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Jody Herring (courtesy myspace.com)

Accused killer couldn’t own gun; police say she had one, the usatoday.com headline proclaims. As far as I’m concerned, that’s all I need to know. How Jody Herring got ahold of a .270 Remington rifle, with which she shot a social worker and three family members, is not a big deal. Unless Son of Sam handed her the gun and told her to shoot a bunch of people. (Note: Son of Sam was a labrador retriever, who denied any involvement in David Berkowitz’ killing spree.) I mean, we’re talking Vermont. Remington hunting rifles are more common than socialists. And that’s saying something. While . . .

I extend my condolences to the victims of Herring’s homicidal fury, the Burlington Free Press – for it is they who originally penned the piece – missed the boat. They should treat the source of her gun as a footnote to the more important story: why did she do it? What could have been done to prevent it? Gun control? Obviously not.

Absent from a lengthy affidavit prosecutors filed before Jody Herring’s arraignment Monday on a murder charge were details about how the authorities believe Herring obtained the .270-caliber Remington rifle used in the killing. Court papers said she was disqualified from possessing a gun or ammunition under the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, a 1993 federal gun-control law.

People are disqualified from owning, possessing or purchasing a gun if they have a felony conviction, a domestic assault conviction or a domestic assault charge that includes an element of violence, such as simple assault, according to the Vermont Crime Information Center.

Herring was arrested on a misdemeanor count of domestic assault in 2005. She later resolved the case to a disorderly conduct conviction and received a suspended 60-day jail sentence and probation, court records show.

So the “domestic assault loophole” wasn’t looping. And yet what are the chances that the antis will simply chalk this one up to something, anything other than a sick, morally bankrupt individual acting out her rage? None.

Meanwhile, Vermont’s gift to the Democratic race for president’s peeps are silently cursing the killer for not using an “assault rifle,” which Mr. Sanders wishes to ban. Tough luck guys. No luck next time.

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64 COMMENTS

  1. I will say, the socialist concentration varies heavily by geography in Vermont. Burlington, Montpelier, Middlebury, Waitsfield? Definitely. Drive 20 minutes outside of any of those towns and you’ll find a real different picture, especially if you get as far as the NEK.

    • +100

      Been saying that for years. Peeps around the country hear “Vermont” and think: gay marriage, commies, hippies, pot-smokers, etc, when it’s just the major “cities” like Burlington and Rutland, the capital, Montpelier, a.k.a. Montpeculiar, and the college towns that are swarming with granola-heads, lawyers, SJW’s, and peeps not-from-around-here, who once having moved here, immediately set about trying to replicate the places they came from.

      Go twenty minutes or a half-hour away from those towns and it’s a whole different ball game.

      • Not to take away from your (true) statement, but it’s pretty much like that all over the USA. Collectivists gravitate toward cities, and the culture of collectivism and top-down control over the lives of individuals are promulgated in urban culture. Of course, the concentrated population centers make the tax cattle easier to watch and control as well, which is a feature rather than a bug of UN Agenda 21 (the implementation of which is generally called something like “sustainable development”). Sorry, veered off topic at the end, but it’s an idea worth planting periodically because far too few people are aware of it.

        • In large part, you are correct, but, cities have a way of gradually turning one into a collectivist. It’s all part of the hold-over of city-state thinking from back in the Middle Ages. In a modern nuclear world, the city-state mentality of there being safety in great numbers, is now an archaic afterthought….and not a benefit, but a strategic liability.

          Isn’t it a tragic irony how so many of the original 13 colonies then, are now more in tune with the collectivism of a feudal king? That this continent and country were conquered entirely because of the advent of the bang-stick?
          Where did she get the gun? If she couldn’t get a gun, would we see headlines asking, “Where did she get the knife?….hammer?…..baseball bat?….etc? That’s how irrelevant the “Where did she get the gun?” question is.

        • Absolutely.

          I momentarily thought UN Agenda 21 was a right wing hoax – until I continually saw those philosophies in use. The cities get bigger, hold more voters, and swing hard left. They become ridiculously easy to control because the only job they are *allowed* to do is what the government or perhaps a private company licenses / permits / employs them to do. And they feel like they have power because they can report their neighbors for failure to comply with the regulations in their tiny areas of expertise.

          Nobody owns much of anything, except perhaps a tiny condo.

          Meanwhile the guy in the country has actual freedom and perhaps even the desire to use it. He can mend a fence, wash his truck, grow his own food, and hunt and manage his land. Even worse, he could generate his own power via solar and maybe even have his own well for water. As a gun owner, he or she is perfectly capable of defending his own property.

          The city denizen needs the government for food, power, water, protection, etc. Yet many are puffed up with empty pride because they live in an “important city.” Think NYC. But the self sufficient souls in the country have very little need of any sort of government. And the government really hates feeling unnecessary, because folks may actually discover that dirty little secret that most people actually don’t need government meddling in their everyday affairs.

