Instead of focusing on the critical budget issue, the president and his party are focusing on gun control. At issue is renewing the assault weapons ban on the supposition that it will prevent crime. This is far from the truth.

Laws simply do not prevent crime. Laws, and their enforcement, allow society to prevent future crimes by taking criminals off the street after they have committed a crime. Since our justice system routinely returns criminals to the streets, at best we can say that laws delay subsequent crimes. If laws prevented crime, why are there still robberies, rapes, murders, thefts, etc?

This is all political theater, solely to take advantage of emotion. There is no substance to the belief that re-enacting the AWB will save a single life, yet it lives on because so many people lack the fundamental understanding of crime prevention and the Second Amendment.

Meanwhile, we are still headed to financial ruin at the hands of these same politicians. Theater is more important to them than solving the nation's problems.

John Magerowski

Spotsylvania