Burglar killed by "warning shot", three co-burglars charged with her murder.

Alabama doesn't screw around.

I've missed this one until today. Apparently back in April, a teen burglary ring was working the fishing camps on Gravine Island as well as other businesses and residences in and around Baldwin County, Alabama. On April 15th, at 4AM, they were spotted by some neighbors who fired a couple of "warning shots" well away from the three burglars that they could see to scare them off. (The teens were also armed with a rifle, a pistol and a knife, per police investigators.) By sheer dumb luck, one of those shots hit a fourth burglar, Summer Moody, who was hiding in some bushes. The shooters rendered aid for her as best they could once they realized that she'd been hit but she died ten days later from her injuries. The Baldwin County District Attorney submitted the case to a Grand Jury and obtained felony murder indictments against the three surviving burglars under the doctrine that co-conspirators in a crime where a death occurs are held to be responsible for that death. The DA also decided not to charge the shooters as there was no intent to cause harm with the warning shots. Predictably, the family and friends of the dirtbag burglars are livid and their attorney has filed a lawsuit against the three shooters, the local police chief (who wasn't there), and the owner of the cabin that the punks were burglarizing. (He also wasn't there.)

All the stories that you could ever want about this case are compiled here:

Gravine Island Felony Murder case article compilation.

Personally, while I sympathize with the family of Summer Moody to an extent, I have to note that their daughter was engaged in a felony burglary with her boyfriend and his pals. That being the case, I don't think that these people should get a pay day out of raising a little thugette and turning her loose on the community. In a perfect world, there would be no lawsuits allowed by a plaintiff or their family in a case where the plaintiff is injured or dies as a result of criminal activity that they were engaged in.

Now this case should also stand as yet another example of why we don't fire warning shots in a self-defense situation. In a self-defense situation, you are allowed to use deadly force when you reasonably believe that your life or that of another is in immediate danger. That means that you shoot to stop the threat. If you just shoot into the air or the ground, what you're saying is "I didn't really feel quite that threatened yet." By doing so, you just negated your own legal justification for using the force at all. Many people have gone to jail for making that mistake. Part of defending yourself with a firearm is knowing and following the laws in your jurisdiction, and most jurisdictions today do not allow warning shots.

Fortunately for these three men, Alabama's laws are a bit more lax than most states when it comes to using deadly force. However they're now facing a million-dollar civil lawsuit. I wish them well, and I also hope that the three teens charged get convicted and pull down three nice Alabama-style prison sentences, the kind that see them behind bars for a long time.

Some people are just too stupid to die

Down in Birmingham, Alabama, police stopped a car for a traffic offense. The driver had at least one outstanding warrant so he was placed under arrest.

And while they're doing the inventory search of the car prior to turning it over to the tow truck, they find a....

mortar bomb.

An explosive device was found in a Birmingham neighborhood that could have killed people, according to federal agents. Birmingham police found a World War II Japanese mortar in a car in the Bush Hills neighborhood Wednesday morning.

Police dispatched their bomb squad unit to a vehicle located at 16th Street and 8th Avenue shortly before noon. Birmingham Police Sgt. Johnny Williams said the mortar was discovered during a traffic stop. He said a car was pulled over and the driver was arrested on an outstanding warrant. Williams said a female passenger in the car then became disorderly and she was arrested.

With both occupants of the car arrested, the car had to be towed. As the vehicle was being prepared to be towed, the officers discovered the device.

to Birmingham police, it was live and in working order. Resident Agent in Charge of the ATF, Gabriel Mamock, described it as an anti-personnel device used to kill people in WWII..

(No shit? Is that what they were for? Who knew?)

"Based on the proximity of being in a small confined areas, there's a high likelihood it could have killed them," said Mamock. "There could've been danger to anyone outside close by the vehicle, if the windows were up, glass flying at a high rate of speed. So it could've been bad? It could've been bad, yes."

The mortar was safely removed and taken to an undisclosed location. The device will be detonated by the Birmingham Police Department's bomb squad. The driver said the mortar was a gift from his grandfather and he used it as a paperweight, The Birmingham News reports. No word yet on charges for the man and woman in the car.

So this mortar bomb, if live and not an inert display item, has been sitting around acting as a paperweight all these years, and then Einstein here tosses it into his trunk and just drives around with it. Presumably it'd still be in his car now, waiting for the right moment to go off, had not Nimrod gotten stopped for a traffic offense AND had a warrant for his arrest AND had not the passenger, Becky Sue Joe Bob or whatever her name really is, got all huffy about her boyfriend getting arrested. had she not yelled out something like "Y'all ain't takin' my may-un!" and proceeded to act stupidly enough to get herself locked up right alongside him, this bomb--if live--would still be rolling around the Birmingham area right now.

