Fritz Haber, also known as the “Father of Chemical Warfare”, served as Germany’s leading physical chemist during World War I. He spent the war on call to create deadlier chemical weapons for the army. Haber was later awarded the Nobel Peace Prize!
A new national gun surrender will allow people to anonymously hand in weapons and ammunition including heirlooms, shotguns and antique revolvers, as well as illegal stun guns and gas-firing blank pistols bought overseas.
Many such guns are held in innocence and ignorance that having them is against the law, according to the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) and The National Ballistics Intelligence Service (Nabis).
Weapons handed in during past surrenders included old wartime service revolvers, war trophies – including grenades – and gas-operated blank-firing pistols and stun-guns – bought during trips to Europe , or online.
However innocently held, such weaponry can be acquired by crooks through robberies or distributed to criminal networks in other ways.
The surrender – the first since 2019 – gives the opportunity to dispose of a firearm, gun components or ammunition by simply taking it to a local designated police station and handing it in.
The campaign will see nominated police stations flagged as locations for people to take guns, stun-guns, gas-powered weapons, imitation firearms, ammunition, hand grenades or other weaponry.
The surrender is starting on May 12, and runs for two weeks.
People should check police station locations in advance by visiting their local force website or calling 101.
Deputy Chief Constable Helen McMillan, NPCC lead for the Criminal Use of Firearms, said “We’re inviting people from May 12, for two weeks, to contact local police or attend local police station and surrender any firearms – or any type of weapon – that they’re concerned about, that they have in their possession.
“They can do that anonymously and there will be an amnesty for them in order to transport that weapon or be in possession of that weapon at the point they surrender it.
“No-one needs to be concerned about walking into a station or contacting their local force.
“We don’t need to know your name, we don’t need to know how you came into possession of it, all we need you to do is give us the gun.”
Mr Taylor also urged people to check “blank-firer” imitation guns they may have, adding that the “gas-gun” type were “legal in Europe – but definitely illegal in the UK”.
“If you don’t know the status of the gun or are unsure – take the chance to hand it in,” he added.
He also said there were also “a lot of unregistered firearms and (particularly) shotguns, pre-dating the 1988 (Firearms) Act” in homes, often “hanging over the mantelpiece”, which should be handed in, if unlicensed.
The last surrender saw shotguns making up 69% of all lethal weapons handed in.
Changes to firearms’ laws last year also closed a loophole allowing people to own some old guns – particularly revolvers – perfectly legally as antiques, because they used ammunition in calibres which were no longer manufactured.
Ms McMillan urged antique weapon-owners to “know your gun, and know the law”, adding “if you are no longer in possession legally, surrender that weapon”.
Illegal possession of a firearm can mean five years behind bars and if you are found guilty of possession with intent to supply that can lead to a life sentence.
U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- Before the Biden-Harris administration took over the White House, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives usually revoked an average of 40 Federal Firearm Licenses (FFLs) per year. But, in the 11 months since Joe Biden declared war on “rogue gun dealers,” the ATF has revoked 273 FFLs – an increase of more than 500%. However, rather than targeting the true rogues, Biden’s ATF is revoking FFLs for the most minor of paperwork errors, which were never a concern for the ATF until Biden weaponized the agency.
“This has nothing to do with the ATF and everything to do with the DOJ,” said John Clark of FFL Consultants. Clark is a firearm industry expert who said the ATF announced the number of revocations at a recent Firearm Industry Conference.
“The vast majority of the ATF don’t like this any more than the industry does,” he said. “It’s Biden.”
Clark and business partner John Bocker crisscross the country to help gun dealers fight back against Biden’s overreach – a service that is free to all members of the National Shooting Sports Foundation. Their mantra is: “Get it right the first time.”
“Our goal is to prevent an incident from occurring,” Bocker has said. “Our goal is prevention – get it right the first time. We are the proactive and preventative arm of the NSSF.”
Nowadays, they’re extremely busy. “I had three revocation hearings last week,” Clark said.
Key to the massive increase in revocations is Biden’s zero-tolerance for willful violations policy, which Clark said relies upon a new definition of willful. If a dealer makes a simple mistake, they can now lose their license, because the new definition of willful states that the dealer knew the law, but willfully chose to violate it anyway – regardless of whether it was an oversight, an error by an employee or a simple paperwork mistake.
“They have twisted negligence into willful,” Clark said. “These are not uncommon errors that we’re seeing. Things happen.”
Absent extraordinary circumstances that would need to be justified to the Director, ATF will seek to revoke the licenses of dealers the first time that they violate federal law by willfully.
- Transferring a firearm to a prohibited person
- Failing to run a required background check
- Falsifying records, such as a firearms transaction form
- Failing to respond to an ATF tracing request
- Refusing to permit ATF to conduct an inspection in violation of the law
However, Clark and Bocker are seeing these rules pushed far beyond the realm of common sense or fairness, and local gun dealers are paying the price.
For example, the transaction number for a NICS background check requires nine digits. If a gun dealer mistakenly omits a number, their license can be revoked for failing to run a background check. Under the Biden-Harris administration, there is no longer any room for human error.
