Michigan State Shootings: Enforce Existing Gun Laws. Please.
So predictable.
Calls for stricter gun laws began emanating from the left as soon as news broke about the horrific tragedy at Michigan State University in East Lansing on Monday.
There, a homicidal maniac shot up two buildings. He opened fire and killed three students, injured 5 and eventually shot himself.
The shooter - Anthony Dwayne McRae - was 43 years old and was “known to local police.”
Color me unsurprised.
There are inconvenient facts that get in the way of the predictable cries for more and tougher gun laws.
First is that McRae was arrested in 2019 on felony charges that he was carrying a concealed weapon without a permit. If convicted, The Detroit News reports that he could have gone to prison for five years and would have been prohibited from legally owning a gun.
Instead, a bleeding heart George Soros-backed prosecutor allowed him to plead guilty to a lesser charge, one that kept him out of prison and allowed him to legally purchase another gun once his period of probation ended.
Corrections records obtained by The Washington Post on Tuesday show that McRae was previously arrested on a weapons charge. On June 7, 2019, he was questioned by police when he was spotted near an abandoned building after leaving a Lansing store at 1:30 a.m., according to the Michigan Department of Corrections. McRae admitted to police that he had a gun but did not have a concealed-weapons permit, records show.
“He claimed he left home to walk to a store buy cigarettes and feared for his safety, so he took his gun,” Chris Gautz, a spokesman for the Michigan Department of Corrections, said in a statement to The Post.
McRae was arrested and pleaded guilty to possession of a loaded firearm. But he never served time in prison, records show. He was sentenced to probation on Oct. 24, 2019 and discharged on May 14, 2021, according to the agency.
“He did not have any issues while on probation and never had a positive drug test,” Gautz said.
Court records in Ingham County show that in October 2019, McRae pleaded guilty to one of the two charges he was facing. Under a plea agreement, the court records indicate, the count of carrying a concealed weapon was dismissed, while he pleaded guilty to a count of possessing a loaded firearm in a vehicle, a misdemeanor.
Under the terms of the plea agreement, the records state, McRae would forfeit his weapon.
On Tuesday, John J. Dewane, the top Ingham County prosecutor who took over that office at the end of last year, said that if McRae had been convicted of the original charge of carrying a concealed weapon in 2019, he would have been barred under federal law from buying or possessing a firearm because that was a felony count. Federal law largely prohibits people convicted of felonies from buying or possessing firearms.
In November 2019, McRae was sentenced to 12 months of probation in that case. His probation was amended in October 2020 and again in April 2021. In May 2021, he was discharged from probation and the “terms were successfully completed,” the court records show.
News reports describe McRae as a “hell-raiser” who had been reported to police numerous times for shooting guns out of his back door during what appeared to be target practice.
Details about the prosecutor who allowed McRae to plead to a misdemeanor instead of a felony are troubling as well. Former Ingham County district attorney Carol Siemon, a Democrat, retired in December.
According to the Free Beacon:
Siemon retired from the district attorney’s office at the start of this year after facing criticism from judges and law enforcement officials for her soft-on-crime policies. The same year that McRae was released, Ingham County sheriff Scott Wriggelsworth pushed East Lansing’s city council “to reconsider her internal felony firearm charging policy,” which he said “does not hold people properly criminally accountable, and increases the likelihood of additional gun violence.”
Siemon made it her office’s official policy in August 2021 to drop mandatory prison sentences for felony firearms charges. She said the sentencing enhancement led to “dramatic racial inequity” and was “not in any way linked to the goal that we share of keeping the public safe.”
Siemon is part of George Soros’s vast public safety network.
Despite not knowing what sort of weapon this psycho used to terrorize the MSU campus, President Biden immediately used the tragedy to call for an assault weapons ban.
"Every American should exclaim "enough" and demand Congress take action," Biden said.
Sure. Why wait to learn if McRae even used an assault weapon? That takes time.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer joined the chorus, Tweeting:
As parents, we tell our kids, "it's going to be okay" all the time. But the truth is, words are not good enough.
— Governor Gretchen Whitmer (@GovWhitmer) February 14, 2023
We must act. And we will.
I have no doubt they’ll act. They may even pass some tough laws. But without prosecutors willing to actually send gun-slinging miscreants to prison, they won’t do a lick of good.
Someone please tell the left they can’t have it both ways: They simply can’t be soft on crime, declining to prosecute criminals to the full extent of the law, while demanding even stricter laws.
Here’s a modest proposal: Before passing new gun laws that squishy prosecutors will ignore, try strictly enforcing the gun laws on the books and show no mercy to violators.
Build new prisons, if necessary. Lock up the criminals. See if violent crime stats don’t plummet.
You know they will.
