Posts Tagged ‘Guns’

Anson Chi Denied Bail (Plus Additional Information, Including His YouTube Videos)

Sunday, July 8th, 2012

Accused Plano bomber Anson Chi was denied bail at a hearing at which he testified on his own behalf. I don’t see anyone placing any sort of credibility on his claims that some of his wounds were due to being tortured by police while in the hospital. Various testimony adds a lot more to the “walking time-bomb” file:

[FBI agent Brian] Carroll described Chi as “anti-government, anti-technology, anti-big business, pro-environmentalist (and) slightly anarchist.”

“He said he was tired of armchair activists and wanted to have this in the bank to prove he was a real activist,” Carroll said.

One wonder what sort of “activism” Chi thought he was displaying. Anti-gas-pipeline activism? I fail to see how blowing up a pipeline would fight the Federal Reserve, the IRS, or genetically modified food (all noted Chi concerns).

Testifying for the defense, Chi’s parents said they were OK with him living at home if the judge agreed to release him and would notify police immediately if he broke any rules.

But the testimony also seemed to backfire.

His father, Swia Chenn Chi, said he often fought with his son and was so afraid of him he once called the police.

“If we don’t agree, he usually goes wild,” the father testified. “I was so afraid he would take the gun and point it at me … I wished the police would (have taken) his gun away, but they never did.”

The FBI said agents recovered two pistols and three shotguns from the family’s Plano house, in addition to bomb-making chemicals and hardware in a search hours after the explosion.

Chi’s father said he was upset with his son because he hadn’t worked for several years.

“He’s such a grown-up man,” Swia Chenn Chi said of his 33-year-old son. “He’s not handicapped but he doesn’t work so he makes me disappointed.”

An adult refusing to look for a job fits the Occupy mold a lot more than your typical Ron Paul supporter. It also fits in with Chi’s posting the “Disappointed Asian Father” images on his Facebook page, like this one:

It also ties into the themes in his novel.

Anson Chi’s mother, Fai, testified her son had no real friends and added she had no idea what the chemicals were inside their home.

“I didn’t know what he was doing,” Fai Chi said. “When I ask him questions, he says I’m nosy.”

She said she thought the chemicals were ingredients for him to make soup.

“I always thought he was baking and cooking,” she said.

Asked if she ever saw him eat anything he baked, she said, “Last year he did eat a loaf of bread.”

She also said her son would sometimes compare himself to Jesus.

“He said, ‘Jesus cannot save the world. I can save the world,'” she said.

Comparing yourself to Jesus is a pretty clear sign you’ve gone off the deep end.

More information from The Dallas Morning News:

In addition to the bomb-making materials and instructions, agents found three shotguns and two 40-caliber semi-automatic handguns at the Chi home. They found books on domestic terrorism and technological slavery. They also found $2,000 hidden in a spray can with a false bottom, as well as euros and Asian currency.

Carroll detailed Chi’s extensive travel in recent years, including trips to Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia. Records show that Chi crossed into Mexico 20 times on foot and that he was denied entry into Canada last year, Carroll testified.

More information continues to come out about Chi, including some information I was unable to locate between the time I figured out he was the likely bombing suspect and the time the Dallas media revealed who he was.

Here’s Chi, in a video with badly synched audio:

I’m not a big fan of the IRS, and as a fan of small government I have a bit of sympathy for tax protestors. But that sympathy is tempered by the fact that the theories by which they deduce the federal income tax is unconstitutional range from the almost certainly wrong to the completely ludicrous. And further evidence that they’re mistaken is the frequency with which they end up in prison.

Chi also posted a copy of this well-known video depicting soccer fans overwhelming police over their excessive use of violence. I’m all for exposing and punishing police brutality, but when Chi comments “Watch the police (pigs) get what they deserve—oink!” once again he gives that Occupy-tainted whiff of throwback 1960s radicalism. Not everyone who called police pigs in the 1960s built bombs, but virtually 100% of the 1960s bomb builders (The Weatherman Underground, etc.) would be found among their ranks.

He also links to a 9/11 Truther video, which does not speak well of his credulity.

