The kid and I rode up there on 4-wheelers this summer.  We stopped in and it wasn’t too bad…clearly some animals had been in there but overall not too bad.  We went up there today to clean things out…the child walks in…and there is silence.  I went around back to turn on the propane tank for the lights…I asked her how bad it was and all I heard was “love you daddy”.  I knew it wouldn’t be good.  I walked into the building and it was a crazy mess.  We’d left a couple of pillows in there and they were tore completely apart with stuffing all over the place.  The steel cabinet was tipped over, the other one was opened.  It wasn’t good, but over all it was just a mess to throw in the garbage and sweep up.  There was no food that needed to be cleaned up…then I started looking around….

There were piles of crap everywhere… literally crap, fecal matter… excrement…whatever you want to call it, it was crap.  Some of the piles looked animal sized, other’s looked more people sized…my lord.  I started looking at stuff, some were clearly from animals with the seeds and all that in it…at least one other pile didn’t look like it had any seeds.  Now to be clear, I didn’t get face to face and dig around there….I was looking from about 2 yards away.  The kid and I started looking around…trying to figure out a game plan.  It had to be a ‘coon that was in this place.  Not that it matters really at this point, it needs to be cleaned up.  We’re talking and moving things around…suddenly I tell sam to “stop moving” and back up slowly.  Behind one of the cabinets I saw a bit of fur that was unmistakably ’coon in nature.  We needed to determine if this sucker was alive or dead…well it quickly assisted us with that determination by moving slightly.  Damn, now I had to figure out how to get this thing out of here.  Now what?

The first thing that crossed my mind was rabies…for whatever reason when I see ‘coons and skunks I think rabies and get ta hell away from them.  I’m sure this was driven into my head when I was a kid…and I’m not sure how grounded in fact this is.  I think I read somewhere that bats are the most prevalent carriers of rabies…but I don’t mind watching them flying around.  In fact I like to see them around…help keep the bugs under control.  Being the turtle mountain hillbilly I am..naturally I did -not- have a gun in the truck.  Later when relaying this story to my ma she asked me “how the hell do you not have a gun in the truck?”  It’s pretty simple actually…it’s hard to say what vehicle I will be taking to work (at the school) on any given day…so I don’t keep guns and ammo (or booze) in any of them.  I could just drive one every day…but the other one needs to be run sometimes as well.  So, what the kid and I did was prop the door open and headed back to the house for a couple guns (4 mile run).  As I was driving away I realized I had turned on the heat in the cabin (propane) so why would he leave?

As we come back it turns out he had moved…he turned just enough to be looking me right in the eyes across the room as I walked in the door.  Anyone who has seen ‘coons at night in the headlights know how brightly those eyes reflect…it’s kind eerie actually.  When I was looking at him (or her) it was hidden behind the door of the steel cabinet a little bit, so with the .45 pistol it would have been a really awkward shot…so I elected to use the .22 rifle…I also didn’t want to use the .45 since it was going to be a shot inside the building.  I told the kid to get outside…I stood up a bit and shot.  Suddenly all hell broke loose, that thing started flopping and going crazy.  I hustled out the door and cocked the .45 for when he worked his way outside.  The noise coming from inside the building was crazy.  I told people it sounded like a Sumo wrestler trying on tights in a china shop…crazy amount of noise.

Finally things settled down and the noise stopped.  I came around the corner and the little sucker had worked his way out from behind the cabinet to under one of the bunks and died.  I told the kid to come in and we again started forming a game plan to clean things up.  We started moving things around a bit.  On the way home to get the guns the kid had asked about why it would come in the building…etc.  Normal kid questions.  I told her it could have had little ones in there so they might be hiding in there somewhere too.  I told her they would be about 1/2 the size of that thing or about the size of our 1 year old cats.  At the time I didn’t know it was an adult, so this was all speculation.  After we saw it was full grown she started asking about little ones and so forth.  I told her to look around a bit but don’t reach under anything…etc.  She stops suddenly “there is one!”  Right behind the same cabinet the “mama” was behind we could see what looked like a small tail.  I tried to look behind there but it was too close to the wall to be able to see anything.  I told the kid to go outside, I had to move the cabinet and I wasn’t sure what it would do.

