Zigga;
I will try to answer your questions in a manner that even you may be able to comprehend.
None of us have champion the idea of "ex-felons" being able to possess firearms. In fact it is just the reverse. we feel that being convicted of a felony means that felons should lose certain rights for life. One of them is owning or having possesion of any firearm. Even the NRA has pushed and advocated this belief.
The majority of recent gun laws have penalized the honest citizen and not the criminal, but it's author, your local politician, can claim he is all for curbing violent crime when he knows his bill is usless in reducing crime.
Believe it or not, most states have more then enought gun laws on the books that would curb violent crime if the law was used the way it was intended too. A very good example is the law referred to as "use a gun, go to prison" that about every state has in it's penal code.
This law was intended for harsh punishment of any ex-felon that uses a firearm in any crime or even gets caught with a gun in his possesion. This law, in most states, demands that the ex-felon is given an additional 5 years of prison time over the time he gets for the crime he was convicted of when he used the gun. Most states say that this added sentence must be served for the intire sentence, no parole or probation to be granted.
Guess What??? This law is rarely used. It is severe enought that most felons will agree to a plea bargain and plead guilty to the robbery or rape if the local politician, your local District Attorney, will drop the "use of a firearm" charge and they save money-time by not having to go to a jury trial. If you do not believe this, take the time to go down to your local court house and check the records for felons arrested for a crime with a firearm use charge, then check to see what their final conviction was in court. It just may piss you off to relize how many violent felons are returned to the streets in a very short time due to this plea bargain. You may also be surprised that the NRA has promoted this law in many states. But after passage it has been gutted by our politicians in office.
Now what has this "use a gun, go to prison" law have to do with violent gangs that are committing most of our homicides in major cities and even rural areas, including drive by shootings.
It is a known fact among law enforcement that most gang members caught with a gun have already been convicted of a felony. Just catching that felon with a gun in a traffic stop means he should go to prison for at lease 5 years for the simple fact he had a gun with him. As for the gangbanger who is not a felon, but commits a shooting in a driveby, he also comes under this law for using a gun in a commission of another crime, such as ADW or attempted homicde or firing into a inhabited building. This means he gets sentenced for 5 years plus the time for the original crime. If he is a teenager, he would be sent to a juvenile facility until he is 21 years old. Guess what, it almost never happens due to a liberal soft on crime D.A. and court system that drops the gun clause law to avoid that so called expensive jury trial.
Now if you still do not believe this, I want you research "project exile" that was used in Richmond, Va. which is a suburb of Washington D.C.
They had some of the most restrictive guns laws on the books that even prevented most citizens from having a handgun in the home or any firearm in a place of business. Guess what??? They were also known as the "Murder capital" of the world by the FBI stats on homicide and violent crimes.
After all these useless new gun laws, that penalized the citizens, the criminals ignored the gun laws, they finally got their collectived moron heads together and figured out for themselfs that new guns laws, even confiscation of all firearms would not work. Remember that criminals will not turn in their guns, only law abiding citizens. They decided they had to seek a new route, they remember that law on the books that was favored by the NRA and decided to try it. They got the law enforcement agencies, the District Attorney office, and the judges together and came up with "Project Exile".
What they did was to use the law as it was intended to be used and advocated by the NRA as a law to punish the criminal and not the honest citizen. They charged all criminals, if it applied, with the "use a gun, go to prison" law and stopped it being plea bargain off and sent the criminals to the max time in prison. Most were gangbangers that were dope peddlers and doing most of the violent crime in that area. They also took some heat from the liberals for "racial profiling" because most of those gangbangers were Afro-American. The word got out on the streets to the criminals to not get caught in Richmond with a gun or you are history and it worked!
If I remember right, their crime stats took a sharp dive and homicides went down by 65-70% in the first year or two. Do the research yourself, I would not want you to feel that this conservative minded guy was snowballing you with right wing B.S.
It has been over 6-7 years since I researched this project and I do not know if Richmond is still applying it or if they have gone back to the old ways due to constraints.
Now you will say, if it is that easy, why don't most other areas do the same and we can watch the violent crime rate plunge into the basement. I will tell you why, "MONEY, AND LOTS OF IT TO BUILD MORE PRISONS TO LOCK UP THOSE VERY VIOLENT CRIMINALS".
Our politicians prefer to use our money for other projects, instead of our safety which takes a backseat unless we yell enough and threaten to vote the bums out if they do not do something as the citizens in Richmond, VA. did after seeing usless gun law after more usless gun laws fail.
I brought this very same project to the attention of our local politicians, while I was a detective Sgt. and it fell on deaf ears except for one local county supervisor. It seems there is a under lying push to keep this under the table by our politicians from the county level to the state level and Federal gov. due to the cost and other factors that are not dear to most liberals and also the GOP has to shoulder some blame for not pushing it at the Federal level.
Now if you do not mind, I am tired of typing and it is up to you to do the research and try to make some adjustments in your thinking about positive Vs. negative gun laws that our politicians try to cram down our throats under the diguise of curbing violent crime in our country.
RELH
