officer did fire their gun at the car to try and stop the driver. There were no other shots fired.

More than 20 people were injured after a car drove through a crowd at the Waukesha Holiday parade Sunday evening, according to Waukesha police.

Officials said at least one person died. Ambulances, police, and family members drove the injured to local hospitals.

Waukesha police have recovered the vehicle and are aware of a person of interest.

The incident was live-streamed on the City’s Facebook page. A video sent to TMJ4 shows a car driving through a busy section of the parade and hitting least half a dozen people. The car continued to drive through the parade and then the video ended.

The incident happened on Main Street beginning at Barstow and going past Gasper. The vehicle had to drive past a barricade to get into the parade.

This was clearly ‘something personal’ as we can see the deadhead was waving out of the way what turned out to be an off duty cop that TCOB.
‘Stupid is as Stupid does’

Also, lesson learned from other’s experience?
‘Check 6 isn’t just for fighter pilots’

Hero off-duty Baltimore cop kills gunman who fatally shot barber

The gunman, identified as Carlos Ortega, entered The Bladi Style barbershop in Baltimore’s Medford section Saturday afternoon with a handgun and “fired it at one of the barbers” working there, killing him, Police Commissioner Michael Harrison told reporters Saturday.

An off-duty cop in plainclothes who was getting a haircut from another barber reacted immediately and “with great bravery produced his firearm” and fatally shot the attacker, Harrison said.

Cops identified Ortega, 38, early Monday as the man who killed barber Rafael Jeffers, 33, the Baltimore Sun reported.

Investigators believe Ortega was tied to two earlier Saturday shootings, including one that left one person dead. Another victim was listed in critical condition following gunfire near the city’s Greektown section.

If more guns caused more crime, we would know it.

BLUF:
The violent crime rate fell by about 38 percent over two decades while the number of guns sold each year almost doubled. The implied number of gun owners also doubled. If anything, this data shows that firearms sales cause a decrease in violent crime.

Gun Ownership versus Crime in the US 2000-2019

I’ve seen analysis that relates guns and crime. In particular, the data looks at the growing number of firearms in civilian hands in the United States. It compares gun ownership with the rate of violent crime across the country. Unfortunately, that data is a few years old. It is easy to get raw numbers, but it is very hard to get good data. This is what I found.

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Just to point out, in case you were wondering. Drs. Wintermute & Hemenway are leftists and rabidly anti-gun/anti-self defense .

More Than Gun Violence That Differs Between US, Other Places

So-called gun violence is higher in the United States than in other first-world nations. It’s a point that is continually brought up, in part because we also are the only first-world nation to actually respect people’s gun rights.

As we’ve noted in previous posts, ABC News has been running a series about rethinking firearm-related violence here in the United States. We’ve poked an awful lot of holes in some of their stories, and today’s isn’t likely to be any different.

You see, they’re focused on comparing the United States to other countries on this subject.

The United States has a gun violence epidemic, and it’s not one shared by its peers. The nation that by one estimate has more guns than people has the highest rate of firearm deaths compared with other high-income countries. Mass shootings, an all-too-common occurrence in the U.S., are also exceedingly rare in peer countries — where governments have often been quick to pass gun reform in the wake of such tragedies.

“Compared to the other peer countries, basically what we have is lots and lots of guns, particularly handguns, and we have by far the weakest gun laws. Not surprisingly, we have huge gun problems,” David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, told ABC News. “I think if we had basically the gun laws of any other developed country, we’d be better off.”

It’s unclear if gun prevalence definitively impacts gun violence, though research by Hemenway’s center has found links between a large number of guns and more firearm homicides, suicides and accidents. The implementation of new gun restrictions has also been associated with a drop in firearm deaths, a 2016 review of 130 studies across 10 countries found.

The U.S. is “not necessarily a more violent society than others,” Dr. Garen Wintemute, director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at UC Davis, told ABC News.

“What we have is unique access to a technology that changes the outcome — firearms,” he said.

