How did he get a gun?
Danny Lemieux on Jan 13 2011 at 7:24 am | Filed under: Uncategorized
According to what I have been reading, Loughner purchased his handgun legally.
How could this happen?
When you purchase a handgun, you have to fill out an extensive questionnaire for the FBI background check. You answer questions about whether you have ever been convicted of a violent crime or misdemeanor, been psychologically evaluated, etc. A discrepancy in any of your answers will invalidate your right to purchase a firearm.
However, reports are suggesting that Loughner had made several explicit threats against the life of Rep. Giffords, which Sheriff Dupnick’s office had investigated but not pursued, even though the author of these threats was clearly identified.
My understanding is that any death threat constitutes assault and is grounds for an arrest and prosecution. However, Loughner was never arrested. A single arrest and conviction would have forever invalidated his right to purchase a firearm legally.
Was Dupnick’s weird and scatter shot reaction to the shooting an attempt at mass obfuscation to cover-up his own department’s malfeasance? I guess time will tell.
Maybe the real issue here is not gun laws but rather how law enforcement is far too lax in allowing people to make death threats with no consequences.
Can anyone, especially the attorneys amongst us, help shed light on this?
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The same questions were asked about three years ago after the Va Tech massacre. We know the answer. We also know that there has been little or no real interest in solving the problem. Official hands are wrung for awhile. Official, semi-official (NGO), and private breasts are beaten for awhile. The usual actors try to undercut the second amendment–possibly playing to their own finite audience of supporters and contributors, awhile.
So far, little changes. Laws are in place. But, laws ignored are inconsequential.
Like Social Security, and other hot potatoes, the issue of how to deal with the threat posed by unstable personalities is just too hot to handle. Individuals are reluctant to point fingers–until after the tragedy. (Then they are suddenly legion.) Officials are apparently afraid to make the call even when their attention is reluctantly focused on a potential threat. So, people like the VT shooter, and Loughner, plod onward in their descent into irrationality. It is only by great good fortune that the number who actually grab a gun and try to solve their internal conflicts by murdering everyone in sight, is relatively small.
My understanding is that there was a many-fold problem. 1) He lied on his application about drug use; 2) campus police either did not inform or interact with Pima County officers on several counts; 3) allegations have been made that personnel from the Pima County Sheriff’s office counseled those who allegedly received death threats from Loughner to not press charges. Any of those would have flagged him for the legal purchase of a handgun.
As the previous poster says, the Loughner case is closer to the Virginia Tech shooting than anything else. In both cases, campus personnel had knowledge of mental instability (in fact Loughner was removed from campus and was told that he could not re-enroll until he had proof that he’d sought professional help) and that knowledge was not passed along, due to federal privacy laws as well as a basic don’t-rock-the-boat-or-be-judgmental campus mentality. If it had been, he could have been placed in the system and would have been flagged if he’d tried to legally purchase a handgun.
In my opinion, the campus mentality of not sharing with local police (combined with federal privacy laws that, depending upon how they are read completely tie the hands of officials) as well as the reluctance of people to take that next step and actually press charges are more the issues than the gun laws in place.
The Wal-Mart associate who refused to sell Laughner ammunition should get some kind of award.
Look, there is no answer. Crazy people don’t always end up adjudicated or with a felony conviction before they end up doing major damage. Congresspeople have made public death threats are they to be prosecuted. A death threat is just mouthing off unless there is some evidence of intent or attempt to carry it out.
It all seems so clear in the aftermath but it isn’t when the person is just one of the thousands who mouth off about killing someone each year. Otherwise, every time someone said something hostile about the President they wouldn’t get a visit from the Secret Service to evaluate the threat, they would just be hauled off and disappeared.
It sucks but misuse of the Thought Police would be far more dangerous than any benefit.
Book – you’re applying California thinking to someplace non-California. Arizona actually values the 2nd Amendment – (though probably now there’ll be the usual liberal uproar: pissing, moaning, whining, and screaming and the law will be attacked.)
