Where do terrorists live?

November 30, 2015November 30, 2015 commongunsenseAmerican gun culture, Charleston church shooting, Confederate flag, corporate gun lobby, hate speech, home grown terrorists, militia groups, NRA, Open Carry, politicization of terror attacks, politics and guns, President Obama and guns, public health and safety, Southern Poverty Law Center, Syrian refugees, white supremacists1 Comment

It turns out that American terrorists mostly live in several states though the Southern Poverty Law Center keeps track of insurrectionists, militia groups, and terrorists in all 50 states. Check out the map for where they live in your own state. Let’s take a look at this article about the most recent of our mass terror attacks– that being the shooting up of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs. From the article:

Among dozens of avowedly Christian, anti-Semitic, and right-wing terrorists cataloged by the Anti-Defamation League and theSouthern Poverty Law Center, you’ll find many from these two states: Charles Robert Barefoot Jr., a North Carolina Klan leader who was convicted in 2012 on charges involving firearms, explosives, and violent conspiracy. Kody Brittingham, a Marine at Camp Lejeune who confessed to plotting the assassination of President Obama. Paul Chastain, a South Carolina militiaman who tried to acquire plastic explosives and threatened to kill federal officials. Steve Bixby, a violent activist from an anti-Semitic household, who gunned down two police officers in Abbeville, South Carolina. Daniel Schertz, a klansman arrested in Greenville, South Carolina, and later convicted, on weapons charges involving racist bomb plots.

And then there’s Dylann Roof. After allegedly murdering nine black people in a Charleston, South Carolina, church this summer, Roof drove more than three hours north, to Shelby, North Carolina. Nobody stopped him at the state border. The boundary between North and South Carolina, like the boundary between Syria and Iraq, is a joke.

North and South Carolina apparently host a good number of home grown terrorists. What is it about these states? Loose gun laws for one. Ultra conservative political persuasion for another. Clinging to the Confederate Flag and what it stands for as the Charleston church shooting ramped up for yet another. There is so much important information in this article for us to digest. We can only hope that our politicians will actually digest it and think about what they are saying. Denying Syrian refugees entrance into our country will not solve our problem with home grown terrorism. As it turns out, according to the above article:” Of the 77 people killed in these 27 incidents, two-thirds died at the hands of anti-abortion fanatics, “Christian Identity” zealots, white anti-Semites, or other right-wing militants.”

Yikes. Congress- we have a problem. Are you watching and listening?

There are militia groups and terror cells in all 50 states. But then there are the “lone wolf” types like the shooter in Colorado Springs who fly under the radar, basically unknown or little known to law enforcement. But they can ALL get their hands on weapons in the US. That is why we have so many more of these attacks than other countries. In the above article, the author hones in on the basic reason for the existence of the militia groups- they are afraid for their second amendment rights. Because surely ~~President Obama and those awful gun grabbers are going to take away their guns and their rights.~~

It’s already happening, right? ~~We are coming for their guns.~~ According to the NRA and other gun lobby groups, this is the scenario of the immediate future. From this article by Josh Horwitz of Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, the NRA is encouraging insurrectionism:

An even more disturbing NRA revelation was largely ignored by media last week, however. On October 20, the NRA tweeted a link to a blog post by North Carolinian and former PJ Media writer Bob Owens with the text, “Make no mistake, anti-gunners are ‘calling for forcible disarmament.'”

The blog post, titled, “Gun Confiscation Fantasies are Fast-Tracking the Democrat Party to Destruction,” is a deeply insurrectionist screed in which Owens fantasizes about a violent civil war with Democrats who support gun reform.

If you believe this, I have a bridge to sell you…..

And then there are the Open Carry extremists who insist on walking our streets with their military style weapons. Remember the one who killed 3 people last month in Colorado Springs?

Also apparently “law abiding” militia members are not so safe with their own guns. In North Dakota, one member shot another– too much alcohol, militia mentality and guns just are not a good mix. From the article: ” “They have some very different beliefs about the world. Their beliefs didn’t mix.””

Sigh. When your politics don’t mix and you are armed, tragedy happens. What about this are we not understanding?

We are war with each other. A portion of our own citizens are armed and ready to fight those who are in another camp, or of another political or religious persuasion, or another color, or another ideological position about abortion, terrorism, gun rights or immigration.

For the sake of common sense and public health and safety, we just have to be dealing with the true dangers before us every day. Can a group of Black Lives Matter protesters not gather together without fear of alleged white supremacists shooting at them? Is there a possibility they won’t even be charged for shooting and injuring 5 black people? Insanity.

Can women not go to an abortion clinic for needed health care procedures and sometimes abortions ( legal under the law) without fear of being shot up? Can refugees or immigrants not go to public places without fear of being beat up because they look different? Several disturbing anti-Muslim incidents have surfaced lately and they will surely increase in number if the gun rights extremists, Presidential candidates and politicians keeping fanning the flames of hate, intolerance and insurrectionism.

It is now revealed that the Colorado Springs shooter ranted about “no more body parts.” Remember where that came from? I do. Fake videos.

This one happened in Minnesota when a Muslim woman was beaten by a beer mug by an intolerant woman customer.

A Muslim cab driver was shot and injured by a gun guy in Pittsburgh because he was a Muslim.

We are living in an unsettling time in American history. Terror attacks abroad are of obvious concern. But the anger and concern should be turned inward towards our own policies and dangerous rhetoric. It’s past time for this to change. Let’s get to work and demand that our lawmakers do something that will actually keep us safe.

This will be cross posted on commongunsense.com.

UPDATE:

Many are writing similar articles and posts about America’s home grown terrorists after the Planned Parenthood shooting. This one notes even higher numbers of attacks than I had reported from above articles:

Though terrorism perpetrated by Muslims receives a disproportionate amount of attention from politicians and reporters, the reality is that right-wing extremists pose a much greater threat to people in the United States than terrorists connected to ISIS or similar organizations. As UNC Professor Charles Kurzman and Duke Professor David Schanzer explained last June in the New York Times, Islam-inspired terror attacks “accounted for 50 fatalities over the past 13 and a half years.” Meanwhile, “right-wing extremists averaged 337 attacks per year in the decade after 9/11, causing a total of 254 fatalities.” (…)

Kurzman and Schanzer also surveyed hundreds of law enforcement agencies regarding their assessment of various threats. Of the 382 agencies they spoke with, “74 percent reported anti-government extremism as one of the top three terrorist threats in their jurisdiction,” while only “39 percent listed extremism connected with Al Qaeda or like-minded terrorist organizations.”

Meanwhile, the percentage of refugees that are connected to terrorist plots is vanishingly small.

Let’s get our priorities straight. They are now misplaced and misunderstood by people who should know better.

Peace and justice on Thanksgiving

November 25, 2015November 25, 2015 commongunsense"accidental shootings", access to guns, American gun culture, American gun laws, Black homicides, Black Lives Matter, Charleston church shooting, conceal carry permit holders, corporate gun lobby, domestic shootings, fear and paranoia, gun suicides, guns and anger, guns and racism, mass shootings, public health and safety, shooting in Minneapolis, shooting of police officers, shootings by police officers, Stand Your Ground laws, The Trace

Puzzle Pieces: Justice Concept.

As Thanksgiving approaches we should all pause and think about what is going on right now in our country. The Paris terror attacks have elevated the fear, anger and paranoia of Americans for good reason. But since the terror attack, some of the reactions have been amazingly uneducated and utterly frightening. I have been writing about this in my last few blog posts.

But now terror has hit Minnesota in the form of an attack by armed (alleged) white supremacists in Minneapolis against members of the Black Lives Matters protest over the shooting of a young black man by police last week.

This is a domestic terror attack- there is not another word for it. When so many people have been encouraged to arm themselves for perceived threats to their safety, this is inevitable. When so much hate, anger and fear is spewed on the air waves every day, what do we expect? More guns have definitely not made us safer or more polite. We have a violent and racist society.

Mike the Gun Guy has written about the Minneapolis shooting. It’s something to consider. From his post:

If you don’t think there’s a connection between the Black Lives Matter protestor who was beaten up at a Trump rally in Alabama and the attempted killing of peaceful demonstrators in Minneapolis, then you haven’t been paying attention to the news or the Trump campaign. When you stand up in front of a cheering-jeering audience and call someone a ‘jerk’ or a ‘dope’ or a ‘crazy’ because they yell something during your speech, you’ve abandoned any degree of public civility and are now just pandering to the lowest and meanest folks in the crowd. (…)

But they don’t have to keep quiet if they can go to a rally headlined by Trump. And they don’t have to keep quiet when they walk up to a demonstration held by Black Lives Matter because another Black man may have been gunned down by the cops. After all, these guys have a Constitutional right to call someone a name and they also have a Constitutional right to walk around with a gun. Put those two rights together and you know what you get? You get three young Black men in the hospital with gunshot wounds and the cops, in a shooting which took place right outside a police station, still looking for the guys who pulled out the guns.

It happened right outside the police station. Think about that.

Didn’t these armed thugs know that armed police officers were nearby? Of course they did. They didn’t care. Their hate, racism and anger fueled them and combined with guns, it didn’t go well. The suspects have all been arrested.

We don’t know yet what exactly happened in the case of the shooting of Jamar Clark in Minneapolis. Both sides have a story to tell and evidence to bring. An investigation will hopefully bring some justice and peace to citizens of the 4th precinct.

No matter what happened to Jamar Clark, one can understand mistrust of officers by people of color given the incidents that have happened over many years’ time. The tenuous relationship between people of color and law enforcement has been much in the news all over our country.

A Chicago officer just turned himself into police over the shooting of a black teen in October of 2014. It turns out that the officer shot the teen 16 times, many of the bullets shot after the teen was lying dead on the street.

These are difficult times for America. When there are so many guns on our streets and in our homes, the inevitable result is mistrust of others. Yes, black teens and young men are dying in greater numbers than their white counterparts. Yes, white men are dying more often than their counterparts of color in gun suicides. Toddlers and small children are “accidentally” shooting themselves and others at an alarming rate. Mass shootings occupy our media spaces on a regular basis. Yes, white radicalized home grown terrorists are shooting people of color. Stand Your Ground laws are unmistakably aimed at people of color and affect them at a greater rate than white people. And yes, black young men are also shooting each other and innocent people in gang related shootings all over America. Police officers are being shot by others in various scenarios. And police officers are sometimes shooting young men of color in sometimes justified shootings, sometimes not.

The issue of race and guns needs to be examined so we can understand the issues faced by our communities of color. It is not without controversy as nothing is with gun rights and gun violence prevention. The Trace has written about the history of race and gun rights. It’s worth the read for a better understanding of what is going on in our own country right now.

It’s impossible not to connect the dots from this article with the summer shooting of 9 Black people at Mother Emanuel church in Charleston, South Carolina. It was an act of terror and it was an act of overt racism.

Home grown extremists are shooting Americans on a pretty regular basis.

We have a gun problem that is contributing to all of the above.

