Obama’s gun law enforcement at work: sell 55 illegal guns, get one year probation

When Shannon Miles walked up behind Harris (TX) County Deputy Sheriff Darren Goforth and pumped 15 9mm rounds into him he did so with a weapon he was not allowed to possess. Via Houston Chronicle:

Court records reveal that Miles had a lengthy criminal history. His first reported arrest came in February 2005 for failing to identify and giving false information to police officers. He would be arrested six more times by 2009.

In July 2005 he was arrested by Harris County Sheriff’s deputies for criminal mischief. On Oct. 2, 2005, he was arrested again by Harris County and held for eight days for resisting “arrest, search or transport.”

In 2006 he was arrested for “discharging or displaying” a firearm. He pleaded guilty and was held for 10 days. On May 3, 2007, Jersey Village police arrested Miles for evading arrest. Nine days later he was arrested again for criminal trespassing by Harris County deputies. On Jan. 29, 2009, Miles was arrested for preventing or obstructing officers duties by using force against the officer.

In addition he had been declared mentally incompetent for committing a violent assault:

A man charged with murder in the ambush of a suburban Houston sheriff’s deputy had a history of mental illness and was once declared mentally incompetent, according to authorities and his former attorney.

…

Miles was found to be mentally incompetent in October 2012 and he was sent to North Texas State Hospital in Vernon, Texas.

How does this happen? How does someone who is barred from possessing a firearm suddenly get one? Via the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel we get some insight:

In giving probation with no jail time to a Milwaukee man charged with 55 counts of buying firearms with fake identification and dealing them without a license, a federal judge delivered a message:

…

Dontray Mills, 24, purchased a total of 27 firearms, mostly handguns, between December 2012 and April 2014 and pleaded guilty to one of the charges on April 22, 2014, after an ATF investigation. As a result of the conviction, Mills will never again be able to buy firearms legally.

On Wednesday, he was sentenced. As part of the plea bargain, prosecutors agreed with the one year of probation.

Via: Red State

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Are liberal city centers dying off politically?

It’s a given in American politics that urban centers are essentially Democrat strongholds. There is no point in Republicans or conservatives competing there because you’re simply not going to gain any votes or find any agreement on key policy points. This can be attributed to both economic and demographic factors. The low income urban communities are predominantly composed of minority voters and they stand with the Democrats in numbers which are too daunting to contemplate. The majority of the wealthy tend toward the limosene liberal crowd who can afford destructive taxes and have the leisure time available to dictate proper life choices to others no matter how they live their own lives. (Be sure to take a limo or a private jet to your next climate change conference.)

But is this changing? Joel Kotkin at Real Clear Politics looks at the numbers and finds that while urban population centers are still large, they are not growing in relation to the exurbs and rural areas, and they’re also not turning out to vote in the same numbers as they did in the heyday of the Democrats.

This urban economy has created many of the most unequal places  in the country. At the top are the rich and super-affluent who have rediscovered the blessings of urbanity, followed by a large cadre of young and middle-aged professionals, many of them childless. Often ignored, except after sensationalized police shootings, is a vast impoverished class that has become ever-more concentrated in particular neighborhoods. During the first decade of the current millennium, neighborhoods with entrenchedurban poverty actually grew, increasing in numbers from 1,100 to 3,100. In population, they grew from 2 million to 4 million.Some 80 percent of all population growth in American cities, since 2000, notes demographerWendell Cox, came from these poorer people, many of them recent immigrants.

Such social imbalances are not, as is the favored term among the trendy, sustainable. We appear to be creating the conditions for a new wave of violent crime on a scale not seen since the early 1990s. Along with poverty,public disorderliness, gang activity, homelessness and homicides are on the rise in many American core cities, including Baltimore,  Milwaukee, Los Angeles and New York. Racial tensions, particularly with the police, have worsened. So even as left-leaning politicians try to rein in police, recent IRS data in Chicago reveals, the middle class appears to once again be leaving for suburban and other locales.

