Flashback: Power of the People

I was going through the Citizen archives to find a particular story that I wrote on Christian motorcycle organizations at Bike Week since it's coming up, and I came across some old articles about an incident involving a shooting facility that got voted down that got a LOT of buzz at the time.

Now, I don't have anyting against shooting facilities in general - I've been known to go to the range a couple of times myself. But with the amount of accurate information that was hard to come by on the project, you can understand why the residents were upset by this coming in to town.

Back in 2006, a company called North American Training Lodge, headed up by a man named William Gifford, was planning on building what some considered a "military styled" training camp. It basically amounted to a place where police and military officials can take their trainees and troops for more intensive, real-life scenarios. There are a few other training facilities like it throughout the U.S. At the time, even though I covered Groton as part of my regular beat, not much happened there, so it kind of slipped off my radar until we got a notice about the meeting that the company was planning on outlining their plans.

Boy, was that meeting room packed. And not all Groton residents, either. In fact, a lot of the residents were from the surrounding towns who were concerned that the project would affect their towns, as well, because of traffic and noise concerns. Because of the uproar over this project, the Groton Planning Board passed a resolution that would ban development for one year until they could figure out some zoning for the town.

In the meantime, Gifford and NATL were holding what some people considered "secret meetings" about the project to inform the public. Problem was, the public they wanted to inform was strictly Groton residents -- when trying to schedule another public meeting, they wanted only Groton residents there, but the Selectmen told him he couldn't do that. People were not happy. I was among them -- not because I was against the project per se, but because Gifford was not doing himself any favors by being so "secretive" about the whole thing. When I tried to sneak into the meeting (I tried to alter my appearance to get in to this first meeting, but someone who was trying to get in recognized me). I got dinged on this, but the impression I got from the snippets of conversation that I overheard from people gave me the impression that he only invited known supporters. If he had let me into the meeting, I would have been able to do more accurate reporting.

Anyway, the whole thing ended up becoming a heated discussion at the beginning of the year. In fact, it almost ended up being a battle between NATL and Concerned Citizens for Regional Impact, which was formed shortly after this project was announced. Gifford even tried to spin it that "the press" was presenting inaccurate information on the project (which, if I had gotten any good information, I wouldn't have needed to rely on rumors about the project). Unlike one of our competitors, who was having a hard time getting any information at all, I managed to get myself into one of the meetings when talking with the guy at the door who was in charge.

After only two of these private meetings, the residents voted down the project. People that I talked to expressed environmental concerns with lights and noise. But I think the real reason was that they didn't want just anyone coming in to the town, which is pretty rural, and this facility woke them up.

Another Proud Moment In My Family

This is my brother Shawn. He is currently training in New Mexico to be a border patrol agent.

Shawn has always wanted to be involved in law enforcement in some way or another. He started out wanting to train dogs for police officers, but ended up going into the Navy. Towards the end of his time in the service he did security at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.

This is a first time picture of him in his border patrol uniform. He will be training for 15 months, then he will be stationed in Vermont at the Northern border keeping the terrorists out of the country.

We are all very, very proud of him.

V-Tech One Year Later: Still Blaming Everyone Else But The Killer

DoublePlusUndead had this link as part of his daily "Around The World In 80 IQ Points" lineup today, so it got me looking over at GamePolitics.com to see what they had on this as well as other aspects of the V-Tech anniversary.

Morality In Media: Blame The Violent Culture!
Pro-Gun Control Advocate: Blame the Guns, Not Games!

I got a novel idea -- how about blaming the guy who shot all those people?

The killer (whose name I will not utter here for fear of giving him legitimacy) was mentally ill. What did not stop him was a loophole in our gun control laws that would have forbid him from having a gun if the courts at the time had done their job (yes, the courts). If he had been declared a harm to himself and others, the laws would have stopped him from getting the guns.

I am not in favor of putting more laws on the books for guns -- I believe in enforcing the ones we have against the true criminals who have no regard for the law. Anytime a tragedy like this happens, people are either blaming it on the media (video games are always a favorite target) or calling out for more gun laws. I don't believe in neither, because correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation. There have been a few cases where younger kids have been influenced by something they saw -- I remember a case where a young teenager killed his friend just to see what it felt like to kill someone after watching movies like "Friday the 13th" - but those cases are rare, and parental supervision of such media would be more beneficial than keeping it from them altogether.

I'm not saying that I'm going to be showing my stepkids or my soon to be biological kid violent movies along those lines anytime soon. But my husband and I can only shield them from so much.

Hillary Clinton and the 2nd Amendment

Hat tip to Doug from Granite Grok for the following video. This was an event that Hillary Clinton gave in December 2007, where someone asked her the question on the "proliferation of guns" within the United States. Her answer seems a little different than what she's been promoting since Obama's little gaffe from this past week.

(I should also note that the commentary in the video is Granite Grok's and not mine)