More Laws Won't Prevent A Shooting Like Sutherland Springs

I was listening to the radio this morning and heard an update on the Sutherland Springs, Texas, church shooting. Survivors of the shooting say that after the initial volleys of bullets, after many people were already dead and/or wounded, the shooter began targeting crying infants and toddlers, searching them out and executing them.

I had tears in my eyes as I listened to the horrid details. What kind of monster does it take to deliberately shoot innocent children as they cry for their wounded or dead parents? There is no doubt in my mind that Satan himself was in this man's heart as he committed those evil acts. And President Trump was right when he said the incident was a mental health issue rather than a gun issue.

Over one third of Americans say they or someone in their household owns at least one firearm. That's 106.6 million legal gun owners. Given that there were at least two shootings in Texas that day and no doubt several dozen others across the country, that means that 106.59 million gun owners did not shoot anyone on Sunday. And those are the statistics every day. Legal/licensed gun owners do not go out and commit mass murder. Most of them never fire their weapon anywhere except on the range.

More laws will only make it tougher for law-abiding citizens to purchase and/or retain their weapon(s). Bad guys like Devin Kelley don't follow the law. He lied about his criminal conviction on his background check application. Sadly, the U.S. Air Force failed to enter his conviction into NICS so he passed the background check. But only because he lied.

In like manner Dylan Roof, the Charleston S.C. shooter, had a criminal conviction for drugs and his information was inadvertently not entered into NICS. He should not have been able to purchase a firearm either, let alone two. But a government screw up allowed him to lie on his background check and buy guns.

So why do people think more laws will help when bad guys don't abide by the law(s) and the government sometimes doesn't do its job in ensuring the laws are enforced and all information is entered into the system as required. No, I'm not blaming the shootings on the government. But at least two of the recent shooters would have been unable to obtain a gun through regular channels had the government agencies done what what was required of them.

Texas Senator John Cornyn plans to introduce legislation aimed at ensuring all federal agencies upload required conviction records into NICS. It's already a requirement for all federal law enforcement agencies to do this. Do we need a law? And if a conviction gets overlooked somehow are we going to prosecute the responsible person and put them in jail?

According to news sources, Devin Kelley escaped from a mental health facility while still in the Air Force. He had been sent there after assaulting his wife and fracturing his baby stepson's skull. He had also attempted to smuggle firearms onto Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico in an attempt to carry out death threats he had made against his military superiors.

The guy obviously had mental health issues. And I think it's incumbent on our legislators to figure out a way to prevent people like this from legally obtaining firearms. I have no problem with preventing someone who has proved himself/herself a danger to others from legally buying a gun. That's about the only law that would be common sense. Outlawing semiautomatic rifles won't prevent gun deaths. It will only cause people to use a different weapon.

Laws only work for law-abiding citizens. More laws won't keep bad guys from obtaining guns. If that was the case Chicago would be the safest city in the United States.

More gun laws may have prevented the hero of Sutherland Springs from stopping the shooter's progress, thereby potentially increasing the number of dead and wounded on Sunday. A good guy with a gun stopped a bad guy with a gun.

More laws will prevent good guys from having guns. They do absolutely nothing to the bad guys. The sooner the left figures that out the better.