Eighteen years ago, Christian Phillip Oberender ambushed his mother with a shotgun attack as she came home. He was convicted of a felony, and later judged to be insane and involuntary admitted to a state mental hospital. He is legally barred from owning any firearms in the United States.
Yet last may, he was able to obtain a permit allowing him to purchase any firearm he wanted in Minnesota. With it, he acquired an arsenal of 13 weapons, including a Thomson submachine gun, a .50 caliber desert eagle handgun, and an AK-47 assault rifle.
Recently Oberender wrote chilling comments on his Facebook wall.
"I am so homicide,'' it said in broken sentences. "I think about killing all the time. The monster want out. He only been out one time and someone die.''
The only reason Oberender was stopped? Because the local sheriff who investigated the crime recognized the name on a list.
Just two days earlier, Olson had scanned the day's shift reports and froze when he tripped over Oberender's name. A scan of a Facebook page then showed firearms spread out like a child's trophies on a bed inside the home, along with notes about the Newtown, Conn., gunman who shot 20 children to death.
...
Today, Oberender sits in a Carver County jail cell on a charge of being a felon in possession of firearms. And Olson, who investigated the 1995 murder as a young detective, finds his investigators at the center of a case that exposes the dangerous loopholes in the nation's gun laws and Minnesota's system of criminal background checks.
Even though Oberender killed his mother with a firearm, even though he was committed to the state hospital in St. Peter as mentally ill and dangerous more than a decade ago, he was able to obtain a permit to purchase firearms last May. That piece of paper gave Oberender, now 32, the ability to walk into any licensed Minnesota retailer and buy any assault weapon or pistol on the rack.
Because the Minnesota government will issue permits to just about everyone, people who should not be able to purchase guns are able to purchase guns. Gun Violence Prevention advocates warned people about this problem a decade ago.
"This was one of our concerns during the 'Conceal and Carry' debate in Legislature 10 years ago and it was beaten down like everything else," said Heather Martens, executive director of Protect Minnesota, a gun violence prevention organization.
Yet another case where the NRA has stood in the way of basic public safety that all Americans agree with. The only gun rights the NRA is actively protecting are Oberender's. My right to own a firearm is not endangered at all by the entirely reasonable regulation that Barack Obama has asked for. But those policies would prevent someone like Oberender who has no business owning firearms from obtaining them.
And that appears to be what the NRA is fighting for: Oberender's Second Amendment Rights.
Full story at the Minnesota Star Tribune.
12:28 PM PT: I have been accused of intellectual dishonesty, and need to respond.
If the diarist had bothered reading the article that he/she linked to, it has nothing to do with NRA lobbying.
Although, with the level of dishonesty displayed in this diary, maybe he/she did and just didn't care.
Loopholes
The state's criminal background system appears to contain another loophole for violent felons and persons found mentally ill and dangerous who want to escape scrutiny. Under state law, a person's juvenile record is deleted from the BCA's database when the individual turns 28 unless a judge says otherwise, Oliveira said. As a result, a person with a violent juvenile record -- like Oberender -- might still qualify to buy a gun if there were no felonies on his adult record.
State law requires the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) to provide local law enforcement agencies with records of people who have been committed to institutional care for mental illness, if the applicant gives consent. But in general, the BCA said, a court order for civil commitment is classified as private data and is not available to the BCA.
The NRA had the patriot act amended so that they could block the appointment of an ATF director. They have referred to federal agents as "jackbooted thugs" and compared them to the Nazi SS. They oppose the President's very reasonable gun control package. They oppose closing legal loopholes.
While they say "enforce the gun laws we have" their lobbying has actively prevented those laws from being enforced.
So what they are actively dong, today, has nothing to do with my right to own a hunting rifle.
They are protecting the gun shops that sell guns to criminals by barring the ATF from investigating them.
So while they talk a lot of nonsense about enforcing the gun laws that we have, they are actively keeping those laws from being enforced.
The NRA may not say that they are protecting Oberender's second amendment rights. I'll even go out on a limb and assume that they don't actually want Oberender to have guns.
But their actions have the effect of helping people like Oberender, and helping those gun shops that sell guns to criminals. Whether they like it or not, that is the consequence of their lobbying, and they must be made to own up to reality.
I hope that clarification clears up my position, and my argument.