Massad Ayoob's Blog, page 119
May 29, 2014
A BRIEF PAUSE FOR A COMMERCIAL ANNOUNCEMENT
I try not to use this blog to blow my own horn or profit, but one of my publishers has just offered a ten-dollar saving deal on my newest book:
We now resume regular programming…
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May 25, 2014
REFLECTIONS ON LOSERS
The latest mass murder spree, this one in California, has once again led the media to focus on guns. The killer’s family has announced through their attorney that they are in favor of gun control and “staunchly against guns.” The family’s attorney added something that makes more sense: “My client’s mission in life will be to try to prevent any such tragedies from happening again. This country, this world, needs to address mental illness and the ramifications from not recognizing these illnesses.”
The father of one of the victims blames guns and gun people too, apparently. “…craven, irresponsible politicians and the NRA” are the focus of a fist-waving emotional tirade, here.
I can understand and forgive the emotions generated by the terrible grief the loved ones of innocent murder victims experience. The tool of the murderer becomes a symbol, and then the focus, of their pain. At the time the last statement was made, the speaker may not have known that the killer committed his first three murders with a knife.
The killer’s family is “staunchly against guns”? Did that include the killer himself? Like the disgruntled ex-cop who turned rogue and gunned down a series of cops and innocent victims in SoCal some fifteen months ago, using the same “assault weapons” he railed against in his sick manifesto, the same document in which he praised the gun prohibitionists? Food for thought, there. This latest homicidal creature has left behind a long manifesto, a self-portrait of a psychopathic, misogynistic narcissist. He writes in part that he is “…Divine.! I am the closest thing there is to a living god. Humanity is a disgusting, depraved, and evil species. It is my purpose to punish them all. On the Day of Retribution, I will truly be a powerful god, punishing everyone I deem to be impure and depraved.” Read his screed yourself
Elliot Rodger, Santa Barbara mass shooting suspect, "My Twisted World" manifesto by Matthew Keys
Before this latest killer’s YouTube videos were taken down, I was able to review some of them. Watch it below before it disappears again. He comes across as a creepy reincarnation of Sal Mineo, but with much less acting ability. He overdramatically recites an obviously rehearsed tirade, complete with a repeated, hokey “heh-heh-heh” chuckle that reminds one of cartoon villains. Celebrating his own magnificence as “a supreme gentleman” and an “alpha male,” he bemoans the fact that he’s a 22-year-old virgin whom girls don’t want. If his approach to people in real life was anything like his video selfies, it’s no wonder he creeped them out.
I’m one of those who’ve long bemoaned the publicity mass murderers get, which in turn makes more of these thwarted losers want to commit murder to get their fifteen minutes of fame. “I wanna see my smiling face on the cover of the Rolling Stone”? That would be Tsarnev, the Boston Marathon bomber, who wound up exactly there. Make the cover of Time or Newsweek? The monsters of Columbine and Virginia Tech did. Other losers were apparently inspired to follow their example.
Maybe the world SHOULD see this latest aberration’s YouTube videos, to see what kind of thwarted loser does things like this.
But, instead, we’ll hear demands for gun bans and lower-capacity magazines. Like that impaired this one: early reports are that he had three “high-capacity” 9mm pistols and some forty loaded magazines, all of California-compliant ten-round capacity.
I wonder how many will overlook the most glaringly obvious lesson of this atrocity: That the slaughter of the innocent stopped as soon as the perpetrator met lawfully-armed resistance.
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May 20, 2014
A DISPATCH FROM TOAD SUCK
I recently spent a few days in Toad Suck, Arkansas. Click the link, and see where the place got its name. Might explain why it sits in a dry county these days.
It’s the kind of place limousine liberals make fun of, and not just because of the name. There’s a definite Old South feel to it, and lots of folks haven’t taken kindly to the recent court decisions allowing same-sex marriage in Arkansas. We weren’t there at the right time for the Toad Suck Daze Festival, darn it, but we noticed that the Concierge Guide to Faulkner County lists Little Caesar’s Pizza among cuisine options, and several thrift shops among the shopping opportunities. 
Elitists would have a ball mocking this place.
But the elitists would ignore some other things, no doubt. A quick survey of house of worship architecture, for example, shows more in the way of the eclectic and innovative, and less of the vaulting cathedrals America’s rich used to tour Europe to see. And elitists would miss the way black and white and rich and poor pitched in together for tornado relief efforts after the storms that devastated this area. A visitor gets a strong sense of…community. A place where neighbor helps neighbor, and where a dark-skinned stranger with a Yankee accent is treated as cordially as a good ol’ home town boy.
And a place where people can attend the Arkansas Shakespeare Theater, and the Conway Symphony Orchestra.
Those who piously preach diversity often overlook the fact that places like Faulkner County are part and parcel of that diversity.
