Gun culture:

When Christopher Roupe answered the door last Friday, he probably didn’t think death would be waiting on the other side. But that’s exactly what the 17-year-old ROTC student found after the police officer outside mistook his Wii controller for a gun, a lawyer for his family says.

Roupe was killed Friday night after an officer arrived at his mobile home in Georgia to deliver a probation violation warrant for the teen’s father. As the officer tells it, Roupe was holding a gun when he answered the door. But Cole Law, who is representing Roupe’s family, disagrees.

“We don’t know where [the claim that he had a gun] came from,” Law told WSBTV in Atlanta. “The eyewitnesses on the scene clearly state that he had a Wii controller in his hand. He heard a knock at the door. He asked who it was, there was no response so he opened the door and upon opening the door he was immediately shot in the chest.”

thinkprogress.org

The fact that any major news outlet would still treat Frank Taaffe as an “expert” after being exposed for what he is, in this day and age ought to be seen as very troubling. Its even worse given the fact that this is CNN, we’re talking about, not “Fox News.” David Neiwert has more.

Frank Taaffe, a self-styled “expert” who appeared on a number of talk programs on CNN and its Headline News subsidiary to offer his views on racially charged criminal trials, has recently emerged as an entrenched figure in the far-right white supremacist movement. While one of his frequent hosts, Nancy Grace, recently grilled him about his views, the network has neither backed away from using Frank Taaffe nor explained why it has done so at all, particularly without making his background clear to viewers.

Taaffe’s white supremacist background was first exposed last August by Mariah Blake in a thorough piece for Mother Jones, after Taaffe had appeared on a number of CNN programs defending his friend George Zimmerman, the Florida man who shot and killed unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin. At the time, CNN made no explanation for using Taaffe as an “expert”, but after Zimmerman’s trial ended in acquittal, Taaffe stopped appearing.

When another racially charged Florida case came along, this time involving a white man, Michael Dunn, who gunned down a young black man after a verbal confrontation at a gas station over “thug music,” Taaffe returned to CNN to discuss the cases, particularly Headline News’ Dr. Drew and Nancy Grace programs.

Read more at Hate Watch

Shocking! Colorado GOP Lawmaker: A ‘Good Thing’ Theater Gunman James Holmes had 100-Round Magazine (Video)

Colorado Republican state Senator Bernie Herpin made quite the gaffe during a hearing for legislation that would overturn the new ban on magazines of 15-rounds or more. Herpin and other Colorado Republicans are trying to overturn the ban imposed last year despite being outnumbered by Democrats in both the Colorado House and Senate.

Herpin tried to support his point by invoking the gun used by James Holmes, who killed 12 people and injured 70 when he opened fire in an Aurora movie theater back in July 2012. Here’s how the dialogue went:

Democratic state Senator Irene Aguilar: “My understanding is that James Holmes bought his 100-round capacity magazine legally. So in fact, this law would have stopped James Holmes from purchasing a 100-round magazine. I was wondering if you agree with me.”

Herpin: “Perhaps, James Holmes would not have been able to purchase a 100-round magazine. As it turned out, that was maybe a good thing that he had a 100-round magazine, because it jammed. If he had four, five, six 15-round magazines, there’s no telling how much damage he could have done until a good guy with a gun showed up.”

Read more at Progressive Populist

photo via Rightwing Watch

The fact that there are a lot of people out there trying to make this guy a hero, says a lot.

In an attempt to outdo Sean Hannity’s efforts to turn George Zimmerman into a hero, WorldNetDaily’s Jack Cashill is now writing a book that paints the killer as a conservative idol.

Cashill even blames two recent allegations of domestic abuse, including claims of violence from Zimmerman’s estranged wife and girlfriend, on the media.

Read More At Rightwing Watch

From the Washington Post:

Virginia state Sen. R. Creigh Deeds (D-Bath) was seriously injured early Tuesday in an assault at his house in Bath County, west of Charlottesville. A second person inside the home was found dead, according to Virginia State Police.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported that Deeds was stabbed and critically injured and that the dead person is his son, Gus, who suffered a gunshot wound. The Washington Post could not confirm that Deeds’s son was the deceased victim.

Creigh Deeds was a gubernatorial Democratic candidate in 2009.

And an update:

BREAKING NEWS update, 12:14 p.m.: Virginia State Police said Sen. R. Creigh Deeds was stabbed multiple times and seriously injured at his home early Tuesday morning. His son, 24-year-old Gus Deeds, was fatally shot. Police are not searching for any suspects. This story will update shortly.

