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Strangely, the video above is titled McDonald’s shooter purchased gun legally in Maine. Odd because the report makes no mention of this fact. I reckon the news hounds at WMTW-TV got the information after the report aired and figured it was really important. It isn’t. In fact, I’m sick of the media’s fascination with where a bad guy got his gun – as if a shooting could have been avoided if only the bad guy didn’t get a gun. As our President recently pointed out, there are parts of this country where it’s easier to buy a gun than finding a single Democrat who supports gun rights (or something like that). Don’t get me wrong . . .

I appreciate the need to trace a “crime gun” to see if it was bought by a straw-purchaser – someone who isn’t prohibited from purchasing a gun who lies on their ATF form 4473, and knowingly buys a heater for a prohibited person. People who “lie for the other guy” should be prosecuted for their crime.

That said, the media’s focus on the source of a gun used in a crime plays straight into the hands of the civilian disarmament industrial complex, who want fence straddlers to believe that gun control stops crime. It doesn’t.

In a country of over 300 million firearms, one way or another, bad people will get guns. One need only look at firearms-related crime in countries with total or near-total gun bans (Mexico, Venezuela, Australia, Ireland, etc.) to see the futility of trying to stop bad people from obtaining firearms by limiting citizens’ ability to legally purchase one.

Equally, does the media highlight the source of a knife used in a crime? A baseball bat? They do not. Sure it’s interesting to know where a criminal got his gun, but it’s far less important than the perp’s criminal record, and the justice system’s failure to remove these violent people from society.

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41 COMMENTS

  1. They will blame us for owning inanimate objects, but not themselves for chanting this hateful filfth into these maniacs heads. Honestly, is there a single “manifesto” that doesn’t reek of the liberal excuse culture? Even the right wing ones sound like they copy and pasted conservative buzzwords into a feminist anti-penis rant. Whiny entitlement destroys nations. Socialism invites losers to build empires out of their excuses.

  2. Did the buyer admit to being an unlawful user of marijuana on the 4473? I’ve heard that’s a big deal on this particular blog.

    • 🙂

      Yeah, it’s equivalent to asking, “did you ever lie to your spouse about how much you spent on that darned thing?”

    • Form 4473 asks “Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?” There’s a bit of wiggle room there, especially if you live in a state where marijuana use is legal. You know, on the state level. In any case, I answer it truthfully. You?

      • While I live and work in a state where Marijuana has been decriminalized, and I am gradually coming around to agreeing with that, it’s still illegal on a Federal level. Without making a moral judgement on whether that Federal law should change, to assume they weren’t talking about that where the form is concerned is perhaps wishful thinking.

        • glad you have those zoned-out drivers who are too mellow to bother obeying traffic laws, like too much trouble to move the foot from the accelerator to the brake pedal.

        • ‘Reefer Madness’ (1936)

          Cautionary tale features a fictionalized and highly exaggerated take on the use of marijuana. A trio of drug dealers lead innocent teenagers to become addicted to “reefer” cigarettes by holding wild parties with jazz music.

          http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028346/

          “Hey, hey, listen, guys… Look, I don’t wanna mess with no reefer addicts, okay?”
          –‘Skinhead’ (J.J. Cohen) to ‘Marvin Berry’ (Harry Waters Jr.) in 1955: ‘Back to the Future’ (1985)

      • Isn’t an SBR a “controlled substance”? Then I’m guilty. But, RF, 5 years ago there were no states allowing marijuana use.

  3. Don’t you ever want to know where a person responsible for a vehicular homicide bought their car and how well they were vetted (No pun) by the dealership? When will we crack down on bad apple dealerships???

    • My thought exactly! Where did the Santa Monica “shooter” get the BMW he used to attack half of his victims? If he bought it used, was that seller a “Straw Purchaser”?

