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

06/14/10 - VCDL Update 6/14/10 - Part 1

Abbreviations used in VA-ALERT: http://www.vcdl.org/help/abbr.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- VCDL Update 6/14/10 1. Reminder: VCDL meeting June 17 at Mason District Government Center 2. Portsmouth not the 'O.K. Corral' 3. Gun Control: The ultimate human rights violation 4. How Obama reduced crime rates last year 5. RT LTE: If we can teach sex ed, we can teach gun safety 6. RT Op Ed: No conditions on Second Amendment 7. Cops won't charge 2nd man in a week to shoot, wound intruder 8. Gregory Kane: Mayor Daley is wounding gun control advocacy 9. UK taxi driver kills 12, wounds 25 in rampage 10. British mass shooting belies 'gun control' mantra 11. Mexico City newspaper points to source of drug cartels' guns - the government 12. New developments in the 'concealed carry' debate 13. Children wearing body armor to school 14 South Africa not compensating owners for surrendered guns 15. List of states that honor all concealed handgun permits 16. Advanced tactical training in Central VA ************************************************** 1. Reminder: VCDL meeting June 17 at Mason District Government Center ************************************************** VCDL will be having a membership meeting on Thursday, June 17th at 8 PM at the Mason Government Center. Fellowship starts at 7:30 PM. We will be discussing issues with Falls Church that have just cropped up, as well as a variety of other things. As with all VCDL membership meetings, it is open to the public, so bring a friend! Afterwards, we will go to a local restaurant for continued fellowship. And for the final time I will make the following announcement: Since we may be at a restaurant that serves alcohol, if you choose to carry, be prepared to open carry. Map: http://tinyurl.com/32awt9f ************************************************** 2. Portsmouth not the 'O.K. Corral' ************************************************** Virginia Court of Appeals upholds the right to self-defense. Fred D Taylor emailed me this: -- http://tinyurl.com/2c279jh valawyersweekly.com By Deborah Elkins June 2, 2010 Of all the rights prized by Virginians, the right of self-defense must be pretty high on the list. Knowing when the right kicks in can be a hair-trigger question. A Portsmouth Circuit Court judge thought Quinton Hill could have retreated when Thomas Chavis, a passenger in Shannon Ford's car, shot into Hill's car as Ford pulled alongside Hill on the George Washington Highway. Instead, Hill fired a shot into Ford's car. 'The City of Portsmouth is not the O.K. Coral and just because somebody shoots at you doesn't necessarily mean that you have a right to shoot back,' the judge said in denying Hill's motion to strike. Judge Dean Sword Jr. convicted Hill of maliciously shooting into an occupied vehicle. Yesterday, the Virginia Court of Appeals reversed Hill's conviction and dismissed the case against the gunslinger. 'We absolutely agree that the City of Portsmouth should not provide a modern-day backdrop to the shootout at the O.K. Corral,' wrote Judge Rossie D. Alston Jr. in the court's unpublished opinion. A student of the Wild West - or maybe modern movies - Alston found an 'interesting historical parallel to the O.K. Corral conflict' involving the Earps, Doc Holliday and Judge Wells Spicer. Alston quoted Judge Spicer's consideration of the 'lawlessness and disregard for human life,... the fear and feeling of insecurity that has existed' and the 'supposed prevalence of bad, desperate and reckless men who have been a terror to the country,' to evaluate Hill's claim of self-defense. Alston said Chavis had shot and injured Hill a month earlier, and at the time of their vehicular encounter, Chavis was awaiting trial on charges resulting from the earlier shooting. Their exchange of 'What's up' on the day of the shooting 'was not an exchange of pleasantries,' the court said. Portsmouth is not frontier country, Alston said, but the lawlessness of Chavis's actions and the threats and actual harm suffered by Hill meant his act of firing one shot at Ford's vehicle 'was a reasonable response to the harm posed by Chavis's attack.' ************************************************** 3. Gun Control: The ultimate human rights violation ************************************************** VCDL EM Hal Macklin emailed me this: -- Wonderful! Someone who links gun rights with civil rights: http://tinyurl.com/2w4oos6 www.humanevents.com By A.W.R. Hawkins June 3, 2010 [SNIP] When one reads Jefferson's statement in light of his many writings on nature's laws and the benefits of private gun ownership, it's clear he was implying that the denial of the right to self-defense with a firearm is essentially a denial of one of the core aspects of what it means to be