D
Dr. Jai Maharaj
Guest
AK-47-Type Guns Are Turning Up in U.S. More Often
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
FOX News
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
[Caption] Feb. 29: ATF officer Carlos Baixauli holds an AK-
47 in Miami. It is fast becoming the gun-of-choice for
American street fights.
Kenner, La. - The cake had been served and the children
were jumping up and down in a big, inflatable castle when
the birthday party turned to bedlam.
Clarence McGraw's jaw dropped as he saw the visitors
coming, guns drawn. The screaming began.
Children ran everywhere in the courtyard of the low-income
apartment complex; adults fell to the ground. Bullets flew.
The killers wounded three youngsters, but for reasons
police can't explain, it was 19-year-old McGraw they were
after.
As McGraw lay in the center of the green square, the gunmen
stood over him and fired again. He was shot 15 to 20 times
in all.
The Sept. 15 killing was remarkable in that it took place
in the most innocent of settings -- the fifth birthday of
twin boys. But it was unremarkable in that one of the guns
brandished was an AK-47-type rifle -- a powerful, rapid-
fire weapon that has long been used in Third World
conflicts but is increasingly being used in American street
fights.
Figures from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and
Explosives, obtained by The Associated Press through public
records requests, show a marked increase in the number of
AK-type weapons traced and entered into the agency's
computer database because they had been seized or connected
to a crime.
The number of such tracings rose even while the federal
assault weapons ban was in effect and has continued to
climb since its expiration.
Since 1993, the year before the ban took affect, ATF has
recorded a more than sevenfold increase in 7.62x39mm guns -
- which includes the original Russian-made AK-47 and a
variety of copycats from around the world. The number of
AK-type guns rose from 1,140 in 1993 to 8,547 last year.
Since 2005, the first full year after the ban's expiration,
ATF has recorded an 11 percent increase in such tracings.
ATF says the increases in the first half of the 1990s are
partly the result of wider usage of its weapons database by
local law enforcement agencies. But after that point, the
numbers reflect a real increase in tracings of AK-type
guns, the agency acknowledged.
The numbers corroborate what police chiefs around the
country have been saying: AKs and other so-called assault
weapons are terrorizing their communities and endangering
their officers.
The numbers are reflected in some of the most horrifying
violence of the past year, including a deadly shooting
rampage at a department store in Omaha, Neb.
They're reflected in the growing number of police forces
equipping their officers with higher-powered guns to match
the bad guys' firepower.
And they're reflected in a single 72-hour period in
September that started with the shooting of four Miami-area
officers and ended here, in a drab apartment complex just
outside New Orleans.
- - -
On Thursday, Sept. 13, Jose Somohano, a 37-year-old officer
with the Miami-Dade Police, was cut down during a traffic
stop in suburban Miami by a man with an AK-type weapon.
Three other officers -- armed, like Somohano, with just
handguns -- were wounded, one of them suffering a bullet
wound the size of a grapefruit in her leg.
By midnight, the gunman, Shawn LaBeet, had been shot to
death by police after a huge manhunt.
Police have refused to say how many times Somohano was hit
or how many shell casings were found.
The officer's wife, Elizabeth Somohano, had gone off to her
job at an insurance company earlier that day, and just
before noon, Jose's sister reached her at the office. "Have
you heard?" she asked. Something was going on in the area
Jose patrolled.
Elizabeth called his cell. She text-messaged him, over and
over. She called her kids to see if they had heard from
him. She checked the Internet to find out what was
happening, and learned that officers had been shot and a
gunman was on the loose.
A colleague of Jose's -- one of his closest friends --
called Elizabeth and told her to stay put. He showed up at
her office, and when their eyes met, he broke into tears.
"He didn't make it," he told her. She screamed.
Later, she took some comfort in knowing that her husband
had eaten lunch that day, which meant he must have seen the
hot-pink note she had slipped into his lunch bag along with
his chicken salad-on-pita sandwich: "I love you, macho
man."
Days before the ambush, Miami Police Chief John Timoney
agreed to let patrol officers carry assault rifles to help
counter the use of such weapons by criminals. John Rivera,
president of the Dade County Police Benevolent Association,
pleaded for the same for officers in the Miami-Dade
department, which protects more than 1.4 million people
around the city.
"It's almost like we have water pistols," he said.
For years, only SWAT teams and the like carried AR-15s or
similarly powerful weapons. But police forces nationwide
have increased their firepower to match the criminals'
arsenal -- not only in urban areas such as Miami and Los
Angeles, but in Waterloo, Iowa, Stillwater, Okla., Danbury,
Conn., and Merced, Calif.
"We're in an arms race," said Police Chief Scott Knight of
Chaska, Minn., chairman of the firearms committee of the
International Association of Chiefs of Police.
