Letter to the Editor: Time to Say ‘Enough’ to Gun Nuts

I am writing to commend you [this letter was originally sent to Congressman Mike Gallagher] and thank you and your colleagues, Rep. Martha McSally and Rep. Adam Kinzinger, for calling for a restriction on the gun modifier “Bump Stocks.” I was heartened by your statement, which I read in the Peninsula Pulse, that you spent months and sometimes years training to use automatic weapons in the military. You said, “They were never intended for widespread civilian use.” You further commented about the mass murder in Las Vegas and said, “…the chilling audio reveals a rate of fire more in line with my time in Iraq than a Wisconsin shooting range.” I thank you from the bottom of my heart for those words!

Of course, now this senseless slaughter of innocent Americans has happened again in a church in a small town in Texas. Will the American people finally say, “Enough?” I pray that we will finally come to our senses. Like most Americans, I support gun ownership for hunting. I see no rational reason for typical Americans, civilians, to be allowed to obtain weapons of war, or any other tool which adapts guns designed for hunting into weapons of war.

To those who say, “Guns don’t kill people, people do,” I say that guns are a tool for people to allow them to kill more efficiently. They have no other purpose. Because we are human, and endowed by God with a brain like no other species, we have created many tools to help us be more efficient in our daily lives. Guns are one of the most dangerous tools and must be regulated by us because we know that we cannot always predict our fellow humans’ behavior.

I am sure you are aware that the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, officially the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act of 1994, expired due to a sunset provision, in 2004. I know that several efforts have been made to reauthorize the ban and they all have failed. I believe that now is the time to again reintroduce the law, with a provision to make it permanent, and pass it.

It is shameful to me that our U.S. Congress failed to pass a law after the tragic mass murder at Sandy Hook elementary in Newtown, Conn., in 2012. It is also shameful that President Trump repealed President Obama’s Executive Order, which prohibited the purchase of guns by those Americans who have been determined by a court of law to be mentally incompetent.

I believe that now is the time for Americans to put aside their apathy and stand up for the sanctity of human life! I hope I can count on you to lead the way in this fight. I will support you in any way that I can and pray that others will join me!

Jan Welborn

Sturgeon Bay, Wis.