Friday Tour d’Horizon, Week 33

This week’s Tour d’Horizon is where we dispose of a week’s worth of open tabs, or try to. It’s gun-light this week.

Guns

I don’t wanna work, I just wanna bang on my gun all day.

Kalashnikov to Open Shop… in Moscow Airport

The shop at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport will offer Kalashnikov-branded souvenirs and chachkas… and even fake AKs.

The Russian gunmaking company announced Friday that it will soon open a souvenir shop at Sheremetyevo International Airport, where T-shirts, pens, umbrellas, and, yes, fake AK-47s will be available for purchase. There will also be “I Love AK” T-shirts for sale, because, hey, why not? Some 31 million people passed through the major airport last year.

In Russia, airport secures you.

Usage and Employment

The hardware takes you only half way. (Nothing this week, or this post’d be even later).

Sometimes the Right Thing is Not to Shoot

This guy, who is not named in Jennifer Cruz’s write-up at Guns.com, used his superior judgment so as not to have to make a vulgar display of his superior skills.

The argument restarted and Langley pulled out a revolver and opened fire on the ex-boyfriend. The ex, who was also carrying a gun, chose not to fire back at Langley for one simple reason – his child was in the car driven by Langley and Martin.

Instead of grabbing his gun, the ex-boyfriend grabbed his phone and dialed 911. As he was dialing, Langley fired off his last round from his revolver, then fled on foot, ditching his gun somewhere along the way.

Guess which of them had a license? Yep, the guy who didn’t start nothing, and who didn’t fire when he couldn’t be sure it was safe. The cops noticed:

“It does appear that he used a lot of good, common sense and wisdom by choosing not to fire,” said Evansville Police Captain Andy Chandler. “Even after the shots were fired and the suspect took off running, the [victim] that had a legal carry permit once again chose not to fire at the suspect because he felt like he was no longer in danger because the suspect was running from the scene.”

Evansville, huh. What’s up with Indiana these days? Is it aiming for a reputation as the version of Florida, for those who can’t live without lousy lake effect weather?

And Sometimes the Right Thing is To Shoot

When he ran out of other options, Robert Padgett shot the man attacking him, Gary Durham — and then tried to save him.

Padgett apparently warned Durham to back off. Durham, however, failed to heed the warning and as the argument escalated further, at some point, Padgett pulled a gun and shot Durham.

When police arrived on the scene, Padgett was administering CPR to Durham as he waited for first responders, but efforts to save him failed and Durham died.

It was only after Durham was pronounced dead that Padgett learned about Durham’s history of violent crime, including  the shocking fact that he beat a man to death in a similar road-rage incident in 2001, and had only just gotten out of the Florida prison system after doing 11 years for manslaughter.

Cops ‘n’ Crims

Cops bein’ cops, crims bein’ crims. The endless Tom and Jerry show of crime and (sometimes instantaneous) punishment.

The Cop was a Crim, DEA & Secret Service Edition

DEA guys are always coming up dirty — it’s a dirty business they’re in, and if an agent is morally weak, well, some of the folks they deal with are skilled at exploiting that. But this case is interesting, as a DEA Agent and a Secret Service Agent working on the same task force both appear to have been stealing from the target of the investigation, unknown to one another. Ars Technica has a fascinating and deep report on the crime and the investigation.

The Cop was Cleaned Out by the Crim

Police chief Kelly McMillin of the agricultural and recreational pharmaceutical city of Salinas, CA, locked his AR-15 with a “gun lock” in his unmarked g-ride. This ordinary looking cat, one Joseph Twiford Sutton, made off with the AR, gun lock and all. He also scored ammunition, and the cop chief’s protective vest.

Sutton was a no-go at the evasion and escape phase of the exercise, you might say. He will now spend the next few years experiencing a milder version of the Resistance Training Lab.

All in all, the hunt for McMillin’s missing AR yielded not only that AR but 19 further firearms, including one other Salinas PD firearm.

She Thought Her Sister Was Gonna Throw Her Out, So She…

…you know this is going to be good. First, Jennifer Lampe loaded up on multiple kinds of Judgment Juice™: whisky, amaretto, beer. Then, she got the munchies — enough to eat the heads of her sister’s two pet snakes, a boa constrictor and a “bull python” (sic).

“When her sister saw the defendant in her bedroom she had a boa constrictor under her top and was covered in blood.”

