Well, I wrote to my Congressman. The first time I’ve ever done that. He’s a Republican in a very Republican district, though I don’t know much about him. Does writing to your Congressman make a difference? I don’t know. But I did it. And here’s my letter, which I submitted through his website.

This is my first letter, ever, to a Congressman.

My wife and I enjoy shooting. We own guns, and we both have concealed carry permits.

That said, I hope you’ll be open to the President’s proposals. I read through all of them and found very little that I would object to. There is a lot of hysteria about a war on the Second Amendment, and the government taking away guns, and the need to fight a tyrannical US government, but you and I know that this is an over-reaction. Too much of what is being said by gun rights advocates lacks intellectual integrity, and that angers me.

The President’s proposals dealt minimally with new gun restrictions, and placed much emphasis on issues of information sharing, school preparedness, and mental illness. These make good sense, and I would encourage you to support them. It would be a shame to see his proposals killed purely for partisan reasons, or to satisfy the gun lobby.

I do not support renewing the Assault Weapons Ban; it is an artificial category of weapons. However, I’m confident the Republic can survive its renewal. We, after all, seem to have weathered the previous 10 years of the ban without seeing the American way of life crumble before our eyes.

I am much more open to a limit on magazine capacity. While I do have some high-capacity magazines, and would like more, I can live without them.

The prevalence and accessibility of guns in American society means that, inevitably, massacres like Sandy Hook and Aurora will happen again. More innocent children WILL be slaughtered. It is an inevitable side effect of a society which reveres gun ownership. But there are common sense regulations we can impose which could cut down on the number of children and other innocents who are killed. The President outlined many good steps to take. I encourage you to give them the consideration they deserve.

Thank you.

Steve Dennie

In a few hours, the White House will announce their ideas for curbing the gun violence epidemic. I think I can safely (and cynically) predict that the NRA and other gun rights organizations will oppose every single idea, as they’ve been doing with tiresome predictability.

I’m mostly a gun rights person, but I’m really disturbed by their total intransigence. They respond to every idea by saying, “It won’t work. It wouldn’t have stopped….” and then they name one of the many massacres that have occurred. Argument by anecdote. I realize that these organizations are less about gun owners than they are about gun and ammo manufacturers, so that’s a problem. And it’s pretty clear that the Republicans can block most anything from getting through Congress, so you have to wonder, “What’s the point?”

On the other side, Hollywood and videogame makers will also oppose anything aimed in their direction, citing First Amendment concerns.

I’m not an NRA slippery-slope person. In fact, the only slippery slopes I see involve more and more guns, fewer and fewer restrictions, an ever-increasing saturation of violence in entertainment media, and more frequent mass shootings. That’s the reality of American society, clear for all to see. Do we want to keep going down those slippery slopes?

Come on, people, there’s common sense stuff we can do.

UPDATE: I read through all of the materials put out by the White House. I don’t see much cause for concern from gun owners. The president didn’t order up a new fleet of black helicopters to swoop in and confiscate everyone’s guns. Universal background checks are totally reasonable, and the Republic will not collapse if people’s gun magazines are limited to 10 bullets. A good share of the recommendations dealt with sharing of information between law enforcement agencies, school preparedness, and mental health issues (which will be real thorny).

On Piers Morgan, a woman gun rights advocate was asked, “Is there ANYTHING in what the president recommended that you agree with?” She said, “No.” That type of closed-mindedness drives me nuts.