Gun Control and Second Amendment Rights

I spent most of my career as a prosecutor keeping criminals off of our streets.  I know from experience that providing law enforcement with the tools they need to combat illegal gun crime is critical to our community’s safety.  We can strike a balance in protecting the Second Amendment while keeping weapons away from those who wish to harm us.

A constant thread in tragic mass murders is the mental instability of the shooter.  While we have an important debate over the effectiveness of existing regulations in preventing these unspeakable crimes, we need to also focus on mental health strategies that might help prevent the tragedies from happening in the first place.

A good example of this dual strategy is the Public Safety and Second Amendment Rights Protection Act, which I co-sponsored.  The legislation improves the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) to help keep guns away from criminals, allows information on mental health disorders to be shared with NICS, and creates a commission to study mass violence.