To the editor:

Rhode Island’s General Assembly is about to consider a number of bills that can make you and your family less safe. These bills will restrict your firearms ownership, while doing nothing to keep guns out of the hands of those committing violent crimes.

According to CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and FBI statistics, more than 95 percent of gun crimes are committed with criminally possessed firearms. Criminals pay no attention to laws. So how does it make anyone safer by enacting more gun laws that criminals will ignore but that make it more difficult for Rhode Islanders who choose to protect themselves and their families with legally owned firearms to do so?

Legally owned firearms prevent crime and save lives. Multiple CDC studies find that defensive uses of firearms by crime victims are far more common than offensive uses by criminal offenders.

Most of the gun control advocates’ claims are false. “Information” from Rhode Island Coalition Against Gun Violence and Moms Demand Action, comes from Everytown, Violence Policy Center, Southern Poverty Law Center, Giffords, Brady and the like is mostly not true. These are propaganda factories created to support the gun control agenda. Accurate firearm information is available from reputable sources like the FBI, Department of Justice, and CDC websites. 

Reducing gun violence cannot not be achieved by passing laws that restrict people who are not causing it, those who own firearms legally. This puts good people at a dangerous disadvantage against better armed criminals. Going after people who own firearms legally is a simplistic and ultimately ineffective response to gun violence, which has multiple societal causes. 

Firearms are not the problem. The problem is keeping them out of the hands of those who shouldn’t have them.

Before our General Assembly votes for more firearms restrictions, tell your legislators not to support more gun control that will make you and your family less safe.

The names and contact information for your legislators can be found at www. sos.ri.gov or by calling your municipalities canvasing office. Be sure to include the two politicians who control everything that comes out of the Statehouse: Rep. K. Joseph Shekarchi, speaker of the House, rep-shekarchi@rilegislature.gov; and Sen. Dominick J. Ruggerio, president of the Senate, sen-ruggerio@rilegislature.gov.

Your life could depend stopping these misguided bills.

David Huth

544 Boyds Lane

Portsmouth