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.
Some people hate Hillary Clinton. They hate her with a fervor that is unreasonable and over the top. Often there is no reasoning with these folks, many of them Bernie Sanders supporters. I just can’t figure out that kind of hatred. I don’t hate Bernie Sanders. I don’t hate Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio or Donald Trump. I vehemently disagree with their policies and their tactics. And I am actually fearful for our country if Donald Trump were to be elected our President. It is beyond my capability to comprehend that this could happen.
I happen to support Hillary Clinton. Her positions fall into line with mine, for the most part. Especially her views about guns and gun violence. There are a few things on which I will disagree with her. No politician is pure. They disappoint us because we want them to represent everything we believe. We want to trust them. And then reality happens. Debate happens. Compromise happens. And soon enough, we are not happy.
Wayne LaPierre and the gun rights extremists have had Obama derangement syndromesince the day he was elected ( or before). Claims of gun confiscation and hysteria over gun rights have been flung around for 8 years. Interestingly, guns have not been confiscated nor have rights been taken from anyone but those who should not have guns.
I wrote in my last post about some people who should not have guns- domestic abusers. There are too many deaths of American (mostly) women every day because an angry, deranged, suicidal, depressed, drunk or otherwise spouse, partner, ex spouse, ex partner, sibling or other family member had access to a gun. Tragedies are happening all around us. And we are turning our heads. Actually most people feel helpless to do anything until we educate them and they realize that guns in the home are more dangerous for homicide, suicide and accidental shootings than for self defense. This new article from The Trace confirms this:
A recent study published in The Journal of Preventive Medicine offers new support for the argument that owning a gun does not make you safer. The study, led by David Hemenway, Ph.D., of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, examines data from the National Crime Victimization Survey — an annual survey of 90,000 households — and shows not only that so-called “defensive gun use” (DGU) rarely protects a person from harm, but also that such incidents are much more rare than gun advocates claim.
A 2014 Gallup poll suggests that Americans increasingly perceive owning firearms as an effective means of self-defense — having a gun makes one less likely to become a victim of a crime. But as Hemenway’s study demonstrates, this belief is not supported by crime statistics. Contrary to what many gun advocates argue, the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) data reveals that having a gun provides no statistically significant benefit to a would-be victim during a criminal confrontation.
Perception is not reality. Facts matter as it turns out and can save lives. More from the article:
In his new NCVS study, Hemenway also found that defensive gun use is exceedingly infrequent. While smaller private surveys estimated that there are up to 2.5 million DGUs on an annual basis, the NCVS data indicates that victims used guns defensively in less than 1 percent of attempted or completed crimes, with an annual total of less than 70,000. (…)
The only thing we can know for sure is what we have empirical data on: Namely, that there is a reliable floor for defensive gun use estimates at around 1,600 a year. In addition, according to the most recent data on defensive gun use, we have reliable evidence showing that owning a firearm does not give individuals any significant advantage in a criminal confrontation, and they are no less likely to lose property or be injured by using a gun in self defense.
This being the case, why take the chance that something like this awful tragedy in Minnesota could happen to your family. From the story:
Everyone in the community is struggling to explain what would cause the 17-year-old boy, David Cunningham to do this. His father, Tom Cunningham, didn’t want to speak on camera. But he gave us some clues about his son’s growing despondence.
Tom Cunningham is trying desperately to cope with the horrifying scene. Returning from town, he saw the family’s German shepherd dead on the back step. Inside lay the bodies of his two teenage children.
“No, we have no motive at this point,” Meeker County Sheriff Brian Cruze said.
Two teens are dead. A 17 year old boy was despondent. He had access to a gun. More investigation will reveal what kind of gun it was and where it came from. And now another family and community are devastated. Guns are dangerous. They are designed to kill. And kill they do. Yes, a gun by itself doesn’t kill unless there is some sort of discharge of a gun that ends up killing some by accident like this one where an Iowa Veteran dropped a gun that discharged and the bullet killed him. This is only one of many like this. People with guns kill many people and themselves every day in our country. They are not killing people very often with knives, hammers, clubs, chairs, or other heavy items. It’s the guns.
So what does any of this have to do with Hillary derangement syndrome? Mr. Wayne LaPierre, Executive VP of the NRA is at it again. He delivered yet another speech at this year’s CPAC conference making old, tired and false claims about Hillary Clinton coming for your guns. Let’s take a look at what he said:
The trigger-happy head of the National Rifle Association warned women Thursday that they face a dangerous future should Hillary Clinton wind up in the White House.
“All of America’s women, you aren’t free if you aren’t free to defend yourself,” NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre said during a rambling speech Thursday at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. “If President Obama, Hillary Clinton or anyone else denies you that right, they don’t really care about you at all.”
LaPierre, speaking at a conference hall where weapons were banned, took aim at Clinton, telling the Democratic front-runner to “bring it on” in the fight over gun control.
SAUL LOEB/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
“All of America’s women, you aren’t free if you aren’t free to defend yourself,” NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre said during a rambling speech at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference.
“Mrs. Clinton, if you want to come after the NRA, and if you want to fight over the God-given rights of America’s 100 million gun owners, if you want to turn this election into a bare-knuckled brawl for the survival of our constitutional freedoms, bring it on,” LaPierre said. “We aren’t going anywhere, and we aren’t hard to find.”
Is this a challenge? And God-given? Find me a place in the Bible or other religious writings about guns being given to people by God. This is stupid and dangerous rhetoric and also ludicrous. LaPierre just can’t fathom that people who want to pass laws to prevent shootings aren’t coming for his guns. American women should be very afraid when Wayne LaPierre ramps up fear and paranoia as he does when he speaks.
Josh Horwitz, executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, said: “It’s the same populist, fear-mongering speech. It’s amazing to me that Wayne LaPierre has been making the same speech for 25 years. We have a complex problem of gun violence in America and the only come to the table with: ‘We need more freedom.’ It sounds more hollow every time he says it.”
More reaction from his speech addresses the reality of gun violence in American and the total obstruction of the gun lobby to do anything real about it:
LaPierre’s remarks were condemned by the Newtown Action Alliance, a gun control pressure group formed in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook killings. It’s chairperson, Po Murray, said: “Wayne LaPierre supported universal background checks until the NRA decided to pursue an extreme agenda of arming anyone, anywhere and everywhere. He will say and do anything to elect a president who will promote the gun lobby’s efforts to put guns everywhere in a greedy pursuit of corporate profits for the gun industry. His job is to fire up the NRA supporters with fear, lies and rhetoric.
