On Sunday,Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar joined the growing call for new regulation of Internet speech, including the imposition of fines on sites that fail to remove posters and comments of suspected “bots.” While the true impact of the Russian trolls and bots is being hotly debated (and I admit that I am skeptical), Democrats are calling for measures that worry many of us in the free speech community.
Klobuchar said it would be “a great idea” to pass legislation that allowed for the fining of companies like Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. should be fined if they don’t remove automated accounts, or bots.
The “great idea” of fining sites and companies is an invitation for Internet regulation — something ironically that Vladimir Putin and other authoritarian figures have been pushing for years. The fear is that, once the government starts to fine sites for failing to remove suspected automated or bot poster, it can start to target suspected paid trolls or, as in Europe, anyone viewed offensive or intolerant.
Klobuchar however said that this may not happen because “You need a Congress to act, and there are too many people that are afraid of doing something about this because we know these sites are popular.” So is free speech.
Please Professor Turley post something about the Awan bros!!!!
Why Did The FBI Let A Congressional Hacking Suspect Leave The Country?
FBI agents apprehended Hina Alvi at an airport in 2017
She was suspected of hacking Congress and is the wife of Imran Awan
Awan and his family members allegedly logged into servers of congressmen for whom they did not work
In March 2017, FBI agents were tailing House of Representatives IT aides suspected of hacking Congress, and apprehended one at the airport trying to make a hasty exit to Pakistan. She refused to speak with them, and a search revealed that she was carrying an apparently illegal amount of cash.
The FBI allowed Hina Alvi, wife of Imran Awan, to board the plane anyway — then filed paperwork saying agents believed she had no intention of returning to the U.S.
For nearly a year since, the case has lingered despite the House Office of Inspector General (OIG) determining that the family of Pakistanis made “unauthorized access” to Congress’s data shortly before the election.
Following revelations about the FBI’s actions in the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s email server and Department of Justice officials’ handling of the Trump dossier, attention has turned to the agencies’ apparently lax attitude toward the congressional cyber breach case as perhaps the most jarring failure to enforce laws in cases that overlap politics.
The OIG alleged Imran Awan and his family members logged into servers of congressmen for whom they did not work, logged in using members’ personal usernames, covered their tracks, and continued to access data after they’d been fired.
Though the findings place the case squarely into the category of political cyber-crimes that have otherwise been high-profile priorities, the lead FBI agent assigned to the Awan case was a first-year agent, and not from one of the FBI’s big-guns divisions. The charges brought by prosecutors are so minor that Awan’s own lawyer speculated they could be a “placeholder” for future charges.
Server logs of government computers backed up the OIG’s findings. Yet six months after the initial charges, no additional counts have been brought, raising the question of whether the DOJ is seriously investigating the potential national security breach.
From the FBI affidavit on Imran Awan and his wife, Hina Alvi:
On March 5, 2017, your Affiant, along with agents from the FBI and U.S. Capitol Police, approached Alvi at Dulles International Airport, in Dulles, Virginia. Alvi was about to board Qatar Airlines, Flight 708, to Doha, Qatar, on her way to Lahore, Pakistan. Alvi was with her three children, who your Affiant later learned were abruptly taken out of school without notifying the Fairfax County Public School System.
Alvi had numerous pieces of luggage with her, including cardboard boxes. A secondary search of those items revealed that the boxes contained household goods, clothing, and food items. US Customs and Border Protection conducted a search of Alvi’s bags immediately prior to boarding the plane and located a total of $12,400 in US cash inside. Alvi was permitted to board the flight to Qatar and she and her daughters have not returned to the United States. Alvi has a return flight booked for a date in September 2017.
Based on your Affiant’s observations at Dulles Airport, and upon his experience and training, your Affiant does not believe that Alvi has any intention to return to the United States.
The FBI affidavit was filed in July 2017 after Awan also attempted to board a flight to Pakistan — this time with $9,000. Unlike Alvi, the FBI arrested Awan. Both were indicted on charges of lying to the government to cash out their congressional retirement fund and lying to a bank to secure a loan.
Prosecutors said in court papers that they believe rounding up that money and wiring it overseas was part of a plan to flee from the underlying investigation.
