USA – -(Ammoland.com)- “The fiend behind one of the most infamous mass shootings in city history — the ‘Palm Sunday Massacre’ that left eight children and two young moms dead in Brooklyn in 1984 — has been quietly released from an upstate prison,” the New York Post reports. “Christopher Thomas slaughtered the innocents in an East New York apartment on a rainy Palm Sunday — the blood-soaked culmination of a beef with the home’s owner, convicted cocaine dealer Enrique Bermudez.”
Why is such a human aberration being released?
Thank New York “law,”the same “law” that spits on the Second Amendment and ensures those who disregard it have an advantage over those who obey it. And Thomas was only charged with manslaughter because somehow, his choice of “heavy cocaine use” legally absolved him of assuming full responsibility for his actions. So he only had to serve two-thirds of a 50-year sentence because of, among other things, “good behavior.”
Hey, it’s not like he had a chance to execute defenseless victims in the joint – those guys know how to fight back. The coward didn’t even have the guts to take on the man he had his “beef” with, but instead went after women and children with a gun, “executing them at close range with gunshots to the head.”
Some crimes are so heinous there can be no earthly redemption, and certainly never a reestablishment of trust. The truth is some people are broken and can’t be fixed. The science of healing diseased and evil minds comes up with no solutions that can ensure the monster will not once more ravage when released from his restraints. The finest minds in psychiatry can offer no more of a cure than ancient Egyptians could exorcise demons using “afa root, onions and honey.”
Author Robert J. Kukla made a relevant observation in his 1973 classic “Gun Control,” equating their release from prison with opening the cage of a man-eating tiger and expecting a different result. Yet government routinely releases known homicidal predators to live among us, and offers the totally illusory “protection” of “laws” designating them “prohibited persons,” forbidden by law to so much as touch a firearm, let alone own one.
Anybody check headlines in Chicago or Baltimore lately? Who thinks “Fix NICS” or prohibited status or bans on carrying or age requirements made a bit of difference – except negatively to people who obey the” laws”?
Leave it to gun-grabbers to come up with dumb arguments about that.
Deny it if you like, but the reality is anyone who can’t be trusted with a gun can’t be trusted without a custodian. Because even without guns, the greatest mass murders in U.S. history were ostensibly initiated with box cutters, fertilizer, and gasoline. And think of the damage that can be (and has been) done with knives, with blunt instruments, with fists and feet, with cars…
So how do we determine if someone can or can’t be trusted without a custodian?
When penalties for their actions that can strip them of fundamental rights are involved, everyone is supposed to be afforded full due process – like Thomas got. That doesn’t mean some politically-appointed panel rubber stamps a mental health allegation or some anti-gun judge rules a subjective complaint from a questionably-motivated relative, a cop, a co-worker or even a self-designated “girlfriend” is all the justification he needs.
It means if someone is thought to be a danger, that he be afforded all legal protections. If someone is proven to be a danger, the only way to protect society is to keep him away from the rest of us for as long as he remains a threat. Depending on the issue or crime, there need to be ways to determine he is no longer a danger and restore rights. In the most heinous cases, our laws need to recognize it’s just too dangerous to set him loose. Ever.
In Thomas’ case, he forever forfeited his right to live freely among the rest of us. I’d argue he forfeited his right to life, but that’s a different topic. Instead, in the ultimate Bizarro World ending, the child killer is allowed to live next to a day care (and tangentially related, courts have upheld edicts banning gun stores near locations including day care centers).
As for those who successfully reintegrate back into society, full recognition of rights needs to be restored. And who put Chuck Schumer in perpetual charge of that remains a mystery.
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating / defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament.
In addition to being a field editor/columnist at GUNS Magazine and associate editor for Oath Keepers, he blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.