Senator Ernst,

We, your constituents, are IMPLORING you to introduce and/or support bills that will prevent gun violence in all its forms. Your website says you "feel strongly that law-abiding citizens should be able to exercise their fundamental right to self-defense." We are asking that ONLY law-abiding citizens maintain the ability to bear arms, and have laid out how to achieve this below.

The solution of many politicians is to secure or “harden” schools. No matter how much you turn our schools into prisons, violent people with assault weapons WILL find a way to murder innocents. We need to keep guns out of the hands of people who would harm humans with them and assault weapons out of civilian hands, PERIOD. Besides, protecting schools will not prevent gun deaths by suicide - the highest amount of gun deaths - or gun violence at:

• the grocery store
• the movie theater
• churches
• music festivals
• our streets

just to name a few places where gun violence has happened recently.

We are tired of hearing the excuse that criminals will find guns no matter how many laws we have. THAT IS JUST FALSE. The United States far exceeds any other high income country in gun deaths, and if we look at those country’s gun laws, we can see that in many cases, guns are not widely available to their citizens. But even Austria, which is seen as the loosest on gun laws in Europe, has more gun violence prevention than many US states.

As your Iowan constituents, we are asking for the following common sense federal laws (as researched and drafted by March For Our Lives) to prevent gun violence:

1. A ban or tight regulations on assault weapons. They were designed to kill the highest amount of PEOPLE in the lowest amount of time without being a fully automatic weapon. There is no need for them to be in the hands of civilians. We’ve decided as a society to highly regulate machine guns, for instance. It is time to get out of denial about the dangers assault weapons pose to our society,
2. A ban on high capacity magazines, placing the cap at 10 or 15 rounds of ammunition,
3. A required national licensing and registry system that promotes responsible gun ownership, including background checks, in-person interviews, and rigorous gun safety training. License renewal would be required annually,
4. A limit of one firearm purchase per month,
5. Policies to disarm gun owners who pose a harm risk to themselves or others,
6. Mandatory 10 day waiting periods, when purchasing fire arms, to prevent homicides and suicides,
7. A prohibition on any and all online firearm and ammunition sales or transfers, including gun parts,
8. A requirement to safely store firearms, including implementing national standards for locking devices on guns,
9. A requirement to report guns that are lost or stolen to local law enforcement within 72 hours,
10. Ensure that firearms are expressly regulated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and
11. A national gun buy-back and disposal program

We say NO MORE gun violence, and we mean it. We refuse to hand this issue over to a little girl who had to lay in her friend's blood and wait over an hour for the police to arrive.