“law abiding” gun owners

America’s new “OK Corral”

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standing_cowboy_393It is becoming more and more difficult to narrow the topic for my blog posts because there are so many shooting incidents to write about. But this article from the St. Paul Pioneer Press gave me pause. From the article:

Jones said someone then threw a punch and “hell broke loose,” the complaint said.

“Jones said it was the OK Corral outside with everyone shooting,” the complaint said. “Jones said people were shooting everywhere.”

OK then. This quote is from a man, Jones, who we learn later in the article, cannot legally possess a firearm but had one anyway. And even though this incident in a local bar reminded him of the OK Corral. He was trying to “protect himself” he said. And so it goes in America. Bullets are flying everywhere and people feel like they need guns to protect themselves from others who have guns to protect themselves. And felons and others who are prohibited purchasers can easily get guns to add to the mayhem.

This is not OK.

Yesterday I attended my Senate district Democratic convention in Duluth. I ran into a man I had met recently at another event who wanted to talk to me about the gun issue. I was wearing my “Minnesotans Against Being Shot” tee shirt from Protect Minnesota which garnered a lot of attention and reaction because- who wants to be shot? Anyway, this man suggested that we write a resolution for next year’s party platform to lower flags to half staff for every mass shooting in our country. Though this is not amusing, it struck me as genius. Because, as we discussed, the flags would be at half staff almost every day.

For example, in the last few days there have been two heinous ( aren’t they all?) mass/spree shootings that have taken the lives of many innocent Americans, including children. The first, in Ohio, left 8 dead and several injured, including infants for goodness’ sake. From the article:

A fourth crime scene with an eighth victim, a 16-year-old boy, was established near Left Fork Road’s intersection with OH 772 in Pike County.

Three small children, a now 5-day-old, a 6-month-old and a 3-year-old survived the shootings. The Pike County Sheriff’s Office and the Ohio Attorney General’s Office have not said who is currently caring for the children.

Five days old? No words.Who does that? The shooter is still at large and the victims were related. This is likely another domestic shooting where the shooter and the victims knew each other. That is the most common type of homicide in our country- not a stranger shooting where a victim needed a gun for self defense. Most victims need to defend themselves from people they know as it turns out and trying to do so with a gun doesn’t work out well and is rarely done because victims are taken by surprise with little time to react

The next mass/spree shooting took place in Georgia. Five dead and the shooter shot and killed himself as too often happens. From the article:

In Columbia County, investigators say you can count the number of murders in a year on one hand. Although some of those murders have been violent in the past, Captain Andy Shedd says Friday night’s killing spree is something he’s never seen in all his years on the force.

“It is shocking and you try to wrap your head around it and you of course try to maintain your professionalism,” said Shedd.

Five people were killed Friday night by Wayne Hawes before turning the gun on himself.

Investigators are calling it a domestic violence attack involving his estranged wife and her family. Shedd tells News Channel 6 that the last time anything close to this happened within the county was back in the 1980’s.

And surprise, surprise, another shooter who was a prohibited purchaser but was able to get a gun anyway because….. America. From the article:

According to the Columbia County court system, from 1989-2002 Wayne Anthony Hawes had been arrested and charged with Battery, Assault, Several Speeding charges, Shoplifting, Selling Cocaine, 2 DUI charges, Obstruction of Police, Fleeing or Attempting to Allude Police, Reckless Driving.

This is just not happening in countries where gun laws are strong and people who shouldn’t have guns have a very hard time getting them. But in America- no problem. Felon? Go to a private seller and buy one with no background check. Domestic abuser? Use a straw purchase to get someone to buy a gun for you. Adjudicated mentally ill? Steal a gun from a friend, relative, or anyone who has guns unsecured in their homes. Have a grudge with your estranged wife or a family member?  Get a gun and take care of it. That’s the American way. Every day in America is a “shoot out at the OK Corral.”

And back to the OK Corral comment, let’s look at what that was all about in the first place because there are myths about the American wild west and guns that need to be examined. Here is the history of the shooting at the OK Corral:

After years of feuding and mounting tensions, on this day in 1881, the “law and order” Earps and the “cowboy” Clanton-McLaurys engage in their world-famous shoot-out near the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona, leaving three men dead and three more wounded.

By today’s standards of mass shootings, 3 dead is not a lot. Sadly that is the truth of the matter. But here’s the truth about guns in the wild western areas of America:

The 1881 gunfight in Tombstone, Ariz., was actually sparked by an effort to enforce the town’s Ordinance No. 9:  “It is hereby declared unlawful to carry in the hand or upon the person or otherwise any deadly weapon within the limits of said city of Tombstone, without first obtaining a permit in writing.”

