A proposed amendment to Minnesota’s current gun regulations would severely increase punishments for reformed felons caught possessing bullets, ammunition or other firearm-related projectiles.
The proposal, put forth by Sen. Ron Latz, DFL-St. Louis Park, would create a five-year mandatory minimum sentence for felons with a history of violent crimes caught possessing ammunition or bullets. That’s the same sentence that Minnesota currently has for felons caught with a gun or firearm.
The bill was unanimously passed at the senate, but some organizations are speaking out against the harsh sentence. According to the Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines Commission, the updated law would lead to an increase in prisoners, which would put a strain on the state’s prison system. They project that roughly 114 more overflow beds would need to be added to the prison system by 2019, and they believe that the law would increase the number of offenders by anywhere from 3.2 to 15 percent.
Harsher Gun Sentence Not Ideal
Minnesota is already dealing with the problem of overcrowding in its prison system, as harsher sentencing guidelines for DUIs, drugs, assaults and sex offenses have put more people behind bars for longer periods. That said, Minnesota still has one of the lowest prison population rates in the US, so the state may not have felt the need to build new facilities or expand current prisons. The state is currently housing overflow prisoners on some county jails across Minnesota as a temporary solution.
The fact that possession of a single bullet can send a person to jail for at least half a decade seems preposterous, and even Sen. Latz, who proposed the bill, is now backing away from his proposal. He believe the five-year minimum sentence may be “problematic.”
“I think the policy move was in the right direction, but now that we’re gathering all this complete information and putting it in full context, I think it’s worth re-evaluating the length of mandatory sentence,” Latz said.
Aside from adding to an already overcrowded system, analysts project that the bill would only add to racial disparities in the state’s prison system. Here’s a quick snapshot of the current and projected racial landscape in Minnesota prisons:
- African Americans make up 6 percent of the population in Minnesota, but they account for 35 percent of prisoners.
- Native Americans make up 1.3 percent of state residents, but they account for 9.5 percent of prisoners.
- The Sentencing Guidelines Commission projects that about 52 percent of offenders under the proposed law would be black, while about 8 percent would be Native American.
- Projections suggest only 32 percent of new offenders would be white.
In the end, while the roots of the proposal have some merit, it’s clear that the proposal in its current state would do more harm than good, and it needs to be re-evaluated.
Related source: MinnPost
