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US Marshals Do More To Fight Violent Crime Than Gun Control

(Butch Comegys/The Times & Tribune via AP, File)

Gun control is sold to the American public as the best means available to combat violent crime. Such marketing is generally not questioned by the media who repeat it verbatim and uncritically. It then gets accepted by a whole lot of people who go on repeating it.

However, gun control only really impacts lawful firearms sales and ownership. For criminals, it means less than nothing.

They buy their guns on the black market and then use them for whatever crimes they want to commit. They’re not worrying about any background checks or things like that.

So if gun control doesn’t work, then what can you do? Well, the US Marshals may have just made Texas a fair bit safer.

More than 350 people, including 92 alleged gang members, have been arrested at the end of a six-month operation in the Gulf Coast in Texas. Over $4 million was also seized in the operation, U.S. federal authorities announced.

The probe was a part of the ongoing “Operation Triple Beam,” which produced 351 total arrests, including 92 of whom are alleged gang members. 86 guns were confiscated, along with $4,360,968, and 32 kilograms of illegal narcotics.

The 26-week-long operation, which was headed by the Gulf Coast Violent Offender Task Force, included the U.S. Marshals in cooperation with several federal and state agencies and stretched from April 7 to September 30, the New York Post reported, noting that the investigation focused on street and prison gangs operating in Nueces, Aransas, and San Patricio counties in Texas.

“As violent crime and gang violence continue to rise and plague our cities and counties, those of us in the law enforcement community must be ready and willing to engage,” said US Marshal for the Southern District of Texas T. Michael O’Connor on Monday.

And by going after those most likely to commit violent crimes–and who have generally committed a number of other crimes previously–law enforcement can make a significant dent in the problem.

But only if they’re not back on the street just hours later.

See, another part of the problem we’re seeing is from criminal justice reform pushed by Democrats in many of our cities. They’ve started turning jails into revolving doors.

Now, I get it. The whole “innocent until proven guilty” thing is the core of our legal system, as it should be. With that in mind, we shouldn’t be keeping people locked up for no good reason.

That said, we can’t ignore the fact that violent crime surged after criminal justice reformers decided to make an arrest little more than an administrative procedure. While correlation doesn’t equal causation, it does tend to signal that we might want to take a longer look at what’s going on here.

Regardless, though, these arrests are hitting the very people most likely to commit a violent crime later on. They’ve been arrested and many of them will likely go to prison. That takes them off the streets so they can’t do anything else, at least for a few years.

That means at least a little less violent crime, at least from this bunch. It also means some of their buddies who didn’t get rounded up will look at this and decide to lay low for a little while. That’s also likely to have an impact on violent crime as well.

And the best part?

It’s not gun control. It doesn’t do anything to the law-abiding citizen. It doesn’t interfere with their right to keep and bear arms. It does all the things gun-control fans claim their favorite policy does, but it doesn’t make life more difficult for the good guys just trying to go about their life in peace.

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