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Man was hanging out with a loaded 'ghost' gun near street shrine for recent Roslindale murder victim, authorities say
By adamg on Thu, 04/21/2022 - 11:27pm
Boston Police report arresting a Brockon man on gun charges following his arrest in the Florence Apartments parking lot at the end of Bradeen Street in Roslindale Wednesday evening.
Police and the Suffolk County District Attorney's office say gang-unit officers and state troopers, on the lookout for several man whom they'd been told were packing weapons, found the men in the parking lot shortly before 7 p.m. Among them: Vanell Dominique, 20, a former resident of Olney Street in Dorchester now living in Brockton, who police say had "a semiautomatic Polymer-80 loaded with ten rounds of ammunition in the magazine." The DA's office called it an untraceable "ghost" gun.
According to the DA's office, gang-unit officers were already patrolling the area round a memorial in the Bradeen Street parking lot for Dreshaun Johnson, who was shot to death at the nearby Alfa gas station on April 8. The DA's office reports that three days after Johnson's murder, somebody fired at least 20 rounds in the area of his Bradeen Street memorial.
Dominique, who was arrested on gun charges in Dorchester two years ago, was charged with unlawful possession of a firearm, unlawful possession of ammunition and carrying a loaded firearm. He was also charged as an armed career criminal, which could mean a longer sentence if he's convicted on the other charges.
At his arraignment in West Roxbury Municipal Court, a judge ordered Dominique held without bail until at least a dangerousness hearing on Tuesday.
Innocent, etc
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Comments
People need to learn
People need to learn untraceable does not equal invisible. So he'll get at least one year for having the gun. Am I reading this right, his gun arrest from two years ago hasn't been tried yet?
One would hope
However those sentencing guidelines are often dismissed here in MA, specifically in Suffolk.
He could walk with 1 year probation. A slap on the wrist.
Not in this case
If he's found guilty, he'll be looking at prison time, thanks to his status as an armed career criminal.
He's not an armed career
He's not an armed career criminal if he has no prior convictions. The earlier case is pending, but there's no conviction.
Will go out on a limb then ...
And assume that police, who, unlike the general public, have easy access to state criminal-court records, have knowledge of past convictions on his part.
US gun culture is
absolutely psychopathic. You want to drive a car, a dangerous vehicle which may injure others? OK. Just register here, pass these driving tests, pay this registration fee, this inspection fee, and this insurance fee. It's a complicated, bureaucratic process that we accept as part of the contemporary world. You want to 3d print a weapon that may kill someone and that is untraceable as such? That is just what those people fought for in the eighteenth century, with muskets and black powder, indistinguishable from democracy itself, and it's enshrined forever now for hobbyists as a liberty that may never be inspected, much less questioned.
It's obviously a distraction from other, more systemic problems, but so goes la guerre culturelle.
Legally obtaining a license
Legally obtaining a license to own a gun in MA is just that: a complicated, bureaucratic process that I (at the very least) accept as part of the contemporary world. In order to be licensed, one must attend a class, get certified, and then submit an application to/interview with his local police department. Even after licensing, you must pass a background check with every firearms purchase and register each purchase with the Commonwealth. What this leaves you with is a fantastic system for the licensing and tracking of legal gun ownership--it doesn't work too well when people just choose to bypass it entirely, and those who would bypass it tend to be criminals (or pro-2nd-Amendment scofflaws, who I'd put in the same boat because while they may not like the rules, they know what they are and are choosing to ignore them).
In some ways, it's very much like the licensing of drivers and the registration of motor vehicles. When kids go blasting around Boston on 4-wheelers and mini motorcycles, do you think that they're appropriately licensed to do so (think there'd be a valid motorcycle license in the whole bunch?), or that those vehicles are properly registered and/or inspected, that excise taxes have been paid, etc.? I'd wager not. Also, think of the amount of times people make the police blotter for something-or-other when you see "driving without insurance," "suspended license," or "unregistered vehicle" tacked on as an additional charge.
I think you've stumbled on a better analog than you may have thought.
Remind me
How exactly does that happen with ghost guns?
It doesn't, and nowhere in my
It doesn't, and that's precisely the point of my post.
