People may not be aware how much damage the gun industry and the lawmakers they have purchased have done to regulatory schemes designed to protect the public. You shouldn’t make any assumptions about licensing and regulation without looking at the current state of the law:
In February 2005, Erik Zettergren came home from a party after midnight with his girlfriend and another couple. They had all been drinking heavily, and soon the other man and Mr. Zettergren’s girlfriend passed out on his bed. When Mr. Zettergren went to check on them later, he found his girlfriend naked from the waist down and the other man, Jason Robinson, with his pants around his ankles.
Enraged, Mr. Zettergren ordered Mr. Robinson to leave. After a brief confrontation, Mr. Zettergren shot him in the temple at point-blank range with a Glock-17 semiautomatic handgun. He then forced Mr. Robinson’s hysterical fiancée, at gunpoint, to help him dispose of the body in a nearby river. It was the first homicide in more than 30 years in the small town of Endicott, in eastern Washington. But for a judge’s ruling two months before, it would probably never have happened.
For years, Mr. Zettergren had been barred from possessing firearms because of two felony convictions. He had a history of mental health problems and friends said he was dangerous. Yet Mr. Zettergren’s gun rights were restored without even a hearing, under a state law that gave the judge no leeway to deny the application as long as certain basic requirements had been met. Mr. Zettergren, then 36, wasted no time retrieving several guns he had given to a friend for safekeeping.
“If he hadn’t had his rights restored, in this particular instance, it probably would have saved the life of the other person,” said Denis Tracy, the prosecutor in Whitman County, who handled the murder case.
Under federal law, people with felony convictions forfeit their right to bear arms. Yet every year, thousands of felons across the country have those rights reinstated, often with little or no review. In several states, they include people convicted of violent crimes, including first-degree murder and manslaughter, an examination by The New York Times has found. While previously a small number of felons were able to reclaim their gun rights, the process became commonplace in many states in the late 1980s, after Congress started allowing state laws to dictate these reinstatements — part of an overhaul of federal gun laws orchestrated by the National Rifle Association. The restoration movement has gathered force in recent years, as gun rights advocates have sought to capitalize on the 2008 Supreme Court ruling that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to bear arms.
This gradual pulling back of what many Americans have unquestioningly assumed was a blanket prohibition has drawn relatively little public notice. Indeed, state law enforcement agencies have scant information, if any, on which felons are getting their gun rights back, let alone how many have gone on to commit new crimes.
The same people who are now pointing to the mentally ill as “the problem” neglected to tell us all how hard they have been working to ease restrictions on gun ownership for anyone and everyone.
MikeJ
They aren’t so generous about allowing ex-cons to vote.
Elizabelle
Will read your post in a moment, Kay, but have to love this, from the NY Times:
The Freedom Group. Which is gun companies.
Fucking obscene use of language. George Orwell applauds.
Forum Transmitted Disease
Why would the NRA want people convicted of violent crimes to be able to buy and own guns?
Huh. If I were the thinking type, I’d think about that.
Kay
@MikeJ:
I know, right? They have these big, boring round table discussions on whether felons deserve to vote, because they broke the law. Yet they’re handing them weapons.
The objective here is to conduct an experiment: does having a weapon make any person more dangerous or deadly? We’re the people they’re conducting the experiment ON. Luckily, they’ve set it up so we can’t collect any data, so we’ll never know.
David Hunt
@Elizabelle:
I have no ida what’s written on Orwell’s gravestone but sometimes I think it should be, “I told you so.”
c u n d gulag
Because, “Freedom!”
And nothing says “Freedom!” more than the right to let any and every one – healthy, sick, sane, or certifiably insane, have as many guns and as much ammo as they want!
BECAUSE, “FREEDOM!”
And please show me where the right and freedom to own and carry a gun, supercede the right and freedom of others to pursue “… Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” – if not LIFE itself?
Something tells me we need to change the spelling of that, to “FreeDUMB!”
