This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Guns

  • DC brutalizes Iraq vet and then drops charges

    Emily Miller (I’m starting to develop a real crush on this lass) at the Washington Times writes about how Army 1st Sergeant Matt Corrigan, who we discussed a few months ago, was mistreated by the nation’s capital justice system when they busted in his apartment on North Capitol Street after he made a call to what he thought was a veteran help line, but got the suicide hotline instead. When we first talked about Corrigan, I wrote;

    He was awakened at about 4am by someone calling his name through a bullhorn. When he turned on his phone, he found that the police, accompanied by a SWAT Team, were calling him on it telling him to come out of his home. When he did, they cuffed and stuffed him.

    He wouldn’t let the police search his house, so they broke down his door, which he had locked behind him when he came outside and searched anyway. One officer was reported to say, when Corrigan denied his permission for a search; “I don’t have time to play this constitutional bullshit”. Yeah, because it’s involving one of those dangerous, armed veterans, and they don’t deserve the constitutional rights the officer would have afforded a gang banger.

    The police found three firearms, a rifle and two handguns. I’m pretty sure the handguns were illegal in the District without reporting and registering them. And that’s probably why he’s facing charges for that evening, after nearly three weeks in police custody after the incident.

    From Ms. Miller;

    In the dark, snowy night, the Iraq vet was an easy target. “I looked down at saw 10 jiggly red dots all over my chest,” [Corrigan] said, looking afraid of the memory. “I crumbled.”

    Miller writes that the charges against Corrigan were finally dropped this week after his case languished for years;

    Sgt. Corrigan, 35, and his attorney Richard Gardiner appeared before Judge Michael Ryan at D.C. Superior Court on Monday. The District’s assistant attorney general moved to dismiss all ten charges against him – three for unregistered firearms and seven for possession of ammunition in different calibers.

    I know Sergeant Corrigan wants to put this behind him, but he needs to punish the MPD for their overreaction before it happens to another veteran, maybe a veteran for whom this would end much worse. I know, if it had been me, with my distaste for bullshit authority, I would have ended up in the hospital for repeated buttstrokes to the head, and there’d be some cops getting rabies shots for the bites to their ankles.

    But you should read the whole article before you comment.

  • Soldier gets his guns

    We wrote the other day about LT Augustine Kim who had his guns confiscated by the DC Metro police when he was caught transporting them in a totally legal manner under Federal law back to his home in South Carolina from New Jersey. Well, the mighty District of Columbia property clerk, Derek Gray, sat in judgement of the young LT’s property last week, and at the prompting of two Senators and his Congressman determined that the District would send his weapons, which have languished in a storage locker somewhere for nearly two years, according to Emily Miller at the Washington Times;

    Lt. Kim pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of possessing an unregistered gun, and that charge was dismissed in May 2011. Since then, Lt. Kim’s lawyer, Richard Gadiner, had failed to get the attention of Mr. Gray, who refused to respond to his repeated requests for a hearing.

    That changed after The Washington Times published a story about the case last Monday. The long-time firearms lawyer had never known the city to set up a hearing within a matter of days. Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, spoke with Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier on Thursday. Fellow Palmetto State Republican Sen. Jim DeMint and Rep. Tim Scott have also been engaged. “When you get two senior U.S. senators and a member of Congress calling the chief of police, it makes a difference,” Mr. Gardiner explained.

    Yeah, well, the District is so anti-gun, they’ll do anything they can to keep guns out of the hands of responsible gun owners – they disregarded the federal laws and arrested Kim anyway, so more laws won’t make the gun Nazis in DC treat law abiding gun owners any differently. Kim is lucky that they’re sending his guns to South Carolina, otherwise, I’d expect him to be arrested as soon as he exited the property room with them.

  • Injured vet loses guns to DC thugs

    ROS sends us a link to Emily Miller’s article in the Washington Times about Lt. Augustine Kim who was traveling between his parents’ house and his own home in South Carolina when he stopped at Walter Reed for an appointment two years ago when Walter Reed was still in DC.

    Apparently, there was a clerical error in regards to his driver’s license that he straightened out over the phone the next day. But the officers asked Kim if they could search his car;

    The lieutenant agreed because his guns were properly locked in a case in the trunk, in compliance with federal firearm transport laws. Mr. Kim was handcuffed and told to sit on the curb during the search.

    He recalled that the officers inspected the collection and “were upset about the fact that I had the AR-15, which D.C. considers to be an ‘assault weapon.’” The model of rifle is illegal in the District, but not in his home state.
    The officers then told Mr. Kim he was in violation for the carrying firearms outside the home (in his vehicle) in the District. The nation’s capital does not acknowledge the right to bear arms, so there are no carry rights.

    “I told them I had been under the impression that as long as the guns were locked in the back, with the ammunition separate, that I was allowed to transport them,” Mr. Kim told me in an interview. “They said, ‘That may be true, however, since you stopped at Walter Reed, that make you in violation of the registration laws.” It is illegal to possess a firearm anywhere in D.C. other than the home.

    So they hauled his ass off to jail facing $20,000 in fines and up to 20 years in prison on the four felony charges;

    The veteran spent a “few hours in the drunk tank,” then was moved to the central jail. It was cold on the steel slab, so he asked the police guard for a blanket. “He was surly with me and sarcastic. He said, ‘Oh you want blankets? Well they’re back ordered,’” Mr. Kim recalled. “I remember thinking, we treated detainees in Afghanistan better than this.” He didn’t get much sleep that night.

