William, who used to perform at Pulse Orlando, remembers friends and co-workers killed there.
Several hundred people gathered in front of Trinity Church in Copley Square tonight to vent their anger at the deaths in Orlando, but also to show their love for those hurting.
William, a drag performer who moved to Boston from Orlando last fall, recalled the four friends he had there who died, the four in critical condition and others who were shot. But as he tried to maintain his composure, he said, "if I preach one word today, it would be love."
Greg Cook attended and filed a report and photos:
The Boston Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, who led the vigil, called for a moment of non-silence, in which people could let out their feelings:
Xandra Minter of Queer Muslims of Boston said the Koran says that anybody who murders one person murders all of mankind and that
The Rev. Bill Rich, vicar of Trinity Church, said the church decided to cancel its normal 8 p.m. service, "so we could be with you."
"We all could have been there," Rich, who is gay, said, adding he mourns not just for the victims of the gunfire, but for "all the hearts, and minds and souls that have been injured by this violence."
He continued, however, the answer is not meeting violence with violence, or fear. "Never give up! Never give up! Never give up!" he said.
People with candles raised them in memory of the dead and injured:
The crowd sang "Amazing Grace:"
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Comments
Thank you for reporting about this.
By anon
Sun, 06/12/2016 - 11:31pm
A moving and fitting tribute.
How can we love our enemies when we hate each other
By EM Painter
Mon, 06/13/2016 - 8:55am
We have pushed into something we know nothing about, let's figure out how to get our country together before we try spreading whatever this is into other parts of the world.
We can't agree on how to find a place for a ship captain from 500 years ago.
God bless, but will gays/libs reevaluate Muslim immigration?
By O-FISH-L
Sun, 06/12/2016 - 11:49pm
God Bless the victims, their families and Orlando Police responders who will never forget this. Anticipating the full fledged UHub attacks on me, will gays, libs and other thoughtful people reevaluate the far-left welcome mat for Muslims who cannot be vetted? Granted, this young Muslim terrorist was born here to Afghan parents but I'm not sure if that's better or worse. Time for gays and alternative crowd to realize Islam is exterminating them across the Middle East and now here in the US.
No
By adamg
Mon, 06/13/2016 - 12:02am
Let's talk about easy access to AR-15s in the United States of America first. He didn't get weapons or training overseas. He walked into a gun shop, and despite being on the FBI's radar, he bought a weapon the only purpose of which is to kill people.
I'm not going to blame an entire religion anymore than I would blame your religion for Charleston, Aurora, Sandy Hook, Oklahoma City, Columbine, the University of Texas, the Holocaust, etc., etc., etc.
And he did it
By me
Mon, 06/13/2016 - 7:05am
after twice being on the FBI radar screen.
You can thank the GOP
By TommyJeff
Mon, 06/13/2016 - 8:04am
And Ron Johnson in particular for refusing ANY gun control legislation to pass through Congress.
Equal opportunity
By Stevil
Mon, 06/13/2016 - 9:49am
Bernie and Hillary aren't exactly champions of the cause- along w a lot of other Dems who pay lip service to a politically popular right even among the left.
And this is not a partisan retort. I'm a HUGE gun control advocate as I've stated before out here.
You want guns? Buy all you want. But keep them in a publicly or privately maintained facility. You want to take them out? Limits on who, what, where you can take them with a reason why.
Sadly, not likely in my lifetime.
In the meantime about one person an hour is murdered by a gun. 2 people kill themselves w a gun in that same time. And 10 get shot just not killed. I personally know two people that almost got shot by "unloaded" guns last year. The guns went off but fortunately were pointed in the air, not at someone. There but for the grace of God.
You think this guy was going
By CCD
Mon, 06/13/2016 - 10:19am
You think this guy was going to follow ANY laws???
We'll never know
By Kaz
Mon, 06/13/2016 - 10:31am
Let's try higher hurdles to gun ownership and test the hypothesis. Clearly not having any higher hurdles hasn't solved anything.
