To the editor:

As a mother and concerned citizen, I plan to vote “Yes” on Initiative 594 this November. Initiative 594 will close the loophole in our current background check system and keep guns out of dangerous hands.

Every day, 86 Americans are killed by gun violence, eight of those children. No other developed country has such grim statistics. It’s clear we need to do something to keep our families and communities safer.

New data released by Everytown for Gun Safety and the FBI confirm that background checks are a very effective way to keep us all safer from gun violence.

In Washington, background checks have stopped more than 40,000 gun sales to prohibited purchasers since 1998. Of those, more than 6,000 were domestic abusers.

Currently, only those buying guns from licensed gun dealers undergo background checks. Our state’s loophole makes it easy to evade a background check by buying a gun from an unlicensed dealer, at a gun show, or from a stranger.

In states that have closed the background check loophole, 38 percent fewer women are shot to death by intimate partners and 39 percent fewer law enforcement officers are murdered with handguns.

Initiative 594 takes our existing background checks system and makes it work even better for us. It will make a big difference in keeping our kids and communities safer.

Please join me in voting “Yes” on Initiative 594.

DENISE GARCIA

Bainbridge Island