Congress and gun laws

International Women’s Day

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Today is a day to celebrate women all over the world. We have only to look a few decades back to when women in America finally got the vote after years of protesting, organizing, and being arrested to understand why we need a day of celebration of women. Women like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton persisted in spite of the men who were as determined that they should not be able to vote as they were that they had the right to vote. They are role models to all women even today.

Women are superheroes- they are working mothers, they are stay at home mothers, they are sisters and grandmas who serve as CEOs, and in all professions that just decades ago were almost all occupied by men. The world has changed thanks to the persistence of women.

I am a proud member of the League of Women Voters in my community. The League has served to educate, engage and activate women on issues of concern- not just women’s issues- all issues. Many women leaders and elected leaders have come from that organization over the years. I stand on the shoulders of many great women leaders and organizers.Don

Of course, the Million Mom March was the springboard for many of us now and remaining involved in the gun violence prevention movement. One woman, Donna Dees Thomases, after seeing small children being led out of a Jewish Community Center day care center in L.A. in 1999 after a shooter wounded several inside, got a permit for a march on the Mall in D.C. And then the Columbine shooting happened. Mothers ( and parents) all over the country watched in horror as kids were shot down in a school in Colorado. And then they got mad and got organized.

The rest is history. I attended the march in 2000 in Washington D.C. and was moved, angered, and energized after observing so many victims and survivors of gun violence with names of loved ones killed by bullets on their hats, shirts and signs. Some of the mothers of kids injured in the day care center are still involved with gun violence prevention. We are now merged with Brady and there are chapters all over the country populated by mothers and others. We persist in pushing for stronger gun laws all over the country, including in my own state of Minnesota.

Brady is celebrating the women who got involved and stayed involved in videos sent out to supporters before the coming 20th anniversary of the Million Mom March. After the 2000 march, the organization name was changed to Brady because of the efforts of Sarah Brady, wife of James Brady, President Reagan’s Press Secretary, shot in the assassination attempt on Reagan’s life in 1981. Sarah persisted in her efforts to get the Brady Law passed and finally won. The law has been in effect since 1994.

And Brady’s capable leader is Kris Brown, a powerful and effective woman leading one of the country’s oldest gun violence prevention organization.

Spurred on by the horrendous shooting of 20 young children at Sandy Hook Elementary school in 2012, Moms Demand Action for GunSense in America was founded by Shannon Watts. Hundreds of thousands of women and others belong to chapters of MDA in every state in the country.

Women have been victims of many domestic and other shootings. My sister was just one of many of these women. Victims of domestic violence are FIVE times more likely to be murdered if their abuser obtains a gun according to Brady.

According to Giffords ( an organization formed after a woman Congress member, Gabby Giffords, was shot and severely wounded in a mass shooting in 2011):

The firearm homicide rate for women in the US is nearly 16 times higher than that in other high-income countries.
Laws that prohibit firearms after a domestic violence restraining order is issued are associated with a 13% decrease in firearm intimate partner homicides.

As long as the Senate refuses to act on bills that will keep guns away from domestic abusers, women will continue to be at risk. For the first time since the Violence of Women Act passed in 1994 the Senate has refused to pass this bill. From this New York Times article:

“The bill has three broad, but simple, goals: to make streets safer for women; to make homes safer for women; and to protect women’s civil rights,” Joseph R. Biden Jr., one of the bill’s sponsors when he was a Delaware senator, said in 1990.

That summer, survivors delivered stirring testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee. At the time, the Senate had only two women and the proposal had little support from women’s groups or civil rights groups.

There is one reason why Senator Mitch McConnell and most Republicans refuse to re-authorize the act:

There’s already a law on the books to keep guns out of the hands of spouses convicted of such crimes, and Democrats and some Republicans have long wanted to extend that restriction to partners. But the National Rifle Association is opposed, and that’s why the bill is stalled in the Senate.

“The objection doesn’t make any sense if the idea is to be consistent and to protect women,” Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) told VICE News. “At this point, we don’t see why we wouldn’t close that loophole.”

Are we going to let a minority of gun owners and Americans decide what is best for women? If the violence was happening to men, would the act be stalled? I think we know the answer. The same is true of women’s health care and women making their own decisions about their bodies. The fact that men want to control women’s bodies is just another example of why we must celebrate women on this day.

Everyone is affected by gun violence- men, women, transgender and GLBTQ Americans of all ages and races. But when it comes to domestic violence, it is most often the women who become the victims. And many of our mass shootings are spawned by a domestic dispute:

But scientists say the real problem is that violent, impulsive, and angry men are getting their hands on guns.

Many of the shooters behind the deadliest mass shootings in modern America (listed below) committed violence against women, threatened violence against women, or disparaged women.

Suicides become homicide/suicides as well as (mostly) men who are angry, depressed or upset about a relationship or something else are suicidal but also shoot someone else:

In a comparison of homicides-suicides in the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United States (using NVDRS data), major differences — e.g., Switzerland and the U.S. have much higher rates of homicide-suicide than the Netherlands — are explainable by the availability of firearms.

