In Minnesota, you can carry a gun around, concealed, if you have a permit. Why? Well, I suppose so that if you get mad at someone you can pull your gun out and shoot them.
According to wcco:
The Cook County Sheriff said the man who opened fire Thursday in a courthouse in Grand Marais got the gun from his own vehicle.
Daniel Schlienz was convicted on a sexual assault charge in Cook County Court. After the jury found him guilty of criminal sexual conduct, he left the building then came back into the courthouse and into County Attorney Timothy Scannell’s office with the loaded weapon.
He then shot a witness i his trial, the county attorney, and injured a bailiff. Fortunately, he was an incompitent marksman so no one was killed.
I do not yet know if he had a carry permit, or was using it legally, but certainly despite the best efforts of the NRA it is still not legal to carry a weapon into a courthouse.
This is obviously a matter of mental illness. What gun advocates often do not admit, however, is this: It is exactly the the intersection between lax or permissive gun laws and mental illness that facilitates this kind of event. Stricter gun regulation is needed exactly because of this intersection, not the opposite.
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Guns don’t kill people (or maim them), people do.
And that’s why we need to carefully fucking regulate who can get a gun.
Greg
This shooting has exactly nothing to do with legal concealed carry of firearms?
Daniel is a convicted criminal appealing his case, and therefore for him to poses a firearm is already illegal.
What gun control advocates do not want to admit, is criminals don’t obey laws, and stricter gun regulation won’t change that fact.
Then it has everything to do with the conceal and carry law and its enforcement.
I have to admit that I also fail to see the link between concealed carry laws and this incident.
This person was not legally able to carry a gun, according to the carry and conceal laws, if we are all interpreting the news correctly.
How can you possibly fail to see a connection between the fact that he was illegally carrying a gun and this incident?
How does one enforce a law prohibiting persons from carrying a concealed weapon? Such enforcement can only come after the person in question has taken said weapon from concealment and used it in some way. Even then, we’re only dealing with the aftermath of the crime which occurred in the past, in secrecy, when the person concealed the weapon illegally. It seems that we are talking about two different things here, those being the illegal carriage of a concealed weapon, and the legal licensing of people to carry a concealed weapon. The person illegally carrying a concealed weapon has already broken the law, so I still fail to see the point.
Again, unless you are advocating some form of totalitarian police state, I’m not sure I follow your argument. What is possible for a person to do, and legal for a person to do are very different things. This person was already disallowed from possessing or carrying a weapon in the manner which he did. What form of stricter enforcement do you envision?
Florida politicians who armed their base … are afraid to be in their offices with their armed base … have installed panic buttons.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/12/15/132816/commentary-panic-in-floridas-state.html
…why was he able to leave the courthouse unsupervised after being found guilty of sexual assault?
As for the comments…
…well, despite it being illegal for him to carry a handgun, he doesn’t seem to have had any difficulty obtaining one. I suppose you’ll just postulate that he bought it on the black market, but that’s not at all in evidence…
How does one enforce a law prohibiting persons from carrying a concealed weapon? Such enforcement can only come after the person in question has taken said weapon from concealment and used it in some way.
In your head maybe. We have all sorts of laws that are similar. One way to enhance compliance is to make penalties very severe. So, if you get picked up with a firearm where are not supposed to have it, when you are not supposed to have it, or if you are a person who is not supposed to have it, there should perhaps be very severe penalties.
It may be that people are not compliant or sensible enough for this to work. That can be managed with a system whereby you keep your firearms in a locker at the police station.
Eventually, the NRA lobby will weaken and the restufus will become sufficiently annoyed that we can get rid of the second amendment. It isn’t needed anyway. We don’t need a constitutional amendment to protect firearm ownership. All we need is a reasonable democracy. Without a Second Amendment, we could develop sensible laws that are properly adjusted to the maturity of our present civilization and its denizens.
Then, the relationship between law and compliance will quickly follow if gun lovers want to keep their guns.
That seems like a more pertinent question to me. If they’d held onto him, he’d never have had a chance to grab the gun.
Unless, of course, they weren’t going to bother sending him to jail. It’s only sexual assault, after all. No one thinks that’s a real crime. /snark
I love the idocy of our gun laws…
1. Where does the second give one the right to carry a lethal firearm?
2. Why can’t we carry machine guns or nukes? Hows ya “people kill, weapons dont” defense now? Why aren’t those weapons protected by the 2nd?
3. How does a gun protect without firing first?
4. Isn’t returning firing an act of revenge?
5. For Any situation you think you need a gun for protection, there are other non-lethal ways that would provide the same or better protection.
5. Finally, if you make the decision to carry a lethal weapon, doesn’t that logically mean that you have also made the decision to kill when you think the situation demands that action?
Logically, guns serve no purpose in a free society other than to enforce one’s might over another.
I find arguments in favor of concealed weapons to be completely ignorant and self serving.
