A lot of pro-gun folks do not like the argument of, “Why pass new gun control? Just enforce what’s on the books!” Their reasoning makes sense, too. It’s mostly that those laws are generally unconstitutional, too, so why encourage the enforcement of unconstitutional laws?
Believe me, I get it.
Yet there’s something to be said about pointing out how gun control advocates claim these measures are super important and are essential to keeping bad people from having guns, only to mostly ignore the bad people when they end up having guns. Even if the laws aren’t just in and of themselves, the fact that the people who defended those laws don’t seem to care about actual enforcement matters.
It tips their hand that it’s not about the bad guys, but about you and me.
And a Connecticut editorial board understands that perfectly.
While the Democratic Party and anti-gun activists generally support further restricting gun ownership via laws that would turn millions of nonviolent Americans into criminals, many Republicans and ideological conservatives are left asking why so many convicted gun criminals receive light prison sentences or are offered plea deals that allow them to avoid prison altogether.
Several Hearst Connecticut Media reports from this year alone spell out how Connecticut, ostensibly one of the most pro-gun-control states in the country, handles gun crime:
• In February, Quinten “Quack” McKoy of Bridgeport was sentenced to three years and four months in prison “after authorities found a stolen gun, a high-capacity magazine and drugs in his home.” Hearst CT noted that Mr. McKoy’s “criminal history includes multiple felony convictions, and it is illegal for a person previously convicted of a felony to have a firearm.”
• In June, a state appellate court “ordered a sentence reduction for a man who skipped his Waterbury trial on gun charges and was considered a persistent felony offender.” The man, Yero S. Walker, was “arrested in an incident in which shots were fired in a parking lot near bars on Freight Street in Waterbury early on Oct. 7, 2018, court records show,” although prosecutors only pursued charges of carrying a pistol without a permit and criminal possession of a pistol. Prior to the sentence-reduction order, he was facing 15 years in prison; it’s unclear how much time he will now have to serve.
• In August, Jeremiah Reyes of Stamford avoided prison entirely, receiving just three years of probation after “an incident in which he and three others were caught with pistols equipped with extended magazines in their car during a traffic stop.” The plea deal also applied to an unrelated assault charge against Mr. Reyes.This pattern exists throughout Connecticut and other blue states that chiefly concern themselves with limiting gun ownership among the law abiding.
I’m not interested in debating the validity of these laws. I’ve spilled gallons of digital ink decrying every single one of them at some time or another.
What I’m interested in, though, is how light these sentences are despite the claims of anti-gunners that we simply have to take the scourge of “gun crime” seriously. It seems that taking it seriously only means passing new gun control laws, which this editorial board rightly notes only impacts the law-abiding of Connecticut.
If “gun crime” is a problem and gun control is the solution, shouldn’t enforcement of those laws be essential? Why do so many anti-gun groups look the other way on light sentences like this, knowing full well that light sentences are far less likely to deter people from breaking the law?
Armed felons getting off with slaps on the wrist without them saying anything suggests a great deal to me. It tells me that they don’t care about armed criminals, just us. They’re fine with violent criminals carrying guns, potentially because all those “gun crimes” can be leveraged for still more restrictions in a state like Connecticut. You can’t get that leverage without those armed criminals, after all, and that’s what matters to them.
But maybe I’m just too cynical about them.
Then again, maybe I’m not.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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