Are there stray bullets?

June 30, 2019June 30, 2019 commongunsenseaccidental gun discharges, accuracy of shooting, American gun culture, Capital Gazette shooting, celebratory gunfire, children and guns, concealed carry permit holders, concealed carry reciprocity, Congress and the NRA, Dana Loesch, drive-by shootings, irresponsible gun owners, Joe Jaskolka, July 4th celebrations, lapdog politicians, mass shootings, Media Matters, Minnesota shootings, NRA, NRATV, patriotism and guns, road rage shootings, stray bullets, target shooting, training for gun owners, Trump lies

I have been thinking about all of the shootings since I last wrote and shooting anniversaries ( 5 victims remembered one year after the Annapolis Capital Gazette newspaper office). We have a mass shooting every day in America and could be doing a memorial every day as well. This is the sad state of gun violence in America in the week leading up to our nation’s July 4th celebration.

Is there such a thing as a stray bullet? Every bullet shot out of a firearm finds a place to land. Most often they land in the bodies of innocent humans going about their everyday business. Take, for example, the headline of an article in today’s Duluth News Tribune- “Drive-by shooting in St. Paul injures 5“:

The shootings in the Payne-Phalen area happened about two hours after a man was killed in a shooting, also on the city’s East Side, but Sgt. Mike Ernster said police don’t believe the cases are related.
Officers responded to a two-story house at 909 Desoto Street about 10:30 p.m. on a report of shots fired and found four people injured.

Note that there was a shooting homicide a few hours earlier. No doubt we will learn more about this shooting of 5. No matter who they were or what the circumstances, we know that bullets are flying in our neighborhoods and homes, injuring or killing about 100 a day.

These are daily headlines all over America. They are commonplace enough that most people just shrug and move on. In another country, people would be outraged about it and do something about it or have already done something about it so these are not headlines in their media outlets.

We are an America in love with our guns. Other countries have hunters and recreational shooters but do not own handguns for protection. Other countries also do not have a second amendment or powerful and influential gun lobby making the rules for gun ownership. That could change in America because the once powerful gun lobby has been exposed for the corrupt organization it is and is having so many financial difficulties that there hateful and fear mongering NRATV has been canceled. Dana Loesch’s voice will be silenced for the moment and her terrible screeds against those of us who want common sense gun laws and a gun culture that includes gun safety reform will not be heard by the gun rights extremists.

Her lies and deceptions have been influencing the far right for several years and fomenting the people with guns who are waiting for their insurrection moment. From the Media Matters article above:

The morning after the first Democratic primary debate, Loesch took to Fox & Friends to criticize Democratic presidential candidates’ positions on gun violence prevention. Loesch claimed the candidates hide their “confiscation” plans by calling them “mandatory buybacks.”
The former NRA spokesperson went on to baselessly claim a new Gallup poll shows “there are more people who think that 9/11 was an inside job” and “more people believe the moon landing was fake than actually want gun control.”

Fake news. Some people can be controlled by lack of understanding and education about issues. Facts actually do matter. Basing policy and public opinion on false information and lies is dangerous to our country. We have a President who lies with almost every word that comes out of his mouth. So to attribute lies about guns and gun safety reform to those who were telling the truth in the Democratic primaries is the height of hypocrisy. So far it has worked for a certain segment of the population who also call themselves patriots.

~~Do guns = patriotism?~~ No, is the answer. But on July 4th and other holidays like New Years Eve, some people believe they can do whatever they want with their guns and fire them into the air in celebration. They forgot or never thought of the fact that bullets don’t know where to stop until they hit something. Celebratory gunfire takes the lives or injures innocent people every year when stray bullets go up and then, as is inevitable, come back down. My friend Joe Jaskolka, is one of the innocent victims of such a stray bullet.

Joe’s life and those of his loved ones and friends were forever changed by a stray bullet.

Another stray bullet found its’ way into the body of a Minnesota motorcyclist just traveling innocently and trying to enjoy his ride. A reckless and irresponsible gun owner was target shooting nearby not thinking that bullets actually fly around in the area:

Good advice. The funny thing about this statement ( not funny really) is that too often shooters are sure of their targets which is why so many Americans have died from bullets. And the other bit of hypocrisy is that even people who are trained to use weapons such as law enforcement officers and military members frequently miss their intended targets.

And we want teachers to have guns in schools to protect our children? Do we want this teacher to carry her gun in her classroom after pulling it out to threaten someone who got in front of her at a McDonald’s drive through line? I think not.

Guns are dangerous weapons designed to kill. They should not be owned, stored or carried cavalierly as they too often are.

We are at our cabin for the week of July 4th. We have heard someone target shooting across the lake and not too far from the road that goes past our lake. We think it is the sound of a shotgun which would be less dangerous to others. But it isn’t even close to hunting season so why be shooting now? But then we do hear the sound of a rifle which means there are bullets flying around that could actually hit someone else. And yes, people have a right to shoot off guns in rural areas on property they own or at gun ranges, But if they are not careful, innocent people could be their targets.

Speaking of innocent victims there have been a number of “accidental” shootings of children by children. Two children were injured in Texas when another got access to a shotgun and shot it, as children will do. Yes, even shotguns need to be stored safely away from ammunition. Or this grandmother whose purse was the “holster” for a concealed carried gun:

Kayden Stuber was staying with his grandmother and aunt while his parents were at work, and according to local authorities, the child went into his grandma’s purse — which was sitting on the bed — and “in some way retrieved, was handling the gun when it discharged,” Greenville County Coroner Kent Dill says. Deputies and emergency responders rushed to the scene, but Kayden was pronounced dead on the way to the hospital.

An innocent two year old is dead and the entire family is traumatized. The ripple effect of gun violence is real.

These are American tragedies and not only senseless but avoidable.

The thing is, there are far too many irresponsible gun owners who have been convinced that owning a gun for self defense and maybe carrying one around for protection is a good idea. There is no training required when one purchases a gun for any reason. There should be.

And some states have loosened concealed carry laws to the point where no permits or training are required and want a national law that would recognize the permits from any other state regardless of the ~~regulations.~~

So far the law has failed to pass. How can any politician even think this is a good idea? Simple- they are lapdogs for the corporate gun lobby.

Our politicians are not thinking through the facts and one fact should trump all others. Passing stronger gun laws is patriotic and will result in a safer America. Stronger gun laws will not infringe on our constitution or gun rights. It will make them stronger as well.

Back to my original thesis- there really are no stray bullets. There are bullets intended for someone else. There are bullets intended for someone loved or known by the shooter. There are bullets that are not locked away from children, suicidal adults, felons, burglars, domestic abusers, terrorists and others who should not have them. There are bullets shot by irresponsible gun owners who think it’s fun to target shoot or shoot into the air without bothering to think about the consequences and where the bullets might land.

Have a safe and happy July 4th however you celebrate. If your celebration includes guns, please use them safely and think about your surroundings. And for goodness sake, don’t let children use those guns or find them lying around loaded. Safe storage of guns saves lives. It keeps small hands from accessing them. It keeps people who are suicidal from accessing them. It keeps people who could be a danger to themselves or others from accessing them.

Being a patriot also means caring enough about our country to care about the safety of its’ families and communities. Being free from shootings is being a free country where we all feel safe in our communities.

Big money and guns

January 18, 2018January 19, 2018 commongunsense#corrupt, 2016 Presidential election, Blood money, Brady Campaign to prevent gun violence, concealed carry reciprocity, constitutional carry, corporate gun lobby, Dark Money, Gabby Giffords, good guys with guns, gun lobby and money, Jordan Davis, lapdog politicians, NRA, NRA and Russia ties, profits of gun lobby, Republicans and gun lobby, Russian investigation in our elections, Stand Your Ground laws, Trump and guns, victims of gun violence, Wayne LaPierre

The NRA, the Russian investigation, power, money, corruption, influence on elections, Trump and the 2016 campaign. What could possibly go wrong?

If this allegation is true, it shows how far the corporate gun lobby will go to gain and hold on to their influence over our political system. From the article about the FBI investigation into the influence of Russian money, the NRA and the Trump election:

However, the NRA reported spending a record $55 million on the 2016 elections, including $30 million to support Trump – triple what the group devoted to backing Republican Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential race. Most of that was money was spent by an arm of the NRA that is not required to disclose its donors.

Two people with close connections to the powerful gun lobby said its total election spending actually approached or exceeded $70 million. The reporting gap could be explained by the fact that independent groups are not required to reveal how much they spend on Internet ads or field operations, including get-out-the-vote efforts.

We know that Trump attended the NRA’s annual meeting to lie about his support for their dangerous policies. And we know he received a large campaign donation from the organization along with support by way of letting supporters know that they should vote for this unfit man:

A supporter of restrictions on guns before he entered politics, Mr. Trump became a fierce champion of gun rights during his bid for the White House, earning early backing — and $30 million in campaign support — from the powerful lobbying group.

“Only one candidate in the general election came to speak to you, and that candidate is now the president of the United States, standing before you,” Mr. Trump said. “You came through for me, and I am going to come through for you.”

There it is for all to see.

This is simply corrupt and absolutely not OK. We need to keep our eyes and ears open.

The book, “Dark Money” reveals the extent to which this is happening in our democracy, if you can call it that given that money is buying elections and influencing important decisions on behalf of the American people. From the review of the book:

A careful exposé of the libertarian agenda, spearheaded by the Koch brothers, to “impose their minority views on the majority by other means.”

