Conservative Evangelical Pastor Rick Warren tweeted yesterday that the unregistered gun his son used to kill himself was purchased from an online buyer:
LOS ANGELES — The gun Rick Warren’s son used to kill himself was unregistered and purchased on the Internet, the pastor tweeted Thursday afternoon.
Warren’s tweet read:
“Someone on the internet sold Matthew an unregistered gun. I pray he seeks God’s forgiveness. I forgive him.#MATTHEW 6:15”
California law requires that gun dealers keep a register of all guns sold in the state. Federal law also requires a background check before a firearm may be purchased from a gun dealer. One of the things the background check looks for is whether a person has ever been committed to a mental health institution. More details here:
The Orange County Sheriff’s Department is trying to find the seller but it won’t be easy. The gun’s serial number was scratched off, making it impossible to trace, spokesman Jim Amormino said.
“We can’t tell if it’s registered or not because the serial number is scratched off,” he said. “At one point in time, it may have been, but it’s going to be impossible to find out.”
The Warren family has disclosed that Matthew Warren suffered from mental illness, for much of his life, including debilitating episodes of depression and thoughts of suicide. I don’t know if Matthew had spent time in a psychiatric facility, but the fact that he purchased his gun online rather than at a gun dealer where he would be required to submit himself to a background check suggests he may have believed he would have been disqualified from purchasing a firearm because of the background check requirement.
Unfortunately online sales of firearms are not well regulated, as the report released by Mayors Against Illegal Guns in 2011 demonstrated. Though online gun dealers are supposed to comply with federal laws regarding background checks, many do not, and “private sellers” are exempt from the federal background check requirement.
Federally licensed firearms dealers are required to conduct background checks on all buyers, whether in person or online. But unlicensed “private sellers” are exempt from conducting background checks. This so-called “gun show loophole,” along with the Internet, now accounts for about 40 percent of U.S. sales, fueling what law enforcement officials say is a huge black market for illegal guns.
One online gun dealer was linked to both the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre that killed 32 people and the mass mass shooting at Northern Illinois University in 2008 that left five dead. Guns purchased illegally online also have been linked to police shootings, gun trafficking and sales to minors. […]
In the New York investigation, a team of 15 undercover agents surfed the Internet over a period of 18 days to capture audio and video recordings of online gun sellers blatantly skirting the law that bars the sale of firearms to felons, the mentally ill, domestic abusers and other prohibited buyers. The investigators examined 125 private sellers in 14 states who advertised on 10 different websites. They found more than 25,000 guns for sale on those sites alone.
Investigators found that 62% of the private gun sellers they contacted (77 out of 125) indicated they would sell guns to people who could probably not pass a background check. It appears that Matthew Warren was able to obtain a firearm online without the knowledge of his family or legal authorities. Meanwhile, the NRA and other pro-gun groups such as the Gun Owners of America continue to resist a more comprehensive systems of universal background checks and the elimination of the private seller loophole.
In a tense exchange with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America said Wednesday his organization would seek to oust Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) from office.
“He ought to be held politically accountable and they way to do it is in a primary,” Pratt explained.
Though the Republican senator has an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association, his support for closing the so-called gun show loophole indicated he didn’t really support the Second Amendment, according to Pratt.
All because, I suppose, they believe the unfettered access to guns is a God-given right that trumps all other rights, including the right to life. To which I reply from the scriptures: “Jesus wept.”
One would think that in this case Warren’s son’s computer that he used to buy the gun might be of help in checking the history to find who he bought the fun online from. Course that may open up a Warren can of worms as well, but if they truly want to track the source the option is on the table.
The argument was made on CNN yesterday that guns bought online still have to be shipped to a dealer who does a background check. This story pretty much decries that argument.
NRA, your friendly terrorist lobbyist?
Well, is our paralyzed Congress thinking of passing (in 2013) a “universal” background check law that doesn’t address online gun sales?
What could be more feeble?
