Constituent Letter: Take Action or Step Down

Senator Pat Roberts, Senator Jerry Moran,

I am profoundly sad and utterly baffled.  I don’t know what kind of people my federal representatives in Washington, D.C. are, and that includes you.  I used to believe that people from Kansas had some of the same values and beliefs that I, another Kansan, do.  But you don’t – it seems you don’t care about your constituents, or your fellow U.S. citizens, in the least.  If you did, you would have taken up the issue of gun control long before now, before people were shot in Lawrence, Kansas, or Las Vegas.  I would have thought that the killing of children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut would have motivated you to address this issue, to propose a bill, to co-sponsor a bill… to do SOMETHING besides express your sympathies.  They were beautiful children, for God’s sake!  And you did nothing, except talk.

When Sandy Hook didn’t move you, I was sure that the shooting of members and staffers of Congress at the baseball practice last June would surely make you pay attention.  Those are your own peeps – surely a shooting that was so “close to home” would move you!  But no.  No movement, nothing but hollow words of sympathy for the victims and some mild public outrage to mollify your constituents.

Please explain to me how money from the NRA matters more to you than the murder of children or the shooting of your fellow Congressmen or 59 people in Las Vegas?  Help me understand the morality of a man – you – who is more interested in getting re-elected than he is in the well-being and safety of the people he was elected to serve.

All this talk about 2nd Amendment rights and “they’re going to take away all our guns” is unmitigated horseshit and you know it.  There are a number of actions that could be taken to protect the citizenry, none of which you seem willing to consider at all:

• Universal background checks – for all sales, at all venues, for every person.  If you want a gun, you wait a week while we check you out.  Doesn’t matter whether it’s a gun show or an auction or a retail outlet: UNIVERSAL BACKGROUND CHECKS.
• No one, NO ONE except the police and the members of our military need automatic weapons, or even semi-automatic weapons (which clearly can be altered to function automatically, as we have just seen with the Las Vegas shooter).  NO ONE.
• The law currently being considered (and backed by the radical SOBs at the NRA) to legalize the use of gun silencers is morally repugnant.  In a case like the Las Vegas tragedy, it would make it more difficult for the “human targets” as well as the police to identify where gunshots are coming from.

When the framers of the Constitution met and wrote that great document, including the Bill of Rights, the 2nd Amendment had to do with very different kinds of guns than we have now, and it was meant to allow individuals to protect themselves in their homes and to form a “well-regulated militia” when called upon.  Furthermore, the Supreme Court has ruled that the 2nd Amendment is NOT unlimited and does not prohibit all regulation of either firearms or similar devices.  But you have allowed yourself to be bullied and threatened by the NRA into believing that there should be no regulations AT ALL.

If you continue to choose not to act to protect the lives and safety of your constituents, then I can think only that you lack the courage and fortitude to stand up for us. And if that’s true, then step down, because you don’t belong in Congress.  It takes people who are brave enough and strong enough to stand up to wrong-doing and who have a moral center to govern our country.  Based upon your lack of action on this very important issue, you are clearly not one of those people.

Sheilah Philip