WeaponsManThe gun law that emerged from the conference committee in Massachusetts has the state’s anti-gun politicians, mostly but not all Democrats, thrilled; it makes the right to have any gun at all, including a single-shot shotgun, subject to police discretion.
The law erases, or, pending court action we might say attempts to erase, the 2nd Amendment from the rights of subjects of and visitors to the Bay State and converts them into a privilege bestowed, or not, by a police official; although the cop must seek a rubber stamp from a Massachusetts court to deny the right. This was not a near-run thing: the vote was extremely lopsided, 122-29 in the state House and 37-3 in the state Senate.
A denied person can appeal — to an anti-gun Massachusetts judge. Already, police oathbreakers throughout the Bay State are high-fiving over their new authoritah. Police already had unfettered discretion over hand guns and semi-automatic centerfire rifles, the possession of which requires a pistol permit under the state’s byzantine gun laws.
Despite the liberal dream regime of the nation’s strictest gun control; lax, idle policing; suspect-friendly and victim-hostile courts; and, not least, short sentences in “program”-rich prisons, the state has a great deal of gang activity and violent crime, far more per capita than other New England states. For some ironic reason some of the most liberal conurbations are foremost in the crime statistics, and the very leading cities are the ones where the police exercise their permit discretion most narrowly, for some counterintuitive reason (if you’re a newspaper reporter).
All of the state’s liberal, anti-gun papers have editorialized in favor of the ban. The Boston Globe (which favored an even stricter version that did not pass). The Boston Herald. The Worcester Telegram (which sounded almost pro-gun, praising this anti-gun bill). The Springfield Republican-American (theirs does not seem to be on line). The Quincy Patriot-Ledger and Metro-West Daily News. The Hampshire Gazette, from the Sapphic mecca of Northampton. The Lowell Sun was a rare exception among the top 10 ABC circulation papers in the state; it didn’t comment on this bill but has previously called for control of “politicians, not gun owners.”
Republicans are as useless as Democrats in the Bay State, but the Democrats can get way out there. One candidate for Attorney General, Warren Tolman, called for a sweeping ban on all handguns until “smart gun” technology is developed, then backed off to “new guns.” His primary opponent, Maura Healey, continues to insist she’s to the hard, totalitarian left of Tolman on the issue.
The weak in-state gun rights group, the Gun Owners’ Action League, accepted the law as an appeasement measure, an important milestone in GOAL’s slide to irrelevance. GOAL’s point was that the original draft language was even worse, so this bill was a win, and MA subjects gain a right to have their denial heard by a judge, and — whoopie-do — won’t need the new may-issue FID Card for pepper spray. Clearly, their chains rest lightly upon their shoulders, and their manacles are but a sign of how much their Master values them.
Boston Police Chief Evans celebrated the law, and intends to use it to deny long gun licenses (“Firearms Owner ID Cards”) and gun registration to all but the police and those connected to organized crime — in Boston, two sets with a big intersection. He also plans to “review” existing FOIDs, with a view to revoking most of them.
How’s the law going to work for Evans? Well, first let’s take a look at his department’s performance on homicides: poor. Over the last ten years, Evans’s record is to leave more than half of homicides cold cases, unsolved). Evans appears unconcerned about his department’s worse-than-this-year’s-Red-Sox record, but a series of exposés of the underperforming homicide unit in the Boston Herald seem to have stirred Marty Walsh, a mayor of the public employees’ unions more than a mayor of the murder victims, to discuss, however reluctantly, taking action.
A Herald special report this week found that more than half of the city’s 628 homicides over the 10-year span remain unsolved and that murder clearance rates are marked by disparities in everything from neighborhood to race of the victim. Black males, for example, were 10 times more likely to be murdered than white males — but their killers were caught at a 38 percent rate compared with a 79 percent rate for whites.
They don’t even aim very high: their target is a 50% clearance rate (the case is cleared if a suspect is identified, even if he is not arrested, not tried, or acquitted). They’ve only hit that target two years running once, and barely, former chief Ed Davis told the Herald. On the plus side, if they go as far as indictment, they almost always win a conviction (90+%), so they seem to be holding cases for strong and convincing evidence, which is a factor in the low closure rate (most big cities are over 60%, so Boston’s a lot worse than its peers). Here’s the whole Herald series:
Justice on Hold:
- Boston lags behind U.S. in solving murders
- Heartbreak as teen cases languish
- ‘It’s just like, it’s another black person, whatever’
- Ballistics tech falls short
- Most unsolved cases involved guns
- BPD’s homicide unit driven to nab killers
- Justice On Hold: Where tragedy strikes
- A decade of deadliness
- A closer look at the data
- How Boston compares
Since we didn’t have the ambition to sieve through the 628 murders over 10 years, 336 of which are now, or are becoming, cold cases, we took a quick spin through the 29 murders Boston has experienced in 2014. A handful of them were with knives, so those are unlikely to be affected by Evans’s anti-legal-gun-owner push. Given Evans’s low prioritization of actualcrime fighting as opposed to gun-owner fighting, a significant number remain, as you might expect, unsolved. Of the solved cases, the amount committed by registered, licensed gun owners, or any legal gun owners, appears to be … zero. Committed with long guns? Zero. Committed by activists with GOAL or the NRA, Evans’s and Walsh’s favorite whipping boys?Zero. Committed by gang members, felons, teens and other Federally prohibited persons — just about all of ‘em.
Likely effect of Evans’s top “crime-fighting” priority: zero.
Maybe his priority is not crime fighting.
Good. We need to get this war going. The sooner the socialist trash attack someone the sooner we can get this thing on the road. Vote with your wallet and buy more ammo and mags. We will need them. Liberty1775. (but not in the Communist state of Mass-e-stupid)
Where’s Paul Revere and the Minutemen when you need them?
Don’t visit Massachusetts, don’t patronize any business that’s based there, and don’t let so much as a penny of your money enter that state.
Mark’s right (above); it will help to get things rolling, but until then, don’t give ’em a dime.
Also — regarding Mark Koernke’s common reminder to “buy more ammo, buy more ammo, buy more ammo”, he’s absolutely right about the importance of that too.
You may think you have more than you need, but it’ll go fast because there’s a lot of shooting to be done, and ammunition shortages are the most common reason for failures of revolutions throughout history.
You can’t have enough, and the stuff is always increasing in value, so it’s kind of stupid not to buy as much as you can. (it’s worth a lot more than the dollars you’re trading for it)
Agreed!