Open letter to Sens. Burr and Tillis:
Has the NRA bought your silence?
Published reports indicate that you both have received millions of dollars in support from NRA sources, more than all but one other senator! Your silence on common sense gun regulations indicates that you have little interest in keeping our communities safe. “Thoughts and prayers” are meaningless when the Senate takes no meaningful action.
North Carolinians deserve answers to these questions: How do you justify inaction in the face of mass killings of 10-year-old students in their classrooms, shoppers in a grocery store, worshipers in their churches and synagogues? Silence and inaction amount to consent to these atrocities.
How do you justify high-capacity magazines? How do you justify the absence of universal background checks? How do you justify the failure to enact red flag laws, keeping weapons out of the hands of people who are mentally unstable?
Has the NRA bought your silence? You cannot hide behind the Second Amendment. That right is not absolute. Our right to live in safety and security demands common sense limitations. When you pledge allegiance to the Constitution, your pledge includes to its Preamble which identifies the reasons our country exists, among them to “insure domestic tranquility” and “promote the general welfare.”
Do our communities currently live in safety and tranquility? Not Uvalde. Not Buffalo. Who’s next? Winston-Salem? Huntersville? Burlington? Unlimited access to guns robs us of what we deserve. I urge you to find the moral courage to give priority to your constituents instead of the NRA. That means giving priority to safety in our schools, businesses, and houses of worship.
RICHARD W. MCBRIDE
Burlington
This article originally appeared on Times-News: Letter: Reader asks Sens. Burr and Tillis about NRA money, silence on gun regulations
