Category Archives: Individual Rights

How Did Canadian Killer Get A Shotgun? Give Me A Break!

As much as I love Canada—I’m a citizen—I could not live in a place that practically outlaws the right to defend life and property. Ordinary Canadian citizens are de facto barred from owning firearms. Read Second-Amendment scholar David Kopel’s account of Canada’s draconian gun laws:

… it is virtually impossible for an ordinary citizen to obtain a permit to carry a loaded handgun for self-defense. Handgun carry permits for self-protection are issued “only in exceptional cases” where the issuing officer is “satisfied” of the applicant’s need. A 600 page National Firearms Manual, prepared by the Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, provides ample reasons for an officer to accept or deny a self-protection application as he sees fit. In contrast, permits to carry unloaded, locked handguns to target ranges are readily obtainable.
… How strict the police departments are in issuing handgun target licenses varies from region to region. In some jurisdictions, a person might legally buy a handgun, but the police would hold the gun for several months, while the central government in Ottawa completed its paperwork. Only then would the police allow the gun to be taken to a target range.

Notice how law-enforcement are first to champion gun control against the populace, by using the pretext that it’ll stop criminals from arming themselves. This is the case in the US too. Currently, in Washington State, one is treated to TV footage of weepy “vaginas” (not my coinage; I’m innocent here) plumping for a ballot initiative that would, as these simpletons promise, stop violence against women. Explains Rachel Alexander:

I-594 has been cleverly drafted to sound like it merely makes small changes to gun laws, not a flat-out ban or gun registration scheme. This is why it is so dangerous. People are less likely to oppose it; in fact, polls show that even a majority of gun owners – 54 percent of the 35 percent of Washington residents who own a gun – are in favor of it.

The initiative, or so the professional criers claims, is backed by thousands of policemen.

But I digress. Gun restrictions impact the law-abiding citizen; criminals by definition are outlaws. The criminal who “ambushed the Parliament building in Ottawa” had no qualms about violating Canada’s pernicious anti-gun laws to carry out an attack on the Canadian parliament.

Still, the moron media stateside pushes more gun control in … Canada.

Costco And The Supersized Killer Cops

BAB's A List, Business, Criminal Injustice, Fascism, GUNS, Individual Rights

BY WILLIAM B. SCOTT

On July 10, 2010, Erik B. Scott, a 1994 U.S. Military Academy at West Point graduate with an MBA from Duke University, was shot to death by three Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (“Metro”) officers in front of a Las Vegas, NV, Costco big-box store. While many readers will recall that egregious, senseless murder, few know what followed: A jaw-dropping cover-up more typical of the old Soviet Union than America.

To every man and woman who carries a firearm, the Erik Scott shooting is a chilling reminder that billion-dollar companies, such as Costco, have irrational, secret, anti-gun policies that literally kill their customers.

Erik, a Boston Scientific cardiac pacemaker sales rep, was carrying a legally registered concealed firearm, while he and his girlfriend were shopping at Costco-Summerlin in Las Vegas. He also had a concealed-carry permit in his wallet, issued by the same Metro police force that killed him.

When Erik squatted on the floor to verify that three metal water bottles would fit into a soft-sided, zip-up cooler, a Costco employee spotted Erik’s Kimber Ultra Carry .45-caliber semiautomatic in an inside-the-waistband holster. A civil interchange with a Costco manager ensued, and Erik was told that a Costco policy banned guns inside company stores—although there were no signs to that effect posted outside or inside, and there’s no mention of a gun-ban policy in the membership application. Erik calmly responded that his sidearm was legal and that he had a concealed-carry weapon (CCW) permit on his person. The manager never asked Erik to leave the store, and the two parted on good terms, according to witnesses.

The Costco manager reassured a plainclothes security guard that Erik would be leaving soon. For reasons known only to him, the same young, cocky guard—defying management practices and company policy—placed a 911 call to the local police, falsely claiming Erik “had a gun and was acting erratic.” Thinking an armed madman was barricaded inside, Metro cops descended on the store in overwhelming force—15 police cruisers, a helicopter, an incident-command team and an ambulance.

