Holden: Gun debate should focus on background checks and mental illness

Mayor Kip Holden says the gun control debate should, at the very least, result in across-the-board background checks for gun buyers to curb violence in Baton Rouge and the rest of the country. Last week, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg urged city leaders gathered at the U.S. Conference of Mayors to pressure members of Congress to support President Barack Obama’s proposals to curb gun violence, but Holden stops short of doing so; he knows some Louisiana representatives have entrenched positions on gun rights: “I would not want to waste my time or theirs,” says Holden, who attended the recent mayors conference. He added that that current discussion about placing armed guards in schools, in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut, is misguided; the debate, he says, should instead be centered on treating mental illness. He points out that the shooter at the Sandy Hook school broke into a building window to gain entrance. “You could have had somebody at the front door, but that incident still would have played out in some way,” Holden says. But the loophole where gun buyers can purchase arms at gun shows must be closed, Holden says. “To me that seems like something that’s common sense that we would do,” Holden says. The mayor also says Baton Rouge could rein in violence among juvenile and young adults by following a model program in Kansas City, Mo., where offenders are rehabilitated and trained to find a job up to a year in advance of being released from incarceration, reducing the risk of recidivism. —Adam Pearson