Columnist shares his views on gun control

Here are some items to write on your calendar for January and February. Start with the Wasilla hockey boosters’ gun show, which is scheduled for the weekend of Jan. 23-24 at Wasilla High School. The show is scheduled to run from 10-5 both days. Starting the following Friday, Jan 29, and running through Feb 6, the Great Alaska Boat Show will be held at the Northway Mall in Anchorage. Parking and admission for this event are both free. Show times run from 10-7 Monday through Friday, 10-6 on Saturday, and 12-6 on Sunday. On Feb 13-14, the Matanuska Valley Sportsman’s Gun Show is scheduled to run from 10-5 both days at Raven Hall on the state fair grounds in Palmer.

I’ve heard there’s literally a gun show every month this year. Look for the various show announcements as they are posted in the paper.

Now I want to make a couple of comments and then on to our main topic: the president’s executive orders on gun control issued earlier this week.

I find it “interesting” that both the Judicial and Executive branches of our federal government have been usurping the duties of the Legislative branch by creating their own laws, either through the courts or by Executive Order, when they can’t get their way through Congress. I was taught the Judicial branch’s role was to “quality control” legislation passed by Congress, not create their own court versions. I have also labored under the impression that the Executive Order authority exited basically to implement change when the normal timeframe of passing legislation through Congress would cause a significant problem — sort of an emergency “stop gap” approach until Congress could react. So much for that thought and the United States Constitution’s separation of powers!

My next thought is that the number of reporters in the media who actually understand firearms definitions and many of the gun laws already on the books can be counted on one hand. I have a federal firearms license. I have to know about the various gun regulations or risk federal prison time if I make a mistake.

Based on what I hear in the media, the average reporter doesn’t know the difference between an assault rifle, as defined in federal law, and a semi-automatic rifle that looks like a military weapon. We’ve had laws controlling assault rifles (fully automatic) since the 1930’s. We’ve had laws requiring background checks for sales by dealers since before I got my FFL back in the mid-1980’s. There are currently at least 20,000 firearms laws already in place.

Maybe a little enforcement is in order rather than another new and meaningless (for lack of enforcement) law?

Anyway, on to our president’s edicts. I have not seen a final version of the executive order so I’m working off what I have read in the general media. At one point, it was reported President Obama was recommending a significant level of increased funding be placed in accessing and treating mental illness.

That I can support!

Virtually all the “mass shootings” Obama referred to in his tear-filled speech were done by either mentally ill people or avowed terrorists.

Remember Timothy McVey and his fertilizer/diesel fuel bomb in Oklahoma City or the Boston marathon bombings? If there’s a will to kill, the nuts and terrorists will find a method!

Every one of the shootings referenced by the president occurred in a so-called “gun free” zone. One commentator (Thomas Sowell, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in California) raised the question of who is really mentally ill — the shooter who finds a gun free zone where he can kill with impunity, or the gun-control zealots who seem determined to create even more gun-free zones where individuals cannot defend themselves? He asks how many shooters have opened fire at a National Rifle Association meeting.

They pick places where people are not likely to shoot back.

Sowell also asks the question that, by making the acquisition of a firearm by a law-abiding citizen for personal protection more difficult, while the criminal element simply ignores any gun laws, how many lives might be lost because an individual was unable to protect themselves from a criminal assault.

Another commentator who watched Obama’s tear-filled presentation on television wrote that the president’s actions seemed “really contrived.” Dan Gainor of the Media Research Center said, “What’s funny is if you were paying attention, he (the president) wipes away one of his tears with his middle finger, which I thought kind of appropriate.”

Howard Delo is a retired fisheries biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. This column is the opinion of the writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman or its parent company, Wick Communications. You can leave Delo a message by emailing sports@frontiersman.com.