It’s almost always a bad idea to compare your political opponents to Nazis. Not only does it show an utter lack of suitable historical reference, it’s also often wildly off the mark. So when Glenn Beck — the keynote speaker at the NRA’s recently completed convention — compared New York City’s mayor to Hitler, it was more than an eyebrow raiser. (For those interested in historical context, it’s ironic that a Jew, whose most infamous “authoritarian” transgression for the right was a ban on excessively sized pop, would be pilloried as the second coming of the Third Reich, but I digress.)

The audience reaction of laughter and applause confirmed that this once bipartisan group of hunters and reasonable gun owners has devolved into a cesspool of far right-wing craziness. Also speaking before the convention were a slew of discredited figures: former half-term governor Sarah Palin; failed presidential candidate and noted homophobe Rick Santorum; and rocker Ted Nugent, who last year predicted, “If Barack Obama becomes the president in November, again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.” It goes without saying that Nugent is neither in jail nor dead.

Wayne LaPierre, the group’s executive vice president who cited the Boston bombing as a reason to own a gun, told the irrational faithful that “there is nothing the president will not do to get something, anything, through Congress to advance his agenda to destroy the Second Amendment. Nothing.” Certainly his language can rile up a crowd but it has no basis in reality.

This is the same man who blamed the video game industry in the wake of twenty dead kindergarteners at Newtown. “There exists in this country a callous, corrupt, and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people,” he said in December.

Getting back to Glenn Beck, though, illustrates the paranoid schizophrenia of the NRA. In his speech, he claimed that it was not just the president that was out to get people’s guns; it was a mass conspiracy on virtually every level of society:

“Charlton Heston’s words were meant to wake people up. He needed to shock us into realizing who our opponent really was: an out of control growing government under Jimmy Carter.

Today we are in a different place than we were in 1976. The problem is worse today. It wasn’t just Jimmy Carter, just as it isn’t just this president. It’s not just the Democrats either. It’s the Republicans, too.

The problem is everywhere.

It’s in our media, churches, educational systems, in our own homes. It is the Progressive ideology, which is antithetical to our Constitutional Republic. They want to fundamentally transform the country.”

Beck, of course, was referring to Heston’s famous line, “I’ll give you my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands!” which the now-deceased actor repeatedly employed to push back any measures to regulate guns. Beck goes on to use more alarmist rhetoric, saying that, “Our Constitution, our rights, our way of life is at stake. The freedom of all mankind is at stake. And because of that, so are our souls.”

Got that? Glenn Beck and the NRA faithful see themselves as revolutionaries in a fight against an oppressive government under Barack Obama — and they haven’t ruled out using force. The gun owners of America — not its peaceful citizens — are the last vanguard of freedom. Anyone familiar with this country’s violent history of political assassinations (four presidents have been murdered at the barrel of a gun) would recognize that this type of fiery rhetoric is dangerous.

(As an aside, if you don’t share the same trembling fear of philanthropic former president Jimmy Carter, you’re not alone. The Carter Center has literally facilitated the near eradication of the guinea worm parasite that once afflicted millions. In the United States, he’s built homes with Habitat for Humanity every year since 1984. President Carter’s Nobel Peace Prize was awarded for his Center’s efforts “to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.” His recent political criticisms have been against the use of torture and the invasion of Iraq, hardly controversial.)

The majority of Americans disagree with Beck — as do the courts who are the arbiters of our system of government. Not only are measures to curb gun violence popular, they’re perfectly constitutional. The Supreme Court has upheld gun control measures short of a blanket ban on all guns. Just as no one claims there is an absolute right to free speech (i.e. you cannot threaten people, slenderize, or even hold demonstrations without a permit), there is not an absolute right to gun ownership.

Except for NRA fanatics.

They believe that gun ownership is a fundamental right that cannot be infringed under any conditions. Even the most modest measures to prevent guns from being purchased by criminals, the mentally ill or terrorists are rejected by the NRA. “Expanding background checks at gun shows will not prevent the next shooting, will not solve violent crime and will not keep our kids safe in schools,” they said in a statement.