“Currently, Hillary Clinton is the only presidential candidate who stands with the families and communities impacted by gun violence. She is pushing for sensible gun laws. Justice Antonin Scalia stated, ‘Like most rights, the right secured by the second amendment is not unlimited …’ and Connecticut passed the second strongest gun laws after the Sandy Hook tragedy.”
Murray added: “Meanwhile, the NRA is aggressively pursuing an agenda to put guns on campuses and allowing anyone to carry guns without permits. In an era of increased mass shootings, voters have a clear choice this November. We choose Hillary Clinton.”
Since the Sandy Hook shooting, rather than armed security guards protecting children from a shooter, which has not happened once since that shooting, this has happened instead:
But never mind. LaPierre said this about children and school shootings:
Recalling the shooting of 20 young children and six of their adult carers at Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut in 2012, LaPierre said the NRA was unfairly attacked and blamed. “I simply and honestly proposed that our schools, our children, should be protected at least as much as our jewellery stores or banks or stadiums, and maybe the Oscars in Hollywood the other night. The national news media savaged me. What parent wouldn’t feel safer dropping their kids off at school with a police car parked out front? (…) He went on: “As a result, millions of our children go to school today, no longer the sitting ducks of the worst and most dangerous of all lies – gun-free zones. The news media, protected by their own armed security, will never admit it, but today, millions of children are safer for one reason: the NRA. The overwhelming majority of Americans agree with the simple truth that the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. The politicians and the media be damned!”
A gunman armed with what police called an “assault-style” weapon killed three people and injured 14 others in Kansas Thursday before he was killed by a police officer.
All three victims and 12 of the injured were shot at Excel Industries, a plant in Hesston that makes lawn mower products, Harvey County Sheriff T. Walton said. Of those hurt, 10 were critically wounded, he said.
Authorities have not officially identified the deceased suspect, but multiple co-workers identified the shooter to local media as Cedric Ford. Walton would not discuss a motive, but told reporters there were “some things that triggered this individual.”
“….some things that triggered this individual.” So in America, the land of the free and milk and honey, when something “triggers” someone, they can just get out their assault style rifle and handguns and take out their anger or their beef with someone and open fire on innocent citizens. 4 are dead, including the gunman, and many are critically wounded because….. America.
Are we insane? One does have to wonder why these things happen. Or maybe not. With the American gun culture as it is, with enough guns for every American citizen and laws that allow just about anyone to access a gun, it is inevitable that the shootings continue unabated.
With children who access their parents’ guns shooting themselves or their parents or siblings or friends on a regular basis, it sure does seem like a great idea to let more children use guns doesn’t it?
State representative Jake Highfill told the Washington Post that the new law “gives the power back to parents”.
“Allowing people to learn at a young age the respect that a gun commands is one of the most important things you can do,” Highfill said.
The alternative, he added, is “turning 18 with no experience”.
What? No words.
Yesterday I participated in an event in Minneapolis with Americans for Responsible Solutions. I was honored to stand behind former Representative Gabby Giffords and her husband Captain Mark Kelly as they spoke about the facts. And I was also honored to be asked to be a member of this coalition of law enforcement officers, domestic violence organizations, community activists, educators, gun owners and people on both sides of the aisle. The round table discussion centered on the easy access to guns and what we can do about it. And the group, of course, understood that saving lives was the common goal.
Why should it take courage to do something about the senseless shootings in our country? What is it about the gun lobby that makes our leaders put their heads in the sand and pretend that if they pass common sense laws the rights of law abiding citizens will be affected? This denial is costing lives at an alarming rate. There is no more time for this heads in the sand response to the shootings like the ones in Michigan, Kansas and …….
But Bryan Strawser and the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus believe the focus should be on dealing with violent criminals, particularly looking at prosecution and sentencing, and providing additional access to mental health services – not on laws such as Giffords’s group supports that primarily impact law-abiding citizens.
“We have hundreds of thousand of permit holders, and, by in large, those gun owners are extremely safe and law-abiding citizens in the community,” Strawser said.
Strawser agrees certain people shouldn’t have guns, but he says some goals of the coalition go too far.
“We believe that is where the focus should be, not on the kind of laws that this organization has pushed that will really impact law-abiding citizens,” Strawser said.
Denial. Fallacy.
Does anyone challenge this lunacy? In what way will laws that expand background checks to all gun sales to stop felons, domestic abusers, those who are dangerously mentally ill and others who should not be able to buy guns affect law abiding citizens? They don’t say. They just say this stuff and then pretend it’s true and enough of our leaders buy it that we fail the majority of Americans and Minnesotans who agree with common sense solutions.
This is simply not OK. This is lunacy and denial. This is the influence of money over lives that has kept our country from addressing the public health epidemic staring us in the face.
We’ve had #enough. Are our leaders going to take their heads out of the sand and do something? Are they going to listen to the nonsensical rhetoric that is not based on evidence and fact brought to them by a small group of citizens who believe that passing reasonable laws will affect them in some way?
It’s time for courage. Thank you Gabby Giffords for having the courage to stand up, even after your heinous injuries and life long disabilities to challenge the status quo and demand that we do something and do it now. We just can’t wait any longer. Saving even one life will be worth the fight.
UPDATE:
Well, I didn’t think I would be adding to this post. But there has been another mass shooting in the state of Washington leaving 5 dead. If one of the gun rights folks who read my blog want to share with me an explanation or what could be done better or differently than trying to keep guns away from people who shouldn’t have them and educate the public and gun owners about the awesome responsibility of owning guns. The risks of owning guns are great and can lead to death and injury. More guns are not making us safer.
So, Jeb Bush tweeted a photo of his new gun. It’s a nice shiny handgun, apparently his first, with his name engraved on the metal. It was a gift from a gun manufacturing company. When he tweeted this photo, he just used the word “America.” I am betting he didn’t expect the reaction to this ill considered tweet. The gun manufacturing company in question, located in South Carolina ( of course- where the Republicans are fighting to get delegates) is FN America ( when trying to link to their website, it appears to be “unavailable”). Anyway, you can see, on the linked site, the types of guns manufactured by this company. Their trademark is:”The World’s Most Battle-Proven Firearms“.
America. Where daily “battles” occur on our streets leaving behind 32 homicide victims a day and 89 a day dead from bullet wounds due to homicide, suicide and “accidental” discharges.