Disaster Recovery Plans: Mountain Lion Edition

Thursday, July 5th, 2012

“Most members of the urban workforce don’t actually have any plan if they came in contact with a mountain lion.”

You don’t say.

Actually, in Texas, a CHL holder would have one more action available: shoot it. Of course. this wouldn’t do you any good in California, or if you’re unfortunate enough to work in an office that has a “Gun Free Zone” policy, since there’s no chance the mountain lion will heed the “Mountain Lion Free Zone” policy…

Heritage Auctions Offers NRA Firearms

Thursday, April 19th, 2012

Although I’ve frequently talked about various Heritage books auctions on my other blog, I think some of my readers here will be interested in hearing about their firearms auction coming up on April 30 as part of the NRA Firearms for Freedom program. I’m not enough of a gun collector to tell you what’s notable, but the gyrojet pistol looks interesting, and they have several vintage Winchester rifles and a couple of flintlocks.

LinkSwarm For February 15, 2012

Wednesday, February 15th, 2012

Time for another roundup of this and that:

  • Media Matters is a paranoid interest group that works as an extension of the Democratic Party, and which many liberal journalists take their marching orders from. In other news, pro-wrestling is fake.
  • Mark Steyn on Obama as Henry VIII.
  • Harry Reid and the Democratic caucus totally support Obama’s war on Catholicism.
  • A goodly percentage of Notre Dame’s professors have rendered their judgment on Obama’s war on Catholicism: Unaccapetable.
  • Your tears, Rahm. Let me taste them.
  • Texas ranks top in exporting yet again, with exports bringing in more than $249.8 billion in 2011, up 20.7% from $206.9 billion in 2010.
  • Is the redistricting fight all about Lloyd Dogget? So black and Hispanic interest groups are fighting a long, drawn-out court battle to protect a single white incumbent.
  • I got that story from Must Read Texas, which seems like a veritable firehose of Texas news and links.
  • To support its welfare state, Denmark travels quite a way down the road to serfdom: “A suspected terrorist has more legal protection than the ordinary Danish taxpayer.”
  • Bin Laden gave up on jihad. Maybe.
  • Iowahawk takes aim at a certain Clint Eastwood commercial.
  • Clayton Cramer: A lot more people use guns to defend themselves than you think. (Hat tip: Say Uncle.)
  • Holly Hansen breaks radio silence to note skulduggery in Round Rock ISD. And here’s Part 2.
  • Some Marin County residents are fighting George Lucas’ plans to expand film-making facilities. Because California is just doing so well it can afford to alienate job creators.
  • LinkSwarm for February 3, 2012

    Friday, February 3rd, 2012
  • James Q. Wilson on income inequality.
  • Obama declares war on Catholics.
  • Hey Rocky, watch me pull 1.2 million people out of the labor force in a single month!
  • The blue model is breaking down so fast and so far that not even its supporters can ignore the disintegration and disaster it now presages.”
  • The Cato Institute has put up this handy interactive map of defensive gun use. (Hat tip: Say Uncle.)
  • Over at Shall Not Be Questioned, Sebastian talks about a review of Adam Winkler’s Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America, an excerpt of which Clayton E. Cramer was kind enough to examine here. This particular post is notable as both Winkler and Cramer chime in in the comments. I would be most interested in reading a full-length review by Cramer of Gunfight, but I don’t think he’s done one yet.
  • Big labor loses big in Indiana.
  • Mickey Kaus wonders what Obama does all day
  • A bit of followup on that Killeen recall election: this is what democracy in action looks like.
  • Texas Senate Race Update for January 31, 2012

    Tuesday, January 31st, 2012
  • A testy exchange between Ted Cruz and Tom Leppert at last week’s Texas Republican Assembly Biennial Endorsing Convention Biennial Endorsing Convention on Leppert’s gay rights parade and ACORN baggage that I, Matt Dowling and whoever was behind the now-silent Race to Replace KBH dug up.

  • Last week Ted Cruz was on the Glenn Beck Show:

    Glenn Beck: “There’s no way you’re ever going to get elected. You make too much sense.”

