Focus on sentencing
There is no such thing as gun violence, only human violence. Banning guns won't stop violence any more than arresting a machete or hammer.
The most effective way to make our community safer is to put the violent people in cages. Yet our legislators choose to release dangerous criminals (Donald Blom) and Level 3 sex offenders in our neighborhoods every day.
Minnesota is at the extreme with about the lowest incarceration rate and highest parole rate in the nation. Until that attitude changes, expect the demand for guns to be high.
Criminal justice is the most important function of state government, yet accounts for less than 5 percent of the state budget. The Legislature's ideology is what has driven the demand for guns.
You cannot have it both ways -- releasing killers while demanding citizens be a pool of helpless victims. The new concealed-carry law is a first step in correcting that utopian ideology.
Martin R. Wellens, Shorewood.
There is no such thing as gun violence, only human violence. Banning guns won't stop violence any more than prohibiting machetes or hammers.
The most effective action to make our community safer is putting the violent people in cages. Yet our legislators choose to release dangerous criminals and Level 3 sex offenders into our neighborhoods every day.
Until that attitude changes, expect the demand for guns to be high. There would be little need for guns, gated communities and flight from the inner cities if our legislators chose to keep criminals behind bars and reversed the social policies that attract them. But they won't. [Did the writer omit this sentence from his Strib submission, or could the Strib not handle the inner-city flight comment?]
Criminal justice is the most important function of state government yet accounts for less than 5 percent of the state budget. The Legislature's ideology is what has driven the demand for guns. You cannot have it both ways – releasing killers while demanding citizens be a pool of helpless victims.
Concealed carry is a first step in reversing that utopian ideology.
MARTIN R. WELLENS
Shorewood