Parrots! Each and every time there is a mass shooting in our country, our lawmakers sound like parrots. First they offer heartfelt thoughts and prayers, which are meaningless without action.
Then, because they are owned by the gun lobby, they oppose common-sense gun safety legislation that helps keep firearms out of dangerous hands. They use their, loud parrot voices and say, “We should enforce the laws already on the books,” Or, “The problem is mental illness, not guns.”
Exactly what I heard after I witnessed six people dead and Congresswoman Gabby Giffords nearly dead with a bullet in her head at her Congress on Your Corner event in Tuscon. Because two good guys without guns tackled the shooter, I was able to take a loaded magazine from his hand.
Our Senator is a pro at those tropes. U.S. Senator Jeff Flake continues to hide behind gun lobby talking points in a cowardly effort to justify his votes against common-sense gun safety laws. Flake displayed his hypocrisy, and his loyalty to the gun lobby, yet again with his vote last month to weaken enforcement of existing laws aimed at keeping guns out of the hands of people with severe mental illnesses that are danger to self or others.
I say: Shame on Senator Flake; shame on you.
In December 2016, President Obama finalized a rule to improve enforcement of existing laws to keep guns out of the hands of people with severe mental illness who are already prohibited from having guns.
Under that rule, the Social Security Administration would submit records into the national background check system for recipients who are prohibited from possessing guns due to severe mental illness. Before the rule was put in place, those records were missing from the background check system. The rule didn’t change who is allowed to buy guns in our country – but it did fix the reporting of records for people who were already legally prohibited from owning guns.
Just recently, U.S. Senators including Jeff Flake brazenly voted to repeal this rule – and President Trump signed the repeal making new law this week. This legislation weakens the ability to keep guns out of dangerous hands and widens the loophole that makes it easy for dangerous people to buy guns in our country.
Senator Flake should be ashamed. On the one hand, he crows about enforcing existing laws and addressing mental health instead of guns – yet he voted to repeal an existing law that did just that. He has helped undermine the enforcement process and mental health issues he has previously claimed to support.
Just two months after the Sandy Hook shooting where 26 were murdered by a man with firearms, Senator Flake said, “We need more effective and broader background checks.” And he subsequently claimed, “…(W)e need to strengthen the background check system, particularly when it comes to the mentally ill.”
Concerned Arizonans and gun violence survivors like me shake our heads and ask ourselves: Whose side is Senator Flake on? The gun lobby’s or ours?
Senator Flake’s true colors will come shining thru in the coming months as National Rifle Association lobbyists push to lift restrictions on firearm silencers and advance their top policy priority – making it legal for dangerous people to carry concealed, loaded weapons everywhere.
As an Arizonan, a gun violence survivor and a volunteer with Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, I’m ashamed of the way Flake is voting in Congress.
I say, Senator Flake, will you finally show some courage by standing up for safety and standing up to the leadership of the National Rifle Association as it seeks to further advance a dangerous agenda of more guns for anyone, anywhere – no questions asked?
Patricia Maisch survived the 2011 mass shooting at Congresswoman Giffords’ Congress on Your Corner event in Tucson and helped disarm the shooter. She is a resident of Tucson.
This article appears in Mar 23-29, 2017.
Thank you for this Pat, it beggars belief that a public servant such as he is can be such a blatant hypocrite and not be called out on it more widely. Ridiculous too that there should be any support for these repeals of sensible laws.
So much misrepresentation, hyperbole, and blatant falsehoods in this article that I will not lower myself to try and respond point by point.
However, this kind of hit piece is to be expected from the left.
Do I like Flake? No, for many reasons. But he got this vote right.
To the boneheads who think this was the right thing to do. First, if you had a clue who the 75K SSA recipients were and how they were treated, you might understand. SSA finds out that someone is not taking care of themselves, investigates, then goes to court to have a Conservator appointed as the individuals have proven not to be able to take care of everyday business, such as paying rent, buying food, keeping themselves clean and healthy. Their funds are then put in the hands of the Conservator who is required to report how the money is used. To put guns in the hands of someone declared incapable of handling day to day living simply belies common sense much less the implications of legal responsibility should these individuals commit a crime. These are not the hundreds of thousands of disabled on SSA benefits, but a small portion of the whole.
Further, the same is true of Veterans Administration beneficiaries with mental illnesses. So, what Flake is saying is that it is OK to have someone with mental illnesses such as PTSD of such severity that a representative payee is appointed to be able to own guns. Do you want someone like that next door with your children running amok outside? Again, this is a small subset of veterans receiving benefits.
Flake is an embarrassment to Arizona. His Duck-horse question at the current SCOTUS hearings was a slap in the face of Arizonans who actually care what a Supreme Court Justice thinks.
#votehimoutin2018
” finalized a rule to improve enforcement of existing laws to keep guns out of the hands of people with severe mental illness who are already prohibited from having guns”
There are already laws in place dealing with people that have severe mental problems being restricted from having guns, they must be declared incompetent by a judge not some flunky in a civil service job. The misdirection here that removing this power to abrogate second amendment rights from all except a judge is disingenuous. You don’t like guns, I get that but so long as the second amendment is there you don’t get to ignore it.