Justin Kephart (courtesy wfmz.com)

Man who killed him mom, and self, in a standoff with police was not allowed to have firearms. That’s the headline at washingtonpost.com and various other “news” sites. That’s the story in a nutshell. Apparently, it bears repeating . . .

A man who killed his mother and then fired more than 100 rounds at police as her body lay in a yard during an eight-hour standoff before killing himself, wasn’t permitted to have firearms and likely obtained them from his father, who killed himself days after the rampage.

And this is news because . . . ?

The forces of civilian disarmament must convince people that civilian disarmament disarms criminals.

Where’s the evidence for that, exactly? The fact that the WaPo considers a Pennsylvania felon’s ability to obtain firearms to commit murder in any way remarkable is laughable — if anti-gun agitprop wasn’t so effective amongst prog press purveyors.

Which begs the question: what’s the alternative to this delusional belief? How DO you stop criminals from getting guns? Is that even possible?

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

87 COMMENTS

    • Artificial hands can fix that. Try, “shoot the mofo dead as a stump.” Seriously. If he cannot be trusted to wander loose and armed in a free society, dispatch the turd. The world is *grossly* overpopulated, we do not need him.

      • While I agree, the whole chopping off the hands theory is an interesting one. Are artificial hands effective enough to handle firearm and other weapon useage? Also I imagine they’re probably quite expensive.

  2. It’s not possible, and any attempt to do so deprives people of their civil rights and edges us closer to a “papers, please” dystopia.

    • Yeah! Next thing you know, they’ll be pulling us over in our cars and demanding proof that we own the car and are allowed to drive it.

        • The right to own/drive a car isn’t an explicitly constitutionally protected judicially recognized right. The right to keep and bear arms is … sort of on the judicially recognized part.

          Just because a right isn’t explicitly constitutionally protected and/or judicially recognized doesn’t mean it isn’t a right. The idea that you don’t have the right to take advantage of private property ownership and use if you can afford it is ridiculous in itself. The founding philosophy of America is that everyone has the natural right to life, liberty, and property. Americans thinking of our foundational rights has forever been tainted by Jefferson changing it to “pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration.

        • Leighton, while driving a car on public roads may not be a right per se, it becomes one because we have the right to travel, a right which has to be extended to include the right to have and use common means of travel.

          What’s interesting there is that while antis are perfectly willing to accept that, they are not willing to admit that having a right to self-defense has to include the right to have and use common means of doing so.

      • Cars are primarily privately owned and operated on public property. Drive your privately-owned car on private property, and the .gov has about zero say in how you drive or register that car. Unless you kill someone.

        Our guns are primarily privately owned and operated on private property. The government should have virtually zero say in how you shoot or register that gun. Unless you kill someone.

      • Just so you know, the police are not allowed to pull you over just because they’d like to check your registration.

    • The U.S. has long been a “‘papers please dystopia’.” Every cop in every encounter with a citizen demands “I need your ID.” or “Let me see your ID.” Cops are not your friends.

      • I disagree, unless you’re being arrested or in a vehicle stop (where you have to show your license) you’re not obligated to present ID.

        • Nope, required to disclose your name isn’t the same as required to provide your papers. That also seemed to apply in cases where you’re reasonably a suspect in a crime, which I believe I already mentioned as an exception.

        • I disagree. When an officer asks for your ID during what is known as a Field Investigation, yes you are required to produce ID. In just about every state I’ve been in if you didn’t have ID you could be considered a vagrant. I’ve lived in seven states in my life and just in daily life have had interactions with local law enforcement. I have absolutely no criminal record at all. Police officers and sheriff’s Deputies are charged with keeping the peace and preventing crime. I’m also a CCW permit holder and the first thing you must do when asked by a police officer in Florida is let him know whether you have a ccw permit and are carrying your sidearm or not! This is for both the officers safety and your own. There is absolutely nothing wrong with it. If you think there is, what are you hiding?

