My Senator wrote me back about gun control legislation.

As many of you may remember on Wednesday I encouraged all of you to write to your Senators to urge them to push for a full vote on the assault weapons ban.

Following my own advice I did just that, and sent off e-mail messages to my two Senators Mark Begich and Lisa Murkowski.

Yesterday I received this response from Senator Murkowski:

Dear Jesse: 

Thank you for contacting me regarding recently proposed gun control measures. I appreciate hearing from you and having the opportunity to respond. 

Alaskans have mourned with all Americans at the tragic, senseless deaths in recent years and I believe we should examine ways to reduce violence by improving our mental health care system, keeping guns out of the hands of criminals, and enforcing existing laws. But we must continue to protect our Constitutional right to bear arms.

I am opposed to Senator Feinstein's bill that would prohibit the sale of many semi-automatic rifles and pistols to law abiding Americans and infringe on their Second Amendment rights. Now is not the time to demonize those who possess and use firearms lawfully. It is time to build a national consensus, with firearms owners, about how to prevent incidents like those we have recently seen. We must look at the issue from all perspectives, but demanding the vast majority of us who responsibly use firearms to give up our individual freedoms in the interest of community safety simply may not make our communities safer. 

If Congress considers legislation related to gun control, I will be sure to keep your thoughts in mind. Again, thank you for contacting me. 

 I am not precisely sure how restricting the sale of military style weapons to every Tom, Dick, and Dirty Harry that wants one is "demonizing" anybody, but from the gist of this letter I will assume that Lisa is not willing to break ranks with the GOP, nor risk angering her sometimes crazy constituents by taking this on. I don't think I ever expected that she would, though I did mention in the e-mail that she was in a "unique position" to take a leadership role on this.

However to be fair I wrote to BOTH of my Senators only minutes apart, and have only heard back from one thus far. I am really interested in what Mark is saying about this legislation since a lot of other Senators are looking at the blue dogs to give them inspiration to vote on this bill.

Once he responds, if he responds, I will let you all know what he says.