Category: You have to be kidding, right!?!
Man with WWI explosive lodged in his rectum sparks bomb scare, hospital evacuation
The case left doctors shell-shocked.
A French hospital was partially evacuated Saturday after a senior citizen arrived with a World War I artillery shell lodged in his rectum.
The 88-year-old patient visited Hospital Sainte Musse in Toulon to have the antique explosive removed — but instead sparked a “bomb scare,” French publication Var-Matin reported.
“An emergency occurred from 9 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. on Saturday evening that required the intervention of bomb disposal personnel, the evacuation of adult and pediatric emergencies as well as the diversion of incoming emergencies,” a hospital spokesperson stated.
“We had to manage the risk in a reactive framework,” the rep added. “When in doubt, we took all the precautions.”
Bomb disposal experts at the scene determined there was little possibility the shell would explode inside the man.
“They reassured us by telling us that it was a collector’s item from the First World War, used by the French military,” the hospital stated.
Stunned doctors subsequently began the process of trying to remove the object — which measured almost 8 inches long and more than 2 inches wide — from the man’s rectum.
It’s believed the pervy patient inserted the item up his anus for sexual pleasure.
“An apple, a mango, or even a can of shaving foam, we are used to finding unusual objects inserted where they shouldn’t be,” one doctor declared. “But a shell? Never!”
Medics were forced to take the elderly man into surgery, cutting open his abdomen in order to remove the relic.
According to the hospital, he is now in “good health” and is expected to make a full recovery from the surgery.
BELLEVUE, WA — -(AmmoLand.com)- A California appeals court panel has unanimously denied a request from state Attorney General Rob Bonta for an immediate stay of an injunction in a case brought by the Second Amendment Foundation in a challenge of the state law allowing the state Department of Justice to share personal information about firearms owners with private researchers.
Bonta claimed the law, AB 173, “does not create a serious invasion of privacy.” The trial court disagreed, granting a preliminary injunction to the plaintiffs, thus placing a hold on the enforcement of the information-sharing law. The case is known as Barba, et.al. v. Bonta.
Second Amendment Foundation is joined in the lawsuit by the Firearms Policy Coalition, Inc., California Gun Rights Foundation, San Diego County Gun Owners PAC, Orange County Gun Owners PAC, Inland Empire Gun Owners PAC, and a private citizen, Ashleymarie Barba. They are represented by attorneys Bradley A. Benbrook and Stephen M. Duvernay with the Benbrook Law Group, PC in Sacramento.
“We’re delighted the appeals court panel unanimously rejected Bonta’s effort to set aside the preliminary injunction because the privacy of California gun owners is important, even if he thinks otherwise,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “Bonta is determined to supply gun owner information to biased researchers who, we believe, will use it to promote additional restrictions on their Second Amendment-protected rights.”
Gottlieb dismissed arguments by Bonta that the researchers take steps to protect identifying information about gun owners.
“That’s not the point,” Gottlieb said. “The point of our challenge is that this information is being shared at all, especially with non-government entities. This isn’t just about Second Amendment rights. California’s law clearly threatens the privacy rights of gun owners.”
The lawsuit was filed because of a change in the California Penal Code that required the state DOJ to share private information on millions of gun owners in the state, with the California Firearm Violence Research Center and others.
About Second Amendment Foundation
The Second Amendment Foundation (www.saf.org) is the nation’s oldest and largest tax-exempt education, research, publishing and legal action group focusing on the Constitutional right and heritage to privately own and possess firearms. Founded in 1974, The Foundation has grown to more than 720,000 members and supporters and conducts many programs designed to better inform the public about the consequences of gun control.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scrubbed numbers showing upwards of 2.5 million defensive gun uses (DGUs) a year after being pressured by gun control activists, FOX News claimed.
FOX News pointed to email obtained and published by the Reload. Those emails allegedly show that the CDC was pressured to removed links to a summary of studies on DGUs which showed that annual DGUs range between 60,000 and 2.5 million, the latter figure totally eclipsing criminal gun uses.
