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Printed Plastic Guns a Growing Worry for Law Enforcement

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Photo Credit: Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post Federal law enforcement officials are increasingly concerned about the public-safety threats posed by plastic handguns made with 3-D printers because they can potentially slip past metal detectors and are capable of firing lethal rounds.

At a media briefing Wednesday, senior officials of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said they had built and tested the Liberator, a printed handgun designed by Defense Distributed, a Texas organization. Cody Wilson, its co-founder, is a former law student leading a campaign for do-it-yourself firearms.

In one test, ATF officials fired eight rounds from the Liberator. Other tests and simulations showed that the weapon was capable of firing with enough power to injure vital organs.

The Liberator’s designs were downloaded more than 100,000 times in just two days before federal officials demanded their removal in May. The risk, officials said, is not that street criminals will use printed weapons in their day-to-day operations. Rather, ATF officials are concerned about individuals slipping plastic guns past metal detectors and into schools, sporting events or government offices.

Depending on the sensitivity of a metal detector, a bullet might not be enough to set it off. Only X-ray machines could spot the handgun itself, and in many public places they aren’t available.

Read more from this story HERE.

Filmmaker Michael Moore: ‘Guns don’t Kill People, Americans Kill People’

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Photo Credit: APFilmmaker Michael Moore had a lot to say about guns to a paparazzo who caught up with him at LAX, the scene of a shooting last week that left a TSA worker dead.

“I think the NRA, they’ve got it half right when they say ‘guns don’t kill people, people kill people,’” he told the TMZ cameraman. “I change it to ‘guns don’t kill people, Americans kill people.’ Because we’re really the only ones that do it on this level, on this scale. Why?”

The cameraman asked Moore about his thoughts on the LAX shooting.

“Nothing changes. It’s the country we live in… Legally purchased gun, bullets. What are you going to do?” Moore said.

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Man Tries Checking Rifles, Handguns and Ammo at JFK Airport- Things Didn’t Go So Well for Him

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Photo Credit: NBC New YorkPolice arrested 23-year-old Keenan Draughon at New York’s Kennedy International Airport Saturday morning after he tried to check two defaced rifles and two handguns.

Both rifles were missing their serial numbers and one had a round in the chamber. Police spokesman Joseph Pentangelo says the Tennessee man also tried to check two magazines capable of holding 15 rounds of 9-millimeter ammunition.

These magazines are illegal in New York.

Draughon was arrested trying to board a flight to Charlotte, N.C., after Port Authority of New York and New Jersey police found the weapons.

Police said the 23-year-old told a United Airlines attendant that he wanted to check two cases containing firearms for his flight to Charlotte, a spokesperson for the Queens County district attorney’s office said in a statement.

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Gabrielle Giffords Attends First Gun Show Since Shooting

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Photo Credit: AP/Tim RoskeA smiling Gabrielle Giffords toured rows of tables loaded with rifles and handguns in her first visit to a gun show since surviving a 2011 shooting, and pleaded afterward for people to come together to stop gun violence.

The former Arizona congresswoman visited the Saratoga Springs Arms Fair on Sunday with her astronaut husband, Mark Kelly and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to highlight a voluntary agreement that closely monitors gun show sales in New York.

The trio mixed with a gun show crowd that was mostly welcoming — with a few hostile undertones — before calling for people to build on the cooperative effort.

“We must never stop fighting,” Giffords said at a post-tour news conference, her fist in the air. “Fight! Fight! Fight! Be bold! Be courageous!”

Giffords, a face of the national gun control effort, slowly walked hand-in-hand with Kelly through the large room where Winchester rifles, muzzle-loaders, antique knives and other weapons were on display and “Don’t Tread on Me” flags hung from poles.

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Obama, Holder to Place Good Guys with Guns in Schools

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obama-hugs-kids-wh-photoCNN reports that President Obama is “putting millions of dollars into funding armed police officers in schools around the country, an idea not far removed from a National Rifle Association proposal.”

According to CNN, on September 27 the DOJ announced $45 million in funding meant to “create 356 new school resource officer positions.”

The $45 million will be distributed in the form of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) grants. One of the earliest grants will be to Newtown, Connecticut, to create two new officers for Newtown schools.

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Georgia School District Mulls Placing Rifles in School Offices

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A school system in north Georgia is considering a proposal that would allow district police to store rifles in school offices in case they’re needed to defend students in a school shooting.

Gainesville City Schools Superintendent Merrianne Dyer said school resource officers would have access to rifles placed at Gainesville High School, Gainesville Middle School and Wood’s Mill Academy.