human. In other words, gun control actually steals part of our humanity. How much worse of a human rights violation can exist than one that actually separates the human from the rights? Gun control could just be the ultimate human rights violation. And if we ever give up our guns in this great nation, we will ultimately give up our humanity. ************************************************** 4. How Obama reduced crime rates last year ************************************************** Or, 'more guns, less crime!' Jay Britt emailed me this: -- http://tinyurl.com/2alzrou biggovernment.com By John Lott June 8, 2010 President Obama surely didn't intend it, but he deserves some credit for last year's 7.4 percent drop in murder rates. His election caused gun sales to soar, and crime rates to plummet. While gun sales started notably rising in October 2008, sales really soared immediately after Mr. Obama won the presidential race. 450,000 more people bought guns in November 2008 than bought them in November 2007, that's over a 40 percent increase in sales. By comparison, the change from November 2006 to November 2007 was only about 35,000. Over the last decade, the average year-to-year increase in monthly sales was only 21,000. The increase in sales continued well beyond November 2008. From November 2008 to October 2009, almost 2.5 million more people bought guns in the 12 months after the election than in the preceding 12 months. The National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS, doesn't tell us how many guns each person bought just the number of people who bought them. Most likely though, gun sales rose by more than the number of people who purchased them. At the same time gun sales were soaring, there was an unusually large drop in murder rates. The 7.4 percent drop in the murder rate was the largest drop in murder rates since the 1999. For those who don't remember, 1999, when President Bill Clinton and Columbine occurred, was another time when gun sales soared. With people such as Elena Kagan serving as Mr. Clinton's deputy domestic policy adviser were pushing hard for more gun control, Americans were worried that more gun bans were coming. And in response gun sales soared. Just as higher arrest and conviction rates, longer prison sentences, or the more frequent use of the death penalty reduce crime, so does letting victims defend themselves with guns. More certain or greater penalties make it more risky for criminals to commit crime. Victims who can defend themselves can also make committing crime more dangerous and deter criminals. Americans living in the District of Columbia and Chicago have seen this phenomenon themselves. After the ban went into effect in both cities, murder rates rose dramatically. After the Supreme Court threw out DC's ban and gunlock laws in 2008, the District's murder rates plunged by 25 percent in 2009. Indeed, my research in the just released third edition of More Guns, Less Crime shows that every place in the world that we have crime data for has seen murder rates climb when guns were banned. If Mr. Obama really understood that letting law-abiding citizens defend themselves reduces crime, it is unlikely that gun sales would have had to increase. Yet, if the Supreme Court strikes down the Chicago gun ban this month, Americans may get to see yet again that more guns mean less crime. ************************************************** 5. RT LTE: If we can teach sex ed, we can teach gun safety ************************************************** EM Dave Hicks emailed me this: -- http://tinyurl.com/256ra8a www.roanoke.com June 4, 2010 If we can teach sex ed, we can teach gun safety Re: 'Virginia schools get NRA-only gun education,' May 27 Dan Casey column: Don't be so quick to judge. If I have one soapbox issue in my life, it's that all small children should be taught over and over (first grade through sixth grade) the danger of guns and how to handle them responsibly. Absolutely, they ought to be taught that guns can kill. Teaching gun safety to youngsters is every bit as important as having sex education in schools for teens or teaching fire safety in schools. All are matters of life and death. I'm not necessarily saddened when two criminals get into a spiff and one blows the other away with a gun. That's a totally different subject. However, I am sickened, as surely you and all caring people are, when a child innocently gets his hands on a gun and accidentally kills or maims someone or himself because he has no clue about the danger or safe handling of a gun. These are the accidents we can and must prevent. If it's OK to have sex ed in the schools for the children's good, it's certainly OK to teach gun safety as well. It's for their safety and well-being. Ignorance is not bliss when it comes to guns. JOSEPH MARKS ROANOKE ************************************************** 