Blogging for gun safety reform and changing the conversation about the role of guns and gun violence in our communities. Common sense gun laws and gun safety reform and gun rights are not mutually exclusive.
More often than not, I find links to articles to support what I am writing. Occasionally, however, information is not accurate and needs to be updated or corrected. I am writing this to correct what I wrote in my last post. Though it has been difficult to assess with accuracy, it does look like concealed carry permit holders will be allowed to carry guns inside of the Nashville Music Center at the upcoming NRA convention. What I learned from my own sources is that guns are not allowed in the music performance center but are allowed in the convention center attached to it. But one can see why there is confusion because this sentence from the security section about the convention says: ” All guns on the convention floor will be nonoperational, with the firing pins removed.” Seems like that could mean ALL guns on the floor. But, from one of my readers who presumes to know:
Carry is permitted at NRA HQ in Fairfax by everyone, this is also allowed at NRA Annual Meeting unless it’s prohibited by the venue. The last place that carry was prohibited by the venue was in Charlotte, and that law has since been changed to allow carry at that venue in the event of a future return there.
The article you found only applies to firearms being displayed at Annual Meeting as part of an exhibit, not firearms being legally carried. It is just a common sense safety measure to render exhibit firearms inoperable.
So yes, apparently loaded guns will be allowed inside of the Nashville Convention Center if this reader is correct. That should be fun. Hopefully there will be no “accidental” discharges by any of those “good guys” with guns. There was a recent case of this at a gun range in Florida where armed police officers were training. One of the guns accidentally discharged, killing another officer. It happens. Thus one can see why allowing a bunch of armed people in one place could be a very bad idea. But, whatever. It looks like there is no concern for that at NRA conventions. Except all of those guns on display that will be handled by armed folks need to be unloaded. Why? To prevent “accidental discharges”. Hypocrisy.
The problem with the idea that ALL permit holders will be safe with their guns and nothing bad will happen is that it’s not true. I write about such incidents on this blog all the time. In my last post I wrote about a man whose gun discharged “accidentally” at an Easter mass church service. It turns out that there’s a lot more to that story. Check it out in this latest report:
Officials at Mount Aloysius College confirmed the same man expelled for having a gun on campus, is the same one who police say saw his gun go off during an Easter mass over the weekend.
On Tuesday, WTAJ obtained a letter to students sent out by the school, letting them know that Matt Crawford, the man expelled from school last week, is now at the center of another gun related incident.
Back in 2010, Crawford was arrested after pulling a gun on a relative during an argument. He faced simple assault charges then.
Shouldn’t the 2010 incident disqualify this guy from keeping his permit? If not, it should because his pattern of gun handling and carrying seems pretty dangerous to me. This one was an accident or intentional shooting waiting to happen. But the gun lobby has pushed legislators into the false premise that permit holders will be safe with their guns and there won’t be incidents like this. As more people carry guns in more public places because of the loosening of gun laws all over the country, we can expect to see more incidents like the this one. This is the hypocrisy of the gun lobby. The thing is, lives are at stake. Public safety is at stake.
And speaking of more hypocrisy, not one gun rights advocate reading my blog commented on all of the examples I gave of “good guys” with guns shooting people intentionally or unintentionally. Why not? Because those incidents don’t fit with the ideas purported by them about more guns making everyone safer. In fact, the lies are still coming and continue to come. Check out this Iowa legislator who made a false claim about a bill but got caught in his hyperbole. From the article:
While critics have argued the measure opens a loophole that would allow some buyers to avoid background checks, Windschitl, R-Missouri Valley, told The Des Moines Register it would actually lead to more background checks for firearm purchases.
We rate this statement FALSE.
In a follow-up interview, Windschitl clarified that his statement was an “assumption” and wasn’t rooted in any evidence. In fact, the data necessary to determine how the law would affect the number of background checks performed and firearms purchased aren’t collected and don’t exist.
Windschitl’s prediction is also based on questionable logic. It assumes that firearms consumers will not take advantage of the option to forgo a permit, and that private sellers will go out of their way to perform background checks on prospective buyers.
The Tennessee House of Representatives passed a bill Monday night that makes it illegal to take a squirt gun — but not a real gun — within 150 feet of a school.
The new ban was included in a larger bill that would nix any local laws prohibiting people with gun permits from taking guns to parks.