Bush had just toured the Columbia, South Carolina, manufacturing facility of FN America, a subsidiary of the Belgian arms manufacturer FN Herstal, orFabrique Nationale d’Herstal. Bush’s tweet blew up, with many responses noting the dubiousness of associating “America” with a foreign gun company. But that’s not the most questionable thing about Bush’s embrace of an FN Herstal product.
The company produces a wide variety of guns, for both military and civilian markets. But one of its models, the FN Five-seven, a semi-automatic pistol utilizing a 5.7-mm round, has a particularly sordid history. Developed for NATO, the gun’s power and unusual cartridge type has made it a popular gun with Mexican drug cartels, some of whom arm themselves with Five-sevens bought in the United States and smuggled across the border.
The bullets from the handgun described above, produced by this company, can penetrate body armor and cause great damage to body tissue. It is not (or should not be) a gun for civilians but, as we already know, some civilians get their hands on these guns. More from the article:
In 2009, the gun’s ability to puncture body armor helped make it the weapon of choice for Ft. Hood shooter Nidal Hasan. In an interview with NPR, Tom Diaz, a former senior policy analyst at the Violence Prevention Center, argued that the story of the Five-seven neatly demonstrates the problems posed by the transfer of increasingly sophisticated military-grade weapons to the civilian market.
Posting a photo of a gun gifted to you in a Presidential campaign on Twitter and saying “America” is just a really bad idea. It’s pandering at its’ worst. We know that candidates think they must show their “gun creds” in order to get elected. Or do they? In this case it backfired badly.
Jeb Bush was the Governor of Florida who pandered badly when he signed into law the first Stand Your Ground law. He was a lapdog to the gun lobby. Since that law passed, there have been high profile shootings like that of Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis and the gun homicide rate increased. Florida is a testing ground for gun laws proposed by the corporate gun lobby. Once a law passes in Florida, we can expect to see it show up in other state legislatures. And show up it did. 33 states have passed Stand Your Ground laws. Thankfully my state of Minnesota was saved (at least so far) from this insidious law by a veto from Governor Dayton.
But back to the pandering. We need to decide as a country whether what matters most in our leaders is their owning a gun and showing us pictures of it ( them) or whether candidates actually care about saving lives and preventing shootings. I would suggest that Jeb Bush did not show much common sense when he tweeted his now viral gun photo.
And speaking of Florida, a Florida man set up a gun range in his back yard because…. America. One of the bullets left his range and landed inside a nearby home where, luckily for the shooter, it only injured the hand of a young girl inside the home. And what happened as a result? Nothing. Because….. America, where gun rights trump public safety. From the article:
But the family’s home was directly behind the line of fire, and one of Lanham’s shots was fired too high and missed the target and berm and instead went through the glass door.
Authorities in other communities have been unable to stop residents from setting up shooting ranges in their front or back yards because Florida law prohibits local governments from restricting gun rights in any way.
A state pre-emption law, pushed by, you guessed it, the corporate gun lobby, does not allow local governments to pass gun laws any stricter than state laws. So people who want to shoot guns in their neighborhoods can go ahead in spite of the noise and the danger.
America, America.
( And,by the way, a gun lobby favorite, Open Carry, is now “dead”in Florida. In a rare moment of common sense, the Florida Senate rejected the gun lobby’s attempts at loosening gun laws.) From the article:
On Tuesday, February 16, Miami Republican Sen. Miguel Diaz de la Portilla announced that the proposed bills to allow open-carry in Florida, and another bill that would allow guns in airports, are now officially dead.
You saw that right- guns in airports because……. America.
Edited addition to post:- I must add this incident in a Florida school before leaving the state of Florida behind in the discussion. A parent apparently was carrying a gun at his child’s school and the gun “accidentally” fell out of a hole in his pocket. The gun was found by another adult who “accidentally” fired the gun with no one injured. Good grief. This is America all right. Gun owners are not always responsible with their guns but when we encourage a gun culture where parents are carrying guns around while bringing their kids to school, this is the America we get.
My state has pre-emption as well. It’s a bad idea. And speaking of my state of Minnesota, among the very many really bad shootings that have occurred in the past few days (toddlers killing others, “accidental” discharges killing loved ones, domestic shootings, etc.) this one happened. A man threatened his wife with a gun while she was breast feeding their baby. There is so much wrong with this story that it’s really hard to write about it. But here goes. From the article:
In April 2015, Lehmeier assaulted a child who was 7 years old at the time, and because of it, their five minor children were removed from the home, according to the criminal complaint. He was charged with malicious punishment of a child for that incident and pleaded guilty to fifth-degree assault in November 2015.
July 2, 2015, was the first night they were able to bring their baby home since the child had been removed from their home; the other children had not yet been returned to the home, according to the criminal complaint.
The woman said she was sitting on the couch holding the baby and that Lehmeier became upset because she was spending time with the child and not with him. She said Lehmeier blamed her for the children being removed, and she responded that she wasn’t the one who had been criminally charged.
The woman said Lehmeier then grabbed a 12-gauge shotgun, loaded it and pointed it at her and the child. She said he then pulled the trigger but that the gun didn’t go off, according to the complaint.
She said he then loaded a revolver, saying, “One bullet is all I need to end this,” according to the complaint. She asked him if she could at least put the child to bed first so he wouldn’t be hurt.
Lehmeier then left the room and fired the gun out of the bedroom window, according to the complaint.
The woman said she never reported the abuse because Lehmeier always threatened to kill her or the children.
This is the 2nd case of domestic abuse involving guns in Minnesota in several days. I wrote about the other one, ending with the death of the abused woman and the abuser, in my previous post. Women are afraid to leave abusive relationships. They are often threatened with guns because……. America. Some people should not have guns. Domestic abusers are among them. Efforts have been made to get guns away from abusers but it’s not easy to do. Minnesota passed a law to do just that but this woman did not report the abuse so authorities would not have known of the danger posed by this man.
After Jeb Bush tweeted his gun photo the Brady Campaign released a video of what America is really experiencing concerning guns and gun violence. You can see it here. This is the real America. It doesn’t have to be this way. I believe the public has had #enough of the carnage and the violence and candidates pandering in the worst way using guns to get votes while ignoring the victims whose lives were lost because someone had a gun and shot them.
We are better than this. “From sea to shining sea…” people are dying from gunshot injuries. Let’t get our heads and our hearts together to figure out the best way to prevent those deaths and make America a country safer from devastating gun violence.
