Dear Editor:

HR 1565 is new legislation in Congress to expand Brady background checks on gun sales. But despite the fact that nine in 10 Americans support expanded background checks, the gun lobby extremists are working overtime to kill the bill.

Strong, sensible gun laws preserve Second Amendment rights, prevent gun violence, and save lives.

While the Brady Law requires criminal background checks of gun sales at gun stores, these checks are not required at gun shows, online sales and other venues where unlicensed sellers operate.

Right now in most states, felons, domestic abusers and the dangerously mentally ill can walk into a gun show, flea market or even log on to the internet and buy weapons from unlicensed sellers, no questions asked.

Congress should require a simple criminal background check on gun sales. The Brady Law has stopped over 2 million felons and domestic abusers from getting guns at gun stores. Now it’s time to finish the job.

Completing the necessary paperwork for background checks takes mere minutes, and more than 91 percent of these checks are completed instantaneously.

I strongly support the Second Amendment. However, this right also requires basic responsibility, and as a society we are responsible for keeping guns out of the hands of dangerous people like criminals, terrorists and the dangerously mentally ill.

In addition, there are exemptions from a check between family members, hunters and sportsmen who temporarily want to exchange firearms while hunting or participating in sports shooting activities.

I urge every reader to contact their representatives today and ask them to co-sponsor the bipartisan King-Thompson bill (H.R. 1565) to expand criminal background checks and save lives.

Politics dominated much of the news in South Queens in 2012. With local and national elections looming, the communities were the epicenter of a hard-fought state legislative race with statewide implications.

But much like T.S. Eliot’s explanation of the apocalypse in “The Hollow Men,” the campaign ended not with a bang, but with a whimper, shoved from the top of people’s minds by the most devastating natural disaster to strike South Queens in a lifetime.

Democrats appeared to retake control of the state Senate Tuesday, as Republicans failed to win a Queens race they had poured resources into and may have lost several other tight contests around New York.

The likely changeover from GOP control would be one more victory for the party that saw President Obama re-elected and solidified its control of the U.S. Senate even as it lost a few more seats in the House of Representatives.

The first came on Oct. 18, when the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage only as a union between a man and a woman, is unconstitutional. The law’s opponents cheered the ruling.

“Today’s ruling is another step forward in our nation’s ongoing march toward justice and equality,” Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-Queens, Brooklyn, Manhattan), who voted against the law when it passed in 1996, said in a prepared statement.“The court’s decision recognizes that DOMA runs afoul of the Equal Protection clause and is fundamentally unfair.Now, all of us must continue the fight to see the rest of this discriminatory statute overturned or repealed.”

New information on the electorate from the 6th Congressional District primary on June 26 shows a Democratic voting bloc that was far more white proportionally than the population of the district.

The new 6th CD is 40 percent white, 38 percent Asian, 18 percent Hispanic and 4 percent black.

Both sides in the race for the 6th Congressional District say they are eager for a series of televised debates called for on Monday by City Councilman and GOP candidate (Dan Halloran (R-Whitestone).

The campaign of Assemblywoman Grace Meng (D-Flushing) said she is ready to go.

U.S. Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-Queens, Brooklyn, Manhattan) had little trouble fending off her three challengers in the Democratic primary on Tuesday, garnering slightly less than 58 percent of the vote in the race for the new 7th Congressional District, which includes Woodhaven and parts of Maspeth.

The 10-term congresswoman landed 57.5 percent of the vote, while Councilman Erik Martin Dilan (D-Brooklyn) received 31.8 percent, Manhattan economist Dan O’Connor garnered 8 percent, and Sunset Park district leader George Martinez won 2.6 percent of the ballots.

Candidates seen as the front runners in congressional primaries across Queens — whether incumbent lawmakers or party establishment choices — all won their nominations by wide margins Tuesday, according to preliminary results.

When Woodhaven Democrats head to the polls for the primary on June 26, they will not be able to cast their ballot for a candidate from their neck of the woods —but the three individuals running for the 7th Congressional District said they will focus on their Queens constituents, no matter how small a sliver of their area the borough constitutes.