You can’t make this stuff up. What are people thinking? Real guns are clearly more dangerous than toy guns. Yes, I know that kids have been shot by officers when they have been carrying air soft guns or other toy type guns. But that’s not the point here. If you are going to ban any kind of gun in a school zone, it needs to be all guns. But the corporate gun lobby, of course, is against banning guns anywhere. Hypocrisy as far as the eye can see.
So during the upcoming NRA convention in Nashville, armed attendees will be treated to the usual ridiculous nonsense spewed by Wayne LaPierre, whose over the top rhetoric is meant to inspire fear and paranoia. His speeches are amazing for the content, hardly any of which is true. So a new video produced by Everytown for Gun Safety makes those speeches all the more ridiculous. When children say the words, they come out seeming like the nonsense they are. “Li’l Wayne LaPierres” can say it in a way that adults just can’t. Kids know baloney when they see and hear it and they also sometimes have more common sense than the adults.
And last, as to concealed guns allowed at NRA headquarters, information is not easy to obtain. A friend called NRA headquarters and someone there confirmed that something had changed regarding their policy about no guns inside so apparently now permit holders can carry inside of the building. It’s likely only in the public areas and not in the offices of the CEO and other leaders of the organization. I’m sure they would want to be safe from guys like the Altoona permit holder I wrote about above.
I have updated and edited this post since I first posted it.
Easter is now past and Passover is being celebrated this week. I attended a wonderful church service at a church attended by my son and his family before we had Easter brunch. It was an uplifting, celebratory service in a church filled to the brim as they often are at this Christian holiday. The pastors told several relevant stories of the season based on the Biblical accounts of the resurrection. I looked around at the families and was feeling thankful for this chance to celebrate my own faith with others who believe in similar values to mine.
I would have been horrified to think that one of those folks sitting there with their families was carrying a gun at the church. There are just some places where guns should not be. Church is one. Places where families and children gather are another. And that, actually, makes for most places where the gun lobby has managed to convince too many bought and paid for legislators that guns are “needed.” Facts don’t support this “logic.” But the gun rights advocates tell stories that don’t make sense and are actually unbelievable to instill fear and paranoia into legislators and the potential gun buying public. We need true stories and actual research in order to make informed decisions about important public safety measures such as preventing gun violence.
We were collecting information to answer the question of who, what, where, when, and how did shootings occur?
We were finding that most homicides occur between people who know each other, people who are acquaintances or might be doing business together or might be living together. They’re not stranger-on-stranger shootings. They’re not mostly home intrusions.
We also found that there were a lot of firearm suicides, and in fact most firearm deaths are suicides. There were a lot of young people who were impulsive who were using guns to commit suicide.
No wonder the gun lobby doesn’t like this research. It blows a hole in their messaging and story telling.
Let’s look at just a few of the many incidents in the past week or so. It’s impossible for me to get them all into one blog post. Remember- about 80 Americans a day die from gunshot injuries in gun suicides, homicides and “accidental” shootings. I don’t make this stuff up. OK- a partial list:
Nik Clark, president of Wisconsin Carry, Inc., a gun rights advocacy group, said his group was puzzled why the DA’s office “didn’t re-examine their pursuit of charges after the first charge was dismissed.”
He also said the case “demonstrates the fundamental level of discrimination that exists in society today with respect to firearms.” He said power tools, lighters and poisons all cause more child deaths that unattended guns, yet no one would be charged for leaving those items in a restroom.
Good grief. What is the matter with these people? Are these good folks with guns or bad folks with guns?
What kind of “good guys” with guns are these? Or for that matter, any of the incidents I write about in this post today. Did these “good guys” need their guns to defend from “bad guys” with guns? The answer is a resounding NO. Guns are risky business. That is becoming more and more obvious, as if it already was not. But the gun rights extremists who believe in the mantra of “more guns everywhere for everyone” and the fear and paranoia coming from the corporate gun lobby, convince our legislators that passing any law will infringe on their rights. They are telling false stories to keep their power, influence and profit. Do these folks have a right to shoot off their guns wherever they are and get away with shooting someone else or almost shooting someone else by their negligence? Is this the “God given” right we are talking about?