Their logic, if you want to call it that, is baffling. Unless you prevent all violent gun crimes, a law is not worth passing. What if we applied this to any other crime? For instance, speed limits. People speed all the time but I think generally everyone would agree that they are in place as a deterrent AND are justified. To take the NRA’s position to its logical end, why even have any laws since none of them will ever prevent all crime?

Of course we could apply any number of logical tests to their positions but none of them would stand up to scrutiny. More important than discrediting their ridiculous positions is discrediting their organization in the minds of not only politicians who write laws in Washington and state houses across the country, but also amongst the general public.

The NRA does a good job of this on their own, especially when they select a new president who has called the Civil War as the “War of Northern Aggression”. The company that they keep amongst some of the most ill-reputed people in and outside of Washington — and the organization’s leadership that releases outrageous statements on serious policy matters — is more than enough to soil their credibility. Respectable individuals who care about their reputation would be crazy to associate themselves with the NRA.

The Republican Party can either allow the NRA to continue to attach itself like a parasite, voting in lockstep with an organization that is wildly outside of mainstream American politics, or they can burn it off before it sucks them dry of what little credibility they have left with the voting public. It’s one of multiple elements that they will need to jettison in order to be competitive in future elections. Thankfully for them, many of those far right voters overlap and can be severed without doing long-term damage to the party. The long-term damage would come from continuing a relationship with an organization as toxic as the NRA. And as for gun owners, if they want to actually protect their right, they shouldn’t support such an extremist leadership. The NRA is an organization that has come to burn bridges rather than build them.

Maryland is a progressive model for the nation. Their unemployment rate is nearly a full point lower than the national average, they increased spending on infrastructure and mass transit, lowered the penalties for marijuana possession while legalizing medicinal use, eliminated the death penalty, kept down the cost of college tuition, passed a ban on assault weapons and high capacity magazines, funded an offshore wind farm and did it all while balancing their state budget. This is what progress looks like.

Meanwhile the federal government spends money on the military as if we’re in the middle of World War III. “Defense” spending has increased by 81 percent over the past ten years to the point that today we spend nearly a trillion dollars a year on it — a third of the federal budget. This includes spending dedicated to war, expensive weapons systems and necessary expenditures to veterans who were injured fighting for our country. Our veterans deserve good care and we should fund it fully but our continued presence in Afghanistan only guarantees that more Americans will die and get badly injured. It exacerbates the ballooning military debt while doing nothing to enhance American interests.

Instead of investing in the future with funding for education, infrastructure, and science (i.e. energy and medical research, as well as space exploration), we put all of our eggs in aggressive military policies that do not reflect the threats that we face. Combating terrorism does not involve armies of hundreds of thousands of troops. It’s as much about building relationships with foreign countries as it is using a military option. Likewise, the threats that we face from actual nations are fairly limited. North Korea can barely get missiles off the ground without them failing and Iran’s economy is completely tied to exporting oil. Any conflict with them would immediately result in a crippling of their economy.

At the end of the day, Americans have a choice to make. We can make the necessary investments in the future or we can be beholden to the military industrial complex that has strangled the U.S. Treasury to the point that we have annual deficits that are near or in excess of a trillion dollars. It’s not a coincidence that the budget deficit is about the same amount that we spend on the military.

Personally, I’m tired of the headlines that say we don’t have the money to make the investments that are so badly needed to build a 21st century economy. States like Maryland have given us a blueprint for building a thriving economy. We need politicians who will stand up to defense lobbyists or else our economy is looking at falling permanently behind our foreign competition. The money is there to wisely invest in the future. We just spend it on the wrong priorities. It’s time that we change that.

I’ve long been a critic of the filibuster. The Senate’s rules that sixty percent of its members vote in favor of a measure is an onerous requirement for a democratic society accustomed to majority rule. Today, the chamber once again showed how ineffective it is at governing when a 55-45 majority voted in favor of expanded background checks. You read that correctly. Fifty-five senators voted “Yes” and the amendment still failed because of the archaic rules of the Senate.

The universal background check proposal negotiated between conservative Republican Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Blue Dog Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia was a watered-down amendment that would have required a background check for purchasers at gun shows and online. Previous proposals offered by Senator Chuck Schumer of New York would have also included private sales between friends, neighbors and family. The Toomey-Manchin amendment stripped this language to accommodate conservative senators.

