Saturday, January 26, 2008

Closing the "felons who steal guns" loophole

One of the surviving victims of the Westroads mall shooting has stepped forward to support gun control measures. He ... well, several people believe that a couple of laws could have prevented the mall shooting which left eight dead.

The law he's supporting includes:

Mandatory reporting of a stolen firearm withing 48hours
Would have done nothing to stop Hawkins, who'd committed suicide before the 48th hour.

Mandatory sale of trigger locks along with guns.
If the owner didn't even store the gun behind a locked door, do you believe he'll put a trigger lock on each of the individual guns?

Mandatory five year sentences for gun crimes.
... would not have put hawkins behind bars any longer. Also: pushing for mandatory sentences means you have no faith in the penal system, it eliminates the human element as well as case-by-case evaluation. Also, 2, they didn't work for drug offences, why would there be any difference here?

These are typical feel-good measures endorsed by politicians who are playing on peoples fear, emotions and ignorance (AK-47 military assault rifle) concerning the issue.

1 comment:

Ryan said...

Last I heard stealing anything was a crime. Last I heard felons having possession of a gun are also guilty of a crime. Maybe if we effectively enforced the laws on our books these issues could be taken care of.