EDITOR: Reading the Feb. 27 editorial from Newsday, “Existing gun laws can stop many deaths,” initially gave me hope that people were finally beginning to get it: enforce the laws that already exist rather than just mindlessly writing new, even more useless laws. If gun control actually worked, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
I think the root cause is that advocates have the misconception that legal sales are the equivalent of all sales. Gun laws only potentially affect legal sales. The fatal flaw is that they do nothing to stop illegal sales. The most recent study on the subject by the Department of Justice indicated that only 10.3% of federal and state prisoners obtained their guns from a retail source. That includes 0.8% from gun shows, 0.4% from flea markets, 1.6% from pawn shops, and 7.5% from retail stores. Almost 90% got their guns from sources that don’t run background checks and don’t worry about the niceties of the law.
The idea that universal background checks or magazine size restrictions are a “crucial” need is ludicrous. The same goes for restrictions on magazine size. How does that reduce gun violence when all it takes to negate them is simply to ignore them?
Jay Hanig, Topsail Beach
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