June 17th, 2010
The Boston Globe:
Will it really kill legal gun owners if we restrict them to one gun purchase a month? It may kill children if we don’t.
In some neighborhoods, it’s as easy to get your hands on a pistol as on a bag of Cheetos. We’re battling an epidemic of gun violence in this state, with 14-year-olds dying. We have to do something about gangs. But we also have to do something about guns.
The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives traced 1,000 of the illegal guns recovered from criminals and crime scenes in Massachusetts last year and found that more than a third were originally bought — legally — right here.
How did they get into the bad guys’ hands? Some were stolen. And some were acquired through straw purchases: That’s where legitimate buyers purchase multiple weapons, then sell them illegally on the street.
Legislation being considered on Beacon Hill would limit gun buys to one every 30 days, making it impossible for traffickers to buy in bulk in Massachusetts.
So by their own admission, only one-third of the guns were bought legally. How many of those were bought more than one per month?
It seems that doing something about the other two-thirds of the crime guns would be more effective than limiting the rights of legal gun buyers. But that’s just Murdoc.
And they don’t quite get the “straw purchase” definition, either.
Tags: MA
June 17th, 2010 at 1:52 pm
A firearm acquired through a straw purchase was not purchased by a “legitimate buyer”. It was an illegal purchase from the outset making even fewer than 1/3 of the firearms used in these crimes bought “legally”.
June 18th, 2010 at 12:20 am
If it made any sense, or had even a little impact on crime, I’d almost be willing to support this kind of thing. But every one of these “common sense” laws always fail in their stated intent. California, you have to wait ten days to pick up your legal purchase. Has gun crime, or crimes of passion fallen because of it? Of course not. Handguns are registered in the purchaser’s name in California, are illegal handguns more difficult to get now? I seriously doubt it. I already own several guns in various calibers, yet I still have to wait ten days every time I buy a new one. Makes no sense.
The author hit closer to the truth with the aside “We have to do something about gangs.” Even more to the point, the complete failure of the welfare state in alleviating poverty, and its effect in decaying the need for a traditional family. When kids grow up with a strong family, basic standards of morality and discipline, gangs tend to lose their hold. But since the state can’t and never will solve those kinds of problems, why not blame an inanimate object?
June 18th, 2010 at 5:36 pm
Illegal guns are also imported. In the Netherlands I can get a semi-auto pistol for 50 Euros, illegally of course. And AK-47s start at 200 Euros. In Austria organized crime has used RPGs and hand grenades to fight each other in the past.
Going after the legal gun owners won’t stop criminals from getting guns. They’ll just ship them in from Eastern Europe.
June 24th, 2010 at 9:31 am
MA gun laws don’t make alot of sense on a good day. Trying to guess whether you’re doing something right or wrong concerning guns here is sometimes like trying to predict the weather.
June 24th, 2010 at 5:20 pm
Mass. is a joke.
My family all comes from the ass backwards state.
They never went the Kennedy liberal route however, until the baby-boomer generation.
It’ painful, and I realize that the recent Brown election provides some strange sliver of hope, but I can’t believe that the numbers of folks with common sense up there can possibly prevail.
You can’t win in MA with 51 percent because of the liberal corruption, you need an astounding landslide.
To think the shot heard around the world was over the redcoats coming to steal a weapons cache.
They are an agonizing shame and they will never, ever admit to being wrong about anything.
Damn them all.
35 billion for a tunnel that is already collapsing when you can land remote vehicles and drive them around ON MARS for less than ten billion.
Damn those people, when will the tar and feathers come out?
No hope until there are politicians getting tarred and feathered on youtube.