Minnesota has had a rough year for shootings. There have been many shootings in the communities of color. There have been horrific domestic shootings and the usual suicides which account for 80% of gun deaths in Minnesota. Just yesterday, a man in a domestic dispute was shot and killed by officers in a Minnesota suburb. Domestic cases are among the most dangerous for officers.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Getting a handle on our nation’s public health and safety gun violence epidemic won’t be easy. But we shouldn’t stop until we have the conversation we deserve about the causes and effects of devastating gun violence. Common sense and resolve have to lead the discussion. Facts will be important but our sense of justice and common values should be at the forefront of the discussion and decision making.

You may have conversations around your Thanksgiving table with family and friends about the many controversial topics surrounding us. There are terror attacks, Syrian refugees, what to do with old aunt Sally, how to deal with cousin Peter, what to do about Uncle Joe’s drinking, where to go shopping on Black Friday and other important and not so important topics. If shootings and gun violence come up there are some answers to some of your gun toting relatives in this article in The Trace. “Arming” yourself with the facts rather than arguing at an emotional level may make your Thanksgiving table conversation less confrontational.

This Thanksgiving is going to be very difficult for a lot of people who are missing a family member because of a deadly shooting. Please think of them while you are with your own family and friends. And stay safe this holiday season.

God help us all. We will need all the help we can get to deal with all of the tragedy and unrest surrounding us.

The world is beautiful and scary

September 23, 2015September 23, 2015 commongunsense"law abiding" gun owners, access to guns, American gun culture, background checks, Charleston church shooting, church shootings, corporate gun lobby, guns for self defense, guns in schools, kids and guns, shooting of Virginia journalists, WhatEverItTakes3 Comments

Last Sunday, my minister said that the world is both beautiful and scary in a sermon relating to one of the readings of the day. She is so right. Most of the time, I find the world to be beautiful. In spite of my family’s having dealt with the domestic shooting of my sister, we have all moved on the best we could living around the hole left by my sister’s death. Life seems beautiful and we are lucky for that.

But then something happens to bring the grief and sadness to the surface again. Recent shootings, especially the very public shooting of 2 reporters in Virginia, brought those scary feelings back instantly. Gun violence is so unexpected and violent. Thoughts of a loved one experiencing that horror, pain, violence and fear are hard to push back down again. People die from auto accidents, household accidents, diseases, and sometimes by homicide. But gun deaths for the most part are so senseless and preventable.

So maybe we should all put our heads in the sand and pretend it’s not happening. We could roll ourselves up in a ball and move on. But many of us have not done that. We have made ourselves advocates for preventing the awful effects of gun violence on other families. So I read. I act. I write. I talk.

The daily news of gun incidents is hard to ignore. But it’s important to keep writing and talking. Most people become numbed to the issue and just want to live their lives without thinking about gun violence. But just as with auto accidents, diseases and other causes of injury and death the majority of parents do what they can to keep their families safe and healthy. Gun safety reform and awareness of the dangers of guns should be a part of the safe and healthy life styles that we all practice . We, as adults, will not be here forever. Our children will be around longer than us and we owe it to them to keep them safe and teach them healthy habits. We should do #WhatEverItTakes. When 8 children a day are dying from gun homicides, suicides or accidents, we can’t take it lightly. And many more are injured and suffer life long disabilities and/or emotional distress.

Given that, how can a parent shoot a one month old child? Now that is downright scary. A man brought a gun to a church in Selma, Alabama on Sunday but was noticed before he could get off a lot of shots. He wounded his wife, his one month old son, and a man who tried to get the gun away from him. This was yet another case of a domestic dispute gone terribly wrong. From the article:

Earl Carswell said Sunday’s incident could have been much worse.

“If (Minter) had been aiming, and wasn’t somebody pulling on him, he could have killed three, four or five folks,” Carswell said. “But thank the Lord he got pulled off. As soon as that gun appeared, they grabbed a hold of it.”

Despite struggling with several churchgoers, Carswell said Minter was able to squeeze off seven rounds.

“Bullets don’t got any sense, they just go whichever way,” he said. “It could have been a hairy thing quick, I mean sure enough.”

(…) “When I think about it (today), I get jittery,” he said.

Jackson said he believes residents “are still in shock that something like this could happen in Selma.

This is probably the first church shooting we have had, but unfortunately this is the world we live in now,” he continued. “Church used to be off limits, even to the worst criminals, as far as committing a crime in the church. Now times have changed.”

Carswell said he has lived in Selma for 61 years and many churchgoers have been known to carry guns into worship service. Carswell said himself carried one into church for 10 years.

“This is the first time anyone has ever pulled it and even showed it,” he said.

“…. but unfortunately this is the world we live in now.”” Yes. It’s unfortunate but not inevitable. It’s hard to believe that this is the first time there has been a problem with guns in worship services in Selma given that people have been carrying guns into churches for years. Why? Why are guns needed during church services? What are people scared of in church? Church services are mostly beautiful and peaceful or joyous. If we are scared of people with guns coming into churches, it’s because we, as a country, have allowed our laws to be weakened to the point of allowing guns in our churches.

And why is that when people “snap” it’s a gun that they turn to to “solve” their problems?

Our gun culture encourages almost everyone to own and carry guns and we don’t make serious attempts to stop people who shouldn’t have guns from getting them. When someone like the man in the Selma church “snaps” a gun changes everything in an instant from normal, beautiful, calm, happy,…. to scary. The shooting at Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston was scary not only because 9 people were shot but because of the shooter’s motives. He was associated with white supremacists and had racist sentiments. The recent fomenting of racism and anti-Muslim statements made by Republican Presidential candidates is making our world scarier. Combined with people who shouldn’t be able to own guns, we have a potential “perfect storm”.

Part of this is the consequence of a culture of guns that is based on fear of others who are not like us and fear of others with guns. It’s a vicious circle.

Bullets don’t have any sense of course as is mentioned in the above linked article. That’s the point. They have trajectories that can be predictable or not. Guns with bullets in them are dangerous and people who carry guns and own them can become dangerous in a split second.

Speaking of becoming dangerous in a split second, we really do need to have a very serious discussion immediately about kids bringing guns to school. Going to school should be a positive experience. We all know that is not the case for all children given their race, religion, home life experiences, intellect, etc. Many factors can make learning difficult for some. But school, at least, is supposed to be a safe place. Not so any more. From this article in The Trace, we learn that:

Since the school year began roughly one month ago, there have been at least 29 incidents in which elementary, middle school, and high school students were caught bringing firearms to school, according to a survey of media reports. Most have involved teenagers.

This bears repeating- “…there have been at least 29 incidents in which elementary, middle school, and high school students were caught bringing firearms to school....” Very frightening. What are we going to do to keep our kids and students safe? Every gun in the hands of a child or teen must first pass through the hands of an adult. What in the world are adult gun owners thinking? The problem appears to be that people have such a cavalier attitude towards guns that they don’t seem to realize how dangerous they are. Guns are mostly not used for self defense. When will we get this into our collective heads? When will we stop listening to the gun lobby who tells people the opposite?

Scary to say the least. And the problem comes from easy access to guns. We now have more guns around than ever before. It is inevitable that they will make it into the wrong hands. There is just no common sense to our gun culture and our gun laws.

Yesterday I took a little time away from the cares of the world and this blog and gun violence prevention. I drove up along the North Shore of Lake Superior on a gorgeous day to enjoy the beauty of the nature around me. I was not scared of anyone or anything. I saw no guns. I saw no one who looked like they were scared about some idiot with a gun in the parking lot or along the trail. What I saw was people enjoying the beautiful day with cameras carried instead of guns. Thanks goodness most people don’t carry guns or feel the need to own them. At least not where I live. And not the people with whom I am friends. And if they do have guns, they use them mostly for hunting in the beautiful woods that are all around my area of northern Minnesota. Not only do people hunt, they love the beauty of the woods in the fall and the sport of hunting.

Until we get to the point of of a serious national discussion about the dangers of guns, even for “law abiding” gun owners, the incidents I read and write about will continue. The corporate gun lobby is aiding and abetting our insane gun culture to boost sales and preserve a narrative that is just not based on the truth. Maybe some of those folks should take a walk in the woods and enjoy the beauty around them instead of thinking of ways to sell guns.

Gunned down Americans- Rest in Peace

August 29, 2015September 23, 2015 commongunsense"law abiding" gun owners, access to guns, Adam Lankford, Alison Parker, American gun culture, Andy Parker, Brady background checks, Charleston church shooting, Chattanooga shooting, corporate gun lobby, gang shootings, gun suicides, guns and anger, guns and mental illness, mass shootings, shooting of journalists, shooting of police officers, shootings by police officers, Stand Your Ground laws, Texas officer gunned down, victims of gun violence

In what country are we living again? Historically we have understood that there are countries where awful violence affects the citizens and the rest of the world watches in horror. I would suggest that in the last week in America, the rest of the world has watched in horror as a disgruntled employee gunned down 2 journalists because….? Actually other nation’s citizens have been watching our gun violence in horror for years now but last week was particularly horrific.

We know more about the shooter of the journalists now and understand that he was an angry man and potentially violent. He had to be physically removed from the TV station after throwing things and making threats against other employees.

As a result of that shooting, there has been a focus on the issue of gun violence prevention because Alison Parker’s father has chosen to use his grief to call attention to our nation’s lax gun laws and has proclaimed that he will work hard to make change happen. I wish him all the luck with that and we are all expecting to work with him. Many other family members of shooting victims have come forward over the years to work on the issue. This beautiful piece, written by the mother of a Sandy Hook school shooting victim, encourages Parker to get involved and offers hope:

Please use your emotions, your love for your daughter and the pain caused by the gaping hole in your life, and focus them into this issue. Once you’ve been touched by violence, saving the lives of others is the only way forward. Whether you choose to fight for policy and political change, or whether you decide to get ahead of the violence and prevent it before it happens (as I chose), always know you are never alone.

We are on a long, difficult road together, but with my son, your daughter and hundreds of thousands of others across the states, we will get there. I promise.

When will our leaders make this promise in the name of the victims and survivors? Unfortunately for them and for the country, not much happens as a result because of our entrenched gun culture and refusal of the corporate gun lobby to actually work to stop the shootings. Our leaders put their fingers to the wind and believe ( erroneously) that if they challenge the gun lobby, they can’t get re-elected.

I would also offer that if we had stronger gun laws and screening of potential gun purchasers and gun carriers more carefully as is done in a lot of other countries, the shooter of the 2 young journalists would likely not have been considered as someone who could legally buy a gun. And in a system where all sales require background checks or personal information as in other countries, there would be few avenues for him to purchase a gun. So angry people do kill people by other means but not anywhere close to the killings by firearms ( in America).

And we thought this shooting of 2 young journalist on live TV and recorded by the shooter was horrific. It was. And then yesterday, another execution occurred. A Texas state trooper was gunned down execution style while he stopped for gas at a convenience store. The details of this are almost too awful to contemplate. From the article:

A man shot a uniformed sheriff’s deputy “execution-style” while he fueled his patrol car in the Houston area, killing him instantly, authorities said.

Deputy Darren H. Goforth, 47, was returning to his car after pumping gas Friday night.

The gunman walked up from behind him and opened fire for no apparent reason, Harris County Sheriff Ron Hickman said.

When Goforth fell to the ground, the gunman stood over him and shot him some more, authorities said. He died at the scene.

