Attorney General Jeff Sessions delivered a fiery speech Thursday, promising that the turbulence surrounding the country’s gun laws would not continue. His words came less than 24 hours after over a dozen students and staffers at a Florida high school were massacred by a rifle-wielding madman.
Mass shootings must be prevented. The government can help by routing out potential murderers before they strike and enforcing existing laws.
“It cannot be denied that something dangerous and unhealthy is happening in our country. And we are once again watching the images of children, terrified, streaming out of their school, hands over their heads. It is an image we don’t need to continue to see,” Sessions said.
Gun control advocates are both right and wrong. They’re right that more needs to be done to prevent these senseless tragedies, but they’re wrong about the best way to go about it.
Alleged shooter Nikolas Cruz made threatening remarks in the past. He was reported to the FBI because people were so alarmed by his behavior. Yet he was still allowed to legally purchase an AR-15.
“It is not good if we’ve got gun laws that say criminals can’t carry guns. They never get enforced. So we intend to enforce our laws and, if anything, the recent events have caused us to know we need to do even more in the future,” Sessions said.
“It is just too often the case that the perpetrators have given signals in advance … I suspect it appears that we have seen that again in this case.”
He admitted that officers are in a tough spot because they can’t arrest someone merely for being unsavory. Still, he insisted that law enforcement has to do more.
“We owe it to every one of those kids, crying outside their school yesterday and all those who never made it out of that school. Our hearts are hurting today, and all the law enforcement community knows that we have a challenge in front of us, and I know together we’ll meet it,” Sessions said.
(Source: New York Post)