Tag: Violence

Ethics, Marketing, Public health, Safety, Violence

The G.J. Sentinel hawks cheap handguns while wishing readers “a safe and happy holiday”

by Anne Landman • November 23, 2017 • 7 Comments

With ads like these in the local paper, no wonder Grand Junction has such a high suicide rate

The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel ran a big ad in it’s Thanksgiving Day paper selling handguns for cheap while on it’s Facebook page it simultaneously wishes readers a “safe and happy holiday.”

Many area residents would consider the ad alone grossly inappropriate in a community that recently reached a record high suicide rate, and which has for years struggled with one of the highest suicide rates in the nation.

Merely Carrying a Permitted Gun Can Get You Killed

by Anne Landman • June 21, 2017 • 4 Comments

Think carrying a legally permitted gun keeps you safe?

Not in the least. In fact, just having it can get you killed.

Philando Castile was an innocent man who was shot dead in his own car by a policeman after Castile was forthright during a traffic stop about having a permitted firearm with him.

Buy a gun for Father’s Day? Think again.

by Anne Landman • June 9, 2017 • 18 Comments

Shame on Sportsman’s Warehouse for advertising guns on sale for Father’s Day. Mesa County has one of the highest suicide rates in the country, and women comprise 75% of all fatal domestic violence victims by guns in the U.S.

Sportsmans’ Warehouse ran a big ad in today’s Daily Sentinel touting a big sale on guns and ammo for Father’s Day.

This does our area a big disservice.

There is a huge intersection between fatal domestic violence killings and guns, and keeping guns in the home raises the risk of homicide, suicide and accidental shootings tremendously.

In Colorado alone, there have been 105 domestic violence homicides by gun since 2006.

Lawsuit Filed Against Donald Trump on September 30, 2016, for Child Rape

by Anne Landman • October 18, 2016 • 1 Comment

Tipton announced he is supporting Donald Trump for president

Donald Trump was slapped with a lawsuit September 30 alleging forcible rape of a 13 year old girl. Several local elected officials, including Rep. Scott Tipton and all three Mesa County Commissioners, John Justman, Rose Pugliese and Scott McInnis, continue to openly support the Republican candidate for U.S. president.

The domestic media has been quiet about the fact that the Republican Party’s candidate for U.S. president, Donald J. Trump, has been named as a defendant in a lawsuit filed on September 30, 2016 for rape of a child. The plaintiff originally filed her case in June, 2016, but pulled it and then re-filed on September 30, 2016. The victim says she was 13 years old when Trump violently raped her at a Manhattan party in 1994. The woman pulled her original suit after filing it herself, without the help of attorney, and making errors in the filing. She has since refiled her case with the help of Florida attorney J. Cheney Mason, who served as co-counsel in the successful defense of Casey Anthony, the woman who was acquitted in 2011 of murdering her two year old daughter, Caylee Anthony, after the child’s disappearance in 2008.

The lawsuit names Trump and a friend of Trump’s, Jeffrey E. Epstein, who is a registered sex offender. The Florida sex offender registry describes Epstein’s crime as “procuring a person under age of 18 for prostitution.”

It is unprecedented for a candidate for U.S. president to face a rape a lawsuit during the course of a campaign.

Rep. Yeulin Willett: Let Those Ladies Wear Pink!

by Anne Landman • January 15, 2016 • 3 Comments

Rep. Willett -- What world is he living in? It ain't Mesa County any more!

Photo Credit: Facebook

Things aren’t going too well for folks here in Mesa County, but you wouldn’t know it from what Colorado House Representative Yeulin Willett is up to.

Rep. Willett is sponsoring a bill to make it legal for women to wear pink when hunting.

Yes, isn’t that just so wonderful of him to consider what the little ladies would prefer to wear in the woods?

In the mean time, more Mesa County residents than ever are living in poverty, falling into homelessness and freezing in the cold, working at low-paying jobs, more District 51 kids than ever are going hungry and more of our citizens are committing suicide.

Need We Ask Why?

by Anne Landman • November 26, 2015 • 2 Comments

Mesa County has one of the highest suicide rates in the nation, and most suicides are by gunshot wound. Need we wonder why?

Mesa County has one of the highest suicide rates in the nation, and most suicides in our area are from gunshot wounds. The above photos show how the local gun culture contributes to this situation. If the most common method of suicide in Mesa County was arson, would hardware stores put their blow torches on sale?

