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This belongs to you. Take it back...
Thu Apr 19, 2007 at 12:09:07 PM EDT
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| Unlike many pro gun nuts, I actually have great respect for all ten amendments that makeup the Bill Of Rights. I feel I would be a hypocrite if I were to advocate so vociferously for the 1st and 4th amendments without defending the integrity of the 2nd as well. I'm from the south. I have been hunting. I have known guns and gun owners my entire life. I have known people who hunted for sport and I have known folks who hunt because, well, that's how they feed their family. I do not own a gun and I doubt I ever will, but I support the right for law abiding citizens to keep and bear arms. I also support extensive background checks and safety and proficiency training before someone can purchase a firearm. I support waiting periods for gun purchases and I support registration of all firearms. Period. But in the end, the 2nd amendment is the 2nd amendment. Until it is repealed or interpreted differently, it is the law of the land.
That said, there is something deeply, profoundly flawed about a system that could allow this kid:
to legally obtain a firearm.
I'm also getting awfully damn tired of reading stories like this:
Queens Man Kills Mother and 2 Others, Then Himself
A 20-year-old man with a history of mental disturbance shot and killed his mother, her companion and her companion's health care aide before killing himself in a quiet Queens neighborhood yesterday, the police said.
More on the flip... |
| phillip anderson :: A Picture, A Thousand Words... |
Moments before the shootings, the mother, Sonia Taylor, 44, called the police frantically, saying she feared for her life. A fifth person, the companion's nephew, escaped by leaping out of a back window. He had played dead after the gunman grazed him in the leg, the police said.
The killings appear to have been the grim culmination of an increasingly fractious relationship between the gunman, Wade Jimmy Lee Dawkins, and Ms. Taylor, who called the police twice on Monday, saying she was frightened by arguments with her son. The police said they had responded, but concluded that the arguments - one of which was about the use of a computer and a telephone - did not amount to a crime.
Mr. Dawkins was taken to Long Island Jewish Hospital for emotional disturbance in October, after his mother, who worked at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan, called the police, saying he was throwing things around the house. In that instance, too, the police said there was insufficient evidence to arrest Mr. Dawkins. It is unclear whether he was admitted to the hospital. But Ms. Taylor filed a complaint with the Police Department's Internal Affairs Bureau because she thought that he should have been arrested, the police said.
I've got a real bad feeling about what we are going to be dealing with in the years to come. |
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