Commentary: Attention Randy Lynch: Your March 8 column (Las Cruces Sun News) raises every hackle I have. You criticize, actually you insult the Las Cruces City Councilors, for bringing and voting on resolutions on which they are wasting time and which show they don't understand what their job is. According to you, “Our City Council ignores the concept of representing the will of the people who put them in office...” I wonder.
You complain that in July 2016, the Las Cruces City Council passed a resolution urging our elected leaders in the state legislature to close the background check loophole and pass a law that would require criminal background checks on all gun sales.
The background check loophole or private sale loophole in the 1993 Brady Act, are terms referring to sales of firearms by private sellers, including those transactions at gun shows, dubbed the "secondary market." This loophole allows any unlicensed person to sell a firearm to any unlicensed resident of the same state, as long as the seller does not know or have reasonable cause to believe the buyer is prohibited from receiving or possessing firearms. Since private-party sellers are not required to perform background checks, how would these sellers have any idea if the buyers can legally possess a firearm? I know for a fact that such private, unlicensed sales took place here in Las Cruces on Saturday, February 24, 2018, at the Sunrise Lion's Club Gun Show at the Convention Center. No doubt this practice will continue in October at the Club's next Las Cruces Gun Show.
In June 2017, Quinnipiac University Polling Institute released poll results: In answer to the question, “Do you support or oppose requiring background checks for all gun buyers?” 94% said they support universal background checks. Last month, the Institute conducted the same poll. This time 97% of all respondents as well as 97% of those who said someone in their home owns a gun, said they support universal background checks. Last month, PolitiFact wrote that while many of the polls of NRA members on this subject are imperfect due to small samples, if several polls show a majority of NRA members favor background checks, that increases the confidence in the findings. After reviewing polls taken as far back as 2013, PolitiFact concluded that 52% to 74% of NRA members support universal background checks.
It strikes me the City Council acted on the cutting edge back in 2016, even though our legislature has left us as unprotected now as we were then.
You hear “rumblings” that the Council is getting ready to put forward another resolution on gun control. In a country where since 2012, we are 25 times more likely to be murdered with a gun than people in any other developed country, I say thank goodness.
You say “Thank God that, besides the 2nd Amendment, our state Constitution says..” No municipality or county shall regulate, in any way, an incident to the right to keep and bear arms” (Article II, Section 6).
Well, Mr. Lynch. I can read our state Constitution too. Article XIX,Section 1: “An amendment or amendments to this constitution may be proposed in either house of the legislature at a regular session...Amendments approved by the legislature shall be voted upon at the next regular election held after the adjournment of that legislature or at a special election to be held not less than six months after the adjournment of that legislature … An amendment that is ratified by a majority of the electors voting on the amendment shall become part of this constitution.”
Here is the resolution this Las Crucen wants discussed and approved by her City Council.
On behalf of the residents of Las Cruces, we demand that every member of our legislative contingent propose, in the next regular session, a constitutional amendment that:
- requires criminal background checks for all gun sales.
- closes the gun show loophole.
- raises the age to 21 for any gun purchase.
- prohibits private ownership of bump stocks and assault hand guns and rifles.
- restricts high-capacity magazine use to the police and military.
You say the City Council ignores the will of the people. I say let's find out.
Jean Berlowitz
Representative of herself and all those who think like her