Reply #72: And you are missing the point as well

[slackmaster]

Huh, that's not all a restraining order does in the fairytale land I live in.

It generally comes complete with a firearms prohibition order, authorizing police to seize firearms in the possession of the person against whom the order is made.

A domestic RO (at least California's) has an explicit admonition against the restrainee "having a gun", which is generally interpreted as having one easily available. People who comply with that part of the order either stash their weapons at a friend's house or turn them over to police. It would be nice if we had the law enforcement resources to search the home of every restrainee, but thousands of temporary ROs are issued in California family courts every working day. There is NO CHARGE to get a TRO against an estranged family member, roommate, lover, etc., and the process takes about one hour. It's a common way for a jilted lover to get some petty revenge, and one of the most common responses is for a restrainee to get a TRO in retaliation.

Even if we had the gun controllers' wet dream of a flawless registry we wouldn't have the cops to go enforce every order. None of which makes a hill of beans worth of difference if the victim has not obtained an RO, as is apparently the case in the crime under discussion.

On edit: If the plaintiff on a TRO calls the cops and says "My estranged ex-SO against whom I have a TRO has a gun," the police WILL respond by going to the restrainee's home, place of work, etc. immediately.

You see?? It just is *not* as easy to kill someone without a gun.

You keep whacking that straw man, but it does not in any way resemble anything I've ever written on the subject.

The fact remains that a person is just as likely to be murdered today in Australia as he or she would have been 10 years ago. The decline in the availability and use of firearms in crime, which is borne out in statistics, has apparently been offset by an increase in the use of other weapons.