I have been writing this blog for quite a few years now. When I first started writing on my other platform ( commongunsense.com) I didn’t know the nuances of blogging. So I just let people comment as anonymous commenters and comment they did. It took me a while to figure out that I could make sure commenters signed on with their names ( or at least a pseudonym). And I learned to moderate comments.
What I got and what I learned is that there is sub culture of gun rights extremism that includes people who are willing to say, and maybe do, anything in defense of their “God given and inalienable” gun rights. I have been called the worst names possible and demeaned, diminished, attacked, offended and (just a few times) threatened. The people on the other end of those comments must have thought I would give in and change my mind or stop writing or run away scared. I am a woman. That entered in. They thought they could intimidate a little woman who didn’t know what she was talking about.
And these are the (mostly) guys with the guns.
It’s nasty out here in the blogging world. Especially if you dare to challenge the gun rights extremists and their ideas. When I write, I link to websites or articles to defend and corroborate my views and my assertions. It’s not hard to find the hundreds of articles about actual shootings about which I write in my blog. For example, in today’s Star Tribune there is an article about a Fargo, N.D. police officer who was shot and killed yesterday in an alleged domestic incident. But more, from the article, reveals something else:
Todd said he was confident that Schumacher meant to shoot at officers.
“I doubt it was random,” said the chief, somber with a strip of black tape around the badge on his chest, symbol of a fallen colleague. “There was a squad car that was shot up [earlier] in a different location than where Officer Moszer was hit.”
This is disturbing, if true. What is going on when our culture has made things like this possible? Earlier in the article we learn that the man who shot the officer should not have been able to have guns. From the article:
Schumacher has a criminal history that includes a conviction for negligent homicide for the October 1988 shooting of a 17-year-old boy, Maynard Clauthier. Schumacher was sentenced in 1991 to five years in prison, court records show.
There is a serious unaddressed problem in our country. We are making it easy for people like this to get their hands on guns. Anger, hostility, and illegal behavior just do not go with guns. And now a young police officer is senselessly dead. The shooter maybe took his own life but that has not yet been determined. And the people of Fargo, police and law enforcement officers, family, friends and neighbors ( who were terrified by what was going on in their neighborhood) and the community have suffered the ripple effect of gun violence.
It doesn’t have to be this way. But it is. Back to the topic at hand of the ugliness of the gun culture. Unless you’ve been under a rock, you likely know that the Bundy group was finally arrested in Oregon. Nice bunch of guys, those. From the article:
After repeatedly threatening to shoot himself, complaining that he couldn’t get marijuana, and ranting about UFOs, drone strikes in Pakistan, leaking nuclear plants and the government “chemically mutating people,” the last occupier, David Fry, 27, lit a cigarette, shouted “Hallelujah” and walked out of his barricaded encampment into FBI custody.
These are the guys with the guns fomenting fear, paranoia, anger and conspiracy theories. They get support from many of the gun lobby groups, most especially the NRA who allows the infamous Ted Nugent to remain on their board of directors in spite of a continual rant of offensive, racist comments and posts on social media. His latest has certainly gone over the line of common decency as if the others didn’t. But when will people like him be marginalized by their own? The NRA must like the dangerous soup brewed up guys like Nugent. Why? Does it lead to more people joining their organization? Or maybe buying more guns to protect themselves from the folks in the cross hairs of Nugent’s rants?
Here is the latest one from the linked article above:
Nugent, an outspoken Second Amendment advocate, posted a photo on Facebook earlier this week calling Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), “Jew York City Mayor Mikey Bloomberg,” former senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, among many others, “punks” who would “deny us the basic human right to self defense and to keep and bear arms while many of them have paid hired armed security.”
The Israeli flag appears over or next to each of the 12 faces in the photo, which is the same one that has been shared many times in white supremacist circles, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
The post prompted applause from anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi groups.
Sigh.
One of Nugent’s targets in his post was Dan Gross, President of the Brady Campaign. Here is his comment about what Nugent did:
Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, took aim at Nugent as well after being featured in the Facebook post.
“Ted Nugent’s latest comments go beyond being anti-Semitic — they are ignorant and do nothing but fuel hate,” Gross said in a statement. “Personally, I am repulsed — my brother was shot and seriously wounded in a religiously-motivated mass shooting on the observation deck of the Empire State Building. Reasonable people on both sides of the debate recognize Mr. Nugent’s comments for what they are: hate speech and nothing more.”
Is this the kind of country we want? We are more polarized than ever and the rhetoric in the Presidential campaign certainly isn’t helping us work together better for the common good. Common sense seems to be out the window for many folks.
We just can’t tolerate what is going on right now. We’ve had #enough of this stupid and dangerous rhetoric which sometimes leads to actual shooting deaths.
Every day there are shootings in the homes of Americans all over the country. Some of them make the news, some don’t. Many are suicides which don’t often make the news but sometimes found in an obituary in a local paper not listing a cause of death. Many are domestic shootings that are arguments or disagreements about a separation that end in death. Some are children who find a gun and accidentally shoot someone in the home- a friend, a relative or him or herself. These do make the news.
Unfortunately or maybe fortunately, there are places where we can find out the truth about how often guns are used by children and teens and by lawful gun owners in “accidental” gun discharges. For example, in the AccidentsHappenGunsKill blog, 2 incidents were reported just today. One was a 3 year old New Orleans child who was shot and killed when the gun of his grandmother, a security guard, sleeping with a gun under a pillow, “accidentally” discharged.
Most gun owners are responsible with their guns. Many, but not all, lock their guns in safes away from the ammunition, where they are hopefully safe from small hands, teens, vulnerable adults and thieves. That’s all good. My last post was about gun safety.
If LaDue goes home, his parents have agreed to remove any firearms from the house and deny him Web access. LaDue also could not leave the house except for authorized appointments.(…)
Police found LaDue in a Waseca storage locker in April 2014 after a citizen saw him enter it suspiciously. He told authorities of his plans to shoot his family, set a fire in the countryside to distract emergency officials, and go to school with pressure-cooker bombs and guns to kill as many people as he could.
Authorities who searched the locker and the boy’s bedroom had said they confiscated chemicals, several guns, ammunition and a few completed explosives. Officers concluded that he intended to carry out the massacre within a week or two.
The case has raised questions about what to do with the teen, who had plotted but never hurt anyone. His parents have said they believe he never would have carried out the plan.
I have sympathy for this family. It has to be one of the worst things that could have happened short of the actual attack their son was planning. But parents need to realize that these things actually have and do happen in our country. The story does not mention where the teen got his guns nor any charges against anyone for the fact that this boy was in possession of the guns that he was going to use to carry out this attack.
