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So Is Asst AG Lanny Breuer The Next Fall Guy?

November 1, 2011 by

Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer admitted in a statement released this afternoon that he knew of both Operation Wide Receiver and Operation Fast and Furious as early as April 2010.

Today, Breuer issued a statement saying he “regrets” that he didn’t alert others in Justice Department leadership, apparently including his boss Attorney General Eric Holder.

In a separate ATF case reported by CBS News earlier this year, called “Fast and Furious” and started under the Obama Administration, Breuer says he likewise regrets not alerting leaders about the similarities in the cases. That, said Breuer, was a mistake.

Given the increasing number of Representatives calling for Attorney General Eric Holder’s ouster as well as the new ad campaign from the NRA, my surmise is that this is an effort to deflect attention away from Holder. It appears to me that Breuer is willing to take the fall in order to protect those higher up in the food chain. It would be interesting to know what perk or promise he is being given in exchange for being the designated fall guy.

I think a pattern is developing in which mid-level officials are taking the hit in order to protect Holder and eventually President Obama. First you had former US Attorney for the District of Arizona Dennis Burke and Acting ATF Director Ken Melson take blame and now you have Assistant AG Lanny Breuer do the same thing. At the rate this is going, the Administration is going to run out of successively more important fall guys. However, it won’t be for a lack of trying on their part.

UPDATE: Katie Pavlich of Townhall.com writing today about Breuer’s sudden acknowledgement of knowing about Operation Fast and Furious:

Breuer’s testimony and statements about “not making connections” between two separate but similar gunwalking programs and his claim he never told Attorney General Holder about his concerns or Fast and Furious at all, raise new questions.

Why is Breuer coming out with these revelations now? The House Oversight Committee Investigation into Fast and Furious has been going on for months, yet Breuer all the sudden regrets not sounding the alarm about the dangers of gunwalking when Operation Fast and Furious started in the Fall of 2009? While claiming he never told Attorney General Eric Holder about the program? Although Breuer claims he personally never told Holder about the tactics being used in Fast and Furious, five detailed memos about the lethal program dated July and August 2010 were addressed directly to Holder. Despite Breuer’s testimony, the question of “who authorized Fast and Furious,” remains unanswered.

It looks like someone, Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, is falling on a sword, and that sword happens to be Eric Holder’s.

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Washington State Appellate Court Upholds Ruling Saying Seattle Can’t Ban Guns In Parks

November 1, 2011 by

The Second Amendment Foundation was handed another win today in the Washington State Court of Appeals for District 1. The court unanimously upheld a King County Superior Court ruling that said a City of Seattle ban on guns in city parks was invalid.

The Second Amendment Foundation continues to secure gun rights one lawsuit at a time!

Their release on the win is below.

APPEALS COURT UPHOLDS SAF VICTORY IN LAWSUIT V. SEATTLE PARKS GUN BAN

For Immediate Release: 10/31/2011

BELLEVUE, WA – The Washington State Court of Appeals for Division 1 today unanimously upheld a 2010 King County Superior Court ruling against the City of Seattle’s ban on firearms in city parks in a lawsuit originally brought by the Second Amendment Foundation, other gun rights groups and five individual plaintiffs.

SAF Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb said he had always been confident that the Appeals Court would rule “in favor of the law and against the attempt by Seattle to dance around it.”

“We told former Mayor Greg Nickels he was wrong,” Gottlieb said, “and we have reminded the city under Mayor Mike McGinn that it was wrong, and now the Appeals Court has confirmed our position.”

SAF was joined in the lawsuit by the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, the National Rifle Association and Washington Arms Collectors.

Writing for the Court, Presiding Chief Judge Ann Schindler noted, “We hold that under the plain language of RCW 9.41.290 and RCW 9.41.300, the city’s attempt to regulate the possession of firearms at designated park areas and park facilities open to the public by adopting the Firearms Rule is preempted by state law.”

“This is not only a victory for the citizens of Washington State,” he said, “but also for the State Legislature, which had the wisdom in 1983 and 1985 to pass and strengthen our preemption statute. This law has become the model for other state statutes across the country.

“The ruling is also an affirmation of Judge Catherine Shaffer’s original trial court ruling last year,” he continued. “She had the foresight to include observations about our state constitutional right to bear arms but also the Second Amendment.

