Very nice.

In Pierce County [Washington] the way the prosecutor decides whether to press charges or not is to print out the arrest records of the people involved and weigh them... Scumbag dead, good guy still upright -- good guy walks.  Scumbag dead, other scumbag still upright -- scumbag gets prosecuted.  The guy is an IPSC shooter himself, he figures you are just cleaning out the gene pool when you shoot a scumbag.

Greg Hamilton
Self Defense Instructor
Nov. 19, 1995

Michael Charles Williams

I received two calls from Michael Charles Williams today.  I was driving to work the first time and couldn't take notes but here is what I remember.  Where I could I found news stories that relate to what he told me:

• Adams (the guy Williams shot three times) had a long rap sheet.  His associates have criminal records too.
• Adams was partway into Williams truck through the window by the time the last shot was fired.
• Today the prosecuting attorney tried to get the blood alcohol content of Adams (0.327--legally drunk in Idaho is 0.08) ruled inadmissible in court.  He failed.
• The ex-wife testimony was ruled inadmissible. The prosecutor was virtually begging for it to be admissible and said he would "go all the way to the Supreme court" to achieve that.
• There are no other witnesses that claim Williams "was looking for someone to kill."
• Detectives didn't try to get fingerprints or other evidence off of the truck.
• The first detective and Williams knew each other in high school 15 years prior and had a bad history between them.
• The first detective had a good relationship with Adams family.
• Williams had some handgun training in the military but no formal training on civilian self defense.
• The gun was a "brand new" Springfield 1911 style compact in .45 ACP with "self-defense ammo".
• The prosecutor has a conceal weapons license.
• The prosecutor once shot at, in error, a plainclothes police officer.
• At my suggestion the defense attorney plans to call SAF.
• Williams thanked me profusely for "helping" (not sure I have actually done much).
• Williams said he sent a link to my previous blog posting to friends, family, and his private investigator.  My log files have confirmation of such traffic.
• His sister is digging up more newspaper stories for me to put on the web and comment on.

Background is here.  This has been bugging me for several months now.  Maybe grumbling about it here will relieve the frustration some.

And before you start laughing at me please realize that I know it's a minor thing and "it really doesn't matter" but it still bugs me.  Its that I want the world to be perfect and expect people would want to work toward that goal.  I know it's not possible but why can't people make the changes that they can instead of being so random?  It makes me look down on people in general.  Give me a reason to believe that the Neurotypicals are worthy of my respect.  But no.  That's not the way it works.  I'm looked down upon when it is they who are inaccurate and random.

The thing that has been bugging me?  The one of the pizza types in the cafeteria is labeled "grilled vegetable pizza".  It has red peppers, yellow peppers, black olives, yellow squash, and mushrooms along with the usual cheese and tomato sauce on it.  I'll bet 99+% of you won't see anything wrong with this "picture".  I do.  And it bugs me.  There's only one vegetable there--the mushrooms.  All the other plants parts are fruits.

This sort of irritation is perversive in our society.  Why can't people get it right?  And they tend to get irritated when you politely inform them they made a mistake (no, I didn't inform the cafeteria staff about their mislabeling of the pizza) and they almost never correct their errors.

There's a reason I'm into computers, guns, and explosives--they are understandable, rational, and predictable.

Reports from the media are almost always filled with errors.  The reporters, at best, are expert writers and are seldom experts on the topic.  They have limited time and rely on others for the "facts" which filter through biases and various error prone communication channels before they ever reach the public. And in the case of what happened behind a bar shortly after closing time on a Friday night (actually early Saturday morning) even the people who participated are probably not going to be worthy of being called knowledgeable.  The changes in the story of what happened that night reflect the difficulty in knowing exactly what happened.

What is known for certain is that 32 year old Michael Charles Williams, in possession of an Idaho concealed weapons license, fired three shots from a "large caliber" semi-auto pistol into the chest of 25 year old Christopher Rick Adams who died at the hospital a short time later.

My references, all from the same paper, are:

• February 27, 2005 Man shot and killed near Blackfoot bar
• February 28, 2005 Waitress: 'This sort of stuff just doesn't happen': Blackfoot shooting shocks lounge workers
• March 01, 2005 Verbal dispute sparked killing: Victim hit by three gunshots to chest
• March 11, 2005 Hearing put off for accused murderer: Williams charged with shooting man
• April 08, 2005 Judge sets Williams' trial date: Man faces second-degree murder charges
• May 11, 2005 Accused murderer pleads not guilty
• May 18, 2005 Judge reduces bail in Blackfoot murder case
• June 02, 2005 Man posts bail in murder case
• August 30, 2005 Blackfoot man free unless murder charges are refiled
• September 2, 2005 Man faces highest charge of murder

Read the April 8th story for the most detailed version of what is believed to have happened.