“Based on the suspicious timing of that transaction, Awan and Alvi likely knew they were under investigation at that time,” prosecutors later wrote. In other words, the case isn’t actually about bank fraud, as some Democrats claimed, because the alleged fraud didn’t even occur until after the investigation had begun. Yet they have not charged them with anything in the underlying investigation.
“We don’t use surveillance assets for loan fraud,” Michael Sharkey, a retired FBI agent with 24 years experience, said. “The bureau doesn’t just do physical surveillance willy-nilly. It’s a lot of manpower; they only do it when its a serious case. I was thinking they just didn’t have anything to hold her on. But when they found that $12,000 in cash, that changed.”
Anyone “transporting more than USD $10,000 or its equivalent” must declare it on a form before going through customs, according to U.S. Code Title 31 section 5361. Penalties include “not only forfeiture of the money, but a fine ranging from $250,000 to $500,000 and jail time from 5 to 10 years.”
Ron Hosko, the FBI’s former assistant director, said the agent on the case is “getting marginalized on the thing, he doesn’t have the bigger picture.” He said the facts in the case plainly call for the resources of both the FBI’s counterintelligence division and the public corruption unit. Peter Strzok, who sought to close down the investigation into Clinton’s emails before the intelligence community IG found classified materials, and who repeatedly voiced his support for Democrats, was deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division.
Former U.S. attorney Andrew McCarthy observed that prosecutors waited until Alvi left the country to indict her — even though the alleged fraud occurred weeks before she left, and after the bureau was surveilling her.
“The office is low-keying the Awan prosecution,” McCarthy wrote. “The indictment itself is drawn very narrowly. All four charges flow from a financial-fraud conspiracy of short duration. Only Imran Awan and his wife are named as defendants. There is no reference to Awan family perfidy in connection with the House communications system.”
(The IG report named others as suspects: brothers Abid and Jamal Awan and friend Rao Abbas. Neither have been charged with any crimes.)
The indictment also made no mention of the airport encounters. “Did prosecutors fail to mention the flight evidence in hope of diverting attention from the government’s decision to let Alvi flee?” McCarthy asked. “Again, one would hope not; but if not, what could the explanation be?”
Alvi returned to the U.S. in October to be arraigned, leading GOP Rep. Trent Franks of Arizona to speculate Alvi had some reason to believe she would never face serious charges. When it came time for the dual citizen to turn herself in and surrender her passports, Alvi shook her head “no” to say she didn’t have a Pakistani passport. After whispered discussion with her attorney, she clarified that she had a Pakistani passport but hadn’t brought it. The court requested Alvi have her Pakistani passport mailed to authorities if she could. Prosecutors not only didn’t ask for jail, they didn’t request a GPS monitor. Awan has a GPS, but Judge Tanya Chutkan — who was also the judge in the Fusion GPS case until she recused herself — said she is inclined to have the device removed, given the nature of the current charges.
If prosecutors had any doubt the IG’s findings on Awan fit into a troubling pattern of allegations, they need go no further than to ask Alvi herself. After landing in Pakistan in March, she filed a lawsuit against her husband, alleging he was a fraudster who controlled her with violent threats. Prosecutors in the U.S. never mentioned this, and she was seated as a co-defendant directly across from her husband, whom she refused to look at.
Starkey said defendants that may be under duress should be separated. He pointed out that the DOJ missed out on an obvious opportunity to “flip” Alvi, and they may be placing her in danger. (Two other women romantically linked to Awan called Virginia police on him in 2015, and authorities discovered both women bloodied.)
The IG report called attention to suspicions that multiple members’ data was being funneled onto one server — that of the House Democratic Caucus. The entire server was physically stolen soon after, three senior government officials said.
That should have set the nation’s primary law enforcement and intelligence bodies into full gear, Sharkey said. “I cannot fathom that there’s not some major investigation going on. It’s outrageous the things that have happened in this case,” he said.
As the FBI appeared to dedicate resources not commensurate with the gravity of the findings, the case seemed to shrink even further once it got to prosecutors.
Some apparent crimes depicted in the FBI’s affidavit were missing from the indictment. The affidavit claims Alvi’s tax returns show she did not pay taxes on income from a different rental property for multiple years. It says Alvi then falsely claimed the house wasn’t being rented out and provided a supposed lease showing her mother lived there. Agents talked to the real tenants and determined there was rental income, but prosecutors didn’t charge her with tax evasion.