An inbound Metro lieutenant suggested that Costco managers quietly evacuate the store. Unaware that the evacuation had anything to do with him, Erik and his girlfriend calmly walked out with the crowd, passing three Metro officers waiting at the entrance and exit doors. Costco’s aforementioned security guard identified Erik to an agitated, scared Metro officer, William Mosher, who was clutching a semiautomatic, visibly shaking and sweating profusely. Alarmed, Mosher spun around and immediately yelled something, which even nearby cops failed to comprehend.

Erik turned to find a frightened, supersized cop shouting three conflicting commands. With his left hand, Erik lifted his T-shirt to expose the Kimber, and repeated, “I am armed, I am armed … .” Witnesses said he moved his right elbow enough to expose the Kimber. In his right hand, Erik held a BlackBerry cell phone.

Mosher instantly panicked and fired two shots with a .45-caliber Glock 21. The cop’s first hollow-point slug struck Erik in the heart; the second went through his right thigh, well below his jeans’ front pocket.

Two other officers hesitated not at all, then fired another five rounds, all into Erik’s back. Erik was shot a total of seven times. The five that hit him in the back were fired after he was on the ground, dying.

Based on a recording of the Costco fool’s 911-call, we’ve confirmed that Mosher gave Erik three conflicting commands and fired, all within two seconds. Mosher then knelt on his victim’s back and handcuffed Erik’s hands.

Costco had numerous security cameras inside the store and at least four trained on the entrance, where the lethal shooting took place. Violating department policies, Metro detectives did NOT immediately seize the surveillance system’s two digital video recorders’ hard disks. They left the critical DVR and hard drive in Costco’s control for five days, allowing Costco-Summerlin personnel and the store’s IT contractor to tamper with video data. Five days after the shooting, Metro detectives finally decided to pick up one Costco DVR. After valiant attempts to “recover” critical imagery, the DVR was sent to the U.S. Secret Service’s Los Angeles office, where forensics experts examined it. The experts later testified that 96 percent of the DVR’s data were recovered. The four percent not recoverable just happened to encompass the time Erik was in Costco, as well as the fatal officer-involved shooting. The hard disk’s platter sectors, where that critical four percent of unrecoverable data resided, was physically damaged, as if the disk were running, “then dropped from about chest high,” according to forensic experts’ testimony.

Within hours of the shooting, a Clark County deputy public administrator and a Metro cop illegally entered Erik’s condominium and removed several of his firearms. One pistol, a small Ruger LCP, was later produced as “proof” that Erik was carrying two guns. Why two? Because the AMR ambulance crew had reported finding a gun on Erik’s body. The sole gun Erik really was carrying (the Kimber) had already been removed from his dead body and placed on the ground at Costco, still in the holster, as if Erik had pulled it, thereby “justifying” Erik’s murder. In fact, the only item Erik ever had in-hand was his BlackBerry smartphone. In a state of panic, Mosher couldn’t distinguish a BlackBerry from a semiautomatic pistol. Erik was literally executed.

There is absolutely no doubt that Erik was murdered. However, the integrity-challenged cops of Metro’s “Blue Wall” immediately resorted to post-shooting procedures that are standard practice for hundreds of corrupt Las Vegas police officers: Conceal the facts, destroy and manufacture “evidence,” coerce selected eyewitnesses, and systematically demonize the deceased victim. The cover-up of Erik’s murder-by-cop was aided and abetted by the Clark County district attorney, an unprincipled union—the Las Vegas Police Protective Association—and wealthy power brokers who control The Strip.

My family filed two lawsuits in federal court—one against the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, the three shooters and the sheriff, Douglas Gillespie, and a second against Costco. For reasons unbelievable, both suits went nowhere. After the second was dismissed, our lawyer said, “I don’t think it’s possible to get justice in this town.”