There is no extensive questionnaire for the FBI in Arizona (or Washington, Nevada, Wyoming… most western states, in fact). If you have a driver’s license that establishes that you’re over 21 you can buy a gun. Records are snot necessarily kept either, that tends to be up to the individual gun dealer, but there often isn’t a state requirement. (There isn’t in WA or WY, for instance.) So he didn’t need anything beyond a driver’s license to buy a gun. If he wanted to legally carry it, for that he’d have to have a license. Arizona is a “shall issue” state, so he – or anyone else – cannot be subjected to a long, protracted anal exam (such as New York City puts aspirants to a carry permit through, designed ultimately to discourage you from applying. It can take up to two years); nor can he be subjected to unreasonable fees (again, you’ll have to hire a lawyer and it’ll cost you around $10,000 in BS to get a carry permit in New York City); nor does he have to demonstrate “need.” The 2nd Amendment applies, he’s a citizen, he’s allowed to own and carry a gun – period. (Just in passing, the 2nd Amendment applies in New York City, too, and they will tell you with a straight face that they support it, and anyone can apply for a license to carry a gun in the city. And it’s true. The way they get around it is to make the permitting process so Draconian that 99% of people give up. If you spend the time and the money, you will win, and end up with a license – but it’s dersigned to be so painful most people surrender.)
So in Arizona you buy the gun with a driver’s license – not complex. But to get that license to carry, there is a process. You chug down to Sheriff Dopenick’s office and give him a set of your fingerprints. Then the fingerprints are run through the local system (hey – Dumbnick! That would be you!), sent to the state and run through the state system, and sent to the FBI and run through the federal system. Any hits, and ballgame over. (Again: hey! Dopenick! You knew [in the cop sense of "knew"] this guy! What the hell, knothead?)
In my own case, in Washington, the FBI was all backed up and busy or something – maybe just institutionally inefficient, and didn’t get back to the local fuzz within the “shall issue” time limit, so the Sheriff just fired us off our licenses in the mail with a note that said: “you’re clear with us and the state, but the feds didn’t manage to get off their asses and get back to us in timely fashion, so here are your licenses – but if they do end up with a hit we’ll have to have you bring them in so we can revoke them.”
Point is, he bought the gun legally – in Arizona anyone with a valid state driver’s license can. If he bothered to apply for a carry permit, right then is when Dumbnick should have stopped the whole thing, on the basis that the Sheriff’s Department had experience – not good – with him. If it turns out he had a permit to carry, that will be 100% Dripnick’s fault.
And now we await the screaming to begin, as Arizona’s “lax” (that’s what it’ll be called) gun laws are attacked.
The real tragedy here is that the mental illness of Jared Loughner went untreated and led to this horrible event.
That tragedy is being compounded by the one way fingerpointing of blame at the right, the calls for onesided civility (the left NEVER lives by the same rules they daily demand of us) and more calls for tougher gun laws.
What is lost in all this ANY effort to address the real problem of making treatment for the 1% of the American people who suffer Schizophrenia more available and even compulsory for those like Loughner.
Good article in the Wall Street Journal discusses the REAL problem:
http://on.wsj.com/e5RWw1
Unfortunately, since the left wing blame machine continues to crank out hate and anger directed at the right (while Obama conveniently gets to portray himself as a uniter) all the oxygen in the room is consumed that might otherwise go to actually solving the problem.
When a tragic shooting like this happens again, the blame should rightly be placed on those who sought to use the Arizona shooting for poltiics rather than help those who might also be led down this dark path.
JJ, it’s Danny Lemieux – please don’t blame Book for this posting.
FBI -generated national criminal background checks are required for all firearms purchases from licensed dealers, including at gun shows. The only time they are not required (unless by state law) is when they are gun sales/purchases between private individuals. The seller is required to wait a minimum of 3 days to obtain clearance from the FBI before transferring the weapon.