“Now that the Second Amendment has been incorporated to the states through our victory in McDonald v. City of Chicago,” Gottlieb concluded, “it is going to be impossible for anti-gun politicians in the Evergreen State to defy our preemption statute and our constitutional rights. Such local rules and ordinances are illegal, and now they know it for sure.”

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Occupy Gracie Mansion

October 31, 2011 by 4 Comments

Grace Mansion for the uninitiated is the official residence of the Mayor of New York. For the last several years it has been occupied by Michael Bloomberg, billionaire, nanny stater, and gun control proponent.

Not content to attempt to impose New York City-style gun control on the rest of the nation through his Mayor Against Illegal Guns, Bloomberg is now trying to buy six State Senate seats in the commonwealth of Virginia in an effort to block gun rights reforms there.

Bloomberg (I) has donated $25,000 of his own money to six Senate Democratic candidates, who are involved in some of the closest races in the state: Sen. Toddy Puller (Fairfax), Sen. Dave Marsden (Fairfax), Sen. George Barker (Prince William), Sen. Mark Herring (Loudoun), Sen. John Miller (Newport News) and Barbara Favola, who is running for an open seat in Arlington.

As noted in The Gothamist, not everyone is happy about Bloomberg’s meddling in their state.

When reached for comment on his donations, a manager at A&P Arms in Hampton, Virginia told a Daily News reporter, “He’s an arrogant bastard who shouldn’t be meddling.” This man will have his chance to tell Bloomberg what he thinks in person: the mayor plans to visit Virginia next week.

John Feinblatt, the mayor’s Criminal Justice Coordinator, is blunt about what they are trying to do.

The state Senate, controlled by Democrats 22-18, has blocked the passage of those bills (repeal of one gun a month and campus carry) – but the party’s hold on power is tenuous.

If these six would lose, the laws (gun rights bills) would sail through, said Feinblatt. A bad situation would get even worse.

The South saw its share of carpetbaggers and scalawags during Reconstruction. It looks like Mayor Bloomberg wants to go back to that era – at least when it comes to Virginia and gun control.

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Didn’t Return Home Empty Handed

October 31, 2011 by 1 Comment

I didn’t return home empty handed after attending Chris and Elise’s wedding in Cincinnati this weekend.

From left to right is Pure Kentucky XO, Willett Pot Still Reserve, and Buffalo Trace’s White Dog Mash No. 1. The Pure Kentucky XO is a 12-year old small batch bourbon from Kentucky Bourbon Distillers, Ltd. while the Willett Pot Still Reserve is a single barrel bourbon by the same company. The White Dog isn’t yet bourbon because it hasn’t been aged. It is essentially legal moonshine. On a side note, the Willett Pot Still Reserve has the coolest bottle – it is shaped just like a pot still.

If we didn’t have to get home early today, I might have been able to pick up some others not available through the state-owned North Carolina ABC Stores. However, there will be future trips and more bourbons to find and try.

As to Chris and Elise, their wedding was wonderful, the bride looked stunningly beautiful, and Chris looked quite handsome in his tux. Elise, who graduated from the University of Cincinnati Law School in May, found out on the morning of the wedding that she had passed the Ohio Bar which made the rest of the day even more of a celebration. Congratulations to both of them and best wishes for a long and happy life together.

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Reflections On A Training Class

October 31, 2011 by

One of my goals for the year was to take a training class. The abbreviated class offered by Rangemaster’s Tom Givens at the Lucky Gunny Memorial Day Blogger Shoot was good. However, it was not a full-blown class but rather an appetizer. So when Sean Sorrentino said he was pulling together a training class for North Carolina gun bloggers, I signed up immediately – and I am so glad that I did.

The class was offered by TigerSwan at their range just outside of Fayetteville, North Carolina. I think TigerSwan has flown under the training radar because the bulk of their work is with military and law enforcement clientele. It hasn’t gotten the same press that more famous schools like GunSite or Thunder Ranch have received. However, if my introductory pistol class was an indication of the quality of the training received, it should.

