Sen. Leland Yee arrested, Capitol office searched by FBI

March 26, 2014

Sen. Leland Yee arrested, Capitol office searched by FBI

FBI agents are in the Capitol office of state Sen. Leland Yee this morning, and Bay Area news stations are reporting that the San Francisco Democrat has been arrested on suspicion of corruption.

FBI spokeswoman Gina Swankie would not confirm anything about Yee or others who may be targeted by the agency, but said “the FBI is executing multiple search warrants and conducting arrests in multiple locations today.”

“At this time we are not elaborating due to the need for agent safety,” Swankie said.

Yee’s press secretary Dan Lieberman said he had no information but expected to provide a statement later today. Yee was photographed entering the federal building in San Francisco, apparently to be formally charged.

News reports said that a well-known former Chinatown gangster, Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow, also had been arrested.

Yee, a child psychologist, has served in the Assembly and the Senate and is now running for secretary of state, with another state senator, Alex Padilla of Los Angeles, his chief Democratic foe. Yee has carried a wide variety of legislation during his career and is best known for his measures dealing with violence in video games and his advocacy for open records.

Two other Democratic state senators, Rod Wright and Ron Calderon, are already on leaves of absence due to criminal charges against them, and their departure erased the Senate’s Democratic supermajority at least temporarily. Were Yee also to depart before his term expires, it would drop Democrats to 25 seats in the Senate and give Republicans a larger role in legislation that requires two-thirds votes, such as tax increases, constitutional amendments and a pending water bond issue.

Updated at 10:35 a.m. with additional details.

PHOTO: State Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, arrives at the San Francisco Federal Building on March 26, 2014 after being arrested on suspicion of corruption charges. Courtesy of KPIX

By the Sacramento Bee

Read more here: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2014/03/nbc-bay-area-reports-sen-yee-arrested-in-fbi-sting.html#storylink=cpy

Concealed-gun ruling widens debate in California

California has the most gun-restrictive laws in the country, but last month a federal appeals court loosened requirements for carrying concealed weapons.

PALM SPRINGS, Calif. — From rusted six-shooters to semi-automatic weapons, hundreds of guns line the walls of a Desert Hot Springs police storage room.

Some are waiting to be destroyed. Others are evidence in ongoing investigations.

Nearly all came from criminals who got them illegally, Police Chief Dan Bressler said.

Bressler leads one of the most understaffed police departments in the Coachella Valley, in a city struggling with gangs while it grapples with how to pay for public safety.

While crime has dropped compared with years past, the crime rate was more than double the national average in 2011, according to the FBI.

“There are a lot of gang members running around the Coachella Valley who are armed, and there are many law-abiding citizens that are concerned for their safety,” Bressler said.

“I think it’s time for us to issue concealed weapons licenses to the law-abiding people of this city,” he said. “I believe this will deter crime and help people feel safer.”

California has the most gun-restrictive laws in the country, but last month the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the “good cause” component to carry a concealed weapon in a San Diego County case. For example, a domestic violence victim who fears for her life or a lawyer who deals with violent criminals might be granted good cause due to an imminent threat of violence.

In the ruling, a three-member panel found that “a responsible, law-abiding citizen has a right under the Second Amendment to carry a firearm in public for self-defense.”

California Attorney General Kamala Harris and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence moved to appeal, asking that the ruling be reviewed by a full 11-judge panel.

“Local law enforcement must be able to use their discretion to determine who can carry a concealed weapon,” Harris said. “I will do everything possible to restore law enforcement’s authority to protect public safety.”

On Wednesday, the appellate court also found Yolo County’s good cause requirement unconstitutional.

Experts on both sides say the issue probably is headed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Applications pouring in

Some sheriffs in the state aren’t waiting around for the legal wrangling.

In Orange County, Sheriff Sandra Hutchens immediately loosened the concealed-carry permit requirements, and there was a flood of nearly 1,000 applicants.

Ventura County has also dropped the “good cause” requirement and has seen an increase in permit applicants.

In Riverside County, there were 771 civilians with active concealed weapons permits in 2013 out of a population of more than 2.25 million people, according to sheriff’s spokesman Sgt. Mike Manning. Of those, 525 were approved in 2013.

The county received eight applications immediately following the court ruling.

The sheriff’s department could not immediately specify how many of those were held by Coachella Valley residents.

The number of people with licenses to carry handguns in public varies among California’s 58 counties.

Though there are some exceptions, a Desert Sun analysis of data provided by the Calguns Foundation, a pro-gun group, shows higher concentrations of concealed-carry permits in rural counties and where the majority voted for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in the 2012 election.

