Saturday, April 26, 2014 2:31:44 AM
No Comment Necessary: Vote for Me or I’ll Shoot
[ http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/22/no-comment-necessary-vote-for-me-or-ill-shoot/ ]
Ala. State Rep. is bringing out the big gun for his re-election campaign — literally
Rep. Steve Hurst is pulling out the big gun in his campaign.
[ https://twitter.com/varnergreg/statuses/458310262429597697 ]
by Cliff Sims in State Politics — 21 Apr, 2014
Alabama State Rep. Steve Hurst, R-Munford, is pulling out the big guns in his effort to fight off a Republican primary challenge in House District 35, which he has represented since 1998.
The Hurst campaign has been seen driving around his Calhoun and Talladega County house district with a giant revolver in tow. The photo above started making the rounds on social media today, and Yellowhammer had a chance to check in with Rep. Hurst to get the back story.
“There’s a local fabricator who brought one by sometime back,” Hurst said. “I told him I wanted one similar for my business, Haynes Street Pawn, where we sell guns and just about everything else you could imagine from barber chairs to amusement machines to coke machines and jewelry. But it comes in handy during campaign season, too.”
Hurst said it helps him to leave no doubt in the voters’ minds as to where he stands on the Second Amendment.
“With that particular gun, it lets people know that I very much support their right to bear arms. I had a bill called the ‘Home Castle’ bill that let’s you protect yourself, your home, your business or your automobile. I sponsored it a few years back and it didn’t pass, then a buddy of mine sponsored it the next year before I could so I had to cuss him out,” Hurst said jokingly. “Then we sponsored it together and got it done. Prior to the Legislature passing that bill you had to try to evade people when they were threatening you with bodily harm. Now you can shoot them.”
On top of its promotional uses, Hurst said the giant gun is actually a functioning smoker.
“Yea, you can put the wood down in the bottom of it, then open up the side to put the meat in and the smoke vents out of the barrel,” he explained. “Everybody loves it.”
This isn’t the first time Hurst has found his name in the media in recent months.
He pre-filed a bill ahead of the Alabama legislature’s 2014 sessions that called for child sex offenders to be surgically castrated [ http://yellowhammernews.com/statepolitics/ala-state-rep-introduces-bill-castrate-child-sex-offenders/ ].
Under Rep. Hurst’s proposal, convicted sex offenders would be castrated before being released from prison if their victims were under the age of 12. The offender would also be responsible for paying the cost of the procedure.
Businessman Steve Dean is challenging Rep. Hurst in the Republican primary, which is set for June 3.
© COPYRIGHT 2014 YELLLOWHAMMER MULTIMEDIA
http://yellowhammernews.com/statepolitics/ala-state-rep-bringing-big-guns-re-election-campaign-literally/ [with comments]
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Munford candidate’s campaign prop a target of conversation
Alabama House District 35 Representative Steve Hurst strokes his big gun.
Photo by Stephen Gross.
by Tim Lockette
Apr 22, 2014
MONTGOMERY — Rep. Steve Hurst, R-Munford, knew he'd draw attention when he bought a barbecue grill shaped like a giant revolver.
He didn't know how much.
"You put the wood in the handle," Hurst said, describing the the large black pistol-shaped grill. "The cylinder, where you’d put the ammo in, is where you put the meat. The smoke comes out of the barrel."
Hurst picked up the big gun last year as a promotion for Haynes Street Pawn Shop, his business in Talladega. When campaign season rolled around, he turned it into a campaign prop, adorning the gun with a "Hurst" sign.
The pistol, which Hurst transports in a trailer behind a pickup truck, has been in Mardi Gras and Christmas parades in Hurst's district. But it never attracted attention outside Talladega County until Monday, when someone posted a photo to Twitter.
"Rep. Steve Hurst is pulling out the big gun in his campaign," tweeted Greg Varner, a former Democratic candidate for state Senate.