The bottom line is that women are often the ones on the front lines of the fight against gun violence. They are also on the front lines of those affected by gun violence. Today is a day to remember and celebrate women all over the world who have fought against violence against women and for women’s rights. Being a woman in many countries is dangerous and difficult. When heroes like Malala Yousafzei step up, it gives other women and girls the courage to do the same. She was the victim of a terrible shooting and survived to speak up. And, of course, it took a Swedish teen-ager, Greta Thunberg, to lead the world wide effort against climate change.

Women are about 50% of the population but still not where we should be regarding influence and leadership on the most important issues of the day. If even half of the world’s and our own country’s leaders were women, I believe many issues would be looked at and solved differently.

The day after President Trump was sworn in as the 45th President, a million women and others (including myself) marched in Washington D.C. bringing in more people than attended the inauguration. Several hundred thousand others marched in cities all over the world in concert with the march in D.C. Women have led the way against a misogynistic man whose reputation with women and statements made during the campaign angered and invigorated women to act. The march organizers held workshops on running for office and run they did. The historic 2018 election saw 90 newly elected women take office in Congress.

When women run for office they serve as role models to girls and women as well. The 2020 Presidential race is an example of how difficult it is to run as a woman to lead our country. It’s discouraging that so many believe that a woman cannot be the Commander in Chief. That’s nonsense. Women are tough. Maybe that’s the problem. When women challenge men in a relationship or in a primary or a debate, too often they become victims of the status quo.

We can and should get the background check bill passed into law in the U.S. Senate to keep guns away from domestic abusers and others who should not have them. In addition Red Flag or Extreme Risk Protection Order laws have been passed in many states but should be passed in all to allow for the removal of guns from domestic abusers by law enforcement after a judge determines they could be a danger to themselves or others. Women would be safer if these bills are enacted into law.

Everyone would be safer, of course. But today is the day to celebrate women.

I applaud all women who put their names and faces into the public sphere to speak up for what’s right and for the changes we deserve. It’s not easy. Women are often criticized unfairly and suffer from discrimination because of simply being a woman. Please say thank you to a woman today.

Knives, tusks, guns and terror attacks

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The world stopped for a while on Friday when a now known terrorist killed 2 innocent British citizens in a knife attack. Bystanders acted quickly by grabbing something called a narwhal tusk and a few fire extinguishers before police arrived with guns to shoot him. (A narwhal tusk is very long and sharp, made of ivory) Much has been made of these brave citizens who acted without thinking about their own safety. Likely they saved more innocent people from being killed or injured. And- without guns.

Raise your hand if you have heard of a narwhal tusk used as a weapon.

(As an aside, I actually saw a narwhal tusk on display while at the Hofburg palace museum in Vienna in October. It was a curious item to be displayed there and we wondered at the time about it. It turns out to be an item of the myth of Unicorns.)

Let us stop for a minute to remember the two victims of the attack- both graduates of Cambridge University:

Saskia Jones, 23, and Jack Merritt, 25, were both involved with Learning Together, a network of academics and criminal justice organizations, which was hosting an event at Fishmonger’s Hall where the attack began on Friday.

In the United Kingdom, citizens do not carry guns nor do they own many of them without a lot of regulations and laws. Police did not used to be armed but are now, given the world in which we live. Fairly regular terror attacks have occurred in the UK- none with firearms. Many have died but it doesn’t even come close to the toll of American lives lost in armed terror attacks in our country:

Terrorist attacks are much more likely to involve firearms in the U.S. than in many other high-income industrialized countries, a new study suggests.

Researchers examined data on 2,817 terrorist attacks in the United States, Canada, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand from 2002 to 2016.

Nearly all of the countries with attacks had at least 10 incidents. Among these countries, the U.S. had the highest proportion of attacks involving guns, at 20 percent, followed by the Netherlands at 14 percent.

“The overall burden of firearm violence is much greater in the United States compared to other high-income countries,” said lead study author Dr. Robert Tessler of the Harborview Injury Prevention and Research Center and the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle.

“Our findings indicate that terrorist attacks involving firearms are deadlier compared to attacks with other weapons, regardless of the country,” Tessler said by email.

We should also remember that in the U.S. those on the known terror watch list can legally buy guns because we have not made it illegal.

You can’t make this stuff up.

There is a truth here that seems to go unnoticed by our elected officials in Congress who are beholden to the influence of the corporate gun lobby instead of to the majority of Americans who want them to protect us from senseless gun violence. I should say that these leaders notice but choose to do nothing. Since the U.S. House passed the bill requiring Brady background checks on all gun sales in February of this year, 27,670 Americans have died from firearms injuries.

Stunning.