It’s not uncommon to compare the U.S. with other developed countries, especially after yet another horrific mass shooting. There are developing countries with higher rates of firearm deaths than the U.S., though comparing gun violence among peers helps to control for other factors, Hemenway said. And while there are lessons in other nations’ policy measures that could help address the problem here, because the U.S. is on such a different plane when it comes to civilian gun ownership, it will also take more research and multiple, targeted solutions to address the scope of the problem, experts said.

“Other countries do better. We should be able to figure out how to do better,” Hemenway said.

Hemenway is essentially arguing that the only real difference between these other nations and the United States is our lack of gun laws and that we really should embrace how the rest of the developed world treats firearms.

Well, that might be a compelling argument if it wasn’t premised on such a faulty concept.

The United States is a unique experiment, one that may look like the other developed nations of the world, but isn’t, and for a number of reasons. One of those is indeed our Second Amendment protections of our right to keep and bear arms, but there are other differences as well.

For one thing, we tend to be more racially diverse.

England, as an example, is 87.2 percent white and only three percent black, three percent Indian, 1.9 percent Pakistani, two percent mixed, and 3.7 percent other.

Meanwhile, we’re only 61.6 percent white, 12.4 percent black, 10.2 percent classified as multiracial, six percent Asian, 8.4 percent other, 1.1 percent Native Americans, and 0.2 percent Pacific Islander. Then, by ethnicity, they have 18.4 percent Hispanic. In other words, we’ve got a lot more ethnicities trying to share this patch of land.

Now, I’m not saying that any of these minorities are more prone to violence than anyone else, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility that all these ethnic groups rubbing together may create some kind of tension that we just haven’t resolved that results in that violence. After all, we live in a time when everyone is accusing everyone else of being racist. It’s possible that racial animosity–which goes in all directions–may result in people feeling like they don’t have to play by the rules.

Or, it may have no difference. We simply don’t know, but it is a data point that shows there are differences between us and many other developed nations.

But that’s only one potential difference.

Let’s also talk about poverty. America is the land of opportunity, but it’s also the land of falling on your butt if you’re not careful. Many people do just that and rebuild. Others don’t and some start off on their butts and foster resentment.

Among the 38 nations that make up the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the majority of which are developed nations, the United States has the fourth-highest poverty rate. The three nations with more poverty? Chile, Israel, and Mexico. Of those three, only Israel can be universally considered developed and they have a problem with violence as well, though theirs comes in the form of terrorism.

So it’s not difficult to see that the United States has some stark differences that separate it from other developed nations. Poverty alone may account for all of the difference. This holds up upon more localized examination.

After all, we think of cities like Chicago, Detroit, and Saint Louis as being extraordinarily violent, but even there, you’ll see that the violence is generally localized. Where? In the poorer neighborhoods in the city.

In other words, poverty within our cities also seems to have a direct correlation with violent crime in our country. That’s poverty that doesn’t show up in other nations for various reasons.

Where is that in Hemenway’s examination?

It’s not there because it’s not useful for him to push his preferred narrative. It’s just that simple.

And I haven’t even gotten into all the nations with strict gun control laws that have much worse violent crime rates than we have.

So don’t come to me about what other countries do or don’t do. Those countries aren’t the United States, so their experiences are largely irrelevant.

Portland’s ‘Gun Violence Task Force‘, previously the ‘Gang Enforcement Team’ is shut down….. gang crime “skyrockets”

‘Duh’

‘Where are we headed?’ Portland’s record-setting year for murder fuels search for answers

PORTLAND, Ore. – Pastor J.W. Matt Hennessee, a longtime local anti-gun violence advocate, never expected to lose his own child to the bullets he has tried to stop for almost four decades.

So when he got a call on May 13, letting him know that his stepson Jalon Yoakum, 33, was the latest victim in an onslaught of violent crime, Hennessee felt numb.

“This isn’t something where I’m new to the table,” said Hennessee, 62, who has battled gun violence in Portland for 40 years. “But I hadn’t worried about it, hadn’t thought about it, and when that call came 
”

His voice trailed off.

