Conservative Culture

A gun is pulled. A carry-concealed license holder responds. A young dies because he chose to be on the street robbing people. Which one is the victim? Well… by reading it appears that the young man was the real victim. The real victim of killers who can legally carry guns. Is there no end to the madness?

Damon Wells is the man gun supporters imagined when they fought for the right to carry concealed weapons.

He had a permit to carry his gun, and he had the gun on him when a pair of teenage thieves approached him Saturday night on his front porch.

When one of the youths pulled a gun, Wells whipped out his and shot one of the boys multiple times in the chest, police said.

Arthur Buford, 15, died after stumbling away and collapsing on a sidewalk near East 134th Street and Kinsman Road.

City prosecutors decided Monday that Wells, 25, was justified and would not be charged for what appears to be the first time a concealed-carry permit holder has shot and killed an attacker.

Nonetheless, the shooting reignited the debate that roared three years ago when Ohio’s concealed-carry law took effect.

Gun supporters said the weapon saved Wells’ life. Opponents said it took Buford’s - that the 15-year-old might be alive if a citizen had not been armed.

An angry throng of about 30 youths gathered Monday and set up a memorial at the intersection where Buford, a freshman at John F. Kennedy High School, died.

His cousin, Tameka Foster, 21, questioned why police refused to punish Buford’s shooter. “They let that man run out freely,” Foster said. “My cousin is dead.”

Who was dumb enough to ask such a inane question? Why didn’t the police question the youth and threaten them with prosecution for withholding vital information on a crime? Where is the true sense of justice.  That’s the whole point. The gun of a cc holder is to defend their life and if need be to take the life of the violent criminal. Excuse me but there will be no tears for the boy who learned to run with the gang with a gun. They approached him and threatened him. Of course the media wouldn’t have complained if it was just one more dead guy at the hand of the innocent youth.

I like this comment.

I’m sorry, but if he hadn’t been out on the streets of Cleveland robbing people at gunpoint, then he’d still be alive today. Mr. Wells is not getting charged because he didn’t do anything wrong.

It so clear unless you want to excuse bad behavior and make the rest of us victims of reckless youth violence.  Yet the media will rejoice at the opportunity to discuss strong laws against legal ownership and permit holders. In return let the criminal continue to have the edge. Think about that the second before the youth pulls the trigger in your face.

The Bush Administration is certainly receiving unfair attacks from the left. What is problematic is that conservatives have also been concerned about some disturbing trends from the Attorney General on down. I happened over the Ramos and Compean case (the jailed border agents).

The administration has defended the actions of the federal prosecutor, who for his part argued that the agents not only shot an unarmed man while he was fleeing toward the Mexican border, but also tried to cover up the crime by disposing of their shell casings and not reporting the incident to their supervisor.

Though Aguilar was never vocal on either side of the border agents case, Bonner said most agents were unhappy that he had not spoken up for the agents and saw it as part of a pattern.

The union released the result of the vote on Monday to coincide with the “Hold Their Feet to the Fire” event in Washington, sponsored by the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

What is disturbing is that as more information has come out there remains some serious questions about why they received such a harsh sentence… or one at all. Shouldn’t they have received more backing from the top down to make sure they received at least as much protection as the illegal drug smuggler they shot?

Citing the case of imprisoned former agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean among other complaints, all 100 top leaders of the National Border Patrol Council have endorsed a no-confidence resolution against Chief David V. Aguilar.

The union, which represents 11,000 of the U.S. Border Patrol’s nonsupervisory field agents, pointed to Aguilar’s willingness to believe the “perjured allegations” of criminal aliens over his own agents, in a statement issued today, first reported by the Washington Times.

Ramos and Compean are among a number of agents who recently have been prosecuted on civil rights grounds for their actions in the arrests of illegal aliens and drug-smuggling suspects.

“Front-line Border Patrol agents who risk their lives protecting our borders have every reason to expect that the leadership of their own agency will support them,” NBPC President T.J. Bonner said in the statement. “When this does not occur, and instead they are undermined by their so-called leaders, no one should be surprised when they express a loss of confidence in those managers.”

The list of complaints are as follows. And it represents a growing conservative complaint against both the Democratic leaders and the ‘moderate’ Republicans that are not speaking up on this issue and doing something about it. The border is a cheese cloth posing a serious threat to the security of this nation. If we do nothing now what will a socialist leaning President (should one win) do when suddenly it becomes an imminent threat? I cringe to think about it. They deal with the border like they do with Social Security.

• Shamelessly promoting amnesty and a greatly expanded guest worker program despite intense opposition to those concepts from the front-line Border Patrol agents who risk their lives enforcing our nation’s immigration laws.
• Declaring our borders to be secure while millions of people illegally slip across them every year.
• Perpetuating the “strategy of deterrence” despite clear and convincing evidence that it does not deter anyone from illegally crossing the border. (This strategy requires Border Patrol agents to remain in fixed positions along the border, and in many cases prevents them from leaving those positions to pursue people who are spotted crossing illegally.)
• Prohibiting Border Patrol agents from enforcing immigration laws in “interior” towns and cities, including many that are only a short distance away from the border.
• Preventing Border Patrol agents from pursuing vehicles that flee from them, even those that are carrying tons of narcotics or other dangerous contraband.
• Believing the perjured allegations of criminals over the sworn testimony of innocent Border Patrol agents.
• Forbidding front-line Border Patrol agents from working congressionally-funded overtime – at the same time the administration is trying to double the size of the workforce.
• Forcing all Border Patrol stations across the country to adopt uniform shift hours, making it easier for smugglers to evade apprehension during shift changes.
• Drastically shortchanging the funding for transfers of front-line Border Patrol agents in order to fund unnecessary transfers of management cronies.
• Cutting corners in the hiring and training processes in order to meet recruitment goals, including the elimination of two weeks of instruction at the Border Patrol Academy.