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Officers Lose 243 Homeland Security Guns
In a screw up so big it could only be brought to you by the government or a famous athlete, 243 guns were lost by Homeland Security agencies between 2006 and 2008. 179 guns, were lost "because officers did not properly secure them," an inspector general report said. One of the worst examples of carelessness cites a customs officer who left a firearm in an idling vehicle in the parking lot of a convenience store. The vehicle was stolen while the officer was inside. "A local law enforcement officer later recovered the firearm from a suspected gang member and drug smuggler," the report said.
by the government of a famous athlete
I'm sure you had a joke in there that you were dying to get out, but this makes less than no sense.
The vehicle was stolen while the officer was inside.
Sleeping in the back seat again?
It is hard to say if it makes them look stupid or hypocritical, without knowing the punishment for losing your gun. Apparently, since one officer at least recovered his from a gang member, it is not termination of employment.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
the number of DHS officers who were fired as well.
Yup, we all do stupid things. Lose our car keys, forget to lock up our guns, dont wear a condom...
Oh, but when it comes to a cop, they better be more than perfect.
Just the other day a 3 year old shot themselves while attempting to get a gun from under their grandmothers couch.
So... yeah. If anything this just shows they need better weapons handling training. What? You think this was the first time someone did something stupid with a gun?
So, over 3 years, 179 / 188,500 weapons went missing, 0.09%, only slightly higher than the percentage eaten by beavers or flattened by steam rollers.
What a travesty. How could they have been so careless with our tax dollars. Let's impeach Obama.
=^P
I understand your point regarding incompetence, but the only reason we know about this is because this is a government agency. If it was private company the public would have no idea. You could make an argument regarding hiring standards between the government and private companies, but based on my experience private companies hire lazy and incompnent employees as well. Where is the public report from a Health Care company where mistakes cost hundreds of premium paying customers money or time to recoupe money due to sloppiness on the insurance company? Or worse, where are the reports where people were delayed necessary procedures? You won't see it because it is a private company. I agree the government may not do a great job managing heathcare, but this is not a valid example.
You'll have to explain to me how losing a statistically insiginficant number of weapons constitutes proof of government incompetence. Not that I necessarily assume the government is competent, mind you, but losing 250 out of a total number of guns that must be in the hundreds of thousands doesn't constitute 'proof' of anything.
Only America has famous athletes (Look at David Beckham--came to the US to become famous). Only the US Goverment can make mistakes this hillariously collosal. Thus, only famous athletes' government (the US) can do this.
QED
You must have a personal problem with the Canadian health care. The Canadian government does not directly control the health care. What they do have is a Canadian Health Act, which stipulates the minimum required coverage per province. The individual provinces then create their own modifications to the Canadian Health Act to utilize the tax money allocated for that purpose. The provinces have to give at least the minimum care required.
What's interesting is Canada has an average increased life expectancy of ~2 years more than the U.S..
In addition, the individual tax burden for Canada, as a whole is lower than the cost for health care in the US paying piece meal.
I appreciate your cynical view of Canadian health care, however, I would still rather get seriously sick (or be seriously injured) in Canada as a Canadian citizen than in the US as a US citizen.
grammer nazi
That would be grammar, son.
And we really need this huge, bloated, self-justifying, all-powerful organism to run our health care system because...?
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
People are incompetent. The government is composed of people. Can you present a solution to social and economic issues that involves NO human oversight and control? If not, your complaint is totally invalid.
Validity of your rant aside, please be consistent; too often I hear both this rant ("government is incompetent") coupled with conspiratorial, big-brother, black-helicopter rants that assume the government actually is capable of doing something, sometimes, as long as it's something nefarious. I'm not saying they're not capable of such, nor doing such -- I'm just saying ... please, to all of you, be consistent. Either the government can, or it cannot, get its act together.
The Dems don't understand business and the private sector; they don't understand what actually generates wealth in this country because they themselves are destroyers, not creators, of wealth
Interesting idea when you consider the largest destroyers of wealth are in New York City on Wall Street, rather than in Washington DC. But those of us in the know, know that the Dems and Reps all have their campaigns paid by Goldman Sachs anyway.