  • Cruz was also named as one of the Top Ten Conservative Challengers in Texas by New Revolution Now.
  • Craig James appeared on WFAA (again, apologies for their crappy, non-YouTube video embedding):

  • Ted Cruz, Lela Pittenger and Ben Gambini all appeared at the North Shore Republican Women’s forum in Montgomery County.
  • Craig James is just fine with a later date for the primary. That piece isn’t particularly information, but I thought I would put it up since they do actually manage to mention all the Republican and Democratic candidates filed for the race, a sharp contrast with other news stories I could name…
  • The Texas Association of Business will have another Senate candidate forum in Austin tomorrow from 200-3:30 PM. Scheduled to attend are Ted Cruz, David Dewhurst, Tom Leppert and Craig James. I’ve been sending email back and forth with the James campaign to try a find a time to interview him while he’s in town, but it doesn’t look like we’ll find one that matches both our schedules. (It’s a busy time for my day job.) So we might end up doing an email interview instead.
  • The National Association of Realtors endorses Dewhurst. I’m sure this is a shocking turn of events completely unforeseen by anyone following the race.
  • Texas Sparkle lends her blog to Kevin Jackson so he can make the case for Craig James. His upshot seems to be that James is a tough competitor. Well, great. But getting your chin stitched up without anesthetic is probably a skill that will never be needed on the senate floor, and Mr. Jackson’s piece seems to be devoid of any actual discussion of political positions.
  • The AP takes a look at three of the five Democrats in the race.
  • Of them, Paul Sadler gets endorsed by the AFL-CIO. So that’s a second traditional Democratic interest group Sadler has in his corner along with the legacy news media.
  • Profile of Democratic candidate Jason Gibson. “Gibson considers himself a mainstream Democrat who believes in lower taxes and efficient government and who supports the Second Amendment. He’s pro-labor, he said, with an abiding interest in worker safety, but still is working to fill in the blanks on most issues. Jobs and the economy, he said, are key. He has hired several well-regarded campaign consultants and has said he is willing to spend into the seven figures.”
  • Glenn Addison raised $17,606 in Q4. That’s down significantly from the $35,059 he raised in Q3.
  • The Case for Rick Perry

    Monday, January 2nd, 2012

    Ace of Spades makes his case for Rick Perry here.

    Since that piece came out December 19, it’s hardly cutting edge news. But I’ve been ruminating on it for a while to try and figure out if I have anything more to add. I think I do. And with the Iowa Caucuses looming, I probably should.

    I haven’t covered much of the 2012 Presidential race, mainly because I’ve been focusing on the Texas Senate Race and everyone and their dog was blogging every twist in the POTUSA race.

    OMG! Ron Paul is up 3 points!

    Plus I don’t have cable, so I wouldn’t be able to watch the interminable numerous debates.

    Finally, a baseball team the Astros can beat

    Which is why I didn’t see Perry commit his brain freezes, of which there were many. (My theory is that he was still hopped up on goofballs from his back operation.)

    Percocet makes me see tiny little Jim Hightowers, and I have to grab and crush each and every one of them

    Having lived in Texas for the entirety of Rick Perry’s tenure as governor, I can attest that he is not a perfect candidate. There have been times (Gardasil, the Trans-Texas Corridor) when he’s strayed from conservative principles. And he’s not as polished as Mitt Romney or as articulate as Newt Gingrich.

    But Perry isn’t running against the second coming of Ronald Reagan, or even Sarah Palin. Every other major Republican contender is not only at least as flawed, they’re considerably more so.