Similarly, the ATF has started contracting out its trace requests, Clark said. He and Bocker have talked to a dealer whom the ATF accused of not complying with a trace request. They fault, they found, actually belonged to the ATF, which hadn’t updated its records from the contractors. Until this was clarified, the dealer was at risk of losing everything.
Their firm offers a free webinar for gun dealers, which addresses Biden’s policy.
Biden first announced his zero-tolerance policy for “rogue gun dealers” in June of last year. He claimed these dealers were responsible for skyrocketing violent crime rates in major cities historically controlled by Democrats.
The violence wasn’t caused by weak prosecutors who refuse to hold criminals accountable, or gangs or underfunded police departments or by any combination thereof, he said. It was all the fault of “rogue gun dealers,” who Biden claimed willfully transfer firearms to prohibited persons, and/or refuse to cooperate with a tracing request from the ATF.
To vet Biden’s rogue gun dealer theory, the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project immediately sent a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the ATF, seeking the following:
Copies of documents that show the number of Federal Firearms Licensees (FFLs) and their state of residence, who have been prosecuted for willfully transferring a firearm to a prohibited person over the past three years (from June 23, 2018 to June 23, 2021.)
Copies of documents that show the number of Federal Firearms Licensees (FFLs) and their state of residence, who have been prosecuted for ignoring and/or refusing to cooperate with a tracing request from the BATFE, over the past three years (from June 23, 2018 to June 23, 2021.)
(Note: We did not seek the names or other identifiers of any FFL.)
We’re still waiting for a response.
In the 11 months since the FOIA request was filed, the ATF has not complied with the law. The ATF is in a trick-bag of sorts. They can comply with federal law and provide the documents, which will likely reveal that Biden’s rogue gun dealer policy is just a ruse, or they can continue to deny and delay the FOIA request even though their actions violate federal law.
If there is a dealer who transfers firearms to prohibited persons, fails to conduct background checks and ignores requests from the ATF to help trace firearms used in a crime, they should lose their FFL. I don’t know anyone who disagrees with that. However, these are not the type of dealers the ATF is targeting at Biden’s behest. The Biden-Harris administration has ordered the ATF to revoke FFLs for even the most minor of paperwork errors, solely to support its rogue-dealer myth.
There is no doubt Biden will soon hold a press conference touting the effectiveness of his zero-tolerance policy and the hundreds of “rogue gun dealers” whose licenses were revoked as a result. What he won’t mention is that none of the dealers who lost their livelihoods contributed to the skyrocketing violent crime rates of major metros. They were simply law-abiding men and women who made a minor paperwork error, which Biden has now criminalized as part of his ongoing war on our guns.
About Lee Williams
Lee Williams, who is also known as “The Gun Writer,” is the chief editor of the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project. Until recently, he was also an editor for a daily newspaper in Florida. Before becoming an editor, Lee was an investigative reporter at newspapers in three states and a U.S. Territory. Before becoming a journalist, he worked as a police officer. Before becoming a cop, Lee served in the Army. He’s earned more than a dozen national journalism awards as a reporter, and three medals of valor as a cop. Lee is an avid tactical shooter.
Even if the Biden administration refuses to quell threats and intimidation, pro-lifers and religious believers have – and should use – the remedies that the law provides for them.
Pro-abortion groups this past week have called for increased lawlessness to express their opposition to the expected reversal of the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade. Apparently having failed to persuade either the court of the soundness of their legal position or Congress of the necessity of codifying Roe in a federal statute, these groups are committing, or threatening to commit, hate crimes targeting churches and worshippers.
The real or intended victims of these outrages are not defenseless. The legal system affords them robust protections against violations of their right to free exercise of religion. These include both federal and state criminal and civil remedies and private civil actions under federal and state law.
Churches and congregants alike should make full use of our legal system to protect themselves against pro-abortion forces that are vandalizing church property and attempting to intimidate believers as they worship. Not only do they owe it to themselves to defend their religious liberty, they have a duty to the larger community to combat these unmistakable hate crimes.
To date, President Biden has failed to personally denounce these threats to religious liberty by the pro-abortion forces that are Democrats’ political allies and core constituents. So has his Justice Department, which was quick to condemn parents appearing at public school board meetings. An unnamed White House official made a meaningless comment, and Press Secretary Jen Psaki finally condemned “violence, threats, or vandalism” on Twitter Monday, but the president himself has yet to speak out against pro-abortionists’ recent violent tactics.
Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland should be publicly shamed if their inaction continues. And if the administration chooses to turn a blind eye as the legal rights of American believers are trashed, state attorneys general can and should fill the breach.
Private persons can also bring tort actions under federal and state law, and if successful might obtain monetary damages in amounts that could be a significant blow to the pro-abortion movement and its (often undisclosed) donors.
The assaults on religious liberty are coming in two forms. One is the vandalization of church property, such as happened in Boulder, Colo., soon after the leak of the draft Supreme Court opinion in Dobbs. Vandals broke the windows and spray-painted over the doors of the Sacred Heart of Mary Church and left pro-abortion messages, including “keep your religion off our bodies” and “my body, my choice.”
