The photo of the day is turning into quite a contest. Sebastian has a really good one up on Shall Not Be Questioned. However, the one below could give it a run for its money. It comes from the CalGuns.Net Facebook page. The comment that accompanied is good, too: “Found his real business card, complete with his slogan!”
This tweet from State Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) is absolutely priceless given his arrest yesterday on charges of conspiracy to deal in firearms without a license and to illegally import full automatic firearms from Russia and/or Muslim extremists in the Philippines.
by A year after Sandy Hook, let us recommit ourselves to working towards a safer society for all of us.— Leland Yee (@LelandYee) December 14, 2013
The comment of the day comes from Tam. It is about State Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) and his arrest yesterday for public corruption and arms trafficking. It is deliciously snarky in a way that only the Mistress of Snark could do with her skill and aplomb.
This guy ranting about the dangers of the criminal misuse of firearms is like Jerry Sandusky railing against the touching of little boys.
California St. Sen. Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) who has led the fight to close the “bullet button loophole” was arrested by the FBI today on public corruption charges including bribery.
A California state senator who was lauded for his efforts to make government more transparent was arrested Wednesday along with a onetime gang leader known as “Shrimp Boy” during a series of raids by the FBI in Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area, authorities said.
FBI spokesman Peter Lee confirmed the arrests of State Sen. Leland Yee and Raymond Chow, but declined to discuss the charges, citing an ongoing investigation. Yee was scheduled to be arraigned in federal court in San Francisco later Wednesday.
Yee was one of three Democrats running to be California Secretary of State. One of his opponents blamed the arrest on the need to raise money for campaigns.
Democrat Derek Cressman, who is one of several candidates also running for secretary of state, released the folowing statement:
“Coming on the heels of the corruption charges of Senator Calderon and the conviction of Senator Wright, today’s actions need to be a wake up call. We are clearly beyond the point of looking at one bad apple and instead looking at a corrupt institution in the California senate,” Cressman said. “The constant begging for campaign cash clearly has a corrosive effect on a person’s soul and the only solution is to get big money out of our politics once and for all.”
Corrosive effect on a person’s soul? Oh, please. As for his confederate who was arrested at the same time, Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow, he was indicted in the 1990s for racketeering involving both teenage prostitution and trading in heroin. He later served 11 years of a 25 to life sentence on gun charges.
#breaking now State Sen Leland Yee arrives SF Federal Building. details as they happen on http://t.co/tKa6lJZqJ2 pic.twitter.com/lvCUKh2xHC
— KPIX 5 (@CBSSF) March 26, 2014
UPDATE: It gets better. What could be the worst charge that you could think of for an anti-gun politician like Leland Yee? Yep, arms trafficking.
In addition to being charged with wire fraud of honest services, Sen. Yee, along with his political consultant Keith Jackson and Wilson Sy Lim, are being charged with violating Sec. 922(a)(1) and Sec. 922(1). They are charged with conspiracy to deal firearms without a license and to illegally import firearms.
According to the criminal complaint, Yee told an undercover FBI agent that he would introduce him to an arms dealer he had known for many years. Yee went on to say that the weapons would be sourced from Russia. He asked the undercover agent if he wanted automatic or semiautomatic firearms. When the agent replied “automatic”, Yee said that wouldn’t be a problem. (see p. 84) The smuggled firearms would come through the Port of Newark, New Jersey. Yee was to get $100,000 for facilitating the first transaction valued at somewhere between $500,000 and $2.5 million.
All I can say is that Leland Yee is a hypocrite of the worst sort.
Michael Bloomberg and Mark Glaze must be giving a big sigh of relief. A big city mayor was arrested today on corruption charges and the big distinction in all of it was that he wasn’t a member of (former) Mayor Bloomberg’s Illegal Mayors.
Charlotte Mayor Patrick Cannon (D) was arrested on charges that he took bribes and Vegas trips from undercover FBI agents five times. These bribes were in the tens of thousand of dollar range and he was asking for $1 million more. The 48 page Federal criminal complaint can be found here.
From the Charlotte Observer:
Charlotte Mayor Patrick Cannon was arrested Wednesday on public corruption charges, with the FBI alleging he took tens of thousands of dollars in bribes – including $20,000 in cash delivered in a briefcase last month to the mayor’s office where he also solicited $1 million more.
In return for the money, trips, hotel rooms and access to a luxury SouthPark apartment, Cannon promised to help agents posing as potential commercial investors with zoning, parking and other city-related issues.
If convicted on all charges, Cannon could face up to fifty years in prison and a $1.5 million fine.