To understand power in the United States, don't follow government. Follow the money.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Yet another off-topic article. Or maybe /. has entirely become off-topic?
No, I didn't RTFA, but the summary doesn't even try to explain how this is affecting my rights, online or otherwise.
Actually, this is very common. It isn't unusual at all for an officer to leave a vehicle running pretty much all day with the doors unlocked. It helps keep the cabin cool in the summer and warm in the winter. More importantly, most police cars are essentially roving data centers with limited backup power and no backup cooling. Boot up time for the CAD/Mobile client, the private radio broadband system, GPS locator, car-handheld radio relay, video evidence system, radar, and ALPR system can run upwards of five minutes. Most modern cars shunt A/C vents into the trunk to help cool all the boards down. That's a dang long time before you are ready to resume patrol, so most officers just keep them running if they step away for a few minutes.
Just because I can hook a shark from a boat, I do no offer to wrestle it in the water.
It is hard to say if it makes them look stupid or hypocritical, without knowing the punishment for losing your gun. Apparently, since one officer at least recovered his from a gang member, it is not termination of employment.
If people in that agency were fired for incompetence, there wouldn't be anybody left by now. So presumably the punishment is having to figure out a new way to annoy the general public.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
who care more about delivering value to stockholders, than delivering you life
the idea that there will be government death panels is hilarious, since we currently have corporate death panels: ex-nurses in cubicles looking at your list of CPT codes purposefully working hard to make sure you don't cost so much as you die
besides, i wonder if you've ever dealt with the maze of paperwork between hospitals, doctors, health insurers. now THAT'S a bloated bureaucracy. not that the feds won't indulge in odious amounts of waste, but it might actually be an improvement, since there are currently so many entities in the game throwing reams of paper at each other. and it would COST less, since there is no profit motive to run 900 tests on you every time you have a chest pain, while completely ignoring things like preventative medicine because its not profitable. instead, forcing uninsured diabetics to sit in expensive emergency rooms because they can't afford a doctor. which you pay for, and its more expensive. pathetic
no one says universal socialized healthcare is perfect. i advocate for it, and openly admit it would suck in many ways
the point is it would suck WAY LESS than the bullshit system we have no
so i accept admit and endorse every criticism of universal socialized healthcare you can imagine
and then challenge you to defend our current bullshit system as remotely better in any way
wake the fuck up
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Actually, this is very common.
Yes, but law enforcement vehicles which need to be left running are equipped with a lockout switch which keeps the engine running and the accessories energized without allowing the vehicle to be driven
You start the car normally, turn on the lockout switch, and then remove the ignition key. The car can be shut off by turning the lockout switch off, but it cannot be restarted or driven without the ignition key.
There's never a good reason to leave the keys in a running and unattended vehicle. This is what the officer in question did.
Putting moderation advice in your
Did they check behind the sofa?
I care not for your karma and your mod points.
The goal here is an irrational rant. Preferably in wall-of-text format. Why bother actually forming an informed opinion when we can spume and froth at the mouth and work up a good outrage?
So please, quit confusing the issue with stuff like "facts" and "details" like the following.
Infant Mortality Rate and Life Expectancy, by Sex: Canada
Year: 2010
IMR Both Sexes: 4.99
IMR Male: 5.34
IMR Female: 4.63
Life expectancy both sexes: 81.29
Life expectancy male: 78.72
Life expectancy female: 84.00
Infant Mortality Rate and Life Expectancy, by Sex: United States
Year: 2010
IMR Both Sexes: 6.14
IMR Male: 6.81
IMR Female: 5.44
Life expectancy both sexes: 78.24
Life expectancy male: 75.78
Life expectancy female: 80.81
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, International Data Base.
United States - Latest Data Used in the Estimates and Projections
Reference years: 2007
Data source: vital registration
Data collection years: 2007
Notes: Preliminary data on total registered deaths.
