We need to close loopholes in our background check law

When I moved to Alaska in 1977, I fell in love with the place and the people. I loved the culture, the fishing, the hunting, the land and the importance of community. As a gun owner and hunter, teaching my son and daughter to safely use guns and hunt was an important part of our life in Alaska. Going to Alaska’s rural villages and, for example, watching seal hunters come home in the dark after spending the day gathering food for the village taught me important lessons about Alaska’s culture and the importance of guns to the subsistence way of life and survival in Alaska.

When I became Commissioner of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, I was supportive of the Department’s Hunter Safety, Becoming an Outdoors Woman, and shooting range programs for Alaskans. All of these emphasize gun safety, as well as shooting and outdoor skills.

I value guns as a means for providing my own family’s food. But, like many hunters, my relationship to guns is more complex than just hunting and taking animals. When I learned to hunt, I also learned the importance of gun safety and the power of guns. What they could do. What they could take, too — including my own cousin.

Like many gun owners, I’ve bought and sold firearms. I believe we have the responsibility to ensure that people who are legally barred from owning guns cannot use the loopholes in our current background check law to obtain a gun. But the current loopholes in federal law allow me, an unlicensed seller, to sell a gun to strangers with no background check and no questions asked. I could legally sell my guns online, at a gun show, or in a parking lot and the buyer can avoid having to pass a background check.

I have always chosen to sell my guns through a licensed gun dealer to make sure the buyer passes a background check and that I’m not inadvertently selling a gun to someone who is not legally allowed to own a gun. But it should not be up to me as an individual to decide whether our gun ownership laws are enforced, it should be up to all of us to make sure these laws are enforced.

With Alaska recording the highest rates of gun death in the country, having someone taken by gun violence is an all too familiar story. But there is something we as a society can do to help address this terrible problem right now — or at least something Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan can do.

It’s been 25 years since our federal government last passed a gun safety law: That’s 25 years of families across Alaska and the country being devastated as their loved ones were killed or wounded. But now, the Senate, with Sens. Murkowski and Sullivan’s votes, can close the loopholes in our current gun law and pass common-sense, lifesaving, comprehensive background check legislation which has overwhelming bipartisan support: 93% of Americans and 85% of Alaskans support background checks, according to Everytown for Gun Safety. Because they save lives.

When it comes to gun safety, Sen. Murkowski said it well in 2019: “The level of gun violence and beyond gun violence to mass shootings has escalated to a point in this country that none of us should say is acceptable.”

“I want to make sure that Second Amendment rights are protected. I think we can do that while at the same time we make sure that children in schools, and people at a theater, and people at a nightclub (are protected too).”

It’s time for action — starting with the U.S. Senate passing comprehensive background check legislation that closes the huge loopholes in the current background check laws. Background checks don’t infringe on the Second Amendment and they do save lives.

I hope you will join me in encouraging our senators to vote for closing the loopholes in our background check law.

Frank Rue lives in Juneau. He is a hunter, gun owner, Moms Demand Action volunteer and a former Commissioner of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

The views expressed here are the writer’s and are not necessarily endorsed by the Anchorage Daily News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)adn.com. Send submissions shorter than 200 words to letters@adn.com or click here to submit via any web browser. Read our full guidelines for letters and commentaries here.