One of the emails, allegedly sent by Gun Violence Archive executive director Mark Bryant, said “that 2.5 Million number needs to be killed, buried, dug up, killed again and buried again. It is highly misleading, is used out of context and I honestly believe it has zero value — even as an outlier point in honest DGU discussions.”
Bryant allegedly complained that once the CDC study on DGUs appeared, “gun violence prevention policy … ground to a halt,”
Bryant allegedly complained specifically about Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck’s work, whose work on DGUs was included in the CDC summary.
Kleck’s work, which was academic in nature and which began to be placed in the public eye in the early 1990s, was reaffirmed by Kleck in February 2015.
On February 19, 2015, Breitbart News reported Kleck responded to criticism of his past studies on DGUs by showing why the criticism is wrong and why a minimum of 760,000 DGUs each year is still a viable claim.
According to The Reload, gun control advocates had difficulty reaching people had the CDC who had the power to get the information off the agency’s website. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and the White House reportedly stepped in to put the gun controllers in contact with the right people, after which the information on annual DGUs was removed.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. AWR Hawkins holds a PhD in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.
By Larry Keane
A New York Times conference featured a bank CEO pushing the financial industry to track Americans making purchases at retailers and monitor their “suspicious activity” under the guise of “reducing gun violence.”
Amalgamated Bank CEO Priscilla Sims Brown was the special guest at the Times’ DealBook confab and was interviewed by Andrew Ross Sorkin. He’s the Times’ columnist who previously proposed the gun buying monitoring scheme and spelled out the “next steps” in a column highlighting Sims Brown’s efforts after an international financial standards board adopted her petition to create the tracking codes.
Putting even a little thought to the idea reveals the serious flaws of the plan. Implementing the enormous system to track the private financial transactions will create a myriad of privacy and civil liberty concerns and no doubt is ripe for abuse.
Gun Control Dragnet
Sims Brown lobbied the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to create a gun-related Merchant Category Code (MCC) for credit and debit card companies to use to track cardholders’ purchases of firearms and ammunition. The ISO adopted the proposal and banks are beginning to use them. Listening to Sims Brown forecast what’s ahead, her true gun control aim is revealed. It’s a dragnet for law-abiding Americans.
“We’re at the very early stages of this –,” Sims Brown told Sorkin and the audience. “But as this is implemented, those scenarios will be used.”
By “those scenarios,” she means “detection scenarios” in which a particular purchase prompts a bank to file a Suspicious Activity Report to the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. Here’s how the MCC tracking will reportedly work. Purchases made at retailers selling firearms or ammunition would be assigned the new code for purchases. The MCC won’t identify what is in the customer’s basket, so it could be a total purchase for a firearm and several boxes of ammunition. It could also include a new tent, sleeping bag, propane stove, waders, decoys, blinds and other outdoor gear. The total cost could be flagged as “suspicious” since it might be an outlier on a customer’s purchase history. That doesn’t make it nefarious, though.
Media reported the proposal won’t have its intended effect. “The payment network and its banking partners would have no idea if a gun-store customer is purchasing an automatic rifle or safety equipment,” Bloomberg News reported. Banks aren’t saying what purchases would be “suspicious.”
Just a Steppingstone
The MCC scheme has caught the attention of Congressional gun control politicians. Legislation has been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives, H.R. 5764, by Reps. Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.) and Jennifer Wexton (D-Va.) and in the U.S. Senate, S. 3117, by Sens. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). That legislation, The Gun Violence Prevention Through Financial Intelligence Act, would provide banking institutions the cover they need to track purchases by requiring the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network to provide “guidance” needed to institute the MCC.
“Financial institutions have a legal obligation… to have programs in place to help detect and report suspicious activity, but they have to know what they are looking for,” Rep. Wexton said.
Rep. Dean has praised the back door gun control effort, too. “Financial institutions already have proven systems in place to identify suspicious behavior and purchasing patterns,” she wrote in a release.
Still no one has offered what “suspicious behavior” or “purchasing patterns” would be flagged. The questions are endless, answers few and the threat to Constitutional rights high.
Trudging Ahead. Trampling Rights.
Sorkin hypes his work in getting the MCC code established. He told the Dealbook audience, “This is an emotional topic for me in many ways… because back in 2018 I started writing about the role of guns in our society… and the role of credit card companies and banks in financing mass shootings.”
Sorkin stated his belief that lawful firearm retail businesses and the already-highly regulated Federal Firearms Licensees (FFLs) which provide for the legal exercise of the Second Amendment should do their part to create the backdoor database of gun buyers – something Congress is prohibited by law from doing on their own.
“Merchants must start using the code, and not obfuscate transactions by using other classifications,” Sorkin wrote. “Most crucially, the payments industry needs to develop and refine software algorithms for identifying suspicious activity…”
There are those words again – “suspicious activity.”
The suspicion is better reserved for those who would compile lists of Americans lawfully exercising their Constitutional Second Amendment rights. The right to keep and bear arms begins with the ability to make a purchase at the retail counter. Financial industry power players, though, are twisting their roles to facilitate legal transactions into social credit scores that put Americans on secret watch lists.
The financial industry doesn’t need to be suspicious of gun buyers who already are subject to FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) verifications. This move, though, is reason enough for Americans to be suspicious of “woke” banking CEOs doing the bidding of gun control politicians.
Larry Keane is Senior Vice President of Government and Public Affairs and General Counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the firearms industry trade association.
——————————————————————————– Does anybody remember voting for this guy? I don’t! Grumpy
Honolulu Police Chief Arther “Joe” Logan has asked residents to call the police if they see another citizen open-carrying. This request, from a live stream for “Spotlight Hawaii,” comes on the heels of the HPD issuing concealed-carry licenses.
According to Logan, dispatched officers will be required to investigate any complaints. Police will need a physical description of the person in question as well as any other detail that can aid in their investigation.
“Obviously, concealed carry and the definition of ‘conceal’ means that you can’t see it or it is unrecognizable to the average person,” said Logan. “If it is noticed and you can see it, I would ask you to call 911.”
Back in June, the Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling on a case known as New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen that struck down New York’s “may-issue” carry scheme and opened the door for firearm enthusiasts to carry across the country.
However, it has also led to some controversial requirements for those wishing to obtain a permit in Honolulu. An applicant must be able to remove their weapon from the holster and hit a silhouette target, placed at five distances, from nine to 45 feet.
SEE ALSO: Federal Judge Strikes Down Draconian Hawaii Handgun Purchase Requirements
The owner of 808 Gun Club Tom Tomimbang said last month that he is not too concerned about the requirements in an interview with Hawaii News Now.
“Practice, practice, practice, right?” Tomimbang said. “If they do that before they take the actual qualification course, they should be able to do it.”
Chief Logan says this requirement test is not really to prove someone can shoot, but that they can shoot under duress – which is why they added a timed element to the test.
“You might have to learn how to cope with that stress while shooting,” he said.
Currently, there are around 600 pending applications for CCW licenses on Oahu, and they are being processed in the order in which they were received.
Aside from the requirement test, these 90-day applications require applicants to undergo background checks, mental health evaluations, and live-fire training before the HPD issues the certification – similar to a driver’s license with a picture included.
Gun carriers who get caught in public without their license will face a misdemeanor criminal offense.
Chief Logan has declared that he will not wait on the city of Oahu to complete action on Bill 57, which would limit concealed carriers from possessing a weapon on public transit, at schools, or in the voting booth.
SEE ALSO: Smith & Wesson Files Suit in Hawaii for Public Records Disclosures
Furthermore, the bill would also prevent carrying in Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve, the Hawaii Children’s Discovery Center, the Honolulu Aquarium and the Honolulu Zoo. Those permitted to concealed-carry would also be required to stand 100 feet away from the outer edge of groups of 25 or more who are participating in “first amendment expressive activities.”
