It would look more convincing if they let them have the guns but have Sheriff Andy make them keep the bullets in their shirt pockets.

Just some good old boys, never meaning no harm.

I was going to guess that this was going to be a puff piece about how these guys don't need weapons in their sleepy town. And I expected that it was because they wanted to float the idea that they wouldn't be getting illegal guns. They tell the paper to write the story, and everybody eats that shiat up.

meanwhile they still have utility belts with Tazer, baton, mace, flashlight and multiple restraints.

Vaughn is one of those towns that obviously used to be a big stopover for north-south railroad work and weary travelers on the highway. Lots of cool looking abandoned buildings. There are still a couple restaurants and motels, that seem to be doing well enough, and the 2 convenience stores are convenient places to grab a snack/take a piss, but I'm surprised the place even *needs* two local cops. It seems like the sort of town where a state trooper or sheriff would handle most business, in between bouts of using it as a convenient speed trap.

There's actually an even smaller place up north of there, called Encino, where if you turn off the 4 lane highway/excruciatingly slow 25 MPH main street, you're pretty much on a gravel road, or the most ancient pavement that could even be called such. I wonder if the Vaughn PD ever helps them out. They don't even have a gas station anymore, which means the people who live there have to actually *travel* to Vaughn, at the closest, to even stock up on the most basic supplies.

That's gotta be a pretty cool/weird way to live, depending on your mindset about these sorts of things.

Why would failure to pay child support be any reason to prevent someone from carrying a firearm? I mean sure, you should be held accountable for your child support, but what does it have to do with guns?

in my fantasies I dream of being a fat do-nothing dick in uniform that everyone called "El Jefe" and all the teenagers in three counties around lived in fear of me pulling them over and confiscating their booze and drugs and girlfriends. Blackmail can be an easy gig in a status conscious small town and there's many a scheming trailer park trash willing to bed the Methodist minister and/or the banker's wife to get ahead in this world.

"Don't let me catch you with this shiat again, boys," I said and put the plastic bag three fingers thick in my pocket, nestled up like a wayward child against my .38 service revolver. I stuck my head in through the passenger window and glowered at the three of them until they looked near enough to shiatting themselves all over the interior of that cherry red camaro. "Now you boys get on out of here and go home. I don't want to catch any of you out again this time of night and you should thank me for not telling your folks what you were up to. The way I see it, you dumb farks owe me. You all owe me big-time."

Yeah....that's just how it will be one of these days. Perhaps one of you will stumble into my intricate speed trap in a few years time. Perhaps you will cuss and fuss and get beat in the kidneys until you fork over the dough to leave my jail and my county and never come back again.

You'll see.

OBBN: Why would failure to pay child support be any reason to prevent someone from carrying a firearm? I mean sure, you should be held accountable for your child support, but what does it have to do with guns?

Because he was convicted of criminal non-support. The article isn't clear, but if it was a felony charge, that prevents him from owning a gun under federal law.

I've got to say, though, that I don't know how they expected him to pay $52,000 in support on a salary of $30,000, or even the lesser amount of $40,000, in any kind of reasonable time frame. He was bound to fail there. Not that it is all that uncommon: A friend of mine was forced to live in a borrowed pop-up camper for about 6 months until he finally convinced the court to lower his child support payments. That finally happened in January. In upstate New York. He simply couldn't afford the rent on even the crappiest of apartments, along with the house payment he had to pay, his ex-wife's car payment, his car payment, alimony, and child support. At least, he couldn't afford it and buy food at the same time.

Still, it's a non-violent felony, if it's a felony at all. Despite federal law, that shouldn't be a permanent bar to owning a firearm, which is a fundamental constitutional right.

Likewise with the domestic violence misdemeanor thing: It's entirely likely that particular federal law, which is a permanent bar to firearms ownership, is unconstitutional. The right to keep and bear arms is the *ONLY* enumerated right in the Bill of Rights you lose for the rest of your life for a misdemeanor charge. I don't see how that can stand against a serious legal challenge, post-Heller and McDonald.