As people who read my blog know, I often talk about how the gun lobby represents a distinct minority of Americans and even gun owners. But their agenda is about money and influence which works against the majority. For decades that money and influence has bought us terrible policies that are dangerous to public health and safety. Such laws as “Stand Your Ground” and ” Constitutional Carry” allow people with guns to get away with murder and for people to openly carry guns in public places where most people do not want them. And if the agenda of passing “Concealed Carry Reciprocity” were to move forward and get the support of the Senate, just about anyone would be allowed to carry loaded guns wherever they go.

These are the wishes forced on us by the minority who have money. Money talks.

Left in the wake of all of this are the victims. But victims don’t talk. Sometimes they have a voice and survivors like former Representative Gabby Giffords, for example, speak as well as they can in demanding common sense in the halls of Congress and state legislatures.

Unfortunately for us, her voice and the voices of others like her are not loud enough compared to the voices of money. Many of our politicians are lapdogs for the gun lobby. I posted this Brady Campaign video in my last post as well. It is still relevant:

Woe unto us if we let the money continue to influence the safety and well being of the public. The bodies are piling up in front of our eyes.

In Minnesota a few days ago, the combination of icy roads, an accident, and guns came together to lead to the death of a young driver:

What happened next was spelled out Wednesday in a criminal complaint that said Weiss, 25, of Rochester, who has a legal permit to carry a gun, shot the teenage driver of the other car at point-blank range when a confrontation flared.

The Olmsted County attorney charged Weiss, who says he acted in self-defense, with second-degree murder in the death of Muhammed Rahim, 17, the middle child of a family that fled Iraq six years ago. The charge is a felony that, with a conviction, carries a potential prison sentence of three to 40 years.

Weiss was arrested and jailed. He has since been released on bail.

Rahim’s passenger told police that he thought Weiss wanted to fight after the collision. He said he and Rahim threatened Weiss and that Rahim even dared Weiss to shoot him. There were no punches thrown, according to police, but Weiss said Rahim shoved him once in the chest.

Incidents like this should not lead to death. This was an accident, a misunderstanding, perhaps some strong words. But if one man had not had a gun, the other would be alive today. And claiming self defense may or may not work here. The victim was unarmed and only ( maybe) had words with the shooter. Is that enough to kill someone?

But Minnesota does not have a Stand Your Ground law. We have fought against it for many years in the face of fierce support by the corporate gun lobby’s influence on some of our state legislators. Would this man be able to get away with murder with no trial if a Stand Your Ground law was in place?

This is yet another of those “good guys” with guns that Wayne LaPierre so famously and nonsensically said after the shooting of 20 first graders, held up when pretending that only good guys with guns can stop bad guys with guns:

Sigh.

Sometimes even in states with Stand Your Ground laws, shooters have not gotten away with murder. The case of Jordan Davis, shot in Florida by a gun permit holder because of teens sitting in a car playing loud music, showed that murdering an unarmed person who simply annoyed someone isn’t an excuse.

We are better than this.

The confluence of the Russia investigation into their influence on our 2016 election, with the NRA is an interesting situation. If the findings come out showing that it was, indeed, true, we need to hold the NRA responsible for their actions and expose the truth about dark money and guns.

UPDATE:

This New York Times article expands on the possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians through the NRA:

It’s important not to get carried away, if only because a scenario in which the Russian investigation ensnares the N.R.A., probably the most influential conservative group in the United States, seems a bit too much like Resistance fan fiction, too delicious to be true. Indeed, if it is true, it has devastating implications for the entire Republican Party, since many officeholders enjoy lavish financial support from the N.R.A. Still, an N.R.A. role in Russiagate would explain a few things, including why the N.R.A. has, in recent years, developed such a close relationship with Russia.

Follow the Money. People are dying. The gun industry profits. Gun laws are loosened. People unfit for office are elected with the help of the gun lobby. Our leaders are afraid to pass laws to save lives and protect us all from senseless gun violence.

The insatiable quest for profits for the gun industry, power and control of our democratic process may end in a very bad way. It would not be a surprise to most people who have come to understand that the NRA is not a gun rights group any more. It is an arm of the Republican party and is run by extremists.

New Year’s Eve lunacy

December 31, 2017January 1, 2018 commongunsense2017 gun deaths, Caren and Tom Teves, celebratory gunfire, Colorado theater shooting, conceal carry laws, concealed carry reciprocity, domestic shootings, Gun Violence Archive, guns and alcohol, guns and women, Joe Jaskolka, kids and guns, Las Vegas shooting, mass shootings, New Year's eve precautions, shooting in Littleton, shootings of law enforcement officers, stolen guns, Utah gun laws4 Comments

Bitmoji This post has been updated to reflect new information.

Every year, New Year’s Eve results in deadly shootings. We live in America where we have come to expect this lunacy. Let’s take a quick look at what happened today before we get more information to flesh out what actually happened. A Sheriff’s deputy was killed and 4 injured in a domestic dispute in Littleton, Colorado. If this city sounds familiar it’s because it is the home of a deadly high school shooting- Columbine.

From the article:

Five deputies were shot, one fatally, after they responded to a report of a domestic disturbance on Sunday morning in a suburb of Denver, officials said.

The gunman was shot by deputies and was “believed to be deceased,” the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office said on Facebook. Two civilians were also shot by the suspect, the Sheriff’s Office said. (…) Deputies had responded to a call of a domestic disturbance around 5:15 a.m. at the Copper Canyon Apartments on County Line Road in Highlands Ranch, the Sheriff’s Office said in a statement on Facebook.

Domestic disputes are the cause of many shooting deaths of law enforcement officers. They are among the most dangerous for officers and for women, of course, because they are most often the victims in these types of shootings.

From the above article:

The most dangerous time, the time when we’re getting killed the most often, is in the approach. It’s the ambush. Often they know we’re coming, so we don’t park right out front.

The nature of the crime adds another complication. Domestic violence is about one person’s desire to control another. The police officer who arrives at the scene is taking away some of that control.

Guns provide the ultimate control, of course, and that is the purpose.

Speaking of dangers to women, research shows how often they are threatened, injured and/or killed by partners:

When it comes to gun violence against women, the United States is the most dangerous country in the developed world. Domestic violence affects millions of women across the country, and guns in the hands of domestic abusers can turn abuse into murder. Indeed, the presence of a gun in a domestic violence situation makes it five times more likely that the woman will be killed. And the deadly mix of guns and domestic violence is exacerbated by America’s weak gun laws: women in the U.S. are 16 times more likely to be shot and killed than are women in other developed nations.

It’s only common sense that guns should be hard to access for domestic abusers or men who are angry over loss of control in a relationship. That one I know for sure having experienced the death of my sister in a domestic shooting. She hasn’t celebrated New Year’s Eve for decades and we haven’t been able to ring in the new year with her.

And this just came to my attention. A 12 year old girl shot and killed a 16 year old girl with a loaded gun she found in an unlocked car:

Police responded to a shooting call at an apartment at 3:25 a.m. and found several juvenile girls inside along with the 12-year-old’s grandmother, who is the tenant, police said in a news release.

According to a preliminary investigation, the group of juvenile girls snuck out of the apartment without the grandmother’s knowledge, went to a nearby parking lot and began pulling on car door handles, police said.

They found an unlocked vehicle and burglarized it. Police said a loaded semi-automatic pistol was taken during the burglary.

The girls brought the gun back to the apartment where police say the 12-year-old is alleged to have handled it and pointed it at other girls when the gun discharged, killing Wilson.

There is so much wrong with this scenario that I hardly have the words for it.

More guns= more gun deaths. That is the bottom line.

Happy New Year’s eve everyone.

Remember other New Year’s shootings?

Some happen as a result of firing a bullet into the air in celebration of the new year. I will be happy when this year is over for many reasons but I won’t be shooting a gun into the air. For one thing, it’s too frigid to be outside long enough to do that in my neck of the woods.

My friend, Joe Jaskolka, was the victim of one of those celebratory bullets while a child in Philadelphia. He is now a young man who has suffered through numerous surgeries and his life was completely changed as the result of a lunatic thinking that a bullet fired into the air does not come down again. The laws of physics seem to have escaped some folks.

Instead of making us safer the minions of the corporate gun lobby are making moves to make it more dangerous for citizens to be safe. The passage of the Concealed Carry Reciprocity act in the House was such a measure. The public did not come to their representatives and ask for this. It would be forced down the throats of innocent citizens should it become law and pass in the Senate.

Caren and Tom Teves, whose son was massacred in the Colorado theater shooting, should know what dangers come from lunatics with guns. From the above linked article:

The deep sorrow the victims’ families feel knowing they will never see their loved one again is something that we know all too well. We have felt it every single day since our son, Alex, was shot and killed in the 2012 Aurora, Colo., movie theater mass shooting.

The night Alex was murdered, he and his girlfriend were attending a midnight showing of “The Dark Knight Rises.” When the shooter began spraying bullets into the dark theater, Alex got to the floor but his girlfriend, Amanda, froze. Alex jumped back up and pulled her to safety, but as he did a bullet hit his forehead. (…)

Arizona has experienced firsthand the devastating effects of weakening concealed carry standards. In 2010, Arizona legislators repealed the state’s concealed carry permit requirement — and aggravated assaults committed with a firearm increased by 44 percent in the subsequent six years.