Over the past two years, Colorado has seen a series of attacks (not all proclaiming pro-abortion views) on Catholic churches. These attacks include one last October on the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Denver, and another in September on St. Louis Catholic Church in a Boulder suburb (involving pro-abortion graffiti).
What is happening in Colorado unfortunately has been happening throughout the country. In January, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops reported that there had been at least 129 attacks on Catholic churches in 35 states and the District of Columbia since May 2020. Secular sources like The Wall Street Journal have noted the increase in desecration of Catholic churches as well. If Roe is indeed overruled, expect worse.
In a second line of attack, the shadowy pro-abortion group Ruth Sent Us has called, not only for demonstrations outside the homes of six Supreme Court justices, but also for the disruption of services in Catholic churches on Mother’s Day during Sunday mass. The group posted a message on Twitter, stating “Whether you’re a ‘Catholic for Choice,’ ex-Catholic, of other or no faith, recognize that six extremist Catholics set out to overturn Roe. Stand at or in a local Catholic Church Sun May 8.”
Protesters disrupted planned services at Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, some engaging in grotesque pantomimes of abortion immediately outside the church grounds. Christopher Plant, whose bio says he is the pastor of St. Bartholomew the Apostle Catholic Church in Katy, Texas, took to Twitter on Monday to report that the church’s tabernacle had been stolen the night before.
Meanwhile, a Molotov cocktail was thrown into the headquarters of pro-life group Wisconsin Family Action in Madison, Wis., with the words “If abortions aren’t safe you aren’t either” graffitied outside. A pro-life center in Denton, Texas was also defaced.
These dangers to the peaceful exercise of religious liberties must be confronted and overcome. Even if the Biden administration refuses to quell threats and intimidation, believers have – and should use – the remedies that the law provides for them.
Of these remedies, one powerful option is, ironically, The Freedom of Access to [Abortion] Clinic Entrances Act (FACE). In an obvious legislative compromise, FACE protects not only abortion facilities, providers, and clients, but also criminalizes actions or attempts intended “by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction” to injure, intimidate or interfere with “any person lawfully exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship.” Likewise, FACE criminalizes the actions of anyone who “intentionally damages or destroys the property of a place of religious worship.”
Enforcement of these criminal provisions is, however, in the hands of the vehemently pro-abortion Biden administration, which can be expected to tailor the execution of the laws to its political ends. Even so, FACE offers other means for vindicating religious liberties.
This is because FACE also authorizes churches and individual worshippers injured by the relevant misconduct to bring private actions on their own behalf. If entitled to relief, they may obtain either (or both) an injunction against the misconduct or “compensatory and punitive damages,” along with an award of reasonable legal fees. These legal awards, especially if they include punitive damages, could be crippling for pro-abortion defendants.
Finally, FACE authorizes state attorneys general who find “reasonable cause to believe” that a violation “is being, has been, or may be” occurring, to bring civil actions. The Virginia attorney general has already signaled his intention to refer any criminal violations for prosecution. Concerned citizens should demand that their state attorneys general follow suit.
States also commonly have hate crimes statutes that are similar to these federal civil rights laws. Colorado, for example, has at least two statutes that might apply to the vandalization of a Catholic church in that state. One statute makes it a crime knowingly to “desecrate” (which includes defacing) “any place of worship.” It will be interesting to see if the state’s Attorney General Phil Weiser, who served in the Clinton and Obama administrations, will bring a case under the state’s anti-desecration law on behalf of the Catholic churches in his jurisdiction.
Lawsuits against the pro-abortion extremists who attack churches or worshippers can also be brought under state tort laws by the injured parties. Professor John Banzhaf of George Washington University Law School has argued that civil actions, especially if class actions, can bring justice to those who suffered injuries when “peaceful protests” have turned into violence that damaged their lives or property. For instance, journalist Andy Ngo sued those who beat when while he was covering a “peaceful protest” that turned into a riot, alleging the torts of assault, battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress as well as a violation of the state’s anti-racketeering act.
Finally, churches and worshippers should remember that they have a legal right of self-defense against threats to life and limb. The choice of forms that self-defense should take – churches might install security cameras, provide cans of pepper spray to their congregations, or even bring in defenders who openly bear arms – is best left to the consciences of pastors and congregants within the confines of applicable law.
THERE are fears that this summer will bring wild west-like gun violence in US cities where even good kids feel pressure to carry guns.
This feeling of an impending storm follows Monday’s CDC analysis of shooting deaths during the pandemic, which reached levels America hasn’t seen since 1968 and disproportionately impacted black men.
Firearms were involved in 79 per cent of all homicides in 2020 – a 35 per cent increase from 2019 – according to a May 10 report published by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
There were 19,384 gun murders in 2020, which surpassed the previous high of 18,253 recorded by the CDC in 1993.
The sky high number of firearm murders coincided with the pandemic-fuelled spike in gun sales, according to Pew Research.
“In 2020, the number of monthly federal background checks for gun purchases was consistently at least 20 percent higher than in the same month in 2019,” Pew Research said in its September report.
“It’s about to be a crazy summer. You can feel it in the air,” Damon Jones told The Sun.