The reason that the measure failed to reach the sixty vote threshold is clear: the NRA opposes any attempt to thwart gun purchases, even if it means allowing criminals and the mentally ill to purchase a gun. They continually lied about the bill in alarmist fashion, saying that it would lead to a gun registry and eventually to confiscation. Then they used threats against senators: a vote in favor of common sense background checks would be considered a vote against the Second Amendment, promising to unleash hordes of cash to defeat their re-election bids.

I’ve argued in the past that the filibuster is itself unconstitutional and should be abolished. The Constitution calls for a majority vote in the House and a majority vote in the Senate with the Vice President acting as the tiebreaker. The Vice President never needs to fulfill his role, however, because the rules of the Senate simply allow minority members to bottleneck any action with as few as 41 senators. This practice must end. Contact your senator and tell them that you support eliminating all filibusters. We cannot allow a small minority of extremists to grind our democracy to a halt.

Voters who cast their ballot for Barack Obama in November have a right to be angry. After criticizing Mitt Romney as a “reverse Robin Hood” and deriding Paul Ryan’s budget plan as “social Darwinism” (a plan which would privatize Medicare, costing the average senior an extra $6,350 in out-of-pocket medical expenses), the president has proposed a “compromise” budget that would take the ax to Social Security.

“Disguised as [a] deficit reduction plan, it’s really an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country. It’s nothing but thinly-veiled Social Darwinism. It’s antithetical to our entire history as a land of opportunity and upward mobility for everyone who’s willing to work for it — a place where prosperity doesn’t trickle down from the top, but grows outward from the heart of the middle class. And by gutting the very things we need to grow an economy that’s built to last — education and training; research and development — it’s a prescription for decline,” the president described Paul Ryan’s budget during the campaign.

Now the president takes his own swing at social Darwinism. Politicians in Washington have found a nice new term for cuts to Social Security. They call it “chained CPI“, which would reduce cost of living adjustments (COLA) to less than inflation. The chart below reflects different COLA projections: blue represents a more generous COLA for the elderly due to higher health costs, red is the current model, and green represents chained CPI.

The president pretended to be a defender of the poor and middle class in the campaign, declaring that “no current beneficiaries should see their basic benefits reduced” and “the administration will not accept an approach that slashes benefits for future generations.” Now that he has won re-election on a mandate to preserve both Social Security and Medicare, the president has reversed course and is looking to strike a “grand bargain” with Congressional Republicans on deficit reduction. The problem is that he plans on doing so not by addressing the main drivers of our deficit – the bloated military budget which is rapidly approaching an unsustainable trillion dollars a year or historically low tax rates – but instead by targeting the very program that defines the modern Democratic Party.

Forty-four percent of seniors would live in poverty if Social Security were not in existence today. It is a vital program for the well-being of this nation’s most vulnerable citizens. It has greatly reduced the incidences of homelessness and premature death.

Any tampering of the Social Security system should keep these facts at the forefront of discussion. But in Washington, the impact that cuts have is often one of the least concerns. Many politicians, especially on the right, see Social Security as just another line on the federal budget.

This is a problem for a number of reasons. Social Security is a program that is fully financed by beneficiaries. Social Security is a retirement insurance program that you pay into your entire life. It is a guaranteed benefit, a social contract that our government has had since the New Deal.

Second, a quick look at the budget will show that Social Security does not contribute to the budget deficit and has not for decades. In fact, the federal government has raided the Social Security Trust Fund to pay for things such as wars, tax cuts and stimulus measures. Amazingly, $2.7 trillion was owed by the federal government to the Social Security Trust Fund in 2011, according to a Trustee report.

In other words, the government has taken your retirement money to pay for its pet projects. The Afghanistan and Iraq wars, for instance, are estimated to cost a stunningly high $4 to $6 trillion over the long haul due to veteran medical costs and interest on the debt. Now politicians in Washington want to add insult to injury by cutting benefits to retirees after they blew their life’s savings on everything except for Social Security.

