Wrong turn leads to Mexican prison for Texas truck driver

A Dallas-based truck driver is in prison in Mexico and facing a possible 35-year sentence because he missed his exit and had no way of turning around without crossing the border.  Jabin Bogan was making deliveries in El Paso before heading on to Arizona when he missed his exit and found himself stuck on the highway leading into Mexico.  This is an easy and common mistake to make on the confusing highways of the El Paso area, but it can be a costly one as Bogan has discovered.  Near the border he says he “asked a cop” how to turn around and was told he would have to continue on a couple of miles to an exit.  The details of that part of the story are murky as US authorities say they have no record of a truck driver making such an inquiry of border agents.  They say that had Bogan asked at the US checkpoint they would have stopped traffic to allow him to make a U-turn on the highway.  Instead Bogan crossed the border and was stopped by Mexican authorities who searched the truck and found over a quarter of a million rounds of rifle ammunition. 

Headlines in Mexico and the US announced the largest detection and seizure of illegal ammunition in recent memory and strongly suggested that the shipment was destined for Mexican drug cartels.  That assertion was quickly denied by both Bogan’s boss and the ammunition dealer in Phoenix who had paid $100,000 for the shipment.  Dennis Mekenye, operations manager for Demco Freight, says the truck was equipped with a GPS tracker and when he saw it was in Mexico he called Bogan’s cell phone.  The driver told him about the missed exit and that Mexican authorities were searching the truck.  Shortly thereafter, Bogan was arrested.  The ammunition dealer in Phoenix, Howard Glaser, says he believes Bogan is a victim of confusing signs — just a hard working man who made a simple mistake.  He says the ammunition, 250,000 rounds of military surplus 7.62 NATO and 18,000 rounds of 5.56 NATO, was for commercial sale in the US only and that the suggestion that Bogan was trying to smuggle it into Mexico is ludicrous.  He says Mexican authorities should have recognized that an honest mistake had been made and sent the driver and his cargo back to the US and on to Arizona.  Bogan is now being held in a federal prison in Veracruz where he has been formally charged with smuggling military ammunition.

Continue reading Mexican Standoff →

How Fear Begets Tragedy

Why do tragedies like the death of Trayvon Martin occur?  Because atrocities like the murders of Bob and Nancy Strait occur.

Nancy Strait was 85-years old, mostly blind, and had been caring for her 90-year old husband Bob for over 65 years, when she was brutally raped and murdered.  A suspect named Tyrone Woodfork, who turned 20 a few days after the attack, was quickly arrested.  Police say that Woodfork and up to four accomplices broke into the Strait’s Tulsa, Oklahoma home during the overnight hours of Tuesday, March 13.  They beat Bob, breaking ribs and his jaw, and shot him several times in the face with a BB-Gun.  They also beat and sexually assaulted Nancy.  The couple was not found until the following evening.  Bob survived almost 2 months, but passed away on May 4.  His family says the real cause of death was a broken heart over the loss of his wife.  Nancy succumbed to her injuries the day after the attack.  Police say Woodfork was captured after an alert citizen spotted the Strait’s stolen car. 

The attack on Bob and Nancy Strait is all the more tragic because they were among the last and best of what we have come to refer to as “the greatest generation.”  After surviving the Great Depression, Nancy had left her small town home to go to the big city of Tulsa to work in a factory supporting the war effort.  Bob was serving in the 101^st Airborne Division and participated in the D-Day invasion.  Though he was wounded, he turned down a Purple Heart because he didn’t feel his injuries warranted the citation.  And even though he was eligible for VA medical care and other veterans’ benefits, he never took advantage of them because he felt that he had just done his job and his duty, and didn’t think further compensation was warranted.

Continue reading Tragedy Strikes →

Virginia Tech Mom Speaks Out

Yesterday was the 5^th anniversary of the tragic rampage shooting at Virginia Tech that took the lives of 32, wounded 17 more, and impacted all of us.  In the years since that horrific event there has been much said about the availability of guns, particularly on the campuses of America’s educational institutions.  Among the loudest voices have been some of the family members and victims of the Virginia Tech massacre.  Their personal tragedies and struggles make their feelings on the matter particularly relevant and moving.  Unfortunately, while some of these folks and their views have been embraced by the media and certain special interest groups, others have been muffled and not heard at all.

One voice is that of Holly Adams.  Her daughter, Leslie Sherman, was murdered that day.  Unlike others who have focused on the tools the murderer used that day in the commission of his crime – what they were, how he got them, and what laws might have prevented him from acquiring them, and thus, in their minds, would have prevented the tragedy – Ms. Adams points to the possibility that someone might have been able to stop the murderer before he hurt so many people.  Those Virginia Tech survivors and families who misguidedly call for constraints on the law-abiding as a means of controlling criminals, have been promoted as speaking on behalf of all of the families directly impacted by the tragedy.  That is a misrepresentation that Holly Adams would like to set straight.  On the anniversary of her daughter’s murder she sent a letter to Philip Van Cleave, President of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, a grass roots pro-rights organization.  That letter is reprinted below.