That’s right, City Marshal Virgil Earp and his brother Wyatt were attempting to enforce a gun-control law that cowboys were evading — a law that was rather common in the West, according to historians.

“Carrying of guns within the city limits of a frontier town was generally prohibited. Laws barring people from carrying weapons were commonplace, from Dodge City to Tombstone,” said Adam Winkler, a professor at UCLA’s School of Law and author of Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America. “When Dodge City residents first formed their municipal government, one of the very first laws enacted was a ban on concealed carry. The ban was soon after expanded to open carry, too. The Hollywood image of the gunslinger marching through town with two Colts on his hips is just that — a Hollywood image, created for its dramatic effect.”

…”ban on concealed carry”…. Yikes! That could not happen in today’s America because the corporate gun lobby got its’ way and convinced state legislators that it’s just a peachy idea for anyone to carry loaded guns around just about everywhere. It’s working out well, don’t you think? The American gun culture encourages gun ownership and self defense. And the result? Read what I wrote about above.

I grew up watching cowboy “shoot ’em up” movies. Gun Smoke. Palladin. Roy Rogers. Wyatt Earp. The Lone Ranger. It was mythical and fantasy given that we knew those kinds of incidents were not actually happening in our own communities. But then, something happened in my family to change that idea and I became aware of what was actually happening all over America to families like mine. After my sister was shot and killed in a domestic shooting, I got involved in how to prevent that from happening to other families. Since then we have experienced too many heinous mass shootings to count. This is the real America actually. The “Wild West” was nothing compared to what’s occurring today.

So let’s review shall we? In the last several days or week in America, shooters are shooting up bars like the mythical days of the OK Corral. But in reality, the America of today is more deadly than the America described by a man (who couldn’t legally possess a firearm) who was involved in a bar shooting where bullets were flying everywhere. A spree shooting in Ohio with the shooter still at large, appears to be a domestic shooting leaving behind 8 dead and infants who have somehow survived their gunshot injuries. A Georgia man shot up his family and also himself because of some kind of domestic dispute leaving 6 total dead.

And I am now amending this post because I have seen that there have been 8 mass shootings since Friday taking the lives of 19, injuring 23 according to the Gun Violence Archive- a credible new source for tracking gun incidents.

half staff flagLower the flags to half staff.

Where is common sense?

Guns kill people

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Killing - Text on Red Puzzles.

Yes they do. Guns are the only product sold to consumers that are not regulated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. They are also in a unique category called deadly weapons that mostly includes guns and certain types of knives. Guns are designed to inflict harm and kill people ( or animals in the case of hunting). I write this often on my blog. When I post actual articles about “accidental” discharges or incidents involving so called “law abiding” gun owners I get the usual remarks from gun rights folks. They agree that these incidents are irresponsible and careless.

Maybe they shouldn’t have had a gun? No, that is usually not mentioned because the goal of the gun lobby and gun rights extremists is for just about anyone to have guns and have them just about anywhere. And so that is the push- selling guns to as many people as possible without apparent regard to whether that person knows even the tiniest thing about a gun before walking away with one.

I am going to digress for a second here because today is the anniversary of the Columbine shooting. I wrote about April anniversaries in my last post. The Columbine shooting was the one that we saw endless video of through media outlets. Who can forget the images of teens walking out of a school building with their hands up or running in some cases or trying to get out of the windows of the building to safety? And images of the memorials and the aftermath of our country’s in a series of heinous school shootings.This was a visual reminder that indeed, guns do kill people. Here is a disturbing video from surveillance cameras in the Columbine High School cafeteria before, during and after the shooting took place. That day, guns killed 13 and injured many others and left an indelible imprint on the American psyche.

When it’s real people and we see it live or almost in real time, it’s different than watching people get shot on TV shows or movies and now, videos and video games. But truth is stranger and more real than fiction. States United to Prevent Gun Violence produced a film about the effect of real shootings called “Gun Crazy“. Watch as film goers sit in the theater with popcorn seeing real shootings rather than a violent movie. When it’s real, it’s too much. When real people have to see the real bodies of a child or a loved one who has been shot and killed by bullets, it’s  unforgettable. Nothing is ever the same.

Yes. Disturbing. We are gun crazy.

Back to guns killing people, why do people buy and own guns and who are they? Some are gun collectors. I know a few of those folks and they are nice people whose passion happens to be collecting guns- some older antique guns, some modern guns. You can really only use one at a time but if you like to handle he guns, work on them, look at them, admire them, take them to the gun range and shoot them or take them hunting, that is one thing. Some are hunters and that is the only reason they own guns. My family falls into that category. Some buy guns for target shooting and sport. And some buy guns for self defense. Still others buy many guns just in case they need them to fight against their own government. And, as it turns out, many of these people support common sense gun laws.

And unfortunately, some buy guns to kill someone they know and even love and that is the only reason they buy or access a gun. Such was the tragic case of a Minnesota man who went out and bought a gun so he could shoot his family and himself in a murder/suicide. He bought that gun one day before the shooting knowing what he was going to do. Without that gun, he must have thought he could not have accomplished this awful thing.

Can we stop incidents like this? Not all of them of course. But we do live in a country abundant with guns at the ready for anyone who wants to shoot someone or his/herself. Some people know exactly what they are going to do with a gun. Others are just careless or irresponsible as has been mentioned. But whatever else we say or don’t say or intimate or excuse, we must say the truth. Guns are dangerous and can kill or otherwise harm someone known to the owner whether or not they intend it.

So when I read this article, it resonated with me. I particularly liked the title: “Guns are designed to kill so why are we shocked when they do?” From the article:

In our national mythology, guns are symbols of liberty and autonomy, self-determination and control. When they harm us and there is no obvious person to blame, we want to believe they only do so “somehow.” Such linguistic tics subtly attribute gun failure and misuse to forces beyond our control, which is more comforting than admitting they are born of the choices we make.

The article ends this way:

Gun accidents happen because we live in close proximity to machines designed to kill; they eventually will do what they were made to do, though perhaps not at a time our choosing. Whenever this happens, the true culprit is obvious: A culture that refuses to learn the lessons of its past.

At a time of our choosing is an important phrase. Some shootings are actually accomplished at times the shooter has chosen and even thought about ahead of time. Many are not. Many are spur of the moment shootings that happen in an instant of anger or in the muddled thinking of depression or having too much alcohol or mishandling a gun or just leaving it sitting somewhere where it can be used at a time not chosen to kill or injure someone. That’s how it is with guns. They kill people. One killed my sister. Or I should say the bullets from that gun- 3 of them- caused internal injuries that killed her almost instantly. The person with that gun that day was angry over a contentious divorce. We don’t know what prompted it since there was not a trial where we could hear from him in his own words why he picked up a gun that day and shot two people. We don’t know if he met them at his door with his gun when they came to deliver some papers and got them inside the house. He killed himself 3 months after the shooting. What we do know is that he shot and killed two people while angry and depressed. Without that gun accessible, two people would not have died that day almost 23 years ago.

A woman once asked me why I didn’t think they ( my sister and her friend) could have been killed as easily with a knife. Maybe she was thinking of the now famous case where O.J. Simpson was on trial for killing his ex-wife and another man with a knife. He was not found guilty as we know but someone killed those two people and we are not sure how it was managed. Most knives are not really designed to kill people but they do kill. At a much lower rate than guns in spite of the nonsensical arguments that come from the other side about that. There have been “mass knifings” which have most often injured the people who were attacked but not killed them. One such happened in China on the same day as the Sandy Hook shooting that killed 26 innocent people. In China, 23 were injured and none killed.

And the answer is “no” to the woman who asked me, by the way. My now deceased brother-in-law was able to threaten and intimidate two people with a gun because it’s hard to run away from someone with a gun. A gun can be shot from close up or far away. Bullets have long trajectories. That is why they are so effective.

I’m writing and talking about common sense solutions to our gun violence epidemic. One of the things that has to be talked about is the risk of guns to their owners and others in the vicinity. I have asked whether guns are accessible when I hear of someone in a contentious divorce or domestic situation. At least some of our leaders recognize that domestic abusers certain should not have guns. In Minnesota and a handful of other states recent laws were passed to allow law enforcement to take guns away from domestic abusers who have exhibited behaviors that resulted in a restraining order and/or order for protection. Even the gun friendly legislators supported these laws and came together to make women and children safer from those who should not have guns. Hopefully that is a realization that guns can be a risk and can become deadly quickly in domestic disputes.

There are many ways we can deal with our gun violence epidemic if we treat it as the public health problem that it is. Passing laws requiring background checks on all gun sales is one. Requiring and encouraging safe storage of guns. Stopping bad apple gun dealers and stopping gun trafficking is another. Education about the risks of guns, of course, would help. Asking if there are unsecured loaded guns in the homes where your children play. Suicide awareness programs recognizing that access to guns can result in a senseless avoidable death. And this is not just about the NRA’s Eddie Eagle program which was the subject of a recent segment of Samantha Bee’s Full Frontal show.

I hope you will join me in supporting solutions that will stop the proliferation of guns in our communities and the devastating gun violence that is taking too many lives.