“Concealed carry reciprocity” would force each state to accept this dangerous “permitless carry” standard, even though 81 percent of Americans oppose allowing people to carry concealed guns without a permit, including top Arizona law enforcement officials.

2017 brought us the worst mass shooting in American history in Las Vegas as a lunatic with a gun shot and killed 58 innocent people attending a concert. This year, extra precautions ( at taxpayer expense) will be taken in Las Vegas to assure that this does not happen again.

Snipers on New Year’s Eve. Are we at war?

New York City will be taking similar precautions.

When lunatics with guns can fire off enough bullets to kill dozens at a time, this is what America is all about at the end of 2017.

Only in America.

Lunacy.

Check out what Utah is up to regarding gun rights as just one example of Red state legislators beholden to the NRA and the gun lobby. From the article:

The state lawmaker behind Utah’s .05 percent DUI threshold is preparing tweaks to the law that pertain not just to driving but also to carrying and firing a gun while intoxicated.

Rep. Norm Thurston seeks to carve out an exemption for people who are under the influence but use a weapon to defend themselves or someone else, he said Wednesday. (…) “We’re looking at modifying it to say that there is an overriding feature that if you are using that dangerous weapon to defend yourself, or your home, or a family member, or another person, (then) that’s justifiable — that even if you’ve been drinking, you still have the right to defend yourself,” Thurston said.

Good grief. This is absolute lunacy. What could possibly go wrong? If there is any common sense left in Utah, this provision will not make it into the law or be removed if it does by people who have some sense and care about public safety

Americans are dying in increasing numbers every year from gunshot injuries. This is not normal. It is not acceptable. It is not inevitable. The new year can bring some better safety measures for all of us if we put our heads together and do what’s right and sensible. This is not about the second amendment or gun rights. This is about the rights of all of us to be safe from gun violence.

The Gun Violence Archive tells us that that 15,466 gun homicides and according to all other years, approximately 22,000 gun suicides. That makes over 37,000 Americans killed by guns.

I say good riddance to 2017. It was a particularly violent and tragic year.

Let’s make 2018 the year of making America safe again and raising our voices to demand action on strengthening, not loosening, gun laws. We have a serious public health epidemic that we have ignored for far too long.

We are dying as a result.

Happy New Year.

Stay safe out there.

UPDATE:

Another tragic shooting involving another teen accessing a gun he should not have had has left 4 people dead on New Year’s Eve:

A 16-year-old New Jersey boy armed with a semi-automatic rifle shot and killed his parents, sister and a family friend inside the home where they lived, authorities said Monday. Monmouth County Prosecutor Chris Gramiccioni said Monday that the teen will be charged with four counts of murder and a weapons offense stemming from the shooting that occurred late Sunday night, less than 20 minutes before midnight on New Year’s Eve in the shore town of Long Branch.

A possible motive for the shooting has not been disclosed. The rifle used in the shooting was legally registered to a resident of the house, Gramiccioni said.

Sigh.

Every gun in the hands of a child must first pass through the hands of an adult.

Lock up those guns everyone.

Forced changes to gun laws

December 11, 2017December 11, 2017 commongunsenseBrady background checks, conceal carry permit holders, concealed carry reciprocity, Congress and guns, corporate gun lobby, Gabby Giffords, gun registration, gun rights extremists, H.R. 38, mass shootings, NRA, permitless carry, public support for background checks, Sandy Hook shooting, school shootings, state gun laws, Steve Scalise shooting

forcing The NRA and it’s minions accuse the side of gun violence prevention or gun control, as it is often called, of trying to force changes to gun laws that people don’t want and that would affect law abiding gun owners. Claims include gun registration somehow hidden in “gun control” laws, mostly laws that would require Brady background checks on all gun sales. How that would work is a mystery to me. Currently, and as long as the Brady law has been in effect requiring Federally Licensed Firearms Dealers (FFLs) to perform background checks on sales in their establishments. there has been no gun registration.

But to require private unlicensed sellers to do background checks on the very same people who often go to FFLs for their guns suddenly becomes gun registration. It isn’t true of course but facts don’t seem to matter to the gun lobby. Fear and paranoia are what sell guns and ammunition. And how this would affect law abiding citizens’ rights to own a gun is beyond me. The protests about this don’t fit the problem or the solution to the problem.

But further, as the claims go, following registration, confiscation is inevitable. Such nonsense is not to be believed. It just makes no common sense but never mind. I would remind everyone that this worked pretty well during the Obama administration and the 2016 election when the NRA, an arm of the Republican party, ramped up the fear of gun confiscation, driving sales of guns and ammunition.

Follow the money.

Can one say that forcing everyone to undergo a background check to acquire a deadly weapon is unlawful or would affect law abiding citizens rights? No, but never mind the facts.

We have laws for a reason. They are mostly to protect people from harm. And that is one of Congress’s main missions.

So this past week when H.R. 38, Concealed Carry Reciprocity or “arm anyone” passed in the U.S. House, there was no talk of just enforcing the laws already on the books or doing something harmful to law abiding gun owners. Maybe that is because this law, if passed in the Senate and signed by an eager NRA supported President, would supercede the laws of many states. Currently 12 states require no training or permits for people to carry guns. So anyone can carry regardless of their status. That is because, anyone, including presumably felons, domestic abusers, those who have been adjudicated mentally ill and others don’t need to get a background check from local law enforcement to carry a loaded gun around in public. And further, these same dangerous people, if living in a state that does not require universal background checks can buy a gun(s) with no background check from a private seller on-line or at a gun show. 1 in 5 guns are sold without background checks.

This is a double whammy for innocent people living in places where stricter laws preclude these folks from buying and carrying.

I don’t have to remind my readers that in the last year and a half two of the nation’s worst mass shootings have taken the lives of dozens of Americans. And in the last few months two mass shootings have killed many innocent Americans. In light of this fact, one would think that our Congress would consider strengthening our gun laws to prevent these from happening. For some of them could have been prevented with stronger regulations or following the laws we already have.

But one would be wrong. In light of that, Congress went ahead with its’ adherence to folly and lunacy by loosening gun laws. This week, the 5th anniversary of the heinous massacre of 20 first graders and 6 educators will occur. There will be hundreds of vigils around the country to mark that anniversary.

What are we doing? Continuing to allow the shootings to happen unabated and shrugging as if it’s inevitable.

95% of Americans agree to universal background checks. Who are these people representing anyway?

We know the answer.

We only need to google news stories to find the truth. As just one recent sampling of the news stories I found that , these yahoos- “law abiding” gun owners, had gunfights on the streets of Texas over road rage. There were 3 incidents of this in a few days. One assumes it was legal for the perpetrators to carry but if H.R. 38 becomes the law of the land, that won’t make one whit of difference. We won’t know. Anything goes. Check it out:

Investigators said two men involved in a crash on Westheimer and South Kirkwood fired on one another, sending bystanders-including Erica-scrambling to take cover.

A woman nearby was grazed in the ear and taken to a west Houston medical center for treatment, while one of the shooting suspects was transported by Ben Taub Hospital.

All these incidents highlight a need for everyone to be prepared for the unexpected and to keep your eyes open.

That highlighted paragraph is from the last shooting mentioned. Two men squared off with their guns, presumably legal gun carriers, endangering bystanders, pedestrians, car passengers and law enforcement.

“…be prepared for the unexpected…”

Why should the majority of us who don’t carry guns and don’t want them where we live, work, drive, play and learn, have to be prepared for lunatics with guns around? One woman died and one was grazed with a bullet in these incidents. The other one frightened a young mother who was driving with her 3 year old when a man pointed a gun at her.

There are no excuses for this but our Congress excuses it all by hiding behind the “rights” thing. Or what exactly do they think? Or are they thinking at all? This is just about paying the gun lobby back for their contributions in their elections. Or maybe they actually believe that we will all be safer with more loaded guns around everywhere. If that is the case, the truth and facts prove them wrong.

If one of their own was involved in one of these incidents, would they think differently? Oh right. One or two of their own have been shot and seriously injured. Of those, one- Gabby Giffords- is working hard to prevent shootings. The other, Steve Scalise, is still, inexplicably, in the pocket of the gun lobby.

The shooter of Scalise “escaped the system”. This happens far too often in America leading to avoidable, senseless gun deaths and serious injuries. We can’t allow anyone to escape the system. We are talking here about people who shouldn’t have deadly weapons having them anyway. This is not acceptable or normal. Innocent lives are shattered by a system made to protect gun rights under cover of the second amendment rather than to protect citizens from harm. Our Congress has a duty to protect the citizens from harm. They have failed to protect us. They have failed to protect their own.

Gabby Giffords’ shooter is the very person who would be allowed to carry his gun into another state legally if H.R. 38 passes through the Senate. Arizona is a permitless carry state. No permits required. Therefore no background check by law enforcement when applying for a permit to keep someone from carrying who shouldn’t. It’s optional to get a permit. One can’t assume that the gun carrier went through a background check to buy that carried gun.

It’s not optional to get a driver’s license in any state. If you drive a car, you have to have a license. If you buy a car, it has to be registered. There are reasons for that. Gun permits are not like driver’s licenses. If they were, we would call it gun licensing which the gun lobby hates. There are similar requirements, state to state, for getting a driver’s license. That is what allows states to be confident that someone from Texas driving in Arkansas has gone through a permit and driver’s test to get a license to drive and is legal to drive. The same is not true of gun permits. From the above linked article:

States honor one another’s driver’s licenses under a voluntary agreement. There’s no federal mandate. States also have fairly uniform requirements for issuing driver’s licenses. If you’re renting a car to someone with a New York license who is visiting Texas, you can be pretty confident the New Yorker has passed a road test. Guns are different. At least 26 states will issue a gun permit to someone without requiring that person to ever actually shoot a gun.

