Free Republic

Guns are Tightly Controlled, but The U.S. Virgin Islands has one of the Highest Homicide Rates in the WorldNot counted as a state or a city, the U.S. Virgin Islands is often missed in statistics about gun control in the United States. Gun ownership is tightly regulated, with permission to own a gun only granted by the Police Commissioner upon application, and subject to the Commissioner's discretion. Even antique firearms, which are not regulated under U.S. Federal law, are not allowed unless they are inspected and "rendered useless". 476. Collections of antique firearms; certificates of uselessness. No provision hereof...

Dead Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev and another man — who was killed by the FBI on Wednesday — murdered three people in Massachusetts after a drug deal went wrong in 2011, law enforcement sources tell NBC News. Sources say that what began as a drug ripoff ended in a triple homicide when Tsarnaev and friend Ibragim Todashev realized their victims would later be able to identify them. Todashev was killed by a federal agent while giving a statement on his role on Wednesday in Orlando, Fla. The man who was shot, Todashev, 27, allegedly attacked an agent with a...

An off-duty officer opened fire this morning, killing her husband and 1-year-old son in an apparent murder-suicide in Brooklyn this morning, sources said. Police and EMS responded to a 911 call of a man shot inside of a building at East 56th Street and Farragut Road about 8:30 a.m., the FDNY said.

Someone did an excellent job of annotating our homicide rate chart from 1885 to 2011. Since every thing here is intended to be taken for use against the gun control nuts, I am glad they left a link so I could enjoy their good work. Here is the same chart, with just a bit greater detail than dropping keywords on the graphic allow. The easiest way to do this is to put key numbers referencing the notes, below: 1.) The SodbustersThe United States was pretty well settled by 1885, with homicide rates that generally reflected the country of origin of...

Suicides and Homicides in Patients Taking Paxil, Prozac, and Zoloft: Why They Keep Happening -- And Why They Will Continue Underlying Causes That Continue to Be Ignored by Mainstream Medicine and the Media From almost the day that they were introduced in the late 1980s and early 1990s, sudden, unexpected suicides and homicides have been reported in patients taking serotonin-enhancing antidepressants such as Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft. I'm not surprised this problem hasn't disappeared, nor will it unless we look deeper. I never hesitate to say that these drugs -- selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) -- help millions of people....

The Bay Fair BART Station in San Leandro was shut down for more than five hours Saturday after a midday shooting killed a man and wounded a woman, authorities said. The deceased victim, described only as a 40-year-old black man, died at the scene of the 12:20 p.m. shooting at the bus stop outside the station, BART officials said. The station was shut down at 12:50 p.m. while authorities collected evidence and searched for suspects. The station did not completely reopen until after 7 p.m. The second shooting victim was rushed to a nearby hospital. Her injuries are not believed...

There have been calls for an inquiry after minister disclosed that birth rates for girls and boys vary noticeably according to where their mothers were born. It was the first official statistical evidence potentially backing up concerns that sex-selection abortions are being carried out in Britain. Fiona Bruce, the Conservative MP for Congleton, has tabled an early day motion which calls on the Department of Health to ensure the data of aborted foetuses is reported “so that statistical evidence of crime cannot be hidden”. The early day motion was also signed by Jim Dobbin, the Labour MP for Heywood...

It's no surprise to LaTanya Lozano that homicides are up in the Bay Area's biggest cities. She moved to Hayward in late 2011 to try to protect her four sons, only to see two of them shot dead last year back where she used to live, Oakland. First her 15-year-old, Shonte Daniels Jr., was shot by a 14-year-old friend in a park, apparently after teasing him. Six months later, in October, 21-year-old Rashad Meredith was caught in the middle of a gunfight between rival groups outside his aunt's apartment. "This tore down my whole life," said Lozano, who was hospitalized...

