Toledo Responds Intelligently to Government Choosing Social Programs over Police

If dialing 911 isn’t going to result in being protected, defending yourself makes complete sense.

During a violent break in: A gun in the nightstand is worth two cops on the way.

Toledo police layoffs leading to gun buying
Posted: May 23, 2009 05:43 PM

TOLEDO, OH (WTOL) – The first round of Toledo police layoffs, in which 75 officers were let go, may already be having an affect on gun ownership.

“I just don’t feel safe with the amount they’re laying off,” says Jonna Ewing. “I think it’s going to be a longer respond time.”

She is spending the day at a conceal carry class. She’s been thinking of getting a gun for awhile, but feels now’s the time due to the recent layoffs.

She’s not alone. Case in point, someone in Jonna’s class wears one those infamous police t-shirts: “I called 911 and all I got was this lousy garbage can” that showed up soon after the TPD cuts.

Tom Urbanski runs Ski’s Firearms Training & Consulting. He also teaches the conceal carry classes.

For him, the layoffs mean big business as people are taking safety into their own hands.

“People are panicking, they’re figuring the only way they can protect themselves is for them to protect themselves,” says Urbanski. “So yeah, my business is booming.”

Urbanski says since the presidential election and the collapse of the economy, people have become more interested in owning guns.

He says locally the police layoffs and recent attacks on the elderly are only fueling the fire, especially for senior citizens.

“They don’t have much support out there. Their family is not visiting as often so they’re having to be their own protectors. I’m seeing an increase in the elderly.”

For Toledoans like Jonna, having a gun and knowing how to use it means she’ll sleep just a little better.

Armed student saves friends, kills assailant

http://www.examiner.com/x-7564-SF-Libertarian-Examiner~y2009m5d6-Armed-student-saves-friends-kills-assailant

Two masked gunmen burst into Charles Bailey’s apartment where he was entertaining ten guests, celebrating his birthday. The gunmen started counting bullets, making sure they had “enough,” and then separated the men and the women into different rooms to be raped. The gunmen didn’t expect one of Charles’ friends to be packing heat, but he was:

That’s when one student grabbed a gun out of a backpack and shot at the invader who was watching the men. The gunman ran out of the apartment.

The student then ran to the room where the second gunman, identified by police as 23-year-old Calvin Lavant, was holding the women.

“Apparently the guy was getting ready to rape his girlfriend. So he told the girls to get down and he started shooting. The guy jumped out of the window,” said Bailey.

Calvin Lavant was found dead a block away, from a well-deserved gunshot wound to the face, and police say they are close to arresting the second gunman.

This story should illustrate that when things really hit the fan, you are ultimately responsible for protecting yourself and your loved ones. You will probably not have time to wait for help, and most importantly, you will be the one who has to live with the results. You can not count on the police to protect you, and they are not legally obligated to protect you (seriously).

Keep this story in mind as we push for tighter federal gun laws. If that one brave student hadn’t brought his gun to the party (and to be honest, I’m kind of blown away that he did), 10 lives would have been ruined, if not ended. You also might want to ask yourself why no major news outlets have been running this remarkable story, or read John Lott’s excellent essay on the media’s bias against guns.

As for me, my birthday’s not coming up for a while, but I’m asking for a cute little nine-millimeter insurance policy. And if you come to the celebration, feel free to come packin’.

Gunman kills 12 at Azerbaijan university

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-college-shooting1-2009may01,0,1458026.story

Gunman kills 12 at Azerbaijan university

He entered prestigious Azerbaijan State Oil Academy at a busy hour and ‘was just shooting right and left,’ an official says. More than a dozen people were wounded before the shooter killed himself.
By Megan K. Stack

May 1, 2009

Reporting from Moscow — A young man opened fire Thursday in a bustling building in a prestigious university in Azerbaijan, killing 12 people before turning the gun on himself.

The gunman was identified as Farda Gadyrov, a citizen of neighboring Georgia. He entered the building at Azerbaijan State Oil Academy in Baku, the capital, about 9:30 a.m. and began climbing the stairs, shooting indiscriminately as he went, officials said.

More than a dozen people were wounded. The gunman killed himself as police closed in.