And, of course, we must talk about the hypocrisy (sometimes on both sides) in the argument about states’ rights, commonly used by conservatives. In this case, states’ rights to pass their own gun laws would be trampled by the bill under consideration.

And finally this incident just came across my emails. A young man who had an open arrest for a murder was, thankfully, rejected for a gun purchase at a Walmart store. Luckily for everyone, Walmart did their lawful duty and took the time needed to stop this man from getting a gun legally:

Laura Cutilletta, the legal director of the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said Beardsley offers a sharp example of why the new definition poses a danger to the public.

“Somebody who’s wanted for a crime is not someone who should have a gun,” she said, “Not only have they broken the law, but they have evaded the law.”

U.S. Marshals picked up Beardsley for murder on Nov. 14, just as the three-day waiting period was running out, sources close to the case said. He did not have a gun, according to a Marshals spokesman.

But our very own Justice Department has inexplicably loosened our laws so that FFLs don’t have to reject a gun purchase if there is an open arrest. Why? Good question. And these could be the kind of people who could carry a gun around in public places.

No one ever said politics was easy or uncomplicated but the issue of gun rights seems particularly fraught with controversy and inconsistency.

And finally, regarding “everyday” shootings, there was another school shooting- in New Mexico. The shooter was known to the FBI for having threatened a mass shooting but they closed the case because he didn’t have a gun at the time. Two are dead as a result of another case of not paying attention and flagging dangerous people like this guy- because rights. When gun rights supercede common sense, this happens over and over and over again.

This is not an either/or all or none situation. Gun rights have co-existed with reasonable gun laws and can continue to do so. Making strong laws is for the good of us all. The fact that we can’t come together about this is tragic and deadly.

We all deserve better than this. These things are not inevitable and they are not normal. We are shirking our responsibilities as Americans to keep our communities and families safe from gun violence.

What is the N.R.A. doing?

December 4, 2017 commongunsense1934 National Firearms Act, Blood money, Brady background checks, bump stocks, conceal carry laws, concealed carry reciprocity, Congress and guns, HR 38, lapdog politicians, Las Vegas shooting, mass shootings, NRA, Republican party and guns, Russian influence in our elections, SHARE act, Trump and guns, Wayne LaPierre6 Comments

As the Russian investigation by Congress and the special counsel Robert Mueller continue, we are learning about the extent of the influence of the Russians into corners we did not necessarily expect. But we shouldn’t be surprised at anything. Ever since Trump was elected it’s been a surprise a day and daily chaos and dysfunction, if not corruption.

Is that by design, incompetence, craziness or whatever other word has been used to describe what is going on? Kleptocracy has been mentioned as a cause for this American travesty. It’s so hard to determine what is going on but things are coming into closer focus.

It’s becoming more difficult to discern the difference between the NRA and the Republican party of late. What exists today is not your father’s or grandfather’s NRA. Back in the day, the NRA was a sportsmen’s organization, supporting hunting and shooting sports and training people ( and kids) how to properly handle their guns and be safe with them while hunting and shooting for sport.

Today? Not so much. A hostile take-over of the organization occurred in 1977 and it hasn’t been the same since.

After the corporate gun lobby managed to get laws passed to allow just about anyone to carry guns in most of our states, the NRA stood to make some money by offering classes to instruct prospective permit holders how to safely carry loaded guns in public and about the laws in a particular state. (You can even get a free gun on this site if you sign up).

Sigh.

One wonders, as an aside, what will happen if the NRA and the corporate gun lobby gets HR 38 ( Concealed Carry Reciprocity) or “arm anyone” bill passed into law? Why? Because 13 states don’t even require any hours of training before allowing someone to pack heat in public places and 3 have some version of the idea of “constitutional carry”. What will happen to the NRA revenue stream if classes are not required? They can hope that the bill to allow the legalization of gun silencers passes ( which by all rights it should not after the Las Vegas shooting) so a new source of revenue will open up.

That bill, too, is the ~~clever~~ theft of language to change something into something it isn’t. You just have to love that the bill is named the “~~Hearing Protection Act~~“. The bill was included in a House Natural Resources Committee bill called the SHARE Act. Seriously- what do gun silencers have to do with natural resources? Another theft and co-opting of language. The goal is to remove gun silencers from the National Firearms Act which was passed for good reason after the mafia used gun silencers and machine guns to silence their enemies.

We get it. If we allow silencers ( and then possibly machine guns) to be sold like every other firearms instead of the now very strict regulations, the consequences will be dangerous. Because of that law, it is extremely rare but not unheard of for them to be used in crimes.

Back to “constitutional carry”. This is the stealing of a right ( second amendment) as written in our Constitution to make it into something it was not intended for. Tricky but we get it. It is the theft of the right to be safe and to make sure those who carry loaded guns are at the least, minimally trained to carry that deadly weapon.

You would think this is only common sense. But you would be wrong.

What about bump stocks? They are still being sold. Will Congress pass a law requiring at the least, a Brady background check before purchasing? Or will they be outlawed all together after the Las Vegas shooting?

This is insanity and more mass shootings waiting to happen.

The NRA has become an arm of the Republican party. That is pretty well known. But in the last few days we have discovered that a prominent member of their organization helped arrange a meeting between a Trump campaign leader and a Russian for the alleged purpose of helping Trump get elected.

This is like a spy novel. The intrigue is fascinating. Now we know what we have suspected. The NRA is an extremist organization and not in existence to just support shooting and hunting sports. They are a lobbying organization with a lot of power, control and influence in Congress and on our sitting President. This is dangerous.

As shooting deaths rise and lapdog politicians work to help the NRA and others in the corporate gun lobby with profits and more influence, we are becoming less and less safe from gun violence. I say this is an untenable situation.

Sigh.

Let’s take a look at the above linked article about Russian influence in the 2016 election:

A conservative operative trumpeting his close ties to the National Rifle Association and Russia told a Trump campaign adviser last year that he could arrange a back-channel meeting between Donald J. Trump and Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian president, according to an email sent to the Trump campaign.

A May 2016 email to the campaign adviser, Rick Dearborn, bore the subject line “Kremlin Connection.” In it, the N.R.A. member said he wanted the advice of Mr. Dearborn and Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, then a foreign policy adviser to Mr. Trump and Mr. Dearborn’s longtime boss, about how to proceed in connecting the two leaders.

Russia, he wrote, was “quietly but actively seeking a dialogue with the U.S.” and would attempt to use the N.R.A.’s annual convention in Louisville, Ky., to make “ ‘first contact.’ ” The email, which was among a trove of campaign-related documents turned over to investigators on Capitol Hill, was described in detail to The New York Times. (…)

The emailed outreach from the conservative operative to Mr. Dearborn came far earlier, around the same time that Russians were trying to make other connections to the Trump campaign. Another contact came through an American advocate for Christian and veterans causes, and together, the outreach shows how, as Mr. Trump closed in on the nomination, Russians were using three foundational pillars of the Republican Party — guns, veterans and Christian conservatives — to try to make contact with his unorthodox campaign.

You really can’t make this stuff up.

The hypocritical calling for Hillary Clinton to reveal her ” acid washed” emails or lock her up is coming back to bite the Republicans and their supporters.

There are really no coincidences here. More from the article:

Indeed, evidence does appear to show deep ties between Mr. Erickson, the N.R.A. and the Russian gun rights community that were formed in the years when many American conservatives, put off by the Obama administration’s policies, were increasingly looking to Mr. Putin as an example of a strong leader opposing immigration, terrorism and gay rights.

The N.R.A. was one of Mr. Trump’s biggest backers during the campaign, spending tens of millions of dollars to help elect him.

Follow the money. Follow the influential lobbyists and you will get to the bottom of the mystery. For it’s nothing short of a mystery as to what is going on today. There is no common sense in any of this intrigue. There is danger. There is collusion. There is corruption. There is trouble.

If this is what we have become, God help us. We are no longer a democracy.

Guns should not be influencing national elections or our local or state elections. No Mr. Wayne LaPierre, the guys with the guns should not be making the rules. This is insanity itself and we must #resist.

Arm anyone

December 1, 2017December 1, 2017 commongunsenseAmerican gun death rates, Brady background checks, concealed carry killers, concealed carry reciprocity, Congress and guns, corporate gun lobby, HR 38, law enforcement officers and gun laws, majority support for reasonable gun laws, public health and safety, stolen guns, Violence Policy Center

armed man While important things are going on in Congress concerning national security, raising taxes on the middle class, a President re-tweeting a white supremacist UK site with fake videos about muslims attacking others, they found time to mark up a bill to allow anyone to carry loaded guns in public.

You can’t make this stuff up. But in today’s political atmosphere, absolutely everything is turned inside out and left is right, up is down. You would be right if you think this is lunacy.

There is no reason for HR 38 to become law except that the corporate gun lobby wants it and their lapdog politicians are all too willing to bow down and acquiesce. The bill is stupid and dangerous. The Law Enforcement Partnership To Prevent Gun Violence is against it:

The complete lack of consistent training standards, the different standards for identifying individuals that are too dangerous to carry, the uncertainty of a document’s validity, and the exposure of agencies and police officers to civil liability create unacceptable risks to our nation’s 900,000 police officers and the public at large. We reject the idea that one state’s approach to carrying a concealed firearm will work across the country. States and localities should maintain their rights to legislate concealed carry laws that best meet the needs of their citizens. The National Law Enforcement Partnership to Prevent Gun Violence urges you to respect and defend state laws while protecting and supporting our nation’s police officers by opposing H.R. 38 and S. 446. Thank you for your support.

