Obama's lectures nation on guns while ignoring the facts: Sen. Jeff Sessions
By Leada Gore | lgore@al.com
Washington
President Obama's executive order aimed at reducing gun violence is another misguided effort that ignores the facts, Sen. Jeff Sessions said.
"The proven method for saving the lives of innocent Americans is not disarming them. The proven method for saving the lives of innocent Americans is to arrest, prosecute, convict and jail criminal offenders, especially armed career criminals illegally using guns. This is the way to reduce gun violence," Sessions said.
Obama announced the policy changes from the White House today. The order includes expanding the definition of a gun dealer to require more background checks. It also devotes additional resources and law enforcement to help reduce gun crimes and closing loopholes that would allow some people to acquire high-powered weapons.
Sessions said the order "seeks to limit law-abiding Americans' exercise of their constitutional rights" even while the "administration's policies have let loose thousands of dangerous criminals onto America's streets." He points to Obama administration policies that do away with many congressionally mandated minimum sentences for drug trafficking, crimes that often involves firearms.
"Every day, lax sentencing costs lives," Sessions said, pointing to the case of Tyrone Howard, the suspect in the October murder of New York Police Officer Randolph Holder and Raleigh Sizemore, a suspect in the November shooting death of Kentucky police officer Daniel Ellis. Howard is a gang member with 28 arrests and two prison sentences for drug crimes. He was later convicted with of another drug crime but sent to a diversion program instead of jail. Sizemore had been sentenced to 10 years in prison for operating a meth lab but was paroled after three years.
Immigration and guns
Sessions also pointed to the case of Kate Steinle, the 32-year old woman who was shot and killed in July by Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, who was in the country illegally. The killing happened in San Francisco, a "sanctuary city," which does not honor federal requests to hold people found to be in the country illegally. Lopez-Sanchez had been deported five times before he allegedly shot and killed Steinle.
Sessions said the Obama administration refuses to address the connection between immigration enforcement and crime.
"In just the last three years, ICE encountered and then let go 235,000 criminal aliens, taking no action to remove them. Yet the victims of their crimes, and their demands for justice, are not heard in the Oval Office," said Sessions, chairman of the Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest.
"How many thousands of lives would be saved if we enforced our immigration laws, our guns laws, and our drug laws? Public safety is not being held hostage by the 'gun lobby,' but by the open borders lobby and the anti-law enforcement lobby," Sessions said.
"Crime is rising across the nation. Homicides are surging. Violent crime is increasing. And the Administration is acting to make it harder for law-abiding Americans to purchase guns while freeing some of the most dangerous felons in the world. This record makes it clear that the Administration is far more focused on rolling back enforcement of the law and reducing prison populations, than protecting the American people from crime and violence," he added.