Like kaz says
By Stevil
Mon, 06/13/2016 - 12:14pm
Your way OBVIOUSLY hasn't worked. Let's try something else and see what happens. The gun folk are scared of that because once you prevent thousands of killings and suicides the answer will be obvious.
Canada and Australia
By anon
Mon, 06/13/2016 - 12:37pm
Drive through either and see all the gun shops.
Now look up how much WMDgun mayhem they had since banning the guns that have a single purpose (mass murder capability).
Face facts: this is about high killing capacity weapons, and taking those away doesn't stop hunting, farming, or other non mass murder uses of weapons. It only stops the mass murders.
Except not really. All
By CCD
Mon, 06/13/2016 - 3:32pm
Except not really. All weapons available for legal purchase i.e. from a Federal Licensed Firearms deals are Semi-automatic weapons. Handguns and the scary looking "assault rifles" shoot at the same rate: one shot per trigger pull. They are all equally as powerful and dangerous as the next but the fact is liberal media loves to peddle that scary military looking "assault weapon" can kills hordes of people... So can a powerful handgun. You wanna know what the 1994 assault weapons bad did? "The 1994 assault weapons law banned semi-automatic rifles only if they had any two of the following five features in addition to a detachable magazine: a collapsible stock, a pistol grip, a bayonet mount, a flash suppressor, or a grenade launcher.
That’s it. Not one of those cosmetic features has anything whatsoever to do with how or what a gun fires. Note that under the 1994 law, the mere existence of a bayonet lug, not even the bayonet itself, somehow turned a garden-variety rifle into a bloodthirsty killing machine. Guns with fixed stocks? Very safe. But guns where a stock has more than one position? Obviously they’re murder factories. A rifle with both a bayonet lug and a collapsible stock? Perish the thought."
The failure here was not "assault weapons" or lack of "sensible gun laws" but the fact that this guy was clearly a threat to society and the government failed to prevent him from purchasing guns. There has been many reports of a "systematic purge" from counter-terrorism training of any references to Islam. This may well be why the FBI investigations were closed, and Mateen was free to purchase his arsenal.
I spent the day Sunday
By Elmer Fudd
Mon, 06/13/2016 - 10:49am
At a shotgun class conducted by those well known gun murderers in Freeport, Maine: LL Bean. Ten students, three instructors, a couple thousand shells. At a facility with a 100 per cent safety rating since day one.
Somehow, despite the wild and free access that we all have to as many guns as we want in 2016 America, nobody got killed. No confederate flags, no Alahu Akbah, no alcohol. Twenty shotguns and bunch of guys following the laws currently in place, and no injuries or killings.
Amazing how that works, huh?
10, 20, 100
By Stevil
Mon, 06/13/2016 - 12:53pm
Roughly The number of murders, suicides and shootings annually in the US in thousands.
Amazing how that works, huh?
You'll never stop all the carnage but my money is on cutting those numbers in half if you take guns out of homes.
Google "toddler shoots self" next time you want to talk about all those "responsible" gun owners.
Yep take them out of the
By CCD
Mon, 06/13/2016 - 3:36pm
Yep take them out of the homes than only ruthless criminals will have them. Funny how Chicago has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation yet the murder rate is off the charts. Also funny how little media coverage the homicide and shooting rate in Chicago gets. Probably cause it doesnt fit their agenda... FYI in 3 days over memorial weekend, 63 people were shot and 6 killed in Chicago. Funny how that works.
You can't have localized gun laws
By Kaz
Mon, 06/13/2016 - 3:53pm
When you don't even have to drive an hour to legally buy a full arsenal to bring into Chicago, then claiming that Chicago's tough gun laws have "failed" thus there's no reason to implement anything similar anywhere else in America is a fallacious argument.
You can't create "gun-free zones" like Chicago, or Boston, or NYC and just let people go a few miles down the road to buy them instead. However, when you have zero other options, at least this is better than nothing.
In other words, you think this has failed? Sell guns in storefronts right in Chicago and see how that goes...it won't bode well.
