FINALLY…Chicago has a solution to their “gun violence” problem . . . High-tech ATF ballistics van comes to Chicago to fight gun violence
A high-tech ballistics van from the ATF that can analyze evidence on the spot at crime scenes is now in Chicago, and it’s the only one in the country at the moment.
The van is in a testing phase right now and may only be around for the summer.
“They have been here in the city of Chicago that van for the last three weeks we have them for another month. I would hope that the ATF would keep the resources here in the city of Chicago throughout the summer in helping our police department,” said Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
This is what happens when you combine poorly designed research with clueless writers . . . How news organizations, including this one, unintentionally misinformed the public on guns
According to Finkelhor, the actual question the researchers asked was, “At any time in (your child’s/your) life, (was your child/were you) in any place in real life where (he/she/you) could see or hear people being shot, bombs going off, or street riots?”
So the question was about much more than just shootings. But you never would have known from looking at the table.
Finkelhor said he understood why “exposure to shooting” might have misled the CDC-UT researchers even though his team provided the underlying question in the appendices. Linda Dahlberg, a CDC violence prevention researcher and co-author of the study featured in The Post and this newspaper, said her team didn’t notice anything indicating the statistic covered other things.
Patience . . . What’s happened to the pro-gun wish list in Washington?
Gun rights advocates entered the Trump era with high hopes. After years of frustration they thought a gun-friendly president and Congress would advance their agenda. At the top of the list: a gun-owner’s ability to bring a legal weapon across any state lines, a policy known as reciprocity.
But many of their favorite initiatives have stalled in Washington, set aside as the city is closely watching the investigations into President Donald Trump’s administration. Republicans are focused on other priorities, especially health care, but also keeping gun rights on the back burner may be the fact that because they are, in fact, a heavy lift.
The NRA hardly cares about black gun owners like me. Philando Castile proves that.
I’m a 280-pound black guy with a bald head, a beard, and, sometimes, a gun. It’s already hard enough going through life stereotyped as a dangerous black man. Add in that I exercise my right to bear arms and that I live in a country where police officers can shoot black men with impunity, and you have a dangerous situation.
Last week, a jury cleared Yanez of three counts of manslaughter for Castile’s death. I knew he would get off as soon as I read in the paper that the jury had hit a third day of deliberation.
As much as we’d like to believe it, justice is not blind. This happens repeatedly: A black man, whether he’s armed or not, is shot by police; there’s damning footage that shows no real reason for the shooting to take place; and then a jury clears the officer. Every juror who won’t cast a verdict, every judge who won’t heed proper sentencing, and every police officer who lives behind that blue code of silence is complicit in the powder keg that this inaction creates in America.
Where there’s demand, there will alway be supply . . . Stolen Guns: “Getting Them is the Easy Part”
(Julius) Callicutt deployed some of that skill just after 3 a.m. on Oct. 10, 2011, when he cut the locks on a roll-down metal gate at Cash America, located at 3500 S. Mendenhall, and walked in without an alarm sounding. After making off with the laptops, he returned a half hour later for the guns.
“I was thinking, where are all the cops?’’ he said. “I guess they figured no one was that bold. How could I turn that down?’’
By the time police finally arrived, he’d made off with an estimated $14,000 in merchandise.
Four weeks after the burglary, police recovered the first of the Cash America guns, the 9mm McGill, the 16-year-old, was carrying at Minor Oaks Apartments the night he was shot. (His friend, Eric Woods, initially was charged with voluntary manslaughter but was later cleared of criminal culpability.)
It isn’t clear how McGill came into possession of the gun a witness saw him with — a Smith & Wesson model SW9GVE with serial number PBZ3674 etched on its underside — but Callicutt insists he didn’t sell it to the teen.
Crafty little bastards, aren’t they? . . . Gun store burglars use new tactics to enter Castle Rock shop
Gun store burglars used tow wires to bust open the front door and gate of a Castle Rock gun store early Tuesday morning, showing that thieves involved in a string of thefts in metro Denver are capable of evolving tactics.
