Friday, March 18, 2011

Gun Availability is Not the Answer


A violent confrontation took place in a committment hearing.  

Referee Anthony Schumacher was attacked at the start of a 10:15 a.m. civil commitment trial at the Government Center in Minneapolis, said District Judge Jay Quam, who presides over the county's probate and mental health courts.

Without warning, Truman Harper, 25, rushed Schumacher and hit him at least twice in the face before a deputy and others pulled him away. Quam said Schumacher did not appear to suffer serious injuries.
What would have happened if the referee had been armed, you know for personal protection? And imagine if some folks get their way, guys like the attacker will continue to buy guns legally - after he gets out of the nut house, that is.

What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.

3 comments:

  1. "What would have happened if the referee had been armed, you know for personal protection?"

    It depends. If he were open carrying, he probably wouldn't have been attacked in the first place.

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  2. Gee, AzRed, did you miss this part?

    "before a deputy and others pulled him away"

    Those deputies in the Government center are openly armed, at all times. It did NOT stop this guy from attacking someone in front of A DISTRICT JUDGE sitting ON THE BENCH.

    Or did you miss the 'commitment hearing' part - the bad guy is also the crazy guy in this story. I don't know that the judge having a gun would have made any difference to his actions whatsoever, since the alleged attacker is not apparently in his right mind.

    I don't know about you - but I don't want to see judges in my state armed with anything other than the law and a gavel, leaving protection duties to the bailiff and deputies who are trained and paid to do that work.

    What is NOT in this story is that there IS a metal detector at every entrance that you have to go through to get inside.

    A minor bit of trivia, this is part of the same complex where a local Minnesotan ran afoul of the law and is challenging the open carry restrictions.

    And this crazy / aggressive attacker? He is just one more name that we in MN should be sending to the NCIS data base - but to date, have sent ZERO. So the attacker crazy bad guy COULD still legally buy a gun under the NCIS data check.

    That makes me unhappy as a Minnesotan, because our stupid gun-crazy Republican majorities do NOT want to fund that data check AND they want to do away with the state of Minnesota background check.

    They're all crazier than this attacker.

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  3. For me, arming more of the good guys is not part of the answer, but improving the quality of the database is.

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