The Tribune’s March 3 editorial, “The high price of tougher crime laws,” should have been titled, “The high price of hypocrisy.” The Tribune condemned the state legislature for passing mandatory sentencing laws because it is filling our prisons with more criminals than they were designed to hold.
At the same time the Tribune is constantly demanding laws that would punish people just for owning or using a gun for self-defense. Laws have been created because of that. Unfortunately, the decent people in this country have to pay the high price of the Tribune’s hypocrisy.
But the main point of the editorial is that government has reached the limit of what it can do to stop crime. So the Tribune concludes that government should solve this problem by not passing anymore mandatory sentencing laws that put even more criminals in jail. But the Tribune’s conclusion is that government has to solve this problem, that it’s what government does or doesn’t do that stops crime. Human beings as individuals don’t enter into the Tribune’s equation.
The way to stop crime is for people to accept responsibility for their own lives. That means they are responsible for their own defense because the government can’t protect them. That means buying a gun for self-defense, learning how to use it and learning gun-safety rules.
The Tribune should report that in those states where it’s legal to carry handguns, they have low crime rates. Crime goes down in those states because people rely on themselves instead of the false protection of government.