It was a new wrinkle on an increasingly perplexing problem encountered by gun shops across the Denver metro area the past year, said Sgt. Marc Ruisi of the Castle Rock Police Department. Dozens of shops have been hit.
DCF Guns had weathered an attempted smash-and-grab attack by thieves just last week when they drove a stolen Jeep toward the entrance. The Jeep had gotten jammed between concrete balustrades built to thwart smash-and-grab thieves.
Emanations and penumbras . . . No guns at the St. Louis Zoo, judge rules
The judge said the zoo argued it fits the state law’s definition of a “gun-free zone” in that it is both an educational facility and a gated amusement park as defined by the state’s open-carry statute.
“The zoo has shown that the safety, patronage and image of the zoo will be compromised if visitors are permitted to carry firearms or other weapons on zoo property, which would significantly harm the level of visitorship, as well as the mission, the public image and autonomy of the zoo as an institution,” Moriarty wrote in her ruling.
https://youtu.be/O2KTrd6wjxI
WOW! ITS A GLOCK!
WHO WOULD HAVE GUESSED?!
“Gun store burglars used tow wires to bust open the front door and gate of a Castle Rock gun store early Tuesday morning, showing that thieves involved in a string of thefts in metro Denver are capable of evolving tactics.”
Uhh yeah, breaking news on the creative thievery front – in the 1980s. And I bet someone can cite instances before that. Got a gate or door that you want removed in an expeditious way? Throw a winch cable/town chain around it and let ‘er rip.
Yep. 1960s… Bill Ayers and the Weathermen of the Weather Underground, the radical branch of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).
1960s – Black Panthers obtain weapons and ammunition used during bank robberies, and years later in a police standoff burned down a house containing significant ammo stores.
1970s – UW Seattle Tacoma area students stole weapons from Ft Lewis sentries.
1971 – UW students rob National Guard Armory.
Bill Ayers, Obama’s friend, may know where large stores sit waiting for his dream to come true… Bring down the government.
1976 – the explosives storage shed at a mine near Mojave, CA was broken into and dynamite stolen.
“Got a gate or door that you want removed in an expeditious way? Throw a winch cable/town chain around it and let ‘er rip.”
Pawnbrokers here in Florida got tired of having their inventory stolen by ‘disadvantaged youths’ and modified their store’s security practices.
Business doors tend to open *out* to harden against ramming. Home doors tend to open *in* to be more ‘inviting’.
You solve the ‘chain around the front door’ problem by mounting the door pulls with break-away hardware like nylon bolts.
You solve the ‘Rip the security bars off the windows and doors problem’ by mounting the bars *inside* the shop *behind* the glass you replaced with shatter-resistant Lexan sheet. (LEXAN, *not* Plexi, that’s IMPORTANT)
Big-assed decorative concrete planters make dandy improvised bollards, to keep them from ramming into the building.
Try using a little common sense, people. Here’s another news flash – You can harden you home against theft in much the same way…
And then I go steal a full size welding truck, or some such, and drive it through the wall.
I think the solution is claymores.
“And then I go steal a full size welding truck, or some such, and drive it through the wall.”
If you take a peek just above, you will notice:
“Big-assed decorative concrete planters make dandy improvised bollards, to keep them from ramming into the building.”
You can do the same at home. It’s also a good idea to get rid of those shrubs lots of folks have around their houses, especially under windows, as they provide nice cover for some dirtbag breaking into your residence.
“I think the solution is claymores.”
If wishes were fishes…
🙂
“You can do the same at home. It’s also a good idea to get rid of those shrubs lots of folks have around their houses, especially under windows, as they provide nice cover for some dirtbag breaking into your residence.”
Better still, plant the right kind of shrubs strategically. I have some thorny roses in my landscaping that are way nastier than barbed wire. Looks great from a distance, and ain’t nobody going to mess with them up close.