Most Americans are against it.

But never mind the majority.

It should be noted that the corporate gun lobby ( NRA, etc,) want this to happen soon just in case the Republicans lose their power. And after the news of the past few days, that may happen sooner rather than later. So many incidents, tweets, statements and policies are making America dangerous again. The gun death rate has increased over the past few years so now over 100 Americans a day die from gunshot injuries. This is due to more guns everywhere. More guns are making us less safe. There are more guns on our streets thanks to stolen guns, trafficking, purchasing without background checks and straw purchasing. I wrote about recent reports of stolen guns in my last post.

Facts matter. We have a President who lies to us every day- sometimes several times a day. The gun lobby is lying to us as well. And the very sad and tragic thing is that many in Congress believe it. Apparently 2 of the nation’s worst mass shootings occurring in the last few months does not faze them. They don’t seem to care about victims.

Where is common sense?

Let’s take a look at H.R. 38 for a minute. You can watch the hearing on the bill here. During the hearing, Congressman Bob Goodlatte, chair of the House Judiciary Committee unbelievably said that people with violent misdemeanors are “law abiding”. This means that those folks, though not felons and technically not prohibited purchasers should be allowed to carry loaded guns in public.

After 6 hours of discussion, the hearing ended with the committee voting in favor of the bill on a party line vote. In spite of any common sense arguments about public safety being at risk, the NRA bought and paid for politicians voted for yet another dangerous bill.

Now tell me that allowing people with no permit or training to carry guns wherever they want to is a great idea. One of the arguments from the gun lobby is that people don’t need permits to carry because, they say, you have to pass a background check to get the gun you will be carrying around with you loaded in public. That is totally false. We know that crime guns come from many places- one is from private sales on-line or at gun shows. Others come from stealing guns and some from straw purchases. Some of these aforementioned guns are trafficked. It’s easy to get a gun with no background check.

Concealed carry permit holders actually do kill people as this site from the Violence Policy Center shows clearly. Since 2007 when the VPC started keeping track, 1119 people have been killed by permit holders and 31 mass shootings have been committed by gun permit holders. That should be reason enough to kill this bill.

So now, if Congress passes the Concealed Carry Reciprocity bill, people with violent misdemeanors, those adjudicated mentally ill, domestic abusers and others who shouldn’t have guns in the first place can carry where you are.

We can expect an assault on public safety and we definitely will not be a safer nation.

What in the world are they thinking? Not about public health and safety.

Follow the money and power for the answer.

It’s not too late to contact your Representative and Senators to oppose this craziness. Please make some calls in the name of the victims of gun violence.

We are better than this.

Not even bump fire stocks?

October 14, 2017October 14, 2017 commongunsense1934 National Firearms Act, American gun laws, Brady Campaign to prevent gun violence, concealed carry reciprocity, Congress and guns, Congress and the NRA, corporate gun lobby, deregulation of silencers, Gun Industry Immunity law, gun industry profits, gun owner support for gun laws, lapdog politicians, Las Vegas shooting, lawsuits and guns, mass shootings, NRA, NRA money, PLCAA, public support for background checks, Quinnipiac polling on gun control, Senator Mitch McConnell, SHARE act, Speaker Paul Ryan, Tiarht amendment, victims of gun violence8 Comments

Really Paul Ryan? Not even bump fire stocks?

Halloween is approaching and our Congress is scared and scary in more ways than one. Our leaders are failing us in more ways than one. Our leaders claim that care about Americans. If they actually did, they would grow a spine and stand tall for the majority and do it proudly and feel good about it.

They are lapdogs for the NRA and other special interests.

The cynical and evil leadership of the NRA suggested that they may be able to support a ban on bump fire stocks. NOT. Not even that very small measure will pass muster with this group of disingenuous group of guys who represent the industry that sells these things.

So where are we? We are where we are after every one of the nation’s mass shootings. Lapdog and weak politicians with no backbone are afraid to do what they know is right. Because…..rights.

Rights? Where are the rights of Americans to be safe when going to concerts, shopping at malls, going to college classes, sitting at work or school, having a drink at a nightclub or at a military base? They don’t count. Death is not their concern. If it was one of their own though, ~~they would care.~~

The gun issue is not untouchable. We will make it touchable. We will demand answers and demand solutions. Politicians will have to address it. They will not be left to avoid it any more. Some are already changing their tune:

Another Democrat who had once been in the NRA’s favor, Rep. Tim Walz (Minn.), also donated a sum matching his past NRA contributions this week. Walz, who is running for governor and was under pressure from a Democratic primary opponent, sent $18,000 to the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund, a nonprofit group that helps the families of service members who are killed or severely wounded.

“I’m doing what I can to get past the political attacks and back to addressing this problem,” Walz said, who also held an “A” rating.

They want to be elected and perhaps they are finally waking up to the common sense of the American voters. I have personally spoken with Rep. Tim Walz who is the only Democratic candidate for Governor with an A rating from the NRA. That is poison for him. We need to make it poison for all candidates. Gun violence is one of the most important issues of our day. It’s a public health epidemic that we are ignoring.

Speaking of NRA money, who does get the most money from the NRA anyway? Let’s take a look from the article:

Below are the top 10 career recipients of N.R.A. funding – through donations or spending to benefit the candidate – among both current House and Senate members, along with their statements about the Las Vegas massacre. These representatives have a lot to say about it. All the while, they refuse to do anything to avoid the next massacre.

Senator John McCain heads the list and had this to say about the Las Vegas shooting: ““Cindy & I are praying for the victims of the terrible #LasVegasShooting & their families.”” He has taken $7,740,251 from the NRA in his career as a Senator. It goes on from there. You get the picture.

No- your prayers and thoughts are insincere as long as you don’t have the spine to stand up for the victims and actually do something to prevent at least some shootings.

American support for stronger gun laws is at an all time high according to this latest polling after the Las Vegas shooting by Quinnipiac:

American voters say 63 – 27 percent that it’s possible to make new gun laws without interfering with gun rights. Republicans voters say 51 – 37 percent that it’s possible to make gun laws that don’t interfere with gun rights and voters in gun households agree 57 – 33 percent. “The Las Vegas massacre echoes though a survey that shows American voters want stricter gun laws and a ban on high-capacity clips and bump stocks, the device that makes a lethal weapon even more lethal,” said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll. -m

So Speaker Ryan and Republicans in control of our country- what say you?

Shame on them all. We need much more than a ban on bump fire stocks.

What we need is a comprehensive bill to make America safe again, including a ban on bump fire stocks, a reduction in the number of bullets in an ammunition magazine, a ban on certain types of assault rifles and the accompanying features that can be added to make them more deadly, universal Brady background checks, research into the causes and effects of gun violence, adequate funding for the ATF, stronger straw purchasing and gun trafficking laws, mandatory training before owning or carrying a gun, mandatory secure storage of guns, child access prevention laws, gun violence protection orders, limiting who can carry a loaded weapon around in public, and yes, perhaps even a system of gun registration.

These are my personal ideas by the way. Some of them, but not all, are shared by other gun control groups. But I am writing for myself on this blog post.

What we don’t need is concealed carry reciprocity, the NRA’s wet dream, that would leave us all with gun carrying yahoos walking around anywhere we are gathered in our communities without a shred of training with that gun and no permit to carry it. What we don’t need is for the deregulation of gun silencers so mass shooters can carry out their massacres making much less noise so law enforcement and victims can’t locate the shooter in order to flee or stop him.

Even Speaker Ryan got a spine for just a little while after the Las Vegas shooting. But never trust that the gun lobby will let it go away. They will be back. They will scare the lapdogs who carry their water into voting on a bill that makes no common sense and is a slippery slope to to doing away with the 1934 Gun Control Act.

I have spoken to many hunters and gun owners before and since the Las Vegas shooting. They agree with every one of these measures. And yes, to the gun extremist who doubted that my husband was a hunter and gun owner, he is. And he agrees with me and would even were he not married to me.

Oh, and I forgot to add the repeal of PLCAA and the Tiarht amendment and bringing law suits against gun manufacturers and sellers.

Speaking of that, the Brady Center to prevent gun violence has done just that. A class action law suit was filed earlier this week against the maker and sellers of bump fire stocks on behalf of the 22,000 or so concert goers whose lives were affected one way or the other by the heinous shooting of 58 of them and the injuring of about 450, some still in serious or critical condition.

Here is just one story to think about:

Like the rest of America I learned of the latest mass shooting in Las Vegas last Monday morning. My first thought was there will be fatalities. Families like mine receiving the devastating, life-altering news that a loved one has been murdered. That friends and family members will never come home again. More lives taken by bullets. These families will unknowingly and unwillingly join the sad club that no one wants to join. Tragically this club continues to grow, because a small loud vocal group of extremists love their guns more than they love their families. So I cry out to you America, it’s time to rise up and out shout the extremists to honor the 58 lives cut down at a music concert. It’s time to rise up and help me and thousands of other gun violence survivors, so that your family won’t receive the devastating phone call that a family member has been murdered by a disturbed man with a gun. Pick up your phone and call your U.S. Congressman and Senator and demand they fight for gun safety laws.