If the server theft was designed to make the case harder to prosecute, members of Congress who seemed to be wary of another cybersecurity scandal appear to have joined in. A Capitol Hill Republican involved with oversight on the case said Democrats were refusing to press charges and asserting the “Speech and Debate Clause” of the Constitution, which protects lawmakers’ legislative comments, to block prosecutors from evidence.
Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida threatened the Capitol Police chief with “consequences” if he didn’t return a key piece of evidence and said Imran was being “persecuted.” Wasserman Schultz’s brother is an assistant U.S. attorney at the office handling the case, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
The legislative branch’s continued influence on the case is apparent in several ways, including the presence of Capitol Police officers at both airport encounters. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan painted the FBI as merely offering “assistance” to the Capitol Police, who report to the House and whose evidence prosecutors cannot automatically obtain.
Sharkey said when “you’ve got Congress involved, DOJ freaks out, because those cases are very sensitive.”
The FBI told numerous people it had hundreds of pages of Suspicious Activity Reports detailing the Awans’ cash transfers– reports that frequently lead to money laundering or tax evasion charges.
Public records show the family ran suspicious limited liability companies while they worked on Capitol Hill, and those entities were not listed on their House financial disclosure reports. Former Democratic Rep. Corrine Brown of Florida went to prison in January for lying on those same forms, yet prosecutors have not charged the Awans.
The OIG report also claimed the Awans submitted manipulated invoices for computer equipment to Congress, the falsification of which no one disputes, and which DOJ reportedly subpoenaed from vendors, but no one has been charged for that.
Hosko said six months in, DOJ has all the tools it needs and cannot blame the House, and inaction can only indicate a lack of desire to pursue the case.
“I would hope the Capitol Police are being forthcoming with the U.S. attorney, not just telling them a part of what’s gone on here,” Hosko said, alluding to the House’s characterization of the incident as a “theft” case. “But with these circumstances, [DOJ] can’t put their head in the sand. You can’t just say, ‘Well, someone on the Hill said it’s Speech and Debate.’ There’s certainly a way around it. This is [ Attorney General Jeff] Sessions, and there’s a new mindset in DOJ.” (Michael Mirando is the prosecutor. Since the case began, President Donald Trump appointed a new U.S. attorney, Jessie Liu.)
“I don’t see it as [members] having the opportunity to press charges — the government is the victim,” Hosko said.
If prosecutors don’t act, Hosko said, higher-level officials could consider moving the case. “It could be the Eastern District of Virginia has jurisdiction as well,” he said.
Their next court date is March 8.
” March 2017, FBI agents were tailing House of Representatives IT aides suspected of hacking Congress, and apprehended one at the airport trying to make a hasty exit to Pakistan. She refused to speak with them, and a search revealed that she was carrying an apparently illegal amount of cash.
The FBI allowed Hina Alvi, wife of Imran Awan, to board the plane anyway — then filed paperwork saying agents believed she had no intention of returning to the U.S.
For nearly a year since, the case has lingered despite the House Office of Inspector General (OIG) determining that the family of Pakistanis made “unauthorized access” to Congress’s data shortly before the election.
Following revelations about the FBI’s actions in the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s email server and Department of Justice officials’ handling of the Trump dossier, attention has turned to the agencies’ apparently lax attitude toward the congressional cyber breach case as perhaps the most jarring failure to enforce laws in cases that overlap politics.
The OIG alleged Imran Awan and his family members logged into servers of congressmen for whom they did not work, logged in using members’ personal usernames, covered their tracks, and continued to access data after they’d been fired.
Though the findings place the case squarely into the category of political cyber-crimes that have otherwise been high-profile priorities, the lead FBI agent assigned to the Awan case was a first-year agent, and not from one of the FBI’s big-guns divisions. The charges brought by prosecutors are so minor that Awan’s own lawyer speculated they could be a “placeholder” for future charges.
Server logs of government computers backed up the OIG’s findings. Yet six months after the initial charges, no additional counts have been brought, raising the question of whether the DOJ is seriously investigating the potential national security breach.
From the FBI affidavit on Imran Awan and his wife, Hina Alvi:
On March 5, 2017, your Affiant, along with agents from the FBI and U.S. Capitol Police, approached Alvi at Dulles International Airport, in Dulles, Virginia. Alvi was about to board Qatar Airlines, Flight 708, to Doha, Qatar, on her way to Lahore, Pakistan. Alvi was with her three children, who your Affiant later learned were abruptly taken out of school without notifying the Fairfax County Public School System.
