Handling crime, including establishing what it is, should come under the purview of states.

Recently a Texas Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Rep. Randy Weber, introduced the “Justice for Victims of School Shootings Act,” which would make carrying out or conspiring to a school shooting, a federal crime.

The Heritage Center’s GianCarlo Canaparo, a legal fellow in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, says hold on. It’s wrong to assume there needs to be one.

Then he cites a Supreme Court decision from 40 years ago saying that preventing and dealing with crime is much more the business of states than the federal government.

Experts estimate that there are now nearly 5,000 federal statutes and more than 300,000 federal regulations that carry potential criminal penalties. There are, in fact, so many federal criminal statutes and regulations that nobody—not even the Justice Department—knows for sure, Canaparo wrote.

And just think what a left-leaning Congress with a left-leaning president could do with such an addiction.

They could make any thought they didn’t like a crime.

If a person even made a face that indicated he disagreed with an official position, he-she could be charged with a “crime.”

Such a regimen would seem to be a gateway drug for systems made famous by Russian communism. Such a policy could land a person in a slave labor camp if not a firing squad.

The dream of the left is to force everyone to believe according to the leftist goals.

Maybe There Oughta (Not) Be a Law

People who used to proclaim “there oughta be a law” have been more successful than they should have been.

Nineteenth century England is an example of too many laws. A man could hardly feed his family without breaking a “hanging” law.

Wikipedia comments on the Bloody Code this way:

“ In 1688 there were 50 offenses on the statute book punishable by death, but that number had almost quadrupled by 1776 and it reached 220 by the end of the century. Most of the new laws introduced during that period were concerned with the defense of property, which some commentators have interpreted as a form of class suppression of the poor by the rich.

Grand larceny was one of the crimes that drew the death penalty; it was defined as the theft of goods worth more than 12 pence, about 1/20th of the weekly wage for a skilled worker at the time. As the 18th century proceeded, jurors often deliberately under-assessed the value of stolen goods, in order to avoid a mandatory death sentence.

Otherwise stealing a loaf of bread to feed hungry children could result in the gallows.

More Than Enough Laws, Already

Our point here is that there are more than enough laws already on the books to deal with any crime committed. Making actions of thought criminal undermines the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which permitted federal prosecution of anyone who “willfully injures, intimidates or interferes with, or attempts to injure, intimidate or interfere with ... any person because of his race, color, religion or national origin”or because of the victim’s attempt to engage in one of six types of federally protected activities, such as attending school, patronizing a public place/facility, applying for employment, acting as a juror in a state court or voting.

Going beyond that surely infringes on the First Amendment.

Adding another federal law for school shootings might well encourage those with mental problems to copycat publicized events for their 15 minutes of fame.

Canaparo suggests:

“Rather than create a new federal crime with which to charge school shooters, federal legislators should instead step back, allow states to pursue justice when one of these horrendous incidents occur, and let the names and faces of those who commit school shootings fade quickly from memory.”