Virginia Citizens Defense League, Inc. (VCDL)

Virginia Citizens Defense League, Inc.
PO. Box 513, Newington, VA 22122 • 804-639-0600 • 703-372-3285 • 757-271-3705 • 540-446-5783

05/25/10 - VCDL Update 5/25/10 - Part 2

Email: sales*mc-leather.com MC Leather will give discounts to all VCDL members. ************************************************** 13. Va. family: Handyman fatally shot protected us ************************************************** A good guy was given a horrible set of choices (not uncommon): 1. Shoot the armed bad guy and hope the bad guy won't have a chance to kill the woman being held hostage 2. Turn over your gun to the bad guys and pray they don't kill you and/or the woman 3. Tell the criminal that if he harms the woman you WILL kill him deader than a doornail, guaranteed He chose #2 and was murdered in cold blood. :-( The woman wasn't killed. My first choice would be #3, followed closely by #1. Oh, and carry a gun with you AT HOME! http://tinyurl.com/3xa8rny www.wtop.com May 19, 2010 CENTREVILLE, Va. - Fairfax County Police need the public's help in finding the killers of a handyman shot to death while defending his employer's family during a Centreville home invasion. Jose Ramiro Rosales, 39, of Manassas, was killed Monday morning after two gunmen entered the house through the garage. The gunmen fled after = the shooting. Rosales managed to get a gun away from an intruder in the family's garage, but then gave the weapon back when a second gunman threatened to kill the mother. The gunmen then turned the gun on Rosales before possibly taking off in an older model white Toyota pickup. Meanwhile, the family is speaking out, saying without Rosales, they would not be alive. Speaking for the first time since the crime, Robbie Brar - a member of = the family - described Rosales as a 'guardian angel.' 'He stood strong to protect people that are not related to him,' Brar tells The Washington Post. Police don't know whether the Brar family's 9,000-foot, Tudor-style mansion on Compton Road was deliberately targeted. The family is in the construction and real estate business and owns a check cashing and = mortgage store in Manassas. Rosales was married with two adult sons. When he was not working as a landscaper and handyman and sending money back to his family in Guatemala, he was studying to be a minister and spent time discussing the Bible with a church group. Brar says his family now plans to help Rosales' family however they can. Fairfax County detectives want to hear from anybody who may have seen the white truck in the vicinity of Bay Valley Lane. The truck would have been in the area between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. on Monday, May 17. Police say a witness told police he saw someone jump into the bed of a = truck and pull a tarp over himself between 10:50 a.m. and 10:55 a.m. The truck then drove eastbound on Compton Road toward Union Mill Road. ************************************************** 14. Maryland law on transportation of handguns, ammo ************************************************** Douglas Johnson emailed me this: -- Philip, Your warning to your readers regarding Maryland's gun laws is helpful and important. A lot of people do not realize that in Maryland, transporting a handgun in a vehicle (without a Maryland-issued carry permit) is generally illegal, except that transporting an unloaded and = fully enclosed handgun to and from a short list of 'approved' destinations is allowed. Just as a minor point of clarification, however: Mr. Southard would NOT have been in violation of any Maryland law if he had been transporting only ammunition, or even ammunition loaded into detached magazines. The ammunition was pertinent in this case only because it provided a justification for the LEO to look for the handgun. (By the same token, I have a friend who was politely questioned by a Maryland local LEO because he had a pair of yellow high-contrast sunglasses on his dashboard, which the officer referred to as 'shooter's glasses.') However, Mr. Southard's starting and ending point matter. If he started his journey somewhere that he had a right to possess the handgun (Virginia, for example), and was traveling directly to an end point jurisdiction in which he had a right to possess the gun, then he = would be protected by the federal firearms transport law, 18 USC 926A, = assuming that the gun was unloaded and stored in accordance with the requirements of that statute. In the District of Columbia, however, possession of ammunition is indeed a separate offense, with narrow exceptions. Douglas Johnson ************************************************** 15. Manassas man held in bank robbery ************************************************** VCDL Board member Dale Welch emailed me this: -- Good opportunity to say 'Thank You' to LEOs for good response. We need to say that more often IMHO. They were are the right place at the right time with their eyes wide open. [PVC: Absolutely. VCDL tips its hat to the great work done by Albemarle County PD and to ALL the fantastic LEOs who fight the bad guys 24/7/365!] ---- Dale http://tinyurl.com/39tjpor www2.insidenova.com By Media General News Service May 19, 2010 CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va.