    So, for some reason, the prosecutor offered Kim a deal and Kim accepted one misdemeanor charge of one unregistered gun. But the MPD won’t return his guns to him;

    On Monday, MPD spokesman Gwendolyn Crump said the department “notified the respondent’s attorney last week of his right to a hearing concerning the return of weapons.” Mr. Gardiner said that he did not receive a letter. The spokesman did not respond to my inquiry about the date the letter was sent.

    Why does he need a hearing? The prosecutor released the property, so it’s not theirs. They need to just give back the injured veteran’s property, that they confiscated wrongly in the first damn place.

  • Zimmerman’s doctor reports injuries after Martin shooting

    CNN is reporting that George Zimmerman, the man who shot dead Trayvon Martin, sustained several injuries, which the media has denied happened previously;

    The medical exam, which was taken a day after Zimmerman’s February 26 altercation with the unarmed 17-year-old, says Zimmerman suffered a “closed fracture” of his nose, according to two sources who have detailed knowledge of the investigation.

    The Associated Press reports that court records released yesterday describe more extensive injuries;

    Court records show George Zimmerman had a pair of black eyes, a nose fracture and two cuts to the back of his head after the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

    Martin’s family, of course, say that Martin inflicted those injuries because he was “fighting for his life”. Yeah, I’m sure. So, all of that overblown speculation from the media is beginning to look sillier every moment.

  • Today’s feel good story

    Chief Tango sends us a link from the NY Daily News which recounts the tale of 84-year-old Korean War veteran, Fred Ricciutti, who took up the German Luger he says he carried in Korea to fend off some chap who happened to wander into his kitchen the other night;

    In a scene that appeared to be pulled from the pages of the Clint Eastwood film “Gran Torino,” grizzled war hero Fred Ricciutti grabbed his battlefield sidearm after he heard someone bust through a kitchen door of his Elizabeth Township house at around 4:30 a.m.

    “I said, ‘Halt, who’s there?’ ” Ricciutti told Pittsburgh station WPXI.

    “I’m thinking, friend or foe, he shouldn’t be there that time of day.”

    Ricciutti fired once, hitting suspect Raymond Hiles, 25, in the neck.

    Hills took off, but was arrested a few blocks away after Ricciutti called 911.

    Hills had a screwdriver and a stun gun and had lived across the street from Ricciutti, so he thought he knew whose house it was, but probably didn’t expect the firepower. The police say that they don’t expect Mr. Ricciutti to be charged. Which is even better news.

  • Skeet for men

    Now, when TSO, Mr Wolf and I were in Minnesota last year, we went out to the range with Old Trooper and his friends (who call themselves the Hillbilly Hunt Club) and I proved my creds on the skeet range but I think even I would have trouble making this shot in a video sent to us by Spockgirl;

  • Update on a feel good story

    CavRick sends us an update on the case of three Camp Lejeune, NC Marines who interrupted two upstanding citizens who were burglarizing the home of the Marines and the Marines ventilated the burglars, Maurice Skinner and Diego Everette. Apparently the prosecutor is not pressing charges against the Marines who are still not being identified;

    The shooting deaths were justified, said the Onslow County district attorney.

    There were items found on the bodies of the two men killed and according to police, they were the same items reported stolen from an earlier car break-in nearby.

    CavRick says that it went down like this;

    Couple weeks ago two Marines and a friend returned to their Jacksonville home to find 2 scum bags burglarizing it. One of the scum bags had the Marines’s shotgun. The scum bag butt stroked him and then tried to fire a shot. The Marine always kept the chamber empty. He took the shotgun away and put two rounds into that POS. He looked around and saw this other POS fighting with his friend. He then took the gun and shot the other POS. [The criminals] both went to meet their maker at that moment.

    Of course, the family of one of the fine young burglars isn’t buying the prosecutor’s decision;

    A family member of Diego Martes Everette, who wished to remain anonymous, said he wasn’t a “stick-up kind of guy.”

    “The heart is really what matters. Diego was a good guy. We all know that if you knew him personally, you knew he was a good guy and he loved any and everybody,” she said.

    Apparently, he also loved any and everybody’s stuff, too.

  • Lulu Campbell thwarts robbers

    This is the story of Lulu Robinson Campbell, a 57-year-old grandmother who says she always carries a gun, which is lucky for her, not so much for the two Macon men who tried to rob her the other night when she was dropping off her grandson after a night at her gas station.

    “(Spencer) shouted, ‘Give me the f—— money and open the f—— door!’ ” Campbell said. “I said, ‘Oh my God, somebody is going to rob me.’ I said, ‘Baby, you’re going to kill me anyway, so I don’t have to open it!’ ”

    Campbell said she reached for her .38-caliber revolver just as Spencer allegedly fired at her. She felt Spencer’s bullet whiz by her chest as she fired back. Her shot hit Spencer in the chest.

    “I hurt my back (pushing the seat back to avoid the shot),” she said. “I saw the guy in front of me, and I said, ‘Oh my God, there are two of them.’ I said I’m going to take one of them with me. That’s what was in my head.”

    At that point, according to Campbell and the police report, Shivers allegedly started shooting at her. As she ducked, she said she fired wildly in front of the truck, forcing the second gunman to flee. Campbell said she didn’t consciously realize that she fired at Shivers until police later told her she did.

    “They told me I was aiming the wrong way, that I was shooting upwards,” she said.

    She wounded one of the assailants. Apparently she doesn’t always miss what she shoots;

    Some 35 years ago, she shot her husband and his mistress after catching them together.

    However, no charges were filed against her.

    “After that, my husband said ‘I wish I didn’t teach you how to shoot!’ ” she said.

    I hope Lulu has a long and healthy life, and that criminals in Macon have learned something.