          • “what are you hiding?” That is the worst argument for any sort of privacy rights violation. Maybe I just don’t want to be hassled by an asshole who is more likely to be believed than me by a jury. If all men were angels …

        • Alton Gayle says”…and the first thing you must do when asked by a police officer in Florida is let him know whether you have a ccw permit and are carrying your sidearm or not! This is for both the officers [sic] safety and your own.”
          How does admitting to the officer that one is legally carrying a gun under one’s jacket (OK, heavy winter coat here in WI right now) make either party “safer?”
          My response to that is “Hogwash!”

    • Sure it’s possible. Keep them locked up. Anyone we can’t trust with a dangerous object shouldn’t be out mingling with the rest of us. Solved.

  3. Is there a way to stop heroin users from getting heroin? (other than asking the CIA to stop importing it so they can fund their operations). And what’s up with “Man who killed him mom” in the first line of this piece? Hitting spellcheck doesn’t work, you have to manually read it.

    • Define “most difficulty.”
      Zip guns are still a thing in jail/prison.
      Just like cell phones, drugs, sex, etc.
      Being locked up, for a lot of people, doesn’t really l8imit what they can do.

  7. Nothing is perfect but taking more criminals out of circulation helps. In other words appropriate prison sentences and wider use of the death penalty!

    • Appropriate to me is, do you want this guy, with a gun, in a room alone, with your 13 year old daughter? If the answer is no, then he hasn’t reached appropriate yet, and likely never will.

  8. Absolutely not. Even in nations where there are no legal avenues where people can own firearms they still show up. Hell, the UK itself has had an upswing the amount of guns seized by the police in recent years. And even worse we’re seeing more and more examples of homemade sub-machine guns in recent years.

  9. Is There Any Way to Stop Criminals from Getting Guns?
    Simple answer is No.
    Wrong question though. Why should we even care? Right question…
    Why do we let criminals out of jail that we don’t trust with guns? If someone isn’t trustworthy enough to have a gun then why would we let them among us in the first place? And that leads down a path that no liberal will ever follow. Yes Virginia, there really are bad guys.

  11. It’s not possible. Look at France statistics. France beats the US in mass shooting statistics and have stricter gun laws.
    The real question is can you stop criminals from killing people.
    Where there’s a psychopath, there’s a way.

    • “Look at [European] statistics. [Europe] beats the US in mass shooting statistics and have stricter gun laws.” That’s also true. France is a bit of an outlier for mass shootings like the year 2001 was for terrorism.

  12. Can you keep somebody who is willing to break the rules of the game from breaking the rules of the game? Sure. Don’t let them play the game. If they’re out there living and breathing then they’re playing the game.

    • Superbly well put!

      People uninterested in playing by the rules aren’t going to suddenly follow some new rule.

    • So you expect criminals to sell their guns when the government has a buy back?
      Can you tell me why they would do such a thing?
      Criminals don’t obey laws, they are criminals.

    • LOL…LMAO…
      best laugh all day…
      saw an article where a pawn broker brought in 12 guns to one of these
      he probably gave the guys $25-50…they never returned for the guns…he gets $100-150/gun
      not a bad deal…and no questions asked if they are stolen or crime guns…

  14. It can’t be totally prevented, but it can be reduced. The motivation for a criminal to have a gun could be reduced by decreasing the incentive and increasing the liability. Legalizing all drugs can reduce the price for addicts and destroying gang/cartel income. Addicts don’t need to commit as much crime to satisfy their habit, and slinging drugs loses the glamour and profit. Penalties for illegal possession or use of a gun in a crime would need to be increased. Instead of being an add on offense that’s often plea bargained away, make it a capital offense with a fast path to Mr. Sparky instead of years/decades on death row. If crimes with guns are a near guaranteed death, it isn’t worth the risk. It doesn’t help with irrational people who are planning to die in their crime, like spree killers, since the penalty won’t apply to them or is accepted as worth being able to commit the crime. None of this will happen politically, but maybe a “use a gun, go to jail” mandatory 20 year sentence would be possible with a lesser effect.