State Legislature is expected to discuss adopting statewide standards for carrying restrictions by location in January. Meanwhile, Bill 57 passed the initial reading at a November 29th city council meeting. The bill is required to be voted on twice more before it can be implemented.
Logan has been making the rounds with members of the city council to ensure the language of the bill is clear for citizens and law enforcement alike. He wants everyone to understand what to do in confusing situations where a legal carrier is forced to pick up their child from school last minute. According to Logan, these murky circumstances need some elaboration.
“The way the language of the law is written is really going to impact how we enforce, ” Logan said. “It’s something we need to figure out.”
Logan says that with officers putting their lives in danger, a clearly worded ordinance or law is expected to protect them.
“It becomes a little difficult for us on an enforcement level, ” said Logan. “We’re already asking our officers to do a lot.”
Disney CEO Bob Iger: Those of Us in Positions to Influence Laws, Shape Culture ‘Have an Extra Responsibility’ to Push Gun Control
3:06
Disney CEO Bob Iger attended a Sandy Hook Promise Benefit and referenced people in influential positions and suggested that those who shape culture “have an extra responsibility” to push gun control.
Sandy Hook Promise is the group with to whom country singer Tim McGraw donated concert proceeds for a gun control fundraiser in July 2015.
On April 16, 2015, Breitbart News pointed to McGraw’s planned participation in the fundraiser and he responded to the coverage by telling MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, “I lead my life leading with my heart, I do the things that I can do and support the causes that I support, try to help in the areas where I can help, and I do that with my heart. If I have a decision to lead with my head or my heart, I’m going to lead with my heart every time.”
The Hollywood Reporter noted that Iger, Barack Obama, and actor Matthew McConaughey all gathered in New York Tuesday, where they honored the work of Sandy Hook Promise and continued the push for more gun control.
Iger said, “As a grandfather, as a father, as CEO of The Walt Disney Company, I believe there is no greater or more important task than ensuring the safety and well-being of our children.”
He added, “Those of us who are in positions to affect change, whether it’s by influencing laws of shaping culture or supporting organizations on the frontlines, I think we have an extra responsibility.”
Obama also made comments, lamenting the failure to pass Second Amendment restrictions wanted by the gun control lobby:
Perhaps the most bitter disappointment of my time in office, the closest I came to being cynical, was the utter failure of Congress to respond in the immediate aftermath of the Sandy Hook shootings. To see almost the entire GOP, but also a decent number of Democrats equivocate and hem and haw and filibuster and ultimately bend yet again to pressure from the gun lobby.
Universal background check legislation was the key proposal pushed under the Obama administration following the attack on Sandy Hook. It failed as an emphasis was placed on the fact that the Sandy Hook attacker used stolen guns, thereby eliminating any benefit of the passage of more point-of-sale gun controls.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. AWR Hawkins holds a PhD in Military History with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.
Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, together with 17 other state attorneys general, are asking shipping companies UPS and FedEx to explain their newly implemented policies to track and record Americans’ firearms purchases and disclose whether these policies have been coordinated with the Biden administration.
In letters sent on Nov. 29 to FedEx CEO Raj Subramaniam and UPS CEO Carol B. Tomé, Knudsen and his co-signers wrote that the shipping companies’ policies “allow your company to track firearm sales with unprecedented specificity and bypass warrant requirements to share that information with federal agencies.”
“What both of these companies are saying is that they’re doing this so they can better cooperate with law enforcement,” Knudsen told The Epoch Times. “That’s all fine and well, until you find out that that’s a violation of federal law.”
Based on reports from gun stores, Knudsen’s letter states, FedEx and UPS are now requiring federal firearms license holders to provide details of each shipment to the shipping companies, including the contents and recipient, allowing them “to create a database of American gun purchasers and determine exactly what items they purchased.