In 2010, the latest data available, there were 2,935 firearm deaths in California when the population was 37.2 million, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The number includes unintentional and violent deaths. That is a rate of 7.8 deaths per 100,000.

The same year in Arizona, a state with much more liberal gun control laws, there were 931 deaths in a population of 6.3 million. That rate is 14.5 deaths per 100,000.

Sense of security

Each night after closing Sidewinder Grill, a country-themed restaurant he has owned for 22 years in Desert Hot Springs, Angelo Avramidis walks to the car carrying a loaded .38-caliber revolver.

Avramidis doesn’t need a concealed weapon permit to carry a gun on his property, but he’d like to take it beyond the border of his parking lot, he said.

“Things are not getting any better,” he said. “I don’t want to get robbed. I want to feel safe when I leave here at night — all of us do.”

At Second Amendment Sports in Palm Desert, many of the 2,000 shooting club members also are encouraged by the court decision, said general manager Alex Talley.

“I know several people that are planning” to apply now, Talley said as he watched people firing at paper targets resembling Osama bin Laden or Yasser Arafat.

“Seeing a glimmer of hope about getting our civil liberties back is getting everybody very excited. We have been talking about it since the news came out.”

The rally for carrying guns in public is being spurred by gun manufacturers looking for more sales and profit, said Ladd Everitt, spokesman for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence.

“More citizens being armed isn’t going to make citizens safer,” he said, adding that Bressler’s comments are “an odd position for a police chief to take.”

A self-described Libertarian, Bressler took over the position of Desert Hot Springs police chief in December after the former chief retired amid a fiscal emergency. Several others also moved on, including two high-ranking commanders, because police salaries were cut more than 20% to save the city from bankruptcy

The department has only 23 officers and Bressler is expecting more will leave for better pay in other cities.

“We are in the process of hiring 10 officers right now,” Bressler said. “We need all the help we can get.”

He’s also now looking for volunteers with the proper experience to help with background checks, interviews and fingerprinting to help reinstitute concealed-carry gun permits.

Bressler lives in the city with his wife and three young children.

“I have a more sense of security when I’m armed than when I am not,” Bressler said about when he’s out of uniform. “It gives more sense of comfort. If something horrible did happen, I would at least have a chance.”

Contributing: Robert Hopwood of The Desert Sun

By USA Today

Feinstein putting pressure on Obama to ban semi-auto imports

Sen. Dianne Feinstein is urging president Obama to ban the importation of semi-automatic modern sporting rifles, according to a letter obtained by theDaily Caller.

In the letter, the California Democrat claims that importers are taking advantage of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ loose interpretation of “sporting purposes” to transport firearms that are not in violation of the Gun Control Act of 1968, which bans the importation of guns that are not “generally recognized as particularly suitable for or readily adaptable to sporting purposes.”

“Many semiautomatic firearms on the market today do not have a military origin but are modeled closely after military firearms,” states Feinstein in the letter. “These military-style firearms are not prohibited under the current import ban, even though they are functionally equivalent to prohibited rifles with a military origin.”

To close this putative loophole, Feinstein suggests that the president via the ATF should do, at the very least, the following:

– Prohibit importation of all semiautomatic rifles that can accept, or be readily converted to accept, a large capacity ammunition magazine of more than 10 rounds, regardless of the military pedigree of the firearm or the configuration of the firearm’s magazine well;

– Prohibit semiautomatic rifles with fixed magazines with a capacity of more than 10 rounds;

– Prohibit the importation of the frame or receiver of any prohibited rifle, regardless of whether it is incorporated into a fully manufactured firearm;

– Prohibit the practice of importing assault rifles in parts and then constructing the rifles once they are in the United States by adding the requisite number of American-made parts;

– Prohibit the use of a “thumbhole” stock as a means to avoid classification of a rifle as an assault rifle; and

– Prohibit the importation of assault pistols, in addition to assault rifles.

Feinstein justified her comprehensive prohibitions by suggesting that these imported “assault weapons” are sold to the civilian market where they are “either to be used in violent acts here at home or smuggled across the border into Mexico.”

To emphasize that latter point, Feinstein pointed to a July 2013 memorandum by the Council on Foreign Relations which found that of the 99,000 weapons recovered by Mexican law enforcement since 2007, over 70 percent were traced back to U.S. manufacturers and importers.

Though, critics of that study will point out that the demand for firearms in Mexico is driven by an all-out drug war and not lax U.S. gun laws. Moreover, even if the U.S. were to completely ban all semiautomatic firearms it would not impact the violence epidemic south of the border because well-heeled cartels would simply find other avenues to import firearms.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., rifles of any make or model are used in only 4 percent of gun-related homicides, which raises questions about the efficacy — or lack thereof — of Feinstein’s gun-control agenda.