-Minutes after the BB&T Bank on Seminole Trail was = robbed Tuesday, police had a suspect in custody. Just before 11 a.m., a man with a pistol went into the bank and demanded money from a teller, according to police. Two officers, Greg Davis and Steve Watson, started canvassing the Fashion Square mall parking lot when they spotted a man who matched the description of the robber, according to police. 'They were really good about getting the description out and the officers were very alert,' said Sgt. Darrell Byers of the Albemarle County Police Department. He added, 'He was just coming through the wood line.' The man threw a container into a parked vehicle, according to police. A later search revealed the container, which police weren't willing to = describe Tuesday, held cash and a gun, according to officials. James Manson of Manassas has been charged with armed bank robbery, commission of a felony while in possession of a firearm and possession = of a firearm after having been convicted of a felony, according to police. He is being held in the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail without bond, according to authorities. ************************************************** 16. Chicago Mayor Daley's mental instability shows at press conference ************************************************** This article about guns and Chicago Mayor Richard Daley shows the duplicity of the mainstream media (as well as some insights into a tyrannical big-city mayor). Just imagine the huge explosion of fury by the media if, say, Governor Bob McDonnell did something even remotely like Daley did! Philip Levy emailed me this: -- http://tinyurl.com/2esp6zb www.chicagoreader.com By Mike Dumke May 20, 2010 Mayor Daley loves to bag on the local media, and given my recent line of inquiry into his politics and policies, I've never expected to be greeted with a fruit basket at City Hall. But even I was a bit taken aback this morning when the mayor grabbed a = rifle and threatened to shoot me. The mayor was holding a press conference to discuss what the city was doing to prepare for the Supreme Court's expected decision to overturn = the city's gun ban. The short answer: all sorts of things, but we'll just have to wait until the court weighs in next month to find out the = details. 'We're hoping for the best,' Daley said. Guns are one of the mayor's favorite soapbox topics-he regularly goes out of his way to point out that he despises gun manufacturers and 'extremists' like the NRA. 'It's really amazing how powerful they are,' he said today, standing next to a table covered with handguns, rifles, and even a machine gun that police had seized. 'They're bigger = than the oil industry, bigger than the gas industry, bigger than Google, bigger than President Obama and the rest of them.' Daley also likes to highlight what he considers to be flagrant hypocrisy on the part of the defenders of gun rights. 'Now you can't walk into the Supreme Court-you have to walk in the side way. They're going to barricade the doors or something now. I mean, they're barricading the doors but they're saying everyone else should have guns. That's the thing that bothers me in Washington. As you know in Washington all things are being barricaded, all federal buildings. But = they're saying everybody else should be able to carry guns.' But even supporters of tough gun regulations-myself included-have to admit that it's not clear how much they reduce violence. Despite having some of the most restrictive laws in the country, Chicago is a national leader in shootings and murders, and the mayor himself noted that 'we've seen far too many instances in the last few weeks' of firearm violence, including the shooting that left a cop dead last night. So I asked: since guns are readily available in Chicago even with a ban in place, do you really think it's been effective? I'm hardly the only guy who asks the mayor things he doesn't want to answer, and I've been responsible for at least one of his huffing, puffing, ranting tangents, which generally get the press corps laughing, thus enabling him to move on to the next question without giving a real answer to the one at hand. But even by those standards, this was a masterful and surreal performance. 'Oh!' Daley said. 'It's been very effective!' He grabbed a rifle, held it up, and looked right at me. He was chuckling but there was no smile. 'If I put this up your-ha!-your butt-ha ha!