By noon on Tuesday, the photo had rocketed across the Internet. The editorial page editors of The New York Times posted it to their blog, with the headline "No Comment Necessary: Vote for Me or I'll Shoot." In the Washington Post, the headline was "Meet the Alabama legislator who really, really loves his guns."
Hurst said he was indeed trying to send a message that he supports the Second Amendment. He said he was an early supporter of the Castle Doctrine, an Alabama law that allows homeowners to use force against an intruder, instead of retreating if there's a way to escape.
"I tell people that I sell guns," Hurst said, referring to his pawn shop. "When they hear that, they know I support the Second Amendment."
Hurst's stance on guns isn't drawing opposition from fellow Republican Steve Dean, a Munford businessman who is challenging Hurst in the June 3 primary.
"I understand he's a strong supporter of the Second Amendment, just like I am," Dean said.
Dean said he's an avid outdoorsman, and owns a number of long guns. He said his wife often carries a pistol.
He doesn't own a handgun himself. Dean said that after his son Brandon committed suicide with a handgun in 2007, he couldn't bring himself to use one.
"It changed everything about our lives," he said. "It changed everything we do every day."
Dean said he still supports the right to own a handgun.
“It was the instrument by which Brandon lost his life, but it's not the reason,” he said.
Pistols have been a major topic of debate in the Legislature for the last two years. In the 2013 session, lawmakers approved a bill that allowed Alabama residents to openly carry holstered pistols in most public places, unless a property owner forbids it. This year, lawmakers rejected a bill to allow people to carry handguns in their cars without a pistol permit. Even many of the lawmakers who opposed those bills were careful to point out that they're handgun owners.
Dean said his aversion to pistols may have hurt him with some voters, but he never went public with his reasons for not owning one. He said he has told his story to a few people he's met on the campaign trail — people who, like him, have lost a family member to suicide.
"That may be all that God wanted me to do in this race," he said of those encounters.
Hurst said he knew about the death of Dean's son, but didn't know, until a Star reporter told him, that it involved a handgun. He bristled when asked if that would change his use of the gun-grill on the campaign trail.
"I didn't get the gun for the campaign to start with," he said. The grill was an ad for his business, he said, and became part of the campaign after he noticed that it attracted attention.
People asked to have their picture taken with it, he said, and it was popular when he allowed a local gun-safety program to use it as a prop.
Hurst's gun-grill isn't the first Alabama campaign theme to travel far and fast on the Internet. In 2010, ads featuring agriculture commissioner candidate Dale Peterson and gubernatorial candidate Tim James became sensations on YouTube, largely because of what many viewers considered to be over-the-top elements of each ad.
James said immigrants should learn English or leave the state. Peterson, in his ad, wore a cowboy hat and wielded a rifle.
Neither James nor Peterson won. Political scientists say there's little evidence candidates are able to translate nationwide Internet notoriety into local votes.
"A viral video makes for a lot of entertainment for people out-of-state, but they don't vote," said Sam Fisher, a political science professor at the University of South Alabama. "It gives candidates some name recognition, but besides getting their name out, they have to convince people to come out and vote."
Curtis Ellis, a political science professor at Auburn University at Montgomery, said a viral campaign theme can make a candidate the national face of a cause. He said he used the James and Peterson ads in class when teaching in Oklahoma.
"It could make him a cult hero," Ellis said of Hurst's gun.
Hurst told The Star that he wasn’t aware of any coverage of the gun-grill beyond some Alabama news outlets. When The Star asked him for a chance to take a photo of the grill, Hurst said it was parked at his house, and needed cleaning.
"It's a conversation piece more than anything," he said.
Unless an independent candidate emerges, either Hurst or Dean will be Munford's next state representative. Stephanie Engle, the only Democrat in the race, withdrew earlier this year after discovering she didn't meet residency requirements.
The primary will be held June 3.