Citation: National Center for Health Statistics. 2008. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr56/nvsr56_21.pdf.
Canada - Latest Data Used in the Estimates and Projections
Reference years: 2004
Data source: vital registration
Data collection years: 2004
Notes: Registered deaths by age and sex.
Citation: Statistics Canada. 2006. Annual Demographic Statistics: 2005. Ottawa.
Note: Infant deaths are approximated as IMR times births in the year and may not add to totals due to rounding.
U.S. data are based on official estimates and projections. Population estimates for 1950-1999 are based on the resident population plus the armed forces overseas. Population estimates for 2000-2008 are for the resident population and are based on Census 2000. Population data in the IDB for 2009-2050 are projections of the resident population. The U.S. population components shown in the IDB for 2000-2050 may not match the official population components for the United States, due to differences in how they are displayed (calendar year versus midyear estimates). Revised official population estimates are released each year (see http://www.census.gov/popest/). Therefore, the U.S. population estimates (official compared with IDB) may not match due to differences in the timing of their releases.
I've lost all my marbles except one & It's fun to test angular & centripetal acceleration in my skull
The DHS has a total of around 200,000 employees. The number of those who are actually armed (as opposed to sitting on their butts in an air conditioned office in D.C.) is significantly less. In a cursory search, I couldn't turn up any concrete numbers, but I imagine it's safe to say that probably 10% of DHS employees are actually "agents" of some type (Border Patrol, ATF, Air Marshals, etc). So that's 20,000 armed employees.
I don't see a 1% loss rate as "statistically insignificant" when you're talking about firearms lost through negligence.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
Colbert already blew the lid off of this one. There's normal Obama, who presides over the incompetent government that can't do anything. Then there's evil Obama, who rules the evil government that is an unstoppable menace bent on destroying the country.
Thus the government can *and* cannot get its act together.
The U.S. government blows trillions of dollars each year, trillions that are expropriated by force (yes, the threat of jail for not paying your taxes is force--politely whitewashed, of course, but force nevertheless). Wall Street's fat cats wettest dreams don't have that kind of monetary clout.
Last I saw, the estimate for the amount of wealth Wall Street's fat cats blew in September 2008 was $650 Trillion. For comparison, the Gross World Product is only $22 Trillion, the GDP of the United States is $13 Trillion, Obama's 2009 Federal Budget was $3.1 Trillion, and the annual Income Tax revenue of the United States is $2.1 Trillion. What was that again about Wall Street's Fat Cats not having that kind of clout?
The only people getting their "wealth" from the government are government employees and welfare recipients. And all that "wealth" was taken from someone else--it wasn't just created out of thin air by Obama's magical rainbow fairies.
Agreed, but exactly the same could be said replacing "government" with "the stock market" and "government employees and welfare recipients" with "investors and financial companies". And the scary thing is, both statements are entirely equal, thanks to modern campaign financing, Wall Street IS the government. The people in Washington, DC are just figureheads.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
You'll have to explain to me how losing a statistically insiginficant number of weapons constitutes proof of government incompetence. Not that I necessarily assume the government is competent, mind you, but losing 250 out of a total number of guns that must be in the hundreds of thousands doesn't constitute 'proof' of anything.
OK, bounce the DHS ratio of lost weapons vs. issued against any other major police agency and see if it's even close. An average of one gun "lost" every 4 days is pretty damn bad if you ask me, especially when talking about "trained" personnel.
Still think they're not THAT bad? Try and think about the number of manpack-sized nuclear devices that are "misplaced" out there. Yeah, seems we have a few of those we can't really put our hands on...
Incompetence is incompetence, and I cannot help but to hold the fucking department of HOMELAND SECURITY to a higher level. Learn how to secure your weapon.
Thanks for injecting sanity and numbers... :-)
You're welcome. To explain further and give those numbers better meaning.
Infant Mortality Rate - The number of deaths of infants under 1 year of age from a cohort of 1,000 live births. Denoted 1q0 or IMR, it is the probability of dying between birth and exact age 1.