Citing the new policies, the letter states: “Perhaps most concerning, your policies allegedly allow FedEx [and UPS] to ‘comply with … requests from applicable law enforcement or other governmental authorities’ even when those requests are ‘inconsistent or contrary to any applicable law, rule, regulation, or order.’ In doing so you—perhaps inadvertently—give federal agencies a workaround to federal law, which has long prevented federal agencies from using gun sales to create gun registries.”
“The ATF [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives] is hoping they’re not going to have a warrant problem,” Knudsen said. “They could just go get this information from UPS and FedEx.”
FedEx and UPS’s new gun-tracking policies follow efforts by Visa, Mastercard, and American Express to also monitor purchases from gun stores, with the intention of handing that information over to federal law enforcement. The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution prohibits the federal government from conducting searches of U.S. citizens without a warrant and “probable cause” that a crime was committed.
Increasingly, however, banks, credit card companies, and now shipping companies are conducting those searches on the government’s behalf.
The letter demands that the shipping companies respond within 30 days, clarifying their policies and explaining whether or not they acted in coordination with the ATF or any other government agency. It also asks them to clarify a reported “gag order” under which they directed gun shops not to disclose the terms of this policy to the public.
Possible Collusion?
The two letters to UPS and FedEx were virtually identical because the policies the companies implemented appear to be strikingly similar, raising the additional issue of possible collusion between companies that hold an oligopolistic position in shipping. Collusion in restraint of trade has long been illegal under U.S. antitrust laws, including the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890.
“It’s either collusion, they’re working together, or what I suspect is, it’s probably originating out of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, or the Biden administration,” Knudsen said. His letter recommends that the shipping companies “consider taking actions to limit potential liability moving forward, including the immediate cessation of any existing warrantless information sharing with federal agencies about gun shipments.”
If the shipping companies don’t answer his questions within 30 days, Knudsen said, “I’ll probably start with an actual formal civil investigative demand where we’ll ask for some documentation. That’s short of a subpoena and an actual lawsuit, but, ultimately, if they don’t want to cooperate, a lawsuit is where we’re going to end up.”
In response to the letter, FedEx told The Epoch Times in a statement that “FedEx is aware of the letter from the state attorneys general. We are committed to the lawful and safe movement of regulated items through our network.”
UPS responded that it “has not bypassed any laws to provide customer information to the Biden administration or federal agencies related to the shipment of firearms. UPS will only provide information about our customers or shipments when required to do so by law, such as in response to a subpoena or a warrant.”
UPS “will respond to the letter sent by several state attorneys general to answer their questions and clarify misinformation. UPS will continue to abide by all applicable laws in providing service for firearm shipments,” it stated.
“The policies set forth by FedEx and UPS are troubling, to say the least,” Mark Oliva, public affairs director of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, told The Epoch Times. “They carry with them serious risk of privacy concerns for law-abiding gun owners, and Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen is correct to be wary of how this information is to be used.
“We know that pressure was applied to these common carriers by antigun Democratic senators and the result was these new policies. It does seem rather coincidental that the Biden administration and certain elected officials that have been frustrated in instituting extreme gun control measures are suddenly and curiously seeing big businesses doing exactly what they are not allowed to do by law.”
Knudsen was asked why the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which is tasked with protecting consumers against corporate collusion, is taking no action against what appears to be a coordinated effort by the shipping companies to target the firearms industry.
“I think there’s probably pressure from the White House to not do that, which is why you’re seeing AGs in states like Montana that have joined me to push back on this. If the federal government isn’t going to do their job, we’ll step in and make them do it.”
He said that gun shops are being targeted not only by credit card and shipping companies but by insurers as well.
“I’m aware of a number of FFL brick-and-mortar gun shops, and also some retailers that are just middlemen in Montana, that have been denied property-casualty insurance on their business property simply because they’re in the firearms industry.”
Kevin Stocklin is a writer, film producer, and former investment banker. He wrote and produced “We All Fall Down: The American Mortgage Crisis,” a 2008 documentary on the collapse of the U.S. mortgage finance system.