I don’t think that can happen now. That’s what makes young Warren’s death meaningful. Terrible events like this that didn’t have to happen are wake-up calls, and we’ve had quite a few lately. If that had not been the case with gun safety we would never have gotten even this far.
The second amendment says: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.”
A moment’s thought unblinded by prejudice will show that if “regulation” ipso facto meant “infringement”, the amendment would be in contradiction to itself.
Some people say, well the first applies to the militia, the second applies to the people. But the underlying idea is that the people ARE the potential militia. That is exactly the justification for the right. Behind that is the security of the free state.
A militia can only exist through strict regulation and obedience to the chain of command. If the militia is well regulated, it means that regulation is inseparable from the whole issue of the people’s right to bear arms. Unregulated bearing of arms is a threat to the security of the free state.
While state militias are normally under the command of the state governors, they exist by FEDERAL statute, based on the second amendment to the FEDERAL constitution. So the “free state” referred is in the last analysis the United States of America, not merely some individual state or states.
The NRA imagines some kind of fictional parallel universe (like a virtual CSA) where the second and the tenth amendment to the FEDERAL constitution give states the right to defy and rebel against the FEDERAL government. I thought we put paid to that theory in 1865, but apparently not.
In fact one of the main purposes of the state militias is to put down insurrection and rebellion. If a situation should arise where the security of the USA is threatened, then the president, not the governors, would be the legal commander in chief of the state militia(s). Aside from Abraham Lincoln, President Eisenhower actually had to do this with Governor Faubus in Arkansas in 1957.
http://www.heritage.org/constitution/#!/articles/2/essays/87/commander-of-militia
It’s an extraordinarily poorly drafted amendment, as though Madison didn’t really know what he was trying to say. Not his finest work, ha-ha.
I’m sure you’re aware the 5 conservative male activists masquerading as “justices” solved the problem by simply reading the militia preface entirely out of the amendment. As though the first 13 words were throat-clearing by Madison. And how exactly an amendment speaking of the “security of a free State” gets interpreted into a right of “personal protection” is another mystery of “conservative” judicial thought.
But that was the policy that the nation’s “conservative” movement desired, and amazingly it turned out to be the “correct” reading of the amendment! Funny how that works for Scalia and his Boyz…
In any event, as you likely know, your observations were all specifically rejected by the 5 man conservative majority when they ruled that every American has a constitutional right to buy and own a handgun and that no state may regulate that “right” in any way. “A well regulated Militia”, indeed.
They did not rule that ‘no state may regulate that “right” in any way’.
“The outcome of D.C. v. Heller leaves some issues unanswered, including whether the Second Amendment restricts state regulation of firearms, and the standard for evaluating the constitutionality of other laws and regulations that impact the Second Amendment right. These issues will be the subject of future litigation.”
http://loc.gov/law/help/second-amendment.php
I believe what the court decided was that the particular regulation in question did infringe the right. But certainly not that any regulation per se infringes the right, which would be absurd, for the reasons I pointed out.
I think the amendment could have been clearer, but it is not that poorly worded. The first part, “a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state” is the logical antecedent, and the second,
“the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” follows from that (is the consequent).
That means the meaning of the law is logically dependent on the general premise of the first part being the case. If the court ignored it, I suppose that’s because it was not at issue. It certainly has been adjudicated before, the militia situation has changed a lot since the late 18th century. If counsel made it an issue they might have to say something.
Sorry, I haven’t read the decision and the dissents, I need to.
Well, if you are interested in this issue, then slogging thru the Court’s two recent gun cases would probably be of interest to you.
I think you are being a little hopeful about just how ideologically poisoned today’s Court really is. Heller invalidated the DC handgun ban and upheld handgun ownership for “home defense”. Of course the 5 “conservative” males had to interpret the entire amendment if they were going to construe it. They decided that the amendment had nothing to do with state militias, as they had to do if they were going to strike down a city’s handgun law that also had nothing to do with militias. If the amendment is construed to be about “well regulated militias”, then clearly municipal handgun bans would not have been implicated in the slightest.
