Reply #5: It's not surprising to those who've done their homework on this issue

[jazzhound]

and are aware that scapegoating guns is the cowardly and lazy man's approach to solving this problem. If you don't want to take it from me, take it from Dr. Gary Kleck -- a lifelong liberal Democrat whose won the highest award bestowed by the American Society of Criminology for his groundbreaking study on defensive gun use. Kleck, and citizens with an education on the relationship between guns and crime realizes that social ills are at the bottom of criminal violence -- not the inanimate tools that criminals use. But of course, it's so much easier to take the lazy feel-good approach and slap on a band-aid with "gun control".

Here's another quote that goes to this point copied from the second article:

“The problems with gun violence start long before the shot the kills someone is fired. Those that stand with me today understand the responsibility to protect all of New Jersey’s citizens. The creation of a broad Newark strategy that employs tools other than traditional policing strategies is necessary to tackle this problem.”