Jones, who spent three decades in law enforcement, is New York State’s representative of Blacks in Law Enforcement of America and publishes the local newspaper Black Westchester.
The paper covers issues impacting black communities in Westchester County, New York and focuses on the predominantly black city of Mount Vernon, which is a few miles north of the Bronx.
AJ Woodson, Black Westchester’s editor and journalist, said he met a straight-A high school student who stays out of trouble that told him that he feels unsafe in his neighborhood without a gun.
“There’s one youth, a real good kid, who admitted he carries a gun because everyone else has one,” Woodson said.
“He’s scared to go to the store without it. He’s scared to go to the movies without it … Our children are living in a war zone, and there’s no where to go to unpack their trauma.”
Woodson’s single anecdote is representative of a key finding in the CDC’s report about gun violence during the pandemic.
The firearm murder rate among black men between the ages of 10 and 44 was 21.6 times higher among than white men of the same age.
The number-based report didn’t reach any conclusions about why there was such a drastic leap in firearm deaths during the pandemic or why black communities were hit the hardest.
“It’s 6.30 in the morning, and we turn on the TV at work and there’s always a story about someone getting shot,” Jones said.
“After awhile, you say what’s going on? Where’s black lives matter? There were protests against police brutality, but what about the black lady shot while sitting at a stop sign? All black lives should matter.”
In Woodson and Jones’ hometown, 13-year-old Shamoya McKenzie was killed in December 2016 when a stray bullet intended for a rival gang member pierced the passenger side of her mom’s car.
A recent burst of violence included a shooting outside of the city high school, a melee involving dozens of students and a beloved cheerleader who was murdered.
“When I was growing up, we had places to go. Three or four days out of the week, we would play pool to stay off the streets,” Woodson said. “And if i had a serious issue, I could talk to someone.”
“I was a coin flip. A lot of my friends spent double digit years in prison. I could’ve been one of them if I didn’t have places to go.
“But now, there are no programs for our youth, and then they wonder why our youth are out in the streets. What do you expect the kids to do?”
And then there’s a cycle of violence and trauma that reaches back to the kids’ parents and grandparents.
“There’s generational trauma in our communities,” Woodson said.
“These are kids trying to figure it out when adults aren’t able to. And all of that trauma builds up, and most of the time it comes out in a way that’s not positive.”
Jones said the CDC’s report shows how the US is “at a crossroads.”
“As someone who champions criminal justice reform, I think the narrative has gone too far. We need policing but good policing.
“Now we need to invest more in reform and social issues and mental health services that have been cut in our communities.
“You don’t have to be a psychiatrist to see there was something wrong with the Brooklyn subway shooter. We have to address mental health and social issues in the black communities.”
Jones and Woodson said they’ve been pushing for federal prosecutors to go after the gun traffickers like the DEA has been clamping down on narcotic suppliers.
“What plagues our communities are guns and drugs, none of this is being made in our community; they’re being brought in,” Woodson said.
Building off the point, Jones said, “The young brother who has to have a gun to go to the store can get jammed up and face stiffer penalties, but there’s no increase in sentencing for gun trafficking.
“Those laws need to have stiffer penalties and the gun manufacturers need to know where their guns are going.
“We know of a gun trafficker who has been caught but hasn’t spent a day in jail because they say he’s a small fish and they want a big fish. Meanwhile, illegal guns continue to come into our city.”
Isaiah Lee, 23, was charged instead by the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office with single misdemeanor counts of battery, possession of a weapon with intent to assault, unauthorized access to the stage area during a performance and commission of an act that delays an event or interferes with a performer.
“This alleged attack has got to have consequences,” City Attorney Mike Feuer said in a video statement announcing the charges.
Feuer — a candidate for Los Angeles mayor — added, “My office takes protecting public safety extremely seriously and we are going to vigorously prosecute this case.”
I’m sure that Feuer, who’s a longtime anti-gun activist, will be happy to soak up the press attention that he’ll get for prosecuting Lee, who allegedly had a replica handgun that disguised a knife blade in his hand as he rushed the stage and tackled Chappelle on Tuesday evening. But should his office really be the one to handle this case? The misdemeanor charges aren’t likely to result in much time behind bars if Lee is convicted, and honestly, if his victim weren’t a celebrity the odds of him avoiding jail entirely would be in his favor.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Gascon’s office declined to pursue felony charges because while Lee had a weapon on him, he never had the chance to use it on his target, and since Chappelle wasn’t injured, the crime didn’t rise to the level of a felony assault with a deadly weapon regardless of Lee’s intentions.
This is a pretty high-profile example of Gascon’s alleged leniency towards criminal defendants, and it comes as the organizers of the recall campaign against the prosecutor announced they’ve hit a milestone in their efforts to gather enough signatures to get the recall on the ballot this fall.
Today, the Recall DA George Gascon campaign announced it has collected over 400,000 signatures as of May 1st, with thousands more being turned in daily. The recall campaign has now raised over $6 million to support the effort. To get the recall on the ballot, the campaign must collect 566,857 signatures from registered Los Angeles County voters (10% of the total current registered voters). The deadline for submission to the Registrar is July 6, 2022. “We are starting to see light at the end of the tunnel – there is a legitimate pathway to qualifying the recall by the July 6th deadline if we do not let up.”
