“As a demonstration against police shootings made its way downtown here on Thursday, it differed from others around the country in one startling way: Twenty to 30 of the marchers showed up with AR-15s and other types of military-style rifles and wore them openly, with the straps slung across their shoulders and backs. In Texas, it was not only legal. It was commonplace.” Nothing happened. And yet nytimes.com reckons it’s cause for defenestration. Or something like that.
wmur reports that “Brookline police arrested a Robert Napior, 62, for theft of lost or mislaid property and a felon in possession of a firearm. Earlier in the day, an ex-girlfriend of Napior who had lived with him reported that she had purchased two shotguns while living with him. Upon moving out, the firearms were left at the residence.” There were more firearms in the apartment, safely stored. Bad boy. Op-Sec people. Op-Sec.
nydailynews.com cordially invites you to connect these dots: “The Bronx is a little lighter on fire power after the NYPD netted 165 guns in buybacks at two churches on Saturday . . . Shooting incidents are down 19.3% citywide compared to the same time period last year, with 531 shootings through July 31, compared to 662 in 2015.” How’d it go?
Knock knock! Or not. A Safariland press release reveals that the NYPD are donning new lids and plating-up: “The Safariland Group’s ballistic equipment being readied for deployment to the NYPD include 20,000 high-performance Delta™ 4 helmets; 12,000 Hardwire® Type III armor plates and 6,000 TAC PR plate racks.” That’ll be $7.3m (and the cost of maintenance, storage and administration) Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer.
“About 9 in 10 young adults say they support criminal background checks for all gun sales . . . Stiffer penalties for violating existing gun laws are supported by 9 in 10 young adults, including about 9 in 10 whites, Asian-Americans and Latinos, as well as 8 in 10 African-Americans. Fifty-seven percent of young Americans support a ban on semi-automatic weapons, with support especially high – 74 percent – among Asian-Americans.” Dubious poll from a dubious source: “GenForward is a survey by the Black Youth Project at the University of Chicago with the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.” Anyway, how many Americans supported slavery back in the day?
Doing it for the (tourists’) children: DC Travel Guide Rejects NRA Museum Ad – “’I am writing again about the ad your team has recently submitted for the Destination DC’s Official Visitors Guide,’ Claire Carlin, VP of partnerships & alliances of Destination DC, told NRA officials in an email obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. ‘We recognize the place that firearms have had in history, but have decided not to run any ads that depict weapons or ammunition at this time.’ The organization told the NRA it was willing to run an ad for the firearms museum, as long as it does not depict any firearms.”
“Sporting a 43-percent wider field of view than traditional prism-based sights in the market, the BRAVO4 Battle Sight is the world’s first ultra-wide 10° field-of-view optic in its category. The flat, distortion-free target image of the BRAVO4 boasts unprecedented edge-to-edge clarity by means of low-dispersion glass, SpectraCoat lens coatings and an aspherical lens design. The magnesium BRAVO4 is a rugged, dependable and no-nonsense fixed-power optic. The BRAVO4 comes with MOTAC Motion Activation technology to extend battery life of the illuminated reticle, an adjustable eyepiece of +/-2 diopter and horseshoe dot etched-glass reticles in either 5.56/7.62 or 300 Blackout with 12 levels of illumination intensity.” So much want.
“CCI Ammunition, the only American manufacturer of handgun shotshells, introduces all-new handgun shotshells featuring larger shot for deeper penetration and extended range . . . CCI has added to its one-of-a-kind offering with exciting new CCI Big 4 loads to extend the range and capabilities of these downsized shotshells, thanks to a payload of No. 4 lead shot.”
Assault-Rifle Camp for Kids, Courtesy of the American Military. A look at the Army’s annual marksmanship clinic for children aged 9 to 18. Uh, those aren’t “assault rifles.” They’re not even modern sporting rifles. Anyway, a remarkably pro-gun piece from the otherwise irretrievably anti-gun rights Atlantic Monthly. Even a stopped clock and all that.
“The ominous 50th anniversary of the University of Texas mass shooting from atop the 307-foot UT Tower should signal lawmakers in states like Kansas to abort plans to allow firearms on university and college campuses.” Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it. [Note to kansascity.com‘s editorial board: next time find a more detailed historical link; check out the role an armed civilian played in ending that UT mass shooting.]
abcnews.go.com is happy to present a study based on the idea that correlation equals causation: “One of the most startling of Johnston and Joy’s findings is that the more tweets that occur about a mass shooting, the higher the chance of another gun massacre occurring soon after. If, after a school shooting, at least 10 out of every million tweets mentions the incident, the likelihood that there will be another school shooting increases to 50 percent within eight days after the initial violence and to 100 percent within 35 days afterward, according to the paper.”