[857] in Depressing_Thoughts
Guns Freely Available to Criminals
redskin@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (redskin@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Mon Oct 2 12:18:03 1989
A year or two ago, the Maine State Constitution was ammended from
reading that people had a right to bear arms in the common defence
(I forget the exact wording) to "Every man shall have the right
to keep and bear arms and this right shall not be abridged."
(Or something very similar.) This summer, an apellate court judge
ruled that this meant that convicted criminals, even those convicted
of violent crime, could not be prevented from purchasing or
owning firearms. Yep, Joe the mobster with a long history of
murder, can freely purchase any weapon he wants to. Considering that
Maine is only two hours from here, want to place bets on whether
or not a criminal around here can legally obtain a weapon.
And just Saturday night there was a shooting incident on Campus
in which 4 men (non-students) were arrested. As far as I could
tell only one of them shot though, so...
