Category: Guns

Awr Hawkins at Breitbart is reporting the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act contains an amendment approving the sales of military surplus 1911 pistols through the Civilian Marksmanship Program (CMP).

The move will defray storage costs of some 100,000 pistols, and perhaps recoup a profit by selling the firearms via the CMP, a program that has sold surplus firearms to the public for over 100 years.

The 1911 is one of the most popular handguns ever developed, was used as a military and law enforcement sidearm, and is found in the civilian world as a personal and home defense weapon. These are available to the public from several manufacturers and range from basic 1911s to custom firearms costing serious money for competitive shooting.

Sales have yet to be announced, but if the CMP follows past practices, pistols will be priced according to condition and availability. Latest from the CMP:

“Because of the limited number and the exceedingly high demand for the pistol, and the great level of Congressional scrutiny, the Board of Directors will make a decision regarding how sales will be handled. We have no further information at this time. – Mrs. Judith Legerski, Chairman, CMP Board of Directors”

I have room in my safe for a piece of American history, and I’m sure I’m not alone.

An 81-year-old in Tellico Plains, Tennessee had a negligent discharge with his concealed weapon while he and his wife were in church. Someone asked the parishioners who was carrying a weapon, and he said that he always carries his .380 semi-automatic pistol. He cleared the weapon and passed it around, the reloaded it when he got it back;

“Somebody else walked up and said, ‘Can I see it?’” Parks said. “He pulled it back out and said, ‘With this loaded indicator, I can tell that it’s not loaded.’”

He accidentally pulled the trigger, firing one round, according to ABC News.

The bullet struck the gun owner in his hand, then hit his 80-year-old wife, Parks said. The bullet entered the left side of her abdomen and came out on the right side.

It then hit her forearm, came out, hit a wall, ricocheted and landed by her wheelchair, the police chief described.

The husband and wife were flown to the University of Tennessee Medical Center with non-life-threatening injuries. No one else was injured.

“This was an accident. It was not intentional,” Parks told the media. “It just slipped his mind that he recharged the weapon.”

He said the man was carrying the gun legally and no charges will be filed.

That never would have happened to me, because I wouldn’t have owned up to having a gun in the first place, regardless of the audience. That defeats the purpose of a concealed weapon, doesn’t it?

Thanks to Top Kone for the link.

Earlier this week, Kevin Janson Neal, shot up the Rancho Tehama Elementary Schoolnear Sacramento, California. He killed 4 people before he was killed by sheriff’s deputies who responded. Among the dead was Neal’s wife who officers found buried under the floorboards of his house and two neighbors with whom he had disputes in the past. Neal had a semiautomatic rifle and two handguns in the truck he stole, according to the LA Times.

Sheridan Orr, of North Carolina, said her brother had a history of mental illness and episodes of rage.

“There are certain people that do not need guns, and my brother was clearly one of them,” she said.

Orr said that her brother had long struggled with mental illness and that he would get paranoid and speak of government conspiracies. She said he was also known to have sudden episodes of unwarranted anger.

According to Sacramento CBS Neal was out of jail on bond from an assault with a knife on a person who ended up being one of his shooting victims. He was prohibited from possessing a firearm, police went to his house on numerous occasions when he fired off rounds in the neighborhood;

At a tense news conference Wednesday, police conceded that neighbors had repeatedly complained about Kevin Janson Neal firing hundreds of rounds from his house.

Tehama County Assistant Sheriff Phil Johnston said authorities responded to calls several times, but the 44-year-old Neal wouldn’t open the door, so they left.

“He was not law enforcement friendly. He would not come to the door,” Johnston said. “You have to understand we can’t anticipate what people are going to do. We don’t have a crystal ball.”

Somehow, I don’t think that not answering the door to police would work for the rest of us.

At the time of the attack, Neal was out of custody on bail after being charged in January with stabbing one of the neighbors he later killed in the rampage.

After the January assault, a judge barred Neal from having guns, according to court records.

The records also show that Neal was charged with illegally firing a weapon and possessing an illegal assault rifle on Jan. 31.

He was charged with five felonies and two misdemeanors. As part of a protective order that barred him from “owning, possessing, purchasing or attempting to purchase firearms,” Neal was ordered to stay away from the two female neighbors he had threatened.

It’s a good thing that protective order was out there, otherwise someone might have been hurt seriously instead of just killed. This is in California where law abiding people can’t own guns and the government that convinced the law-abiding that they would keep them safe failed. Miserably. On numerous occasions. With cowardice.

Yesterday, we talked a bit about Devon Kelley, the fellow who shot up the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. The 26-year-old was indeed an Air Force veteran of two years;

The DoD counts the time he spent at trial and the time he spent in prison as his active duty time, I don’t.

Military.com says that he was booted from the Air Force for committing domestic violence against his family;

The man who shot and killed at least 26 people at a Texas church on Sunday had previously served in the U.S. Air Force but received a bad-conduct discharge after being court-martialed for assaulting his wife and child, a Pentagon official said.

[…]

Ann Stefanek, a spokeswoman for the service at the Pentagon, said Kelley was an airman who served in Logistics Readiness at Holloman Air Force Base, N.M., from from 2010 until his discharge.

Kelley was court-martialed in 2012 for two counts of Article 128 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice: assault on his spouse and assault on their child, Stefanek said. He received a bad conduct discharge, confinement for twelve months and a reduction to the grade of E-1, she said.

The Bad Conduct Discharge (Big Chicken Dinner) wouldn’t necessarily prevent him from purchasing a firearm, but the domestic violence conviction would.

He is prohibited from buying and possessing firearms, if we are to believe the AFT Form 4473 (Question 11(i));

So he either purchased the gun he used illegally or he just didn’t bother to be truthful on the form and the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) failed to flag his purchase. People with criminal intent usually aren’t bothered with laws anyway.

There was, however, one American in legal possession of a firearm who stopped Kelley, according to the New York Post;

A concerned neighbor who heard the Texas church massacre unfolding on Sunday went and grabbed his rifle and tried to stop it — opening fire on the shooter and chasing him down in a stranger’s truck, a report says.

The man, who has not been publicly named, is being hailed online as a “hero” after state officials described his actions during a press conference.

A resident told the local ABC affiliate KSAT that he teamed up with her boyfriend and the two gave chase for several minutes inside his truck before the alleged gunman, Devin Kelley, eventually crashed the car he was in.

Authorities said the armed neighbor may have saved countless lives by opening fire on Kelley and forcing him to flee the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs during his 11:30 a.m. massacre.

It’s still not clear whether Kelley was killed by this citizen’s gunfire or if he offed himself, but what is clear is that more stringent gun laws would have only disarmed the hero, not the villain, in this case.

Update: Fox News reports that police told them that the gunman shot himself when he lost control of his vehicle, but the unnamed hero did prevent him from causing more deaths and injuries at the church.

However, valor thief Richard Blumenthal took the opportunity to lobby for more gun laws, according to CBS News;

“Horror, heartbreak, shame. Prayers are important but insufficient. After another unspeakable tragedy, Congress must act — or be complicit,” Blumenthal wrote in the wake of the shooting.

“Enough is enough,” he said. “Now is the time for commonsense gun violence prevention steps. Congressional complicity must end.”

While they’re at it, Congress can make murder illegal, too.