The truth about Erik’s murder and its blatant cover-up is so bizarre that non-Las Vegas citizens would never believe it. Consequently, I resorted to asymmetric warfare. I wrote a novel based on the actual events of my son’s senseless execution. Entitled The Permit, the book is “faction”—truth wrapped in a techno-thriller story. The Permit is a fast-moving, riveting tale of intrigue, corruption and accountability, in which murder-by-cop victim “Erik Steele” was actually a covert assassin for Checkmate, an ultra-secret Department of Homeland Security counterterrorism team. Arrogant, low-intelligence Las Vegas Metro cops had brazenly killed a high-value federal agent. As Metro leaders soon realize, their trigger-happy cretins truly did kill the wrong guy.

Only in fiction was justice finally done.

READ: “Stop the Killing on Both Sides of the ‘Thin Blue Line’” By Bill Scott.

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William B. Scott, the late-Erik Scott’s father and author of “The Permit,” is a full-time author and consultant. He retired in 2007 as the Rocky Mountain Bureau Chief for Aviation Week & Space Technology. Over a 22-year career with the international magazine, he wrote more than 2,500 stories, and received 17 editorial awards. He is a coauthor of two other novels, “Space Wars: The First Six Hours of World War III” and “Counterspace: The Next Hours of World War III,” and a nonfiction book, “Inside the Stealth Bomber: The B-2 Story.”

During a nine-year Air Force career, Bill served as aircrew on classified airborne-sampling missions, collecting nuclear debris by flying through radioactive clouds; an electronics engineering officer at the National Security Agency, developing satellite communications security systems; and an instrumentation and flight test engineer on U.S. Air Force fighter and transport aircraft development programs.

Bill is a Flight Test Engineer graduate of the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School and a licensed commercial pilot with instrument and multi-engine ratings. He has logged approximately 2,000 hours on 80 aircraft types, and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from California State University-Sacramento.

Independence? It’s ‘EZ-Pass Up Our A-S’

America, BAB's A List, Constitution, History, Individual Rights

Some independence: It’s “EZ-Pass up our a-s,” says Myron Robert Pauli, Ph.D.

238 years ago in Philadelphia, a group of Americans adopted the world’s most famous grievance list against the British Empire and declared our independence. As Thomas Jefferson stated, “… unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. – That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men … ”

With some guts, guns, and help from Louis XVI, we secured our independence – that was the good news. The bad news was that America was left with the task of self-government. It didn’t start that well with squabbling local governments full of rogue demagogues appealing to indebted yahoos with paper money and contract repudiation. Alarmed men like Washington and Hamilton supported a federal government to keep the yahoos in check. Others like George Mason and Patrick Henry preferred 13 local independent confederacies over one big (potential) tyranny and became the Anti-Federalists.

Jefferson and Madison went along with the Federal idea with a Bill of Rights attached to limit the potential tyranny. And Ben Franklin prophetically said: “I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other.”

Fast forwarding to 2014, and we now celebrate our independence with military displays. We spend more on our Armed Forces than the rest of the world combined. We can kick anyone’s butt, even with such exemplary soldiers as Lynndie England, Chelsea Manning, Nidal Malik Hasan, and Bowe Bergdahl and with one hand tied behind our back! Even our Coast Guard has a larger budget than the British Navy! We can invade anyplace and install “democracy” in primitive cultures in the form of Diem, Thieu, Maliki, Karzai, or HumptyDumpty, until Americans get tired of the expenses and the troops returning in body-bags, without limbs and with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Our President can execute 16 year old Americans on his whim-wham by pushing buttons controlling drones. The local cops now are equipped with lasers, tasers, radars, ladars, mMine-Resistant Ambush Protected armored vehicles with turreted 50 cal machine guns, and even drones. Millions of bureaucrats, contractors, etc. can read our e-mail, regulate our soft drinks, fondle our privates, access our bank accounts, deny medical treatments, and track our movements.

It’s EZ-Pass up our a-s – and even small children can come equipped with transponders. Americans can be held incommunicado for years if captured on a “battlefield,” such as Chicago, provided the president labels them “terrorists.” Waterboarding, sleep deprivation, thermal discomfort and painful positioning is how we “secure these rights” in the 21st Century. Unless there’s permanent organ failure, it isn’t torture!

