Over at my alma mater Slog, there’s a guest post up by Dave Hoover, a Colorado police sergeant and uncle of Aurora theater shooting victim A.J. Boik, urging support for Washington’s Initiative 594:
In Colorado, we responded to the unacceptable reality of gun violence by requiring background checks on private sales. It’s the best thing we could have done to honor the lives of our loved ones. Washington has an incredible opportunity this year to prevent future acts of gun violence by passing Initiative 594’s common sense background checks.
Since 2013, Colorado’s background checks on private sales have worked well for everyone in our community. Ninety-eight percent of the over 11,000 private sale background checks performed have been approved while 227 prohibited purchasers were stopped from purchasing firearms. I have personally used the system twice: once to purchase firearms and once to sell them. It’s a simple and convenient system that keeps firearms out of the hands of those who shouldn’t have them—felons, abusers, and the dangerously mentally ill.
It’s a moving and thoughtful piece. Read the whole thing.
(Presumably up next on Slog, following the equal time doctrine they adopted on the minimum wage debate in the immediate wake of my departure, will be an anti-594 guest post from a potentially disenfranchised mass shooter.)
“anti-594 guest post from a potentially disenfranchised mass shooter” – I am assuming, Goldy, you won’t volunteer to write that op-ed post at slog :).
I-594 is a good step towards keeping firearms out of the wrong hands, but it doesn’t go far enough. What really needs to happen is as change in gun culture, where gun owners keep their weapons locked up and inaccessible to children, thugs, felons, and the mentally ill.
If a firearm is not in the immediate physical control of its owner, it needs to be locked up. Imagine if Adam Lanza’s mother had kept her weapons (a small arsenal) in a gun safe and inaccessible to her troubled son. There are countless tragic examples out there of foolish gun owners who leave their weapons lying around just waiting to be misused or stolen. The careless cop in Marysville who left his gun where his 3-year-old son could pick it up and kill his sister.
Well, they could mention the competing I-591. Or the fact that like most mass murderers the aurora theater shooter passed background checks several times.
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Where background checks were very inadequate.
As we found out through the Cafe Racer shootings there is no mechanism short of involuntary institutionalization to strip a person of their second amendment rights. This has played out before. Family members warn police, police can’t do anything until the citizen represents a danger to the public. They don’t legally represent a danger until after they’ve killed someone or been involuntarily institutionalized.
Allowing family members to petition a judge to remove guns from another family member’s possession and place them on the cannot purchase database. To which form of abject tyranny will the NRA compare that?
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Oh, don’t get me wrong, I put that badly. I want to get rid of the guns.
The main attack on I-594 is going to come centered around I-591 I think. I-594 doesn’t do much to protect or prevent and may very well lead to Washington adopting 591, a law preventing further universal background check legislation.
Trying to integrate some kind of mental health checks into gun ownership sounds like a great idea to me. Let the NRA spew about the rights of the mentally disturbed to own AK-47s. Why must we always pussyfoot around the NRA? Lets poke those fuckers with a sharp stick until their crazy starts to become evident to everyone.