Texas shootings test limit of self-defense law

From The New York Times:

Joe Horn’s home was his castle, but what about his neighbor’s home?

When Mr. Horn ... saw two burglars breaking into the house next door on Nov. 14, he called 911 and grabbed his shotgun.

Moments later, after what the police say was a confrontation on Mr. Horn’s front lawn, the two men — both illegal immigrants — lay dead on winding Timberline Drive, leaving behind a pillowcase stuffed with jewelry and about $2,000 in cash.

Protests -- both for and against Horn's choice -- have "convulsed" the neighborhood.

Defense and death from home intruders

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) _ A homeowner shot to death a man trying to break into a house in a city neighborhood, police said.
The victim was found dead on the driveway Wednesday night after the house owner called police to say he shot a burglar, police said.
Police took possession of the gun and the homeowner was cooperating with investigators.

BRADENTON, Fla. (AP) _ A 67-year-old man returning home from a Valentine's Day lunch with his wife interrupted a burglary in progress and was fatally shot in his yard by one of the robbers, authorities said.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) _ The House voted Thursday to expand the right for potential crime victims to use deadly force against their attackers.
House members endorsed a bill barring civil lawsuits against people who injure or kill someone attempting to enter their home or car.
Missourians already are allowed to use deadly force when they have a reasonable belief of harm or believe it necessary to protect themselves and to stop a home trespasser from committing arson, burglary or physical violence against someone else.

3,000 Kansans gain right-to-carry

LAWRENCE, Kan. - Nearly 3,000 Kansans have been cleared to carry concealed guns, with more applications being processed.
The attorney general's office had expected to receive about 5,000 applications by the start of the new year. The law went into effect Monday, after the Legislature approved it last session.

Gun-owning town urges gun ownership

GREENLEAF, Idaho (AP) - After seeing the chaos of Hurricane Katrina, a city councilor in this tiny Idaho town founded by pacifist Quakers came up with a novel idea.
Ordinance 208, passed by the City Council on Tuesday, asks Greenleaf's 862 residents who do not object on religious or other grounds to keep a gun at home in case they are overrun by refugees from disasters like Katrina.
An estimated 80 percent of the adults already own guns.

Hat tip to reader BS Steve!

Hearing on Kansas concealed-carry regs

The Kansas Attorney General's Office is seeking public input regarding the proposed regulations regarding the implementation of the Kansas Personal and Family Protection Act, which permits concealed carry of handguns by licensed individuals in Kansas.
A public hearing on the regulations, particularly the design and rules for signs, will be held in Topeka tomorrow afternoon. For those unable to attend, you may e-mail comments to ksagcc@ksag.org or mail written comments to:

• Kansas Attorney General, c/o Julene Miller, 120 S. W. 10th Ave., Topeka 66612-1597, Attn: Proposed Concealed Carry Regulations.

CONCEALED CARRY REGULATIONS PUBLIC HEARING
Tuesday, October 10, 1 p. m.
SRS Learning Center
2600 S. W. East Circle Drive South, Room A
Topeka, KS

Advocacy group tallies up gun deaths

Some interesting stats from the Childrens Defense Fund, which wants parents to get guns out of the home, and you to stop coveting assault weapons:

2,827_child and teen deaths by firearm in one year

• More 10- to 19-year-olds die from gunshot wounds than from any other cause except motor vehicle accidents.
• Boys ages 15 to 19 are nearly nine times as likely as girls of the same age to be killed by a firearm.
• In 2003, there were more than nine times as many suicides by guns among white children and teens as among black children and teens.
• The firearm death rate for black males ages 15 to 19 is more than four times that of white males the same age.

  The CDF weapons program:

• The Children’s Defense Fund calls for the support of common sense gun safety measures; congressional passage of legislation that closes the gun show loophole to criminal background checks on those purchasing guns from unlicensed dealers; and renewal of the ban on assault weapons. Parents should remove guns from their homes; organize nonviolent conflict resolution support groups in their congregations and communities; and refuse to buy video games and other products for their children that glamorize or make violence socially acceptable or fun.

Alternative: Take your child to blast away at targets at the Bullet Hole or other range. We used to. It's way fun.

