An Act to Require Background Checks for Gun Sales, a citizen-initiated referendum question, is Question 3 on this year’s ballot.

The fact that Question 3 is a citizen-initiated referendum alerts me to the fact that the lack of gun knowledge in our state is real. The role of guns in the home is not only an individual and family decision, but is also a community issue. To that effect, the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine along with Project Safe Neighborhoods developed a kit for the private seller that explained the gun-sale laws and provided a form to be filled out by the buyer.

The real community need is for gun courses on the existing laws about guns, such as the federal law requiring private sellers to go to a gun dealer to have a background check performed on any nonresident buyer, and gun safety courses about accident prevention and crime prevention. Education is our most important tool with regards to gun safety and ownership, not draconian economic measures of punishment on law-abiding citizens.

The title of Question 3 is misleading as the proposition requires a background check on all transfers, including loans. Don’t loan your gun to your hunting partner or you will be a criminal.

Question 3 also fails to provide any meaningful education or safety measures, discourages tourism as people will no longer look to Maine as a sport destination, and is simply unenforcible, making criminals out of law-abiding citizens while doing nothing to stop real criminals.

We need to enforce the laws we already have not make unenforcible ones.

I will be voting no on 3. I urge you to do so as well.

Robert Sezak

Fairfield

Send questions/comments to the editors.