In addition to getting an email from Williams sister asking for help what makes this interesting to me are some of the biases in the story as it appears in the paper.  Some of those biases are probably unintentional.  Others, almost for certain, were intentional.  All of them are against Williams yet who, according to my understanding of the law, is to be presumed innocent until proven guilty.

The February 28th story says:

A press conference on the murder is scheduled for 10 a.m. today at the Blackfoot Police Department, 501 N. Maple St.

It's not murder until someone is convicted.  The paper should have said something along the lines of "...conference on the death...".  If the circumstances had been much more clear I would let them get away with it.  But in this case there is at least some reasonable doubt as to what actually happened.

The following, from the March 1st story, doesn't adversely affect Williams in this case but it does affect you and me.  It's an implication of what someone, probably the reporter, thinks the law is or should be.  The police captain, Kurt Asmus, almost for certain knew the question presumed things that were not true but figured it didn't really matter and answered the question in such a way the reporter could continue believing their view of reality was correct:

The weapon was legally registered to Williams, Asmus said.

There are no registration requirements for semi-auto pistols in Idaho.  My guess is the police captain said something like, "The pistol was legally owned." in response to a question about the gun being registered.  This allowed the naive public to believe firearms are registered and desensitizes the public to the hazards of firearms registration.  When it comes up that firearm aren't registered after for years believing they were it will be easier to get such a law passed.

In the May 18th story the prosecutor, arguably doing his job, shows a bias and the newspaper lets it stand:

He said Williams has shown no remorse for his crime and has admitted he could have avoided the shooting.

"Mr. Williams was perfectly willing to kill Mr. Adams," Andrew said.

Williams has only been charged with a crime.  It has not been proved there was actually a crime committed.  No remorse could mean he believes he behaved morally and legally correct.  Admitting he could have avoided the shooting doesn't mean that would have been the proper course of action.  You could avoid shooting someone and let a dozen innocent people be killed.  And willingness to kill someone is not evidence of a crime or even evil intent.  For example I'll bet we could have found 100's of thousands of people willing to flip the switch that turned Ted Bundy into burnt toast.  I suspect the prosecutor exaggerated on the willingness angle.  Carrying a firearm for self defense shows willingness to use deadly force under extreme circumstances.  We don't really know if the prosecutor has evidence Williams was "perfectly willing" to kill.

In the August 30th story we have this from the prosecutor:

Andrew said witnesses would now testify that Williams told them he would kill someone if the right scenario presented itself.

If you reword that just slightly you get the essence of what nearly every firearm self-defense instructor teaches.  That is you are legally justified in using deadly force if innocent life is immediate danger of death or permanent injury.  And guess who one of the witnesses is?

...one of the prosecution's new witnesses is Williams' ex-wife and the couple is currently involved in a child custody action.

I'll bet the child custody battle will go a lot smoother for the ex-wife with Williams doing time for murder.  I'm sure she will be totally unbiased in her testimony.

From the September 2nd story we find the line from Deputy prosecutor Scott Andrew that got Williams sister all wound up in her email to me:

Williams is accused of shooting Adams outside the Blackfoot bar after Adams allegedly walked towards his car during an argument.

"He waited for him to get closer, just like when you're hunting ... He hunted Mr. Adams," Andrew said.

Interesting hunt when the prey knows about the hunter, has been warned about a possible weapon, and still advances on the hunter.  This is really over the top--even for a prosecutor.

I don't know which way this is going to go or should go.  I don't have a strong opinion on it because I know the facts as represented in the newspaper story are tenuous at best.  The jury will have much better, if still limited, view of the facts and usually will do a pretty good job of coming to the correct conclusion.  But there are some lessons to be learned here.  Nothing new, but this guy either didn't know or forgot them.  As we teach in the NRA Personal Protection class:

1. After a shooting let your lawyer do all the talking.
2. Don't talk about killing people to defend yourself.  What you can say is that if innocent life is in immediate danger of death or permanent injury you would be willing to use deadly force to stop the attack.

I suggested to his sister that the defense attorney call CCRKBA and/or SAF.  Depending on the type of case the prosecutor tries to make, like saying the concealed weapons license was evidence Williams was looking for someone to kill, they may be able to help in some way.