    • One significant problem with your suggestion about more death sentences is all the liberals funding all the liberal lawyers to prevent death sentences from being carried out. That is why they are on death row for many years. The solution to that problem is to require liberals to house and support those sentenced those felons personally while all the appeals are working.

      • I believe laws against possession are outside the fed’s enumerated powers. The states that most need it are the ones least likely to pass it. Illinois, New York, New Jersey, and Maryland don’t currently have capital punishment. There are felons who asked for the death penalty vs. life imprisonment since death row gets individual cells, don’t have to work, etc, so it has no deterrence value currently. On California’s death row, you’re more likely to die of old age than be executed (13 executions in 25 years, none in 12 years, 747 inmates = 1436 years at current rate, or 747 years at previous rate).

        • BTW, I’m not advocating such draconian tactics as mandatory death sentences — just pointing an “any way.” Despite the media and Bloidy Shirt Brigade ballyhoo, crime is relatively low and declining, outside of a few, large, Democrat controlled, cesspool cities.
          However, bans, background checks, etc don’t prevent people from getting anything because they don’t disincentivize anyone except the law abiding. It may make it harder to get or make a gun, but the gun actually becomes more valuable. This is why prohibitions lead to black markets. If guns are hard to get, a $50 Lorcin is suddenly a $500-1000 gun. If guns are helpful the illicit drug trade, smuggling 1 or 2 kg of guns in with a tens of kg of drugs isn’t a challenge.

        • “I believe laws against possession are outside the fed’s enumerated powers”

          That is so given the militia concept. I’ve read examples of someone being forbidden from owning guns that were brought up by antis to justify a proposed federal law restricting certain people from ownership, but what they missed was the fact that the prohibition in question was done on the local level (below state), by peers in the original sense of people who know you well enough to judge — which is to say as essentially a local militia matter. It would have been considered ridiculous for anyone who didn’t know you to say you weren’t allowed a gun.

          So the moment an anti brings up the militia, given the concept as used in the Constitution he has just conceded that the federal government has no authority to determine who may or may not have a gun, because the militia concept itself forbids that as well as because the Constitution does not assign it.

    • The easiest way to insure ultimate safety is to restrict individual rights, something that is—and ought to forever remain—a non-starter in American society. It seems to me that living in a free society carries both an increased risk . . . and an increased individual responsibility for its maintanence. Anything less than that should be unacceptable.

  15. No. Criminals are going to do crime and violence with or without guns.

    The object then becomes to arm all non criminal folk so the criminals job is more dangerous.

    Constitutional carry is coming. The left has lost this battle. They appear to be unable to see that. But it’s a done deal.

    What we need now is a tax incentive program to encourage folks to buy and carry their guns.

    • Criminals will do violence with or without guns. That’s true. And, OUR issue with this is that when criminals do violence with guns they increment the crime-by-gun statistics. Our interest is – clearly – to reduce crime-by-guns statistics. Then, the pressure will ease (or refocus on some other issue) on guns in civilian hands.

      What we need to do next is to promote knife-rights. Criminals should find themselves facing lesser sentences if they commit a crime with a knife vs. a gun. If committed with a club the penalty should be lower; and if by strong-arm, lesser still.

      You see, the issue is THE GUN, not the instrumentality. We concealed-carriers will all be safer if criminals attempt to rob us with knives or clubs while we are armed with handguns.

      Let’s have not just States’-rights but precinct-rights. The voters in each precinct might be allowed to vote on whether to accept Stop-&-Frisk in their precinct. Then, the police can take guns away from gang members who have become prohibited-persons. Yet, these gang members should retain their rights to cutlery & clubs. We should have fewer gang members and drug dealers carrying concealed guns in such precincts. (Those of us who prefer a stricter interpretation of the 4A can avoid Stop-&-Frisk neighborhoods.)

      • (All in Texas). You can carry a rifle damn near anywhere. If you have an LTC, you can carry a handgun almost anywhere. Anyone can carry a knife over five and a half inches most places (but less places than the gun), and it is highly restricted where you can have a club.

