I will not be voting for Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler this fall.
Washington has one of the highest teen suicide rates in the nation. Clark County, especially in the city of Battle Ground, has an extremely high rate of youth suicide. In our state, two teens commit suicide each week.
Of those, half use a gun. The use of a gun to take one’s life is the most lethal of choices; it will result in death 85 percent of the time. Use of medications for suicide result in death 2 percent of the time, and suffocation 60 percent of the time. Having a gun in a house where a suicidal teenager lives is asking for a tragedy.
I attended a town hall meeting in Battle Ground, where a high school student said, “I am afraid every day at school. I am afraid someone will bring a gun to school and shoot us. There are guns everywhere up here.” How is it we tolerate this as a society?
Yet, Rep. Herrera Beutler takes regular contributions from the National Rifle Association and enjoys an “A” grade from the group. She has been woefully absent from Congress the past six months, and ignores the seriousness and urgency of this issue. She recently did take one small, likely ineffective, step of supporting federal funding for an additional resource officer for the Battle Ground school district, yet she ignores the “elephant in the room:” Guns in the home put children at higher risk of death. Period.
