13-Year-Old Charged In Holdup

I hope that the police explained to the 13 year old that he's very lucky that the victims didn't have a CCL.
Death is a tough way to find out that a BB gun is BS when the person you're robbing pulls their real Sig Sauer.

It's way past time to make toy guns illegal and to investigate the ease in which guns are obtained and used. Vote for candidates who will support tightening gun and weapons restrictions so that only the person who legally owns a gun can fire the gun through fingerprint identification, if our smartphones can only unlock with a fingerprint, or facial recognition, our guns should only allow access the same way. Mental health evaluations, background checks and firearms safety training should be required with recertification every few years. Bullets and guns and other weapons should be only allowed to be sold after you've completed the multiple hours of training and evaluations.
Nobody should be allowed to own weapons of war, or semi automatic or automatic weapons. Ghost guns should be banned and the machines that print them should be reprogrammed to prevent their being able to do so. Gun parts for building your own should be as restricted as the guns and bullets themselves. Online postings that teach you how to get around these restrictions and build your own should be illegal and removed immediately. Anyone violating the restrictions should be facing 25 years to life, depending on the number of offenses they're convicted of, and the severity of crimes committed with the guns and weapons they've accessed or created. The right to bear arms should be limited to pistols and rifles or other firearms equivalent to the weapons that our founding fathers used at the time they wrote our founding documents, and restricted to firearms used to hunt for food, to shoot an animal attacking a person or livestock, or to protect your family from an intruder in your home, not to obliterate someone.
It's time to enact common sense gun laws.

@Heather C.
Here in Ct it is not easy to purchase a gun legally. It is illegal for the vast majority of people in this country to own automatic weapons. (But not in movies, where I suspect you learned about guns). Gun manufacturers tried the finger print activation, but sometimes there was a lag or it just didn't work, just like your phone. (BTW, this is not a good thing if the intruder you're talking about has a non-fingerprint semi-automatic pistol.) You went on to say, "The right to bear arms should be limited to pistols and rifles or other firearms equivalent to the weapons that our founding fathers used at the time they wrote our founding documents,...". Sorry, but with 600 million guns out there, and with maybe .02% being muskets it would be unrealistic to try. And by the way the founding fathers didn't say, "...the right to bear muskets", because they were smart enough to realize that arms were going to progress like everything else. It's illegal guns that have to be removed from society, and the laws against owning an illegal gun enforced.

"Object"

Hope this kid realizes how easily, and justifiably, his stunt could have been met with deadly force.
Also, why so insistent on calling a bb gun an "object" for five paragraphs into the story, especially when the story is accompanied by the actual photo of what is clearly a gun, bb or not? "This realistic-looking bb gun" doesn't take quite so many words.

posted by: OhHum on July 20, 2020 4:07pm

Sorry, but with 600 million guns out there, and with maybe .02% being muskets it would be unrealistic to try. And by the way the founding fathers didn't say, "...the right to bear muskets", because they were smart enough to realize that arms were going to progress like everything else. It's illegal guns that have to be removed from society, and the laws against owning an illegal gun enforced.

The founding fathers said.The right to bear arms.So we can go back to Flint Lock Guns which would not violate the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Former Chief Justice Warren Burger, a conservative, said the idea that there was an individual right to bear arms was "a fraud." If he were writing the Bill of Rights now, he said in 1991, "There wouldn't be any such thing as the Second Amendment."He declared on PBS that the Second Amendment "has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime."

Warren Burger "2nd Amendment Fraud" - 1991 PBS News Hour

https://youtu.be/Eya_k4P-iEo

I agree with this.

I am not anti-gun. I'm pro-knife. Consider the merits of the knife. In the first place, you have to catch up with someone in order to stab him. A general substitution of knives for guns would promote physical fitness. We'd turn into a whole nation of great runners. Plus, knives don't ricochet. And people are seldom killed while cleaning their knives."

― Molly Ivins

Wait, what,?!?! The "above object"!!!!! That is a facsimile firearm that could have led to the death of the person or persons pointing it at a armed citizen or police officer.

