PSH Over Firearms At Our Paper?

Who could have predicted it? Zounds!

Yes, like clockwork; as predictably as the Reasoned Discourse that breaks out whenever antis are challenged, my city's own Fishwrap And Sports-Franchise Booster -- er, what, what's that? Oh, it's still called "The Indianapolis Star," just like it was a real newspaper for grownups an' all. Anyway, they are frettin' over firearms in Indiana, especially here in Indianapolis (still trailing Chicago in firearm deaths, despite that city's bigtime illegalization of handguns in a state that regulates guns in every way Our Mr./Ms Editor could want, to no discernible effect).

Let's get out the Big Mean Fisking & Mockery Machine and see what this individual's on about.... (You'll have to wait on the link, as the piece is not posted yet: paying customers first! 'Sup now).

After praising efforts by police to "zero... in on the most crime-ridden neighborhoods and known worst offenders" (well, duh -- and you mean they haven't been? What's up with that, was the previous plan that everybody gets their fair share, 0.25 Terry stops and 0.1 dynamic entries per year?), Our Dear Scribe then avers that despite the "reticence" of some unnamed generic public safety officials about "the notorious weakness of Indiana's gun laws" (Notorious to whom? And remember, now, this is the state where if you take one step -- one single step! -- off your own land with your own handgun and you don't have permit, you are committing a felony, unless the gun was unloaded, "in a secure wrapper" and you were transporting it to buy, sell or get it repaired) -- where was I? Oh, yes, those "reticent public safety officials," who were just patting the hand of the poor, timid Editor, assuring he, she or it that the ease with which criminals lay a-holt of "illegal firearms"* is the main reason nearly 50 Hoosiers (or perhaps this figure counts Indianeapolitians alone; he's not clear. Slept through that class in J-School, did we?) have been killed by gunfire thus far in 2010 -- and every last one of them a deacon of their faith, pure and guilless as the driven snow, with lives filled with Good Works ahead of them, cut down at the very threshold of sainthood by -- oh, sob -- guns! Not, if you please, by wicked men wielding guns, or even noble men in the process of defending hearth, home, family and fortune. Nope, 'twere the gun what done it. So much better if their enemies had merely shoved their victim's sweet heads under the workin' bits a steam hammer to be beaten to a bloody pulp, I guess, or only hacked out their beating hearts with an obsidian knife; anything, so long as it didn't go bang!

But -- bravely suppressing a single, crystal tear of pure moral outrage -- the dear, sweet, loving Edit-thing insists, "...the problem doesn't stop with illegal firearms.*"

...And proceeds to launch into a shopping list of civilian-disarmament whines and wishes. In order:

- "...limit the number of guns that can be lawfully purchased at one time." Like the one-gun-a-month laws that have been shown in several states to not reduce the use of firearms in crimes; I believe Virginia's is up for repeal. Such a measure also short-circuits a Federal effort you'd think the writer would favor: buy more than one handgun from the same dealer within a few days and the dealer has to fill out ATF Form 3310.4 and send copies "to the designated State police or the local law enforcement agency in the jurisdiction where the sale took place." Jeepers, wouldn't that help 'em find, you know, folks doing big, fat straw purchases?

- "...the Indiana general Assembly voted to seal off the public records of gun permits." (License To Carry Handgun records, actually). The paper, as I have previously reported, managed to find a handful of baddies who -- at the time they were issued LTCHs -- had done nothing that would disqualify them under State or Federal law. How, you might ask, did the paper identify these miscreants? Why, because they subsequently did commit acts that disqualified them! And lost or were in the process of losing their carry permits. Yes, the system worked -- but because there are no tea-leaf readers at the Indiana State Police (where they check one's criminal record when applying for an LTCH), the paper wants to "fix" it. Ah, Precrime: interesting science fiction but it didn't work out well even there.

- Accuses (praises!) police of "not being Second Amendment absolutists." Gosh, Mister or Miz Editor, what if they stop being First Amentment absolutists, too? Will you still sing fondly of them when they come getcha after your next gripping expose of favoritism, crime or corruption within IMPD?

- Admits law enforcement will "have no shortage of weapons to confiscate...within the limitations imposed by loose state laws." So what's your beef?

- "Of course, getting guns out of the wrong hands is only part of an ambitious strategy of heading off crime before it happens..." (h'mm, just addressed this) "...A few ounces of prevention from the Statehouse would be welcome." I can only gather from this statement that taking guns from the right hands would be the other part of Dear, All-loving Editor's "ambitious strategy. "

Ambition, indeed. C'mon, then. Take them. Molon Labe. Just you try.
__________________________
* Whatever that means -- from context, not NFA weapons lacking a tax stamp. Maybe it means "illegally-possessed?" But that would mean blaming the poor, innocent victim-of-society who is pointing the thing at one's face and demanding free money, oh dearie me no, no, no.