6. RT Op Ed: No conditions on Second Amendment ************************************************** http://tinyurl.com/247uyz6 www.roanoke.com By Rick Surratt June 3, 2010 The May 15 opinion piece 'Gun rights should apply to the general good,' by Lawrence Reid Bechtel, prompts me to respectfully disagree with his views on the meaning of the Second Amendment and his proposed future course for gun rights. Specifically, his interpretation that the right to keep and bear arms applies only as an adjunct to the need for a well-regulated militia does not comport with an objective reading of the language. As he quotes it, the Second Amendment provides: 'A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.' Given the overall context of this amendment and the unconditional nature of our Constitution generally, the introductory phrase referring to the need for a well-regulated militia more convincingly appears to have been merely an expressed premise, not a precondition, for the substantive right to keep and bear arms. Thus, the Second Amendment conveys essentially an unconditional 'right of the people' that 'shall not be infringed' regardless of any changing circumstances or convenient excuse. No exceptions to this right were tacked onto it. Moreover, while there may currently be no need for a militia, as such, and may very well never again be, that is not a certainty. Also, it would seem that the issue of whether there is a need for a militia would always be a political, rather than a legal, question, the answer to which courts could not decide or assume as a given. It is arguable that the Second Amendment necessarily presupposes or presumes an ongoing potential need for a militia -- even if not always an immediate one -- as its wording expressly proclaims. Regardless, the operative language in the amendment is its positive command, which stands timeless and permanent, that is, 'the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.' This imperative is a clause, not an interdependent phrase, as Bechtel characterizes it. No part of the Bill of Rights is temporary, comes and goes with circumstantial fluctuations, or expires with shifting sands. Contrary to Bechtel's suggestion, there is no need to contrive some new, current societal utility in the right to keep and bear arms to justify honoring and upholding it. Our Constitution is a foundational document that is inviolable unless changed according to its own terms, terms that opponents of gun rights grudgingly cannot meet. Though constitutions and statutes are necessarily somewhat abstract and therefore sometimes in need of judicial interpretation and practical application, they cannot legitimately be interpreted or applied in such a way as to negate or defeat their essential thrust and purpose. To make the right to keep and bear arms contingent upon an ever continuous need for a militia would, for all practical purposes, render this cherished part of our Constitution temporary and superfluous. ************************************************** 7. Cops won't charge 2nd man in a week to shoot, wound intruder ************************************************** Mayor Daley is in a self-made firestorm. People simply aren't drinking his Kool-Aid any more. http://tinyurl.com/23423nv www.chicagotribune.com By William Lee June 3, 2010 Resident escapes charges despite city's handgun ban A drug suspect fleeing Chicago police chose the wrong home to break into Thursday on the West Side. A resident inside with a handgun wounded the intruder, authorities said. While the wounded suspect was hospitalized and later charged, police declined to seek criminal charges against the 27-year-old South Austin resident with the gun, despite the city's decades-old handgun ban. It was the second time in a week that police didn't seek charges against a city resident apparently using a gun in self defense. The man in Thursday's shooting had a valid firearm owner's identification card, but also a misdemeanor conviction for unlawful use of a weapon. ************************************************** 8. Gregory Kane: Mayor Daley is wounding gun control advocacy ************************************************** Mayor Daley is helping to sink the gun-control ship. It's actually sinking quite well without his help (the Brady's are even selling their donor list to raise funds), but we appreciate his efforts! ;-) http://tinyurl.com/2bv2u6z www.washingtonexaminer.com By Gregory Kane June 7, 2010 America's gun control proponents might want to consider shooting (pun intended) this memo to Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. 