Tell me again how more gun laws are going to fix the problem:
He was arrested in Lansing and charged in June 2019 with carrying a concealed pistol without a concealed carry permit, according to Ingham County court records obtained Tuesday by The Detroit News. The initial charge was a felony that carried a potential penalty of five years in prison, according to the records.
I don't think a man should have to have a permit to exercise his constitutional rights, but I have been repeatedly told that permits and bans will keep criminals from carrying guns!
In October 2019, Ingham County prosecutors added a second charge against McRae: possession of a loaded firearm in a vehicle, a misdemeanor.
In Michigan, it is illegal to carry a firearm in your vehicle for self-defense unless you have a concealed carry permit. Otherwise, weapons must be unloaded and stored in the trunk – separately from ammunition – so that you'll be a good law-abiding target for any criminals that want to take your life or property.
That same month, October 2019, McRae agreed to plead guilty to the lesser misdemeanor charge, and prosecutors dismissed the felony charge.
If this was a one-off under different circumstances, I'd say prosecutors did a good job. I don't think a man's life should be ruined because he didn't understand the state laws that keep him from keeping and bearing arms as the Founders intended.
But this man wasn't exactly known as the peaceful type.
Paul Rodney Tucker, who lives around the corner from Anthony McRae, said he'd run into McRae more than once at the party store and described him as "wild" and a "hell-raiser."
"I knew he lived at that house because there was constant trouble there," he said.
Tucker also heard gunshot target practice from the home last summer and believed police had been called there before.
"I told my dad it was a semi-automatic pistol," Tucker said of gunshots heard last summer. "Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. It wasn't firecrackers."
More:
Megan and Tyler Bender, who live on the same street as Anthony McRae, said he moved in with his father about a year ago. They said Mike McRae, Anthony's father, is a scrapper well-known in the neighborhood.
"He's never done any harm to anyone," Megan Bender said. "He's just an old man, minds his business."
But police had been called to the residence before because of the sound of gunshots, Bender said.
Bender said Anthony McRae would fire out of the back door of the home, she believed for target practice.
Based on where McRae was found dead, Bender believed he was headed home.
McRae also reportedly had a note threatening two schools in New Jersey, which caused those schools to close on Tuesday even though the suspect is dead.
McRae "had a history of mental health issues," police added.
If this is the case – if this is a man with a history of mental health issues who had police called to his home multiple times for gun-related reasons – then why did the prosecutors drop the charges against him or fail to bring any new charges (or an extension of his probation at the least!) forward?
Let me show you a picture of the suspect again:
You'll never heard it from the prosecutors, of course. But if if McRae was a white man with a MAGA hat, somehow I think the gavel of justice would have banged a little harder.
(To keep those white supremacist domestic extremists at bay, of course.)
I know that's a loaded statement, but if you know anything about the far-left policies of Michigan's capital city and MSU (which comprises most of the eastern portion of the city), you'd suspect that woke justice reform policies might very well have led to this outcome.
Here's what the suspect's father had to say:
Anthony McRae, 43, had a difficult time handling the loss of his mother, Linda McRae, and his demeanor and outlook on life "changed" after she died of a stroke on Sept. 13, 2020, according to his father, Michael McRae.
"He was a mama's boy. He loved his mom. They were tight. His mom was like his sister," Michael McRae said.
After her passing, the younger McRae quit his job at a warehouse and stayed in his room all day, his father said.
"He was grieving his mom. He wouldn't let it go. He got bitter, bitter and bitter," Michael McRae said. "His mom died, and he just started getting evil and mean. He didn't care about anything anymore."
...
Michael McRae said he did not know why his son targeted the school but believed he may have been trying to apply for a job there.
NBC also notes the weapons charge (at the very bottom of the article):
In 2019, Anthony McRae pleaded guilty and was convicted in Ingham County of possessing a loaded firearm and sentenced to probation. He was discharged in May 2021.
Like I say after every tragedy: I would rather not politicize this. Three people are dead. Murder is not new to the human experience, but we could at least bury and honor the dead before screaming for political power to be wielded in our preferred direction.
But activists were screaming so hard about gun control last night that it was difficult for me to even get updates on what was happening as it was happening!
And then there are the tone-deaf press conference from Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Tuesday, where her administration talked about being sick of this violence, despite supporting the policies that allow it to propagate:
I'm sick of it too.
Perhaps we need a blind justice system that gives criminals what they deserve and allows law-abiding citizens to have the freedom they deserve.
We can train people to exist in a world with modern weaponry (they used to teach shooting in high school, people) so that they can defend themselves from criminals instead of just pretending that guns don't exist. We can also promote mental health services and limit who is able to own weapons if the community believes a specific person to be a threat. All of these things are possible without infringing on inherent, God-given liberty.
