The guns of Boston

[SPEMack618]

Originally Posted by MT2008

Also, to use an (admittedly flawed) parallel: The Columbine shooters both had long rap sheets for B&E and were already known to local law enforcement. That hardly deterred them from having friends buy them weapons that they were not legally old enough to buy themselves (and then sawing off the barrels on their two shotguns).

That is sort of my point. The dumb bimbo who bought the Tec-9 and something else, can't remember, for the two at Columbine was never prosecuted for her part in the straw sale, nor accessory to murder. Instead she got drug in front of Congress to speak about lax gun laws. I guess straw sales should be made even more illegal.

Further more, I think the reason that gun laws have no effect currently is because they aren't used. Atlanta has a provision, in which a prosecutor can tac on another five years to any criminal's sentence for the use of a firearm in the commission of a crime. It has been used exactly forty times since enacment in 2007.

Something like 10 convictions resulted from false 4473s in 2012, out of like 7,000 rejected NICS checks.

Straw sales are a problem. They are already illegal. Making them more illegal isn't going to stop to them, but effective prosecutions with stiff sentences will.

Originally Posted by MT2008

Agreed. I would rather not treat these guys as "enemy combatants". In practical terms, there isn't much difference between guys like the Tsarnaev brothers and guys like the Columbine shooters.

There isn't anything to seperate the Tsarnaev brothers from the Columbine shooters. Or the North Hollywood shooters. Or Lanza. Or Holmes. Or Whitman. Or Boothe.

A terrorist is nothing more than a common criminal adhereing to a political philosophy instead of personal betterment.

I think that the Taliban guys we capture in Afghanistan should be turned over to the Afghan National Police and tried for whatever crimes could be pinned on them. And left to rot in Mazeri-Shariff.

These guys were American citizens and should stand before a jury of thier peers, preferably from Boston.