Some people die because they are unlucky. Others don't die because the rest of us are unlucky.

Yay! Two more terrorists going to prison.

A federal judge in Alabama just sentenced two militia members to terms in prison for making and stockpiling hand grenades and other weapons in preparation for battle against the government and American law enforcement personnel, according to this story from the Decatur Daily.

James Ray McElroy, 20, of Collinsville was sentenced to 41 months in prison, and Randall Garrett Cole, 22, of Gadsden was ordered to spend 37 months in prison.

Both men admitted being part of a militia that authorities said feared the government and disliked illegal immigrants. McElroy, Cole and three other men who pleaded guilty to weapons charges previously said they made and stored grenades out of fear of an economic collapse, terrorism and martial law being imposed in the United States.

More convictions are coming from the other defendants, once members of this domestic terror cell.

Agents who conducted a series of raids in April seized items including 130 hand grenades, a grenade launcher, about 70 hand grenades rigged to fire from a rifle, a machine gun, a sawed-off shotgun, 2,500 rounds of ammunition and stolen fireworks that were used as a source of explosive powder.

Authorities said the group called itself the Free Militia or the Alabama Free Militia, but members said it was too disorganized to have a name. Many of its activities centered around a ramshackle camper without running water or electricity.

"We just called it the militia," said Raymond Dillard, who held the rank of major and testified during the sentencing hearing for Cole.

Man,they just sound like a bunch of hick goobers, don't they? Only thing is, even the most pathetic clowns stop being funny once they start shooting guns or hurling bombs at people. Good job, Alabama authorities and BATFE! A lot of other cops and local officials and their families can sleep safer now thanks to the stellar job that you guys did.

On Enemies, Domestic. Militia terrorists and their admirers.

This story about a federal raid on an Alabama militia group was all the news this morning. Six males were arrested, one of whom had been a federal fugitive for over a decade. They allegedly had machine guns, suppressors, short-barreled shotguns, hand grenades, a home-made rocket launcher, and many other improvised explosive devices and booby-traps. Worse, they were selling some of these items, presumably to whoever they found with the desire and the cash. (Think about the worst or dumbest kids in your neighborhood running around with hand grenades and bombs.) And the suspects also had a number of marijuana plants, because we all know that there's nothing like getting stoned while playing with guns and bombs, right?

Predictably, I made my rounds of several of the gun-related forums and saw thread after thread started in support of these criminal pot-heads. It seems that you can never be too bad for a segment of the internet posters as long as you: 1. have guns, and: 2. profess a hatred for our government and the laws of our nation. If Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer had owned an AK-47, worn camouflage and made a few anti-government comments, they'd have been the darlings of the internet commandos at AR-15.com and FALfiles. Sheesh.

So what's up with the internet revolutionaries who sit around all day masturbating over fantasies involving not hot women but they themselves shooting and blowing up police officers and elected representatives of the American people? Most claim to worship out Constitution and the Founding Fathers who wrote it, but none seem to understand that Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and others who worked on the Constitution were setting up a government that was intended to apply to everyone in this country. The self-described "Constitutionalists" (their word, not mine)will tell you that Thomas Jefferson was some bloodthirsty radical who wanted an overthrow of every government every twenty years or so, and they'll back that up with a ton of single-sentence quotes attributed to Jefferson and other Founding Fathers. Unfortunately for their claims, most of those quote are taken out of context from the voluminous works of those great peace-loving gentleman, or else they are completely made up. Our nation's founders set up to create a government, not advocate anarchy 200 years later, and the Constitution sets up that government and establishes many checks and balances that include allowing the citizens to elect their representatives and vote directly on many laws. It also sets up a court system through which anyone can sue to block or overturn legislation, and it grants everyone the virtually unfettered right to speak out publicly about perceived injustices.

