District 58 Rep. Joel Bomgar believes less access to guns, and specifically assault weapons, is not the answer to the recent mass shootings.
Bomgar recently told the Sun he wants to keep Mississippi gun laws the same.
“I am a huge supporter of the Second Amendment,” he said.
With the nation struggling to prevent another shooting like the Stoneman Douglas High School in Lakeland, Fla., the debate over gun control is in the spotlight.
“I think we need to dismiss any solutions that would not have actively stopped mass shootings,” he said. “Every time there’s a tragedy like this, people end up coming up with solutions that don’t apply to the recent mass shootings. It’s a bait-and-switch…”
Bomgar thinks some of the effort should be put more on the local and federal law enforcement responsible for investigating social media posts and reports on possible criminals.
“It’s absolutely insane that when police are called 23, 39 times with reports of an individual saying that they’re going to shoot up a school, that the answer is more gun laws. The answer is to focus on the intelligence we already have.”
If law enforcement continues to do a poor job of following up, Bomgar says, school shootings will continue to happen.
“In a lot of cases, citizens are doing good jobs of reporting, but it falls through the cracks, because law enforcement (agencies) chase innocent people instead of focusing on those who intend violence.”
Another solution that Bomgar himself wants to investigate is the cause of past school shootings and find the impetus for most incidents.
“What caused it? What actionable steps could have been done to prevent it? I think we get misguided when we reflexively jump on proposed solutions that don’t apply to the majority of situations. We need to find the commonality — What could have actually made a difference?”
Mental illness can also be a contributor to these tragedies, like the Stoneman Douglas massacre.
“A lot of these individuals are on drugs. Were they on those drugs when they committed those school shootings? Or should they have been, and they stopped? … We spend way too much time grasping for easy solutions instead of conducting a deep, root cause analysis of what’s actually going on.”
