gun control

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Thoughts on the Marathon Bombing


On the day of the Marathon bombings, I was out exercising, taking a 50-mile bicycle ride, which meant I did not know of the bombing until almost 2 hours after they occurred.  I was stunned, and glued to the television for hours afterwards.  When I first saw, and heard, the recording of the bombs going off, my first reaction was that they were small.  My thought was that they power was approximately that of a single artillery round.  That told me we were not dealing with a well-organized terrorist, although I knew immediately it was a terrorist.  We are fortunate that these men, Tamerlan and Dzhokar Tsarnaev, could not carry out an attack with IEDs such as are known in Iraq and Afghanistan, was quite fortunate.  Not to minimalized the deaths of those 3 who were killed by these bombs, but it certainly could have been a lot worse.

The picture were are getting of the Tsarnaev brothers leads us to believe that Tamerlan embraced some sort of radical Islam on a trip in 2009 to Chechnya.  By 2011 he was on the FBI’s radar after a, as yet unknown, foreign country requested information on him.  But all accounts of his brother, Tsarnaev, suggests a youth who was drawn in by his brothers radicalism, and not of his own undertaking.  Still, he is guilty of acts that should land him in prison for the rest of his natural life if the government choses not to pursue the death penalty.

But at this point I feel it only responsible to point out that long standing positions of the NRA and conservative members of Congress aided Tsarnaev.  How so?  Massachusetts has some of the toughest gun laws in the nation and yet Tsarnaev had a sizeable cache’ of weapons.  They were probably legally procured too.  Or were they?  Tamerlan was a legal permanent resident but not a naturalized US citizen.  That being so, Massachusetts law prohibits the sale of guns to non-US citizens.  The loophole, of course, is the internet.  Massachusetts law requires a background check using the NICS (National Instant Check System) prior to the sale of any gun.  This database is used to identify individuals who are barred from gun purchases.  Had there been no loopholes, and better laws, the FBI could have, in 2011, flagged Tamerlan in the database as someone they would want to know about should he attempt a gun purchase.  But for some reason, we do not know yet, that did not happen.  Furthermore, the NRA and its cronies, have doggedly blocked all attempts to require gun powder makers to put a marker in their product to identify who produced it.

The gun lobby’s declaration that background checks and registration denies access to guns to law abiding citizens should ring rather hollow by now.  By all accounts, these two men were, prior to April 15 2011, law abiding citizens.  And yet, one of them was a person of interest to the FBI who, it appears, eluded detection because of a lack of laws and controls.

The violence of Columbine, Sandy Hook and Boston is not only going to continue but with increasing frequency if we do not put controls into place.  The simple fact is, truly law abiding citizens who harbor no ill-intent have nothing to fear of comprehensive background checks and gun registrations.  Law abiding gun dealers have nothing to fear either.  But right now, commerce is trumping public safety.  There really is, and never was, a good argument against comprehensive background checks and registration.  And while this may not have stopped the bombing, it would certainly have given Tamerland Tsarnaev reason to pause before he attempted to purchase what became weapons of mass destruction.

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A Democrat Against Assault Weapons Ban


That Democrat is me.  I have given this issue a lot of thought.  The question that should be asked, in my opinion, is not which weapons should be on the street, but what can we do in insure that those people who own weapons will be fully responsible.  The NRA and its supports love to trot out how good honest Americans should have the weapon of their choice without except.  I agree with that statement, but it does not go far enough.

Neither the NRA, nor anyone else, has much of any idea who legitimate gun dealers are selling weapons to.  And worse, is the private sale of weapons.  But let’s start at the beginning.  Every weapon produced in the United States has a serial number on it.  Why bother except that the manufacturer can tell by the serial number when it was made?  Once that weapon leave the manufacturer the is somewhere between little and no record of where it goes and who buys it.  Try to but an automobile that does not have a vehicle identification number on it.  You cannot!  Why?  Every state in the union requires that a record of the vehicle and all transaction be kept.  And there is the exact system I am suggesting for all gun sales.  I have never heard the NRA complain about having to register their cars, which intrinsically requires their own name be included, so why complain about gun ownership?  How much do you want to bet that the number of guns ending up in the hands of criminals goes down radically because otherwise responsible individuals suddenly become equally responsible about to whom they sell their guns.   And when a gun in found in the hands of a criminal, this data base can be used to find out who is selling weapons to these people.  If the NRA is entirely a group of law-abiding citizens, it is difficult to understand why they would stand in the way of the police from finding out who is selling these weapons.

This suggesting does not raise the level of difficulty for a truly law-abiding citizen to buy any gun he desires.  If anything, the general public view of them will go up because all Americans will be able to say they feel safer in general and that they favor ownership of any sort of gun.

One of the ancillary laws that needs to be passed is how many rounds can be loaded into a weapon at one time.  The Central Florida student who just committed suicide was to be found in possession of a magazine that held 100 rounds.  Law enforcement officials noted that he had gained legal ownership of all weapons.  But why does an arms dealer or a consumer need a magazine that holds 100 rounds?  I suggest 16 rounds might be a reasonable top end.

Democrats are focused on the wrong thing.  We do not need to remove any weapons from the street.  We simply need a system of tracking what is sold and who can sell weapons and under what circumstances.  Republicans are also focused on the wrong thing.   When the Police Chiefs Union and other law enforcement groups are calling for better gun regulation, if you truly support your local police department, you have to listen to them.

The problem with gun control, or a lacking there of, is the absolute refusal by each political party to even attempt to find a middle ground.  Are they being controlled by PAC or special interest group?  They shouldn’t be!