Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Murder-Suicide in Bayonne, New Jersey

NJ.com reports on the terrible events.

Four people, including a baby, were shot and killed in Bayonne tonight in an apparent murder-suicide that neighbors said erupted from a domestic dispute.

The police didn't release much information, but

Angelo Ortega, 63, said he walks his dog past the house around 6 every morning, and often stopped to speak with a man at that address. He said the man, a Dominican, kept an impressive vegetable garden.

Ortega described him as "tranquil."
Either he owned the gun legally or he did not. Either way it's the easy access to guns that contributed to this. If he'd been a legal owner, the the requirements to qualify are too lenient. If he'd been an illegal owner of the gun, then it's just too damn easy to get guns.

What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.

17 comments:

  1. "If he'd been a legal owner, the the requirements to qualify are too lenient."

    New Jersey already has your wishlist of ownership including registration of guns and gun owners and along with the discretion of local police in issuing a permit.

    So now even your draconian list is too lenient. And you say we are paranoid about incremental gun control and the "slippery slope".

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  2. Are you claiming FWM that this was a good case for guns, gun ownership, and that you condone the use this person made of a firearm?

    If not, then you must agree that not having a gun would have been better in this instance.

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  3. No my point is you cannot wish all of the bad out of the world with a law.

    If you believe that New Jersey gun laws are too lenient, then do not acted all shocked when free America opposes other gun control schemes.

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  4. Dog Gone,

    Not having a gun may have been better in this instance, but I can't see how we could have prevented this man from having a gun. As FatWhiteMan pointed out, New Jersey is your version of paradise. Now how could he have got that gun? Oh, yes, it came from the surrounding evil states with weak gun laws. (See the Brady Bunch website for a citation.) What if New Jersey's obscene gun laws were in effect nationwide? How would the shooter get his gun then? Oh, yes, across our porous borders.

    But then, you won't get the laws that you want nationwide. They will only affect the good guys, and we won't let them pass or stand.

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  5. You can't work backwards from a particular incident and say what whould have prevented it. What you can do is implement the kinds of laws that would prevent people like this from getting guns in as many cases as possible.

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  6. Mikeb302000,

    We already have those laws. What many are unwilling to recognize is that people do bad things. There are ways to improve the situation--education, better economy, etc.--but we can't make everyone be perfect, and the cost of trying to do so is too high.

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  7. Greg, I have no interest in making people perfect.

    I have every interest in preventing dangerous people from having firearms - which btw, given your failure to identify fact from fiction and your poor understanding of the law, and your demonstrably poor safety practice from the photo would possibly include you. That would be because you clearly do NOT practice the rules of firearm safety and you are unwilling to make shooting someone a case of last resort.

    As other countries have demonstrated, it IS possible to keep firearms out of the hands of far more of the 'bad people' than we do here.

    And the cost of lives here is too high; the cost in lives trumps your demented need to carry a firearm to empower you no matter how unlikely it is that you will encounter a criminal attempting to harm you.

    We could be making those who do own guns far more accountable than we do, including restricting the transfer of weapons to others in private transactions, and with requiring more secure storage to prevent theft. I think it makes perfect sense to be asking some damned hard questions if a firearm is used in a crime, but was not reported stolen by the owner to whom it was registered, for example, in case they had in fact purchased it for a person prohibited from having guns.

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  8. Dog Gone,

    We've been over that photograph too many times. There is nothing particularly unsafe, as I've explain to you. The fact that you don't know what you're talking about doesn't stop you from drawing conclusions, though.

    Let me explain again. It represents the practice of some during a particular period in our history. You are free to doubt that; I don't care. Cooper's Third Rule wasn't known to people in the Old West, so to show someone following that rule would have been an anachronism, anyway. The revolver was a single action type with the hammer down on an empty chamber. Without cocking the hammer, it will not fire. Besides, I do not carry a gun in the fashion presented. Will you please let this obsession with one photograph go?

    Now, are you adding a test of history to the qualifications for having a gun? Perhaps you feel that only those with graduate classes are safe to own firearms.

    It has been possible to remove guns from other countries because they started with many fewer. In America, we have too many to make easy removal something that can happen.

    The cost in lives of my carry guns is zero. I have killed no one, nor have I shot anyone.

    You keep ignoring this fact, but most guns in America are unregistered. We can't trust you when you tell us that registration won't be for later confiscation. We see how you mock gun owners. We know your attitude about us. Why do you feel that we would ever believe you when you say that registration is just to keep guns away from criminals? Can you imagine the bureaucratic nightmare of registering all the guns in this country? Do you imagine that criminals will register theirs, anyway? You say that I lack critical thinking skills, but then you try to pass off this registration scheme on us and get shocked when we have our doubts.

    But more than all of that, you say the cost of carrying concealed weapons is too high, and yet, you have a license and possibly carried at one time. I'm tired of your hypocrisy. If the cost is too high, why did you do it?

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  9. Greg says, "We already have those laws."

    I'm afraid that's not the case at all, at least not the laws I'm talking about which would make gun availability to unfit people much less than it is today.

    I agree there are other factors which need to be addressed, and we are working on them too, but why would you omit the gun availability one?

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  10. Mikeb302000,

    Because limiting gun availability makes guns unavailable to those who have every right to them. It does keep coming back to that. Show me how good citizens can have guns, while those who will commit crimes with them can be denied, and I'll probably go along with it. But the countries that Dog Gone names as good examples deny firearms to the general population or make ownership excessively difficult. That's why I refuse to go along.