“He was literally gunned down in what appears to be an unprovoked, execution-style killing,” Hickman said. “I have been in law enforcement for 45 years, I have never seen anything this cold-blooded.”

Well, dear readers. This is the America we now have in no small part because of our twisted and paranoid gun culture. The corporate gun lobby is promoting guns for everyone everywhere and that is what we have.

(I am editing this post to include details about the shooter of the Texas law enforcement officer. He has been caught.):

Sheriff Ron Hickman released few details about the suspect Saturday in a press conference. Miles has a list of prior convictions including resisting arrest, trespassing and disorderly conduct with a fire arm, he said.

He was able to get a gun, of course. And now an innocent law enforcement was gunned down and his family will grieve for him forever. Senseless.

So now what? Is this how it’s going to be? Domestic shootings happen between people who know each other and one ( usually a male) decides to take out his anger by killing a spouse/partner and whoever else happens to be in the way. Suicides happen quietly but sometimes are also the motivation of mass shooters who were likely suicidal in the first place but had to shoot others first for some inexplicable reason. It happens quite often that way. The shooter kills himself after shooting all the others. Too hard to face what he/they did or knowing how awful it was to shoot other human beings, why live with those images in your head? And we do have a problem with young people in our large cities who may or may not be members of local gangs but who shoot each other over slights or arguments about territory or whatever. Easy access to guns adds to this urban violence problem. Also often enough, innocent people get caught in the cross fire and are killed by stray bullets. It happens often enough to alarm us. We are gunning each other down in America.

Are we alarmed? Do we care that we now have execution style shootings going on in our communities? Hyped up fears and mistrust of law enforcement officers (and government) have caused other attacks in public places, here ,and here. There are others where these come from. And then the opposite happens. Officers themselves shoot and kill ( often) people of color over things that should not result in a shooting death. We have the recent shootings of Michael Brown, Walter Scott and Tamir Rice to name just a few. We are gunning each other down in America.

Anti government sentiment, whipped up by extremists and the gun lobby, also result in horrific shootings. Take the shooting in Las Vegas in 2014 for just one example but there are many others. The Southern Poverty Law Center keeps track of potentially dangerous extremists groups who represent racist, white supremacist, anti government sentiments. These folks are armed and can do a lot of damage.And shootings also have killed some of our military members serving on US soil, also this summer, in the Chattanooga shooting. Expect to see more of these shootings like the one in the Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston this summer. The hate and racism exhibited by the shooter there seems to have been some sort of catalyst for the shooter of the Virginia journalist or so he claimed.

It just may be true that one mass shooting contributes to another, and to another and the cycle continues until we decide we’ve had enough like Australia did after a horrific 1996 mass shooting there. For now, though, we are gunning each other down.

Officers fear for their lives every day because there are so many citizens with guns that they, themselves, get caught in situations where they believe they are defending themselves. When carrying a gun, officer or citizen) it’s there to use and sometimes judgment is impaired or race plays a role or fear. Some citizens apparently fear for their lives every day as well and sometimes kill others over something that shouldn’t result in a death. And with new Stand Your Ground Laws, people like George Zimmerman can do this and not be accountable for the death of an unarmed young black man.

The result is that the violence is increasing. The Gun Violence Archive is keeping track. There have been over 33,569 shooting incidents so far in 2015. It’s only August. So far this year there have been 247 mass shooting (4 or more shot and injured or killed) incidents in America. We have 4 months left in the year. What will happen next? We keep thinking we have seen the worst. When 20 first graders are gunned down by a young man who never should have had access to guns and we do nothing, we can expect to see more. When people are gunned down in movie theaters, churches, malls, schools and everywhere we go for no apparent reason, we are officially a country that has lost it’s moral compass in efforts to appease a group of armed Americans so fearful of losing something they value that they will allow just about any kind of carnage to keep their way of life. But there appears to be disregard for the valuable lives lost because of our love affair with guns.That love affair with guns has resulted in what we are now seeing in our media and on the streets of our communities.

There are ways to change what we are doing to keep guns away from volatile, angry people who don’t necessarily find themselves on the prohibited purchaser list for gun purchases at a licensed dealer. And, of course, we can require that every gun sale go through a Brady background check no matter where a gun is purchased.

But we aren’t doing these things.

A new report/study by Criminologist Adam Lankford points to our American gun culture as exceptional compared to other countries and provides some interesting ideas about why these kinds of shootings happen mostly in America. He was interviewed for this article:

“For decades, people have wondered if the dark side of American exceptionalism is a cultural propensity for violence,” he wrote, “and in recent years, perhaps no form of violence is seen as more uniquely American than public mass shootings.”

Lankford, author of “The Myth of Martyrdom: What Really Drives Suicide Bombers, Rampage Shooters, and Other Self-Destructive Killers,” looked at the situation globally, and considered a wide range of relative factors — the state of mental health coverage, the availability of guns, the valorization of fame, and other cultural differences. (…)

What the data clearly show is a strong relationship between firearm ownership rates – what is the percentage of firearms owned by civilians in a country – and the number of public mass shooters. That’s what I found in my study of 171 countries – that relationship was very strong. And it was even strong when you removed the United States from the analysis – it explains the variations in other countries as well. So that seems to be one of the critical factors, and the United States has five times the number of mass shootings than any other country – five times the second-ranked country – from 1966 to 2012 – and we have the world’s leading firearm ownership rate among civilians. (…)

There is nearly one handgun for every person in America – far higher than the ratio in ever other country in the world. How consequential is that?

Very consequential. It effects both who can get a gun to carry out an attack, and how many guns someone who’s decided to carry out an attack can get, which directly, in turn, effects the number of people they kill. One of the findings of my study is that attackers who use multiple guns kill significantly more victims. That was a global finding. (…)

It would be a great day for America if people struggling with mental health problems and had some motive to carry out an attack decided to take a different path because they couldn’t find the firearms they wanted.

That would be a great day, indeed. Let’s get to work to make that happen because we just have to be better than this. We can’t let the world look at us as people who gun down other Americans in public places because they hold a grudge in the workplace, are angry over a separation, are angry in general, or have mental illness that could lead to thoughts of homicide.

Yes. We are gunned down America.

In spite of all of this, gun violence prevention advocates are not going away. We will continue to discuss gun violence and solutions to the problem in the midst of yet another shooting even though the gun lobby doesn’t want us to “dance in the blood of the victims.” If we waited until we had no shooting tragedies, we would wait a very long time and that is exactly what the gun rights advocates want. Mass shootings, execution style shootings, keeping track of shooting incidents, writing about the carnage, witnessing a shooting live on TV, hearing about a neighbor killed by a souse or partner- they won’t go away no matter what the gun lobby thinks. Ignoring it would be a total abrogation of our responsibilities to make sure our families and children are safe. And it would be a moral lapse of huge proportions.

No, we will not back down in the face of the fierce resistance of an armed minority of Americans. The public is with us. We will continue. Andy Parker’s voice will be heard and added to the many others like him working for reform. The voices of other high profile shooting victims ‘ families will be heard. Those of us who have lost someone in a domestic shooting will continue to force the conversation to happen. We will be heard. But in the meantime, we are killing each other every day.

Where is common sense?

Rest in Peace America.

The balance between gun rights and responsibilities

August 25, 2015August 25, 2015 commongunsense"accidental shootings", "law abiding" gun owners, access to guns, American gun culture, American gun laws, Americans tackle gunman on French train, Charleston church shooting, church shootings, conceal carry permit holders, Congress members and guns, corporate gun lobby, gun range instructor killed by child shooting automatic gun, gun range practices, kids and guns, mass shootings, Mike the Gun Guy, school shootings, The Trace, Wayne LaPierre

Should people who attend church services ( or services at a synagogue or mosque or any place of worship) need guns? I mean, what is the fear about sitting in a church without a gun? Yes, there have been a few shootings at churches (here and here). (More on this later) The most recent being the shooting at the Charleston Mother Emanuel church where 9 innocent people were shot and killed by an unhinged young man who shouldn’t have a gun. Most of the church shootings have been racially or politically motivated or arguments between people.

But then, there have been shootings just about everywhere in the US. 88 American citizens die every day from gun injuries in “everyday” shootings. We tend to pay attention to the high profile mass shootings because they happen often enough to capture our attention.

In fact, the US has had more mass shootings than any other country over the last 5 decades according to this article:

Nearly one-third of the world’s mass shootings have occurred in the United States, a new study finds. Adam Lankford, an associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Alabama, has released the first quantitative analysis of public mass shootings around the world between 1966 through 2012. Unsurprisingly, the United States came out on top—essentially in a league of its own.

Over those five decades, the United States had 90 public mass shootings, defined as shootings that killed four or more victims. Of the 170 other countries examined in the study, only four even made it to double-digits: The Philippines had 18 public mass shootings, followed by Russia with 15, Yemen with 11, and France with 10.t’s no coincidence that the US has the laxest gun laws and the most guns of any other democratized countries not at war. Connect the dots. This article only addresses mass shootings which, in fact, have taken fewer lives than the “everyday” shootings which result in the loss of 88 Americans a day. No other country can “brag” about something like this.

We are out of balance with the rest of the world and with public safety. It’s no coincidence that the US has more guns, laxer gun laws and more gun deaths and injuries than other democratized countries not at war. Our gun laws are not balanced in favor of public health and safety. There is a fear and paranoia factor fostered by an American out of balance gun culture that has moved us in the direction of rights over responsibilities. There are a certain number of people who believe that there are armed “good guys” with guns who will just take care of any situation presented to them. We should all remember Wayne LaPierre’s now infamous speech after the Sandy Hook school shooting.

In fact, Mike the Gun Guy has written this piece about the American heroes without guns who most likely saved a terrible mass shooting on a train headed to Paris last week. Mike looked into whether armed citizens have stopped mass shootings and here is what he found:

Last year the FBI released a detailed analysis of 160 shootings between 2000 and 2013 in which the gunman killed or wounded multiple victims. The definition of these events, known as ‘active shootings,’ was that the shooter “actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and populated area.” The FBI found that exactly one of these active shootings ended when an armed civilian opened fire with a gun. But 21 of these shootings came to an end because unarmed civilians intervened.

Want to show me any place that is more confined and populated than a high-speed train? If that gunman had been able to shoot up the train we’d be hearing nothing but endless “I told you so’s” from the NRA. But not a word out of them when three young Americans, two of them active military, got the job done without using a gun. Frankly, the silence is refreshing.

Silence when it comes to allowing young kids to use automatic weapons resulting in the death of a gun instructor. Silence when it comes to the heroism of unarmed citizens in stopping potential shootings or shootings in progress such as the armed Arizona permit holder who realized if he used his gun at the site of the Tucson mass shooting it would have had a bad result. An article in The Trace debunks the idea that an armed citizen can change results during a mass shooting or prevent one from happening:

When a “good guy with a gun” does intervene in an active shooting, things can go terribly awry. On June 8, 2014, an armed couple burst into a CiCi’s Pizza in Las Vegas screaming, “This is the start of a revolution!” They quickly gunned down two police officers eating lunch, and then moved to a nearby Wal-Mart. One customer, a concealed-carry license holder, drew his gun rather than flee, but was immediately shot. As it would turn out, all three of the couple’s victims that day were armed.

Another example: On Jan. 8, 2011, a gunman opened fire on an outdoor meeting between Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her constituents in Tucson, Ariz., killing six and wounding 13. When the killer was forced to reload, he was tackled by a bystander. Having heard the gunshots, an armed man ran to the scene. He saw two men wrestling and assumed the wrong man was the shooter. Had it not been for other bystanders quickly correcting him, he could have ended up shooting the wrong person. Afterwards he stated: “I was very lucky.”

Lucky. Yes. There are a lot of unlucky people in America.

People who own and/or carry their guns everywhere have the responsibility to take care with their guns so others don’t get access to them, or they, themselves don’t “accidentally” discharge them or shoot the wrong person in a crisis.

Sadly, a man who was handling his .22 rifle in his home near Duluth, Minnesota dropped his gun and it discharged, killing him. These kinds of gun deaths are avoidable and senseless. It is amazing to me that this happens so often in our country. Where there are guns, there will be gun injuries and deaths. But why is it that so many otherwise safe and responsible gun owners have problems with accidental discharges? Is it a problem with the design of guns or is it a problem of too little training or is it just the cavalier attitude too many gun owners have towards guns, believing that nothing bad will ever happen to them?

More news of irresponsible gun owners brings us this one- On Sunday, a 4 year old found a gun in the bathroom of a church. Why allow guns in the church in the first place? Kids should not be finding loaded guns in bathrooms but this is not the first time guns have been left in bathrooms as I have written about before here and here. In the last linked article, an officer’s gun was stolen from a bathroom and used in a shooting within hours. And this one is classic. One of Speaker Boehner’s security guards left a gun in a bathroom where a small child found it. There are more where these came from. Leaving a gun in a bathroom or anywhere else, for that matter, is just not the same as leaving a purse or keys or a wallet behind.

How about a young Texas man shooting off a gun from the roof top of an elementary school? The gun was stolen. Make any common sense to you? Everyone was lucky that no one got hurt. Only in America.

On this one year anniversary of the shooting death of a Nevada gun range instructor by a 9 year old girl who was allowed to shoot an automatic weapon, the victim’s family is calling for change to the law:

She further told CNN’s “New Day” on Tuesday that their father often schooled them on gun safety when they were younger, telling them “how to be safe with guns, but he never let us fire them because we were too young.”

It’s unreasonable, she said, that children smaller than her little brother are able to handle automatic weapons “that military personnel are trained for weeks to handle.”

“It’s time for a change. We have a voice, and so do you,” the children said on the petition’s website.

“The adults haven’t been able to keep people safe, so it’s time for us to speak up,” 15-year-old Tylor said.

On August 25, 2014, Vacca was teaching the 9-year-old girl how to shoot an Uzi at the Bullets and Burgers shooting range in Arizona. The gun range, which caters to Las Vegas tourists about an hour away, has said on its website that children between the ages of 8 and 17 can shoot if accompanied by a parent or guardian.

Guns are dangerous, obviously. 9 year old children should not be allowed at gun ranges, period. This is not the first time something like this has happened with a young child shooting a machine gun. A Massachusetts 8 year old shot one and killed himself with his father standing by. This is serious stuff and totally senseless and avoidable. Where is the balance between rights and responsibilities? Why anyone would think it’s perfectly fine for a young child to shoot off a gun meant for the military is so beyond the scope of common sense that there are hardly words for this wrong-headed practice. The gun lobby should heed the advice of the victim of the Nevada shooting range incident when he taught his children about being safe around guns but didn’t let them shoot them. This cynical promotion of pushing children shooting guns that are clearly not meant for them is all about profits over saving lives. If children are exposed early, they are future customers, as are their parents. Kids and guns just don’t mix. How many times do I write about small children “accidentally” shooting someone when they access a gun?

As always, just as soon as I publish a post, another ridiculous incident gets called to my attention. The school year has barely begun and we have a shooting in a Georgia elementary school. A young student with a gun (where did he get the gun?) allegedly was “playing” with a gun in school and it “accidentally” discharged hitting a female student. I suggest that our priorities are out of balance. This is the definition of insanity. In most shootings like this the gun comes from the child’s home. Where are the “responsible” adults? Were they thinking their rights to have a gun trumped their responsibilities to keep the gun away from a young child?

So what’s the take-away? There are over 300 million guns in circulation in our country. Some are owned by responsible citizens who will never do anything wrong with their guns. They may be used one or two times a year for hunting for example. Or maybe they are used at a shooting range for recreation and used responsibly. But because we have this idea that gun rights trump any responsibilities to make sure the public and our families and communities are safe, this is the situation. The corporate gun lobby is unyielding in its’ stance that no stronger gun laws can pass in Congress and in many states. Gun violence prevention groups only want safer communities and gun safety reform. It’s too important for us not to put our heads together to do the right thing in trying to prevent some of the senseless shootings occurring every day.

Responsible gun owners need to come forward and speak up for common sense gun reform. In all polling data taken for decades we know that the majority of them want stronger gun laws. We should err on the side of saving lives as we move forward towards a balance between rights and responsibilities.

UPDATE:

Sadly I am updating this post to include the shooting death of a 21 month old baby in the St. Louis area:

It is unknown how the child came to be shot. No one is in custody at this time. Police do not yet know if this was an accident or a homicide.

Last week in the same area a 9 year old girl was shot and killed while sitting inside of her home doing her homework. ( you can read about that one in the linked article). Could things be more out of balance? Where do they get the guns? As I said before, our priorities concerning the role of guns and gun violence are very out of whack. Time to get to work and do something about it. We just have to be better than this.

UPDATE #2:

Wow- I didn’t think I would be adding to this post. But when a 14 year old West Virginia student holds a classroom hostage with a pistol, it must be talked about. Why? Where did he get the gun? Who is responsible for this boy’s behavior? What is it about kids bringing guns to school? What are we doing wrong? Why are we so out of balance with the rest of the world and with public health and safety? What do the gun rights extremists have to say about this? More silence?

Anniversaries and actions

August 5, 2015August 5, 2015 commongunsense"accidental shootings", "law abiding" gun owners, Armslist.com, Brady background checks, Charleston church shooting, corporate gun lobby, Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs, domestic shootings, guns and women, Lafayette theater shoot, Million Mom March, on-line gun sales, private gun sellers, Sikh Temple shooting

Anniversaries are important. Couples know that it’s important to remember each other on their anniversary. Forgetting is not a good idea for obvious reasons. My wedding anniversary is in August. It just happens that it’s on the same day our 3rd grandchild was born so we never forget this one.

August is a month, like all months, of shooting anniversaries. The one that is most important to me is the day my sister was shot and killed by her estranged husband. That would be Aug. 5th- 23 years ago. It might seem like it was really a long time ago. It was. But I can remember the details as if it were yesterday. I can remember the phone call. I can remember the feeling of disbelief and then of a slow reality that this was happening to my family- to my family. Not someone else’s. But mine. How could that be? Things like this only happen to someone else.

I can remember how painful it was to have to inform my mother that her oldest child had been murdered. That was for me. Only I couldn’t do it. She was at her cabin far away in a remote place with a visiting relative. It was night time. It was a 3 hour drive. What to do? We waited until morning and my husband made the call. It was so difficult. She was brave. And she came right home to be where she needed to be. With family. Now what?

We huddled. We cried. We railed. We read the newspaper accounts since the shooting was committed by someone well known in the city where he lived. They were getting a divorce. He was resisting. He was in contempt of court for refusing to cooperate. This had been going on for several years. My sister was moving on to a new relationship. He had already moved on to a new relationship. Things were not going well legally. She and her new guy were delivering legal papers that came to my sister’s house ( he had moved out some time before the shooting). He must have asked them to come inside. They did. She felt protected by her man friend. That didn’t work. He shot and killed them both.

But I try not to remember these kinds of details. What good does it do? My sister is not here any longer to enjoy the grandchildren she would never know and love or my grandchildren that she will never know. She didn’t get to be at her oldest son’s wedding or be the beloved aunt at my own children’s weddings. She didn’t get to see her life through to actually be divorced from the man who shot her and move on to a relationship with a man who loved her and was ready to be with her as they grew old together. Her potential was never reached. Lives lost are lives not lived and lives of people who had much to give to the world and their families and communities. Memories can’t make a difference in the world.

My sister was a beautiful woman- an actual beauty queen. She was intelligent, athletic, educated, caring, daring, creative and loving. She was an artist. She was a pilot. She played tennis well. She was a biker. She loved music and plays. She loved her children and her family and welcomed everyone in. She was a bit frenetic, talking as she did other things and creating some chaos in her wake. It was always interesting and exciting being around her. She attracted a lot of attention and was loved by many. She was a strong and independent woman as well. And she knew her marriage needed to end. She stood up for herself in the divorce process and that is what makes for trouble sometimes. She was trying to leave this relationship. It often takes women 7 or 8 times to get out of an abusive relationship and it is while they are trying to leave that can be dangerous for women. Abuse takes many forms. It was not physical abuse in my sister’s relationship. It was rather more emotional and financial abuse. You can check out the Power and Control wheels developed at Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs for more information.

The majority of women killed in domestic disputes are killed with a gun.

So it is in my sister’s memory that I do what I do. Her shooting death changed the lives of her family and friends forever. For me, it launched me into advocacy to prevent senseless gun violence. I have been working towards common sense gun laws and changing the gun culture for the last 15 years since I marched in the original Million Mom March on the National Mall. It’s been an interesting ride. There have been challenges, some defeats and some victories. I am part of a movement that is changing every day.

One of the big changes that has not been achieved is making sure all gun sales go through background checks. The Brady background check law came into effect after my sister was shot. It would not have made a difference in her case because my now ex and dead brother-in-law would have passed one. He was a “law abiding” gun owner until suddenly he wasn’t. He was a “responsible gun owner”. Or was he? He had loaded guns sitting around all over his house- a fact we learned after the shooting. He was a gun nut. He loved his guns. My sister was nervous about this. No one thought anything about it because- well just because. Awareness of the danger of guns in the home came for me after this happened to my family. I grew up in a house with guns. Hunting guns. Not handguns or AR-15s. No one had those where I grew up. I learned to hunt. My husband is a hunter. We are gun owners. But we are more savvy now about the facts and we understand that a woman in the US is 11 times more likely to die of a gunshot injury if she lives in a home with a gun than women in other high income countries. We know that children are also at risk when loaded guns are accessible to them. Women and children were not being shot in the numbers they are today as when I was growing up. The organization founded to support hunting and gun safety has turned into a huge and well funded lobby organization in large part supported by the gun industry that makes profits with every gun sale.

But I digress.

Just because an expanded background check system would have unlikely affected the outcome in my sister’s shooting does not mean it won’t for many others. We also now know about the effect of the private sale “loophole” in the Brady law. Occasional sellers have become much more than occasional. It is estimated that about 40% of gun sales go without background checks through private sellers at gun shows, flea markets, classified ads, and now, on-line sales.

A great and informative article about how easy it is for people who shouldn’t have guns to get them anyway was written by a Tennessee woman. This woman goes through the process of how easy it is to get guns from sites like Armslist.com. We know now that the shooter in Chattanooga got 3 of his guns through this site- no background check, no questions asked. You can do your own research like this woman did and find out for yourself what she found out. The majority of gun sales on this on-line exchange are through private sellers.

