Cape Cod times 10-3-2008

Would it be legal to publish the name address and phone numbers of the staff at the news paper?
Maybe add in pictures of their kids, where they go to school..
What times their houses are un occupied, previous convictions..

You know, public records, important relevant information? The people have the RIGHT to know...
 
In fairness to the Rag....er, I mean Newspaper, they never called for the dissemination of names and addresses of gun owners. They just made it sound like they were going to tell you and then told you why they can't. Typical rag journalism; sensationalizing an unsensational topic.
 
You see, despite the picture they'd like to paint, WE are the good guys and are morally barred from publishing things like someone's kids and family.

Sadly, for the most part, nobody outside of this group will ever know that.
 
If they ever did this, I'd say to everyone on Cape Cod: hide all your guns and report them stolen. Then you can get the insurance dough, buy more toys, and write an article about how newspaper journalists contributed to the huge flux of illegal guns flooding the streets of Cape Cod.
 
Article: Lax laws cause rise in illegal weapons

http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081005/NEWS/810050333

Lax laws cause rise in illegal weapons

By George Brennan
[email protected]
October 05, 2008
Kenneth Webster Jr. was able to walk into a Maine gun shop with his driver's license and legally purchase the arsenal he gathered at his property in Marstons Mills, according to police. Webster likely walked out of the gun shop with a weapon, a safety brochure and no questions asked.

It turned into a crime when he crossed the state line without a valid license to carry and stashed them at his remote property off Route 28 in Marstons Mills, Barnstable Police Sgt. John Murphy said. But that crime went undetected until police were asked in July to serve him with a restraining order sought by his estranged wife. They found more than 50 unlicensed firearms and other weapons.

Related Stories
1 in 20 Cape residents licensed for firearms
Where they come from

Top five states where firearms seized in Massachusetts were traced to in 2007, although the data is not a complete record because law enforcement does not trace all guns:
Massachusetts - 316New Hampshire - 93Maine - 93
Georgia - 32
Florida - 31
Source: U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives
"In my opinion, part of the biggest issue is the lack of uniformity in gun laws and what it takes to legally purchase a firearm," Murphy said. "It's been fairly well documented through cases in this department that a lot of guns are purchased legally in other states and transported to Massachusetts."

Webster, 44, was released on $50,000 cash bail posted Sept. 29 by his mother. He is scheduled to appear for a pretrial conference Nov. 19.

At his mother and father's home in Marstons Mills Friday, Webster answered the door wearing jeans, a shirt with several buttons undone at the top and headphones. Stepping outside, he said he would welcome the opportunity to set the record straight about the cache of weapons police confiscated from his property.

"I'm not the evil person I've been portrayed to be," he said, still wearing a wrist bracelet ID from his stint in the Barnstable County House of Correction. The bracelet included his mug shot.

"This has been hard on other people," he said referring to his parents. "I'm not going to talk without clearing it with them first."

An hour later, the drapes were drawn, the front door closed and Webster's father answered the door. "We have nothing to say at this time," he said.


Guns and drugs
The Webster case raises questions about just how many illegal guns there may be on the streets of Cape Cod and if there are any other secret stashes. And while there's no way to know for sure, police are certain that such stashes are on the rise with a large percentage of those weapons seized in drug-related arrests, Murphy said.

"They go hand-in-hand with drugs," Falmouth Police Chief Anthony Riello said.

Riello has been chief in Falmouth for a little more than a year and while the problem of illegal weapons isn't nearly what it was in the city of Pittsfield, where he served as chief, it is real.

Despite Massachusetts' strict gun laws, which require background checks and varying degrees of firearms licenses, the relatively lax laws of surrounding New England states only contribute to the illegal weapons here, according to John Rosenthal, executive director of Stop Handgun Violence, a Natick-based group that successfully lobbied for Massachusetts gun law reform 10 years ago.

Criminals and terrorists know, Rosenthal said, that Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont are among 32 states that require no background checks to purchase a gun.

"We should be very concerned about that," he said. "Maine is an hour away and no ID required. It's a little scary."

Last year's trace statistics from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives appear to back up Rosenthal's claims. Of the 1,538 firearms recovered statewide in 2007, law enforcement was able to trace 845 of them. And of those, 529 were traced to other states with Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont accounting for 173 of the weapons.

In contrast, Massachusetts accounted for five of the firearms recovered in Maine in 2007 — or about 1 percent, according to the federal trace data.

Many southern states also have lax gun laws that allow weapons to be purchased legally in one state and then sold or traded illegally in Massachusetts, Murphy said.

James Wallace, director of the Northboro-based Gun Owners Action League, said the Massachusetts gun laws have been a disaster, only serving to make it tougher to be a lawful gun owner. He said he's never been shown evidence that the gun laws of other states are contributing to illegal guns in Massachusetts.

"Why would a criminal go to another state and come back to Massachusetts to commit the crimes?" Wallace said.


Seizures not uncommon
While Webster's case is an extreme one, police seizures of illegal weapons on the Cape is not unique.

Last May when Sandwich police arrested Jason Greene of Forestdale on drug charges, they seized a 9 mm handgun along with 800 Percocet pills and marijuana. He was charged with illegal possession of a firearm, along with drug charges.

In August, Adam Clough, 24, of West Yarmouth and Shawntay DeBarros, of Marstons Mills were arrested along with another man in an Attleboro drug sting. Clough and DeBarros were also charged with illegal possession of a firearm because police found a loaded Smith & Wesson 9 mm handgun in the car.