As is typical in Washington parlance, instead of calling chained CPI what it is – a benefit cut – they are instead referring to it as “savings”. And for his part, President Obama says that his proposed budget is a “compromise” which includes chained CPI as a component to deficit reduction.

The problem is that Congressional Republicans weren’t even at the bargaining table. Speaker Boehner rejected the plan out of hand on the basis that it includes any tax increases at all. In fact, it’s a remarkably generous proposal that offers $2 in spending cuts (to Social Security and other cherished programs of Democrats) for $1 in tax increases.

“If the president believes these modest entitlement savings are needed to help shore up these programs, there’s no reason they should be held hostage for more tax hikes. That’s no way to lead and move the country forward,” Boehner said.

Once again, the president has negotiated with himself. Boehner can now turn around and say that Obama’s “compromise budget” is the starting point for negotiations and we end up near the Ryan budget as an end point. This is not how a negotiation is supposed to work.

The president has failed voters who believed in his message of fairness. He has thrown seniors and future retirees under the bus in favor of an ever-elusive “grand bargain”. Let the Republicans be the ones to call for cuts to a program that is vitally important for seniors. They’ve been doing it since the program was founded nearly a hundred years ago. We’re Democrats. We believe in strengthening Social Security, not leaving seniors at the mercy of overzealous bean counters who harp about the deficit but ignore its true causes. President Obama, we deserve better.

My favorite four letter word starts with an F but it’s not a profanity: FREE. Download Operation Bald Eagle — absolutely free — at Barnes & Noble, Apple’s iBooks, Kobo or Smashwords to celebrate the release of its sequel, Dusk Before Dawn! B&N’s Nook and Kobo have free apps, as does Apple for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.

Agent Ethan Clark faces one of the most challenging missions in his thirty year career working for The Agency in Operation Bald Eagle. A Chinese businessman attempts to acquire a highly valued American technology company with sensitive U.S. government contracts. Intelligence suggests a possible cyber attack is in the works, but all is not as it seems. A thrilling adventure across the globe awaits.

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The sequel to Operation Bald Eagle is finally available. I am proud to release Dusk Before Dawn after a long five month process of writing, proofreading and editing. My heart and soul went into perfecting every word in this book. It is, in my opinion, the best piece of fiction that I have done. Fans of Operation Bald Eagle will definitely not be disappointed.

Dusk Before Dawn is a spy novel featuring the veteran CIA Agent Ethan Clark and his young colleague, Martin Frost. The story takes place across the Atlantic where a Russian invasion of Ukraine upends a presidential election to replace a corrupt U.S. government. Agent Clark must investigate a possible coup in Moscow at the same time that monied interests at home threaten American democracy itself.

If you enjoy spy novels and political dramas, Dusk Before Dawn is an absolute must-read. It’s available for the affordable price of $2.99.

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Today, the horribly named “sequester” goes into effect, forcing $85 billion in spending cuts over the course of the rest of 2013 all because Congress failed to enact an alternative bill. The cuts are divided evenly between defense and non-defense items, including discretionary spending on everything from unemployment benefits to education funding. Medicare will also be targeted but not Social Security. The economic impact of these cuts is not yet clear but with anemic GDP growth and a stagnant job market, any cuts in government spending in the United States would put a dent in the economy.

So what could Congress do to replace the automatic spending cuts? Well, for one, they have the power to restore all funding without instituting any cuts or tax increases at all, but aside from that, there are a number of ways for the government to save money that would make a whole lot of sense, yet encounter political resistance for a variety of self-interested reasons.

1. Medicare Buy-in

One of the easiest ways for government to raise revenue without raising taxes is by instituting a Medicare buy-in program. An estimate by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office pegged the savings over ten years at a substantial $110 billion. By itself, it solves one-tenth of the sequester.

What does a Medicare buy-in plan mean, though, you ask? It means that the federal government would allow individuals on the open market to buy into Medicare. Currently, the program only accepts citizens over the age of 65, which is financed through payroll taxes that you pay over the course of your life. The problem with this is pretty obvious: senior citizens are an extremely high risk pool compared to someone who is, say, thirty years old.

