You see T-shirts around the Utah Capitol these days proclaiming that “Guns Save Lives.”
Not in Utah they don’t.
In Utah guns take lives — upwards of 400 per year. Real lives. Innocent lives. People dying from suicide by gun. People killed with a gun in a domestic violence tragedy. Unintentional shootings resulting from carelessly stored guns.
How many real lives do guns save every year in Utah? Four hundred? Anything close to that? No. It’s bad enough that deaths from gun violence have increased nationally by 17% from 2008 to 2017, but in Utah the increase was a stunning 45% over the same period.
To whom do we turn in order to reverse this shocking and unacceptable trend?
Utah state Rep. Cory Maloy has publicly stated that the state “owns the regulation of firearms.” Well, with ownership comes responsibility. And that responsibility to the people includes protecting Utahns from gun violence — to strike a reasonable balance between public safety and individuals’ Second Amendment right to protect their homes with a firearm.
The fact that innocent Utahns have been dying from gun violence at an increasing rate — now nearly 400 a year — demonstrates how badly the Legislature has failed its responsibility to promote public safety.
Innocent Utahns are dying from legislative inaction on common-sense legislation. In 2019, the Legislature didn’t even allow a public hearing on implementing universal background checks for firearms purchases or on providing for extreme risk protective orders (ERPOs) — two measures that have proven across the country to help prevent gun violence without infringing on any Second Amendment right.
This year, the recent hearing by the House Committee on Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice on the universal background check bill demonstrated the Legislature’s continuing refusal to act in the face of overwhelming evidence. House Bill 109 would have closed the so-called “gun show/online” loophole by extending the background check requirement to sales by unlicensed sellers.
Undisputed evidence has shown that the current background check requirement for sales by licensed dealers works — over 1,300 restricted persons in Utah who tried to buy a gun from a licensed dealer in Utah last year were denied. Common sense says to close this loophole. HB109 would do just that. Nobody who testified at the hearing claimed that HB109 would infringe on constitutional rights — not the Utah Shooting Sports Council, not the NRA and none of the members of the committee.
So, if HB109 doesn’t infringe on the Second Amendment and would help reduce gun violence, why did the eight Republicans on the committee vote to kill it? To the extent that they were swayed by the claims of gun owners that someday, somehow universal background checks could lead to registration of gun owners, that kind of distant, speculative fear simply is not a rational justification for not adopting reasonable measures to prevent the loss of real lives today.
If the Legislature wants to “own firearms regulation,” it must step up and take the responsibility that comes with it. As many as 400 innocent lives a year lost to gun violence is the cost of the Legislature’s inaction. That’s simply not acceptable.
Citizens get it. The vast majority of Utahns support universal background check and ERPO legislation. Please contact your legislators and tell them to start living up to their responsibility to protect Utahns from gun violence.
Ed Rutan
Ed Rutan, Park City, is a member of the board of directors of the Gun Violence Prevention Center and was the city attorney for Salt Lake City for 10 years until he retired in 2013.