And, last January, a drug bust coordinated by Falmouth, Bourne, Mashpee and Barnstable, the Cape Cod Drug Task Force, state police detectives and the Barnstable County Sheriff's Department, included seizing a 9 mm Ruger semi-automatic handgun and the arrest of James Peters on outstanding drug and weapons charges.

There is a reason why the cops were wearing bulletproof vests during that early morning raid.

"There's a nexus between drugs and violence — whether that's guns, knives or physical violence," Murphy said. "It's becoming more and more common on the Cape."

Massachusetts laws do little to help with illegal weapons, Sandwich Police Chief Michael Miller said.

"The only people who obey laws are the ones who aren't going to cause you a problem," Miller said.



---------------



"Criminals and terrorists know, Rosenthal said, that Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont are among 32 states that require no background checks to purchase a gun.

"We should be very concerned about that," he said. "Maine is an hour away and no ID required. It's a little scary."



Since when can you get a gun with no ID required???
 
Criminals and terrorists know, Rosenthal said, that Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont are among 32 states that require no background checks to purchase a gun.

Strange......Every gun I've purchased at my local gun shop in NH required a background check. I guess I should tell him that it's not required. [rolleyes]
 
Would it be legal to publish the name address and phone numbers of the staff at the news paper?
Maybe add in pictures of their kids, where they go to school..
What times their houses are un occupied, previous convictions..

You know, public records, important relevant information? The people have the RIGHT to know...

Why would they public that.... they will censor it....publish it on a billboard.
 
Strange......Every gun I've purchased at my local gun shop in NH required a background check. I guess I should tell him that it's not required. [rolleyes]

I know. I bought a gun one day and went back the next day and bought another one and can you believe it they STILL did a background check! He had even asked me how I liked the rifle I bought the other day.
 
If you listen to what he said it was "gun DEATHS". An important distinction. Most of the violence happens in Boston, which also has one of the highest concentrations of cutting-edge hospitals on the planet.

[shocked] You've hit the nail on the hammer! High concentrations of cutting-edge hospitals are the leading cause of gun DEATHS! Ban these hospitals! Move them out of Boston and to Manchester. Boston doesn't deserve them!
 
[shocked] You've hit the nail on the hammer! High concentrations of cutting-edge hospitals are the leading cause of gun DEATHS! Ban these hospitals! Move them out of Boston and to Manchester. Boston doesn't deserve them!

I think the point he was trying to make was that using gun DEATHS as a metric to illustrate the effectiveness of MA gun laws is misleading, as the high-concentration of cutting edge hospitals in the area means that those admitted with gunshot wounds are less likely to die of those wounds. It says nothing about the rate of gun violence.

If we had 1000 shootings in MA, and only 5 of those people died (the high survival rate being due to the quality of medical care here), and someplace like Iowa had 10 shootings and 8 of them died because of a lack of such high-quality care, it would look like MA is a less violent place (when looking solely at the numbers of gun casualties, which is what the reporter was forcing his readership to do), which we KNOW is not the case.

Or maybe you got his point and I missed your sarcasm.
 
If we had 1000 shootings in MA, and only 5 of those people died (the high survival rate being due to the quality of medical care here), and someplace like Iowa had 10 shootings and 8 of them died because of a lack of such high-quality care, it would look like MA is a less violent place (when looking solely at the numbers of gun casualties, which is what the reporter was forcing his readership to do), which we KNOW is not the case.

Or maybe you got his point and I missed your sarcasm.

Good point, that one actually slipped me and I am glad that you brought it up.

And I think he was being sarcastic.
 
You mean you can't get accuracy holding the gun on it's side?[rofl]

You mean like this...
gangsta%201.JPG

or
new_gangsta_trend_0902orgB.jpg

or my personal fav...
Nigerian%20militia%20marijuana%20gangster%20gangsta%20Kalashnikov%20ak47%201.jpg
 
Still BS.
From those links:
Homicide rate per 100,000 population
Gun homicides per 100,000 population

Nothing about actual gun violence, only deaths. I would love to see gun violence stats without consideration of outcome but can't find them.

The Bopo publish fatal vs. non-fatal shoot stats. But granted, that doesn't help at all comparing Boston or the Commonwealth to the rest of the country.

http://www.cityofboston.gov/police/divisions/pdfs/Crime_stats2_7-21-08.pdf

But to Pipmaster's point, there are probably a LOT of non-fatal shooting that would likely have been fatal almost anywhere else. There are at least three level I trauma centers within Boston and there's almost always at least one within a 4 minute ambulance ride. Couple that with one of the best EMS systems in the country and you have a much higher than average likely hood of surviving a shooting in Boston.
 
The Bopo publish fatal vs. non-fatal shoot stats. But granted, that doesn't help at all comparing Boston or the Commonwealth to the rest of the country.

http://www.cityofboston.gov/police/divisions/pdfs/Crime_stats2_7-21-08.pdf

But to Pipmaster's point, there are probably a LOT of non-fatal shooting that would likely have been fatal almost anywhere else. There are at least three level I trauma centers within Boston and there's almost always at least one within a 4 minute ambulance ride. Couple that with one of the best EMS systems in the country and you have a much higher than average likely hood of surviving a shooting in Boston.

After getting shot in Boston, you only have a roughly 1 in 5 chance of dying. If you assume it is 1 in 3 elsewhere, that really sends MA up the chart into the top 10 given how Boston dominates the statewide stats. Got to love data. Won't matter a lick since rosenthal will continue to spew BS every chance he gets and the 4th estate are too lazy to fact check him.
 
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