“It’s not going away,” Hennessee said. “Jalon was victim No. 31 and there’s been (36) more from May to October. Where are we headed?”

Crime is up all over the country, and has been since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. But there is a a certain sad irony in Portland, long considered a safe, desirable place to live. Already, the city has tallied 67 homicides for 2021, breaking a 34-year-old record of 66. Last year, 55 homicides was a 26-year high in the city.

The numbers alone are troubling, but even more worrisome when compared with other similarly sized cities, where violent crime numbers are considerably less, including Seattle and Boston. In Portland, long considered a liberal stronghold in America, some community leaders and officers feel that police defunding efforts in summer 2020 may have backfired, at least somewhat. With fewer officers on the street, violence has escalated significantly.

City defunds shooting prevention team

Portland’s gun violence problems can be traced back, at least partially, to the killing of George Floyd in May 2020. Floyd’s murder, at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer, sparked a nationwide racial reckoning as hundreds of thousands took to the streets.

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19? My foot. He’s well in his 20s if he’s a day old, and in pretty good shape for an Afghan ‘refugee’ (more like taliban infiltrator if you ask me)

Montana Cops Arrest Unvetted Afghan for Rape. Montana Rep. Rosendale: Remove Afghan Evacuees

Americans had better brace themselves for an unprecedented increase in rape and other sexual assaults now that the Biden Regime has imported 50,000 Afghan “refugees.”

Cops in Missoula, Montana, have arrested an Afghan refugee in connection with the rape of a woman at a hotel. Biden immigration authorities “paroled” him into the country without screening.

It’s not the first disturbing report about the “allies” who supposedly helped the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan. And it won’t be the last if what happened in Austria after a flood of “refugees” arrived there proves anything.

The Rape

In the wee hours on October 17, KGVO Radio’s Nick Chrestenson reported, workers at Marriott’s Residence Inn in Missoula noticed a young woman leaving the hotel “visibly upset and crying.” She is 18 years old.

“Shortly after the female exited the lobby, a male, later identified as 19-year-old Zabihullah Mohmand, followed the female outside and engaged in what the employee thought was a verbal disturbance,” Chrestenson reported.

Cops received two 911 calls; one from the woman, one from the hotel who witnessed the argument.

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Here’s the part that is seen so often
It’s like it’s not a bug, but a feature.
Kongsberg: Bow and arrow suspect known to Norway police

A man arrested over a deadly bow and arrow attack in Norway had converted to Islam and there were fears he had been radicalised, police say.

The 37-year-old Danish citizen is accused of killing four women and a man on Wednesday night in the southern town of Kongsberg.

Police were in contact with the man last year over their concerns.

The suspect has not been identified, and police are working to establish whether it was a terror attack.

Meanwhile, flags were flown at half-mast on Thursday while flowers and other memorials were placed in Kongsberg’s main square.

The victims were all aged between 50 and 70, regional police chief Ole Bredrup Saeverud told reporters.

Residents have told local media that the close-knit community has been deeply shaken by the violence.

Police confronted the man six minutes after the attack began at 18:12 (16:12 GMT) on Wednesday, but he shot several arrows at the officers and escaped. He was caught at 18:47 – 35 minutes after the attack started.

All five victims are believed to have been killed after the police first encountered the man. Officers fired warning shots before he was eventually arrested.

Man armed with bow and arrow kills five people in Norway attacks

OSLO, Oct 13 (Reuters) – A man armed with a bow and arrow killed five people and wounded two others in a series of attacks in the Norwegian town of Kongsberg on Wednesday, local police said.

The suspect was in custody, police added.

“The man used a bow and arrow … for some of the attacks,” police chief Oeyvind Aas told reporters. The police were investigating whether other weapons had also been used, he said.

“The man has been apprehended … from the information we now have, this person carried out these actions alone,” Aas added.

One of the wounded people was an off-duty police officer.

Newspaper VG showed images of an arrow that appeared to be stuck in the wall of a wood-paneled building.

