Focus
By Mitch Berg
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Every week, the Court of Appeals releases opinions on criminal cases. Every week, there’s an ineligible person in possession of a pistol. And these aren’t all of the ineligible persons in possession – these are only the ones that had a good enough legal argument to appeal. There’s no telling how many other felons had guns but didn’t appeal, or plea-bargained the charge away. It’s a genuine epidemic and nobody is going anything about it.
So here’s the question for every one of those cases: Where’d this particular felon get this particular pistol? Did he pass a background check? Order it off the Internet? Buy it at a gun show? Which Obama gun-control proposal would have prevented him from acquiring the pistol? We don’t know because the court doesn’t report that fact and if the cops asked at all, the felon undoubtedly lied to protect his source.
Maybe we need an incentive program? Maybe the cop says “Look, man, you’re going away. Nothing can change that. But if you give up the name – and the name checks out – we hand you $1,000 cash, tax free. Plus you get a carton of Marlboros and one extra hour of yard time each week.”
Maybe it wouldn’t work. But maybe it would. We know from the War on Drugs that cracking down on suppliers is far more likely to dry up the supply than piling more restrictions on innocent, law-abiding citizens. Why not use a proven technique in the War on Crime?
Joe Doakes
That presumes that the Minnesota left – who control law enforcment in the state – are interested in addressing crime.
February 29th, 2016 at 6:51 am
rather than spend money on miscreants, make it law that ineligible weapon possession gets you a mandatory consecutive sentence of 3-5 years and that the only plea bargain acceptable to the court is give up a name that checks out and you get either a couple years shaved off the gun charge or the judge allows it to be a concurrent sentence
February 29th, 2016 at 8:16 am
I was in La Crosse Wisc this weekend and picked up the very liberal La Crosse Tribune (this paper is Bernie to the Mpls paper being Hillary). The story on a shooting last week…….”the shooter was armed with an assault rifle and a handgun”. They went on to say the rifle “was a semi-automatic that was made to looked like an AK47”.
Sooo a semi-automatic is now “an assault rifle”? Or is it because what we have said….if it has cosmetic items, then it must be banned.
February 29th, 2016 at 8:51 am
Get with the program, Kel.
Putting people in jail is causing crime.
Because these day we live in progressive ju-jitsu world, where cause and effect are reversed. You want to cause a crime? Put a criminal in jail. Elect a Black man president for the first time in history, and he explains how America is a racist country. Keep insane murdering Muslims from emigrating to the US, and the country will be full of insane, murdering Muslim immigrants.
February 29th, 2016 at 8:53 am
The flip side here is that those facing time in the pokey are sometimes known to name a name that does NOT check out, but the raid that finds out the person is innocent also kills him.
February 29th, 2016 at 9:42 pm
“That presumes that the Minnesota left – who control law enforcment in the state – are interested in addressing crime.”
Well of course they aren’t. But I guess this is another rhetorical question.