Jenny and Bert Heyman guest commentary: Letting go is not an option

It’s been a long 12 years since our son’s murder and we’ve had plenty of time to reflect on how it’s impacted our lives. We keep him close in our hearts — we feel we owe it to him, his memory, and to our little family.

Our son, Chris, along with his sister, Tanya, and her three beautiful kids, have been what we lived for — watching them grow and being an active part of their young maturing lives has been so fulfilling for us. Having Chris ripped from our lives in a preventable crime, which has been described in California court documents as road rage by a person who used a modified fully automatic TEC 9 with a 50-round magazine, has been unbelievably agonizing. It just didn’t need to happen.

Conventional wisdom says to let him go and move on with our lives, but maybe it’s because we spent a lot of time and energy raising him, or maybe it’s because we just loved him, but for us letting go is not an option. His memory has made us better parents, grandparents, and hopefully better human beings. We honor his memory by trying to help prevent future tragedies like ours from happening to others.

We have an opportunity to be part of Nevadans for Background Checks, an organization who stands for gun safety and closing the loopholes in our current Background Check System. We give them our full unconditional support and we very much hope the voting age youngsters, the young at heart, aunts and uncles, sisters and brothers, all concerned parents and grandparents are going to join us and get out the vote in November 2016 to pass this initiative. Eliminating the loopholes in the current Background Check System will make Nevada the 19th state to pass similar laws.

It’s probable current background checks would not have kept our son from being murdered, as his murderer traveled from California to an Arizona Gun Show to buy his weapon. It’s impossible to eliminate all acts of violence from our society but let’s not stand by and do nothing. We have an opportunity to make our streets a little safer, to legally keep guns out of the hands of felons, domestic abusers, those who have been adjudicated mentally unstable and others already prohibited from buying guns.

My family and I ask everyone to help us PASS the Initiative to eliminate the loopholes in our current Nevada Background Check System.

We encourage you to read the initiative as it’s written at http://nvsos.gov/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=3440.

Jenny and Bert Heyman are Carson City residents.