I’m writing to follow up on your story in the February Bugle about gun violence. Since then we’ve been barraged with name-calling, ultimatums and demands in the mass media and in our public conversations. Throughout it all I have appreciated the strong, steady, sensible voice of Rep. Alice Hausman, who has proposed common-sense solutions in the legislation she has sponsored at the state Capitol. We are fortunate in our neighborhood to have her representing many of us.
Kathy Magnuson, St. Anthony Park
I attended the Minnesota House of Representative’s Public Safety Committee hearings last week regarding HF.241, HF.242 and HF.243. These are bills introduced by Rep. Alice Hausman that seek to ban a wide variety of commonly used
firearms and standard-capacity ammunition magazines (and the firearms that use them). These are major bills that would fundamentally alter the lives of a majority of Minnesotans by permanently eliminating entire classes of firearms, entire segments of sport shooting competitions, and by causing property forfeiture, random home searches and gun registration.I was disappointed to see that Rep. Hausman spent barely any time introducing one of these bills before leaving the hearing and turning bill presentation over to a paid shill for an anti-gun lobbying group. I was more disappointed that she was not even present for the introduction or testimony of the other two bills. She knows virtually nothing about the legislation she claims to have authored because this paid lobbying group was actually responsible for submitting the content. She also did not hear any of the opposition testimony against the bills that described how misguided and awful they are for Minnesotans. People traveled to St. Paul from all over Minnesota to testify about the impact these bills would have and about how misguided and unconstitutional they are.I call on Rep. Hausman to immediately withdraw these awful proposed bills—HF.241, HF.242 and HF.243—since she had little to do with writing them, she doesn’t understand the content, and she did not listen to testimony related to them.
Rob Bell, Rogers, MN
