Help undo Heller’s gun-safety failure

By Darchel Mohler

Friday, Jan. 8, 2016 | 2 a.m.

As Yogi Berra said, it’s like déjà vu all over again. Another mass shooting — the deadliest since Sandy Hook — and another day when 88 Americans are killed in shootings around the country and hundreds more are injured. And in case you missed it last month: another vote by Sen. Dean Heller against the single most important thing that experts tell us we can do to keep guns out of the wrong hands to reduce gun violence.

Heller voted against the bipartisan Manchin-Toomey bill, which would have closed a loophole in our gun laws that allows criminals, domestic abusers and the dangerously mentally ill to buy guns online and at gun shows with no background check, no questions asked. He also voted against a bill first recommended by President George W. Bush that would have kept suspected terrorists from purchasing guns.

Flack back to April 2013, in the wake of the Sandy Hook school shooting. The Senate had a chance to close the background-check loophole. The bill had the support of a majority of Americans and a majority in the Senate, but a minority of senators, including our own Sen. Heller, blocked it from becoming law.

Last month — and more than 60,000 American gun deaths later — Heller had a chance to right that wrong. But once again he put the interests of the gun lobby ahead of the safety of his constituents.

Enough is enough.

I care deeply about gun violence because I am one of the many Americans whose lives have been irrevocably altered by a gun in the wrong hands. My 13-year-old precious daughter, Brooklynn Mae Mohler, was shot in the back and killed with an unsecured gun at her friend’s house. The gun was left in the kitchen cabinet and chambered when her friend pulled it out and fired it unintentionally, ultimately extinguishing my daughter’s bright future and wonderful life.

Brooklynn was everything a parent could ever hope and dream for. She was kind, compassionate, extremely athletic and artistic, and a natural leader. In the wake of our tragedy we have decided to channel our pain into prevention and education. This issue has become personal for my family, and we use our voices to prevent other parents from going through the visceral pain and suffering of having a child killed by an absolutely senseless and preventable act. I’ve joined the Everytown Survivor Network, a community of more than 800 gun-violence survivors across the country who have been shot, or whose loved ones have been shot or killed, to build community and empower survivors to become advocates and leaders in the gun-violence-prevention movement.

We often hear politicians say “thoughts and prayers” are with the victims of shootings, but that alone doesn’t cut it anymore. Heller said it himself not too long ago, following the mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon. We also need action. And yet again, Heller has refused to take action.

The December vote came very quickly — the day after the shooting in California that killed the most people since Sandy Hook — and without much time for Nevada voters to remind Heller where they stand. But it’s not too late for us in Nevada — where polling shows 86 percent support requiring a criminal background check on all gun sales — to tell him now that we won’t soon forget his vote.

As one of the tens of thousands of Americans affected by gun violence, I had the honor of being at the White House this week to hear the President announce executive actions that will save lives. Now, Nevada must do its part to make our state safer by taking matters into our own hands and doing what Heller and Congress have failed to do. We need to vote in November for the Background Check Initiative. It would require background checks for all gun sales, with reasonable exceptions for family, hunting and self-defense. We can improve public safety by voting to close loopholes in Nevada law that make it too easy for felons, domestic abusers and the dangerously mentally ill to buy guns.

This isn’t an abstract problem. It’s real as we know from the constant drumbeat of shootings here in Nevada — many of them by people who could have been stopped from buying a gun had they undergone a criminal background check at the point of sale, like one of the shooters at a Las Vegas Wal-Mart last year.

So why does Heller continue to stand in the way of life-saving measures?

We need to hold our elected leaders accountable if we are going to turn the tide of gun violence in America. Let Heller know where you stand, get involved in the Background Check Initiative campaign and do your part to prevent another loved one from facing the same tragic fate as our family.

Darchel Mohler lives in Henderson.