Stronger enforcement will solve the gun problem. Gun crime must be enforced. Criminals must go to jail regardless of age. Washington softened enforcement and criminals know it.
Europe is seen as an example for gun control. Pre-European Union gun laws in Germany and France are now worthless. The media doesn’t report about the cross-border criminal gangs from Bosnia, Italy and Turkey taking advantage of open borders and infecting all EU countries with an increase of gun violence.
Enforcement is a deterrent.
In England, no one can carry a locking knife over 3 inches long or they go to jail. A minor can’t buy a butcher knife. All are punishable by up to four years in jail, a fine or both. Germany has a firearm enhancement law. Separate from the punishment for the crime, just having a gun at the scene of a crime carries an additional non-negotiable, non-pardonable mandatory, no exception seven-year sentence.
Prisons are expensive. Let’s get the most out of them. The purpose of prison is to punish, rehabilitate and serve as a deterrence. I believe the three-strike law is perfect but should be tiered for each strike. First strike, offenders receive every effort to rehabilitate and retrain them to be productive and understand each time they return the degree of unpleasantness continues to worsen. No more wash, rinse and repeat.
I have my thoughts, but I’ll leave those decisions to the people in charge, but they must be both a punishment and a deterrent. Society should pay for outcomes, not more incubators of crime.
Kate Steinle in San Francisco was killed by a gun stolen from a U.S. park ranger’s truck. Between 2010 and 2016 in the Bay Area alone, over 900 weapons were stolen, not from homes or stores, but from federal agents. Homeland Security lost 238 in two years in the Washington, D.C., area. One weapon was a real weapon of war, a grenade launcher. These weapons weren’t stolen by law-abiding citizens. These numbers don’t include all the weapons the government lost but do prove those who want guns can and will get them.
The days of the 1950s are gone, and now all gun owners must secure their weapons. Suicide accounts for more than half of all gun deaths yearly. No one can know the actual mental condition of people they love. People intent on suicide will find a way, but a gun owner shouldn’t give them the means.
Should gun owners be punished for not properly securing a gun? Yes. The owner passed the background check, not everyone in the house. Negligence should be punished as should lying on an ATF Form 4473 Firearms Transaction Record.
In the Army, a soldier fears the loss of a weapon or a classified document more than anything else. Citizens should experience the same gut-wrenching fear. We have enough laws, just enforce them.
“The more corrupt the state the more numerous the laws.”
Ray Anderson
Ethel
