Jacology: Gun Court In St. Louis City

(KPLR) – As the national debate wages over gun control, St. Louis City is trying to control its gun cases with a new court system.

In case you haven’t noticed, there are a lot of guns in this town. There are also a lot of criminals. But there are only so many cops, so many judges .and so much jail space. So in the interest of keeping things moving through an overcrowded legal system, judges sometimes aren’t as tough on people with guns as they should be. A proposed city gun court could change that.

The city’s idea is to make sure that anyone who uses a gun to commit any kind of illegal act, will serve jail time. But wait, you may ask. Isn’t that already the case?  No, it’s not the case. If someone’s merely found in possession of an illegal gun or if they use a gun to shoot at an abandoned house, they’re probably not going to be facing jail time.

The city’s idea is to have the Missouri legislature set up a separate gun court in the city. And that court would only try gun offenses. More serious crimes involving guns, murder, rape, armed robbery; they would all be prosecuted as usual. But the so-called lesser gun offenses, which are the precursors of worse gun crimes, would go to gun court.

This seems to be the sort of sensible solution even the so-called gun nuts could get behind. Second amendment supporters, the NRA, hunters and target shooters, gun collectors, none of those people should have any objections to getting tougher on criminals with guns.

But all this has to go through the legislature in Jefferson City and seeing as how the legislature is chock full of the kind of people who don’t believe in evolution and think President Obama’s not an American; than anything could happen when it comes to guns. Watch this space.

I’m Charles Jaco and that’s Jacology.