When Democrats begin looking at these types of numbers in a serious fashion they must be asking a question which conservatives have been pondering for some time. Who has been running things in the cities for decades now? The Democrats. And how’s that working out for you? Crime rates in the cities have been – and remain – epic. You can try to blame vast social conflict on the police if you like, but the fact is that the police go where the crime is. The social infrastructure in so many large cities has simply collapsed and it’s all taken place on the watch of the liberal Democrats who rule the roost. They whip up their voters into a frenzy every election cycle, warning of the dangers of the Republicans who hold no power over their lives, but it is under their leadership that you saw the current mess develop.

On the upper end of the scale, particularly in places like New York City, there is a jarring contrast which is hard for the Democrat base to ignore. How do you talk about income inequality and the evils of the fat cats when it’s those same fat cats financing the election of the same Democrats over and over again? Isn’t there a bit of a disconnect there?

Looking at the numbers in that article I have have to wonder if Barack Obama – by virtue of being able to generate racial empathy – might be the last Democrat who will turn out large numbers of voters in the cities. What does Hillary have to offer them which is any different than the policies which have seen New York’s murder rate skyrocket once again and Baltimore going up in flames?

Via: Hot Air

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The New Nationwide Crime Wave

The consequences of the ‘Ferguson effect’ are already appearing. The main victims of growing violence will be the inner-city poor.

The nation’s two-decades-long crime decline may be over. Gun violence in particular is spiraling upward in cities across America. In Baltimore, the most pressing question every morning is how many people were shot the previous night. Gun violence is up more than 60% compared with this time last year, according to Baltimore police, with 32 shootings over Memorial Day weekend. May has been the most violent month the city has seen in 15 years.

In Milwaukee, homicides were up 180% by May 17 over the same period the previous year. Through April, shootings in St. Louis were up 39%, robberies 43%, and homicides 25%. “Crime is the worst I’ve ever seen it,” said St. Louis Alderman Joe Vacarro at a May 7 City Hall hearing.

Murders in Atlanta were up 32% as of mid-May. Shootings in Chicago had increased 24% and homicides 17%. Shootings and other violent felonies in Los Angeles had spiked by 25%; in New York, murder was up nearly 13%, and gun violence 7%.

Those citywide statistics from law-enforcement officials mask even more startling neighborhood-level increases. Shooting incidents are up 500% in an East Harlem precinct compared with last year; in a South Central Los Angeles police division, shooting victims are up 100%.

By contrast, the first six months of 2014 continued a 20-year pattern of growing public safety. Violent crime in the first half of last year dropped 4.6% nationally and property crime was down 7.5%. Though comparable national figures for the first half of 2015 won’t be available for another year, the January through June 2014 crime decline is unlikely to be repeated.

The most plausible explanation of the current surge in lawlessness is the intense agitation against American police departments over the past nine months.

Since last summer, the airwaves have been dominated by suggestions that the police are the biggest threat facing young black males today. A handful of highly publicized deaths of unarmed black men, often following a resisted arrest—including Eric Garner in Staten Island, N.Y., in July 2014, Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., in August 2014 and Freddie Gray in Baltimore last month—have led to riots, violent protests and attacks on the police. Murders of officers jumped 89% in 2014, to 51 from 27.

Via: Wall Street Journal

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REPORT: ATF AGENTS 'LOST TRACK OF DOZENS OF GOVERNMENT GUNS' BY MISPLACING THEM

A disturbing report from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel alleges that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has lost "dozens" of weapons as agents leave them in bathrooms, on top of cars, movie theaters, and other public areas.

An extensive dive into the records of the ATF of the past five years uncovered dozens of incidents of egregious irresponsibility with weapons, from revolvers to machine guns, by ATF agents across the country. The Journal Sentinel highlights specific cases in which ATF agents leave their guns in bathroom stalls (in those cases, a good Samaritan has returned them) or cases in which agents leave their guns on top of their cars and drive away. In one of those cases highlighted, the gun was never found. 

In another case, the guns were found by children, and the agent did not fess up to losing it until the local news reported young children playing with a loaded gun by a storm drain. The agent told the press that he expected the gun would "turn up eventually" upon losing it.

A number of other agents lost their guns in "Operation Fearless," a plan to buy overpriced guns off of criminals to track their routes in the black market--not dissimilar to the border operation Fast and Furious. One agent had his guns stolen out of his truck while conducting a task for the operation. The thefts involved "at least two assault rifles" and three firearms.