“About three-quarters of the snake could be seen. The defendant was hysterical.”

The defendant’s sister called the police, and officers found her with the headless – albeit still-moving – body of a boa constrictor around her neck.

Lampe had “vomited up” the heads and placed both in her trouser pockets as she “wanted to keep them”.

The snakes experienced “prolonged and painful” suffering, said Mr Price, adding that reptiles’ heads “can remain operable up to an hour after decapitation.”

OK, here, he’s selling snake oil — they’re reptiles, for Christ’s sake.

No word on whether her sister threw her out, but what do you think?

Minnesota Court Says No to Sharia, Women Remain People There

The brother of dead taxi driver Nadir Ombabi, Hosameldin Imbabi, was outraged that a wrongful-death settlement was paid to Ombabi’s widow, one Nariman Khalil. In Imbabi’s viewpoint, kufr law has no standing, and the money should be paid out according to sharia — that is, among other provisions, primarily to male heirs.

Alas for Imbabi, the panel of kafrs at the Minnesota Court of Appeals were unimpressed with his legal maneuvers — he acted as his own lawyer, the chump — and with his source of law. In Minnesota, at least, women are still human beings and not, as under sharia, half of one.

Eugene Volokh has the story, although the link to the appeal in his story didn’t work.

Secret Service: We’ve Got This, Sorta

After a stage-rusher approached Donald Trump (Trump looked like he was going to pop the guy!) the Secret Service was on CNN denying that they’re under any strain.

But that’s not what the USSS told other agencies when it was poor-mouthing its way into borrowing thousands of bodies for campaign support and the UN General Assembly — over a thousand of them from ICE alone. (Which is okay, because under this administration they just get in trouble if they do the job that’s the title of their agency). Moreover, the budget’s tight enough that the poor bastards supporting UNGA.. well, here’s how one of them put it:

Agents in NYC will not get lodging yet will be expected to show up on time for a 12+ hour shift and then have an hour or more drive to and from work in a city that is virtually shut down during that time.  

It’s not all making up the foursome behind the president, you know.

The agent notes that:

The media should be aware of this for sure.

If it doesn’t reflect luminously on their Supreme Personality of Godhead, don’t expect the media to notice it, pal.

 The Perils of Kathleen: Rubble Bouncing Edition

Here’s where we chronicle ongoing meltdown of the paranoid, vengeful and extremely anti-gun now-former Pennsylvania attorney general, Kathleen Kane. This week she was convicted by a lightning-fast jury on all counts, and finally reigned. We did previously post on that, and expect this to be our last regular update on Kane.

• Her Deputy Bruce Castor is now the acting-jack AG and wasted no time changing the label on the AG’s twitter feed. He’s also scheming to keep her out of jail and put her accusers in.
• But the Shiv is In for Castor already.
• Kane has No Regrets, she tells the press.
• “A misguided sense of righteousness,” is how one former supporter puts it at Philadelphia Magazine.

The Cop was a Gun Crim

In California, building an AR-15 is a felony — even, it turns out, when a cop does it. Officer Thomas Abrahamsen of the San Francisco PD may be the first one charged under Jerry Brown’s new “Gunpocalypse” gun bans signed on 1 July 2016. He has been under investigation for over a year, apparently, but his “bullet button” AR-15 wasn’t illegal until now.

According to the San Francisco Examiner, Abrahamsen was dimed out by brother(?) officers.

Thomas Abrahamsen, 50, surrendered himself Tuesday and was booked into San Francisco County Jail on one felony count of manufacture of an assault weapon and one felony count of possession of an assault weapon, police spokesperson Sgt. Michael Andraychak said.

The investigation allegedly revealed that Abrahamsen, a Berkeley resident, had manufactured and possessed a prohibited AR-15 assault rifle and AR-15 components, Andraychak said.

Abrahamsen has entered a plea of Not Guilty.

It’s a good thing that this crackdown has eliminated homicide from the streets of San Francisco, and that the cops have solved — oh, wait. The red ones are the ones they haven’t solved. Not a priority. Damn it, man, there are guns at large!

The Crim was a Blockhead

Some crook selling fake english-language certificates and other documents was spamming forums with stuff like:

Real and Novelty quality documents such as passports,drivers license,id cards,stamps,visas,diplomas of very high quality and other products for all countries:

USA, Australia,UK, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Italian, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Mexico, Netherlands, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland,

Buy Passports,Drivers license,id cards,visas,counterfeit money.

