“A Waterloo resident who was shot and killed by police after allegedly pointing a gun at a crowd Sunday morning had obtained a permit to carry a gun days earlier,” wcfcourier.com reports. “Sheriff Tony Thompson, who issued [Derrick] Ambrose’s permit to carry a weapon, said Ambrose [above] was within Iowa law to obtain the permit. A change in state law in 2011 took discretion out of the permit process and required county sheriffs to issue permits if applicants are free of felony convictions and mental health committals and undergo training . . .
Thompson said Ambrose wouldn’t have received a permit under the old discretionary process. Thompson said Ambrose originally was turned down for the permit in June 2012 because of a pending misdemeanor marijuana possession charge stemming from a December 2011 traffic stop where police found a burned cigar that smelled like marijuana in an acquaintance’s car Ambrose was driving . . .
Courier archives also show that police tasered Ambrose in April 2010 during a disturbance where people allegedly were blocking traffic and then pelted a responding squad car with rocks. Ambrose was arrested for interference and assault on an officer, but the case later was expunged.
Whether or not Ambrose “deserved” a concealed carry license or, for that matter, deserved to die, is a matter of investigation and debate. But not if you’re a gun control advocate.
The first comment [by “Bailey”] underneath the original news story illustrates an important point; some people believe Americans’ Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms depends on other people’s ability to exercise that right responsibly. And how.
First of all, to the families of all involved, sympathy to you all. A family has lost their son and a man now must live with the memory of the moment when he took a life. This is difficult for everyone involved. To the parents of young Mr Ambrose, may I make a plea and a kind suggestion.
However absurd it may appear to be at the moment, please just think about this and give it a fair chance: “You now have the opportunity to prevent others from this same grief….to make a difference in this community….to help with a new beginning….to make a start at stopping the violence. At the funeral service of your son stand up at the church pulpit and ask those friends and family of your son who own or carry weapons to please stand up.
Then ask those who own and are not carrying at that exact moment to please sit down. To those who are carrying at that time, ask them to come forward and surrender their weapon and bury those weapons with your beloved son so that others will not suffer the same heartbreak you have suffered.
Plead with everyone in attendance to imagine the heartache and loss you are now suffering and to understand that carrying guns, or owning them for anything other than to hunt animals or protect the inside of your home, is the reason for your pain. Ask them to turn in their weapons so that they can be destroyed…..
And, as the days progress and time passes, might I encourage you to contact the mothers and fathers of other victims who have lost their lives to gun violence in the area and sponsor–with the authorities–a day in which they may turn in their weapons, no questions asked. If those of you who feel the pain caused by gun carrying and gun crimes, speak out and unionize your goal to the public. Stand up and be recognized. Help others to see what this has done to you and your loved ones.
Please help to discourage the carrying of weapons or the unnecessary ownership of something that can ultimately cause heartache and grief. I believe YOU can make a difference.”
Imagine that.
Dear Bailey,
As to your funeral theatrics suggestion, I hear my mother saying,”…and if everyone else jumped off a cliff….”
The reason for your pain is your son was a misanthropic idiot,which is his fault alone,and in no way connected to the choices of responsible folks.
Amen
Amen.
I’ll jump off the cliff so long as everyone else goes first to give me a soft pile to land on… /sarcasm
Well said.
Any idea if carrying in a church is even legal in Iowa?
It is legal. Unless they have posted no guns signs and asked you to leave in which case you would be trespassing.
In such a case, You just have a keltec 380 or similar on yourself and nowbody will be the wiser. Better judged by twelve than carried by six.
This “Bailey” person’s suggestion to the “grieving family” represents nothing more than the typical emotionally charged rhetorical propaganda of the gun grabbers, but this particular case is kind of sick. I guess desperation pushes the boundaries.
I don’t see how his CCW permit contributed to this incident. Maybe I am missing something but I believe he would have been carrying the weapon anyway, with our without the permit. His arrest record and previous police related charges make it pretty clear he was headed for something like this in his life. The CCW permit is just a piece of paper to these guys which allows the to carry until such time as they commit a crime with their weapon. The permit makes it easier to avoid LE charges if they get Terry stopped and found to be carrying. I see this as a perversion of the CCW not as the CCW is the enabler of the crime. The simple fix is to not issue a CCW permit while you are on a criminal docket for drug related or felony offenses.
