Defenders of SAFE Act advocate rush to his defense after he's caught bringing a gun to school

Don’t you gun nuts understand? Dwayne Ferguson is a good and decent person trying to make his community a better place, not some ignorant gun-humper like you.*

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Dwayne Ferguson spent more than a decade advocating for nonviolence and peace in the streets of Buffalo.

He was a well-known face in the movement for the SAFE Act, the state law that made carrying a gun on school property a felony. He was also a familiar presence in the hallways of the city’s Harvey Austin Elementary School, where he worked in the after-school program and mentored students.

No one imagined that on Thursday he would show up at the school in possession of a gun, touching off an hours-long lockdown, search and ultimately his arrest on two felony charges.

He was among local activists who stood with Assemblywoman Crystal Peoples-Stokes last year lobbying for a law that would make possessing a gun on school property a felony. Prior to New York State’s adoption of the SAFE Act last year, in response to the Sandy Hook school massacre in Connecticut, it was a long-established state law that guns could not be brought onto school property. The only difference was that the crime carried less punishment as a misdemeanor.

In an ironic turn of events, Ferguson was charged with two counts of criminal possession of a weapon under that law for Thursday’s incident. The law carries a maximum sentence of up to four years in state prison.

Some gun advocates opposed to the SAFE Act have argued that the law actually makes schools less safe since law-abiding handgun owners cannot possess their weapons on school grounds, while mass murderers have never heeded laws making schools gun-free zones.

Ferguson held a New York State licensed pistol permit, but that makes no difference under the law.

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These activists can’t seem to get it through their thick skulls that the restrictive laws they champion have zero effect on the criminal behavior of career criminals and gang-bangers that are responsible for the vast majority of gun crime, but only affect good a decent people like Dwayne Ferguson always imagined himself to be.

Now that he faces felony charges and the permanent loss of his own right to own a gun because of a law he championed, I wonder if he realizes how big of a mistake he has made.

 

* That’s called sarcasm, folks.

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