Well, in Tennessee there’s currently a push by the state legislature to allow guns in state parks. Prior to an NRA convention in Nashville, state Rep. Glen Casada was questioned about this push in his state and what he would think about a child being struck and killed by a stray bullet while playing in one of these parks. His answer? If that were to happen, those would just be “acts of God.” He also went on to suggest that a child is just as likely to get killed in a bicycle accident as they are by a gun, claiming that if a gun is “used properly” it’s no more dangerous than a bike.
“Acts of God…” Really? I guess if you can’t blame anything else, you can just blame God for those nasty “accidental gun discharges.” I mean, these are the folks who believe God granted them their rights to own guns in the first place. Think about this for a minute or two. And if you do, you will, of course, conclude that is not possible. But I guess thinking through to logical conclusions based on fact is just not part of the discussion for some folks.
Speaking of “acts of God”and gun discharges, a gun permit holder in Altoona, PA “accidentally” discharged his loaded gun while attending a church service. I don’t make this stuff up. The first question about this incident is why the man was pulling his gun out of his pocket while attending a mass in a church? I’m sure God would love to know that people think they need guns while worshiping because……… well, because……… Hmmm. Sorry. Can’t think of one reason why someone needs a gun in church. But what makes common sense is just not part of the discussion for some folks. Good guy with a gun or bad guy with a gun?
There is new information about the man who was involved in this incident. From this article:
The gun owner involved in an accidental shooting at a cathedral in Altoona is the same man who was expelled from Mount Aloysius College last week for bringing a gun inside a classroom. Charges were not filed in the Mount Aloysius incident, and charges have not been filed in the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament incident, so 6 News is choosing not to release the man’s name. (…) That man reached out to 6 News and said he has a permit to carry and said the incident at the cathedral was an accident. He also confirmed he was the Mount Aloysius student who was expelled for bringing a gun into a classroom. The man said in this case, his shirt rode up, exposing his concealed weapon, and it was just an honest mistake. Police said he will not face charges for the Mount Aloysius incident, and there is no word yet if he will be facing charges in the church incident.
Were the people who died, were injured or suffered a narrow miss with a bullet involved in “acts of God”? Because if they were, according to some folks who boldly and falsely make this claim, there is nothing we can do about any of these shootings. And that, dear readers, is exactly what the gun lobby wants you to think. Doing nothing is better than infringing on their “God given” rights. People dying? No problem. It’s the price of a constitutional right. It’s also the price of a gun culture gone wrong.
“Many people understandably have questions about what would prompt an individual to carry a gun into the Cathedral,” Bishop Bartchak said in a statement released Monday by the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown. “I would like to take this opportunity to state my firm belief that guns have no place in our Cathedral or any of the other parishes in our Diocese. Our churches must be an environment in which all feel safe to worhip the Lord and celebrate our Catholic faith.”
Amen to that. This is just common sense.
We’ve got it wrong in America. We’ve got it backwards. Gun rights are not inalienable. Gun rights come with responsibilities. People who own guns need to be trained and safely secure them from kids and others who should not have them. They should have to go through a background check for every sale to make sure they are “law abiding” citizens. Just like we require training, licensing and background checks for most every other thing going on in our country, guns and their owners or prospective owners should be no different. Do we want to trust our kids at a daycare to just anyone- a felon maybe or a domestic abuser or sexual predator? You know the answer. Background checks are required. Do you trust your financial advisor or accountant with your money and personal financial information? Do you expect that person to be free of a criminal background? Of course you do. Do you expect that people who drive on the same roads as you do to have a license and have had driver’s training? You know the answer. Do you expect the people who teach your kids to be properly vetted and licensed in their field? Do you expect law enforcement officers to be well trained in handling firearms and for the job they do every day to protect us and enforce the laws? Do you expect your lawyer to be trained and not to be felons or sexual predators?
A multilevel security plan went into works not long after Nashville was chosen as the convention destination. All guns on the convention floor will be nonoperational, with the firing pins removed, and any guns purchased during the NRA convention will have to be picked up at a Federal Firearms License dealer, near where the purchaser lives, and will require a legal identification.