I live in Iowa and was a victim of the old system too. I have had no brushes with the law except one speeding ticket. In Iowa the old system required you to go to the local sheriff and ask him permission to give you a license to carry. From the outside looking in, people thought the sheriff would thoughtfully give a license to a lawful responsible citizen after a fair testing procedure. That is far from the truth. The truth was some sheriffs were tyrants or “no issue” people no matter the need. There were a good chunk of counties where sheriffs regarded all their constituents with distrust and no matter if you were being stalked by the Mob and you were an upstanding citizen there wasn’t a chance in hell you were getting a license. There were other Sheriffs who put restrictions on the licenses that made them unusable like “only valid if in possession of 500 dollars or more”, “only valid if possessed inside business”, “only valid for the hours of 9am to 5 pm” and so on. Then there were the sheriffs that issued licenses to their friends, reminiscent of Boss Hogg instead of the Andy Griffith persona they ran on for reelection. Don’t get me wrong, there were honest sheriffs that ran their shops based on a reasonable level of qualification to get the CCW to satisfy the minimum standards and issued the licenses equally. I lived in Polk county where the sheriff was such a fair guy and issued licenses that looked like a driver’s license. I had a permit for almost 5 years before moving one county over. In Jasper county it was a boss hoggish atmosphere for licenses and I was denied my license because “he didn’t trust me”, “he has been fooled before”, and I didn’t have a good enough reason. I joined the Iowa Carry lobby group the next month and we worked towards getting the law changed. A year or so later the state came up with the Shall Issue Law and now every one is treated fairly. I think the issue with the above mentioned idiot waving his gun and getting shot was the other laws were not enforced. Marijuana charges and assault on a police officer should have stuck thus if they had, he wouldn’t have been dead. This guy already demonstrated he was not a responsible law abiding citizen.
“Please help to discourage the carrying of weapons or the unnecessary ownership of something that can ultimately cause heartache and grief. I believe YOU can make a difference.”……. I for one regard my firearms ownership as NECESSARY, ’nuff said…….
My owning and carrying firearms is a right. Necessity doesn’t enter into the question. What does matter here is that I’ve committed no crimes while exercising my rights. I have killed no one, nor have I harmed anyone. Some of my friends know, but that’s because they’re part of the gun culture too. I’ve discussed the matter with my students when it’s relevant to the topic of the day. But again, I’ve harmed no one.
Bailey needs to get to know a better group of people.
Looks like they are still considering it ok to dance in the blood of a shooting!!!
Just freaking oozing sympathy and caring for the family in their time of loss!!!
I’ve carried CC and OC for 14 years; the only time I pulled it to use it other than at the shooting range was when 4 pit bulls running loose jumped my dog when we were out walking the neighborhood. ( The pit bulls ran away without even growling at me when I started to aim my gun at them)
Never felt the need to wave my gun at bad drivers or rude elevator operators.
I don’t know but call me strange, but I don’t think the gun determines if I’m going to act the idiot or not.
Will Obama and Holder send in an FBI team to seek out anyone who can give evidence that the police shooter(s) have made racist comments in their private lives (just like the FBI did with George Zimmerman) hoping to prove the shooting was a hate crime? I think not in this case since it was the State that did the shooting.
I’m also still utterly baffled by Bailey’s comment. I’ve re-written this comment about 5 times now, including a couple shots early this morning, but I still can’t quite express how utterly backwards, silly, illogical, and freaking bleeding-heart-so-my-brain-can’t-get-oxygen dumb that “surrender your guns and bury them” line really is.
Is this what it’s like to be conservative and enraged at liberals/progressives/damn dirty hippies? :p (flamebait over)
Will the grieving parents try to trademark AMBROSE? Yeah, St. Skittles phony family of the year, I’m looking at you.
This thing is snowballing… Race, placement of shot, why the cops shot more than once.
“Mayor Buck Clark (bleeding heart liberal) described the shooting of Derrick Ambrose as another example of a “culture of gun violence” that must end.
The Division of Criminal Investigation is investigating Ambrose’s shooting by officer Kyle Law.
Authorities say Law responded early Sunday to a reported shooting at a bar, where he saw Ambrose pointing a gun. Law ordered Ambrose to drop his gun, but Ambrose fled. During a pursuit, investigators say, Ambrose stepped out from behind a tree and Law shot him.
Friends want to know why Ambrose was shot in the head.”
“He confirmed that police recovered a gun but said he didn’t have any other details.