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was crowing. "The number of murders this year will be lower than any time in recorded city history," Bloomberg said Friday in a statement announcing that homicides in the city this year had fallen to 414 — the fewest since it started keeping such statistics in 1963. About the same time Friday, Chicago police were trying to get the message out that their city hadn't actually recorded its 500th homicide this year, as was being reported. A few hours later, they had to backtrack and acknowledge that, yes, in fact, "the city has seen its...

HOUSTON – Investigators are searching for answers after a suspected drunken driver was found shot dead after he allegedly slammed into a family's truck on a rural Houston-area road, killing two young brothers. 12-year-old David Barajas and his 11-year-old brother, Caleb, were helping their father push his disabled truck down the road when 21-year-old Jose Banda allegedly slammed into them from behind, MyFoxHouston.com reports. Neighbors say they heard gun shots minutes after the crash. Police responding to the crash found Banda shot in the head, but no gun at the scene. Banda and both boys died.

BEAVER FALLS (KDKA/AP) – Police are searching for two 14-year-old boys, and reported a 13-year-old who are charged as adults with fatally shooting a Beaver Falls woman. Beaver Falls police have charged Todavia Cleckley and Marcus Velasquez with criminal homicide and other charges in Saturday’s shooting of 22-year-old Kayla Peterson. She was shot at a house about 3:30 p.m. that day and died at Allegheny General Hospital two hours later. Cleckley’s Facebook page shows a young man posing with a revolver in one hand and a pistol in the other. The photo was posted less than 12 hours after Peterson’s...

Whenever international comparisons of homicide rates are studied, it is mandatory to consider Switzerland. Not only does Switzerland have very low homicide rates, it has one of the highest levels of gun ownership in the world. As I attempted to find out what the gun homicide rate for Switzerland was, I ran into a curious phenomena. The most commonly quoted figures for gun homicides were for both gun homicides and attempted gun homicides. In one source, this led to the startling conclusion that gun homicides for a given year were greater than total homicides. At the site gunpolicy.org, the total...

Joseph E. Baldwin Jr., 23, of 26 Lathrop St., was sentenced to the Illinois State Penal Farm for 11 months and placed on three years probation Friday after he pleaded guilty to a charge of reckless homicide. Baldwin, a novelty salesman, pleaded guilty to the charge in July after the car he was driving crashed into a semi-trailer near Danville, Ill., killing his passenger, Robert M. Clark, 19, of Champaign, Ill. The court granted 60 days reduction in the jail sentence to compensate for time has has already spent in the Vermillion County Jail.

CITY OF NEWBURGH — A Newburgh cop and three others were stabbed early Saturday at a party honoring a recent homicide victim. City police said the officer was stabbed multiple times around 2:35 a.m. at a Dry Dock nightclub event honoring Justin “J-Doc” Doctor, 23, who was killed Oct. 14. The officer was trying to arrest somebody involved in a fight. The cop received a stab wound to the neck, and was treated at St. Luke’s Hospital. The officer is now in stable condition at a trauma center, police said. Some 200 friends and relatives came out to 90 Broadway...

An extraordinary poll published by the British Humanist Association (BHA) highlights the public ambivalence about assisted suicide and euthanasia. In conjunction with other recent surveys, it shows that more people are in favour of the law allowing the killing of relatively healthy patients like Tony Nicklinson than of those who are terminally ill. The "respectable" wing of the assisted dying movement, Dignity in Dying, wants a very limited right to medically assisted suicide: only people who are terminally ill and in full possession of their faculties would qualify. Even this limited position is hugely controversial. But the BHA believes that...

(Reuters) - In the Philippines, they vote with their trigger fingers. Elections mean big business for illegal gunsmiths, who are looking forward to 2013 mid-term polls. With election-related violence commonplace, the Philippines imposes a ban on the carrying of guns for six months, from campaigning to the proclamation of winners. With legal access denied, Filipinos simply turn to the many illegal gunsmiths who ply their trade in back alleys and on the edge of rice fields despite government crackdowns. -----------------------------cut--------------------- According to www.gunpolicy.org, a site hosted by the University of Sydney's School of Public Health in Australia, there are about...