I moved the cabinet and tried to look back there…sure enough one of the little suckers was staring me right in the face.  It looked like only one so I should be alright.  Again, since it was inside I was going to use the .22.  I got the gun back there…wedged myself in a spot where I could shoot and gave him a round.  It popped him in the head and he starts going ape chips.  I got up off the floor…again all I could think of was “rabies”.  And this sucker…just as big if not bigger than the first one…comes -walking- around the corner.  Not running, not staggering…-walking- around the corner after taking a round to the head.  It walked outside and I could see it leaving a blood trail.  The kid tells me “it’s under the blue chair!”.  (we have a blue chair outside of the shack…it’s an old bus seat that they got decades ago for nothing).  I come outside, the child is sitting on top of my truck.  Not in the box…she is sitting on top of the cab of the truck….  I get her down in to the box, toss her the .22 and pull out the .45.  I don’t see him under the chair…but there under the shack between the chair and the galvanized garbage can he’s staring at me.  I gave him a round with the .45 this time…whablammo!  He staggers a bit…flops under the shack…and nothing.  I assume he’s dead but I’m not going under there to verify.

At this point the child and I need to “clear” the shack to make sure there are no more animals in there.  Here comes the child in with the .22, “I’ll cover you!”…uh…no dear.  I don’t want you with a gun getting excited.  She uses a shovel to lift up the foot rest on the chair, I get ready to give ‘em hell…nothing.  We looked behind everything else…nothing.  Only 2…two!  of the little suckers in there.

I’m not sure how much they weighed, but I do know about how big these things are normally.  I believe these both to be 2+ years old and around 20lbs.  They were -big-.  The kid threw the one out of the shack and said it was pretty heavy.  We ended up throwing out a lot of stuff because it had ‘coon crap on it…maybe we could have washed it but I wouldn’t have been able to get over seeing it covered with crap.

We got things cleaned up pretty good…but it’s going to take some work to make this place a bit more animal proof.  I need to put some time into sealing up the cracks and so forth.  I don’t want to pour much money into this place…but a little bit of elbow grease would fix things up pretty good.

Almost ready for another season!

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I’m watching this show last night…every once in awhile some brings in a gun they own to have it checked out, cleaned up…whatever.  Some dude brought in a japanese millitary rifle that was used in WW2, an arisaka model 38.  I listed to them a little…then got to thinking, I’ve got one of those in one of the gun cabinets.  I look, sure enough…same gun.  I listen to them explaining some of the history and significance of it, detail some of the markings…it was pretty interesting.

My grandfather brought the gun back from the pacific after his time as a marine in WW2.  He brought at least 2 guns back, I’m not sure if there were more.  They were the 7.7 and 6.5mm rifles.  The guns were shot regularly for quite a few years by him and the kids until it was finally retired for no real reason other than they acquired other guns.  After he died the 7.7 was taken by my old man and the 6.5 by his brother, my uncle.  Looking at the 7.7 it still has the “emperor” mark, which according to the show and what I read online is a touch rare.  Apparently when the soldiers thought their guns might fall into enemy hands they tried to file off the mark as a respect type thing for their emperor.  I had read that Patton also had ordered these marks filed off of acquired rifles…but the validity of that is questionable.

Listening to them talk about this rifle and the history it made me think about the significance of what is now my rifle.  It was a mass produced piece of equipment, so the quality and accuracy is probably questionable…but there’s no reason to think it’s a pile of junk.  They used it hunting, it must be somewhat accurate.  Thinking that this rifle was used by someone from another nation, sent to kill Americans/allies and an American acquired it…possibly killing the guy that owned it…it’s just kind of a strange feeling holding it.  It can be argued that every gun I own was designed to “kill people” and they could all perform that function…but this one possibly did.  The other’s can kill people, but with the exception of the glock, none of them were really designed for that function.  Most are hunting rifles, built for accuracy or target guns…etc.  This one was built to use while foreign soldiers hunt down Americans/allies and kill them.  I don’t know the story behind the gun or how it was acquired, and that’s kind of a shame.  I’d like to know if Harold took it off the battle field or picked it up in some other way.  I’m not even sure what he did in the Marines.

