Call it the hatemail special. Because I got some particularly rude e-mail this morning in response to two “Chicks with Guns” columns I wrote earlier this year– here and here– I was reminded to do another little civilian gun-defense round-up.

The great thing about gun-defense stories is, not only are they just plain great stories, they almost always come with just plain great quotes. The story of 84-year-old Willie Hancox of Tennessee is no exception:

Police say [Hancox] called 911 around two Friday afternoon to say that he had shot an intruder.

Hancox says he fired two shots, hitting an intruder twice in the head.

Hancox says he is sick of the crime in his community.

“He said if they come in the door, I’m not gonna let them kill me and he meant that,” says neighbor, Dorothy Dickerson.

Dickerson lives across the street and looks after Hancox.

Dickerson adds, “I say God is good, cause they had no business in there, and whoever did that got what they deserved. And, I say it in front of they face, not behind they back and I mean it.”

In South Carolina, an armed woman protected a car and a life with her pistol, sending the would-be carjacker to the hospital, where he was picked up for his crime:

The victims say the man who tried to rob them came towards them as they were getting into their car and said, “Man, you know what time it is? Give me the keys!” Then they say Jeffcoat pushed his pistol into the man’s stomach.

That’s when the woman acted. She opened the passenger door and got her pistol from the glove box. She says she fired about five shots at the suspect, who ran away.

Officials say they found Jeffcoat at the Providence NE emergency room. He was there for a gunshot wound to the buttocks.

I got both of those stories from Clayton Cramer, who keeps a close eye on this stuff. Unfortunately, his permalinks are broken, so I couldn’t link him, but visit the main blog.

In other gun news, I was amused to find last week that Jeffrey Birnbaum, who otensibly covers K St. regularly for the Washington Post, was shocked–shocked!– to find NRA lobbyists acting like– well, lobbyists:

The NRA is on high alert, and its latest weapon is a pamphlet designed to send its members into fits of paranoid rage and to inspire them to open their wallets.

A draft of the 27-page document, which was provided to The Washington Post by a source outside the NRA, lashes out at such icons of the left as investor George Soros, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Pelosi. They are depicted as part of “a marching axis of adversaries far darker and more dangerous than gun owners have ever known.”

Since when is the typically overwrought fundraising copy of interest groups worthy of leaking to the Post? I guess since Birnbaum decided that invoking “fear” and “rage” about potential threats to special interests to raise money is a novel tactic. You know, because environmental lobbyists, PETA, and the anti-gun folks never use those kind of tactics, right?

Birnbaum tut-tuts that, “no one expects gun legislation this year.”

Well, that’s not entirely true. There are three gun bills to be introduced in the 110th Congress– one bad, two good, according to gunblogger Alphecca. Though they probably won’t be high priority bills, I can’t think of a reason gun-owners should feel particularly safe and carefree under a Pelosi-run House. So, raise away, NRA.

Well, I guess there is this tactic for making gun-owners feel safe:

While pro-gun laws like the one in Greenleaf (Idaho) are mostly symbolic, to the extent that they actually make a difference, it is likely to be a positive one.

Greenleaf is following in the footsteps of Kennesaw, Ga., which in 1982 passed a mandatory gun ownership law in response to a handgun ban passed in Morton Grove, Ill. Kennesaw’s crime dropped sharply, while Morton Grove’s did not.

To some degree, this is rational. Criminals, unsurprisingly, would rather break into a house where they aren’t at risk of being shot. As David Kopel noted in a 2001 article in The Arizona Law Review, burglars report that they try to avoid homes where armed residents are likely to be present…

Likewise, in the event of disasters that leave law enforcement overwhelmed, armed citizens can play an important role in stanching crime.

That’s the Instapundit in the NYT. Read the whole thing.

Cam Edwards has a cartoon about catching the real culprits in gun crime cases.

And, finally, a link to these girls because they like guns, and I like the name of their blog.

Update: Ooh, and one mayor has bailed from Mayor Bloomberg’s anti-gun mayors’ group. Background on the group, here.

Update: One of Michelle’s readers, Paul, sent me this story from the Arizona Republic– a front-page, above-the-folder, according to Paul–“U.S. Guns pour into Mexico.” It’s amazing what those little guns can do on their own, isn’t it? It’s almost as if they don’t have criminals breaking a multitude of laws to purchase and commit crimes with them.

Michelle would probably be better at catching all the infuriating stuff in this article, since border security is her issue, but I did my best. My take’s below the fold. Who did the article blame? Americans? Gun-dealers? Gun-manufacturers? The lift of the Assault Weapons Ban? All of the above? Click to see. You know the suspense is killing you.

The Mexican village of Zazalpa got a chilling lesson in American-made firepower recently. Homes, cars, everything was destroyed. Even the cows were shot.

About 60 Mexican drug smugglers rolled into Zazalpa, 300 miles southeast of Douglas, looking for a rival trafficker in November. They rounded up residents, then raked the empty village with American-made AR-15 rifles.

The destruction of Zazalpa is just one of dozens of unrelated drug skirmishes in Mexico with a common element: American guns.

