PA Bill Number: HB335
Title: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons.
Description: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons. ...
Last Action: Removed from table
Last Action Date: May 1, 2024
Gun control law failures in the two Washingtons :: 03/30/2016
The Seattle Times is reporting this morning about the updated Seattle Police investigation into the fatal February shooting of Che Taylor while in Washington, D.C. more information about yesterday's shooting at the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center is also surfacing.
If all the facts so far are correct, the two cases represent failures of gun control laws in the two Washingtons. While the District of Columbia is no longer a “gun free zone” for law-abiding citizens (it never really was for criminals), guns remain prohibited in places like the Visitor Center.
A man identified as Larry Russell Dawson, a 66-year-old Tennessee resident who has reportedly had trouble before in the District, was shot when he allegedly pulled out a gun and pointed it at officers, as reported by the Washington Post. In Seattle, Taylor, a convicted felon, was fatally shot when he allegedly reached for a .45-caliber Springfield Armory pistol, which was recovered at the scene.
UPDATE: WJLA in Washington, D.C. and the Associated Press reported that the gun allegedly carried by Dawson was a BB gun that looked like a real firearm. WJLA is an ABC affiliate.
As this column reported over the weekend, and KING disclosed last Friday, the much-ballyhooed Initiative 594 that cost more than $10 million to pass has so far only managed to prevent 50 transactions via the so-called “universal background check” requirement. Figuring the I-594 campaign spent approximately $10.4 million, that’s about $208,000 per blocked sale, with no apparent arrests or prosecutions, and no evidence that any of the presumed “disqualified” would-be gun buyers didn’t subsequently get a firearm some other way.
Perhaps the gun prohibition lobby has figured it is better not to talk about this. Instead, an email message late Monday from the Alliance for Gun Responsibility wants public attention focused on proposals in nine states to allow legally concealed firearms on college campuses. The message lamented that “Colleges in seven states allow students to carry guns on campus without any meaningful restriction -- and similar proposals are being considered in another nine states...That’s just unacceptable.”
“Unacceptable” to who? Certainly it’s not okay with anti-gunners, and it is probably not okay with criminals who have found campuses to be ripe for the picking in the past. It might be very acceptable to people who now have the ability to defend themselves against robbery, rape or other crimes.
After Taylor was fatally shot, family and friends challenged the police version of the story. Now that a witness statement has been made available indicating that Taylor did have a gun, will there be any “correction?”
There is still no word on the origin of the pistol recovered at the scene. Images of that handgun have been posted on the Seattle Police Blotter website. It’s a Springfield XD-S in .45 ACP. There is one visible cartridge in the magazine, and a second one that may have been removed from the chamber. That small pistol carries five rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber.
One of the recordings on the SPD Blotter site features remarks from a firefighter called to the scene, and who cut Taylor’s trousers away. He said Taylor was wearing a Kydex holster for that pistol. The holster is shown in one of the SPD images.
I-594 evidently didn’t prevent Taylor from being armed. Of course, neither did existing federal and state laws against possession of firearms by felons. So, there was a failure of more than one gun law involved, just like yesterday’s incident in Washington, D.C. involved alleged violations of more than one local gun law there.
By no small coincidence, earlier today this column received a gag photo of a barren desert, without a single living creature in the image. It was captioned, “A group photo of everyone saved by a gun free zone.” The sarcasm is well-taken.
http://www.examiner.com/article/gun-control-law-failures-the-two-washingtons