“He was just shooting right and left around himself at people fleeing in all directions,” said Eskhan Zakhidov, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry. “At that time, the building is usually full of students and professors.”

Gadyrov came armed with a Makarov pistol and several fully loaded clips, officials in the oil-rich former Soviet republic said.

“The attacker is a young man, but it’s not clear whether he was a student himself,” Zakhidov said. “His motives aren’t clear, either.”

“We were in an exam, we heard gunshots, we went out of the classroom in panic and saw a gunman opening fire on everyone,” Turkish student Bekir Belek told Turkey’s CNN-Turk television from a hospital in Baku. “Everywhere was covered in blood, all corridors. There are many wounded.”

“We were trying to escape but had to return when my friends were shot,” Belek said. “We took them to the hospital.”

The century-old oil academy once trained engineers who worked throughout the Soviet Union.

“I feel deep regret,” Education Minister Misir Mardanov told reporters, “and consider this a terrible incident for our society.”

College Student Shoots, Kills Home Invader

http://www.wsbtv.com/news/19365762/detail.html

Updated: 9:09 am EDT May 7, 2009
COLLEGE PARK, Ga. – A group of college students said they are lucky to be alive and they’re thanking the quick-thinking of one of their own. Police said a fellow student shot and killed one of two masked me who burst into an apartment.

Channel 2 Action News reporter Tom Jones met with one of the students to talk about the incident.

“Apparently, his intent was to rape and murder us all,” said student Charles Bailey.

Bailey said he thought it was the end of his life and the lives of the 10 people inside his apartment for a birthday party after two masked men with guns burst in through a patio door.

“They just came in and separated the men from the women and said, ‘Give me your wallets and cell phones,’” said George Williams of the College Park Police Department.

Bailey said the gunmen started counting bullets. “The other guy asked how many (bullets) he had. He said he had enough,” said Bailey.

That’s when one student grabbed a gun out of a backpack and shot at the invader who was watching the men. The gunman ran out of the apartment.

The student then ran to the room where the second gunman, identified by police as 23-year-old Calvin Lavant, was holding the women.

“Apparently the guy was getting ready to rape his girlfriend. So he told the girls to get down and he started shooting. The guy jumped out of the window,” said Bailey.

A neighbor heard the shots and heard someone running nearby.

“And I heard someone say, ‘Someone help me. Call the police. Somebody call the police,’” said a neighbor.

The neighbor said she believes it was Lavant, who was found dead near his apartment, only one building away.

Bailey said he is just thankful one student risked his life to keep others alive.

“I think all of us are really cognizant of the fact that we could have all been killed,” said Bailey.

One female student was shot several times during the crossfire. She is expected to make a full recovery.

Police said they are close to making the arrest of the second suspect.

Sell Your Cloak And Buy One!

“But now,” he said, “take your money and a traveler’s bag. And if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one!”

Luke 22:36

Preaching for God and guns
By James L. Pate
SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Black ministers practicing politics from the pulpit are nothing new. Since the genesis of the modern civil rights movement a half-century ago, no group has had more influence on the politics of rank-and-file black voters than their clergy.

But seldom have black preachers mixed Bible readings, political debate and target practice.

Meet Kenneth Blanchard, the “Pistol Packing Preacher.” That is the title of a motivational compact disc aimed at black and Hispanic audiences, his chosen demographic for preaching about the “sacred right” to self-defense.

“Gun rights are civil rights,” says Mr. Blanchard, who is licensed as an assistant minister by the Mount Sinai Baptist Church in Washington. “Self-defense is a divine right.”

Citing the New Testament book of Luke, chapter 22, verses 36-38, he tells listeners that “after the Last Supper, Jesus told his homeboys that they must be ready to defend themselves, and that if you don’t have a sword, sell your clothes and buy one.

“The sword mentioned was for defense, not offense,” he cautions. “It was not a steak knife, but a fighting tool.”

Asked to reconcile his self-defense advocacy with the Christ’s admonition to turn the other cheek, Mr. Blanchard said the two philosophies are compatible.

“Jesus was not some pacifist wimp, as many like to portray him, but a really tough guy,” Mr. Blanchard said. “His advice to turn the other cheek did not mean to lie down and give up, but to be cool, careful and calculated. It means to control your emotions and actions through inner, spiritual strength, to not react in anger or rage, but carefully.”

