3 Boxes of BS

Sooner or later, I hope, criminals are going to learn it is dangerous to try robbing someone in Texas.

FORT WORTH — A suspected robber was killed and his intended target was hospitalized with minor injuries in a shooting Tuesday afternoon outside a southeast Fort Worth business, officials said.

Desmond Paige, 20, of Fort Worth was pronounced dead at 1:08 p.m. in the parking lot of a business in the 7400 block of Wichita Street, the Tarrant County medical examiner’s office reported.

20 years old and he owned a pistol; unless it was a gift from a parent, he owned it illegally. Imagine that.

The other man was not identified.

Investigators believe the two men met because one of them had advertised on Craigslist that he was buying cellphones. One tried to rob the other, police said.

The robbery target was a licensed concealed-handgun carrier, police said.

Not quite Thunderdome in Bartertown but a stark reminder — when you answer an ad on Craig’s list you never know who you are truly dealing with or their motives. Be careful out there folks.

MedStar spokesman Matt Zavadsky said paramedics told him that the robbery target “took out his gun, and he shot the alleged perpetrator in the chest several times.”

The man with the gun was shot in the arm. His injury was not life-threatening, Zavadsky said. It was not clear late Tuesday whether he was shot by Paige or shot himself, officials said.

I’m going to guess a person cool enough to draw when he is already has a pistol aimed at him isn’t likely to shoot himself but it isn’t impossible.

And I want to take a moment to address the stupidity that anti-rights cultists often throw out with “Your property isn’t worth someone’s life even if he is a criminal”.  The moment the thug threatened deadly force it stopped being about ‘property’ and became about the victims life !!! What is so hard to understand about that?

From the Texas Penal Code Section 9.01

(3)  ”Deadly force” means force that is intended or known by the actor to cause, or in the manner of its use or intended use is capable of causing, death or serious bodily injury.

The thug threatened to use deadly force in order to get what he wanted. It isn’t as if he walked up empty handed, said “Please give me your cell phone, wallet and money” and would have walked away peacefully if told NO.  When threatened with deadly force the best answer is deadly force, not cowering in submission.

So Mr./Ms/ Anti-Rights Cultist, instead of asking gun owners to not defend themselves; why don’t you spend a little time reaching out to the criminals- see if you can get them to stop threatening to kill people?

(H/T to GregTag)

There are so many memes going on in this one it is difficult to track them all.

According to the complaint, obtained by Campus Reform, the professor compelled students in her graphic design class to create artwork opposing firearms on campus and opposing pro-gun legislation currently pending before the Texas state legislature.

The professor then used the artwork students created online to publicize an anti-gun petition entitled “MSU is anti-Concealed Carry on Campus” and on a now deleted Facebook page opposing firearms, says the complaint.

“On Monday, April 1, around 7 PM (class was 5:30 – 8:20), Jennifer Yucus, Assistant Professor of Graphic Art/Design, compelled students from her Computers For Artists class to advocate in favor of a political petition opposing firearms on campus, in opposition to a pair of bills currently before the Texas legislature, using personal art materials and MSU resources,” reads the complaint.

“Several of my classmates were uncomfortable with the assignment and either quietly or openly expressed this,” it continues. “Professor Yucus asked students to rationalize objections by thinking of it as a job from an employer (or words to that effect).”

The complaint adds that Yucus “did require all works to include the URL to the petition” she had created and adds that students were photographed while crafting the posters to give the illusion of youth support.

“Professor Yucus took photos of her students in the process of drafting and creating the posters, but did not say how these would be used,” says the complaint. “The posters were then hung in the hallways of the Fain Arts building, giving the impression of student support.”

Some of the photos later appeared on an anti-gun Facebook page that appeared to have been created by Yucus. The page appeared to have been deleted after the complaint was filed, but Campus Reform was able to capture the posted images before they were removed.

Let’s see Liberal college professor

From law Professor Rob Natelson

I am so going to steal that idea.

H/T to Clayton Cramer

A Texas homeowner with nerves of steel subdued three burglars with a rifle that wasn’t even loaded, it was revealed today.

Randy Magdeleno stumbled on the three teens in his Houston house on Wednesday and grabbed his rusty .22-caliber rifle.

