In re: “Community reflects on Saugus shooting – and what comes next – at remembrance event” (Nov. 15).
Grief is a very powerful emotion and far be it from me to lecture or advise any grieving person, especially a parent who has lost a child, on why they are grieving. Where I do feel it necessary to voice an opinion is when it comes to turning grief or sympathy into legal actions that presume and are promoted to be a prevention for the events that caused that grief.
As I have stated in other submissions, I defy anyone to give me an example of a law that has ever prevented someone from committing a crime. Laws are nothing more and nothing less than a means to proscribe a penalty for a crime that has already occurred. Bottom line, they are AFTER THE FACT instruments! Personally, I don’t care to live in a country where the government has the power to arrest and prosecute people for what they “might” do in the future.
How do politicians, like my good friends Rep. George Whitesides and Assemblywoman Pilar Schiavo, propose enforcing laws requiring firearms to be locked up in private residences? And how does banning the ownership of certain types of firearms based entirely on their “appearance” have any effect on preventing murders and assaults? Do my good friends propose roving bands of law enforcement officers going house to house to see if firearms are locked up in a safe?
Last time I checked there is a long list of “illegal” drugs, with laws preventing their possession and use, but I have yet to see where all of these laws have even made a small dent in their use and abuse. And just read the pages of The Signal to see the huge amount of deaths and injuries caused by people violating the posted speed limits, driving while intoxicated and also the laws against using phones while driving.
I would never question the sincerity of anyone who seeks to prevent violence of any kind, especially violence against children or others who are incapable of defending themselves.
But, I also find it more than a bit disingenuous when people proposing new laws are the very people objecting to the enforcement of existing laws by allowing/requiring plea bargaining felonies down to misdemeanors and also promoting arrested violent offenders to be released without posting a bond, even ones illegally possessing the “evil” firearms that they are wanting to ban for law-abiding citizens.
Rick Barker
Valencia