Reported in the news: Police have been called to the house 10 times in the last 10 years, four of which were Jared Loughner related. The sheriff has refused to release all the records and we can only guess as to the other six times. So far, all mental health facilities have denied that they have ever been contacted, either by the family, police, community college or any other source. There’s a lot of sand in Arizona and we can speculate that too many people had their heads buried in it, but there is less sand in Virginia. Addressing mental health issues has taken a back seat for the past 20 years plus. The ‘elite’ prefer to cast their adversaries as the culprits with a name or political party … I guess they figure it’s an easier diagnosis to complement their ‘theories’ as to what ails America.
Since the 1980s, some states have moved significantly away from a strict dangerousness standard for involuntary commitment. In Arizona, for example, a person who is “persistently or acutely disabled” because of mental illness may be subject to commitment (Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 36-540 (A) [1995])
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Committed+(disambiguation)
The Left doesn’t want dangerous crazies on the streets to be treated or locked up. That’s not going to generate the requisite terror and “emergency” that the Left will be able to exploit politically.
You know what my solution is, Danny.
Make it legal for the person receiving the death threat to use force, up to and including lethal force, against the original authorized sender of the death threat. As verified under law. Justified homicide, it is called.
Watch how many fake death threats there are after that.
I’d also include hostage takers and what not. The police have to follow rules and laws and red tape like that. But our civilization has gotten to the point where that is not enough any more. In fact, it is too limiting. We need greater initiative on the part of the individuals closest in nearness to the issue at hand.
If power to kill is what is holding individual families and individuals back, that’s no barrier to me. If they want such power, it’s not all that hard to acquire. There are many H2H training formats, short or long, including external tools such as firearms, that can do the deed just fine for one individual or a set of individuals.
Btw, this goes back to the tried and true Code Duello. Which was erased and supplanted by “law and order”. But as these things tend to be, it cycles around.
That’s right – you’re a poster now! Blew right past that, apologies all around.
You are, however, quite wrong. Just last September at a gun show in Washington I picked up a very nice Taurus .357 seven-shot revolver, satin finish, two inch barrel. (It’s the seven shots that make it kind of cool.) It took a driver’s license and $450.00 – I walked out with it. Its presence brings the total artillery in this house to 9 guns, six of them pistols/revolvers, three long guns. I assure you: the FBI was not involved in any of the purchases (all from gun stores or at shows, not one from an individual, though one was a gift.)
I don’t know who gave you your information about FBI generated anything, or the 3-day waiting periods, but it’s not the case. Even when I lived in New York and bought guns there, I paid for them and walked out. NY State does require evidence that you’ve taken a gun safety course, and to carry it you do need a license, which involves fingerprints, etc. – but once you have the license you can walk into a gun store with money and out with a gun – right then, not 3 days later. Now – that’s NY State - not the city, which has it’s own whole separate deal going. (Which, every time it’s challenged gets knocked down – but you have to spend two years and $10,000 to do it, as I said above.) There’s also a broad tendency amongst even NY City idiot liberal judges to consider a state license good enough for the city – nobody with a state license has been successfully prosecuted for having a gun in the city – but not having a city license – in decades. (There’s a famous case from about 15 years ago in NYC where a woman visiting from North Carolina was attacked, and shot her attacker. The fact that she had the gun licensed in North Carolina was good enough for the NYC judge, who found she was defending herself with a perfectly legal gun – what’s the problem? – and declined to let her be prosecuted.)
I don’t know who told you about the FBI background checks and the 3-day waiting period, etc., etc. – but it ain’t so, especially in the western states. Even California can’t stop you from owning a gun in your home, though they do make it tough to carry it. Family and friends in Topanga Canyon, Burbank, West Hollywood, and Santa Barbara are all legally armed – and two of them are licensed to carry.