Kay
@Elizabelle:
I think Cerberus are school privatizers. There’s a tight fit between school privatizers and gun sellers. One more reason to cast a wary eye on school privatizers.
burnspbesq
Back when I worked for the Office of Chief Counsel at IRS, I had a case involving a guy who was arrested for threatening to shoot an IRS collections person. As a condition of being released on his own recognizance, he was required to surrender all of his guns and ammo to the clerk of the district court.
He was convicted, served his time, and went back to the clerk’s office to retrieve his guns and ammo. The clerk said to him, “I can give you your guns and ammo, but then that nice FBI agent over there will have to arrest you for being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm.” The guy left without his guns — and claimed a theft loss deduction on his return.
Mnemosyne
@MikeJ:
That was my first thought, too. We have to deny ex-felons their civil right to vote forever because they committed a crime but, hey, here’s a gun to make up for it!
Kay
@burnspbesq:
The federal law is still really tight. If you’re convicted of a crime under federal law you’re not getting your weapon back.
It’s just state law crimes, so the vast majority of violent crime.
I have to laugh, I really do. They’re screaming and yelling about “looking for signs” (whatever that means) among the mentally ill, and they’re quietly handing guns back to felons with no judicial discretion and sometimes no review at all. They worked hard to defeat the one and only system we had to identify and bar people who might go batshit crazy!
Jax6655
OK.
I hope they can find better test cases as examples. While it is appalling that, with his history, Zettergren was able to gain access to firearms, the fact that he shot a man who was trying to rape his (unconscious?) girlfriend probably isn’t the most sympathetic example.
Just all kinds of wrong here.
Kristin
The big excuse I’m hearing is, “evil people will do what evil people will do, and no regulation will stop them.”
You know what would help, though? Not giving guns back to people who you consider “evil.”
Bill in Section 147
Once again weakly enforced, poorly written regulations that are not adequately funded prove the government cannot solve the problems created by increasing access to arms and ammunition.
It really too bad for the car and towing lobbies that the Bill of Rights did not consider horse ownership or carriage rights necessary for a well regulated militia.
At least then our roads would be safer. Yet more government fail.
Feudalism Now!
@Mnemosyne: Well as Malcolm X said, it’s the Ballot or the Bullet.
The battle is being fought at the wrong level. We need state level groups targeting the loop holes. We need ALEC type support and coordination. We do not have this now and it shows.
Capri
@Forum Transmitted Disease: Because their money is as green as everyone else’s.
mcmullje
I read this as a comment on another website:
“If you don’t support a ban on assault weapons, then remove all the metal detectors from the doors of all government buildings-including the Supreme Court. If it is acceptable to have guns in my child’s classroom, or my church or my office, I want to take a gun to your office. You’ll feel safer.”
R. Porrofatto
Another one.
“Somebody can be barred from taking a flight at O’Hare International Airport because he is a suspected terrorist but not from buying a gun…”
“The Government Accountability Office examined gun purchases by people on the government’s terrorist watch list. It concluded that such people bought guns and explosives from licensed dealers on 865 occasions between 2004 and 2009.”
Thank you NRA!
SatanicPanic
Their concern about the mental health of the country would be more convincing if they were making any real efforts to make things better. They only thing they have to offer is more jails.
johnny aquitard
I noticed that they don’t have a problem with regulating and curtailing the right to vote for certain other people as well.
I really think they want to destroy our society and our democratic institutions. Public schools being one of them. Give guns to everyone out there, and massacres are gonna happen. It ultimately undermines people’s trust and faith in the things the Right is against. Which is what they want.
It’s an indirect terrorism. Same methods, same aims, but they just indirectly use the most suggestible and susceptible and mentally ill people to do the deed by making sure they can easily get a hold of weapons.
And really, is that really much different from AQ or Hezbollah recruiting and grooming the mentally unstable in their societies to don an explosive belt and go out with a bang, with the ultimate goal of undermining that society’s insistutions?
gocart mozart
Well at least these felons won’t be able to vote.
Villago Delenda Est
Never, ever forget that the NRA is, first and foremost, a lobbying group for the gun and ammunition manufacturers.
This is about moving product, with little or no concern about who uses the product, and what they use it for. The cash register chings for ammo used on a firing range or in a classroom in Connecticut.
“Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department’, says Wernher von Braun.”
