Democrats in Massachusetts are scrambling for political cover after a repeat, violent felon managed to evade the state’s restrictive gun control laws and get his hands on a rifle this week, using it to fire dozens of rounds at motorists in Cambridge before he was stopped by an armed citizen and a Massachusetts state trooper.
As the Gun Owners Action League reports, some Democrats are demanding new laws in response; not to make it easier for lawful citizens to exercise their Second Amendment rights, but to make violent crime even more illegal.
“The only law that saved lives on Memorial Drive was the Second Amendment,” said Jim Wallace, Executive Director of GOAL. “An armed citizen stopped what could have been a blood bath, but the Commonwealth’s politicians can only call for more laws. They can’t help themselves because that would mean they would have to admit their policies have been a complete failure.”
The previous crimes of the Memorial Drive terrorist should have kept him in prison for many decades. Instead, he was back on the streets in three years. This isn’t a failure of the system, it is the system.
This is the new law being called for:
SECTION 1. Chapter 265 of the General Laws, as appearing in the 2020 Official Edition, is hereby amended by adding the following new section:
Section 15G. Whoever without regard for the risk of serious bodily injury to another intentionally or recklessly discharges a firearm, large capacity weapon, rifle, shotgun, sawed-off shotgun, or machine gun and thereby causes a substantial risk of serious bodily injury to another shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for not more than 5 years or by imprisonment in the house of correction for not more than 2 ½ years.
Oh, well, that oughta take care of the problem. Never mind that the suspect in Monday’s shooting had been sentenced to five to six years in prison for essentially the same crime back in 2020, or that it’s already a criminal offense in Massachusetts to try to murder someone regardless of what implement is used.
And forget about the fact that prosecutors sought a 10-to-12-year sentence for the suspect in this week’s attack back in 2021, when he was charged with firing more than a dozen shots at police officers, but a judge slashed the sentence in half. Even if Democrats do pass this nothingburger law, what’s to stop a judge from sentencing future offenders to the bare minimum?
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey has pointed her finger at the now-retired judge, complaining that Tyler Brown “should have received a much stiffer sentence” five years ago, even as she continues to downplay the armed citizen who played a major role in stopping the more recent rampage.
Healey tells the Herald she has spoken with the state trooper and retired Marine who took action Monday to subdue the gunman.
“I just want to say I spoke to the trooper and the former federal agent (Marine) who were on scene. Their acts of heroism were just unbelievable. Just like what we saw last week from Trooper Trainer on Route 1 in looking to save lives, which he did,” Healey said.
He’s not a former “federal agent.” He’s a Marine veteran and a private citizen who had his pistol in his vehicle when he saw a guy with a gun taking shots at cars driving by. His bravery and heroism should be recognized, but there’s no reason for the governor to portray him as anything other than a good guy with a gun who was in the right place at the right time and was willing to risk his life in order to protect and save others.
Healey and her fellow Democrats don’t want Massachusetts residents to get the idea that maybe they too should be able to protect themselves and others, or to figure out that the state’s draconian gun control regime is standing in their way. They’ll demand another law that will punish an offender after the fact, blame a retired judge for their shared soft-on-crime philosophy, and do everything they can to convince the people that this defensive gun use was just a fluke instead of evidence of the importance of our right to keep and bear arms.
Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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