In most of the western and southern states you buy a gun with a driver’s license,and you walk out with it when you pay for it. If you want to legally carry it, then you have to have a license. Except in several states where you still don’t need a license to carry it openly, like a cowboy. (Theory being, if everybody can see you’re armed, there will be peace in your vicinity. And if the cops can see you’re armed, they’ll know you have nothing to hide and are probably one of the good guys.)
Hi JJ:
We are apparently reading from different rule books:
Here is the FBI page that references background checks:http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/nics. Note that it is “mandated”. There was a loophole for gun shows but I think it was been closed within the last year or so (I could be mistaken on that last point).
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/nics
I have had to fill out the forms for all my firearms purchases over the past 10 years (I just recently bought a Baretta “Storm” 9mm).
Conceal/carry laws do vary state-to-state but, unfortunately, I live in the Peoples Republic of Illinois, which believes only criminals should be able to conceal and carry because innocent civilians are not to be trusted.
JJ
I think they got the idea for your seven shot six shooter from this movie a Schwarzenegger classic. Those were the days…
JJ is putting wrong information on at least one count. I have not checked to see what the requirements are for buying, and owning, a gun in Arizona. I would be very surprised if there were no background check requirements. I have been very surprised before.
However, I do know that no concealed carry permit is required in Arizona. If you legally own a gun you can carry it open or concealed in any locale, except where guns are specifically prohibited. That law went into effect last summer, I believe.
I expect the anti-gun crowd to jump on that fact.
One pro-gun commentator remarked that if there had been at least one responsible gun carrier in the crowd, lives might have been saved.
Also noted that the 24 year old man who ran from the store toward the sound of the shots was carrying. He ended up holding Loughner’s feet. He did not consider using his weapon because the shooting was over by the time he arrived on the scene, and Loughner was under control. Very responsible kid.
“Beretta”! Sheesh!
Flyer – you need a driver’s license to buy a handgun in Arizona, and to carry concealed you do need a permit, which is “shall issue” after a safety class. (“Shall issue” just means that state law outweighs local law, and if you’re okay by the state criteria then you’re ipso facto OK by the locality criteria, and they can’t get out of issuing the permit. To take the example with which I live, Seattle keeps trying to see itself as an exception to Washington State law – much as New York City keeps seeing itself as an exception to New York State law – and the state legislature has to keep hitting them in the head and saying “no, you’re not.” “Shall issue” nails this point: “no, Seattle city cops, if the applicant passes state requirements, then he/she passes your requirements, because your requirements do not supersede state ones, so issue the permit and let’s be having no more BS about it.”)
In AZ you have to be a resident over 21 to buy, you do (according to the state rifle & pistol association) need a permit to carry concealed, and you don’t need anything to carry openly. That’s where the FBI’s input comes in for most states: at the licensing to carry concealed stage, not at the purchase stage nor, in many states (17, I think it is now) if you want to just own it and carry it openly.
In fact open carry is permitted without any kind of license/permit/anything in: Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Virginia. Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. OK – that’s 18 – not 17. (And Wisconsin’s a weird one, there are no permits to carry concealed at all there – no difficulty buying a gun, but if you want to carry it you have to do it openly. In 2006 Governor Doyle said: “if you want to carry your gun, wear it on your hip.”)
I don’t know about that “mandated” stuff, Danny – I’ve never, in NY, FLA, or WA ever filled out much of anything to simply buy a gun. Carry concealed yes, you need a license to do that in all three places, and that does involve fingerprints and some level of check. I wasn’t being funny, either, in WA the sheriff didn’t hear back from the FBI within the time he was mandated to give us the carry licenses, so he was required to issue them anyway – which he did. This is now a few years ago, one wonders if they’ve yet heard back from the FBI. (One doesn’t much care, but one does occasionally wonder.)