Speaker Paul Ryan- where are you? Senator Mitch McConnell- where are you?

Hiding in plain sight behind the second amendment with absolutely no backbone or will to protect your fellow Americans from senseless shootings. We know how the Las Vegas shooting happened Speaker Ryan, since that was your excuse to do nothing. It was the guns stupid. It was our nation’s feckless gun laws that allow easy access to weapons of mass destruction meant for war that allowed this to happen.

Get a backbone. Get some common sense for the love of God. If you are too weak to even consider challenging the corporate gun lobby over bump fire stocks that were used to massacre 58 Americans in cold blood, you don’t deserve to be sitting in your seats. Go home and be with your families and let those who are bold, courageous and with backbone do what needs to be done.

The thing is, every country has angry men. Every country has people who are dangerously mentally ill or who are felons or domestic abusers. But only in America do we have these people accessing arsenals of weapons to inflict mass destruction.

We are better than this.

“Get small”= gun control

October 6, 2017October 6, 2017 commongunsense"gun control", American gun deaths, bump stocks, concealed carry reciprocity, Congress and guns, corporate gun lobby, Fareed Zakaria, gerrymandering, Gun Violence Prevention, gun violence victims, guns and mental illness, lapdog politicians, Las Vegas shooting, mass shootings, NRA, NRA money given to Congress, representation in U.S. Senate, Senator John Thune, SHARE act, shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise

So let’s review this awful week.

58 dead and over 500 injured and we are told to be quiet and talk about guns and gun violence another time.

We were even told by South Dakota Senator John Thune to do more to get away from a shooter who is aiming a weapon with a “bump stock” making it act like a fully automatic weapon. He said we should “get small”.

Yes, he said that. He blamed the victims. I called his office and asked for an apology. As my family has suffered the loss of my sister to a gun homicide, I was wondering if she got small to try to defend herself against the totally unexpected situation of her estranged husband holding a gun to her head at close range. Then I started wondering if those innocent little children mowed down at Sandy Hook Elementary School could have gotten any smaller when a shooter rushed into their classrooms with no warning and opened fire.

Or what about Rep. Steve Scalise- one of their own? Could he have made himself small as a shooter took aim and seriously injured him? Yet, even he is afraid to speak up for what makes common sense. In fact in this article he claims that his own shooting “fortified his views on gun rights.” What? Yes, he said that. Check it out if you don’t believe me.

A stubborn adherence to an agenda without thinking through what could change to make us safer does not make sense- unless we follow the money and influence and the years of the gun lobby fooling us into believing that more guns would make us safer.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Insanity reigns.

And it’s not the claimed insanity of the shooters I am talking about. It is our very own elected leaders who are exhibiting insanity.

We are told that this is about mental illness and evil people- not guns.

(Oh- and I haven’t even talked about the daily carnage from guns aside from the almost daily mass shootings. That would be the 90 or so Americans who die every day from gunshot injuries that don’t get 24/7 media attention. One just happened in my home town- a young man used a gun to end his own life.)

It is about guns. We all know that. Who do they ( corporate gun lobby that is) think they are fooling? Maybe a minority of Senators and Representatives who actually represent fewer of us than the majority.

Fareed Zakaria knows this is not about mental illness:.

Second, turning immediately to the “sickness” of the shooter and piously calling for better mental-health care is, more often than not, an attempt to divert attention from the main issue: guns. (It’s also breathtakingly cynical because the politicians who use this rhetoric are typically the ones who also aim to cut funding for mental-health treatment.) Every conversation about gun deaths should begin by recognizing one blindingly clear fact about this problem — the United States is on its own planet. The gun-related death rate in the United States is 10 timesthat of other advanced industrial countries. Places such as Japan and South Korea have close to zero gun-related deaths in a year. The United States has around 30,000.

This disparity is the central fact that needs to be studied, explained and addressed. When seen in this light, it becomes obvious why focusing on mental health is a dodge. The rate of mental illness in the United States is not anywhere close to 40 times the rate in Britain. But the rate of gun deaths is 40 times higher. America does have more than 14 times as many guns as Britain per capita, and far fewer restrictions on their ownership and use. That’s the obvious correlation staring us in the face, as we insist on talking about every other possible issue.

And then, he says what is now being spoken out loud but was only quietly said after each of the other now more frequent mass shootings that inflict only America:

Given the Second Amendment, America’s gun culture and the influence of the gun lobby, there isn’t any simple answer. But there are many small fixes that would make a big difference: universal background checks; restrictions on military-style weaponry (of which banning bump stocks would be a tiny first step); a ban on selling to people with a history of domestic violence or substance abuse. But first we have to stop the dodges and the diversions. When you consider America’s stubborn inaction in the face of this continuing and preventable epidemic of gun violence — I sometimes wonder if it is all of us Americans who are crazy.

It is actually not all of us. It is some of us. But we are all responsible for not taking on the lapdog politicians who owe allegiance to the corporate gun lobby. Shame on us all.

Who will be next? Where will the next deadliest shooting take place?

The NRA is trying again to fool us all ( cleverly and cynically) by saying maybe they would consider dealing with the “bump stocks” that were used in the nation’s worst massacre from guns. Who do they think they are fooling? Lapdog politicians for a few.

Why are “bump stocks” even a thing?

We are not fooled. The fox is guarding the hen house. In what world does the industry that makes the weapons used to mow down this many people get to decide on the policies that have allowed this to happen in the first place?

This is another cynical and evil attempt to get the gun violence prevention movement to shut up and go away:

The NRA and its allies in the gun-rights movement want to avoid the airing in Congress of controversial issues such as universal background checks on gun sales, a ban on assault weapons and limits on high-capacity ammunition magazines.

When we make noise, it doesn’t look good for them. Profits may tumble. Power may crumble. More lives may be saved.

It’s been a hard week. The NRA went dark while the rest of us had vigils and calls to action. And no, thoughts and prayers are clearly not going to fix America’s unique national gun violence epidemic.

In what other country does this happen? It did happen once in Norway. When it happened in Australia, they acted. When it happened in Scotland, they acted.

The result? No more mass shootings.

Other countries have angry people and domestic abusers and felons and people with dangerous mental illness. What they don’t have is these people killing innocent citizens with guns they shouldn’t have had in the first place.

All brought to you by the corporate gun lobby.

Now is the time to talk about our gun violence epidemic. NOW IS THE TIME.

94% of Americans know this. Even Republicans. Even gun owners. But their leaders are not acting and, indeed, acting against the wishes of their constituents.

Shameful. Deplorable.

Those who refuse to act lack the courage to do what even in their own hearts they know is right.

Here are the ones who have taken the most money from the gun lobby. They are in part responsible for the carnage. There is really no other way to say it any more.

We can see you. We can see how much you have taken to stop efforts to save lives.

Shame on you.

It’s the guns, stupid. Or is it the stupid guns?

Our local Rabbi sent me this when he regretted he could not attend our candlelight vigil the other night due to a Jewish holiday:

“I join with all those who grieve at the massacre that took place in Las Vegas and who are frustrated at the timidity of our elected representatives who fail to enact reasonable gun control measures or, worse yet, seek to loosen those that already exist.”

Yes- loosen. Speaker Paul Ryan took the SHARE act off of the table- for now- knowing how insane it would be to consider deregulating gun silencers in light of the discussion about how much worse this mass shooting could have been had the shooter used silencers.

They got caught this time. The media and sane politicians exposed this insanity.

But we don’t trust that it will stay off the floor. After the tears dry and the talk dies down and the victims’ families quietly mourn, the lapdog politicians will try to sneak it in.

Insanity.

And we know that the NRA has already said that their priority is the national concealed carry reciprocity act. In light of the Las Vegas massacre, we ought to consider how cynical it is to push this bill right now. But it will be used as another excuse to loosen gun laws that need tightening. Because- rights- the second amendment. I mean, think about how a person without a permit or training could have saved the day outside of the Mandalay Bay hotel that night!

In their dreams.

Fantasyland. This article explains it better:

The least fantastical is the idea that if a criminal threatens or attacks tomorrow, you want a gun handy to kill him. Being prepared for a showdown with a bad guy is the main reason gun owners give for owning one, and in the surveys that answer has doubled since the 1990s. During the same period, the chance of an American actually having such an encounter has decreased by half. In New York City, where restrictions on owning and carrying guns are among the strictest in the United States, the chance of being murdered is 81 percent less than it was in 1990. (…)

But beyond the prospect of protecting oneself against random attacks—and by the way, among the million-plus Americans interviewed in 10 years of Crime Victimization Surveys, exactly one sexual assault victim used a gun in self-defense—several outlandish scenarios and pure fantasies drive the politics of gun control. One newer fantasy has it that in the face of an attack by jihadi terrorists, armed random civilians will save the day. Another is the fantasy that patriots will be obliged to become terrorist rebels, like Americans did in 1776 and 1861, this time to defend liberty against the U.S. government before it fully reveals itself as a tyrannical fascist-socialist-globalist regime and tries to confiscate every private gun.

A friend noted on her Facebook page that it dawned on her that gun control is actually guns controlling our politicians.

True.

Where is common sense?

Now is the time.

