What Law or Laws...

...could prevent something like this from happening? In a nutshell, an 18 year old woman was shot to death over a disagreement at a local house party. People showed up uninvited, were asked to leave, and as they left the premises, the woman who was killed stuck her head out a window and told them to keep walking. Someone from the group produced a firearm and took a few shots at the window, and the young woman was struck and later died from her wounds.

This story has been back in the news today with the arrest of the alleged shooter. It turns out that the young woman who was killed did not know her assailant - this was a completely random shooting. The shooter in question was too young to legally own a handgun in MA to begin with (he's 19, you cannot get a MA LTC for pistols until age 21); by all accounts he was most likely ineligible to own a firearm legally in any case.

So what law or laws could prevent something like this from happening?

We have a young man who decides that the proper response to someone chiding him for being somewhere he wasn't welcome was to produce a firearm and start shooting. He didn't care if he killed someone; he didn't care that he was breaking dozens of laws simply touching the gun; he was not the least bit concerned about any existing law currently on the books. Someone disrespected him. That someone had to die. That was this young man's mentality.

Folks, no law in existence will stop someone like that. You can't legislate a sense of morality. You can't pass a bill that makes people respect human life. You can't cram decency down someone's throat with a law or a stack of laws. All the law can do is punish someone after the fact. Let's face facts here: all the laws the Commonwealth of MA has that dictate who can own a firearm in this state were meaningless; the young man was reportedly homeless, and didn't go to his police chief to get a Class A LTC. He either stole the gun or bought it on the street, immune to any laws of the state.

He then decided to carry that gun, even though he did not possess the proper permit to carry a concealed weapon. He fired that gun, even though there are laws against the discharge of firearms in city limits. And he fired that gun at another human being, breaking laws against assault, battery, and murder. Countless laws were broken. A life was taken. And yet to the proponents of gun control, one more law would have made the difference.

Please, those of you who favor gun control, tell me. How does limiting me, a law-abiding citizen, to buying one gun a month stop a young man from callously taking a life? How does arbitrarily dictating what additional features my rifle has protect us from people who show no more concern for killing their fellow humans than most people show towards putting down rabid animals? How does forcing the law abiding people to jump through multiple hoops and spend hundreds of dollars to get a permit make a lick of difference when any homeless crackhead can get one on the street?

Focus on nailing the folks who break the laws and not restricting those of us who, by our very nature, will obey them. Not only that, put them in prison and keep them there - the current system of "catch and release" (also known as "157 strikes and you're out") isn't cutting it as a deterrent. When a young gangbanger knows he'll only serve a few short years for gunning down an adversary in cold blood - and add to his "street cred" by doing dime, what possible disincentive is offered? Find them, put them away for a long time, and execute the worst offenders.

But then again, it's more politically correct and expedient to rail against the gun owners, isn't it?

That is all