Police have found a body inside the charred remains of the home of the New York man who police say shot and killed two firefighters and injured two more early on Christmas Eve.A big part of the pro-gun argument depends on the mistaken idea that criminals and madmen will always get guns regardless of what we do. This is an obvious falsehood. It would be like saying there will always be murders so we shouldn't bother to make it illegal or strive to prevent them.
William Spengler, 62, who served 17 years in prison for manslaughter in the 1980 hammer slaying of his grandmother, set his house afire before dawn on Dec. 24, before taking a revolver, a shotgun and a semiautomatic rifle to a sniper position outside, Police Chief Gerald Pickering said.
Police revealed that a body believed to be the killer's 67-year-old sister, Cheryl Spengler, was found in his fire-ravaged home.
Authorities say Spengler sprayed bullets at the first responders, killing two firefighters and injuring two others who remained hospitalized Tuesday in stable condition, awake and alert and expected to survive. He then killed himself as seven houses burned on a sliver of land along Lake Ontario.
Pickering said it was unclear whether the person believed to be Spengler's sister died before or during the fire.
What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.
Umm...This guy was a felon who wasn't supposed to have access to any guns and yet managed. Kind of a bad example to use to make the argument that laws will keep determined felons from being able to get weapons.
ReplyDeleteEven so, I have yet to see anyone arguing that we shouldn't try to prevent such people from getting guns. We just have various reasons that we object to many of the proposals put forth so far.
Yes, you are right. This felon got a gun. What gunsuck criminal using the gun show loophole sold it to him? We need universal registration and tracking of all firearms sales to find the gunsuck criminals. Bad gunshop run by an NRA criminal? Kitchen table gunsuck killer?
DeleteAnonymous,
DeleteMaybe he bought it at a gun show. More likely, he had a straw purchaser who committed a crime by buying it for him after engaging in a criminal conspiracy to do just that. A registry could not have stopped that as his co-conspirator could purchase the gun for him, give it to him, and wait a while to report it stolen. It wouldn't have made any difference to the shooter here--if he was caught with any gun, that's a trip to the federal pen, so what's an extra, smaller sentence of possession of stolen property.
Exactly mike. Convicted felon in possession of firearms that he most likely bought from a criminal, a criminal who had most likely stolen them. Oh that is right you want to punish people when criminals steal from them. My bad, carry on with your gun banning fantasy.
ReplyDeleteProbably bought them at a gunshow from some NRA gunsuck criminal.
DeleteScott, when talking about where guns come from, we're only interested in the transfer in which the gun passed from the law-abiding to the criminal. Theft is one way, as in your example. Straw purchasing is another, and private sales without the background check. But they always had the key moment in which one of you guys turned it over to a criminal.
DeleteWhen it's theft, the gun owner is often at fault. That's why we need safe storage laws because you guys don't have the commons sense to stop keeping them under you pillow or in the night stand drawer.
This was in New York, a state that has a lot of the laws that you want. If only those wicked other states would secede from the Union...
ReplyDeleteBut the real question here is why was this man out in public in the first place. He killed his grandmother with a gun--no, wait, it was a hammer. That only counts as manslaughter? It must have been an accident, one of those "one strike and you're out" situations where he should have lost his right to use tools, but served no time.
You know the New York laws and you know my idea of proper gun control. New York is much too lax.
DeleteNew York is much too lax? This is one of many reasons why your proposals will never pass.
DeleteSick person let out into society when he should have been locked up for life.
ReplyDelete