A parent volunteer at Newington Elementary School in Summerville, South Carolina is demonstrating how to be a bad parent and a bad gun owner in one shot. Stick with me here, I’m breaking this one into sections. On February 6th, police were called to the school because a 2nd grader had found a gun in her book bag. Reports say that when the child discovered the gun, she immediately called her teacher over and told her. The student’s mother works as a parent volunteer at the school. Now, we back up a day, and hear from another volunteer (we’ll call her “A”) that the same mother had bragged to her about having a gun . . .
opening her purse and showing her a black and pink pistol (actual gun not shown). When questioned by “A” about the wisdom of having the gun, her response was that she had a concealed weapons permit. [Not for much longer, I’m thinking.] Volunteer A then told another volunteer (“B”) about the gun, and the next day (now we’re back to February 6th), “B” told the principal. That same day, the mother had a conversation with one of the volunteers who the previous day had asked her if having the gun at school was a good idea. That volunteer said the mother became “flustered” and left. Later that day, the pink & black Ruger .380 was found in the child’s bag. The child’s teacher later told police that the mother had stopped by her daughter’s classroom and asked the teacher if she could put a book in her bag. The teacher OK’d it, and the mom put the bag back in the classroom after she was done.
So, in case you had trouble following the Pulp Fiction-esque timeline twisting, here’s the short, in-order version: Mom brags about gun to coworkers, coworkers question mom’s gun, mom and coworkers have another conversation about gun the next day, mom gets nervous that she might get reported for having it, mom decides to stash gun in her child’s bookbag so she won’t have it if confronted, child (unfortunately for mom) finds gun, tells teacher, police are called, The Aristocrats.
A man traveling south to Mexico was arrested recently at the Brownsville & Matamoros Bridge in Brownsville, Texas, after Customs & Border Protection officers discovered he was carrying two boxes (100 rounds) of .40-caliber ammunition inside a box containing juice bottles. The man agreed to give statements to agents with Homeland Security without an attorney present, and told them that in the last six months he’d “smuggled approximately 15,000 rounds of various high-caliber rifle and handgun ammunition and approximately 600 magazines for various high-caliber rifles and handguns and delivered them to unknown persons in Mexico.” Well, smuggling is bad, of course, but I’m not nearly as mad as I would be if he’d been transporting .22LR ammo out of the country. That’s a hanging offense at this point.
Colion Noir quick-reviews the SIG Sauer P229 .40 S&W.
Just an advisory for the California folks. State Sen. Kevin de Lèon, of “ghost gun” fame, is proposing an ammunition background check bill, currently under consideration in the Assembly Public Safety Committee. Capital Public Radio reports he says that his bill would provide commonsense safeguards to the sale of a potentially lethal product and give law enforcement a useful tracking tool. “We have no regulations whatsoever. We don’t know who buys it. We don’t know who sells it. And that’s simply wrong.” This will be de Lèon’s second attempt at this type of bill; a previous effort in 2008 failed in the Senate. Governor Jerry Brown’s office is working with Senator de Lèon on drafting the latest bill.
Gabby Giffords is working on a book about gun control. She is collaborating with her husband, Space Cadet Mark Kelly on “Enough: Our Fight to Keep America Safe from Gun Violence.” The book is based on an essay by Giffords that appeared in the New York Times in April, in which she raged against the senators who blocked the gun control legislation that had failed to make it through the Senate. Kelly, in a statement released by Scribner, the book’s publisher, said in part, “As Second Amendment supporters and gun owners ourselves, we hope our book rouses the long-overdue conversation our country needs to make responsible changes to our gun laws so that no more precious lives are lost.” The book is due out in June, be sure to reserve your copy so you don’t miss out.
Primary Weapons Systems Half Cocked returns with Episode #2 (I guess the SHOT Show episode doesn’t count), “Lizard Lick.” It’s, um… not safe for work.
It’s gotta be the heat.