Just remember, she was voted into office by people who are as, or even more, stupid that that liar.

The Good Samaritan With A Gun In Indiana Serves To Refute Four Common Gun Control Myths

On Monday, a good samaritan with a gun averted a catastrophe at an Indiana mall. Douglas Sapirman, a 20-year old man brought more than 100 rounds of ammunition and three rifles: a Sig Sauer M400 rifle he bought in March 2022; an M&P15 rifle that was found in the mall bathroom and bought in March 2021; and a Glock 33 pistol discovered on his body. In the span of a few minutes, Sapirman fired 24 rounds, killed three people, and injured two others.

But Elisjsha Dicken, a 22-year old man, was shopping at the mall with this girlfriend. And he was carrying a concealed pistol. The New York Times describes his heroics:

Chief Jim Ison of the Greenwood Police Department called the bystander’s actions “nothing short of heroic,” identifying him as Elisjsha Dicken of Seymour, Ind.

He engaged the gunman from quite a distance with a handgun, was very proficient in that, very tactically sound, and, as he moved to close in on the suspect, he was also motioning for people to exit behind him,” Chief Ison said at a news conference where he described surveillance video footage of the shooting. . . .

All the victims were shot by Mr. Sapirman, who fired 24 rounds, Chief Ison said. Mr. Dicken fired 10 rounds, killing the gunman as he tried to retreat to a mall bathroom where he had spent an hour apparently preparing for the attack. . . . .

Over the past two years, the relatives told the police, the gunman had frequently practiced shooting at a range in Greenwood, which is roughly 15 miles south of Indianapolis. . . .

When the police arrived, they handcuffed Mr. Dicken and took him to a station for questioning, where security camera footage confirmed his description of the events. Chief Ison said that the police could not determine whether Mr. Dicken had a gun permit, but that he was carrying his Glock 9-millimeter handgun legally under the state’s constitutional carry law.

“This young man, Greenwood’s good Samaritan, acted within seconds, stopping the shooter and saving countless lives,” Mayor Mark Myers said on Monday.

This amazing story is simply one data point, but it serves to refute four myths about gun control.

First, a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun. Recently, Eugene catalogued other similar instances of defensive gun use.

Second, constitutional carry ensures that good samaritans can carry, even if they do not satisfy onerous carry regimes. I imagine that if this incident happened in New York, the good samaritan would be indicted for illegal possession of a firearm.

Third, a common argument in favor of “high capacity” magazine bans is that defensive gun use never needs more than a few bullets. Here, the good samaritan used ten bullets, and he could have needed even more. In California, for example, magazines are limited to ten rounds. Had the good samaritan needed one more bullet to drop the assailant, he would have been out of luck in California.

Fourth, it is commonly argued that a person armed with a handgun cannot take down a person armed with larger rifles. This incident proves that myth is wrong.

It is difficult to generalize from a single incident, but the situation in Indiana serves to push back against many of the common gun control myths.

Update: I didn’t realize that Indiana’s constitutional carry went into effect on July 1, 2022. Had this event happened a month earlier, the good samaritan may have been in violation of the state’s carry law. The NY Times has some more details:

Mike Wright, manager of the Luca Pizza di Roma in the mall’s food court, remembers taking shelter when the firing started and then emerging when it stopped to see the bystander behind a low-slung wall with his handgun trained on the assailant he had shot to death.

“He stood there maybe 25 or 30 feet from the body and held that pistol pointed at him until law enforcement arrived,” Mr. Wright remembered on Tuesday. “The good Samaritan guy seemed poised and under control. He appeared to be very disciplined.” Jim Ison, the local police chief, went further, saying that his engagement with the gunman, who had killed three people, was “nothing short of heroic.”

But along with the horror, drama and acclaim came a roaring and rekindled controversy in a country united in revulsion over its ceaseless plague of gun violence, yet bitterly divided over a loosening of gun restrictions like the Indiana law, passed this year, that allowed the bystander, Elisjsha Dicken, 22, to carry his 9-millimeter handgun in the first place. . . .