-you'll find out how effective this is!' For a moment the room was very, very quiet. I took a good look at the weapon. It had a long bayonet. (Was it seized during the Civil War?) 'If I put a round up your-ha ha!' The photographers snapped away. Suddenly everybody started cracking up. Daley went on. 'This gun saved many lives-it could save your life,' he = said-meaning, I think, that getting that gun off the street might have = saved many lives, including mine. And he went on some more. 'We save all these guns that the police department seizes, you know how many lives we've saved? You don't realize it. First of all, they're taking these guns out of someone's hands. They save their own life and they save someone else's. You cannot count how many times this gun can be used. Thirty, forty times in shooting people and discharging a weapon. I think it's very important. [PVC: And this buffoon runs one of the largest cities in America!] 'Next will be hand grenades, right? We'll say that hand grenades are OK. I mean, how far can you go in regards to mass weapons? To me, any gun taken off saves thousands of lives in America. I really believe that, I don't care what people tell me. You have to thank the police officers for seizing all these weapons. We lead the country in seizing = weapons. This is unbelievable.' I had to agree. [PVC: I don't. For all those seizures, which are nothing more than a = political sideshow, crime continues to soar because Chicagoans are left helpless by a foolish tyrant. Or could it be that Daley is just dumber than a rock? His bizarre comments and actions above do make it = seem like that could actually be the case...] ************************************************** 17. Responsible gun ownership is key to NRA basic training course ************************************************** EM Ed Levine emailed me this article, which mentions Ed and gives VCDL = a plug: -- http://tinyurl.com/38csgkh www.loudountimes.com By Jana Wagoner May 19, 2010 The idea of a responsible American exercising his or her second amendment right to bear arms has never scared or threatened me. As someone whose job is to write about crime on a regular basis, I'm very supportive of law-abiding citizens who want to do any and everything possible to protect themselves. But I recently learned that the first step to protecting yourself from = violent criminals is not going out and buying a gun. The first step is education. That's why I found a recent National Rifle Association Basic Pistol Shooting course I took at G3 Security Group Inc. in Sterling to be very beneficial. I know that not everyone is a fan of the NRA. There are differing interpretations of the second amendment, and not all states agree that = they have to let people carry firearms in public. But, when it comes down to it, the NRA isn't just political. In fact, the first chapter in the book we received for the course is all about safety. And I think that's something we can all agree on. Anyone who wants to own a firearm should know how to handle and store it safely. This is where those of us who are responsible differ from a majority of criminals out there. Criminals don't care if they handle their guns safely or if they obtain them legally, because they're not intending to use them for legal purposes. In the case of the law-abiding citizen who wants to own a gun, the only possible purposes are legal - for shooting sports and for self defense. That's why a basic pistol course is essential for anyone who is contemplating buying a gun. When I walked into the classroom portion of the course, I didn't know the proper way to handle a gun, so I wasn't really comfortable picking = one up. The course instructors Greg Stone, who owns G3 Security Group, and Ed Levine quickly put me at ease though. The NRA mandates that there be no loaded guns in a classroom setting. That way, you get to learn how to handle a gun safely without the threat of an accidental discharge. When you follow the NRA's three basic rules - always keep the gun pointed in a safe direction, always keep your finger off the trigger until ready to shoot and always keep the gun unloaded until you're ready to use it - there's no chance for a tragic accident. After learning about different types of handguns, how they work and the ammunition that they use, your knowledge translates into comfort. I passed a multiple choice test at the end of the classroom instruction and moved on to my live fire instruction. I admit, having never shot a handgun before, I was a little nervous heading to the Blue Ridge Arsenal in Chantilly. But once again, Stone quickly put me at ease. For each round or group of rounds I shot, he demonstrated what to do, focusing mainly on safely handling the firearm. While at first, the two-hand grip I had to place on the 9 mm Glock felt uncomfortable, I quickly got accustomed to it. My actual first shot surprised me. I thought the