Gun Owners Group: We Oppose ‘Feel Good,’ ‘Uninformed’ Gun Control Measures
One day after the fatal shooting of two Virginia journalists, news reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Andy Ward, the Independent Firearm Ownership Association (IFoA) has issued a statement on gun control measures:
“Once again America grieves over a senseless tragedy caused by a mentally deranged dangerous person committing a horrible multiple murder with the use of a firearm. Once again the Pavlovian reaction by many politicians and their media cohorts is to focus on more ‘gun control.’
We at the ‘IFoA’ support useful ‘gun control’ legislation calculated to keep guns out of the hands of violent criminals, unsupervised juveniles and dangerously confused, mentally ill individuals.
We vigorously oppose ‘feel good,’ uninformed, ‘do something’ proposals that are irrelevant to the problems we face or worse, interfere with the increasingly important, constitutionally protected rights of hundreds of millions of Americans who commit no crimes, never misuse guns, and have every moral, legal and practical reason to own and use firearms for protection, sport, hunting or collecting.
Two and a half years ago IFoA president Richard Feldman met at the White House with Vice President Biden after the Newtown massacre. This was his statement. We ask, ‘what’s changed?’
Independent Firearm Owners Association January 10, 2013
The White House, Washington, DC
- Let’s agree upon a return to public civility. We are all concerned Americans and we must be considerate of each other and address these issues in a rational and adult fashion.
- Let’s agree that we are united in opposition to the misuse of firearms, especially the access of guns to criminals and mentally unstable individuals.
- Let’s ensure that we have the people, the processes and the technology to make law enforcement most efficient and effective in investigating gun crimes and stopping armed criminals. Let’s provide ATF with the resources and the technology in the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN) system for linking crimes, guns and for tracing guns used in crimes. This means giving ATF and all of law enforcement the technology tools to accomplish this goal in a sustainable way.
- Let’s agree to enhanced penalties for straw purchasers and gun traffickers who put the public at risk by arming criminals. A serious approach to gun laws requires getting serious about the consequences for violating them and backing them up with real prosecutions by the Department of Justice.
- Let’s agree to require the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) at gun shows. NRA’s Wayne LaPierre supported this to Congress back in May 1999. Our proposal is called the Gun Show Preservation and Protection Act of 2013.
- Let’s begin a national firearm safety awareness campaign and provide the resources to encourage people to keep their firearms safe and secure from those who should never have access to them.
- Let’s agree that our civil commitment laws don’t prevent dangerous behavior — they require it! This must change.
- Let’s agree to prevent the issues that divide us from moving forward with the multitude of action items that we are united as Americans in achieving.
Criminals hurt people everyday. Victims and their families deserve action, not rhetoric, not sloganeering and certainly not senseless and counterproductive infringements on the freedoms all lawful gun owners and a majority of Americans cherish.”
