How Often Do Americans Use Guns For Defensive Purposes?: Larry Elder
reviews some of the more credible studies and looks at why they may vary
in their estimates.
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/larryelder/le20050901.shtml
---
Armed Citizens vs. New Orleans Looters: Even The New York Times
recognizes the role of privately owned firearms in limiting looting in
New Orleans.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/01/national/nationalspecial/01lawless.html?hp&ex=1125633600&en=e4e635e0dc20fc8c&ei=5094&partner=homepage
---
Acquittal In Back-Shooting Case: A West Virginia jury appears to have
recognized that the dynamics of a fight can result in a shot in the back
without criminal intent.
http://www.herald-mail.com/?module=displaystory&story_id=119014&format=html
---
41 Magnum vs. Pit Bull: Of note, the dog was hit with what appears to
be a .41 Magnum round and still had to be euthanized.
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=local&id=3400016
---
Texas - Legislative Intent vs. Harris County DA: The NRA-ILA posts a
press release from the legislator who wrote the bill to clarify the
definition of "traveling," as it applies to carrying a handgun inside a
vehicle in Texas.
http://www.nraila.org/CurrentLegislation/Read.aspx?ID=1716
---
Extremism In Minnesota: Two Minnesota teachers are fighting suspensions
for violations of district weapons policies. One authorized a student to
bring a gun barrel to school and the other authorizes a student to bring
some fired cases to school.
http://www.fillmorecountyjournal.com/main.asp?SectionID=16&ArticleID=16114&SubSectionID=109
---
MIT Pistol Team: Last year, eight MIT pistol shooters bested the
military academies at the National Rifle Association Intercollegiate
Pistol Championship, beating Navy by four points to be crowned the best
Pistol squad in the country. But that's not the surprising part. What's
surprising is that seven of the eight competitors from MIT had never
picked up a gun before setting foot on campus.
http://www-tech.mit.edu/V125/N33/33pistol.html
---
Unusual Report: Persistent malfunction of SIG P220's are cited in the
no-confidence vote in their chief by Falls Church VA police officers. I
tend to agree that this pistol has generally maintained an excellent
reputation in American law enforcement but question its suitability if
it is that prone to alleged operator error - in an emergency you may not
acquire a solid, two-handed grip on your handgun.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/30/AR2005083001772.html
---
Technicality Could Punish New Zealand Cops: Due to a lag in pistol
requalifications, New Zealand officers and their supervisors could face
criminal charges for carrying their Glock pistols.
http://www.hbtoday.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyid=3650454&thesection=localnews&thesubsection=&thesecondsubsection=
---
From Gun Week:
Cons Teaching Cons How to Defeat Tasers
by Dave Workman
Senior Editor
A Columbus, OH, police department officer safety memo, obtained by Gun
Week, is raising alarms in law enforcement circles that criminals may be
teaching one another how to defeat being shot by Tasers.
The memorandum was written after a July 15 incident in which a female
Columbus officer confronted a stabbing suspect. After the suspect
ignored repeated verbal commands, the officer shot the suspect with the
Taser twice, and both probes made skin contact about 16 inches apart.
However, according to the memo, the suspect dropped to the ground and
rolled. In the process, he broke both Taser wires, and thus broke the
contact with the weapon, which stopped the electric charge. He then
jumped up and ran away with the two probes still in his chest, according
to the memo.
Gun Week contacted Sgt. Brian Bruce with the Columbus Police Division of
Defensive Tactics Unit, who confirmed that the memo is authentic. While
he did not write the original memorandum, he did circulate it to other
law enforcement sources. He said the suspect in the July 15 incident was
captured a short time later and that the female officer involved was not
hurt.
He also said that police examined the suspect and found two contact
wounds where the Taser probes had entered his skin. According to the
memo, the suspect "stated that he learned from talking to other inmates
at the jail that to defeat the Taser one merely needs to roll away from
the Taser, which will cause the probes to fall out or the wires to break."
Police departments across the country have been issuing Tasers to their
patrol officers for some time. In Columbus, according to Bruce, each
patrol officer has been trained with the device, and there is one in
each patrol vehicle.
Tasers were developed as a non-lethal weapon designed to deliver a
charge of 50,000 volts to someone in order to incapacitate them. The
devices have been in the news over the past several months because in a
few instances, people have died after being shot with Tasers. The causes
of those deaths have been found to sometimes relate to other conditions,
such as drugs in a suspect's system, or poor health, both conditions
that officers on the scene of an incident may have no way of knowing
about when they deploy the devices on resistant subjects.
After he was apprehended, the stabbing suspect in Columbus told police
that he pulled the Taser darts from his chest as he ran away. Then,
according to the memo, "the suspect made it obvious that this method of
defeating the Taser was common knowledge at the jail."
Gun Week's call to Taser International, which manufactures the device,
had not been returned by press time.
Gun Week also obtained a copy of a report, written by Bruce to Columbus
Police Chief James Jackson just 10 days prior to the July 15 incident.
This was a report on the success of Tasers during their first six months
of full deployment with the Columbus department. The devices were first
fully deployed in October of last year, the report says. Prior to that,
they were in use for six months beginning on Apr. 1, 2004, but
apparently not in full deployment.
In that report, Bruce stated that there were 172 "Action-Response to
Resistance Reports" filed during the first six months of full
deployment. Taser probes were actually deployed 140 times, and there
were 132 uses of the Taser in a "drive-stun" mode, in which the unit is
used more like a contact weapon.
Of the 140 times that Taser probes were deployed, they were effective
76.4% of the time. Some of the shots missed. Of the 120 shots that
actually hit the mark, Bruce reported, 89.2% were effective. The
ineffective hits were blamed on bulky clothing in 12 cases, and there
was one miss.
There was one other notable statistic in Bruce's report. Since Columbus
implemented Tasers, citizen complaints declined 23.8% and excessive use
of force complaints declined 25.3%.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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--
Stephen P. Wenger
Firearm safety - It's a matter
for education, not legislation.
http://www.spw-duf.info