Continue reading Virginia Tech Shooting →

Fast & Furious Facts

      In the 16 months since information about the ATF and DOJ program known as Fast & Furious began trickling out, there have been many revelations and much written about the operation, but in spite of formal investigations by the DOJ Office of Inspector General, and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, as well as numerous inquiries by journalists and bloggers,

• ATF encouraged gun dealers to sell large quantities of guns to suspected gun traffickers even though the gun dealers objected and would not have made the sales on their own.
• The “high level cartel member” at the top of the investigation objectives was a 24-year old active smuggler named ???? who was actually caught smuggling ammo into Mexico, but was released after he agreed to provide information about higher level cartel members to ATF.  He continued smuggling guns and never provided any information.
• Two other principle targets of the “investigation” were actually working for the FBI and were shielded from prosecution.  The FBI apparently never told ATF that these men were working for them and were “untouchable.”
• ATF made no attempt to interdict the guns.
• ATF made no attempt to track the guns. Continue reading FFF →

Freaks and Oddballs – You’re One

Just over 200 days away from what will undoubtedly be one of the most important elections in US history, and most of the country still isn’t even paying attention yet.  Of course those of you reading this have been paying attention for years, even decades, but that’s because you’re all freaks and oddballs like me.  At least that’s what the majority thinks of us.  We prefer to think of ourselves as exceptional and concerned – responsible citizens, but they see us as demented political junkies lacking in real life.  Any way you want to define us – those of us who pay attention to politics more than 60 days out from a major election are definitely a minority – about 20%.  While that can be a bit disheartening, it also should be encouraging.  Since 70% of potential voters are in the dark about politics, those of us in the 20% have an opportunity to leverage our knowledge to significantly influence the myopic majority.  We have to understand that most of these people aren’t ignorant because they don’t care, but because they don’t care enough to make it a priority in their daily lives.  They want to vote for the best candidate, they just have been focused on other things and need someone to guide them to that candidate.  You and I can be their guides.

After the election of 2008 I did some simple research into search trends on Google.  What I found was pretty startling.  While there were millions of internet searches for such hot-button issues as “Obama + gun control” and “Obama + abortion,” in the days leading up to Election Day, the day these searches really spiked with the highest number of searches wasn’t the day before the election or two days prior, the most such searches actually occurred on the day after the election.  It seems that people were more interested in finding out what they had done than researching the decision they were about to make.  Nancy Pelosi’s statement that the House should pass ObamaCare to see what was in the bill comes to mind.  I found the search data pretty disturbing, but at least it shows some interest.  We just need to figure out how to activate that curiosity a bit earlier and make sure that the information folks need is readily available in a format they can easily understand.  We also need to be sure that as people find the information they need about presidential candidates that they also learn something about other candidates lower down on the ticket.  Regardless of who wins the White House, if there is not a solid, reliable House and Senate in place to support the good and block the bad, we’re going to be in a lot of trouble.

Continue reading Political Junkies →

Winning in the Courts

Alan Gottlieb, founder and Executive Vice-President of the Second Amendment Foundation, or SAF, likes to say that he and his team are “winning back firearms freedoms one lawsuit at a time,” and they’ve been doing a bang-up job of it.  In the wake of the critical victory in the Supreme Court in the Heller case, Gottlieb teamed up with Heller lead attorney Alan Gura to bring cases against the City of Chicago and several city suburbs over their outright bans on handgun possession, and a suit against a handgun ban by the city of San Francisco.  Since then SAF, which already had a pretty solid track record for filing and winning litigation, and Gura have ramped up their efforts filing dozens of court challenges to restrictive gun laws nationwide.  

At the time of the Heller victory in 2008, I commented that, while I believe litigation is important, I felt that litigation was a long, slow process that would take decades to produce meaningful results.  What has transpired in the few years since that landmark decision has been nothing short of astounding.  Gun bans and egregious restrictions have fallen like dominoes as Gottlieb and Gura have led a loosely associated army of attorneys in a strategy of selective and narrowly targeted litigation in which each victory lays the groundwork for the next court challenge.  While the progress made has not been fast enough or gone far enough to satisfy some, the firm foundation being laid will serve gun owners well for decades to come – if the Supreme Court doesn’t back-pedal on Heller and McDonald.

Continue reading One Lawsuit at a Time →

Mr. Obama, Tear Down that Wall!

The stonewalling and obfuscation from the Obama administration continues as information about ill-conceived, and apparently politically motivated, “gunwalking” operations, and the subsequent cover-up of those programs, slowly comes to light.  The latest bit of stonewalling comes directly from the White House where the Obama administration has refused to make available former National Security Advisor Kevin O’Reilly to testify before the committee investigating the matter.  Even though his attorneys had already agreed to O’Reilly testifying over the phone, the White House response was that O’Reilly is not available because he is in Iraq. 