Elizabelle
Another day, another multiple fatalities shooting. From Reuters, just up in the NYTimes:
Police recovered a handgun at the scene.
American exceptionalism.
We’re looking at you, Colorado.
catclub
@MikeJ: Voting isn’t in the constitution.
Pococurante
@Jax6655:
That was my take on it as well. I can’t say I would have taken the time first to yell at him.
trollhattan
Jeez, anybody else seen this post by Eric Loomis yet?
Scared people are scared. Armed and scared of “liberals”, DFHs and of course, teh brownz.
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2012/12/on-metaphors-and-violence
A more interesting development–1. CalSTRS (state teachers retirement system) threatens to sell of its Cerberus investment and 2. Cerberus announces it’s selling its investment in the company that makes the Bushmaster mass murder rifle.
i.e., Union thug moocher teachers are power-grabbing your Freedoms(tm). Yay, thugs.
Unironically I guess, the Bushmaster maker’s owner is called Freedom Group. God, you can sniff these lunatics out a mile away, just from their names.
http://www.sacbee.com/2012/12/18/5062124/cerberus-selling-stake-in-gunmaker.html
catclub
@Pococurante: As described, he shot a man who was no longer trying to rape the girlfriend.
A little more like self-defense claims when you shoot someone in the back.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Villago Delenda Est:
The Gun Control Battle. It’s Not About Guns As Weapons, but Guns as Symbols. It’s a pretty interesting read.
I found the full read worth the (relatively brief)time it took.
Mnemosyne
@Jax6655:
No one’s saying he shouldn’t have beaten the crap out of the guy. But execution on the spot was a bit too much, don’t you think?
ETA: Because I am a good liberal — beaten the crap out of the guy and then called the police.
LanceThruster
An ex-roommate had to surrender his firearms (including 5 different M-16 variants) when he was charged with domestic assault (pepper spraying an ex-gf who drunkenly attacked him). The charges were dropped after over a year with no actual court appearance, yet he will only be allowed to retrieve his weaponry after first filing about $1200 worth of forms. I do not know if he’s gotten his property back yet.
I understand the caution and think it was proper (apparently, after the OJ murders, domestic abuse got more stringent enforcement protocols). It also seems as if some really blatant cases readily slip through the cracks, or more specifically in this case, have all meaningful obstacles removed.
Kay
@Kristin:
The original prohibition came about in the 1930’s. I don’t know why there’s such resistance on the Right to learning from experience. It’s incredibly arrogant to ignore what’s come before. We don’t have to learn these lessons over and over and over. Their experiments have been tried. They failed.
trollhattan
Drat, beaten to it upthread. Darn you, slow typing fingerz.
gene108
@catclub:
If you ignore the the 15th, 19th, 24th and 26th (I think) Amendments, plus there’s the one that allows D.C. to have electoral votes in a Presidential election.
Mnemosyne
@trollhattan:
Actually, doesn’t “head on a stick” imply execution by the state, who would then put the traitors’ severed heads up on poles as a warning to everyone else?
There was a lot of dancing around with heads on sticks during the French Revolution but, again, those were people who had been guillotined by the government. Hmm.
Mnemosyne
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
I’m pretty sure that fervor is not nearly as asymmetrical anymore.
Tim
I would like to suggest an idea that I haven’t seen anywhere else, I wish I had.
You probably remember MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Drivers). This group worked tirelessly for decades to pass legislation as well as to change public attitudes. I remember how the liquor industry (manufacturers, distributors, retailers) hated them but you can’t win in a fight with committed moms. I worked for a major brewer at the time, and I can tell you they hated MADD. No matter, they couldn’t stop increased enforcement, lower blood alcohol requirements, stiffer sentencing, and liability for industry negligence.
I hope that mothers of victims will come together to form such a group. It was wives and mothers who forced Bush to form a 9-11 commission. It was mothers who forced change upon Northern Ireland when they got fed up. It was MADD who changed public opinion regarding drunk driving.