I love this country…
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May 15, 2014
ANTI-GUNNERS PURSUE GRAND SLAM OF HYPOCRISY
A few weeks ago we shared the story of the armed Men In Black surrounding Shannon Watts at her Moms Demand Action anti-gun soiree in Indianapolis. When called on it, her minions claimed that it was necessary because of death threats from our side. (Where’s that rolling eyes emoticon when I need it?)
Now, our friend Dave Workman at Second Amendment Foundation is quoted here once again. Seems the head of the Brady Organization was also surrounded by armed protectors at a recent speech in Washington state: http://www.examiner.com/article/gross-hypocrisy-brady-campaign-head-talks-gun-control-with-armed-security . In a “gun-free zone,” of course. The rules are apparently only us peasants, whose lives aren’t worthy of protection from lethal threat…
Former Mayor Bloomberg was always surrounded by an ample staff of NYPD bodyguards, at least one allegedly concealing an HK MP5K machine pistol. Anybody know whether the NYC taxpayers are still paying for his armed guard phalanx, or is the sixteenth richest guy around paying for his own hired guns now?
One of his predecessors, Mayor John Lindsay, was anti-gun…but it turned out he had a concealed carry permit, and was a bit embarrassed when the press got hold of that fact. Decades ago, I outed Dianne Feinstein, the queen of the anti-gunners, for having a concealed carry permit. She and her minions ducked that one for a long time.
Today’s high profile anti-gunners are apparently more blatantly out of the closet with their hypocrisy.
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May 9, 2014
WHO DO YOU WANT ON YOUR JURY?
So here I am, sitting in the back of the classroom with a laptop. My co-instructor Attorney Jim Fleming and I are teaching a CLE (continuing legal education) course geared for attorneys, on the topic of self-defense cases. Jim is talking about jury selection.
Some of his advice is counterintuitive, but hell, if trial law was all intuitive, no one would need continuing training, would they? And some in the audience are shocked when he says that as a criminal defense lawyer, he LOVES to have cops on his clients’ juries. Of course, this is 180 degrees counter to conventional wisdom. If the game is cops and robbers and your client has been cast in the role of the accused robber, wouldn’t a member “of the other team” be the LAST person you wanted on your jury?
Jim explains that police officers mediate disputes almost daily, from two angry drivers at an accident scene to spouses in mortal rage when the officers arrive to break up a “domestic.” They’re attuned to listening to both sides. During voir dire, the jury selection process, he’ll make a point of asking any cops in the jury pool if they can be fair to someone other cops have arrested. He has found over the decades that these cops can be the most scrupulous of jurors…and other jurors, having heard this discussion with them, are reminded of their own duty to be fair and impartial.
Many of you reading this have served jury duty yourselves. What are your thoughts and observations on this topic? If you were, let’s say, charged or sued after a self-defense shooting, who would you want on – and off! – the jury that judged you?
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May 1, 2014
A GIANT PASSES
A professor friend sent along this clipping from the New York Times on the death of Walter Walsh, one of the great gunfighters of the 20th Century. It’s a very well done obit; my only quibble would be that in most accounts I’ve read, the Japanese sniper he killed with his .45 pistol was 90 yards away, not 80.
I had the privilege of meeting Mr. Walsh back in the 1990s, when we were both nominees for the Outstanding American Handgunner of the Year. He won that award well before I did, and he certainly deserved to. He wasn’t a big man, but courage and fighting skill aren’t necessarily measured by physical size. Walter Walsh was very hard of hearing, the occupational hazard of serious shooters of his time; effective muff-type hearing protection wasn’t really available until Gil Hebard popularized it in mid-20th century.
Said to have killed eleven gunmen as an FBI agent, and many of the enemy in the Pacific Theater during WWII, Walter Walsh was indomitable. In his most famous gunfight, with the notorious Brady Gang in Maine, he was shot three times including a .45 slug through his chest. With one of the first Smith & Wesson .357 Magnums in his dominant left hand and a Colt .45 automatic in his right, Walsh returned fire and killed the gangster who shot him…and then proceeded to apply his .357 to the gang leader, with equally fatal results.
Above all, he was a gentleman…kind, and soft-spoken. Most of the real gunfighters I’ve met over the decades share those traits.
Walter Walsh made it to 106. It was an honor to have known him. May this Guardian rest in peace.
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April 27, 2014
“GUNS FOR PRIVILEGED WE, NOT PEASANT THEE”
The Evil Princess and I took a pleasant spring day walk from the NRA meeting at the convention center in Indianapolis to the Veterans Park, where the Bloomberg-financed Everytown crew was holding forth. How ironic that they would speak for diminution of gun owners’ civil rights in the shadow of a monument to those who died fighting for those rights…
We couldn’t help but notice the guys straight out of central casting, burly fellas with black suits, Oakley style black glasses, and most with obligatory shaven heads. One confirmed to me that they were “private security,” and “three or four” in number. Didn’t look quite like the 300 protesters they claimed. Photos and commentary can be found at Gun Free Zone.