Consumer advocacy, Health, Human rights, politics, Safety, Security, Violence

G.J. Gun Club Protests Continued U.S. Gun Violence

by Anne Landman • September 10, 2015 • 3 Comments

Photo Credit: Lee Gelatt Photography http://www.leegelattphotography.com/

Grand Junction Gun Club members held signs and waved at noon today at 7th Street and Patterson Road to protest the escalating epidemic of gun violence in the U.S. and demand sensible gun regulations, like closing loopholes in the law requiring background checks for gun purchases.

The group turned out in response to Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, which organized similar rallies across the country including in Washington, D.C. today. Stay-at-home mom Shannon Watts founded Moms Demand Action on December 15, 2012, in response to the devastating shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in which 20 elementary school children and 6 school staff members were massacred. Moms Demand Action wants state and federal legislators enact common-sense gun reforms.

Photo Credit: Lee Gelatt

Gun Violence Protest in Grand Junction

In Grand Junction, protesters stood on the busy corner in front of St. Mary’s Hospital in clear, sunny 80-degree weather holding signs saying “No More Massacres,” “End Gun Violence,” “Background Checks for Guns” and “Whatever it Takes.” The group got plenty of thumbs-ups and honks of approval from drivers passing by, as well as curious looks and even some middle fingers and angry shouts from drivers who didn’t support their efforts.

Photo Credit: Lee Gelatt Photography

In the U.S., nearly 8 children are shot and killed every day, and Colorado has the dubious distinction of now being home to a growing list of notorious gun massacres: The Chuck-Cheese killings in 1993, the Columbine High School mass killing in 1999 and the Aurora Theater Massacre in 2012. And the legacy continues: at the same time protesters were holding their signs in Grand Junction today, yet another juvenile male was shot in Aurora, Colorado, resulting in three schools being locked down.

Have you had enough of gun violence in our country? Want to see the U.S. start doing something to reduce these now-common tragedies? To join the anti gun violence cause locally and get word of upcoming gun sense activities in Grand Junction, go to the Grand Junction Gun Club’s Facebook page.

Ethics, Hate, Intolerance, Propaganda, Public health, Safety, Security, Violence

Grand Junction’s Growing Hate Community

by Anne Landman • June 25, 2015 • 65 Comments

As the feds mull hate crime charges against Dylann Roof, the shooter in the June 17 massacre at a historic black South Carolina church, the presence of hatred, bigotry and intolerance is growing more evident in and around Grand Junction every day, and it’s not a comforting sight.

Remember this hate-filled, wing-nut truck spotted in Whitewater a few weeks ago?

The truck belongs to a local guy named “Marc” who operates a business that manufactures fake fiberglass rocks sized and shaped specifically to hide an arsenal of firearms. Marc designed the rocks to hide rifles, in particular an M4 carbine semi-automatic rifle, and according to his e-commerce website, “a butt load of ammunition.” Marc’s fake rocks come with a pocket-sized copy of the U.S. Constitution, and they sell for $925 each. Marc also makes fake, hollowed-out tree stumps designed to hide small arms, like pistols.

The front page of Marc’s e-commerce website bears a threatening “WARNING” to all potential customers. He writes,

If you…

Are a liberal or in anyway support the willful destruction of America by this [Obama] regime or…

Refuse to recognize that this “shining city on the hill” was founded on Christian principles or…

Regard English as your “second language” and are content to let it remain as such…

DO NOT EVEN CONSIDER PURCHASING MY PRODUCT! [MY PRODUCTS] ARE HANDCRAFTED BY PATRIOTS FOR PATRIOTS!

So right up front as part of his business plan, Marc parades his paranoia and intolerance of people with differing political opinions, religions and nationalities. Below is a photo taken from Marc’s fake rock website, showing Marc and a friend, armed to the teeth with powerful weapons, posing along side the truck he has splattered with paranoid messages.

"Marc" proudly poses alongside his paranoid, hater truck

“Marc” proudly poses alongside his truck

What’s really troubling is that Marc is not an anomaly in the Grand Junction area. He is one of a growing number of Mesa County business owners who are “out” about the hatred and disgust they harbor towards area residents who are different from them. They revile, condemn and insult ethnic minorities, political progressives, women, people of other nationalities and religions, and people of no religion — in short, anyone who differs from them in their beliefs, physical appearance or cultural background.

