On May 2 of last year, Jason Lee Morrill, a convicted felon, bought a Taurus 9mm pistol and two magazines from a man he found through an online classified ad. Morrill then almost immediately sold the firearm, which was found a few weeks later near the scene of a shooting in New York City involving police officers.
In 2005, Emmanuel Nzambi, who had spent four years in a mental hospital after being involuntarily committed, bought a Ruger 9mm pistol at a sporting goods store. In 2007, he used that gun to murder a woman in his psychiatrist’s office, and later to shoot and wound a neighbor.
The first case occurred in Maine, and the second could just as easily have happened here. Together, they show the failings of the laws intended to curb gun violence, and provide lawmakers with a starting point for finding solutions that strike the right balance between personal rights and public safety.
It looks like the 126th Legislature will have plenty to say on the issues of firearm ownership, safety and violence. The Portland Press Herald quoted Sen. Stan Gerzofsky, co-chairman of the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee, as saying there are at least 40 bills regarding gun violence among the 1,775 or so submitted for this session. But it is unclear whether much will be changed when the dust settles, given Maine’s history with firearms.
“I foresee possibly some changes in the away we treat firearms in this state, but not a lot,” Rep. Bryan Kaenrath, a Democrat on the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee, told Current Publishing. “We have a pretty good record here. We are a high gun ownership state yet we have one of the lowest rates of violence involving firearms.”
Lawmakers should look first at tightening up the background check system. In the Morrill case, a law requiring background checks on private sales may have prevented the gun from getting in the wrong hands, or at least made it more difficult. Placing private sales under the same scrutiny as retail sales makes sense, and would hardly be a burden on law-abiding gun owners.
Laws for preventing mentally-ill people like Nzambi from buying firearms are already in place, but funding shortages have kept the state from sending information on the involuntarily committed to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System. It’s unlikely state funding would be available in the next two-year budget, given the state’s fiscal ills. That’s an issue that, unfortunately, also impacts access to the kinds of mental-health services that can help prevent violent outbursts. In the meantime, legislators should look at making sure law enforcement and mental-health providers have the proper tools and training.
Bringing back the so-called assault weapons ban and banning high-capacity magazines get a lot of attention, but both would make the state only marginally safer, as they would be easily circumvented by manufacturers and gun owners.
President Obama is pursuing many of these changes on the national level, as well, and perhaps federal funding can help Maine and other states catch up on the background check system. Changes at the federal level could also close the private sale loophole.
Of course, even the strictest laws will not eliminate all gun violence. Perhaps Morrill would have found a seller willing to forgo a background check, were one required by law. And maybe Nzambi would have done the same, or simply found another way to harm the person in his path.
But a few simple, hardly oppressive changes would make it less likely, and that should be enough.
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