The newspaper reports that it found 76 incidents in the past five years of lost, stolen, or missing weapons-- "nearly double the rate of the FBI and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration." Perhaps most disturbing of all, the reports do not say whether the agents involved in the accidents were disciplined for the lack of responsibility in caring for their guns. The ATF's record as disclosed here by the newspaper appears significantly more egregious than many government law enforcement agencies, even the DEA, which was responsible for the Fast and Furious operation that took the life of Officer Brian Terry and resulted in the distribution of illegal guns all over the American Southwest.

The Journal Sentinel published the reports described above, linking to them anecdote by anecdote. They were available to the newspaper, despite being incidents nationwide and not just in Wisconsin, through a Freedom of Information Act request, though the names of the agents were not. You can read them all at the newspaper's website here.

Via: Breitbart

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Obama To Close Campaign With Celebrity Blitz…

MILWAUKEE – After thousands of ads, hundreds of stump speeches and a record war chest of campaign cash, President Obama is banking on a final burst of star power to boost his get-out-the-vote effort in the final 72 hours of the 2012 presidential campaign.

As Obama and his top surrogates – Vice President Joe Biden, first lady Michelle Obama and former President Clinton – barnstorm the battlegrounds this weekend, they will have a cast of Hollywood stars and music icons at their sides.

The pairings are aimed at driving turnout, particularly among young and minority voters, while bolstering enthusiasm in a handful of key states where polls show the presidential race very close.

Here in Wisconsin, Obama will be joined by multi-platinum singer Katy Perry, who appeared with the president at a midnight rally in Las Vegas last week wearing a white “ballot” dress. Later in Dubuque, Iowa, rocker John Mellencamp will perform, and actress Kate Walsh of ABC’s “Private Practice” and “Grey’s Anatomy” will address the crowd.

Dave Matthews will open for Obama at a late-night rally in Bristow, Va., where the president will also unite for the first time on the 2012 campaign trail with Bill Clinton.

The celebrity tour continues Sunday with Latino rapper Pitbull joining Obama in Hollywood, Fla.; soul legend Stevie Wonder performing at a rally in Cincinnati; and Dave Matthews making a second appearance with the president in Aurora, Colo.

Via: ABC News

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Nearly 40% Of Chicago Public School Teachers Send Their Kids To Private Schools

The Chicago teachers’ strike is an awkward dinner conversation between President Barack Obama and his former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.   Many of the policy prescriptions in the new Chicago teachers’ contract designed to create more accountability are supported by the Obama administration.

As the Chicago teachers’ strike continues, we’ve learned that they make $71-76,000 a year and they turned down a 16% pay increase, which amounts to $11,360.  They work nine months out of the year, but say that this strike is benefits oriented.  However, given that ABC World News didn’t even air this story last Sunday and most of the media, with the exception of CBS, failing to mention the compensation statistics in their broadcast – suffice to say that the  media will probably ignore the fact that almost 40% of Chicago’s public school teachers send their kids to private schools.

I’m not against public education, but the fact that these teachers make enough to send their kids to private schools shows that Chicago’s public teachers are aware of the serial failure within the system.  Second, it shows that these teachers have zero confidence in their own respective school district.  Why are the teachers going on strike?  Aren’t the contentious measures they’re squabbling about aimed at enhancing accountability that will make their institutions of learning better for the students?  It appears this strike, like most union strikes, are defined by these three words: give. me. more.

However, given the state of public education and that of Chicago, it’s not alien for public school teachers to ship their kids to private institutions.  According to The Washington Times in September of 2004, they quoted the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which found that:

 More than 1 in 5 public school teachers said their children attend private schools.

In Washington (28 percent), Baltimore (35 percent) and 16 other major cities, the figure is more than 1 in 4. In some cities, nearly half of the children of public school teachers have abandoned public schools.

In Philadelphia, 44 percent of the teachers put their children in private schools; in Cincinnati, 41 percent; Chicago, 39 percent; Rochester, N.Y., 38 percent. The same trends showed up in the San Francisco-Oakland area, where 34 percent of public school teachers chose private schools for their children; 33 percent in New York City and New Jersey suburbs; and 29 percent in Milwaukee and New Orleans.

Via: Hot Air

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