'Guns don't kill people' - Burnett County Sentinel

•Sheriff Dean Roland weighs in on gun control legislation.

SIREN—"It's a knee-jerk reaction," Burnett County Sheriff Dean Roland said of possible changes to gun laws currently being debated on Capitol Hill.

The proposed changes come in the aftermath of the school shooting in Sandy Hook, Conn. in December.

"It is devastating, it is terrible and there's nothing that will bring those dead children back," Roland continued. "But are stricter gun laws the answer?"

He doesn't believe so.

"There's not a gun in the world that has ever killed anyone," Roland added.

He likens gun violence to drinking and driving.

"There are more people killed by drunk drivers — are we taking cars away?" he asked rhetorically.

"I think the United States and the State of Wisconsin have outstanding gun laws," the sheriff remarked. "The problem is they are not being enforced."

He said convicted felons can't get guns and people suffering a mental illness can't get guns.

"The law we have is quite good," Roland reiterated. "Let's enforce the laws we have."

A case in point is the new conceal/carry law Wisconsin recently passed.

"Statistics show that in states with conceal/carry, crime does go down," he noted.

However, Roland did point to Chicago and Washington D.C. as a flaw in that line of thinking.

"They have some of the strictest gun laws in the country, yet they have the highest murder rate committed by guns," he explained.

He said it comes down to the fact that bad guys are still getting guns.

"Even if you register your gun with the authorities, that becomes public record and bad guys now know where to break in and get a gun," Roland said, somewhat tongue-in-cheek.

He said if someone chooses to have a gun, they should be allowed to have a gun.

"Until the Second Amendment has been repealed or until the U.S. Constitution is null and void, I do not plan on going after anybody," Roland asserted. "It is our right to bear arms — it is the law of the land."

In fact, he said if stricter gun laws were proclaimed after this latest shooting, he envisions a problem.

"It would pose a problem for me if they required registration and confiscation," Roland admitted. "Then I would have a choice to make — do I continue being the sheriff or do I become a citizen."

According to Roland, he doesn't feel the act of registering a gun makes us safer as a people.

With so many potential weapons available, cars, dynamite, even baseball bats, stricter gun control isn't the issue.

"If you wanted to kill someone bad enough, is this really going to change anything?" he questioned.

"The solution is mental health," Roland declared.

While it may not be easy to classify who has mental health issues and who doesn't, the sheriff believes there is another way.

"Community policing," he reasoned. "If you see something that looks wrong or feels wrong, say something — don't assume it away."

"We have to teach people to be more cognizant and more suspicious," he said.

He went on to cite a study in which a briefcase was placed in different settings, outside a bank, inside a school, outside a train station — whatever, and took note of how long it was before the alarm was raised about the presence of the briefcase.

"In the United States, it was four to six hours before anyone recognized it as being out of place and said something to someone," Roland noted. "In Israel, it was six seconds."

He said that culture is highly tuned to potential terrorism or disaster.

"We in this country are naive — until Sept. 11, 2001," he continued. "That told us we were vulnerable, but people have forgotten that lesson."

Just on the face of it, community policing would mean extra work for Roland's department as well as all law enforcement agencies — is that something he is willing to deal with.

"Compare it to the alternative," Roland replied simply.