- - -
On Friday, Sept. 14, along the Tigris River outside
Baghdad, an alleged Shiite extremist linked to roadside
bombings was taken into custody with his AK-47s and
grenades. In Afghanistan, in villages south of Kabul,
troops arrested three suspected Taliban militants and
confiscated their weapons, including their AKs. And in
Sydney, Australia, a former soldier pleaded guilty to
gunning down a photographer with an AK in a contract
killing.
With AK-47-type guns used in wars and insurrections all
over the world, some 250,000 people are said to be killed
by such weapons each year, and more than 75 million are
believed to be in existence. In Iraq alone, congressional
investigators estimate 110,000 AKs bought by the U.S. for
security forces there cannot be accounted for.
The AK was designed by Mikhail Kalashnikov and went into
production in 1947, with its name standing for Avtomat
Kalashnikova and the year.
"Once the Wall fell, these guns were everywhere," said
Carlos Baixauli, an agent with ATF.
Kalashnikov, who is now 88 and still lives in Russia, has
said he is proud of his invention but saddened it's been
used by terrorists. He said he wishes he had invented
something like a lawnmower.
Bullets fired by AK-47s travel at a higher velocity than
those from many other weapons, and can do grievous damage
to the body. Often they have enough energy to pass clear
through.
Knockoffs of the AK can be bought from legitimate gun
dealers for as little as $300, and are also available on
the street. Original Russian-made models are more
expensive. Normal ammo clips hold 30 rounds, but higher-
capacity ones are also available.
Most of the AKs on American streets are semiautomatic,
meaning they fire as fast as the gunman can squeeze the
trigger. Fully automatic ones, common on the battlefield,
require just one pull of the trigger to release a burst of
fire.
A 2004 study by the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence
concluded the U.S. ban on AKs and other guns was
successful, saying in the five years before its passage,
assault weapons made up 4.82 percent of ATF crime gun
traces, compared with 1.61 percent between 1995 and 2003.
Many politicians, police chiefs and gun control advocates
point to the expiration of the assault weapons ban as a
reason for the spread of the guns. But many others argue
the law was so riddled with loopholes that it had little
effect.
The National Rifle Association says the focus must be
getting criminals off the streets, not more legislation.
"The basic reason why gun control laws fail is that they
require the cooperation of a very unlikely source, and that
is criminals," said NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam. "Each
time you pass a gun control law, the only people that are
going to be affected by that law, the only people that are
going to follow that law are law-abiding Americans."
- - -
On Saturday, Sept. 15, at the Glenwood Apartments in
Kenner, Trinioucka Martin rose early and cooked all morning
for her twin boys' birthday party -- meatballs, fried
chicken, baked macaroni, sandwiches. She had already
ordered a cake with the youngsters' picture on it, hired a
DJ, and rented the inflatable castle and house.
McGraw woke up at his aunt's house across a highway from
the apartment complex and had a hankering for something
sweet. He wanted some cake.
At the party, after the crowd had dispersed and the
officers arrived, McGraw lay dead on the ground near a
sewer grate, his torso and lower body riddled with bullet
wounds. Balloons still floated from ribbon; the "Happy
Birthday" banner still hung.
No arrests have been made. McGraw was buried in a $450
grave against a chain-link fence in a crumbling New Orleans
cemetery. The mound of dirt above his casket is littered
with rocks and bone fragments and teeth. There was no money
for a marker.
More at:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,341988,00.html
Jai Maharaj
http://tinyurl.com/24fq83
http://www.mantra.com/jai
http://www.mantra.com/jyotish
Om Shanti
Hindu Holocaust Museum
http://www.mantra.com/holocaust
Hindu life, principles, spirituality and philosophy
http://www.hindu.org
http://www.hindunet.org
The truth about Islam and Muslims
http://www.flex.com/~jai/satyamevajayate
DISCLAIMER AND CONDITIONS
o Not for commercial use. Solely to be fairly used for the educational
purposes of research and open discussion. The contents of this post may not
have been authored by, and do not necessarily represent the opinion of the
poster. The contents are protected by copyright law and the exemption for
fair use of copyrighted works.
o If you send private e-mail to me, it will likely not be read,
considered or answered if it does not contain your full legal name, current
e-mail and postal addresses, and live-voice telephone number.
o Posted for information and discussion. Views expressed by others are
not necessarily those of the poster who may or may not have read the article.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This article may contain copyrighted material the use of
which may or may not have been specifically authorized by the copyright
owner. This material is being made available in efforts to advance the
understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic,
democratic, scientific, social, and cultural, etc., issues. It is believed
that this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title
17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without
profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included
information for research, comment, discussion and educational purposes by
subscribing to USENET newsgroups or visiting web sites. For more information
go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
If you wish to use copyrighted material from this article for purposes of
your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the
copyright owner.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
FOX News
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
[Caption] Feb. 29: ATF officer Carlos Baixauli holds an AK-
47 in Miami. It is fast becoming the gun-of-choice for
American street fights.