“These things happen quickly, they happen unexpectedly and in places and locations where we can’t anticipate. Any lapse of time to get a weapon would be detrimental in an emergency,” Dyer told MyFoxAtlanta.com.

Dyer said the weapons would be locked inside safes in the offices of school resource officers. She said all school resource officers are armed, but recent training showed that handguns they carry would not be effective in long hallways or corridors.

Gainesville Lt. Jay Parrish told MyFoxAtlanta.com that officers should not be required to leave a school during an emergency to retrieve certain types of weapons.

Read more from this story HERE.

Missouri Liquor Store Clerk (Iraq War Veteran) Shuts Down Armed Gunman

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Photo Credit: NEWS-LEADER

Photo Credit: NEWS-LEADER

A would-be thief picked the wrong liquor store to rob.

Clerk Jon Lewis Alexander, a 54-year-old military veteran, was working on Sunday at Beer 30 in Marionville, Mo., when the wannabe tough guy swaggered through the door, puffing a cigarette.

Alexander told the man smoking wasn’t allowed inside. “He just took another puff and looked me dead in the eyes, like he was Billy Badass,” Alexander told the Daily News.

The man’s mistakes began piling up from that second on. “You need to give me all your f–king money,” the crook demanded.

A surveillance video shows the thief start to raise his pistol, but Alexander is quicker. He covers the man’s gun with one hand and swings his own pistol to the thug’s face with the other.

Read more from this story HERE.

Oregon Supreme Court finds Portland Law Prohibiting Loaded Guns in Public Places Constitutional

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

A city of Portland ordinance that prohibits carrying loaded guns in public places does not violate a person’s right to bear arms, the Oregon Supreme Court has ruled.

The decision in State and City of Portland v. Jonathan D. Christian, released Thursday, is believed to be the first time the state’s highest court has weighed in on the ordinance. The justices’ endorsement of the law’s constitutionality comes as communities across the country continue a heated debate over government regulations of firearms.

The ruling, written by Justice Richard Baldwin for the unanimous court, carries implications for more than just Portland, said Harry Auerbach, Chief Deputy City Attorney for Portland. He said several local governments throughout Oregon have similar regulations.

“The ability of cities statewide to protect their citizens was an important consideration” for the court, he said, adding that the ruling bolsters efforts “to protect the safety of people on the streets of Portland by limiting the number of loaded firearms that are out there.”

The city ordinance prohibiting the carrying of loaded firearms in public has existed for decades, although the Portland City Council amended it in December 2010 to add a mandatory jail term of 30 days for violating the ordinance. That amendment was part of a package of new gun laws passed under former Mayor Sam Adams.

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Video: Texas Man Shoots His Abductors

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Photo Credit: SkleyAuthorities say a Houston-area man turned the tables on two bank robbery suspects who had abducted him and his wife by pulling a gun on the unsuspecting duo and shooting them both, killing one of them.

The suspects apparently knew that the woman worked at the First National Bank of Eagle Lake in Columbus, and they abducted her and her husband at gunpoint at their residence north of the city on Thursday and drove them back to the bank, Columbus County Sheriff’s Sgt. Andrew Weido told Houston television station KHOU.

The suspects forced the woman to taken an undisclosed amount of money from the bank, then forced the husband to drive them in his truck down Highway 71, Weido said. It was then that the husband grabbed a gun that was in the truck and fired at the suspects, he said.

Officers who responded to a 911 call found both suspects lying on the ground near the truck suffering from gunshot wounds.

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Circuit Court: ‘Unsettled’ if 2nd Amendment Applies Outside of Home

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Photo Credit: APIn a case over New Jersey’s requirement that a citizen demonstrate “justifiable need” for a carrying a firearm before receiving a concealed carry license, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled that such a requirement “does not burden conduct within the scope of the Second Amendment’s guarantee.” The court also said “it remains unsettled” whether the Second Amendment is even applicable outside one’s home.

Filed on July 31, 2013, the ruling in Drake v. Filko upheld New Jersey’s practice of placing the burden of proof upon the citizen. In other words, the citizen who wants to carry a gun for self-defense must demonstrate why doing so is necessary for him or her. In simple terms, the citizen must justify being free.

That runs contrary to previous rulings in other circuits, such as on March 6, 2012 when U.S. District Judge Benson Everett Legg ruled against Maryland’s requirement that citizens who wanted a concealed carry permit had to demonstrate a “good and substantial reason” for getting one. Overturning this New Jersey-like requirement, Legg ruled: “A citizen may not be required to offer a ‘good and substantial reason’ why he should be permitted to exercise his rights. The right’s existence is all the reason he needs.”

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