Monthly Archives: February 2006

Xenia’s murder trial

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Xenia went on trial for murder this weekend–actually there were three trials.  She was found not guilty in the first two by a votes of 10-2 and 9-3.  Barb figured with her brother on the second jury she would be found guilty for certain.  But I knew him better than she did.  There was no way with the ‘evidence’ given that he would vote for a conviction let alone try and convince other jurors.  Just before the third trial, as I was about to leave for the Seattle area, I gave her a handcuff key just in case they convicted her.  She was found guilty but didn’t need the key because she was able to squeeze out of the handcuffs.

It was a good performance.  I didn’t realize Ayn Rand had written any plays.  This was apparently her first and it shows it in many ways but it wasn’t really bad.  When Xenia got on the stand and told the court she had been raped by her employer ten years earlier on her first day at work and was proud to became his mistress from there after we gave each other “the look”.  Yup, just the part Xenia would like to play.  Check out the pictures Xenia has on her Live Journal.

A bias against self-defense part III

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It’s way too late for me to comment intelligently on the following newspaper clippings.  Michael Williams sister sent them last week.  I’ve read them all but was unable to comment on them due to my exceedingly busy weekend (more details later but it involving guns, explosives, and two murder trials unrelated to Williams trial).  If you are interested in this case go ahead and read them.  I’ll comment later after I have had some sleep.

Quote of the day–Ambrose Bierce

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Once Law was sitting on the bench
        And Mercy knelt a-weeping.
“Clear out!” he cried, “disordered wench!
        Nor come before me creeping.
Upon you knees if you appear,
‘Tis plain you have no standing here.”

Then Justice came.  His Honor cried:
        “YOUR states? — Devil seize you!”
“Amica curiae,” she replied —
        “Friend of the court, so please you.”
“Begone!” he shouted — “There’s the door —
I never saw your face before!”

Ambrose Bierce
The Devil’s Dictionary

A quick history lesson

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If you want to fire an assault weapon, do what so many patriotic Americans do: Join the armed forces.

Does that sound familiar to anyone?  

That could have been Lenin rephrased, as in this case, where the party members were exempt from a weapons ban.  Or it could have been Adolf Hitler who said:

If any citizen wants to possess arms, let him join the Party.

But it was neither.  And it was said in todays newspaper, not by a despot known to have killed millions, but by the U.S. politician Del. Anthony G. Brown who is Martin O’Malley’s running mate for the governor of Maryland.  He also said this:

Assault weapons have one purpose and one purpose only: That is to kill human beings.

Of the thousands of rounds I have fired through my “assault weapons” no humans were killed as a result.  I have to conclude that either my guns are defective or Brown’s thinking is defective.  I don’t have to toss a coin on this one.  In a comparison between my rifles and Brown’s brain I’ll take my rifles as the better of the two any day.

Is this a trend?

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Another womans says she just couldn’t control herself and had to have sex in public:

RANDY Alana May was nabbed having sex in public by police THREE times in 30 MINUTES, a court heard yesterday.

Two of the romps were at a floodlit abbey in the middle of a town. The third was on land also owned by the church.

Officers first saw Alana, 25, with her pants down with a semi-naked man outside Selby Abbey, North Yorks. They ticked her off and told her to go home.

But they returned 15 minutes later and discovered Alana performing a sex act on the man against the 11th century abbey’s walls.

She was again told to go home. But just 15 minutes after that the pair were spotted having sex in church parkland.

Alana and the romeo were arrested. She said of the romps: “I couldn’t wait until I got home.”

She was fined £50 for outraging public decency. Her unnamed lover, who has no previous convictions, got a caution.

Posted in Sex

Quote of the day–Henry Kissinger via Paul Smith

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THE STORY that amused me most in 1998 came out of the Christopher Hitchens’ column in The Nation: “At a glamorous book launch given by Vogue for Katharine Graham, a Nation colleague of mine was introduced to Henry Kissinger. On hearing the name of the magazine, the doctor drew back. “The Nation? So I suppose you think I am a war criminal?”  Yielding to that fatal instinct that sometimes urges people to be laid-back and unpredictable, my comrade attempted a pleasantry and observed that in these post-Cold War days, the old mag was just as likely to describe – who knows? – Bill Clinton as a war criminal. Kissinger stared into his cocktail and said slowly and distinctly, `Mr. Clinton does not have the strength of character to be a war criminal.'”

From Paul Smith
January 13, 1999

Interesting kink

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They said they had this urge they couldn’t control.  Oh well… I’ll bet they will find a little more willpower the next time the urge occurs:

LONDON: In Argentina ‘sex’ is something which should be enjoyed within the four walls of the house, as if one intends indulging in it publicly, one is more likely to be put behind bars.

An Argentinean couple were recently arrested for making love outside a mayor’s office in broad daylight.

The man and woman, in their mid-30s, were having sex in a completely nude state on a bench by the Nahuel Huapi river in Bariloche, and when cops arrived to arrest them, they shocked them further, by asking the officers to let them finish what they were doing.

A crowd gathered and cheered the couple on, but the Mayor of Bariloche said he was shocked by the spectacle.

Not ashamed of the incident, the woman concerned told police that she had always fantasised about having sex outside the mayor’s office while politicians were working inside.

“They are otherwise two very respectable citizens but they told us they had this urge to have sex in public and that it was very strong and they couldn’t control it,” Fox News quoted a police spokesperson, as saying.

The couple were arrested on charges of disrespecting public space and indecent exposure.

Posted in Sex

Quote of the day–Greg Hamilton

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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

A bias against self-defense part II

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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.

Daily trials of an Asperger type

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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.  It’s 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.

Bias against self-defense

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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:

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.

Quote of the day–Jürgen Gottschlich

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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

A short history of interesting email

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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.

In Australia condoms grow on trees

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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.

Posted in Sex

Boomershoot update

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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?