I did my own exercise looking at the number of handguns for sale just in the Minneapolis area on Monday of this week. I narrowed my search to private sellers. I found that there were 45 handguns for sale in the area and 27 of them were private sellers. That means that 60% of the handguns for sale on Monday, August 3rd in Minneapolis alone were offered by private sellers. Who knows who the buyers might be? Private sellers don’t have to find that out. As the author of the above blog says, some private sellers sell guns to people they know shouldn’t have them and many sell these guns “inadvertently” to people who shouldn’t have guns. But when you are a private seller, you must understand that people who are buying from you could very well have an order for protection out for themselves and their intent just may be to use that gun to kill a spouse/partner. It happens every day. That person could be like the shooter of the Lafayette theater who was only voluntarily committed to a mental institution.

The only way someone like the Lafayette shooter gets his/her name into the FBI data base is when they are involuntarily committed to a mental health facility. A voluntary commitment doesn’t rise to the level of concern apparently for a gun purchase. Who got that provision into our gun laws? Who got the provision about no background checks for private sellers? Who got the provision that a gun has to be handed over to a seller after 3 days even if a background check was not completed because of something called a “default proceed”?

These questions are finally being asked and some are being answered. What we have is a flawed system, in part written and supported by the gun lobby and its’ bought and paid for politicians, that is allowing guns to get into the hands of people who should not have them. All the way around, something is wrong. Something is wrong with all of the shootings happening every day in America no matter where the shooter got a gun or who the shooter is. The fact that this is not more alarming and immediate to our leaders is shameful and downright inexcusable.

So the effort to make families and communities safe from devastating gun violence goes on. People like me with stories to tell will keep telling them to call attention to the scourge of gun violence all over our country. Many groups and individuals are successfully pushing back efforts of the gun lobby to get guns everywhere and in the hands of anyone. We will succeed when politicians feel the pressure from even the gun owners and NRA members who are fed up with the shootings. Most gun owners are nice people who own guns for sport, recreation or maybe even for self defense. They are hopefully practicing responsible gun ownership. But even responsible gun owners have episodes of anger, depression, relationship problems, too much alcohol or leave a gun unsecured for a child or teen to find.

It’s about laws. It’s about culture. It’s about the guns. It’s about the memories of lost loved ones.

Today I dedicate my blog post to my beautiful sister who was shot and killed 23 years ago.

UPDATE:

I want to add that today is also the anniversary of the Sikh Temple shooting that took the lives of 6 inn0cent people in a terrible mass shooting. From this article:

Members of the Sikh community and the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin say they’re using the tragedy to teach others about understanding and compassion for others.

“We have a lot of shootings going on around the city, around the world, around the nation. How we can make a bigger impact — so that we can spread message of love and compassion?” Dubey said.

Love and compassion rather than hate and intolerance of others can make a difference. Keeping guns away from those whose anger and intolerance is dangerous will make a difference.

Why background checks on all gun sales are essential

July 27, 2015 commongunsenseaccess to guns, American gun culture, Armslist, Brady background checks, Brady Law, Charleston church shooting, Chattanooga shooting, corporate gun lobby, Governor Bobby Jindal, Lafayette shooting, loopholes in background check laws, Louisiana gun laws, mass shootings, Sandy Hook shooting, theater shootings5 Comments

Unless you have been living under a rock, on a vacation with no news available or just plain in denial, you know that our nation has been experiencing an epidemic of gun violence that is really not new. This time, however, there seems to be more talk about it and even politicians are being pressed by the media and constituents to talk turkey about gun violence and what to do about it. It’s a topic that most want to avoid. Why? Because if they say what they really know to be true in their heart of hearts, it will p#$$ off the corporate gun lobby and the gun extremists and no one wants to go there. If it p&^%es off the rest of us? Apparently we don’t count and we are the majority. We are the 92% of even gun owners who want our politicians to pass a law to require background checks on all gun sales. I guess we don’t count.

So let’s look at the past month or so. The shooter of the 9 Black Charleston residents at Mother Emanuel church should not have had a gun. How did he get it? He bought his gun from a licensed dealer after an incomplete background check. This was admitted to the public by the FBI Director:

Comey said the FBI made the error due to a breakdown in the background check system and confusion with paperwork between the FBI, local police departments and county jurisdictions.

Due to Roof’s admission during an arrest in late February that he was in possession of drugs, he should not have been permitted to buy the gun he used in the massacre. However, an agent working for the FBI’s background check system who was performing the review on Roof failed to contact the Columbia, South Carolina, police department which arrested Roof, in part because of a clerical error in records listing the wrong agency.

Because Roof’s background check took longer than three days to complete, the gun shop owner was allowed to sell the gun to Roof. The law permits gun sellers to sell guns if a background check takes longer than three days to complete.

Houston, we have a problem. Lives depend on our fixing this flaw in the background check system brought to us by the corporate gun lobby. This great article in The Trace explains how this happened in the first place:

It was called House Amendment 390, and it radically altered the implementation of the Brady background check bill. It was backed by the NRA. Twenty days later, it was the law. And 22 years later, one of its elements allowed Dylann Roof to get a gun.

Last week, Jim Clyburn, a Democratic Congressman from South Carolina, filed legislation that would close the so-called “default proceed loophole,” which allows federally licensed firearms dealers to proceed with a sale if a background check — as in Roof’s case — takes more than three business days to complete. Connecticut Sens. Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal echoed the call, urging President Obama to take executive action to extend the window that federal examiners have for making a determination on a purchaser.

Here is more from this article about how this provision to proceed with a sale after 3 days even without a record of a background check made it into law:

His amendment was initially rejected, but when he tweaked it slightly and requested a floor vote on November 10, 1993, it passed the House 238 to 192, with 122 Republicans and 84 Democrats voting “aye.” The full Brady bill passed the House later that day. When the Senate took up the legislation, lawmakers were faced with Gekas’s one-business-day time limit, which would go into effect five years after Brady’s enactment, along with the instant check system. But after further maneuvering in the Senate, the investigation period was raised to three days.

On the night of November 20, 1993, the Brady Act passed the Senate 63 to 36, with 47 Democrats and 16 Republicans voting yes. President Bill Clintonsigned it into law on November 30.

Charles Schumer, who shepherded the legislation in the House, would later testify about the “tortuous negotiations” necessary to get the Brady bill to Clinton’s desk. Though he called the instant check provision (which would come to be known as the National Instant Criminal Background System, or NICS) “unworkable,” he conceded that “it was a necessary compromise to pass the most important gun control legislation since 1968.”

Five days before the bill signing, Wayne LaPierre gave his own assessment of the outcome, reiterating his group’s stance: “The waiting period is unfair to honest, law-abiding people. The criminals won’t wait.” But in actuality, the group had triumphed. It managed to maintain political cover with supporters by fighting an unflinching war against the bill in the public arena while simultaneously watering it down from within. And more than ever before, it proved that it could mobilize its three-million-strong membership in the process.

Ten months before NICS was scheduled to go online, Clinton floated the idea of indefinitely extending the five-day investigation period used by the interim manual background check system. But the Republicans who had taken over control of Congress proved inhospitable to any further alterations.

And so 9 people are dead because of the corporate gun lobby’s totally irrational fear about “law abiding” citizens having to wait to get their guns. What’s the rush I ask?

Regarding the shooting in Chattanooga, there’s so much it’s hard to know where to start. The shooter obtained some guns “legally” whatever that means given his alleged problems with drugs and mental illness. One of the guns was purchased at the on-line site called Armslist.com that connects ~~shooters~~ buyers with sellers. And yes, this is legal because we have not made it illegal. Until states and the federal government pass laws requiring background checks on all gun sales we will have more of these shootings. Do we care?

( To deflect the real problem of easy access to guns, some state Governors have issued orders for our at home military to be armed. Of course, we now know that at least one of the victims of the Chattanooga shooting was likely armed. Never mind. Armed citizens are showing up at military centers to “guard” our military. I wrote about this one in my last post. It’s not going well so far.)

Every time another of these shootings occur, a whole population of Americans have flash backs and PTSD. It happens. A friend wrote this article about her own experience with gun violence and why the shootings cause her to experience PTSD:

I started working as an activist to prevent gun violence in December 2012 after the devastating shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary school in which a 20-year-old man shot and killed 20 children and six adult staff. I felt I could no longer sit idly by as this epidemic ravaged my country — especially after my own experience more than a decade earlier. My PTSD-fueled visions were turning into nightmares of guns pointing at my own children’s heads. And that’s when I knew I had to do something.

What makes my job so damn hard — aside from the powerful and greedy gun lobby — is that I’m caught in what seems a never-ending cycle of gun-related violence, and it seems I can’t do it. I am caught in a perpetual state of drop-everything-and-rapidly-respond to another shooting.

My typical response, like many I know, is to feel a rush of anger at yet another shooting. Our legislators need to recognize that our system is bleeding — quite literally shot to hell. (…)

But this time, I am not angry. And that scares me. This time I feel helpless and I want to run away. Maybe it’s because I’m hosting a friend from New Zealand where they don’t have the epidemic of gun-related violence like we have here.

It has made me think about moving, about leaving the country.

Imagine what life would be like not having to worry whenever I take my kids to see a movie or send them off to school.

Imagine life without gun violence.

“Imagine a life without gun violence.”

Sigh.

But I digress. I got to thinking about the victims, PTSD, violence, epidemics, hapless politicians, the poisonous corporate gun lobby, my sister, families of victims of domestic violence who I know, families of victims of mass shootings who I know, families of victims of gun suicides who I know……

Where was I?

Oh yes,- the Lafayette theater shooting. The shooter was a prohibited purchaser but supposedly bought his gun legally. What does that mean? Let’s look at this article:

In between, Houser assembled a file that will tell one of two important policy stories when the still ongoing investigations are incomplete. Either Houser will stand as a case study in how far a person can go without being barred from gun ownership — or become the latest reminder of the missing records that hobble the federal background check system. (…)

But on its own, the emergency petition that led to H0user’s stay at West Central would not necessarily prohibit him from gun ownership under the federal law that regards involuntary psychiatric commitments as grounds for banning someone from possessing firearms. For that to happen, a judge must take the next step and order extended hospital time. And for Houser, the records trail (at last for now) goes cold at that critical juncture. The relevant probate records are sealed and cannot be made public by the court.

While Houser’s family was asking that he be committed for psychiatric care, they were also seeking a temporary protective order barring him from any contact with them. That court filing cites “various acts of family violence” and states that Houser’s wife had “become so worried about the defendant’s volatile mental state that she has removed all guns and/or weapons from their marital residence.” A subsequent, handwritten court record indicates that the temporary protective order was lifted on May 8, 2008.

Some states have laws that command persons subjected to a protective order to relinquish their guns while the order is in place. Georgia, the state where Houser’s family lives and the order was filed, is not one of them, according to a 2014 report from the Center for American Progress. Houser’s home state of Alabama has a similar lack of restrictions. In 2014, the Louisiana State Legislature passed a law prohibiting the possession of firearms “by persons who are the subject of protective orders or permanent injunctions involving domestic violence.” However, the law only applies to cohabitating spouses and permanent restraining orders. Houser, who was estranged from (but allegedly sometimes stalked) his family and had only a temporary order against him, would not have been affected.

The shooter was denied an Alabama permit to carry a gun in 2006. But:

With the 2013 passage of legislation backed by the National Rifle Association, Alabama went from a “may issue” to a “shall issue” system for concealed carry permits, taking away some of sheriffs’ discretion. And none of the behaviors that led the sheriff’s office to reject his bid for a pistol permit would have caused him to fail a federal background check before buying a gun.

What might — might — have was a judge’s order of involuntary psychiatric commitment, which brings the events of April 2008 back to the fore.

If the judge in the case didn’t order more hospital time, that could explain Houser’s legal gun purchase in 2014. The other possibility: The involuntary commitment was ordered, but the record never made it into the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. Georgia is among the worst performing states when it comes to forwarding mental health records to the federal database, according to an analysis by Everytown for Gun Safety. (Everytown is a seed donor to The Trace.)

2 are dead and at least 7 injured as a result of a fatal flaw in our background check system.

Where is common sense?

Governor Jindal?

Congress?

That’s what I thought. Silence. Denial. Pandering.

Disgusting and shameful.

We are better than this.

Here is what LouisianaGovernor Bobby Jindal, Republican candidate for President, said about gun laws and the loopholes that allowed for the shooter to get his gun:

Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana called for tougher gun laws in other states on Sunday, breaking his silence on the issue three days after a gunman with a history of mental illness and violence opened fire in a movie theater in the state’s fourth-largest city.

Gun control has become a prominent subject on the presidential campaign trail after the shooting on Thursday in Lafayette became the third mass shooting in six weeks in the United States. Mr. Jindal, who received an A-plus rating from the National Rifle Association, is one of 16 candidates seeking the Republican nomination for 2016. (…)

Until Sunday, Mr. Jindal and most of his Republican rivals had deflected questions in recent days over whether the killings reflected a need for tighter gun control laws. On CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Mr. Jindal called for states to adopt laws similar to Louisiana’s that feed information about mental illness into a federal background check system for potential gun buyers.

“I think every state should strengthen their laws,” he said. “Every state should make sure this information is being reported in the background system. We need to make sure that background system is working. Absolutely, in this instance, this man never should have been able to buy a gun.”

Hmmm, OK. We could give Governor Jindal credit for at least attempting to say the right thing under pressure. What he didn’t say might be more important to the discussion. Clearly the Lafayette shooting exposes the flaws in our system brought to us by gun lobby bought and paid for politicians like Jindal. Does he really think we will turn the other cheek and pretend he didn’t just sign into law some of the weakest gun laws in the country? Does he think we don’t know that Louisiana has one of the highest gun homicide and gun death rates in the country? From the linked article above:

The state doesn’t require background checks on private sales, even for assault weapons; doesn’t require gun owners to register their firearms; and doesn’t have a limit on the number of firearms that can be purchased at one time, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. As for gun violence, the state has the second-highest gun death rate in the nation, according to an analysis of the latest National Vital Statistics report. Louisiana’s lax oversight also enables firearms trafficking to other states, in which it ranks fifteenth in the nation, and 28 percent of guns wind up in criminals’ hands within two years of sale—almost six points above the national average.

Jindal has worked to weaken the state’s already lax gun control by signing a wave of bills in 2013 and 2014. He broadened the “Stand Your Ground” law to protect shooters who hurt, but don’t kill, someone they feel is threatening. He allowed concealed weapons in places that serve alcohol. He banned public access to the personal information of concealed handgun permit owners. He approved guns in churches. And he allowed Louisianans to apply for lifetime concealed-carry permits.

The hypocrisy oozes out of his mouth. Will he get away with it or will the public and the media keep asking questions and keep making politicians responsible for their own actions.

The time is NOW to talk about our gun violence epidemic. We don’t need lying and pandering. We need action. But of course the gun lobby and its’ bought and paid for politicians think we will believe them when they say the time to talk about gun violence is not after a wave of gun violence. A Washington Post article talks about why now is the time:

There are good reasons for legislative restraint in the aftermath of emotional tragedies. You probably don’t want lawmakers drafting bad legislation in a panic to do something, anything, in response to a public outcry.

On the other hand, as the shootings continue and the body count rises, the inevitable counter-argument becomes: if not now, when? Jindal didn’t want to talk gun laws last month, after Charleston. He doesn’t want to talk about them this month, after Lafayette. It’s only a matter of time before the next national tragedy strikes and sets the national gun clock back to zero again. And it will likely happen sooner than you think.

The Mass Shootings Tracker, a crowd-sourced tally of mass shootings maintained by the GunsAreCool subreddit, shows that we haven’t gone more than eight days without a mass shooting in the U.S. since the start of 2015 — that doesn’t leave a lot of time to grieve and regroup between shootings. We’ve averaged exactly one mass shooting per day since the start of the year. Forty eight days saw more than one mass shooting take place. On 18 days there were at least 3 shootings. On three days this year — April 18, June 13 and July 15 — there have been five shootings. (…) In the end, it often seems that the goal is to put off the conversation about the role of guns in America or quibble about methodology while the number of people killed or injured by guns rises. On the other hand, some people, like the Telegraph’s Dan Hodges, argue that we’ve already had the conversation, and that it’s already over. They may be right.

Here is what Dan Hodges tweeted that got the attention of the writer of the article above:

Indeed. Have we decided that the massacre of 20 small school children is bearable. What have we become in order to satisfy a well funded corporate gun lobby’s appetite for power, influence and sales of weapons? Have we become the country reflected in the cartoon at the top of this post? The question has to be asked and answered. For what we do about this epidemic of gun violence reflects our values and who we are as a country.

We just have to decide what the price is for our insane gun culture as this writer is wondering:

How much is one innocent life worth? Ten gun buyers waiting a few minutes longer to purchase a firearm? 25 buyers? 100?

I’m not going to tell you about how other countries have faced similar crises and collectively made the decision to enact reform. We aren’t other countries. As Americans we deal with issues at our own rate based on our own values.

Instead, I’ll point to an issue that the South just tackled: the Confederate flag. Since revisionist historians started to recast the role of the South in the Civil War in the late 1800s, it was pretty much an accepted fact that people were too divided over the flag for anything to ever change.

…and then it did. In a matter of weeks, the Confederate flag was relegated to the dustbin of history in South Carolina and companies that understood its harmful symbolism to so many Americans began pulling products from their shelves.

The change came at the cost of nine more innocent lives, but it happened. (…)

Our lack of action as a country suggests that we don’t value the lives of innocent Americans over the minutes of inconvenience that potential gun buyers might face. So unless we are willing to start telling our elected leaders to pass background check reform, we might as well continue to just haggle over the price of innocent lives.

Lives matter. Laws matter. Background checks or lack thereof matter. The proof is screaming at us. Are we listening?

We could listen to the voices of the victims. How about the video of one of the Lafayette shooting victims, Jillian Johnson, singing with her group in this lovely and moving tribute to her and her life. The victims have names. They have families. They had jobs, husbands, aspirations, opinions….. until suddenly they don’t.

We just have to be better than this.

Once a week….shootings

July 24, 2015July 24, 2015 commongunsense"accidental shootings", American gun culture, Aurora Theater shooting, Charleston church shooting, Chattanooga shooting, gun free zones, guns and the military, Louisiana gun laws, mass shootings1 Comment

America is fatigued. One mass shooting a week- or at least that gets media attention. First Charleston. Then Chattanooga and now Lafayette, Louisiana. 3 are dead ( the gunman shot himself) and 9 injured in yet another theater shooting. The dust hasn’t settled yet on the trial of the other theater mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado yet and we are having flashbacks of the 12 killed and 70 injured in that shooting.

From the above linked article:

They described the shooter as a 58-year-old “lone white male” with a criminal history but did not immediately disclose his name. Lafayette Police Chief Jim Craft said the gunman was by himself and started the rampage by shooting the two people sitting in front of him.

At least one theatergoer described the attack, saying an older man stood up about 20 minutes into the 7:10 p.m. showing of the movie “Trainwreck” at the Grand 16 theater in Lafayette and began shooting.

Sound familiar? A lone white male. Someone with a criminal history who had a gun.

Sigh.

Yawn.

Congress?

Louisiana has the highest rate of gun deaths in the country:

An analysis of the data published Wednesday (June 18) by the Violence Policy Center found high rates gun deaths in Louisiana and other states correlates with weak gun protection laws and high gun ownership. The VPC, which bills itself as a national educational organization working to stop gun death and injury, also found states with stronger gun control laws and less gun ownership had lower rates of gun deaths. (…) In an unusual move for Louisiana, the state Legislature and Jindal have agreed to enact one new gun restriction. Domestic abusers under a legal protective order will be prevented from owning a gun for 10 years under a new law that will go into effect Aug. 1.

This happened in 2014.

Guns matter. Laws matter.

Gun free zones? Much is talked about recently because of the Chattanooga shooting at 2 military establishments that were “gun free” zones. And yet, according to new reports, one of the military members shot back at the shooter:

At a news conference here, the F.B.I. confirmed that at least one service member shot at the attacker, but did not say whether he had managed to wound the gunman, Mohammod Abdulazeez, who was killed minutes later in a shootout with the Chattanooga police.

“A service member from inside the facility observed him and opened fire on him, firing several rounds at him,” said Edward W. Reinhold, the special agent in charge of the F.B.I.’s Knoxville office. Two guns belonging to service members were recovered from the scene, he said, and “at least one of those weapons had been discharged.”

So much for the argument that the Chattanooga military facilities were gun free zones. But armed citizens have taken it upon themselves to “protect” these “gun free zones”. It hasn’t gone well so far. An Ohio “good guy” with a gun “accidentally shot off his AR-15 while “guarding” a military facility there. So much for more guns making us safer. From the article:

A police report said 28-year-old Christopher Reed was holding the rifle outside the recruiting station near the River Valley Mall in Lancaster, about 40 miles southeast of Columbus, at about noon when someone asked to look at the weapon. While Reed was clearing the ammunition from the rifle, he accidentally fired a shot into the pavement.

Reed was given a summons to appear in court on a misdemeanor charge of discharging a firearm within the city limits. A call to a number listed for him in the police report rang unanswered.

Sigh.

The military is treating these armed folks as potential danger. I wonder why?

So far the gun extremists are yelling that the Louisiana theater was a “gun free zone”. Not sure about that. If theaters have policies not allowing guns, they do so for a reason. Allowing people with guns inside a dark and crowded theater is just not a good idea. Small children and families go to movies. Why the need for a gun? Could someone really have stopped this shooter once he took everyone by surprise when he stood up and started firing? What does the average person do when hearing a gunshot and observing a shooter? Run to get away. That’s the natural and usual response. Firing back in a crowded dark theater with people running around? Ludicrous. But in addition, this Florida concealed carry permit holder shot an innocent young father over texting and popcorn at a movie theater. Tragic. The “good guy” with a gun didn’t do so well in this case, did he?

So yes, let’s allow those “good guys” with guns in our theaters. Clearly those folks will stop shooters and protect themselves and others.

Meanwhile, the shootings that don’t make national news?

Michigan boy shoots and kills brother.

