If Baltimore City Councilman Jim Kraft were a law he?d be one requiring everyone to eat five servings of fruits and vegetables per day. Healthy, yes. But totally unenforceable ? just like the new gun laws he wants to add to the city?s books.
He introduced a non-binding resolution Monday at a council meeting urging members of the General Assembly to pass a law tolet the city regulate guns.
“Our colleagues in other parts of the state don?t really understand the severity of the gun problem in Baltimore,” he said. “We need to be able to pass our own laws.”
But what new laws could possibly fix Baltimore?s gun problem? The state already restricts children under 21 from owning handguns and those under 18 from possessing any guns without parental permission. It also requires handgun buyers to go through state and federal background checks and requires permits for concealed weapons, among other regulations.
The people who take the time to go through a background check or get a permit are not the ones committing crimes as all statistics show. It?s those who buy guns illegally. Criminals still get illegal guns despite myriad ? tough but seldom enforced ? state and federal laws. New laws won?t stop them.
The issue, as Del. Jill Carter (D-41) said, is enforcing existing laws. Any gun manufacturers and dealers who knowingly circumvent the law and sell guns to criminals or bypass regulations must be prosecuted, of course. So should those who possess firearms illegally.
But law enforcement already has tools, such as federal Project Exile, to do that. The only thing new laws will do is waste time, money and paper.
Besides, any bans Kraft may want to enact could prove unconstitutional. The Supreme Court soon will decide whether to hear a gun case from Washington, which bans handguns. In that case the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in March said that Washington?s ban violated the Second Amendment: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
Kraft should drop his pursuit of more gun laws. Instead, he should spend his time and creativity working with local, state and federal authorities to better enforce laws already on the books.