Basically a Medicare buy-in program would work like this: anyone under the age of 65 could get a plan by paying for a premium based on a specific set of conditions (age, whether they’re a smoker, etc.). You would get all of the benefits of Medicare, the country’s most efficient health insurer in terms of cost, without breaking the bank. Since Medicare is not a for-profit venture, the plans would also be cheaper than private insurance.

So what’s preventing Medicare buy-in from taking effect? That one is pretty simple: private insurance companies killed it in the Senate in 2009 because the price efficiencies of a Medicare buy-in program threatened their profit margins. However, any discussion about deficit reduction should include it.

2. Closing military bases overseas and ending wasteful programs

Any serious deficit reduction has to start at the root of the problem: military spending. Between fiscal year 2001 and 2010, the military budget increased a staggering 81%. The United States spent $768 billion on defense spending in fiscal 2011. This is more than we spend on either Medicare or Social Security. When you add on top of that the $141 billion for veterans benefits, defense-related spending tops $900 billion a year. That does not even include the cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which alone amounted to over a trillion dollars!

This is not to suggest that we should cut veterans benefits or the pay of our fine men and women in uniform, which account for only about a quarter of military spending. Our fighting forces are relatively lean compared to the top-heavy leadership. The ratio of officers and flag officers to uniformed personnel (per 10,000) is at a historically high 7. This is up from around 6 in 2001 and fewer than 2 during World War II.

As the New York Times put it in 2010, “there are now 963 generals and admirals leading the armed forces, about 100 more than on Sept. 11, 2001. Meanwhile, the overall number of active duty personnel has declined to some 1.5 million from 2.2 million in 1985, even though the Army and Marine Corps have grown since the Sept. 11 attacks, to carry out the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

However, the bulk of military spending is on expensive equipment that we do not even need or use, overseas military bases, and on research and design for future weapons. To give you an idea of how overstretched the U.S. military really is, consider the fact that we have active duty military personnel stationed in a ridiculous 148 countries. Let that sink in: 148 countries.

This includes nearly 55,000 stationed in Germany and 35,000 in Japan, over sixty years after World War II ended. Likewise, Korea has nearly 30,000 military personnel as well. The problem is that once we start a conflict, we never leave these countries. The same would have been true of Iraq (where there were plans for permanent bases) if the American people had not demanded an exit.

3. Financial transaction fee

An interesting proposal from Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa would raise $352 billion over ten years for the federal government without even touching income tax rates. The idea is pretty straightforward: charge a three penny fee for each $100 of a trade on stocks, bonds, derivative contracts, options, and other complex Wall Street instruments. Initial public offerings are exempt.

Importantly, the fee would target high-risk speed traders who threaten the financial system with their erratic behavior and short-term gain outlook. Those looking for long-term investments in solid companies, rather than speculative trading based on events, would be minimally impacted by such a fee. It would also have a decidedly small effect on the poor and middle class (for example, $50,000 worth of trades would come to a measly $15), whereas the sequester cuts target these groups almost exclusively.

Combined with the Medicare buy-in, a financial transaction fee would save the government the equivalent of roughly half of the sequester. The other half could easily come from reductions in military spending by closing unneeded bases, winding down the war in Afghanistan, eliminating wasteful weapons programs and counting the interest saved on the debt (which is substantial when you’re talking about over $900 billion in defense-related spending per year). The only thing stopping Congress from doing any of this is the political will to do what is right.

Few cities in the world have been transformed as much as Chicago. First a small trading post, the city rapidly expanded to the nation’s second largest by 1890 (only forty years prior it was not even in the top 10 largest cities). The Great Chicago Fire, industrialization and post-industrialization have all changed the face of the Second City over the decades. Here is a look at the city’s skyline over the past roughly 100 years:

The first image was taken in 1926 from the top of the Tribune Tower near the Chicago River. It’s facing north along Michigan Avenue with the only noticeable building remaining being the Water Tower (which itself was one of the few buildings to survive the Great Chicago Fire). Image two was taken in 1970 slightly further south of the Tribune Building, which can be seen just beyond the brown office building. In the background is the John Hancock Center, which was the tallest building in the world outside of New York City when it was built in 1965. Today, it is the fourth tallest building in Chicago at a height of 1,127 feet. The third image was taken in 2012 from the top of the Sears Tower, the tallest building in the world until 1998, which is several blocks southwest of where the other images were taken. It includes most of downtown Chicago, including the Trump Tower (2nd tallest in Chicago), Aon Center (3rd) and John Hancock (4th).

