Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Letter to the editor:

State initiative could save lives

It’s been a long 12 years since our son’s murder, and we’ve had plenty of time to reflect on how it’s impacted our lives. We keep him close in our hearts — we feel we owe it to him, his memory and to our little family.

Our son, Chris, along with his sister, Tanya, and her three beautiful kids are what we lived for. Watching them grow and being an active part of their young, maturing lives has been so fulfilling for us. Having Chris ripped from our lives in a preventable crime — which has been described in California court documents as road rage by a person who used a modified, fully automatic TEC 9 with a 50-round magazine — has been unbelievably agonizing. It just didn’t need to happen.

Conventional wisdom says to let him go and move on with our lives. Maybe it’s because we spent a lot of time and energy raising him, or maybe it’s because we just loved him, but for us, letting go is not an option. His memory has made us better parents, grandparents and hopefully better human beings. We honor his memory by trying to help prevent future tragedies like ours from happening to others.

We have an opportunity to be part of Nevadans for Background Checks, an organization that stands for gun safety and closing the loopholes in our Background Check System. We give them our full, unconditional support, and we very much hope that the voting-age youngsters, the young at heart, aunts and uncles, sisters and brothers, all concerned parents and grandparents will join us and get out the vote in November to pass this initiative. Eliminating the loopholes in the Background Check System will make Nevada the 19th state to pass such a law.

It’s probable that background checks would not have kept our son from being killed, as his murderer traveled from California to an Arizona gun show to buy his weapon. It’s impossible to eliminate all acts of violence from our society, but let’s not stand by and do nothing.

We have an opportunity to make our streets a little safer, to legally keep guns out of the hands of felons, domestic abusers, those who have been adjudicated mentally unstable and others already prohibited from buying guns.

My family and I ask everyone to help us pass the initiative to eliminate the loopholes in our Nevada Background Check System.

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