If the country removed every self-loading centre-fire rifle and every large barrel handgun from the entire country, then you'd see a huge drop in gun crime. If this country made it so that if you wanted a large capacity cartridge and a rifle with tremendous spray-and-pray stopping power you had to go to Croatia to get it, then you'd see a huge drop in gun crime. Claiming that our current hyper-localized attempts to control guns is a demonstration of how gun control is failing is so dishonest that the only people making it are either too simple to think deeply about the issue (and should have their opinions on the matter discounted) or being paid to say that level of stupidity to keep gun sales flowing (and should have their opinions on the matter discounted).
"Hyper-localized" gun control
By CCD
Tue, 06/14/2016 - 9:09am
"Hyper-localized" gun control laws? What does that even mean? Where did I suggest "hyper-localized" gun laws are failing? Chicago city limits are pretty big, so I wouldn't call that localized. Further, there are Federal gun control laws on the books such as "background checks" that exist on a "hyper-localized" and national level. I think its safe to say 99% of the murders, shootings etc occurring in Chicago are done by criminals with guns obtained illegally with no serial numbers. Keep in mind its a felony in most states including Illinois. So besides a gun ban which will not and should not happen in this country (sorry my freedom to bear arms is more important than your desire to have all guns confiscated and be "protected" by the government) what laws do you suggest?
And stop with the typical smug "your opinions should be discounted" fascist nonsense. Sorry you dont like dissenting opinions, you might want to talk to someone about that...
Just stop
By Kaz
Tue, 06/14/2016 - 10:40am
Chicago: 234 sq mi.
The rest of the USA: 3,806,000 sq mi.
The majority of recent Chicago murders have happened in the Austin neighborhood.
Oak Park isn't in Chicago. Windy City Firearms is located just inside Oak Park. From the epicenter of the shootings to Windy City Firearms isn't even an hour WALK away.
You only have to go a bit further by car to pick up a handgun.
If I buy a handgun, file off the serial number, and sell it out of my trunk in Chicago, it wouldn't even be a day's work. If it's harder for me to get a gun...If I can't keep buying and "losing" guns because of, say, a federal reporting law for lost and stolen weapons (that doesn't exist because Republicans keep blocking attempts at it)...If I have to go further, then the cost to do so goes up. The risk goes up. Fewer people are doing straw purchases and illegal sales. Fewer guns are on the street for criminals to use.
This isn't rocket science and your petulant attempts to pout about how a reduction in the sales and availability of firearms is unclear to you as to the ripple effect it would have on gun crimes is meaningless. Great, you've agreed you're an idiot and can't see how a reduction in the purchase of guns from gun stores would effect the availability of illegal guns (where do you think they come from??).
Finally, your "freedom to bear arms" isn't a suicide pact. You had freedom to use cocaine as medicine back in the 1800's. By the 1920's this was legislated to non-existence. How we as a society interpret the Second Amendment is our choice. If we determine that your "right to bear arms" has limits that exclude all but the most necessary circumstances or only within specific locations like gun ranges, then take it to court. By the point these restrictions are in place, you'll lose just like a cocaine user who might want to take up the illegality of cocaine with the courts. But you're welcome to argue your case.
Also, I approve of dissent. I dissent on a lot of things. But I back them up with reality. You don't. You ignore reality. You ignore dissent. You can't handle a world in which you lose access to guns because guns are too readily available to too many people in this country. You need to accept that the world you want to live in doesn't exist any more. We've pulled bigots, misogynists, and all sorts of other malcontents who clinged to "the way things were" through worse things than gun control before and we still survived. We'll drag you into a less gun-happy country because the rest of us are tired of dying so that you can have your playthings. Get used to having your ignorant and dangerous "opinions" ignored.
Guns are far, far too accessible here in the United States,
By mplo
Tue, 06/14/2016 - 7:46am
which is a part of the root problem here. The United States has the highest rate of murder by handguns per capita in the Western World. Murders and suicides occur more by guns, because it's so much easier, in a fit of anger, or in the throes of depression, to pick up a gun, aim it at oneself, or another person, and pull the trigger. What results is either a death, or an adversely and permanently altered way of life for the victim(s).
