In the wake of the San Bernardino attack, politicians reverted to to form.  Republicans prayed for the victims, and Democrats called for more gun laws.  No surprise there, but some straight talk about guns is in order.  The Republican calls for prayer prompted the New York Daily News headline, “God Isn’t Fixing This.”  The implication is that Obama and his band of loony lefties have a fix that Republicans are resisting.  They don’t.  The Democrat default position is “we need new gun laws.”  We don’t.  I happen to know something about this problem.  For 25 years, I was a Prosecutor in New Jersey, a State which has some of the toughest gun laws in the country.  We have a mandatory 3 year prison sentence for carrying a gun without a permit.  We have a rigorous review process for carry permits. We prohibit ownership of a wide range of weapons, including assault weapons and large capacity magazines. We impose severe mandatory prison sentences on previously convicted persons who possess a gun.  We impound guns owned by anyone involved in a domestic violence complaint.  We also have no shortage of gun violence in New Jersey.  Here’s a bulletin – People who do violence with guns are criminals, and criminals, by definition, are people who do not obey the law.  Passing one more gun law won’t make the public any safer.  I’ll give you a case in point.  I once supervised a county narcotics taskforce in Essex County.  Although automatic weapons have been against the law in America since 1934, I can assure you that there are more machine guns on the streets of our big cities today than Al Capone ever dreamed of, and these are wholly illegal weapons.

The notion that some new law will magically take guns out of the hands of criminals or the deranged is simply a fantasy.  For good or ill, there are almost as many privately owned guns in America as people.   So, even if the Second Amendment didn’t exist, it’s too late for gun control, what we need is nut control, or in this case, terrorist control.  The San Bernardino shooters wore military gear and carried rifles and handguns when they killed 14 people.  Back at home, they had 5,000 rounds of ammunition, 12 pipe bombs, and materials to make more bombs.   Shooter Farook’s Pakistani wife, Malik, underwent and passed a Department of Homeland Security counter-terrorism screening before being admitted to the U.S.  Presumably, this is the “robust vetting process” that Obama says the Syrian refugees will undergo.  As I write this, we are told that shortly before the attack, Ms. Malik pledged her allegiance to the ISIS leader.  This news, the bombs, and the arsenal have prompted even Il Duce Obama to grudgingly muse that the California attack was “possibly terrorist related” rather than merely workplace violence.  You think?

Yet, the President tells us that the villain here was not the “possible terrorists” but the guns that they bought legally.  The media delights in reporting that the shooters had military-type assault rifles.  They neither know nor care what that means.  It sounds scary, so that’s good enough.  Traditionally, an “assault rifle” was one which was capable of automatic fire   (a machine gun),  or selective fire (a 3 round burst).  These weapons have been illegal since 1934.  The rifles in California were semi-automatic (one bullet with each trigger pull).  California already outlaws “assault rifles” and prohibits magazines of more than 10 rounds.  The shooters carried multiple magazines.  So much for that law.  Do away with all semi-automatic weapons?  That’s not a solution either.  JFK was assassinated with a bolt-action rifle.  Military-type weapons?  That term has no legal significance. The Marine Corps assaulted Guadalcanal (and a number of other islands) armed principally with bolt-action 1903 Springfield rifles.  In short, there is no magic fix for the problem of gun violence.  Passing a new “feel good” law would be a cruel joke on a justifiably frightened public.  And Mr. President, you can’t protect the public from criminals by disarming the law-abiding.