Gun Sense Candidate Questionnaire

I believe local elected officials have a role to play in addressing gun violence. This isn't only a federal issue. Cities set the tone for public safety, and a council member who stays silent on gun violence is choosing silence, not neutrality.

I support closing the private-sale loophole. In my clinical and forensic work, I've sat across from people navigating reentry after a felony conviction, people who are legally prohibited from possessing a firearm for good reason, and I've seen how little it takes for a gap in the law to become a loophole someone walks through. A background check that only applies at a licensed dealer and not at a gun show or an online private sale isn't a background check system, it's a suggestion.

This is close to the work I do every day. As a clinical liaison in the family court system, I sit inside the exact moment these laws are built for, when a loved one or a clinician can see someone is in crisis before it becomes a tragedy. An Extreme Risk Protection Order gives that moment somewhere to go: a judge, a process, a temporary pause, instead of nothing. I don't see this as taking rights away. I see it as giving families and courts a tool that already exists for other kinds of danger and finally applying it here.

I'm a father. Secure storage isn't a political position to me, it's the same instinct as a childproof cabinet or a pool fence: you don't have to distrust gun owners to ask that a loaded, unlocked firearm not be within reach of a child or someone who isn't legally allowed to have one. Responsible ownership and secure storage aren't in tension. They're the same thing.

I come out of mental health work, and the data on this inside clinical circles is not controversial: access to a firearm is one of the clearest risk factors in a suicide crisis, because it removes the time and distance that save lives in almost every other method. I've also lived this outside a clinic. Years ago, a friend going through a hard time asked me to hold his firearms for him. I did, and I kept holding them even when he later came back and asked for them, because I could see he was still in crisis. I didn't budge until he was clear, stable, and ready. When I gave them back, he thanked me for holding that line. That's what this question is really asking: do we believe access matters in a moment of crisis? I've seen firsthand that it does, and that someone being willing to hold that line can save a life.

A background check system only means something if there's no side door around it. Ghost guns are built specifically to be that side door, untraceable, assembled outside any system of accountability, and increasingly turning up in the hands of people who couldn't pass a background check in the first place. Supporting this isn't about restricting lawful ownership. It's about making sure the rules we already agreed to can't be built around in a home kit.

I knew an insurance agent in Berkeley, California, excellent at her job, who was a victim of domestic violence. When she filed for divorce, her ex-husband found her and shot her dead. That is what's at stake in this question. The data backs up what I watched happen to someone I knew: a gun in the hands of an abuser turns a dangerous situation lethal, and the period around a divorce or a restraining order is often the most dangerous of all. Requiring abusers to surrender their firearms once they're legally prohibited isn't a policy abstraction to me. It's the difference between someone living and someone not.

This is the work I've spent my career doing, case management with people coming home from prison, jail, and supervision, trying to break cycles of violence and recidivism before they repeat. I've seen up close that the people at highest risk of being shot or shooting someone are usually already known to outreach workers, hospitals, and case managers, if those programs are funded enough to actually reach them. But my platform doesn't stop at intervention. It's also about prevention: funding pro-social programming for youth and young adults, parks and rec, mentorship, and the everyday infrastructure that builds real connection in community, for adults as much as kids. That includes making sure school districts actually fund counselors and nurses, not treat them as optional. As a sophomore, I was part of Berkeley High School's first class in conflict resolution, communication skills, I-statements, learning to take personal accountability, and I still believe that curriculum should be a required part of how young people grow up, not an elective. In my clinical work, I've also watched how a single impulsive moment, a matter of seconds, can determine years of a person's life spent behind bars. Investing in connection, conflict resolution, and school-based support before that moment is public safety too, and it's cheaper in every sense than responding after.

Most of the guns that end up at crime scenes didn't start there, they came from somewhere, often trafficked in from states with weaker laws. If we're serious about public safety, we have to be willing to follow that supply chain back to its source instead of only responding at the point of harm. I've seen this up close too. In the community I grew up in, I noticed people carrying guns with the serial numbers scratched off, untraceable to anyone, with no way to know where they'd come from. That's not a loophole, it's a deliberate erasure of accountability, and it should carry real consequences. Comprehensive tracing gives local officials the information to hold traffickers and irresponsible dealers accountable, not just the person left holding an untraceable gun, and possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number should come with accountability of its own.

Carrying a loaded, hidden handgun in public is a serious responsibility, and a permit process with real safety training attached is a reasonable floor, not a burden. This is consistent with where I stand throughout this questionnaire: responsible gun ownership and common-sense standards aren't opposites. A permitting system that screens out people who pose a danger and makes sure carriers actually know what they're doing protects everyone, including responsible gun owners themselves.

Maine allows open carry, and state law keeps cities like Portland from setting their own gun rules, so this decision belongs in Augusta. My view comes from my family. My father was a correctional officer at a California Youth Authority facility in Ione, and the state trusted him to carry because of the risks of his job. History also shows that who gets to carry openly has rarely been neutral. California's 1967 open carry ban passed in direct response to the Black Panthers. I support banning open carry, applied fairly to everyone, because a loaded gun in a crowd makes people feel less safe, not more.

I've spent my career working at the intersection of the court system, law enforcement, and the people caught between them, and I've seen how much distrust builds when there's no real transparency or accountability for use of force. That distrust doesn't make communities safer, it makes officers' jobs harder too, because people stop cooperating with the people meant to protect them. Supporting de-escalation training, transparency, and independent review isn't anti-police. It's what actually rebuilds the trust that effective policing depends on.

I oppose Shoot First laws as written. I believe in self-defense when a situation genuinely calls for it, but that's different from a blanket rule that lets someone use deadly force in public even when they could have safely avoided it. Removing the duty to consider whether force is actually necessary doesn't protect people, it lowers the bar for using a gun. Self-defense should be judged by what the situation actually required, not treated as a standing permission.

I've stood in front of a classroom myself, as a substitute teacher and teaching third grade, and I have teachers in my own family. Arming teachers doesn't match what I saw in those rooms. Teachers are already stretched thin, buying their own classroom supplies, managing twenty-five kids at once, there's no evidence that handing them a gun makes students safer, and real risk that it makes an already chaotic moment worse. Keeping guns out of K-12 schools and colleges, outside of trained law enforcement and security, isn't about distrust of teachers. It's about not asking them to carry one more impossible responsibility.

Three years ago, 18 of our neighbors were killed in Lewiston at a bowling alley and a bar, ordinary places on an ordinary night. Weapons designed for the battlefield belong with the military, not on our streets. I respect responsible gun owners and hunters, and none of what they do requires a weapon built to kill many people quickly. As a clinician, I believe in prevention. Countries like Japan treat ownership as a responsibility you prepare for, with real training and screening. And when someone has a crisis involving violence, or a history of domestic violence, that should trigger a real review before they keep or buy a firearm. That's not punishment. That's care before crisis.