Thursday, November 4, 2010

13-year-old Chicago Boy Dead

The inexorable flow of guns from the manufacturer through the FFL system to the lawful individual owners, with its inadequate controls, results in this.

Thirteen-year-old Isaiah Mendez was hanging out with two other teens on a back porch of a two-story home in the Humboldt Park neighborhood Tuesday afternoon when one of the boys started playing with a handgun.

The boy chambered a bullet in the gun and it went off, fatally striking Isaiah in the head about 3:25 p.m.
Some pro-gun folks pretend to not understand what I mean when I say I blame them. Allow me to clarify.  With proper controls, this kind of incident could be extremely rare.  The reason we don't have proper controls is because the gun lobby supported by individual pro-gun folks does everything in its power to block them.

I'm referring to background checks on every transfer, licensing of all gun owners and registration of every gun.  This would need to be followed up properly as I've described here. To thwart gun theft, we need proper storage laws.

Those who oppose these common-sense initiatives are to blame, plain and simple. Because of you, we have this to be proud of:

Guns are a constant problem for teens in the neighborhood, said Manuel Rodriguez, who described himself as a street-outreach minister.

"They have easy access to guns and nothing to do. The streets are their playground," Rodriguez said.

Three young men who were standing with Rodriguez outside the home where Isaiah was killed said they also have been shot.

What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.

8 comments:

  1. "...This would need to be followed up properly as I've described here..."

    And would need to be amended as I have described there in order to deserve the currently false term "common-sense".

    You might be able to argue for registration, but there's absolutely no legitimate need for renewal requirements.

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  2. "The reason we don't have proper controls is because the gun lobby supported by individual pro-gun folks does everything in its power to block them."

    Yes. Yes we do.

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  3. You might be able to argue for registration.

    And I and millions of others will never register our guns.

    What will the anti's do about it?

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  4. So if I register my guns in Ohio it would have kept this teenager in Chicago, where they have strict gun control now, alive how?

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  5. "I'm referring to background checks on every transfer, licensing of all gun owners and registration of every gun. To thwart gun theft, we need proper storage laws."

    All of which Chicago has. It doesn't look like it worked though.

    Then again, none of us should be surprised that criminals don't obey the law.

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  6. Guy, How do you figure this?

    "You might be able to argue for registration, but there's absolutely no legitimate need for renewal requirements."

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  7. If you require a clean background check for the initial registration, then the permit can be forfeited upon comission of a felony.

    If that's so, there's no need for renewal requirements.

    In fact, since criminals couldn't get a permit, there's no need for irresponsible laws such as the AWB and NFA (which are allegedly "justified" by criminal misuse), so they can go.

    If you want registration, you're asking... no, demanding that the law-abiding accept one hell of a burden to exercise their rights.

    Why should they get nothing in return?

    The honest, sensible thing to do would be to advocate simutaneous repeal of all bans, quite literally "for good".

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  8. Guy Ohki: “You might be able to argue for registration, but there's absolutely no legitimate need for renewal requirements.”

    The legitimate need from a gun controller’s perspective is to discourage firearm ownership, increase costs, and punish those in non-compliance by taking away their arms. This is easily proven since re-registration requirements create a “re-registration gap LOOPHOLE” that allows a prohibited person to keep their firearm for as much as a year/or 3 years (whatever the renewal timeframe is), while a better system would be to simply revoke the registration at the time of conviction.

    Also, you and I share the compromise idea of giving up registration in return for a ban on all bans. I don’t know why people and groups that “are not a gun ban organization” would not support sensible measures while maintaining all guns for law-abiding citizens.

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