Gun-rights advocates need to work on gun safety too

Gun-rights advocates are really good at criticizing gun safety legislation, but they aren’t very good at stepping forward to formulate any serious gun-safety proposals of their own. They oppose everything, including expanded background checks and laws that would keep guns away from people with documented mental illness.

In a half-hearted attempt to address gun violence in our state, Republicans in our state House recently proposed legislation for longer jail sentences for people convicted of noncapital crimes when a gun is used during the commission of a crime, and for people convicted of being a “felon in possession.” Unfortunately, increasing punishments for noncapital gun crimes will not stop dangerous people from getting and using guns. An angry or mentally ill person isn’t going to put down his gun simply because there’s a new law, which he probably doesn’t even know about, that says if he gets caught and if he gets convicted, then his jail sentence will be a bit longer than it used to be.

Bills like this are political tricks to appear tough on guns and crime while sidestepping the more important public need for real gun-safety legislation that will increase the likelihood dangerous people won’t get guns in the first place.

Gun-rights advocates ought to get off their obstructionist Second Amendment soap boxes and start working together with gun-safety advocates to come up with gun-safety laws that most of the people in this country find acceptable. BRAD GOODWIN Albuquerque