McHenry Times

The national gun debate is set to take center stage in Springfield in the coming days as legislators are set to discuss ways to prevent the kind of senseless tragedy that ended in the shooting deaths of 17 people at a Florida high school earlier this month.

“We’re going to hear proposals for common sense reforms, which the proponents will say will prevent future mass killings,” Rep. Steve Reick (R-Woodstock) said in a blog posted to his website.

As most of the nation remains shaken by the tragedy in Florida, Reick seems intent on stressing there has to be a common sense approach to dealing with the lingering issue of gun control.

“Banning certain types of weapons represents a ‘collective punishment,’ in which the rights of the law-abiding are restricted with no real evidence that their ‘reforms’ will work,” he said.

Reick lamented that there is a common thread that ties the shootings at a Fort Hood army base; Charleston, South Carolina, church; Orlando nightclub; Sutherland Springs, Texas, church; and Parkland school together.

“Each happened after federal authorities were given plenty of notice to stop them,” he said. “What good is ‘if you see something, say something’ if those to whom you say it, who have the authority, don’t do something? We have policies already in place which may have stopped these killings, it was human failure that stood in the way, and no amount of common sense gun legislation is going to stand in the way of blithering incompetence.”

Reick said those who argue that age restrictions should be placed on gun purchases, similar to restrictions on young people’s ability to drive a car or purchase alcohol, miss the point.

“Driving and alcohol purchases are privileges, gun ownership is a right,” he said in the post.

In the end, Reick said, he subscribes to many of the theories put forth by National Review Senior Fellow David French in his gun violence restraining order (GVRO) principles.  

“French argues that when individual citizens are vigilant and individual government officials are not, then it’s time to consider different measures,” Reick said. “It’s time to consider rearranging the balance of power … let’s empower the people who have the most to lose and let’s place accountability on the lowest possible level of government: the local judges who consistently and regularly adjudicate similar claims in the context of family and criminal law.”

Reick argues that the GVRO principles of limiting those who can seek an order to close relatives or those living with the respondent; a requirement of clear and convincing evidence; granting the respondent a chance to respond in the form of a full hearing and setting a defined period after which any order would lapse, makes perfect sense. 

“As dearly as those who believe that banning certain types of guns will stop mass killings, their fascination with the instrumentality will accomplish nothing,” Reick said. “We need to do something to address the evidence that’s right before us. The GVRO is not a panacea, unfortunately there are those who will find other ways to kill. But it’s something that, had it been in place at the time, may have stopped so many of those killings. Whether you believe that gun ownership is a right or a privilege, the GVRO is something we should take the time to discuss.”