gun would kick back a = lot and be hard to handle, but I was able to handle it pretty well and = keep it under control. I'm not a sharpshooter yet, but I think with practice, I could get pretty accurate. Like the instructors told us during class, it's about muscle memory. If you go to the range and practice enough, and prepare for your shot the same way each and every time, you're going to be comfortable. And being comfortable with the firearm you're carrying or storing in your house for protection is the key to the safety of you and your family. Now, I don't know that I'm going to start carrying a gun. Yes, there are times at night when I'm walking to my car alone and I feel unsafe, but I need a lot more range practice before I'm comfortable enough to actually protect myself with the gun. Right now, = a taser is a more appropriate option for me. But, the education I've received has me much more comfortable should I = ever need to use a handgun to protect my home. For more information on G3 Security Group, log on to http://www.g3securityg= roup.com =2E For more information on the right to bear arms, log on to the NRA website at http://www.nra.org or the Virginia Citizens Defense League website at http://www.vcdl.org. Jana Wagoner is the Times-Mirror's public safety reporter. ************************************************** 18. Open carry survey ************************************************** Jay Minsky emailed me this: -- Phillip; The attached story has a Rasmussen Survey on open carry that might be of interest to the VCDL community. I have found the Rasmussen organization in general has more accurate surveys on political issues. http://tinyurl.com/28ctmfg news.yahoo.com May 13, 2010 Most Americans are not concerned about their safety around those who have legal permits to carry concealed weapons but have mixed feelings about laws that would allow gun owners to wear their weapons openly in = public. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 41% of Adults are at least somewhat concerned about their safety in the presence of those who have 'concealed carry' gun permits. Fifty-eight percent (58%) don't share that concern. But 47% oppose so-called 'open carry' laws that would allow citizens to openly wear their guns in public. Forty-one percent (41%) favor laws. Several states are currently wrestling with this issue. In households with a gun owner, support for 'open carry' laws rises to = 57%. In households where no gun is present, 62% oppose them. Similarly, 55% of those in non-gun-owning households are concerned about their safety around those who have legal permits to carry concealed weapons. Just 27% of those who have a gun owner in their household express similar concern. This survey of 1,000 Adults nationwide was conducted on May 11-12, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. = See methodology. Americans continue to overwhelmingly believe the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right of the average citizen to own a gun. Seventy- eight percent (78%) hold that view. These findings have changed little = through several surveys. Men believe in the constitutional right to own a gun more strongly than women. Whites believe in it more strongly than African-Americans. Sizable majorities of Republicans, Democrats and adults not affiliated = with either major party also think the Constitution guarantees the right of gun ownership. However, Democrats are far more likely to be concerned about their safety around those with 'concealed carry' permits than Republicans and unaffiliateds are. Fifty-five percent (55%) of Republicans and a plurality (48%) of unaffiliated adults favor 'open carry' laws, but 65% of Democrats oppose them. Americans consistently have supported gun ownership over gun control. Sixty-nine percent (69%), for example, said in March that city governments do not have the right to prevent citizens from owning handguns. Forty-two percent (42%) said tougher anti-gun laws are needed, but 49% disagreed. In recent years, support for stronger gun control has ranged narrowly from a low of 39% in October to a high of 45% in April 2007 following the killings at Virginia Tech. Fifty-seven percent (57%) of Americans say gun sales are up in the United States because of a fear of increased government restriction on = gun ownership. Early in his presidency, 71% believed it was at least somewhat likely that President Obama would seek tougher gun control laws. ************************************************** 19. Open carry is spreading [VIDEO] ************************************************** Tommy Carroll emailed me this article about California: -- More and more people are starting to 'get it'. http://tinyurl.com/3ya4bud www.ocregister.com Video by Mark Eades Gun group exercises rights at Tustin market An Open Carry gun group exercises its Second Amendment rights at a Whole