Saturday, January 19, 2013

Real World Translation

While this might seem like political "red meat", I do think this is a great summary of Mr. Obama's recent pronouncements on executive orders regarding gun sales.  I could summarize the summary as being multiple instances of:

  • Tell government officials and agencies to do their jobs
  • Waste money doing things that private agencies already do, and do better than government agencies.
  • Spend money, sometimes without an obvious benefit
  • Pretend that the ACA doesn't say what it actually says
The first one on the list is really very frustrating.  We have plenty of gun laws.  But they are not enforced.  We have plenty of policies.  But government agencies elect not to follow them.

Yet when a tragedy occurs, all we hear is a hue and cry for more gun regulations.  Why?

Or better yet, why not try using the current regulations and laws to do what we said needed to be done after the previous incidents?

One of the tools that federal prosecutors have is the ability to get felons convicted of gun crimes sentenced to facilities that are no where near their families.  I read about a prosecutor in either West Virginia or Virginia (I think) that was making full use of that law.  As as result, crimes committed with guns were down in this individual's area.

It seems that while the criminals were willing to commit crimes, they were unwilling to commit crimes that would keep them far from their families for extended periods of time.

Which might also suggest that we inconvenience them in other ways while they are incarcerated, but that is probably a discussion for another day.

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