He said he bluffed his way through the encounter, pointing the weapon at the intruders and telling them to lie on the floor as he called his wife at work and told her to phone the police. 

Outnumbered 3 to 1 but with a .22 caliber rifle that wasn’t even loaded, he was able to even the odds more then a bit.  Solid Brass Ones

The old Mossburg rifle was built for shooting rabbits, squirrels and other rodents and fires a low-power round from a relatively slow bolt action that requires manual cocking after each shot.

…

‘So I grabbed my rifle and I came around through here in my kitchen,’ he told the TV station.

‘It was scary, I didn’t know what I was walking into and hearing people running around inside my house at the same time. I didn’t know if they were carrying weapons around or not.’

Mr Magdeleno said the teens were complaint when they saw his gun – they never suspected it wasn’t loaded.

Given that many cops would have either hesitated to enter or called in SWAT, I think the situation ended very well. I don’t fault the home owner for checking out the scene; it could have been a family member, neighbor or friend. Someone he didn’t want to call the cops on.

But in  a situation where there are multiple voices and evidence of a crime; walking into that scene with an unloaded bolt action rifle is gutsy; solid brass ones gutsy.

It must drive the anti-rights advocates crazy to read about stories like this; no injuries, no deaths and a crime in progress stopped.

Please Join The Discussion.

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Pretty even handed report from CNN.

The changing tide idea comes not from more women owning firearms ( a great thing to see ) but that even CNN is producing fairly decent news reports on firearms; that is a huge shift from the past.

Quick, describe the  appearance of someone breaking into a house to rob it and then tell me how the appearance differs from someone breaking into your house to kill everyone in it.

Could you do it now? Could you do it in the few moments for someone to break a window and climb in?
Most people can’t so they rightfully treat those with no permission to be in their house as the worst case scenario.

Such a scene play out in Dallas yesterday

A homeowner fatally shot a man as he climbed through a window and into his home Monday afternoon, Dallas police say.
 
The shooting took place at a home on the 2200 block of Morrell Avenue at about 4:15 p.m.
 
Police said the homeowner heard a noise inside his residence and shot a man, later identified as 33-year-old Deyfon Pipkins, aka BJ, as he climbed through the window.

“The homeowner heard a noise. He came around the corner, saw the individual trying to climb into the window and according to the law, the castle doctrine, he used deadly force,” said Sgt. Calvin Johnson, with the Dallas Police Department.

Note to criminals and the antis; read what the police department said — ‘according to the law’ – the homeowner didn’t “take the law into his own hands”. He followed the letter and apparently the spirit of the law as it was written by our elected representatives.
Of course the law also provides for a review of the victims actions and the Grand Jury will decide if he will face any charges. Given what the mother had to say, I would be very surprised if any are brought.

Pipkins mother, Catherine, said she had been called to the scene by her daughter-in-law and said the crime sounded like something her son would do.
 
“Yeah, it’s something he would do … Somebody called me and said my son got shot that’s the reason I’m standing here,” said Catherine Pipkins. “….

Pipkins had a lengthy criminal history in Dallas that included numerous charges for theft, trespassing and possession of a controlled substance.

Very unusual; normally the deceased is a boy scout, choir boy teaching orphans to read after he volunteers are a homeless charity. My sympathy does go out to the family; regardless of his criminal past they have lost a loved one.

The homeowner faced a terrible choice but it was one brought on by the actions of the deceased. The world, contrary to the protestations of the antis, is not a safe place. We had escaped convicted felons running loose in the area.  We have former law enforcement officers killing people. We random crime happening in supposedly safe places “but it is a skating rink, people should ‘feel’ safe there”.  We have wild animals squaring off over territory in suburban neighborhoods.

The world is simply not a safe place. It is safer then many places and safer then many times in history but that isn’t the same thing as safe. So what is making it safer then before?
Some will argue that it is the law but we’ve had laws for thousands of years so I doubt it. There is a possibility that the longer life and better living conditions means less people are scrambling for limited resources. Prosperity can reduce crime but that doesn’t fully explain it.  Could it be that effective self defense is affordable and practical for the average citizen more then ever before?

