But at the time he murdered Big Billy Walsh, his permit was utterly irrelevant. For one thing, he didn’t have his gun on him, initially– after being kicked of the bar, he went away, retrieved his gun (he apparently was driven home and back by somebody; it’d be interesting to know whom), and came back to murder Walsh.

For another, the murder happened during the Lillehaug interregnum — the period between David “Darth” Lillehaug getting the MCPPA ruled unconstitutional because it was attached to another bill and late May of 2005, when the law was repassed, as a standalone. I’m not blaming Lillehaug for that; the permit, or lack thereof, was irrelevant.

The only way that the MCPPA has ever affected the ability of somebody to own a gun was to restrict it; it turned a felony conviction from a ten-year bar on possession to a lifetime one for violent felons. That changed, temporarily, during the Lillehaug interregnum; the lifetime bar was restored with the repassage, shortly after the murder.