  • Despite cheer-leading from the likes of Kathryn Jean Lopez and Jennifer Rubin, Mitt Romney has always struck me as a phony without any real core convictions except that he should be in charge; sort of the Republican answer to Bill Clinton, without the charm or adultery. Pick an issue and Romney’s been on both sides of it at one time or another. He seems the most likely of all the major candidates to be praised by The New York Times and The Washington Post for “growing” in office. Romney is most likely to disappoint me in caving in to D.C.’s usual free-spending, pork-barrel log-rolling.
  • I could get behind voting for the Newt Gingrich of 1994, the one whose laser-like focus on the holding the Democrats accountable for their misdeed and promoting the Contract With America helped Republicans take the House and Senate, set the stage for a welfare reform and helped (temporarily) balance the budget. Sadly, that Gingrich is not up on offer. We have to deal with the idea-a-minute-and-many-of-them-bad, ex-lobbyist, “Big Government Conservative” Newt Gingrich of 2012, the one so devastatingly and accurately skewered by Mark Steyn in this week’s National Review. (As Bruce Sterling once said at a Turkey City Writer’s Workshop, “Cruel, but fair!”) No matter how many times he tries to sound like Reagan, there are all those other times when he sounds like everyone from Al Gore to Faith Popcorn. I imagine that I would be disappointed many times in a Gingrich Presidency. Unlike Romney, I’m sure Gingrich would find entirely new and innovative ways to disappoint me.
  • I could almost get behind Ron Paul, based on his absolute, rock-steady position on the biggest problem facing America: out-of-control government spending and ever-increasing size and power of the federal government. The debt bomb is an existential threat to American prosperity, and If we don’t shrink government and get the deficit under control, none of the other issues really matter. And I lean heavily on the libertarian side of the spectrum. But even given that, there’s just too much weirdness (what Kevin Williamson called “his Ronness”) about the rest of Paul’s policies: the newsletters, the footsie with racism, the conspiracy theories, the weirdness about gays and wishing Israel didn’t exist, the running against Reagan. Being just one of 435 House members was a great place for Paul to be, since he could bring up conservative and Libertarian issues without any chance that his wackier ideas would ever end up in legislation, but the Presidency is a different kettle of fish. Plus there’s the problem of his electability, or rather lack thereof. With all his diverse baggage, I believe that Paul is the GOP candidate Obama would have the best chance of defeating. Ignore all the hard-left liberals talking up Paul as a better choice than Obama; it’s just a smokescreen that would evaporate at the first excuse to jump back on the Obama bandwagon. William F. Buckley always said conservative should support the right-most viable candidate. I don’t think Paul is a viable candidate.
  • Michelle Bachmann’s star has faded even more than Perry’s, and she doesn’t have Perry’s executive experience or record on job creation. The fact she’s neither dumb nor crazy doesn’t mean the MSM won’t pull the Full Sarah Palin Treatment on her (Andrew Sullivan womb-diving optional) were she to get the nod.
  • Rick Santorum: Too little, too late, he lost his last election, and his strengths don’t lie in the economy and job creation.
  • Jon Huntsman: Which part of “Republican” was unclear?
  • By process of elimination, that leaves Perry. As I said before, Perry isn’t perfect, but he has a record on holding the line on government spending and enabling job creation that puts Romney to shame. One again, let’s go to the charts that the indispensable Will Franklin of Willisms has provided on Texas job creation:

    And the case for Perry over Romney (again thanks to WILLisms) is even more stark:

    More on the Texas job success story here.

    While I have criticized Perry’s campaign budget proposals for being too timid, Perry insisted on balancing the Texas budget without tax hikes. I assure you that California would love to have Texas’ budget. Indeed, adjusted for inflation, population growth, and federally-mandated spending, the Texas state budget has actually gone down under Perry. His guiding principle has been “don’t spend all the money,” and it’s one that Washington desperately needs.

    One final, very big reason to support Perry: He can win. Perry’s never lost a race, because he’s a tough and tenacious campaigner who’s not afraid to hit his opponents hard. Everyone thought Kay Bailey Hutchison was going to cream Perry in the 2010 governor’s race, and he beat her like a rented mule.

    Or maybe a rented donkey.

    In the general election against Bill White, he ran an ad featuring a police widow talking about how her husband had been killed by a multi-arrested illegal alien while White was touting Houston as a “sanctuary city.”

    Even professional MSM Perry hater Paul Burka says that Perry is a hard man. “He is the kind of politician who would rather be feared than loved.” Perry will have absolutely no fear of taking the fight to Obama and going negative early and often, and he won’t let political correctness cow him into treating Obama with kid gloves.

