On April 21, Carol Bowne from Berlin Township, NJ, applied for a license to own a handgun, which she wanted to protect herself from a former boyfriend against whom she had a restraining order.

On June 3—while still waiting for the state to give her permission to own a gun—Bowne’s former boyfriend, Michael Eitel, allegedly stabbed her to death in her own driveway.

According to the Courier-Post, after getting the restraining order, Bowne “installed security cameras and an alarm system to her home and began the months-long process of obtaining a handgun.” Bowne’s co-workers said, “She got a restraining order about a month ago, and right after that her car windows were broken.”

Bowne “had inquired” about the progress of her gun license request as recently as June 1, but the “application process typically takes two months or more as police collect information on the applicant, including fingerprints and reference checks.”

Eitel, Bowne’s former boyfriend, is “a convicted felon” who, as of Thursday, had still managed to elude authorities. He pleaded “guilty to a weapons offense in 2008 after being indicted in 2006 on a charge of aggravated assault with bodily injury. He received a five-year sentence for that offense, which neighbors said was related to an assault on a former girlfriend.”

This tragedy is one more example of the foolishness of putting a licensing requirement on the Second Amendment. Like all gun control, it empowers those with criminal intentions while making the vulnerable more vulnerable.

Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.