New Jersey Man Gets 8 Years for Accidental Shooting Death

NorthJersey.com reports

A 32-year-old Paterson man was sentenced Friday to eight years in state prison for accidentally killing a close friend as he played with a gun while high on marijuana.

Luis Alvarez, who pleaded guilty to reckless manslaughter, wept as relatives of 20-year-old victim Storm Brown stood before state Superior Court Judge Raymond A. Reddin in Paterson and mourned what was clearly a mutual loss.

“You don’t play with guns,” said Helen Melton, Brown’s aunt. “You were older than Storm. You should have known better.”

Attorneys characterized the relationship between defendant and victim as almost like uncle and nephew.

“It was a tragic accident,” Alvarez said. “It’s something that hurts me every day.”

Authorities said the incident occurred at Alvarez’s home at 42 Highland St., where a party was winding down on the night of Oct. 24, 2010. Alavarez was smoking marijuana while playing with a 357 Magnum. The gun accidentally fired, striking Brown in the chest at about 1:10 a.m.. He was dead on arrival at St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center in Paterson.

That sentence sounds quite excessive to me. I don't think people should go to jail for accidents, especially for longer sentences like 8 years. Of course if there are extenuating circumstances, it could be right. This was probably not a legally owned gun, for one thing, and perhaps Alvarez had a long record of criminal convictions already. But generally speaking, I say one-strike-you're-out with regards to the right to own guns, and no jail for accidents.

What's your opinion?

Any MikeB Readers Care to Speculate on the Firearm Ownership in This Home?

I am skeptical about both the denials that these people are neo-nazis and that there is no violence issues in this home. It has been unusual, a departure from the norm, for children to be successfully removed from a household if there are not safety issues, neglect issues, and/or violence issues.  So, while this may be one of those exceptions, I am heartily skeptical that is the case, until shown evidence otherwise.

Geeze, and I used to think a boy being named 'Sue' was bad...

from U.S. News on MSNBC.com and 'myfoxphilly' (despite this occurring in New Jersey):

Parents of Adolf Hitler Campbell lose custody of newborn Hons

Rich Schultz / AP

The Campbells with their son, Adolf Hitler.

A New Jersey couple who lost custody of their first three kids after giving them Nazi-inspired names has been denied the right to take home their fourth child, a newborn boy they named Hons.
Heath and Deborah Campbell's other children - Adolf Hitler Campbell, JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell - are in foster care. On Monday, the Campbells went to family court in their hometown of Flemington, N.J,. in a bid to regain custody of Hons, who they say was taken from them by state child welfare officials hours after Deborah gave birth on Thursday, reported myfoxphilly.com.
Hons is still in the hospital, but the couple has been barred from seeing the baby, they told FOX. Heath Campbell said police came into the nursery and took Hons without a court order.
“They kidnapped my kid,” Campbell said. “I’ve been sleeping with his little blanket from the hospital.”
The state took custody of the couple’s other children nearly two years ago, saying there were in danger because of previous violence in the Campbell home, The Associated Press has reported. The Campbells have been fighting to get their children back ever since, claiming the violence charges are fabricated. It wasn't clear whether the latest court hearing involved all of the children or just the newborn.
The Campbells came into the spotlight in 2009 when a supermarket refused to ice a birthday cake for their now 4-year-old son Adolf Hitler.
Heath Campbell defended the children's names and told myfoxphilly.com on Monday that his reverend approved of him naming his new son Hons.
The Campbells have denied that they are neo-Nazis.

New Jersey League of Humane Voters

I'm not too sure about that 99% claim, but I like what this guy says. Hunting is a sick macho activity. It's about killing and violence. And typical of the ones who practice it, it involves cheating and unfair advantages.

I'd like to see one of these Ted Nugent types go naked into the woods and kill a wild boar or a deer with improvised weapons picked up from the forest floor.

Camden Lays Off Cops

And there not just laying off a few, it's nearly half.

I've got an idea, why don't the relax the gun laws too?