Copyright © 2014 Anniston Star
http://annistonstar.com/view/full_story/24976927/article-Munford-candidate-s-campaign-prop-a-target-of-conversation?instance=2nd_right [no comments yet]
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Teen Arrested With Loaded Gun In Vagina: Cops
by Andres Jauregui
Posted: 04/23/2014 10:09 am EDT Updated: 04/23/2014 11:59 am EDT
Cops say a Tennessee teen who got arrested for driving with a suspended license on Monday had a surprise in store for police [ http://www.timesnews.net/article/9075991/kpd-loaded-stolen-gun-found-in-womans-body ].
When a female corrections officer at Kingsport jail performed a search on 19-year-old Dallas Archer, she allegedly discovered an "unknown object" lodged in the young woman's crotch [ http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/loaded-gun-hidden-in-vagina-576432 ]. She alerted another female officer, who accompanied her during a further examination, according to documents obtained by the Smoking Gun.
The officers allegedly discovered a loaded, five-shot, four-inch .22 caliber mini-revolver concealed in Archer's vagina. It turns out that the gun was stolen last year when John Souther's car was "ransacked" in an auto burglary, cops said.
Souther, a 70-year-old retired car salesman, told TSG that he'd make sure to give his stolen "little fellow... a bath in bleach.”
Archer was charged with gun possession and introducing contraband into a penal facility [ http://gawker.com/jail-bound-teen-busted-trying-to-smuggle-loaded-gun-in-1566488456 ], and was later released on $6,000 bond, according to Gawker.
This isn't the first time someone's allegedly been caught with a gun concealed in their nether regions. Last year, an Oklahoma woman
was arrested with a loaded 5-shot revolver sticking out of her vagina, cops said [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/10/christie-harris-hid-gun-in-vagina-meth-in-butt-sentenced_n_3574436.html ].
"It would seem to be a very dangerous place to carry a loaded firearm," Pontotoc County District Attorney Chris Ross told KFOR at the time. "If it goes off, it's only going one place."
That woman, Christie Harris, also had two bags of what turned out to be methamphetamine hidden in baggies in her butt, according to police.
Copyright ©2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/23/dallas-archer-gun-in-vagina_n_5198486.html [with comments]
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[ http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/22/no-comment-necessary-vote-for-me-or-ill-shoot/ ]
Ala. State Rep. is bringing out the big gun for his re-election campaign — literally
Rep. Steve Hurst is pulling out the big gun in his campaign.
[ https://twitter.com/varnergreg/statuses/458310262429597697 ]
by Cliff Sims in State Politics — 21 Apr, 2014
Alabama State Rep. Steve Hurst, R-Munford, is pulling out the big guns in his effort to fight off a Republican primary challenge in House District 35, which he has represented since 1998.
The Hurst campaign has been seen driving around his Calhoun and Talladega County house district with a giant revolver in tow. The photo above started making the rounds on social media today, and Yellowhammer had a chance to check in with Rep. Hurst to get the back story.
“There’s a local fabricator who brought one by sometime back,” Hurst said. “I told him I wanted one similar for my business, Haynes Street Pawn, where we sell guns and just about everything else you could imagine from barber chairs to amusement machines to coke machines and jewelry. But it comes in handy during campaign season, too.”
Hurst said it helps him to leave no doubt in the voters’ minds as to where he stands on the Second Amendment.
“With that particular gun, it lets people know that I very much support their right to bear arms. I had a bill called the ‘Home Castle’ bill that let’s you protect yourself, your home, your business or your automobile. I sponsored it a few years back and it didn’t pass, then a buddy of mine sponsored it the next year before I could so I had to cuss him out,” Hurst said jokingly. “Then we sponsored it together and got it done. Prior to the Legislature passing that bill you had to try to evade people when they were threatening you with bodily harm. Now you can shoot them.”
On top of its promotional uses, Hurst said the giant gun is actually a functioning smoker.
“Yea, you can put the wood down in the bottom of it, then open up the side to put the meat in and the smoke vents out of the barrel,” he explained. “Everybody loves it.”
This isn’t the first time Hurst has found his name in the media in recent months.
