Archive for the ‘Links’ Category

Gun control: Crackdown on fake arms licence makers delayed

Tuesday, October 30th, 2012
Original Story Via:  The Express Tribune
LAHORE: The city government has decided to delay a crackdown on makers of fake arms licences till it can gather more evidence on which weapons dealers are involved, The Express Tribune has learnt.

City government officials said that after Eid, they would invite holders of weapons licences made after July 2010 to get their licences verified at the district coordination officer’s (DCO) office. In July 2010, the government started issuing computerised weapons licences with watermarks and other security features.

However, the Licence Branch at the DCO’s office has confiscated some 800 fake licences in the last five months from citizens who had voluntarily come to get their licences verified. These fake licences were made after July 2010, but were prepared manually. Government officials believe that the licences were issued by licensed weapons dealers.

Tariq Zaman, the personal staff officer to the DCO, said that the city government had decided to delay a crackdown on the makers of the fake licences until it had gathered more evidence.

“Even fake licences carry the dealer’s stamp. The more licences we can look at, the more we will get to know of the arms dealers involved. The decision has been made to lodge FIRs against these dealers so we want to get as much information as possible,” he said.

He said that anyone who turned in a fake licence for verification voluntarily would not be prosecuted. But a gun owner who did not turn in their licence for verification and was later caught would be prosecuted, he said.

An official said that there were a total of 55 licensed weapons dealers in the city. He said no new arms sale licences were being issued and these licences were not transferable. He said that the city government knew of around 10 dealers who were involved in preparing fake licences for their customers.

The official said that under the rules, a new gun licence costs around Rs5,000 and the process must be initiated by the licence seekers themselves.

The licence is supposed to be ready in 45 days, but applicants usually have to wait around three months.

An official in the DCO’s office, speaking on the condition of anonymity as he is not authorised to speak to the media, said that the fake licence holders had claimed that they had obtained the licences through their arms dealers.

Most of them had paid Rs20,000 to Rs25,000 for the licences and had received them in a week.

According to the official procedure, applicants for weapon licences must first get a form, fill it out and get a picture taken at the Licence Branch.

The form must be signed by the DCO, or the official assigned the task by the DCO. The form is then sent to the capital city police officer’s office, which returns the application to the DCO.

The file is then sent to the Pakistan Security Printing Press, Karachi, where the licence is made.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 24th, 2012.

UK Judge to burglars: Being shot is a ‘chance you take’

Thursday, October 11th, 2012

Original Story Via:  BurtonMail.co.uk

A judge has told two burglars permanently injured when they were shot by a homeowner: “That is the chance you take.”

Judge Michael Pert QC jailed Joshua O’Gorman and Daniel Mansell for four years each after rejecting a plea that he take the shooting into account.

O’Gorman and Mansell, who have a string of convictions between them, were blasted with a legally-owned shotgun by Andy Ferrie as they attempted to ransack his isolated farm cottage in the early hours of September 2.

O’Gorman, who was shot in the face, and Mansell, who was hit in his right hand, had pleaded guilty to the break-in in Welby, near Melton Mowbray, at an earlier hearing.

Sentencing them at Leicester Crown Court, the judge said: “I make it plain that, in my judgment, being shot is not mitigation. If you burgle a house in the country where the householder owns a legally held shotgun, that is the chance you take. You cannot come to court and ask for a lighter sentence because of it.”

He was responding to a mitigation plea from Andrew Frymann, representing O’Gorman, who said being shot was for his client akin to a “near-death experience” for which he was not prepared. His injuries left him with blurred vision, severe pain and problems with his balance.

Replying to Mr Frymann’s suggestion that O’Gorman was traumatised, Judge Pert said the arrest of Mr and Mrs Ferrie on suspicion of grievous bodily harm could be considered just as disturbing. He said: “Some might argue that being arrested and locked up for 40 hours is a trauma.”

Mr Ferrie, 35, and his wife Tracey, 43, were held in custody for nearly two days after Mr Ferrie called police to tell them he fired his shotgun at the intruders. Their arrests prompted widespread criticism. The couple were later bailed and told they would not face criminal charges.

Mansell, 33, and O’Gorman, 27, both from Leicester but with no fixed addresses, appeared in the court dock each wearing a grey sweatshirt and showing physical evidence of the confrontation. A scar was clearly visible on the right side of O’Gorman’s face and Mansell had his arm in a sling.

Commenting after sentencing, a spokesman for Leicestershire Police said: “The decision made by the Crown Prosecution Service, after reviewing all the evidence, was to take no further action against the homeowners involved. We are unable to comment any further as we have an ongoing investigation with three men currently on police bail.”

The U.N. Speaks: The Arms Trade Treaty Will Affect “Legally Owned Weapons”

Friday, June 22nd, 2012

Original Story VIA:  The Heritage Foundation

Ted R. Bromund, Ph.D.

Yesterday, the U.N. released its press kit for the July conference that will finalize the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). The most interesting item in the kit is a lengthy paper by the U.N.’s Coordinating Action on Small Arms (CASA) program titled “The Impact of Poorly Regulated Arms Transfers on the Work of the UN.”

This paper perpetuates the belief, on which much of the ATT is based, that the big problem the world faces is a lack of agreed standards on arms transfers. That’s wrong: The big problem the world faces in this regard is that many U.N. member states are dictatorships, supporters of terrorists, or simply incapable of controlling their own borders.

But the paper makes it clear that the job of the U.N.—as the U.N. itself sees it—is to make the case for a very broad treaty. As CASA puts it, “Advocacy efforts should be developed…through relevant reports and op-eds, messages, and statements at relevant meetings and to the press.” So watch out for U.S. taxpayer-funded funded U.N. propaganda in a newspaper near you.

But in spite of its desperate efforts to rebut Second Amendment concerns, the U.N. can’t stop stepping on its own shoelaces. After proclaiming that the ATT “does not aim to impede or interfere with the lawful ownership and use of weapons,” the CASA paper goes on to say that “United Nations agencies have come across many situations in which various types of conventional weapons have been…misused by lawful owners” and that the “arms trade must therefore be regulated in ways that would…minimize the risk of misuse of legally owned weapons.”

How, exactly, would the ATT do that if it doesn’t “impede” or “interfere” with lawful ownership? The U.N. would have a lot more credibility on the ATT if it didn’t imply so regularly that the problem is as much lawful ownership as it is the international arms trade.

Of course, CASA isn’t just concerned with lawful ownership; it’s also campaigning against “community attitudes” that “contribute to the powerful cultural conditioning that equates masculinity with owning and using a gun, and regards gun misuse by men as acceptable.”

All this just goes to show that the U.N. regards gun ownership—even under national constitutional protection and for lawful activities—as a cultural failure that it needs to redress and that it has no patience at all with the idea that self-defense is an inherent right.

And that is exactly why the concerns that Senator Jerry Moran (R–KS) expressed at Heritage on Tuesday are so important—and why his criteria to ensure that the ATT does not infringe on Second Amendment rights are so valuable.