Rick Brainard Resurfaces to Gloat Over Former Juror’s Plight

by Anne Landman • May 2, 2015 • 2 Comments

Former Grand Junction City Councilman Rick Brainard. Photo credit: KREX-TV, Grand Junction

Convicted domestic abuser and former short term Grand Junction City Councilman Rick Brainard is publicly gloating over the former Blagg juror’s contempt conviction, and is being assisted by Paul Shockley, the Daily Sentinel’s court-beat reporter.

In response to an April 29 article by Shockley about Ms. Charlesworth’s conviction, Brainard tweeted, “XOXO. That darn Karma is a son of a gun.” Shockley retweeted the comment, helping Brainard further magnify it.

Judge Finds Blagg Juror in Contempt

by Anne Landman • April 29, 2015 • 4 Comments

Judge Jane Tidball

Retired District Court Judge Jane Tidball today ruled that the juror accused of misconduct in the Michael Blagg murder case was in fact in contempt of court. Judge Tidball cited legal documents she believed indicated the juror was knowingly exposed to domestic abuse decades ago. The judge further stated that, beyond reasonable doubt, the juror had opportunities “to revise or elaborate” about her experience with domestic abuse, but that she “willfully failed to answer fully the questions on the questionnaire” in the Blagg case. She concluded the juror had “offended the dignity of the Court” and ruled her in contempt.

Judge Tidball set a sentencing hearing for June 26. The juror can potentially be ordered to spend up to six months in jail, and the Mesa County District Attorney is attempting to extract tens of thousands of dollars in fines from the juror, seeking to have her pay the costs of Blagg’s trial, including expert witness fees, hotel and meal expenses.

Online Videos Reveal John L. Casey to be a Fearmonger and Racist

by Anne Landman • February 25, 2015 • 0 Comments

Online videos of talks by John L. Casey, the 2015 Energy Forum and Expo’s keynote speaker, reveal him stimulating fear and racism by telling audiences that in the coming cold era that will occur on Earth, minority groups in urban areas will rise up to become thieves and murderers who will try to steal your food.

In videos of his talks, mostly given to Florida tea party groups, Casey tells his audiences that anthropogenic global warming is a “widespread fraud of climate science.” He says carbon dioxide (CO2) has nothing to do with climate change, that changing climate is purely related to the sun. Casey says the sun is now in a period of “hibernation” that will lead to extreme cold that will devastate crops and result of massive food shortages globally.

One of Casey’s talks in reveals his fearmongering and cultivation of racism.

In a video published to YouTube on December 4, 2014, around minute 56, Casey tells his audience:

“After the first panic, when the shelves are cleared out…your neighbor is going to come across the street — maybe your neighbor’s wife — and say ‘sorry to come to your house’ and say there’s no bread and no milk, would you give me something because we know you have a one year food supply. What are you gonna do? What are you gonna do? You’re gonna try and help of course. That’s the human thing. But at some point you’re gonna have enough neighbors lining up and at some point you’re going to have to say ‘I’m sorry we need to preserve our food for ourselves.’

Guess what happens after that point? They’ll beat you up and they’ll kill you. …Nothing is more driven than a starving person. They will do anything, especially if they have children who are starving….

Worst case, have a sanctuary away from urban areas…this may not apply too much here…but it absolutely applies if you live in Miami, New York City, or Atlanta, Georgia,…I mean, pick a major metropolitan area, especially those that are heavily minority and dependent on government food. That’s another reason we need to get rid of the food stamp program, ladies and gentlemen. We need people to be self reliant, not dependent. By making them independent and self-reliant, we give them a chance…”

“The death and destruction will be biblical in scale,” Casey tells the crowd.

See the clip here.

Environment, Ethics, Pollution, Safety, Security, Violence, Women

G.J.’s North Desert Trashed by Off-Road Vehicles, Shooting, Dumping

by Anne Landman • February 9, 2015 • 1 Comment

Off-roaders revel in tearing up the North Desert area after rain and snow, creating rutted mud pits for fun.

