Christmas? Hell, that’s nuthin’. You can forget Easter, Independence Day, Yom Kippur and Thanksgiving, too. In St. Louis, the one high holiday that trumps them all is Opening Day, which is today. The city’s a sea of red, with plenty of thinly-veiled, lamely transparent excuses for playing hooky proffered all across Cardinal Nation this afternoon as fans figure ways to skate out of work and catch the birds versus hated Cincinnati. If you’re lucky enough to have tickets, though, St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson has some advice for you . . .
“You can’t take your gun into the ballpark, even if you have a concealed carry permit you can’t take your gun into the ballpark. Don’t even bring your gun down and leave it locked in your car.”
Huh? We get that, like all MLB stadia, Busch is a gun-free zone. Ostensibly. But what’s that car thing?
“Unfortunately, there is a portion of the segment of the population that looks for people who leave their concealed carry in the car and then, in the second or third inning when people are enjoying the game, they go and break the window in the car and perhaps steal the gun.”
Isn’t that what car safes are for? And, you know, cops? But there’s good news. No one really has to worry about crime in or around the ballpark. Just ask the chief.
“Unless you’re engaged in a lifestyle that’s going to put you at risk, you’re not going to be the victim of violent crime going to a baseball game. You don’t need to bring your conceal and carry, you don’t need to bring your guns.”
Really? We know you’re relatively new to the job, chief. Maybe you haven’t had time to get the lay of the land yet. Until then, though, we think we’re going with a better-safe-than-sorry approach if it’s OK with you. Or even if it’s not. Go Cards!
Gun control advocates are assaulting our Constitution. What’s needed is Legal hardball. Example-if I threaten/scare you- you can get a restraining order against me and probably(depending on county/state)it will lead to my arrest. How about
a restraining order against these anti American/constitutional abusers(politicians
et al) that they scare me as infringing on my freedoms—To have these fools Arrested!. Would take a $fund as they would( !), to defend themselves using our
tax money in a competent/incompetent court. What would be their defense?
Trashing the Constitution and the People.
Remember complainers the People(groupies) of CT voted him in???maybe a restraining order against CT citizens by American citizens bordering CT to
keep them out of your/our state(s).
FYI, Mo state law says no CCW in sporting arena / stadium over with seating over 5,000, regardless of Cardinal policy. 4,999 is A-OK though. Go figure.
So, before you leave your gun locked in the car you wave it around and loudly announce you’re leaving a gun unattended in your car? Do the thieves simply break into every car hoping to find a gun? If they do what does that say about the safety and security of the ballpark?
“Unless you’re engaged in a lifestyle that’s going to put you at risk, you’re not going to be the victim of violent crime going to a baseball game. You don’t need to bring your conceal and carry, you don’t need to bring your guns.”
So, if, just saying, IF something were to happen to somebody who has a CCW and isn’t allowed heat, is the Chief now personally liable? …along with the city?
Yes, because only criminals get robbed in public places..
You want your up/down +/- vote, do ye? Okay…. hear me out, slime: IF YOU WILL AGREE to ONE YEAR without your bodyguards or your privileged weapons, ONE DAY FROM THAT, we will sit down and hammer out any sort of control measure you want!
READY TO BEGIN, sheets-fer-brains?
Why are anti-gunners angry? Because having a wild hair up one’s @ss will do that. That’s why.
And they don’t just hate guns. They hate us. And I hate them right back.
The only real way to conclude this test would be to take an ice pick and stab the vest. A nice, thin, sharp implement like that should go cleanly through the vest better than the proverbial ‘hot knife through butter’. But then you would have to carry the wood piece stuck to the vest home with you. Plus, the gun grabbers would then try to ban ice picks. On second thought, never mind.
Female solipsism. Remember Sandy Hook: it was just like it happened to her personally. She is offended and disturbed that anyone would disrespect those people by doing anything that had anything to do with encouraging more people to carry weapons around – weapons that can kill children!!
I think they should have seized Holmes, not his weapons. I know it’s been said before by many but, if you can’t be trusted with a gun maybe you can’t be trusted to be loose amongst us.
As for the NRA and the crazies winning the day. America would be better off if we did. Anybody seen as a crazy by the anti’s is saner than the average bear.
This article is probably the most “emotion-riddled” article I’ve ever read. Full of paranoias, fantasies and “wild” half-baked assertions that carry little or no reality at all. Now, let me correct this flotsome with some “reality” based facts.
