SAUGERTIES – “Sane people don’t kill other people. People who suffer from mental illness commit murder,” Saugerties Police Chief Joe Sinagra said Thursday.
The comments by the president of the Hudson Valley Police Chiefs Association come in the wake of the murder of students and teachers in Texas this week and the killings of African Americans at a Buffalo supermarket earlier this month.
“Everybody does have a right to bear arms, but every sane person has a right to bear arms. And what we really need to be screaming for and what we need to implement when it comes to our gun laws is, number one, waiting periods – there should be a national database, and secondly, we really need to take a look at the mental health wellbeing of an individual before we turn around and give them a license to have a firearm or allow them to go out and purchase a longarm, like an AK-47 or a shotgun,” he said.
Sinagra said the system has failed those with mental illness, as more care and treatment must be afforded to them.
“Simply taking guns away from people will not deter the illness that causes them to act out so violently against others,” the chief said. “If it’s not a gun, it will be some other deadly instrument that will be used to inflict their reign of terror.”
