By Seth and Rebecca Larson
Here at FREDS Guns our focus is always on safety and how we can better our community. Initiative 1639 would not make our schools or state safer.
Instead, it would strip the rights away from our trained military under the age of 21 and our heroic veterans who would give their own lives at any time to protect others and our Constitutional rights.
A law becomes a piece of paper that no criminal respects, which weakens law-abiding citizens, turning them into victims.
Thousands of semi-automatic weapons exist in Washington state; how does changing a law make you safer?
Schools are already a “no gun” zone, yet that hasn’t stopped school shootings.
We become a safer community when we are armed and have each other’s backs — becoming a community of action, protecting and serving as our military and law enforcement do daily.
The Second Amendment wasn’t put in place to control hunting or safety; it was purposely placed there to ensure tyranny would never infiltrate this great nation.
This is why Washington law enforcement opposes I-1639, because they too see this initiative as an attack on every law-abiding citizen’s Constitutional rights.
In 2016, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) stated that 0.000118 percent of the population died by firearms, a number that includes suicides. This proposed law wouldn’t help the mentally ill or stop suicide.
Adequate background and mental health checks are already in place, without having to sign over our HIPAA [Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act] privacy rights forever.
Also, these statistics don’t show the thousands of lives that were saved by firearms.
A 2013 study ordered by the CDC stated that “defensive use of guns by crime victims is a common occurrence.”
Gun control is exactly that, another way to try to control the people when guns are what gives power in the first place — power to protect yourself and your loved ones, your property and the innocent.
Let us be a state with a moral compass. Let that be our common sense.
Instead of criminalizing responsible gun owners, let’s step forward as a united front of people who safely store their firearms and take safety classes to be responsible and equipped gun owners.
We need to stand up and defend our Second Amendment right to bear arms, and do it with integrity, keeping our community safe, where there is no need to make more laws.
The FBI 2016 statistics on robbery in California, where the gun laws are some of the strictest in the nation, are at an alarming number of 54,789.
We are not victims. We are patriots who will continue to protect our community with our Constitutional right to bear arms.
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Seth and Rebecca Larson are the owners of FREDS Guns 2.0 in Sequim.