        Sticks and stones are verbotten, AR-15s are fine for a walk into the pub. (Seriously, a lot of the gun laws prohibit the carry, licensed or otherwise, of handguns, but don’t say anything about rifles).

        • My lawyer friend, either you wrote that funny or you need to catch up. A recent TX law removed all restrictions on blade lengths, it is legal to open carry a no-shit sword in TX.

          • Not on college campuses. Some dusky fellow with a strange accent took a machete to UT, I think, and ran into a cop who shot him a few weeks before the bill you speak of was voted on.

            Swords were always legal in Texas. They were what is classified as an “illegal weapon,” which meant you basically had to keep them on your property. They were going to not be restricted at all. Then machete man macheted up a college, and the legislature realized we need to keep machetes off campuses, so they changed it from removing “illegal knife” to “Location-restricted knife” which “means a knife with a blade over five and one-half inches” because that way the guy couldn’t have done what he did when he illegally carried a blade over 5 1/2 inches because he wouldn’t be able to legally carry the blade he illegally carried.

            Here is a link to the bill as passed: http://www.legis.state.tx.us/tlodocs/85R/billtext/html/HB01935F.htm

  16. Their end game is prohibition and confiscation.

    “You can’t’ keep them away from criminals.” plays out for or against, depending on whether non-criminals are also competent. If non-criminals are all incompetent and feckless, then prohibition and confiscation is a no-brainer. The sheeple can’t fight back, so take the dangerous tools away from everybody. If non-criminals are competent, and prudent then prohibition and confiscation is suicide. If we can protect ourselves, disarming leaves us at the mercy of the predators.

    This conversation is hard to have, as there are two things going on: guns dangerous & people competent. Make a matrix with four quadrants, like consultants do.

    Some of the anti’s see this end-game coming, while most of the rest are their usual useful idiots. For them all, this argument fits nicely with their intuitive sense that people are generally helpless and suck.

    For the pro-gun folks, we need to emphasize prudence, responsibility, and good results. Examples of people taking care of themselves blow up the anti’s end game, and their anti-human sense of “Ewwww.” too. There’s a reason they memory hole successful DGUs, and play up the tacti-cool caricature.

    This is all a consequentialist argument, which is the perspective they’ll take. Arguing human nature and natural rights is another perspective, that won’t convince the anti’s or the folks the other argument is aimed at. That makes a sting tag on the tail of the pro-gun conseqentialist argument.

    • Sounds like you’re advocating a freaking game. Tell the damn truth, forget the spin, and let people figure out what the correct action is, for themselves. Making my decision for me ‘cuz I’m too stupid to make the “correct” decision will eventually lead to violence.

  17. Incarceration and execution both seem to be fairly effective deterrents. As soon as the incarceration ends, so does the deterrent effect.

    • so we just keep them on the paxtayers tab…forever? or do we execute for every crime? there is another culture that does that. i’ll let you look that up. HINT: it starts with M and is popular in the middle east.

      • We could get rid of the lifers and true animals without turning into China.
        Whack someone famous right on Tv and you send a strong message. Mumia should be first .

  18. this is not the question. the question is really “how do we determine WHO is a criminal (before they commit crimes)/will use a gun illegally”. the only real way to answer that question is brain scans and even that would just be circumstantial evidence, at best. And that would only point out people with brain abnormalities like psychopathy. it would do nothing be people who just WANT to harm others. Evil is a word that is thrown around a lot, i just call them “sick”. because some people are just sick assholes, no magical force behind it. just plain old humans doing what they do.

  20. Pre-Crime by Rutledge

    Pre-crime aims to pre-empt ‘would-be-criminals’ and predict future crime. Although the term is borrowed from science fiction, the drive to predict and pre-empt crime is a present-day reality. This book critically explores this major twenty-first century development in crime and justice.