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Watch how quickly this drops off the radar with the perp not fitting the gun-grabber narrative since he’s the in the wrong demographic subset.

Texas high school shooting injures multiple, suspect in custody, Arlington police say

The suspect has been identified as 18-year-old Timothy George Simpkins. Police say he likely fled the scene in a 2018 Silver Dodge Charger with license plate PFY-6260 and anyone who spots him should dial 911. 

A suspect who fled after opening fire inside a Dallas-area high school, which sent students and staff running for their lives, was taken into custody Wednesday after an hours-long manhunt, authorities said.

Arlington police say cell phone video obtained from a student shows that a fight broke out inside a classroom at Timberview High School around 9:15 a.m. Wednesday before 18-year-old Timothy George Simpkins drew a weapon. He fled the scene and was believed to be driving a 2018 Silver Dodge Charger.

Authorities said Simpkins was caught following a manhunt and is expected to be charged with three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. He was being questioned by detectives Wednesday afternoon, officials said.

St. Louis New Murder Capital Of U.S.

When we talk about violent cities, I usually bring up Chicago. Sometimes, I’ll add in places like Baltimore. Both are famously violent cities, after all, so it makes sense to bring them up.

However, it seems someone else is the murder capital of the United States for 2020.

Homicides in the U.S. in 2020 increased nearly 30% over the previous year according to new FBI figures and St. Louis City is reportedly the U.S. city with the highest murder rate.

St. Louis City had 263 homicides in 2020 with a homicide rate of 87 per 100,000 people.

The murder rate hit a 50-year high for the city but fell short of its all-time record of total homicides of 267 in 1993. The city’s population has declined since 1993 so the homicide rate was higher in 2020.

It’s not just murders, nationwide violent crimes in 2020 went up by a more moderate 5.6% over the previous year. In St. Louis, the increase was less than the national average at 3.8%.

Dr. Richard Rosenfeld, a criminology professor at the University of Missouri- St. Louis, points out that while the homicide and violent crime rate are up, those crimes are rare. He stressed it is important to note the rate of other, more common crimes dropped.

The FBI data shows property crimes continued a nearly two-decade decline, falling 7.8% between 2019 and 2020. St. Louis saw a 6.3% drop in those types of crimes as well.

Dr. Roenfeld actually makes a perfectly valid point.

Few people deal with homicide in their lifetimes at all, but most will be the victim of some form of theft and those rates are declining, so that’s a very good thing.

Yet people don’t rest easy because they no longer need to be concerned if their lawnmower is going to get stolen. They get jumpy about things like murders and violent crime in general, and those rates are going up.

Some will likely use this to point out that due to preemption laws in Missouri, the city of St. Louis can’t really do anything about violent crime. That, of course, is a cop-out. After all, if the lack of local gun control were the problem, every city in Missouri would be damn near as bad as St. Louis. It’s not.

What happens is that you congregate a lot of people in a fairly small amount of space and they’re going to find excuses to clear out the competition for resources. I suspect it’s something bred into our evolution to some degree as a way to prevent resources from being stripped from an area too quickly or something, though I have absolutely zero evidence for that.

Regardless, stuff like this is an issue in larger urban areas, not rural parts of the state, which tells me there’s something about the cities that’s the issue.

It’s not the lack of gun control, it’s the cities themselves that appear to be the problem.

Besides, I’m sure next year it’ll be Chicago or Baltimore again and St. Louis will be down the list a notch or two, all without any changes in the laws.

Unfortunately, this blind focus on gun control means no one is interested in looking a little deeper so as to find out the truth of these things.

FBI: Over 3.5x More Killed with Knives than Rifles of Any Kind

FBI data released Monday in the Uniform Crime Report (UCR) show over three and a half times as many people were stabbed to death in 2020 than were killed with all kinds of rifles combined.

The UCR shows that 454 people were shot and killed with rifles in 2020 while 1,732 were stabbed or hacked to death with “knives or cutting instruments.”

Breitbart News reported that the previous UCR release showed over four times as many people were stabbed to death in 2019 than were killed with rifles of all kinds.