In Houston early Friday, a 19-year-old convenience store clerk shot and killed a 52-year-old man who stole beer, according to police. The matter remains under investigation, but the clerk was not arrested. In Texas and elsewhere, each time someone is shot dead with a claim of self-defense, a grand jury must decide if an indictment is warranted. However, deliberations by grand juries are secret and the basis of their decisions is seldom public. The Chronicle also examined times of death, gender and race of both the shooters and the dead. Citizen shootings most often happen after dark, and involve a...

Does anyone remember the murder of a nun by a priest back in 1980?

How's the strictest gun control laws in America working out for ya there, Chi-town? New York Times: ____________________________ Mr. Emanuel listed safer streets among his top three priorities when he became mayor a year ago, but Chicago, the nation's third-largest city, is now testing that promise. Homicides are up by 38 percent from a year ago, and shootings have increased as well, even as killings have held steady or dropped in New York, Los Angeles and some other cities. As of June 17, 240 people had been killed here this year, mostly in shootings, 66 more deaths than occurred in...

Travis Baumgartner, 21, had no passport, tried to enter U.S. with Alberta driver's licence, according to U.S. border officialsThe man wanted in connection with a deadly armoured-car heist at the University of Alberta had over $330,000 in cash in his vehicle when he was arrested at a U.S. border crossing adjoining British Columbia, U.S. border officers say. Travis Baumgartner, 21, was stopped at the border crossing in Lynden, Wash., near the U.S.-Canada border southwest of Abbotsford, B.C., Edmonton police said Saturday. Border security was alerted when his licence plate was scanned by an automated system and set off an alarm...

KALAMAZOO, MI — Over a span of 10 years beginning in 2000, prosecutors in Kalamazoo County ruled that the slayings of eight people were done in self-defense or, in simpler terms, were justified. The first was James Douglas, a 20-year-old man who was shot and killed by Portage police detective Larry Napp near Augusta after he opened fire, wounding Napp. Napp later recovered. The last was Bernel Gordon, also 20, who died by gunfire after he tried to rob Frank Pierce during a drug deal at a Kalamazoo apartment complex. Justified to Kill series • Introducing the series • A...

Everyone around W. Arrow and S. 20th streets knew John H. Spooner, the older white man who had lived there for decades, much longer than his younger Hispanic and African-American neighbors, and who was always walking his dogs around the block. And they knew he was upset about a break-in at his house earlier this week, when burglars took some expensive shotguns and other items. He suspected his new next door neighbor. According to a criminal complaint filed Friday: As 13-year-old Darius Simmons was moving a garbage cart from the curb Thursday morning, Spooner, 75, confronted him and demanded the...

Local child molester slain in L.A. prison An inmate serving a life sentence stemming from the sexual assault of a child in Oceanside was killed Tuesday in his prison cell in Los Angeles County. Francisco Javier Aguilar, 36, was found dead in his cell at the California State Prison in Lancaster after 1 a.m., authorities said. He had a cable wrapped around his neck, The Los Angeles Times reported. The cause of death has not been released. An autopsy was set for Thursday, according to the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office. Aguilar’s cellmate, Aaron Alvarez, 42, has been arrested in...

Despite ‘Castle Doctrine,’ defendant is convicted in slaying A PHILADELPHIA JUDGE said Wednesday he was convinced that a disabled, retired Marine was being attacked in the moments before he fatally stabbed a man last October, but he concluded that the stabbing was still a criminal act rather than self-defense. Common Pleas Judge Benjamin Lerner then convicted Jonathan Lowe, 57, of voluntary manslaughter and possession of an instrument of crime. The judge found him not guilty of the more-serious charges of first- and third-degree murder. Lowe, who wears a pacemaker and has survived two strokes and two heart surgeries, could face...

Police in New Haven are investigating the city's sixth homicide this year, and its third in a week. Police said 23-year-old Shane Deran Barrett was shot several times at the corner of Gibbs Street and Dixwell Avenue Tuesday afternoon. Police said someone posted pictures of Barrett online and fled the scene before police arrived. Police are still searching for a suspect.