O’Reilly maintained a personal relationship with Phoenix ATF chief Bill Newell and was briefed by Newell regarding Fast & Furious.  Emails indicate that O’Reilly was briefing others in the White House and investigators would like to know who.  Apparently the White House doesn’t want that information shared.  This White House dodge takes on an even more pungent odor when it is remembered that US Attorney for Arizona, Patrick Cunningham, invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to avoid testifying before Issa’s committee.

Continue reading Just The Truth Please →

Lynching the Law

The media circus surrounding the tragic death of Trayvon Martin has largely focused on Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law.  That focus is misplaced.  Stand Your Ground (or SYG) provides certain narrow protections for individuals who use deadly force in self-defense, but the basic standards for whether the use of deadly force is justified are not changed by the SYG law, nor are the penalties and liabilities for the unjustified use of deadly force.  In the Trayvon Martin case, the specific part of the law that has applied so far is a provision that a person claiming self-defense should not be arrested unless there is some clear evidence that self-defense was not the motive.  In this case, George Zimmerman, the Neighborhood Watch volunteer who shot Martin, was beaten and bloody with grass stains and mud on his clothes when police arrived.  Zimmerman told them he had turned around and was going back to his vehicle when he was attacked by Martin.  There was nothing to suggest Zimmerman was lying then, nor has any new evidence surfaced indicating that his story was not true.  Martin’s girlfriend, who was talking to Martin on the phone just prior to the shooting, says she told him to just go on home, but that he said he was going back for the guy following him.  Another witness said he saw Martin straddling Zimmerman and beating him.  He said that Zimmerman was calling out for help.

Stand Your Ground laws were developed in response to state laws which have been seriously eroding self-defense rights over the past several decades.  In many states, laws had shifted to a “guilty until proven innocent” standard for self defense.  People who had just been involved in the most traumatic event of their lives were treated as criminals until they could prove in court that their actions were justified.

Continue reading Stand Your Ground →

Richard Lugar: The Most Anti-Gun Republican in the US Senate – Defeated!

Richard Lugar lost his bid for another 6 years in the US Senate yesterday when he was defeated by Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdoc.

Mourdock will now face Democrat Joe Donnelly in the November elections.

           While we like to think the gun issue transcends partisan politics, and there are certainly some pro-gun Democrats and some anti-gun Republicans, but the fact is the Democrat Party has never included recognition of Second Amendment rights or support for specific legislation recognizing some aspect of those rights in their national party platform.  Republicans, on the other hand, have routinely included pro-gun provisions in their party platform.  When rights issues come up for a vote, on the floor or in committee, we can generally count on most Democrats to vote in opposition and most Republicans to vote in favor.

Even though there are some Democrats who support individual rights, they generally follow the party line when the rubber meets the road on key partisan matters like judicial and cabinet confirmations and major policy initiatives from the White House – even when it is clear that the vote will be detrimental to gun owners.  While it is frustrating and disappointing when a supposedly pro-gun Democrat votes for confirmation of a clearly anti-gun judge like Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court, it is even more frustrating when a Republican chooses to defy their party and vote with Democrats on such matters.

Continue reading Senator Richard Lugar →

Shooting for Liberty

States competing for lowest Brady score

       The Brady Bunch has released their annual scorecard rating states based on how strict their gun laws are.  The scorecard is a very useful tool to help rights groups understand how their state compares to others on a liberty scale; more points = less liberty.  Alaska, Arizona, and Utah have all achieved the coveted Zero Points/Zero Stars on the Brady scale and are now competing to see which state will be the first into negative numbers – which is possible through bonus points.  Arizona and Alaska can reach a –2 point score by protecting carry rights on campuses of state colleges and universities.  Utah already has such protections, but could achieve a –2 score by adopting Constitutional (permitless) Concealed Carry as Alaska and Arizona have.  Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana, North Dakota, and Oklahoma all came in with just 2 points apiece and all have a real shot at beating the leaders into negative numbers with the right combination of reforms.

The Brady Center released this latest scorecard with much hoopla and heavy breathing, but their own data clearly shows that there is no correlation between gun control and criminal violence.  Crime statistics vary widely – from high to virtually non-existent among the 40 or so states Brady ranks as “poor,” while several of the Brady’s highest ranked states have some of the highest rates of violent crime.  As a matter of fact, a full 25% of all violent crime in the US occurs in the Brady’s top four states with the most severe firearms restrictions.  Of course the Bradys and their political allies argue that the tight restrictions are a response to the high crime, but most of the restrictions have been in place for years, if not decades, and they have proven to be completely ineffective at reducing criminal violence.

Continue reading Shooting for Liberty →