And Illinois, by the way, is one of very few states that requires a permit for each purchase. Most states don’t. Even NY doesn’t do that – once you are licensed you don’t need a new license every time you buy a gun. The state of Washington – and the FBI – has absolutely no clue how many, or what guns I own. There is no registration, nor is there a record. That’s much more the norm.
So the Loughner kid got the gun in any of the usual ways, and there was no check involved for him just to own it. And if he carried it openly, he didn’t need a permit to do that, either, so probably the FBI had absolutely zero involvement with him, and no reason to be involved with him. (I imagine, in AZ anyway, once the excrement-storm starts that may be subject to change – though Jan Brewer’s a pretty tough broad, so maybe not.)
Gun laws aside, the problem is mental illness in this case. Loughner is schizophrenic – I think it’s hard to dispute that. But courts have given the mentally ill the right to be crazy and it’s hard to dispute that if you consider the evil uses to which psychiatry has been put in the past. However, you can generally be put away only if a judge finds that you are a danger to yourself or others. Since Loughner never was so found, he was able to get a gun and use it.
The interesting question is, why was Loughner never involved in any kind of mental health proceeding. If Sadie’s info is correct, why was there never a civil commitment hearing on Loughner? Did this awful sheriff prevent this from happening as a favor to mom who was also a county employee? What accounts for this terrible dereliction with respect to Jared Loughner? This is the big question that needs to be answered.
I think that jj is not quite up on firearms purchasing in different states and is getting firearms purchase and carry permit information confused.
Per the ATF website, the FBI performs a NICS check for firearm purchases in Arizona. This means that anyone wishing to purchase a firearm from a gun store or firearms dealer fills out a form, the dealer calls in the information and then they get a ‘go ahead’, a ‘hold’, or a ‘denied’. Flags on this would include drug use, convictions, mental health issues, etc.
In Illinois, in order to purchase a firearm, you must have a FOID card: a Firearm Owners Identification Card. You do not need a permit for each firearm you purchase.
I believe in some states there is a three day waiting period, but not all and is separate from the NICS check.
However, all of this is off-topic. My comments above, I believe are part of the answer. As someone else said, it’s very easy to armchair quarterback and try to point fingers. The point is he was mentally ill, did not get help and/or was not forced to get help nor was he put into the criminal system which might have at least gotten him off of the streets. It looks like some of that can be put at the feet of the sheriff’s office since he’s been dancing and pointing fingers at anyone and everyone so no one looks behind his curtain (or at his records).
If you’re already licensed to conceal, and / or buying something too big to fit in your pocket anyway, and / or buying from someone who can key in a NICS check as proficiently as he can key in a credit card number, and / or you’re understandably distracted by all of the other cool guns on display while the transaction is being processed, I think it’s easy to miss how much checking is done. Interestingly, I got three of my weapons (two pistols, and one not) in WA. It’s been awhile, but I remember it going a lot like this.
Bottom line, though, we have about 200 million firearms floating around in a country of about 310 million people. The idea that you can safely have otherwise-dangerous lunatics running around on the loose in a free country, just so long as no one legally sells them a gun, is simply not realistic. If they’re dangerous, they’re dangerous, and they need to be kept out of society at large until and unless they’re not dangerous.
Spartacus – not remotely! You go into the gun store, show them your driver’s license, (which only verifies age and address, in WA they won’t give licenses to people from out of state though many states will), and walk out with a gun. That’s purchasing the gun. Anybody can do that and have a gun in their home. WA is not a “castle doctrine” state yet (it will be) but it is a “stand your ground” state, so pretty much anyone is allowed a weapon in their home. I don’t know where – or when – the process in your cited site comes from, but I have patronized three gun stores – two in the country and one across the street from the Pike Place Market in central downtown Seattle – and two gun shows, and have yet to need more than a driver’s license, and have yet to have waited longer than it took to sign a credit card slip, and away I went, gun in pocket.