    • When it comes to granola, birkenstocks & aging guys with gray ponytails,
      you left out Brattleboro & Putney in the SE corner of VT.

      Here’s the 2012 Vermont vote totals:
      Nominee Barack Obama Mitt Romney
      Party Democratic Republican
      Home state Illinois Massachusetts
      Running mate Joe Biden Paul Ryan
      Electoral vote 3 0
      Popular vote 199,239 92,698
      Percentage 66.57% 30.97%

      More than 2 to 1 leftist.

      • Actually, the percentage of Democrat to Republican is about 2-1 through out the whole country. States like NY and IL have more people in the large cities than they do in the rural towns, so that a city like Chicago may determine the laws for the rest of the state. That’s why the right lost to Obama twice, even though they had more money, and an extra 4 years to figure out how to beat him in 2012. With Trump breaking up what was left of the GOP and 17 candidates I doubt the Republicans can circle the wagons in time for a victory in 2016.

    • Same in WA State. The I-5 corridor which takes in Seattle is highly progressive. The balance of the State is primarily rural and or rural in attitude and supportive of the 2A, especially Eastern WA. I feel the good people’s pain in VT.

      • Even if you head 20 miles east/west from the population centers the state changes completely in attitude. It’s really confined to the I5/405 corridors, from Tacoma to Everett with Bellingham thrown in for good measure.

      • Twenty miles to the west from Burlap puts you in the Vampire State, just across Lake Champlain. The other towns, no. Ditto twenty miles west from Rutland and fewer miles west from college town Bennington. We’re roughly the size of New Hampshuh, with a statewide pop roughly equivalent to Boston’s.

  2. So let me get this straight: if someone is CHARGED with crime such as a “domestic assault charge that includes an element of violence” then they are disqualified from owning a gun? I thought one had to be CONVICTED to be disqualified.

    • That would be true in the United States of America. We stopped living there back when we let our politicians stop paying attention to the Constitution.

      • And “simple assault” as I understand it can be any physical contact, including lightly touching someone on the shoulder while you talk to them. Which is why one should never, ever act like a warm and open human being while arguing with a leftist.

    • While it’s technically correct you would lose gun rights AFTER a conviction, upon arrest the charges are listed in the computer system. At the moment your name and charge get into the system your rights are null and void, It’s supposed to be updated upon the completion of the criminal investigation/adjudication. In actual fact after a ruling in your favor, they generally DO NOT correct or update the entry. The derogatory info stays put and the (assuming you were not guilty) outcome never gets input onto the system. I’ve known people who have spent thousands of dollars on lawyers who go through hoops just to get the record corrected. It’s amazing, but the lefties like it and most of the rest who would be upset by this never experience this overlooked aspect of the “legal” system and therefore do nothing about it.

        • I didn’t say you could get a felony expunged. To my knowledge a violent felony conviction is forever. Getting a charge expunged is a case by case thing and not open to just any type of conviction. I also can’t imagine such action would be handled for 1000.00 or less. All I was saying once derogatory information is entered (i.e. subject was arrested on the suspicion of a crime, not convicted), the dust settles and the person detained was found not guilty and released, the original charge is still floating around the NICS system and that person could get either delayed or denied a gun purchase. Then they would need an attorney to get the record corrected (A notation that the subject was found innocent). That is not an expungement, that is just an update of the disposition of a case. Most people just assume that the update is automatic, but usually is not.

  3. It’s the same story with drugs.
    So much time is spent trying to figure out how Timmy got a gun or where Sara got the cocaine but hardly anyone asks why did Timmy want to murder those people or why did Sara want to self-medicate herself. Sure, the answers are hard if not impossible but at least it’s the right tree to bark up.
    Prohibition is just as impossible but at least targeting the root could maybe reduce the amount of damage done. Prohibition (guns, drugs, whatever) only accomplishes putting more power into the hands of the state and less liberty in the hands of the people.

    • Also, I think this sums up the wonderful ineffectiveness of just about every law on the books:

      Accused killer couldn’t own gun; police say she had one

      Police say she couldn’t kill but she did anyway. Police say his BAC was too high but he drove anyway. Police say marijuana is prohibited but it grows anyway.
      What magical powers do people think laws have that this would be news to anyone?
      It’s no different than a parent telling their kid they can’t watch a show so they go watch it somewhere else. Have parental orders or prohibitions ever worked? Why would governments?

      • The fallacy is the assumption that laws are written to prevent crime. Sure, there may be some people who are deterred from committing a crime by the punishment proscribed for said crime, but an actual number of these people would be nigh impossible to obtain.