Also guns can and do kill and maim many more people much more quickly to boot.
As horrendous as the GOP positions on gun control are,
By mplo
Thu, 06/16/2016 - 1:16am
The Democrats, at large, are no better in that respect. The sad fact remains that, with very rare exceptions, neither the GOP or the majority of Democrats have had the gumption to stand up to the bullying tactics of the NRA (National Rifle Association) and the Gun Lobby and pass more stringent, more affective gun laws that would save many more lives.
With a father
By anon
Mon, 06/13/2016 - 8:18am
Who hosted an Anti-American talk show, following an ex-con imam who openly preached hatred towards LGBT people, co-workers who complained about him openly sharing racist and homophobic views.
But hey lets all do the liberal circle-jerk and blame anything but what evidence is being laid out. Because, well it could have been his religious views because that's the "religion of peace."
Rush Limbaugh?
By anon
Mon, 06/13/2016 - 9:10am
Rush Limbaugh was his father?
Or was it that gun-loving right-wing pseudoprof at Florida State who defames the constitution on a regular basis?
Here is evidence
By Daan
Mon, 06/13/2016 - 10:32am
The clearest and simplest evidence is that bullets entered the bodies of 49 people killing them. Bullets entered the bodies of more people without killing them.
Let's start with the clearest and simplest evidence: bullets kill people.
This guy, even without a gun would have done this atrocity
By Matt
Mon, 06/13/2016 - 9:11am
This guy, even without a gun would have done this atrocity some way, some how.
Don't be fooled into thinking that even with tougher gun laws that this would not have happened in some sort of fashion! i.e. truck bomb, pipe bombs, setting the place on fire, knives etc. This POS was determined!
Newsflash
By anon
Mon, 06/13/2016 - 9:23am
He'd have a far more difficult time building a bomb of sufficient power than getting a gun, because the components are controlled.
Note that the marathon bombs, built from fireworks, only killed three people. Guns and cars involved later were just as lethal.
Delusional thinking is the cause of this - by the NRA and people like you.
No. The Marathon bombing was a failure...
By dmcboston
Mon, 06/13/2016 - 10:08am
...in certain ways. If the bombs were on mailboxes or traffic light control boxes, you would have had 200 amputations, not of legs but higher up.
Of the maimed, they all survived because we have a hell of a good medical response system here.
Oh, and the blast pattern was low.
We'll never know
By Kaz
Mon, 06/13/2016 - 10:34am
If the bombs were on mailboxes or traffic control boxes, they would have been more obvious to staff trained to look for bombs than as they were. Then it would have been a total failure as the bombs would have been detectable and the area cleared.
If you're going to play "what if", then you have to give benefit of the doubt to all parties involved or you're just throwing out red herrings.
Actually, no. Not red herrings.
By dmcboston
Mon, 06/13/2016 - 1:35pm
The bombs were placed, they walked away, then detonated them. They weren't there very long.
You're right. If someone spotted them in time, fine. If not, it would have been chest level carnage.
OK, another one for you...the Times Square bombing (failed) was a total success. The bomb vehicle was placed, triggered and the guy got away.
The bomb itself, however, was made by an amateur and was a failure. If it was made correctly, the gas cans and propane tanks would have turned Times square into, in the words of our elders, a "charnel house". Great plan, shit workmanship.
Bombs are simply not that easy to make without either it not working, or going all Bill Ayer's followers on you.
Oh, for what it's worth, I personally know about a half dozen people that were there that day.
Are you kidding?
By mplo
Tue, 06/14/2016 - 9:01am
There were a number of people who were killed outright in the Marathon bombing, as well.
It's a good thing Florida has
By anon
Mon, 06/13/2016 - 10:15am
It's a good thing Florida has conceal carry laws and all those innocent people were able to protect themselves with their guns!
