BOHICA, Part ?

Hoo boy. Things are going to get... ugly...

Patrick seeks to toughen gun laws

Backed by Mayor Thomas M. Menino and Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley, the Patrick administration asked lawmakers yesterday to allow prosecutors to hold suspects in gun cases without bail and to bar gun owners from buying more than one firearm within 30 days or face 2 1/2 years in prison.

Those proposals were offered as part of a broader attack on gun-related violence in the state and were made after the Supreme Judicial Court on Monday banned prosecutors from seeking dangerousness hearings in illegal gun possession cases.

Because when you want to make a dent in gang-related slayings using firearms, the logical place to start is by going after the law-abiding gun owners... I mean, it's just so much easier than keeping the damn criminals in jail, right? Better to make a law-abiding gun owner wait 30 days to buy the second gun in a pair than to actually keep a violent drug dealer locked up.

Here's what's on the agenda:

The administration wants to limit legal gun purchases to one every 30 days, a change intended to cut down on mass gun purchases by people who then sell the guns to people who cannot qualify to own firearms.

The plan would also require that private gun sales be overseen by a licensed gun dealer, so the transaction could be immediately entered into government records.

Got it? One gun a month, to ostensibly thwart strawman purchases - which are already a FEDERAL crime - and no more private sales. I fail to see what stopping private sales is going to accomplish in MA. In order for a "private" sale of a firearm to take place in MA, both the seller and the buyer must have valid MA licenses, and the seller must, within 7 days, submit a form to the Criminal History Systems Board (CHSB) with the buyer's name, address, MA LTC number and all the information about the firearm as well as the seller's name and MA LTC number.

Tell me why this process needs to be changed, why routing the transaction through an FFL will be more thorough?

Answer: It won't. All it does is add another hurdle - and another expense - in the process of transferring a firearm in MA. It's not going to stop Jimmy Gangbanger from trading a rock of crack for a Glock Fohtay. It's not going to magically stop a scumbag from making an illegal sale. I love this thinking - that someone that would sell a gun to an unlicenses/ineligible person would be STOPPED if there were no private sales.

The stupidity is strong with this one...

So, yes, MA gunowners are, once again, getting taken out to the woodshed for the Patrick administration's complete and utter failure in getting a handle on crime. The door to our justice system revolves on and on, letting career criminals walk free among us; gun owners are treated like Nazi war criminals. Par for the course in the Volksrepublik of MA...

That is all.