If you want tourists, friends and family to see the best our area has to offer, whatever you do, don’t take them up 27 1/4 Road into the desert north of H Road. While the panoramas from the north desert area are spectacular, this formerly stark and beautiful range of mancos shale hills running along the base of Grand Junction’s iconic Bookcliffs is now defaced from virtually end to end with trash dumps, mud ruts, shotgun shells and makeshift religious memorials to people who have died out there in accidents.

What used to be a marvelous place for a long, peaceful walk with your dog, is now so disappointing it tries the soul.

An airplane flies over areas on BLM land where shooting is permitted, right underneath the takeoff/landing patterns for G.J. Regional Airport

An airplane flies over BLM land where shooting is permitted underneath the takeoff/landing patterns for G.J. Regional Airport

Since the shooting range opened several miles out on 27 1/4 Road, and since the North Desert started being included on OHV (off-highway vehicle) maps, the area has turned ugly. It’s also a more dangerous place for peaceful users, like walkers, bikers and horseback riders.

Online Database Details Religious Crimes Against Humanity

by Anne Landman • October 25, 2014 • 0 Comments

An eye-opening database publicly available on Google Docs lists known major organized crimes implemented globally by the Catholic church and other religions. The list includes systematic child abductions by the Church (the seizure of millions of babies from unmarried women and girls from the mid 1940s to the mid 1970s who were then adopted out for profit), child and female enslavement, sexual abuse, child pornography, abuse of deaf victims, beatings, severe punishments and use of orphans as “guinea pigs” in human experimental and clinical trials. All entries are documented to authoritative sources or reporting. One example of crimes committed by the Catholic church is the so-called “Baby Scoop Era,” in which unwed pregnant girls were “disappeared” into Catholic “Mother-Baby Homes.” There the girls and young women were fed and housed with minimal attention until they gave birth in rooms alone, without support, assistance, counseling or coaching. The new young mothers were then coerced or forced to surrender their babies for adoption. This human rights crime against women is backed up with a link to a one hour investigative news program by Dan Rather titled “What the Catholic Church failed to tell you: Abominations of the Catholic Church in USA and Canada” that details how from the 1950s to the mid-1970s, Catholic nuns coerced over one million American women and girls to give up their babies. The Church then sold them into illegitimate adoptions for “astronomical profits.”

Woman and Girls Used as Slave Labor in Irish Laundries Operated by the Catholic Church

by Anne Landman • October 23, 2014 • 0 Comments

Women who were held as slaves in Catholic laundries in Ireland are seeking justice for their imprisonment and abuse

A BBC investigation has revealed that Irish nuns from the Catholic church took female children out of church-operated state orphanages and used them as unpaid slave labor in church-owned commercial laundry facilities called the Magdalene Laundries. Women and girls made to work in the laundries were held as prisoners and endured significant abuse. The slave laundries existed into the 1980s and did the laundry for restaurants, railway stations, convents and the airport. Some women were held in the laundries for over 50 years.

The Irish Examiner newspaper investigated the finances of religious orders that operated the laundries in 2012 and found they owned assets of $1.9 billion. (Yes, that’s “billion” with a “B.”).

One woman, the main subject in BBC’s report, escaped the laundry, ran to a nearby church for help, got raped by a priest and returned to the laundry. She became pregnant from the rape. The nuns took her baby away from her at birth and gave it up for adoption. The woman was forced to work in the laundry for 14 years. She was finally reunited with her daughter 40 years after her birth. The woman is demanding an apology — just an apology — from the Church.

Source: Demanding justice for women and children abused by Irish nuns, BBC News, September 23, 2014

Children, Elections, Gun violence, Health care, politics, Poverty, Public health, Violence, Women

CO Rep. Ray Scott Throws Women and Kids Under the Bus

by Anne Landman • July 29, 2014 • 0 Comments

Colorado Rep. Ray Scott poses with a fancy car while Mesa County's poorest women and children go without health insurance

Colorado Rep. Ray Scott proudly poses with a hot sports car while Mesa County’s poorest women and children go without health insurance

Colorado House Rep. Ray Scott may love fetuses, but he doesn’t care much about women and apparently doesn’t think much of kids, either.

Besides being a chronic no-show at election-time debates sponsored by the League of Women Voters, in January of 2012 Ray Scott co-sponsored HB1130, a bill titled “Penalties for Violent Offenses Against Fetuses.” The bill’s very title ignores the fact that typically the woman surrounding the fetus would be the primary recipient of any violent acts perpetrated against the fetus. But in Ray Scott’s mind, women matter less than their fetuses.