It did pique my interest in shooting this gun though.  It’s not worth any more than any other rifle in the collection, in fact it’s worth a bit less than several of them.  Seeing this on T.V. though did give a little bit of significance to this, before last night, insignificant rifle.

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From 2006 per 100k population 0-19 years (the chart doesn’t paste in well) we see that the greatest killer of children is the motor vehicle (7006) followed by drowning (1077).  Firearms fall at the bottom of the posted list as (154).  Do I mean to say that playing with a firearm is safer than swimming?  Of course not…what I intend to convey is that parents take certain activities for granted and do not appreciate the inherent dangers involved.  When a child is young a parent (I hope) automatically straps them into a seat belt in the car or straps a life jacket on them and guides them into the pool.  As they get older, you give them swimming lessons and driver’s ed.  You watch them as they learn to drive and hopefully you are teaching them to be responsible and safe.  The same should hold true for swimming, train them to swim, keep them safe while letting them have fun.  I can’t understand why the mentality wouldn’t be the same towards firearms.

I don’t get why someone would not talk about the dangers of firearms to their child.  Even if you don’t have them in your home, why wouldn’t you assume they might come across them at some point in their life?  We teach our children about sex (or you should be), and we hope they will be safe but have fun…the same is certainly true for firearms.  If you don’t have one in the home…why not buy a toy and teach them that it’s not a toy.  I remember being a very young child and the old man pounding it into my head that a gun, no matter what kid, is not a toy.  Even the guns with the suction cup darts would yield a smack on the ass if used inappropriately.  While some might view that as extreme, it did successfully drive home the point that no gun is ever a toy.

It seems over and over again that the kids of parents that tech something is evil but never fully explore the dangers and teach them to be responsible are the kids that have problems.  I believe this to be true in all things, not just firearms.  Yes there are fringe cases where the kids went nuts…I would still argue that’s a parenting issue, just extreme to the other side.  Building an alter to Sam Colt isn’t exactly stable either.

What prompted this latest PSA?  1 child dies every 5 summer days in a portable pool.  People continually underestimate the dangers of every day things but never fail to key off on things that, when put in perspective, pose less of a risk to their children.  I am constantly amazed at how little attention some parents will pay to their small children.  It has gotten to the point where I don’t like to even be around certain people and their kids because of how they “parent” if it can be called that.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — A child dies every five days in portable pools during warm-weather months, according to a new study.

“Parents need to be aware that these pools can present the same risks for drowning, especially for young children, as in-ground pools,” which are typically thought of as a greater safety hazard, the study’s senior author Dr. Gary Smith said.

The research published Monday in the journal Pediatrics shows 209 deaths and 35 near-drownings of children under 12 from 2001 through 2009. Most of the children, 94 percent, were under 5, and 81 percent of the incidents happened during summer months.

“That’s a child every five days that is drowning in a backyard portable pool during the summer months,” Smith said.

The study focused on portable pools, from small wading pools less than 18 inches deep to inflatable pools and other soft-sided pools that can reach depths of 4 feet. It was conducted by researchers at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus and Independent Safety Consulting in Rockville, Md.

“The anecdotal evidence was suggesting that because portable pools are readily available in many convenience stores and malls, and they’re relatively cheap, parents would pick them up, take them home, quickly assemble them, and all this would be done without a lot of forethought about the safety aspects,” said Smith, director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide.

The authors found cases of drowning when kids opened the doors of their houses and climbed into the pool using a ladder or another nearby object, as well as examples of kids playing in the pool when parents were nearby but were distracted by chores or a phone call.

