It’s time to rip the masks off politicians like state Sen. Ernie Lopez, R-Lewes, who profess in public to hold positions they believe are popular with constituents, then behind closed doors, vote the other way.
Lopez, along with every other Republican senator in the General Assembly, voted last month against a resolution to declare gun violence a public health crisis. This is the same Lopez who, not so long ago, appeared at an anti-gun rally in Rehoboth Beach and left his constituents with the impression that he supported their call for a ban on assault weapons. Then, he voted against such a ban. He did the same thing with equal-pay legislation.
It’s difficult to understand the senator’s recent vote on the gun resolution. First, this is only a resolution, not a bill. It doesn’t take guns away from gun owners, and it doesn’t ban assault weapons. It does nothing to break the bond between gun owners and their guns. You can’t get much more vanilla.
Second, all the resolution does is state the obvious: that guns are used to commit homicides with guns — not knives or batons or peashooters — and that the number of homicides committed with guns in Delaware is pretty darn high.
Facts aren’t fashionable these days, but here are a few: 1.) Delaware has the 13th-highest number of gun homicides in the country; 2.) nearly 80% of all homicides in Delaware are committed with guns, exceeding the national rate; 3.) from March through May 2020, unintentional shooting deaths by children increased by more than 30% compared with the same three-month period for the previous three years; and 4.) according to the latest statistics, gun deaths in Delaware increased by 32% between 2009 and 2018.
The logic is inescapable: When the rate of gun violence is rising, and it’s high to begin with, any reasonable person has to conclude that Delaware is indeed in the midst of a public health crisis caused by guns.
I would love to hear why Lopez voted against this resolution. In the past, he has labeled those with opinions different from his as extremist and divisive, saying extremists are using a litmus test to tear us apart.
I guess that’s politics as it’s practiced by many today, including another name-caller who, using his own criteria four years earlier, lost the last presidential election by a landslide. Maybe people are fed up with politicians who bypass the facts and go straight to name-calling.
So Ernie, what on earth are you thinking? Why would you vote against a resolution that acknowledges what the facts clearly show? Gun violence is a public health crisis.
And one other thing: Don’t call me a left-wing extremist. That’s so yesterday. It didn’t work for Sen. Joseph McCarthy, and it didn’t work for Donald Trump.
Gerald Cohen
Lewes