Ray Scott even supported a fetal personhood amendment in the past. Such proposals are among the ultimate affronts to women, since they are religiously-based efforts that would make it a crime for women to use some forms of contraception, in accordance with Mr. Scott’s own personal religious beliefs.

Sheriff Candidate Mike Harlow: The Ugliest Face of Mesa County

by Anne Landman • July 13, 2014 • 1 Comment

Mesa County Sheriff write-in candidate Mike Harlow

It’s no surprise that Mesa County’s tea party faction endorsed custom holster-maker and write-in candidate Mike Harlow for sheriff.

What is a surprise, though, and a huge embarrassment for Mesa County citizens, is that Harlow got the endorsement of anyone at all.

Harlow’s smugness and extreme hate-filled views reveal one thing: he is a ticking time bomb waiting to go off.

If his writings are any indication, contempt and hostility ooze from Harlow’s every pore.

Rick Brainard Resurfaces

by Anne Landman • March 19, 2014 • 0 Comments

Rick Brainard’s arrest in APril, 2013 shocked Grand Junction citizens and embarrassed the City

Rick Brainard, the infamous, short-lived Grand Junction, Colorado City Councilman who was arrested for assaulting his girlfriend four days after he was elected to City Council last April, has gotten a job with KaiserAir in Santa Rosa, California as Director of Maintenance Marketing and Business Development.

His arrest in April, 2013 stunned the community and galvanized hundreds of citizens who protested in front of City Council and worked tirelessly over the next four months to oust him from Council. Brainard insisted on taking his seat on Council despite his arrest and guilty plea. After citizens formed a recall committee and it appeared his recall was imminent, he finally stepped down from Council on July 18, 2013, but claimed his leaving had nothing to do with the months of protests against him. Brainard was fired by West Star Aviation and pushed off several prestigious local boards after his guilty plea.

The Grand Junction Area Chamber of Commerce selected Brainard to run for office and backed his campaign financially through their “social welfare” (lobbying) group, the Western Colorado Business Alliance, leading locals to dub him a “chambermade.”

In a March 4 press release, KaiserAir announced, “We are excited about the addition of Rick to our team.”

Source: AviationPros.com, March 4, 2014 press release

Corporations, Corruption, Democracy, Ethics, Gun violence, Human rights, politics, Tobacco, Violence

Thousands Protest at ALEC’s 40th Annual Meeting in Chicago

by Anne Landman • August 10, 2013 • 0 Comments

Police tangle with protesters at ALEC’s 40th Annual Meeting at the Palmer House Hotel in Chicago in August.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) held its 40th annual meeting earlier this month at the Palmer House Hotel in Chicago, drawing a crowd of about 3,000 protesters. ALEC is a conservative bill mill that masquerades as an educational nonprofit. ALEC holds meetings in tony resorts and at fancy hotels, where it provides corporate lobbyists with face time with thousands of state legislators over dinners, happy hours, tennis, golf and other activities. Corporate representatives draft the “model bills’ they prefer, and at ALEC meetings, hand them off to legislators, who then take them home and introduce the bills in their own state legislatures as if they were their own ideas. The public is not allowed to weigh in during any phase of the drafting of any of ALEC’s so-called “model bills.” The prime sponsor of ALEC’s 40th annual meeting was tobacco giant Reynolds American, who ponied up $100,000 for the honor. $50,000-level sponsors include ExxonMobil, the Cigar Association of America, Inc., Peabody Energy, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, a front group for coal companies. Other sponsors include CenturyLink, UPS, Pharma, Cloud Peak Energy, TransCanada and BNSF Railways. ALEC is responsible for the proliferation of “Stand Your Ground” laws, the type of law that permitted George Zimmerman to kill Trayvon Martin, an unarmed African-American Florida teen, and get away without any punishment. About two dozen states how have such “shoot first” laws. Many protesters at ALEC’s Chicago meeting wore hoodies and with targets on their chests and backs that said “Stand Your Ground.” Activists unfurled huge banners inside the Palmer hotel that said “ALEC makes For-Profit Prisons,” “Moral Monday – NO to ALEC” and “ALEC Attacks All Workers.” The peaceful protest turned violent after Chicago police rushed into the crowd and started arresting people and beating them to the ground. Photos of the protests can be seen here.

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