DUNEDIN, Fla. -- Five days removed from the most recent school shooting that left 17 people dead, there isn't yet an answer to preventing another tragedy.
But we need to do something, said Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri when asked about changes to a background check program. In fact, Gualtieri says, there isn't much of a program to begin in the state nor country.
He was asked to comment on the shooting during a press conference Monday, Feb. 19, announcing a more than 20-person sweep of unlicensed contractors across the county.
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"What we have is a system ... (where you're) declared incompetent, or whether you have a disqualifying crime as a conviction," said Gualtieri, speaking of ways a person can be barred from buying a gun. "You can tell a deputy last night that you're going to kill your mother and still walk into a gun shop today and buy a gun."
He joins Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd in calling on the Florida legislature to make changes to the state's Baker Act that would allow deputies to take action if someone shows signs they might carry out an attack.
The act is a means of providing people with emergency services and temporary detention for mental health evaluation and treatment, either on a voluntary or an involuntary basis.
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Gualtieri, like Judd, says it's not reasonable to pick and choose which guns someone can or cannot have access to purchasing. Accused shooter Nikolas Cruz is said to have used an AR-15 to carry out the Valentine's Day shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
There's hypocrisy in the law if people were not allowed to buy such weapons and then be asked to fight with them in Iraq, said Gualtieri, who says society needs to focus less on guns and more on processes and systems to ensure individuals who can't possess guns shouldn't be able to do so.
That includes considering arming some school personnel and making sure there are enough school resource officers on staff.
"I don't think that restricting anybody's rights -- and even an 18-year-old -- to possess any type of a firearm is necessarily going to solve this problem," Gualtieri said.
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