Random crime-related wire stories

Man admits foot-fetish assaults on subway
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A 23-year-old with a foot fetish has admitted he tried to kiss, fondle and lick the legs and toes of more than 70 women on the New York subway over the last three years, prosecutors said on Wednesday.

56 illegal immigrants found locked in refrigerated trailer
LAREDO, Texas (AP) — Sheriff’s deputies found 56 illegal immigrants locked inside a refrigerated trailer with no driver in sight and no way for the shivering human cargo to escape.

Risking a life term to protect a child
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Matthew Ryan Hahn glared in disbelief at the digital photographs of a man molesting a girl. She was only a year old, maybe 2.
The next thing to do would be obvious — call police. But Hahn had been convicted of burglary more than once. And the memory card on which he discovered the photos came from a stolen safe.

Wrongly imprisoned inmate graduating from law school
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — On Christmas Eve 1996, Christopher Ochoa went back to his Texas prison cell and pressed a razor blade to his forearm.
He was serving a life sentence for a murder he did not commit and was ready to end it all.

Workers find baby's arm in sewage
BOSTON (AP) — Sewage treatment plant workers discovered a baby’s arm in the muck, and authorities said Wednesday the remains could have come from 21 communities near Boston.

Governer gets bill closing gun records
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The public won’t have any clue about who’s applying for concealed gun permits in Kansas under a bill Gov. Kathleen Sebelius has been asked to veto.
Under a compromise worked out Wednesday by House and Senate negotiators, all information about who applies for, receives or is denied a permit will be sealed.

ICANN rejects .xxx domain
NEW YORK - Faced with opposition from conservative groups and some pornography Web sites, the Internet's key oversight agency voted Wednesday to reject a proposal to create a red-light district on the Internet.

Update: Adell the non-felon felon

Plumbing contractor Adell Hardiman has homes in Blue Springs and Kansas City. Being a good citizen, he voted in Blue Springs. Being clueless (he said), he'd vote again in KC.
That habit - they called it vote fraud - got him put on probation in Jackson County in 2001 under a Suspended Imposition of Sentence (SIS).
This made the news in 2004 when I wrote that the assistant county prosecutor who prosecuted him, Phil LeVota, himself may have run afoul of voting laws when he voted in Independence after moving to Lee's Summit.
Nothing happened to LeVota, other than he was elected county Democratic chairman. Hardiman, naturally, felt a double standard was going on. But far-off legal experts told me "residence" is where one says it is, and no prosecution of LeVota would likely succeed.
That's where it rested, until Hardiman called me last month and said the county wouldn't give him a concealed-carry permit because that law - and state law - bar felons from owning firearms. I posted about his unsuccessful court fight for the permit.
In a comment to that post, sharp-eyed reader tex saw this in my 2004 story:

• He pleaded guilty to one felony count and was placed on probation. Hardiman said the case cost him "a tidy sum" of "less than $10,000" in legal fees. Hardiman was given a suspended sentence, which means that when his probation ends, he will have no criminal record.

Was that wrong? Yes and no. For purposes of a job app or almost anything else, Hardiman is not a felon. For "law enforcement purposes", however,  Hardiman is a felon, deputy prosecutor Jim Kanatzer told me. That's Missouri law. It's the same with SIS for DUI cases, he said.

Adell the vote felon: No gun permit

The way plumbing contractor Adell Hardiman sees it, his 2001 felony conviction for double-voting shouldn't keep him from getting a Jackson County concealed-carry permit.

But the Missouri concealed-carry law bars felons, and the sheriff's office has turned down his application. He's going to court this afternoon to try to win the permit.

"I have a business, for one thing," Hardiman, 53, told me. "The other part of it is, you've got so many people who are just totally crazy anymore. And I like to hunt."

Hardiman was placed on probation after voting twice in four elections in Blue Springs and Kansas City. He said he owned homes in both cities, registered under the same name and Social Security number. He claimed he didn't know it was wrong to vote in both places.

In 2004, just as Hardiman was getting off probation, he read in The Star that the man who prosecuted him, assistant county prosecutor Phil LeVota, himself had voted in two elections in Independence in 2004 after moving to Lee's Summit in 2003.