The Ninth Circuit agreed with the city of San Francisco yesterday saying local ordinances requiring firearms in the home must be either on the person or locked up. They also allowed San Francisco’s ban on the purchase but not possession of hollow point bullets to stand.
This panel of judges was decidedly not as friendly to the Second Amendment as the panel that decided Peruta, Richards, and Baker. The unanimous decision was written by Judge Sandra Ikuta who is a George W. Bush appointee.
Professor Eugene Volokh has his analysis of Jackson et al v. City and County of San Francisco here. He is rather skeptical of their decision and concludes:
As I’ve argued before (and in detail in pp. 1454-61 of Implementing the Right to Keep and Bear Arms for Self-Defense), I think the right to keep and bear arms has long been understood throughout American history as allowing various kinds of regulations that don’t substantially interfere with self-defense. That is also compatible with how many other rights are treated (setting aside equality rights, such as the Equal Protection Clause ban on race discrimination, or the First Amendment bans on religious discrimination or discrimination based on the content of speech). So the hollow-point ban may well be properly seen as constitutional, though I think it’s a bad idea. But I’m skeptical of the court’s conclusion that the locked-storage-when-not-carrying requirement is constitutional.
The comment of the day comes from Jim Shepherd of The Shooting Wire. He reviews the scathing decision by US District Court Judge John D. Bates in which he found that BATFE had erred in classifying Innovator Enterprises’ muzzle brake as a silencer.
Jim ends with this:
Using Judge Bates’ comparative critique of the flawed-logic used by the agency in its decision, you could draw the conclusion that possessing three characteristics of a competent police officer (a badge, gun, and arrest powers) wouldn’t qualify an individual (or group of similar individuals) to mount complicated investigations where a scrupulous attention to detail, an adherence to the rule of law, or an unswerving dedication to public safety during those investigations were essentials.
Maybe it’s just me, but this ruling makes another compelling argument that ATF is an agency in need of a top-to-bottom overhaul.
I think you’d find many rank and file BATFE agents in agreement with Jim’s conclusion.
You can read Judge Bate’s decision here.
Spring has sprung!
Or maybe not.
Those are the Great Balsam Mountains in the background. They, along with the Plott Balsams, are connecting mountain ranges between the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains.
In some areas of the country, police departments conduct gun buybacks in the mistaken belief that it will “take guns off the streets”. The reality is that it allows people to dump old clunkers as well as allow criminals to ditch hot guns without a question.
In a refreshing turn of events, the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department in Pine Bluff, Arkansas just had a gun auction that raised over $125,000 for the Sheriff’s Department and the Tri-County Drug Task Force. The auction was held in accordance with Arkansas law (A.C.A. § 5-5-101) that mandates the public auction of seized weapons and contraband by the law enforcement agency.
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| Courtesy of the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department |
This was the first auction that the Sheriff’s Department held since 2005 when they only netted about $15,000 in proceeds. This auction was the largest auction in the county’s history.
Approximately 600 people from across the state attended the auction with 380 registered bidders. Approximately 204 checks were processed through the NICS. However, 6 individuals hoping to leave with a firearm were disappointed after receiving 3-day delayed notices and one (1) individual was denied approval to purchase firearms by the ATF.
Each gun auctioned went to the highest bidder. The highest bid at of $2,375.00 was for a Winchester .38 WCF L.A. Rifle and the lowest bid was $5.00 for a Marksman 177 Caliber BB Pistol.
I like this quote from the JCSD’s press release: “Today’s auction provided citizens an informative, secure, and safe way to buy firearms at a bargain.”
I think this is a sheriff that get’s it.
Today’s college students must be protected from everything it seems except reality. That is why university administrators are so adamant about keeping their campuses gun-free zones.
Now it seems that being gun-free is not enough.
I received an email this afternoon from the local university where I teach warning me not to be alarmed if I heard gun-shots. And what, pray tell, would be causing those gun-shots?
A military funeral with the customary 21-gun salute.
From the email:
Students, Staff, and Faculty
There will be funeral with full military honors at the Cullowhee Baptist Church today, March 22, between 3:30pm and 5:00pm. Please be aware the funeral will include a 21-gun salute using blanks. If you are on/near Campus or the Baptist Church, you will hear what sounds like gunshots. Please share the information with others that may not have access to email so they are not alarmed.
Thank you,
Perhaps the bugler playing Taps after the three volleys might have been a giveaway to anyone hearing the gun-shots but I guess that would have been too logical to assume.