In the Hunt for a Florida Serial Killer, Whose Side is the NRA On?

The National Rifle Association is advocating for a murderer's right to stay on the loose.

The 2004-2005 case of four women shot and killed in Daytona Beach, Florida was all but cold until detectives recently got a bright idea: they would ask gun-sellers for a list of people who purchased guns like the murder weapon around the time the murders began.

Could the strategy work? Not if the NRA has anything to say about it.

Based on forensics evidence, police believe the women were killed with .40 caliber handgun. It's the kind of gun that local lawmakers across the country banned until the NRA appealed this summer to the Supreme Court's penchant for conservative judicial activism. (Those bans are now "unconstitutional.")

The NRA, though, isn't content simply to celebrate their coup by judicial fiat. No, they're also doing everything in their power to make sure police can't track who buys or owns such guns. Even if it means getting in the way of justice for a serial killer.

Here's the rub: gun-rights lawyers sold the Supreme Court on striking down handgun bans by claiming that self-defense is a fundamental right. If self-defense is what the NRA thinks these guns are being used for, why are they preventing law enforcement officials from knowing who possesses them?

Let's not pretend that the Daytona Beach serial killer was acting in self-defense in four independent killings, which police suspect were committed with a legally purchased and owned firearm.

Law enforcement officials have long pushed for creation of a national gun registry to track firearm ownership. It's a proposal that the gun-rights lobby, including the NRA, has likewise worked hard to kill. Since at least 1968, the NRA has successfully defeated every effort to track gun or ammunition possession with a national registry. Politicians fear the NRA's powerful lobbying arm, with its ability to mobilize members and spend opposition money during election season.

In the case of the Daytona Beach serial killer, though, detectives recently thought of a way around the NRA's registry bans. Knowing that gun retailers maintain records about their sales, including who buys what, police sent letters to local gun shops asking for the names of folks who bought weapons like that the serial killer used in the appropriate time period.

And now that detectives have found a way around their registry laws, the NRA is predictably furious. Makes you wonder: whose side is the NRA on?

Former NRA President Charlton Heston famously declared that you could only take his gun "from [his] cold, dead hand." Maybe the NRA should take a step back and consider the cold, dead hands of these women — whose killer remains on the run.

Photo Credit: Gideon Tsang