Laws, Enforcement and Liberty - excellent read

[WhiteFeather]

Since we are entering shortly into 2010 wanted to post these older article from ACSL website (lots of excellent info BTW) to illustrate the more things that change, the more they are the same.

Please note that one of the ceasefirepa anti-gun person very sad story is listed here. Including the uncomfortable truth about that young boy would be alive today if the failure of the court system to jail a repeat violent criminal Vaughn Mathis had done its job, its not the weak or non-existant gun laws that let Ryan Hacke or his parent down or allowed that criminal access to that boy. Its the failure of the courts and DA to do their stated purpose, something you will never hear the otherside tell about this story, other than its just the gun faults or that we need more gun control laws.

Why don't you ever hear the other side tell the whole story?

Why because they don't want to deal with the human elements, just deal with hardware, its easier and feels good, but doesn't solve anything. So they are right back asking for more gun control laws, till it get like the UK and many other disarmed countries around the world are.

So please read and understand what at stake 2010 is going to be a VERY interesting year about gun rights and attempted enactment of more gun control laws, You need to be ready for legislative battle.



http://www.acslpa.org/n-legislative/...nd_liberty.htm

Laws, Enforcement and Liberty


Overview:

America was founded on the concept of ‘Liberty and Justice for All’. It is a historical constant that as government grows, enacting more and more laws, ‘Freedom’ becomes diluted and ‘Justice’ becomes elusive. Justice in America was, and is, meant to apply to all with no one being ‘Above the Law’ as has been the case in so many nations throughout history. The ‘Bill of Rights’ is a clear example that laws established ‘by the people’ that empower government (albeit in a limited fashion) are restricted and circumscribed by those very same ‘people’.

Laws by their very nature do not stop crime; they only establish societal guidelines and punish the involvement in it. An early example of this is the Ten Commandments, which are considered under Judeo Christian tradition to be God’s laws. To violate one of these commandments was to invoke the wrath of those around you and, in the afterlife, the Supreme Being. So, too, is the concept embodied in Man’s Law in that violations are supposed to carry significant penalties.



Firearm Violence and Enforcement



At the heart of this entire debate is the daily tragedy that unfolds for all of us in the news of the urban area body count. We cannot disconnect these tragedies from the examination of the enforcement of the laws of our Commonwealth as well as the impact that policies have on criminal behavior.



Accountability for one’s actions, as well as swift and sure punishment for the use or attempted use of lethal force, is an essential part of the restoration of safety and security to our neighborhoods. Many remember the tragedy of Mary Beth Hacke, whose child (Ryan) was killed by a recidivist criminal, Vaughn Mathis, out on bond. The killer had an extensive criminal record that encompassed numerous violations of the Uniform Firearms Act that were plea-bargained away. In a strange dichotomy, Ryan Hacke’s killer, who had not received the five-year mandatory sentence for his earlier crimes, again sidestepped the imposition of the five-year mandatory sentence. Ryan Hacke would be alive today IF the Justice System had applied the law as would hundreds if not thousands of other Pennsylvanians.



The Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing reviewed the enforcement of the five-year mandatory sentence for the use of a gun in a crime and their report states that, out of 50,000 convictions, this penalty was used only 312 times. Additionally, the Courts have a tendency to impose this sentence concurrently, rather than consecutively, further negating any potential benefit to our society.



Philadelphia continues to be the crime and murder capitol of Pennsylvania and with good reason: the system seems more concerned with moving people through the system than actually imposing the will of the people on those with most violent of intentions. An article in the Philadelphia Inquirer on May 10, 1998 synopsizes the problem by examining how firearm cases are handled in the local court system. The following quotes are excerpts from the main article and reveal a great deal about Philadelphia’s flourishing crime:



· The two young men were a couple of nobodies among the 1,500 adults charged last year with illegally carrying guns in Philadelphia -- and among the estimated 80 percent of those who never saw jail time.



· Now, a review of his tangled history in the Philadelphia courts reveals a system that routinely tosses out firearms cases -- a system where Davis' arrest was, in the words of Judge Smith, "just a gun case."



· More serious gun cases are failing at the same or even higher rates. More than half of all gun assaults and gun robberies last year resulted in trial acquittals, dropped charges or judicial dismissals.

· Factor in this: FBI figures show that police make arrests in only 20 percent of reported city gun robberies in the first place.



· District Attorney Lynne Abraham blamed the lost cases on state Supreme Court rulings that restrict police, victims who are apathetic or afraid to testify -- and judges who "leave their common sense out of the courtroom."

"The problem," she said, "is that the system doesn't work very well."



· "You've got to get more serious," [Senior Judge] Brady said of gun cases. "Volume wise, you get in an awful spot. There's so darn many, it becomes garden variety. You lose the importance that the gun represents. How deadly it can be."



