Loughner’s Judge Makes Conservative Plea For Gun Control

[Tx4obama]

Loughner’s Judge Makes Conservative Plea For Gun Control

Larry Alan Burns, the federal district judge in San Diego who just last month sentenced Tuscon shooter Jared Lee Loughner to seven consecutive life terms plus 140 years in federal prison, is no darling of the gun control movement.

Burns is a self-described conservative, appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush, and he agrees with the Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia vs. Heller, which held that the 2nd Amendment gives Americans the right to own guns for self-defense. He is also a gun owner.

But while sentencing Loughner in November, Burns questioned the need for high-capacity magazines like the one Loughner had in his Glock, and said he regretted how the Federal Assault Weapons Ban was allowed to lapse in 2004. On Thursday, reacting to last week’s mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., Burns publicly called for a new assault weapons ban “with some teeth this time,” in an op-ed published by The Los Angeles Times.

“Ban the manufacture, importation, sale, transfer and possession of both assault weapons and high-capacity magazines,” Burns wrote. “Don’t let people who already have them keep them. Don’t let ones that have already been manufactured stay on the market. I don’t care whether it’s called gun control or a gun ban. I’m for it.”

-snip-

Full TPM article here: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/12/loughner_judge_conservative_gun_control.php?ref=fpb

And...

A conservative case for an assault weapons ban
By Judge Burns

Last month, I sentenced Jared Lee Loughner to seven consecutive life terms plus 140 years in federal prison for his shooting rampage in Tucson. That tragedy left six people dead, more than twice that number injured and a community shaken to its core.

Loughner deserved his punishment. But during the sentencing, I also questioned the social utility of high-capacity magazines like the one that fed his Glock. And I lamented the expiration of the federal assault weapons ban in 2004, which prohibited the manufacture and importation of certain particularly deadly guns, as well as magazines that can hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

The ban wasn't all that stringent — if you already owned a banned gun or high-capacity magazine you could keep it, and you could sell it to someone else — but at least it was something.

And it says something that half of the nation's deadliest shootings occurred after the ban expired, including the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn. It also says something that it has not even been two years since Loughner's rampage, and already six mass shootings have been deadlier.

-snip-

Full text of Judge Burns' OP-ED here: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-burns-assault-weapons-ban-20121220,0,6774314.story

A Good Read.

[Recursion]

1. Heller left *tons* of room for realistic gun control. Actually it made things better, in some ways

If you don't believe that the 2nd Amendment granted an individual right to own firearms, then that right is protected by the 9th, which has no militia clause.

Conservatives and liberals agree on so many things about gun control that it makes me pound my face into bricks every time I see our side (and, yes, I'm going to call out our side here) let it become another culture war wedge issue.

Want to end the "gun show loophole"? Guess what! The NRA does too, if you'll stop using the dishonest term "gun show loophole".

[freshwest]

2. Courageous statement. The quality of judges we lack in some places. Loughner killed a judge, too.

Thanks for posting this.

[Tx4obama]

3. MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell just read it on his ReWrite segment. n/t