We’re definitely seeing a serious increase in the number of articles saying the same old things we’ve heard about assault weapons:
In a January series on murder in Jacksonville, the Times-Union discovered that, of 136 people accused in gun homicides over the past three years, one out of every eight was a juvenile.
What that means is that a lot of them won’t be around at class reunion time – if they were in school at all.
McGuinness, for example, told me about a 13-year-old who fatally shot a woman during a robbery attempt.
He’s now locked up for life.
Good! If you murder someone you should go away for life. I don’t care if you’re 13. If you’re old enough to run around with a gun robbing people, you’re old enough to go to prison. But here’s more PSH:
Guns are too easy to get in this city. McGuinness said that a number of his clients say that they stole their guns from trains in the CSX railyard, a contention that a CSX spokesman told the Times-Union in January is more legend than fact. Yet, it’s a story that McGuinness’ clients continue to tell.
So CSX says it isn’t true, there’s really no reason for people to ship guns on rail cars, but we’ll print it anyway. Great journalism!
Then there are the community gun stashes. The gun shows. The lapsed federal ban on sales of assault rifles – weapons that are designed more to maim than to protect.
If they are designed to maim and not protect, why do the police use them?
Right now, McGuinness said, a drug dealer can send an 18-year-old with a clean record into a gun shop to buy several of them.
“If you’ve had a good week selling drugs, you can outfit yourself and your buddies with AK 47s,” he said.
Already a felony.
Unless the dealer in the shop is willing to break to law he’s not going to be selling to any 18yro, clean or not. But it’s the j-ville times/union, a crap-sheet not exactly known for it’s truthfulness regarding gun-issues. Kind of like the St. Pete times North.