Carrying is a different story. If you wish to carry – concealed or openly – then you go to the local sheriff, get fingerprinted, and that process involves the checking part – local jurisdiction check, state check, FBI check. In WA they have to get back to you within two weeks. I didn’t realize how Draconian that was until the event I’ve described happened: the feds were slow getting back and the sheriff sent the licenses anyway – because he was mandated to by state law. But even in that process there was no registering of the guns, no record of what they are, and the FBI has no idea what I or anyone else in WA owns. When I bought the Taurus in September I gave the dealer my driver’s license, he filled out a one-page little form which I then signed, I paid him, and the gun left with me. Zero phone calls, faxes, telexes, smoke signals – and, as I said above: zero wait.
Chick – Arizona, on their gun law website, doesn’t seem to think that’s what they do. Nor does the Arizona State Rifle & Pistol Association. Neither is of the opinion that you need a permit to buy – only to carry. And I said it badly I suppose, about Illinois. To clarify, every new purchase gets its own FOID – not permit. (Is the FOID something other than a permit? You can’t do anything without it – so classify it how you will.)
All this is presupposing that this guy had any interest in the law anyway and, being a nut, didn’t just steal the weapon from somewhere. Which I don’t know – do we yet know that it was actually a legal gun?
jj,
This is not the place or the subject but I don’t want people to have incorrect information. To purchase a handgun in the state of Arizona, you have to be over 21, you have to have a valid government-issued photo ID, and you have to fill out a form 4473, which is form for the NICS check. (http://www.azccw.com/purchasingfirearminarizona.htm) This is the federal form I referenced earlier. A NICS check is not a permit, so no, you don’t need a permit to purchase a handgun from a gun store or dealer. A NICS check is a check to see if you have any flags in the system that would prohibit you from legally purchasing a handgun from a gun store or dealer. If you don’t pass the check, you don’t get to legally purchase.
Additionally, I’m originally from Illinois and have purchased a firearm in Illinois, so I’m probably more familiar with the rules for firearm purchase there than you are so read my prior answer.
You seem to have your terminology mixed up.
I don’t know about Washington State and wouldn’t presume to comment on the laws there but they are not listed as a state that requires a federal NICS check.
Again, see my first post. It was a legal purchase, but that point is moot.
First hand data is more accurate than second hand reference sources such as utilizing a general website on the net without a way to adapt it for contextual differences.
Which is to say, I appreciate people’s first hand experiences. So long as they are specific as to the limits of that experience.
jj,
OK, this is officially weird. From your comments on this site, I’ve come to think of you an an intelligent, coherent, lucid and trustworthy dude. And I am not going to change that opinion over one thread of comments. But your observed reality is flying in the face of my observed reality, and there’s only one reality.
I have cited 1) state law, and 2) my personal experience, which coincides with state law.
Regarding the law, please check the URL on the link I provided: leg.wa.gov. Not “Bob’s Low-Down on Gun Laws of the 50 States,” but the official site of the state government, stating quite clearly what its laws are on this topic, and what they have been since 1994. I don’t know where to find anything more official.
Regarding memories of my personal experiences, I’ve never taken hallucinogens or any other illegal drugs, and have no history of diagnosed mental illness (complaints about liberals driving me insane notwithstanding). I don’t remember each purchase in vivid detail, but am comfortable in the facts which I have presented. The first pistol, purchased in my pre-CPL days, c. 2001/02-ish, required filling out a form, watching the clerk call in the information on the form, and going back to pick it up several days later. The rifle was less hassle, which surprised me, but it turns out the state is more worried about concealability than lethality, and besides, I think I had my CPL by then. The second pistol, I *think* I showed my CPL, I’m nearly certain I filled out a form, and I’m nearly certain it was called in, but I was able to walk out with it after about 20 minutes.
I’d like to file this one away under “Whatever.” That’s not a euphemism for “jj’s lost his marbles,” but actually, “We have a discrepancy of observed reality that I can’t explain, but am not overly worried about.” The lucidity of the mass of your comments speaks for itself.