The recall campaign might want canvass for signatures outside some of the comedy clubs in L.A. and ask patrons, employees, and comedians to sign on after Gascon’s decision, because while it might be legally defensible, it’s likely to be pretty unpopular at a time when crime continues to surge in Los Angeles and many residents say they feel increasingly unsafe.
Tombstone, AZ- -(Ammoland.com)- On May 2, 2022, the New York Attorney General’s Office filed its Second Amended Complaint against the National Rifle Association.
Not only the Association but its Chief Executive Officer Wayne LaPierre, Secretary, and General Counsel John Frazer, Former Treasurer and CFO Wilson “Woody” Philips, and Former Deputy CEO Josh Powell.
As with the original complaint and the previous amended complaint, this one is full of very specific, largely verifiable, and utterly damning charges against NRA’s top officers and executives. Many of the previous accusations have been admitted to by some of the various parties, while Woody Phillips has refused to answer most questions, based on his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
It needs to be understood that LaPierre and the others are not named in the suit based on their positions within the NRA, as when someone sues a state and names the Attorney General or the governor as a representative of the state. The four named defendants were named for specific actions each is accused of, and the NRA itself is named for failing to stop them. With that in mind, legal experts said early on that the NRA’s best defense against the suit would be to adopt the following policies:
A genuine response to the allegations would go a long way toward blunting the very real political motivations involved in the suit. New York Attorney General Letitia James is a highly motivated political actor, and she has not been shy about expressing her animosity toward the NRA, its mission, and its members. The Association should deal cautiously with her office, and request that the judge make sure that this personal and political bias doesn’t taint the case or cause undue injury to the Association.
This animosity on the part of AG James has actually been one of the strongest arguments from defenders and apologists of Wayne LaPierre. They point to James’s hatred of the NRA, and her political ambitions, and conclude that the whole case is just trumped-up lies and political theater.
The problem with that assertion is that LaPierre himself has admitted under oath that most of the charges against him are true.
He admits to billing the NRA for personal travel for himself and his family. He admits to improperly accepting gifts from major vendors, and awarding those same vendors multi-million-dollar contracts with no competitive bidding. He admits to giving multi-million-dollar severance packages to retiring and even fired employees, usually in exchange for them signing a strict nondisclosure agreement about NRA activities.
And he admits to giving contracts to family members and former staffers, often with little or no performance requirement attached. He also admits to doing all of this without clearing it, or even reporting it, through or to, the NRA Board, as required by state law and NRA policy.
His main defense in all of this, is to claim that either, it wasn’t improper, he didn’t know it was improper, and/or he didn’t know what other people were doing. Not a very impressive defense from a CEO who’s being paid in excess of $1.6 million per year.
One is reminded of Bart Simpson’s all-purpose defense: “Nobody saw me! I wasn’t there! You can’t prove a thing!”
Why would any organization facing existential threats – most of those threats based on accusations of misconduct and dereliction on the part of its chief executive – allow that executive to continue to hold inordinate sway over the organization? And why would any organization facing this kind of turmoil in its executive offices allow that same executive to retain control over the legal strategy of the organization in addressing the charges?
An equally perplexing question, is why the Board has so far not even attempted to rein in its rogue executives?
As noted above, NY AG Letitia James hates the NRA and all it stands for, and she wants to see it destroyed. The judge in the case has already taken dissolution of the Association off the table as a potential punishment, should the AG win her case. Her latest Amended Complaint focuses less on the NRA as a target, and more on the officers and directors – as it should – with the complaint calling for severe financial penalties and restitution payments from the Association’s wayward “leaders.” The complaint calls for the removal of LaPierre and his followers, but only as part of the penalty phase of the trial. That isn’t going to happen until sometime next year.
Meanwhile, LaPierre and company remain in control of the Associations resources, and most importantly, in control of its legal strategy – which amounts to shoveling millions of dollars into the pockets of New York lawyer William Brewer, who was originally hired by LaPierre to head off a threatened lawsuit from the NY AG back in 2018. Obviously Brewer failed in that mission, but he’s been very successful at extracting cash from the Association.
Brewer has reportedly been drawing over $2 million per month, averaging around $30 million per year, for the past 3 years. At the same time, NRA membership numbers have been in a nosedive, fundraising has collapsed, and the Association has cut practically all of its core programs to the bone.
If LaPierre and his enablers were to be removed from power now, the Association might do what they should have done from the beginning: Claim victim status and reorganize, without the crippling payments to the Brewer law firm. With that, they should be able to start recovering membership and see improvements in their fundraising, not to mention begin to recover the trust of its members. But that would not be seen as a good thing by Letitia James. Those steep legal bills, along with the potential of a court-mandated lawsuit against the NRA from the NRA Foundation, if things go as expected in a lawsuit filed by the AG of Washington DC, could totally bankrupt the NRA, and that would be a big win for Letitia James.