    Will the media savage Rick Perry for his flubs? Of course they will. But, as Ace noted, they’ll always find a way to crucify any Republican candidate to make Obama look better. They’ll use the same “he’s an idiot” line of attack they used on Reagan and Bush43…and you saw how far that got them.

    If you’re still undecided on Perry, this video should at least give you a more rounded picture of him:

    For those who think Perry is already out of the race, remember that at this point in 2004, the consensus was that Howard Dean was going to be the nominee. There’s a reason Americans actually get to vote, and they frequently prove the pundits wrong.

    One final reason to vote for Perry: he’s a pretty good shot.

    LinkSwarm for December 29, 2011

    Thursday, December 29th, 2011

    The year winds down, and I have a bunch of more-or-less lengthy posts in various stages of completion. You know what that means? That’s right! LinkSwarm!

  • Even profitable firms are leaving California for Texas.
  • Charles Murray concludes that more prisons means less crime. “Higher imprisonment was the necessary condition for 100 percent of the reduction in violent crime.”
  • Riot at the Mall of America.
  • My amazing psychic powers prove accurate again.
  • Some good news: ethanol subsidies have finally expired. Now let’s make sure to keep them dead.
  • That’s a Heller of a lot of money.
  • Michigan men: Are you living with someone who’s pregnant? Congratulations! If this proposed law passes, you’ll be a slave.
  • “”The Occupy movement is alive and well and kicking, and doing precisely what it was intended to be: The Re-Elect Obama Campaign. Period.”
  • Hat tips: Insta, and a smattering of others.

    Brief Candidate Profile: Jason A. Gibson, Pistol Packing…Democrat?

    Monday, December 19th, 2011

    I just got off the phone with newly-filed Texas Democratic senate candidate Jason A. Gibson. (I called when his law firm’s email bounced for some reason.) He says his website, www.jasongibson2012.com, will be up live in a day or two.

    I asked him why he was running. He said he was “tired of Washington being dysfunctional” and “tired of being on the sidelines.” He also said “I get things done.”

    He says his family has a long history in the Democratic Party, and that his grandfather a union organizer. However, when I noted that my blog was on the conservative side of the spectrum, he mentioned support for two policies not often voiced among modern Democratic candidates: lower taxes and the right to bear arms. Indeed, he said he was a Texas CHL holder, which must surely be an uncommon thing among Democrats these days.

    There was a time, of course, when the Texas Democratic Party had numerous conservative politicians among their ranks. But by the 1980s, the party that had once been home to Allan Shivers and John Connally found itself to be captive to the ideological likes of Jim Hightower and Lloyd Doggett, causing the exodus of conservative Democrats like Phil Gramm, Kent Hance and Rick Perry to the Republican Party, which goes a long way toward explaining why it’s been over a decade since the Democrats held a single statewide office in Texas. The majority of Democratic partisans at both the state and national level have nothing but contempt for “Blue Dog Democrats,” and I doubt Gibson can buck the trend.

    But we’ll see.

    Fast and Furious Update for December 8, 2011

    Thursday, December 8th, 2011

    Some cleaning-up after yesterday’s bombshell:

  • Holder stonewalls today on both fast and Furious and Elena Kagan’s role in ObamaCare.
  • Wisconsin Republican Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner suggests impeachment of administration officials involved with Fast and Furious. he’s right. Breaking the law in a way that results in the deaths of innocent Americas solely to justify a cynical political ploy is indeed an impeachable offense.
  • Say Uncle pointed out that the U.S. House of Representatives now has a Fast and Furious webpage. Including this handy PDF listing all the fast and Furious players, and this one listing the victims. A very good start, though this scandal begs for some sort of interactive web widget to follow all the threads of evidence…
  • Obama gives Holder the dreaded vote of confidence.
  • Sipsey Street also provides an email thread between former ATF head Kenneth Melson and former United States Attorney for the District of Arizona Dennis Burke on getting their Fast and Furious stories straight.
  • Also from Sipsey Street (really, if you’re only going to follow one source for Fast and Furious, it should be them) comes further news of Obama’s war on the ATF whistle-blowers.
  • Republicans House members to Holder: Heads must roll.