This organization is pushing guns at the rest of us in places where we hang out to shop, learn, eat, work and play ( playgrounds, parks, etc.) but not in their own convention? Come on. I don’t make this stuff up. What are they so afraid of? I thought they loved their guns and loved to carry them around with them everywhere they go. Is it that they aren’t afraid of other people like themselves? Is it that they actually understand that if a whole bunch of gun carriers are walking around in one place, safety will be compromised? It is because someone might get angry at one of the many “illustrious” speakers like Sarah Palin, Jeb Bush, Mike Pence, and others and take a shot? Or what is it? I’d love to know. In addition, they are telling people they will have to pass a background check in order to buy/order guns at the convention and pick them up at a federally licensed firearms dealer near their home. Really? I thought that was terribly inconvenient for these folks.
Hypocrisy as far as the eye can see. There is absolutely no common sense when it comes to the gun lobby’s safety policies for themselves and their total resistance to the same for the rest of us. In fact, there are no loaded guns allowed at gun shows. Occasionally an “accidental” discharge occurs in spite of this safety measure. Like here or this one. Did you know that guns are not allowed for visitors to the NRA headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia? Yes, it’s true. Who don’t they trust? Staff can carry but anyone else, no. So this organization pushes for visitors to schools, malls, hospitals, college campuses, state legislatures. national parks, etc. to carry guns but at their own headquarters? Nope. From the article:
She told me that the security guards at the front desk were unarmed, but that visitors were not allowed to bring weapons into the building (except to their posh firing range, which has a separate entrance). Doesn’t that leave the visitors at a bit of an disadvantage, I asked, and we had a bit of a chuckle about that. I was too chicken to ask her whether that policy was inconsistent with the NRA’s present philosophy that seems to encourage shoot-outs.
So there you have it. The NRA staff is armed, while visitors are disarmed.
Well, There you have it. People are being shot every day by “law abiding” citizens intentionally or unintentionally and the NRA claims that more guns make us safer. And then they don’t allow guns in their convention or at their own headquarters.
This Facebook page (Parents Against Gun Violence) is keeping tracks of the shootings every month and the reasons for the shootings. Please read (below)and then raise your hand if you agree with Mr. LaPierre ( above) that “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun”:
On the Facebook page you can see links to the actual stories about these incidents. No one made them up. So there you have it. The hypocrisy of the corporate gun lobby and the gun rights extremists is “alive” and well. Meanwhile, too many Americans are not alive thanks to gunshot injuries or are suffering the long term affects from gunshot injuries while the gun lobby opposes any and all measures to reduce the carnage. It’s well past time to do something about this national public health and safety epidemic. Please join me in efforts to keep our communities safe from devastating gun violence.
America lost a treasure yesterday with the death of Sarah Brady. She was a courageous woman who was tough and persistent while at the same time caring and a true friend to those who knew her. From this article:
“In the history of our nation, there are few people, if any, who are directly responsible for saving as many lives as Sarah and Jim,” Brady Campaign and Center President Dan Gross said in a statement.
Brady became a gun control activist after her husband, White House press secretary James Brady, was shot in the head during an assassination attempt against President Ronald Reagan in 1981.
James Brady died in August of last year.
The Brady Campaign says the legislation Sarah Brady championed after James Brady’s shooting has prevented the sale of more than 2.4 million firearms “to criminals and other dangerous people.”
At the 1996 Democratic convention in Chicago, Sarah Brady was invited to speak because in the preceding term President Bill Clinton had signed the Brady bill. Brady called that moment “the proudest moment of our lives,” but she also called for continued work on gun control.
“This battle is not about guns; it’s about families, it’s about children, it’s about our future,” Brady said. “You can’t have stronger families without safer children. The gun lobby likes to say that Jim and I are trying to take guns away from hunters and sportsmen. The gun lobby is wrong. To the hunters and sportsmen of America we say, keep your guns. But just give us the laws that we need to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and out of the hands of children.”
Her advice to those who knew her was that we should never give up. She and her husband Jim who died last year after living with the consequences of his shooting in 1981, never gave up in their fight to get the Brady Law enacted. Because of their efforts, lives have been saved. There is no question that stopping people who shouldn’t have guns at one of the points of sale will also make it harder for those people to get guns to use in crime and shootings. Since the law was enacted about 2 million gun sales have been stopped when prohibited people have attempted to buy guns at federally licensed gun dealers.