I’m not an attorney, but I’ve spoken with knowledgeable attorneys, and they keep coming back to the need for the NRA to distance itself from the accused “leaders,” even if only with temporary furloughs or compartmentalizing them away from certain aspects of the Association, particularly the legal strategy. They have also suggested that the NY AG could – and should – force this action by filing a request for partial summary judgment based on the admissions already submitted by LaPierre and some of his supporters. LaPierre has admitted to a variety of offenses, any one of which would fully justify his removal from office. Other NRA “leaders” have also admitted to various transgressions and failures in their fiduciary duties. With those admissions, it should not be difficult to convince the judge to remove LaPierre and the offending officers on the basis that they are using the NRA’s resources to protect LaPierre and themselves, rather than fulfilling their fiduciary responsibilities to the NRA and its members.
Wayne LaPierre, along with NRA President Charles Cotton, 1st VP Willes Lee, and 2nd VP David Coy, should be the subjects of a motion pointing out that they have all admitted to actions that should disqualify them from participating in the management of the Association, and especially anything to do with setting legal strategy.
If protecting the assets and interests of the Association’s members is of any concern at all to the attorneys in the NY AG’s Office – as the law states are their primary obligation – then they would have such a motion filed within days.
While we would hope that such a motion would be filed and addressed by the court prior to the Members’ Meeting in Houston on May 28, 2022, that seems unlikely, so NRA members must press the attack from different directions. The primary tactic must be to pressure NRA Directors to do what they should have done at least three years ago: Remove Wayne LaPierre. The best opportunity for the Board to take this action will be at the Board meeting on Monday following the Members’ Meeting. At that time, it will only take a simple majority of Directors to elect new leadership.
A group of concerned NRA members, including former and current members of the Board of Directors, want to draft former Director, LTC Allen West to run for the Executive Vice President position at the meeting in Houston. West has the support of many and could work with reformers to clean up the NRA and get it back on the right track, and he has a record of integrity and effectiveness.
Along with electing LTC West to the position of Executive Vice President, the Board needs to elect a slate of officers to back West in his reform efforts, and to lead the NRA’s legal strategy going forward. All of this makes it absolutely critical that every NRA Director attend the meetings in Houston, and be prepared to stand up for the membership. It’s equally critical that NRA members attend the Members’ Meeting on Saturday the 28th, 2022, to call out the lies and corruption, and to put some starch into the backs of the Directors. We also have a campaign underway to recruit, nominate, and elect a slate of reform candidates for the Board of Directors in the 2023 election.
Much more information about all of this is posted on our website, www.FirearmsCoalition.org, with both the first and second Amended Complaints, along with the Responses to the first one from LaPierre and the NRA. It’s a lot to digest, but it’s critical reading for anyone concerned about the future of the NRA.
I hope to see you in Houston.
NYS Second Amended Complaint against the National Rifle Association, May 2022
2020 People of the State of NY v NRA & Co May 2022 Amended
About Jeff Knox:
Jeff Knox is a second-generation political activist and director of The Firearms Coalition. His father Neal Knox led many of the early gun rights battles for your right to keep and bear arms. Read Neal Knox – The Gun Rights War.
The Firearms Coalition is a loose-knit coalition of individual Second Amendment activists, clubs and civil rights organizations. Founded by Neal Knox in 1984, the organization provides support to grassroots activists in the form of education, analysis of current issues, and with a historical perspective of the gun rights movement. The Firearms Coalition has offices in Buckeye, Arizona, and Manassas, VA. Visit: www.FirearmsCoalition.
Yeah I know as its RACIST! Grumpy
Hannah Crisostomo attempted suicide when she was a sailor in the Navy.Alex Welsh for NBC News
As her one-year anniversary with the Navy approached last May, Hannah Crisostomo swallowed 196 pain relievers. Her organs shut down. Her brain swelled during multiple seizures and she stopped breathing.
She was on life support for eight days, during which time doctors had warned her family that she may never regain normal brain functions. When Crisostomo woke up, she immediately wondered why she was still alive. Her thoughts grew more despairing during the next few weeks in the hospital and then in the Navy’s psychiatric ward.
“If they keep me in the Navy, and they put me back in the same situation, I’m going to kill myself,” she recalled thinking, “and I’m going to be successful the next time.”
That spring, Crisostomo, an aviation boatswain’s mate handler on the aircraft carrier USS George Washington, had been moved to night-shift repair duties. Amid disorganization on the ship during an extensive overhaul, Crisostomo said she was constantly berated for things out of her control.
At the time, she was dealing with some family issues. She also said bipolar disorder that went undiagnosed had played a role in her decision-making. But Crisostomo, now 20, said 95 percent of the reason she tried to kill herself was work-related.
“The command pushes you to that point,” she said, adding that she had tried to get help but was belittled instead. And unlike a traditional corporate employee, she could not simply quit because she had signed a five-year contract.
“There is no putting in your two-week notice and getting out,” Crisostomo said.
Crisostomo and several other George Washington sailors said their struggles were directly related to a culture where seeking help is not met with the necessary resources, as well as nearly uninhabitable living conditions aboard the ship, including constant construction noise that made sleeping impossible and a lack of hot water and electricity.