Governor Rendell has stated the need for, and his support of, greater regulation of firearms and yet the facts dictate a different and troubling picture of official indifference and bureaucratic bungling the likes of which would land the average citizen in jail for violations of the negligence laws. Has the system become an accessory to the violence in our society?



In 1994, Allegheny County District Attorney Bob Colville spoke of a 1,192% increase in firearms offenses by juveniles in Allegheny County. How many of those juveniles caught with a gun in 1994 and shown compassion by the courts for some extraneous reason are today’s murderers? How many of the victims would be alive today if the courts had enforced the violated laws?



In Boston, Massachusetts a police officer and a probation officer put together a program, in 1995, involving local, state and federal law enforcement agencies and community groups that would reduce the previous years juvenile homicide rate of 47 to ZERO for two and one-half years. How did this miracle happen? Aggressive prosecution, stiff punishment and elimination of plea bargaining for violations of gun laws was instituted, as well as adding flexibility to law enforcement operations and publicizing this new no-nonsense attitude through the media.



Many will, and have, denounced the effectiveness of strictly enforcing laws. Yet, every trial of this concept has produced remarkable results. Project Exile in Richmond, Virginia is another example where a committed effort reduced gun homicides even though that state restricts the sale of firearms to ‘One Gun a Month. In stark contrast is Pennsylvania where there were, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, NO prosecutions for the violation of Federal gun laws (Sec.922,x,1 & Sec.922,x,2) nor were there any recommendations for prosecutions for juveniles with a gun or for an adult giving a gun to a youth. This includes Philadelphia where two-thirds of Pennsylvania gun crime is committed. The thrust of our argument is exactly what the Boston and Richmond efforts have demonstrated—criminals will avoid crime that results in stiff unyielding punishment.



Many academicians have expressed deep concern about the role of tabloid journalism in turning criminals into celebrities by focusing on these tragic events. I discussed these issues with Sociology Professor Colleen Hyden of Washington & Jefferson College. Professor Hyden, who also has a B.A. in psychology, stressed the risks of allowing the media to immortalize these troubled kids and how the process actually empowers them to terrorize their community and even the nation. In addition, other kids who feel that no one cares watch these tragedies unfold and seize upon this as a way of striking out at people in general. According to Prof. Hyden, these troubled kids, and others who copycat them, can derive great satisfaction from watching news segment after news segment of crying classmates and parents, funerals and politicians and experts entering into national discussion and debate over the “tragedy” he/she has single-handedly caused. Dr. Hyden is extremely critical of the entertainment industry and their glorification of violence. Numerous studies have shown that young minds are very easily influenced and guided by violent messages within this venue. Another factor for consideration is psychotropic drugs and their role as aggravating factors in violent situations. These drugs, such as Prozac or Ritalin, can have an extreme effect on personality, especially when administered all too liberally by the medical professionals who are charged with their oversight.



Law enforcement officers tell us that much more can be done to combat violent crime. The key, they tell us, lies not in sophisticated policies but in a return to the basics. Prioritize the Judicial system to focus on the small percentage (6%) of violent, recidivist criminals that commit the bulk (70%) of violent crime. Robert E. Sanders, former Asst. Director of Criminal Investigations for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) has told us that gun control laws siphon away scarce funding and assets with little or no return and that locking up the criminal is the ONLY solution to violent crime. Mr. Sanders has been to Pennsylvania, at our invitation, to convey this message in meetings with legislators. Retired Pittsburgh BATF supervisor John McIlwain has given us his view that not one juvenile has been prosecuted for Federal gun law violations locally. Not even gang members caught using sawed-off shotguns in armed robberies. What message does this send our children?


What we have learned over the years is that laws and blanket policies do not stop crime and that police cannot be everywhere. Flexibility and adaptability by law enforcement and redefining the focus to the individuals responsible will yield better results than brutish government efforts at attenuating all citizens’ rights. Sadly, nothing can change the past. We can, however, learn from it and build upon that which works and discard that which doesn’t.



Examples abound of politicians confronting a tragedy with a solution of dubious value or questionable intent and gun control is perhaps the worst manifestation of this. In a free society, no citizen should ever have to justify the assertion of a fundamental right. Certainly the government should not even consider abridging the right of the people to keep and bear arms until and unless it has exhausted all available alternatives. When the government is not properly enforcing the laws that already exist to curtail violent crime, it is wrong to place additional restrictions on the law abiding to accomplish the same purpose.



Examples:



The following examples show the folly of allowing recognized violent individuals to be processed and released through the revolving doors of our justice system. While they are tragic, we must understand that they are not the exceptions to the norm, for, by and large, they are the rule across our nation.