He pre-filed a bill ahead of the Alabama legislature’s 2014 sessions that called for child sex offenders to be surgically castrated [ http://yellowhammernews.com/statepolitics/ala-state-rep-introduces-bill-castrate-child-sex-offenders/ ].
Under Rep. Hurst’s proposal, convicted sex offenders would be castrated before being released from prison if their victims were under the age of 12. The offender would also be responsible for paying the cost of the procedure.
Businessman Steve Dean is challenging Rep. Hurst in the Republican primary, which is set for June 3.
© COPYRIGHT 2014 YELLLOWHAMMER MULTIMEDIA
http://yellowhammernews.com/statepolitics/ala-state-rep-bringing-big-guns-re-election-campaign-literally/ [with comments]
--
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Munford candidate’s campaign prop a target of conversation
Alabama House District 35 Representative Steve Hurst strokes his big gun.
Photo by Stephen Gross.
by Tim Lockette
Apr 22, 2014
MONTGOMERY — Rep. Steve Hurst, R-Munford, knew he'd draw attention when he bought a barbecue grill shaped like a giant revolver.
He didn't know how much.
"You put the wood in the handle," Hurst said, describing the the large black pistol-shaped grill. "The cylinder, where you’d put the ammo in, is where you put the meat. The smoke comes out of the barrel."
Hurst picked up the big gun last year as a promotion for Haynes Street Pawn Shop, his business in Talladega. When campaign season rolled around, he turned it into a campaign prop, adorning the gun with a "Hurst" sign.
The pistol, which Hurst transports in a trailer behind a pickup truck, has been in Mardi Gras and Christmas parades in Hurst's district. But it never attracted attention outside Talladega County until Monday, when someone posted a photo to Twitter.
"Rep. Steve Hurst is pulling out the big gun in his campaign," tweeted Greg Varner, a former Democratic candidate for state Senate.
By noon on Tuesday, the photo had rocketed across the Internet. The editorial page editors of The New York Times posted it to their blog, with the headline "No Comment Necessary: Vote for Me or I'll Shoot." In the Washington Post, the headline was "Meet the Alabama legislator who really, really loves his guns."
Hurst said he was indeed trying to send a message that he supports the Second Amendment. He said he was an early supporter of the Castle Doctrine, an Alabama law that allows homeowners to use force against an intruder, instead of retreating if there's a way to escape.
"I tell people that I sell guns," Hurst said, referring to his pawn shop. "When they hear that, they know I support the Second Amendment."
Hurst's stance on guns isn't drawing opposition from fellow Republican Steve Dean, a Munford businessman who is challenging Hurst in the June 3 primary.
"I understand he's a strong supporter of the Second Amendment, just like I am," Dean said.
Dean said he's an avid outdoorsman, and owns a number of long guns. He said his wife often carries a pistol.
He doesn't own a handgun himself. Dean said that after his son Brandon committed suicide with a handgun in 2007, he couldn't bring himself to use one.
"It changed everything about our lives," he said. "It changed everything we do every day."
Dean said he still supports the right to own a handgun.
“It was the instrument by which Brandon lost his life, but it's not the reason,” he said.
Pistols have been a major topic of debate in the Legislature for the last two years. In the 2013 session, lawmakers approved a bill that allowed Alabama residents to openly carry holstered pistols in most public places, unless a property owner forbids it. This year, lawmakers rejected a bill to allow people to carry handguns in their cars without a pistol permit. Even many of the lawmakers who opposed those bills were careful to point out that they're handgun owners.
Dean said his aversion to pistols may have hurt him with some voters, but he never went public with his reasons for not owning one. He said he has told his story to a few people he's met on the campaign trail — people who, like him, have lost a family member to suicide.
"That may be all that God wanted me to do in this race," he said of those encounters.
Hurst said he knew about the death of Dean's son, but didn't know, until a Star reporter told him, that it involved a handgun. He bristled when asked if that would change his use of the gun-grill on the campaign trail.