This peaked my interest about how this boy got his guns and I had forgotten that, of course, the guns were given to him by his parents. Except for one, an SKS, that he got by forging his Dad’s signature and apparently bought it from a friend’s father.The majority of guns used by teens in school shootings come from their own homes and their parents. This report from the Brady Campaign to prevent gun violence, The Truth About Kids and Guns, reveals what is true but rarely spoken out loud, and most especially by the corporate gun lobby. In fact, 2/3 of the guns used in school shootings come from the homes of the shooters. Even if the teen doesn’t have their own guns stored in their bedroom as did the Waseca teen, teens and children know where the guns are in their homes. My own adult kids have told me that they knew where my husband’s hunting guns were stored even though we had not discussed this nor showed them.
The big and very serious question here is where is the responsibility of the adults in the room? This story from CNN profiles this teen whose heroes were the Columbine school shooters and the Boston Marathon bombers. From the story:
He purchased a black duster jacket so he could dress like Harris. “Kinda want to pay tribute to him,” he would later tell police. He hoped to time his attack to the Columbine anniversary, in honor of his idol.
He’d studied the Boston Marathon bombers. He thought their attack weak because they killed just three.
He planned to fill two pressure cookers with 6,000 ball bearings, as well as buckshot and screws. Each bomb would have cans of WD-40 strapped to it to magnify the blast. He would use flash powder, instead of black powder, to create a more powerful explosion than the ones in Boston.
John LaDue enjoyed playing the guitar before his arrest.
He believed Adam Lanza was a coward for killing first-graders. “I wanted to target people in my grade who I knew.”
He named five students at his high school who he wanted to kill for specific reasons. Two were classmates who talked too much in German class and “got annoying.” A third called him queer on the school bus in seventh grade. He also would target the school resource officer.
So meticulous was his plan that LaDue told authorities he chose a bolt-action Soviet-style SKS rifle to use in the attack — a weapon without a large magazine like Lanza’s AR-15 or other semi-automatic rifles used in shooting sprees.
That way, he said, people lobbying for gun restrictions after his attack would have a weaker argument. “I kinda wanted to prove that wrong.”
The Columbine mass school shooting continues to cast a long shadow in our country. Other teens admire the shooters of the first mass school shooting in a K-12 school in our country that is still a marker for the others that followed.
And so today we have teens plotting similar attacks. And we have teens with access to guns they should not have. More from the article:
Police found seven guns in John’s bedroom: two near his bed and five in a safe in his closet. All but one of the guns belonged to his father.
David had taught both his children how to hunt and took them to gun safety courses. He trusted his son with guns to protect the family while he worked the overnight shift at a steel plant.
He had no idea that John had purchased a gun; he got it through a friend’s dad by forging his own father’s signature.
John’s sister, Valerie, knew about her brother’s fascination with explosives, but she viewed it like any big sister might: My brother is such an idiot. She says she didn’t know about his plot. He bugged her about getting a storage locker, saying his room was getting crowded and he wanted to move some stuff. She thought it was a weird idea and refused to help him. A friend’s mother did.
What were the adults thinking here? There are no charges against any of the adults because, of course, the gun culture in our country is such that there is a cavalier attitude by some towards the actual risks of guns in the home and safe storage is not considered to be important apparently. Yes, this was a foiled potential school shooting/bombing thanks to a citizen who reported suspicious behavior. And yes, the family of this teen is and was devastated by what happened. There is heartbreak and blame to go around. But until we wrap our heads around the idea that teens should not be keeping guns in their own bedrooms for many obvious reasons, we will run the risk of many more shootings- domestic, suicides, accidental discharges and intentional shootings. It doesn’t have to be like this.
One of my drumbeats in this blog is that guns are dangerous and deadly weapons designed to kill people. There are risks to owning them that must be taken seriously. Common sense tells us that with rights come responsibilities. We can only hope that the adults with guns will think twice about how their teens and children access the guns in their homes.
Of course I write often about gun violence in general on this blog. It is why I write and why I do what I do. 89 Americans a day die from gunshot injuries. That is indisputable. Never mind. The gun lobby doesn’t want to talk about the “accidental” discharges or the suicides. Accidents with guns are apparently not supposed to happen. But happen they do. And death by gun suicide? It’s happening every day. Guns are the most common method and the most lethal and the most successful. That is not much published since gun suicide deaths don’t often make news and not considered to be crimes.
Can we talk about gun safety like we talk about other safety hazards in our every day lives? There are warning signs all around us about the problems with guns but we are purposely ignoring them at our peril and the for the sake of the lives of innocent Americans.
“NEVER mix guns & booze,” said the militia member, who calls himself Joe Bleaugh. “Charles got drunk and belligerent and took away his friend’s sidearm and threatened him with it; at which time his friend drew his backup weapon and fired to defend his own life. This is why it is a #felony for an intoxicated person to be in possession of a firearm. Guns and booze do not mix. End of story, and unfortunately the end of Charles’ life. What a waste, & by his own hand!”
Texas law prohibits licensed gun owners from carrying firearms while intoxicated, regardless of whether the weapon is holstered or concealed.
Carter and Smith had been organizing the march, which they hoped would remove President Barack Obama and congressional leaders from office ahead of November’s elections.
You can’t make this stuff up. Were these guys both law abiding permit holding citizens? Just asking. How can we stop armed citizens from drinking while carrying? We have laws about this but just as with drinking while driving a vehicle, not everyone follows the law. It does seem as if this one was self defense. But if neither of these guys had been armed, this could have resulted in a fight without a death.
Gun violence in the United States has produced a culture soaked in blood – a culture that threatens everyone and extends from accidental deaths, suicides and domestic violence to mass shootings. In late December, a woman in St. Cloud, Florida, fatally shot her own daughter after mistaking her for an intruder. Less than a month earlier, on December 2, in San Bernardino, California, was the mass shooting that left 14 people dead and more than 20 wounded. And just two months before that, on October 1, nine people were killed and seven wounded in a mass shooting at a community college in Roseburg, Oregon.
Mass shootings have become routine in the United States and speak to a society that relies on violence to feed the coffers of the merchants of death. Given the profits made by arms manufacturers, the defense industry, gun dealers and the lobbyists who represent them in Congress, it comes as no surprise that the culture of violence cannot be abstracted from either the culture of business or the corruption of politics. Violence runs through US society like an electric current offering instant pleasure from all cultural sources, whether it be the nightly news or a television series that glorifies serial killers.