25 years later- unhappy anniversary

August 5, 2017August 5, 2017 commongunsenseASK campaign, Brady background checks, Brady Campaign to prevent gun violence, Brady Law, conceal carry laws, concealed carry reciprocity, corporate gun lobby, Dear Abby column, domestic shootings, gun laws in America, gun lobby myths, gun rights extremists, gun trafficking, incivility, Jim Brady, mass shootings, NRA, President Trump and guns, public health and safety, responsible gun owners, risks of guns in homes, safe storage, Sikh Temple shooting, straw purchasing, victims of gun violence4 Comments

crying woman This will be a long post. But then again, 25 years is a long time since the death of my sister. It’s a long time to have worked on gun violence prevention. It’s a long time living with the fact that we seem to be febile in the face of the gun lobby influence and have allowed lapdog politicians to do their bidding. And while the fight to prevent gun violence continues so do the deaths due to firearms injuries.

Too many families mark the anniversaries of the death of a loved one to gun violence. What an unhappy anniversary. It brings back the memories of the phone call and/or the visit from law enforcement announcing that a shooting had taken the life of your child, parent, sister, brother, aunt, uncle, grandchild or grandparent or a good friend. Gun violence has a ripple effect so the broader community and sometimes the entire country is affected by heinous shootings. It is in our consciousness and our collective memories and our collective culture.

Today is the 25th anniversary of the shooting death of my sister, Barbara. She was a beautiful lively, talented artist and pilot. She was a biker, a very good downhill skier, a tennis player, a beauty queen, a mother and step-mother, very involved in her community and a world traveler. In high school her friends called her Bugs. I still am not sure why. Because she grew up in Duluth, some of her friends still live here and I run into them occasionally. They always have fond memories to share of her as she was loved by many.

In spite of the fact that her estranged husband ( 2nd husband) killed her, the adult children from her first marriage and adult child from her second marriage along with the adult children from his first marriage remain close to each other. His first wife has taken on the role of grandmother to the grandchildren my sister never met. My husband, my children and I all remain close with all of them. It was because of my sister’s ability to love and draw people together that we have remained a close family.

We could have been angry and divorced ourselves from his family, but my mother was forgiving to a fault and kept them all close. The thing is, we loved them all and had no idea that my soon to be ex brother-in-law was capable of shooting and killing two people. That is how it often is. Family members are surprised proclaiming that the shooter was such a nice person or a quiet guy or the family seemed to be so happy. What went wrong? It was so unexpected. That is the risk of having a gun so accessible in situations of anger and domestic disputes.:

DID YOU KNOW? Keeping a gun in the home raises the risk of homicide.

States with the highest levels of gun ownership have 114 percent higher firearm homicide rates and 60 percent higher homicide rates than states with the lowest gun ownership (Miller, Hemenway, and Azrael, 2007, pp. 659, 660).

The risk of homicide is three times higher in homes with firearms (Kellermann, 1993, p. 1084).

Higher gun ownership puts both men and women at a higher risk for homicide, particularly gun homicide (Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard Injury Control Research Center, 2009).

Stunning.

I will always remember the night of the phone call about my sister’s death- actually on August 6 because her body and that of her friend were not discovered until the next day. When my nephew told me that my sister had died I assumed it was a plane crash since she was a pilot. Or anything else besides a shooting. How can one imagine that happening to a loved one? The violence. I often wonder how it would have been for her in the seconds before death after 1,2 and then a third bullet entered her body. Unimaginable. I can’t go there. photo of Barbara

Guns are deadly weapons designed to kill people. I won’t repeat the figures here again but we know that a lot of people die needlessly from firearm injuries. We also know that we are NOT helpless to change the trajectory of the number of gun deaths. More guns means more gun deaths. That is just a common sense fact.

We are not dealing in common sense though. Tragically we are dealing with a powerful and well funded corporate gun lobby that has become an arm of the extreme right wing of our nation. They use the second amendment as cover for their ever increasingly extreme agenda, aimed at arming anyone everywhere. We will not be safer as a country.

On this 25th anniversary of my sister’s death, I want to also remember the 5 year anniversary of the Sikh temple shooting in Wisconsin, 6 died that day because of a hate filled white supremacist who killed just because. That is the American tragedy playing out regularly every day, week, month and year.

This shooting was just one of the very many mass shootings in America. Only in America is this a regular part of a nation’s culture. It doesn’t have to be this way.

I have some suggestions:

Stop making this about the second amendment. It is about preventing gun deaths and injuries.

Stop the ludicrous assertion that passing a universal background check to require Brady background checks for all gun sales will inevitably lead to gun confiscation. That is a lie.

Challenge the NRA and other extreme gun rights groups when they cross over a line and stoke up lies and fear. Take this latest from Dana Loesch of NRA TV, for just one example:

Dana Loesch, spokesperson for the National Rifle Association, is yet again making headlines for controversial reasons. On Friday, during an interview with Grant Stichfield on the NRA TV channel, Loesch equated penalizing gun owners with shaming rape victims. Her comments were in response to a study conducted by the Center for American Progress indicating an increased rate of gun thefts in Southern states — with most of the stolen firearms ending up illegally trafficked and utilized in robberies and violent crimes. Texas, Georgia, and Florida topped the list with over 8,100 thefts of licensed firearms between 2012 and 2016. The Center for American Progress suggested implementing laws enforcing stricter storage guidelines for gun owners.

Loesch argued that focusing on gun owners rather than on those stealing the guns is analogous to shaming victims of sexual assault:

Good grief. What nonsense. No wonder some gun owners are moving away from this organization.

So we should encourage more reasonable gun owners who generally agree with the gun violence prevention groups to raise their voices. Many believe the NRA has become too extreme for them and have left the organization. Here is just one who wrote about his displeasure with the NRA:

As a gun owner and defender of the Second Amendment, I’m here to tell you the NRA has lost its ever-loving mind.

The nation’s largest firearms organization began its slide into moral degeneracy as late as the early 2000s, when actor Charlton Heston became its five-term president (a feat for which the NRA’s rules had to be changed to allow him to serve longer), before going public with his battle with Alzheimer’s disease and retiring. Under Heston’s firebrand leadership, the NRA’s rhetoric shifted its focus from working with lawmakers across the country to defend Second Amendment rights, to recasting the group as the front-line warrior in a crusade against the entire progressive movement in a culture war that they claimed had engulfed the country. (…)

A responsible NRA would be working for, not against, universal background checks on all firearms sales. As a responsible gun owner, it’s my job to ensure anyone I transfer a weapon to is in fact legally permitted to possess one. That’s the bare minimum due diligence that should be expected of me, and the vast majority of Americans and even gun owners agree. But not the NRA.

Pass the law to close the gap with Brady background checks that now allows private sellers to sell guns without knowing whether the buyer is a felon, a domestic abuser or someone dangerously mentally ill.

Pass laws to require safe storage of guns.

Strengthen gun trafficking laws.

Crack down on straw purchasing. The Brady Center won a settlement against a Florida gun dealer and announced it today. The message from the gun dealer who sold a gun through a straw purchase which was used in a fatal shooting:

“We must exercise great caution and due diligence with great responsibility in preventing firearms from getting in the wrong hands of people who seek to harm us all. I support laws that protect our Second Amendment and the laws that protect our society from criminal elements who would abuse that right to the detriment of others. I encourage all gun dealers, including the new owner of my gun shop, to implement such measures.”

Hold every gun dealer and every gun owner responsible for being safe with guns and business practices. Lives can be saved.

Educate parents about ASKing if there are loaded, unsecured guns in homes where their children play. One big question could save a life.

Form coalitions of like minded people who are interested in keeping people from shooting themselves or others such as faith groups, gun owners, law enforcement, mental health organizations, domestic violence associations, health care providers, communities of color, LGBTQ community, educators, parents, business leaders and other gun violence prevention groups.

Crack down on irresponsible gun dealers. (See above article about the Brady Center settlement against an irresponsible gun dealer)

Don’t loosen gun carry permit laws. New research suggests that the passage of the conceal (and open) carry laws have led to more gun violence.

Change the conversation about the risks of guns to families and communities. Push back when bad advice or faulty information is in the public domain like the recent Dear Abby column about kids and guns. After the Brady Campaign and other organizations and volunteers weighed in Abby wrote a column with new advice and changed her mind.

Remember the victims and survivors and make sure their stories are told. They are the voices of the movement to prevent shootings.

Stop saying our thoughts and prayers are with you and do something about the gun violence epidemic. TAKE ACTION.

Join one of the many gun violence prevention groups working to end gun violence at the local, state and national level. Join them in sending emails, postcards, making phone calls, lobbying at offices, tabling, speaking out, going to rallies, bell ringings, other events. They need you.

Work together for common sense.

I will end by suggesting that the current culture of incivility, sometimes including our own friends, on social media is disturbing. It starts from the top. With a President who has mentioned violence at rallies and said that he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue without losing supporters, we have hit some new lows in civility. With trolls making rude and offensive comments when they disagree with someone, how can we have a civil society? It’s a frightening trend.

With members of both parties attacking each other and then the other party, how can we expect civility? With more armed people walking around with loaded guns in public, can we expect civility?

Social media allows a platform for organizing and promoting causes as well as keeping in touch with each other. But when it also becomes a platform for open criticism of even other friendly organizations or candidates or friends and family members, how can we expect people to settle disputes peacefully and without use of force? With the wide gap between Americans politically, the fear and paranoia is real. What we don’t need is ramping it up to include the idea of violence against each other and particularly with guns. Gun rights and the second amendment go only so far. The NRA’s leaders and lobbyists and other gun rights organizations have increasingly associated themselves with one political party in our country. The rhetoric has become more violent and suggestive of “second amendment remedies”. Why? The question should be asked and answered.