Its also a good thing Florida
By CCD
Mon, 06/13/2016 - 12:27pm
Its also a good thing Florida has laws making it illegal to carry a firearm in an establishment that serves alcohol. That sure stopped this jihadist!
Guess What Ammosexual Fetishist!
By anon
Mon, 06/13/2016 - 12:39pm
The first person to engage this creep was ... AN ARMED SECURITY GUARD.
So much for that "I'mma gonnna be a biiiiig herooooo in my mind!" stupidity. Doesn't happen, dear.
The other hole in that argument
By Stevil
Mon, 06/13/2016 - 1:24pm
If only we had guns!
Right. So one person pulls out a gun and starts shooting. Then 100 more do the same. Yeah, that'll work. Just shoot at the guys in black hats, right?
Huh??? It wasn't an "armed
By CCD
Mon, 06/13/2016 - 3:42pm
Huh??? It wasn't an "armed security guard" but a uniformed off-duty police officer who was working there heard gun shots then exchanged gunfire with Mateer. They were allowed to have a firearm on the premises. Nice try though, dont let facts or an agenda for that matter get in the way.
The FBI and statistics say ...
By SwirlyGrrl
Mon, 06/13/2016 - 8:41pm
Nope.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-weisser/fbi-rep...
Furthermore:
Here's the link to the full FBI report: https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2014/september/fb...
Huffington Post- the bastion
By CCD
Tue, 06/14/2016 - 9:13am
Huffington Post- the bastion for centrist and unbiased opinions... "Not readily understood to be gun free zones" means nothing. Pretty sure that shooters know schools, for instance, are gun free zones. And AGAIN, if Mateen had know Pulse was a "gun-free zone" do you think that would have stopped or deterred him? Highly doubt it. Use some common sense here.
Quoting the above post ...
By anon
Tue, 06/14/2016 - 2:01pm
What part of "link to the full FBI report" do you not get?
I have to disagree with you here, Matt.
By mplo
Tue, 06/14/2016 - 7:54am
Tougher gun laws are needed here in the United States. When Norway had a similar shooting afew years ago, the Norwegians called on their government to implement stronger, more affective gun laws, and that's what they got. The Norwegians didn't go out and arm themselves to the teeth like so many people here in the United States do after mass shootings like this.
The fact that this guy went in, opened fire and killed and injured so many people so quickly is rather horrific. Guns are far easier to carry and to use, and pipe bombs and/or truck bombs can turn out to be duds and fail. Guns, on the other hand, do even more damage, because bullets travel at a much greater velocity, because they're fired from a distance, plus they're generally made out of metal, which does even more extensive damage. Guns are already put together for use, and don't have to be manufactured on the spot.
Just because people can and do sometimes get killed or permanently maimed with bomb explosions doesn't negate the fact that firearms are entirely too accessible here in the United States, and are all too easy to use, either on oneself, or against other people. The United States has long been a society and culture that depends and revolves around firearms, and it has come home to roost, in more ways than one; we're now seeing the net results; in mass-shootings like the shooting in Orlando, the VA Tech shooting, the Columbine shooting, to mention afew, as well as in the streets of our poorest urban areas, and the fact that all too often, arguments between ordinary people turn deadly when firearms are present.
"Only purpose of which is to
By CCD
Mon, 06/13/2016 - 10:18am
"Only purpose of which is to kill people" is incredibly disingenuous. 99% of the other AR-15 gun owners use them for their lawful purposes: target shooting, hunting etc. He passed background checks. The FBI did investigate him, twice but closed the case due to lack of evidence. Do I think this terrorist should have been able to purchase guns? Hell no! But how do you prevent people like this from buying guns, besides an outright gun ban? He committed no crimes other than making threats.
Further, its also disingenuous to make a compare Christianity to Islam. There is no global Christian move to "slay the infidels." Not all Muslims are terrorist, but all the recent terrorist attacks have been committed by radical Islamic terrorist. Paris, Belgium, Orlando, Boston, Chattanooga, Fort Hood and the numerous attacks in Middle East.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Islamist_ter...
