Scandal: Existing Gun Laws Not Enforced.

 Selwyn Duke has, what for Democrats may be counterintuitive ideas about gun control.  His idea?  Enforce the laws already on the books!  What an amazing thought!  So, naturally you will want to read Duke's article at the American Thinker entitled You really want federal gun control intervention? Here's an idea for you.

Word is that the Senate has the necessary votes for federal gun control legislation designed to, among other things, pressure states into instituting “red flag” laws. These measures are controversial because they involve suspending a person’s rights (i.e., seizing his weapons) without due process. Wherever you stand on them and federal firearms laws in principle, however, a simple fact is under-emphasized in this debate: Laws mean little if not enforced.

What’s more, they’re actually instruments of evil if only enforced to the degree where good people will comply.

Here’s another fact: Corresponding to the general unwillingness among left-wing district attorneys to punish criminals (who aren’t also political opponents), these officials, though claiming firearms are a plague, aren’t punishing most gun crimes. Odd, huh?

We already have an incredible number of restrictions on the purchase and possession of guns. The idea that it is easy to buy a gun is an out and out lie. Try it! Yes, you can purchase a gun on the internet, as in pay for the thing. But you cannot have it shipped to your door. Instead, the person who took your money will instruct you to designate a Federal Firearms Licensee who will still put you through the process of filling out a Form 4473 and run a criminal background check. Gang members who have been convicted of a felony cannot pass the background check and would be refused. Most criminals obtain their weapons from the black market or steal them themselves. Occasionally they get them by having their girlfriends purchase them, which is itself illegal as well. Duke points out that fully 50% of murders occur in certain parts of 2% of counties. Fully 73% of counties had no murders whatsoever in any given year.

Enforcement of local laws makes far more sense than any one-size-fits-all policy, too, as crime is not an evenly distributed phenomenon. Consider that more than half of 2016’s murders occurred in just certain parts of two percent of our land’s counties, and 68 percent of the homicides were committed in only small pockets of five percent of the counties.

Oh, these would be exclusively, or almost all, Democrat-governed areas.

In contrast and on average, “73 percent of counties in any given year had zero murders from 1977 to 2000,” reported Fox News in 2017. (These would generally be GOP areas.)

In other words, we don’t have a “gun problem. We have a Democrat population/governance problem.

What’s so disgusting about enacting more laws but not strictly enforcing those on the books, especially the important ones, is that only good people are affected. They tend to follow laws even when enforcement is lax and punishment for violation is minimal; miscreants won’t without the threat of Draconian measures.

Perhaps instead of giving money to incentivise red flag laws, which are unconstitutional and will eventually be struck down, the incentive should be to actually enforce the most important of the gun restrictions: felons may not own or possess guns. This charge should always feature in any arrest of a felon. The NRA has also said that before any new gun laws are passed, perhaps it might be a good idea to enforce the laws already on the books. And while it is true that so many laws have been passed as to make owning a gun somewhat risky, it is still true that both at the state and federal level, the ability of felons to own guns is a scandal of our law enforcement.