[image_caption]Stephen Venable[/image_caption]
See, I have two boys, and each night at dinner I try to make my job as a corporate lawyer sound as exciting as possible. I tell them of phone calls I’ve had with people in exotic places like Chicago, New York and Dallas. Usually, their eyes start to glaze over a bit.
This session our legislators have a chance to go home and tell their kids, grandkids, nieces or nephews or neighbors that in their job, they were heroes, maybe even superheroes. We all know superheroes save lives. And this session our legislators are considering two gun safety bills that do just that; they save lives.
The Legislature is considering two bills, one that would expand Minnesota’s criminal background check law to cover all gun sales, including private sales arranged online or at gun shows, and a second that would provide for guns to be taken from an individual who has been shown to be an extreme risk to himself or others.
Consistent and effective in reducing deaths
We continue to see data that expanded criminal background check laws are consistent and effective in reducing gun deaths. In some cases, in other states that have passed similar measures, gun deaths have been reduced by up to 40 percent, and states with these laws have seen reductions in many different forms of gun violence, including homicides, suicides and officer involved shootings. Data is still being collected on extreme risk protection orders, but early studies have shown they are significant in reducing gun suicides, which are the leading form of gun death in Minnesota.
When I talk about heroes with my boys I tell them about my dad, Billy Venable, and my younger brother Bill. They were both shot and killed in a random home invasion 15 years ago.
My dad was a high school football and wrestling coach, a larger than life figure for me. I got to see how much his players and students admired him — but he was my dad. He was my hero before he died protecting our family.
My brother was a 17-year-old kid with everything in front of him. Bill had just finished his senior football season, playing for my dad, and he had just been accepted to college. He was fun-loving and good-hearted, offering free hugs, for a dollar. He was the baby of our family, in the best way possible, but in his last act, racing to defend our dad, he became my hero.
Not a unique story
My story is not unique. In Minnesota, we have more than one death a day due to gunshot. Nationally, that number is almost 100. The circumstances of shootings may vary, but the conclusion is the same. We have too many gun deaths; too many fallen heroes.
We need more champions on gun safety issues — more who are willing to take a stand against a lobby whose leadership seems intent only on selling more firearms, rather than considering their impact.
Last fall voters in Minnesota, led by groups like Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, made gun safety a leading issue in our midterm elections. The results were clear. Minnesota elected a House of Representatives committed to enacting gun safety legislation.
So, now legislators, the opportunity is yours.
Be heroes.
Better yet, be superheroes.
I’ll tell my boys about you.
Stephen Venable is an attorney and a Fellow for the Everytown Survivor Network. He lives in Minneapolis with his two sons.
WANT TO ADD YOUR VOICE?
If you’re interested in joining the discussion, add your voice to the Comment section below — or consider writing a letter or a longer-form Community Voices commentary. (For more information about Community Voices, see our Submission Guidelines.)
Both of these proposed bills are absurd. Neither will stop crime as we have seen elsewhere. Almost every mass shooter passed a background check. All these laws do is place undue burdens on law abiding citizens and makes criminals out of anyone that doesn’t comply or forgets. You can’t even lend a hunting partner a gun for more than 12 hours without breaking the law. Also, the fact they changed perjury (making a false claim on an emergency protection order) to a misdemeanor means they are encouraging people to lie about others to have their guns taken.
Both of these are unconstitutional. Neither will stop gun deaths. Luckily the MN Senate will sink both of these bills.
“….all these laws do is place undue burdens on law-abiding citizens….et. al. What a stretch Bob. You mean like no texting/driving laws, seat belt laws, speed limits, driver’s licences, stop signs, etc….those ‘burdens’ ?
Common sense is all that the majority of citizens people want Bob, including the majority of those gun owners who look at the big picture and understand the problem that the NRA has created.
Stephen, thank you for your thoughtful and well-written article.
Dennis, you are comparing Apples to Oranges. But I’ll take that one on as well… pretty much all of those laws you listed shouldn’t exist. Those things should be up to the individual to decide if they want to take those safety precautions or not. Speed limit laws are just a revenue source for the State/local govts. If they truly wanted to stop people from speeding, the penalties for doing so would be orders of magnitude more harsh than they are now. The right to travel freely is for individuals which means that drivers license laws and license plate requirements infringe on that right. Those laws should only apply to commercial drivers.
These new bills would place undo burdens on an individual’s right. You have to fill out paperwork to have your entire history searched for any crime or possible mental illness diagnosis (what happens IF or when you get on that list by mistake like all those people that ended up on the no fly list?????). You have to wait 7 days (minimum) before you can take possession of the gun. Family members don’t get a break either.. a son must get a background check to receive a gun from his father. Then that paperwork is “supposed” to not be kept as a registration but that’s already in place anyway as all FFLs keep copies of their NICS background checks for the FEDS. Any time a check is done, the govt knows that person is buying a gun..do you honestly believe they aren’t keeping that data given that they already capture every phone call, text message, email and website people go to?