But we have not yet finished the job started by Sarah and Jim Brady. Until we require background checks for all gun sales, we will be allowing felons, domestic abusers and adjudicated mentally ill people (and others) to legally purchase guns they should not have. There are markets for guns through private sellers at gun shows, on the Internet and other venues who don’t require background checks on buyers. The American public knows this and agrees that background checks on all guns sales are a very good idea for public safety. Sarah understood this well and worked until the end of her life on efforts to expand Brady background checks to all gun sales.
Sarah was not afraid of the gun lobby. Gun violence prevention advocates are not afraid of the gun lobby. It’s our elected leaders who are so afraid of the corporate gun lobby that they give in to their false claims that background checks on all gun sales will only affect law abiding citizens and inevitably lead to gun registration. In the 20 years that Brady background checks have been in existence there has been no gun registration. But never mind the facts.
This is backwards logic but the gun lobby gets away with this talking point with our leaders. Not so with the public who can understand that if you are a legal buyer, a background check won’t affect you. Legal buyers go through background checks every day to purchase guns from licensed gun dealers and are barely inconvenienced as a result. It will be those who should not have guns who will suffer from the inconvenience of being turned away by a seller. And that inconvenience may just stop a shooting. The inconvenience of burying a loved one after a shooting is an actual inconvenience. The other one is fabricated by a group whose getting their way means profit, power and influence.
Sarah and Jim Brady knew that inconvenience well. Their life changed in the instant the bullet hit Jim’s head in 1981. An armed man who shouldn’t have had a gun shot that bullet that killed one and injured not only Brady but President Reagan. This happened in spite of armed security and police at the scene lending the lie to the NRA’s ridiculous statement that only good guys can stop bad guys with guns.
Jim Brady lived with the paralysis and other problems that come from a head injury from a bullet. Bullets do serious damage to body tissue and organs. Jim Brady’s sense of humor, though, was not lost in the shooting but as his life progressed, it was difficult to understand his speech. He, along with Sarah, were relentless in their cause to keep guns away from those who shouldn’t have them. Sarah was his loving partner and his legs in her visits to the U.S. Capitol to get the Brady law passed.
After the Million Mom March in 2000, Sarah Brady recognized the value of grassroots organizing and advocates in states all over America. The Million Mom March merged with Handgun Control, Inc. in 2001 to form the now Brady Campaign/Center and Sarah continued working with chapter members all over the country on gun violence prevention measures. In the 15th year of the Million Mom March, chapter leaders and members will not only continue the work begun by Sarah and Jim Brady but will renew our efforts to change the conversation about guns and expand Brady background checks. In Sarah’s memory, we are energized to get the job done.
I had opportunities to work with Sarah and knew of her intellect and her well thought out remarks about gun violence prevention. She was wise and listened well. She was also feisty and fought for what was right if she thought someone was doing the wrong thing. Sarah was also charming and opened up her life to other advocates, making them her friends immediately.
Sarah Brady will be missed by many. Her dreams of finishing the job will not die because she did. Those of us who knew her and those who didn’t will continue in our efforts on her behalf and in her memory. Sarah knew what common sense was all about. To her it meant that gun laws can co-exist with gun ownership and gun rights. In fact, she and Jim came at the issue from the side of protecting their young son from a gun to which he was accidentally exposed by a friend. She grew up in a home with guns but when her young son found a gun in the truck of a friend, she realized that something had to change. She knew that gun safety reform was about children and families.
“All of us at the Brady Campaign and Center to Prevent Gun Violence are heartbroken over the passing of Sarah Brady. Together with her husband Jim ‘Bear’ Brady, Sarah was the heart and soul of this organization and the successful movement it has become today. In the history of our nation, there are few people, if any, who are directly responsible for saving as many lives as Sarah and Jim. There are countless people walking around today who would not be were it not for Sarah Brady’s remarkable resilience, compassion and – what she always said she enjoyed the most – her hard work in the trenches with this organization, which she continued right up to the very end.
“Sarah and Jim are responsible for the passage of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (the ‘Brady Law’) which has prevented more than 2.4 million sales of firearms to criminals and other dangerous people and remains, by far, the most significant achievement in the history of the gun violence prevention movement. Our nation has lost a great hero, and I have lost a dear friend. I am certain that she would want nothing more than to know we are carrying on her and Jim’s legacy with the same fiery compassion and dedication that made her so remarkable.”