There is so much more to the above article that should be read and quoted. But here is a bit more after the author explains the militarization of our society and the overall corporate influences that have changed who we are as a country. From the article:
Warlike values no longer suggest a pathological entanglement with a kind of mad irrationality or danger. On the contrary, they have become a matter of common sense. For instance, the US government is willing to lock down a major city such as Boston in order to catch a terrorist or prevent a terrorist attack, but refuses to pass gun control bills that would significantly lower the number of Americans who die each year as a result of gun violence.As Michael Cohen observes, it is truly a symptom of irrationality when politicians can lose their heads over the threat of terrorism, even sacrificing civil liberties, but ignore the fact that “30,000 Americans die in gun violence every year (compared to the 17 who died [in 2012] in terrorist attacks).” It gets worse.
As the threat of terrorism is used by the US government to construct a surveillance state, suspend civil liberties and accelerate the forces of authoritarianism, the fear of personal and collective violence has no rational bearing on addressing the morbid acceleration of gun violence. In fact, the fear of terrorism appears to feed a toxic culture of violence produced, in part, by the wide and unchecked availability of guns. The United States’ fascination with guns and violence functions as a form of sport and entertainment, while gun culture offers a false promise of security. In this logic, one not only kills terrorists with drones, but also makes sure that patriotic Americans are individually armed so they can use force to protect themselves against the apparitions whipped up by right-wing politicians, pundits and the corporate-controlled media.
This lengthy and thoughtful article exposes the reality of our country for those who benefit from exploiting the fear and paranoia of American citizens to profit for themselves. It’s the world in which we live but it doesn’t have to be this way. We don’t have to accept the world of the corporate gun lobby telling citizens that if only they buy that gun for self defense, all will be well with the world and families will be safer. For the truth does not bear this out.
It’s time to challenge the status quo in a big way and one way would be to change the conversation about guns and gun violence, to allow research about the causes and effects of gun violence, to make sure that Americans understand the actual risks to them when buying and carrying a gun, to make sure that proper training will actually serve to make people more responsible with their guns, to strengthen rather than weaken gun laws, to stop the practice of allowing armed citizens in all of our public spaces, to make appropriate laws to keep us all safer and to have a society less focused on violence and more focused on how to prevent it in the first place.
Every year there are senseless gun deaths and injuries due to celebratory gun fire. One has to wonder why those who shoot off their guns on New Years Eve don’t have common sense. Perhaps they don’t understand that bullets have a trajectory that ends somewhere. What goes up must come down. An article from The Trace explains how dangerous this practice is. From the article:
In the 48 communities where ShotSpotter’s equipment is deployed, the company reports, “Statistics show that there are strong seasonal gunfire periods, where approximately 15 percent of all annual gunfire incidents take place on the holidays around New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day, and the Fourth of July.” In the fourth quarter of 2014, according to ShotSpotter, “there were 16,597 incidents in ShotSpotter coverage areas, and of those, 3,556 (or 21.4 percent) took place during the New Year’s Eve period.” The overwhelming majority of those rounds will land harmlessly or lodge in roofs or other property. But in areas with high population density, some will inevitably hit human beings. And so, each year before the holiday season, police, city officials, and activists from California to Ohio to Texas to Florida are compelled to call on their communities to refrain from spraying bullets skyward.
The impoverishment of data notwithstanding, it’s safe to stipulate at this point that the odds of any single person’s being hit by a celebratory round are extremely low. Even contentious research on stray shootings in general acknowledges that celebratory gunfire (wounds from “falling bullets”) represents less than 5 percent of all firearm-related injuries.
Though the odds are low, tell that to the families of those who have been killed or injured by celebratory gun fire. Every year, my friend Joe Jaskolka and his father Greg have a press event to let people know that celebratory gunfire is, indeed, very dangerous. Joe was hit by a bullet in Philadelphia on New Year’s Eve of 1998 when he was just 11. Joe is living with the results of that bullet lodged in his head. He is now 28 years old and lives in a wheel chair suffering from ongoing physical disabilities. But he stays involved in the issue of gun violence prevention by warning others of the danger of celebratory gun fire. Joe’s a great young man and I’m happy to call him my friend and colleague. From the above article:
“This is very simple,” said Joe Jaskolka, “what goes up must come down.”
“We went from having an annual New Year’s Eve party to having an annual press conference,” his father, Gregory Jaskolka, said.
So this New Year’s Eve, please use common sense and don’t fire off a gun to celebrate the coming of 2016. For if 2016 is like other years, innocent people will be killed or injured tonight and every day of the new year. Bullets fired into the air or anywhere else cause trauma and devastating results for many American families. Let’s make 2016 a safer year than 2015. Below is a graph provided by the Gun Violence Archive showing the results of shootings in 2015.
This does not include the many suicides which are not usually publicly available. The actual yearly numbers are over 100,000 total gunshot injuries of which about 33,000 have ended in death. It’s hard to keep track of all of the incidents given the amazingly large number of them.
We must be better than this. Join us in 2016 to make our communities safer from devastating gun violence. There are many organizations working on this issue. Find one in your area or that interests you and add your voice to those demanding a change to the conversation and a change to our laws. You can be part of the solution to our nation’s public health and safety epidemic. It’s past time for change.
What an awful title for a blog post. In America it has come to be expected that shootings happen no matter the day, time, or holiday. When anguish, anger, mental illness, revenge, domestic difficulties, or economic difficulties happen in the lives of average people some “solve” the problem by picking up a firearm. Yes, sometimes broken homes, broken relationships, broken hearts, and broken minds lead to arguments or fights or abuse and physical, emotional, financial and psychological injury. But way too often, they also end in death. In domestic deaths, firearms are the most used method to kill.
That is the story of my sister’s death in a shooting over difficult divorce proceedings. No one thought it was possible. He was eccentric but not violent. He had issues unknown to most on the outside. He seemed like a nice quiet guy who couldn’t harm anyone. But he did. He had several guns and lots of ammunition. Two died when he shot them in his anger and misplaced concerns over difficult divorce proceedings. Why not just shoot those who you believe were causing the problem? That will solve everything, right?
Wrong.
Our family is without a loved one forever.
I have run across at least 3 murder/suicides during the last 2 days alone that were reported in media sources. There are surely more.
A New Jersey man shot and killed his wife and 8-year-old daughter before turning the gun on himself at a luxury high-rise apartment building, authorities said.
Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli said the bodies of Michael Stasko, 53, his wife, Melissa, 49, and daughter, Nellie, 8, were found Friday night at the Windsor at Mariners Tower, an apartment building on the bank of the Hudson River in Edgewater. (…) “We don’t know whether it was financial, we don’t know whether it was familial, we don’t know really perhaps what was going through Mr. Stasko’s mind for him to do this,” Molinelli said.
We don’t know. That is often the case. A seemingly normal family obliterated because of a firearm in the home.
Police Capt. Jim Gregoire told the newspaper that officers responded and found a man with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Officers also discovered in the home two women dead of gunshot wounds. The weapon investigators believed was used in the shootings was found next to the dead man.
Authorities have withheld the dead people’s names pending notification of family. Gregoire told the paper that process could take days. One of the women is from overseas, and the department will have to go through federal agencies to reach her family. Those agencies are closed for the Christmas weekend, he said.
Gregoire said there was no indication of what could have led up to the shootings. No one left any messages behind, he said.
No indication. Nothing appeared to be wrong. Further investigation may show something else but for now, it is a mystery.
Two young girls were killed Wednesday night by their father, 37-year-old Levi J. Parker, according to Sheriff Chris Nanos. Parker then shot himself in the head. He was pronounced dead at 12:10 p.m. Thursday.
The Pima County Sheriff’s Department received a 911 call just before 7:00 p.m. Wednesday night from a mother who said the father of her two young children threatened their lives.
“He made statements to her that basically led her to believe this was her last chance to talk to the kids alive,” Sheriff Nanos said.
Some people should not have guns. With rights come responsibilities and safe gun ownership is one of these. There were red flags and warning signs. Power and control over others motivates many men to kill their current or ex spouses, girlfriends and/or partners. The ultimate power and control is a gun.
I link to the website of Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs where power and control wheels show how various ways of using power can end in tragedy when taken to the extreme. The post separation time can lead to abuse and using children to gain power and control as we see in this wheel from DAIP.
This is our American tragedy. Domestic shootings happen daily. Suicides happen in large numbers. Our young people are shooting each other in urban areas. Toddlers are shooting people at a rate of once per week. Accidental discharges by “responsible” gun owners continue- mostly outside of the main stream media but reported in local news stories.
Laws can’t stop all of these shootings. But awareness can. Culture can. Changing the conversation can. Challenging the gun lobby’s myths that guns will keep us all safer can. Asking if there are loaded guns in homes where your children play can.Storing guns safely unloaded away from ammunition can. And laws can stop some of these shootings. As long as there is easy access to guns with no Brady background checks for domestic abusers, adjudicated mentally ill people and others who are denied purchases by licensed dealers who require these background checks, we can expect to see high numbers of dead and injured Americans.
Common sense has worked in other countries where stories like this at holiday time and every other day of the year are not in the news.There may be other problems in our neighboring countries and our friends across the oceans but gun violence is generally not one of them.
We are better than this. We can also do something about this but we need our leaders to think straight about our national public health and safety epidemic without the interference of those who profit from selling the firearms used every day in incidents like the ones I included above.
Let’s get to work and make 2016 a safer year from gun violence than 2015 was.
As 2016 is soon to be upon us, change is in the air regarding guns and the conversation about the causes and effects of gun violence. I wrote in my last post about new research about gun violence that is educating people about the insidious nature of a devastating public health and safety epidemic. If we understand the causes, we can work on common sense solutions.
This is what change looks like. The public has had #enough. The shootings at the Planned Parenthood building in Colorado Springs and the terror attack that killed 14 people in San Bernardino have changed the conversation. It is long past time for that to have happened. It’s too late for Andy and Barbara Parker. It’s too late for Chris Hurst. It’s too late for Sandy and Lonnie Phillips. It’s too late for the parents of the 20 first graders who were massacred by a teen who shouldn’t have had access to guns. It’s too late for Colin Goddard. It’s too late for Bob Weiss and Lucy McBath and Richard Martinez. The list is too long for this blog.
It’s too late for the 89 Americans a day who lose their lives to gunshot injuries.
2016 will bring more change and more common sense. As the fear and paranoia will ramp up during the presidential election, more people will buy guns and more accidental shootings will happen and more children will die. More women will be shot by their abusers. More teens and older white men will take their own lives with guns that are accessible in their homes. More gang shootings in our large cities will lead to devastating deaths and injuries. More angry men will shoot innocent people in public places and at home. More and more and more.
There will be more victims. But the victims will not be quiet. They will fight back.
As more people like my friend at Accidents Happen Guns Kill and the Ohh Shoot blog write about the dangers of guns in homes, the public will be made aware of the risks to owning guns and hopefully think twice about leaving loaded guns around rather than storing them safely. As more parents are made aware that they should ASK if there are loaded guns in the homes where their children play, children will be safer. As more awareness of bad apple gun dealers ends with consequences for gun dealers who are providing guns to felons and others who shouldn’t have them, communities will become more safe.
The corporate gun lobby has gone too far and will have more defeats thanks to their unyielding resistance to common sense gun laws that the American public wants. When even their own members agree with the gun violence prevention groups, it is becoming more obvious that Wayne LaPierre and his fellow gun rights extremists are out of touch with even their own.
There will be more awareness and more talk about solutions and more laws passed to make it harder for dangerous and potentially dangerous people to get their hands on guns. There will be more people involved with gun violence prevention groups and more voices raised to let our leaders know that we have had more than #enough. There will be more bloggers and groups writing about the truth of our insane American gun culture.
#NRAdefeat will be trending on Twitter.
As we go into the Christmas holiday, I will be thinking of the family members missed around the tree and for whom there will be no gifts. There will be no gifts from them to their family members this year. We have missed gifts to and from my sister for 23 years now.
We remember them. We honor them. We will continue our march to common sense and making America safe from gun violence again.
Merry Christmas to those who celebrate the holiday. To those who celebrate and those who don’t I wish peace and fond remembrances of your loved ones.
There’s a lot to cry about these days. I know I have shed a few tears over the dead bodies piling up on American soil- dead from gunshot injuries. I can feel the grief and pain of their families as they try to cope with the sudden and violent death of a loved one. I’ve been there. I’ve cried my own tears over my sister’s gun death.
As you would expect, the controversy over abortion and a woman’s right to choose have been much in the news after a man shot up a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs. Some are blaming the victims or Planned Parenthood itself for the shooting. Some are saying that if only people inside had been armed, this would not have happened.