Kenner, La. - The cake had been served and the children
were jumping up and down in a big, inflatable castle when
the birthday party turned to bedlam.
Clarence McGraw's jaw dropped as he saw the visitors
coming, guns drawn. The screaming began.
Children ran everywhere in the courtyard of the low-income
apartment complex; adults fell to the ground. Bullets flew.
The killers wounded three youngsters, but for reasons
police can't explain, it was 19-year-old McGraw they were
after.
As McGraw lay in the center of the green square, the gunmen
stood over him and fired again. He was shot 15 to 20 times
in all.
The Sept. 15 killing was remarkable in that it took place
in the most innocent of settings -- the fifth birthday of
twin boys. But it was unremarkable in that one of the guns
brandished was an AK-47-type rifle -- a powerful, rapid-
fire weapon that has long been used in Third World
conflicts but is increasingly being used in American street
fights.
Figures from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and
Explosives, obtained by The Associated Press through public
records requests, show a marked increase in the number of
AK-type weapons traced and entered into the agency's
computer database because they had been seized or connected
to a crime.
The number of such tracings rose even while the federal
assault weapons ban was in effect and has continued to
climb since its expiration.
Since 1993, the year before the ban took affect, ATF has
recorded a more than sevenfold increase in 7.62x39mm guns -
- which includes the original Russian-made AK-47 and a
variety of copycats from around the world. The number of
AK-type guns rose from 1,140 in 1993 to 8,547 last year.
Since 2005, the first full year after the ban's expiration,
ATF has recorded an 11 percent increase in such tracings.
ATF says the increases in the first half of the 1990s are
partly the result of wider usage of its weapons database by
local law enforcement agencies. But after that point, the
numbers reflect a real increase in tracings of AK-type
guns, the agency acknowledged.
The numbers corroborate what police chiefs around the
country have been saying: AKs and other so-called assault
weapons are terrorizing their communities and endangering
their officers.
The numbers are reflected in some of the most horrifying
violence of the past year, including a deadly shooting
rampage at a department store in Omaha, Neb.
They're reflected in the growing number of police forces
equipping their officers with higher-powered guns to match
the bad guys' firepower.
And they're reflected in a single 72-hour period in
September that started with the shooting of four Miami-area
officers and ended here, in a drab apartment complex just
outside New Orleans.
- - -
On Thursday, Sept. 13, Jose Somohano, a 37-year-old officer
with the Miami-Dade Police, was cut down during a traffic
stop in suburban Miami by a man with an AK-type weapon.
Three other officers -- armed, like Somohano, with just
handguns -- were wounded, one of them suffering a bullet
wound the size of a grapefruit in her leg.
By midnight, the gunman, Shawn LaBeet, had been shot to
death by police after a huge manhunt.
Police have refused to say how many times Somohano was hit
or how many shell casings were found.
The officer's wife, Elizabeth Somohano, had gone off to her
job at an insurance company earlier that day, and just
before noon, Jose's sister reached her at the office. "Have
you heard?" she asked. Something was going on in the area
Jose patrolled.
Elizabeth called his cell. She text-messaged him, over and
over. She called her kids to see if they had heard from
him. She checked the Internet to find out what was
happening, and learned that officers had been shot and a
gunman was on the loose.
A colleague of Jose's -- one of his closest friends --
called Elizabeth and told her to stay put. He showed up at
her office, and when their eyes met, he broke into tears.
"He didn't make it," he told her. She screamed.
Later, she took some comfort in knowing that her husband
had eaten lunch that day, which meant he must have seen the
hot-pink note she had slipped into his lunch bag along with
his chicken salad-on-pita sandwich: "I love you, macho
man."
Days before the ambush, Miami Police Chief John Timoney
agreed to let patrol officers carry assault rifles to help
counter the use of such weapons by criminals. John Rivera,
president of the Dade County Police Benevolent Association,
pleaded for the same for officers in the Miami-Dade
department, which protects more than 1.4 million people
around the city.
"It's almost like we have water pistols," he said.
For years, only SWAT teams and the like carried AR-15s or
similarly powerful weapons. But police forces nationwide
have increased their firepower to match the criminals'
arsenal -- not only in urban areas such as Miami and Los
Angeles, but in Waterloo, Iowa, Stillwater, Okla., Danbury,
Conn., and Merced, Calif.
"We're in an arms race," said Police Chief Scott Knight of
Chaska, Minn., chairman of the firearms committee of the
International Association of Chiefs of Police.
