Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts has joined Barack Obama in calling for new gun-control legislation, but now he has even outstripped the White House in his calls for harsher limits on guns.
Where Obama has called for banning assault rifles, limiting the amount of ammunition a weapon can hold, and stopping gun sales without background checks, Patrick wants to go much farther. He wants court judgments of mental health available for background checks, buyers only able to buy one gun per month, and legal weapon magazines cut from holding ten rounds to seven.
Jim Wallace of Gun Owners Action League (GOAL) of Massachusetts said Patrick wasn’t addressing the issues at work in the Newtown massacre:
Supposedly all of these proposals are in response to the actions of a deranged person. Now they’re saying we don’t want you to have 10 rounds, we want you to have seven. Frankly, I’m not comfortable with a deranged individual having any rounds. Why are they trying to restrict lawful people when we are trying to take a killer out of the classroom?”
John Rosenthal, founder of Stop Handgun Violence, argued that Patrick’s ideas would stop “straw purchases”, which are situations where criminals get licensed owners to buy guns for them.
Wallace then destroyed that argument, saying that GOAL had researched and couldn’t find a single prosecution in Massachusetts for a “straw purchase.” He added, “Forty percent of the guns used in violent crimes come from in-state. One gun a month could stop the illegal trafficking of guns.”
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