VANCOUVER, Wash. (KOIN) — Marilyn Balcerak clearly remembers June 7, 2015.
It was a Sunday. She was in Auburn, Washington when she had to do “the hardest thing you can ever imagine you can do.”
Her 23-year-old son, James Balcerak, killed his stepsister, Briana Smith, and then turned the gun on himself.
“I went upstairs and opened the door and she was lying on the floor with blood on her pillow and on the wall,” Marilyn told KOIN 6 News.
She had to call relatives.
“As a mom to call up and have to say that your son killed somebody and killed somebody that you loved is beyond a nightmare,” she said. “I wouldn’t want anybody to go through that.”
Marilyn turned her grief to activism and is the citizen sponsor for Washington Initiative 1491, which would let family and household members ask a judge for an Extreme Risk Protection Order.
The proposal would allow a judge to suspend someone’s access to guns if there is evidence that person is a threat to themselves or others.
She said James had threatened suicide in the past and showed signs of being mentally unstable, and she believes Initiative 1491 might have helped her family.
“Without a doubt, I know for sure my step-daughter would be alive,” she said. “Could James have committed suicide another way? Yes, he could have,” but added she doesn’t think he would have.
Marilyn said she found suicide letters around the house occasionally, and she asked the police if there was any way she could keep a gun out of the house.
“They said no, unless I take a restraining order out and I just didn’t see how that would help. That means I couldn’t see my son.”
Stephanie Ervin, the campaign manager for Initiative 1491, said the effort to get Extreme Risk Protection Orders in Washington was tried twice before, but never got a vote in the state legislature.
But this time it’s different and on the ballot. Ervin is leading the campaign on a 5-city tour to draw attention to the initiative and came to Vancouver Thursday.
“Our country is finally waking up to the need to do something about this epidemic,” Ervin said.
One of the supporters of the initiative is Paul Kemp, whose brother-in-law Steve Forsythe was killed in the Clackamas Town Center shooting. He doesn’t think this law would have saved Forsythe but thinks it might help save other lives.
“I’m absolutely certain nobody would want to walk in our shoes. It was the worst moments of my life all rolled into one afternoon, and my sister and her kids have to live with it everyday,” Kemp said.
“They need this tool to be able to legally intervene in the situation and to give law enforcement the proper tool to legally intervene until things can be calmed down,” he said.
The Alliance for Gun Responsibility is backing this proposal.
But the NRA opposes the Extreme Risk Protection Orders proposed under Initiative 1491. Their opposition states the initiative would “selectively target gun owners,” and that “household members” who could petition for such an order is too vaguely defined.On their website, the NRA-ILA states:
“This law would be ripe for abuse by individuals that disagree with the Second Amendment, and the mere insinuation that gun ownership makes you a danger to yourself or others is offensive and insulting.”
Ervin disagrees.
“We know that a majority of mass shooters, and the vast majority of suicide victims, make their intentions known to their family and loved ones,” she said. “Initiative 1491 would allow families and law enforcement, the most likely people to see those warning signs to go to a court and ask a judge to prohibit someone who’s a real threat to themselves or others from accessing firearms.”
For Marilyn Balcerak, Initiative 1491 is her wish for other families.
“To have this tool to prevent suicide, something like this happening,” she said. “You hear about kids killing parents or parents killing a mother or kids. It takes the gun out of the equation and it gives everybody a chance to solve that problem, to get out of that crisis period.”