The Brady Campaign/Center are named for Jim Brady and will continue to work in their name to keep our communities safe from gun violence and to change the conversation about the risks of guns. We mourn the loss of a great woman who has left behind an amazing legacy for the rest of us. She was a mentor and role model to many and we loved her for her kindness but also her fierce advocacy.
It’s April Fools’ Day. Let’s not be fooled by the corporate gun lobby. They have fooled our nation and our nation’s elected leaders for far too long.
Yes, guns do contribute to our economy, no question about that. This article reveals some very large profits for the gun lobby’s most profitable group- the NRA. They also contribute to deaths and injuries- many of which are avoidable. And that is no joke. There is, as it turns out, a lot of hypocrisy that comes with the money and power of the corporate gun lobby. Is there a cure for that hypocrisy? Action, changing the conversation, making sure our elected leaders are dealing with facts, organizing the public who is already in favor of doing something about gun violence and much more.
But some common sense about the risks of guns in the home would lead to fewer gun deaths. The gun lobby does not adequately address the risks and instead pushes for more people to own guns and have them at home, loaded and ready for whatever action people mistakenly believe might lead them to have to shoot someone. Instead, those very guns are used to kill someone in the home in a domestic homicide, or a child who finds a gun and shoots him/herself or someone else or a teen who is distraught and has a bad day, or an adult with severe mental illness whose actions may be suicidal. The list goes on an on and so does the carnage from guns.
Boys’ lacrosse teams nationwide have worn hard-shell helmets for many years. Girls, who play by vastly different rules that generally forbid contact, have historically spurned most protective gear. In Florida, where lacrosse is a new sport, state officials instead reasoned that all lacrosse players are at risk for head trauma and defied the sport’s traditionalists by mandating a soft form of headgear for everyone in a girls’ lacrosse game or practice. (Goalies in girls’ lacrosse have worn helmets for several decades.)
But in a volatile example of how thorny and tangled the debate can become as communities nationwide implement new rules to protect the brains of young athletes, Florida’s mandate has created a combative firestorm that has reverberated across the country. (…) But proponents of the rule point to data that shows that girls’ lacrosse has the fifth-highest rate of concussions in high school sports — only football, ice hockey, boys’ lacrosse and girls’ soccer rank higher. As the Florida High School Athletic Association board of directors was deliberating on whether to approve headgear, it heard emotional testimony from a mother whose daughter had sustained a devastating head injury while playing lacrosse.
OK. I guess everything has two sides. But it is in the interest of safety for our kids that these proposals are made in the first place- not to harm anyone or make things difficult. My son played LaCrosse as a club sport while in college. Helmets were required. There was no questioning whether or not players should wear them. LaCrosse is a contact sports with injuries coming with the game. My son once had an injury that sidelined him for a month- not to his head, thankfully.
But back to the gun lobby push for more guns where kids and teens live, hang out or go to school…..
How many kids and teens die from sports injuries every year? It looks like 39 in 2011 according to this article. So many more kids and teens suffer from sports related injuries than from gunshot injuries. But guns are lethal weapons and they actually kill many many more children per year than sports injuries. About 2920 or close to 3000 kids and teens die every year from gunshot injuries.
What are we doing about sports injuries? Making sure kids wear the proper protective gear. Examining the rules of the games to keep kids from hurting each other such as no checking from behind in hockey which has caused a good number of terrible injuries ( one recent one right here in Minnesota). Also coaches receive a lot of training about injuries and rules of the games to make sure kids are safe.
What are we doing about gun injuries and deaths? Good question. Gunshot injuries take the lives of thousands. And yet, we sit in the stands and watch instead of cheering for preventive measures. The gun lobby should not be the loudest voice in the arena of gun safety reform and gun violence prevention.
Twelve or more U.S. case control studies have compared individuals who died by suicide with those who did not and found those dying by suicide were more likely to live in homes with guns.
For example, Brent and colleagues studied three groups of adolescents: 47 suicide decedents, 47 inpatient attempters, and 47 psychiatric inpatients who had never attempted suicide. Those who died by suicide were twice as likely to have a gun at home than either of the other two groups:
Adolescent Adolescent Psychiatric Inpatients
Suicides Attempters Non-attempters
Firearm in home: 72% 37% 38%
And further, from the article:
Ecologic studies that compare states with high gun ownership levels to those with low gun ownership levels find that in the U.S., where there are more guns, there are more suicides. The higher suicide rates result from higher firearm suicides; the non-firearm suicide rate is about equal across states.
