We, the undersigned people of Shandaken hereby state our strong objection to Shandaken Town Board Resolution #58-13, the "Resolution in Support of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution." This Resolution was passed by three members of the Shandaken Town Board on Monday, February 4, 2013 despite near unanimous opposition expressed by members of the public present and those who wrote letters to voice their opposition, which were read at the meeting.
This is a matter of personal conscience and has no bearing on town law. We are not challenging the Second Amendment but do not feel it is proper for the Shandaken Town Board to use the town as a platform to advance individual views on the highly charged topic of gun control. The "Resolution in Support of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution" does not represent our views, and we call on the Shandaken Town Board to repeal it.
Why is this important?
The Shandaken Town Board, at its Feb. 4th meeting, presented and passed a resolution stating ""BE IT RESOLVED, that the Town Board of the Town of Shandaken does hereby oppose the enactment of any legislation that would infringe upon the Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms and consider such laws to be unnecessary and beyond lawful legislative authority granted to our State representatives, as there is no documented correlation between gun control measures and crime reduction." This resolution, which was approved by three member of the Shandaken Town Board, will be sent to every elected official from President Barack Obama to County Legislator John Parate.
