Gun bill a great idea as long as criminals obey the law

When it comes to preventing crime and keeping communities safe, the new gun bill passed by the Massachusetts House of Representatives is shooting blanks.

As the Herald reported, the bill expands a list of banned firearms, adding most popular AR-15 styles to a list of “assault style weapons.” It would also require licensed concealed carry holders to secure permission before entering another’s home with a firearm and require additional training for license holders, among other points.

For law-abiding gun owners, it adds layers of compliance on top of the state’s already-strict firearms regulations.

For criminals, it means nothing.

After a pair of fatal shootings in Boston last week, Suffolk District Attorney Kevin Hayden pointed out that the arrests of two repeat offenders on firearm charges are a “prime example” of how a core group of people drive the “illegal gun possession menace” in Boston.

Those repeat offenders were arrested after traffic stops just days before two more men lost their lives to gun violence in Dorchester and Mattapan on Friday afternoon and early Saturday morning.

“These cases also highlight the need for us as a society to recognize the concentration of guns among a core group of individuals — in this case, two repeat offenders — and to find ways to break the cycle, which so often leads to violence and tragedy,” Hayden said.

He noted the gun-related arrests were “cases where prior convictions and prior incarcerations have apparently done little to dissuade these individuals from repeating the offenses.”

That’s the problem — those who follow pre-existing gun laws will follow new ones. Those who don’t follow the law at all won’t start.

Criminals who carry unlicensed guns are highly unlikely to secure permission before entering another’s home with a firearm. Training happens on the street, when members of that “core group” discharge weapons during commission of a crime.

Those who obtain illegal guns, hide guns and fashion ghost guns to commit crimes don’t care about gun laws in the slightest. Yet they are the ones racking up the deadly numbers of shooting deaths.

It’s those deaths that have gun bill proponents concerned.

“The Massachusetts League of Women Voters supports HD.4607,” Art Desloges, speaking on behalf of the group, told the House Ways and Means Committee last week. “Statistically we have the lowest gun death rates nationwide, but gun violence archive reports 83 people killed by firearms in the Commonwealth through July of this year. We must get to zero. Even one person lost to gun violence is too many.”

True. That’s the sentiment echoed by those who’ve lost loved ones to gunfire in Boston, whose children fear walking to school, and who know that an act as simple as sitting on the front porch can be deadly if they are in the crossfire of a drive-by.

The gun bill won’t stop this, a key reason why the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association won’t support it. As the organization’s executive director Mark Leahy noted, the bill simply won’t reduce crime.

We need to get illegal guns off the streets to make our communities safe. Having law-abiding gun owners jump through more hoops doesn’t help the cause. Perhaps the Senate can clear the fog.