The home owner in this report probably didn’t spend dozens of years learning to use a weapon like sword play requires or most martial arts. The home owner probably didn’t spend months or years worth of salary buying a firearm like swords or crossbows or even firearms cost in the past.
Affordable weapons, easy to use and abundant ammunition (well there used to be at least) combined with laws protecting the right of the people to defend themselves and their property is a reasonable explanation of the lower crime/violence rates.

The anti-rights cultists want to change that. They want to make firearms less available, they want to make ammunition more costly, they want to force the home owners or victims to run away before defending themselves. This is cultural divide that goes beyond the best way to implement a policy. This is one group of people wanting to deprive another group of their rights. Regardless of their public veneer, read what laws they are pushing. Look at the Washington law where they put in a provision that allows for warrant-less yearly inspections of homes simply for owning a firearm. It didn’t get in there by accident; someone thought it was a good idea at one point. Joe Biden knows the laws they pushing won’t stop another mass shooting; but he is pushing it anyways under the guise of doing something . What they are doing is stripping away our rights.

I know I”m preaching to the choir here but maybe someone will read it and change their mind. Maybe someone will decide to call a legislator where they might not have otherwise. If nothing else, I am another voice in the debate telling the antis that enough is enough. Maybe if enough of us say it they will finally get it. If nothing else, they will not be able to say it was because no one spoke up.

Antis -Hear it now, read it hear and elsewhere — the time for your version of compromise is over. We will insist on our rights. We will have them one way or another.

I’ve been following this story because I simply could not understand how the power outage happened. The storms we had that day weren’t severe, there was no wide spread or even localized power outage reported and no winds to speak of.

Turns out they did it to themselves

The problem followed a routine test of the 911 system, city officials said.

After the test, a circuit breaker popped, causing the 911 system to lose hardline power, said Doug Wiersig, the city’s transportation and public works director.

Well finding problems is why you test the system so not a big issue, right?

The system reverted to battery backup. Employees mistakenly believed they had fixed the problem, but the system continued to operate on battery power, unnoticed, Wiersig said.

Read that last part very carefully. Fully trained, qualified personnel ready for problems (due to the testing aspect) failed to notice the system was still functioning on battery power. I find it incredibly incompetent that they didn’t confirm the battery system wasn’t providing power.

The battery backup system began sending warning messages, but the modem wasn’t working, so the messages didn’t transmit, Wiersig said. The 911 system went down when the battery power ran down, and control room personnel noticed the problem at that point, Wiersig said.

Guess their testing isn’t as thorough as it needs to be, eh? Makes me wonder what other systems have not been tested and aren’t working. And definitely reduces my confidence in the 911 system in Fort Worth (I work in Fort Worth) and every other city. If a major city like Fort Worth; with money, personnel and time to spare for testing has these types of problems- what about other smaller cities?

At that point, workers moved to transfer the system to Arlington’s 911 center but weren’t able to without power. Working with the city’s telecom provider, workers manually threw a switch that transferred Fort Worth’s system to Arlington’s, Wiersig said.

Hmmm, and this was a test where the city hadn’t lost power in areas, remember? Think the system will function when major areas are disrupted by a tornado or terrorist attack? I don’t.

Fort Worth is replacing the bad breaker and modem and putting in more battery backups and alarms, Wiersig said.

Folks, I am not anti-911. That wonderful system has a place in the spectrum of emergency responses…..but clearly it shouldn’t be your primary response. We have to be our own first responder in the majority of cases.

To say otherwise is to deny common sense.

We wouldn’t call 911 for an ambulance every time one of our children were injured, right?
We would go to them, assess the injury, treat it with first aid if appropriate, determine if we needed to go to the hospital immediately or at all.

We wouldn’t call 911 for the fire department every time we smelled smoke, right? We would locate the source,   determine the size and source (hey burning leaves is allowed in many areas and our neighbors might get a little upset if we doused their barbeque), then determine if we could handle it. In most cases, calling 911 isn’t needed for household fires.

So why do the anti-rights cultists advocate throwing common sense out the window when it comes to our safety?  It just doesn’t make sense to solely depend the 911 system for self defense.
Remember in all of this the system was down for 24 minutes. 224 phone calls were missed during that time. If you don’t think 24 minutes is a long time, slowly count to 1,440 while imagining what a thug could be doing to you or your family.