Obviously this takes some discretion away from the judge. Experience with judges over my career has been varied. Like any other group of people in the community, you have some you agree with very strongly and others you don't agree with so much, in terms of their judgments.
However, particularly in small communities they know, judges have very good opportunities to respond to crimes through judgments in ways that would best help the communities.
Certain minimum sentencing does work, particularly for certain offences. In fact, firearms offences belong to the type of offence impacted by minimum sentencing, but you have to look at the degree of impact and the alternatives.
As I mentioned earlier, there are significant alternatives being worked with presently.