Since Crisostomo’s attempt, at least five of her shipmates on the George Washington have died by suicide, including three within a span of a week this April, military officials said. The latest cluster of suicides is under investigation by the Navy and has drawn concern from the Pentagon and Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., who served in the Navy for two decades.
On April 15, Master-at-Arms Seaman Recruit Xavier Hunter Sandor died by suicide onboard the George Washington, according to the Navy and the state chief medical examiner’s office. He had been working on the warship for about three months, his family said.
His death came five days after Natasha Huffman, an interior communications electrician, died by suicide off-base in Hampton, officials said.
The day before, Retail Services Specialist 3rd Class Mika’il Rayshawn Sharp also died by suicide off-base in Portsmouth, said his mother, Natalie Jefferson.
“Three people don’t just decide to kill themselves in a span of days for nothing,” said Crisostomo, who left the Navy in October 2021, on an honorable discharge with a medical condition following her suicide attempt.
In a statement, the Navy said, in part, that it was a “resilient force,” but “not immune from the same challenges that affect the nation that we serve.”
“We remain committed to ensuring our carriers are manned, trained and equipped to optimal levels including embedded mental health providers,” said Rear Adm. John F. Meier, the commander of Naval Air Force Atlantic.
Several sailors said poor working conditions were exacerbated by the fact that since 2017, the USS George Washington, one of the world’s largest warships, has been docked at the Newport News Shipyard in Virginia, where it’s undergoing a multiyear overhaul. Such an overhaul is done once during a carrier’s 50-year service life, the Navy said, and it includes significant repairs and upgrades, and the refueling of the ship’s two nuclear reactors.
While most of the roughly 2,700 sailors go home after their shifts, hundreds who live out of state or don’t have off-site housing stay on the George Washington, where they endure nearly uninhabitable conditions, according to a sailor, who still works on the warship and asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation.
Constant construction made it difficult for sailors to fall asleep after long shifts. So some sailors, including Xavier Sandor, slept in their cars, according to Sandor’s shipmates and his father.
“They’re living in an active construction site, and half the boat is not livable at all,” the sailor said. “They don’t care about you trying to sleep.”
When he wasn’t working 12-hour night shifts on the George Washington, Sandor stayed in his car, where he kept a thick blanket and his clothes, according to his father, John Sandor.
During these overhauls, according to several sailors, most crew members are relegated to clean-up and repair tasks rather than the jobs they enlisted in the Navy to do. In her role, Crisostomo was originally supposed to help direct aircraft on the vessel. But because the ship was docked, she spent most of her workdays painting and doing other handiwork.
“We’re glorified janitors,” she said.
A second sailor who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation said he spent nearly two years sitting on a bucket with a fire extinguisher, watching other sailors weld, instead of directing aircraft on the carrier. That sailor, who was reassigned off the George Washington less than a year ago because of an injury, said he felt depressed during his time on the warship and lost over 80 pounds.
“It’s a lot of stress and pressure, especially for people straight out of boot camp,” he said. “It’s mentally scarring to go through stuff like this.”
In a recent address to the George Washington crew, Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy Russell Smith, the service’s senior enlisted leader, told crew members that he knew their working conditions during the overhaul were “not pleasant” or easy, and he acknowledged there was a suicide problem.
“Beating suicide is like beating cancer,” he said, according to a transcript of the address, released Monday by the Navy. “There are many different causes, many different reasons.”
Smith disagreed when a sailor said living standards on the ship were not “necessarily up to par.” He said that the sailors get to go home most nights and that they were not “sleeping in a foxhole like a Marine might be doing.”
“I think we probably could have done better to manage your expectations coming in here,” Smith said. “I hear your concerns and you should always raise them, but you have to do so with reasonable expectations.”
He said the overhaul should be complete in less than a year.
In a statement to NBC News, Lt. Cmdr. Robert Myers, a Navy spokesman, said a “certain number” of sailors have to stay on the ship to run essential equipment, maintain fire and flooding watches, and secure the vessel. The Navy has directed leaders on the ship to identify sailors who could benefit from morale and personal well-being programs, Myers said.
Nautica Robinson, 23, a former fire controlman who worked with Huffman on the George Washington, agreed that overhaul periods affect workloads, increase stress and cause sailors to work longer and harder to make up for schedule delays that are out of their control, as well as keep them from being deployed at sea. But she said the root of the problem is not the shipyard, or the ship itself, but “toxic leadership” on the George Washington.
“They just threw us back in the environment, like our attempted suicides didn’t happen,” Robinson said. “The things that pushed those sailors overboard didn’t exist.”
When Crisostomo first had suicidal thoughts about half a year into her tenure, she said she sought help from a superior. But Crisostomo said she was told she had to finish her work and seek help on her own time. Crisostomo worked night shifts, so by the time she had finished her duties, she said there was no one around to ask.
“Being in the Navy was all I ever wanted,” said Crisostomo, who enlisted when she was 17. “I wanted to be part of something big to help the country. I got robbed of that, and I didn’t deserve it.”
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The deaths have left each of the families searching for answers.
During daily phone conversations with his father from his car, Xavier Sandor frequently expressed his frustrations with living and working conditions.