Intentionally voting where you don't live is a class-one election felony in Missouri. LeVota, now chairman of the Jackon County Democratic Party, was not charged. Unlike Hardiman, LeVota cast only one ballot in each election.

"Does the sword have a double-edge?" Hardiman asked me at the time. "Does justice cut both ways? He's an attorney, which I'm not, of course, but if he screws up and does something wrong, does he get the same thing, just like I got?"

Votes raise question of fraud (2004 LeVota story)
Adell Hardiman charged in 2001
Adell Hardiman, Minority Contractors Award, 1992

Update: No luck for Adell. 1) Vote-related felony convictions in Missouri are never expunged. 2) There's no wiggle room in Missouri laws barring felons from owning guns, as to type of felony.

Judge Margeret Sauer and sheriff's office attorney Stacey L. Mortimer were both sympathetic. But the law was clear.

"This is a good example of what I used to tell my students when I was teacher," the judge told him. "Things you do in your life can have consequences forever."

Missouri concealed carry: NBD?

From the wire:

• ST. LOUIS (AP) — Nearly two years after Missourians were given the right to carry concealed firearms, the law appears to have had little impact, advocates on both sides of the controversial issue say.
• Crime has not dropped since residents were allowed to carry guns, but neither has the number of unjustified or accidental shootings risen, police said.
• Story

Crime his career, prison his future

From U.S. Attorney Todd Graves' office 4:34 p.m.:

• Russell D. Kirkland, 46, of Kansas City, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Howard F. Sachs this morning to 15 years in federal prison without parole. Because he has three previous convictions for violent felonies, Graves said, Kirkland was sentenced as an armed career criminal.

Mr. Kirkland's career path:

• 1975 robbery/assault w/blue steel revolver
• 1976 stealing from a person by striking the victim about the head with his fists
• 1989 robbery for forcibly stealing money from another person while armed with a deadly weapon

News release: DOC PDF

(Note to Brad Alpert, gun expert: Brad, the feds call it blue steel. I always thought it was blued. But Google gives me a million-plus hits on "blue steel revolver", and only a few thousand on blued steel revolver. Which is right?)

KC homicide #127: Self-defense?

From KCPD PIO Darin Snapp 1:46 p.m.:

• On December 29th, 2005 at approximately 9:15pm, KCMO Police were called to a residence in the 11300 block of Orchard in regard to a shooting.  Upon arrival officers located the victim inside the residence suffering from an apparent gunshot wound.  He was transported to a local hospital by Mast and died early this morning. 
• Witnesses say the shooting victim forced his way into the residence and threatened the residents with a knife.  After a brief struggle with one of the residents a second resident shot the victim after observing him swinging the knife in a threatening manner.  The residents are familiar with the victim from past disturbances and one of the residents has an Order Of Protection (Jackson County) against him. 
• Detectives have questioned and released all residents of the house (including the shooter).  Early investigation reveals the shooting to be in self-defense.  It will be presented to the prosecutor for review.   
• This is homicide #127 for 2005, compared to 90 at this time last year.

Pen guns Part III: Lady Derringer

By Greg Reeves
One of the great things about locally-owned businesses is the incredible depth of knowledge you find there. Plumber's Friend is like that. So is The Bullet Hole, a shooting range and gun store in Overland Park.
Are guns shaped like fountain pens legal? My post yesterday said so, but a reader said that was wrong.
So I called The Bullet Hole and talked to manager Jeff Neumann, who told me 1) yes they're illegal but 2) there is in fact a legal version, made by American Derringer Corp. (right)
"They took a considerable amount of duress from the ATF", Neumann told me. "Here was the big difference – these pen guns, to deploy it, you had to take it out, pull the tailpiece and then it swung down into a grip, and when you pulled, it also flipped out the little spur trigger."
Neumann said he actually has sold such a gun, used, within the past year. But he said he has never seen an original (illegal) one.
"The original pen gun was like a zip gun, where there was literally just a little striker bar that you pulled back against a spring and swung it over, and it had a release button. They were usually .22 caliber," he said.
The American Derringer version, he said, also came in .25- and .32-caliber versions.
I tried all day to raise American Derringer and Lady D (aka Elizabeth Saunders ). No luck.