The exact figures for 2019 were 375 killed with rifles while 1,525 were stabbed to death with “knives or cutting instruments.”

On September 30, 2019, Breitbart News reported that the FBI’s UCR for 2018 showed a similar finding, with over five times as many people stabbed to death with “knives or cutting instruments” as were killed with rifles of any kind.

The broad categorization of “rifles” includes a broad swath of firearms, from bolt action rifles to lever action, pump action, breech action, and beyond. It also includes semiautomatic rifles that take a detachable magazine, which the left often classifies as “assault weapons.” Yet three and a half times more people were stabbed to death in 2020 than were killed with all of these various rifle types combined.

Remember this?:
Blinken Admits Most Afghans Were Not Vetted Before Boarding US Evacuation Planes

Assault on female US service member by male Afghan refugees at Fort Bliss under FBI investigation

An investigation is underway into an alleged attack of a female U.S. military service member by several male Afghan evacuees being housed at Fort Bliss.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has confirmed to Fox News it is investigating a referral from a Fort Bliss Afghan refugee housing complex in New Mexico alleging that a woman, whose name and age are unknown at this time, was assaulted on Sept. 19 by a “small group of male evacuees.”

“We received the referral from Fort Bliss and our office is investigating the allegation,” FBI Public Affairs Officer Special Agent Jeanette Harper told Fox News.

Officials at Fort Bliss confirmed the report of the assault to Fox News.

“We can confirm a female service member supporting Operation Allies Welcome reported being assaulted on Sept. 19 by a small group of male evacuees at the Doña Ana Complex in New Mexico,” the 1st Armored Division and Fort Bliss Public Affairs said in an emailed statement. “We take the allegation seriously and appropriately referred the matter to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The safety and well-being of our service members, as well as all of those on our installations, is paramount.”

The statement added that counseling and support has been provided to the service member.

“Task Force-Bliss is also implementing additional security measures to include increased health and safety patrols, additional lighting, and enforcement of the buddy system at the Dona Ana Complex,” the statement continued. “We will cooperate fully with the FBI and will continue to ensure the service member reporting this assault is fully supported.”

Rep. Yvette Herrell, a Republican congresswoman who represents New Mexico’s 2nd congressional district, called the news a “vetting failure.”

“My prayers are with the courageous soldier and her family. This is yet another tragic failure in the vetting process for Afghan nationals,” Herrell tweeted. “The American people deserve answers.”

The alleged attack comes on the heels of two Afghan refugees housed at Wisconsin’s Fort McCoy being indicted for federal crimes including sexual assault on a minor and domestic assault.

Bahrullah Noori, a 20-year-old Afghan evacuee, is being charged with attempting to engage in a sexual act with a minor using force against that person, along with three other counts of engaging in a sex act with a minor, according to a statement from the Department of Justice. Additionally, 32-year-old Mohammad Haroon Imaad is being charged with assaulting his wife by choking and suffocating her on September 17.

Republicans on Capitol Hill have reacted to the news of violence carried out by Afghan refugees being housed in the United States with demands for answers from the Biden administration.

On Thursday night, Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford and four other Republican senators sent a letter to the Biden administration seeking more details on the way Afghan refugees are being vetted.

“How many Afghan nationals are waiting on background checks at a transit site? How many Afghan nationals have been paroled into the United States?” the Republican senators asked. “What specific categories, classes, or criteria constitute the Administration’s definition of ‘vulnerable Afghans’? How many individuals who have been paroled into the United States fall under each category, class, or criteria?”

Earlier this month, an official with the Biden administration categorically denied anyone “of concern” had made it into the country, saying there is a “second layer” of screening once a refugee gets to a U.S. entry point.

“No one has gotten into the United States or entered that is of concern,” the official said. “The administration is working with urgency and with care to enhance the screening and vetting operations to make them more efficient without compromising U.S. national security.”

Turns Out Psaki Was Wrong About Vetted Afghans. Two Were Just Indicted.