I’ve been reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s absolute must-read Team of Rivals, which is a political biography of Lincoln and his three main rivals for the presidency (Ohio Governor Salmon Chase, Missouri Attorney General Edward Chase, and New York Senator William Seward). She has a number of interesting anecdotes that I could share, but one that popped out most was a part of his history that I had never been aware: his opposition to the Mexican-American War.

Abraham Lincoln is perhaps best known for his role as president during the American Civil War, making him in a sense the ultimate “war president”. It was a war that he did not choose to fight but one that was forced upon him. More importantly, though, was his reluctance to use military force at all. In many ways, it can be reflective of recent American history when a not-so-distant president invaded a foreign country named Iraq.

Eighteen months prior to his election to the House of Representative from the state of Illinois, the United States declared war on Mexico. The country was eager to expand, a part of the “Manifest Destiny” which would see the nation extend from Atlantic to Pacific. The president of the time, James Polk, sent General Zachary Taylor into disputed territory – the United States claimed that its border with Mexico extended to the Rio Grande with its recent acceptance of Texas into the Union, while the Mexicans claimed that it extended to the Nueces River.

Many contemporaries of the time, predominantly Whigs, would argue that Polk hoped to provoke a response from the Mexican Army by sending Taylor into the disputed territory. Abraham Lincoln was one of those critics. Lincoln would say that, “It is a fact that the United States Army, in marching to the Rio Grande, marched into a peaceful Mexican settlement, and frightened the inhabitants away from their homes and their growing crops.” Lincoln was not convinced that the war was legal, saying that it was both “unnecessarily and unconstitutionally” initiated by Polk.

As a freshman member of Congress, in the form of a resolution on the House floor, Lincoln challenged the sitting president of the United States to show the House of Representatives “whether the particular spot of soil on which the blood of our citizens was shed” belonged to Mexico or to the U.S. He believed that the onus of proof was on the president to show that “Mexico herself became the aggressor by invading our soil in hostile array.” Without so much as a response from Polk, Lincoln declared that since he “cannot, or will not do this,” the war was “from beginning to end, the sheerest deception.”

The point is not to re-litigate a war that occurred over 150 years ago, but that we have checks and balances for a reason. As we saw then, and as we have seen in recent history, the rush to war and the justifications for them are often an overzealous means to an end. Lincoln wisely pointed to the deception of his time, even if it was unpopular at that moment, and still managed to capture the presidency a decade later. We need leaders like him in Washington to push back, ask the tough questions and take the political heat. Not because it is popular, but because it is right.

Later today, President Obama is expected to unveil a series of steps that the country should take to combat the epidemic of gun violence in the United States. I would like to offer my two cents on the subject by sharing a letter that I wrote for my current representative in the House, Jackie Walorski, and Indiana’s two senators, Joe Donnelly and Dan Coats. I encourage you to do the same with your members of Congress. Feel free to re-use portions of this letter if you don’t have the time to write your own. The important thing is that we mobilize to combat the powerful interest groups that would rather have us do nothing. And now, the letter…

Dear Congresswoman Walorski:

Congratulations on your recent narrow victory and on being sworn in as the representative for the 2nd Congressional District of Indiana. As a 2nd District resident, as a voter and as a citizen of these great United States of America, I am writing on the important issue of gun violence.

Following the recent tragic events in Newtown, Connecticut, where twenty children and six staff members were gunned down in cold blood, the nation has turned to our elected leaders to seek a solution to the carnage taking place on a stunningly frequent basis. Whether it is the mass shooting in Tucson, where Congresswoman Giffords miraculously survived a gunshot to the head, or the horrific mass shooting in Aurora, where a man armed with body armor and an assault rifle brutally murdered twelve and shot fifty-eight others, we are becoming all too accustomed to these tragedies. This nightmare must end.