What really surprises me is that, after someone goes to all the trouble of breaking into a gun store, the owners so often seem to reward the perps by leaving their inventory out and unsecured.
We have all seen (even here on TTAG) stories about gun store owners who seem to not understand the concept of a gun safe.
Why is that?
“We have all seen (even here on TTAG) stories about gun store owners who seem to not understand the concept of a gun safe.
Why is that?”
Having worked pawn shops, I can tell you the answer.
Taking them out of the safe, putting them in the display case, then the reverse EVERY DAY dings them up.
You can try and be careful handling them, you will still ding them up.
Before long, NIB guns look like beaters. There are some things that can be done, and some shops do, like have custom trays built to load into safes, but most shops don’t have those. They choose to leave them out at night.
If you have a gun in the display case like a mint Anaconda, you don’t want to handle them as much as possible…
“Having worked pawn shops, I can tell you the answer.
Taking them out of the safe, putting them in the display case, then the reverse EVERY DAY dings them up.”
Do the insurance rates reflect this?
(Smart) pawn shops are insured for theft. Wear and tear on handling the merchandise, no.
That’s the main reason *why* they choose to leave them out.
I’ll modify my original observation a bit – Guns in pawn tend to be secured in safes or heavily locked rooms at pawn shops, but not always. Guns for sale (owned by the shop) tend not to be.
Take a look at the total size of your average mom-n-pop pawn shop. Understand the back room is usually substantially larger than the customer side of the shop. If they have a lot of handguns in inventory, the safes themselves in the back of the shop will take up too much room that could be using to store pawned items.
That’s also a pretty good gauge as to how well a pawn shop is doing, the more stuff in the back room, the more of the shop’s money is on the street. Money on the street is profit for the pawn shop.
(I am available for paid consultation if someone would like to open a pawnshop…)
Most ‘mom-n-pop’ pawn shops aren’t insured for theft. The rates would bankrupt them. Most are insured for fire-flood, etc. of their building and business furnishings, but *not* the pawned contents.
The honest shops self-insure, if at all. Honest, smart shops secure their building, have them *heavily* alarmed, some go so far as to have dogs at night or even one of their employees sleeping there.
The shops I worked for were of the honest variety. As in, they didn’t buy stolen stuff. They valued their business reputation, and that made them a very comfortable living.
Unless your local cops are crooked, you can count on your shop being tested regularly by undercovers seeing if you will buy without ID – fingerprints. If you do, expect a felony conviction. I have personally seen that happen locally to me…
Welcome to the zoo … I mean amusement park … I mean school.
The decision is poorly reasoned. The zoo might be a school or amusement park under Missouri law. I don’t know and neither does that judge. (If she does know, she is really bad at legal writing).
How long have you been practicing?
We have long since passed the point of having at least one ruling to support just about any decision a judge wishes to reach. Your job is to have the right friends, belong to the right clubs, and persuasively make a case that a friendly judge can rule to follow the law in your client’s favor. The supporting argument is a couple hours of LexisNexis done by an unpaid intern.
Law as an absolute without dozens of possible gray areas, or interpretations? Bwaaaahahahahahah!
This judge didn’t even use the unpaid intern. Courts have been making stuff up since at least 1937, but they used to at least pretend.
As a lawyer, you know full well that the side with the more persuasive lawyer wins, law notwithstanding.
I don’t care how persuasive your lawyer is when facts and the law are clearly against you (if the other attorney is merely competent).
Now if the judge is corrupt and doesn’t care about the law or facts, that’s another story.
Tex, you got me with the corrupt judge part (Ninth Circus, anyone?).
But many lower court cases are overturned not because of corrupt judges, but because the judge accepted one side’s lawyer’s arguments, while ignoring the law. Publicized cases abound.
As an aside, watch small claims cases; I swear the judges there are off-the-street people sometimes.
