Here we go again!

By now you’ve heard about the shooting attack on congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona in Tucson this past week, where six people were killed and 14 others, including the congresswoman, were injured. The alleged shooter is a young man who has a history of exhibiting mentally unstable behavior. According to reports, the shooter used a semi-automatic handgun with a high-capacity magazine in the attack.

Predictably, gun-control advocates are using this tragic occurrence to call for more and tighter gun control laws they say will keep “illegal guns” out of the hands of mentally disturbed individuals. The newspaper articles and commentary I have seen or heard so far are calling for a total ban on high-capacity magazines and a reinstitution of the ban on assault weapons, which happened under the Clinton administration. For the record, the handgun used in this attack was legally purchased in Arizona, following all federal and state laws. The gun was not “illegal.”

Let’s look at exactly what the anti-gun folks are calling for. By federal definition, an “assault weapon” is a firearm capable of fully automatic fire, a machine gun if you will, that fires as long as the trigger is held down. These types of firearms are typically fired from the shoulder or mounted on a bracket or tripod in order to operate. The semi-automatic handgun used in Tucson fires only once when the trigger is pulled. The trigger must be released and re-pulled for the firearm to fire a second time.

The call here is to ban a type of firearm which was not used in the referenced crime and which is already heavily regulated by the federal government. For those who don’t know, machine guns have been under tight regulation in this country since 1937, when the National Firearms Act was passed. That federal law requires a mandatory, in-depth background check of the proposed owner and a $200 tax just for applying for ownership, plus detailed reporting on who has possession of the firearm at all times (read: no unregulated sale of this type of firearm).

The high-capacity magazine ban is another warm and fuzzy that has no meaning in real life. Most 9mm semi-automatic, full-size handguns come with a magazine capable of holding from 15 to 17 rounds, plus one more in the chamber. I believe the particular handgun used in this attack has a 17-round standard magazine. My math might be poor, but the last time I looked, 17 plus one is only two short of the total number of folks injured or killed in Tucson, and that would be using a standard magazine. Would banning a larger capacity magazine make a significant difference here? I don’t think so.

Let’s try injecting some common sense into this discussion. There are already both federal and state laws that prohibit a mentally defective person from legally buying, owning or possessing a firearm. If these laws were actually enforced this young man might not have gotten access to a gun. I say “might” because there was a major breakdown in how this man was treated.

The alleged shooter was a former college student with a long history of erratic, mentally disturbed behavior. The community college he was attending expelled him and told him he could not return to class until he had undergone a mental health evaluation and was deemed not dangerous to either himself or others. Do you think that might have been a hint that this kid needed help? Nobody did a thing to follow up on this requirement. If any laws need to be passed, consider this approach. I hope our legislators in Juneau are paying attention because Alaska could sure use this. Pass a law that would allow a person with a history of irrational public behavior to be picked up and held by law enforcement for a mandatory evaluation of mental competency before they can be released back into society.

The officers could only pick this person up if another person filed a complaint regarding a specific public, irrational episode. If this person was found to be mentally incompetent, a legal determination must be made and entered into the national FBI background database used to identify folks we don’t think should have access to firearms.

I have personal experience with an individual in Big Lake who regularly exhibits irrational and belligerent behavior in a public place, and I don’t mean a bar. This person has repeatedly been reported to the state troopers and is well known to them. In fact, when I called the troopers to report this person harassing me, I couldn’t think of the individual’s name. As soon as I told the trooper where I was, the trooper told me the person’s name.

Troopers have responded and talked with the individual at this location in the past, but that’s as far as things have gone. The problem is that until this person physically attacks someone, the troopers’ hands are tied; there are no statutes that would allow them to detain this person for irrational behavior and subsequent evaluation. I think everybody in Big Lake familiar with this situation half expects this person to hurt someone eventually.

We all have a right to be safe and the ability to defend oneself with deadly force is the only guarantee we have in today’s society to accomplish that right! Don’t ban the object, address the disturbing behavior.

Howard Delo is a retired fisheries biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. You can leave him a message by e-mailing sports@frontiersman.com.