Police have yet to charge a black motorist who shot dead a mentally disabled and unarmed "white Hispanic," Daniel Adkins, in a Taco Bell parking lot near Phoenix earlier this month. The two reportedly exchanged words before the shooting that occurred, according to some accounts, after the motorist almost ran over Adkins who then banged his fist on the car's windshield. The April 3 shooting by the 22-year-old black man -- whom police in suburban Laveen have yet to identify -- has gotten little if any coverage by the national media. Nor has President Obama weighed in on the case....

Imagine Soldier Field beyond capacity, brimming with 63,879 young African-American men, ages 18 to 24 — more than U.S. losses in the entire Vietnam conflict. Imagine the University of Michigan’s football stadium — the largest in the U.S. — filled to its limit of 109,901 with black men, age 25 and older. Now add 28,223 more — together totaling more than U.S. deaths in World War I. Picture two UIC Pavilions packed with 12,658 Trayvon Martins — black boys, ages 14 to 17 — nearly twice the number of U.S. lives lost in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now picture all of...

Raeford, N.C. — As they buried a Hoke County couple killed in their front yard last weekend, family members said Thursday that they are still struggling to make sense of the tragedy. Tommy Charles Brown Sr., 35, and his fiancée, Thalia Rebbecca Mook, 35, were gunned down outside their home on Philippi Church Road in the Rockfish community on Saturday evening, authorities said. John Oliver Hill Jr., 48, who lives across the street, has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder in their deaths and is being held without bond in the Hoke County jail. Hoke County Sheriff Hubert...

A suspected drunken driver accused of crashing into a home killing one child and injuring another is being held without bail after a judge heard Monday that he may not be in this country legally. Luis Hector Lopez-Rodriguez, 27, is accused of losing control of the blue Ford Crown Victoria he was driving and plowing in to the front porch of a southwest Houston apartment, where two children were playing during a Saturday night party. During a brief court appearance Monday, Magistrate Judge Blanca Villagomez said federal officials have put a hold on Lopez-Rodriguez, which typically means his immigration status...

An Italian prosecutor wants to put Amanda Knox back in prison, saying today that he is "very convinced" that she killed her roommate Meredith Kercher. Prosecutor Giovanni Galati filed a 112-page appeal today seeking to throw out a court ruling that found Knox innocent of her roommate's murder and set her free after four years in an Italian prison.

KARAK, Dec 9: Unidentified gunmen shot dead a young man as he came out of a court in Takht Nusrati after the proceedings of the alleged gang rape of his sister in Karak on Friday. Alamzeb Khattak, 24, had steadfastly supported his sister`s fight for justice in the face of threats and unrelenting pressure from the accused who include three policemen. His cold-blooded murder in the precinct of a court prompted the provincial home department order “a thorough and transparent probe into any security lapse” ... Police had arrested the four accused in the rape case, including inspector Peer Mohsin...

(STATEWIDE) The homicide rate for African Americans in Wisconsin is almost five times the national rate. A new report using FBI statistics ranks Wisconsin in the top ten for the percentage of black murder victims. The figures are from 2009. Of the 146 murders in the state that year 79 of the victims were black and most of them 66 were young black men. Most 60 percent knew their killer. Josh Sugarman heads the Washington, D.C. based Violence Policy Center that produced the report crunched the numbers and produced the ranking. He says gun control laws are the key to...

An infant girl found wrapped in a towel on the front steps of a Northeast residence late Sunday night later died, and police are investigating the case as a homicide. A resident of the 3000 block of Channing Street, NE, was walking home when he saw the unidentified infant on the steps of another home in the same block, police said Tuesday morning. After finding the baby cold and unconscious, he brought the baby into his home and called 911. Police and Fire and Emergency Medical Services arrived at the scene shortly after 11:30 p.m. and found a neighbor performing...