We are better than this. I am sure we all want to leave our country and the world a better and safer place for our children and grandchildren. That is what my sister would have wanted and that is why I am persisting. In her name I carry on. I stand on the legacy and lost lives of the 825,000 Americans who have died from gunshot injuries since 1992. That’s right. 25 multiplied by 33,000 is that much. In 1992 when my sister was shot and killed gun deaths were actually higher than 33,000 per year.

And last, I want to pay tribute to Jim Brady who died 3 years ago yesterday. I met him once and immediately was taken by his sense of humor and engaging personality even as he suffered from the decades long firearm injuries he suffered in the assassination attempt on the life of President Reagan. Jim and his wife Sarah persisted in spite of the terrible situation in which they found themselves, and got the Brady Law passed. Lives have been saved as a result.

I honor all victims of gun violence on this anniversary of my sister’s shooting death. Many things have changed since her death but one thing has not- gun violence is a thing. It’s a thing that needs fixing.

Shed a tear. Ring the bell. Light a candle. Pick a flower. Think for a minute the horror of losing a loved one in a shooting. And then take action and do something about it.

A summit of gun violence prevention leaders and advocates

May 6, 2017 commongunsenseAmericans for Responsible Solutions, ASK campaign, Brady background checks, Brady Campaign to prevent gun violence, child access to guns, Children's Firearm Safety Alliance, concealed carry killers, concealed carry reciprocity, Dan Gross, domestic shootings, Gabby Giffords, gun silencers, guns and public health and safety, H.R. 38, H.R.367, lapdog politicians, mass shootings, Million Mom March, officer involved shootings, permitless carry, politics and guns, state conceal carry laws, Violence Policy Center

There are so many things to talk about.

I have just made a trip to Washington D.C. for the joint Brady Campaign, Americans for Responsible Solutions summit- A Nation United for a Safer Future. I have been involved in this movement long enough to have met many leaders and victims from all over the country. Many of us met and continued our friendship through the Million Mom March and now Brady Campaign. I also have met and know people involved with Americans for Responsible Solutions. Social media has allowed us all to connect and become friends. Many victims and survivors attended the summit.

Here were just a few of the victims and survivors in attendance.

A mother whose daughter was shot at the Aurora Theater; a mother and father of a young woman reporter shot on live T.V.; a young woman whose mother was shot in the Clackamas Mall shooting just days before the Sandy Hook shooting; a mother and a father whose college students survived the Virginia Tech shooting; a father whose son was shot when a friend was handling a gun; a mother whose 13 year old daughter was shot by a gun stored openly and loaded in the home of a friend; a man whose mother shot and killed herself; the woman who kicked the ammunition away when the Tucson shooter stopped to re-load his gun; a father whose son was shot in the Isla Vista mass shooting; several women whose family members had committed suicide by gun; a woman whose brother was shot and killed many years ago; me- who lost a sister to bullets during a domestic shooting; Dan Gross, President of the Brady Campaign whose brother was shot and injured in the terror attack on the Empire State Building; a woman who had lost two children to shootings; two women whose children were shot and injured in the Jewish Day Care Center in Los Angeles; a man whose mother was shot and killed when a shooter was looking for someone else and mistakenly shot and killed her and wounded his father…….

Aside from victims and survivors, attendees included law enforcement officers, interested advocates, leaders of national and state organizations, clergy, staff members of the two organizations, politicians, lawyers, health care providers, NAACP leaders, film makers, a founder of the Women’s March, and many others.

Politicians who spoke to and with us:

Former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and her husband Mark Kelly.

Senators Cory Booker, Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal from Connecticut, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand

Connecticut Representative Esty, California Representative Mike Thompson, Rhode Island Representative Dave Cicilline, Representatives Val Demings and Stephanie Murphy from Florida and others.

Maura Healey, Massachusetts Attorney General

Valerie Jarrett, former advisor to President Obama.

But we didn’t just listen and react to these amazing speakers. We took action.

Hundreds of participants lobbied on Capitol Hill and had great visits, “armed” with information about two concerning bills that would make us all less safe if enacted:

H.R. 38- Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017 ( Arm Everyone bill). This bill would, if it became law, override steps that states have taken to protect public safety and put citizens at risk. It would leave states with no power to decide who carries hidden loaded guns ( or openly carried) within their own states and communities.

H.R.367- cynically called the Hearing Protection Act. This bill is meant to do what the gun lobby loves- increase sales of accessories to guns ( gun sales are down right now) and attempt to undo the 1934 National Firearms Act which requires individuals who purchase gun silencers and machine guns to undergo strict background checks, fingerprints, payment to register and license the gun/silencer and a waiting period. These regulations work. We just don’t see silencers used in crimes since that act became law. If this bill were to pass, we could expect to see silencers sold without Brady background checks through private seller internet sales and private sellers at gun shows. It also creates threats to law enforcement and would make it more difficult to respond to mass shooters as the sound of gunfire would be muffled and dispersed. There are many items sold to protect hearing while using firearms that make more sense.

Can we just talk about the fact that conceal carry weapons holders DO kill and threaten people with their guns even after going through a permitting process? Read the Violence Policy Center‘s report- Concealed Carry Killers. And can we also talk about the fact that 11 states now allow people to carry guns with no training or permit requirements.?Without a system of universal background checks, these people could be prohibited purchasers who will be allowed to carry their guns everywhere. How will we know the “good guys” with guns from the bad guys with guns? I have not heard an answer that makes any sense. The idea that it’s OK to normalize the carrying of guns everywhere by anyone is not only ludicrous, it is irresponsible and dangerous.

On “The Hill”, we had some great conversations, a chance to thank those who have voted against the gun lobby sponsored bills and who have led the charge and the conversation about the need to prevent gun violence. And we had a few victories when Congress members changed their positions after meeting with our groups of victims and advocates.

The importance of the summit and visits to Capitol Hill cannot be overstated. Advocates who had never attended a summit before were engaged and energized. They now know they can do this. People like me came away re-energized and encouraged that, in spite of the Republicans in charge, the issue of gun violence and the prevention of it has more support than ever before. It’s only Congress (doing the bidding of the corporate gun lobby) who stands in the way of common sense. And while they are doing that, 32,000 Americans ( give or take)- real people- someone’s family member or good friend- are killed by guns. It happens every day.

During the summit we all engaged our minds about legislation, other actions, and changing the conversation about this public health epidemic. There was much to think about and actual incidents that reminded us about why we were there. Among just a few:

Americans continue to die by bullets in alarming numbers. The Gun Violence Archive keeps track of shooting incidents. It’s not pretty.

And here are the reasons people get shot in Aor shoot others from Parents Against Gun Violence::

reasons people shot in April

And ISIS is telling its’ members to buy guns in America because it is so easy:

“The acquisition of firearms can be very simple depending on one’s geographical location,” the article read. “In most U.S. states, anything from a single-shot shotgun all the way up to a semi-automatic AR-15 rifle can be purchased at showrooms or through online sales — by way of private dealers — with no background checks, and without requiring either an ID or a gun license.”

The Rumiyah article specifically touted gun shows where these unregulated sales are often easiest.

And the officer who shot a black teen in Texas was fired and charged with murder.

And Gander Mountain management bet wrongly on gun sales and lost. (Go figure. When Democrats are in office, the gun lobby scares people into buying guns in high numbers. When Republicans are in charge- no worries.)

“In 2016, at a rate of more than twice a week, a child under 18 years old was shot and killed with a loaded, unsecured gun”. This is from the Children’s Firearm Safety Alliance, a new organization that presented information at the summit. One can look up current information of shootings of and by children on this site. Who cares about the children?

And in just another average day in America, two young people are dead in a murder/suicide at a Texas college campus. Domestic disputes often spill over into public places and also way too often are the cause of mass shootings.

Asking about loaded, unsecured guns in homes can save lives. (ASK campaign)

And a health care bill passed in the House that will leave millions of Americans with no health care and lower taxes on the wealthy.

And those those with mental illness will have easier access to guns than health care.

Gun violence is a public health epidemic.

Many gun deaths and injuries are preventable and avoidable.

If we are to have the serious conversation we need and deserve to have, recognizing that there is a problem in the first place that can actually be fixed, or cured, or prevented or reduced in severity and frequency, is the most important thing we can do. Using some common sense in arguments and discussions will lead to responsible solutions.

On my plane back home from DC were at least a half dozen members of Congress, including my own, anxious to get back home for the recess ( didn’t they just have one?). While waiting to board, I spoke with my own Representative who introduced me to a Senator from a neighboring state- a Republican. We had a good discussion about health care and gun violence. We did not agree on much. But his main reason for being skeptical or against common sense solutions to save lives is one of the gun lobby’s myths. He actually believes that organizations such as the Brady Campaign and Americans for Responsible Solutions are out to get his guns. He is a lapdog for the gun lobby and will do their bidding no matter what anyone says to him.

As long as some of our politicians are in the pocket of the corporate gun lobby, we can expect to see bills that could become law that will actually make us less safe and lead to an increase in gun deaths and injuries. Is there anyone who thinks that is a good idea? The American public agrees that passing strong gun laws is a good idea.

Please make sure your own elected leaders are doing the bidding of the people and not the corporate gun lobby. We can make a difference if our voices are loud and clear about saving lives. For that is the bottom line.

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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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