Further, have not seen what happens on a regular basis in Iran and Iraq/Syria to Gay people? Is it widely practiced in the Middle East that those guilty of Sodomy are punishable by death.
Thanks for the NRA propaganda CCD
By anon
Mon, 06/13/2016 - 10:39am
But the AR15 is in fact a military assault weapon, designed for the Army, used for killing people, and not particulary useful for hunting. There are thousands of articles on the internet on this subject but I think this one is particularly useful.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/crime/2013/01/02/gun_co...
As for your anti Muslim, pro Christianity propaganda, simply not true. Some Christians advocate the death penalty for gays. Does that mean all Christians do? Of course not.
Hang on a minute, anon.
By mplo
Tue, 06/14/2016 - 8:00am
The fact that there is a great deal of anti-Muslim sentiment in this country and in the west, generally (which is not justified.), and that some Christians do advocate the death penalty for gays does not negate the fact that homophobia occurs throughout the world, and most of the Islamic countries are not exception to this.
Have a hard time agreeing
By Daan
Mon, 06/13/2016 - 11:06am
99% of AR-15 gun owners use them for lawful purpose? Take that as a given it does not answer the question of whether they or any civilian needs to own a weapon proven to be a weapon of mass destruction. Are these particular weapons necessary to satisfy the needs (not merely wants) of these gun owners?
It is disingenuous to compare Christianity to Islam at least where Gay people are concerned? There is a global Christian denomination that officially declares Gays as "intrinsically disorderd." This policy supports the mental torture of Gay people by declaring all Gay people are mentally ill. The global denomination: Roman Catholic Church. Add the other Christian denominations that preach love the sinner but hate the sin and you have a world wide religion that advocates mental torture. Guess it's not terrorism. But close enough for my money.
By the way: Until the 20th century Christians physically tortured, beheaded and burned people accused of Sodomy. And in this nation in the 50s simply to be accused of homosexuality led to loosing jobs, homes and families. Not quite the severity of beheading. But let's not pretend that the hands of the United States are clean.
The logic of an outright ban is the black and white fallacy. It's either this or that. Sorry but that is presenting a false choice. The Supreme Court itself in its majority decision agreed that regulation is appropriate.
I have indeed seen pictures of what happens to Gays in Iran and other Middle East nations. Including a major ally of the U.S., Saudi Arabia. These are the same nations that exist in a culture that treats women as second class. Does that mean to condemn all Muslims? Well the same argument would apply to nations where Christianity is dominant religion of the culture and where Gays are treated with the same contempt. So when do you decide which should be condemned?
By the way the list of above events left out Sandy Hook. Does Sandy Hook not count as mass murder? The murderer was not Muslim; but he was a killer.
Bullshit
By chaosjake
Mon, 06/13/2016 - 10:48am
If you're speaking strictly of "terrorism" as politically motivated violence, the radical right has a nasty track record in the US. They have a long history of bombings, shootings, and targeted assassination of doctors and police officers.
If you mean "terrorism" as an act of mass killing, you're average disgruntled white guy is still the one to be most afraid of.
Further bullshit
By chaosjake
Mon, 06/13/2016 - 10:55am
Christian Republicans like Cruz, Huckabee, and Jindal all feel like Kevin Swanson is mainstream enough to appear speaking in support of him at an event where Swanson calls for the death penalty for homosexuality and the mass execution of gay people by the US government.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBDbGyv6SIQ[/youtube]
I would like a poll to determine how many gun owners
By bulgingbuick
Mon, 06/13/2016 - 4:41pm
are posers. You know POG's, wanna bees, dress up men. You know, Ted Nugent types.
Hunting??
By Sally
Mon, 06/13/2016 - 5:58pm
What kind of incompetent dipshit needs an AR-15 to hunt? Seriously? What are they hunting exactly? It's a military weapon designed to inflict maximum damage on people. If you need that gun in your life to shoot targets or deer then I have news for you: you need more skill and less firepower and probably a bigger wiener.
