More laws won’t fix gun violence

To the editor:

So you think you know all there is to know about current background checks? If you are only listening to the media, you won’t get the whole story.

We need to keep firearms out of the hands of the mentally deficient. Surprise, it’s already a crime for these people to have a firearm. Does this stop them from stealing one? Will another bill saying the same thing thing do any good?

We need to keep firearms out of the hands of criminals. Surprise, it’s already a federal crime to supply a felon or any other criminal (drug dealer, terrorist, rapist or other violent criminal) with a firearm. Check BATF. Felons can’t legally own them, either.

These proposed background checks would have stopped most of the shootings. Wrong. At Sandy Hook and Parkland, people knew the people who did the shooting were unstable, and nobody did anything to stop it. At Parkland especially, the police were notified about the shooter long before the shootings occurred. Either a legal gun owner supplied the firearms, or they were stolen from legal owners before the shooting took place — all felonies in themselves. Did the law protect anyone? No.

Now to what enhanced background checks would do in most of the proposals I have seen. If you wanted to pass down heirloom firearms to your heirs and you didn’t have them go through background checks, even if they legally already owned firearms, you would be committing a felony. If you wanted to loan a firearm to a lifelong friend on a hunt when his firearm broke without having him pass a background check, you would be committing a felony.

Moms and dads would need to subject their kids to background checks before giving them a gun to start them hunting, or they would be otherwise committing felonies. Would these things really stop anything, or make unaware people felons without them knowing it?

We have laws on speeding, theft and domestic violence, but do the laws in themselves stop anyone from committing them? If they did, we would not have any crime now, would we?

Yes, we need to do something, but it needs to be taking action before something happens and saying something to law enforcement or professionals who could take actions to prevent things from happening in the first place. More useless laws do nothing unless people take action to report violent behavior.

Bruce Watters, Bowler