Our educational system spends more money than anyone else to churn out ADHD-drugged up functional illiterates with masters degrees and tons of student debt. The accredited over-tested narcissists having gone through years of New Math, Leave No Child Behind, Ebonics, Political Correctness, Common Core, and dozens of other bureaucratic fads taught by burned-out teachers in a system where administrators outnumber teachers.

Our Federal Reserve can miraculously create trillions of “dollars” at the press of a computer tab and, lo-and-behold, the banksters and hedge funds are bulging with newfound wealth. My 401k can rise $1000 while I’m in the bathroom. General Motors can turn out clunkers indefinitely and the people shout Amen! Employment drops 5 percent and inner cities resemble Hiroshima in 1945 while the Dow hits new highs.

But whatever corrupt rot, bureaucracy, dysfunctional hyperpartisan politics, or authoritarianism has evolved – it was not imposed on us by “terrorists,” Nazis, Commies, Martians, or even Mexicans, but by our own making (as Franklin foresaw). The self-government that was supposed to “secure these rights” now keeps us in a gilded cage with 500 TV channels in the Empire of the Welfare-Warfare State.

In the 1960’s show “The Prisoner,” Patrick Mc Goohan, “Number 6” was held captive in some “utopian ‘Village’” and asked, “Who is Number 1?” That’s easy, baby. It’s US! USA!! U-S-A!!!

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Myron Pauli with his late, lovely wife.

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Barely a Blog (BAB) contributor Myron Pauli grew up in Sunnyside Queens, went off to college in Cleveland and then spent time in a mental institution in Cambridge MA (MIT) with Benjamin Netanyahu (did not know him), and others until he was released with the “hostages” and Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1981, having defended his dissertation in nuclear physics. Most of the time since, he has worked on infrared sensors, mainly at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He was NOT named after Ron Paul but is distantly related to physicist Wolftgang Pauli; unfortunately, only the “good looks” were handed down and not the brains. He writes assorted song lyrics and essays reflecting his cynicism and classical liberalism. Click on the “BAB’s A List” category to access the Pauli archive.

UPDATED: Play Cops and Robbers In The US & We’ll Kill Ya

Europe, GUNS, Individual Rights, Private Property

The German consulate is demanding justice for seventeen-year-old Diren Dede, an exchange student who was shot dead by an American homeowner while burglarizing the Montana man’s garage. The alarm went off and so did a shot gun. Celal Dede, the dead boy’s dad, seen here weeping over a coffin draped in Arabic-etched fabric, declared: “America cannot continue to play cowboy.”

Really? And what was Dede junior playing at? It’s different here in the U.S. In places like the “Big Sky Country,” a man can still defend his castle. If you want to play cops and robbers, go to D.C., where residents are more likely to enjoy playing dead.

Note how the reporters have criminalized the homeowner, Markus Kaarma, and are making an effort to portray him as a stoned dope-head.

It’s very sad. A boy died. However, it’s also quite clear who here committed trespass.

UPDATE (5/21): Myron Pauli on Facebook:

“Notice the prosecutor already poisoning the public [jury pool] but spreading unproven accusations about the homeowner in the media. This is the Nifongian Lynch Mob mentality of those who should be dedicated to serve the cause of justice and not just make notches in some sort of victory belt. Personally, I am loathe to make any definitive judgements based on leaked sound-bites but the general concept of the sovereignty of private property is a sacred value. …
As for Germany lecturing America on morals and private property, I found out just yesterday that while my granduncle Lt. Julius Pascheles died in 1917 fighting FOR Germany, his widow, her parents, and all her nieces and nephews were murdered BY Germany – – – of course, they all might have just taken a spaceship to Neptune as part of a Jewish plot to extort money from Germany if you happen to be an 8th grader in California doing an assignment on whether there was a Holocaust (a new low in “public education” in America).”