        Unfortunately, in a world where it seems that the attitude that freedom of choice should equate to freedom form consequence (or a simple lack of care for consequences), people are willing to commit crimes for notoriety, out of greed and/or malice, or simply because “they’re bored”. Add in the “guilty before proven innocent” mantra that is behind many anti-2A laws and you have one nasty mix.

      • Rules and laws influence only two kinds of people: good people who are civilized and will abide by reasonable codifications of what’s already socially expected, anyway, and less good, less civilized people who at least are unwilling to suffer the consequences of breaking the law.

        For both groups, it’s assumed that they have the mental faculties to discern right from wrong, understand the consequences of their actions, and possess sufficient impulse control to direct their actions consciously.

        Outside of such people, the law has zero prophylactic power, except segregating offenders from society, after they’ve offended, so as to prevent their next offense.

        Ultimately, though, bangers gotta bang, and crazies gotta craze. So Jonathan – Houston has to carry.

  4. When you do something and it doesn’t work, it’s empirical proof that you simply haven’t done enough of what doesn’t work. (/drippingwithsarcasm)

  5. But but but… guns!

    If she would have hacked her family to death with a knife (as HAS happened recently), we wouldn’t of even heard a peep from the Media, or any of the ‘ban-freedom’ crowd!

    Why? …because guns!

    • Americans, always so loud and brash. Why can’t we learn to murder quietly with knives and machetes like they do in more civilized countries such as England, India, and Pakistan. 🙂

      • BINGO! We have a winner. Except in England, where it’s illegal to carry a knife on you unless you “require it for your work”. So, if you worked for a company that required you to open boxes, you carry a knife. If you worked in an office, you cannot carry a knife. Yes, it is insane as it sounds.

        • How’d that soldier get his head chopped off in England last year, then, huh? Riddle me that!

    • Agree strongly, but there is one more wrinkle. This is a case of someone defying the bureaucracy in the most direct and profound way possible. This is something the left absolutely cannot tolerate now that they have effective control of most bureaucracies. Unless, of course, they orchestrate it themselves for political purposes, in which case the people involved are to be celebrated as “protestors” or “social justice warriors.”

      Caveat: I don’t know this woman’s back story. It may well be in the best interests of the kids in this particular case to have them pulled from the mother’s custody. Whether the intervention was legit or not, the leftist establishment with which most of the media are complicit takes a very dim view of resistance to their authority.

    • Close, but no cigar. Sam was Berkowitz’ neighbor. The dog’s name was Harvey. You’re right that Berkowitz called himself the “Son of Sam”, though.

    • Berkowitz said the “Sam” mentioned in the first letter was his former neighbor,
      Sam Carr. Berkowitz claimed that Carr’s black labrador retriever, Harvey,
      was possessed by an ancient demon and that it issued irresistible commands
      that Berkowitz must kill people.

  6. What we need to do is pre-emptively arrest anyone that takes a selfie with their phone in a bathroom mirror.

  7. I see the medium power hunting rifle is about twice as powerful as the super powerful 5.56 killer assault bullet.

    • But hunting rifles only kill deer, not social workers! There must be a mistake, she must have had an assaultriflemachinesubgun and the NRA is covering it up.

  8. I am not a socialist. We dont all support sanders. Libertarians are common here too. More people need to vote and care.

  9. No, the “Son of Sam” was the murderer. The dog that (he claimed) told him to do it was a 2000-year-old black Labrador retriever named Harvey. But the jury didn’t buy the insanity defense, in effect exonerating Harvey.

  10. Looking at where a firearm came from should not be of great importance. What’s important is who and why they exerted energy to point then pull the trigger. No firearm ever killed anyone.

    • Exactly. You have to be convicted.

      18 U.S. Code § 922 (d)(9)
      has been convicted in any court of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.

  11. Has anyone else noticed that the antis solution to these freak events involves allowing dangerouslyrics and violently unstable people remain in society and just challenge them to be more creative?

    They might as well make it s game show: drop a lunatic of at a k-mart for an hour with a set budget and see what murder implements they can come up with sand firearm.

  12. Roy nailed it. Who fucking cares, she could legally own a gun. Any gun. She was never a prohibited person. She almost certainly will be now though.

  13. How many of you conspiracy nuts have already typed out your manifestos? You call others sheep and cattle and yet you all are so lockstep with the current conservative talking points you could be one person typing every comment. You’re being actively recruited into a domestic terrorist organization. Don’t be a tool of the radical right.

  14. Spoken like someone who doesn’t know anything about either case or individual involved and it’s also very apparent you just skin headlines and articles without actually reading them so you can mold something to your narrative.

  15. Typical. You don’t even have a picture of Jody herring. You couldn’t even get that right. I really hope you don’t get paid for this. My dog coukd go better

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