Madam Speaker, I spent 20 years teaching criminal justice before I came to the House. The literature, professionally, was already clear that mandatory minimums did nothing to deter crime. No one who is about to commit a crime gets out his or her Criminal Code, looks up what the penalty will be and makes a decision on whether to commit that crime based on whether there is a mandatory minimum. It is simply an absurd view.
However, as I stated in a previous question, we have had more than a decade of experience with mandatory minimums in our country, especially on firearms, and they have done nothing to deter firearms crime. There are many other ways to tackle this crime; mandatory minimums make no contribution.