Penny Dean and Your Rights

A New Jersey State Trooper was cruising down the Turnpike when he rolled up on what, in his eyes, may or may not have been a routine traffic stop initiated by a plain-clothes officer. So the Trooper was leery when he saw the unannounced, plain-clothes police officer in an unmarked van in the same spot. Gun drawn, he walked towards the officer, later identified as Officer Robert Duboue, and demanded he identify himself.

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The peaceful, law-abiding homeowner is being charged with the crime of defending himself and his home, while a firebomber attacks. It is all on video.

Put yourself in his place. What would you do, if you knew you would be charged with a crime for protecting yourself?

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"[T]his case is not about the effectiveness of stop and frisk in deterring or combating crime. This Court’s mandate is solely to judge the constitutionality of police behavior, not its effectiveness as a law enforcement tool. Many police practices may be useful for fighting crime — preventive detention or coerced confessions, for example — but because they are unconstitutional they cannot be used, no matter how effective. “The enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table."

A Noble, Okla., police officer, who accidentally shot and killed a child while trying to shoot a snake, has had his record cleared.

Six years ago, Jack Tracy was fishing with his 5-year-old grandson Austin Haley when two police were called to home on a report of a large snake dangling from a birdhouse. One of the officers, Paul Bradley Rogers, fired two shots from his gun. The bullets missed the snake, but one struck Haley, who was in the woods directly behind the home.

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So says this headline from a video from Eyewitness 9 News in Brevard Co. Fla.

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After leaving her operating room scrub nurse duties at Sarasota's Doctors Hospital on Wednesday, Louise Goldsberry went to her Hidden Lake Village apartment.

Her boyfriend came over, and after dinner — about 8 p.m. — Goldsberry went to her kitchen sink to wash some dishes.

That's when her boyfriend, Craig Dorris — a manager for a security alarm company — heard her scream and saw her drop to the floor.

Goldsberry, 59, said she had looked up from the sink to see a man “wearing a hunting vest.”

He was aiming a gun at her face, with a red light pinpointing her.

TUCSON, Ariz. — A Tucson, Ariz., police officer has been fired after authorities say he pulled a gun on a gas station attendant while off duty and apparently intoxicated.

<img src="http://www.guns.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/resized_99265-us_news_dro... align="right" width="200">The small Colorado town of Deer Trail, population 546, is seeking to pass a local ordinance that would legalize the sport of drone-hunting. The law would create a licensing system that would certify drone hunters and allow them to collect bounties on drones.

WASHINGTON — A U.S. board reviewing whether surveillance programs violate civil liberties wants to hear from companies including Google and Microsoft on what kind of data and access to servers they’ve given the government.

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, appointed by President Obama, is reviewing the scope of National Security Agency spy programs and will recommend to Congress whether new controls are needed to curb the government’s surveillance authority.

A small Nebraska gun shop has decided to buy its ink pens and post-it notes somewhere else after they said Staples rejected their entry into a marketing contest because they are in the firearms business.

Travis Vonseggern and Bill Jackson own Maple Creek Gunsmithing in Fremont, Neb. The store offers gunsmithing, guns, ammo, and firearms training.gunsmith

They recently entered the Staples PUSH It Forward Contest – hoping to win a $50,000 marketing campaign for their small business. But a few days later, the men received a rejection email: