American gun culture

Guns for terrorists, lies and elections

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pinocchioThis post has been edited since first posted to include new information.

It’s no surprise that we are in the middle of the 2016 Presidential election. Candidates are posturing about all issues before them but in light of the Paris terror attack, the rhetoric has become hysterical and downright deceptive. The lying is absolutely stunning to me and the fact that Americans are buying it is what I am truly afraid of. When Donald Trump can drum up the fear and anger of Americans to get elected, we have a serious problem that we should all fear. How can we believe someone who claims that there were people in New Jersey who cheered when the Twin Towers collapsed? This claim received a “pants on fire” rating from Politifact. 

When we elect a President, among other things, truthfulness should be at the top of the list. This person will be the leader of the free world that is now more dangerous and complicated than ever.

One area of discussion that most of the Republican candidates don’t want to have is the ability of terrorists to be able to legally buy guns in America from licensed firearms dealers. An article from Media Matters sums it up nicely: 

NRA: Rep. King “Is Pushing A Scheme To Deny Your Second Amendment Rights” With Terror Watch List Legislation. The NRA’s online magazine America’s 1st Freedom misidentified Rep. King as a Democrat in an article opposing the legislation, writing, “Amid the horror and outrage over last week’s Paris terrorist attacks, on the pretext of stopping terrorism, New York Democrat Congressman Pete King is pushing a scheme to deny your Second Amendment rights — and deny your right to due process in the bargain — by banning firearm sales to anyone on the FBI’s so-called Terrorist Watch List.” [America’s 1st Freedom, 11/20/15]

Anyone can get a gun through a private sale with no Brady background check. So the argument that terrorists will just get their guns somewhere else is true but ludicrous. We can prevent that as well as most Americans understand and want us to do.

And let’s get this straight. Republican Congressman Peter King is pushing for a bill that would keep terrorists from having guns. He’s not a Democrat. Are the people who write this stuff ignorant or clever?

Why in the world would the gun lobby oppose a bill like this? It would not deny law abiding citizens’ right to bear arms or due process. And yes, there are problems with the list:

So, clearly, the watchlist itself needs improvement and that ought to come first. But nonetheless, there surely are many thousands of people who are legitimately on the list. And those who are should surely be barred from legally obtaining firearms.

But as usual, the National Rifle Association has stood in the way of legislation that is designed to prohibit terrorists from purchasing firearms legally, and that obstructionism goes back to 2007.

Naturally, one the NRA’s arguments is that terrorists will just acquire firearms illegally, so such a law would only hurt “law-abiding citizens.” The gun lobby also trots out its standard rap about this kind of legislation being “sponsored by gun-control extremists.”

We just don’t need those kinds of false statements. It’s all hands on deck right now. Let’s fix the problem in a bill that will prevent those who are actual terrorists from being able to buy guns. If we truly care about the safety of America, we will get to work post haste and get this done. We can’t wait for the politicians who are clueless, deceiving us or so in bed with the corporate gun lobby that they are afraid, to get on board. The time is now to act.

The New York Daily News has been on the attack against the NRA’s opposition to closing the terror gap and now going after their fearless leader, Wayne LaPierre in this latest publication. So where is Mr. LaPierre? Where is a statement from the NRA about a bill that could save Americans from a terror attack? From the article:

At issue is the NRA using their overwhelming influence with lawmakers to block a law that would ban anyone on the terrorist watch list from purchasing a gun.

The bill, known as the Denying Firearms and Explosives to Dangerous Terrorists Act, was proposed in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris that left 129 people in Paris dead and hundreds more injured. Gun control advocates say that a legal loophole allows suspects on the terrorist watch list to purchase guns while the same list prevents them from flying on U.S. airlines.

The bill was originally proposed in 2007, but has been blocked by conservative lawmakers who are heavily backed by the NRA.

According GOP House member and bill co-sponsor Rep. Peter King of Long Island, the NRA is opposed to any bills that might stop anyone from purchasing a gun.

“Anything which they feel restricts the use or the ability to retain a gun they’re opposed to,” King said.

The Daily News doubled down on their attacks on the NRA for their intransigence on sensible gun legislation, with a lead story Monday morning that began: “Under the gun, with its leader nowhere to be found, the NRA faced a fusillade of new criticism Sunday for prioritizing gun rights over prevention of a Paris-style massacre in the U.S.”

I found this response by the NRA-ILA to the discussion about the terror gap:

Regardless of whether the transaction is given the green light to proceed or is denied, the encounter is noted at the time and its import is assessed in the same manner as all newly discovered pieces of intelligence about the subject of the investigation. … What the attempt to buy a firearm means in a counterterrorism investigation, and as a result the subsequent actions it warrants, necessarily must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

Of course, just because and individual is allowed to purchase a legal item doesn’t mean that person is thereafter beyond the reach of law enforcement. If authorities knew, for example, that a person were buying fertilizer to make a bomb, they obviously wouldn’t sit on their hands simply because the fertilizer purchase was legal.

The same would obviously be true of the otherwise-lawful purchase of a firearm by a person who officials had evidence intended to use it to commit a terrorist act. In this regard, current law, coupled with the FBI’s procedure, could actually produce useful and actionable anti-terrorism intelligence.

On the other hand, prohibiting every purchase by a watchlisted individual gives real terrorists under investigation or surveillance an easy way to determine whether their acts have drawn the government’s suspicion. All they would have to do is go to a gun shop and attempt to buy a gun. If they were denied and knew they had no other basis of denial, they would know the denial was watchlist related.

What? So we shouldn’t try to stop them at the point of sale because our system will get around to investigating who they are later? Really? And within hours, we could have a terror attack. And if a terrorist were denied a gun sale at a licensed dealer, he/she would know the denial was watchlist related? And so?…. What then? The terrorist would be stopped and would have to find another way to get a gun which is, as we know,  far too easy in our country. That is also why we need to require a Brady background check on ALL gun sales.

If we stop terrorists at the point of sale, just perhaps a terror attack would be averted, at least for a time. Meanwhile, the FBI would know for sure that that person was attempting to buy a gun. If someone on the Terror Watch List buys a gun, it just can’t be for sport. This kind of faulty reasoning by the gun lobby is ludicrous and potentially dangerous for us all.

It’s not time to be making things up about guns and terrorism in the silly season known as election time in America. Donald Trump appears willing to say just about anything to pander and ramp up the fear and hysteria. One of his latest deceptions is that black Americans commit the most murders in America. From the article:

The statistics, purported to be gathered by a Crime Statistics Bureau in San Francisco this year, appear to be fabricated. The Crime Statistics Bureau cited in Trump’s tweet does not exist. The FBI, which does gather official crime statistics for the U.S., has not yet released them for this year.

Last year’s FBI statistics show that the numbers in Trump’s tweet are incorrect and appear to be aimed at perpetuating racist myths about black people and crime.

In 2014, about 82 percent of murders involving white victims were committed by other white people, while only 14 percent were committed by black people, according to the FBI.

Among murders involving black victims, just under 90 percent were committed by other black people, while 7 percent were committed by white people.

Crime experts have concluded that homicides are most likely to occur among people of the same race because people are usually murdered by someone they already know, and most people primarily know people of their own race.

What we absolutely don’t need is Trump’s hyperbole and fabrications because it gives excuses for Americans to feel terror and fear that is unwarranted considering the facts. The rhetoric is leading to armed Americans “patrolling” the streets because of fear of “the other”. In Texas armed open carriers appeared outside of a Mosque making dangerous claims:

“We tried to talk to the mosque before we did this, but they wouldn’t return our messages,” said David Wright, dressed in black all the way from his backwards baseball cap to the barrel of his tactical shotgun. “So here we are.”

Wright said he organized the rally in the wake of an Islamic terrorist group’s massacre of Parisian civilians this month. Like millions of Americans, he wants to block Syrian refugees from U.S. shores, lest they replicate the attack here.

But like a fraction of those millions, he was convinced that Irving’s mosque had established the country’s first Islamic court earlier in the year—a false rumor that started online but grew in popularity after Mayor Beth Van Duyne made it the focus of speeches to Tea Party groups.

“They shut the illegal court down,” Wright said, incorrectly. “And then, they threatened to kill the mayor.”

Thus, the guns. A protester with a bandana over his face showed off his AR-15 to traffic. A 20-year-old who wants to join the Army and ban Islam in the United States carried a Remington hunting rifle while his mother held the sign.

“They’re mostly for self-defense or protection,” Wright said, eyeing his 12-gauge. “But I’m not going to lie. We do want to show force. … It would be ridiculous to protest Islam without defending ourselves.” (…)

“My initial impression was they were using them for intimidation,” Palmer said. “I doubt that they’d be happy if some of the Muslim churchgoers here showed up at their Christian church, their Baptist church, their Methodist church tomorrow morning with rifles slung over their shoulders.”

Palmer said the police chief personally warned mosque leaders about the rally. They in turn urged their worshippers to steer clear of the group, which calls itself the Bureau of American Islamic Relations and had recycled some of the signs it took to a Richardson mosque last month, on a national day of protest against Islam.

The worshippers largely took that advice, ignoring the protest until it broke up after a couple hours. The Muslims in the tiny audience declined to share their opinion — instead offering praise for freedom of speech and variations on “no comment.”

But back on the sidewalk, a man who wore a name tag that read “Big Daddy Infidel” and was afraid to give his full name worried about the day he would be forced to use his hunting rifle to take a human life.

It’s just a matter of time before some of these folks, armed to the teeth, will act on their fear and cause our very own terrorist incident. And that is exactly what Daesh would love to have happen. I wonder if that is what Trump and other candidates would love to have happen? Because if they don’t stop their own dangerous and false claims, they will be igniting a group of Americans who are ready to fight on the streets against their own and/or against those they fear will hurt them.

This is why we have a military and National Guard. We don’t need untrained and uneducated heavily armed people patrolling our streets with their military style assault weapons ready to go to war.

These are complicated and dangerous times. We need common sense and the facts. Potential and actual insurrectionists with guns are dangerous and have no common sense. We have our own home grown terrorists and mass shootings that need our attention. For example, 16 people were just shot and injured in a New Orleans neighborhood. From the article:

A manhunt was underway across New Orleans on Monday after 16 people were shot during a gunfight at an impromptu music video recording at in a city park, authorities said.

The victims were all in stable condition.

The shooting broke out late Sunday at Bunny Friend Park in the Upper Ninth Ward where about 500 people were gathered for the video shoot, officials said.

“At the end of the day it’s really hard to police against a bunch of guys who decide to pull out guns and settle disputes with 300 people between them,” Mayor Mitch Landrieu said at a news conference.

Why isn’t this a terror attack? Where is the outcry over this mass shooting?  No one died, thank goodness. But does the scene look familiar? Two or more gunmen opened fire at a crowd of people. Chaos and panic.

Sigh.

Also in New Orleans a Tulane University medical student was shot by a robber when the student attempted to help the woman being robbed of her purse. Yes, it’s scary being on the streets of America. What the gun lobby wants us to do is arm ourselves as if this student could have stopped the robbery had he pulled out his own gun. It would have been another gunfight on the streets with potential collateral damage.

Since I posted this, I came across this article about the New Orleans shooting:

Landrieu said the shooting that erupted in a crowd of nearly 500 people is akin to terrorism.

“Dead is dead, whether it’s national terrorism or domestic terrorism,” he said.

“This is senseless. We will never stand for it,” NOPD Superintendent Michael Harrison said.

The answer is not more guns on the streets. It’s fewer guns on the streets carried by those who shouldn’t have them. We are ignoring what is before our very eyes every day.

Where are our priorities?  There is a lot of work to get done. Let’s get together and make it happen.

UPDATE:

Vox has done some research on the topic of discussion- terrorism. They found what I have been saying and many have been writing about. The chances of a Syrian refugee committing an act of terror against America are far far slimmer than an American radicalized citizen shooting up a bunch of innocent people. And many of these are labeled right wing extremists- they are radicalized by religion and ideology. Let’s look at what Vox wrote about:

Domestic terrorism kills a small number of Americans each year; far more die from gun violence annually. But what gets lost in the national conversation on domestic terrorism is that terrorist acts are largely perpetrated by American citizens already living inside America’s borders. Radicalization — whether it’s jihadist extremism or right-wing extremism — more often than not starts at home in the US rather than entering the country from abroad.

When will we admit to the facts? The safety of Americans depends on our getting this right.

 

Sweeping away the real risks of guns

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vacuumIt should not be surprising that we are sweeping some of our more serious problems under the rug. For example, the many incidents involving legal gun owners that occur every day. Why aren’t we talking about the true risk of guns in the home or in public places? We know the answer. The gun lobby doesn’t want us to know about this stuff. They just want us to know that if we aren’t all armed, we will be attacked by zombies, or God forbid, terrorists. And so the hyperbole and paranoia continues. I wrote in my last two posts about the foolishness of politicians and presidential candidates regarding the Paris attacks. Many opined that things would have gone so much better if only those folks had been armed.

But they don’t want to talk about the real dangers of guns carried by people who, even in situations that don’t involve terrorism, can’t handle their legal guns. And so the carnage continues.

Only in America can we read about incidents like the those I am listing below:

A man shot a woman in a “freaky sex” incident and killed her. He forgot to take the bullet out of the chamber. Really? I thought gun owners knew better. They are supposed to make themselves and the rest of us safer. Guns and sex don’t mix.

Do you need to be carrying your gun while vacuuming? It turns out that it could be dangerous. Who knew? I guess those dust bunnies are pretty scary after all. Guns and vacuuming don’t mix.

Speaking of sweeping our real problems under the rug, only in America can a white gun extremist who threatened on Twitter to kill Jews and school kids get released to his parents by a Montana judge. From the article:

Lenio’s defense team managed to have his trial postponed earlier this year and has been working on a plea deal with prosecutors. Hutson noted, however, that when he was released on the condition that he not use social media at all, Lenio immediately reactivated his Twitter account under the name @PsychicDogTalk3 and proceeded to retweet anti-Israel propaganda and musings on how to satisfy the “urge to kill.”

“He has violated the court’s order and shown contempt for the judge 348 times,” Hutson told Strickland. “He is unfit for release into his parent’s custody in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I question if he would be getting such preferential treatment if he weren’t white and the son of an investment banker.”

A Native American or Muslim man would be treated very differently under Montana law, Hutson said.

Brant Getty, the public defender assigned to represent Lenio declined to comment for the DailyInterLake article.

This article, written by Jonathan Hutson, the man who reported the extremists’ tweets, resulting in his arrest, says this about the case:

My concern now, shared by many others, is that justice may not be served by the backroom deal apparently in the works, in which a young man who may be a danger to himself and to others could be released without having been held to account for his online threats against the Kalispell community, and without the court ensuring that Lenio receive appropriate mental health care which he apparently needs and deserves.

The prosecutor, County Attorney Ed Corrigan, is considering a possible plea bargain which could result in the felony charge of intimidation being reduced to a misdemeanor, or a deferred prosecution, which would mean that eventually, the felony charge would be dismissed, and Lenio would one day get his arsenal back. Imagine David Lenio, reloaded, courtesy of the State of Montana. That could happen.

We have our own home grown terrorists with guns:

But the breakdown of extremist ideologies behind those attacks may come as a surprise. Since Sept. 11, 2001, nearly twice as many people have been killed by white supremacists, antigovernment fanatics and other non-Muslim extremists than by radical Muslims: 48 have been killed by extremists who are not Muslim, including the recent mass killing in Charleston, S.C., compared with 26 by self-proclaimed jihadists, according to a count by New America, a Washington research center. (…)

Non-Muslim extremists have carried out 19 such attacks since Sept. 11, according to the latest count, compiled by David Sterman, a New America program associate, and overseen by Peter Bergen, a terrorism expert. By comparison, seven lethal attacks by Islamic militants have taken place in the same period.

If such numbers are new to the public, they are familiar to police officers. A survey to be published this week asked 382 police and sheriff’s departments nationwide to rank the three biggest threats from violent extremism in their jurisdiction. About 74 percent listed antigovernment violence, while 39 percent listed “Al Qaeda-inspired” violence, according to the researchers, Charles Kurzman of the University of North Carolina and David Schanzer of Duke University.

We have our own problems with terrorists at home. The Montana case represents our nation’s willingness to let people who shouldn’t have guns get them anyway because….. rights.

Sigh.

With the latest terror attack and all of the talk of radical Muslims attacking people in the Western world, we absolutely must join together to do whatever it takes.

We also do need to deal with young white angry bigoted men here at home. The young man arrested for his threats to Jews and children  may get away with his threats. Where else does this happen? Are his gun rights more important than the potential damage he can do once released? I think not. And what could possibly go wrong if he gets his guns back?

We have a double standard in our country. I have written before about mass shootings being committed by mostly young white angry men with (mostly) legally purchased guns. And yet the evidence is in about young black men becoming the majority of the homicide victims in our country. They are also incarcerated at a higher rate than white people.

We have some pretty serious problems that we are not addressing in America. Yes, there was a terror attack in Paris. There was a terror attack in Lebanon. We have serious problems with violence all over the globe. Ours is with gun violence not seen in any other civilized country not at war.

Today we are alarmed and talking 24/7 about the latest terror attack. And we should be talking about that in a reasonable thoughtful manner that will result in a plan to stop the terror and the violence. But the conversation is dumbed down by those who are speaking before engaging their brains or getting the facts.

Shameful.

And when this terror attack fades from constant public attention in a few weeks as it inevitably will, will we then pay attention to our own serious public health and safety epidemic? And will we, at the least, stop people on the terror watch list from buying guns legally in our own country? From the article:

And, as the GAO found, a number of them do: Between 2004 and 2014, suspected terrorists attempted to purchase guns from American dealers at least 2,233 times. And in 2,043 of those cases — 91 percent of the time — they succeeded. There are about 700,000 people on the watch-list — a point that civil libertarians have made to underscore that many on the list may be family members or acquaintances of people with potential terrorist connections. (…)

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.) introduced a bill to do that earlier this year. The “Denying Firearms and Explosives to Dangerous Terrorists Act of 2015” would prevent several hundred gun purchases by suspected terrorists each year, and it includes provisions to let people challenge a denial if they believe they were placed on the watchlist in error.

But these bills have rarely made it out of committee, in part due to vehement opposition from the National Rifle Association and its allies in Congress. The NRA objected to earlier versions of the bill, saying they were “aimed primarily at law-abiding American gun owners,” that “prohibiting the possession of firearms doesn’t stop criminals from illegally acquiring them,” and that the bills were “sponsored by gun control extremists.”

The NRA doesn’t want us to know about this or talk about it. Why not?

And will we sign on to the UN Small Arms Treaty as the country that is providing the most small arms to the rest of the world? Will we do our part in stopping the terror in our own country and in the world at large? From the linked article about the gun lobby deceptions that keep the US from signing the treaty:

In 2013, after nearly a decade of effort (and opposition from the Bush administration), the U.N. adopted an Arms Trade Treaty to curtail illicit sales of war weapons, including tanks, fighter jets, warships, missiles, artillery, and small arms, chiefly to keep them out of the hands of rogue governments and militant groups. But that last category of weapons riles Second Amendment activists, who are concerned that the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) is part of a secret globalist agenda to winnow away their constitutional right.

Under President Obama, American leadership helped the treaty get enough signatures to enter into force — as much force as the U.N. can muster, anyway — late last year. This week’s meetings in Mexico are when the 72 ratifying states will discuss amendments to and enforcement of the agreement. Notably, the U.S. will not be among them. It’s signed the treaty, but Congress has yet to ratify it and is unlikely to anytime soon. (…)

And it’s here that the real shenanigans begin, as the rest of the treaty text makes it clear that opponents are warping its intent to suit their own purposes. It is true that the ATT aims to keep guns (and tanks, and anti-aircraft missiles) out of the hands of “unauthorized… end users.” But contrary to the NRA’s interpretation, no one is required to provide small arms makers or their governments with specific identifying info on a gun’s ultimate owner. As the treaty now reads, exporting countries “may include end use or end user documentation” in the info they share with other treaty nations, when deemed “appropriate.” On top of that, the treaty also permits a participating country to tailor that arms-trade data “pursuant to its own legal or constitutional system.” In other words, if U.S. courts see reporting “end user” information as a violation of Second Amendment rights, the U.S. won’t be able to provide that info to exporters abroad.

More importantly, guns imported to the U.S. already get registered. With very few exceptions, all firearms brought into the country have to go through a firearm dealer licensed by the ATF, and a Form 6 for the deal must be filled out in detail and filed with ATF and Customs and Border Protection. Your individual sportsman can get a special permit to directly import sporting-gun parts and ammunition for personal use — but even then, there’s a record of the importation. In all likelihood, treaty parties will treat gun stores and dealers who receive imports as the “end user” for record-keeping purposes, rather than individual customers who may buy the weapon at a point of sale months or years later.

So in a broad sense, the specter of “registration” that the NRA raises has already been the law of the land for some time. The more specific fear — that foreign governments and UN lackeys will gain lists of every Tom, Dick, and Harry who owns a Beretta — is the absurd product of scaremongering.

I suggest you read more of this article. The scare mongering and paranoia exhibited by the American gun lobby are hampering efforts to try to control the trafficking of weapons world wide that inevitably end up in the hands of terrorists.

So again I ask, what are we doing about terror in our own country and our own failures to help with anti terrorism at home and abroad?

We can actually deal with the concerns about with the terror watch list and the UN Small Arms Treaty by the way. If we can send people to the moon, we can figure this out as well. It takes resolve and common sense which sometimes we have little of.

And why do so many Americans believe the hype about guns for self defense? The guys who were involved in the shooting while having sex and while vacuuming apparently believed nothing could possibly go wrong with a gun in their own hands. I am guessing these are the same folks who are thinking that the citizens of Paris should have been armed during the terror attack. What could possibly go wrong?

The real problems cannot be swept away.  As long as the gun lobby holds sway over our politicians, the house cleaning of our weak gun laws to save lives won’t happen. Let’s dust off our reluctance to attack the problem and get to work.

I would like to add an article to my post. I like this one about how the NRA and the corporate gun lobby are actually arming criminals because of their insistence that stronger gun laws won’t work. From the article:

Through all of this, the National Rifle Association has been resolute in its mission to protect Americans’ access to guns. Their success extends far beyond protecting Second Amendment rights.

They have been so effective at limiting or weakening gun violence prevention laws that they can legitimately be accused of helping to arm many of the United States’ criminals. And while they do this they cynically claim that there are plenty of laws on the books if you just enforce them.

Before you fire off angry letters and comments, please read just a few ways how the NRA’s mission has strayed from protecting law abiding gun owner’s rights to keeping the flow of arms to crooks steady.

And then the writer gets to my point from this post:

If you were wondering how out of touch the NRA has become, think about this – they strongly oppose legislation to prohibit the sale of guns to people on the terrorist watch list. Is any comment even needed here?

We need an honest debate about gun laws and how to reduce violence, balancing the protection of Second Amendment rights with realistic measures to keep guns away from lawbreakers. But the NRA, through scare tactics, exaggeration, lying and appeal to paranoia has shown they are not capable of participating in an honest debate.

Through their tactics, they make it easy for criminals to keep getting guns. And if you support the NRA, so do you.

No further comment.

 

 

Je Suis Paris

commongunsense, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Paris profileThe past hours have been filled with the news of what has now been determined to be a terrorist attack in Paris. It is estimated that 127 people are now dead, so far anyway. Some of those injured are reported to have very serious injuries so the death toll could rise. There are really no words for this incident. The world is watching yet another attack on innocent people perpetrated by those with hate and anger in their hearts. We are all asking- why?

Predictably there are Americans who actually believe that if only French residents were allowed to carry guns in public, lives could have been saved. These delusional people have an alternate view of the world not shared by most. If someone can explain how a gun could have been used to take out guys wearing suicide vests when there is no expectation that someone will blow themselves up in seconds, then go ahead. Enlighten us. If someone can explain how a pistol in a waistband holster would save innocent citizens from men armed with AK 47s, (maybe automatic type weapons) then go ahead- enlighten us.

Tragedies like the ones that unfold every day in America and international terror attacks will not be stopped by armed citizens. I saw some tweets today from American gun extremists and a few politicians stupidly opining that if only the French had our American conceal carry laws, this attack could have been thwarted. This tweet by a Wisconsin Sheriff suggests that the Paris terror attack could be an opportunity for the Republicans to win the White House. Sheriff Clarke has made other incendiary remarks regarding gun violence. He also has strong conservative views about gun rights and is a Constitutional Sheriff. Other gun nuts are claiming that they would now carry AR 15s in their cars along with the ammunition needed to thwart a terrorist attack.

Lunacy.

Just as the false claim that armed people could have saved themselves in the January Charlie Hebdo attack was debunked by a Texas gun group who set up a mock attack, the same is true in this attack and other terror attacks. From the article:

Killed or not, some of the volunteers still seem to believe arming themselves is the right thing to do.

“Still got killed, but I did better than I thought I would do,” said Parks Matthew, one volunteer who played the role of an armed civilian to KTVT. “If I was in a movie theater and someone were to pull a gun, what am I going to do? And I know now I’m not just going to fall on my kids and protect them. I need to advance on the threat,” Matthew said.

“It’s interesting to see how people react under stress,” said Nick Leghorn, part of the group that staged the reenactment. “It’s not what you’d expect people do.”

Texas.

Sigh.

This bears repeating from the above article: “It’s not what you’d expect people do.” That is the problem with the false logic of the corporate gun lobby and gun rights extremists. They live in a world where they are the “good guys” with guns who can inevitably take down the “bad guys” with guns. They are wrong and they even proved it to themselves in their mock scene of the Charlie Hebdo attacks. But even after that, they can’t admit that they are wrong.

Lax American gun laws, promoted by the corporate gun lobby and their bought and paid for politicians, are not working to keep us safer on our own soil- 89 Americans a day die from gunshot injuries and about 32 of these are homicides.

I found this article which highlights the problem of loose guns left over from wars on the Continent becoming the weapons of choice for terrorists. Weapons of former wars become weapons of current terror attacks. But weapons of war are not available to ordinary citizens in most of Europe. Other countries don’t need our gun culture. We need theirs.

It only takes a few people armed with guns and explosives to terrorize a city or a geographic area. Let’s look at the “DC snipers” and how they held the citizens of several communities in 3 states hostage for several days in 2002 with their military style weapons, readily available in the US to just anyone. And then let’s take a look at the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai and how easy it was for terrorists armed with military style AK 47s to hold a city hostage for days. The 2013 attack at the Westgate shopping Mall in Kenya  is another example of how a group of armed terrorists- domestic or otherwise, can use weapons to terrorize a large shopping mall for days. And we shouldn’t forget the 2011 attacks by an armed extremist in Norway that shocked that country and the world with the inexplicable death toll of 77.

And I’m sure I don’t need to get into our own country’s mass shootings that are carried out by our own armed domestic terrorists.  Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora, Charleston, Sandy Hook, Naval Yard, Fort Hood, and numerous others have also rocked our own country and the world.

Common sense tells us that ordinary armed citizens cannot defend themselves against attacks like these or the regular mass shootings, domestic shootings and daily homicides taking place in our own country. But gun extremists are suffering under the delusion that guns are the answer. Remember the attack on a French train this past summer? Remember that it was ended by brave unarmed Americans?

We are all sad and feeling helpless this morning in the wake of the “City of Light” suffering the darkness of the worst toll of human life in France since World War ll. But then let us also remember that in 2 days time, more than 127 Americans die from gunshot injuries. Since World War ll, hundreds of thousands of Americans have lost their lives to bullets. And we do nothing.

Now we are outraged and fearful. Some of us will, inexplicably, promote more guns. Most of us want fewer guns everywhere and want to find ways to stop the carnage.

There are obvious political and foreign policy debates occurring after this attack which I am not going to get into on this blog. Those need to be discussed by people with a higher pay grade than my own.

But there are other considerations as well for American and world travelers. With terror attacks occurring in tourist destinations all over the world, what will we do about travel plans? That is also on my mind as someone who has done a lot of travel to places like Paris, Spain, Turkey, Greece, Norway, Croatia, etc. where terror attacks have occurred.

Travel writer Rick Steves has made this statement on his Facebook page:

I’m sure that many Americans will cancel their trips to Paris (a city of 2 million people) or the rest of Europe (a continent of 500 million people), because of an event that killed about 150. As a result, ironically, they’ll be staying home in a country of 320 million people that loses over 30,000 people a year (close to 100 people a day) to gun violence.

Again, our thoughts and prayers go out to the people of Paris, the victims, and their loved ones. And it remains my firmly held belief that the best way for Americans to fight terrorism is to keep on traveling.

And what will we do about the carnage of mass shootings and terror attacks all over the world? It will take all hands on deck to deal with the modern world’s terrorists no matter where they attack. The world is full of angry men with guns. They are shooting innocent people in movie theaters, churches, schools, military bases, on our streets, in tourist destinations, in cafes and music venues, shopping malls and other public places all over the world. We can’t stop living our lives out of the fear that comes with these attacks. But we can demand that our leaders keep us safe from the carnage.

Vigilance, better and stronger policies, thoughtful and serious discussion, responsible solutions and whatever else it takes is what is needed now. We are outraged by the continued death and destruction caused by armed people all over the world every day. #Enough.

Wake up calls about gun violence

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alarm_clockDoes anyone think through the results of our lax gun laws? I know I do but, as a country, we have been so steeped in a unique gun culture that we have lost our way. It’s time to wake up to the reality of what our lax gun laws actually mean.

I ran across an editorial from the Washington Post comparing the recent Colorado Springs shooting with the recent California campus stabbing. Four people were stabbed by someone wielding a knife on a campus and will survive. Not so for the victims of the Colorado man who walked plainly down the streets of Colorado Springs with an openly carried gun that was legal to carry. From the article:

Imagine if Colorado weren’t so permissive in allowing people to openly display guns. Would that 911 operator have recognized the danger more quickly and would lives have been saved?

Similarly, imagine what would have occurred if the attacker at the University of California at Merced had wielded a gun instead of a hunting knife. Would there have been fatalities instead of injuries, and would there have been additional victims before the attacker could be stopped? Indeed, would the construction worker who bravely broke up the attack have been able to do so if a gun were involved and not a knife?

Where is the knife lobby when you need it? Death by knifings/stabbings are very low compared to firearms. The obvious is before us. Gun laws would matter and would save lives. But we are living in a country where rights come before public safety. Is this what we really thought would happen when our state legislators loosened our gun laws in a slippery slope that has led to the spectacle of armed citizens on our streets?

What do we think of when armed men (mostly men) are walking armed on the streets of our communities? I think of countries at war. And I do believe that we are war with ourselves in America. How can we think otherwise? When more Americans have lost their lives since 1968 to gun violence than all Americans who have died in all American wars since the Revolutionary War, we know we have a real public health and safety epidemic that we are not addressing with any kind of common sense.

When small children continue to shoot themselves or someone else because of easy access to a gun, we have a serious problem. When teens and middle aged white men have access to guns, they are shooting themselves at an alarming rate. 

Will we admit that guns are dangerous weapons designed to kill people and animals? Even in hunting season, there are accidents because bullets are projectiles coming from guns that kill animals but sometimes kill or injure hunters or innocent bystanders. One such happened in my own state of Minnesota when a slug hit a hunter instead of a deer. Luckily for all the man will live. Gun safety is of the utmost importance but isn’t always followed by gun owners.

Every one who holds a gun should have required gun safety classes before they can own or carry a gun. I will remind my readers that the gun lobby is actually working to do away with training requirements for those who carry guns in public. And we don’t require any prior experience or training before someone walks out the door of a gun shop with a gun. Never mind those who get their guns without a Brady background check because we have no idea who these folks are or whether they are allowed to purchase guns let alone be able to be responsible with them once they have them.

Not only is the gun lobby keeping us snoozing when it comes to gun safety reform, they are ramping up the fear and paranoia to those who believe it. It sells guns. Take a look at this post from Mike the Gun Guy for the contradictions in our country when it comes to gun rights and gun safety reform. Mike is a guy the gun lobby/extremists hate. Why? He is a gun owner who is speaking the inconvenient truths about guns and gun laws. He is a supporter of gun violence prevention and yet lives in the world of guns. A majority of gun owners are like Mike. From his latest blog post after attending a vigil at the National Cathedral in DC and then attending a Pennsylvania gun show:

The point is that the two sides in the gun debate are more different than any two populations that we could identify as having different viewpoints on any public policy issue at all.  When it comes to gun violence, incidentally, what’s funny is that we all seem able to discuss in reasonable tones whether as a country we need to have a ready supply of really big weapons – planes, tanks, nukes – to make the world a safer place.  It’s when we get down to safety on our own street corners with the little weapons that rhetorical ugliness and angry epithets tend to shape the debate.

Somehow over the last twenty years the reaction to people getting killed or injured with guns has turned ugly, raucous and mean.  But hasn’t the discussion of all policy issues become more nasty and abrasive since a certain Kenyan signed a lease at for an apartment in the People’s House?

The issue of gun rights has become not just about guns but about politics. When most Republicans agree that gun rights are more important than gun safety reform, it’s political. Republican Presidential candidates are tripping all over themselves to be the most extreme NRA supporter. The opposite is happening with the Democratic candidates who are trying to outdo each other to be the one with the worst rating from the NRA. It’s become part of the far right’s take over of the Republican party. The fear and paranoia spewing after our first Black President was elected is not only offensive- it’s frightening.

A friend attended a recent gun show and took photos there, which the gun show operators hate. Why? Because what she got photos of were incendiary bumper stickers, hate posters, Confederate flags, rows and rows of assault rifles for sale, tee shirts for sales with slogans like this: “Hillary for prison, 2016″, ” Liberty Freedom Family My right to own a firearm has  more value than your  entitlement to Food Stamps.” Sellers at gun shows not only sell guns and ammunition they sell fear, hate, insurrectionist ideas and paranoia. In addition, a good number of those sellers are private sellers who most often sell their wares without requiring a background check. That is grounds for fear.

This is the extreme view of gun rights that we are allowing to take over any rational discussion we could be having and deserve to have. But, as Bob Dylan wrote in one of his songs,  “the times, they are a changin’.” His words couldn’t be more appropriate for 2015. From the song lyrics ( linked above):

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside and it is ragin’
It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’

Yes, Congress has stalled and a lot of Americans are being hurt because of the snoozing of our politicians. There is a battle for the messaging about gun rights vs. gun safety reform. There shouldn’t be. The two are not mutually exclusive and can co-exist. Tell that to the extremists and your politicians.

America, we need to wake up. We’ve had many wake-up calls over the years. But apparently we have hit the snooze button. We are napping through a serious public health and safety epidemic. I sense that the public is waking up, however. We’ve had #enough.

We’re late for a very important date that can save lives.

Houston, we have an open carry monster

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monsterWe have created a monster. It’s swallowing up our children and innocent Americans at the rate of 89 a day. It’s ubiquitous. It’s huge, slimy, deceptive, has sharp teeth, lots of money, bullies elected leaders and doesn’t care about the health and safety of our communities. It has an agenda to make lots of money for an industry, keep itself influential and wealthy, keep everyone feeling unsafe and paranoid, and arming our country. It’s evil and the cause of a lot of death and injury. It leaves in its’ wake victims and survivors and a ripple effect that is devastating our communities. It is rearing its’ ugly head after loosening our gun laws and it’s coming into more clear focus every day.

Open carrying of guns has come into sharp focus after the man who walked down a street open carrying a rifle in Colorado Springs shot and killed 3 people, seemingly without provocation. I should say that even if someone provoked someone, there is no need to shoot them. The guns were legally purchased. Law enforcement ( or a dispatcher) allegedly did not act quickly because, as she supposedly told a panicked 911 caller, it’s legal to open carry in Colorado. Not to worry. But questions are being asked and let’s hope they can be answered in the interest of public safety.

That said, let’s examine this more closely. An article in The Trace that has picked up on some others written after that shooting incident last week-end looks at the idea of rights vs. public safety. This is the ubiquitous tension in our discussion about gun violence prevention. The article summarized a meeting held in Houston regarding the new law in Texas to allow open carrying of guns in public places but the Colorado Springs incident was on the minds of the attendees. The worst fears came out in the meeting. Residents asked many questions of law enforcement and even they could not answer them. No one seems to understand the details of the law and it turns out the law was “badly written” and difficult to understand.

That is all done on purpose by the gun lobby. When they work with their bought and paid for legislators, many nuances that are meant to confuse the public and law enforcement but benefit the gun rights extremists are stuck into bills. The result is bad bills that are as far as you can get from public safety. So the residents’ questions were right on point.

From the article:

As the meeting got underway in Houston, the law enforcement officials, seated behind a green rectangular table, did not exactly put the room at ease. “As a police officer, it is so complex,” Chief Charles A. McClelland, Jr., announced. “I don’t really understand all the nuances of the law.” City Attorney Donna Edmundson agreed. “Unfortunately,” she said, “this law wasn’t written very well. It’s not very clear.” District Attorney Devon Anderson conceded, “This is complicated.” Later, she admitted to only learning that morning to which government buildings the law applied.

And further:

It was a mother who prompted what might have been the most poignant exchange of the evening. “Most of us, as parents, have told our children that, if you see someone with a gun, run, scream,” She said. “What do you suggest we tell our children, who might be out and about without us, when they see a man with a gun, what do they do? Because they’re scared. They’re very scared.”

The DA appeared sympathetic. “That’s hard, because I have kids too,” she said, fumbling for an appropriate answer.

The mom persisted. “The main thing is, in Colorado Springs, at what moment did he become a threat? When he shot a person on a bike, a woman in her face, and a woman in her chest?”

The DA said, “Let me say this, and I’m taking a chance here but I’m going to say it: if you see a civilian with a gun in a school building, that’s a 911. That’s a prohibited place, inside a school building.” She continued, “You can carry around a school, on the sidewalk, in a parking lot — that kind of thing. But that would give me pause.”

The mom appeared dumfounded. “So I tell my child, if it’s outside a school, it’s okay?”

So what is a parent to do? What are kids to do? What are we all to do? The gun lobbyists and leaders in concert with legislators, who either believe in the deception that more guns will make us safer, or are not willing to challenge the fierce gun lobby are making us all less safe.

Isn’t the job of elected leaders to deal with public health and safety epidemics and concerns? The answer is Yes. So the parents who asked law enforcement in Houston about what to tell their children when they see a “good guy” with a gun walking down the street with a rifle have every right to ask the question. And notice that even law enforcement officers have no idea how to answer. How could they? They don’t want this either. It makes their own jobs very difficult. If they stop someone with a rifle, will that person give an officer ID or will that person shoot the officer? If you ask for ID, the gun rights folks get huffy and often challenge the officers.

There are many examples of these Texas open carriers provoking officers and then getting out their iPhones to video tape the exchange so they rile up their own “troops” or maybe challenge the law or bring a law suit. Here is just one where the open carriers claimed that officers treated them like terrorists. Good grief. This is the world of the gun rights extremists and we have let it happen. And now we are paying the price in lost lives. It will only get worse as more people believe they should be able to “normalize” open carrying in public.

We are not safer now. Anyone with common sense understands that we have created a monster. So now what are we going to do? Expose our kids to this lunacy? Not pay attention to guys with guns strutting around the streets of our cities until they actually decide to kill innocent people? Can we arrest them? Apparently not. Are they a public nuisance? At the least.

We just have to be better than this. The other night I was introduced to some young professionals who had traveled to my city from our sister city of Petrosavask,(Petrozavodsk) Russia. They asked me about gun laws here and were astounded that anyone could buy a gun and that guns were for sale on the internet. In Russia, one must have a license to buy a gun and also go through some questions to make sure it’s OK for you to buy a gun including your mental health status. Unfortunately, Russian President Putin just gave citizens the right to carry guns in public for self defense. Things are changing even in Russia. Russia has its’ own problems politically and culturally but they don’t have the rate of gun violence as that in our own country. 25% of homicides are caused by firearms in Russia whereas in the U.S. that number is 60% at least, according to this chart in Gunpolicy.org. This is a uniquely American tragedy.

We have a problem created by our own elected leaders. Fixing it will not be easy and far too late for the many innocent victims of gun violence. And no, laws will not fix all of this. Many of the folks wandering our streets are legal gun purchasers and “law abiding” until suddenly they are not. It takes a few seconds to snap and when it happens with a gun, lives are lost quickly and violently.

It’s our gun culture run amok with the help of our own leaders and the compliance and urging of the corporate gun lobby. It’s the public, unaware of the implications and the detalis of the laws passed under the radar and scrutiny they deserve. It’s deception at its’ worst and at its’ deadliest.

It’s time for a change. Let’s get to work now while we can still save lives.

Halloween fear and paranoia

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halloween_zombieWas it a coincidence that the writer of this letter that appeared in my home town newspaper was trying to scare everyone into believing the gun lobby’s lame talking points? I am going to share the entire text of this letter below:

There are some people who feel we should ban all guns in America. They feel that when there is an incident when someone goes out and kills people that the gun manufacturers are responsible. They feel the gun manufacturers should be sued for these incidents.

But if you did that, you wouldn’t be holding the individual who killed the people responsible.

Recently, a 25-year-old woman drove her car into a crowd of people, killing four and injuring 48. Are you going to hold the automobile manufacturer responsible for this accident? Here again, you pick and choose who you want to be held accountable.

Those who go out and cause all of these deaths and incidents are the ones who need to be held accountable, not the manufacturers of cars and guns and knives, etc.

People kill people, and it doesn’t matter what they use to do it.

This lame deception is the scary talk coming from, yes, the corporate gun lobby. I would remind my readers that the gun industry are the ones who are immune from most lawsuits, thanks to the corporate gun lobby. No other industry shares such immunity from accountability for faulty products or practices. The NRA and its’ friends in Congress just love to trick people into believing their false arguments.

And when a car’s design or malfunction causes an accident to happen, more often than not, lawsuits are filed and the manufacturer is held responsible. This is what leads to changes in design and practices of the auto industry. That is how the gun industry is different from most others. When lives are lost or injuries are sustained because of faulty design or practices, the public takes notice, legal action happens and changes will lead to lives saved.

The writer is wrong. Congress has picked and chosen who is responsible and they granted immunity to only one- the gun industry.

And when a person purposely drives a car into a crowd of people, killing innocent people, he/she is held accountable unless it was a faulty design of the vehicle. But let’s go further here with the writer’s reasoning. How many times do we read or hear about the accident he used as an example?

Here’s one- people were injured but not killed.

Here is the example the writer chose. Let’s look at what happened here, from the article:

“I opened the door and asked her how she was doing, what happened, felt her neck,” he said. “She just looked at me and said she was trying to kill herself. I said, ‘What?’ And she said, ‘I was trying to kill myself.’ And I asked her why and she said, ‘to be free,’” Oglesby said. (…)

Four people were killed in the crash, and 47 were hurt. One of those who died was two years old. Eleven of the injured were 13 years old or younger. (…)

Immediately after the crash, Chambers was taken into custody for suspicion of driving under the influence.

She now faces four counts of second-degree murder. She made a court appearance Monday, via closed-circuit video, during which bond was set at $1 million.

Chambers’ attorney, Tony Coleman believes that mental illness may have played a role in the crash.

Does any of this sound familiar to you? Much has been made about mental illness as a source for our gun violence problem. It is a deflection about the actual problem which is that when people are severely mentally ill and have access to a gun, bad things happen. The media is replete with way too many examples of this on a regular basis- more regular than the example above. This woman claims to have been suicidal and was under the influence of alcohol. This is a terrible tragedy for all involved.

Let’s now look at how many people actually succeed in killing themselves by bullets when suicidal. The statistics are enough to scare all of us. In 2010, according to this article, over 19,000 people succeeded in committing suicide by gun. More recent data from the Centers for Disease Control show that over 21,000 Americans used firearms to commit suicide. I think we can all agree that suicide by gun takes the lives of exponentially more people than suicide by car.

The same is true with mental illness and alcohol though drunk driving does have a huge toll. In my state of Minnesota alone, drunk driving related deaths took the lives of 1442 people from 2003-2012. This does not include car accident deaths not due to drunk driving of course, which is many more. In approximately that same time period, about 300 ( or more)  gun deaths per year took the lives of Minnesotans leaving us with a toll of about 3150 deaths. 

So do guns kill people? Yes. Do car accidents kill people? Yes. Are cars designed to kill people? No. Are guns designed to kill people? Yes.

What should we be more scared of? Guns or cars? Who should we be more scared of? People with guns or people driving cars? Do more people own cars than own guns? The answer is yes. If the statistics that can be accessed are true, there is about 1 gun per person in the United States but only about 32% of people own these guns.

Guns are lethal weapons that are accountable for 32,000 deaths per year and about 70,000 injuries. Cars, not designed to kill, take the lives of about 33,000 per year. In some states, gun deaths are surpassing automobile accident deaths in young adults.

We have not banned cars as the result of the large number of deaths and injuries caused by automobile accidents. Instead we have reformed the industry and enacted stronger laws. We are not banning guns either. But what we want is the same amount of safety regulations for firearms as we have for automobiles and then we can talk about comparing the two. When firearms are registered like cars and gun owners are licensed like car drivers and the product has safety features designed to reduce injuries and deaths like cars, then we can compare. When we require the same amount of training we require in order to buy a gun as we do for getting a driver’s license, then we can compare the two.

Common sense has prevailed for almost every other cause of death in America. As a country we dig down and try to fix what we know is wrong. Collectively we do care about people dying from natural causes or accidents. That’s who we are. Research is done. Studies are released. We look for causes and effects. We change product design or treatment regimens or try new medications or interventions. That’s who we are.

So why not the same for firearms? We know the answer. The answer is in this letter. The corporate gun lobby is trying to deflect the real problem. It IS guns. People with guns are killing Americans at alarming rates. Bullets from guns in the hands of people who shouldn’t have them or even people who are law abiding actually do kill people. And those bullets kill more people than any other type of object such as knives, baseball bats or blunt objects. Don’t be tricked into thinking otherwise.

We should be scared. Instead many of our elected leaders are running scared from the gun lobbyists and gun rights extremists.

When victims and survivors are “treated” worse than gun lobbyists, we have a problem. But we will not be tricked any more. Our politicians should not be tricked either. Our mission will be to make sure they are not.

We can better than this. When Mothers Against Drunk Driving was formed, things happened. Our country responded by making changes to our drunk driving laws and over time, campaigns were launched to make sure there was a designated driver when groups were at parties or bars where alcohol is served. Culture change came with law changes or the other way around. Why? Because we decided as a country that we couldn’t tolerate the senseless deaths due to drunk driving.

Mothers speak truth to power on many issues, including the gun issue. The Million Mom March has resulted in women and others all over the country pushing for gun safety reform. The newly formed Moms Demand Action for Gunsense is doing the same as is Moms Rising. There are other groups started by women as well that are making a difference. Since we represent millions and the majority who want stronger gun laws, our voices will be heard. We have had #enough of the excuses espoused by this letter writer and the minority of Americans who fight any and all gun safety reform measures using their lame arguments and excuses.

The letter writer would like us to do nothing because his claim that guns don’t kill people is an excuse for doing nothing. That is not how this works or how it should work. It’s time for that to change and change is coming. This man can try to use fear and paranoia as a tactic to scare Americans into buying guns to protect themselves from zombies and other “scary”people out there. But he only needs to look at reality to know that it is not those scary zombies or “the other” killing people with guns. It’s us. It’s toddlers accessing guns they shouldn’t be able to access. It’s teens accessing guns to kill themselves. It’s older men shooting themselves with the guns they own. It’s stray bullets that are discharged by guns that the owner didn’t shoot intentionally or when it drops out of a purse or a pants pocket.

Yes, guns kill people.

On that note- I wish my readers a Happy and safe, gun death free Halloween.

The Brady Campaign on the march

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tipping pointI have been away from my blog while attending the Brady Summit in Washington D.C. hosted by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and the American Public Health Association. Hundreds of attendees were inspired, saddened, educated and energized by like minded people on a mission. The tide is turning. We can feel it and we know it by the public responses to the recent tragedies. We see the testimonials. We hear the speeches. We watch as the news media is changing what they are saying about the issue and at least some politicians are finally speaking the truth about our national gun violence epidemic. Thank goodness. It’s far far too late for way too many. But it’s a step. And I hope it will be the slippery slope towards common sense.

I wrote in my last post about the article on the CNN website written by Dan Gross, President of the Brady Campaign. We have reached a tipping point on the issue of gun violence.

A recent shooting in Virginia which ended with the murder of 2 journalists on live TV was a tipping point. At the Brady Summit, one vey inspiring and emotional moment came when Andy and Barbara Parker, parents of Alison Parker, one of the Virginia journalists, spoke to the attendees. Here is a video of Andy Parker’s remarks:

Let’s do this for Sarah and Jim Brady and for Alison. Let’s not let our mission be derailed by those whose interests are in keeping gun industry profits high and keeping gun lobbyists in business. For too long, those voices have drowned out the voices of victims and survivors. Not any more. We will not be silenced.

Meanwhile, as advocates were learning from the experts in public health and safety, suicide prevention, physicians, attorneys, elected officials, victims, state advocates, and others-   these are the things that went on in our country while we weren’t paying attention:

Insanity.

You can read much more about the world of firearm accidents and intentional deaths at several good sites:

Accidents Happen Guns Kill

Ohh shoot blog

Gun Violence Archive

The Daily Kos- Gun Fail

Don’t you find it amazing that there are so many sites reporting on accidental and intentional gun discharges? Only in America. But much of the research and reporting is coming from sites like this. Since the NRA owned Congress members made sure government agencies can’t research the causes and effects of gun violence, it’s good news that others are stepping up.

One of the best sources of information outside of the public health researchers is the on-line publication, The Trace. In one of today’s articles, we learn that the ATF only monitors 7% of gun dealers in a year. That is a crime, actually.

Where are crime guns coming from? Many from “bad apple gun dealers”. You can read more about that in this piece from the New York Times today:

Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, has pledged to throw his weight behind the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, one of the country’s most prominent gun control groups, in an as-yet-unannounced effort demanding that the Justice Department more closely scrutinize so-called bad apple gun merchants, according to people familiar with the campaign.

Mr. Cuomo, in an interview about his plans to work with the Brady Campaign, promised that his involvement in national gun politics would continue to deepen. He said he would hit the campaign trail in 2016 to emphasize the issue of gun violence, which he repeatedly called “the big issue” in national politics. (…) To start, Mr. Cuomo will be among the chief signatories of a letter to Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch, to be released as early as next week, urging the Justice Department to punish what the Brady Campaign describes as a small fraction of gun dealers who sell an overwhelming share of weapons used to commit crimes. He has promised to lobby other governors around the country to join in the push.

Yes, we can do something about gun trafficking and crime guns and we will.

And you can watch 60 Minutes on Sunday for information about Smart Gun technology that has the potential for saving lives. The gun lobby opposes Smart Gun technology. Why? They need to explain how they can be against new technology that could prevent a toddler from pulling a trigger to kill or hurt themselves or somebody else. They need to explain how they can be opposed to a technology that could keep a teen from accessing a gun to use in a suicide or a school shooting. They need to explain why they oppose technology that could prevent a robber from using a stolen gun in a crime.

But I digressed. I sat at a table with a BBC reporter at the Brady Summit on Tuesday. She was doing a story on America’s fascination with guns and the lack of ability to change the minds of Congress when so many Americans want change. She was stunned at the American gun culture and our seeming tolerance for the carnage. It was unfathomable to her that we have failed to act. These things are just not happening anywhere else in the world. But she was also encouraged that groups were working state by state to change the gun laws that don’t get passed in Congress. That was news to her. As Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy spoke to the summit attendees, she paid attention to his remarks about how hard it was to get new laws passed even in the state where the massacre of 20 small school children occurred.

I explained to her about the insidious corporate gun lobby and the fear of said lobby affecting too many of our elected leaders. The lies and deceptions keep coming as the influence of the gun lobby wanes. You can read about the latest from the NRA’s own Mr. Wayne LaPierre in this Media Matters article:

The NRA’s lie is brazen given widespread reporting explaining how the gun group interferes with ATF operations. As USA Today reported in 2013, “lobbying records and interviews show the [NRA] has worked steadily to weaken existing gun laws and the federal agency charged with enforcing them.”

According to The Washington Post, “the gun lobby has consistently outmaneuvered and hemmed in ATF, using political muscle to intimidate lawmakers and erect barriers to tougher gun laws. Over nearly four decades, the NRA has wielded remarkable influence over Congress, persuading lawmakers to curb ATF’s budget and mission and to call agency officials to account at oversight hearings.”

The NRA’s opposition to the ATF has been extreme. The gun group has threatened to attempt to abolish the agency all together and LaPierre infamously called federal law enforcement agents “jack-booted government thugs” who wear “Nazi bucket helmets and black storm trooper uniforms.”

Sigh.

While lobbying on Wednesday at the Hart Senate office building, a group of us were standing with our”Background Checks Save Lives” stickers on and managed to attract attention and comments from quite a few people. One of them was a Senate staffer who was not American born but worked for a Senator who he said did not agree with us. The thing was- he himself agreed with our views and shook his head as he tried to figure out why America is so gun crazy and so violent. I told him that the majority in his Senator’s state agreed with us and he should go back and check the polling date to share with his boss.

For if our own leaders fail to represent us- the majority and the victims, survivors, experts, researchers, law enforcement, clergy, youth, gun owners, health care providers, educators, hunters, and others who want gun safety reform, what else is there? Congress must act. Our state legislators must act. They are now hearing from the millions who want to get this job done in the name of the victims.

We are marching forward towards saving lives in spite of stiff resistance. We are holding our elected leaders responsible and asking them to commit to measures to keep us all safer in the halls of Congress and state legislatures. The tipping point is here.

We have had #enough. If you have also had enough, check out the #enough campaign on the Brady Campaign’s website.

The gun lobby, once upon a time

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HookI think we can safely say that we are living in a fictional fairy-tale like world when it comes to gun deaths and gun safety in our country. Like Peter Pan, we are pretending that the real world is not what it is. We fly around from place to place looking for what’s real but we aren’t landing on the real problem. Captain Hook , Peter Pan’s nemesis, is revengefully presenting evil choices whenever he encounters Peter Pan. Sometimes Hook gets what he deserves but he keeps showing up anyway. Much like the corporate gun lobby and it’s ludicrous fictional fear and paranoia foisted on some unsuspecting political leaders and some in the public who actually believe in the myths expounded by the lobbyists and gun extremists.

Will we ever grow up?

Once upon a time we at least tried to deal with the carnage- when the Brady Law was passed in 1993; when restrictions on assault weapons were seen as reasonable for public safety. When average citizens weren’t carrying loaded guns around in public places.

Once upon a time the corporate gun lobby agreed that requiring background checks on all gun sales was a reasonable and good idea to prevent people who shouldn’t have guns from getting their hands on them. Let’s take a look at the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre on the subject:

Once upon a time the NRA was an organization that supported hunting and shooting sports for the average gun owner- people like my grandfather, my own father, my mother, my uncles, my brother and my husband. They took safety classes and had hunting guns for recreation and family togetherness.

That was then. Now the response to our nation’s mass shootings and every day shootings- arming everyone everywhere, including in schools is this jaw dropping response to the Sandy Hook massacre of 20 first graders by Wayne LaPierre( again); 

Sigh.

But something happened when the extremist gun rights advocates took over the organization in what is now called the “Cincinnati revolt” at a 1977  NRA convention. And what we have now is something very different from the origins of the NRA. From the article:

“We must declare that there are no shades of gray in American freedom. It’s black and white, all or nothing,” Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said at an NRA annual meeting in 2002, a message that the organization has reiterated at almost every opportunity since.

“You’re with us or against us.”

Once upon a time we could have shades of gray about gun policy. It was a given that we wanted to prevent shootings and save lives and people from both political parties could agree that the problem needed to be addressed. Today it’s black or white according to the NRA’s leadership. The problem with this is that most of their own members agree with the gun policy changes that have been proposed in the wake of the many mass shootings and everyday carnage.

Once upon a time toddlers were not shooting themselves or others in weekly shootings. But now that there are so many guns in circulation owned by people who don’t have any idea how to deal with loaded guns  a toddler is shooting either him/herself or someone else weekly.

Once upon a time, President George H.W. Bush belonged to the NRA. And then a statement was made about “jack booted government thugs” and formerPresident George H.W. Bush resigned his membership with a public statement:

The NRA used the the Oklahoma City bombing and the standoff and siege in Waco, Texas, in order to fundraise for itself in 1993 (while President Clinton was in office). And it denigrated upstanding people who protected the public in order to do it:

“In Clinton’s administration, if you have a badge, you have the government’s go-ahead to harass, intimidate, even murder law-abiding citizens.”
— Wayne LaPierre, 1993 NRA fundraising letter

And what’s more, the NRA lost members because of this extreme position and began their deceptive rhetoric about their membership numbers by including members who had died in their membership roles. So who are included in the membership roles of the NRA? Of course, legitimate gun owners who happen to believe in the organization and may or may not know or understand what the organization is really about. But those who like to target shoot at gun ranges must become members of the NRA in order to belong to the gun club or gun range. I have several friends for whom this is true. Their views do not agree with those of the leadership and lobbyists of the NRA. They just like to shoot at the range.

What does this have to do with today’s gun culture and gun policy? When the gun lobby uses ramped up numbers to claim that they represent anywhere from 4-5 million gun owners, elected leaders listen. But then, we also know that only 1 in 10 gun owners belong to the NRA so the fairy tale needs to be exposed in order to loosen the grip the corporate gun lobby has on our gun policy. Requiring NRA membership to join gun clubs has both an upside for the organization and a downside. Some object to having to belong to the NRA because they are concerned with their positions opposing any reasonable changes to our gun laws. But if we follow the money, we can find the upside for the organization. From the linked article above some Connecticut gun club members resigned their gun club membership:

A dozen or so members decided to quit the club rather than join the NRA, he said. Some who left said they disagreed with the group’s uncompromising stance on gun control. Others said they just didn’t want to be told what to do, or objected to paying $25 to the NRA on top of their annual club dues.

89 Americans lose their lives every day because of gunshot injuries from gun homicides, suicides and “accidental” shootings. That is 89 too many. This is not a fairy tale. This is the truth. Dealing with the public health and safety epidemic of gun violence must be based on the truth and the facts. Dealing with it from the point of view of the corporate gun lobby, whose heavy handed influence on our nation’s gun policy is based on fiction and fairy tale-like assertions, is dangerous and appalling.

Real people are dying every day leaving behind families and friends who are living with the loss of a person they loved. Common sense is fact and based on the truth. We can’t let important national and state level gun policies be based on fiction. Lives depend on knowing the truth and the facts on the ground.

Luckily there are more fact finders than ever before revealing the truth about the corporate gun lobby’s fiction. And because the public is fed up with the gun lobby and daily carnage, the landscape is changing. We have reached a tipping point. Dan Gross, President of the Brady Campaign wrote this piece for CNN telling the truth about what is happening:

Turns out we have been asking ourselves the wrong questions. No single incident, no matter how horrible, and no statistic, no matter how shocking, is going to change things by itself. What is going to change things — what always does — is when the American public comes together, based on common goals and common values, to say “enough!” And that is exactly what is happening, finally, on the gun violence issue.

(…) Meanwhile, there is also overwhelming public support for change, which only continues to increase. An astounding 93% of the American public, including 90% of Republican voters, more than 80% of gun owners and more than 70% of NRA households support expanding Brady background checks to all gun sales. The disconnect between the American public and the politicians who are supposed to be representing us is becoming increasingly clear. Simply put, pressure is mounting on policymakers to finish the job the Brady Law started. (…)

We’re almost there. The American people have had enough. Enough of the mass shootings, enough of 89 people dying every day, and enough of a small group of craven politicians putting the interests of a corporate lobby ahead of our safety.

We’ve had enough of the fiction promoted by the corporate gun lobby. The public understands that it is guns that are taking the lives of too many Americans no matter what the gun rights extremists would love us to believe. We can’t continue basing our policy decisions on this “Emperor ‘s new clothes” fictional view of what is actually happening in real life everyday.

The gun lobby’s sometimes invisible influence on our politicians is now more visible than ever for public scrutiny. But interestingly enough, according to a new Gallup poll, the NRA is still viewed favorably by the public but the public also wants laws like expanded background checks. This is the result of the fairy tale that the NRA has gotten away with telling for far too long.

There is a disconnect between the public perception of the current NRA and what its’ leaders and lobbyists are doing behind the scenes to oppose the very things their own members and the public want. Let’s hope the “emperor” will be revealed for what “he” is.

Armed America- not polite at all

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polite?An armed society is a polite society? Anyone with common sense knows this to be untrue. Let’s look at an article in “The Truth About Guns” about this oft used statement:

The accuracy of that image of an “armed/polite” society in the 19th Century West is not only debatable, it’s irrelevant: There are plenty of “armed societies” in the modern-day world, and most of them can be described as anything but “polite.” (…)

But there’s another problem with the “Armed society=Polite society” equation. Assume arguendo that the saying is true. Ignore the above evidence to the contrary and say, for the moment, that people are more polite when they know there’s lots of heat being packed.

What does that say about us, as gun owners? After all, the tiresome refrain of all anti-concealed-carry arguments is that if more ‘ordinary’ people are packing pistols, they will whip them out and start firing on the flimsiest pretext. Cut me off in traffic? BLAM! Take the last drop of half-and-half at Starbucks? BLAM! Look at me funny? BLAM!

Gun owners [rightly] view this assumption as dangerous nonsense, that the vast majority of people jumping through all the hoops necessary to obtain a CCW permit are sober, rational, and caring adults who would never allow their emotions to take hold of them and cause them to use deadly force inappropriately. Even when they’re not sober, rational or caring.

But doesn’t that Heinlein aphorism say otherwise? Doesn’t it imply, at least on its face, that the whole reason an armed society is a polite society is that in an armed society, the penalty for “impoliteness” might be summary execution?

So this gun owning blogger believes that the statement is generally wrong but he offers a qualifier:

If anything, the saying is backwards. Being “polite”—having a shared set of values that includes placing a high value on peaceful civic discourse—is a necessary pre-condition for the arming of a society. Arms in a “polite” society remain the tools of good citizens to defend themselves against bad ones. But arming a society without those shared values is a recipe for chaos, for violence for, well, Somalia, Beirut, Pakistan et al.

“An armed society is a polite society” sounds cute. It sounds witty and cool.  It impresses all the gun enthusiasts on the bulletin boards. It makes for a great t-shirt to wear at the gun show. But it’s just not true and if it was, it would be a bigger argument against arming ordinary citizens than anything the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence could possibly devise.

Hmmmm. So the problem with the writer’s logic is that everyone in America who has a permit to carry a gun has shared values. The arguments are mounting every day in our country against this argument. It’s not just the Brady Campaign “devising” the arguments. The public has had #enough. And the writer ignores the fact that the gun rights extremists are pushing for permit less carry in many states and some already have this dangerous law. The public is not clamoring for these laws. It’s the corporate gun lobby who represents an decreasing minority of gun owners who push these laws in state legislatures:

Given its high profile, it’s easy to assume that the NRA represents the voice of American gun owners. But in fact, the organization’s membership numbers and survey data point a different picture. Only a small fraction of the nation’s gun owners are NRA members. Even among NRA members, there is widespread dissent from some key points of the organization’s orthodoxy. And on many gun control issues, the majority of gun owners who aren’taffiliated with the NRA hold opinions closer to those of non-gun owners than to those of NRA members.

Let’s start with the membership numbers. In recent years the NRA has said it has 5 million dues-paying members. There’s some reason to be skeptical of this figure, but let’s assume 5 million is right.  Those 5 million members only comprise somewhere between 6 and 7 percent of American gun owners. That would imply that the overwhelming majority of American gun owners — over 90 percent of them — do not belong to the NRA.

1 in 10 gun owners belong to the NRA. Amazing. Take note elected leaders. As I spent time at a table at a local conference attended by 2600 people, I spent some time talking to gun owners who agreed with the literature we were passing out and our views on the issue of gun violence prevention. None of the people we talked to belonged to the NRA and, in fact, they said they don’t like the organization at all. One man told me that the gun rights extremists, like open carriers, are ruining it for the rest of the law abiding gun owners and hunters who just want to use their guns for hunting and sport. They believe in safety and saving lives before they pledge allegiance to an organization that does not represent them.

But I digress.

Let’s take a look at the last week of the American armed and impolite society.

The Minneapolis- St. Paul area have seen at least 5 gun deaths in the last week. That was before the most recent week-end shootings:

And if that was not enough, an Aitken area Sheriff’s deputy was shot and killed by a suspect who had terrorized his wife days before. The man had been hospitalized because of concern about his behavior. More from the story:

A week before he killed an Aitkin County Sheriff’s Deputy at the St. Cloud Hospital, felon Danny L. Hammond, 50, terrorized his wife and threatened to kill her after she told him she wanted to leave their marriage of 12 years, authorities said.

Korena Hammond told authorities that her husband went into a rage on Oct. 10 after she told him her plans. He held her hostage at their home overnight, pointing a 9-millimeter pistol at her head, forcing her to eat food that he said was poisoned and capturing her when she managed to flee the locked house. The next morning she went to her father’s house after Hammond agreed to let her go, according to a criminal complaint released Monday. (…)

A week later, Hammond was at St. Cloud Hospital early Sunday morning. He was not in custody at the time, and was being treated for medical reasons related to a domestic incident, according to authorities. Hammond was being supervised by law enforcement at the request of hospital staff.

According to the Aitkin County Sheriff’s Office, Hammond got out of bed and then struggled with Aitkin County Sheriff’s Deputy Steven M. Sandberg, 60. He somehow took control of Sandberg’s gun and fired several shots. Sandberg was fatally struck by at least one bullet. A St. Cloud Hospital security guard shot Hammond with a Taser. Hammond fell unconscious as a result and despite lifesaving efforts died in the hospital.

This is yet another case of domestic abuse that could have ended with the shooting of this man’s wife but instead tragically ended with the shooting of a law enforcement officer. And the old myth of an armed person being able to protect him/herself is proven wrong over and over again by incidents such as this one. The officer got into a fight with the suspect but the suspect got his hands on the deputy’s gun and was able to shoot him. It’s not the first time this has happened. Being armed does not guarantee that one can keep oneself safe.

It’s not only Minnesota. These kinds of incidents are happening everywhere. You can’t make some of them up because they point to the risk of guns in public places and in homes.

I am adding this one which just crossed my “desk”. A new gun permit holder shot himself in the leg while attending a movie in a Kansas theater:

A man was transported to Salina Regional Health Center on Friday night after he apparently accidentally shot himself in the leg midway through a movie at Central Mall.

Salina Police Department watch commander Sean Furbeck said the incident remains under investigation, but the gunshot wound likely was self-inflicted. He said police were not seeking anyone else in connection with the incident, which occurred at about 8:30 p.m. in one of the small theaters behind the ticket sales area. (…) “I feel really sorry that guy shot himself, but at least he didn’t shoot someone else,” Myers said. “That would have been 10 times worse.”

10 times worse. We have had 10 times worse actually. Remember the Aurora theater shooting?

Let’s start with a shooting at a ZombieCon event in Florida– Florida again which has some of the loosest gun laws in the country. From the article:

Chaos broke out at a zombie-themed street festival in downtown Fort Myers, Florida, after shooting left one man dead and five other people wounded.

Crowds of festivalgoers fled screaming through the streets after the shots rang out late Saturday at ZombiCon.

“It cleared out fast and cop cars and ambulances came,” said Savannah Holden, who watched the panic unfold from a hotel balcony.

One man died of a gunshot wound at the scene, police said, and five other people suffered non-life-threatening injuries. Four of them were taken to Lee Memorial Hospital for treatment.

Seriously. This is ludicrous. Notice that what most people did was to run away rather than try to shoot the shooter. Why? They were taken by surprise. They had no idea from where the shots came and their first reaction was to flee.

On another note, remember that gun extremists love to shoot at zombies on the gun range. They have zombies that are the faces and bodies of famous people like President Obama. Check out this site called Bleeding Zombies. There are the torsos of football players, terrorists, Nazis, etc. Why? What do shooters imagine while shooting at these targets? I think we know. This is our American gun culture gone totally out of whack.

Follow the money.

And then there was this shooting at the historical Tombstone, Arizona site:

Two people were shot in Tombstone, Arizona, during a gunfight reenactment when one of the actors allegedly used real bullets.

One of the actors, Tom Carter, was late to the performance and his weapon wasn’t checked, according to News 4 Tucson. During the shootout, he allegedly hit actor Ken Curtis with a real bullet.

Both were members of the Tombstone Vigilantes performance group.

“The Vigilantes immediately stopped the show and Tom was relieved of his weapon,” Bob Randall, the city’s marshall, said in a statement cited by the Tucson Sentinel. “During inspection of his weapon, it was discovered that there was one live round in the cylinder withfive expended casings indicating the gun had held six live rounds prior to the skit.” (…) Mayor Dusty Escapule told the Sentinel that the Vigilantes won’t be allowed to perform reenactments “until it can be determined all weapons are safely loaded with blank ammunition as required.”

Right. Guns are dangerous. When will that simple fact become part of our everyday language? Until it does, zombies- real or not and cowboys- real or not- will be shot every day.

And let’s get our history straight. The re-enactment of a shooting at the historical town of Tombstone is most likely a myth. Here’s the truth about guns and the “Wild West”.

This article in Politico after the shooting of Gabby Giffords in Tucson, Arizona written by historian Katherine Benton-Cohen sheds light on what really happened in Tombstone:

Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, during a press conference about the Tucson shootings, called Arizona “the Tombstone of the United States.”

Some journalists gave the word a lowercase “t,” but the sheriff was clearly referring to the infamous silver-mining town 70 miles from Tucson — site of the shootout at the OK Corral. (…)

The irony of Dupnik’s remark is that Tombstone lawmakers in the 1880s did more to combat gun violence than the Arizona government does today.

For all the talk of the “Wild West,” the policymakers of 1880 Tombstone—and many other Western towns—were ardent supporters of gun control. When people now compare things to the “shootout at the OK Corral,” they mean vigilante violence by gunfire. But this is exactly what the Tombstone town council had been trying to avoid.

In late 1880, as regional violence ratcheted up, Tombstone strengthened its existing ban on concealed weapons to outlaw the carrying of any deadly weapons within the town limits. The Earps (who were Republicans) and Doc Holliday maintained that they were acting as law officers—not citizen vigilantes—when they shot their opponents. That is to say, they were sworn officers whose jobs included enforcement of Tombstone’s gun laws.

Today, in contrast, Arizonans can legally buy guns without licenses, and are able to carry concealed weapons without a permit. The state bans cities from passing their own, stricter laws. The legislature will consider a bill this session that would force schools to allow guns on campus — like Pima Community College, which the alleged shooter attended. (…) Arizonans, myself included, love to tout their vaunted independence and Western values. But when we perpetuate the idea that Arizona is some unchanging Wild West, we fall into the trap of a myth that only serves to embolden those who refuse to support commonsense restrictions on purchasing firearms.

Thanks to Arizona’s lax permit to carry laws, the Tucson shooter could carry his gun with little or no training. What shared values are involved in not requiring Brady background checks or some kind of knowledge of guns and how to shoot them before allowing people to carry guns around in public places? Carrying a gun in public places is an awesome and dangerous responsibility. This is the opposite of common sense. 

Just like the myth of an armed society being a polite society, so is the myth of gun wielding cowboys in the American western frontier. Yes, shootings happened. But there were also laws to address where and who could carry guns in towns. What are Western values?  Are they any different than the values held dear by the majority of Americans who know that keeping their children and communities safe from the devastation of gun violence is more important to an insane adherence to the second amendment.

Millions against gun violence

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guns everywhereThank you to One Million Moms and Dads Against Gun Violence for the image on the left. The numbers of parents and others against gun violence are surging. Why? Because we don’t believe that guns everywhere are making us safer. We can read the news articles and the headlines. Some of us have lost loved ones to bullets. We understand that we can do something about this constant and unsettling barrage of stories about shootings. In the last 2 days there were 2 college shootings. 2 more dead and 4 more injured. And this was a week after 9 were shot and killed and 9 others injured at Umpqua Community College in Oregon.  A Texas professor has gone public with his resignation saying he doesn’t feel safe with all of the guns around and when the Texas law allowing students to carry concealed guns on campus goes into affect in August, he doesn’t want to be there for what might likely happen.

There are millions of Americans who are angry and appalled at the latest violent incidents in the country. The headlines read like a country at war. In fact, in my local newspaper this morning there were 2 headlines for articles that appeared next to each other. The one on the left stated: “Two students die in shootings at Texas, Arizona college campuses“. The one on the right reads: ” Violence spreads to Gaza, where Hamas leader calls for uprising.” And then on another page, the headline reads: “Obama in Roseburg urges nation to ‘come together’ over gun violence.“ My paper chose the headline above when running an article that appeared in the Los Angeles Times by Maria L. La Ganga where the headline read: “Obama, visiting Roseburg families,is confronted by angry gun rights activists“.

Appalling. The hatred and extremism of the folks protesting a visit by the President of their country to comfort yet the latest families by gun violence is inexcusable. If his had happened to any other President, we would have been calling these folks insurrectionists. The definition, from the link: “an act or instance of rising in revolt, rebellion, or resistance against civil authority or an established government.” Well?

But because it is the right wing extremists, so ugly in their hatred of a President who has done nothing to take away their rights or their guns, somehow they get away with it. Where else can people stand with loaded openly carried guns when the President’s motorcade comes by? And why were they allowed to do this? Rights? Armed intimidation by angry citizens?

There is a disconnect between reality and policy. It’s fueled by angry armed people who have been deceived by the corporate gun lobby and others on the right side of our political spectrum. It keeps them agitated and voting.

Insanity.

Which is it? Will we come together as a nation over gun violence or will the angry gun rights activists who represent a very small minority of Americans get their way because they are angry and armed? Time to start thinking about what this means. Decisions in America are not made at the end of a gun barrel. Bullets will not decide who will lead our country. If it comes to that, our democracy will end and we will become no better than the countries we criticize because they are constantly at war and where violence reigns.

Also in my local paper, a letter to the editor claimed this: “Arming everyone is the answer to gun violence”:

There is just one obvious answer: Allow everyone to carry a gun either openly or concealed. Then, when some bad guy starts shooting, those around him will be able to defend themselves and others. This sounds a little crazy, but is there any other answer?

The suggestion that everyone should be armed is, of course, nonsensical given the facts. In developed democratized countries not at war, there are no headlines like the ones in my morning paper. Of course there are other answers and they don’t involve arming everyone. Guns in the hands of angry gun rights activists are not normal in other countries not at war. It should not be normal here.

What we have learned about most of the shooters involved in the latest rash of shootings on our campuses is that they were fascinated with guns and their parents even encouraged that fascination. The shooter in yesterday’s Arizona campus shooting, for example, loved his guns. And we found out after the Umpqua Community College shooting that the young man who decided to end the lives of 9 people also loved guns and was well versed in gun laws. He had a stockpile of guns which, at this point we are not sure whether were all purchased by him or also his gun loving mother. He was also someone who had developmental and emotional difficulties and should not have had easy access to guns.

Insanity.

A headline in another area newspaper said this: “‘Lucky One’, Matthew Downing, gives first statement about Oregon Community College massacre.” According to this account from one of the survivors, the Oregon shooter mercilessly slaughtered other human beings as though he was a machine. What happens to people when they have these kinds of thoughts and feelings and also access to guns? Something goes terribly wrong and innocent people are killed. From the above article:

Downing did so and said at that point Harper-Mercer fired into the center of the room and began asking students one by one if they were religious. The shooter fired at one student who said he was Christian and another who said she was Catholic.

The shooter reloaded two handguns with ammunition from his backpack during the killings, Downing said. Harper-Mercer was “firing on people who were just lying there,” Downing said.

Downing also said the shooter seemed to lose interest when a woman told him she couldn’t move her legs to stand up because of the pain.

Downing was lucky. He will never be the same. What he witnessed last week will always be in his brain and his life has changed forever. Lucky him.

Insanity.

Common sense tells us that things just can’t keep going the way they are. Millions of Americans are on the side of passing stronger gun laws to stop at least some of the massacres. Why would we not? We know the answer. The corporate gun lobby, representing mostly the gun industry and not their members, has a frightening hold on the country’s conversation about guns and on our political process:

In more than three decades of service to the NRA, Wayne LaPierre has done more than any other man alive to make America safe for crazed gunmen to build warlike arsenals and unleash terror on innocents at movie theaters and elementary schools. In the 1980s, he helped craft legislation to roll back gun control passed in the wake of the Kennedy and King assassinations. And since the late 1990s, twice he has destroyed political deals that might have made it hugely difficult for accused killers like Holmes and Lanza to get their hands on their weapons.

A predecessor once characterized the NRA as being “one of the world’s great religions,” and 64-year-old LaPierre is a strange fit to be its pope. LaPierre did not come from gun culture. He wasn’t a hunter, a marksman, a military man or a Second Amendment activist. “He’s not a true believer,” says NRA biographer Osha Gray Davidson. “He’s the first NRA chief you can say that about.”

But judging from the commentaries, comments, news coverage and finally, some courage by some of our politicians, things are changing. We are not letting candidates for the highest office in the land get away with saying, ” ‘Hey guys, everybody attack him. He may shoot me, but he can’t get us all,’” Seriously? There are more where this came from in this Salon article.

Picture yourself in the room with the Oregon shooter. Someone ( an Army veteran) did actually try to rush the shooter but he was shot and disabled by the shooter. But never mind that. Dr. Ben Carson is sure he would have done it differently and the outcome would have been different as a result.

Picture a room full of first graders. And one of them, Sarah, says to Jack- “Hey everybody, we can take this guy down. Everybody attack him.”

Insanity.

People like Dr. Ben Carson are in an increasingly small minority. The NRA, for example, represents ( or they say they are representing) about 4 million gun owners- give or take a million. A small percentage of Americans own guns.  Even fewer of these are actually members of the NRA. And for those folks, we are letting our kids and others be slaughtered?

Insanity.

In a recent post I wrote about the anger over the string of shootings- one following on the heels of another. We are turning that anger into action. Please join one of the many organizations working to prevent gun violence and let your voice be heard.

Where is common sense? We are better than this.

UPDATE:

Speaking of millions in favor of stronger gun laws and expanding Brady background checks, I ran across 2 articles in the Washington Post written by gun owners who want change. The headline on the first one is” “I’m a gun owner. The NRA doesn’t speak for me.”  The second article, also in the Washington Post, has this headline: ” Most gun owners support background checks and other limits. So why aren’t their voices heard?”

We know the answer to the question asked in the second article. And we also know that the first article’s writer is saying what many reasonable gun owners are saying. The NRA does not speak for them. So when our elected leaders wrap their heads around this idea, something will change and lives will be saved. Until then- calling all gun owners. Join with us in our efforts to make change happen. We need your voices.

UPDATE#2:

Since I mentioned the anti-government gun extremists who showed up to protest President Obama’s visit to Roseburg, Oregon, I feel the need to let my readers know that the man who organized the protest rally is a convicted felon.  Hmmmmm.

Insanity.