 

Road rage in Minnesota

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RoadrageIt’s happened again. Someone decided to take out their anger over a traffic problem with a gun. Why do people carry guns in their cars? That is the question. Let’s look at what happened in Minneapolis yesterday:

 

A 39-year-old woman who honked at a vehicle that cut her off was shot four times in rush-hour traffic on Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis Tuesday.

Police spokesman John Elder said the woman was southbound near Groveland Avenue at 5 p.m. when she was cut off by a beige four-door Jeep Cherokee with tinted windows.

She honked at the car, which then slowed down next to her driver side, and a passenger shot at her multiple times with a black handgun, Elder said. The victim, who was shot three times in the arm and once in the stomach, drove several blocks and called 911. She is hospitalized and expected to survive her injuries, police said.

The shooter has not been found yet but no doubt he will be. When he is, many questions need to be asked. Was he a law abiding permit holder? Was the gun legally obtained or illegally obtained. How did he get the gun? And the biggest question- why shoot someone over a honk?

This is not the first time road rage incidents have ended in injury or death by gun and not the first time in Minnesota. Five women were shot at in January as they were being driven on a freeway in an Uber car- just in January of this year. The shooter has not yet been found.

I could list many more in Minnesota and in states all over the country but you get the picture.

So shouldn’t we be able to drive on roads and freeways without fear of being shot? I say the answer is a resounding YES. So why allow guns in cars in the first place? Before Minnesota passed a law in 2005 to allow “law abiding” gun owners to carry guns around with them wherever they go, this was just not happening. Or if it was, it was pretty rare. Sure, some who have illegal guns have likely been carrying guns around all along. But now we have made it part of our every day culture as if it is normal. It’s not.

Further, we have not even discussed children finding guns in their parents’ cars or permit holders shooting themselves while fiddling with guns in their cars. It happens often and I have written about this before. Most recently a Florida child found his mother’s gun in her car and shot it off “accidentally” sending a bullet flying through the front seat, injuring his gun loving mother in the back.

Senseless.

If you look at the image in this post, you can see a man shaking his fist. No one died or was injured as a result. But when a gun is there at the ready, the result is very different. And that is the problem with allowing guns everywhere we play, drive, live, learn, work, eat and walk.

No wonder 141 public health institutions, including the Minnesota Public Health Association, have signed a letter to Congress asking for an end to the funding prohibition for the Centers for Disease Control to study the causes and effects of gun violence. It is the health care providers who treat the injured and deal with the deaths. They understand perfectly well that bullets cause death and injury. They deal with health risks every day and they want some answers. They also understand that, like other public health epidemics, we can do something about it if we understand how it is caused. That is the American way. It’s all about common sense. We all deserve the questions and the answers and most importantly, the victims deserve a chance at live so their families will not be left with a large hole in their lives due to the shooting of a loved one.

If you believe its normal for people to be shooting at innocent drivers and passengers while they are going about their daily business, you are part of the problem. But since I know that most of you agree with me, the time is now to express your frustration and concern over a public health and safety issue that many of our leaders have chosen to ignore. Lives can be saved. And lives are taken every day in senseless avoidable incidents like the ones above.

If you’ve had #Enough of this craziness, let your legislators and Congress members know that you expect them to stand up for the victims and not the gun lobby whose interest lies in profits over saving lives. Get involved. Speak up. Write letters. Send emails. Make phone calls. Join a gun violence prevention group. That is how change will happen. A bill to require background checks on all gun sales is sitting in the Minnesota legislature waiting for a hearing. Protect Minnesota supports this legislation and is asking legislators to sign on and bring it to a hearing. It won’t get a hearing if you don’t make some noise. Similar background check bills are sitting in Congress waiting for enough co-sponsors to bring them to committee hearings. That won’t happen if you don’t make noise.

All for fun gunny tales

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red_hood_002Many fairy tales are violent. I admit to that and admit that some of them made me uncomfortable while reading them to my own children. Sometimes we examine what we are doing and what we have done and come to the conclusion that it wasn’t such a good idea after all and that we could do better. Writing non violent tales is one of those ideas whose time has come. Is it just a liberal idea that we should protect children from the violence that befalls children and adults in these fairy tales?  Because in the real world, bad things do actually happen to children.

So the NRA is “making light” of some popular fairly tales by writing their own versions in which children appear to save themselves by defending themselves and sometimes with guns:

That world now exists on the National Rifle Association’s NRA Familywebsite, which partnered with author Amelia Hamilton “to present her twist on those classic tales” — a series that has infuriated gun-control advocates, some of whom called it “disgusting.”