Our country has a proud tradition of gun ownership dating back to before the America Revolution. However, just as we have adapted our laws to reflect the changing times on other issues, we also must modernize our gun laws to reflect the realities on the ground today, including the vast technological advancements that have taken place since the 1700s. Back then a one-shot musket was no guarantee of a kill even with a precise aim. It would take well over ten seconds to reload just one round even for a well-trained member of the Continental Army.

Today, we find ourselves with weapons that are truly awe-inspiring — and not in a good way. The Bushmaster assault rifle used at Sandy Hook Elementary is capable of firing hundreds of rounds in a minute. It is meant for the battlefields of Afghanistan, not for the hallways of an elementary school. Let us not pretend that military-style weapons should be in the hands of civilians. These are machines of death, not of play or self-defense. The only civilian who truly needs these weapons is someone who means to do a great deal of harm in a fast, efficient manner without regard for life.

Some powerful organizations, who have a vested financial interest in selling these weapons of mass murder, have attempted to sensationalize the issue by claiming that gun safety advocates support taking away all guns and abolishing the Second Amendment as we know it. Conspiracy theorists, with millions of views on YouTube, have even gone to the extent of claiming that Sandy Hook was a hoax designed by the government to take away people’s guns. This could not be further from the truth. We can and should protect the Second Amendment while also coming to the realization that this is not the 1780s. The Founders never intended for us to unleash firepower onto our streets that frankly would be more lethal than even artillery of the time.

Assault weapons and the size of clips are not the only issues at hand. There were over 30,000 gun-related deaths in the U.S. in 2010 of which there were 11,078 murders. We cannot simply turn a blind eye to this fact when other industrialized nations, such as the UK, had fewer than 50. Responsible gun ownership should be a requisite for owning a gun. Why is proper gun training not mandatory? Likewise, one cannot expect a person with a felony to be a responsible gun owner. Felons, criminals and terrorists should never have access to any weapons whatsoever. And while we cannot completely dry up the black market of gun sales to these groups, we can certainly make it more difficult and expensive, saving countless lives in the process.

The only way that we can prevent such transactions from occurring is by instituting universal background checks. Under current law, a person even with a violent felony can purchase any gun of their choosing at a gun show or through a private sale. It is estimated that up to forty percent of gun sales occur through these means. This loophole is simply not acceptable. It puts the lives of our citizens at risk. Closing it should be a top priority of Congress.

Finally, the issue of mental illness has been given scant attention in recent years. I believe that Congress has an obligation to examine America’s mental health system in a serious, thoughtful and thorough fashion. Just walk the streets of some of our biggest cities and you will see how poorly we have neglected to treat mental illness. Many find themselves homeless, including tens of thousands of veterans. Not only will better funding for mental health prevent future gun violence, it will also help individuals with mental illness live more fulfilling lives.

All of the approaches that I have outlined are enormously popular with the American people. According to a Washington Post poll taken on January 10-13, which mirrors other recent polls taken on the subject, 88 percent of Americans support requiring background checks at gun shows; 76 percent support requiring a background check on anyone purchasing ammunition; 71 percent support creating a federal database to track the sale of all guns; 65 percent support banning high-capacity clips; and 58 percent support banning assault weapons. These are all measures that would enhance public safety with wide support from voters, not only protecting the lives of children, but also police officers, firefighters and others who put their lives on the line for us every day.

In conclusion, America needs a comprehensive approach to solving this critical issue. It is incomprehensible to think that we would allow violent criminals to purchase a gun thanks to a lack of universal background checks. It is equally appalling that weapons of mass murder, such as the Bushmaster assault rifle and others like it, are allowed on the streets of Newtown, South Bend or any other city in America. And of course the lack of mental health funding is not only a safety issue, but a moral one as well. To simply throw our hands up and pretend that we cannot solve this issue in a responsible way is ludicrous. We have the solutions right in front of us. I hope that you will support these common sense measures to bring an end to this violent chapter in our country’s history. Smart gun safety laws not only protect our most vulnerable, they protect our rights as responsible citizens.

Sincerely yours,
Kyle W. Bell