What law — specifically — would have prevented yesterday’s shooting?” - Granite Grok

What law — specifically — would have prevented yesterday’s shooting?”

UCLA Shooting -AP PhotoNick Ut The Associated Press
UCLA Shooting -(AP Photo_ Nick Ut) The Associated Press

Charles C.W. Cooke would like to know. “What law — specifically — would have prevented yesterday’s shooting?”

(NRO) I ask because, absent the total ban on firearms that gun-control advocates insist that they don’t covet, it is not at all obvious which rules would have stopped the perpetrator from carrying out his plan. According to the Los Angeles Police Department, the shooter bought a 9 mm handgun legally in Minnesota, passing a background check in the process; then, gun in hand, he killed a woman in that state; and, finally, he drove with his guns to California, where he killed both his professor and himself.

In the process, he both obeyed and broke a number of existing laws.

In Minnesota, he followed the purchasing rules to the letter, and, because he had no criminal record, he was rewarded for his fealty. But after that moment he resolved to ignore whatever rules got in his way. In both Minnesota and California he violated the statutes that prohibit gun owners from carrying their weapons without a permit; at UCLA he violated a rule issued in September of 2015 that prohibits gun owners from carrying firearms onto campus; and, rather obviously, he violated the flat-out prohibition on murder that obtains in all 50 states. He was, in other words, entirely happy to follow the rules when it suited him, and entirely happy to break them when it suited him. He was, like most shooters, not much interested in the sanctity of the law

 

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