Gun-rights supporters say the stories — which started with “Little Red Riding Hood (Has a Gun)” and continued with “Hansel and Gretel (Have Guns)” — are a more peaceful alternative to the often disturbing fairy tales from childhood.

Which is it?

The idea drew mixed reactions amid the continuing battle between gun-rights advocates holding tight to their Second Amendment rights and gun-control activists concerned with incidents involving children and guns.

And then, the reality of kids and guns is mentioned:

So far in 2016, at least 52 children under age 18 have picked up a firearm and accidentally shot themselves or someone else, according to data from the gun-control group Everytown for Gun Safety.

Gun violence prevention groups (like the Brady Campaign) reacted to this cynical attempt to sell the idea of self defense for children ( from the article):

“Make no mistake, this is a disgusting, morally depraved marketing campaign,” Dan Gross, the organization’s president, said in a statement. “The NRA continues to stoop to new lows in the hopes of shoving guns into America’s youngest hands. If nothing else, this approach demonstrates just how desperate the organization has become to sell more guns — it must now advertise deadly weapons to kids by perverting childhood classics with no regard whatsoever for the real life carnage happening every day.

“To be frank, it’s pathetic.”

Pathetic indeed.

In real life, this just happened:

The father of a 7-year-old San Angelo boy who allegedly shot himself in the leg struck another boy with his truck while attempting to take his son to the hospital, police said.

Andrew Crittenden, 26, told San Angelo police Friday that he had given his son the handgun, which the boy was playing with inside an apartment. Crittenden said he thought the gun had been emptied of live rounds, police said.

So in this case, a father gives his 7 year old a gun to play with and the boy shoots himself and then the father runs over another 5 year old with his car on the way to the hospital with his own son. Is this a fairy tale? Sometimes truth is stranger, or worse, than fiction. The gun lobby can try to create its’ own world of fiction regarding the use of guns for self defense and encouraging children to have guns but reality  blows their fiction out of the water. Or at least it should if we had any common sense regarding the actual risks of guns to children.

This is a real pathetic tale.

Or what about this real story about a 14 year old boy who shot and killed his 13 year old friend with a gun that was left around the house? The 14 year old will be living now in the real world of awful guilt over this terrible and avoidable tragedy and another family will be living with their real grief over the loss of a loved one whose potential will never be reached. That’s no fairy tale.

In the NRA’s ( and corporate gun lobby) world, small concealable guns should look like cell phones because….. why not? Imagine searching through a pocket or purse for your phone and coming up with the gun/cell phone instead. What could possibly go wrong?

In the gun lobby’s world, God gave people their rights to own guns because…….why not use religion to get people to arm themselves?  Let’s look at the above linked article from The Trace:

The bottom line for Wagner, and many gun-carrying Christians, is that it is in fact okay for Christians have guns, and to use them — so long as they do so for the right reasons. Guns should be not be used for vengeance, he says, but for love. “There is a time when the most loving thing you can do is restrain evil.”

“The Bible does say in Matthew 5:9, blessed are the peace makers,” Wagner adds, “and we actually call guys who carry weapons ‘peace officers’ — right? — because they are there to help enforce that which is going to suppress evil and protect the innocent.”

Such talk of blessed peacemaking from the barrel of a sidearm fits perfectly with today’s “good guy with a gun” fantasies. But it likely has another, older parent as well: the aggressively masculine “muscular Christianity” popularized through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, whose shadow still lingers over much of the evangelical world.

Rationalizing and fictionalizing religious teachings as a reason for carrying guns is absurd and just fiction. We all know that firearms were nowhere in the picture when these teachings were put to print.

But never mind. The article starts with the the Mississippi legislature considering a bill to extend “Stand Your Ground” provisions to houses of worship. You never know when that “big bad wolf” will come walking in with a gun- like at the Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston last summer. And in the gun lobby’s fairy tale world, that “bad guy” with a gun could have been stopped if only those 9 people had been carrying in their church.

And last, but certainly not least, the NRA has a Board member who lives in some sort of twisted fairy tale world. The latest from Ted Nugent through Media Matters:

National Rifle Association board member Ted Nugent shared a sexist chain letter on social media, which claimed that “men prefer guns over women” because “guns function normally every day of the month.”

Nugent’s post is the latest example of a phenomenon where the NRA increasingly tries to attract women to the organization even as the organization’s leadership engages in sexist and degrading commentary.

Women, of course, are more likely to die in America in gun owning homes than in non gun owning homes.

In the real world,  the majority of gun deaths are due to suicide. In the fictional world of the gun lobby, that doesn’t appear to be a part of their tale.

In the real world 90 Americans a day die from gunshot injuries. Wouldn’t it be nice if the NRA would write a fairy tale about how to prevent some of those gun deaths instead of arming fairy tale figures with guns?

