Gun Control In Australia

[unit731]

I have never heard of the "Christian Science Monitor" - would they have a vested interest in blurring figures? Gun lobby type websites show similar figures of gun related crime post 1996 in Oz.

 

 

 

The Christian Science Monitor based in Boston is a well respected main line newspaper. It is connected to the religion stated in title but the paper is not by any stretch a religious newspaper. The paper mostly geared toward national issues and usually has longer more in depth articles. The Christian Science Monitor used to be a daily - but as with many newspapers - is now just a Sunday paper. Some of the more famous journalist began their careers with this newspaper. Sadly, circulation is not high - as many think that it is a religious newspaper. And also with much media - folks only read/watch what they want to read/hear. Objective news runs afoul with those who cling to preconceived notions of what reality is.

[Flashermac]

Some of the more famous journalists started with the Bangkok Post, including Peter Arnett.

[Bangkoktraveler]

When it comes to gun control, I firmly believe

'Every citizen has the right to protect themselves".

 

When governments make that right a crime, something is wrong!

[unit731]

# # #

Laughed Out of Court

In 1981, 80 feet of the riverbank along Drega's property collapsed during a rainstorm. Drega decided to dump and pack enough dirt to repair the erosion damage, restoring his lot along the Connecticut River to its original size.

 

A state conservation officer, Sergeant Eric Stohl, claimed to have spotted the project from the river while passing the Drega property on a fish-stocking operation. (The river's natural ecology harbored huge runs of shad and Atlantic salmon, as well as native pike, pickerel, and brook trout. So most New England states -- these devoted acolytes of environmental purity -- now routinely stock bass, and brown and rainbow trout, none of which is native and few of which survive long enough to reproduce.)

 

The state hauled Drega into court, attempting to block his tiny "project."

 

This was piled atop earlier actions by the town of Columbia, some dating back more than 20 years, and starting when the town hauled Drega into court and threatened him with liens, judgments and (ultimately) property seizure over a "zoning violation" which was comprised of his failure to finish a house covered with tarpaper within a time-frame which the town considered reasonable, former selectman Kenneth Parkhurst told the Boston Globe.

 

Drega tried for years to fight the authorities on their own terms, in court. Needless to say, as a quasi-literate product of the government schools, and no lawyer, his filings became a laughing stock both in the courts and in the newspapers to which he sent copies, begging for help.

 

"The dispute, punctuated by years of hearings and court orders, became an obsession for Drega," wrote reporters Matthew Brelis and Kathleen Burge in an Aug. 20 follow-up in the Boston Globe. Drega "filed personal lawsuits against the state officials involved and contacted newspapers, including the Globe, imploring them to write about the injustice being done to him."

 

In court in 1995, the Globe reports that Drega explained, "The reason I'm like this on this case, when I started my project 10 years ago I was issued permits and everything I needed. When I reapplied 10 years later, that's when Eric Stohl came in and the Wetlands Board had absolutely no records ... I am liable for everything that's done there. In the New Hampshire Wetlands Board, if it's not done according to the plan, they can take it out. And if I don't have the money to take it out, they'll take it out. And if I can't pay for it, they'll take my property."

 

I sort the incoming letters-to-the-editor for a major metropolitan newspaper. The receipt of such sheafs of heartfelt, illiterate pleadings from folks at their wits' end (child custody leads the list, though property rights also feature prominently), pleading for help from someone, has become an almost daily occurrence.

Since such tirades are too long, rambling, and "not of general public interest" to run as letters, I diligently forward them to the city desk, in hopes an editor there may occasionally assign a reporter to check them out.

 

They never do ... unless the author shoots somebody, at which point there ensues a mad scramble through the wastebaskets.

 

In newsrooms around the country, the running joke when a large number of such missives or phone calls come in on the same day is that "It must be a full moon."

Reporters cover the bureaucracy. The bureaucracy is adept at putting out its version of events in reasonable-sounding, easy-to-quote form. Those who can't get with the program are generally ridiculed by reporters as "gadflies," "malcontents," and (more recently) "black helicopter conspiracy nuts." Their rambling, disjointed stories don't tend to fit well into the standard 12 inches.

 

By 1995, it was obvious that Carl Drega was running out of patience. Town selectman Vickie Bunnell, 42 (since appointed a part-time state judge) accompanied a town tax assessor to Drega's property in a dispute over an assessment. Drega fired shots into the air to drive them away.

 

(In New England, special property tax assessments are common, and especially cruel to old folks. The courts have ruled that if the town decides to run a municipal water or sewer line along a street fronting one's property, the property owner can be assessed the amount by which the town figures the property's value has been enhanced -- usually in the thousands of dollars -- even if the property owner has a perfectly good well and septic system, and opts not to tie into the new municipal lines. Failure to pay can eventually lead to eviction and auction.)

 

Carl Drega could see what was coming. He couldn't have been ignorant of the government tactics used to ambush and murder harmless civilians at Waco and Ruby Ridge. He bought a $575 AR-15 -- the legal, semi-auto version of the standard military M-16 -- in a gun store in Waltham, Massachusetts, a state with some of the most restrictive gun laws in America. He also began equipping his property with early-warning electronic noise and motion detectors against the inevitable government assault.

 

 

 

 

LINK

 

 

 

MORE

[Flashermac]

When I was a kid in So Cal, the City of Los Angeles would use "eminent domain" to widen roads or anything else they wanted, seizing maybe your entire front lawn without compensation (or just a token amount). Nothing you could do about it. Another practice was to rezone your land commercial to force you to sell to them, since you couldn't afford to pay the high taxes on commercial property. A lot of agricultural land was "bought" that way.

 

The government is not your friend. .

[TheCorinthian]

Carl Drega

 

 

That guy sounds like a total coward and crakpot. Glad he's dead so I dont have to pay for his life.

[Flashermac]

"he died in a shootout on the Vermont side of the Connecticut River."

 

Only good thing about the whole affair.