I don’t know who is a bigger idiot in this story, Judge Paul D. Lewis or Boston mayor Thomas Menino.
The kid was definitely stupid to fire a loaded .38-caliber handgun on a street corner, but he is developmentally disabled with no prior record, and he handed over the gun to the police without resistance.
Gee, maybe we should try something which is admittedly more difficult, and that would be to do something to actually control the flow of gun traffic so this kid never has an opportunity to break the law to begin with. Of course, this will meet with the predictable hue and cry from all of the hardcore types worrying about whether or not they’ll be able to hunt quail and pheasant in their backyards any more if straw purchases are made illegal or one-gun-a-month is passed into law.
I’m not unsympathetic to Judge Lewis and Mayor Menino. It’s just that they’re looking for an easy fix for a problem made complicated by a noisy special interest group. Also, if this kid is incarcerated for any length of time, he will become a statistic in the corrections system that we’ll probably have to end up providing for into his adult life.
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