NJ101.5: ELIZABETH — The gunman who killed two congregants at a Texas church last month had been charged years earlier with a felony gun offense in New Jersey, where prosecutors later downgraded the crime to a low-level misdemeanor that had nothing to do with firearms.
Since the Dec. 29 shootout at the West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement, Texas, much has come out about Keith Thomas Kinnunen’s criminal record, which seems to follow a pattern: He would get charged with serious, sometimes violent crimes, which later were pleaded down to less-consequential offenses.
While plea deals are common in the criminal justice system in New Jersey and elsewhere, this case raises questions about the effectiveness of laws meant to bar certain people from buying or possessing guns.
Despite Kinnunen’s history of mental illness — including a 2012 judge’s order declaring him unfit to stand trial — it does not appear his plea deals were enough to trigger legal provisions limiting gun ownership, which would apply in cases involving domestic violence and felonies.Read More
h/t BonginoReport
Meh. Two less red state voters.
Maybe they realized how bad a gun felony would look on an employment application.
This is infuriating. NJ has some of the assholiest assholes where it comes to citizen disarmament laws and law enforcer abuse of out-of-staters who run afoul of those laws. The NJ pols are continually whining about stronger anti-gun laws and better enforcement of them, and then this hits the news.
In NJ, they should just give up and repeal all their gun laws seeing as how they don’t mean shit.
Same old story. Charges lowered or dropped on a
criminal in a lefty jurisdiction and innocents
down the line murdered. Then the lefties scream
about the evil of guns.
Well, that settles it! More gun law, for everyone!
Right conservatives?
Anon- what is the point of more gun laws when we don’t enforce the ones we already have?
Nj gun laws make California look lenient. This is despicable. The blood of those two churchgoers is on Njs hands
Too bad the victims surviving relatives can’t sue every one of those public officials that gave that guy a pass. Thats the only way to stop this. But of course those in power insulate themselves against liability.
What the F are background checks going to get you, when you have A holes in NJ erasing the truth???
Send Jack Wilson to New Jersey and let him work his magic up there.
Can’t just blame the judge in this case as 2 prosecutors downgraded the charges to misdemeanors in order to put an X in the win column and move on. These lazy ass-hats do it every day in all 57 states just to show positive stats to the citizens.