For example, one study (Miller 2007) used survey-based measures of state household firearm ownership (from the CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System) while controlling for state-level measures of mental illness, drug and alcohol abuse, and other factors associated with suicide. The study found that males and females and people of all age groups were at higher risk for suicide if they lived in a state with high firearm prevalence. This is perhaps most concrete when looking not at rates or regression results but at raw numbers. The authors compared the 40 million people who live in the states with the lowest firearm prevalence (HI, MA, RI, NJ, CT, NY) to about the same number living in the states with the highest firearm prevalence (WY, SD, AK, WV, MT, AR, MS, ID, ND, AL, KY, WI, LA, TN, UT). Overall suicides were almost twice as high in the high-gun states, even though non-firearm suicides were about equal.
I don’t know about you, but there is pretty strong evidence that restricting access to guns by kids and teens can save lives. Another cause of gun death is young children shooting themselves or others after gaining access to guns. This appears to be happening on a more regular basis all over our country. Either that, or the media is reporting on what’s happening out there so we are aware. It’s pretty sobering to see the actual numbers of incidents. A study by Everytown for Gun Safety has collected data and revealed the problem quite graphically:
About a third of American children live in homes with firearms, and of these households, 43 percent contain at least one unlocked firearm. Thirteen percent of households with guns contain at least one firearm that is unlocked and loaded or stored with ammunition.6 In all, more than two million American children live in homes with unsecured guns — and 1.7 million live in homes with guns that are both loaded and unlocked.7 Children in these homes are at elevated risk of being injured or killed in unintentional shootings.8 Studies have shown that a majority of unintentional gun deaths of children occur in the home, and that the highest numbers of unintentional child shootings take place in the late afternoon hours, when children are home from school but their parents may still be working.9 Parents underestimate the extent to which their children know where their household guns are stored and the frequency with which children handle household guns unsupervised. A Harvard survey of children in gun-owning households found that more than 70 percent of children under age 10 knew where their parents stored their guns — even when they were hidden — and 36 percent of the children reported handling the weapons. Thirty nine percent of parents who thought their child was unaware of the location of the household’s gun were contradicted by their children, and one of every five parents who believed their child had not handled the gun was mistaken.10
I don’t know about you but this seems like strong evidence that restricting access to young children by gun owners will save lives. We need much more discussion about this. In Texas, after a rash of child gun deaths due to easy access, this article was written:
This should never, ever happen. There are some simple gun-storage rules that, if followed, would all but eliminate the risk of unintentional child shooting deaths in this country. If the gun is loaded, it should be on your person. Otherwise, it should be in a gun safe. It is never OK to leave a loaded gun on a table, or under a bed, or on a high shelf, and simply assume that your kids won’t find it, or that they know better than to touch it if they do. That’s not just bad parenting; that’s willful self-delusion. Anyone who has ever spent more than three minutes around kids knows that kids don’t know better, about anything. They lack the self-control, life experience, and emotional maturity to reliably stop themselves from making bad decisions.
Parents should know better. And when they don’t—where gun storage is concerned—they should be held responsible. Some states agree. According to the nonprofit Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 28 states (plus D.C.) have passed child access prevention laws (known as CAP laws), which make it a crime to store firearms in a way that makes them readily accessible to children. While there isn’t much data to draw from, the data that exist suggest that strong CAP laws correlate with declines in child-shooting deaths in those jurisdictions.
“Houston, we have a problem.” I could write reams about this and should. We should all be focusing our attention on this national epidemic as well as sports related injuries. Let’s do what makes the most common sense and make sure guns are stored safely away from the hands of children and teens and ammunition is stored in a separate place from the guns. Why don’t we? Good question. Too many people purchase guns for self defense and don’t have any training about how to use or store them. The gun lobby promotes guns for everyone everywhere. When that is the national gun culture, we will continue to see children and teens dying needlessly from avoidable and preventable gun deaths. Until we adequately address the actual risks of guns in homes, we won’t be doing enough to protect our children and teens from avoidable deaths and injuries.