No matter how the trial goes there is plenty of tragedy to go around.  I just hope our legal system can come up with a reasonable approximation to justice--whatever that is in this case.

No longer is the issue merely that of belittling an immigrant group.  Just as there are heroes of free speech in Denmark, there are also heroes - from the Arabian Peninsula to North Africa to Indonesia - who are ready to take to the barricades to defend their prophet's dignity.

Jürgen Gottschlich
A German journalist based in Istanbul
Quoted on February 7, 2006 in A 'dangerous moment' for Europe and Islam

I get the most interesting email.

There have been the room temperature I.Q. cases wanting help building a bomb which I talk about frequently.  There are also cases where I don't talk much, if any, but are just as interesting. 

There was a case where a public defender wanted help defending against federal bomb making charge.  I thought Ry and I were going to be doing some testing for them.  But the case was dropped after the public defender told the court they had an expert who didn't think it would explode but wanted to test a duplicate of the device to make sure. My guess is the the prosecutor knew it wouldn't/couldn't/shouldn't explode but figured putting a 15 year old girl in the slammer was just another way to get a few laughs and get more points toward their next promotion.  Don't ever forget we have a legal system, not a justice system.

Due my Modern Ballistics program I have received lots of requests for ballistics help.  In one case (IIRC, it's been several years now) someone was investigating the possibility of a wrongful death case against a police officer.  It wasn't a problem my program was designed for and I couldn't help.  One request was the defense in a murder case.  Using all the data I had at my disposal I still had a couple unknown variables that could push the answer either way.  And even if those numbers were tied down the answer depended on the skill and knowledge of the shooter as much as the physics involved.

This week I received my first request for help in defending against a first degree murder charge (three shots to the center of mass from a large caliber semi-auto pistol) where the defendant had a concealed weapons permit.  I'll blog the details tomorrow.  The guy goes on trial Monday.

From ABC News online:

The tourist town of Broome, in northern Western Australia, is considering going to unusual lengths to promote safe sex.

Figures show the Kimberley region has the highest rate of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in the country and health workers are advising authorities in Broome that something has to be done.

They are pushing for condoms to be made available in parks and public areas where young people gather.

They would be hung in PVC containers from trees - a method that has already proved successful in other Kimberley towns with high Indigenous populations.

I've update several of the pages on Boomershoot.org.  The most changes were on the general information page.

The news release for Boomershoot 2006 is available now.  See it here.  Send copies to whoever, media or not, you think might be interested.

There are still 26 positions available.  The last week of February is typically when the biggest surge of entries comes in.

There is going to be a similar event in Missouri on April 23rd.  I've been giving the organizer a little bit of help via email but other than that I won't have any involvement.

Update: I've been forgetting to mention that the portable toliets have been ordered, the caterer has us on his schedule, and the last of the chemicals have been ordered.  The only remaining items to be purchased are the boxes used for target containers and possibly a few more stakes to put the targets on.  On the portable toilets... I forgot to look at them at the end of the on Sunday.  Did we fill them up?  Were there long lines?  Do I need to get a third toilet this year?

The damage that the rioters did - both to Lebanese property and to the image of Islam - was far worse than that done by the cartoons which desecrated the Prophet Mohammed.

Editorial
The Star
An English-language Lebanese newspaper
February 6, 2006

A leader in the religion of peace has a solution to the riots and protests over the cartoons that upset the extremist Muslims--execute the cartoonists:

Speaking from Beirut, Omar Bakri Mohammad, leader of the Islamist group al Muhajiroon which is banned in Britain, called for the execution of those involved with the cartoons.

"In Islam, God said, and the messenger Mohammad said, whoever insults a prophet, he must be punished and executed," he told BBC radio by telephone.

But there are some voices of restraint and I hope they get their share of attention as well:

Moderate Moslem groups as well as Western leaders condemned the weekend violence and calls to arms and called for calm.

"With growing concern, we are witnessing the escalation in disturbing tensions...," the prime ministers of Turkey and Spain said in the International Herald Tribune.

"We shall all be the losers if we fail to immediately defuse this situation, which can only leave a trail of mistrust and misunderstanding between both sides in its wake," Tayyip Erdogan and Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said in the joint article.

H/T Michelle Malkin for the pointer to the Reuters article.

I can imagine no greater misfortune for a cultured people than to see in the hands of the rulers not only the civil, but also the religious power.

