Renton gun shop owner warns against knee-jerk reaction to Vegas massacre

RENTON, Wash. — The gun control debate was quickly thrust back into the national spotlight after the Las Vegas shooting Sunday evening — the worst in modern U.S. history. It is something that has become commonplace after mass shootings in America.

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Many Democrats are calling for gun control legislation, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi asking Paul Ryan to create a bi-partisan committee to study mass shootings and come back with legislation to help avoid them. Former Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, injured in a mass shooting six years ago, echoed the calls for action along with her husband, former astronaut Mark Kelly.

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“Despite the tragedies in places like Aurora, Newtown and Orlando, despite daily shootings in communities across America, despite senseless, gun-related domestic violence, despite an epidemic of preventable suicides, despite the problem of toddlers shooting toddlers and their parents … the response from Congress has been to do nothing,” Mark Giffords said Monday.

Gun control debate

Rene Hopkins is the CEO of the Seattle-based gun safety group, Alliance for Gun Responsibility, and she agrees with those calls.

“People who live in this country absolutely are demanding their elected representatives do what they are elected to do and part of that job is to keep communities safe,” Hopkins said. “And part of keeping communities safe is to embrace common sense gun laws that we know will help reduce gun violence.”

Her group was already planning to push tougher gun laws in Washington state during the upcoming legislative session. Such laws would add more expansive background checks for assault weapons. They would also push for criminal liabilities for gun owners whose weapons end up in the wrong hands (kids and/or people not allowed to have guns).

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Diana Pinto, co-owner of Pinto’s gun shop in Renton, says she feels for all the Vegas victims and their families but warns against the knee-jerk reaction on gun control.

“Unfortunately, most people are not able to take the emotion out of this,” she said. “I don’t mean to say that this is something that doesn’t warrant emotion, it absolutely does. But when you are talking about what’s going to work and what’s not going to work, you have to take emotion out of it and say, ‘What are some things that we can do and can’t do?’ Quite frankly, this is an evil act and it’s very hard to control evil however it wants to manifest. It’s very hard to control that.”

Pinto says a better plan would be to ensure gun stores have up-to-date information on would-be buyers when they run background checks.

“There’s an awful lot of states that do not report mental health issues to the federal government and as a gun shop, that’s who we contact for our background checks,” Pinto said. “So if this person has had some mental health issues and they’re not getting reported, then how, as a gun shop owner, am I to know that this person is mentally ill?”

Pinto says she and her staff will turn buyers who act suspicious away in case they’re trying to buy for someone who is not allowed to have a gun or perhaps have mental health issues of their own.

Cox Media Group