Please, moms, put together a group, form local affiliates. And Dads like me will be a part of it too. We cannot depend on politicians. Let’s go, “Mothers Against Gun Violence”.
trollhattan
@Mnemosyne:
In the Edroso spirit, I’m sensing they’re “runnin’ scared” this go-round, in a way that, say, the Colorado theater or the Giffords shooting didn’t elicit. All those poor children, have focused the country’s attention more deeply.
Also, too, their paranois lobes are set to “11” because the dusky Kenyan is a dangerous lame duck Kenyan. Wayne has told us this himself, countless times in the last year.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
In Ohio news, tone deaf as always, Fox News Personality John Kasich says he’ll sign a new law allowing guns into the Ohio Statehouse parking garage — despite calls that he veto the bill in the wake of the Connecticut school shooting.
The Fox News Personality is expected to sign the legislation this week. It will allow guns for the first time in the parking garages underneath the Statehouse in Columbus.Guns would have to be kept in cars, and would not be allowed into the Statehouse. (I’m most likely trailing Kay on this announcement, but just in case…)
Svensker
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
Why are guns not allowed in statehouses and the Congress? Or courts? Why do government workers need protection against these innocent guns which never harm anyone? Also, too, I’ll be packing heat on my next plane flight in the States. Can’t I? Why not? Will Gov. Kasich or Mr. Pierre explain this to me, please? I feel my rights to shoot up government offices is being infringed.
Paul in KY
@Elizabelle: What about ‘Cerberus’? The guarder of Hell. They sure were snickering when they came up with that one.
Kay
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
Why stop there? I thought guns made everyone much safer.
Conservatives should have the Courage of their Convictions. If their guns belong in our schools, guns belong in their workplace, too. We shouldn’t have all the benefit of their hard work “keeping us safe”. I want to give this gift to them.
Either guns make things safer or better or they don’t. Either guns increase danger or they don’t. No reason to disallow them in courts, actually. The more guns the better, right?
Roger Moore
@catclub:
I know you’re snarking, but stripping criminals of the right to vote is specifically OK by the constitution: the 14th Amendment says that participation in rebellion or other crime is the one reason for denying the vote that won’t result in loss of representatives in Congress.
Groucho48
@trollhattan:
I don’t have a whole lot of sympathy for that guy. Internet tough guys SHOULD get called on their macho posturing, even if their actual premise is correct.
As to felons getting guns. I would be VERY interested in seeing what proportion of white felons and of non-white felons get their guns back.
Paul in KY
@Jax6655: Assuming she was unconcious & incapable of intent, I guess he was stopping an assault on a loved one in his own home.
catclub
@gene108: I was being ironical.
LanceThruster
@Kay:
Agreed. They say making us Dodge City coast to coast is the way to go, so they need to put up or shut up.
SatanicPanic
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): I think that’s the heart of the matter. These people are afraid of a changing world where they will have less influence. Which actually makes me hopeful, because their crying and stockpiling guns is a sign that they’re actually losing in the long run.
Amir Khalid
@Tim:
This is precisely the idea Joe Nocera had in his latest column for the New York Times.
catclub
@trollhattan: “have focused the country’s attention more deeply.”
I suspect that fact that almost all were upper middle class, and pale, has a lot to do with it, too. Someone noted that Newtown has over 44% of households with incomes over $100k/yr.
Not plutocrats, but definitely NYT readers, territory.
trollhattan
@Groucho48:
You might enjoy TBogg’s takedown of perhaps the Intertrons original 101st Keyboard Kommando, ironically, another state university employee who has NOT been visited by the state po-lice, despite his many, many calls to violence.
http://tbogg.firedoglake.com/2012/12/18/when-im-called-off-i-got-a-sawed-off/
scav
One set of libertarians suggesting we drill children to rush shooters while other libertarians work to enact laws to make it easier for others to drill same children with bullets. Tidy little mutually reinforcing (re-enforcing) system they’ve got going. Is it one of their virtuous ones?
Kristin
@Kay: I can’t tell if they’re really that dense, or if they just don’t want to.
McArdle and Douthat seem to just be using “there’s nothing we can do” to justify their desire to do nothing. If they simply tell themselves that there’s no point, than they don’t have to feel bad when the — inevitable, really — next school mass shooting occurs.