As for the emergency protection orders… first off they make it a misdemeanor for lying about one. That means there is basically no punishment for lying about someone being a danger (certainly nothing that would stop an angry ex, family member, neighbor etc from making claims). Btw, why are they changing perjury from a felony (up to 5 years in prison) to a misdemeanor (90 days max) in this bill??? Those who are report now have to spend their own money to go to court and prove they are not a danger (including lost time at work to attend court). Not to mention anyone holding their guns is not liable for damage to those guns as long as it’s not negligence. (do you really believe they will take care of a stranger’s guns like the person who owns them would? not a chance).
Those are all undo burdens on people who simply are or want to exercise their natural right to self defense. There is no common sense to the left or to any of these gun laws. Not one mass shooting would have been prevented by either of these bills.
Those are not undue burdens, those are scenarios of an active imagination who makes up rights and privileges, and the argments are inconsistent — on one hand government can do nothing right but then on the other they are expert on infringing on your privacy AND keeping perfect records.
Your life must be very burdensome Bob. Imagine the burdens countless Americans are feeling right now as try to pick up the pieces of their lives after losing a family member to senseless and easy avoidable gun violence.
Yesterday New York passed a Red Flag bill that will alert authorities to individuals that pose a danger.
The Parkland shooter was known to law enforcement but his access to guns was not stopped.
The text of the law is here: https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2017/a11148
It is absurd to think it is unconstitutional. Saving lives from maniacs and bullies with weapons is not an “undue burden” on anyone but those who simply don’t care about deaths, and think of people as “bad” or “good” or “law-abiding” or “criminal”. Those are behaviors any person is capable of committing.
Trivial arguments have no place when we have seen senseless mass killings committed by people who amassed firepower and planned to kill for no good reason.
I wonder how Republicans can sleep at night pretending there is some kind of constitutional right to own anything.
Rights, after all, come with responsibilities.
The CEO of Sig Sauer was shipping weapons to Columbia when the situation there prohibited ANY guns to be sold. The German guns were sent to the New England subsidiary and then on to Columbia, to kill or threaten others, whether they were “good” or “bad”.
People cannot be trusted to do the right thing when money is to be made or conflicts lead to aggression and violence.
That’s why we GOVERN and use the RULE OF LAW.
The term “property rights” comes to mind when I sleep at night. Of course, all citizens are free to give up all of their property to the government if they wish.
“shall not be infringed” means no restrictions, no limitations, no permits etc. The Parkland shooter was allowed to keep his guns because the BCSO failed to do their jobs. As such, everyone involved in the BCSO should have been charged as an accessory before the factor in every death caused by that kid. They were told by people at the home that he put a gun to someone’s head (more than once) which in FL is felony assault with a deadly weapon… a 20 year mandatory prison sentence. Yet they refused to arrest him.
So yes, these laws are unconstitutional. These laws will not stop mass shootings nor will they reduce gun deaths. Criminals won’t obey the laws and the mentally ill will simply kill someone and take their guns (or just steal them) like what was done at Sandy Hook.
California and New Jersey are the Promised Lands for gun grabbers. They’ve pushed the restrictions and fees to the limit the SCOTUS will allow, and yet both are just as bloody as ever. That’s because the criminal populations have not gotten the message their legislatures sent out.
But then, reducing violence isn’t the point.
There are two kinds of murderers. Career criminals and “instant criminals.”
For the first, guns are the tools of the trade. If you participate in private gun sales, there is a real possibility that your gun will get into the hands of a career criminal, resulting in a murder. If you think it is too much to have background checks to make sure your gun doesn’t get into the wrong hands, you are in no way a responsible gun owner.
The “instant criminal” is someone with a gun or who buys a gun who has never been violent but decides to shoot themselves, others or both. The guy who murders his family and then kills himself is a perfect example. The red flag law applies . Consider it a form of self defense for those without guns from those with guns who are acting strangely. It requires that the case is made and the removal of guns is temporary.
Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Every day murdered Americans lose those rights, because someone with a gun took their life. The right to murder your family, co-workers or innocent students does not exist. We need to deprive those who are willing to pull trigger from easy access to guns.
Correction: For the first, there are almost no chance your private gun sale will end up in the hands of a career criminal because they are such a small percentage of the population. I have never once heard of a case where a career criminal was caught and found to have bought his gun legally from a private party. They either steal them or buy them from other criminals on the street.