Mr. Blanchard also advises in the CD that “churches that allow evil men to deny the right to self-protection by hosting [gun] buybacks and turn-ins should be” opposed.

He is among a growing number of black activists who are increasingly vocal against gun control.

In an interview with The Washington Times at his home in Prince George’s County, where blacks make up about 63 percent of the population and registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 4-to-1, he condemned the state Democratic Party.

“They have absolutely exploited their black constituents on the issue of gun control,” he says. “Democrats in Maryland want to keep people in fear and ignorance. Our country has more than 40,000 gun laws on the books and not one has ever saved a single child’s life.

“It’s a travesty and a sham. You cannot legislate human behavior,” says Mr. Blanchard, who is working on a divinity degree.

“Ignorance can be fatal. Knowledge is power. We must educate our people, not feed them feel-good gun-control garbage.”

David Paulsen, spokesman for Maryland’s state Democratic Party, said, “I don’t know Blanchard, but if he’s a Democrat, he is certainly not the only one to share those opinions about gun laws. He may be shortsighted politically, but I certainly respect his opinions on the Second Amendment.”

Mr. Blanchard is no backyard novice when it comes to firearms. After five years in the Marine Corps, he joined the operations directorate of the Central Intelligence Agency, which deployed him in the Middle East and elsewhere on still-classified antiterrorist operations.

When Mr. Blanchard came home, the CIA loaned him to the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Georgia to teach firearms and personal security to rookie agents.

Now married to a former law-enforcement agent and a father of two, Mr. Blanchard is a government consultant on security and antiterrorism issues.

He is not the first black civil rights activist to mix politics, religion and guns.

While Martin Luther King and his disciples preached nonviolence during the bloodiest days of the civil rights movement, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) and other civil rights activists relied on armed parishioners for protection from lynchings or shootingsby the Ku Klux Klan.

Known as the Deacons for Defense, they trained with rifles, shotguns and pistols to provide security for CORE voter registration workers and other activists against the threats of violence and even death.

“We relied heavily on the Deacons for Defense for our protection,” says Roy Innis, a noted veteran of the civil rights struggle in the South and national chairman of CORE.

Mr. Innis, also a National Rifle Association board member, says it is “very sad that the civil rights movement … turned its backs on gun rights. Many of these people are educated and in leadership positions. … But they are willing to sacrifice our Second Amendment … to appease so-called liberals.”

Mr. Innis says civil rights activists are “guys who will picket forever to join some golf club, but they won’t even stand up for their constituency to protect and preserve what’s spelled out in the Constitution.”

“If you’re going to stand up for civil rights, you must stand up for all civil rights,” he says.

Not all self-described black liberals would disagree with Mr. Innis, says Absalom Jordan Jr., a veteran of local Democratic Party politics in Washington and a life member of the National Rifle Association. He is a certified instructor for rifles, pistols and shotguns.

Gun-control advocates, he says, “can’t prove by their own facts that gun control in any way reduces crime. … People in my [Northeast D.C.] neighborhood are scared to go outside on their own street.”

Other blacks in the area are working in quieter ways to advance their cause with minorities.

One is Ricardo Royal, a former paramedic supervisor with the District of Columbia Fire and Emergency Medical Services, who left after 18 years to start his own firearms business, Best Shot Professional Training. He grew up in a single-parent home in which his mother adamantly opposed guns.

As Mr. Royal, now 45, struggled with his studies at Roosevelt High School, his mother got a family friend who was a minister to tutor him in reading.

“My joy of reading meant reading gun magazines,” he said. “My mother didn’t like them, but she knew I was reading them, and away I went.”

At age 15, he joined a gun club in the District, the Junior Pioneer Hunting Club, founded by Mr. Jordan and others in the 1960s. He received basic instruction in handling pistols, rifles and shotguns. Now he is one of fewer than a dozen Marylanders certified to teach others to become instructors.

Mr. Royal has allied himself with other professional trainers to form the Community Association of Firearms Educators (CAF), “to unify folks through education. I tell these kids that education is the key to freedom, to survival and everything else important in life.”