Don't point that pen gun at me

By Greg Reeves
I had to smile when Bob Owens, owner of Confederate Yankee, the 332nd most-popular* blog in the blogosphere (TTLB), corrected my post about pen guns and said:

• The moral of the story? Don't listen to journalists with an anti-gun political agenda.  Most don't know what they are talking about.

Yikes! Tarred! Rather than tick off my various gun-owning adventures and misadventures (bullets *do* ricochet), let me just admit I need to get smart about gun-control laws.
Most of what I know about the subject comes from these two anecdotes:

• When I covered KC police for The Star 1979-1983, most cops I knew favored the right to bear arms, even the right to carry, but were less enthusiastic about running into armed if law-abiding citizens.
• In 1977 I traveled widely in Communist East Germany on a fellowship. I went hunting with some local party officials. Not even they owned guns. We checked out our weapons from the Stasi (secret police), and returned them for lockup when we were done.

(*Crime Scene KC is currently 13,085th most-linked to - TTLB)

Confederate Yankee conquers Crime Scene KC!

By Greg Reeves
There's a good essay about newspapers on slashdot.org that says, 1) No matter how much a reporter or editor knows about something, some readers will always know more, and 2) Some readers don't know what they're talking about.
The first applies to my post yesterday about the death by pen gun of a budding rap singer. Quoting KCPD Capt. Rich Lockhart, I reported those fountain-pen-shaped weapons were subject to the same rules as any other common firearm.
Not so, weighed in Bob Owens of the Confederate Yankee blog:

• Greg, both you and Captain Lockhart need to read the National Firearms Act of 1934.
• The dear captain is totally and completely wrong about pen guns being legally "no different from a handgun or any other kind of gun like that."...
• Pen guns are classified under NFA 1934 along with machine guns and anti-tank rifles. They are regulated so severely that they are among the very hardest firearms to buy legally. You'd have to go through the same legal hurdles to buy a pen gun as you would to buy Rambo's machine gun or a flamethrower. (See his full comment in the post)

As Capt. Lockhart emailed me today, "I have been schooled."

Project Ceasefire's latest catches

By Greg Reeves
Who can be against taking guns away from felons? Or putting felons in jail for having one?
Here are the latest felons-with-guns guilty pleas in federal court here:

• Ontario D. Lewis, 27, KC, had a .22 revolver. His felonies: Two fraud convictions in 1998, when he was 20.
• Damone L. Harris, 31, KC, had five bullets. His felonies: robbery and drug-dealing convictions in 1991, when he was 17.
• Ryan G. Prater, 25, Independence, had a .40-caliber Beretta. He's a meth user and dealer.

On the first two, something tells me there was more going on than those old convictions. If I can find out more, I will, because these cases were part of the federally-funded Project Ceasefire, which in turn is part of the federally-funded Project Safe Neighborhoods.
And Project Ceasefire has kicked felon posterior:

Killers 1, gun owner 0 in Indy?

By Greg Reeves
KC Symphony musician and gun owner Steven Peters (left) was found dead with a handgun on his chest, according to court documents. Did he try to shoot it out with burglars who then killed him?
Independence police haven't said so, but one of the three accused killers, Richard Jones (right), showed up at a hospital with a gunshot wound to the arm.
An armed homeowner defending himself is one of the classic debates over the right of gun ownership, aka the Second Amendment.
What happens to guns in the home? When it comes to confrontation, does the homeowner more often win or lose? Enter "homeowner gun deaths" in Google, and you'll have 77,800 chances to read pro and con views of this question.
This is an emotional debate, and what Crime Scene KC knows about it comes mostly from these two anecdotes:

• When I covered KC police for The Star 1979-1983, most officers I knew favored the right to bear arms, even the right to carry, but were less enthusiastic about running into armed if law-abiding citizens.
• In 1977 I traveled widely in Communist East Germany on a fellowship. I went hunting with some local party officials. Not even they owned guns. We checked out our weapons from the Stasi (secret police), and returned them for lockup when we were done.