Some things that seem to be MISSED here is that this 13 YO was released to the same parent that had NO clue that this is what her child has been up to. What the article also doesn't address is that during COVAID PANDEMIC this parent had no idea where he was let alone any other given afternoon and that is who he was released to . This mother would have stood on the sidewalk and professed he was a good kid had someone rightfully shot her child. When pointed at you, no one has time to look and see is that a toy, is it real, is it a bb gun. If confronted with what appears to be a gun the victim has EVERY right to defend themself whether running that person or shooting them . Inept parents and the courts etc are all supporting this recklessness. This year in Hamden alone there have been multiple YOUTHS that have used guns or facsimiles to hold people up, steal their cars,purses etc. I would rather see a kid behind bars on a labor punishment than to see him on the news dead but no one wants to see that ..They want to TALK ,they want them to write apology letters , they want someone to hold his hand and say whats wrong? Did you do this because daddy isnt there? Did you do this because you want a job with no skills or work ethic, did you do this because mommy didnt hug you enough? MOM this is as much on you as it ANYONE ! Dont have children you cant afford to feed, nurture, watch, take care of so they dont go out and about to do nonsense that puts them in the position to be dead

@THREEFIFTHS

In 2008, that all changed. Writing for a 5-4 Supreme Court majority, Justice Antonin Scalia—the conservative who filled the vacancy created by Warren Burger's 1986 retirement—authored the decision in District of Columbia v. Heller that interpreted the Second Amendment as granting an individual the right to bear arms. The ruling struck down D.C.'s handgun ban and provided a landmark victory in the decades-long push by the conservative legal community and gun-rights supporters.

It would be pretty to think that abolishing the right to bear arms would eliminate guns from society. However, criminals would not obey any such laws. We know this to be true by the number of unregistered firearms in the U.S. which already break the law in most states.
In any event there is a way to abolish the 2nd amendment, which is to have a Constitutional amendment passed in Congress and voted on by the States to abolish it.

The knife thing is just silly.

@OhHum

Flint Lock Guns would not violate the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.Flintlock guns would cut down on casualty.

@ Heather C. I wholeheartedly agree with you. Toy guns need to be outlawed in CT. Just some background..I am a CCW permit holder, a U.S. Marine Veteran, a Yale New Haven Trauma Nurse and a father. When I was a child my mother (a teacher) made sure not to let us have toy guns. We actually had squirt "guns" that were in the shape of animals (an alligator and dolphin, actually...and yes we were bullied by the neighborhood kids because of it). I never touched a sidearm or rifle until I entered the Marine Corps. It was later in life that I was glad she stood her ground about that issue.
Pistols and rifles are not toys but serious tools for very serious circumstances. Why do we indoctrinate our kids at a young age to think they are toys? We have had numerous instances where a child finds an unsecured weapon and hurts themselves or someone else. Are we surprised about this when we have educated them to think of it as a toy rather than something to be respected? That kid was blessed that he did not rob someone with a CCW permit or a nervous rookie cop or he would have been yet another casualty of our inability to separate Hollywood and Video game fantasy from the reality of the responsibility and understanding that needs to be taught regarding our 2nd amendment rights.

@NHI "Object" really?? Come on you are better than that. Part of journalistic integrity is naming the 300lb gorilla that is sitting on what appears to be the hood of a police car. Maybe the emphasis of the article could have leaned a little more toward how this could have gone terribly wrong but for the grace of God did not.

Heather C,

Can you point to the part of the 2nd amendment that mentions the suggestions you made? Should we apply mental health evals, background checks, and fingerprint ID to other constitutionally protected rights? Maybe mental health evals and IDs to vote would be something you could advocate for?

Three fifths,

Are you arguing only objects invented before the constitution was written are protected by the constitution? That would mean no internet, no tv news, no radio. Better apply that to religion and ban any religion not practiced here before the 1790s. The idea that modern weapons are not protected by the constitution is ridiculous.

