Two shootings in two days, and the problem with ‘moral outrage’

Two high-profile shootings in two days – one at an elementary school near Bremerton and the other along a state highway that left a State Trooper dead – have given anti-gunners the launch pad they invariably look for to demand stronger gun laws.

KOMO Radio’s Ken Schram, with whom this writer chatted live during the noon hour Thursday, wants to hold the parents of the 9-year-old suspect in the school shooting responsible for his bringing a gun to school. For the record, this column doesn't think Schram is a dedicated anti-gunner, but he wants to mandate that everyone who purchases a handgun also be required by law to purchase a gun safe. That was before anyone knew where the youngster actually got the gun that accidentally discharged in his backpack, sending a bullet into 8-year-old Amina Bowman.

UPDATE: KOMO News is reporting that the pistol recovered from the backpack was a .45-caliber Heckler & Koch semiautomatic. The safety was apparently off and the gun was cocked, which makes sense because the cycling of the slide would have cocked the hammer after the pistol discharged.

The student who took the handgun to school has been booked into the Kitsap County Juvenile Detention Center for investigation of unlawful possession of a firearm, bringing a dangerous weapon onto school grounds and third-degree assault.

Investigators are trying to determine where the boy obtained the handgun.—Seattle Times

We need another law. That’s what appears to be the panacea to such incidents. Yet, this youngster already violated several existing laws, as noted by the SeattleP-I.com:

The boy was taken into custody Wednesday after being booked into Kitsap County juvenile detention for investigation of unlawful possession of a gun, bringing a dangerous weapon to school and third-degree assault.

Whatever else this incident and others like it demonstrates is that the Gun Free School Zones Act of 1996 has failed again. Just like it failed in these cases, detailed by the Seattle Times:

·         February 2010: 30-year-old Jed Waits, of Ellensburg, stalked and fatally shot Jennifer Paulson, a special-education teacher at Birney Elementary School in Tacoma. Waits later died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

·         January 2007: Douglas Chanthabouly fatally shot fellow student Samnang Kok in a hallway before the start of classes at Tacoma's Foss High School. Chanthabouly was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to more than 23 years in prison.

·         February 1996: At Frontier Middle School in Moses Lake, two students and one teacher were killed and another student was wounded when 14-year-old Barry Loukaitis opened fire on his algebra class.

And let’s not forget that the same law did not prevent the Columbine High School massacre of 1999.

There is a plethora of gun laws, including federal and state statutes that forbid convicted felons from having firearms, yet early Thursday morning, a Washington State Trooper was murdered and the chief suspect in that case is a convicted felon who later apparently shot himself. According to the Seattle Times:

The truck (connected to the shooting) is registered to Joshua J. Blake, a 28-year-old felon who served prison time for manufacturing methamphetamine, the source said. The State Patrol confirmed that Blake is the man suspected of killing the trooper, Tony Radulescu.

Blake had been on state Department of Corrections supervision until last August when he was released early because of a change in the law, sources said. Last year, a friend of Blake's contacted authorities to say that he had made threats to harm or kill police if he was ever arrested again, a law enforcement source said.

UPDATE: The suspect, Joshua J. Blake, has reportedly died from his wound.

Regardless of good intentions and various statutes, firearms will get into the wrong hands and there isn’t a prayer of preventing that, no matter what the gun prohibition lobby says. Whether those hands belong to a 28-year-old convicted felon, or an elementary school student, there is no ironclad preventive measure that guarantees a gun will not fall into them, and everybody knows it, although several Seattle Times readers think firearms, and not the people who misuse them, are at fault.

The 9-year-old boy who brought the gun to Armin Jahr Elementary was due to appear in Kitsap County Juvenile Court Thursday afternoon. As this case unfolds, more information about the origin of the firearm, and what kind of gun it is, will surface.

Meanwhile, remember that quick fixes are typically not fixes at all.

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