Red Flag Laws: It is shameful that regardless of the number of mass shooting events we’ve seen nationally, the needle hasn’t sufficiently moved legislatively to better protect our people. My opponent, Randy Feenstra, has an A+ rating from the NRA and has taken a lot of their money. His inaction reflects this. There are a number of things I support in this regard to make our communities safer. First, I’m a believer in red flag laws, to give communities a mechanism through which they can initiate a process that leads to disarming someone that is a clear threat to the community. I know though that such laws are only as good as the authorities who implement them, so we’d need to be mindful here about how we write the law to ensure it best protects communities. I also am a believer in due process and am wary of government overreach, so the law would need to be mindful of that as well.

An Assault Weapons Ban and National Buyback Program: It is unacceptable that one person with an AR-15 can fend off an entire police department or drive a whole community to have to go on lock down, or kill so many so quickly. These weapons of war do not belong on our streets. I am in support of an Assault Weapons Ban. The last time period one was in place here, we did see a reduction in mass shootings. The masa shooting epidemic is truly an American one, as countries around the world have figured this out. We can too. To facilitate this, I would be in support of a national gun buyback program.

Universal Background Checks: It is unconscionable to me that so many can purchase firearms that have flags in their history that should prevent them from being able to purchase them. Yet, there are far too many loopholes in our current system, and this is posing a significant threat to public safety. I’m a believer in universal background checks for every gun purchase.

State Law Variation: One major issue regarding gun violence is that much of the legislation to curb it is an inconsistent patchwork of state legislation that still leaves citizens of states with more robust gun safety laws vulnerable. For example, in Illinois, much of the gun violence there is driven by guns brought in from other states with more lax gun safety laws. There needs to be more federal action to protect citizens.

Campaign Finance Reform: One of the main reasons that the mass murder of children has not moved the needle on gun safety in our country is because of our campaign finance laws that allow lobbying groups like the NRA to buy members of Congress. It is unacceptable that polling shows the vast majority of U.S. citizens support more robust gun safety legislation but can’t get it. We need to push back against the consequences we’ve seen from SCOTUS’ Citizens United decision and put legislative power back in the hands of the people.

Gun ID: We need to move toward a status quo where each gun purchased needs to have a unique identifier or connection to its buyer to better track illegal gun sales.

Safe storage laws: We read every week of another horrific accidental gun injury or death at home when a child gets their hands on a gun that should have been safely secured but wasn’t. We don’t have sufficient federal legislation to address this problem.

It is absolutely illogical that alcohol is legal but marijuana is not, especially considering the many medical benefits that arise from its use. Marijuana criminalization was based in part on racial harassment of minorities and has suppressed the ability of far too many People of Color to have the lives they deserve. Additionally, study after study shows white Americans and People of Color use marijuana at similar rates, yet People of Color face a much higher rate of legal consequence. We need to legalize marijuana to end this illogical injustice.

We incarcerate more of our own citizens than all nations other than China. Many of our laws were written to bolster the private prison industry, so we first need to end private prisons. There should be no financial incentive to imprison people. That’s absolutely immoral. We also need to shift the War on Drugs that puts so many non-violent offenders in prison to a focus on treatment and recovery, along with getting to the true root of drug addiction, much of which is driven by economic despair.

We need a shift in our policing mentality from one of broken windows policing to one of community policing. Our police departments should have the same demographic makeup as the communities they are policing. We need our police to not be militarized entities. We must establish independent review boards to investigate incidents of police brutality, removing the bias from such investigations. If a police officer is found guilty or liable for excessive use of force, it should not be nearly as easy for them to leave one police department and go to another. Additionally, we need to stop putting police officers in positions they shouldn’t be asked to handle, as they are often not best equipped to handle mental health crises. Instead, whether it be as part of police department budgets or otherwise, we need more funding for mental health professionals so we can better de-escalate these situations and have experts making the decisions in pursuing red flag law enactment. Finally, federal investigations have found a number of police departments are not doing their part to root out racial discrimination from their ranks. It shouldn’t take a notable incident of excessive use of police force to initiate such an investigation. There should be protocols in place to audit these concerns proactively.