U.S. Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens), who already represents a small portion of Woodhaven; Councilman Erik Dilan (D-Brooklyn) and Manhattan economist Dan O’Connor are vying to represent the 7th CD, which was recently redrawn during the state’s redistricting process to include such communities as parts of Maspeth, Chinatown and Williamsburg.

Democrats in much of Queens — and Republicans across the entire borough — will go to the polls June 26 to vote in primaries for their party’s nominees for Congress.

On the Republican side, the race pits U.S. Rep. Bob Turner (R-Queens, Brooklyn) against Manhattan attorney Wendy Long and Nassau County Comptroller George Maragos, who each are seeking the nomination to run against Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York) for a full six-year term. Republicans across the state will be voting in the primary.

Now that Woodhaven has been swallowed by a Congressional district which includes communities quite unlike the Queens neighborhood —hipster-heavy Williamsburg in Brooklyn and Chinatown in Manhattan, for example —what is in store for constituents who will, no matter how this year’s election goes, definitely not be represented by someone from their neck of the woods?

According to one Democrat running for the 7th Congressional District —which much of Woodhaven is now a part of —and an individual representing the district’s current legislator, U.S. Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens), residents getting used to their new political lines need not worry. The new area that covers Woodhaven, which had been part of U.S. Rep. Bob Turner’s (R-Queens, Brooklyn) 9th Congressional District, was born from the recent redistricting process, which happens once every 10 years and determines which neighborhoods fall within which Congressional, Assembly and state Senate districts.

All but one member of the Queens delegation to Congress supported an amendment to a bill last week that could have stripped millions of dollars in federal funding to the NYPD, including anti-terror programs.

All but one of the major candidates for the seat being vacated by Congressman Gary Ackerman said they would have voted against it.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney threw her hat into New York’s newly drawn 12th Congressional District election on April 17. Maloney turned in 9,482 signatures, or 10 times the amount required.

If elected, this will be Maloney's eleventh term in Congress. There are no other candidates running in the district.

Before new Congressional lines were finalized in March, a group of residents held a rally in downtown Brooklyn against the proposed districts and waved signs with such statements as “Where is Ozone Park?” and “Howard Beach and Bed-Stuy — why?”

Flash forward a month later, as the Congressional races are heating up, and South Queens residents are worried those running to represent them could be asking the same questions as the protesters, considering neighborhoods like Howard Beach, Ozone Park and Woodhaven have been placed in Brooklyn-heavy districts.

The Queens delegation to Congress could well take a hit as the state cuts two seats when redistricting this year.

And the election this month of Rep. Bob Turner (R-Queens and Brooklyn) in the 9th District has cast a monkey wrench into the work being done by the state legislature’s redistricting committee.

   Con Edison customers will no longer have to worry about being socked with a double-digit rate increase this summer, thanks to state legislation quickly passed and signed in response to a federal bureaucratic decision, and the reversal of that decision.

   The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission had approved the increases, which would have raised bills 12 percent for residential customers and 17.5 percent for businesses — on top of Con Ed’s own 4 percent hike.

   Layoffs, downsizing, unemployment and financial problems aren’t the only problems New Yorkers are facing. Going to sleep hungry should be a problem that people don’t have, but in parts of Queens it’s a problem people face everyday.

   A recent survey by Gallup on behalf of the Washington, DC-based Food Research and Action Center showed that in 2009-10, residents in seven of New York’s 13 congressional districts still face severe food hardships.

Layoffs, downsizing, unemployment and financial problems aren’t the only problems New Yorkers are facing. Going to sleep hungry should be a problem that people don’t have, but in parts of Queens it’s a problem people face everyday.

The Maspeth community and city, state and federal elected officials last Sunday gathered at the Frank Kowalinski American Legion Post for the installation of Assemblywoman Marge Markey (D-Maspeth), who has represented the 30th District for the past 12 years.

Save Jamaica HS

State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat and son of Queens who grew up in Hollis Hills, won a promotion from the people of New York Tuesday when he was elected governor, easily defeating Republican nominee Carl Paladino and a slew of minor party candidates.

Governor of New York State: Andrew Cuomo (D) Carl Paladino (R)