Three weeks ago, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki reassured Americans that Afghan refugees, who were sloppily and chaotically put onto flights out of the country while interpreters with Special Immigrant Visa holders were left behind, were fully and properly vetted.

“I can absolutely assure you that no one is coming into the United States of America who has not been through a thorough screening and background check process,” Psaki said during the daily briefing on September 1. “There are many individuals who have not gone through that process and they have gone to lily pad countries as that process has been completed. It doesn’t mean there is a flag, it means they haven’t completed their paperwork.”

But yesterday, two Afghan men were indicted on a series of federal charges, including domestic violence and sex with a minor.

“In unrelated cases, two individuals have been charged with crimes while at Fort McCoy, Wisconsin. Bahrullah Noori, 20, is charged with attempting to engage in a sexual act with a minor using force against that person, and with three counts of engaging in a sexual act with a minor, with one count alleging the use of force. The indictment alleges that the victims had not attained the age of 16 years and were at least four years younger than the defendant,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Wisconsin released Wednesday evening. “Mohammad Haroon Imaad, 32, is charged with assaulting his spouse by strangling and suffocating her.  The indictment alleges that the assault occurred on September 7, 2021.”

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Another Russian Attack on America’s Food Supply—Because Nobody Takes Biden Seriously

Despite repeated warnings from Presidentish Joe Biden against ransomware attacks coming from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, somehow another proscribed target just got hit by the Russians.

The “somehow” was facetious, I assure you.

This time Russian hacker group BlackMatter targeted an Iowa grain co-op, demanding nearly six million dollars or else they’d leak the company’s proprietary business data.

The co-op, New Cooperative, manages “supply chains and feeding schedules on track for millions of chickens, hogs and cattle,” according to the Washington Post.

The cooperative took its computer network offline to isolate the incursion, the person said, and shuttered its soil-mapping software — a master-control system that optimizes irrigation and fertilization — as a precaution.

The whole mess has yet to be ironed out, and it remains to be seen whether or how this impacts U.S. food production at a time of supply chain troubles and rising inflation.

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Chicago To Refund Police After Defunding Leads To Disaster

Last year, the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the ensuing riots and unrest lead cities all across the country to cut police funding. It seems local police were to blame for the error of a single officer in a completely different community. It never made sense to me, but it happened nonetheless. One of those cities was Chicago.

As with so many other cities, Mayor Lori Lightfoot used the opportunity to grandstand by cutting funding to the police. It
did not go well.

It seems that when police resources are cut, they’re less able to do their jobs. It was a complete disaster that absolutely no one could have predicted
except everyone who wasn’t a complete Black Lives Matters shill. Even many on the left saw this as a trainwreck in the making.

Now, the Windy City is having to rethink this whole fiasco.

Democratic Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot appears to have reversed course on her failed “defund the police” efforts as soaring violent crime continues to rock the city.

What are the details?

According to the Chicago Tribune, “Lightfoot unveiled a $16.7 billion spending plan Monday that boosts funding for police, relies on federal money to help fill the city’s budget hole and funds a host of new community programs as she seeks to move Chicago past the ongoing pandemic and to address rampant gun violence.”

The proposal suggests lifting the Chicago Police Department’s annual budget to $1.9 billion, up from $1.7 billion in 2021, the news outlet reported.

Fox News added that the proposal followed “a bloody weekend that saw nine homicides across the city, 56 people shot, and an alderman attacked.”

The shocking violence is more of the same for Chicago. Since the start of 2020, the prominent Midwestern city has experienced violent crime at levels not seen in decades. And despite the city’s attempts to combat crime through alternative measures, so far in 2021, things have only gotten worse.

So now, Lightfoot wants to increase funding for the police department.

For once, it’s the right thing to do.

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Austin Hits All-Time Homicide High.

“Higher crime rates in Austin are a direct results of a homeless policy that lured more transients to Austin, of police budgets that were cut so more taxpayer money could be diverted to leftwing activists, and of a Soros-backed county DA that has installed a revolving door to put dangerous criminals back on Austin’s streets without prosecuting them.”