10 year old Louisiana boy shot and killed himself with gun he accessed at home.

14 year old Kansas teen shoots and injures another teen.

A weird California case resulted in law enforcement finding 1200 guns stashed in a dead man’s home.

In Georgia a man killed his wife, her 2 children and himself.

Where do the guns come from? Why do kids and teens have such easy access to guns? Why do domestic disputes too often end in death by firearm? Why does anyone “need” 1200 guns?

There are many more where these came from. But I’m tired of this. Aren’t you? Shouldn’t we be addressing our nation’s serious epidemic of shootings by talking about strengthening our laws? Shouldn’t we be changing the conversation about the role of guns and gun violence in a country at war with itself? More than 80 Americans a day are dying from gunshot injuries including homicide, suicide and accidents. This is a uniquely American tragedy. It’s a gun culture brought to us by the corporate gun lobby and their bought and paid for politicians.

We’re tired of the daily news about shootings. We are fatigued and battle weary with the media coverage and breaking news. That doesn’t mean we are worn down however. What it means is that we need to wake up and do something. We need to demand change.

This shooting left 2 more families grieving for a loved one shot in a senseless act of violence not seen in any other democratized country not at war. It left the injured with life long memories and maybe life long disabilities. It left those in the theater traumatized by the idea that they could have been one of the victims. It has left us all with a feeling of dread.

We don’t need more guns in more places as a “solution” to our problem of too many shootings. We need to keep guns away from those who shouldn’t have them in the first place and consider the actual problem that too many guns in too many places is posing for the public health and safety of Americans. We are not helpless to solve the problem. Only our elected leaders are in that position. And they are in the position to change things as well. The rest of us need to be pro-active in changing the conversation and demanding change.

We are better than this.

Where is common sense?

UPDATE:

A father , Peter Read, who lost his daughter in the Virginia Tech shooting has written a great blog about “gun free zones”. From the blog post:

Now it’s routine for gun lobby commentators and politicians to blame mass shootings on the existence of so-called “gun-free zones.” This is a red herring, pushed by the gun lobby to advance a “guns everywhere” agenda, which insults the dead and mocks the living by reducing tragedy to a mere trope.

It’s past time to lay this fallacy to rest.

In our case, Virginia Tech had routine police presence in and around campus, which the gunman even accounted for in his planning. It’s pointless to debate what hypothetically could have happened if a student or teacher carried a concealed firearm in Norris Hall that day, because nobody will ever know. But such a debate misses the main point: Mary, and everyone else, would have been far safer if the shooter had been unable to obtain a gun in the first place.

In Chattanooga, everyone at the recruiting center, the first attack scene, survived despite a hail of rapid long gun fire, because the combat veterans present followed their active shooter training and helped others to shelter and to evacuate the building. In their case, effective training and quick thinking, not the presence of a gun, made the difference. Only time will tell what exactly happened at the second scene, but official accounts so far indicate our service members’ brave actions and teamwork probably saved lives.

“So-called ‘gun-free zones’ are not the problem, and victim-blaming is not a solution.”

So-called “gun-free zones” do not make people more vulnerable to gun violence. The fact is, 86% of mass shootings – which the FBI defines as four or more murders – occur elsewhere, such as at home, in the streets, or in workplaces, according to research byEverytown for Gun Safety. Many of these shootings relate to domestic violence, and more than half the victims of mass shootings are women. Many of these mass shootings never grab national headlines. You may not know this, but a mass shooting that killed two adults and two teenagers, and left an eight-year-old boy fighting for his life, happened just this month in a private home in Holly Hill, South Carolina.

So-called “gun-free zones” are not the problem, and victim-blaming is not a solution. Dangerous people’s continued access to guns is the problem, largely due to the gun lobby’s extreme agenda which harms everyone, including law-abiding gun owners, military members, and law enforcement. So let’s work on the real problem, together.

The solution is to strengthen our common-sense gun violence prevention laws, like legislation pending in Congress right now to ensure background checks occur on all gun sales. It won’t prevent every tragedy – nothing will – but it would go a long way toward making Americans safer.

The aftermath of the Chattanooga mass shooting

July 20, 2015July 20, 2015 commongunsenseAmerican gun culture, arming the military with handguns, Armslist, Aurora Theater shooting, Brady background checks, Charleston church shooting, Chattanooga shooting, conceal carry permit holders, corporate gun lobby, gun rights extremists, guns and the military, guns for self defense, Internet gun sales, The Trace

As always, after mass shootings, people on both sides start offering solutions. The most common sense solution to come from this particular shooting is to expand our background check system to require background checks on all gun sales. Why? It’s just a good idea in general. But the Chattanooga shooter got many of his guns through the Internet site, Armslist.com where buyers and sellers can be connected to make gun sales.

You can check what guns are available for sale in your own state or city by clicking on the site and going to your state. Then you can click on private party and see that many, if not most, of the guns sold on this site are sold by private parties where background checks are not required. That’s just crazy. I checked on my own state of Minnesota for today and here is what I found. There are 6 handguns listed for sale for today, all from private parties.

Clearly we have a problem. The interesting thing about Internet sales is that the gun rights extremists are in denial about how they work. They make claims that all guns purchased on the Internet have to be picked up at a federally licensed firearms dealer. That, of course, is only for those purchased at a gun dealer on-line. The sites like Armslist are for connecting buyers with sellers and so have no requirement that background checks will be required. This is a dangerous market place for selling guns and we know that other shooters have bought guns from this site. If we don’t do anything about this, more dangerous people will purchase guns this way and it will be legal because we have not made it illegal. That is unacceptable. Lives can be saved. Not to do so by stopping these kinds of sales is not only irresponsible, it is negligent.

It’s vitally important to look towards background checks to save lives. The Charleston shooter who massacred 9 innocent black people in a church, should not have been able to purchase his gun. But an error in our FBI NICS system allowed the sale to go through. Had he been unable to get that gun at the gun dealer, he could easily have used a private sale on an Internet site or found a private seller at a gun show or other venue. This is not a puzzle. It’s solvable. Let’s put the pieces together.

Instead, the other solution now in the news is to arm all state side military members so they can protect themselves. There are many reasons why this is NOT a good idea. This article from The Trace explains it”:

Most service members — 99 percent of airmen, 88 percent of sailors, and about two-thirds of soldiers and Marines — are not in direct combat roles, but instead are technical workers whose specialties support those “tip of the spear” troops. These include navigators, supply clerks, water purification specialists, and camera crews. Roughly the same breakdown applies to the backgrounds of recruiters and reservists. Practically speaking, this means that your average military member’s firearms experience may only go as far as some boot camp familiarization with a service rifle on a “static range,” plinking at paper targets to qualify for a marksmanship ribbon. Some servicesare more stringent than others — “every Marine is a rifleman,” the old saw goes, but even most Marines only qualify annually in the narrow realm of target marksmanship, not tactical handgunning or law enforcement uses of firearms. Civilians may believe that all members of the military are “stone-cold killer weapons experts,” as former Army Special Forces officer and Pentagon official Steven P. Bucci told the Boston Globe, but their files say otherwise.

The upshot is that your average service member is more qualified than most civilians to handle guns, but no more qualified to neutralize an active shooter than the average professional mechanic is to race the Daytona 500.

And they don’t need to be, because most military sites have dedicated baseDepartment of Defense police and military members like MPs and masters-at-arms who specialize in armed law enforcement. (…) The result of all of the above: Hardly any military office meets the definition of a “gun-free zone,” but every military office does observe strict discipline on gun use. “Arming DoD personnel with firearms shall be limited and controlled,” the policy states, limiting armaments to “qualified personnel” — those who apply and qualify to carry weapons, then undergo special training — “when required for assigned duties and there is reasonable expectation that DoD installations, property, or personnel lives or DoD assets will be jeopardized if personnel are not armed.” When determining if those conditions are met, commanders are required to consider “the possible consequences of accidental or indiscriminate use of those arms.”

And more about why arming all military as a bad idea just as arming all citizens is ( from the article):

That’s to say nothing of other shootings — such as the 2013 Navy Yard murders or multiple fatal killings at Fort Bragg, home of the Army’s airborne and special forces — perpetrated by the very same uniformed and civilian military personnel that conservatives seek to arm. Dating back to 1994, there had been 20 shootings on or around military installations before the Chattanooga tragedy. All of them were committed by disgruntled uniformed or civilian military workers. As one Navy training brief on active-shooter situations points out: “Most attackers had no history of prior violent or criminal behavior.”

Beyond the practical concerns about an increase in accidents and criminal killings, military planners have another reason to be sanguine about arming service members en masse: It poses an inherent risk to civil liberties in the United States. Since the late 1800s, the Posse Comitatus Act has limited the federal government’s ability to use military members to carry out domestic law enforcement duties. It originated in the rollback of Reconstruction-era policing of the South, but since then, the law has been widely praised as a safeguard against federal martial law on the streets of America. Second Amendment advocates who often defend personal firearms ownership as a check against government abuse and tyranny would likely be among the first Americans to criticize arming domestic military members wholesale in the name of “security.”

Isn’t this exactly what the gun rights extremists are afraid of? A heavily armed government is going to come for their guns. There will be tyranny so they prepare themselves by arming up. Perhaps the “solution” to arm all military who serve in non combat roles in our own country will give the gun nuts even more fuel for their crazy and paranoid ideas about the government surely out to get them. This will drive up gun sales yet again. It’s a vicious circle for sure.

And the article ends with the obvious:

But arming all military workers everywhere is not one of those sensible new measures. At best, it’s the gut feeling of a car repairman in Connecticut and the political stumpers that pander to him; at worst, it’s the xenophobic expression of pathos by conservative chickenhawks. One of their more ornery (or, possibly, more honest) spokesmen, actor and right-wing activist James Woods, displayed the latter sensibility on Twitter last week. “Chattanooga exposes AGAIN several liberal fallacies,” he wrote. “‘Gun free zones’ are ‘safe’; military shouldn’t be armed; POTUS cares about military.”

This is a particular gun-loving, Islam-fearing ideology taken to its logical conclusion. By this logic, every inch of public space in America is an active battleground, and every American who opposes the militarization of that space (including war-worn Army brass like Odierno) hates America and its troops. It is precisely the sort of emotional argument for a perpetual combat footing that shouldn’t be mixed with lethal weaponry, proffered by precisely the sort of sideline sitters who would never take part in the war. Actual military security experts know better.

Having an armed American is just not going to make us safer. We need to come up with other solutions to the problem of armed people who shouldn’t be on the ready to attack military facilities, movie theaters, schools, shopping malls, and churches.

This does not have to be a puzzle. The pieces fit if we make them and have the will to work on it. But so far, even after the recent mass shootings in Charleston and now Chattanooga, we are not doing what needs to be done for public health and safety.

Proactive and preventative measures, like background checks for all guns sales, have the most chance of saving lives. It’s time for us to get to work to stop the next mass shooting and the next domestic shooting and the next time someone shoots a disabled veteran with his own gun while he is guarding sea turtle nests. Our insane gun culture, thanks to the corporate gun lobby and its’ bought and paid for politicians, is coming home to roost. It’s time for a change. Let’s get to work for we are better than this.

