Medium - Common Sense Gun Laws Save Lives

Op-Ed

By Jahana Hayes

One of the things that I love about campaigning is traveling across the 5th District and listening to the issues each of you care about and realizing that they are the same issues I care about. This week what I heard whether you live in Cornwall or Meriden, was that gun safety is a major concern.

It seems like not a week goes by in our country without an active shooter tragedy, many of them at schools. As a teacher and a mom, the number of school shootings that have occurred just this year is frightening and unacceptable. Each time they happen, we hold brief discussions about the best way to respond before our national attention gets shifted to the next topic. One idea that keep coming up, however, is the notion of arming teachers.

As most people know by now, I am an educator. What people may not know is that my husband is a police officer. When we get dressed for work, he puts on a gun and I do not. He goes to work to protect and serve, I go to work to give kids the tools they need to succeed. The idea of arming teachers and mixing these two professions is insane and as an educator and as your congresswoman, I will vigorously oppose it.

But simply opposing bad ideas is not enough we need to go on offense.

We need to take guns out of the hands of dangerous people by strengthening our background check system.
We need to eliminate the "gun show loophole" and require background checks for gun sales at gun shows and online.

We need to adopt universal background checks in this country so that there is no longer a loophole allowing people to buy guns online or at gun shows without a background check.

We need to hold gun owners accountable for the safe storage of their firearms.

I live in a house with guns and I know radical groups like the NRA who block common sense measures supported by the majority of Americans doesn't speak for responsible gun owners. It's time to stand together and stop these mass shootings and that's exactly what I will do as your congresswoman.

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