Life expectancy at birth. - The average number of years a group of people born in the same year can be expected to live if mortality at each age remains constant in the future.
I've lost all my marbles except one & It's fun to test angular & centripetal acceleration in my skull
The border guards can have my laptop if I get their gun?
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them.
1. Buy cheap gloves und wear them. ;)
2. Steal HS gun.
3. Shoot Cheney.
4. Put HS gun back.
5. Burn gloves
6. Give the media a anonymous tip.
7. Rinse, and repeat (with another real douche)
8. Watch them beat the shit out of each other with accusations.
9. Be quick, before they can react with new rules.
10. PROFIT.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Anonymous Coward is right, the customs officer didn't recover it, it was another officer who found it on a gang member.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
The government and police lose guns (including machine guns) all the time. It hrdly ever makes the news, it's just a well-known dirty little secret.
My assumption was that to some degree they are just making the police car into a bait car. If someone is dumb enough to steal a police car, they would be more than happy to let him drive off in it in exchange for the pleasure of arresting him in a few minutes.
You'll have to explain to me how losing a statistically insiginficant number of weapons constitutes proof of government incompetence.
It might not be that. I have the same handgun as the first batch that DHS got. The trigger is pretty bad, I don't really enjoy shooting it. Maybe they were microwaving their iPhones, so to speak.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
They're fucking GUNS!
Losing 250 toobelts or phones or pants or metal detector wands, fine whatever. But they're losing guns here! You know, those metal things you point at people and they die? Like, forever?
but based on my experience private companies hire lazy and incompnent employees as well.
This is true, but there is one key difference between private businesses and the government. If a private business hires bad employees and operates inefficiently it goes out of business (or at least it should, provided that the government doesn't bail them out). The government, on the other hand, cannot go out of business or disappear; it usually takes a very protracted period of bad performance for governments to be finally shown the door. Also, we can choose not to patronize bad businesses, but taxes are not optional. These are a few of the key differences between private businesses and government.
To understand power in the United States, don't follow government. Follow the money.
and where does all of that money lead? It says "federal reserve note" right on each bill. The government ultimately controls the money supply and the fact that Wall Street went to Washington for their bailouts demonstrates that the government is still master of the money supply; the source from which all credit flows.
Except that ...
The Obama administration has failed and we are paying for their failure. The Dems don't understand business and the private sector; they don't understand what actually generates wealth in this country
Yet somehow...
the fact that Wall Street went to Washington for their bailouts demonstrates that the government is still master of the money supply; the source from which all credit flows.
Yep, same person. Maybe it's me just getting older and noticing it more but what I've been seeing more and more is politics becoming a person's religion.
I've lost all my marbles except one & It's fun to test angular & centripetal acceleration in my skull
I've tried. CodeBuster pretty much echoes my brother. I've backed my brother into the corner with the hard numbers as well or pointed out that his argument against one candidate applied equally to the one he supported. What happened? A smug, dismissive reply and when pressed further, a change of topic.
In a week CodeBuster, very much like my brother did, will forget this argument. It will not have happened. They will repeat the very same position again and again. Statements and "facts" will be put forth but with no supporting data. It's no longer an argument based on reason and data but a reenforcement of a belief system and their faith.
I've lost all my marbles except one & It's fun to test angular & centripetal acceleration in my skull
"If a private business hires bad employees and operates inefficiently it goes out of business...it usually takes a very protracted period of bad performance for governments to be finally shown the door."
So exactly what is the key difference? You just stated that both can go out of business, eventually. And don't forget that all of the crappy employees in business also happen to run the government. They are called citizens and we can't fire them.
"Also, we can choose not to patronize bad businesses, but taxes are not optional."
Actually you don't have to pay taxes. There may be negative consequences but the same could be said for avoiding some very large companies.
You'll have to explain to me how losing a statistically insiginficant number of weapons constitutes proof of government incompetence. Not that I necessarily assume the government is competent, mind you, but losing 250 out of a total number of guns that must be in the hundreds of thousands doesn't constitute 'proof' of anything.
Actually, it does.
