Opinion
“Too Many (Registered) Guns?”
The currently in-custody fifty-nine-year-old suspect in the series of “Gilgo Beach Murders” in Suffolk County, NY (Long Island), dating back to 2010, now stands accused of at least three of those murders.
If he is guilty, he may also be guilty of at least eight other similar murders committed around the same time and in the same area. Those “other” cases remain open, at least currently.
As was the case with the notorious “Green-River Murderer” in WA and OR, who committed his crimes over at least a decade (1980s-90s), nearly all of the Gilgo Beach victims were female prostitutes, which always makes the investigation difficult.
Prostitution is a dangerous profession, albeit probably the oldest!
During the forthcoming normal criminal/justice process, which may include a high-profile trial, many additional details will probably be revealed, but several disturbing developments should concern all of us:
NY’s extremely restrictive gun laws (many of which have subsequently been found unconstitutional), even when in place and presumably enforced, obviously did not prevent this serial-murder suspect from legally acquiring, and also properly registering/licensing, a number of firearms, in fact, “a vault-full” (whatever that means) according to the Suffolk County Police Commissioner.
Law-abiding NY residents, who arduously struggle to comply with hopelessly complex, draconian state gun-control statutes, have been piously assured that proper registration and licensing of guns will protect them from being automatically categorized as “suspects” during the investigation of violent crimes.
Maybe not!
In the aftermath of the arrest of this particular suspect, the above-mentioned police commissioner stated,
“Any time somebody has that type of arsenal, we have some concerns.”
I’m not at all sure what an “arsenal” is, yet up until the day of this suspect’s arrest, county authorities apparently didn’t “have concerns,” apparently not a single concern, about this one!
Does this mean that any law-abiding county resident (who is not a government employee) but who owns more than one or two guns, even when all his or her guns are legally acquired and duly registered/licensed, will still automatically merit the “concern” of county authorities?
We’ve been promised that “registration and licensing” will remove gun-owners from suspicion. That is obviously untrue!
Liberals pay smug lip service to “individual freedom and liberty,” all until a citizen tries actually to exercise his freedoms. Suddenly, that same citizen finds himself labeled “extremist,” “terrorist,” “racist,” etc, by the same liberals!
“Too many guns,” like too much freedom in general, will always make autocrats nervous!
Never doubt it!
“Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy, because you have ‘nothing to hide’ is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.” ~ Snowden.
/John
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Texans would call 300 guns “a good beginning”.
“… up to 300 weapons …”
“… a vault-full … ”
Jethro Bodine of “The Beverly Hillbillies” once mentioned something as being between “a bunch” and “a whole bunch”.
Is it just me, or should we expect the press and police commissioners to be better at “cipherin’ ” than Jethro?
The question is, “What the hell does this have to do with anything”? It’s a completely irrelevant factoid.
As far as I can tell none of the victims were killed with a gun. He could have had a thousand guns or no guns and it would have had ZERO impact on these crimes!
I have no where near 300 firearms. I have noticed, however, that no matter what I try, I can’t really use more than one at a time. Just last week when I had three at the range, I noticed that the two in my range bag were of no more use to me than those in my gun safe. They didn’t load themselves, aim themselves, or fire themselves. They could have still been on the dealer’s shelf for all the use they were to me and the danger they were posing to others. Come to think of it, the one… Read more »
In the interest of full disclosure, I have a bit more than a “safe-full.” It’s not that big of a safe so it’s probably short of a “vault-full” I have no hard number, just that there are more than I need yet not as many as I want, and they don’t all fit in the size safe my wife said we “needed.” Her eyes kinda bugged out when the pile on the carpet refused to fit into the size safe she said would probably be bigger than we needed. Taking them all out and counting them is not on my… Read more »
They caught a janitor in California with an arsenal of 30 guns (several were unregistered) and five thousand rounds of ammo. Many gun owners weren’t impressed. The main comment seemed to be “That’s a nice start, when is he going to get serious about collecting?”. They’re biggest complaint about the Long Island serial killer isn’t that he shot anyone with the guns, but that they weren’t registered as though that would have prevented him from murdering prostitutes over a decade of police incompetence. If you can’t figure out a serial killer (especially with the local police denying there’s a serial… Read more »
“Registered guns”
One of the dumbest ideas you could come up with if you were actually trying to prevent crime! Logically a law would be to deter criminals from committing crimes, but since a convicted felon can not be fount guilty of possession of an unregistered firearm, that is one law that only an otherwise law abiding citizen can be charged with. Gun control is not about guns, it’s about control.
It sickens me to see how these pricks have callously jammed his collection into bins with no consideration whatsoever of how much damage it’s causing to them. So, if this guy turns out to be innocent of the charges and goes though who knows what kind of hell to get his property returned, his collection is going to be marred and damaged. Who pays for that? I see at least one Enfield, a Carcano and a couple Mausers. Such irresponsible disregard to personal property should never be allowed nor tollerated. If he is guilty, being that this is located in… Read more »
“300 weapons hidden in his home” The connotation is automatically nefarious, even though they may be properly secured in a safe or hidden room to keep from being stolen by thieves. I don’t have that many, but mine are “hidden” in safes in my house. No firearms were used in his murders, yet the fact that he had all of those firearms, puts extra onus on how evil the guy is. Because of them, he’s even eviler.
How many guns, how many knives or how many baseball bats someone owns does not make them a murderer, or even dangerous. A evil heart does that, remember Cane killed Abel with a stone.