Friar Bijou wrote:
Which is a great reason for making getting one at least as difficult as getting a driver's licence. Thanks for seeing the light on this one!!
Friar Bijou wrote:
"E", after waiting in his truck for about four hours for his target(s) to leave the building together, stepped out of his truck, walked over to target "J" and shot him point-blank with a .45. He then said to target "S" 'you're next..
Seems as though that would not have made much difference either. Not seeing any light here at all.
Quote:
And the law does need changing. Making anyone illegally selling the gun an immediate accesory to any crime committed with it by the purchaser would eliminate most of the problem. Businessmen don't like to go to prison for 20 years...as a rule.
Was the firearm actually sold to him illegally though? I don't feel like digging through all the applicable laws, and frankly I doubt either of us knows for sure what exact process occurred to result in that handgun being in his hand at that moment. I'm assuming you weren't present with him when he picked it up from the store, right? So any knowledge you have is second hand at best. Probably 3rd or 4th hand (A guy you know said he heard someone say that he overheard someone say that he bought it at ...). We have no way to know this. Maybe he purchased it legally. Unless he's a convicted felon, or has committed some set of lesser offenses, he's legally allowed to purchase and own a firearm. Was he currently committed to an institution? Presumably not, since he was driving around on the streets. So by what rule would you have excluded this one guy from buying a handgun, but not all the other folks who aren't going to go on a shooting spree? And how would you stop him from "borrowing" a weapon from a friend or family member (and by borrow, that can include "steal")?
It's easy to say after the fact "that guy shouldn't have had access to a gun". It's a lot harder to actually come up with a set of rules that will prevent just the people who would later fall into that category from obtaining them. It's obvious that someone is crazy and dangerous after he does a crazy and dangerous act. But that's not terribly helpful ahead of time.
I know it sounds trite, but it really is true that the more and more we pursue this idea of making us safe by making it harder to legally obtain firearms (and to carry them), the more we skew the actual presence of firearms in our proximity away from those who obey the law, and towards those who don't. Because people who obey the law aren't going to violate it every day on the off chance that a shooting might occur and they might be able to save lives. The guy planning to do such a shooting isn't under any such restriction. Those laws do absolutely nothing to deter him.
Has it occurred to you that this shooting, happening in a state with so few firearm regulations, taking place on a property where firearms are not allowed may not at all have been accidental? Despite being a block or two from a police station, this may very well have been the one place this guy knew he'd have enough time to conduct his attack with minimal risk of being interrupted by another armed person before he was done. The fact that the shooting didn't go at all the way he planned was lucky for his victims, but the reality is that, according to your account, he fired 14 shots. Which is one of the highest magazine loads a .45 can carry. That's quite possibly all the rounds he had on him (making his last act basically suicide by cop). In other words, he had enough "time" to do what he planned to do and no one stopped him. He just missed. A lot.
Edited, Mar 8th 2016 6:07pm by gbaji