Many safety methods used for permanent pools, such as fencing, pool alarms, safety covers and removable or lockable ladders, are too expensive or not available for families who purchase portable pools, said Smith, who also is a pediatrics professor at the Ohio State University College of Medicine.

‘Adult supervision’
The Association of Pool & Spa Professionals supports “layers of protection,” and the study underscores the importance of active, undistracted adult supervision, said Carvin DiGiovanni a senior director at the Alexandria, Va.-based association.

“The primary layer of protection is constant adult supervision supplemented by barriers, alarms and other related devices,” he said. “We encourage homeowners to purchase the additional layer of protection that works for them knowing that they would be more likely to use it.”

The study shows that children were supervised by adults in fewer than half, 43 percent, of the drownings and near-drownings, and that most, 73 percent, were at home.

Among other data, the report shows CPR was administered before emergency crews arrived in 15 percent of the fatalities and 17 percent of near-drownings, numbers that help show “it’s time for us to begin requiring that people learn how to do CPR,” perhaps by adding it to high school curricula, said Susan Baker, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research & Policy in Baltimore.

“That to me is a reminder that every one of us ought to be knowledgeable about how to do CPR and willing to jump in and do it immediately,” said Baker, who was not involved in the study.

Smith said drownings overall represent the second-leading cause of injury deaths among young children and are different from other childhood accidents because there’s no second chance.

“I tell parents that drowning is quick, it’s silent and it’s final,” he said.

Parents “can’t say they’re supervising having a couple drinks at a pool and chatting with their friends or talking on a cell phone,” said Dr. Linda Quan, a drowning expert at Seattle Children’s Hospital.

“Supervision has to be constant … and for a very young child, even within arm’s reach,” Quan, who was not involved in the research, told Reuters Health.

Life jackets
Parents can add a layer of safety by making sure kids have a life jacket on whenever they’re by the pool, Quan added.

And when they’re not outside watching their kids, parents have to make sure they have no access to the pool, researchers said.

One of the simplest ways to do that is to empty the pool, especially for smaller pools, Quan explained.

Parents can also put an isolation fence around the pool and make sure there’s no way kids can reach the ladder in bigger inflatable pools, Smith said.  ”Two-thirds of the children who drowned gained access to the portable pool through the ladder,” he said. “Blocking access is the first step.”

The authors note in Pediatrics that local jurisdictions are responsible for setting pool codes and enforcing them, and that only some require fencing around portable pools.

A cover for inflatable pools won’t necessary help, the researchers said — and in at least one case, a pair of kids included in the study drowned together when they got tangled in a pool cover.

Getting parents to follow all of these prevention measures “is a challenge,” Dr. Ruth Brenner, who has studied drowning at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, told Reuters Health.

“But it does represent a significant risk for children. Children can drown in very small amounts of water,” said Brenner, who was not involved in the new paper.

Smith said the most important message is that parents need to take the risks of these pools very seriously — even if the pool is small and only has a couple feet of water.

“If you are on the playground equipment and you fall, you generally get another chance,” Smith said.

“The problem with submersion underwater is it’s very quick … and once (a kid’s) heart and breathing stops it’s very difficult to revive them,” he said. “You don’t get a second chance.”

 

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The older I get, the less I like law enforcement and the less likely I am to cooperate with them.  I wouldn’t actively work against their efforts, but I would not speak to the law or offer information that might make their job easier unless it directly benefited me.

I AM DE LAW!

On Thursday, June 9, 2011, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Terry Green granted a motion in the NRA and CRPA Foundation financed case against the City of Los Angeles regarding the LAPD’s concealed weapons permit (CCW) processing and issuance policies. The motion was brought to force LAPD to comply with a 16-year-old Consent Judgment from the 1995 Assenza v. City of Los Angeles case. For years, LAPD has repeatedly sought to avoid its obligations under the judgment and to keep people in the dark about what it takes to get a CCW in the City of L.A.

The City unsuccessfully opposed the motion.