But back to babies, I recently read this article. There are hardly words for this “accidental” shooting:
Police say Saturday afternoon, three adults, along with Nathaniel Hitt, were in the living room of the apartment: Bartle, Selena Hitt, and another man described by police as a family friend who was visiting.
The accidental shooting happened after Bartle, who is not Nathaniel’s father, cleaned his 12-gauge shotgun in the living room, loaded the weapon and installed an accessory grip on the shotgun, police said. Bartle, allegedly had the shotgun on his lap with the muzzle pointed in the direction of the child, then attempted to stand while still holding the gun, police said. The shotgun fired, and a round of ammunition struck the child in the upper body area, police said.
“The whole thing that gets me…is why would he reload it (the shotgun) in the house,” Muntz said.
“Why wouldn’t my daughter say something?”
There are no answers for this heinous lapse of judgement and irresponsibility with guns. The thing is, the gun lobby can say what they want about “law abiding” gun owners being responsible. But in order to sell more guns, they encourage just about anyone to purchase them with no idea how to really use them or be responsible with them. Thus, these are the news headlines over and over and over again.
Insanity.
Can we talk about how to be responsible for the lives of actual babies after they are born? Did you know that one toddler a week is dying from gunshot injuries? Why is this not as shocking as those who scream about abortion killing fetuses who are not yet born?
For example, as this writer points out, certain models of baby cribs have been banned because a few children have died as a result of their design. We don’t want products that kill babies. Banning them is a good idea. And so this writer wonders why we don’t ban guns. Perish the thought!!! Us gun banners can’t utter that word because…rights.
But let’s look at what this writer has to say:
We know this intuitively, since we’ve had to add numerous amendments to make up for their failures, lack, or just plain ignorance. But if we can add, we can also take away, by interpreting the Second Amendment differently or passing a new amendment that would effectively repeal it. We should never do so lightly, of course—taking away rights can be, and often is, a risky enterprise. But the purpose of a right should be individual and collective flourishing. A right, in other words, has as its goal the individual and common good, even if we don’t like to use such weighty moral terminology nowadays.
It’s not clear to me that gun ownership accomplishes that purpose. It seems more the case that it works against the good of all, in the havoc and murder it wreaks but also in the fear that in promotes. At the very least, we should have a discussion about the relationship of guns to the common good, instead of appealing like a fundamentalist to “rights” every time something happens that questions their value.
(…) A crib or, perhaps, a car, may kill under certain circumstances, but that’s not what a crib or a car is for. When death does result from their use, we assume that they have, in some way, been misused. At the very least, they have failed to fulfill their intended purpose, intentionally or not. Not so with a gun. The whole point of a gun is to injure or kill. Guns can certainly be used in other ways and for other reasons, such as sport, but these are secondary to its primary function. When a gun is used to injure or kill, it’s being used as intended. It’s the gun that’s at issue, because of the type of object that it is.
This person is speaking my language and speaks for the majority of us when he says this:
No “responsible” gun owner ever thinks he’ll ever misuse his gun—until he does something stupid, gets angry in the wrong place at the wrong time, leaves it unattended with children around, or simply snaps. Perhaps that doesn’t happen most of the time, but it happens frequently enough to raise questions, even though we usually don’t.
Secondly, did I ever think my mild mannered and sort of quirky brother-in-law would “snap” and kill my sister during a contentious divorce? No. I am betting he didn’t think he would either. He might even have surprised himself but then tried to make up reasons why he just had to shoot her.
He had access to guns.
That’s what happens folks. Just because it has not happened to you doesn’t mean it won’t.
Even scarier is that Ms. Fiore is running for Congress and has published an assault weapon calendar to make sure voters understand her adherence to the corporate gun lobby. She is exactly who we don’t want to elect to Congress. If there is any common sense for Nevada voters, they will soundly reject her.
Thank you New York Times. We are not helpless to stop this insidious epidemic that is killing our children and families. The Onion got to the root of the problem in their satire about helpless America not being able to do anything about our gun violence problem:
There really wasn’t anything that was going to keep these individuals from snapping and killing a lot of people if that’s what they really wanted.” At press time, residents of the only economically advanced nation in the world where roughly two mass shootings have occurred every month for the past six and a half years were referring to themselves and their situation as “helpless.”
We are not helpless. We can pass a law requiring Brady background checks on all gun sales. We can stop terrorists from being able to legally buy guns. But we don’t.
Babies don’t have to die from gunshot injuries. Toddlers shouldn’t have access to guns. Terrorists shouldn’t have access to guns. Domestic abusers, felons, those who are dangerously mentally ill shouldn’t have access to guns.
Some people hate Hillary Clinton. They hate her with a fervor that is unreasonable and over the top. Often there is no reasoning with these folks, many of them Bernie Sanders supporters. I just can’t figure out that kind of hatred. I don’t hate Bernie Sanders. I don’t hate Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio or Donald Trump. I vehemently disagree with their policies and their tactics. And I am actually fearful for our country if Donald Trump were to be elected our President. It is beyond my capability to comprehend that this could happen.SAUL LOEB/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Well, as we could have predicted, on the heels of a mass/spree shooting in Kalamazoo, Michigan that shook that community, 
Of course I write often about gun violence in general on this blog. It is why I write and why I do what I do. 89 Americans a day die from gunshot injuries. That is indisputable. Never mind. The gun lobby doesn’t want to talk about the “accidental” discharges or the suicides. Accidents with guns are apparently not supposed to happen. But happen they do. And death by gun suicide? It’s happening every day. Guns are the most common method and the most lethal and the most successful. That is not much published since gun suicide deaths don’t often make news and not considered to be crimes.
What an awful title for a blog post. In America it has come to be expected that shootings happen no matter the day, time, or holiday. When anguish, anger, mental illness, revenge, domestic difficulties, or economic difficulties happen in the lives of average people some “solve” the problem by picking up a firearm. Yes, sometimes broken homes, broken relationships, broken hearts, and broken minds lead to arguments or fights or abuse and physical, emotional, financial and psychological injury. But way too often, they also end in death. In domestic deaths, 
As 2016 is soon to be upon us, change is in the air regarding guns and the conversation about the causes and effects of gun violence. I wrote in my 
There’s a lot to cry about these days. I know I have shed a few tears over the dead bodies piling up on American soil- dead from gunshot injuries. I can feel the grief and pain of their families as they try to cope with the sudden and violent death of a loved one. I’ve been there. I’ve cried my own tears over my sister’s gun death.
commongunsense 