seriouslyamerica:

TW: domestic violence

quickhits:

You can stop pretending that guns protect women now.

New York Times:

Early last year, after a series of frightening encounters with her former husband, Stephanie Holten went to court in Spokane, Wash., to obtain a temporary order for protection.

Her former husband, Corey Holten, threatened to put a gun in her mouth and pull the trigger, she wrote in her petition. He also said he would “put a cap” in her if her new boyfriend “gets near my kids.” In neat block letters she wrote, “ He owns guns, I am scared.”

The judge’s order prohibited Mr. Holten from going within two blocks of his former wife’s home and imposed a number of other restrictions. What it did not require him to do was surrender his guns.

About 12 hours after he was served with the order, Mr. Holten was lying in wait when his former wife returned home from a date with their two children in tow. Armed with a small semiautomatic rifle bought several months before, he stepped out of his car and thrust the muzzle into her chest. He directed her inside the house, yelling that he was going to kill her.

What saved Holten was not another gun, but a phone. She dial 911, then hid the phone. “The dispatcher heard Ms. Holten begging for her life and quickly directed officers to the scene,” the report tells us.

“For all its rage and terror, the episode might well have been prevented,” NYT goes on. “Had Mr. Holten lived in one of a handful of states, the protection order would have forced him to relinquish his firearms. But that is not the case in Washington and most of the country, in large part because of the influence of the National Rifle Association and its allies.”

I know that the NRA would argue that Stephanie Holten would’ve been better off had she been armed too. But exchanging gunfire with a lunatic does not guarantee success. And since her kids were present, tragedy would be all that more likely. Gun fanatics live in a fantasy world, informed by action movies, where the “good guy” always comes out on top. But in the real world, criminals aren’t automatically incompetent. Justice is a human construct, not a law of physics. In a gun v. gun confrontation, either party can lose. This is why people with guns are more likely to be shot — if I’m a criminal and someone pulls a gun on me, they’re my primary target. And of course, belief in the “good guys always win” theory promoted by the NRA causes people to take stupid risks.

The fact is that there are people who should not have guns. More guns is not the answer here, fewer guns obviously are. There are situations — and this is one — where meeting the NRA’s definition of “pro-gun” is in reality just pro-crime. Cory Holton is obviously scum. He can live without his guns.

And his ex-wife and kids would stand a better chance of living as well. A woman’s chance of being killed by an abuser increases by 700% if he has access to a firearm. That’s just a fact. And it’s a fact the NRA doesn’t want you to know, because they want to be able to sell guns and ammo to criminals like Stephanie Holton’s stalking, abusive ex-husband.

A woman’s chance of being killed by an abuser increases by 700% if he has access to a firearm.

girljanitor:

blacksocialjournal:

The NYPD Declares Martial Law in Brooklyn

Thursday, March 14, 2013 20:11

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(Before It’s News) On the heels of three nights of protests over the police slaying of 16 year old Kimani Gray, the NYPD has turned the East Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn into a State of Exception, claiming emergency powers to suspend the constitutional guarantees of the citizenry.

The people regularly targeted by police harassment and violence, overwhelmingly the city’s poor and minority populations, have taken to the streets to speak out against the NYPD’s draconian tactics. The police have in turn responded with even further harsh measures by suppressing the right of the people to voice dissatisfaction with that very same police force.

Cops kettled protesters at Wednesday night’s candlelight vigil, resulting in 46 arrests. Police even arrested Kimani Gray’s distraught sister, Mahnefeh.

The NYPD euphemistically calls the public spaces in which the Constitutional rights of the people are suspended “frozen zones.”

Allison Kilkenny wrote about the NYPD’s so-called “frozen zones” in December 2011:

“The ‘frozen zone’ is an arbitrary, official police business-sounding title that has absolutely zero legal merit. It’s something the NYPD made up, just as the ‘First Amendment zone’ is something [Los Angeles Mayor Antonio] Villaraigosa made up to suppress media coverage of the Occupy raids.”

According to FIERCE, the “frozen zone” in East Flatbush is being used to prevent media from covering the protests and arrests. Meanwhile, people inside the “frozen zone” can be subjected to arrest merely by exercising their constitutional rights.

“It basically means the area is under temporary martial law,” writes FIERCE. “The last times the NYPD declared a Frozen Zone was on the 10th anniversary of 9/11 and during the beginning of OWS.”

An arbitrary dictate that arrests protest and free speech, set forth by the institution that is itself the target of the protests, creates a potentially dangerous precedent of placing the NYPD beyond reproach.