Chief Ison said the police found no indication that Mr. Dicken had a permit for the handgun. But the chief said he was carrying it legally under the new law. In a brief interview, Mr. Dicken’s lawyer, Guy A. Relford, described his client as an “all-American Indiana boy,” and declined to provide any specific information about him or the mall encounter.

Update 2: The Greenwood Police now report that the Good Samaritan acted quickly. In the span of 15 seconds (not 2 minutes), he fired 10 rounds, eight of which hit the assailant. And his first shot hit the assailant from 40 yards!

 

That is some top-level accuracy.

Progressive activists put 2A rights on the ballot in Oregon

Oregon’s secretary of state says a coalition of anti-gun activists and organizations have collected enough signatures to place a gun control referendum on the ballot this November, and while there’s still a small chance that the ballot initiative could get scuttled before Election Day, gun owners in the state aren’t counting on that outcome. Instead, they’re sounding the alarm about what the initiative would mean for current and would-be gun owners in the hope of rallying enough opposition to defeat the measure at the ballot box.

Initiative Petition 17, deceptively named the “Reduction of Gun Violence Act” despite targeting legal gun owners and not violent criminals, would impose several new restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms, starting with a ban on the sale and purchase of ammunition magazines that can accept more than ten rounds. Unlike other recent magazine bans, the Oregon proposal grandfathers in existing owners but would still make it a crime for anyone to purchase, sell, or transfer a “large capacity” magazine once the law takes effect.

IP 17 would also impose a new “permit to purchase” requirement on all gun owners, subjecting them to a needless round of government investigation, background checks, training, and fees before being able to legally purchase a gun. Oregon already has so-called universal background checks, so before any firearm transfer can legally take place the purchaser must undergo a background check. Gun control activists want to duplicate that process by forcing all would-be buyers to get a permit beforehand; one that requires documentation of undergoing a state-approved firearms training course, another background check conducted through the NICS system, and the sign off from a county sheriff or local police chief, who will have the discretion to deny that permit if they believe the individual “poses a risk” to themselves or others (even if the applicant has never been charged or been accused of a crime).

Several Second Amendment organizations have put out statements pointing out the hidden consequences buried in the initiative’s fine print, with the Oregon Firearms Federation warning that the ballot measure, if approved, would allow for indefinite waiting periods for gun purchases.

As you know, Oregon already requires the permission of the Oregon State Police before a person can purchase a firearm. Firearms may not be purchased or transferred without approval of the State Police through the Oregon background check system.

Oregon State Police have no statutory time limit on how long they can take to conduct a background check. There are many cases of people waiting over 2 years for the completion of a check. Requests for information or corrections from OSP are routinely ignored.

While current law allows a transfer to take place after 3 business days if the OSP has not completed the check, in practice that virtually never happens because dealers fear retribution from the ATF. (This ballot measure removes even that one small and rarely used safeguard.)

NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action has also sent out an alert to members, noting that the measure also “creates a state registry of firearm owners and their sensitive personal information” just like the one in California that was recently leaked by the state Attorney General’s office.

There is a sliver of hope that the measure won’t appear before voters this fall. NRA-ILA says there is still a chance for gun owners to weigh in before the ballot initiative receives it’s final approval in early August.

The Explanatory Statement Committee (ESC) will draft the statement for the ballot. The title of the draft is “Reduction of Gun Violence Act.” Initiative 17 does nothing to reduce gun violence and blatantly disregards your constitutional rights.

Please tell your friends, family, and fellow sportsmen and women to vote NO on November 8, 2022.

On August 3, 2022, NRA members, Second Amendment advocates, and the public will have an opportunity to comment on, and challenge, the statement. Your NRA-ILA will update you with the language of the draft statement as it becomes available. It is critical that you provide comments on the draft statements identifying the unconstitutional infringements Initiative 17 will place on law-abiding firearm owners in Oregon.

