Guest Post by Morbo
This week, an emotionally disturbed young man named Michael Kennedy put on a camouflage outfit and, armed with seven guns, among them an assault rifle, drove to a police station in Fairfax County, Va., where he opened fire in the parking lot.
Before he was killed by return gunfire, Kennedy critically wounded one officer and killed another. The dead officer is Detective Vicky O. Armel. The 40-year-old mother of two was described as a devoted parent, dedicated cop and devout member of her church. In short, she was a community asset.
Kennedy, by contrast, had some obvious problems. Days before the shootings, he visited friends and gave rambling talks about “good aliens” and “bad aliens.” While Kennedy never made violent comments, it was pretty clear his emotional state was fragile. Kennedy seemed to realize he had a problem. He checked himself in to a mental-health facility but then jumped the fence just an hour later.
Where did Kennedy get the assault rifle and other guns? Police are not sure, but one good possibility is where he lived — his parents’ house. As The Washington Post points out, the place was practically a gun emporium. Police later removed nine guns from the house. Noted the paper:
In all, police found nine guns strewed about the empty Centreville home, unlocked, along with boxes and satchels of ammunition, six pellet guns, several hunting knives and a bayonet on a bedroom nightstand, according to a search warrant unsealed yesterday.
One gun was stashed under a mattress. A local paper called the household “an arsenal.” All of these weapons were within easy reach of the family’s other child, a 9-year-old girl.
I am weary of reading stories like this. I am tired of hearing about little 8-year-old Jason showing up on the playground with a Glock .357. I am fed up with headlines like, “Fired Worker Shoots Four.”
The gun nuts and the National Rifle Association say we don’t need more gun laws. Gun owners, they insist, are responsible. Someone here sure wasn’t. A young man was walking around babbling about alien invasions, and it apparently never occurred to anyone to lock up the guns where he lived.
I would ask why the assault weapon Kennedy used to hunt and kill humans is legal in the first place. But since the U.S. Congress, a wholly owned subsidiary of the NRA, insists people should have the right to own these things, maybe it’s time to explore another direction: Right-wingers have steadily eroded abortion right by nibbling at the edges. Perhaps it’s time to do the same with gun rights.
Here’s a good place to start: If it turns out that Kennedy got his guns at home, if his parents were so lax in storing weapons that a deranged person got access to an assault rifle and used it to kill others, every gun they own should be taken away, never to be seen again. And they should be barred from buying replacements. For life.
My guess is the American people would back a law like that. Let the NRA stand against it.