ShrinkWrapped (who was on duty when John Lennon’s assassin, Mark David Chapman, was brought in) remembers that night (hat tip to Baron Bodissey):

John Lennon was shot to death 25 years ago today. His killer was an undistinguished and indistinguishable man named Mark David Chapman. He was arrested, brought to Central booking, and arraigned the next day, at which point he was remanded to the Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital Prison Ward for Psychiatric observation and evaluation. As it happened, I was on-call the night he was admitted… I had grown up with the Beatles and was saddened, though not surprised, when they broke up. They have left us some of the most memorable music from an era that produced an exceptional flowering of pop music in all its myriad forms. Their music will be with us for a long time.

I remember feeling sorrow for John Lennon myself, and thinking that his unfortunate death marked the end of a period of rock music history coinciding with my own generation’s youth. By that time, of course, John Lennon had developed the relationship with Yoko Ono, which seemed to bring him happiness, but which unhappily also led to the break-up of the Beatles, and which was leading Lennon into further and further depths of intellectual banality and embarassing displays of vanity.

———————–

The Solid Surfer speculates that John might have straightened out, given time, and that had he lived, he’d be a Republican today. Could be. I personally think Taxman on Revolver may well represent a better picture of John Lennon’s natural politics than Imagine. Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds.

———————–

Bolshevik David Corn blames gun ownership by private citizens, and the National Rifle Association‘s defense of Individual Rights, for a madman’s act, and today, as then, believes more Gun Control is the answer to crime. I don’t recall Mark David Chapman having a New York pistol permit, which suggests that gun control laws don’t necessarily deter persons willing to break one law from breaking a second as well.

Mr. Corn will blame insufficiently strict laws in other US states (since Chapman purchased the gun in Hawaii), but no law would ever have prevented Chapman from buying an illegal gun, anymore than any law ever kept Chapman, Lennon, or millions of the rest of us back then from buying marijuana and other illegal substances. And the banning of firearms owned by tens of millions law-abiding Amerrican hunters, target shooters, and collectors, and ordinary people wanting a means of self defense would do nothing whatsoever to prevent crime. In fact, gun control increases crime by eliminating criminals’ fear of potentially armed victims. Not long after John Lennon’s murder, Bernard Goetz shot some assailants in the NYC subway, and in the period when the unknown subway gunman had not yet given himself up, street crime temporarily vanished.

Comrade Corn’s twaddle is worth a look, however, because the conniving Mr. Corn reveals how all he had to do was invent an imaginary organization, the so-called Citizens against Gun Violence, an “ad hoc citizens group” consisting of Mr. Corn, period; and a few photocopied fliers and some calls to the MSM later, he had a full-fledged moonbat rally of his own, and 15 seconds of fame.

———————–

Since unfortunately they did not hang him:

On-line Petition Opposing Parole for Mark David Chapman