Guns can be picked up and used for good or evil, but they are morally neutral objects. Gun-control advocates always try to obscure this point as they strain mightily, without success, to connect the dots between bad gun acts and lawful gun ownership. So in commenting on efforts by some state legislators to ease a number of gun restrictions, The Journal Gazette just has to tie it to a recent murder:
On Tuesday, Indianapolis Police Officer David Moore lay in a coma, suffering from mortal wounds he suffered Sunday when the driver of a car he pulled over fired four gunshots.
Not too far away Tuesday, in the Statehouse, nine Indiana state senators voted to make it easier for anyone to carry a handgun in a car. Hoosiers, they proclaimed, shouldn't need a license to carry a handgun when they want to carry a handgun in a car. Nor, for that matter, should they need a license to carry a handgun on someone else's property.
Yeah, start right out with the police officer in a coma. That's the way to have a rational, intelligent discussion. But the man who killed him was a convicted felon mistakenly let out of prison who was not allowed to have a gun under current law. Making it more or less difficult to get and have a gun makes no difference to people like him. How many times do we have to make this point?
In the meantime, the debate in Indianapolis is whether to seek the death penalty against the man who killed the officer. One opinion is that they won't because of, get this, his age. Since he is 60 and it takes so long to go through the appeals process, he would be at least in his mid-70s before the penalty was carried out, and it's highly probable he would die in prison before he was executed. This is interesting:
Age also can play a role in a jury's willingness to recommend death, said Scott Newman, Brizzi's predecessor.
Newman, who sent six people to Death Row during his eight-year stint as prosecutor, said juries are less likely to impose the death sentence on people in their early 20s or younger, sometimes because they think those people can move past the mistakes of their youth and redeem themselves. Juries also seem less likely to recommend death as punishment for people who are past their early 50s, he said.
So you and I get a pass, young whippersnapper. Somebody better take our guns.
