Are they part of the group, the ones who get the firearms they use in 40% of crimes from family and friends? Are they part of the roughly 10% who get them from straw purchases? Or are they part of the 40% who get them from illegal street transactions, the ones where the guns are stolen from legal firearms owners who don't secure their weapons well enough to prevent easy theft?
Events like this serve to underline why we need to make private transactions, whether weapons transfered through private sales, gifts, inheritance or loaned to other parties require accountability by the legal owner for where those weapons go, for who gets them from the legal party. That should require mandatory reporting of loss of those firearms to law enforcement when it occurs, it should require a background check of those to whom the weapons are transferred from the original owner, and every transfer after that original purchase.
If we did that, we could significantly reduce those 50% of guns used in crimes from getting into the hands of criminals. But the pro-gunners would rather see guns used in crimes, even firearm deaths like this one, than be inconvenienced.
Shame on them; for that resistance, for not doing what they could help to do to keep guns ONLY in the possession of the law abiding, they share some of the blame, some of the guilt, for these occurrences. They share with the criminals a disregard for the life and safety of others.
from the HuffPo and the AP :
Laurence Lovette Jr. Guilty In Murder Of Eve Carson UNC Student Leader
By MICHAEL BIESECKER 12/20/11 12:51 PM ET
HILLSBOROUGH, N.C. -- A Durham man was convicted Tuesday and sentenced to life without parole in the slaying of a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill student body president.
The jury on Tuesday found Laurence Lovette Jr. guilty of first-degree murder in the March 2008 slaying of Eve Carson. He was also convicted of first-degree kidnapping and robbery. He showed no emotion as the verdict was read.
Lovette, 20, was not eligible for the death penalty because he was a minor when the crime was committed.
For the kidnapping and robbery charges, Superior Court Judge Allen Baddour tacked on an additional 20 years to the end of Lovette's life sentence.
"Mr. Lovette will spend the rest of his life in prison," Baddour said from the bench. "This act has no place in our society. It is not activity that we can allow to occur in our society. The life that Ms. Carson led was too short, but I know that she continues to be an inspiration, not only for her family, but for thousands across this country."
Prosecutors say Lovette, who was 17 at the time, had driven in his mother's car to nearby Chapel Hill with another man, Demario Atwater, to go find someone to rob.
In the early morning darkness, they happened upon Carson, a busy Morehead scholar and much-liked student leader from Athens, Ga., who friends said regularly stayed up all night do her school work. The pair shot her five times, prosecutors said, for her ATM card and because she had seen their faces.
Atwater pleaded guilty last year and was sentenced to two life prison terms.
Carson's parents declined to comment after Tuesday's verdict. Lovette's mother and sisters also declined to speak when leaving the courtroom.Orange County District Attorney Jim Woodall had not offered the defendant any plea deal other than a life term.
"We knew we had really strong evidence," Woodall said. "I trusted the jury and felt like we'd get a conviction."
Lovette's lawyer, Karen Bethea-Shields, filed notice of her intent to appeal the verdict. She said her client was prepared to be handed a life sentence.
"There were some very difficult facts," Bethea-Shields said. "We were realistic about it."
According to prosecutors, Lovette and Atwater kidnapped Carson at gunpoint and drove in her Toyota Highlander to a nearby teller machine. The surveillance camera captured an image of a man witnesses later identified as Lovette using Carson's debit card to withdraw $700, the maximum daily limit on Carson's account.
Prosecutors say they drove to Durham to attempt a withdrawal from another ATM before returning to a secluded neighborhood near the UNC campus. Carson was forced from the car and shot four times with a .25 caliber pistol, according to her autopsy report. She would have still been conscious and aware, the medical examiner testified, when she suffered a last blast to the temple from a sawed-off shotgun.
Her body was left in the street.
Graphic photos of Carson's corpse, including her disfigured face, were shown to the jury.
The seven men and five women on the panel deliberated less than 3 hours before handing up their verdict. The jurors declined to comment following their decision.
Though satisfied with the verdict, Woodall stressed that no action of the legal system could mitigate the tragic loss of a young woman with so much potential.
"When you learn about Eve and you meet her family, you understand what an extraordinary person she was. But she was also a college student. She could have been the girl from the next dorm. We all saw our daughters and nieces in her."