Trelka challenged claims that the shooting was racially motivated. Ambrose is black, and the local chapter of the NAACP has called for a federal investigation of the incident.
“The officers do all they can regardless of race, beliefs,” Trelka said. “It’s our role and our goal to protect this community and have a blindfold on our eyes in regard to issues such as that.”
City officials cut short Boston when she attempted to ask a question during the conference.
Afterward, Boston said she had heard Ambrose was shot more than once and wanted to know why, if the first shot struck his head, were other shots fired? She suggested the officer should have stopped after the first bullet struck.”
Something else that no one has mentioned is that the picture of the guy who was shot looks like he’s 14 years old, the press did the same thing with Trayvon Martin.
Probably a current picture isn’t very supportive of the meme being created, again, by the MSM, of an “innocent child” gunned down by those “evil racist” police. Unless he’s a really young looking 21 year old.
I bet it is Obama’s other son that would look like him if he had a son!!!
Of course Obama will get to the bottom of this shooting too!!
He’s got that half-sleepy look to his eye lids suggesting he’s another drug user.
“Gun Control Advocates Wave the Bloody Shirt. Again. Still.”
STOP IT! TTAG is a worst offender when it comes to “waving the bloody shirt”. Need proof? Every ‘DGU of the Day’, every ‘It should have been a DGU’, every “IGOTD”, etc., etc. TTAG usually “waves the bloody shirt” two or three times every day.
Our motives and our desired ‘ends’ are very different than the gun control advocates, but many of our ‘means’ are pretty close to the same. Does the end justify the means? In this case, yes. But don’t criticize the other side for using the same tactics that you are using. That is just hypocritical.
I was thinking TTAG is just “fighting fire with fire”, but I understand where you are coming from. I just don’t know how successful taking the higher ground would be in this nasty fight. With the vocal gun grabbers vilifying gun owners and 2A Rights Supporters at every opportunity without regard for established facts and without hesitation to twist, fear-monger and out and out lie about us, I don’t think there’s any point in trying to be “nice” about fighting back.
It’s like when Hitler was on the rise in NAZI Germany, some people tried to respond to the NAZI’s hysterical, lie-infested propaganda with calm logic and reason. Those people lost big time and paid a terrible price for the loss.
OTOH some of the rhetoric in the articles and comments here makes me think we too often paint ourselves almost exactly like the gun grabbers’ propaganda claims, and makes us appear too rigid in our thinking.
The people whose minds we are trying to change are too willing to accept the negatives about us because they are ignorant and afraid and the negative, emotionally-charged claims of the gun control crowd offer an easy rationalization and way out for them. They want to “feel safe”, but don’t want to accept any direct responsibility for their own safety. Too many of them think of it in terms of “it will only happen to someone else, not to me, but I should support these purported common sense gun control measures because it is my moral obligation to look out for the other guy who is the victim”. Their laissez faire attitude makes it extremely difficult to get them to recognize their erroneous rationalizations and step up to commit to their own defense (and that of others).
I applaud your bravado in speaking your mind about this matter, as we’ll probably both get flamed for these remarks.
This was supposed to be a comment @Bob. Guess I clicked the wrong level link. Sorry.
I’m not saying we should stop “waving the bloody shirt”. Although it may sometimes seem a little cold-hearted, it is a VERY effective way to influence people’s opinions. I also don’t think we should avoid using any weapon in this war for public acceptance, as long as the other side is using it.
I just think we should stop accusing the other side of doing something wrong, when we are doing the same thing. Stop the hypocrisy.
I understand what you are saying and agree with your point about hypocrisy.
@Bob After sleeping on this, I need to offer you my sincere apology because I missed your exact point in my first response and just saying that I agree with your point (which IS your exact point) about hypocrisy is insufficient.
I do have the concerns I expressed, but it should have been a post having nothing to do with what you were actually saying.
It does not serve our side of the crusade to preserve our Second Amendment Rights to accuse the other side of wrong-doing when we are both using the same tactics. The argument is emotionally-charged because peoples’ lives are at stake and it is too easy to let emotions rule better sense. Both sides are committed to saving lives, but the Grand Canyon gulfs between us as to how best to save those lives. So, it will continue.
Anyway, I do acknowledge that I missed your original point, and I do apologize for that error. I agree with what you are saying and hope you will accept my apology for misaddressing what you were saying in my first response.
Hey. RF. Suggestion? Stop reporting on the anti-gunners waving the bloody shirt. You do it all the time with Should Have Been a DGU.