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ANOTHER SHOOTING–GUN LAWS DIDN’T HELP

There was another shooting yesterday, this time on the island of Guam. The
gunman stormed a medical clinic where his estranged wife worked as a nurse
and where he was once employed. He shot her, then shot another woman and
several others before being fatally wounded by police.

Let’s have a look at Guam’s gun laws, which are set by the U.S. government.
Guam is a possession of the United States.

–No one can own a gun without first obtaining a government-issued
identification card.

–All firearms on the island have to be registered within three working days
of their purchase. This also applies to private firearms transactions
between individuals. The “confidential” database of these registered guns
is open to law enforcement officials.

–It’s a felony to possess any type of ammunition that’s capable of
penetrating body armor.

Did any of Guam’s firearms laws prevent the angry husband from shooting his
wife to death yesterday? Nope. Would more gun laws have prevented him from
obtaining his guns? Nope. Criminals aren’t keen on following the law.

The knee-jerk reaction on Guam, naturally, will be to call on the government
to make the gun laws more restrictive. It won’t work.

No matter how you slice it, no gun law (and no future gun law the
anti-gunners may want to put on the books) would have saved the Guam
shooter’s two victims. There’s no law that will make the hands of criminals
drop off if they touch a gun. There’s no law that would erect invisible
shields around offices to prevent gunmen from shooting them up. The only
thing these laws achieve is to turn us into a nation of disarmed sheep who
can’t protect ourselves from the wolves.

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010226/wl/guam_clinic_shooting_5.html
http://www.nraila.org/research/19990716-BillofRightsCivilRights-017.html