There are two worlds when it comes to guns. The majority of Americans live in the world of common sense and support reasonable laws and measures to keep guns away from those who could be dangerous with them. That is the real world. The minority live in the world of fear, paranoia, deception and fiction when it comes to guns. Many in our Congress and legislatures seem afraid of the wrong world. It’s time for them to step into the real world and not believe in fairy tales. Real lives depend on it.

 

 

Denial and insanity

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denialWell, as we could have predicted, on the heels of a mass/spree shooting in Kalamazoo, Michigan that shook that community, yet another community, now in Kansas, has now suffered the effects of a gunman mowing innocent people down because…….:

A gunman armed with what police called an “assault-style” weapon killed three people and injured 14 others in Kansas Thursday before he was killed by a police officer.

All three victims and 12 of the injured were shot at Excel Industries, a plant in Hesston that makes lawn mower products, Harvey County Sheriff T. Walton said. Of those hurt, 10 were critically wounded, he said.

Authorities have not officially identified the deceased suspect, but multiple co-workers identified the shooter to local media as Cedric Ford. Walton would not discuss a motive, but told reporters there were “some things that triggered this individual.”

“….some things that triggered this individual.” So in America, the land of the free and milk and honey, when something “triggers” someone, they can just get out their assault style rifle and handguns and take out their anger or their beef with someone and open fire on innocent citizens. 4 are dead, including the gunman, and many are critically wounded because….. America.

Are we insane? One does have to wonder why these things happen. Or maybe not. With the American gun culture as it is, with enough guns for every American citizen and laws that allow just about anyone to access a gun, it is inevitable that the shootings continue unabated.

And when the gun lobby gets its’ way with elected leaders, yet more insanity occurs. In Iowa, as just one crazy example, the legislature thought it would be a good idea to let children 14 and under become gun handlers. I mean, why not, right? An army of children who will, of course, know exactly how to handle handguns because…… Well, it’s pretty inexplicable actually. Toddlers shot more people in 2015 than did terrorists. And both can easily access guns.

With children who access their parents’ guns shooting themselves or their parents or siblings or friends on a regular basis, it sure does seem like a great idea to let more children use guns doesn’t it?

Here’s another article about the Iowa law:

State representative Jake Highfill told the Washington Post that the new law “gives the power back to parents”.

“Allowing people to learn at a young age the respect that a gun commands is one of the most important things you can do,” Highfill said.

The alternative, he added, is “turning 18 with no experience”.

What? No words.

Yesterday I participated in an event in Minneapolis with Americans for Responsible Solutions. I was honored to stand behind former Representative Gabby Giffords and her husband Captain Mark Kelly as they spoke about the facts. And I was also honored to be asked to be a member of this coalition of law enforcement officers, domestic violence organizations, community activists, educators, gun owners and people on both sides of the aisle. The round table discussion centered on the easy access to guns and what we can do about it. And the group, of course, understood that saving lives was the common goal.

We know one undeniable fact. Gabby Giffords’ life was almost lost when an angry young man with a gun he should not have been able to have shot and killed 6 people and injured Giffords and others. This is the 3rd time I have been with Gabby Giffords and I find her courage remarkable. She is determined to do something about the denial exhibited by her former colleagues in Congress. She spoke about the need for courage.

Why should it take courage to do something about the senseless shootings in our country? What is it about the gun lobby that makes our leaders put their heads in the sand and pretend that if they pass common sense laws the rights of law abiding citizens will be affected? This denial is costing lives at an alarming rate. There is no more time for this heads in the sand response to the shootings like the ones in Michigan, Kansas and …….

We know the routine. In the article about the Gabby Giffords event, this is the response from the gun lobby folks interviewed by the media:

But Bryan Strawser and the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus believe the focus should be on dealing with violent criminals, particularly looking at prosecution and sentencing, and providing additional access to mental health services – not on laws such as Giffords’s group supports that primarily impact law-abiding citizens.

“We have hundreds of thousand of permit holders, and, by in large, those gun owners are extremely safe and law-abiding citizens in the community,” Strawser said.

Strawser agrees certain people shouldn’t have guns, but he says some goals of the coalition go too far.

“We believe that is where the focus should be, not on the kind of laws that this organization has pushed that will really impact law-abiding citizens,” Strawser said.

Denial. Fallacy.

Does anyone challenge this lunacy? In what way will laws that expand background checks to all gun sales to stop felons, domestic abusers, those who are dangerously mentally ill and others who should not be able to buy guns affect law abiding citizens? They don’t say. They just say this stuff and then pretend it’s true and enough of our leaders buy it that we fail the majority of Americans and Minnesotans who agree with common sense solutions.