Foods market in Tustin. The group openly carried unloaded guns to raise awareness of rights under the U.S. Constitution. ************************************************** 20. Oklahoma Governor thinks OC is dangerous for LEOs ************************************************** VCDL EM Hal Macklin emailed me this: -- This kind of thinking seems dangerous to self-defense: http://tinyurl.com/2e4f9n5 waronguns.blogspot.com By David Codrea May 15, 2010 [SNIP] Gov. Brad Henry, worried about safety concerns, said trained and licensed Oklahomans already may protect themselves by carrying concealed handguns, and it doesn't make anyone safer to wear a holster = and display that weapon to others. [PVC: Ah, but it most certainly can be safer, depending on the circumstances. Many VCDL members, myself and Dennis O'Connor included, have personal experiences that prove the Governor wrong.] 'On the contrary, it makes it more difficult and dangerous for law enforcement officers to try to sort out the good guys and bad guys when they arrive at a crime scene, he said. [PVC: Spoken by someone = clueless about criminals. Criminals DON'T OPEN CARRY, Governor!] ************************************************** 21. Ken Klukowski: Elena Kagan's opposition to gun rights ************************************************** Mark Hile emailed me this: -- Hello Mr. Van Cleave, I just read this article this morning and thought that you might be interested in what it has to say about the current Supreme Court nominee and the 2nd Amendment. http://tinyurl.com/2auftc6 www.theacru.org By Ken Klukowski May 13, 2010 A third instance of Elena Kagan opposing Americans' Second Amendment right to own a gun has now become public, and is sure to become a major issue in her Supreme Court confirmation hearings. And it confirms that President Obama's gun-control agenda is to create a Supreme Court that will 'reinterpret' the Second Amendment until that amendment means nothing at all. This year, no case on the Supreme Court docket is more important than McDonald v. Chicago, where the Court is deciding whether the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is only a right you have against = the federal government, or instead if the Second Amendment (like most of the Bill of Rights) also secures a right you can assert against state and local governments. At issue is whether Chicago's law banning = all guns even in your own home is constitutional. When the Supreme Court considered its last Second Amendment case, District of Columbia v. Heller in 2008, then-U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement filed a brief in the case, and then requested and received time to argue the federal government's position in that case as to the meaning of the Second Amendment. When the McDonald case was argued before the Court on March 2 of this year, current Solicitor General Kagan argued... Nothing. Not only did she not ask for time during oral argument, she didn't even file a brief (which the solicitor general routinely does in important constitutional cases and the McDonald case is monumentally important). If someone asserts that the solicitor general shouldn't file a brief because it's a state matter as to whether the Second Amendment is 'incorporated' to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment (which is the issue in McDonald) the record speaks to the contrary. The last time the Supreme Court 'incorporated' a right from the Bill of Rights to the states, in the 1969 case Benton v. Maryland, the solicitor general filed a brief, and then (just like Heller in 2008) got divided = argument time to express the government's views in front of the Court. Why wouldn't Kagan file a brief expressing the view of over 75% of Americans that the Second Amendment is an individual right, one that every American citizen has against all levels of government? Aside from her shocking decision not to file a brief in McDonald, we've learned that Elena Kagan was part of the Clinton White House's gun-control efforts, where a Clinton staffer said, 'We are taking the law and bending it as far as we can to capture a whole new class of guns.' Then it became public that when the Supreme Court was asked in 1987 to = decide if the D.C. gun ban was unconstitutional (the same law that the = Court eventually struck down in Heller), Kagan wrote to Justice Marshall on the Court that she was 'not sympathetic' toward the argument that the Second Amendment doesn't allow D.C. to completely ban all guns. Three anti-gun decisions. Three strikes, and you're out. The bottom line is that Barack Obama supports the Chicago gun ban, a position he publicly repeated as recently as June 26, 2008 (the day the Heller decision was released). President Obama believes that there's nothing unconstitutional about the city or even the whole state where you live completely banning you from