Alvi had numerous pieces of luggage with her, including cardboard boxes. A secondary search of those items revealed that the boxes contained household goods, clothing, and food items. US Customs and Border Protection conducted a search of Alvi’s bags immediately prior to boarding the plane and located a total of $12,400 in US cash inside. Alvi was permitted to board the flight to Qatar and she and her daughters have not returned to the United States. Alvi has a return flight booked for a date in September 2017.
Based on your Affiant’s observations at Dulles Airport, and upon his experience and training, your Affiant does not believe that Alvi has any intention to return to the United States.
The FBI affidavit was filed in July 2017 after Awan also attempted to board a flight to Pakistan — this time with $9,000. Unlike Alvi, the FBI arrested Awan. Both were indicted on charges of lying to the government to cash out their congressional retirement fund and lying to a bank to secure a loan.
Prosecutors said in court papers that they believe rounding up that money and wiring it overseas was part of a plan to flee from the underlying investigation.
“Based on the suspicious timing of that transaction, Awan and Alvi likely knew they were under investigation at that time,” prosecutors later wrote. In other words, the case isn’t actually about bank fraud, as some Democrats claimed, because the alleged fraud didn’t even occur until after the investigation had begun. Yet they have not charged them with anything in the underlying investigation.
“We don’t use surveillance assets for loan fraud,” Michael Sharkey, a retired FBI agent with 24 years experience, said. “The bureau doesn’t just do physical surveillance willy-nilly. It’s a lot of manpower; they only do it when its a serious case. I was thinking they just didn’t have anything to hold her on. But when they found that $12,000 in cash, that changed.”
Anyone “transporting more than USD $10,000 or its equivalent” must declare it on a form before going through customs, according to U.S. Code Title 31 section 5361. Penalties include “not only forfeiture of the money, but a fine ranging from $250,000 to $500,000 and jail time from 5 to 10 years.”
Ron Hosko, the FBI’s former assistant director, said the agent on the case is “getting marginalized on the thing, he doesn’t have the bigger picture.” He said the facts in the case plainly call for the resources of both the FBI’s counterintelligence division and the public corruption unit. Peter Strzok, who sought to close down the investigation into Clinton’s emails before the intelligence community IG found classified materials, and who repeatedly voiced his support for Democrats, was deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division.
Former U.S. attorney Andrew McCarthy observed that prosecutors waited until Alvi left the country to indict her — even though the alleged fraud occurred weeks before she left, and after the bureau was surveilling her.
“The office is low-keying the Awan prosecution,” McCarthy wrote. “The indictment itself is drawn very narrowly. All four charges flow from a financial-fraud conspiracy of short duration. Only Imran Awan and his wife are named as defendants. There is no reference to Awan family perfidy in connection with the House communications system.”
(The IG report named others as suspects: brothers Abid and Jamal Awan and friend Rao Abbas. Neither have been charged with any crimes.)
The indictment also made no mention of the airport encounters. “Did
http://dailycaller.com/2018/02/27/hina-alvi-imran-awan-leave-the-country/?utm_source=site-share
Clinton’s are gonna be like Weinstein – “everybody knew” – may the indictments roll in!!
Bad idea, Amy. And bad ideas translate into bad legislation.
Overall, what did the Russians do in the 2016 elections that a goodly number of Americans did not do? Spread disinformation and accusations, true and false? Could a group of Americans be accused of conspiring to “defraud the United States” for organizing false political rallies and conducting “operations on social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter”?
http://www.libertylawsite.org/2018/02/27/what-is-the-indictment-against-the-russians-about-part-ii/
@HillaryClinton
Hillary Clinton
We should all care about how social media platforms play a part in our democratic process. Because unless it’s addressed it will happen again. The midterms are in 8 months. We owe it to our democracy to get this right, and fast.
Evil woman still doesn’t get it: she lost because she ran.
The general reason that Hillary Clinton lost was a hopeless conflict of interest between her role as a principal in the Clinton foundation and her ambition to be President. The most important specific reason was the e-mail server in her basement.