This is simply not OK. This is lunacy and denial. This is the influence of money over lives that has kept our country from addressing the public health epidemic staring us in the face.

We’ve had #enough. Are our leaders going to take their heads out of the sand and do something? Are they going to listen to the nonsensical rhetoric that is not based on evidence and fact brought to them by a small group of citizens who believe that passing reasonable laws will affect them in some way?

It’s time for courage. Thank you Gabby Giffords for having the courage to stand up, even after your heinous injuries and life long disabilities to challenge the status quo and demand that we do something and do it now. We just can’t wait any longer. Saving even one life will be worth the fight.

 

UPDATE:

Well, I didn’t think I would be adding to this post. But there has been another mass shooting in the state of Washington leaving 5 dead. If one of the gun rights folks who read my blog want to share with me an explanation or what could be done better or differently than trying to keep guns away from people who shouldn’t have them and educate the public and gun owners about the awesome responsibility of owning guns. The risks of owning guns are great and can lead to death and injury. More guns are not making us safer.

Guns and shovels

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ShovelUnless you have been living under a rock, you know about the snow storm that hit the east coast last week-end. Millions of people were left to clear snow from their sidewalks and hope the plow didn’t come by while they were clearing snow from their cars. As a northern Minnesota person, I know about this. Shoveling is back breaking.

Once, many years ago, we got stuck on the remote Gunflint Trail near Grand Marais, Minnesota. during an unexpected snow storm. We went to cross country ski and enjoy my parents’ small cabin on a remote lake near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. It was a great get-away from our (then) small daughter who was left behind with her grandma. But when the time came to go home, we faced some difficult driving conditions and the snow was drifted up on the cabin road where a long lake abutted the road. We got stuck in a snow drift and did not have a shovel. There happened to be a rustic home around the corner and so we walked there and knocked on the door. No one was home and we noticed a shovel outside of the front door.

So we took the shovel to get out of that drift and intended to bring it back to the house. But the driving was so bad that we had to drive a ways down the road and keep going. we hoped the owners would find the shovel standing up on the side of the road where we left it. I have a vivid memory of that trip.

But now, I guess “borrowing” a shovel can be dangerous as it was for this man in New Jersey after the snow storm. From the article:

Newark police say a man told them he found the shovel on the sidewalk on Sunday and was using it to clear an elderly neighbor’s walkway after a major snowstorm when the woman accused him of stealing her shovel.

The man returned the shovel. He was later walking when he said he was approached by the woman and several males and one of the males shot him in the buttocks on orders from the woman.

So why in the world would using a shovel to clear someone’s driveway promote the anger that this woman felt? Without that gun, what would have happened instead? No one would have been shot and injured for sure. Maybe an argument. Guns make arguments dangerous. And where are the “law abiding” gun owners who are responsible with their loaded guns? Is there enough common sense out there for gun owners like this woman to restrain themselves and put the gun away? If you read this blog, you know how often I write about incidents like this one.

Why should we have incidents like this one? We shouldn’t, period. When a gun is available and easily accessible it may be used to harm someone. What is it about the risk of loaded guns that some “law abiding” gun owners don’t understand? Have they been led to believe that a loaded gun will protect them from shadows and terrorists lurking in every corner so their fear causes them to stop thinking about a gun as a deadly weapon designed to kill someone? Or do they think it’s simply OK to shoot someone if they insult you or borrow something or have too much to drink and lose judgement? It’s really hard to wrap one’s head around this lunacy. As long as some people buy the ideas of the corporate gun lobby we will continue to read about these stupid and dangerous incidents in our media.

We have had #enough of this. It’s time to change that conversation about guns and gun violence and get to work to do something sensible about it. There are just plain no excuses for this kind of behavior. Let’s get to work.

 

An inconvenient truth-Minnesotans and the country want background checks

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inconvenientThere is an inconvenient truth about guns and elected leaders. The burden of lack of common sense gun laws is borne by the victims and survivors and their families and friends. It is borne by our communities and our children. It is inconvenient to bury a loved one whose life was taken suddenly and violently from senseless gun violence.

Though the Minnesota legislature has turned down many opportunities to pass a law requiring Brady background checks on all gun sales, Minnesotans have said consistently that they want this law. A new poll by the Star Tribune showed 82% support for such a law. And yes, even gun owners want this to happen. The usual is the case in this poll:

That’s according to a Star Tribune Minnesota Poll, which found 82-percent support for criminal background checks on all gun sales including in private transactions and at gun shows. The overwhelming majority support extends across gender, income and political party lines, and to every part of the state, with even 78 percent of residents outside the Twin Cities expressing support.