“He always said it sucked, and I’d always say to ask for help,” John Sandor said. “He’d say, ‘Dad, they don’t give a f—. They don’t care.’ That was always his response to me.”
Every other weekend, Xavier Sandor would drive eight hours to his family’s home in Shelton, Connecticut, and he never wanted to leave when he got there, his father said. Nothing else but his job was upsetting him.
“He was such a happy, proud person,” John Sandor said. “What else could it be?”
John Sandor said he knew the conditions on the ship were “bad” but not to the full extent. It never crossed his mind that his son was considering suicide.
“If I would have known that, I could have changed it somehow,” he said. “That’s going to haunt me for the rest of my life.”
Jefferson, who lived with Sharp in Norfolk, Virginia, also said she didn’t think she had any reason to worry about her son’s mental health. She said Sharp, 23, had just gotten married last year and had plans to buy a house and start having children with his wife, whom he was “over the moon” about.
“He was the life of the party,” Jefferson said. “He never showed his pain.”
A sailor who was close friends with Huffman said she knew she had been suffering.
“We talked about it. She tried to get help,” the sailor said.
“She wasn’t getting any assistance from the Navy, as much as she tried,” the sailor added. “And then that’s when we got the phone call that she wasn’t with us anymore.”
Robinson, 23, said she had bonded with Huffman over their shared struggles, just before Robinson left the Navy this February following her own suicide attempt.
“She said it was draining, it’s tiring,” Robinson recalled of her last conversation with Huffman. “How going to the psych ward helped, but being sent back to the same place in the George Washington, we were both talking about that.”
“They really, really failed her,” Robinson added.
Besides Crisostomo and Robinson, two other current and former USS George Washington sailors told NBC News that they have either attempted suicide themselves, know shipmates who have, or have had suicidal ideations directly related to an increasingly grueling work environment.
Before Robinson’s suicide attempt in May 2021, she said she had been grappling with mounting pressures and toxicity at work, which got worse after she said she was sexually abused by another sailor off-base in 2020.
Robinson said she repeatedly asked for better mental-health support from her superiors on the aircraft carrier, which she had served on since 2019. But she said she received little help and even less empathy.
She was hospitalized for her suicide attempt at the same time Crisostomo was on life support for her’s.
“It’s life-draining,” Robinson said. “It’s truly sad to see that the place you work for can take so much of you.”
At a news briefing on April 21, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby cautioned against “jumping to conclusions” about what might have led those sailors to take their own lives.
All three sailors had worked in different departments and didn’t appear to be in the same social groups, according to the Navy and some who had worked with them.
That decreases the likelihood that the cluster was due to a social contagion effect that occasionally occurs in tight-knit social groups, said Craig Bryan, a clinical psychologist and Air Force veteran, who specializes in suicide in the military.
While it increases the possibility that something is happening on the ship that is increasing the risk of suicide for all on board, it doesn’t yet rule out the chance that the deaths are coincidences, Bryan added.
“The question becomes what’s going on in the group?” he said.
After the three suicides this month, the Navy said it sent a special 13-person psychiatric rapid intervention team to counsel those serving on the George Washington from April 16 to April 19. Sailors on the ship are currently being provided tele-mental health opportunities and expedited appointments for mental health referrals, according to the Navy.
Before then, the sailors said there had only been one psychologist on the ship to serve roughly 2,700 people. The Navy said while there is one psychologist, there are also three chaplains, two licensed clinical social workers, and others who are equipped to handle suicide interventions onboard.
When asked about mental-health resources, Smith told sailors that the Navy would put more chaplains on smaller ships for the first time, but that it’s not easy to hire more psychologists, psychiatrists, and other mental health care workers, because they’re not “out there in abundance.”
“You can’t just snap your fingers and grow a psychiatrist,” he said, adding that the sailors should be “each other’s counselors.”
Myers said a larger Navy team is being built to assess quality-of-life conditions on aircraft carriers undergoing overhauls.
“Their recommendations will inform potential future action, identify areas for improvements, and propose mitigation strategies to optimize [quality of life],” he said.
In 2020, the most recent year for which full data is available, 580 military members died by suicide, a 16 percent increase from 2019, when 498 died by suicide, according to the Defense Department. Nineteen out of every 100,000 sailors died by suicide in 2020, compared to members of the Army, which had the highest rate, at about 36 per 100,000, Pentagon statistics show.
“Clearly, we have more work to do, and we know that,” Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, recently told reporters. “We don’t want to see any sailor harmed or hurt or lose their life, period, regardless of what the cause is. But I can tell you that the Navy has taken this very seriously.”
Crisostomo, Robinson and the other sailors disagree. They said they shared their experiences in the hopes that leaders would make a real change, especially as, one of the sailors said, suicide becomes “a normal thing” on the George Washington.
Today, Crisostomo has nearly made a full physical recovery. In Menifee, California, she is now attending college for the first time and plans to study psychology, partially because of what she experienced.
“Ever since I got out of the military, my mental health has been extremely better,” she said. “I can say that I am happier.”
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Why aren’t these folks in a barracks instead of being on board? This sounds a lot like some poor leadership to me! Grumpy