“Publicized cases abound.” – Judges hate being overturned. They’re arrogant. Arrogant people don’t like being told they are wrong, especially by someone who can tell them what to do. Most cases overturned are overturned on the margins of the law. On the areas where there is no guidance from courts and the statute doesn’t address the situation.
As an example, I recently had a case where the defendant was illiterate. The SCOTUS has said you have to give actual notice to a party to sue them. The way service of process works in Texas is that the process server hands the papers to the defendant. That’s useless for a guy who can’t read. I couldn’t find a single case on the issue, much less telling me how to get service on him. I wouldn’t know what to order as a judge. I’d have to make something up or tell the plaintiff that it was his problem.
“As an aside, watch small claims cases; I swear the judges there are off-the-street people sometimes.” Sometimes they are off the street people. In Texas (we have a overly complicated court system with at least four different levels of trial courts with overlapping jurisdiction), most judges are lawyers. Some are not. They go to a course on the law. I think it is two days. These judges have to rely on the expertise of the lawyers. These judges are not always small claims judges.
On that Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, Explosives and Really Big Fires van…
From Second City Cop:
Did you know that the CPD has the exact same equipment that’s in the van? It’s over at the gun lab at Homan Square, 3rd floor, above the “black site.” In fact, the lab can run the same tests and comparisons that the van does, in the exact same amount of time, it’s just that you have to transport the evidence to the lab – which is the job of the undermanned Evidence Techs.
The van has the same equipment – except it runs on a 220 volt line….which the van doesn’t have. So guess what it has to do? If you guessed “Drive back to Homan Square and hook into a 220 volt power source,” well, you’re smarter than Rahm Emanuel, Dick “Turban” Durbin and Special Ed who are running a sleight-of-hand number on the press, who are eating it up.
Did anyone ask what use it is to run these tests without the gun used? It might be impressive to match bullets and brass from multiple crime scenes to a single firearm, but without the gun and a shooter to connect it to (and you know Kim Foxxx isn’t going to charge anyone without (A) multiple eyewitnesses and (B) a confession on video) then this is just a great big expenditure that will do nothing to reduce crime.
Van pulls up and after a hour or two announces their results:
“Someone was shot here.”
What time did it happen?
“We don’t know. Ask the coroner.”
Who did the shooting?
“We don’t know, they left before we got here.”
What kind of gun was it?
“A small one – probably looked pretty big to the victim.”
Was it bought at a gun show? Did the shooter steal it? Was he a Trump supporter?
“No idea. Gun isn’t here, shooter isn’t here. Just a dead former gang member and a single spent cartridge casing. Welp, we’re done here – where’s the nearest bar and/or doughnut shop?”
I totally heard that back and forth in my head. Dragnet style.
Have a stray cat that is smarter than Rum Emam.
I suspect, based on the example of other fed agencies, the Scooby van actually is lined with knarlly shag carpet surrounding a bitchin waterbed.
“Did you know that the CPD has the exact same equipment that’s in the van?”
H’mm.
I thought that expensive fancy vinyl graphics doubled as a handy target – bullet collection point…
If Chicago really wants to make a dent in crime they need a low-tech van to…..
1) Locate missing fathers and take them home
2) Teach unmarried girls to keep their legs closed.
RACIST!
True, but still, RACIST!!
I’m not sure how a hi-tech van will help with that.
That cop in the video is a moron. “I lost all respect for those guys when I learned they were using their job to pick up chicks.”
His description and complaints about bonds and the guys tracking down the guys who skipped out on bail is just ignorant.
My favorite is the “they don’t need a warrant” BS. Pro Tip porko… if bail bondsmen are after somebody, there’s a bench warrant out for their arrest for failing to show up to court.
In Kentucky, they have to get a warrant signed by a KY judge and have it served by a KY LEO. Bounty hunting and bail bondsmen are both illegal in KY.
“Bounty hunting and bail bondsmen are both illegal in KY.”
I don’t know about bounty hunters, but bail bondsmen? KY doesn’t allow bail? How does that work?
