ENFORCING DRUG LAWS WOULD REDUCE GUN DEATHS

The Dayton Daily News is calling for gun-rationing schemes like the
one-gun-per-month limit Virginia has.

I lived in Virginia when that limit was adopted, and it didn't work. Some
drug dealers started requiring their customers to pay for drugs with
legally acquired guns instead of with cash. Others merely smuggled in guns
from farther away.

Criminals can always buy guns somewhere farther away. Drug dealers can buy
guns in Mexico, where corrupt government officials have imposed
super-strict gun laws on honest people but deliberately allow the wealthy
drug lords to ignore those laws. Sound familiar?

Or drug dealers can buy Eastern European and Chinese guns and hide them in
their drug shipments. U.S. drug smugglers brought in 690,000 pounds of
cocaine in the first six months of 2000.

If you want to reduce gun deaths, enforce the drug laws.

Rex Tincher, Kettering