Mark Knapp’s Jan. 22 column (“Sex, guns and progressives”) has to be his most bizzare to date. Without addressing all the various rambling, off-topic, right-wing paranoia Mr. Knapp expresses in that column, I would just like to point out that 90 percent of the American public, including gun owners, support full funding of the National Crime Information System Reporting Act, which created incentives for states to improve the reporting of background information to the NCIS database.

Such information would help ensure that someone like Jared Loughner, the person who allegedly shot Rep. Gabby Giffords in Tucson, Ariz., could not, with his history of drug abuse and mental illness, freely walk into a gun store or gun show and walk out with a firearm.

Gun shows require no background checks whatsoever. Closing that loophole should be a no-brainer, as should the reinstatement of the 1994 assault weapons ban, and a ban on magazines that hold more than say, 10 rounds. No one outside of law enforcement or the military needs magazines with a greater capacity than that.

These three changes — fully fund the NCIS Act; close the gunshow background check loophole; and restrict firearms magazine capacity — should be the minimum three changes we make in existing gun laws.

For the record, I grew up hunting, target shooting, served in the military, and later reloaded my own ammunition and belonged to the NRA for several years, until the endless fear-driven fundraising for lobbying from the NRA got to be too much for me. I am one of many progressive liberals, like the president, who supports citizens’ Second Amendment right to own firearms. I just happen to think it’s far past time for some rational form of gun law reform in this nation of 90 guns for every 100 citizens — a nation that has a murder rate 40 times that of Great Britain.

Rich Doggett, Federal Way