And I would be remiss if I did not ask for a moment to think about the victims of the Aurora theater shooting, 3 years ago today. The shooter was just found guilty by a jury just last week so the families have had some sense of relief. But today, they remember the 12 of their loved ones who were shot dead by a young man who should not have had access to guns and ammunition. And 70 more were wounded.

Breaking news- mass shootings and gun insanity as far as the eye can see.

July 18, 2015July 18, 2015 commongunsense"accidental shootings", access to guns, ASK campaign, Aurora Theater shooting, bad apple gun dealers, Brady background checks, Brady Campaign to prevent gun violence, Charleston church shooting, Chattanooga shooting, corporate gun lobby, defensive gun uses, Everytown for Gun Safety, gun free zones, gun ownership in America, mass shootings, military and guns, public health and safety, public support for background checks, safe gun storage, shooting of police officers, The Trace, Walmart gun dealers

On Thursday of this week, the breaking news was all about mass shootings. One could not look at any news media without the interrupted programming reporting about the shooting of Marines at a Naval recruiting center in Chattanooga, Tennessee. And today, the news is that another victim has died of the injuries sustained in Thursday’s mass shooting. Also on that day, the jury of the Aurora theater shooting trial returned a guilty verdict. Common sense happened. In addition, there was news about the upcoming trial of the Charleston church mass shooter. America was consumed by mass shooting.

What we didn’t hear about that day was that 80 other Americans died from gunshot injuries and hundreds more sustained injuries. What the news media did’t talk about was a spree shooting in Maine that killed 2 and injured 5. How did this guy get his gun, by the way?

Will there be a day when we won’t be talking about another mass shooting? When will we do something about all of this? Congress took a break from their work while families were grieving and people were being shot. This statement from the Brady Campaign is perfect:

The two stories dominating news headlines across the country both center on the issue of gun violence – an epidemic that kills 89 people in America every day, and injures hundreds more. Congress’ response to a grieving nation: another three-day weekend.

“Today marks one month from the Charleston church shooting, while just yesterday four Marines were killed while serving their country on US soil and the Aurora movie theater shooter was convicted for murdering twelve people. Gun violence leads the news today in every congressional district in America, and this doesn’t count local shooting incidents that fail to make national news,” said Brady Campaign President Dan Gross. “The issue of gun violence is very much on the public’s mind and the last thing Congress should be doing is taking another break. Our elected leaders should make it a priority to take immediate action to keep guns out of the wrong hands and that starts by taking a vote on H.R. 1217.”

Isn’t it time for them to get to work on solving one of our country’s most pressing public health and safety problems? When 32,000 Americans die in one year from gun injuries, isn’t it time to break out common sense, put our collective heads together and start working on solutions? For there are solutions and we are ignoring them.

I write often about, at the least, requiring background checks for all gun sales. 92% of Americans, and yes, even gun owners, favor this solution. Why is this not the solution? Why would we even think about allowing anyone who purchases a deadly weapon to not go through a background check? It’s insane.

A group of faith leaders has written about another solution and is imploring President Obama to use it in this New York Times piece:

For more than a year, we and fellow religious leaders across the nation have worked to persuade President Obama to use what we believe is the most powerful tool government has in this area: its purchasing power. The federal government is the nation’s top gun buyer. It purchases more than a quarter of the guns and ammunition sold legally in the United States. State and local law enforcement agencies also purchase a large share. Major gun manufacturers depend on these taxpayer-funded purchases. For the government to keep buying guns from these companies — purchases meant to ensure public safety — without making demands for change is to squander its leverage.

Some of the leading brands of handguns purchased by the government — Glock, Smith & Wesson, Sig Sauer, Beretta, Colt, Sturm, Ruger & Company — are also leading brands used in crimes. Among the brands of handguns recovered by the Chicago Police Department at crime scenes between January 2012 and October 2013, all six of these companies ranked in the top 11. When police officers carrying Glocks are recovering Glocks at crime scenes on a regular basis, shouldn’t this prompt questions about whether the police department could use its influence to reduce the number of guns that end up in the hands of criminals? When Smith & Wessons turn up frequently in the hands of criminals, shouldn’t questions be asked when Smith & Wesson seeks a contract with the federal government?

There are specific suggestions made by these faith leaders that could lead to safer practices of selling guns to make sure guns don’t fall into the hands of those who shouldn’t have them. Why would we not require these gun dealers to more accountable for what they are doing? They are selling deadly weapons designed to kill people.

Along the line of common sense solutions suggested in the above linked piece is another article that highlights the gun sale policies of Walmart, the nation’s largest seller of guns:

Current federal guidelines offer dealers a degree of discretion in the small percentage of cases where background checks don’t clear within two hours and are placed under review, after which many retailers will opt to proceed with the sale even if an approval or denial hasn’t been issued when the three-day mark passes. Walmart’s own background check policies have surpassed federal requirements since 2002, when the company decided that it would no longer sell guns to customers without a completed approval from NICS. The company refuses to sell a gun without a concrete all-clear from the federal system.

“The fact is, a gun dealer is not required to sell a gun to anybody,” Jonathan Lowy, director of the Legal Action Project of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, tells The Trace. In default proceed sales, he argues, it’s safer not to. In a 2000 FBI study, the agency found that a person whose background check takes over 24 hours to complete is also 20 times more likely to be a prohibited purchaser. “Walmart realized that it’s just not good practice as a responsible corporate citizen to supply guns to those people,” says Lowy.

Walmart, the nation’s largest gun retailer, sells rifles, shotguns, and ammunition in some 1,700 outlets. (It doesn’t offer handguns, except in the state of Alaska.) In 2008, the company adopted even more rigorous standards by implementing a 10-point code of conduct as part of a partnership with the gun safety group Mayors Against Illegal Guns. In addition to refusing default proceed sales, Walmart agreed to videotape all firearm transactions, require background checks for all employees handling or selling guns, and create a system to trace guns sold by the company that are later linked to crimes, among other measures. (Mayors Against Illegal Guns is an earlier iteration of Everytown for Gun Safety, a seed donor of The Trace.)

Other gun dealers need to follow these simple good practices when selling guns. Lives depend on it.

Making sure kids and teens don’t access guns can also save lives. The ASK campaign is all about asking if there are loaded, unsecured guns in the homes where your kids play and hang out. Making sure if you are gun owners yourself, you do the same, is crucial.

The solution is not more guns, by the way. There is absolutely no evidence that works. In fact the opposite is likely true. For example, this Georgia navy recruiter accidentally shot himself in the leg with his personal weapon carried into a recruiting center. But now, of course, Republican Presidential candidates and gun rights activists are suggesting that if only those Chattanooga victims would have had guns, they could have protected themselves.

Pandering.

How would that have worked? The shooter shot from a distance spraying the buildings with bullets and it happened by surprise as these events always do. Perhaps military members working in these facilities should be armed but armed and trained. But even then, it may not stop the next armed attacker from spraying bullets from a distance. Like in any situation where a gunman shows up, chaos ensues and more guns do not ensure more safety and fewer deaths.

Even armed officers and law enforcement are shot and killed or injured in “guns allowed” zones. One of the first victims in Chattanooga was an armed police officer who was injured and couldn’t stop the shooter. I have written often about the shootings of armed officers in Tacoma, Washington, Pittsburgh, New York and other places.

Arming more people is not the answer. The answer is to have fewer armed citizens. There are far too many guns circulating in America. There are far too many people who shouldn’t be abel to have guns who can access them far too easily. The evidence is mounting that in America we make it easy for shooters like the Aurora shooter, the Columbine shooters, the Charleston shooter, the Chattanooga shooter, the Sandy Hook shooter and all of the others to gain access to deadly weapons.

A new study that draws the same conclusion as others, finds that guns for self defense are used very infrequently and that, indeed, do not actually make much difference and could make things worse for the gun owners. From the article in The Trace:

Despite these advantages, even the NCVS is almost certainly overestimating defensive gun use. The fact is that defensive gun use is an inherently rare phenomenon: Any survey, no matter how well designed, will produce a final estimate that is much higher than its true incidence because of false positives. Not only is this a well-established statistical phenomenon, it’s also supported by new data from the Gun Violence Archive (GVA) — the most comprehensive and systematic effort to catalog every publicly available defensive gun use report — which finds that there were fewer than 1,600 verified DGUs in 2014.

In response to GVA data, pro-gun advocates have been forced to argue that the reason researchers can barely find .064 percent of the 2.5 million DGUs a year claimed by Kleck and Gertz is because virtually nobody reports their defensive gun use to the police. This argument is problematic. For starters, it would seem to imply that the vast majority of people using guns in self-defense are irresponsible citizens who use their firearm to ward off an attempted crime, and then, perhaps uncertain about the legality of their action, are leery of interacting with the police. It would also imply that while these citizens ostensibly stopped a crime serious enough to justify brandishing a firearm, they aren’t at all concerned about informing the police about a criminal who remains on the street.

The only thing we can know for sure is what we have empirical data on: Namely, that there is a reliable floor for defensive gun use estimates at around 1,600 a year. In addition, according to the most recent data on defensive gun use, we have reliable evidence showing that owning a firearm does not give individuals any significant advantage in a criminal confrontation, and they are no less likely to lose property or be injured by using a gun in self defense.

Facts matter. We need to re-think our insane gun culture and the claims made by the corporate gun lobby. For saving lives is the most important thing we can do and if the facts point to stronger gun laws and discussing the role of guns and gun violence in our communities that don’t fit with the claims made otherwise, it’s time to change the conversation.

As if to punctuate the evidence about our daily news and breaking news reports about shootings, Everytown for Gun Safety has a new report about the trends in mass shootings and other shootings. It is not a pretty picture. You can read the facts for yourself but surely the report reveals that more guns and more easy access to guns had made our country far less safe. Let’s look at just one fact, though, considering the shootings of the past few weeks:

Here’s some further evidence to support this point. Last year, Media Matters noted that response rates to mass shootings are generally within minutes of the first shot fired. During the September 2013 Navy Yard shooting which claimed 13 lives, for example, local police arrived within two to three minutes and members of the Yard’s armed security force had already fired at the shooter but failed to stop him. In 2012, Mother Jones found absolutely no evidence that even a single mass shooter had considered whether someone in the area could legally be carrying a firearm. Instead, shooters choose locations based on their personal connection to the site — and don’t seem to care much about whether someone might be firing back at them. Perhaps that’s because many mass shooters are suicidal; Everytown says that in 42% of incidents, the shooter killed themselves.

Facts matter. We can’t let this trend continue.

Today is my birthday. I have much to be thankful for. So today I will celebrate with the usual cards, birthday cake, time with friends, calls from family and time at our beloved cabin on a lake.

Too many people will not be celebrating birthdays. Too many families will not be able to celebrate the birthdays of their loved ones, killed by gun violence. It’s all around us.

We are better than this.

UPDATE:

This article about an Oregon felon arrested with guns and ammunition is the poster child for everything that’s wrong with our American gun culture:

Broke told police that he had the gun “out of concern for his safety because of all the guns on the street,” court documents state.

You just can’t make this stuff up.

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commongunsense

Blogging for gun safety reform and changing the conversation about the role of guns and gun violence in our communities. Common sense gun laws and gun safety reform and gun rights are not mutually exclusive.

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