I was wondering how Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun agitprop arm thetrace.org would spin the fact that Homeland Security cop Eulalio Tordil murdered three people despite the fact that a court had ordered him to surrender his guns. A reasonable person might conclude that Tordil’s ability to secure a gun after the judge’s ruling reveals the utter futility of court-ordered gun confiscation. Trace writer Dan Friedman ain’t that kind of guy. Here’s his take . . .
Two months [before Tordil killed his wife and went postal] he had surrendered at least 10 guns under a judge’s order issued after Tordil’s wife accused him of physically and sexually abusing his family.
But Tordil, a Federal Protective Service officer, kept at least one weapon when he handed in the rest of his arsenal: a .40-caliber Glock he allegedly used to carry out the shootings on May 4 and 5.
Tordil bought the gun legally in Las Vegas in 2014, said State’s Attorney John McCarthy at a hearing on Monday where Tordil was denied bond.
Tordil kept the weapon by exploiting a weakness in state and federal laws designed to keep domestic abusers from using weapons: Local law enforcement had no way of knowing he owned it.
Maryland has a handgun registry. But Nevada, where Tordil purchased the Glock, does not. Nor is there a federal registry of firearms, the spectre of which the National Rifle Association and its allies have used to knock down a range of legislation.
David Cheplak is a spokesman for the Baltimore Field Division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, which traced the gun, found in Tordil’s car, to a federally licensed dealer in Las Vegas. He said that if Tordil had bought the weapon in Maryland, he would have been required to register it there with state police.
So if Tordil had registered the GLOCK, it would have been confiscated. And Tordil couldn’t possibly have secured another firearm — oh wait. He did. OK, then he couldn’t have used alternative murder methods such as a knife, his car, a baseball bat, a can of gasoline and matches, etc. Actually, he could.
Did you catch that? Tordil used two .40 caliber GLOCKs in his rampage. Where’d he get the second one? And why didn’t The Trace mention it? Yet another sin of omission, in an ends-justify-the-means kinda way.
And just in case you’re considering entertaining The Trace’s opinion that America needs national gun registration — or at least a 50 state gun registration system — their article later points out that “just two of [the 10 confiscated] guns were registered in Maryland.” What does that tell you? It tells The Trace that we need more gun control laws! Implied, but not directly stated: comprehensive state forearms registration and/or a national gun registry.
Maryland has a relatively robust law aimed at alleged domestic abusers. The authority to require suspects to give up guns has “enormous benefits for victims of domestic violence,” [Prince George’s County sheriff’s office spokesperson Sharon] Taylor says, but is limited by the lack of a totally effective gun registry.
In a country with over 300 million guns — a significant percentage of which are in criminal hands — there is no such thing as a totally effective gun registry. The Trace and its ilk can blame surrounding states that don’t have gun registries but the fact remains: gun registration doesn’t reduce crime. Why would it?
Given the inherent fallibility of a gun registry, given the fact that a government gun registry enables government confiscation of firearms from otherwise law-abiding citizens, given that the Firearm Owners Protection Act bans any federal gun registry, given that the Second Amendment prohibits any federal gun registry, The Trace’s dream of national gun registration is impractical, infective, a slippery slope to government tyranny, and a violation of a civil right guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.
As for Tordil, the restraining order — mandating the surrender of his firearms — wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on. Obviously. Well, at least to people capable of rational thought.