Buy original travel documents passport,drivers license,visas.

(it goes on… that’s just a sample). And he chose to spam this forum.

Unconventional (and current) Warfare

What goes on in the battlezones of the world — and preparation of the future battlefields.

Uh, That’s a Definite No

Asked whether, if he were Prime Minister and a NATO ally was attacked by Russia, he’d honor the treaty obligation, the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn “refused to say.”

That’s not a non-answer, Jer. That’s definitely an answer.

But what do you expect? He’s the only guy left that misses the USSR more than Bernie and Vladimir Vladimirovich. His hard left group, Momentum, are the Bolsheviks to Labor’s Mensheviks (or maybe Social Revolutionaries).

Interview with a Vampire

A three part article at Foreign Policy purports to be based on hundreds of hours of interviews with an ISIL fighter from Syria. Part 1 begins here.

Veterans’ Issues

Is it time to disband this thing yet, and letting all its bloatoverhead seek its own level in the Dreaded Private Sector™?

Oklahoma Veterans’ Affairs Investigator was a Fraud

This guy was hired as a criminal investigator. That was half true! The Tulsa (OK) World:

A former Oklahoma Veterans Affairs Department chief investigator who faked his credentials and was actually a convicted felon has been sentenced to five years in prison and ordered to get a psychological evaluation.

Steven Pancoast Jr., 43, was also sentenced to 10 years of probation on Tuesday, The Oklahoman reported. He had pleaded guilty in February to 24 criminal counts, including forgery and perjury.

Was any of his resume true? Apparently not:

Authorities said Pancoast carried a counterfeit badge and forged law enforcement credentials, business cards and diplomas from Oklahoma State University and Southwestern Oklahoma State University.

Wow. Turns out he was not a law enforcement officer at all, but a felon. And what was he a felon for?

Court records show Pancoast spent almost three years in prison in New Jersey after two arrests for larceny and a weapons offense.

And it turned out he made himself an investigator in the internal affairs bureau. One small problem: there is no IAB. The Oklahoman:

Pancoast was employed at the Oklahoma Veterans Affairs Department as a safety programs administrator. He had printed up business cards, though, identifying himself as a special agent in charge of the internal affairs bureau, which didn’t actually exist.

He ended up working alongside federal Homeland Security agents and investigators with the attorney general’s office. With them, he carried a gun and conducted searches and interviewed witnesses. He became known as a hard worker.

And it never occurred to anyone to check him out.

Among his lies was that he had been a New York City police officer. To further his ruse, he kept a photograph of himself in his office dressed in a New York City police officer’s uniform.

Pancoast pleaded guilty in February to 24 crimes, mostly perjury and forgery.

He admitted in his guilty plea that he had lied about his background repeatedly and that he had forged documents, including an Oklahoma State University diploma “in the furtherance” of his criminal wrongdoing.

Canadian County District Judge Gary Miller decided Pancoast’s punishment — five years in prison followed by 10 years on probation.

His “investigations” wound up helping one accused murderer get away with a wrist tap:

The judge noted that some criminal cases were damaged because of the wrongdoing.

In one of the most notable case, a former physician assistant at the Claremore Veterans Center was blamed for two veterans’ deaths. The former aide originally was charged, in 2013, with two counts of second-degree murder.

Because of problems in the case, including Pancoast’s involvement, the former aide pleaded guilty this year to misdemeanor assault offenses instead and was sentenced to 90 days in jail.

This guy’s a knucklehead, but he’s a state employee (or was), and we can’t use him as a stick to beat the federal VA with.

Lord Love a Duck!

The weird and wonderful (or creepy) that we didn’t otherwise get to. 

Is this a Crazy Cat Lady Record?

Delores Marti, 78, had 55 cats in her home in Monroe, Indiana — and that’s just the live ones. There was also a freezer full of 35 dead kittens and six dead adult cats, and more dead cats lying around unshriven (and, er, unfrozen). Her home has been condemned.

Thing is: it’s not the first time. She lost a home in 2009 or 2010, and a second one in March, 2010. Both had to be gutted after her then-hoard of cats was removed. She’s been cited for too many cats — a city ordinance limits cat count to three — in her current home, too, at least twice.

If any of you Hoosiers out there want a cat, the Green County Humane Society has got a few — dozen — for adoption.