upon reading this...
Freed Ark. school shooter applied for gun permit
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LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — After serving nearly a decade in custody for opening fire at a Jonesboro middle school in a 1998 sniper attack that killed four students and a teacher, Andrew Golden was released last year at age 21 and tried to start a new life.
While co-defendant Mitchell Johnson found himself in trouble with police within 6 months of his release, Golden went to Cape Girardeau, Mo., registering for a driver's license and adopting a new name. He caught the attention of police only once, after losing control of a motorcycle along a rural road in northern Arkansas this spring. But by then, he was Drew Douglas Grant, a student at a Batesville community college.
Then he applied for a state concealed weapons permit. Police revealed this week that he was denied.
"It just doesn't sit real good," said Craighead County Sheriff Jack McCann, who investigated the school shooting a decade ago and knew Golden's family long before it. "He hasn't been in any trouble since he got out and hopefully he won't be. But still, he shouldn't be allowed to carry a firearm."
Golden applied for the permit Oct. 7, noting the seven hours of training he had taken on handgun fundamentals, ammunition, self-defense and the law, and target shooting on a firing range.
All righty then. Maybe Andrew Golden shouldn't be allowed to carry a firearm. After he had such a role in killing four people I'll grant you that. But still the old question is appropriate — and I'm guessing the AP hack didn't ask it — if Andrew Golden is so dangerous he allegedly can't be trusted with a gun, then why is he not still in jail? I am guessing he is allowed to at least touch a gun if he completed the training for his permit with one, and they also say nothing about him being prohibited from owning one by state or federal law. So maybe they don't think he's so dangerous after all. With that in mind, his being denied a carry permit seems to be nothing more than a punitive measure to me, and an excessively punitive one at that...
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