having any firearms for hunting or self-defense, even in your own home. As my coauthor Ken Blackwell and I discuss in our new bestselling book, The Blueprint: Obama's Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency, President Obama's gun-control agenda is to create a Supreme Court that will repeatedly rule that whatever gun- control laws come before it are okay. No matter how severe the anti- gun measure is, the Court will say, 'This is constitutional.' President Obama the most anti-gun president is American history has nominated for our highest court a close personal friend of his. And now we see that Obama has every reason to believe that his close personal friend shares his radical view on the Second Amendment, one that will work against the constitutional rights of 90 million American gun owners. Elena Kagan's confirmation hearings this summer could get very interesting. America's gun owners have a way of making their voices heard. ************************************************** 22. Mexican President says that U.S. needs another assault weapons ban ************************************************** Thank you President Calderon. If America ever wants to be an impoverished, corrupt, third-world dictatorship, where it's citizens flee to another country to find a job worth having, we'll take your advice. http://tinyurl.com/26whr8c www.msnbc.com By Deborah Charles May 20, 2010 Calderon: U.S. needs assault weapons ban He says guns from Americans are feeding Mexican violence WASHINGTON - Mexican President Felipe Calderon urged the U.S. Congress = Thursday to reinstate a ban on assault weapons to help cut cross- border gun smuggling and reduce drug gang violence for its southern neighbor. In a speech to a joint session of Congress, Calderon described efforts = to fight organized crime in Mexico, where 23,000 people have been killed in drug violence since he came to power in late 2006 and launched an army offensive. Washington is also aiding Mexico's battle against drug gangs with a 2007 pledge of $1.4 billion for equipment and police training to help fight the cartels that ship some $40 billion worth of illegal drugs north each year. The drug violence has become a major political test for Calderon and a = growing worry for Washington and foreign investors as violence has spread across the southwest border. 'There is one issue where Mexico needs your cooperation. And that is stopping the flow of assault weapons and other deadly arms across the border,' Calderon said to a standing ovation from U.S. lawmakers. Calderon said the increase in violence in Mexico had coincided with the 2004 lifting of a U.S. assault weapons ban. The 10-year ban on the sale of assault weapons to civilians expired without being extended by Congress. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has said the administration favors reinstituting the ban, though guns rights groups oppose it. Calderon said he respects Americans' Second Amendment right to bear arms but said many of the guns are getting into the hands of criminals. Seizing guns Mexico has seized around 75,000 guns and assault weapons in the last three years, Calderon said. He said more than 80 percent of them came from the United States and noted there were more than 7,000 gun shops along the border. 'I would ask Congress to help us, with respect, and to understand how important it is for us that you enforce current laws to stem the supply of these weapons to criminals and consider reinstating the assault weapons ban,' he said. Though Calderon's request received applause and a standing ovation from mainly Democratic lawmakers, Republicans criticized the Mexican leader for discussing U.S. laws. 'It was inappropriate for President Calderon to lecture Americans on our own state and federal laws,' said Senator John Cornyn, a member of = the Republican leadership. 'Moreover, the Second Amendment is not a subject open for diplomatic negotiation, with Mexico or any other nation.' 'Common problem': Immigration On immigration - a common theme during his visit to Washington - Calderon said his country was trying to improve economic conditions so = Mexicans would not feel the need to leave their country in order to succeed. He said Mexico expected more than 4 percent growth this year, even though data released Thursday showed the economy shrank quarter-on- quarter in the first quarter of this year. Millions of people are still crossing the U.S. border illegally to seek work. An estimated 10.8 million illegal immigrants live in the United States, most of them from Mexico and Central America. Calderon repeated his opposition to a new Arizona law that requires police to check the immigration status of anyone they suspect is in the country illegally. 'We must find together a better way to face and fix this common problem,' he said. **************************************************