The “base” seems to have deluded themselves into believing some sort of data which they think proves that they need MORE GUNS to prevent violence. They want to believe that because having guns makes them feel better about their lives (for whatever reason), but I also think they’re just sort of dumb. “Well, if Adam Lanzas are out there, I need to have even bigger and better guns and magazines than he does so I can protect myself.” The logical conclusion is beyond them.
As we keep pointing out, their idea didn’t exactly work out for Mrs. Lanza.
Enlightened Liberal
I think the solution to this problem is to arm brown people. When the Black Panthers showed up at the California State House in the 60’s carrying lawfully, Ronald Reagan signed off on some of the most restrictive gun control laws in the country.
About 10 Nation of Islam members bearing arms would take care of state laws. 20 and there would be a move to repeal the 2nd Amendment.
Mnemosyne
@catclub:
I think part of the shock is that it wasn’t one of the dangerous Others they subconsciously fear that did this — it was a nice white boy just like one of their own sons or brothers. Add in the fact that they can’t comfort themselves that the victims were in a place they “shouldn’t have been” (we heard a zillion comments about the dangerousness of suburban supermarket parking lots after Tucson and “why did they take their kids to a midnight show?” after Aurora) and I think this crime is really bursting past a lot of the psychological barriers people had put up to convince themselves it could only happen to other people.
catclub
@Enlightened Liberal: “10 Nation of Islam members bearing arms would take care of state laws. ”
I agree, but this is very similar to the ‘who will bell the cat’ problem. If you were black, and asked to volunteer to be
in that group, how much would your life insurance policy go up? Would your family be in favor of you doing this?
Kay
@Kristin:
I completely agree. It’s like a lot of issues on the Right. The smarter set will admit a problem (global warming, health care, and on and on) but the dogma keeps them in a box where they cannot propose a solution, any solution, so we get that they “feel bad” and then that’s it. Nothing. “Feeling bad” is enough.
McArdle isn’t religious, publicly, anyway, so she can’t rely on “it’s God’s will” or “it’s God’s punishment”. She has to appear to be operating on logic and facts. I really think that’s why she went so far afield here. Everywhere she looks she hits the narrow walls of that ideology. She ends up with little kids protecting themselves from assault weapons.
I understand she’s trying or planning to have children. I hope she develops some common sense between now and then, because she’s going to be a really goofy and impractical mother, if this is an example of her ideas about what kids can and cannot do :)
liberal
@Villago Delenda Est:
Agreed.
catclub
@Mnemosyne: “it was a nice white boy”
It always is. Kip Kinkel, Columbine, the guy in Arizona.
Always a white guy who has problems but they did not think was violent.
I read this, you may have,too.
https://balloon-juice.com/2012/12/15/so-predictable-3/
First six:
Have some predictions:
1. The shooter will turn out to be male.
2. He will turn out to be white.
3. He will turn out to be angry at a woman, or women in general
4. If he’s angry at an ex (wife or lover), she either works at the school or he murdered her before going to the school.
5. More than half of the victims will be female.
6. The weapons will have been obtained legally.
So all the things that are shocking this time, were shocking all the other times. But this time the victims (or their parents) are MUCH closer to the average readership of the NYT.
Bill Murray
@Roger Moore: individual rights to guns aren’t in the Constitution either
LanceThruster
@Enlightened Liberal:
True dat.
gvg
@Tim: RE the commenter who said he hadn’t seen anything about an equivalent to MADD mothers against gun violence…there have already been a couple of threads on here that people mentioned that idea.
graves007
By allowing the mentally deranged to purchase and own guns creates jobs and is good for the economy, dontcha know?
Do you have any idea how much money would be lost if the mentally deranged werent allowed to own guns? That’s just more regulation and everyone knows how much regulation kills jobs and hurts the economy. Republicans have been saying this over and over and over again.