We’ll be following up here as well when that information is released. If IP 17 does end up being approved by voters, its provisions are almost certainly going to be challenged in court soon after the votes are tallied, but it’s always better to defeat a bad bill (or in this case, a voter referendum) than to try to overturn a bad law. Now’s the time for Oregon gun owners to be heard, and to remind their friends and neighbors that while the state’s shocking rise in violent crime is real, it won’t be stopped by targeting legal gun owners and their constitutionally-protected right to keep and bear arms in self-defense.

Garen J. Wintemute. That name rang a bell.

Garen Wintemute’s Conclusions Aren’t Supported By His Own Data…But He Won’t Let That Stop Him
UC Davis’s Dr. Garen Wintemute runs something called the Violence Prevention Research Center. Translation: he’s a hoplophobic grifter with a university sinecure who sucks up millions of dollars to keep his anti-gun rights operation going thanks to the largesse of like-minded individuals, foundations and, of course, California tax payers.


BLUF
Additional authors of the study include Colette Smirniotis, Christopher McCort and Garen J. Wintemute from the VPRO and the California Firearm Violence Research Center.

Machine learning identifies gun purchasers at risk of suicide

A first-of-its-kind study from the Violence Prevention Research Program at UC Davis shows an algorithm can forecast the likelihood of firearm suicide using handgun purchasing data.

A new study from the Violence Prevention Research Program (VPRP) at UC Davis suggests machine learning, a type of artificial intelligence, may help identify handgun purchasers who are at high risk of suicide. It also identified individual and community characteristics that are predictive of firearm suicide. The study was published in JAMA Network Open.

Previous research has shown the risk of suicide is particularly high immediately after purchase, suggesting that acquisition itself is an indicator of elevated suicide risk.

Risk factors identified by the algorithm to be predictive of firearm suicide included:

older age
first-time firearm purchaser
white race
living in close proximity to the gun dealer
purchasing a revolver

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Fort Collins woman sentenced for perjury in red flag filing involving CSU police officer

A Fort Collins woman was sentenced to probation Tuesday after a jury found her guilty of lying on a red flag petition she filed against the Colorado State University police officer who fatally shot her son.

Susan Holmes was found guilty of perjury and attempting to influence a public servant by a jury in April after lying on an extreme risk protection order petition — also known as a red flag petition — she filed in January 2020 against CSU Cpl. Phillip Morris.

The red flag law allows members of law enforcement, a family member or a household member to petition to have a person’s firearms removed if they are deemed by a judge to be a threat to themselves or others.

In the petition filed Jan. 9, 2020, Holmes checked a box saying she is a family or household member of Morris — one of two officers involved in the fatal shooting of her son, 19-year-old Jeremy Holmes, on July 1, 2017 — specifically that she has a child in common with Morris.

Both officers were cleared from wrongdoing by the district attorney at the time of the shooting, Cliff Riedel.

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Place Where Biden Face Planted Off Bike is Named ‘Brandon Falls’ On Google Maps

The place where Joe Biden face planted into the concrete falling off his bike last month has been named as ‘Brandon Falls’ on Google Maps.

Someone has managed to place a landmark in the Delaware location, naming it after the infamous ‘Lets go Brandon’ chant, which was initiated after the White House claimed Nascar fans were not chanting ‘F*ck Joe Biden’ when they totally were.

At time of writing, ‘Brandon Falls’ is still listed as a ‘historical landmark’ on Google Maps.

Can you make a 40 yard supported shot?

Practice and find out, seriously. If you can’t, you have a goal, worthy of attaining, and a demonstrated, not hypothetical, reason for getting there.

There are millions of Dickens and Rittenhouses across America and they’re the reason why the left, media and government hate the right to bear arms.

With the expiration of the federal assault weapons ban in 2004, millions of common AR-15 style rifles hit the market, yet annualized homicides by rifle continued to trend downward. GOA opposes any new bans on these commonly owned weapons.

Image

Well, to be honest, in a ‘free country’, I’ve never thought that the police could prevent any crime. That requires an authoritarian Police State the likes of which would be on par with North Korea. The poor people who always believed this, were always wrong, and that’s what’s sad; they were delusional

Confidence in Law Enforcement to Prevent Mass Shootings Plummets

A new poll from Convention of States Action and the Trafalgar Group shows Americans no longer trust local and federal law enforcement to stop mass shootings. This outcome should be no surprise after a long string of mass shootings where law enforcement knew the perpetrator before the tragedy.

The tragic school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, is the latest example. However, school officials and law enforcement were aware of the risks posed by the shooter in Parkland, Fla., and the other mass shooting tragedies since then. It seems the left’s preoccupation with social justice rather than criminal justice prevents law enforcement at all levels from taking proactive action to prevent violence. The social justice push ended stop and frisk in New York City and ensured red flag laws in Illinois and New York were useless.

These examples may explain why a majority of voters report they are not confident local authorities can prevent a mass shooting before it happens. Sixty-two percent of voters say they are not sure their local law enforcement or federal agents could identify and stop a violent person before they started a mass shooting. More than a quarter (26.9%) report they are not confident at all. Only 9.8% indicated they are very confident in their local authorities’ ability to prevent a mass shooting.

Uvalde officers not immediately and aggressively confronting the gunman in the elementary school was reminiscent of law enforcement failures in the Parkland shooting. “Americans watched in horror as an active shooter was permitted to rampage through a school while the police stood outside and did absolutely nothing. Over and over again, citizens are given the clear message that—when it comes to protecting loved ones—you’re on your own,”  said Mark Meckler, President of Convention of States Action.

Americans are painfully aware of the tragic results in these situations and believe in the “good guy with a gun” more than the gun grabbers would like. According to the poll, a plurality believes their fellow citizen with a firearm is the best protection for them and their family in a mass shooting situation. Almost 42% of voters believe that an armed citizen would be their best protection if they were caught in a mass shooting event. Local police retained the confidence of 25.1%, and 10.3% had the most faith in federal agents. Almost one-quarter said none of the above.

Results indicating how many respondents feel they will best protect themselves and their families would be an interesting supplement. Democrats appear the most fatalistic, with a plurality of 33.9% saying they do not trust anyone to protect them and their family in a mass shooting event. But, they are still the party pushing for strict gun control. Meanwhile, 70.4% of Republicans trust armed citizens the most, while only 16.8% and 1.6% trust local or federal law enforcement.

Yet, somehow, our leaders in Congress think more gun laws are the answer. The recent bi-partisan gun law does little to prevent these tragedies, especially in an environment where citizens are losing trust in law enforcement. “At the same time, we’re told guns are the problem, and we should give up our right to self-defense,” Meckler noted. “Voters are not stupid. They understand that responsible citizens offer the best means of protecting our schools, homes, and communities in this country. Pursuing such policies is not only bad politics, it puts all of us at risk.”

As if to prove the point made by a plurality of voters, an armed citizen stopped a mass shooter in a mall food court in Indiana yesterday. According to law enforcement, the gunman shot three people fatally and injured two Sunday evening before a good guy with a gun shot and killed him. The shooter entered the mall with a rifle and several magazines. Greenwood Police Dept. Chief Jim Ison said, “The real hero of the day is the citizen that was lawfully carrying a firearm in that food court and was able to stop the shooter almost as soon as he began.” The poll ended before reports of this shooting appeared in the news cycle.

A legally armed citizen recently thwarted another mass shooting in West Virginia. A woman used her pistol to shoot a man who had returned to a graduation party with a rifle. He had been in a verbal altercation with the partygoers earlier in the day. “This lady was carrying a lawful firearm,” Lt. Tony Hazelett of the Charleston Police Department said. “A law-abiding citizen who stopped the threat of probably 20 or 30 people getting killed. She engaged the threat and stopped it. She didn’t run from the threat. She engaged it preventing a mass casualty event here in Charleston.”