A) “Home Carrying is Patently ridiculous.” In actuality, Home Carrying is not so ridiculous. Any legal gun owner is not so blatantly clumsy/unsafe as this person claims. A legal gun owner trained in the safe use/handling of a firearm knows how to both use and store a firearm. Where it concerns kids, legal gun owners are smart enough to teach their kids about guns and gun safety. The happenstance of crime may be a very small one, but for the trained gun owner, being prepared to counter a crime is KEY.
B) It is Paranoid. In actuality, it’s called “prepared.” It is the lax gun owner who one day will fall victim to crime. The chances of a home invasion are not as small as some people claim and our homes aren’t the safe havens they once used to be. Anyone with years of experience knows this. And what if its a mother home alone, it is even more important for her to be armed to protect her children. And these days, it’s criminals who look for kids that are left unattended in the front yard who fall victim to criminal lures and kidnappings. But, with an armed adult standing there watching their kids, kidnappings are far less likely to happen when there is a trained gun in the area.
C) You look like a wacko and might act like one too. What a LIBERAL response of fear. Only to a person who is a complete fearful recluse and xenophobe would this be true. You call us extremists, you call us fascists, there is nothing of the sort. Protecting oneself and their family is not an extremist or fascist act, unless you ask Obama. Friends and family members are not so likely to shun one who takes their safety seriously, especially if they might share the same views. The thing about gun owners is that anyone who carries a firearm has to keep their emotions in check at all times. Emotionally unstable people should not even have a firearm in their home let alone carry one at ANY time. That is just a disaster waiting to happen.
The 90/91/92% thing referring to percentage of the Americans who want background checks claim is as fake as the 52% of Americans who want to legalize pot claim. It’s propaganda.
In both instances, the general question is used to promote different results.
“Do you believe there should be background checks” question is turned into
“Do you believe there should be expanded background checks” or
“Do you believe there should be background checks on private sales”
they even throw in the assault weapons ban and expanded magazines into a conversation still even though that has nothing to do with those issues.
The original question was the first one, background checks. Of course most of us would poll this, but they throw in the other two and other claims into these polls and try to pass it along as legit.
With pot it’s the same deal(no pun intended)
“Would you vote for SOME TYPE of legalization” Well not most but about half of us would say yes, some type. Being most are clueless about the language used in both issues many assume legal being de-criminal or medical, or very restrictive legal, not full legal to where it’s sold in every corner store.
The media, mostly liberal, purposely misuses language for propaganda.
In the case of pot there is nowhere near 52% that would vote for legalization. I understand many potheads(less than 10% of the pop) , those already or planning to invest in the industry and the hardcore libertarians who wish every drug to be legal in the name of freedom may vote for it(hypocritical being it’s more taxing), but this is still a great minority and even adding in the regular folks who know the war on drugs is a failure that would vote for some legalization, won’t, not most, not 52%.
Same for gun control. They tried to trick us and the nation into believing that over 90% of us are for greatly expanded background checks, universal checks even for private sales among both strangers and family, and more restrictions on firearms in general. They are trying to force this check line down our throats and it won’t be a surprise when the feds use the model of some states and first ask, then beg, then force gun registration on us if this shit doesn’t stop here, now! None of what they say it is true! They keep feeding us that it’s just the NRA lobby that is holding this up, bullshit, it’s gun owners across the nation speaking out in the millions against new gun legislation. But you don’t see this in media, you will see short coverages of small rallies in some city where they make a redneck or gunnut comment, they will show all the crime in overkill yet never mention who is really responsible for most gun crimes because it’s racist and politically incorrect, they never talk about the daily incidents with guns that save lives, and on and on with their anti-gun rhetoric.
They want to give us pot for our guns, I say no thank you, and f you. I’d be fricking embarrassed to be from CO or CT. What a downhill direction they want for the rest of us.
Just so frustrated period.
5th Amendment, Self-Incrimination, & Gun Registration
http://www.nraila.org/news-issues/articles/1999/5th-amendment,-self-incrimination,-gu.aspx?s=%22Registration+%26+Licensing%22&st=&ps=
U.S. v. Haynes (1968)
A stunning lack of critical thinking. “Even under the new restrictions, [Aurora, Colorado spree killer James] Holmes might well have been able to buy guns because he was not diagnosed as mentally ill until too late.” Well, DUH! He was able to buy guns for the simple reason that he had not been adjudicated mentally ill or subjected to an involuntary commitment as a danger to himself or others–and nothing in the current bills, which only expand the class of persons subject to a background check, would have or could have changed that fact at all. Moreover, those “officially classified” as mentally ill cannot buy guns under the current system. And without throwing due process right out the window, no changes in the background check system will ever change that circumstance; but this is in fact what the author suggests: the mere accusation that you are crazy is sufficient grounds for the police to seize your firearms. Did the author not consider the implications of such a suggestion?