Caius Valerius Catullus
[Theocracies have been known to be a bad thing for a long, long time.  I wish the Muslim extremists could drag themselves into at least the 19th century.--Joe]

Karen and I grew up on farms just 3/4 of a mile apart.  She is a few years older than me and I fondly remember her reading books to me before I could read.  My family would visit her family and after a while our parents were too boring to listen to anymore she would be tasked with keeping me entertained.  I've always been very proud of her.  She was valedictorian of her high school class and later became a lawyer.  After several years of mostly corporate law she became a judge--an Idaho State Appeals court judge.  I don't get to see her very often anymore.  She lives in Boise now which is 300 miles from my home in Moscow.  Sometimes at Christmas and a few other family gatherings we get a chance to chat some.  When I got a mention in Newsweek for Boomershoot she told me that I had topped her single sentence mention in USA Today when she was appointed.  Today she got a mention in the Seattle PI:

"The state's interest in apprehending re-offending sex offenders was not rationally advanced by a classification that differentiated between offenders based solely upon their date of entry into the state," Judge Karen Lansing wrote for the court. "Because the statutory provision under which he was convicted was unconstitutional, however, Dickerson's conviction for failure to register must be reversed."

I can't wait to hear what her brother has to say about this.  One of the cases Karen worked on before she became a judge was a case where someone (I think he was associated with a school) was accused of sexual impropriety with a child.  As part of the investigation the guy took a test where they put fairly tight fitting paper band around his penis then showed him images of young children.  After showing the images for a few minutes they examined the paper band and it was found to be broken--indicating he had been sexually aroused by the sight of the young children.  If I recall the case correctly Karen was defending the school for not taking appropriate action against this accused pedophile.  Karen's brother took great pleasure in asking at every opportunity how her "Peter Meter" case was going.

This case isn't going to make life any easier for Karen.  I just emailed her brother a link to the article.

It is unjustifiable under any kind of personal freedoms to allow a person or a group to insult the beliefs of millions of Muslims.

Al-Thawra
Syrian state-run daily newspaper
Quoted in Ireland Online
February 5, 2006

The Washington Post had an article on shrapnel and a good portion of the article was on Jason.  Katy, Jason's mom, had a few words to say in her blog post about the article.

Mrs. Roosevelt's polemical life was lived right in the heart of liberal mania, with the results that, themselves bereft of their senses, they were incapable of recognizing that Mrs. Roosevelt was bereft of hers.

William F. Buckley, Jr.
Up From Liberalism

I received a call from Xenia's chemistry teacher this morning.  Uh oh...  This has never happened before.  Xenia has almost always been a pleasure for her teachers as well as her parents.

Rather inform me Xenia had lost control of some explosives in her locker (like I did once when I was in high school) she just wanted to tell me that Xenia is doing great in class.  She said she doesn't get to make many of those types of calls and she wanted to let us know.

I'd like to think it had something to do with the chemistry experiments I do and have had Xenia help with.  But while Xenia thinks it's "way cool" she hasn't had the slightest bit of interest in the actual chemistry (and here).

This post on a new blog, face of muhammed, articulates the concept Ry suggested to me the other day quite well:

A new non-political international movement is rising.

4000 terror attacks after 9/11, the world was still slumbering. But 12 innocent satirical drawings in a Danish newspaper, the kind of cartoons printed daily by the thousands in newspapers all over the world, have changed the geopolitical situation.

Suddenly, a new understanding is emerging across political differences.

In recent years, the world crisis between Islam and the non-Muslim world has been discussed in thousands of books, countless television debates and millions of articles across the globe. It did nothing but divide us. Even former western allies were divided, and a wave of anti-Americanism has swept even the free western societies.

Now ridiculous circumstances have changed all that. A sense of humour has changed what all the debating could not.

Read it all.

It isn't the first time I've seen this and it probably won't be the last:

Bloomberg, who was a Democrat before he switched parties for his first run for mayor in 2001, is a political moderate on such issues as abortion and gun control.

Why aren't politicians that want to, and do, violate the constitution considered extremists instead of moderates?

From the AP via the Washington Post comes this list of 12 different deadly postal shootings.  Should we ban postal buildings?  If it only saves one life...

I suspect the text for most of this is in Danish, but the images speak their own language (some may not be safe for work).  The "asshole switch" has definitely been flipped.  Here are a couple of my favorites:

Thanks to Ry for the pointer.

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963)
[Think gun control.--Joe]

The Times (U.K.) calls it Cartoon wars and the clash of civilisations and there are now over 1000 news stories about it.  Channel 4 (London) quotes a Muslim cleric that I particularly liked:

Influential Muslim cleric Youssef al-Qaradawi said: "The least we have to do is boycott those who offended us by not buying their products.