The Benghazi disaster might be dismissed as a tragic foul-up. Whether the uranium deal with Russia is in the national interest is hard to assess. Whether the Clinton Foundation stole money intended to help impoverished Haitians is also hard to assess.
But there is no way to make the secret email server look innocent. And classified documents on Anthony Weiner’s laptop computer? My God!!
George Smith – 18 classified documents along with all the weiner pics. 33,000 emails total. Another unsecured computer with classified emails on it, one from Obama using a non-government address.
Imposing fines on Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms is the wrong approach to counter-propaganda. And counter-propaganda is the only constitutionally permissible approach to defending our country against Russian information warfare. Counter-propaganda will always be reactive and, therefore, always behind the curve. Nevertheless, the longer any given instance of disinformation spreads without being rebutted, the harder it gets to rebut that instance of disinformation at a later date.
In the cases of grey propaganda (where the source is concealed) and black propaganda (where a false source was given), simply identifying and revealing the true source of the disinformation will badly damage the credibility of the message. Since there is no constitutional objection to revealing the true source of a message, therefore, the first step in our counter-propaganda efforts should be identifying, revealing and, where possible, attaching the true source of any instance of disinformation to the message, itself, in the form of warning label that follows the disinformation as it spreads amongst the populace.
Additional methods of counter-propaganda such as fact-checking and the exposure of logical fallacies will take more time to attach to the disinformation as it continues to spread amongst the populace. But such methods should be deployed as soon as they are available to attach to the disinformation as it continues to be disseminated. There would be no need for censorship. In fact, attaching the counter-propaganda to the disinformation as it spreads amongst the populace would be on a par with warning labels for tobacco products and alcoholic beverages. The citizenry could read both the original propaganda and the subsequent counter-propaganda and develop their critical thinking skills in the process.
I forgot to add that private enterprises such as Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms would also get to decide whether to attach or not to attach the counter-propaganda messages to the original propaganda messages, since no Act of Congress could compel anyone to do so.
Non-starter. the First Amendment to the United States Constitution is quite clear. More wasted bandwidth posted here to feed the trolls and fire up the droolers and mouth-breathers.
Marky Mark Mark – the 1st Amendment is what allows you to troll this blawg. I don’t know if you drool or are a mouth-breather, but you are a troll.
Mark M. is often, but not always, a practitioner of counter-propaganda–the only constitutionally permissible approach to solving the problem of disinformation. However, whenever Mark M. indulges himself in his penchant for ad hominem argument, he blurs the line between propaganda versus counter-propaganda. OTOH, I do enjoy reading it as much as Mark M. enjoys writing it.
Linda – 3, maybe 4 times has Marky Mark Mark had a cogent argument. He is just an ad hominem machine. He is like the kid who thinks he is the class clown but really is the class joke. He just takes up space in my inbox.
If you’d read more carefully, Paul, you’d see that the first short paragraph in Mark M.’s posts always engages directly with the issue raised in the argument to which Mark M. is replying. It’s the second short paragraph that contains the ad hominem argument as a way of identifying the poster to whom Mark M. is replying.
P. S. I’m sorry to hear about the space restrictions in your inbox.
Diane – one sentence does not a paragraph make.
Paul–a hasty generalization does not a refutation make, either.
Paul C. Schulte,..
If you read my last post varefully, you’ll notice that I directly emgaged with the issue raised in Diane’s argument.
In the same mamner that she enjoys and excuses.
Tom Nash – I am beginning to think we need to tag team these trolls. 😉
Paul C. Schulte,…
-As other sites shut down their comments sections due to trolling, you can expect to see those trolls gravitate toward sites where they can play their troll games.
It may explain why the troll activity on these these threads is as high as I’ve every seen
it.
“Counter-troll” tactics, whether it’s tag teaminh or other methods, are time consuming and probably not very effective.
A MightyMouth like one of our trolls will continue to spill tons of vaccuos verbiage all over this thread in any case.
The other variety of trolls will continue playing their favorite style of troll games.
Calling them out on it, and/ or countering those from Trollville,is like the “catching frogs” example I mentioned a couple of weeks ago.
A small number of dedicated trolls can, and do, disrupt meaningful exchanges.
That’s their game, and it obviously does not take a genius to go into a thread and screw it up.
Too bad it happened here, but
trolls will play their games wherever they see the opportinity.