'Dear Mayor Daley: Please shut up. You ain't helping us.' Is there anyone doing more damage against advocates of gun control than Daley? The man is a walking billboard for right-to-carry laws. Anyone needing proof of that might want to read the statements he made in the wake of an 80-year-old Chicago man fatally shooting a career criminal who invaded his home. The background story goes like this. The elderly man is a Korean War veteran who bought a handgun after three thugs robbed him at gunpoint in his home in late 2009. Chicago police would not reveal this elderly hero's name, but my late older sister had a nickname she would give any old-timer she ran across, Pop Bucket. For the purposes of this story, we'll simply call the Chicago man, who defended his life, family and home in defiance of Daley's tyranny, Pistol Pop Bucket. In late May, Anthony Nelson broke into Pistol Pop's home. According to news reports, Nelson had a criminal history that included prison stints for drug and weapons convictions. Nelson and Daley, before the incident, probably had little in common other than protoplasm and the firm conviction that Pistol Pop wouldn't have a handgun in his home, because the city of Chicago bans them. Nelson got his rude and final awakening after he fired at Pistol Pop and missed. Pistol Pop returned fire, fatally wounding Nelson. Daley has yet to get his awakening. In fact, he's as stubbornly anti- handgun as ever. Listen to his comments about the Pistol Pop-Nelson affair, taken from the Chicago Sun-Times: 'Daley said that he 'understands the frustration' that prompted an 80- year-old robbery victim to purchase a handgun that he used this week to kill a home intruder. 'But the mayor said that does not mean Chicago's strictest-in-the- nation handgun ban is a mistake or a widely ignored charade. 'He still believes that ... access to guns kills far more people than it saves.' There are a couple of direct Daley quotes in the Sun-Times story, and believe me, they're gems. Here's the first: 'Criminals have far more access to guns today than in the history of this country and that is frightening to America. We have to do something about it. You cannot live in America as the Wild West.' 'It's an issue that most people are afraid to talk about. It's an issue that, politically, is incorrect. You'll defeat your career. It is something you should forget about. Let people handle these situations. But if you firmly believe that people should have access to guns at all times, then you have a totally different society.' Oh, indeed we would, Mr. Mayor. And that society would simply be called 'a safer one.' Notice that Daley failed to mention that if the state of Illinois had simply done its job and kept Nelson behind bars, Pistol Pop wouldn't have had to shoot him. But which political party recently has adopted the mantra that convicts are simply society's latest victims? That would be Daley's -- the same party, for the most part, that wants to disarm law-abiding citizens. Here's Daley's final quote, and it's another lulu: 'Access to guns will destroy America faster than any other war. Take Europe. Take Japan and other countries that don't have the access to guns. They don't have the amount of killings.' For the sake of the Pistol Pop Buckets of their city, Chicagoans need to take this pathetic excuse for a mayor and retire him from office. ************************************************** 9. UK taxi driver kills 12, wounds 25 in rampage ************************************************** Now they will ban rifles and shotguns, which will only make things worse. I pray they will think this through and see the real lesson in this tragedy. http://tinyurl.com/27cfkvy news.yahoo.com By Scott Heppell and Jill Lawless June 2, 2010 SEASCALE, England - A taxi driver drove his vehicle on a shooting spree across a tranquil stretch of northwest England on Wednesday, methodically killing 12 people and wounding 25 others before turning the gun on himself, officials said. The rampage in the county of Cumbria was Britain's deadliest mass shooting since 1996 and it jolted a country where handguns are banned and multiple shootings rare. The body of the suspected gunman, 52-year-old Derrick Bird, was found in woods near Boot, a hamlet popular with hikers and vacationers in England's hilly, scenic Lake District. Police said two weapons were recovered from the scene. Eight of the wounded were in the hospital, with three of them in critical condition. In a sign of the scale of the tragedy, Queen Elizabeth II issued a message saying she was 'deeply shocked' and shared in 'the grief and horror of the whole country.' She passed on her sympathy to the families of the victims. The shootings had 'shocked the people of Cumbria and around the country to the core,' Police Deputy Chief Constable Stuart Hyde said. Police said it was too early to say what the killer's motive was, or whether the shootings had been random. Some reports said Bird had quarreled with fellow cab drivers the night before the killings. Peter Leder, a taxi driver who knew Bird, said he had seen the gunman Tuesday and didn't notice anything that was obviously amiss. But he was struck by Bird's departing words. 