Of course KY has bail bondsmen. They even advertise (a simple Google search shows that).
And also, as the guy kept pointing out, they’re not cops. They’re agents of someone in a contractual relationship with the guy who skipped bail. The guy has basically stolen from bond bailsmen. As the bounty hunters are not government actors, they cannot violate the 4A.
Hey, I started getting irritated when he complained about bail bondsmen being a business to make money. As if the vast majority of policing isn’t about revenue collection. Except with badges and immunity.
Once again-the NRA did NOT sit on that Minnesota jury…duh. Pray tell what should they do? Join Black Lies Matter?!?
So perhaps you failed to realize that Mr. Dennard’s entire point is that the NRA did NOTHING. No public support for Mr. Castile, no statement about the shooing, they did nothing.
Since when does NRA take voice in any kind of situations like this? They’re not some armed citizens defense league. I guess you’ve been watching too much ‘news’.
Which is exactly what they should have done. This incident had little to do with the 2nd amendment. Retard reached for his waistline during a traffic stop when he had a gun on it. Retard got shot. Darwin was served.
More like citizen tried to obey the cop and give him his DL while stating he was not pulling out his weapon. Cop touched his weapon with no threat evident from the citizen. Cop got away with murder.
So you want “…public support for Mr. Castile” to factor how into the jury deliberations?
I don’t think you want to go down that path.
As regards the BATFE van, via a police blog in Chicago.
“Did you know that the CPD has the exact same equipment that’s in the van? It’s over at the gun lab at Homan Square, 3rd floor, above the “black site.” In fact, the lab can run the same tests and comparisons that the van does, in the exact same amount of time, it’s just that you have to transport the evidence to the lab – which is the job of the undermanned Evidence Techs.
The van has the same equipment – except it runs on a 220 volt line….which the van doesn’t have. So guess what it has to do? If you guessed “Drive back to Homan Square and hook into a 220 volt power source,” well, you’re smarter than Rahm Emanuel, Dick “Turban” Durbin and Special Ed who are running a sleight-of-hand number on the press, who are eating it up.
Did anyone ask what use it is to run these tests without the gun used? It might be impressive to match bullets and brass from multiple crime scenes to a single firearm, but without the gun and a shooter to connect it to (and you know Kim Foxxx isn’t going to charge anyone without (A) multiple eyewitnesses and (B) a confession on video) then this is just a great big expenditure that will do nothing to reduce crime.”
Link:http://secondcitycop.blogspot.com/
I have no first hand knowledge to verify this posting. The blog that posted this has been very accurate in the decade I have been reading it. Just thought it was interesting.
NukemJim
Actually, Mr. Large Black Man With Beard, cops can shoot most people with impunity. Black men aren’t so special in that regard. (And it still has bupkis to do with the NRA.)
Especially when they are retarded enough to reach for their waistband during a traffic stop.
Again, the citizen was told to produce his DL. The citizen also stated that he was not pulling his weapon. Cowardly cop fires 7 rounds, killing one citizen and endangering at least 2 others. Cop gets away with murder.
Q: Where’s the safest place for a cop to hide after murdering someone?
A: A courthouse.
“I’m a 280-pound black guy with a bald head, a beard, and, sometimes, a gun. It’s already hard enough going through life stereotyped as a dangerous black man . . .”
I’m a 250-pound white guy with a bald head, a beard, and, always, a gun. It’s already hard enough going through life stereotyped as a dangerous biker yada yada yada yada. Nut up butter cup. You and I have both chosen a look that most people find intimidating and we both end up getting more attention from the police because of it. Change your look or own the good with the bad. You ain’t special because you’re black. I get the same runaround.
People with dozens of facial piercings get stared at because they choose to draw attention to themselves. People who talk/laugh loudly get asked to STFU. The window I was looking in as I walked down the sidewalk at night . . . I am looking at it because it is the only one with the lights on. It draws my attention because it starkly contrasts to all of the surrounding darkness. Anything anybody does that makes them stand out is going to get unwanted attention from somebody. Forever.
