re: #384 Dr. Matt

And yet, Mediatite is correct. The police have not said whether the gun was legally-owned or not, or even how many guns were involved.

Since the ban on automatic weapons in the Thirties unless you obtained a very difficult licence to get, no legally-obtained automatic weapons have been used in crimes.

If the owner of this (or these) gun(s) owned them legally, it would be the first time since the latest update to the law was passed in the Eighties.

One of the first things up for the police and the FBI is going to be where the(se) weapon(s) came from.

No law will prevent crime. Laws give us a way to punish people who display anti-social behaviour. If the gun(s) was/were smuggled into the country, that is already illegal. If the gun was legally owned by this guy, that would be remarkable in that it would be the first automatic weapon used in a crime legally owned by the person (in which case another review of the laws might be in order).

My money would be on “he didn’t get the gun legally.”