In January, 1989 a terrible crime was committed at the Cleveland School in Stockton, California. Patrick Purdy killed and injured dozens of school children before taking his own life. He used a variety of firearms, which were purchased in accordance with then current California gun control laws, to perpetrate this heinous act. The data below is from a Report to the California Attorney General, dated October 1989, and was prepared by Nelson Kempsky, Chief Deputy Attorney General of the State of California. Patrick Purdy's Criminal Rap Sheet is as follows:


April 1977: Listed as suspect in an assault

December 1978: Arrested for possession of stolen property and dangerous weapons.

March 1979: Arrested for possession of a dangerous weapon.

July 1979: Arrested for extortion and possession of a dangerous weapon.

August 1979: Accepted for treatment for alcoholism, and described as "very drug oriented."

August 1980: Arrested and convicted for prostitution.

August 1982: Arrested for cultivation of marijuana, and possession of marijuana for sale. Convicted in March 1983.

October 1982: Arrested for vandalism.

February 10, 1983: Arrested for public drunkenness.

February 13, 1983: Arrested for possession of a dangerous weapon.

July 1983: Purdy's application for a Security Guard Permit is received and processed by the State Bureau of Collections and Investigative Services.

September 1983: Listed as a suspect in vandalism. No charges filed for lack of evidence.

October 1983: Licensed as a Security Guard by State Bureau of Collections and Investigative Services. Subsequently hired and fired by three security services.

April 1984: Purdy buys Excam Targa .25 caliber pistol #MI13107 in Los Angeles.

October 1984: Arrested for attempted robbery; convicted of being an accessory to a felony.

November 1984: Diagnosed as suffering from substance induced personality disorder. Determined to be disabled because of this; declared eligible for Social Security disability payments.

July 1986: Buys a Davis .22 pistol, #79709 in Modesto, California.

October 1986: Buys a Browning Hi-Power 9mm pistol, #2CH1095 in Sacramento, California.

April 1987: Arrested for firing a gun in El Dorado National Forest. Charged with vandalism, resisting arrest, and assault on a peace officer. Attempts suicide in El Dorado County jail. Is diagnosed as suicidal and homicidal while at that facility. Is sent to Placerville Psychiatric Health Facility for further evaluation. Is diagnosed as "extremely dangerous," and deemed competent to stand trial. Is convicted of a misdemeanor; all other charges dismissed. Sentenced to 45 days in jail and three years' summary probation.

August 1987: Diagnosed by Social Security Administration report as "getting worse as time goes by."

August 1987: Buys an Ingram MAC-10 9mm pistol, #S7095032 in Stockton, CA.

June 1988: Social Security reviews Purdy's disability claim, determines that he is still suffering from drug and alcohol abuse. Refers him to treatment center.

August 1988: Buys Norinco 56S 7.62x39mm semiautomatic rifle #MS010963 in Sandy, Oregon.

December 1988: Buys Taurus 9mm pistol #TH141825 at a gun store in Stockton, after passing California's mandatory fifteen day waiting period and security check.

January 1989: Commits murders at Cleveland School and takes his own life.






Note: California had a mandatory 15-day waiting period (at this time) for all handgun purchases, which included Background Checks.

continued in next posting

[WhiteFeather]

The response to the above tragedy by elected officials and the media was to focus analytical and corrective efforts on the instrumentality of the incident and not on the perpetrator of the crime. Thus originated the fixation, at state and federal levels, with banning so-called assault weapons and not on investigating how a person like this could navigate through a system designed and promoted to the public as effective in stopping a man like him. As history and the following show, many more tragic incidents and unnecessary victims lie ahead.

On Wednesday morning, Aug. 23, 2000 27-year-old Jonathon David Bruce broke into the Carpenter farmhouse shortly after 9 a.m. in Merced, California -- a San Joaquin Valley farming community 130 miles southeast of San Francisco. Bruce, who was armed with a pitchfork -- but to whom police were unable to attribute any motive -- had apparently cut the phone lines and then proceeded to attack the four Carpenter children with a spading fork. Two of the Carpenter children, Ashley and John William, were killed. Thirteen-year-old Anna was wounded but survived. Nine-year-old Ashley had 138 puncture wounds to her body and John William, 7 years old, was stabbed 46 times.