Excellent. Since you failed to controvert the substance of my post, I take it you’re in favor of censorship?
This is to “hannity didn’t coach me up yet” paulie- georgie
The substance of your post? There was substance contained in your post????
Marky Mark Mark – is there anything in my comment that shows I support censorship? BTW, I do not watch TV you twit.
Mark M., I’m sure you know your adversary’s operating procedure. But it might be interesting to clue your adversary in on his own operating procedure. Please allow me:
1) You’re not allowed to disagree with your adversary.
2) You’re not allowed to agree with your adversary, either.
3) Since steps 1 & 2 exhaust the possibilities, therefore . . .
4) Steps 1 & 2 can be formally reduced to the statement, “you’re just not allowed.”
Is exclusion the same thing as censorship???
What a crock.
This is to .”I’m a duplicitous motormouth who never shuts up or tires of posting leftist talking points LatteForDindin”.
Since your an enabler of this kind of style and stumble all over your hypocritical self to make excuses for it, I thought you’d enjoy this response to your comment.
Indeed. I can’t get enough of it. Mark M. is a highly influential blawg hound. But I still like Ken da best.
That figues.
That “figures”
Tom Nash – just who is Marky Mark Mark influencing? Mostly he is just insulting.
Thanks much. I too, like Ken da best. I think his posts are more effective here as they utilize a style and tenor which is more accessible; they are accurately targeted at a “gullible rube” audience which is somewhat conversationally and cognitively challenged.
this is to Late4Dinner
Democrats, the Left, know what they are doing they want to eliminate the first and second amendments. This is inherently evil.
I find a great hypocrisy in those who claim they clamor for civil rights but at the same time advocate the evisceration of other civil rights they object to; such as those who support equal voting opportunity but demand firearms be removed from the hands of the general public. Like it our not, the reality is keeping and bearing arms is a civil right as much is to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures or to not be required to pay a poll tax as a condition of voting.
If you claim to be a civil rights champion you must champion all rights. Anything else and you’re merely a charlatan and an opportunist.
Darren,
& yet years later you’re doing a fine job. Great!
I could not respond to your post the other day, but I found it interesting it was my wife that had had me turn on the cable. Yes, again, it’s been turned off over a decade.
Anyway, sorry I can not sometimes offer a timely reply. A very close family member’s illness takes priority.
Listen to this rcrap, a loved one, stage 4xx, was half way through the Pooison part of Cut, Pooison & Burn , the 70+ years of largely failed cancer treatment, when I see a Bloomberg news story that the FDAxx Slapped the Wrist of a Merrrrck sub-contractor for the third time that their chemosss poison additive to chemosss was Contaminated by Other Pooisons! ( xxFresenius?) Sick, Sick, Very Sick Bast#rds!
A wise friend recently told me don’t worry about some of the Huge Bill Numbers & help with the treatment as I can, take care of the loved one as best I can & baseball season will come around again.
Best wishes Darren.
If you claim to be a civil rights champion you must champion all rights.
Darren,
You make a principled argument. It’s logical, it’s reasonable and it will fall on deaf ears for those that believe all rights come from government. It is irrational to believe they can be interested in protecting life by disabling our 2nd amendment rights when they enable the termination of life through abortion.
You played that silly game for 8 years – that the black man wanted your guns. And you still have all your damn guns. So just stop it.
Lemon:
Hey, we even have more guns and trained shooters!! Here’s two ladies showing you how to use ‘em:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uwiSl_zuSd4
Mespo,
Yes, most normal people like us love happy endings as was the case with these to gals.
But watch it again. Now I’m about as proud Americana Red Neck citizen as one can get & these gals are on my home territory even though my Licker Store of choice is far larger. LOL.
Anyway an observant witness will note that there are many cases of a criminal being able to draw a weapon & shoot an off guard cop within a second or second & a half. It can happen Super Fast!
These gals had regained control of the situation yet the nut case comes charging back in & the gals almost lose control at great risk to their lives.
Their hesitation almost got them both killed. I only post this for others education, Don’t Hesitate, those druged up bastr@d might kill you, put the SOB Down.
Olly:
Less than a second. I’m an “empty the magazine” kinda guy. I have a S&W 642 Airweight without the horns that I like.The revolver she used is a five-shot and it looks like she did empty that. She needed some man-killer rounds like I use though: Federal .38 Special +P HST Micro Self-Defense Ammo.