Let’s not forget that by not allowing the mentally deranged to own guns is a violation of their 2nd amendment right! Everyone is entitled the right to bear arms. By excluding the mentally deranged you head down that slippery slope of denying someones rights just because you dont think like them or agree with them, and that’s a travesty.
johnny aquitard
@johnny aquitard: Just found this at NYTimes: What drives suicidal mass killers
Yeah, thought there was some similarities there. There’s only 1 party that wants guns everywhere, no restrictions. Funny how that dovetails with their nihilistic strategy of fear, paranoia and the undermining our institutions for their own political gain.
Pococurante
@catclub:
“Self” defense. So I can only “defend” myself. Glad I’m not in your monkey sphere.
That was not a gun control issue. The rapist was using a few inches of soft muscle. The boyfriend could just as easily beat him to death with a lamp.
Anyway I’ll be blunt. Having been part of a lawsuit going now for three years with the local child molester, knowing the people involved because some of them are family, and knowing adult rapists are nearly as unrecoverable as child rapists, any of the adults would have gotten an “innocent for circumstances as described” from me.
I have no problem with vengeance. Why should we have to go through bone-crushing debt and time away from quality life because some freak went loose on us.
You can explain your abstract purist stance to your friends and loved ones should something that tragic ever happen to you.
Half the folks who come to this blog are one foot into firebagging. Restrict guns from families with in-home dysfunctional members? Oppose semi-automatic guns with extended magazines? Close gun show loopholes? I’m all over that and support it.
But I will protect my friends and family if I have to. Either that or I’d have to kill myself if I let it happen and I did nothing. For all Cole’s recent protestations something tells me he would do the same if he walked in on something similar with anyone he actually knew.
Pococurante
Incidentally, some of the best ideas I’ve heard this past week:
* Require licensing for all states on par with CCW
* Require liability insurance for each gun owned
* Ban semi-automatic assaults guns except for those individuals certified by the military and lump magazine capacity with same
* Require five year reviews by certified instructors
This makes an interesting blend of Israel’s and Mexico’s laws. By aligning ourselves with Mexico we minimize gun availability there (consistency with drug/gun laws) (the problem to date is we overly regulate drugs but under regulate guns – they have the opposite problem. We send them guns they send us drugs. This new approach makes us more rational)
Jax6655
@Mnemosyne:
No doubt. Rapist/Gunman with issues. Like I said, all kinds of wrong.
catclub
@Pococurante: “So I can only “defend” myself”
No, what I meant was, like the case in Florida, once you are not being threatened by someone, you are no longer justified
in shooting them in the back and claiming self-defense.
I do not know the exact details of the case, perhaps the drunk guy WAS still trying to rape the woman. But it sounded to me like he stopped when the boyfriend yelled and they had an argument, then the boyfriend killed him.
“Why should we have to go through bone-crushing debt and time away from quality life because some freak went loose on us.”
This makes it sound like you are on Jack Nicholson’s side in A Few Good Men.
The standard answer is we do this as one price of civilization, so that ‘justice’ in our society is not one of personal blood vengeance. I will note there are societies where the level of insults that MUST be met with a murderous response is much lower. (Plus, the woman that was nearly raped gets killed, too, on principle.) I would prefer not to live in them.
Hypatia's Momma
I have no problem with the shooting of rapists. Going on to cover up the resulting homicide, that’s a problem. But shooting him on the spot? No.
karen marie
@Pococurante: Nowhere did it say that the girlfriend was unconscious or that she was raped.
Djur
@karen marie: Having been a witness to a situation which could have been described in almost identical terms (although, luckily, without any violence), I have to agree. Alcohol makes matters of consent extremely complicated, but there’s not enough information in the quoted article to decide either way.
ETA: To clarify: I don’t think there’s sufficient information to say “well, that guy was a rapist so he deserved to be shot.” I also don’t think there’s sufficient information to say that he was innocent.
Not that it matters — I think the point is that the situation would have been resolved without gunfire if a person with a history of misusing guns hadn’t been given his guns.
ETA 2: Have to back that off: his conviction was for marijuana dealing, not gun-related.
Mnemosyne
@Pococurante:
He didn’t have to go to that much trouble, because he had a gun easily at hand despite being a convicted felon. Which is kind of our point.
Hypatia's Momma
@karen marie:
Is it really so hard to use google?