    This first in-depth study of pre-crime defines and describes different types of pre-crime and compares it to traditional post-crime and crime risk approaches. It analyses the rationales that underpin pre-crime as a response to threats, particularly terrorism, and shows how it is spreading to other areas. It also underlines the historical continuities that prefigure the emergence of pre-crime, as well as exploring the new technologies and forms of surveillance that claim the ability to predict crime and identify future criminals. Through the use of examples and case studies it provides insights into how pre-crime generates the crimes it purports to counter, providing compelling evidence of the problems that arise when we act as if we know the future and aim to control it through punishing, disrupting or incapacitating those we predict might commit future crimes.

    Are you sure we really want to go there? How about when the next BO or Hildabeast is elected President. How would you like it then?

    Liberals will allow this but not “profiling”……hmmmm

    • This “pre-crime” concept is an interesting thought. So, let’s suppose that we have figured-out how to do this identification of candidates for conviction of pre-crime. Good; now, lock them up. After keeping them in a prison/work-camp/re-education-facility we release them. Whom would be the affected class? Oh, yes, that’s right: single young minority males. But we already have an historically high percentage of just this population in prisons and jails already. Far too many for any Progressive’s tastes. So, we can’t go there.

      So, instead, we will tinker with the selection criteria and find that OFWGs concealed-carrying must be those selected for pre-crime. Lock them up instead. But then they won’t pay taxes; so, just put them on probation. See if we can get OFWGs to not carry concealed weapons and if so, whether that has an impact on regular common-law crimes.

      Maybe the thing to do is to have some States that are Right-to-Carry and others that are No-Guns-for-Anyone. In the long run the criminals are apt to move from the RtC States to the NGfA States where a life-of-crime is safer.

  21. Well that’s such an easy question. Living in a tyrannical lefty progressive state, that problem has been solved!
    You see here in commie kalifornia, our gun laws have stopped crime, GUN CRIME, cold. We’ve emptied our prisons, made felonies misdemeanors, invited ILLEGALS, with open arms and open wallets, made weed the fun high, and made energy cost the highest in the nation. I know there’s more. Anyway, UTOPIA has been achived. You-all come on down and have a toke. Unicorns, rainbows, and money trees abound.

    THE REAL ANSWER: YOU CAN’T. You can only infringe on law abiding legal Americans.

  22. Is there any way to stop people from buying/using illegal drugs?
    Nope…bans do not work.
    Laws are in place to do something AFTER the crime is over.
    There is a death penalty/life in prison for murder…we still have over 10,000 per year.
    People will find a way to get what they want…legally or not.
    That goes for guns, drugs or whatever is in demand.

  23. Easy, make a time machine, go back in time and stop gun powder from being invented.

    Oh, my guns are still here. Darn, I guess it didn’t work. Well, since that obviously never happens I guess the answer is no.

  24. Well, yes, but only sort of.

    You can stop criminals from obtaining firearms if you keep them behind bars (or in deep holes covered with quick lime). This presumes you have a list of criminals, but the funny thing about that, is you become a criminal once you commit a crime (technically I suppose it’s once you are convicted of a crime); prior to that you are a citizen in good standing.

    Could you ever stop people from becoming criminals. Hasn’t happened yet; don’t expect it will.

  27. We have laws against murder yet criminals continue to commit murder. Since laws against murder are clearly ineffectibe we should abolish them.

    You are asking the wrong question. Laws can put obsticles in the way of easy access to firearms and the training to use them effectively. For a law to have value it doesn’t have to be 100% effective.

  28. So long as we need government, it will be impossible to keep criminals from getting any common or easily-produced item they want.

    Which is to say, so long as we are a society not of angels but of human beings.

  29. NYC just hit a murder rate low not seen since the 1950s. This is credited to aggressive policing targeting the most dangerous suspects.

    In Baltimore, where political pressure has caused cops to pull back, murder rates just hit a new record.

    It’s not gun control that works. It’s criminal control.

  30. Make the penalties for straw purchases and illegal sales so harsh that people will think twice. It’s a start.

  31. The one way, that the leftists don’t seem interested at all in actually pursuing.

    If a prohibited person is found in possession or commits crime with a gun, he goes away for at least 20 years guaranteed. Make this a federal law, to work around sanctuary city leniency.

    Criminals should be terrified of being caught with a firearm.

Comments are closed.