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  11. GC writes
    Because limiting gun availability makes guns unavailable to those who have every right to them. It does keep coming back to that.

    Bullshit. If you look at the other countries of the world, they have hunters, they have people who engage in shooting sports.

    You would sacrifice lives for convenience in acquiring firearms.

    That is heinous, it is stupid, it is a denial of the rights of all the people who die or are injured by gun violence not to be harmed so you can have your silly fetish object more easily.

    You do NOTHING whatsoever to deny the wrong, bad people getting guns which they use to endanger other people.

    Please, DO show me a single example of some asshat who goes off his nut (or hers in a few rare cases) that understood THEY - OBVIOUSLY - SHOULD NOT HAVE GUNS.

    If you expect us to believe it is rational to take the word of a gun nut that they are someone who really really should have a weapon, you need to overcome that threshold to be credible.

    Oh wait- of course, YOU are not credible.

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  12. Show me, other than a myth among gun loons, the historic documentation for so-called 'Mexican Carry'.

    I provided you a source for the cross draw Cavalry carry.

    So show me your sources other than speculation that such a practice really existed.

    And no, your gun loons don't count; I want HISTORIC evidence. Photos that are not publicity photos, or an academic paper that was presented in an academic context for review and criticism of other historians.

    I hope I don't have to explain to you what credible sources are AGAIN.

    Btw- ever BEEN to Mexico Greg? Ever visited any museums or historical societies in Mexico that addressed firearms and the nation's history?

    Yeah, I'm guessing not.

    I have.

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  13. Dog Gone,

    I've told you already that Mexican carry is a term used in the carry community. If it's not historical, I don't care. I don't use that technique, and I'm not concerned about its origins. Have you ever been tested for OCD?

    You said that there are target shooters and hunters in other countries. Good for them. Do I really have to explain to you that one of the important elements of firearms ownership in this country is self defense? We care about concealed carry. That's not available to the general public in many countries--the Czech Republic being a good exception.

    We also care about types of firearms. In Great Britain, handguns are generally unavailable legally.

    My concern for gun rights is only in part about hunters and target shooters.

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  14. GC I've told you already that Mexican carry is a term used in the carry community. If it's not historical, I don't care. I don't use that technique, and I'm not concerned about its origins. Have you ever been tested for OCD?

    You claim to be representing some historical image.

    It is fiction - and it is a specific KIND of fiction that is synonymous with glamorizing gun violence instead of a fact based concept.

    That is true of your term shootist, that is true of your having a gun stuck in your belt with your finger on the trigger and a dopey grin on your face like a little kid playing cowboy in his new cowboy outfit.

    Everything about that image speaks to what you believe, and it is not a good belief. It is not a belief which encourage US to trust YOU or your judgment.

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  15. GC wrote:. Do I really have to explain to you that one of the important elements of firearms ownership in this country is self defense?

    What a load of codswollop. Bullshit.

    You have no important element of self defense, Rather you wander around with a gun for the unlikely event of a random act of violence where your firearm won't do more harm to you than good.

    You advocate for vigilanteism.

    That is not a good thing. Keep your damned firearm at home if you are going to be a vigilante who does NOT understand or support lethal violence as a last resort - and YOU DO NOT.

    Over and over and over your words demonstrate that you do not.

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  16. Dog Gone,

    Mexican carry has nothing to do with my photograph. Those are two separate things. If you care that much about Mexican carry, feel free to look it up.

    As for self defense, the good news is that the laws of most states and public opinion are on my side. It must be painful for you to realize that you aren't queen of the world.

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  17. GC wrote:
    Mexican carry has nothing to do with my photograph. Those are two separate things. If you care that much about Mexican carry, feel free to look it up.

    I did look it up, to further refresh my memory of the southwest, and to fact check your two heroes that you have cited here as sources, Chic Gaylord and Massad Ayoob. They make historically inaccurate claims about carrying guns in belts.

    You claim it is historically accurate as well for your little dress up game of being a 'shootist' (guffaw, clearly you did not appreciate that was a derogatory term) in some way reminiscent of Wild Bill Hickock.

    It isn't, but that identity and that image are part and parcel of glorifying a fictional version of the old west, of Hickock, and of guns- in that era and in this one.

    You can't back up any of your claims of that being historical. I can laugh- at you, at Ayoob, and the 'gunner' community with your foolish crappy little myths.

    Yeah - heroic like a comic book, not heroic like a real life person of courage..

    It is not. That is a farce, a fraud, a fiction.

    As for self defense, the good news is that the laws of most states and public opinion are on my side.

    No, mostly that is the right wing, and it is typical for the righties to confuse themselves with the majority; they do it all the time. Righties are regressive, they try to return to a golden age of yesteryear that never existed except in their contorted fiction. It is one of the characteristics of fascism, btw, and that in turn is part of what makes your photo telling more than you meant to tell.

    It must be painful for you to realize that you aren't queen of the world.

    Of course I'm not queen of it, but I do consider myself a citizen of it, a traveler of the rest of the world. The hard conservatives are always dragging their heels at coming into the current century. It was true for those who wanted to maintain slavery while the rest of the world was condemning it.

    It will be true of the gunloons who will keep trying to make up shit to put lipstick on the gun loon pig, while the rest of the world condemns all of the harm from gun violence. It will take a while, but that trend will occur here too.

    Your claims about self defense are a lot like Michele Bachmann claiming that slavery was good for Blacks because it brought them to Christianity. And that being enslaved was better for black children than modern freedom.

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