In a move that's certain to irk everyone in the region with a sub-average IQ, some of the details of the spiffy new gun control ordinances being proposed by Mayor Sam Adams were published today. Frankly, after all of the bitching that ensued last August when the ideas were first presented, I was expecting something a bit stronger – or is it that I was hoping for something a bit stronger?
Anything to piss off the perpetually wrong right I suppose.
Instead, these three new proposed laws and two measures read like common sense to me:
- A child safety law that would hold adults responsible if their gun gets into a child's hands. How this isn't already a law is completely beyond me. When I was growing up, my best friend (at age 16) managed to put a hole the size of a silver dollar through his foot because he was handling a gun while being supervised. It was an accident only in the sense that he was fucking around – he had literally grown up around guns but within 5 minutes of having one in his hands for the first time, boom, he buried a large chunk of foot flesh into the ground below him. Imagine him finding one of dad's guns at 5 years old and then going to show the neighbor kids.
- A theft reporting law that would penalize gun owners who don't report the theft or loss of a firearm. They say roughly 1 in 5 crimes are committed with a lost or stolen firearm. How hard is it to call the police and file a goddamn report?
- An exclusion zone measure that would designate shooting hot spots in the city, and allow the city to exclude gun offenders who are on probation or under juvenile authority from entering a public area or park within the hot spot locations, unless they live in the area, go to school, obtain social services or travel through it. And here's where it gets interesting. A lot of people are going to argue that this measure automatically discriminates against gun-toting felons – and so what if it does? What it doesn't affect is the responsible, licensed, Second Amendment loving bastards who have been daring us to pry their penises from their frigid deceased digits for the past few hundred years. What's the big worry? This is basically a measure to give cops the right to haul your ass into the pokey every time they catch you carrying a gun when you're not supposed to. Big deal. They should be anyway.
- A special 7 p.m. curfew for juveniles who have been convicted of a gun offense, found to have possessed, purchased, used, transferred or transported a firearm unlawfully. Yeah, that's right kids, if you did something stupid with a gun at one point then they're going to treat you like a fucking toddler and you get to go to bed early.
- Placing a mandatory minimum sentence of 30 days in jail for previous gun offenders found carrying a loaded gun in a public place, which includes a vehicle or on transit. Again, how come this isn't done already?