Mr. Blanchard, who has spoken throughout the country on the issue, has a Web site: blackmanwithagun.net.

Talking to a group of Boy Scouts recently, Mr. Blanchard reminded them that “shooting firearms is an equal-opportunity sport. You don’t have to be fast, or particularly agile or tall or muscular. What you have to have is discipline between the ears.”

“But you must first master safety and learn the discipline, because if you mess with a gun without any training, there are only two places that you’re likely to end up and that’s in the graveyard or in jail.

“And that’s happened to too many of us already. Let me hear you say, ‘Amen.’ “

Welcome – 14 April 2009

• Jovian Thunderbolt
• Countertop Chronicles
• United Conservatives
• Random Acts of Patriotism
• Anarchangel

George Washington

Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance; they are the people’s liberty’s teeth.
– Gen. George Washington, Continental Army (Ret.)

h/t Random Acts of Patriotism

Welcome – 6 April 2009

• MArooned – Jay G – Dad, gun nut, motorhead, shaved-head biker with a foul mouth and a bad attitude. Foolishly clinging to the notions of self-reliance and free will in the land of the perpetual nanny
• Firearms Blogs – Syndicated guns blogs from across the internet
• Hecate’s Crossroads – the Witch who lives in the woods alone

Welcome!

Sources of Guns Used in Crimes – FBI Report

FBI reports:
According to the 1997 Survey of State Prison Inmates, among those possessing a gun, the source of the gun was from –

• a flea market or gun show for fewer than 2%
• a retail store or pawnshop for about 12%
• family, friends, a street buy, or an illegal source for 80%

In other words, it ain’t legal purchases from firearms dealers in legal shops or gun shows that criminals use.”

After 1996, less than 10% of nonfatal violent crimes involved firearms.

Only 2% of prison inmates used a military-style semiautomatic gun.

“Offenders armed with handguns committed one in every eight violent crimes–rape, robbery and assault–measured by BJS’s National Crime Victimization Survey. The other violent crime victims were attacked or threatened by offenders who were either unarmed or were armed with such weapons as rocks, sticks, knives or other types of firearms. The most common violent crime, simple assault, by definition does not involve the use of a weapon.” That is, going after firearms only goes after 12.5% of the violent offenses.

Recidivism
* Of the 272,111 persons released from prisons in 15 States in 1994, an estimated 67.5% were rearrested for a felony or serious misdemeanor within 3 years, 46.9% were reconvicted, and 25.4% resentenced to prison for a new crime.
* The 272,111 offenders discharged in 1994 accounted for nearly 4,877,000 arrest charges over their recorded careers.
* Within 3 years of release, 2.5% of released rapists were rearrested for another rape, and 1.2% of those who had served time for homicide were arrested for a new homicide.
* Sex offenders were less likely than non-sex offenders to be rearrested for any offense –– 43 percent of sex offenders versus 68 percent of non-sex offenders.
* Sex offenders were about four times more likely than non-sex offenders to be arrested for another sex crime after their discharge from prison –– 5.3 percent of sex offenders versus 1.3 percent of non-sex offenders.

In other words, keep illegal guns out of the hands of urban youth of gangbanger age, especially those who have immediate family that have been incarcerated, and firearm ownership becomes statistically insignificant. The best way to keep the guns away would be to keep the felons who have used illegal firearms in prison.

Happy THIS Ad Slipped Past the Los Angeles Times!

Signs that the LA Times is desperate… allowing a full-page ad for the National Shooting Sports Foundation. But I’m happy it’s there.

• Project Childsafe: The nationwide firearm safety education program is offering FREE firearm safety kits (35 million to date). Learn more at www.projectchildsafe.org.
• First Shots: Never fired a handgun before? This is a FREE opportunity to learn the safe and proper way. Now at a range near you. www.firstshots.org.
• Don’t Lie for the Other Guy: Buy a gun for someone who can’t, and you face serious fines — and serious jail time. Learn more at www.dontlie.org.

The ad was paid for by the National Shooting Sports Foundation.

When you donate to the NSSF, they can help educate those whose 2A muscles have atrophied or never been exercised.

If your local newspaper carried the same ad, please comment here.

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