Rep. Ciscomani Picks His Campaign Donors Over Public Safety Every Time

Ciscomani has voted to loosen regulations on gun silencers, restrict background checks for gun sales, and cut public mental health programs.

On a bright Tuesday afternoon in Tucson in 2021, Savannah Narcaroti, a 21-year-old who loved performing in theater, happened to be riding in a car that was traveling down the same street as Justin Clark Nicholas, who was driving a stolen motorcycle. In a fit of road rage, Nicholas repeatedly shot a gun at the car, wounding Savannah and the driver. Savannah died at the hospital. Her father told a local news station, “In a little size, she really did pack a lot of power, a lot of energy.” Her theater teacher remembered, “She was sunshine walking into the room.”

Gun-related deaths reached 48,830 people in the United States in 2021, a record high. In 2023, the most recent year when data is available, nearly 47,000 people died from shootings.

Arizonans die from guns at higher rates than other Americans on average — a sobering fact in a nation with a homicide rate several times higher than its peer nations. According to the Center for Gun Violence Solutions, in Arizona, on average, someone is killed by a gun every six hours. A majority of the state’s suicides and homicides are committed with guns.

The year after Savannah was murdered, Republican Juan Ciscomani — funded and endorsed by the National Rifle Association (NRA) — was elected to represent Arizona’s 6th Congressional District, where Savannah was shot. Since taking office, Representative Ciscomani has cast several votes that defy common sense if you’re at all interested in protecting people from violence. Among them: Ciscomani has voted to loosen regulations on gun silencers, restrict background checks for gun sales, and cut public mental health programs; he supports an administration that aims to dramatically cut the budget of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), which partners with local law enforcement to investigate crimes.

It’s become routine for a Republican official, usually funded by the gun lobby, to respond to a horrific shooting by saying that the real root problem is the mental health crisis. Well, the Trump administration has defunded mental healthcare so rapidly, in so many ways, it’s difficult to provide a comprehensive summary of all the cuts.

The Trump administration cut $1 billion in school mental health grants that had originally been allocated in a 2022 bill that garnered bipartisan support after 19 young children and two teachers were massacred in Uvalde, Texas, on a day that remains one of the most devastating in our national memory. In April, Trump’s Department Justice terminated $811 million in grants to violence prevention, public safety, and victim services programs.

Under the guidance of Elon Musk, DOGE terminated the positions of Center for Disease Control (CDC) researchers who studied firearm deaths and injuries. Thousands of U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs staff, including frontline healthcare workers, are no longer in their jobs as the prospect of mass layoffs looms. The megabill that Republican members of Congress, including Ciscomani, approved this summer cut roughly $1 trillion from Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which will diminish millions of people’s access to healthcare, including mental healthcare.

Hidden in the fine print of that Congressional megabill are other favors to gun industry CEOs. “The bill includes a radical provision that will make it easier for dangerous people to acquire gun silencers and short-barreled rifles and shotguns,” reads a statement from GIFFORDS, the group founded by former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords after a gunman shot her and killed six people, including a nine-year-old girl, outside a grocery store in Tucson in 2011. Ciscomani and other Republicans voted for the megabill anyway.

That’s not all: The Congressional megabill also included a provision that eliminated a key part of the FBI’s background check system. Previously, once a veteran was deemed mentally incompetent by the VA, the FBI’s federal background check system was automatically alerted. The megabill prohibited that automatic alert, even though an estimated 12 veterans die by suicide every day, according to Brady United. The move created an “enormous threat to the safety and well-being of veterans,” wrote several gun safety groups in a letter to lawmakers.

There’s still more: Ciscomani sticks with Trump even when his administration is defunding the law enforcement programs that prevent and solve gun crimes. The ATF provides local law enforcement tools they can use to arrest repeat violent offenders – and at no cost to the local municipalities. ATF’s gun tracing program “has transformed crime solving by connecting multiple crimes to a single firearm,” according to a report by the Center for American Progress (CAP).

After gun homicide rates increased dramatically during the pandemic, they have been decreasing since 2023. CAP’s report concludes that, “ATF’s partnerships with local law enforcement agencies, along with increased investments in community violence intervention and prevention programs, contributed to this turnaround.” Despite the success of the bureau’s work, and the president’s repeated grandstanding about being pro-police, Trump’s Department of Justice has proposed cutting the AFT’s budget by 25%, which would mean a projected 40% decrease in the bureau’s ability to regulate firearms and explosive industries.

If the goal is to increase public safety, none of this makes sense. It’s been obvious for a very long time that too many members of Congress are willing to sacrifice thousands of American lives to please their political donors.

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ICYMI…