As for red flag laws, if someone is acting weird, get away from them or arm yourself so they cannot harm you. MN House bill 9 does not require any due process.. someone can simply lie about a person and get their guns taken away. It’s just a misdemeanor in this bill instead of a felony beef for perjury. A max of 90 days in jail and 1k fine is nothing for an angry ex or angry neighbor etc. Also, unless a crime has actually been committed, no one has the legal right to take away a person’s property or rights, period. No matter how strange that person may act. I truly hope these red flag laws not only end up costing the States huge amounts of money in lawsuits but that they also get struck down by the SCOTUS.
We need to put actual criminals in prison for a much longer period of time so they can’t harm others anymore AND we need to start putting mentally ill people into some form of care center if they are that mentally disturbed. Plus we must also start going after doctors that prescribe SSRI drugs to people under 24 which the labeling on those drugs clearly states should not be happening. That is why you have young people shooting up schools, malls etc… those drugs are making them into rage monsters (the labels clearly state it can happen) and whoever is giving them those drugs needs to be held accountable for it.
My prayers go to this family. Such a tragedy. As we want to make laws to better our society, we need to make sure that gun laws are effective and punish those that need to be punished.
About 86% of Americans and more than 80% of gun owners already favor universal background checks. What is having more checks going to accomplish? Extending waiting period under the Brady Bill had no effect on murders or robberies and even saw a slight increase in rapes and aggravated assault.
Less than 1% of guns used in crime are obtained from gun shows and those guns are almost always small guns, not the large, high-capacity, semi-automatic guns that get the spotlight as being the problem.
Two-thirds of people who die by firearms are criminals shot by other criminals.
As for the ‘instant criminal,’ that is almost never the case. The time of buy to crime is about 11 years for those that can be traced. That means that most of the rare times when there is an ‘instant criminal,’ the gun was obtained on the street or stolen. It’s extremely rare for someone to just go and buy a firearm with the sole purpose to immediately use it.
As for those that are in a vulnerable state, care needs to be made on who would fall into that category. Mental health is a serious issue and just making gun laws based on this is not the smartest path. We are giving the government the ability to limit one’s freedoms. The care needs to be in that this could lead to a slippery slope that could be easily abused by those in power.
Same old, neanderthal comments , “proposed bills are absurd. Neither will stop crime” “bloody as ever” .answer (no supporting proof or logic of course, that says do nothing because nothing is required, etc, etc. Their real response is Let the carnage continue, the higher the body count the more the NRA likes it because they can push the you need a gun to protect yourself. Despite the statistics, the neanderthals continue the same call, need my boom boom machine! Year to date mass murders but oh wait, got another one from Pennsylvania today! Same discussion, same neanderthal response. Year to date mass murders but oh wait, got a couple more from Pennsylvania & Texas today!
https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting
There are thousands of gun laws on the books in the US. Yet none of them have stopped any of these shootings. So what will adding more laws do to stop criminals who already don’t obey the laws on the books????? You do not understand the problem so you simply focus on an object instead of the people who are actually committing the crimes and violence.
Nearly every mass shooter in the last few decades was on some sort of SSRI drug either when they did the shooting or had just stopped taking them shortly before then. That is a mental health issue. Those drugs are not meant to be given to anyone under 24 yet doctors keep doing it.
Those who weren’t on an SSRI drug were typically a religious nut (Ft Hood, San Bernardino, etc) which could be deemed an act of terror.
60% of all gun deaths in the US are suicides.. Clearly a mental health issue. Of the 40% that are left, the extreme majority are criminals using illegally gotten guns in places like Chicago and Baltimore. Out of all those that are criminals, exactly none of those deaths will be prevented by either of these laws. When we get right down to it, you’re talking about a very low number of gun deaths.. far, far less than the number of people who die from falling down stairs (which happens to be around 12,000 a year). Out of the 30,000+ gun deaths each year… only 4,000 (12%) or fewer are actual criminal homicides or murders. (which is half the total of gun deaths directly related to criminal gangs and drug wars).
Falling down stairs is far more deadly as are car accidents.
It will be interesting just who decides each “red flag” situation. Hopefully any law enacted will spell out the exact circumstances as to what constitutes a constitutional reason to deprive a citizen of their property, and for how long.
Thank you to the author for sharing what is a true tragedy, and for pursuing what means that he feels necessary to enact changes that he believes in.
1) Cite your sources.
2) A very emotional story, and I don’t want to be cold-hearted, BUT… you fail to state how universal background check or ‘red-flag’ laws would have prevented the death of your father and brother. People who have so little regard for the law as to be committing home invasions will not be deterred by yet another law. I am betting that they did not have a legal right to have the guns that were used in the crime. Worse yet, there are plenty of laws already on our books that were probably broken by the perps (example–illegal straw purchases) that are not prosecuted NOW.
The burden will fall on law-abiding citizens. They will be easy targets for prosecution of technical infractions. The thugs will be undeterred.