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The Aurora Shooting
The Aurora, Illinois shooting: five killed and five police officers wounded by an employee who had been fired by his employer.
It is time to start enforcing firearms laws that are already in place. The Aurora shooter was a convicted felon who purchased a firearm in spite of having an aggravated assault conviction for stabbing a woman in Mississippi in 1995. He had also been arrested six times by Aurora, Illinois police officers and his most recent arrest was in 2008 for violating an order for protection.
Court records show Martin was convicted of aggravated assault in the stabbing of a woman in Mississippi in 1995. He’d also been arrested six times previously by Aurora police, most recently in 2008 for violating an order of protection, (Aurora Police Chief) Kristen Ziman revealed Saturday.
Ziman said the assault conviction might not have appeared on a criminal background check when Martin applied and was approved in January 2014 for a Firearm Owners Identification card.
In March of that year, Martin applied to buy a handgun from an Aurora gun dealer, and he was approved within five days.
Five days after that, Martin applied for a concealed carry permit. When Martin’s felony conviction was discovered during the background check for that license, his application was denied and his FOID card was revoked.
However, his Smith & Wesson handgun — the same weapon used in Friday’s shooting — was never confiscated.
Martin’s conviction for aggravated assault did not show up on the background check conducted by his employer.
This shooting is going to lead to more demands for new laws in spite of the fact that Mr. Martin should have never had a firearm if the laws that exist now had been enforced. Regardless of the fact that his conviction had not been found in his approval for the purchase of a firearm it was found later when he applied for a concealed carry permit. A warrant for his arrest should have been sought by the Aurora Police Department, or the Illinois State Police for Mr. Martin, and the seizure of his pistol. He was a felon in possession of a firearm, not just a crime under Illinois state law, a crime under Federal law as well.
Clarification 02/18
The NCIC system is a two tiered system. A criminal background check may not reveal a previous felony conviction to a private employer conducting a criminal background check. A law enforcement agency has more information available to it concerning previous convictions. NCIC checks involving the purchase of a firearm are conducted by state police that have full access to the system. The mystery is that the felony conviction of Mr. Martin was not found at the point of purchase, but was found in his application for a concealed carry permit. A felony conviction is not removed from the database unless a request is made by a court that has expunged a conviction.
The State of Illinois does, and did send a letter demanding the surrender of the firearm so they were aware of the purchase. That is not enough. The timeline between the purchase and the application for the concealed carry permit should be enough probable cause, and a reasonable belief that Mr. Martin, a convicted felon possessed a firearm and a search warrant should have been sought to seize the firearm.
Federal Law, Prohibited Persons from Firearms Possession and Purchase:
• convicted in any court of a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year;
• who is a fugitive from justice;
• who is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance (as defined in section 102 of the Controlled Substances Act, codified at 21 U.S.C. § 802);
• who has been adjudicated as a mental defective or has been committed to any mental institution;
• who is an illegal alien;
• who has been discharged from the Armed Forces under dishonorable conditions;
• who has renounced his or her United States citizenship;
• who is subject to a court order restraining the person from harassing, stalking, or threatening an intimate partner or child of the intimate partner; or
• who has been convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.
Is the goal to eliminate privately-owned firearms, or to reduce the level of violence? Pick one.
continuing the devils advocate mode here. Maybe in the transition period you will have a temporary imbalance where the residual supply of guns in large enough to allow criminals to out gun civilian victims, but over time as total gun levels drop even criminals will have a harder time getting access, so while at a future date you might say only criminal will have guns the total number of criminals with guns would end up being lower over all than it is today. On net decreasing number of people shot. I mean during prohibition you did have a drastic decrease in alcohol consumption. While obviously it did not go away, and its ban created numerous other unintended side affects, it did work to curb alcohol consumption overall. I think we need to have a stronger argument than “people will die” people always die. People are dying now.
Well that is a question to ponder. How related are the two? Or maybe the goal is to lower gun violence, rather than violence over all. If I understand the statistics about violence correctly. America actually has lower levels of violence but the violence that occurs will be more fatal. So in the UK you are more likely to be beaten up, but less likely to be shot. In the US it is the reverse partly because if you try to beat up the wrong person you get shot. But a beating while unpleasant (understatement) will probably be less fatal on average than getting shot.