I am not a world-class shooter and I have never even shot an IDPA club match. In all honesty, I am a mediocre shooter at best. That said, by lunchtime I was not only hitting a B-8 target at 25 yards in timed rapid fire (5 shots in 20 seconds times four) but was getting 20 out of 20 on the target. Even better, five of those 20 were in the black. This was with a stock Ruger SR9. It shows what quality instruction can bring out of a shooter.

Sgt Major Brian Searcy, USA (Ret)

The lead instructor was TigerSwans’ President and COO Brian Searcy who had spent 16 out of his 23-year Army career with 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta aka Delta Force. He was the unit’s Operations Sergeant Major and ran their pistol training program. He also had extensive experience as both an operational sniper and in sniper training. In terms of qualifications, skills, and experience, Brian is like Larry Vickers – another trainer and Delta Force veteran – but without the TV exposure. Brian’s assistant for this class was Paul whose last name I never caught. Paul, like Brian, had served in both the Army Special Forces and Delta Force.

Neither Brian nor Paul took the drill instructor approach to this class. Rather they showed us how it should be done, made adjustments to our shooting style, and offered quiet critiques. They also offered lots of encouragement.

The training itself is built around the fundamentals – grip, stance, target picture, breathing, trigger pull, and follow-through. Their goal was help us learn what it took to produce a single, well-aimed shot and then build from there. George at Newbie Shooter blog who went through the class with me has a good description of this process in this post.

One of the things I’ve noticed in retrospect is that much of the training emphasized an economy of motion. For example, in their draw sequence, instead of holding your weak hand flat against your chest, you were taught to hold it with your fingers spread and wrist cocked towards the target. This puts the weak hand in the position to complete the two-handed grip much quicker. Another example was we were encouraged to use our pistol’s slide release after we reloaded instead of the “slingshot method”. Again, it is quicker and gets you on target faster. When you consider what Brian and Paul did in their former lives, you begin to appreciate how these little small changes could make a huge difference down the road.

As the class wound down, Brian encouraged us to devote 10 minutes a day to dry fire practice. Building the muscle memory serves to make many parts of the shooting process an unconscious reaction so that you can concentrate on the shot and the target. A couple of days after I got home, I received follow-on tips and drills from Brian to help us build on what we learned in the class. Not only was this a nice touch but it showed a commitment to helping us grow as shooters even after the class was over and done.

In conclusion, I would recommend without any reservations training with TigerSwan. They know how to shoot and, more importantly, they know how to teach.

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Cummings Keeps Pushing It Was All A Local Problem Meme

October 28, 2011 by

Ranking Member Elijah Cummings (D-MD) of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee keeps trying to push the meme that Operation Fast and Furious was a local operation out of the ATF’s Phoenix Field Division that went horribly wrong. In a letter today to Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA), he pushed to have former ATF Acting Director Kenneth Melson appear at the same hearing as Attorney General Eric Holder.

Our staffs have already conducted transcribed interviews with Mr. Melson and the former Deputy Director of ATF, William Hoover. During those interviews, these officials expressed serious concerns about the controversial tactics employed by the Phoenix Field Division of ATF as part of this operation. They also raised concerns about the manner in which the Department of Justice responded to congressional inquiries. Both officials also stated that they had not been aware of the controversial tactics being used in Operation Fast and Furious, had not authorized those tactics, and had not informed anyone at the Department of Justice headquarters about them. They stated that Operation Fast and Furious originated within the Phoenix Field Division, and that ATF headquarters failed to properly supervise it.

Mr. Cummings certainly has his job cut out for him if he intends to be the Obama Administration’s designated obstructionist into finding the facts of Operation Fast and Furious. As for Melson, he seems to have been bought off rather cheaply with the transfer to DOJ which allows him to keep his full pension. Of course, it is you and I as taxpayers who are footing the bill for that payoff.

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Light Blogging For Rest Of Weekend

October 28, 2011 by

There will be light to no blogging for the rest of Friday through the weekend. We are heading out to Cincinnati for the Complementary Spouse’s nephew Chris’s wedding to Elise.

On a gunnie note, Chris, though a chemist, would like to be a Class III NFA firearm dealer. He has already been to Knob Creek a few times and has discussed setting up a NFA trust with his dad. When I see young people like him have an interest in firearms, I just smile.