OhHum wrote:
[quote] In 2008, that all changed. Writing for a 5-4 Supreme Court majority, Justice Antonin Scalia—the conservative who filled the vacancy created by Warren Burger's 1986 retirement—authored the decision in District of Columbia v. Heller that interpreted the Second Amendment as granting an individual the right to bear arms. The ruling struck down D.C.'s handgun ban and provided a landmark victory in the decades-long push by the conservative legal community and gun-rights supporters. [/quote]

Yep, and that was a divided court ruling breaking with over two hundred years of precedent, furthering the "fraud" highlighted by Chief Justice Burger. Thanks for the reminder. Also interesting to note that even Scalia in his judicial activism on this issue listed a broad array of prohibitions that would still remain legal under the Second Amendment, including firearm type and location:

[quote] Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose. For example, the majority of the 19th-century courts to consider the question held that prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons were lawful under the Second Amendment or state analogues. Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. [/quote]

OhHum also wrote:
[quote] It would be pretty to think that abolishing the right to bear arms would eliminate guns from society. However, criminals would not obey any such laws. [/quote]

This is American exceptionalism turned on its head and twisted into something pathetic. I take it that America is just [i] fundamentally incapable [/i] of enacting effective gun laws like the ones they have in the UK, Spain, France, Japan, Finland, Australia, or even Canada? We just can't do it? "It's an America thing -- you wouldn't understand. everyone collectively throws up their hands"

Similar confusion between "I'd rather not" and "it can't be done" can be seen in debates about universal healthcare, among other things, but the argument as applied to guns is just next-level egregious because of the many many examples of success staring us in the face.

Of course, neither the NHI or any commenters, commend Officer Rivera for resolving the situation peaceably even though the youth was holding the "object" when apprehended. Then again, he probably doesn't expect it but I'll say, good job officer!

posted by: Fitzy14 on July 21, 2020 7:06pm

Three fifths,

Are you arguing only objects invented before the constitution was written are protected by the constitution? That would mean no internet, no tv news, no radio. Better apply that to religion and ban any religion not practiced here before the 1790s. The idea that modern weapons are not protected by the constitution is ridiculous.

You said The idea that modern weapons are not protected by the constitution is ridiculous.

Show me where in the constitution that modern weapons are protected.You will not find that.

The right to keep and bear arms in the United States is a fundamental right protected by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, part of the Bill of Rights, and by the constitutions of most U.S. states.The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the Second Amendment allows Americans to have guns in their homes for self-defense and blocked local governments from banning handguns.
Does not say what type of Firearms you can have.So the governments can pass a law in which you can only own Flint Lock Firearms.In fact I have seen flint lock modern day firearms.

My bad.

Does the Second Amendment really protect assault weapons? Four courts have said no.

The Supreme Court has declined to review any of these cases. A reason may be that at the moment there is no split among the appeals courts across the country, a factor that heavily influences the high court's choice of cases. The appeals courts have all agreed that assault weapons bans are okay.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/02/22/does-the-second-amendment-really-protect-assault-weapons-four-courts-have-said-no/

Like I said.Go back to Flint Lock Fire Arms which would not violate the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.Flintlock guns would cut down on casualty.

BB guns are not toys. They are guns, although less dangerous than other guns. They should be handled like other guns. Traditionally, every boy received a BB gun on his sixth birthday, or the Christmas of his sixth birthday. Yes, he could shoot his eye out, and that why fathers and camp counselors instructed boys in proper weapons handling techniques.

Three fifths

The constitution doesn't Specifically say that the New Haven Independent is covered by the 1st amendment so would you argue they don't have the right to report the news? Thankfully the constitution protects us from the government and from people who try to deprive us of rights they do not agree with.

posted by: Fitzy14 on July 22, 2020 1:43pm

Three fifths

The constitution doesn't Specifically say that the New Haven Independent is covered by the 1st amendment so would you argue they don't have the right to report the news? Thankfully the constitution protects us from the government and from people who try to deprive us of rights they do not agree with.

Freedom of the press in the United States is legally protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

First Amendment. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

You are ducking.Again Show me where in the constitution that modern weapons are protected.You will not find that.Gun laws in the United States regulate the sale, possession, and use of firearms and ammunition. Firearm owners are subject to the firearm laws of the state they are in. So the government can pass a law in which you can only own Flint Lock Firearms.