  4. You have to understand that this is the illogical conclusion to the mindset that children should never be punished for anything, that every possible instance where they might make the wrong choice must be removed from their vicinity and if they still find a way to be naughty, you must talk with them to show them the error of their ways. To a point I agree with this philosophy when children are very young, but just like telling them a thousand times that they will fall and hurt themselves has no real effect, you kinda have to let them fall from a nonfatal height a few times before they get the idea, or burn themselves when you’re not looking so they understand that pans are hot. These societal apologist people are obsessed with removing the gun from the equation because they believe that will solve the problem of people making the bad choice to be violent or criminal, when in fact what you need to do is let them appreciate the true result of those choices. Open carry does that, it makes it plainly obvious that if you make really bad choices you will most likely end up with really bad wounds or really sad friends and family. Guns are tools, criminals are fools, let’s educate them, that will lead to gun safety.

    • My father, rest his soul, was a telephone man all his life, for the Chesapeake and Potomac (a phone company later absorbed by Verizon, not a railroad). One year, the high school football team asked him to work on some army field telephones, for communications from the radio booth to the sideline. Yeah, it was THAT long ago.

      He set one up in the parents’ bedroom, down the hall, and into my sister’s bedroom (when she came along, I had to move to the rear, enclosed former porch – that’s how it goes). And he yelled at me, “put your hand on those two terminals.” When I did, he cranked the side crank as hard as he could.

      The resulting shock taught me a valuable lesson. I still treasure the moment – and his sense of humor.

      • William, great story! Reminds me of the day I learned the red wire on a household phone line is hot. I was running an extension from the wall jack to the loft bed in my college dorm room. I was stripping the wires, with my teeth of course, and crimping on the RJ… whatever the hell number attached to the wall and phone ends of the cable. I made the end at the wall, plugged it in, ran the cable to the loft, and began stripping that end… again, with my teeth. It took three tries on the red wire to realize that the first one did, in fact, shock me! It was later that I learned that it carries something like 70 volts. “Yep, that sounds about right!” was my reaction to that factoid.

  5. Well, technically speaking, if the shooter couldn’t get a gun there would be no shooting.

    But to quote that immortal American, Archie Bunker. “Would you prefer they wuz pushed outta windows, little girl?”

  6. “Can’t get a gun.” “Where did he get the gun?”

    Getting. That’s all these people understand. They never do anything but get get get. They’ve never made anything in their lives. Which is why they don’t understand that making a gun is easier than growing weed. How’s that ban on weed going?

  7. It’s perfectly relevant if your idea is to ban the legal sale of guns. And the truth is that there will be a lot less “gun violence” if guns are made illegal, in the same way there is less drug use when it is illegal. But that doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. I am not willing to become a statistic in order to decrease another stat.

      • No. The facts say something different entirely. Drug abuse was very low to marginal before drugs were scheduled and made illegal. It only blossomed after they were made illegal.

        Only 80 years ago or so, one could buy Cocaine, Morphine and Heroin in your local pharmacy. Weed was a little harder to obtain, because no one considered how to make it more widely available. It was only easy if you knew someone on the dark side of town, across the tracks.

  8. Many media outlets have admittedly turned to using misleading headlines in order to get attention, acquire readers, and up their clicks. Rather doubt this headline was based on a last-minute update that could not be fully reported in the article/video.

  9. How about focusing on where the bad guy came from, who left him out of jail. Silly facts like the medicine he was on or not taking and all that.

  10. They never say, “… (he) stole it from County Democratic Attorney John Jones’ house.” Doesn’t fit the narrative. Musta got it from a Nasty Gun Store, instead.

    The intellectual dishonesty of these peeholes is appalling.

    • True, but they might jump over that owner’s details and say where HE bought the gun. “The gun was traced to XYZ Guns in Outer Buttswainia where the laws are lax.” Because, y’know, “Gun store bad! Must crush bad gun store!”

  11. You’re saying that a straw purchaser should be prosecuted for breaking a law that you have stated is unconstitutional?

  12. Shock value and sensationalized media is alive and well. The argument of how or where someone acquired an item used in a crime is faced with assumption of what may or may not have happened if things were different. Even a straw purchase relies on someone else to follow through with use, a misuse, a crime.

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