Tappity, Tappity, Tap
That's the sound of freshman US Senator James Webb's little tap dance around actually explaining why one of his aides was carrying a gun into the Senate office building. The aide, Phillip Thompson, was promptly arrested. He told police the gun belongs to Webb and that he was carrying it for "safekeeping" for Webb.
U.S. Sen. James Webb expressed support yesterday for a top aide caught with a handgun in a Senate office building but shed little light on his role in what he described as an "unfortunate" situation.
Webb (D-Va.) declined to confirm what the aide, Phillip Thompson, told authorities after he was taken into custody on Monday: that the gun belongs to the senator and that he was "safekeeping" it for him. Webb said that a mix-up was to blame for the episode but that he could not provide details because Thompson faces criminal charges.
"I think this is one of those very unfortunate situations where, completely inadvertently, he took the weapon into the Senate yesterday," Webb said. Beyond that, Webb provided little information, never saying whether the gun is his.
"I have never carried a gun in the Capitol complex, and I did not give the weapon to Phillip Thompson, and that's all that I think I'll say," Webb said during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol.
This is an interesting response, no? Webb is not denying that the gun belongs to him. But only that he did not give the aide permission to carry it. Which kind of requires an obvious question: why was this gun lying around where someone could just pick it up? Or did Webb have Thompson carry it, only to throw him under the buss when he was caught with it? Either is a problem. The former, in many ways, is by far the worse of the two. Responsible gun ownership says one doesn't leave weapons lying about. (Even when I had the skunk incident at home, I put guns in accessible locations instead of in the gun safe, but with proper trigger locks.)
By Rightmom, Wednesday, 28 March , 2007 @ 9:31 am
My question would be since they had just arrived back from N.O. did they carry that weapon on a plane? and if so did the airline know it? There is so much more to this story however the MSM will let it go by today.