Under Penal Code § 12050, the LAPD has an obligation to process applications for CCWs, and to issue CCWs if the applicant has “good cause.”  For many years, the City and the LAPD had a policy of not making CCW applications available, never finding good cause to exist, and effectively prohibiting the issuance of any CCWs. The City’s unlawful refusal to properly process CCW applications and issue CCWs was challenged in two lawsuits in 1992 and 1994.  To settle the suits the LAPD agreed to be bound by a Judgment requiring that all citizens who request a CCW permit application could get one at any LAPD station house, that the application would be accompanied by a written copy of the LAPD’s procedure for handling the application, including the factors used to determine whether an applicant has ”good cause” for the CCW, and that applicants would be informed of the procedures for appealing the denial of a CCW application. The settlement also established a Citizens Advisory Review Panel, made up of appointed citizens who would review CCW applications denied by the LAPD and make recommendations regarding whether the LAPD should reverse its denial of the CCW application.

The LAPD has repeatedly failed to honor its legal obligations under the Judgment. The LAPD stopped making CCW applications and a written copy of the CCW policy and appeal process available at all station houses. And the LAPD is ignoring the recommendations of the Citizens Advisory Review Panel and has instead enacted a de facto policy of again issuing no CCWs, despite whatever showing of good cause the applicants might make.

The motion heard on Thursday sought, among other things, to force the LAPD to make CCW applications and copies of its written policy available at each station house as the judgment requires. To support the motion, NRA grassroots activists were recruited to investigate the LAPD’s CCW practices. They were frustrated by uncooperative officers at individual LAPD station houses.  The officers had no understanding of the LAPD’s application process and, in almost all instances, could not provide a CCW application to the requesting citizen, much less a copy of the LAPD’s written court ordered policy. LAPD officers bluntly told citizens that unless they were celebrities, they shouldn’t even bother filling out the CCW application because they would be denied a CCW as a matter of LAPD policy. These NRA activist witnesses signed declarations about their frustrated attempts to get CCW applications, which were submitted with the motion to force LAPD to comply with the 16-year-old Judgment.

In granting the motion and ruling against the city, the Court ordered the City to provide contact information for CCW applicants to the plaintiffs’ lawyers, to get sworn declarations signed under penalty of perjury from every Commanding Officer at each of the LAPD’s 21 station houses and precincts confirming their compliance with the terms of the Assenza judgment and indicating what affirmative steps were taken to ensure compliance, and to prominently post a CCW link on the LAPD website so the public can easily access both the CCW application and the LAPD CCW policy. LAPD must comply with this Order by Wednesday, September 7, 2011.

A memorandum discussing the suits and their history is posted here.

So in a city with almost 4 million citizens, with some 300 CCW applications being made per year, LAPD has only granted 24 active CCWs. Citizens who have had credible and ongoing threats made against them and their families, and those who carry large sums of cash as part of job and are high-profile robbery targets, have been repeatedly denied CCWs despite meeting the “good cause” criteria for receiving CCWs that the LAPD was forced to agree to years ago.

To rectify this situation, two new legal actions are being pursued. The first is the motion to enforce Judgment in the Assenza v. City of Los Angeles case discussed above.

The second action is a new lawsuit, Davis v. City of Los Angeles. The nine plaintiffs in this new action, some of whom have had CCW applications pending and unresolved with the LAPD for years, have submitted sworn declarations attesting to a litany of missteps and abuses by LAPD in its handling of their CCW applications.  These abuses include not only the failures to provide applications and copies of the written policies at stationhouses, but refusals to timely consider their applications, failures to respond to inquiries regarding the status of applications, failures to acknowledge the availability of the Citizens Advisory Review Panel as a method of appealing denial, and the failure to give any weight to recommendations by the Citizens Advisory Review Panel.

Second Amendment challenges may be incorporated into these lawsuits as the case law develops in the Ninth Circuit, where another NRA/CRPAF LAP case, Peruta v. San Diego, is currently being heard.

Seventeen years ago the NRA and CRPA joined forces to fight local gun bans being written and pushed in California by the gun ban lobby. Their coordinated efforts became the NRA/CRPA “Local Ordinance Project” (LOP) – a statewide campaign to fight ill conceived local efforts at gun control and educate politicians about available programs that are effective in reducing accidents and violence without infringing on the rights of law-abiding gun owners. The NRA/CRPA LOP has had tremendous success in beating back most of these anti-self-defense proposals.

In addition to fighting local gun bans, for decades the NRA has been litigating dozens of cases in California courts to promote the right to self-defense and the Second Amendment. In the post Heller and McDonald legal environment, NRA and CRPA Foundation have formed the NRA/CRPA Foundation Legal Action Project (LAP), a joint venture to pro-actively strike down ill-conceived gun control laws and ordinances and advance the rights of firearms owners, specifically in California. Sometimes, success is more likely when LAP’s litigation efforts are kept low profile, so the details of every lawsuit are not always released. To see a partial list of the LAP’s recent accomplishments, or to contribute to the NRA or to the NRA / CRPAF LAP and support this and similar Second Amendment cases, visit www.nraila.com and www.crpafoundation.org.

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The Indiana Supreme Court ruled that you have no right to resist entry in to your house by law enforcement officers even if the entry is unlawful.  I understand the spirit of this law, people should not put themselves into situations that might be confrontational with police.  The people also have no way to know if the entry is really unlawful or not.  I don’t expect that it is common place for the police to enter homes illegally in this area.  It’s kind of unsettling to know the courts have ruled that you are to let them in, then have to spend money later on lawyers to reject the search.  Isn’t there something in the constitution about illegal search and seizure?  Did the supreme court of Indiana just rule against that?  I don’t get it.

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Now I’m against the idea of a CWP from the beginning.  I think my american citizenship is the “permit” necessary for this right.  Never the less, after I moved to town I saw a lot more value in having the actual permit.  I’m not a guy that carries a side arm with me all the time…or anytime really.  I wanted the permit because of the distance between fargo and the area where I hunt.  I wanted to avoid any hassles that might arise from me having a gun next to me in the vehicle.  If I wanted to go out to the gun range, about 15miles or so out of fargo, again I wanted to avoid hassle.

I waited till this point to change my address for a couple of reasons.  First, I wanted to make sure I had moved guns up to the farm from fargo…again to avoid some hassle.  Second I wanted to have the address on my driver’s license changed just so I can avoid any potential questions or delay in “checking out” my new address.

It sucks, but in the end it doesn’t cost me anything except time.  As I mentioned earlier I don’t

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BENTON TOWNSHIP — They wore masks.

They wore gloves.

They brandished handguns.

But there was one thing two robbers didn’t anticipate when they barged into a Benton Township Walgreens drugstore early Sunday and tried to march workers into the back room: A worker already in back carried a handgun and knew how to use it.

Township police Lt. Delmar Lange said the worker fired multiple shots at one of the bandits, forcing the men to flee.

“He could see the hostage situation developing,” Lange said. “He could not retreat any farther. He was in the back room. If it was me, I would have done the same thing.”

Lange said the worker, whose name was not released, saw one of the robbers force another worker from the front of the building toward the rear. That robber then saw the worker in back and started to pursue him.

The worker then fired multiple shots.

The robber tried to fire back, but his gun malfunctioned. The robber and his partner ran out.

Lange said none of the four workers was hurt in the 4:30 a.m. incident in the store at Napier Avenue and M-139.

It’s unclear whether the robber was struck, he said. Police are asking hospitals across the area to report if someone comes in with gunshot wounds.

Lange said security camera videos indicate the worker acted appropriately. He said the videos show that the robbers were “very aggressive and very dangerous in what they did and how they did it.”

He said the worker was licensed to carry the concealed handgun.

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ST. PAUL — A bill that would change the state’s laws on gun permits and the right to use deadly force in cases of self-defense is getting a hearing before a House public safety committee.

The committee plans to hear testimony on the bill Thursday.