This is insanity. We can do something about this but we don’t. Why? The national gun lobby has undue influence on our culture and our elected leaders. For years, theirs is the mantra we hear. “More guns make us safer” or “only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun.” These things don’t make any sense given the actual numbers of gun deaths and injuries and proof that in states with high gun ownership, both gun suicides and homicides are greater than states that have strong gun laws and fewer guns. The proof is there.
But what we get from the corporate gun lobby is proposals like these:
North Dakota and Montana have rejected the guns in schools idea showing some resistance to ideas that make no common sense given the actual facts of the matter. I wrote in my latest post about what a Michigan school district has concocted to deal with an armed visitor to a school.
Here is one common sense measure that everyone with kids and grandchildren can take- ask if there are guns in the homes where kids play( ASK campaign). One mother wrote this about the ask:
That question I would ask over and over, “do you keep guns?” ended some friendships before they ever began. A couple of old friends were motivated to buy gun safes. It was as if the possibility of something bad happening had never occurred to them before the question was asked. Parents believe that because they have told their child not to touch a gun, that they won’t. But studies say that simply isn’t true.
Once, when Chloe was in second grade, a mother called me apologizing before I could even get out hello. “I’m so sorry,” she said, “Alex would never harm Chloe, I just want you to know.” I had no idea what she was talking about. But it turned out that her son, Alex, had been teasing another girl in the class, and Chloe had told him to stop. “I’m going to shoot you dead,” 8-year-old Alex had said. “I know where my grandfather keeps his gun, I’m going to bring his gun to school tomorrow and kill you.” Chloe had come home and never mentioned it to me, but she had ratted Alex out to her teacher, who had mentioned it to the mom. The school never called me.
Another is to take a public health approach to gun safety reform. This gun owner has some good advice when it comes to that- do what the NRA did- change the conversation but change it back to making this about public health and safety as it should be. From the article:
At the same time that public health researchers argue that the risks of guns outweighs the benefits, the NRA pushes the opposite point of view. And while research clearly supports the public health position on gun risk, the NRA continues to use a bogus telephone surveyby Gary Kleck and some thoroughly-discredited statistical nonsense from John Lott to sell the idea that guns are essential tools in protecting us from crime. Using the fear of crime as a justification for guns is a master stroke of marketing because a majority of Americans now agree with the pro-gun point of view.
Know why the NRA and its allies have been so successful selling the positive utility of guns? Because they have adopted a public health strategy for convincing the public and the lawmakers that what they are saying is true. First, identify the disease, which in this case is harm caused by crime. Then identify how the disease is spread, in this case contact with a criminal. Now develop a vaccine, i.e., the gun, and immunize as many as people as possible with concealed carry, now legal in all 50 states.
The problem in trying to sell the public health solution to any medical problem, as David Hemenway reminds us, is that unlike medicine, “the focus of public health is not on cure, but on prevention.” This usually requires a long, comprehensive strategy combining research, education and laws. Recognizing that most people aren’t usually responsive to solutions which don’t immediately work, the NRA has fast-tracked the process. The real problem in the gun debate is that the side which is totally resistant to an honest, public health approach to guns has shown itself remarkably adept at turning that same approach on its head and getting exactly what it wants.
Mike is right. It’s time to turn the conversation in the right direction. Gun rights and gun safety reform are not mutually exclusive. Don’t be fooled into thinking so. Even though the corporate gun lobby tries to make us believe the opposite, don’t believe it. Evidence comes down on the side of public safety and common sense. Please join me in changing the conversation and changing gun laws to make our communities safe from the devastation of gun violence that affects far too many. If we can pass laws about LaCrosse helmets and rules about checking from behind, we can pass reasonable gun laws for our own good, safety and health.
Gun deaths and injuries are nothing to fool around about.
More often than not, I find links to articles to support what I am writing. Occasionally, however, information is not accurate and needs to be updated or corrected. I am writing this to correct what I wrote in my last post. Though it has been difficult to assess with accuracy, it does look like concealed carry permit holders will be allowed to carry guns inside of the Nashville Music Center at the upcoming NRA convention. What I learned from my own sources is that guns are not allowed in the music performance center but are allowed in the convention center attached to it. But one can see why there is confusion because this sentence from the security section about the convention says: ” All guns on the convention floor will be nonoperational, with the firing pins removed.” Seems like that could mean ALL guns on the floor. But, from one of my readers who presumes to know:
commongunsense 