Before banning certain types of firearms, try enforcing the existing laws

In his Nov. 19 letter, Joseph Manzo did not dispute the facts presented by Glade Barlow in a previous letter, specifically that many more people are killed by attacks with clubs, bats, fists, feet and knives than by semiautomatic weapons. He then argued that unless we take “legal or illegal automatic and/or semiautomatic rifles completely out of the hands of our citizens, we are just waiting for another mass-shooting headline.”

I have no problem with illegal automatic rifles being removed, as they are already against federal law to possess. And the legal automatic weapons that are in the hands of citizens are so tightly controlled, that fewer than 1 percent have ever been used in the commission of crimes.

So that just leaves semiautomatic rifles.

Mr. Manzo further dismisses any legal use of these weapons by citizens. Yet within in the past year, there have been several incidents in which citizens have defended themselves with these rifles. Yes, they have been used by truly evil people to commit murder. But in the case of last year’s Texas church shooting, a citizen armed with the exact same rifle stopped the shooter.

As a law enforcement firearms instructor for more than 38 years, I have heard many calls for banning such rifles. But even the federal 10-year ban on assault rifles was shown to have no effect on reducing gun crimes. A further ban will be as fruitless as the previous ban.

A much more effective solution to this problem is to enforce existing laws, such as the “straw man” purchase of firearms by seemingly legal buyers. In 2014, there were more than 77,000 cases of “straw man” purchases reported to the Department of Justice. Of those 77,000 cases, fewer than 10 percent were actually prosecuted.

If Mr. Manzo really wants to have an impact on these heinous crimes, let’s use the existing laws and prosecute these criminals to full extent of the law. But leave the law-abiding citizens to choose what weapons they will use to defend their lives and the lives of their families.