And then there is this whole thing about tracing. What is the point of being able to trace a gun? All tracing can accomplish is to find out who last engaged in a recorded sale of a firearm; it proves nothing about who had it at the time of a shooting. If a gun is stolen or lost, tracing will tell you absolutely nothing.
In my home state, as everywhere else firearms are not allowed in sporting arenas, as well as other designated places. The law is the law and I can respect that. Fortunately in my state we have a concealed WEAPONS permit which covers all weapons including firearms. I have learned over the years, if I can’t carry a gun to a particular place, I will carry some other weapon, or if need be a makeshift weapon that will not alert security when they wand me. I strive to NEVER leave my home disarmed……..as your crappiest moment in life will likely arise when you least expect it…………. 🙂
This Police Chief has zero authority to take away people’s 2nd Amendment rights!
EVERY FAN SHOULD SHOW UP WEARING A HANDGUN IN PLAIN SIGHT! WHAT WILL THIS CHIEF DO, CALL OUT HIS GESTAPO? THEY WILL BE BADLY OUTNUMBERED!
That’s what’s up. Can’t wait to see all that comes from it!
> Cops Oppose Gun Control
Based on Farago’s summary here, a more accurate headline would be “Cops Don’t Believe Gun Control Will Reduce Crime”.
Only one question asked them whether they supported or opposed a measure
One can believe that gun control will not reduce crime and still support gun control for the sake of civilian disarmament.
how’s it hanging?, from Hidden Hills, California I want to say, I like this blog post. However, it is strange how I ended up on your blog post. I searched for elegant limousine on Google and ended up on your website. I must say I do like your site and will check back soon. But I need to find the limo I was originally looking for first. Have a great day! adieu.
So how do you feel about this idea 8 months after you posted this article?
I have not owned a handgun since 1964. Given the events taking place all across our nation, I am going to purchase a couple, with adequate ammunition. I sa some High Point pistols in a shop today. The prices looked great, but the guns looked and felt awful. My gut said “No!” I’m going to pony up a few more bucks and go with S&W or Taurus.
A couple of weekends ago, I stayed in a hotel over on North 9th street in St. Louis, not real far from the stadium or the Arch. My weapon was carried to and from the car and went with me anywhere I drove. The bellman at the hotel warned us not to be out in the parking lot after dark.
Do these people, need to declare the cost of this plane ride, on their income tax forms ? Just asking.
Go talk to your friendly neighborhood LEO. He’ll tell you that “a searchable database so authorities can trace a gun found in a crime back to the point of sale,” is a solution in search of a problem.
First they complain that we don’t have background checks for private sales, so Coburn offers them a way to get it done, which they reject because there’s no way to verify the background check was done for a particular weapon.
But let’s say we don’t shut them down at this point as obvious liars and try to humor them further. There exists a mathematical beastie known as a secure hash function. You feed it in an arbitrary amount of data and it spits out a number of fixed size, say 128 bits. If the hash function is secure, there’s no way to reverse the process and find out what data you started with short of brute-force trying every possible combination – but if you already know what’s supposed to go into it, you can easily check that the result matches what was expected. What this boils down to is that rather than giving the feds the name of the seller, make and model of weapon, etc., we can feed all that information into a hash function and send the result. Then when the seller claims he did indeed perform the background check as required, they put his SSN + some information on the weapon and confirm the result matches a hash code sent to their system for a check on the buyer.
My main concern with that is putting together enough entropy to feed into a hash function such that it would be impractical for the government to simply brute-force every entry in the database on their own time.
All this is academic of course, because proposing such a system would only serve to expose that what they’re after is a registry, not an enforcement mechanism.
So what I’m hearing is “We have to do SOMETHING!” or “It doesn’t matter if the laws we pass are actually effective, as long as it’s enough to change people’s opinions of guns. If we enact enough laws to make guns seem bad, people will think they are bad”
The sad thing is she might be right.
Rules for Radicals:
“RULE 11: “If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive.” Violence from the other side can win the public to your side because the public sympathizes with the underdog.”
“RULE 13: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions”