Today Alaska’s U.S. delegates reacted to President Barack Obama’s plan to require more gun sellers to get licenses and more gun buyers to undergo background checks.
Representative Don Young says today is the beginning of the decline of the U.S. led by one man “who thinks he’s the king”.
Rep. Young: “I noticed that he’s proposed additional FBI agents, additional ATF agents – people to implement what he’s proposing. That’s one way we as a Congress can stop it. I have no objection checking for mental illness. I have no objection to that. But when it says if I’m a seller, or I’m a father, and I want to sell a gun to my brother, or my uncle, or my kids and I have to get a license to do so – this is an expansion of what he’s trying to do.”
Alaska’s senior Senator Lisa Murkowski said in a release:
“The President is no friend of practical bipartisan solutions to the gun violence problem, and he is no friend of the Second Amendment. He refuses to work with Congress on initiatives that will actually fix gun violence issues such as the bipartisan Grassley-Cruz proposal that I co-sponsored in 2013 or the bipartisan Cassidy-Murphy mental health legislation in the current Congress which I also co-sponsored. Instead, President Obama is yet again sidestepping Congress to act with the stroke of a pen on an issue concerning our Constitutional rights.”
The Cassidy-Murphy mental health legislation aims to increase access to mental health care across the country as a way to reduce mass-shootings.
Senator Dan Sullivan says this is just another way for the President to bypass Congress, therefore side-stepping citizens’ wishes via their representatives, writing:
“Examples are numerous and extend to our lands, our waters, our energy sector, our financial and healthcare industries and to our technology sector. The implications of this kind of overreach for our constitutional form of government are profound. But his most recent actions to limit who can buy, sell and trade in firearms is particularly troubling for Alaskans, many of whom depend on their guns for protection and to feed their family.”