This case probably has more to do with laws regarding the sale of firearms than it does concealed carry laws.
The offender in this case could not have been licensed for concealed carry because of the criminal background. In such cases, it might have been possible (outside of a court house) for a person licensed to carry firearms to have stopped the attack. There is also the potential for a citizen hero to fire wildly and harm innocent bystanders. This is why concealed carry permits require special training.
The problem here isn’t that law abiding citizens (myself included) are able to legally qualify to carry a concealed weapon. I have yet to hear of a case where a person licensed to carry a firearm has used it in a crime, except for many well publicized cases of police officers using excessive force.
The problem here is that this idiot was able to get his hands on a weapon.
He would not have been able to buy it legally in a gun store because a background check using a national computerized system would have rejected him due to past convictions.
But in my state of New Mexico a person can legally buy a weapon via a personal sale with no such restriction. A want ad in a local paper or on-line, or a private transaction at a gun show makes it easy for criminals to obtain weapons. When they buy and possess the weapon they are breaking the law, but that doesn’t stop them from shooting somebody.
I’m a gun owner, but I don’t mind tighter controls on how weapons can be legally obtained, as long as those controls don’t make it impossible or extremely difficult for citizens who are law abiding. I’m a law abiding citizen and I’m willing to do what is needed to promote safety. I would never join the NRA because I think it’s a paranoid shill for the gun industry. Guns are useful tools for self-defense and sporting enjoyment. But we can’t deny the dangers, especially in densely populated areas.
People can commit assault with automobiles as well. We license them and regulate them and their use. Guns possess a more compact, portable, and directly lethal potential. They should be regulated at least as strictly as automobiles, and ideally more so.
In such cases, it might have been possible (outside of a court house) for a person licensed to carry firearms to have stopped the attack. There is also the potential for a citizen hero to fire wildly and harm innocent bystanders. This is why concealed carry permits require special training.
That is one of the main arguments in favor of loose firearm possession laws, yet it seems to almost never happen.
I have yet to hear of a case where a person licensed to carry a firearm has used it in a crime, except for many well publicized cases of police officers using excessive force.
It happens but that is hardly the point: Where do you think these not as legally carried guns come from? They come from a black market made easy by having such a poorly regulated normal market, and from leakage from the normal market. Lots of people can be legal carriers then become felons. Suddenly, a legally acquired gun is in the hands of someone who is not suppose to have it.
A want ad in a local paper or on-line, or a private transaction at a gun show makes it easy for criminals to obtain weapons.
Exactly
It might be better to have federal laws and just skip the whole state by state thing.
“It might be better to have federal laws and just skip the whole state by state thing.”
That makes sense to me. The law that requires gun shops to do the background check in a federal data base is federal law. The second amendment is federal law as well. Just as the first amendment is subject to time, manner, and place restrictions, so should the second amendment.
I think my point stands, the the problem in the case above has nothing to do with legally trained concealed carry permit holders possessing legally purchased guns.
It was a criminal with an illegal gun for which no permit was held.
The big problems are the private sales and the gun shows. In rural states people love themselves some gun shows, but there is no reason why gun shows can not comply with on-line background checks just as gun stores must. In fact, at a gun show in my town, a local gun shop had a booth and they did the background checks on purchases at the gun show. At the same show, there were some very scary looking monstrous Russian dudes who looked like former military mercenary types. It’s possible to buy assault rifles and automatic weapons at these shows. It’s a big problem in my view. These shows are where terrorists who manage to get in to the country would go to arm themselves. It’s simply stupid.
I think my point stands, the the problem in the case above has nothing to do with legally trained concealed carry permit holders possessing legally purchased guns.
It has everything to do with it. In Minnesota only legally trained people who qualify are allowed to have a concealed weapon. He violated this law. (Of course we are assuming some facts we don’t have here but it works for the present argument.)
But yes, I get your point.
Interesting perspective on gun shows. Seems to me that is a huge problem.
There’s no predicting the far future. But you are long in tooth, and it won’t happen in this lifetime.
The ignorance on this page is asstounding. Anti-2nd ammendment comments are so antiamerican it isn’t funny. How can anyone say to remove somthing witch our forfathers made a law. And the second amendment isnt even the issue here. Its you same liberal do gooders that weaken our law enforcment capabilities, shorten jail times, and make it a crime for cops to randomly search felons al will, that is the issue in this case. If that guy didnt have the freedom to leave he wouldnt have been able to get the gun he was in ILLEGAL possetion of. If the police were able to act the way they should be able to the random searches of felons would have turned up the ILLEGAL firearm. Being that law enforcements hands are tied though I personaly have a permit to carry and exercise my right as often as possible within the law.
As to the 2nd amendment the militia that is pointed out my every anti-firearm person is all of us. We have the right set by our for fathers to regulate the goverment. If said government goes astray we as citizens have the right to take up arms and basicaly hit reset and start over. It is the anti-2nd amendment politians are in fear of this happening one day that want to do away with it.