Huh?
By bosguy22
Tue, 06/14/2016 - 8:58am
You know AR doesn't stand for "assault rifle" right? It is 100% not a military weapon, nor is it that much more powerful than the average handgun. It's also not an automatic weapon. What exactly should one use for shooting deer? Maybe this gun?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.30-06_Springfield#/...
Well, that weapon is more powerful than an AR-15.
Actually, the AR-15 isn't a
By chaosjake
Tue, 06/14/2016 - 3:19pm
Actually, the AR-15 isn't a great deer rifle. They're chambered in .223 (5.56mm), which puts a lot of powder behind a fairly small projectile. You end up with a high velocity, low mass bullet that's not great at taking down game. Back when I hunted, my deer gun of choice was my grandpa's lever action Winchester .30-30. Bigger, slower slug.
I grew up with guns, and I still support gun rights. But I think it's probably time to impose some limits... At least on assault rifles, and maybe on high capacity box magazines in general.
It seems like everyone having this debate is screaming from the far ends of the political spectrum. I wish more people could have a reasonable discussion around the middle.
Sorry, Sally, this isn't really even about your post, I guess.
Or that we enforce the
By CCD
Tue, 06/14/2016 - 4:34pm
Or that we enforce the existing laws:
Several years ago, the U.S. Attorney for Northern Illinois — the federal prosecutor responsible for Chicago — announced that, as a matter of policy, his office would not be pursuing prosecutions in most cases involving “straw buyers,†the clean faces who use their unblemished records to purchase firearms on behalf of convicted criminals and others prohibited from legally purchasing firearms. These cases are lots of work and generally don’t ensnare big-time criminals, but rather the idiot nephews, girlfriends, and grandmothers of big-time criminals. Putting those people in federal penitentiaries for ten years isn’t going to win anybody any friends. But they are the people who render our current background-check laws ineffective against the criminals who have turned parts of Chicago into a free-fire zone. Putting a few dozen of them away for a few dozen years might provide a strong disincentive for other would-be straw buyers, particularly those who (as is not uncommon) engage in straw buying as a commercial endeavor.
It isn’t just the federal authorities. In most of our states, including those with the cities suffering the most from violent crime, the ratio of illegal guns seized to gun cases prosecuted demonstrates just how unseriously these crimes are treated almost everywhere, New York being the notable exception.
The massacre in Orlando is horrifying, but the great majority of our murders are nothing like that. They are the ordinary work of ordinary criminals, who in most cases (more than 90 percent in New York City) already are known to police, as indeed was Omar Mateen. These killers and future killers are on the street committing their crimes because our criminal-justice system, with its vast resources, does not do its job. The police, the prosecutors, the jailers, and the parole-and-probation authorities all must answer for the fact that such a large share of our murders are committed by people already well known to law enforcement.
But there’s a fair number of crimes that could be prevented, if the people we pay to prevent them were willing to do the old-fashioned police work necessary: running down criminals, prosecuting unglamorous cases, properly managing parolees. But those jobs are entrusted to government employees, whose unions are irreplaceable benefactors of Democratic political campaigns. Hence when an ISIS groupie from New York shoots up a gay bar in Orlando under the nose of the FBI, it’s somehow the fault of quail-hunters in Texas and .223 enthusiasts in Idaho.
Your arguments are basically
By chaosjake
Tue, 06/14/2016 - 11:05pm
Your arguments are basically valid when it comes to illegal handguns and gang-ish shootings. Almost every gun used in a spree killing is obtained legally, so cracking down on straw buyers or even requiring background checks on private sales (a measure that, if implemented, would basically function as a massive payday for gun shops, since all second hand guns would get funnelled through their cash registers), wouldn't have made an iota of difference. Figuring out a way to reduce the overall murder rate is another discussion for another day. Getting rid of assault rifles (or arguably all removable box magazines) would go a long way to reducing the lethality of the next asshole who wants to walk into a bar or movie theater or office party or college or elementary school and shoot a bunch of humans.
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