Having listened to Rep. Katherine Rogers’s testimony on gun bills while I sat on the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee when I was a representative, it was unsurprising that she again proved she is woefully unschooled in the law (Monitor Opinion, June 26).
To begin with, all commercial gun sales are accomplished only after a background check. Federal law has required it for decades, and there have been no changes to that requirement. Also questionable are her assertion that 33,000 sales that will not require a background check. The Department of Safety has a history, as proven by ATF audits, of having a large error rate in its approval process. For her to throw out numbers on “crime guns” is also disingenuous, as she provided documents during her committee testimony that were in direct contradiction of her false claims.
The study of “crime guns” has shown repeatedly that New Hampshire’s contribution to the trafficking into Massachusetts has to be combined with Maine to reach 17% of the total. How she created the 29% having a short time-to-crime figure was probably by pulling it out of thin air. Far more illegal weapons come from New York, Rhode Island and Connecticut.
She should also know that a weapon recovered is traceable back to its original owner by its serial number. If so many guns could be traced back to New Hampshire from the surrounding states I’m certain the Monitor would have heard of it and reported on the criminal prosecutions of so many felons.
JOHN MARTIN
Bow