Federal Firearms Policy

Open email to Sen. Cornyn (Texas):

Dear Sen. Cornyn,
    Thank you for your form letter on the federal firearms policy.
    In your letter, you concluded that I am committed to reducing gun violence in America. This is true in part. I am committed to reducing all sorts of violence, including that from automobile accidents and natural disasters, such as floods and tornadoes.
    You went on to say that you want to prevent the horrific tragedies of Newtown, Aurora, and others from ever happening again, and you believe this begins with fully enforcing existing gun laws.
    From there, you went on to discuss the National Instant Criminal Background Check System as developed by the NICS Improvement Amendments Act of 2007. You are now co-sponsoring the NICS Reporting Improvement Act of 2013 (S. 480). This legislation would plug holes in the background check system that have allowed violent criminals to slip through undetected.
With all due respect, I believe you are concentrating on the wrong thing. It is not that we want to continue massive gun violence, such as the school and theater shootings, but we do not want to increase controls on the holding of firearms by the general public. Guns are only one tool among many to kill people. As you know, there are explosive devices, knives, poisons and others, which the nefarious can dream up. We should not be concentrating on the implements, but rather on the perpetrators. I think the NICS Act and your Improvement proposal partially addresses that and should be continued. Mentally unbalanced people and those committed to an ideology of violence, such as terrorists, need to be controlled, but reducing availability of firearms is not the way to go.
To put this in perspective, the Second Amendment to the Constitution says that the right of citizens to bear arms shall not be infringed. This amendment was put there because it is important. In order to have an understanding of its importance, one needs to look at the context of the times at which it was written. The people had been subjected for many years to a despotic government and with creation of an independent state realized that despotism could happen again. Therefore, the Second Amendment exists as part of our Constitution not to allow mass murder activities by individuals or small groups, but rather to protect the people from its government.
Many of us do not want to give up our right to protect ourselves from a despotic government, of which you may be a part, in order to decrease internal civil violence by use of guns. Forget public desire for target shooting or use of firearms in hunting. Those uses are insignificant and in the same category as reducing gun violence. The main point of maintaining firearms in the general public arsenal is for possible need for protection against government. Some of those gun rights have already been infringed and need to be rescinded. Gun permits should not be required for concealed weapon or open carry. We should not be concentrating on implements for possible damage, but on the people who commit such atrocities.