People who build ghost guns are choosing to bypass the system. Unlicensed people driving around with unregistered 4-wheelers and motorcycles are also choosing to bypass the system. Again, we have systems in place that monitor the law-abiding but aren't so great when it comes to monitoring those who are fine operating outside of the law.
In your post, you sort of just assume that everybody with a car has gone through the necessary bureaucracy:
Plenty of people don't register. Plenty of people don't get properly licensed. Plenty of people don't get inspections. Plenty of people are not insured. Some people simply shrug and choose to ignore the "complicated, bureaucratic process" you referenced.
You were trying to contrast car ownership/driving with gun ownership, and my point is that the two have more in common than not in a state like Massachusetts. The most thoughtful and comprehensive licensing/registration systems a society could ever devise would all be, to some extent, dependent upon people's voluntary participation in those systems.
But that's precisely where the analogy ends
No, people who build ghost guns aren't like those driving around on unregistered, unlicensed, uninsured four wheelers. They (and this "they" includes hobbyists who think of themselves as responsible gun owners) are able to do this because there is no federal law that prohibits companies like Polymer80 from making these guns in the first place. That's the whole point. Full stop.
You were trying to contrast
I was discussing what is and is not legal within Massachusetts. Federal law is another matter entirely, but the fact remains that any unregistered gun is illegal in Massachusetts. So while they may be "able to do this", remember that people are often able to so something illegal if they feel like it, because that's exactly what possession of a ghost gun is within the bounds of the Commonwealth. Full stop.
I was making a point
about how psychopathic US gun culture is, which I think this conversation has just demonstrated. The moment you bring up the absurdity of ghost guns, which shouldn't exist anywhere in the US because they shouldn't even be made, but they are, by actually existing legal companies that pay taxes, someone says, but they are already illegal in Massachusetts, and you can do illegal things if you want to with a four wheeler too, because people do illegal things when they make illegal choices.
US gun culture consistently defends the indefensible by pretending the problem has already been solved when it hasn't even been recognized.
Going ad hominem? Please
Going ad hominem? Please take a breath and listen to me...
In my opinion, ghost guns should be illegal. I am pleased that, in Massachusetts, they already are illegal. Nowhere do I suggest that "the problem has already been solved" (if I actually were the strawman you've made me out to be, I'd probably say that there is no problem, folks exercising their constitutional rights, her-durp-a-der!, etc.). I am, in fact, a liberal, and when I look at society at large, I often wonder why the good guys would choose to unilaterally disarm in the face of Trumpian maniacs armed to the teeth, but that's a topic for another day.
Pointing out that regulations tend, functionally, to only regulate those willing to comply with them is not the same as saying there shouldn't be regulations. I am not suggesting that we throw up our hands here and say "oh, well." Functionally, we both agree that there should be no ghost guns.
I merely felt that the logic of your initial post--car ownership/driving are highly regulated, gun ownership somehow isn't--was flawed in that i) gun ownership in MA is highly regulated, not some free-for-all, and ii) there are always going to be people who refuse to comply with licensing and registration requirements, be they automotive or firearms-related. The inference I took from your post is that you felt increased regulation was the answer.
In my statements, I pointed out the fact that there already are such regulations in Massachusetts, but that regulating something is not the same as guaranteeing compliance (hence, these things keep happening). The real issue is one of effective enforcement. Again, I am all for stringent enforcement when it comes to ghost guns.
This may strike you as odd, but many of us who are responsible gun owners are pissed when we see things like this, knowing the fees we've paid and the bureaucracy we've gone through. It's infuriating.
Apparently not his first
Apparently not his first rodeo: https://whdh.com/news/teen-facing-weapons-charges-after-gun-recovered-in...
Thank God
I’m not a religious person at all. But thank God for the Boston Police Department’s Youth Violence Strike Force.
Gun violence
Is committed by a very small percentage of the population. Yes guns are everywhere, however most people are not acquiring them for criminal activity. It is tragic that more effort is not placed in removing those who are looking to commit gun violence from the neighborhoods where they continually wreak havoc.
https://efsgv.org/learn/type-of-gun-violence/community-gun-violence/
For what it's worth
Isn't *ALL* crime committed by a very small percentage of the population?