The murders and other crimes that police say were perpetrated by Joseph Eaton recently have renewed calls for more laws related to firearms in all their iterations. The weak link in such laws is the lack of voluntarily abiding by such laws, or any others for that matter.

Clearly Eaton did not care to abide by any of the laws he broke, which were many.

How about a background check? Yeah, right.

The point being missed by those answering the klaxon call for more laws is this: People like Eaton don’t care about laws, it’s a “catch me if you can” mindset. Good laws are voluntarily abided by. The violations in the Eaton case are of good laws that 99.9% or more of us living in Maine follow willingly, me included. But not the Eatons of the world.

I’ve yet to see a “common-sense law” that would prevent everything that Eaton did, given his “screw the laws” mindset, that does not run afoul of our constitutional rights regarding firearms, as established by the Heller, McDonald and Bruen SCOTUS decisions.

Steve Martin
Arundel