You’re not getting up from those. Here’s the video showing 16″ of penetration on the gel block from the snub nose which probably translates to about 10″ in real life with clothes.
mespo,
I like the hammerless option for the .38 and that cartridge has all the stopping power necessary. The thing that impressed my about those ladies was their instinct to go on the offensive. They survived and hopefully learned the valuable lesson you already know, Stop the Threat…period!
Olly:
That’s why I think they had some self-defense training if not actual firearms training. They didn’t back down.
Out of eight different forms of robbery resistance, “victim gun use was the resistance strategy most strongly and consistently associated with successful outcomes for robbery victims.”
Men and women who resisted with a gun were less likely to be injured or lose property than those who resisted using some other means or who did not resist at all. In the case of women, “having a gun really does result in equalizing a woman with a man.”
http://thefederalist.com/2018/02/27/americans-right-guns-even-makes-us-less-safe/?utm_source=The+Federalist+List&utm_campaign=11c8d87ad3-RSS_The_Federalist_Daily_Updates_w_Transom&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_cfcb868ceb-11c8d87ad3-79248369
The gun is the great equalizer. No other handheld weapon can control as many unarmed people.
The author makes a great argument supporting our natural right of self-defense. Of course he assumes the reader already believes in the natural right to life. Such an argument falls on deaf ears for those Kant describes as being under self-incurred tutelage.
When I think about the utility of guns, whether in defense against hostile threats, or for government to control people, I cannot think of a better example than the American Indian. The gun was the great equalizer.
Olly – just ask Custer, who was out-gunned at the Little Big Horn. The gun is the big equalizer.
At the beginning of the video you see where she first tries to reach for her shooter under the counter, but backs off when the POS comes into view. Then, while her hands are still up, she’s trying to nudge closer to her shooter, but to no avail.
Moral: Get a 380 and keep it in your pocket at all times. It’s plenty powerful, accurate at close range, quickly reloaded with clips, small enough to put in any kid’s pocket. The Ruger LCP is a safe CCW.
That said, these gals were mentally prepared, luck compensating for lack of better preparedness and training. Firing a shot at both the POS and her co-worker was extremely risky.
vinegart:
I like the .38 special with +P loads over the shorter cartridge .380.
I agree, preferring the .38, too. For CCW, there’s nothing like one of the new lightweight, composit 380s, which actually fit inside of a smartphone case, which no one ever takes for a weapon. It’s possible a LEO could frisk, totally missing the 380 inside of a smartphone case. Even something like the LC9 is a good CCW alternative, if you have a sturdy pocket in your jeans.
Those gals definitely had weapons training, in my opinion. Let’s hope by now they’re wearing loose jeans to actually do CCW. Nothing worse than needing a gun you can’t reach. Or dying.
Lemon,
Silly game? The defense of rights that we have naturally is not something that is legitimately stopped.
Walter E. Williams spoke eloquently on the subject of free speech — and its erosion — last night on Mark Levin’s new program.
Democrats, the Left, know what they are doing they want to eliminate the first and second amendments.
Diogenes,
I agree the result is evil, but I’m not convinced they know what they are doing. I don’t believe they’ve thought through all the variables. For instance, In order for this to be a planned disabling of rights one would have to believe they also have a plan to be in control of the lawmakers and the enforcement arm of government. We’ve seen the lengths they are willing to go on the election front, but they haven’t a clue as to the extent people will go to secure rights they have by nature.
I’m still looking for my safe space!
The reversal of Net Neutrality is the biggest threat to freedom of speech on the internet. If the removal of Net Neutrality survives challenges by legislators and by litigation, then internet providers can throttle or silence anyone they please and in short order they will do so in all manner of ways both subtle and in our face.
Klobuchar’s suggestion is just noise to please the DNC who is shaking in their boots at the next election since their response to corporate Hillary loosing, besides the epic insanity of Russia-gate, has been to double down on helping all other corporate whores get on the ballots. Pointing a gun at voter’s heads would be in line with their moral compass, not to mention their desperation, but I’m keeping my mouth shut (since I think they just might do it) and ask the gentle readers of this site to keep mum on the subject as well.
