Dear Senator, I oppose Universal Background Checks

[homerange]

Outstate Democrats can be persuaded and are our best chance. Contact your senators!

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Dear Senator ___________, (lookup)

Please review the included photos. These pictures were taken yesterday, Feb 21st outside Room 15 at the Capitol. These are only some of the hundreds who showed up 2 hours early to voice their opposition to Senator Champion's Bill SF-458, aka, Universal Background Checks.

Why would so many Minnesotans make such a big deal about this seemingly innocuous bill aimed at curbing illegal access to guns?

Because, put simply, SF-458 is a REGISTRATION scheme. You may disagree with that interpretation, but that is the perception held by hundreds of those who came to the capitol yesterday, and of untold thousands of Minnesotans who were unable to attend in person.

Further, SF-458 would:

• Ban the private sale of firearms
• Ban the transfer of firearms between family (including spouses, aunts/uncles, cousins)
• Prohibit loaning firearms for training, hunting, or sporting purposes
• Require all transfers to take place through a Federally licensed dealer
  
• Force registration of firearms that is kept on a computerized government registry of gun owners

It is a myth that a majority of people support Universal Background Checks (including NRA members). This survey was funded NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg, hardly a bastion of unpartisan polling. According to the only legitimate survey of NRA members, 92% oppose a new federal law banning the sale of firearms between private citizens.[1]

What NRA members DO support is requiring dealers to perform background checks, whether at a gun show or in a storefront. But those laws already exist:

• It is ALREADY a crime for a federally licensed dealer to sell a gun without doing a background check – that's all dealers, everywhere, including at retail stores, gun shows, flea markets or anywhere else.
• It is ALREADY a federal felony to be engaged in the business of buying and selling firearms, for livelihood and profit, without having a federal firearm dealers license.
• It is ALREADY a federal felony for any private person to sell, trade, give, lend, rent or transfer a gun to a person you know or should have known is not legally allowed to own, purchase or possess a firearm.

The penalty for selling a gun to a person who is a criminal, mentally ill, mentally incompetent, alcohol abuser or drug abuser is 10-year federal felony. That's now, today, with no changes to the law.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics[2], only 1.7% of convicted felons acquired their firearms at a gun show. SF-458 would unreasonably infringe on the rights of private citizens to own, sell, and gift firearms and do virtually nothing to prevent criminal access to guns.

Lastly, I would like to respond to one of the most common sentiments shared in both public testimony and implied by senators sitting on the committee:

"If it will save only one life, it will be worth it."

Many legislators over many years have passed many laws on the same premise. But when it comes to gun control, many of these laws have had the opposite result.

As the Boston Globe reported this week, in 1998 Massachusetts legislators passed the "strictest gun control laws in the country". Representatives claimed it would "save lives" and "prevent future gun violence". It didn't. As the number of legal gun owners plummeted seven-fold, violent crime soared. A decade later the murder rate in Massachusetts has doubled (from 65 to 122), while the murder rate in neighboring states and the rest of the country declined.[3]

In this case, not only did legislators not “save only one life”, they in fact destroyed hundreds of innocent lives through the unintended consequences of their laws.

For the sake of peaceable Minnesotans who desire the freedom to protect themselves and their families without submitting to federal gun registration, I urge you to OPPOSE Universal Background Checks and Senate File 458.


Sincerely,

___________________
Outstate, MN

[1] http://www.nraila.org/news-issues/news- ... nited.aspx
[2] http://www.nraila.org/news-issues/fact- ... ation.aspx
[3] http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2013 ... story.html

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[BigBlue]

Who are the outstate DFL legislators that should be targeted with this communication?

[homerange]

Who are the outstate DFL legislators that should be targeted with this communication?

Anyone outside the 494 loop.

[Lights]

I sent a copy of that to my senator. She is inside the 494 loop but is on the fence DFLer.

[homerange]

I sent a copy of that to my senator. She is inside the 494 loop but is on the fence DFLer.

Awesome. If metro DFLers are on the fence, that is a very good sign.

I went ahead and compiled a list of the outstate DFLers here.