#DoSomething

As long as Senator Mitch McConnell (President Trump) is in charge of the Senate, we can expect to see more deaths of innocent Americans. They are happening all around us every day. Suicides, homicides and “accidental” gun deaths are in news reports today as I write. There is no common sense amongst Senate Republicans at the moment. Their hands are bloodied and stained with their willful neglect and refusal to do what’s right.

And as long as there are people who insist on perpetuating the myth that more people with guns in public places ( “good guys with guns”) can save the day to stop terror attacks, the deaths will continue. A friend of our very own President had this to say about the terror attack in London:

“Takeaway from #LondonBridge incident: If law-abiding Londoners could carry firearms legally, it probably wouldn’t have happened. Amazing how bold the terrorists are when they know their victims will be unarmed,” he wrote.

Piers Morgan was among those to criticise Wohl’s response, with the Irish Post Award winner tweeting: “How can anyone be this dumb?”

Dumb is a good word for it. Just how would a “good guy” with a gun have been in the exact place when a terrorist decided to attack? And just what would that armed citizen have done to stop an attack that took place in a flash of a second surprising innocent people going about their business? And what makes those who say these dumb things believe they, themselves, would be able to act so quickly to save the day when chaos reigns and adrenaline is taking over the ability to act calmly and rationally? And just what makes those who believe in this myth believe that when law enforcement arrives on the scene, as they usually do pretty quickly, they themselves will not be mistaken for the attacker?

Alas, none of these common sense questions have answers that make any sense-except to themselves.

Rather than prevent so many guns from getting into the hands of people who should not have them or flood our streets with guns, our leaders are aiding and abetting the flooding of weapons into our streets, homes, businesses and public places. And, for the record, many of these guns used in attacks are could possibly have been prevented with stronger laws to keep the perpetrators from getting guns in the first place:

Mass shootings are not a random, inevitable element of American life today. Rather, this report illuminates trends that can help point lawmakers to strategies to curb these tragedies. These trends include that mass shootings are often:

perpetrated by someone who was legally prohibited from possessing a firearm;

perpetrated by someone who displayed prior warning signs;

intermingled with acts of domestic violence; and

far deadlier when they involve assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.

All of our mass shootings to me are domestic terror attacks. Some have involved weapons legally owned such as at the Aurora theater shooting, the Sutherland Springs church shooting,( though he should have been prohibited), the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, and others.

Until we put our collective heads together to solve and treat our national gun violence epidemic, we will have more terror attacks, mass shootings, suicides, homicides and small children finding guns they shouldn’t have to shoot themselves or someone else avoidably and senselessly.

A 14 year old Texas boy found a gun and shot and gravely injured himself. It was a “reckless injury” as reported by law enforcement. The mother said her son had access to guns in the home. The 3 boys were passing it around. Every gun in the hands of a child must first pass through the hands of an adult.

In the same story linked above, the police officer reported in great detail about an officer involved shooting. A Texas airman, obviously suicidal, aimed his weapon at the officers who responded. He then shot and killed himself with his weapon.

Lock up those guns all of you “law abiding” gun owners and good guys with guns. Be aware of military members, veterans and the risk of suicide.

Just today, in the midst of a lot of snow, 2 Minneapolis children were shot and killed while playing outside in the snow. What the H$%T?

11 were injured in a mass shooting at a celebration in New Orleans. Guns and altercations do not go together. Do people need guns at a rowdy celebration? Not really. It’s obviously dangerous and reckless.

And at the National Zoo in D.C. a family thought that fireworks let off by some people nearby were gunshots, closing down the zoo.

The country has PTSD from so many shootings in public places. We shouldn’t have to live like this. From the article:

On Twitter, some visitors inside the zoo said the false alarm caused panic.

“Within 10 minutes people calmed,” Twitter Ashley (@WeinDC) wrote.
“But people were running and carrying kids and screaming gun. It wasn’t great.”

Another Twitter user by the name of Sammie Fritts said that her and her husband left immediately after hearing others shout about a shooter.

‘We didn’t stay long enough to find out,” she wrote. “My husband saw my anxiety attack about to happen and got me out of there asap.”

It is still unclear how many kids had the fireworks and where they were shot from.

We have a serious unsolved problem.

And while we are reporting on all of these senseless shootings, the gun lobby is hoping the Supreme Court will come down in favor of their notion that the second amendment means that people have a right to carry guns in public. In the aftermath of and the midst of mass shootings and school shootings after shootings, will the Court come down on the side of common sense? In light of the fact that more guns in public places have resulted in more death and injury it would be a travesty if the Court expanded the meaning of the second amendment.

So there we have it. More people are dying from gun injuries. Some people believe stupidly that more guns make us safer wherever we are, including from unexpected terror attacks. Children and teens are harming or killing themselves on a regular basis. Senseless homicides are happening all over the country- even in a Minneapolis snow bank. Military members and veterans are using firearms to kill themselves at a stunning rate of 22 per day. And the gun rights community wants to expand gun rights.

We are better than this. Where is common sense?