In the meantime, for those moral desperados who just want to be in good with team
scum, opps, dumb, opps,Dem, such as Amy, pimping the Gestapo line on internet bots and trolls (meaning anyone who criticizes Demorats) seems to be a safe bet.Total nonsense. You think there are no free markets?
BB, one of my fav milleniels did a good show on censorship tonite. The Dims know the reason they really lost was due to the internet we don’t have to accept the MSM narrative and that does not bode well at all for their nefarious agenda.
Right you are, Autumn!
Are you sure dat da voters won’t find T rump’ and his oligarchs theft of our money more nefarious? Time will tell. Squekkky and you have big guns but are not da norm for milleniels.
Xi moves to be dictator of Communist China! AKA the next Mao.
5 weeks ago China told US corps they would pay zero taxes if they turned over 50% of the company to Commie China.
Apple & I hear some other companies are/have turned over shareholders proprietary property to foreign governments.
At the very least this above is a direct threat to the USA’s National Security on many levels.
https://www.infowars.com/apple-moves-to-store-icloud-keys-in-china-raising-human-rights-fears/
Alex Jones’ media platforms came under renewed massive attacks, as I understand it, from at least CNN, Google, Youtube, Twitter.
Hell, many of these attacks many companies management admits as much.
Of interest to me is the reports that CNN & Youtube admitted CNN ask Youtube to help them shut down Infowars & at that point Youtube blocked Infowars’ live feeds & shared with CNN the private business contract between Youtube & Infowars.
If these & many of the other claims are proven to be true Infowars may very well win a settlement with Youtube & CNN for Torturous Interference & Racketeering among other possible legal charges.
In the mean I see on my end youtube seems to have turned at least some of Infowars sites back on.
We’ll see.
More:
https://www.infowars.com/boycotts-against-nra-have-backfire-effect-galvanize-conservatives/
Reblogged this on The Inquiring Mind and commented:
Far too many Western nations are now seeing the abrogation of free speech to protect against perceived injustice. When in effect the remedy itself is free speech, including ridicule and satire – of which the English language has a superb tradition from at least Thomas Paine , Swift through to today. It is the paucity of thought and the lack of understanding of today’s politicians that is enabling the multitude of oppressors and thought police we see today. Indeed by their actions they enable other enemies of all kinds. UK, USA, Canada, Germany are major miscreants here.
Agree.
The government does not have the authority nor the mandate to monitor whether there are automated accounts in social media, of any kind. That would also ban SPAM. While annoying, it falls under the purview of the businesses itself. For instance, email providers typically have SPAM filters to address the problem. the same goes for Facebook.
In fact, Facebook itself uses algorithms to have targeted marketing pop up on user interface. For instance, when I look up romance novels on Amazon or online, I get hit with ads for romance novels on my FB page. Super invasive. When I buy tools for my husband, I get tool ads. If customers don’t like it, then they stop using Facebook, forcing business owners to adapt to what the client wants.
That said, I am all for reporting threatening messages to the FBI, as long as they will do their job and follow up. Without that venue, there goes an opportunity to spot and act on a red flag.
How would Facebook even determine if someone was a “paid troll”? I have been called a Koch employee for years when I make a comment someone doesn’t like. Or that I worship guns. Or some other nonsense. This would create yet another avenue for the Left to censure the Center and Right, and create content bias, which is already a problem for social media.
By the way, someone should start a social media platform friendly to moderates that would not get intrusive advertising, content bias, or any of the other complaints with FB or Twitter. One where executives didn’t rack their brains to come up with a way to delete conservatives’ accounts. I predict it would do quite well. Discontent is fertile ground for inventions.
The greatest threat to civil liberties is politicians.
Oh, I think it is the devine rightists.
Darren,
I blame the voters that enable them.
I agree with Darren and Olly.
We get the politicians we deserve when we vote for the demise of our own liberty.
I find it interesting that those who clamor the most for Big Government eroding individual liberty are the most opposed to the Trump Administration. I am unclear what they want, exactly. They hate who is currently in office, but they are working hard to ensure that which ever butt fills that chair would be in charge of their lives, determining what speech is lawful, making sweeping immigration executive fiats, etc. Do they fail to realize that this is still a multi party nation, and that they may oppose the policies of the person running the country from time to time, so it’s best not to make him or her a dictator?
Agree.
Suze – and former politicians.