Michael McDermott, a man who appears to have stepped out of a Byzantine monastery of the Middle Ages, has been the latest offender, only that the wild-eyed man was not a monk, but a madman.
He was upset and belligerent allegedly because of the garnisheeing of his wages by his employer to pay back taxes to the IRS. Shootings such as this, despite what you have been led to believe, occur also in places where guns are supposedly not easily accessible.
For example, last December, a Dutch student used a banned pistol to wound five people in a high school in the Netherlands, a country with markedly strict gun control laws.
Horrible shootings have also taken place in Dunblane, Scotland and in Port Arthur, Tasmania in Australia in 1996. Both of these bloody rampages resulted in even more stringent gun control laws in those countries with the regrettable consequence of drastic increases in crime.
In the latest episode, in Wakefield, Massachusetts, the victims, four women and three men, could, perhaps, have been saved if only one employee of Edgewater Technology Inc. had been legally armed at his workplace.
Unfortunately, Massachusetts is one of those states whereby it is difficult for law-abiding citizens to carry firearms for self or family protection. In Massachusetts, the right to carry a firearm is not easily granted. The law in that state is quite restrictive in whom it allows to own a firearm, not to mention to carry a concealed one. To apply for a concealed carry permit one must demonstrate a need for a firearm, and even if a need is demonstrated to the authorities, a license may not be issued.
In the home state of historic Lexington and Concord, firearm dealers must also keep records of all sales for tracking purposes. A license for a one-time permit to purchase a firearm is required, as well as an identification card. There is no state preemption, so that municipalities can implement even more restrictive local laws than the state itself. The city of Boston, for example, even has a ban on replicate firearms. Moreover, a purchaser of a firearm must register his/her firearm within seven days and report the condition of the sale in writing to the commissioner of public safety.
As if all of this was not enough, Massachusetts also has a seven-day waiting period for first time permit applicants. Thus, in Massachusetts, the Second Amendment appears to be more of a privilege of the few than a constitutional right of the citizenry at large.
Needless to say, McDermott did not have a permit for any of his guns, including the shotgun and the semiautomatic assault weapon with which he allegedly committed the shooting yesterday.
By definition, only the law-abiding obey the law, criminals don¹t. When the government passes restrictive gun laws, those laws interfere in the lives of law-abiding citizens. Yet, it does not stop criminals or the mentally deranged bent on breaking them.
While neither state waiting periods nor the federal Brady Law has been associated with a reduction in crime rates, adopting concealed carry gun laws cut death rates from public, multiple shootings (e.g., those that took place in Scotland, Australia, and now Massachusetts) by an amazing 69 percent, according to Prof. John Lott of Yale University.
The strict gun control laws in Massachusetts did not prevent McDermott from carrying out his heinous deed. It only prevented his intended victims from having the ability to protect themselves and their co-workers. McDermott¹s attorney told CNN that his client was a psychiatric patient taking medication. Not only had he disobeyed the law but also, more than likely, he would have been disqualified from buying or carrying such firearms legally.
The police, of course, cannot be everywhere all of the time, unless one lives in a police state, and even there, history teaches us, one only finds tyranny, not lasting security. Yet, as criminologist David Kopel and others have demonstrated, supported by the research of Professors Lott and Gary Kleck of Florida State University, even the fact that a citizen may be armed may be enough of a deterrent to protect those who are unarmed in a given locality and prevent crimes, shootings such as the one that took place in Wakefield Massachusetts during this holiday season marred and made tragic by this horrible event.
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