{"id":46565,"date":"2019-04-18T03:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-04-18T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/home\/opinion-alaska-can-join-other-states-in-passing-reasonable-gun-laws\/"},"modified":"2019-04-18T03:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-04-18T11:00:00","slug":"opinion-alaska-can-join-other-states-in-passing-reasonable-gun-laws","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/letters\/opinion-alaska-can-join-other-states-in-passing-reasonable-gun-laws\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: Alaska can join other states in passing reasonable gun laws"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The 20th anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre is Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>I hoped, when it happened, that a tragedy like that would never occur again. Instead, we&rsquo;ve seen one mass shooting after another, and the threat of gun violence at schools has become something that school personnel, students and parents worry about every day.<\/p>\n<p><ins><a href=\"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/police-firefighters-team-up-to-prepare-for-swat-situations\/\" target=\"_blank\">[Police, firefighters team up to prepare for SWAT situations]<\/a><\/ins><\/p>\n<p>Many young people can&rsquo;t even remember a time when this wasn&rsquo;t true. But I remember. It doesn&rsquo;t have to be like this. We can enact reasonable gun laws that help prevent guns from getting into the hands of people who shouldn&rsquo;t have them.<\/p>\n<p>House Bill 62, currently pending before the Alaska Legislature, is that type of reasonable gun law. It would authorize courts to issue Gun Violence Protective Orders, allowing temporary removal of guns when there is an elevated risk that a person will use a gun to harm themselves or others.<\/p>\n<p><ins><a href=\"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/letters\/opinion-wheres-the-adult-leadership-on-gun-violence\/\" target=\"_blank\">[Opinion: Where&rsquo;s the adult leadership on gun violence?]<\/a><\/ins><\/p>\n<p>These laws make a significant difference in preventing deaths by suicide. A law like this might also have prevented the Parkland school shooting. So far, 15 states and the District of Columbia have passed similar Extreme Risk Protection Order or red flag laws.<\/p>\n<p>Please contact your legislators and ask them to pass HB 62. It&rsquo;s one step we can take to build a better world for our children and grandchildren.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ann Gifford,<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Juneau<\/strong><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><b>\u2022 My Turns and Letters to the Editor represent the view of the author, not the view of the Juneau Empire.<\/b><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It doesn&rsquo;t have to be like this. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":46566,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,14],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-46565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-letters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46565"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=46565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}