See the text below from the Saturday Newark Star Ledger, and try not to throw your coffee cup across the room, or shout obscenities that the children may hear.

How can we have a sitting judge state that the gun is the problem here?!?!?! How could the prosecutor offer a plea bargain to this miserable excuse for a human, who apparently has no remorse whatsoever for this heinous murder? He is 17 years old now and will be eligible for parole when he is 30, still plenty of criminal years left ahead for him.

Teen gets 15 years for killing woman

A Newark teenager was sen tenced to 15 years in state prison yesterday for fatally shooting a neighbor for what prosecutors say was little or no apparent reason.

Bryant DeGraffenreid, 17, will have to spend almost 13 years behind bars before turning eligible for parole for killing Frances Mells on May 24, 2006.

DeGraffenreid snuck up on Mells late that night as she was making a phone call outside her Pilgrim Baptist Village apartment on 18th Avenue in Newark and shot her point-blank in the face, throat and shoulder with a .380-caliber handgun, police say. He was 15 at the time; Mells, 29.

Superior Court Judge Michael Petrolle yesterday used the incident to decry the dangers brought on by a proliferation of firearms throughout Newark and Essex County.

"The problem of gun violence everywhere is exemplified in the horrors of this case," he said. "There are too many guns. The way things are going, perhaps one is too many."

Hillary Brunell, Essex County's deputy first assistant prosecutor, said the mix of guns and juveniles is too often lethal and that more attention must be paid to juvenile gun violence. She also had little good to say of DeGraffenreid, whose juvenile record includes a dozen run-ins with the law.

"This is a young man who has no control, sensitivity or understanding about the life he took from this world," she said.

DeGraffenreid, who also lived in Pilgrim Baptist Village, declined to speak after Petrolle rejected his at tempt to withdraw his guilty plea to a count of aggravated manslaughter, claiming he wanted replace his lawyer.

When he entered the plea in November, DeGraffenreid claimed Mells, the mother of a young girl, was out to kill him but did not elaborate. He has two children.

Investigators have been unable to come up with an exact reason for his deadly conduct. They do know Mells called Newark police on the day she died to complain that a group of boys had been banging on her door and harassing her, and they believe that could have provoked the shooting.

In their remarks to the court yesterday, Mells' mother and an aunt also wondered what was behind the shooting and insisted, whatever it may have been, she did not deserve to die the way she did.

"He could have talked with her if he had a problem," said Diane Mells, the aunt.

Janie Mells, the victim's mother, called DeGrafffenreid a coward and said it would have been better had he beaten her and sent her to the hospital rather than killing her.

"I miss smelling her hair, touching her," the mother said. "We had our ups and downs, but when we sat at the table, all that was put aside and we knew how important we were to each other."

Michelle Williams, DeGraffen reid's mother, asked Petrolle to send her son to prison, where he can work and study "and not sit around watching TV all day."

Mells died several hours after the shooting at University Hospital in Newark. Authorities says De Graffenreid fled and was arrested in North Carolina in September 2006 after the shooting. He had been living with his grandmother in Newark.

Originally charged as a juvenile, the teenager had his case waived up to adult court and was indicted for murder last April. That count was amended to aggravated manslaughter for purposes of the plea.

End of article

The bold and italicized text was done by this writer for emphasis.

It's not the guns, it's the idiots in our legal system that are the problem. It's the total breakdown of the nuclear family, and lack of respect and responsibility in many areas that are the problem. The gun didn't cause this miscreant to commit murder, but maybe knowing that he would probably either get a plea bargain, or a slap on the wrist, made him think he could get away with it.

Get tough on the criminals, and quit writing laws to further encroach on the rights of the law abiding. Why is this such a difficult concept for our elected representatives to understand?!?!?!