Examples like these may be why states like Texas, Georgia, and others are passing open and constitutional carry laws. Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb signed constitutional carry in March of this year. As of July 1, no legal gun owner in Indiana is required to have a carry permit after passing the required background check. That law may have made all the difference for the Hoosiers in the mall on Sunday.

New Documents Reveal Huge Scale of Government Cellphone Tracking of Citizens.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) used mobile location data to track people’s movements on a much larger scale than previously known, according to new documents unearthed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

It’s no secret that U.S. government agencies have been obtaining and using location data collected by Americans’ smartphones. In early 2020, a Wall Street Journal report revealed that both Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) bought access to millions of smartphone users’ location data to track undocumented immigrants and suspected tax dodgers.

However, new documents obtained by the ACLU through an ongoing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit now reveal the extent of this warrantless data collection. The 6,000-plus records reviewed by the civil rights organization contained approximately 336,000 location points across North America obtained from people’s phones. They also reveal that in just three days in 2018, CBP obtained records containing around 113,654 location points in the southwestern United States — more than 26 location points per minute.

The bulk of the data that CBP obtained came from its contract with Venntel, a location data broker that aggregates and sells information quietly siphoned from smartphone apps. By purchasing this data from data brokers, officials are sidestepping the legal process government officials would typically need to go through in order to access cell phone data.

Documents also detail the government agencies’ efforts to rationalize their actions. For example, cell phone location data is characterized as containing no personally identifying information (PII) in the records obtained by ACLU, despite enabling officials to track specific individuals or everyone in a particular area. Similarly, the records also claim that this data is “100 percent opt-in” and that cell phone users “voluntarily” share the location information. But many don’t realize that apps installed on their phones are collecting GPS information, let alone share that data with the government.

The ACLU says these documents are further proof that Congress needs to pass the bipartisan Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act, proposed by by Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Rand Paul (R-KY), which would require the government to secure a court order before obtaining Americans’ data, such as location information from our smartphones, from data brokers.

Shreya Tewari, the Brennan Fellow for ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, said: “Legislation like the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act would end agencies’ warrantless access to this data and head off their flimsy justifications for obtaining it without judicial oversight in the first place.”

Spokespeople for Venntel and Homeland Security did not immediately comment on the report.

The Greenwood Mall Shooting Should End Claims of the Danger of Permitless Concealed Carry.

During the recent attempted mass shooting at the Greenwood Park Mall in Indiana, a 22-year old man who was lawfully carrying a pistol stopped the killing. For this heroic action, he’s been called “good Samaritan” by local law enforcement. Even the owners of the mall, (who ban guns on their properties praised his actions. That got under the skin of anti-gun activists.

Why? If they were forced to be honest about it like the main character in the 1997 film Liar Liar, they’d have to admit that a quintessential case of a good guy with a gun stopping a bad guy with a gun is utterly devastating to their case against civilian gun rights.

Sadly (for them) the facts keep coming in, and they continue to be very bad for the gun control industry’s agenda. Not only does Greenwood Park clearly demonstrate that permitless carry (a.k.a. constitutional carry) saves lives, but one of the key arguments against permitless carry was also destroyed.

Constitutional Carry Allowed Lives To Be Saved

Recent reporting from WRTV News sheds light on an important detail in how this mass shooting was stopped . . .

According to [Greenwood Police Chief James] Ison, [Eli] Dicken did not have a permit for his handgun, but due to the passage of the “Constitutional Carry” bill in Indiana, he was legally carrying the weapon.

“I am 100% certain that many more people would have died last night if it wasn’t for his heroism,” Ison said.

If there’s a more devastating message for the forces of gun control, I don’t know what it would be.

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It’s like they are mad that more people didn’t get murdered. Well, of course they are. They don’t care about people. They care about banning guns and once again, their narrative that people can’t really defend themselves literally got shot down.

Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: ‘Good Samaritan’ Who Saved Indiana Mall Goers Is Denounced as No Hero

What makes someone a hero? How about a Good Samaritan? Evidently, such questions are contentious.