'When he left he said, 'See you Peter, but I won't see you again,'' Leder told Channel 4 News. The first shootings were reported in the coastal town of Whitehaven, about 350 miles (560 kilometers) northwest of London. Witnesses said the dead there included two of Bird's fellow cabbies. Police warned residents to stay indoors as they tracked the gunman's progress across the county. Witnesses described seeing the gunman driving around shooting from the window of his car. Victims died in Seascale and Egremont, near Whitehaven, and in Gosforth, where a farmer's son was shot dead in a field. Workers at the nearby Sellafield nuclear processing plant were ordered to stay inside while the gunman was on the loose. Hyde said there were 30 separate crime scenes. Many bodies remained on the ground late Wednesday, covered with sheets, awaiting the region's small and overstretched force of forensic officers. Police would not discuss the identity of those killed, but local reports said Bird killed a 66-year-old woman near her home and a retired man who was out cycling. A spokesman for the local health authority denied reports that Bird had tried to seek medical assistance Tuesday and said he was not known to their mental health services. Barrie Walker, a doctor in Seascale who certified one of the deaths, told the BBC that victims had been shot in the face, apparently with a shotgun. Lyn Edwards, 59, a youth worker in Seascale, said she saw a man who had been shot in his car. 'I could see a man screaming and I could see blood and there were two ladies helping him at the time,' she said. Deadly shootings are rare in Britain, where gun ownership is tightly restricted. In recent years, there have been fewer than 100 gun murders annually across the country. Rules on gun ownership were tightened after two massacres in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1987, gun enthusiast Michael Ryan killed 16 people in the English town of Hungerford. In 1996, Thomas Hamilton killed 16 children and a teacher at a primary school in Dunblane, Scotland. About 600,000 people in Britain legally own a shotgun, most of them farmers and hunters in rural areas. Witnesses described Bird as using a shotgun or a rifle. Prime Minister David Cameron said the government would do everything it could to help the affected region. 'When lives and communities are suddenly shattered in this way, our thoughts should be with all those caught up in these tragic events, especially the families and friends of those killed or injured,' he told lawmakers in the House of Commons. Local lawmaker Jamie Reed said people in the quiet area were in shock. 'This kind of thing doesn't happen in our part of the world,' he told the BBC. 'We have got one of the lowest, if not the lowest, crime rates in the country.' Glenda Pears, who runs L&G Taxis in Whitehaven, said one of the victims was another taxi driver who was a friend of Bird's. 'They used to stand together having a (laugh) on the rank,' she said. 'He was friends with everybody and used to stand and joke on Duke Street.' Sue Matthews, who works at A2B Taxis in Whitehaven, said Bird was self- employed, quiet and lived alone. Some reports said he was divorced and the father of two sons. 'I would say he was fairly popular. I would see him once a week out and about. He was known as 'Birdy,'' she said. 'I can't believe he would do that he was a quiet little fellow.' Emergency services were still working late Wednesday to identify all the dead and inform their families. Rod Davies, landlord of Gosforth Hall Inn near one of the crime scenes, said residents were 'used to 'neighbor's cat missing' stories making the news not this sort of thing. 'There's a lot of fear. A lot of people are expecting to hear names of people they know.' ************************************************** 10. British mass shooting belies 'gun control' mantra ************************************************** Dave Workman emailed me this: -- http://tinyurl.com/26cvsre www.examiner.com By Dave Workman, Seattle Gun Right Examiner June 2, 2010 [SNIP] As this column has previously noted, the gun prohibitionist lobby has had its day, and we have 'tried it their way.' Restrictive measures have proven to be failures, yet they have begotten even tougher gun laws that also failed. Handgun bans did not stop Chicago and Washington, D.C. from experiencing skyrocketing murder rates. Indeed, the bans actually seemed to contribute to the carnage. Bluntly speaking, all gun control has given the United States, and the United Kingdom, is a body count... ************************************************** 11. Mexico City newspaper points to source of drug cartels' guns - the government ************************************************** Kyle Ferguson emailed me this: http://tinyurl.com/27cg5zs www.examiner.com Kurt Hofmann, St Louis Gun Rights Examiner June 2, 2010 [SNIP] The fable of the U.S. civilian gun market being responsible for 'arming' Mexico's brutal drug cartels has become so deeply entrenched, that to question it is to be labeled a 'right wing gun lobby shill.' The claimed numbers, though, as National Gun Rights Examiner David Codrea points out, have continued to drop, as more light is shed on the actual facts. Hence, the Brady Campaign's and Violence Policy Center's claims of '95 to 100%' of Mexican 'crime guns' coming from the U.S. civilian market first dropped a bit to 'over 90%,' and now Mexican President Felipe Calderon has settled on 80% (with Brady Campaign backing)... ************************************************** 12. New developments in the 'concealed carry' debate ************************************************** James Kiser emailed me this: http://tinyurl.com/2dacydh www.personalliberty.com By Personal Liberty News Desk June 7, 2010 In the midst of the intense debate about Americans' right to carry a concealed weapon, both proponents and opponents of this measure can find many resources that can inform their views and decisions. ProCon.org, a nonpartisan public charity dedicated to promoting critical thinking, created a website dedicated to this issue. It explores many of the arguments about the concealed carry debate and includes sources, images, videos, reader comments and a section of little known facts called 'Did You Know?' Supporters of concealed carry argue that criminals are less likely to attack if they believe the potential victim could be armed. They also cite the provisions of the Second Amendment and contend that most adults who legally carry a concealed handgun are law-abiding citizens. Meanwhile, critics argue that increased gun ownership leads to more gun crime and that concealed handguns boost the chances of arguments becoming lethal, and increase the number of unintended gun injuries. However, recent research conducted by David Burnett and Clayton Cramer, who track incidents of defensive gun use at TheArmedCitizen.com, found that concealed guns may in fact save lives. The stories they documented include senior citizens fighting off robbers and women defending themselves against attackers, proving that armed citizens may prevent violent crimes at restaurants, grocery stores, banks or coffee houses. 'We've documented 2,160 stories of self-defense with guns since May 2007,' said Burnett. 'When it comes to concealed carry permits, we have 153 documented cases across 26 states with at least 550 lives saved.' ************************************************** 13. Children wearing body armor to school ************************************************** When will the UK come out of their stupor, realize they have a bad crime problem, and let people actually protect themselves and their families? I also hope someone tells them that Kevlar will NOT stop a direct stab, as a few people have found out the hard way. http://tinyurl.com/28xpz78 www.timesonline.co.uk By Jack Grimston September 9, 2007 PARENTS are kitting out their children in uniforms lined with body armour because of fears they will be attacked walking to and from school. A company based in Essex that markets slash-proof clothes has so far sold blazers and fleeces lined with Kevlar, the material used for military and police protective vests, to about a dozen families. Parents concerned at the increasing danger posed by street gangs to their children include Andrea Lovell from Dagenham, Essex, who has bought a 130 Kevlar-lined fleece for her son Liam McNeill, 14, as he starts term at the local Jo Richardson community school. 'With everything that's going on in this country, I thought it would be safer for him to wear it and better for me knowing he was safe,' said Lovell. 'There's been no trouble [at the school] yet, but there's always a first time. A lot of parents are thinking along the same lines as me.' Liam will wear the fleece on the 15-minute walk to and from school. Despite being only 14, Liam is 6ft 1in tall and a rugby player, but his mother is worried that even someone as imposing as him may be vulnerable, particularly after dark. 'He has to walk back across the park. People have been raped there and they've had vandals. It will give me peace of mind,' she said. Lovell paid 130 for Liam's fleece, in regulation school uniform blue, from BladeRunner, based in Romford. 'The clothes can be lined so the Kevlar can't be seen,' said Adrian Davis, one of the company's directors. 'Some parents are genuinely fearful for their children's safety.' The move follows a spate of murders of teenagers this year. Previously, some knife victims have died at or close to their schools. Continued ...