BELLEVUE, WA – This week’s revelation by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that homicide is no longer among the leading causes of death in the United States – at a time when gun ownership is at an all-time high – shows that the gun ban lobby has been wrong, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today. “The CDC’s report for 2010 that removes homicide from the top 15 leading causes of death in this country coincides with a period of record high gun ownership,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “At the same...

For the first time in 45 years, homicide has fallen off the list of the nation's top causes of death... the murder rate fell enough in 2010 to drop it out of the top 15 causes. Criminologists have not reached a consensus about what's been driving murder rates down

(AP) SALT LAKE CITY - A bodybuilder who was shot in the head during a carjacking outside a Nevada casino — then drove herself to get help — was released from a Salt Lake City hospital just days after the shooting, which authorities said figured in a two-state crime spree. Rattana Keomanivong, operator of the Animal House Training and Nutrition gym in West Wendover, Nev., is a tough woman who earned the title "Wendover Strongest" during a weightlifting fundraiser last summer, police Sgt. David Wiskerchen said Wednesday. Keomanivong was able to drive herself to the police station after being shot...

The United Nations just put together their Global Study on Homicide 2011, an extensive report detailing each country's homicide rate and the factors that brought them there. Globally, there were 468,000 murders in 2010, giving the world an average of 6.9 murders per 100,000 people. But more than a third of these homicides took place in Africa, and slightly lower percentages took place in the Americas and Asia. Not surprisingly, many of the countries with the highest homicide rates are low on human development, high on income inequality and corruption, and fairly unstable. Because homicide rate is per capita, some...

One person is dead and two are wounded in three shootings police investigated today. It’s too early to tell if the shootings were related, police said. Andre Kelly, the city’s 30th homicide victim of the year, was found dead of a gunshot wound by a friend on the first floor of a multi-story building at 536 Whalley Avenue. No further information was available about Kelly, whose body was found at about 7:20 p.m. Police officer David Hartman, spokesman for the department, said the apartment that Kelly was found in is located at the rear of a building that includes a...

An apparent carjacking attempt described as a random act of violence has taken the life of a 45-year-old Albion woman and led to the capture of an illegal immigrant charged with her murder, Orleans County sheriff's officials said Monday. Kathleen I. Byham was walking toward her car in the Walmart Supercenter parking lot in the Town of Albion shortly after 7 p.m. Sunday when she was accosted and stabbed multiple times, Sheriff Scott D. Hess reported. She was taken to Medina Memorial Hospital, where she was pronounced dead at 7:40 p.m.

VIDEO at LINK: This young University of Colorado student and "Occupy Denver" protester may appear too young to have much life experience, but yessir — he’s mad as hell and he isn’t going to take it anymore. “There’s a lot of stuff that needs to change,” our boy says, “and if it doesn’t, violent revolution will come.” How to change things for the better? Apparently it just takes a box of bullets and some rope. “If you get the thirteen families that own the world, including George Bush and his administration," he says to our video blogger, "get them in...

PHOENIX, AZ --(Ammoland.com)- The lamestream media told you: The 413 killings by police nationwide that were ruled justifiable in 2009 were the most since 1994, FBI statistics show. And the 262 killings by private individuals ruled self-defense were the most since 1997. National numbers for 2010 are not yet available. With some variations, the numbers for both categories have been trending upward since about 2000. Interestingly, the national rise in justifiable homicides has occurred as violent crime levels have dropped. The estimated U.S. violent crime level total in 2009 was 5.2 percent below the 2005 level and 7.5 percent below...

How "The Bad Part of Town" and failed social policies are used for sinister attacks on the right to keep and bear arms, and help justify the law enforcement world and its budgets. While anti-rights activists speak emotionally about "gun violence""gun deaths" "human tragedy" and saving lives, what they refuse to say is this— Homicide in America has demographic, geographic, social and economic factors which, if acknowledged and openly discussed, would transform the debate, and place blame where it really belongs: on the causes and people that fuel the violence we hear about (but rarely actually see for ourselves, except...

