Wednesday, June 12, 2013

More Questions than Answers about John Zawahri

Los Angeles Times reports with video

The only think certain is he was a gun nut.

10 comments:

  1. They are still trying to figure out if he was prohibited person in the eyes of California law due to his psychological issues. That seems to be taking a while to answer. Perhaps its an answer they dont want to share. They finally got around to mentioning that the handgun was a black powder pistol.
    We still dont know for sure it the body armor claim is true or if he was just wearing a ballistic nylon vest like James Holmes. If it is body armor, he must have bought the cheap stuff because he didnt seem to fare well once the police got there.

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  2. What I see is a "troubled youth" who wasn't treated with the seriousness that his problems warranted. The attitude of schools and mental health facilities is to regard types like this as basically good kids with a few difficulties.

    If it were made clear to teenagers that bad behavior gets them a much sterner response than In School Suspension (translation, sitting in a room all day with all the other thugs), we could straigten out a lot of problems, and not just the lone psycho types.

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  3. Hey, Mikeb, am I wrong in my thinking that you regularly argue that "all illegal guns start out as legal guns"? I could check for myself, but I know it offends you (for some reason) when I do that.

    Anyway, if you do make that claim, you might have to consider an early retirement for it:

    Investigators found a drill press in 23-year-old John Zawahri's bedroom among other materials that indicate he likely assembled the weapon.

    The drill press is used to help finish building the rifle by drilling holes in the lower receiver. A lower receiver that is only 80 percent complete can easily be purchased, and because it is not complete a person isn't required to go through a background check nor does it need to have a serial number.


    If true, that means our model Californian, who presumably couldn't legally own any gun, and certainly not a so-called "assault weapon" in Brady Campaign paradise California, possessed an "illegal gun" that had never been a legal gun, because at the very moment it became a gun, it was illegal.

    You know what's funny? There are probably still some people laboring under the silly delusion that there's some way of stopping this. Can you imagine such absurdity?

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    Replies
    1. You're (conveniently) forgetting about the several discussions we've had about that. In the end, I began amending my remards to say "almost all."

      I would say the percentage of home made guns is small enough to discount, but in typical nit picking fashion you have once again succeeded in turning the discussion into a tedious drag.

      I guess every one of these show-stoppers are major victories for you, huh, Kurt?

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    2. In the end, I began amending my remards to say "almost all."

      If you say so. Like I said, I didn't bother to hunt down previous discussions on the issue.

      I would say the percentage of home made guns is small enough to discount . . .

      Perhaps for now, because like electricity and water, gun acquisition tends to take the path of least resistance, and for now, buying a gun (at least in the free states) is easier than building one. However, as home manufacture of guns becomes more accessible to the masses, and if America's gun laws become even more oppressive than they are now, that will change.

      I guess every one of these show-stoppers are major victories for you, huh, Kurt?

      Hardly, I like to set the bar for "major victories" decidedly higher than that. Actually, proving the wrongness of the "all illegal guns start out as legal guns" was just a fun little bonus.

      The real point was to leave you no escape from the realization that the acquisition of guns is becoming more and more impossible to effectively regulate, and what an exciting advance this is for humanity.

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    3. Mikeb, did you just use the phrase, "the percentage of X is small enough to discount"?

      But, but, but:

      1. If it saves one life

      2. No one is checking

      3. The numbers are much higher than we realize

      4. You're cherrypicking

      5. Exceedingly rare is your biased assessment of the situation

      Am I leaving out any of your standard responses to when I offer numbers?

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    4. Say--now this is cool: an "80% complete" AR-15 lower receiver that doesn't require a jig for the milling work, because the material that needs to be milled away is a different color. Pretty slick.

      Anonymous, unstoppable gun ownership is getting easier and easier. Ah--is there anything more gratifying than "gun 'uncontrol'"?

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    5. You're (conveniently) forgetting about the several discussions we've had about that. In the end, I began amending my remards [sic] to say "almost all."

      I would say the percentage of home made guns is small enough to discount . . .


      Don't worry, I'll soon go back to complying with your directive--delivered with typical Mikeb civility--to "Fuck off," but first, I was wondering if you're ready to reconsider the above assertion.

      You see, I'm thinking that you'll be as fascinated and thrilled as I am about this little tidbit from California:

      Officials from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives view the spread of the receivers as an effort to get around strict gun-control laws, particularly in California. They also acknowledge that they have no idea how many of the components have been made and sold.

      “That is the million-dollar question,” said Joseph M. Riehl, the special agent in charge of the ATF’s San Francisco office. “We know for sure there are tens of thousands, just in California.


      Say . . . "tens of thousands," and just in one state, and that state is forcible citizen disarmament fanatic paradise California of all places. Isn't that awesome? The government doesn't know where they are, who has them, if they've been illegally fitted with the dreaded "assault weapon features" (but I'd be willing to take a wild guess that thousands have), or even a more precise estimate of numbers than "tens of thousands."

      Warms my big, American, liberty-loving heart, I don't mind saying. What say you?

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    6. "Tens of thousands." OMG, that many, really?

      I repeat, "I would say the percentage of home made guns is small enough to discount . . . "

      About civility, you can hold your own with the best of 'em.

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    7. I would think "tens of thousands" of home-manufactured AR-15s in California is a pretty significant percentage of the total number of AR-15s in the state. If not, there are more AR-15s in California than I'd thought--and that would be pretty good news (in a different way) in its own right.

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