- United States
- Ore.
- Letter
Real Common Sense Gun Control
To: Sen. Merkley, Sen. Wyden, Rep. Bonamici
From: A verified voter in Portland, OR
September 15
Let’s not enact performative gun laws that do nothing to keep firearms out of the hands of criminals. Please don't support performative legislation doesn’t do anything solves the problem of firearms violence in America. Gun violence is fundamentally an issue that stems from things like access to mental healthcare and people's overall living conditions, things we're not going to fix by playing whack-a-mole with firearm bans when there are more legal guns in our country than people. True common sense gun control means: 1. Education. Firearms safety and marksmanship should be taught in school, or at least be available. Accidental gun deaths are as preventable as unintended pregnancy, but just like sex, if you don’t know anything about guns, you can end up facing life-changing consequences for your actions that you didn’t anticipate. We need to fix that, guns are everywhere and action movies, first person shooter video games etc, are the gun use equivalent of porn. Neither are bad on their own, but neither accurately represent real life. There’s nothing quite like actually firing a gun at a target to teach you how destructive bullets can be. 2. Strict liability laws for gun owners. Two of the worst things I can possibly imagine related to being a gun owner are: 1, someone I love taking their life or another persons life with one of my guns and 2, one of my guns being stolen and used to commit a crime. That said, either one would most likely be due to a failure in my part to keep my guns under my control. Sure there are some edge cases, but if it is not in person, my guns should be under lock and key, and I do not share how many guns I have, where my gun safe is, etc with anyone except those family members closest to me that I have trained in gun safety, know very well, and trust. This should be standard, and gun owners should be responsible for what happens if they don’t keep their guns under their control, unbearable grief is not enough my opinion. Insurance should also be made available and perhaps even required. 3. Harm reduction focused legislation that is not retroactive. For example, magazine capacity limits on new guns, like seatbelts in cars, are acceptable, I don’t like it that much, but I can’t really fight it from a harm reduction standpoint. Don’t outlaw them outright, treat old guns and old magazines like classic cars. We already do this with a wide variety of firearms anyhow, it could be rolled out over time like emissions standards etc. Other legislation about the manufacture and sale of certain designs that are similarly constructed may be helpful too, but again over time and not retroactively making ownership of older firearms that do comply with the new rules a crime. We need focus on harm reduction when it comes to gun violence and violence in general, the same way we should with drug use, and the same way we do with alcohol use, automobile use, vaccines, abstinence-only polices don’t work for STIs. Remember Prohibition? Just Say No and the War on Drugs? Why does anyone think an abstinence-only approach will work for gun violence?
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