- - -
On Friday, Sept. 14, along the Tigris River outside
Baghdad, an alleged Shiite extremist linked to roadside
bombings was taken into custody with his AK-47s and
grenades. In Afghanistan, in villages south of Kabul,
troops arrested three suspected Taliban militants and
confiscated their weapons, including their AKs. And in
Sydney, Australia, a former soldier pleaded guilty to
gunning down a photographer with an AK in a contract
killing.
With AK-47-type guns used in wars and insurrections all
over the world, some 250,000 people are said to be killed
by such weapons each year, and more than 75 million are
believed to be in existence. In Iraq alone, congressional
investigators estimate 110,000 AKs bought by the U.S. for
security forces there cannot be accounted for.
The AK was designed by Mikhail Kalashnikov and went into
production in 1947, with its name standing for Avtomat
Kalashnikova and the year.
"Once the Wall fell, these guns were everywhere," said
Carlos Baixauli, an agent with ATF.
Kalashnikov, who is now 88 and still lives in Russia, has
said he is proud of his invention but saddened it's been
used by terrorists. He said he wishes he had invented
something like a lawnmower.
Bullets fired by AK-47s travel at a higher velocity than
those from many other weapons, and can do grievous damage
to the body. Often they have enough energy to pass clear
through.
Knockoffs of the AK can be bought from legitimate gun
dealers for as little as $300, and are also available on
the street. Original Russian-made models are more
expensive. Normal ammo clips hold 30 rounds, but higher-
capacity ones are also available.
Most of the AKs on American streets are semiautomatic,
meaning they fire as fast as the gunman can squeeze the
trigger. Fully automatic ones, common on the battlefield,
require just one pull of the trigger to release a burst of
fire.
A 2004 study by the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence
concluded the U.S. ban on AKs and other guns was
successful, saying in the five years before its passage,
assault weapons made up 4.82 percent of ATF crime gun
traces, compared with 1.61 percent between 1995 and 2003.
Many politicians, police chiefs and gun control advocates
point to the expiration of the assault weapons ban as a
reason for the spread of the guns. But many others argue
the law was so riddled with loopholes that it had little
effect.
The National Rifle Association says the focus must be
getting criminals off the streets, not more legislation.
"The basic reason why gun control laws fail is that they
require the cooperation of a very unlikely source, and that
is criminals," said NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam. "Each
time you pass a gun control law, the only people that are
going to be affected by that law, the only people that are
going to follow that law are law-abiding Americans."
- - -
On Saturday, Sept. 15, at the Glenwood Apartments in
Kenner, Trinioucka Martin rose early and cooked all morning
for her twin boys' birthday party -- meatballs, fried
chicken, baked macaroni, sandwiches. She had already
ordered a cake with the youngsters' picture on it, hired a
DJ, and rented the inflatable castle and house.
McGraw woke up at his aunt's house across a highway from
the apartment complex and had a hankering for something
sweet. He wanted some cake.
At the party, after the crowd had dispersed and the
officers arrived, McGraw lay dead on the ground near a
sewer grate, his torso and lower body riddled with bullet
wounds. Balloons still floated from ribbon; the "Happy
Birthday" banner still hung.
No arrests have been made. McGraw was buried in a $450
grave against a chain-link fence in a crumbling New Orleans
cemetery. The mound of dirt above his casket is littered
with rocks and bone fragments and teeth. There was no money
for a marker.
More at:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,341988,00.html
Jai Maharaj
http://tinyurl.com/24fq83
http://www.mantra.com/jai
http://www.mantra.com/jyotish
Om Shanti
Hindu Holocaust Museum
http://www.mantra.com/holocaust
Hindu life, principles, spirituality and philosophy
http://www.hindu.org
http://www.hindunet.org
The truth about Islam and Muslims
http://www.flex.com/~jai/satyamevajayate
DISCLAIMER AND CONDITIONS
o Not for commercial use. Solely to be fairly used for the educational
purposes of research and open discussion. The contents of this post may not
have been authored by, and do not necessarily represent the opinion of the
poster. The contents are protected by copyright law and the exemption for
fair use of copyrighted works.
o If you send private e-mail to me, it will likely not be read,
considered or answered if it does not contain your full legal name, current
e-mail and postal addresses, and live-voice telephone number.
o Posted for information and discussion. Views expressed by others are
not necessarily those of the poster who may or may not have read the article.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This article may contain copyrighted material the use of
which may or may not have been specifically authorized by the copyright
owner. This material is being made available in efforts to advance the
understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic,
democratic, scientific, social, and cultural, etc., issues. It is believed
that this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title
17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without
profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included
information for research, comment, discussion and educational purposes by
subscribing to USENET newsgroups or visiting web sites. For more information
go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
If you wish to use copyrighted material from this article for purposes of
your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the
copyright owner.