The fact that they lost guns at all shows incompetence. I don't care if they had 32 million guns and only lost 250. They are here to protect us, supposedly, and yet they can't even keep their firearms secure.
Be seeing you...
The DHS has a total of around 200,000 employees. The number of those who are actually armed (as opposed to sitting on their butts in an air conditioned office in D.C.) is significantly less. In a cursory search, I couldn't turn up any concrete numbers, but I imagine it's safe to say that probably 10% of DHS employees are actually "agents" of some type (Border Patrol, ATF, Air Marshals, etc). So that's 20,000 armed employees.
I don't see a 1% loss rate as "statistically insignificant" when you're talking about firearms lost through negligence.
Really? How about one of those 1% guns was used in a crime that killed you, or your wife/husband/kid/mom?
Its not about statistics, it's about reality.
Homeland Security is supposed to be protecting us, yet they can NOT even secure their own guns. don't care if it's just 1% of the guns that went missing. I'm sure there was a 1% chance that the World Tradecenter would get ran into by an airplane.
lets look at it this way, way less then 1% of america died on 9/11. Guess we should just chalk it up to life and move on, huh?
Be seeing you...
and where does all of that money lead? It says "federal reserve note" right on each bill.
And the Federal Reserve is a private bank- sold to Wall Street back in the 1930s.
The government ultimately controls the money supply and the fact that Wall Street went to Washington for their bailouts demonstrates that the government is still master of the money supply; the source from which all credit flows.
If the government truly controlled the money supply (instead of it just being a puppet government controlled from Wall Street) nobody in Washington would have voted for the Bailouts. The only reason to vote for bailouts for big banks is if you had already been bribed with "campaign contributions".
A bribed government is just a puppet shell, not a real government at all.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
The DHS has a total of around 200,000 employees. The number of those who are actually armed (as opposed to sitting on their butts in an air conditioned office in D.C.) is significantly less. In a cursory search, I couldn't turn up any concrete numbers, but I imagine it's safe to say that probably 10% of DHS employees are actually "agents" of some type (Border Patrol, ATF, Air Marshals, etc). So that's 20,000 armed employees.
I don't see a 1% loss rate as "statistically insignificant" when you're talking about firearms lost through negligence.
Really? How about one of those 1% guns was used in a crime that killed you, or your wife/husband/kid/mom?
Its not about statistics, it's about reality.
Homeland Security is supposed to be protecting us, yet they can NOT even secure their own guns. don't care if it's just 1% of the guns that went missing. I'm sure there was a 1% chance that the World Tradecenter would get ran into by an airplane.
lets look at it this way, way less then 1% of america died on 9/11. Guess we should just chalk it up to life and move on, huh?
Certainly any loss is bad, but the reality is humans won't be
perfect and there will be loss/theft issues with anything, weapons
included. It should also be noted that ~3/4 (179) of the loss was
due to 'weapons not being properly secured' (i.e. the officer's
fault). It would be nice if law enforcement didn't need firearms,
but that isn't realistic in the U.S. either. I did want to add some
more numbers to the discussion. The only numbers I could find in a
quick search are from CBS in 2008,
http://www.etsy.com/confirm.php?email=order%40mikesoffice.com&user_name=&code=486659&action=register&utm_source=welcome&utm_medium=trans_email&utm_campaign=welcome_txt&from_page=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.etsy.com%2Fconvo_main.php
which shows weapons loss per year per 1000 employees:
ATF .52 .29 .28
FBI
DEA
Using the 188.5k employee HSA, 243 lost weapons over three years
(although it is hard to tell from the article, this could be two or
one year depending on whether 'between fiscal year 2006 and fiscal
year 2008' is inclusive or exclusive or both:
HSA .43 (or .64, or 1.29)
I would say, at best, this shows that they need to improve there
handling of weapons (via policy/punishment something) and, at worse,
this is plain awful and maybe a few heads should roll. Both the DEA
and FBI are able to do better and perhaps their policies could be
used at the HSA? (The ATF also, um, sucks.)