I swore an oath to let protect everyones rights granted to them by the constitution and now i am worried that one of mine are going to be taken away.
IRQVet:
“If the police were able to act the way they should be able to the random searches of felons would have turned up the ILLEGAL firearm.”
Why is the second amendment more important than the fourth amendment? I don’t think police should be randomly searching people without probable cause. Why not restrict felons at the point of purchase? Why not require gun shows to use the same background checks that gun shops must use? It just requires a computer and an Internet connection.
“As to the 2nd amendment the militia that is pointed out my every anti-firearm person is all of us. We have the right set by our for fathers to regulate the goverment. If said government goes astray we as citizens have the right to take up arms and basicaly hit reset and start over.”
The second amendment specifies a “well regulated militia”. I don’t think every American acting independently qualifies as well-regulated. If it’s okay to require special training and licensing to operate an automobile, why not require proper training for operators of firearms?
Certainly you, as a veteran, have excellent training and knowledge about the use and maintenance of firearms. I myself have taken a course and obtained a concealed carry permit in New Mexico. I paid a local gun shop and shooting range owner, a former DEA agent, for qualified training. I felt that was a reasonable amount of effort on my part in exchange for the legal permission to carry a concealed weapon. The training gave me confidence and skill I would not have otherwise had.
The fore-fathers gave us a way to regulate the government. It’s spelled out clearly in the several articles of the Constitution, not just in the second amendment. It involves a representative form of government and balance of powers.
To seriously regulate our government we need citizens to arm themselves with knowledge of the Constitution, arm themselves with knowledge of politics, arm themselves with knowledge of economics and policy, and to actively participate in government.
It would be tragic for us to abandon our responsibility to govern as We the People until things get so bad we have to start shooting at each other. Let’s hope it never comes to that.
Let’s first fully exercise our rights to govern by mutual consent and fully exhaust our ability to weigh various viewpoints, participate in reasoned dialog, and exercise our Constitutional responsibilities with mutual respect.
“That can be managed with a system whereby you keep your firearms in a locker at the police station.”
This is a stunning statement. Stunning enough, in fact, to make me wonder if you are orchestrating some sort of elaborate 2nd amendment Poe.
Either you are off your rocker, or you have no concept of what the purpose of concealed carry is. Should a women ask her assailant to pause, mid-assault, so that she can go retrieve her firearm from the police station? Laws do not protect people in situations where the other party has broken the social contract. If they did, the woman could merely remind her assailant that he is breaking the law and expect him to cease his attack. People are obligated to take reasonable measures to protect themselves, and legally obtained, legally licensed concealed weapons are reasonable. Whether or not we do enough to restrict criminal’s access to weapons is a whole other subject. If the illegal drug trade (just to name one example) isn’t enough of an example of how well laws limit the behavior of criminals, I’m not sure what argument you would accept.
David, I get what conceal carry is for, and I’m saying that we as a society do not make it a point to raise ourselves up in a manner allowing us as a collection of individuals to shoulder (no pun intended) that responsibility.
There are societies in which the locker-system is implemented. I would like to see something like that happen until gun owners as a group demonstrate themselves able to handle this important responsibly. At this point, it has been demonstrated that they can not.
Several countries have disarmed their citizens either by makeing guns illeagle to own or by the Locker system, and in every case the violent crime rate went up not down. Guns are not the cause of violence they are a tool which people use. If you want to ban guns then you should also ban knives, ropes, and any other tool that people have used violently over the years. It is just simply not intelligent to say guns cause violence, because my argument would be then spoons make obese people fat.
As to the strictness of the laws i purchased a gun this morning, and I am a valid concealed carry permit holder, I still had background checks and full paperwork done so there is no slackness in the law.
As far as criminals getting firearms if you disarm law abiding citezens you do nothing but make it easier for the criminals to function. THe so called black market will not go away if you take guns away it will only thrive, felons will not turn their guns in (the ones there not even supposed to have) they will keep them, and then we will have a government that tells its people that they no longer have a right to their sence of security. I for one would prefer to protect my family and have the right to protect my self.
IRQVet1999: How does the crime rate related to this discussion?
“Guns are not the cause of violence they are a tool which people use.”
Correct, and they are a tool that a lot of people should perhaps not have their hands on.
Well Greg you want to say we should make stricter gun laws. There have been a couple of post to the complete removal of guns from people, or the Locker system, so I was ppointing out that if you disarm the Law abiding citezens then the VIOLENT crime rate goes up.
As to the tools comment are you for regulating the sale of ropes and knives as well? What about spoons since obesity is killing more americans than guns a year?
Lets go back to how the founding fathers wanted it. Every male MUST own a gun. Makes more sense to me. It makes it impossible for a tyrant to take control. Don’t you liberal pukes get that? Guns make us safe from the ebb and flow of tyranny. Unfortunately liberals have ZIP historic vision.