My email response to our D representative from District 17. She seems to be fairly moderate and a supporter of Section 24 of our Constitution as well as the 2nd Amendment of the Bill of Rights.
"Hi Again Representative Stonier,
Thank you for your considerate reply and vocalized support of our Constitutional rights. I agree with you about us needing more mental health solutions. Making it harder for criminals to purchase firearms is also a good thing as long as the law-abiding citizens of our state don't lose their rights in the process. One other solution you failed to mention is getting our courts to use existing laws to hand down maximum sentences to criminals, and to make those sentences tougher. We can affect change by doing this.
I would like to focus on your comment about stronger background checks. Please understand that NONE of the recent gun violence tragedies would have been stopped by universal background checks. The system we have in place through the NCIS is complete and works perfectly. This is an important point because the push for universal background checks is a false step in securing our children and adults against harm. They will not make our citizens any safer.
The one thing that universal background checks will accomplish is that it will give our government a list of law abiding citizens who own guns. This is something that the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional in 1994 because the 2nd Amendment was specifically included in the Bill of Rights to protect us from harm, not only from other citizens who would harm us, but from tyranny by our government. Please refer to the 27th and 28th Federalist papers in which James Madison clearly outlines the founding fathers reasons for this Amendment.
When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, police went door-to-door and collected firearms from citizens who had them to protect their homes. This left many vulnerable to the roving gangs of lawless looters and thieves that we've heard so much about. With a universal background check system, the federal government would then have this kind of list at their disposal and use it in case of a national emergency much like what happened in New Orleans. This is clearly a breach of our rights and exactly what the founding fathers warned us against. In case of national emergency, we should all be able to protect our families against the lawless. I would hope you'd agree.
One more argument in favor of the universal background checks is that they would cover the so-called gun show purchases. It is important to note that gun show purchased firearms account for less than 2% of firearms used in gun-related violence across our country. Nationwide, only a few hundred murders are related to these firearms and I would suggest that someone intent on using a firearm to commit a crime would find another source if this one were not available. In our state, less than 100 crimes are committed with these firearms annually, and the vast majority of those, over 90%, are gang-on-gang crime. If universal background checks were allowed in WA, it may stop 1 or 2 of these crimes per year, if that, but would succeed in restricting the rights of ALL of our almost 7 million citizens. This makes zero sense.
I'd like to keep the lines of communication open with you, Monica. I see in your response a reasonable and responsible tone. Please always consider a cost/benefit analysis to the rights of all WA citizens when considering changes to existing gun laws. Laws passed using emotion in the wake of tragedies, instead of common sense and reason will always do more harm than good.
Thank you and please feel free to write or call me at any time if I can be of service to you.
John W
Vancouver, WA"