Let’s hope that “not searching for any suspects” is a typo.

Kenneth Allen Keith, 48, a Pulaski County, Ky., minister has been charged with the murder of three people in Danville, Ky.

It seems Keith, who was having money problems, was trying to get money from Daniel Smith, 60, while Smith was visiting a pawn shop owned by Michael Hockensmith, 35, and his wife, Angela, 38. All three were shot dead while the Hockensmith’s two children watched.

The shooter fled the scene, and the older child called police.

Police secured the children and began processing the scene. Peel’s affidavit said the “investigation also revealed that a metal briefcase belonging to Daniel Smith was missing from the scene. This briefcase was believed to have contained an estimated $40,000 in cash.”

More: Warrants Provide More Details in Danville Triple Homicide

According to the Lexington Herald-Leader, Keith had a prior history with all three victims. An anonymous tipster called police after speaking with Keith on the phone.

Friends of Keith, the pastor of Main Street Baptist Church in Burnside, Ky., said violence was against his nature.

Keith was due to be arraigned Wednesday in Boyle District Court.

DANVILLE — Police learned about a triple homicide Friday morning when a 9-year-old boy called 911 shortly after 9 a.m. from the ABC Gold, Games and More pawn shop, Danville police Chief Tony Gray said.

Gray identified two of the victims as Michael Hockensmith, 35, and his wife Angela Hockensmith, 38, both of Lincoln County. Michael Hockensmith was a co-owner of the pawn shop and ran it on a day-to-day basis, and his wife often helped out, friends said.

The third victim was a customer, according to police.

The Hockensmiths’ children were in the store at the time of the shooting. The older child called the police after the shooter ran away. That’s one level-headed kid! He and his baby sister are with their grandparents.

Police suspect it was a robbery gone bad, and are still looking for the shooter, described as a middle-aged white male.

Danville is home to Centre College, my daughter’s alma mater, and has a population of about 16,000. It rarely has any violent crime.

More: Victims Identified in Triple Homicide at Danville Pawn Shop

Tuesday morning, abortion opponents went before the Wichita City Council seeking to shut down the South Wind Women’s Center, a clinic that provides abortions. Among their complaints: The clinic draws gun violence.

This struck some, including the clinic’s director, Julie Burkhart, as ironic. After all, South Wind opened in April in the same building that housed George Tiller’s clinic. Before Tiller was murdered in church by an anti-abortion extremist in 2009, there was indeed documented gun violence in front of the clinic—by Shelley Shannon, an abortion opponent who shot Tiller.

“That’s the only gun violence that I’m aware of,” Burkhart, who has been fielding attempts to shut down the clinic since before it even opened, told MSNBC. “We talk to law enforcement regularly and I’ve never had any complaints of gun violence.”

Reached by phone, Mark S. Gietzen, chairman of the Kansas Coalition for Life and one of the petitioners, had a rather different account. He said he and his fellow volunteers had counted 18 incidents involving guns — none actually discharged — between 2004 and 2009, two of which were security staff employed by the clinic pulling guns out of a holster, Gietzen said.

More: Kansas Clinic Under Fire From Anti-Abortion Activists — MSNBC

After getting the cold shoulder from the federal government for 17 years, U.S. scientists who study the public health impact of gun-related violence are finally getting a warm embrace. A report issued today by the National Research Council (NRC) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) lays out a national strategy for firearms research that identifies more than a dozen possible topics.

The report comes 5 months after President Barack Obama announced an end to the ban on public health research on gun violence by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that had been in place since 1996. The White House also asked NRC and IOM to organize a blue ribbon committee of firearms experts, criminologists, and public health scientists, which was charged with surveying the existing literature and coming up with recommendations for future research.

One key need, it says, is simply more and better information on how many guns are in the United States and how often they cause death or injury. “The problem is there just aren’t any data,” committee Chair Alan Leshner told ScienceInsider in a telephone interview. (Leshner is CEO of AAAS, publisher of ScienceInsider.) “Others on the committee may not have been surprised, but I was.”

The best available estimates put firearm-related deaths in the United States at more than 30,000 per year, with twice as many nonfatal injuries. That is the highest rate among industrialized nations. But details about the circumstances of the deaths and injuries, let alone their causes, are often lacking. And the number of guns across the country—both legally and illegally owned—is simply unknown. Political lobbying groups such as the National Rifle Association have vigorously fought to prevent such data from being collected by the federal government.

More: Expert Panel Offers Ideas for U.S. Gun Violence Research - ScienceInsider