Karen Royle’s memories of the last precious hours with her cherished mother Rona are far from the serene, comforting images that she had hoped for. Before arriving in Zurich, Karen, 51, had envisaged a pretty Swiss chalet, with perhaps a view of the Alps — ‘just like the pictures in the book Heidi, which I’d loved as a child’. But the Dignitas ‘apartment’ at No  84 Gertrudestrasse, where 74-year-old Rona chose to end her life rather than succumb further to the ravages of Motor Neurone Disease (MND), bore no comparison to the picture-postcard tranquility her family had imagined. The image Karen...

When Dr. Jack Kevorkian, a leading proponent of right-to-die legislation, died June 3, he may have achieved something he was unable to accomplish in his last years: perhaps return the issue of physician-assisted suicide (PAS) to a serious level of legitimate public discourse. Public opinion polls conducted during the middle of the last decade by CBS/New York Times and the Pew Research Foundation show that Americans are pretty much split down the middle on whether PAS should be an option for dying patients and their families. Yet in more recent years, the debate, while unsettled, seems to have subsided even...

The BBC has received hundreds of complaints from views over a program it aired Monday night showing an assisted suicide of a person killing himself at a suicide tourism facility in Switzerland. The program featured footage of a man dying at a Dignitas suicide tourism clinic in Switzerland and it was hosted by Sir Terry Pratchett and it showed millionaire Peter Smedley taking a lethal cocktail of drugs that resulted in his death. Almost 900 people contacted the BBC to complain while just 82 supported the showing of the program. Four senior peers complained abotu the program and accused the...

Three and a half years ago, Terry Pratchett, the beloved author of the Discworld series, announced that he has early-onset Alzheimer's disease. Now he's made an even more startling announcement. Pratchett, who has campaigned in his native United Kingdom for the right of assisted suicide, has begun the formal process of assisted suicide in Switzerland, one of the few countries in the world to legalize euthanasia. Specifically, this would take place at Dignitas, a clinic that provides qualified doctors and nurses to assist with the patients' suicides. Dignitas has sent Pratchett the paperwork he needs to sign to begin the...

Casey Anthony broke down in tears in an Orlando courtroom today as jurors heard how her daughter's bones had been chewed on by wild animals. The murder trial resumed after Anthony was taken ill yesterday when pictures of her dead daughter Caylee's skull were shown to the court. Jurors were shown photos of the tattered and torn shorts and shirt Caylee was wearing when she died. Later, as they viewed pictures of Caylee's bones, Anthony looked down, covering her mouth with her fist. As the gruesome details emerged Anthony started shaking and had to be comforted by defence attorney Dorothy...

My last post here about Don was Sept 2009. Justice for Don (Berkebile), Retired Smithsonian Curator Homicide. At that point we still had hope that those responsible would be held accountable for our cousin's death. It didn't happen. Don's estate has been finally settled after having to defend itself against the man who killed him. A counter suit was filed and both suits were eventually dropped without this man benefiting financially. Thankfully that was a good thing. But no criminal charges were ever brought against this man and due to 'fill in the blank' the authorities appear to consider the...

SAN DIEGO -- The bodies of a couple and their two daughters were discovered at a San Diego home Tuesday morning, police and family members said. Firefighters, paramedics and police were sent to 162 Parkcreek Court, a home at the end of a cul de sac at about 6:40 a.m., San Diego police Lt. Ernie Herbst said. They found three bodies in the back yard pool and a fourth body in a bathtub inside the house, Herbst said. "The four victims were an adult male and three females," the lieutenant said. Friends and relatives identified the victims as Alfredo and...

DALLAS - At 2:00 in the afternoon on May 13, Dallas reported its thirteenth murder of the month. UPDATE: 14 Murders in 14 days A sudden five-percent spike in killings comes after years of declines. Detectives can't explain it, though some have suggested that the economy might be to blame. However, one thing is clear: the homicide unit is scrambling to keep up with the unsolved cases. Earlier this week, a security guard was killed when he walked in on a robbery at a Wing Stop on Buckner Boulevard. Investigators are seeking the killer. And at 2 p.m. today, a...