Yeah, all those gun control laws in Illinois and Chicago sure kept this convicted felon from getting a gun.
And my guess is that the family of the murdered victim is going to own that business after their lawsuit is settled for them hiring that convict as a security guard.

Security Guard Says He Shot Unmasked Customer In Self-Defense

When can you legally act in self-defense? Laws vary from state to state, but generally, you are only legally authorized to use lethal force in self-defense if there is an immediate threat of great bodily injury or death to you or to another person. Still, it’s not uncommon for people to claim they were acting in self-defense even if the circumstances don’t fit the legal requirements.

That would appear to be the case for a security guard in Chicago charged with attempted murder and other charges after he shot a customer three times. 42-year old Chester Holmes claims he was acting in self-defense
  because the customer wasn’t wearing a mask and he was afraid of catching COVID-19.

The argument did not sway cook County Judge Mary Marubio.

“The victim fled the store, fell outside, followed by the defendant [who], according to the surveillance video, shot a second time. The defendant then paces back and forth and shot a third time,” Marubio said before ordering 42-year-old Chester Holmes held without bail.

Holmes, who is barred from possessing a weapon because he is a four-time convicted felon and registered child sex offender, was working as an armed security guard at the store on the 6000 block of South Racine when a 28-year-old man walked in without a COVID mask around 9:53 am. Monday, according to Assistant State’s Attorney Darryl Auguste.

Holmes and the victim argued about the mask policy and the victim eventually left. He then turned around and walked back in. When he did, Holmes met him with a drawn handgun and shot him, Auguste said.

After he was shot the victim fled the store, only to collapse on the ground outside. Prosecutors say Holmes then walked outside the store and shot the victim two more times before he himself fled the scene.

According to CWB Chicago, Holmes is a four-time felon who’s previously been convicted of sexually assaulting a 6-year old girl and sexually abusing a 15-year old. Holmes also served two stints in prison for failing to register as a sex offender for those crimes, yet somehow Holmes was hired as an armed guard for the store despite being prohibited by state and federal law from lawfully possessing a firearm.

Now, it is possible to legally act in armed self-defense even as a prohibited person, but if a gun is used you’re still going to be facing felon in possession charges. Still, Holmes’ attorney is apparently trying to make the best of a really weak case by arguing that his client was acting to protect himself when he shot the returning customer.

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Strict laws absolutely will not stop someone bent on mayhe

Man Kills 5, Himself in UK’s First Mass Shooting in Decade

LONDON (AP) — A young man who killed five people, including his mother, and then took his own life in Britain’s first mass shooting in over a decade had complained online about difficulties meeting women and being “beaten down” by life.

Police said Friday the motive for the shootings was unclear but there were no immediate signs that the crime was an act of terrorism or the 22-year-old gunman had connections to extremist groups.

They identified the shooter as Jake Davison, 22, and said he had a gun license, but revealed few other details. Witnesses reported that he used a pump-action shotgun, police said, though they wouldn’t confirm what type of weapon it was and whether it was the one Davison was licensed to use.

Gun crimes are rare in Britain, which has strict firearm control rules.

Police responded to multiple emergency calls at 6:11 p.m. Thursday arrived six minutes later at an address in Plymouth’s Keyham neighborhood, where Davison had shot and killed his mother, 51-year-old Maxine Davison, also known as Maxine Chapman.

According to police accounts, Davison left the house and immediately shot and killed a 3-year-old girl, Sophie Martyn, and her father, Lee Martyn, 43. He then shot and wounded two other people down the street whom police haven’t identified.

Police said Davison moved on to a park where he shot Stephen Washington, 59, who died at the scene, and then to a nearby street, where he shot Kate Shepherd, 66 on a nearby street. She died later in hospital.

Eyewitnesses reported that Davison shot himself before police arrived. He was licensed to use a gun last year and police are checking whether he had the license before then.

Shaun Sawyer, chief constable for Devon and Cornwall police, told reporters that investigators are not sure what Davison’s motive was and keeping open minds but do not think extremist ideology prompted the attack.

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