Dear Senator _________,
With due respect, SB163 is an insult to me and thousands of other law abiding gun owners in this state. Before you pass such a bill, ask yourself how much Maryland's similar bill has reduced homicides. It has not. Ask yourself the more obvious question: do you honestly believe criminals or mentally deranged people will care about obeying such a law in Delaware? Of course not. Connecticut's gun laws did nothing to prevent the Sandy Hook shooter from stealing his guns from a relative. California's gun laws did nothing to prevent the San Bernadino terrorists from bringing guns from other states. Illinois' extreme gun control laws have done nothing to reduce a horrible homicide rate in Chicago. The Orlando night club and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School we're both was a gun free zones. How well did that work? The Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas was a gun free zone. That didn't work either.
AR15 style modular, light weight, sporting rifles are favorites of many hunters and sport shooters alike yet you still demonized these guns as weapons of mass destruction. It’s time to stop penalizing everyone for the actions of a few! Outlawing these guns makes as much sense as outlawing large cargo trucks on I-95. The driver of such a cargo truck killed 86 people in Nice, France in 2016. Similar incidents happened twice in London, fortunately with less carnage. The weapons were the distorted minds of the perpetrator. The guns and the trucks were merely the tools of choice. Need I mention anything more than the numbers 9/11? The tools of choice in those incidents were airplanes! There are dozens more examples of mass killings from Oklahoma City to Madrid that had nothing to with firearms. The weapon is in the mind of the user. SB163 simply proposes to outlaw a tool, to penalize law abiding citizens, and STILL it ignores the weapon. These truths are well known. One should research them before one votes on a bill that will do nothing to prevent gun violence. A vote for SB163 is a reactionary attempt to achieve a utopian myth.
Lastly, consider history before you repeat it. In 1920 the U.S. Congress passed the 18th amendment prohibiting the manufacture, sale and transport of intoxicating liquors. That amendment was intended to reduce crime and related social problems. How well did it work? It had exactly the opposite effect. Passage of that amendment triggered a huge rise in organized crime and thousands of speakeasy clubs sprang up in cities all over the country.