I wonder if anyone could think of another “common element.” Like, maybe the Mexican drug smugglers shooting the American guns?

Combat-style rifles are pouring into Mexico, aided by the end of the U.S. Assault Weapons Ban in 2004 and an arms race among several Mexican cartels battling for control of lucrative drug routes.

The weapons are purchased at stores and gun shows, then smuggled into Mexico under car seats or tucked into suitcases.

Nah, let’s not blame the criminals first or even the porous borders that allow the “pouring” of combat-style rifles into Mexico. Let’s blame the expiration of the U.S. Assault Weapons Ban– a sunset even the NYT has admitted didn’t live up to the “dire predictions that the streets would be awash in military-style guns.” Instead, the expiration of the ban has “not set off a sustained surge in the weapons’ sales, gun makers and sellers say. It also has not caused any noticeable increase in gun crime.”

But seizures across Mexico show guns are still getting in. The number of weapons confiscated by Mexican authorities has been rising almost uninterrupted since 2002 and reached 10,579 in 2005. The 2006 catch looks to be even bigger, with more than 8,200 guns seized as of June.

Ninety percent of those weapons come from the United States, Mexico says.

“Rising almost interrupted since 2002,” huh? That would mean the seizures went up for at least two years while the Assault Weapons Ban was in place, from 2002-2004. But I thought the ban expiration was to blame? Also, “ninety percent of those weapons” may come from the United States, but I’d bet near the same percentage of criminals using them do not.

After that comes a scary segment of the article on gun shows with “jet-black AR-15s” and “menacing-looking flare-launchers,” and modifiers that turn semi-automatics into “rat-a-tatting machine guns.” Seriously, the article says “rat-a-tatting.” Hey, Mr. Reporter Man. Need me to hold your purse for you while you write? Sheesh.

“Now, there are more weapons available out there to the general public, and in turn those weapons find themselves in the wrong hands,” said Sigberto Celaya, resident agent in charge for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Tucson.

The assault rifle of choice is the AR-15, a variant of the U.S. Army’s famous M-16. The AK-47, a Russian design now made by several U.S. manufacturers, runs second.

“They lifted that (federal Assault Weapons Ban), and now these weapons are being sold like candy,” Santiago Vasconcelos said.

Of course, those are the same weapons whose post-ban versions were only cosmetically different from those produced before it passed and since it sunset, so I’m not sure why that would make a difference in the number of crimes perpetrated with them. Let’s read about the AR-15, shalll we? This, once again, from the famously gun-friendly NYT: (emphasis mine)

Then, by making minor changes in design, they were able to produce, as they called them, ”post-ban” assault weapons that were the functional equivalent of the originals.

Colt came out with a ”sporterized” version of its popular AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, leaving off some military features that were ”meaningless as far as its lethality,” said Carlton S. Chen, vice president and general counsel for Colt.

”People might think it looks less evil,” Mr. Chen said, ”but it’s the same weapon. It was a hoax, a Congressional hoax, to ban all these different features.”

Back to the Republic:

Seven states still ban such weapons, along with Washington, D.C., and some cities in Ohio and Illinois. The states are: California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York.

Newark’s murder rate reached its highest level in a decade this past year. D.C. is the kind of city that celebrates finally not being the country’s murder capitial due to about a 30-body drop in homicides. Of course, many people attribute the drop in D.C. homicides to the “crime emergency” declared after a killing spree this summer. So, if that’s the standard, then by all means, reinstate the ban!

Nationwide, in a country of 110 million people, there are only 4,323 weapons legally held by citizens, the Mexican government says.

You see, Mexico’s gun-control laws are much stricter, and you see how well that’s working out for them? Gun-law-breakers will buy guns despite gun-control laws because they don’t care about the laws. I don’t know why people don’t grasp this.

U.S. gunmakers say they are not responsible for the violence, stressing they sell only to licensed U.S. retailers.

Uhh, they say that because they’re not responsible.

Gunmakers also note that in the United States, the crime rate has dropped in recent years despite an increase in the number of guns in civilian hands.

The classic gun-control advocate’s “duh!” moment. More guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens means less crime? It’s not a paradox.

It’s unclear how many of Mexico’s weapons come from Arizona, but the state is a major producer of firearms.

Attacking the local economy, for good measure.

The solution to Mexican criminals coming across the border, buying guns, and taking them back across the border to commit crimes? Why, punish law-abiding Americans, of course!

“We need to open the private arms market to inspection and create a detailed registry to know how many people have a pistol and how they got it,” said Arturo Arango, an investigator with the Citizens’ Institute for Studies on Insecurity in Mexico…

Reimposing the U.S. Assault Weapons Ban would go a long way toward stemming violence long the border, Santiago Vasconcelos said…”These weapons come from your country, we know that for a fact,” he told The Republic.

I’m pretty sure there are plenty more ironies to anger folks in this article– for instance, the fact that Guardsmen on the border go unarmed for their job of protecting Americans from, among other things, Mexican criminals and drug cartel types while the Americans they’re unable to protect properly are being castigated for allowing those criminals to buy guns in their country. That’s just one I can think of off the top of my head.

On the bright side, maybe Calderon can get a handle on the drug gangs?