A Reply From Portman; My Response Back At Him

Regular readers may recall my recent letter to my Senators ("To Portman & Brown, Re Background Checks", Buster's Blog 4/8/13).  Yesterday, Portman sent me an email reply.  It's a copy of what he called his "op-ed" piece Our Right To Bear Arms.  I doubt it appeared in any reputable newspaper.  It's essentially an ass-kissing term paper written for Professor Lapierre's course on constitutional law.

If you want to read it, it sucks, but here's the link:
http://www.portman.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/columns?ID=eacdd119-4bf6-48b8-a952-faec83cb9fd1


Since he sent me a term paper, I thought I'd respond in kind.  Sent it to him today:

Dear Senator,

Last week, I asked you to vote to allow the Senate to take up legislation to reduce gun violence.  You did not and instead have sent me a copy of your column Our Right To Bear Arms.  It’s a slippery, fact-twisted piece of one-sided writing.

You say we should reduce gun violence “through better enforcement of current laws.”  What a farce!  Nobody has done more to undermine current laws and make them harder to administer than the NRA and supporters like you.  The NRA’s dark money lobbying efforts on rider-receptive lawmakers such as you have crippled the ATF, the government’s chief enforcement agency:

·         The ATF may not centralize or computerize gun sales records.  It takes weeks to trace a gun.

·         Since the ATF is prohibited from requiring that gun dealers report their inventory, it’s impossible to tell which dealers may engage in unlawful sales.

·         The ATF may not transfer any part of its responsibility or authority to another agency, e.g. the FBI or DEA.

·         The NRA backed a law change requiring the ATF Director to have Senate Confirmation.  The ATF has been without a Director since 2006.  NRA-friendly Senators have blocked President Obama’s nominee since 2010.

So don’t talk about law enforcement.  You’ve done a fine job of weakening enforcement.

You say we need to “address the root causes of violence.”  Well, duh!  Apparently, though, you want to do absolutely nothing else until we identify those root causes.  While you search for the roots, the rest of us would like to do something about the results – people killed and wounded by guns.

And you could probably find the information you seek if the NRA hadn’t successfully lobbied in 1996 for a federal law prohibiting the funding of any gun violence research by the CDC.  At this point, the CDC has two types of gun-use data – old and none.

 

You say an assault weapons ban is based on “cosmetic characteristics” and that the ban in place from 1994 to 2004 had “no measurable impact on gun violence.”  1. The differences between a bolt-action .22 and a semi-automatic AR-15 with a 100-round magazine are more than cosmetic.  2. During the ban period, there was most certainly a measurable decrease in assault weapons sales.  Most Americans consider that to be a good thing.

You say universal background checks are “flawed” essentially because such a system would never be perfect and could never offer guarantees.  Granted, but that’s no reason to do nothing.  That’s a false choice.  They may not be perfect, but background checks will save lives.

You say that people who are caught lying on a background check are rarely prosecuted.  You say in 2010 the NICS denied 72,659 gun sales for false statements, and yet you complain of just 13 criminal convictions.  Rob, if you want 72,000 prosecutions, you'd better give the ATF and other law enforcement the resources, staff, and authority they need.  You can’t have it both ways.  As for me, I’m just glad that 72,000 lying-ass bad guys were unable to buy a lethal weapon.  Seems like a positive to me.

You say background checks wouldn’t work because some states don’t adequately report mental health records to the NICS, and some don’t report at all.  That’s because federal law doesn’t require that states report to the NICS.  Completely voluntary!  Who lobbied hard for that loophole?  Your buddies at the NRA.  These states are being intentionally uncooperative.  It’s their option and it’s crazy.  We can’t leave this sort of thing to the states.  Effective gun violence legislation must be federal.

You say that you “strongly oppose” a national gun registry and imply that the President has called for one.  He has not, nor has anyone else (other than me) in the current debate.  But why are you so opposed?  We’re almost all nationally registered, effectively, by our Social Security number, by our driver’s license, by the Selective Service, etc.  What’s the problem?

You say that an “assault weapons ban, limits on high-capacity magazines, and universal background checks would infringe on 2^nd Amendment rights.”  The 2^nd Amendment has become an NRA perversion.  It is a single sentence, poorly constructed, written 222 years ago by people who couldn’t possibly conceive of today’s military-grade weapons.  And if they could, they certainly would not have thought that equipping every farmer in 1791 with such weapons was a “right” or a good idea.

You end by stating that any such legislation would do “little or nothing to prevent gun violence.”  On that point, Senator, you are heartlessly, horribly and completely wrong.

Once, not so long ago, you were completely wrong on the issue of gay marriage, until your gay son led you to change your tune somewhat.  I was hoping you could do it again on gun violence legislation.  You’ve resisted so far, but go ahead – surprise me, make my day and change your gun law positions.

Sincerely,

Buster Gammons

 
P.S. While you’re surprising me, please introduce legislation to repeal gun makers’ immunity from product liability lawsuits.  What’s up with that?  There’s no such immunity for, say, tobacco.  It takes decades for cigarettes to kill you.  A gun does it in a split-second.