"I didn't get the gun for the campaign to start with," he said. The grill was an ad for his business, he said, and became part of the campaign after he noticed that it attracted attention.
People asked to have their picture taken with it, he said, and it was popular when he allowed a local gun-safety program to use it as a prop.
Hurst's gun-grill isn't the first Alabama campaign theme to travel far and fast on the Internet. In 2010, ads featuring agriculture commissioner candidate Dale Peterson and gubernatorial candidate Tim James became sensations on YouTube, largely because of what many viewers considered to be over-the-top elements of each ad.
James said immigrants should learn English or leave the state. Peterson, in his ad, wore a cowboy hat and wielded a rifle.
Neither James nor Peterson won. Political scientists say there's little evidence candidates are able to translate nationwide Internet notoriety into local votes.
"A viral video makes for a lot of entertainment for people out-of-state, but they don't vote," said Sam Fisher, a political science professor at the University of South Alabama. "It gives candidates some name recognition, but besides getting their name out, they have to convince people to come out and vote."
Curtis Ellis, a political science professor at Auburn University at Montgomery, said a viral campaign theme can make a candidate the national face of a cause. He said he used the James and Peterson ads in class when teaching in Oklahoma.
"It could make him a cult hero," Ellis said of Hurst's gun.
Hurst told The Star that he wasn’t aware of any coverage of the gun-grill beyond some Alabama news outlets. When The Star asked him for a chance to take a photo of the grill, Hurst said it was parked at his house, and needed cleaning.
"It's a conversation piece more than anything," he said.
Unless an independent candidate emerges, either Hurst or Dean will be Munford's next state representative. Stephanie Engle, the only Democrat in the race, withdrew earlier this year after discovering she didn't meet residency requirements.
The primary will be held June 3.
Copyright © 2014 Anniston Star
http://annistonstar.com/view/full_story/24976927/article-Munford-candidate-s-campaign-prop-a-target-of-conversation?instance=2nd_right [no comments yet]
--
Teen Arrested With Loaded Gun In Vagina: Cops
by Andres Jauregui
Posted: 04/23/2014 10:09 am EDT Updated: 04/23/2014 11:59 am EDT
Cops say a Tennessee teen who got arrested for driving with a suspended license on Monday had a surprise in store for police [ http://www.timesnews.net/article/9075991/kpd-loaded-stolen-gun-found-in-womans-body ].
When a female corrections officer at Kingsport jail performed a search on 19-year-old Dallas Archer, she allegedly discovered an "unknown object" lodged in the young woman's crotch [ http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/loaded-gun-hidden-in-vagina-576432 ]. She alerted another female officer, who accompanied her during a further examination, according to documents obtained by the Smoking Gun.
The officers allegedly discovered a loaded, five-shot, four-inch .22 caliber mini-revolver concealed in Archer's vagina. It turns out that the gun was stolen last year when John Souther's car was "ransacked" in an auto burglary, cops said.
Souther, a 70-year-old retired car salesman, told TSG that he'd make sure to give his stolen "little fellow... a bath in bleach.”
Archer was charged with gun possession and introducing contraband into a penal facility [ http://gawker.com/jail-bound-teen-busted-trying-to-smuggle-loaded-gun-in-1566488456 ], and was later released on $6,000 bond, according to Gawker.
This isn't the first time someone's allegedly been caught with a gun concealed in their nether regions. Last year, an Oklahoma woman
was arrested with a loaded 5-shot revolver sticking out of her vagina, cops said [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/10/christie-harris-hid-gun-in-vagina-meth-in-butt-sentenced_n_3574436.html ].
"It would seem to be a very dangerous place to carry a loaded firearm," Pontotoc County District Attorney Chris Ross told KFOR at the time. "If it goes off, it's only going one place."
That woman, Christie Harris, also had two bags of what turned out to be methamphetamine hidden in baggies in her butt, according to police.
Copyright ©2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/23/dallas-archer-gun-in-vagina_n_5198486.html [with comments]
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"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
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upon the Right of Election, 1790
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