Reportedly, several of those folks had to be bused in, courtesy of the Bloomberg money. Meanwhile, some 18,000 women came on their own to the NRA meeting, according to the Indianapolis Star, which seems to be giving fair and balanced coverage.
The whole anti-gun group in the park wouldn’t have filled one aisle in the nine acres of gun displays at the NRA meeting. Yet they claim to represent the majority. Clearly, New York City chutzpah was imported to Hoosier country along with the New York City dollars.
Editorial cartoon, Indianapolis Star, last Friday
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April 23, 2014
NRA ANNUAL MEETING
NRAAM, the National Rifle Association Annual Meeting, begins this Friday and runs through the weekend in Indianapolis. Last year, a scant handful of protesters across the street from the vast convention center in Houston got about as much news time as the tens of thousands of Americans who attended the meeting of Their Organization. Don’t be surprised to see the same this year.
If you’re there, say hi. Several of us will be signing books (free while they last) at the Armed Citizens Legal Defense Network booth, including Bryan Ciyou, Grant Cunningham, Gila Hayes, and Kathy Jackson. I’ll be there 2-4 PM on Friday and Saturday, and hope to meet some of y’all who read this blog.
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April 22, 2014
WHERE THE ASTROTURF, UH, BLOOMS
Former NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg reinvents himself as the face of the “gun control” movement. Unhappy with the weak results of his Mayors Against Illegal Guns and Moms Demand Action, he tries to create a “grassroots movement” from the top down.
Hilarity ensues.
Gun owners’ civil rights advocate Miguel Gonzalez is an émigré from Latin America. He has seen first-hand how registration flows into confiscation and then into tyranny, citing Cuba and Venezuela. His commentary on Bloomberg and the anti-gun movement in general can be found here: http://gunfreezone.net/wordpress/.
My friend Dave Workman at Second Amendment Foundation has well chronicled how American gun owners – being sufficiently technically oriented to qualify as a nerd stronghold – took a quick step ahead of the antis and usurped Bloomberg’s “Everytown” theme. Find one such chronicle here: http://www.examiner.com/article/exclusive-how-true-grassroots-activists-bested-bloomberg.
Backwoods Home’s own Clair Wolfe blogs Bloomberg here: http://www.backwoodshome.com/blogs/ClaireWolfe/2014/04/20/blooming-dishonesty. Be sure to follow the link to her timely essay on the topic for our friends at Jews for Preservation of Firearms Ownership.
I expect the hilarity to continue. Miggy Gonzales put it best, I think, when he explained that even fifty million dollars worth of fake Astroturf still ain’t gonna qualify as “grassroots.”
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April 18, 2014
HERO COPS
I was teaching in the Midwest when I learned that two Salt Lake City Police officers, one the son of an old, good friend, had been seriously wounded in a gunfight in which they had swiftly responded to the deadly ambush, returned fire, and slain the would-be cop-killer. The sparse police log report is here: http://slcpd.com/watch-log-thursday-march-27-2014/ . A more in-depth report, from local news, is here: http://fox13now.com/2014/03/28/2-police-officers-hurt-1-man-dead-after-salt-lake-city-shooting/.
Officers Mo Tafisi and Dan Tueller are credited with literally saving each other’s lives. If the latter name sounds familiar to gun folks, Dan is the son of Dennis Tueller, the famed SLCPD officer and trainer of a generation before, who did the ground-breaking research showing that the average man with a knife could close seven yards and deliver a fatal thrust in only 1.5 seconds, from a standing start. We’ll never know how many lives were saved by that knowledge; I can certainly point to a few.
Both are are recovering, but their recoveries won’t be overnight. Dan’s femur was shattered by the bullet he took, and one eardrum was ruptured by a close-range attempt to fire a bullet into his brain. Reconstructive surgery is going to take a long time. Yes, they get their paychecks and workmen’s comp, but cops with big families count on overtime and paid details to keep food on the table and clothes on the kids’ backs, and that’s gone for now. With that in mind, I asked Dennis where concerned citizens could contribute. He replied:
“We now have both a website and bank account where donations can be made to help support Mo, Dan, and their families with some extra money to help get them through their recovery time. The website (developed by my son Jeff, via his web media studio) is: www.SLCSheepdogs.org where you will find a PayPal link. Contributions can also be made to any branch of Mountain America Credit Union (www.macu.com to find locations): SLC Sheepdogs, account #9807840. You can also send checks to my address, below.
Donations of any amount are appreciated, and I thank you in advance for your help and support. ~~Dennis Tueller, 1733 W. 12600 S. #113, Riverton, UT 84065, Dennis.tueller@gmail.com. p.s. My wife, Marti and I are the Trustees and administrators of the account, so there are zero fees and no overhead. All donations will go directly to support the officers and their families.”
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