Among other things, the bill expands the state’s laws on use of deadly force in self-defense situations. It creates a presumption that anyone who forcefully or stealthily enters a home intends to cause harm, so deadly force is allowed.

Proponents say it allows law-abiding citizens to stand their ground. Those against the bill say it would allow deadly force even if the person is making a peaceable entry and is unarmed.

The bill also would require that Minnesota recognize gun permits issued by other states.

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CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Wyoming on Wednesday became the fourth state to allow citizens to carry concealed guns without a permit, with Gov. Matt Mead signing a bill into law as several other states considered similar action.

The law allows state citizens legally entitled to own guns to carry them concealed starting in July. The guns still wouldn’t be allowed in schools, bars and government buildings.

“We have heard from both sides on this, this bill has attracted a lot of attention,” Mead said at a signing ceremony at the state Capitol. “But as written, I thought it was an appropriate bill for Wyoming, and an appropriate law for Wyoming.”

Similar bills are pending in states including Colorado, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Utah. A bill has been introduced in Kentucky but hasn’t advanced while another was introduced for discussion in Idaho.

Alaska, Arizona and Vermont already don’t require permits to carry concealed guns.

The push to expand permit-free carry of concealed guns is coming from people demanding the freedom to protect themselves in tough economic times without the requirement to pay for state permits, National Rifle Association spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said.

“It’s an organic movement,” Arulanandam said. “I think certainly we are leading the charge — I’m not hiding behind it. A lot of this is organic in the sense that it comes from people realizing that when something bad happens, it’s up to them to defend themselves and their loved ones. And when something bad happens, instant responders are better than ‘first responders.’”

Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence in Washington, said Wednesday the center is concerned about the trend.

“The gun lobby is trying to push more guns into more places,” Helmke said.

Helmke noted Arizona was the most recent state to allow concealed carry without a permit. And he noted that a man has been charged in the Jan. 8 shooting that killed six people at a congressional meet-and-greet Jan. 8 outside a Tucson supermarket. Thirteen other people were wounded including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

A national push that started in the 1990s has resulted in most states allowing concealed carry of guns with a permit. Helmke said that only Illinois and Wisconsin still don’t allow concealed carry.

“They don’t want to lead with the fact that their next sort of agenda item is to get rid of the permits altogether,” Helmke said of the gun lobby. “They lead with the idea that the only people who get permits in states are people who have been thoroughly checked out and law-abiding.”

But proponents of the Wyoming bill say their interested in respecting and restoring individual rights. Wyoming would continue to offer concealed-carry permits so citizens would have reciprocity with other states.

Sponsor Sen. Kit Jennings, R-Casper, said he expects several states will follow Wyoming. “It’s a good bill. We’ll go forward, and we’ll protect those constitutional rights,” he said at the bill-signing ceremony.

Rep. Lorraine Quarberg, R-Thermopolis, was a co-sponsor. She said she had been working to pass such a bill for the past seven years. “The governor by signing this bill just restored some rights to all of Wyoming citizens,” she said.

Anthony Bouchard, executive of the Wyoming Gun Owners Association, has lobbied for the Wyoming bill. He discounted the idea that such legislation is merely intended to sell guns.

“Criminals have guns, and gun laws just prevent law-abiding citizens from doing the same,” Bouchard said.

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I don’t really get the point of bringing this up and would like to hear some of her thoughts on why she thinks this law would help situations like this.

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WYNDMERE, N.D. (AP) — The daughter of a man who was shot and killed in a Wyndmere bar about a year ago thinks all North Dakota bars should be required to have security cameras.

Nicole Vosberg says she’s talked to a state senator about her idea, though the deadline for introducing legislation this session has passed and any bill would have to wait for two years.

Some lawmakers and officials including Fargo Police Chief Keith Ternes tell KVLY-TV that requiring cameras in bars would be a tough sell because it could be viewed as an invasion of privacy.

Gordon Vosberg died after being shot in the chest last St. Patrick’s Day during an argument in the Four Corners Motel and Lounge. The man who shot him is serving a 10-year sentence for manslaughter.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press.

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