Jonathon David Bruce was known and recognized by the justice system as a violent and dangerous man. He was a drug user who became frightening whenever he used drugs according to testimony by his ex-wife and girlfriend. The courts and prosecutors had numerous opportunities to send Bruce to prison. Reports his ex-wife filed with the police in Mojave California in June of 1997 say that he had forced her and their infant son into his car (kidnapping) while living in southern California. At that time, she also reported to law enforcement how she had escaped from him in Mojave after he held a gun to her head (assault with a deadly weapon) and had threatened to kill her and their one-month-old child. His ex-wife had also given to the Dos Palos California Police Dept. a tape from her message machine threatening to kill her present husband. Bruce had also assaulted a police officer while resisting arrest for drug charges and had violated his parole by not appearing at his hearing. Police had a warrant out for his arrest yet failed to pick him up even though they knew where he lived.

Under California’s “safe firearm storage” laws, parents can be held criminally liable unless they lock up their guns when their children are home alone. That’s, unfortunately, just what law-abiding parents John and Stephanie Carpenter had done. One of the Carpenter children, 14 year-old Jessica Lynne, knows how to shoot; her father taught her. Ironically, once the deputies arrived, Bruce rushed them with his bloody pitchfork so they used their firearms to end Mr. Bruce’s violent career. They shot him more than a dozen times.

In the above examples and thousands more, law-abiding citizens would be alive today if the system had done its job. If an average citizen had allowed harm to come to another by the same kind of repetitive negligent acts of the justice system, he/she would be prosecuted by the same kind of bureaucrats whose indifference and irresponsibility allowed the above incidents, and many more, to occur. What permeates these cases and thousands of others is also an odor of bureaucratic indifference to the safety and rights of the law-abiding citizen. The body count and the grief will end only when our leaders shrug off the pressure of new age agendas and make the punishment fit the crime.



Conflicts and Consequences:



There is an old saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions and in the case of our current judicial system and the use of firearms in crime by violent career criminals the aforementioned road must be a four-lane highway.



There exist two different trains of thought on criminals; one is to lock them up and throw away the key and the other is to treat them with kid gloves and use all the resources available to rehabilitate them. While both sides have merit, as in all things, there exists a vast middle ground where flexibility and focus is needed to embrace the concepts of liberty AND justice for all.

Very few violent crimes occur spontaneously as the criminal usually has exhibited a steady increase in the severity and frequency of his/her crimes as their career has developed from childhood to adult. The end result of ignoring this track record of malevolence is death, pain and injury for innocents who otherwise would NOT have been harmed because the perpetrator(s) would have, and should have, been in prison. We must consider the sheer volume of science that shows that certain individuals in our society cannot be allowed to roam free. It is these very same individuals who, in many cases, know how to escape and evade legislatively mandated punishments by maneuvering law enforcement and the courts to their advantage. In many cases the violent criminal knows the system, its limitations and the laws better than his legal counsel.



· Violent crimes with a weapon, and not the mere technical/regulatory violations, must be better addressed.

· We must restrict the release of truly violent weapons-prone predators to prey upon unsuspecting victims by ending the use of pre-trial release, post-trial release prior to sentencing, plea bargains, good time, parole, probation for the most violent in our society.

· We must prioritize our prison system to not release prematurely (over-crowding being one reason) the small percentage of inmates with a history/record of violent crimes using weapons.



We have law upon law and regulation upon regulation, the majority serving as tributes to an entrenched ‘Maginot Line’ style of thinking. Politicians disingenuously pontificate about gun control and mandatory sentencing laws that serve to deter ONLY the law abiding while knowing that criminals ‘easily’ navigate around them.

If you want to do your part to help the cause of firearm rights protection from those that want to take them. Please consider joining FOAC

Firearms Owners Against Crime, PAC (FOAC) is a registered political action dedicated to working with citizens, candidates and incumbents in the furtherance of our constitutional freedoms and ethical, moral and constitutional public policy. FOAC’s mail address is P.O. Box 18292, Pittsburgh, PA 15236, Phone-412.221.3346, Fax-412.257.1099, Website - www.foac-pac.org.

Our mission is to:

To educate citizens on the rights of United States citizens to own firearms to include but not limited to: the Constitutional rights guaranteed under the 2nd Amendment of the United States Constitution, Judicial Reform and the Pennsylvania Constitution as embodied in Article 1, Section 21 and Section 25.

A copy of the official registration informa*tion of Firearms Owners Against Crime PAC may he obtained from the Pennsylvania Depart*ment of State by calling toll free, within Pennsylvania, 1-800-732-0999.

[cgbudde]

Under California’s “safe firearm storage” laws, parents can be held criminally liable unless they lock up their guns when their children are home alone. That’s, unfortunately, just what law-abiding parents John and Stephanie Carpenter had done. One of the Carpenter children, 14 year-old Jessica Lynne, knows how to shoot; her father taught her. Ironically, once the deputies arrived, Bruce rushed them with his bloody pitchfork so they used their firearms to end Mr. Bruce’s violent career. They shot him more than a dozen times

That is why I will never leave my kids unprotected.