And a Sunday incident has some insisting a brave bystander shouldn’t be celebrated.

At the Greenwood Park Mall in the Indianapolis Metropolitan Area, a man opened fire. As reported by Deseret News, 20-year-old Johnathan Sapirman got off 24 rifle rounds.

Tragically, three were murdered: Victor Gomez, 30; and couple Rosa Rivera de Pineda, 37, and Pedro Pineda, 56. Two more were injured: a 20-year-old female shot in the leg; and a 12-year minorly wounded by a deflected bullet.

After entering the mall, Sapirman headed straight to the bathroom and was there for over an hour before exiting the bathroom and opening fire.

“The most puzzling piece…was the amount of time that he was in the bathroom,” [Chief James Ison] said. “We believe he was getting ready.”

But the man’s plans were thwarted because more than bad guys carry guns. Elisjsha Dicken, 22, stopped the mass shooter’s spree.

Footage…showed that Dicken shot 10 rounds from his handgun, while motioning for citizens at the mall to exit behind him.

Chief James has praised Elisjsha’s intervention:

“Many more people would have died last night if a responsible, armed citizen hadn’t been present…”

On Sunday evening, the chief compared Elisjsha to a biblical character. He did so again Monday:

“The shooter was confronted by our Good Samaritan. … The Good Samaritan was armed with a pistol and engaged the shooter as he stood outside the restroom area firing into the food court. [Elisjsha] fired several rounds, striking the suspect. The suspect attempted to retreat back into the restroom [but] fell to the ground after being shot.”

Does that sound like a hero to you? It doesn’t to a Bloomington traffic anchor. Murrow Award-winning journalist Justin Kollar was flabbergasted by the chief’s framing. He expressed his dismay in a tweet:

“The term ‘Good Samaritan’ came from a Bible passage of a man from Samaria who stopped on the side of the road to help a man… I cannot believe we live in a world where the term can equally apply to someone *killing* someone… my God.”

 

And he was none too impressed with Elisjsha packing heat.

“It’s against the @simonmalls code of conduct for anyone to carry a weapon inside the mall. However, Greenwood Police are thankful the…man was.”

Some online were in agreement. One user offered, “What you have is two gunmen — one of whom obeyed the law for a little longer than the mass shooter.”

More remarks:

  • “[A]sk yourself if you really want your mall experience to be like the wild…west.”
  • “Why did he bring a gun shopping, in a specified gun-free zone? Hmm, not so good by definition. What if he was there to shoot people?”
  • “I am horrified to see that term used in this context.”

So goes America’s divide over guns. For many advocates, if a firearm is used to do evil, it’s apparently the fault of the weapon. But if a gun is used to stop the act, that implement earns no points. Nor does the person who rightfully employed it.

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Supreme Court EPA Decision may Apply to ATF Rules

On June 30, 2022, the Supreme Court issued its decision on the West Virginia v. EPA case. The decision reinforced earlier precedent on the non-delegation doctrine. It is a welcome start to roll back the lawlessness of the administrative state. Might the EPA case signal a willingness to strike down arbitrary rule changes in the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) agency?

The architects of the administrative state understood very well it was a critical way to undermine the Constitution:

The reason for this is that the ideas that gave rise to what is today called “the administrative state” are fundamentally at odds with those that gave rise to our Constitution. In fact, the original Progressive-Era architects of the administrative state understood this quite clearly, as they made advocacy of this new approach to government an important part of their direct, open, comprehensive attack on the American Constitution.

In the decision, on page 4 of Justice Gorsuch’s concurrence, in footnote 1, Justice Gorsuch points out the Progressive disdain for power in the hands of the people:  

1. For example, Woodrow Wilson famously argued that “popular sovereignty” “embarrasse[d]” the Nation because it made it harder to achieve “executive expertness.”

In the EPA decision, the Court explains it is defending the Constitutional protections of separation of powers. It shows there is a long history of court decisions preventing the agglomeration of powers from one of the three governmental branches to another by improper delegation. From the decision p. 17-18:

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