This is a standard debate topic of the whole gun debate. The anti-rights side proposes a new law or restriction. The gun rights side notes that the law won’t protect anybody because criminals don’t care. The antis counter that criminals run stop signs, so maybe we should pull up all the stop signs, and gun rights advocates are proposing anarchy.
Yeah, well let’s look at this story:
A member of a visiting minor league football team allegedly brandished a gun during a dispute with a rival player after a game at Terra Nova High School in Pacifica on Saturday afternoon, a police sergeant said.
At about 4:43 p.m., police responded to a report that a suspect was brandishing a firearm on the Terra Nova High School football field after a 2 p.m. game between the Pacifica Islanders and the Sacramento-based Capital City Fury, according to Pacifica police Sgt. Dave Barranti.
Officer stopped a black vehicle leaving the scene and detained the car’s two occupants, according to Barranti.
Police arrested one of the occupants, Julius Cesar Douglas, Jr., 25, on suspicion of brandishing a firearm, possession of a firearm on school grounds, and being a felon in possession of a firearm, Barranti said.
….Police recovered the weapon, a .38 caliber revolver, and determined that it was stolen. Douglas was also arrested on suspicion of possession of stolen property, according to Barranti.
The second occupant of the vehicle, Kirk Patrick Brown, Jr., a Capital City Fury player, was not involved in the weapon incident, Barranti said.
But police discovered marijuana and arrested Brown, 32, a Sacramento resident, on suspicion of transportation of marijuana, Barranti said.
Both suspects were booked into San Mateo County Jail, police said.
Ok so let’s run down this story from oldest offenses to newest.
We have a football player who committed an un-named felony. Now I’m one of those people who hates what felonies have become in this country, but looking at this story I have my suspicions that this was not one of those “soft” felonies that shouldn’t be felonies or even crimes. Still moving on. At some point this convicted felon gets his hands on a stolen gun. While there are ways to “Launder” a stolen gun by selling it to an FFL BEFORE the ATF bulletin comes out when the gun is reported stolen, it still creates a paper trail which will eventually get back to the thief and the current owner. Also since he was booked on a stolen property charge, this is dubious. This means either HE stole the gun himself, or he bought it through a black-market sale where both parties knew they were violating the law. Given that California has no legal private sales, and you cannot buy a handgun outside your state of residence under federal law, this means he personally stole the gun, or was directly involved in a sale where both he and the seller knew they were illegally transferring a firearm.
Now with his illegal gun he brought it to a game on a school campus. This is also a crime. He was carrying the gun concealed on his person on the campus, which in itself is a crime, but given that a felon cannot have a carry permit, this is a crime EVERYWHERE, and likely the simple act of him TRAVELING to the game was a crime.
While the game was being played he brandished the firearm to threaten another player. Yet another crime! Sorry, even if you are legally carrying a gun, and in a place where your permit is recognized you are not allowed to brandish the firearm for anything that does not justify lethal force.
Now after all this goes down the car he was traveling in was stopped and illegal drugs were found in the car. While there are ways to legally posses marijuana in California (tho its still a federal crime, no matter what the DOJ says) they did not play by those rules either.
You want to talk about criminals who have no regard for the law, these are some great examples.
Now let’s dissect this from a libertarian gun-rights point of view. What laws broken don’t I like here?
Well I think Marijuana should be as legal as cigarettes, and intoxication should be treated like alcohol. I guess that let’s the 2nd guy off the hook, but that’s only if they can’t nail him for transporting stolen property. Sorry, what’s mine isn’t yours, and you shouldn’t steal stuff, or help people who have stolen stuff.
I don’t see a point in making schools “Gun Free Zones”, this guy entered and left school grounds with a hand gun. He wasn’t stopped by security, and if he had SHOT the other player, nothing would have stopped this. Still the idea that other players or fans might be armed might have given him pause in whipping out a gun in the first place…
I also don’t believe in gun permits. If you can OWN a gun, you can carry a gun. Somebody who can legally OWN a gun, but NOT legally CARRY one because they don’t have a piece of paper just seems silly. Back before I got my carry permit I had my carry gun(s) and holsters, and I carried on my property. The ONLY thing that stopped me from stepping OFF my property onto the sidewalk with my loaded 1911 was the law that said I couldn’t. I legally owned a gun, and I could legally shoot a deadly threat…heck if the threat was sending rounds into my house from across the street I could have legally engaged him…I just couldn’t cross the street. How dumb is that?
I don’t like the blanket prohibition of “Felons” possessing firearms. Now while I agree with the libertarian philosophy that “Anybody who can’t be trusted with a firearm should not be free in society”, I don’t think its physically possible. We just don’t have enough prisons to lock up every drunken brawler, or people who make violent threats with no means to carry them out up for life, and once somebody is in prison I don’t see a way you can PROVE they have changed their ways enough to go back to free society. I do think non-violent felonies should NOT ban ownership of guns. Cheating on your taxes, or scrubbing lobsters, or picking pockets doesn’t seem to have any bearing on if somebody is violent or not, so their access to dangerous items is irrelevant in my eyes.
Still if you are a VIOLENT person and convicted of it, I see nothing wrong with having your rights to own a gun revoked until you can otherwise prove you have finished that violent chapter in your life.
So what do we have left even after I just peeled back a bunch of relevant laws. We have a felon who is violent. I don’t know if his prior convictions are violent, but it seems likely given his behavior. Let’s play devil’s advocate and say his felony was shoplifting, or failure to appear in court for a traffic ticket.
We still have a guy with a stolen gun. Hell let’s play libertarian devil’s advocate and say that not only was his prior non-exclusionary, and he didn’t steal the gun personally, and since people should have the right to freely sell their own property without permission slips, we’ll say the thief sold the gun to him and concealed the method of his acquiring it. Well the thief still committed a crime, but unknowingly receiving stolen property isn’t a crime.
Well we still have pulling a gun on another person as a threat over a sports game. SERIOUS CRIME!
That’s all without assuming he’s a VIOLENT felon, and personally stole the gun, or knowingly received a stolen gun.
This is why gun control laws don’t work, and why pro-gun people aren’t talking about anarchy, just common sense!
