When I read about gun control in America I am reminded of a presenter at the RSA Conference who said he specialized in security certifications. He told me he recommended that people spend time at a firing range to meet their Continuing Professional Education (CPE) requirements. I suggested this was not a reasonable test of information security knowledge, but I knew right away that he was not hearing me…especially in his right ear, the one closest to his pistol.

With that in mind the big story today is that the US Supreme Court extends gun rights by shooting down local and state authority on guns. The court was asked to review a gun ban in Chicago, which has some sobering statistics:

The Supreme Court’s decision follows a weekend in which 29 people in Chicago were shot, three of them fatally, according to local media.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported that 54 people were shot, 10 of whom died, the previous weekend as well.

I am tempted to ask whether those for and against the ban predict what the numbers will look like. The New York Times has a caustic editorial that seems to suggest deaths must go up when the bans are removed:

About 10,000 Americans died by handgun violence, according to federal statistics, in the four months that the Supreme Court debated which clause of the Constitution it would use to subvert Chicago’s entirely sensible ban on handgun ownership.

The 5-4 decision centered on whether an individual’s possession of a gun should be protected under the phrase “A well regulated Militia”. It did not address whether the ban was effective as a means of preventing death. It also did not address whether militias, in present day terms, are a threat or benefit. Regulation instead was said to mean that guns should be kept only from the hands of felons and mentally ill. The irony of this definition for me seems to be that both may be best defined by how someone acquires and uses a gun, as in the cases of University of Iowa, Virginia Tech and Columbine. The US certainly does not have a great record of identifying, let alone treating, the mentally ill. With weakened bans, will there be any pressure to regulate better and prevent this kind of story?

Neighbor Monte W. Mays said Speight was cordial and friendly. He had long been a gun enthusiast and enjoyed target shooting at a range on his property, Mays said. But the shooting recently became a daily occurrence, with Speight firing what Mays said were high-powered rifles.

“Then we noticed he was doing it at nighttime,” and the gunfire started going deeper into the woods, Mays said.

Then they noticed a homicide.

Imagine if the courts instead said that whereas the mentally ill are not readily and reliably identified, and whereas the mentally ill who are identified are not readily and reliably treated, therefore mental illness is not a wise litmus for “well regulated” militias.

This news has another point that seems somewhat ironic. Groups that are opposed to federal control are the ones now in favor of this particular federal ruling, which explicitly states state and local governments must follow federal law.

The Associated Press says thieves have robbed a police station in Carletonville, west of Johannesburg, South Africa, leaving nothing behind

“It’s a very bizarre situation,” [Democratic Alliance] police spokeswoman Dianne Kohler Barnard told AFP.

“We have a police station being robbed of everything. Stripped. It’s more than robbed. It’s absolutely gutted.”

She said the thieves had stolen toilets, cupboards, windows, doors and even the kitchen sink.

The station was meant to be guarded by private security paid by taxpayers. This is a great example of outsourcing failure. It raises the question of why the police did not guard it themselves.

On the other hand, while this might seem funny, there are worse stories. Sometimes even the police have trouble preventing a station robbery while they are in it. Trenton, NJ gives us an example from earlier this year.

A convicted thief walked past an unmanned security post at city police headquarters and made his way into the detective bureau, where he allegedly stole a cop radio, a computer monitor and a sergeant’s attache case.

[…]

“Security is a major concern here, but we have officers who prop doors open to what are supposed to be secure areas,” an officer said.

Last year in North Bend, OR a man kicked in a door at a police station and stole two tazers, a radio and took the keys to a police cruiser:

Finder, 26, faces just about every charge the police could think up, including burglary, possession of burglary tools, theft, unlawful use of a motor vehicle, unlawful entry into a motor vehicle, criminal mischief, criminal trespass, tampering with physical evidence and reckless driving, after he allegedly committed a brazen raid on the police station in downtown North Bend last Wednesday.

The difference in these three cases is that the latter two in America involved burglars who tried to sell stolen police equipment. The first case is far less likely to be prosecuted successfully as the goods stolen were regular office building furnishings.