What do you think?  Please leave a comment,

1-gun-per-month Law Stalls in NJ Senate

NJ.Com reports on the failure to pass the Senate vote of a law which would have limited handgun purchases to one per month in New Jersey.

The bill was held by its sponsor, Sen. Sandra Bolden Cunningham (D-Hudson), after it received 20 votes, one shy of the 21 needed for passage. No Republicans voted for the bill, drawing a rebuke from Senate President Richard Codey (D-Essex).

Why do you think the vote was so clearly divided along party lines? I thought there were Democrats who are pro-gun, as well as Republicans who are anti.

Cunningham and other supporters argued the bill would cut down on "straw" buyers who purchase guns for criminals. The bill (S1774/A339) would allow the purchase of up to 13 guns a year, one every 30 days.

New Jersey would be the fourth state to adopt such a limit. Gov. Jon Corzine, a Democrat, had pushed for the bill earlier this month, saying it was "close" to approval.

On the surface, that seems to make perfect sense. I've never doubted that gun flow from the legal to the illegal is a very real and significant part of the problem. But, the antagonists of this bill point out that in New Jersey there are already so many restrictions and requirements to purchase a gun legally, the chances of straw purchases taking place in large numbers are very remote.

I agree with that. So what could be the explanation for all this hoopla?

Beans 71 tells us in his comment.

Everybody knows that straw buyers by their guns in bulk from states like GA and TX where you dont need a permit to buy a gun and you can buy as many as you want with no waiting period, just a quickie background check.

I don't know if Mr. Beans 71 is a cop or a criminal, but he sure seems to know what he's talking about. The goods come right up I-95 and onto the Jersey Turnpike in the trunks of cars. Newark and Camden are adequately supplied, business as usual.

So where does that leave us with New Jersey legislation? I'd say my former home state can be proud to be one of the strictest in the nation for gun control. If Georgia and Texas and all the other gun-friendly states had similar laws, the flow of guns into the criminal world might be diminished to the point where the police could do their jobs.

What do you think? Would the one-gun-a-month law have hurt legal gun owners in New Jersey if it had passed? Is there anything to that anti-gun question: "who needs to buy more than one gun a month anyway?"

What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.

The Gun Lobby Will Go to Any Length

On the site Mother Jones, there's a fascinating article entitled “There’s something about Mary: Unmasking a gun lobby mole,” which was published on July 30, 2008. The authors James Ridgeway, Daniel Schulman, and David Corn have put the spotlight on the "industrial espionage" that goes on between powerful lobbying groups and their antagonists, in this case the NRA and the Brady Campaign. It seems, Mary Sapone is nothing less than a bona fide undercover agent for the gun lobby.

Using her maiden name, McFate, Sapone began posing as a gun control activist in the mid-1990s. Bryan Miller, the executive director of Ceasefire New Jersey, a grassroots gun control group, recalls first meeting her in the summer of 1998. The NRA was holding its annual convention in downtown Philadelphia, and the event drew the usual bevy of protesters. Among them was a middle-aged woman then living in Pennsylvania who made a point of introducing herself to Miller. In the following years, Miller would remember this encounter well, as he watched McFate rise from a street protester to a figure known nationally within his movement.

During Sapone's ascent through the ranks of the gun control movement, she worked for the NRA, according to a business associate.

On the Brady Campaign site a challenge of sorts is proffered in an article called, "The NRA's Dirty Tricks Revealed."

Brady President Paul Helmke wrote in his blog "When the National Rifle Association asks its members for their next contribution, they might want to disclose how much of that money will be spent to spy on gun violence victims and their families."

What occurs to me is another challenge to the pro-gun folks. Let's find a way to reduce the gun violence in America to the point that the gun-control people will get off your back. Instead of encouraging the "us against them" mentality, lets work together to get the guns away from the criminals. Some of you guys are too defensive about your "right to bear arms." The moment we start talking, you think we want to take your guns away. I don't.

Can we all agree there are too many guns in the hands of criminals? From there we can discuss what's to be done.