“You ain’t special because you’re black. I get the same runaround.”
Yeah, but one has a ready-made excuse for any and all manner of failures and persecutions, and has been trained from birth to completely discount any suggestion that something may be his fault, his bad grades in high school were all racism, had nothing to do with skipping school to smoke some weed. Sometimes dindunuffin is the problem.
I saw a guy once asking about a job at a fast food joint with his pants around his knees, literally, and a baseball cap on sideways. AND, he was told to come back tomorrow. If he did not get the job, was it racism? When you think about it, recall that I did not mention his race.
How soon til the van gets stolen?
I was thinking more like torched, they marked it so nicely for all the community support groups in south Chi-town to find easily. 😀
Something tells me they won’t be taking that van out anywhere that could happen.
So, yeah, it won’t be actually doing anything.
Anything that supposed cop says is invalidated by the fact he drives on a public road with only one hand on the steering wheel and sometimes lets go of it completely to make some fancy gestures. 😐
That video has so much fail in it.
Did anyone get “triggered” by the presence of the van?
What’s is it now, $0.25 a square ?
Who’s taking bets on when that ATF van gets it’s first bullet hole, and when it gets stolen. I don’t know if there are squares for when the ATF agents get raped and for when they get eaten, but there likely ought to be.
??? Why is that guy’s PMR-30 just…chilling in his pocket? That’s a recipe for a dropped gun in .002 seconds. They’re hard to find, too [at least out my way], so now he’s scuffed his expensive, rare gun. Good job.
It seems like photojournalists go out of their way to get the stupidest CCW pics they can. At least the safety’s on.
I haven’t heard of any smash and grabs in my town, but my favorite LGS for transfers was broken into several months ago. It was a method that sounded like it was out of a movie though, the owners said that they cut a hole in either the back wall or door and crawled in. They had clearly cased the place previously, they had a security system with motion detectors, but they didnt go off because they crawled across the floor and were protected from the detectors by the counter. They broke into their back room and made off with most of their stock, I believe it was around 50 guns of varying types. They said that the ATF had recovered one of them in a city about 3 hours away, but as far as I’m aware that’s the only one that’s been recovered so far. Felt bad for them as they’re a small family business, but wasn’t terribly surprised either as they’re not located in a great part of town.
Gun registry gone mobile?
This is just the ATF’s way of saying:
“We can / will protect you, after the fact”
and,
“We can collect the data on how you are not protected”
Have you read the ATF’s weekly / monthly newsletters? I recommend that you do. It’s all a bunch of bureaucratic overlap. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives
Subscribe at the ATF website or:
subscriberhelp.govdelivery.com
How did GRANICUS get to do “Govdelivery”? Only the shadow knows.
If you would like to know more about NIBIN – here you go:
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/10/06/this-machine-could-prevent-gun-violence-if-only-cops-used-it#.lPZLchnCe
RE: Stolen Guns: “Getting Them is the Easy Part”
This story is published by Memphis newspaper Commercial Appeal.
These are the same assholes that posted an entire searchable list of TN HCP holders in 2009. Their database they put up had the permit holder’s full name, birth date, complete address, and the issue and expiration date of their permit.
There were never any consequences for their action. The TN legislature eventually passed something to prevent it in the future.
“Finkelhor said he understood why “exposure to shooting” might have misled the CDC-UT researchers even though his team provided the underlying question in the appendices. Linda Dahlberg, a CDC violence prevention researcher and co-author of the study featured in The Post and this newspaper, said her team didn’t notice anything indicating the statistic covered other things.”
And this is exactly why no government funds should ever be used to ‘study’ the guns issue. Because their ‘researchers’ are known liars, fools, or worse. It is simply not possible for an actual, trained, research team with even ONE functional brain in it to NOT notice that such a question “covered other things”. Assuming that is, that any of said team even bothered to READ the so called ‘research’ they published…
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