So the 5 “conservative” males had to read the militia preface out of the amendment to create their phony and false reading of it. That’s now a decided issue. Yes, many historians weighed in on what the damn thing was intended to mean. Didn’t matter in the slightest to the 5 man majority because the “conservative” gun “right” ruling was a forgone conclusion.
Their second case invalidated the Chicago handgun ban, and ruled that the second amendment applied to the states as well. Quite remarkable, since the purpose of the second amendment had been previously thought to allow states to protect themselves against an overweening fed’rul gub’mint. But that interpretation wouldn’t protect private ownership of weapons from state regulation, which is what the “conservative” movement demanded and what their male activists masquerading as “justices” delivered for them.
Yes, it is true that not everything has been decided and that future gun rights litigation will flesh out more areas. It is assumed that state regulation of who exactly can possess weapons may be valid—felons and domestic abusers (maybe) don’t have a constitutional right to own a handgun–but I wouldn’t place too much reliance on that, nor will that mean much in trying to deal with the ocean of weaponry that America is drowning in. Indeed, who exactly shouldn’t have a right of “personal protection”? Why not ex-felons and spouse abusers? Why not mentally ill home-owners?
Indeed, I predict that future cases will rule that assault weapons with unlimited magazines are also a protected weapons class, that’s why you see the gun nuts (on our own threads!) throwing those arguments out about isolated and helpless Wyoming ranchers and scared single moms with 7 kids who need huge magazine clips. The NRA is already lining up their absurd “personal protection” arguments for their rightwing judges to vomit out hook, line and sinker. As AG would say, Bet on it.
Anyway, rest assured that the 5 conservative male “justices” (and the rest of America’s rightwing judiciary) will ensure that the new gun “right” they have manufactured out of whole cloth will be very well protected, and don’t expect that states are going to be allowed to do too much to “infringe” upon it. Unlike the (now abandoned) right to abortion, the new (male) gun “right” has the spittle-flecked support of 5 males on the Supreme Court. Common sense has been thrown out the window in America. And it’s not comin’ back…
That could interpreted many ways:
Tweets are almost always ambiguous. The internet isn’t the problem here, it’s the easy availability of guns to people who are depressed or angry or … Warren’s tweet (without any other context) seems to be intended to shift the focus to the internet – where it doesn’t belong.
Gun purchases from stores and dealers need thorough background checks, but it’s impossible to enforce between private individuals. (In private sales cases, I think a voluntary encouragement to do a background check (“Please help your community and friends be safer – check the background check web site before you make that sale and get $25 for your trouble.” or something,) makes more sense than saying you’ll be fined or sued if you don’t.) If the sale was between private people in this case, then saying “the internet” is just a smokescreen.
IOW, the authorities need more information before deciding how to address this case.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
The Republicans got flat-out lucky when Toomey took one of Pennsylvania’s Senate seats. To oust Toomey in a primary, in exchange for an even more radical right-winger, would be a major blow to Republican fortunes.
Go gun nuts! Don’t let that sellout with the A rating from the NRA steal your rights!
Does easy access to guns increase the suicide rate? If so, why isn’t the US closer to the top of this list?
If not for the easy purchase of a gun, would my mental health professional friend’s psychology graduate child who was in therapy not have committed suicide? Statistics don’t support an affirmative answer.
It’s hard to know how to compare suicide rates between countries. A single pair of numbers (for men and women) doesn’t seem likely to be the best way to draw conclusions. E.g. maybe suicide rate variations between countries is partly due to population distribution differences (mostly young vs mostly middle age vs many older); economic success differences (growing economy vs crushing poverty after earlier relative prosperity); out-of-control crime vs “normal” crime levels; chauvinistic versus mellow cultures (“you’ve shamed our family!” vs “don’t worry, we all make stupid mistakes”).
Of course, there are many ways to commit suicide and stronger gun control won’t eliminate it. But suicide is often “successful” only after a particularly rash act. Making it more difficult (mainly through reduced availability of guns) or more time consuming can make it rarer. (Kurt Cobain‘s a good example.)
Cheers,
Scott.