Occupy Austin reposted this poignant summary of events by Jen Roesch as they were unfolding in Brooklyn last night:

“East Flatbush, Brooklyn is under martial law as the NYPD declares it a ‘frozen zone’. Media are being monitored and kept from moving and reporting freely. Dozens of arrests and much brutality. Kimani was shot in the back seven times; a witness is sure he was unarmed; multiple reports are coming out that the police had been waging a campaign of harassment against the young man (including taunting him about a friend who had died in a car accident and threatening to shoot him when he tried to leave). This is just blocks from where Shantel Davis was shot, dragged from her car and left to bleed to death in the street last summer. After that shooting, police went to all the surrounding delis and confiscated their surveillance videos. Residents in the neighborhood live in a state of terror. Heartbreaking, enraging, the stuff that riots are made of. This city is at a breaking point.”

Kimani Gray’s parents are scheduled to hold a press conference this evening to address the March 9 police slaying of their young son.

WHERE IS THIS IN THE NEWS?????

Seriously, the front page of liberal news sites have five stories about Newtown and gay marriage but nothing on this???

whitachi:

anarcho-queer:

anarcho-queer:

anarcho-queer:

Teen Fatally Shot By Two Undercover NYPD Officers

16 year old Kimani “Kiki” Gray was fatally shot by a pair of plain-clothes cops in Brooklyn late Saturday after he supposedly pointed a gun at them, police said.

Gray was hanging out in front of a home on E. 52nd St. near Tilden Ave. in East Flatbush with five other young men, friends and siblings, shortly before midnight. After leaving his friends, Kiki “adjusted his waistband”. The undercover officers approached him and Gray unveiled a revolver. Both cops shot Kimani multiple times.

He was rushed to nearby Kings County Hospital, where he died.

Gray’s mother, Carol Gray, rushed to the hospital after learning her son was shot, and was fainted and hospitalized herself after learning he died, relatives said.

A pair of brothers who said they were hanging out with Gray moments before the shooting told The Daily News they didn’t realize Gray was armed.

“The cops, they just jumped out of the car so fast,” said Devonte Brown, 16. “They started shooting him and he went down. He was bleeding, holding his side, screaming, ‘Stop, stop!’”

“We were just hanging out,” added Brown’s brother, Akeem Brown, 15. “We didn’t know he had a gun.”

Gray’s confrontation with cops was the second police-involved shooting of the day.

Update: Several eye witnesses have come forward to media casting doubts on the officer’s version of the incident:

“He was running for his life, telling the cops, “Stop,”. These cops are ridiculous, they really are, seriously, walking around shooting little kids. They were just beating a little boy on 51st and now they come down here and shot somebodies child.” Camille Johnson, a resident of the neighborhood, told Pix 11 News. 

Another witness told the New York Times: “Mr. Gray’s sister, Mahnefah Gray, 19, said that a witness to the shooting told her that her brother had been fixing his belt when he was shot.”

A woman who lives across the street from where the shooting occurred said that after the shots were fired, she saw two men, whom she believed to be plainclothes officers, standing over Mr. Gray, who was prone on the sidewalk, clutching his stomach.

“He said, ‘Please don’t let me die,’ ” said the woman, 46, who gave her name only as Vanessa. One of the officers, she said, replied: “Stay down, or we’ll shoot you again.”

As of 9pm, an angry crowd of over 200 people, including family and friends of Gray, are protesting in front of the 67 police precinct. It looks like there might be some arrests tonight. I’ll reblog with updates as soon as I have more news.

Update: The crowd is now throwing objects at police who are blocking the crowd at Church ave and Nostrand, it looks like this might escalate into a riot. 

#SOMETHING HAS TO BE FUCKING DONE ABOUT THE NYPD #THEY ARE LITERAL MONSTERS

OH BUT COME ON MAN THEY’RE TRYING TO TAKE OUR LARGE SODA POP AWAY LET’S FOCUS ON THE REAL ISSUES HERE

julianplowden:

torrid-wind:

talented10th:

Sybrina Fulton is the mother of Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old high school student who was shot and killed on Feb. 26, 2012.

***The trial of Trayvon’s accused killer is expected to begin on June 10, 2013. For the latest update in the Trayvon Martin case (as of Feb. 14, 2013) please click: http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/02/14/1594051/whats-happened-in-the-trayvon-martin-case-since-you-stopped-paying-attention/?mobile=nc

THIS IS WHAT THEY DO!!  THEY PROLONG THE TRIAL SO EVERYONE FORGETS AND THE KILLER GETS FREE!!!  DON’T LET YOUR WILL GO TO WASTE!!  PROMOTE PROMOTE PROMOTE!!!

oh that’s my birthday

june 10

for my birthday i would like the start of a trial that gets some fucking justice seen

think-progress:

Read what’s happened in the Trayvon Martin case since you stopped paying attention.