Of course the militia set only recognizes the Second Amendment, which they loosely and incorrectly interpret to mean that there can be no laws whatsoever that restrict who can have what kind of guns or where they can take them. They would have us all believe that while every other Right enumerated in the Constitution is subject to reasonable regulation pursuant to legitimate government interests, the Second somehow is holy and guns cannot be subject to legislation as can free speech, property rights, etc. And of course they've also decided that they--each individual hero-in-a-box militia man--gets to decide which laws are "unconstitutional" without bothering to take it to court. No surprise but they always seem to determine that the laws that they already desire to break are the "unconstitutional" ones. It follows then in their warped minds that anyone who would object or stop them--a police officer, a judge or a lawmaker doing their jobs--must be the real enemy.
Sadly they can't see how silly their position really is or how goofy they look when they espouse it. Seriously, almost all of them are heavily armed and thanks to the internet, they can geek each other up with tales of government "tyranny" and their plans to do battle with the "forces of evil" (police officers, judges and lawmakers again) when "the time" comes. When's that time? Well none of them seem to know. But they all agree that when it comes, they'll be ready to start shooting.

Now in the case of the Alabama goobers, I couldn't help but notice that every one of these guys was within the age limits required for enlistment in the armed forces--the real military. Yet as far as I can tell, none of them was in the service or ever had been. You'd think that with two wars currently under way, any red-blooded American boy who wanted to be a soldier would have no trouble being able to do it for real. But these guys don't strike me as red-blooded Americans any more than the internet Rambos do. The adjectives "posers", "pretenders", "wanna-be's" and "losers" come more quickly to mind. Oh--and "cowards". They want to live in a world where they're armed warriors, but they really don't want to deal with other armed warriors on the other side. They prefer to terrorize neighboring farmers and teenagers. And of course like every other militia wing-nut, they talk smack about how they'll fight off the cops "when the time comes", however as always happens when the time really does come, they fold up like a bunch of lawn chairs and surrender without firing even a token shot.

Of course they probably worship Randy Weaver. That whole cammie-crowd does. Weaver, if you recall, was the no-job-having white supremacist who was arguably set up by federal agents on an illegal gun charge but instead of going to court and defending himself like a man, he ran away to a mountain cabin, where he taunted the feds via short-wave radio for about a year, daring them to come get him, until finally they did. Weaver's son murdered a courageous Deputy United States Marshal by the name of William Francis Degan by shooting him from ambush, and was himself justifiably shot down. Weaver's wife was erroneously shot by a federal sharpshooter a few days later, but she was a grown woman who was aiding and abetting her husband and she'd also had every opportunity to surrender but refused to do so. After she got show, Randy, not really the bravest guy when the heat was on, realized that he would probably be next and meekly surrendered. He sued the government for millions of dollars when he got out of prison, but he lost when the jury said that he had no one to blame but himself. He now ekes out a pathetic living going from gun show to gun show, hawking his book and charging people to have their picture taken with him.

I've seen the guy--he's scrawny, his hygiene sucks, and he rarely makes eye contact with anyone. And I was amazed this this is the guy that the Walter Mitty wanna-be-Rambo crowd views as their Messiah. If anything, it only underscores how pathetic THEY are.

Frankly I'm tired of logging onto some gun-related website and having to wade through post after post by some non-hacking, french-fry-burning, fat-bodied headcase who insists on using the site as a forum to spout off about the Federal Reserve System, the black people and their abuse of welfare, what a great President Ron Paul will be, and how the police are bad, the legislators corrupt, and everyone's conspiring to take their guns then establish Martial Law and start putting "patriots" (their label for themselves) in prison. I resent having some minimum-wage flunky who probably lives in a trailer or with his parents trying to tell me--a law-school graduate and once-practicing attorney--what the Constitution says and means and running down the country that I love because it does not mirror their ideal of what a "free" country should be like. ("Free country"=place where any militia member can wear camouflage when they go to the mall, own and shoot machine guns and blow things up in their back yards all day. That's really all they care about.) And I'm tired of these fools making law-abiding, responsible gun owners look like terrorists just because they insist on following us, posting on our websites, and standing around gun shows in XXXL cammies trying to get mistaken for an actual veteran and bragging about how high-speed they are. Most don't vote, or if they do, they vote for some third-party whack job. They hate everyone who doesn't share their world-view and they despise lawful authority. Folks, these people are not with us reputable gun owners and more than Doctors Kervorkian and Mengele are representative of the medical community or Geoffrey Fieger serves as an example of what all lawyers are like. These militia guys aren't the good guys and I wouldn't want them behind me when times get bad. (These are the ones who seriously plan for a disaster by stockpiling 30,000 rds of ammunition but no food or other supplies. Comforting thought, eh?)

I once took an oath to defend this country against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Many of us in America have. Well when I see these militia types, either being paraded off to jail on the news or posting crap on internet websites, I'm pretty sure that I'm looking at some of those very "enemies, domestic" that I and other great Americans swore to protect this great country against.