"We thought it was only Denmark and Norway ... but several European countries and newspapers started reprinting these extremely offending pictures."

In the spirit of service to their customers I think all freedom loving media outlets should show the cartoons and continue the desensitization therapy.  Let the Muslims do their least to all of us.

Interesting report from the website owners of a sex toy supplier:

A British couple who launched a website selling sex toys to conservative Christians has revealed that vicars are some of their best clients.

Stella Hagarty and husband Stan revealed that they had decided to launch 'Wholly Love' to show normally reserved church-goers that sex is a gift from God, and that it should not be treated as something sinful.

And the website seems to have gotten its stamp of approval from God himself, as vicars make up some of the couple's best clients.

Of course the website owners are not at all unbiased in this.  But I still find it interesting.

If I could have one wish fulfilled right now, it would be for someone to get fusion electricity production operational. Cheap electricity would, in a decade or two, make oil irrelevant. The Arab nations would go back to being Bedouins--and we could turn that part of the world into a giant nature preserve, as a reminder of what happens when you get stuck in the twelfth century, and refuse to move forward.

Clayton Cramer
Middle Eastern Oil Dependence
February 01, 2006
[Not entirely true but probably close enough for Mideast politics.  Oil is used for lots of things besides energy.  Lubricants, solvents, and plastics are just the start of a very long list.--Joe]

Considering some of the crazy things the Brits have done in relation to firearms it should come as no surprise they are creating the circumstances in which their worst fears are realized:

Muggings and violent attacks up by more than 10%
By Richard Ford, Home Correspondent

MUGGINGS and violent attacks on people soared by more than 10 per cent in the third quarter of last year as the police struggled to contain street crime, according to figures published yesterday.

Street robbery is rising at its fastest since Tony Blair demanded action three years ago by the Home Office and police to tackle the issue.

...

Robberies soared by 11 per cent on top of a 4 per cent increase in the second quarter of last year. The Metropolitan Police has said that one of the main factors behind an increase in mugging in London is the rising number of portable hi-tech goods, such as mobile phones and MP3 players. In the weeks after the July 7 bombings, muggings in London rose 23 per cent after thousands of police were sent to guard the capital’s transport network.

Gun crime rose by 1 per cent in the year to the end of September 2005, to more than 11,000 incidents. Violence against the person rose 4 per cent overall, although more serious cases including homicide, threats to murder and serious woundings fell by 10 per cent.

Offences in lower category crimes such as less serious woundings rose by 10 per cent. Serious injuries from gun crime rose by 18 per cent to 470 in the year to the end of September but the number of deaths from gun incidents fell by more than one third to 50 compared with 80 in the previous year.

I find it engages my sick sense of humor that they blame the increase in muggings on the rising number of portable hi-tech goods.  Do they even hear what they are saying?  Muggers don't attack someone they think has a fair chance being their equal.  They "interview" their potential victim and attack those that look and act like "grass eaters".  Carrying a concealed firearm makes the victim selection process much more difficult and if that process misses something the possibility of catastrophic failure is quite high.  Muggings go way down when the wolves can't distinguish between the sheep and sheep dogs.

Sometimes people do things which cause their greatest fear to be realized.  For example; a man that is extremely afraid their wife will leave them will forbid them to work outside the home, to visit relatives, and in general isolate them from all other people.  This forced isolation may well be the reason their spouse does leave them.  And it could be the Arabs and perhaps Muslims in general are working as similar sort of angle.  Take a look at these cartoons from Arab media.  Their view of the world is that the Jews are out to get them.  This frame of mind would explain why many of them want to "wipe Israel off the map" and kill all Jews.  It appears to me they are at risk of having their greatest fear realized because of their own actions.

Jon Armstrong was interviewed yesterday.  And in that interview he was asked what he would do if he were president of the US.  His answer caused one of those blank stares (type 1) in me for a few seconds:

I’d disband the military entirely and spend the money on teacher salaries as well as encouraging public innovation.

I'm nearly certain he is serious.  I looked at some of his blog postings and it's entire consistent.  The defense of our nation via the military is one of the few things the U.S. Constitution grants the Federal Government the power to do and he would apparently leave us defenseless.  There is no Constitutional authority for spending money on teachers and he would do that.  I guess when he took the oath of office and said he would uphold the Constitution he would have his fingers crossed or something.  Of course that's not really any different than it is with the bozos we have in government (at all levels) right now.  But when I say the Constitution isn't even considered a strong suggestion it's barking moonbats like this which prove my point.