Whether such laws would actually reduce mass shootings produced far less certainty. Only 15 percent felt it would help “a lot,” while 45 percent expected it to help “not much” or “not at all.” Those results also split much more along gender and party lines, with a majority of both men and Republicans thinking it would make little or no difference. Women and Democrats were more likely to think it would.

Men and Republicans. Hmm. Who is mostly in charge of the Minnesota legislature? Yup.

Whether or not Brady background checks on all gun sales would stop mass shootings seems open to debate. And background checks will not, of course, stop all shootings. But a one woman polled said, “How can it hurt?” Indeed. Why we don’t at least try is the question that needs to be asked. The fact that we don’t tells us who is in control and it’s not the majority of Minnesotans. It is time for our leaders to bear the burden of lack of action and do the right thing.

It’s significant to note that even rural Minnesotans want Brady background checks. The comment from one of the gun owners polled was consistent with those who don’t want background checks for fear that they can’t sell a gun to their brother without doing a background check. One thing to consider is that we have to hope that the person selling is not a domestic abuser who got his/her gun without a background check from another private seller. This is one way that guns get into the hands of those who shouldn’t have them. How often are relatives involved in providing guns to others? That is a question that should be asked and answered. But further, most background check laws exempt those who buy from and sell to close relatives. But let’s hope that those who do this make darned sure the relative is a responsible gun owner who doesn’t intend harm to others.

So this poll is not a surprise. But it must be a surprise to our legislators that their constituents want them to do the right thing. Or is it? Many of them turn their backs on common sense and vote with the corporate gun lobby instead. I believe they understand that they could do the right thing but they are afraid to stand up to the din of the corporate gun lobbyists who park themselves in their offices. This is not acceptable any more. The gun issue is one of the main issues of the Presidential election and should be one of the main issues for down ballot races as well.

We need to make it an issue. It is up to us to ask our elected officials if they will vote with the majority of their constituents and pass laws that will keep us safer from shootings. There is no reason not to vote in favor of a law that could save lives.

And speaking of polls, Presidential candidate Donald Trump has claimed that his polling shows strong enough support for him that he could step outside on 5th Avenue and shoot someone and no one would care. Really Donald Trump? This kind of rhetoric fans the flames of violent solutions and the gun lobby’s mantra that guns make us all safer and that everyone should carry one. And yes, we would care if you actually shot someone on the streets of New York City even though some of your supporters in the room where you made that statement laughed. Did they laugh because they didn’t dare not? Did they laugh because they were nervous about what you just said? Did they laugh because they actually believed that you could shoot someone and get away with it because you are Donald Trump and they think you should be the leader of the free world? Just imagine this rhetoric coming from the President of the United States.

This kind of offensive rhetoric is an example of how far politicians will go to gain the favor of a small minority of Americans who resist all efforts to keep our communities safe from gun violence. The NRA’s numbers show an increasing drop in their claimed membership according to this article from The Trace:

The National Rifle Association’s (NRA) New York state financial disclosure forms for 2014 are now online, and like past years’ tax filings, the documents provide a rare glimpse at the organization’s inner machinery. The group’s total revenues fell from more than $347 million in 2013 to roughly $310 million. Contributing to the decline was a drop in income collected from its members. Revenue from annual dues fell from $175 million to $128 million in 2014, a drop of 27 percent.

The precise size of NRA’s membership — the core of the group’s perceived political muscle — has long been a mystery. In January 2013, Executive Vice President and CEO Wayne LaPierre boasted before Congress that he served 4.5 million members. Speaking at an NRA convention a few months later, he upped that figure to 5 million. On January 5, in a statement responding to President Barack Obama’s executive actions on guns, the group described itself as “more than 5 million members strong.”

But the truth of those numbers is a matter of debate — the NRA has never allowed an outside party to authenticate its membership, and independent estimates predict a much smaller number. Circulation audits of American Rifleman and other NRA-published magazines that are sent to every member come in at around 3 million. One former board membertold the Washington Post in 1998 that when the NRA counts its size, it includes many deceased lifetime members.

I have written about this before. I know people who have dropped their memberships. I know people who get cards from the NRA enrolling them in their membership. One of my friends is a lifetime member of the NRA because her father bought her a membership when she was a child. She does own a gun but she is working hard alongside gun violence prevention groups in Minnesota to pass reasonable laws. I have a friend who likes to shoot guns at a local gun club. In order to join this club, he has to also join the NRA. He does not believe in what the NRA does and supports my efforts to pass common sense gun laws.

The inconvenient truth is that most Americans want their leaders to pass stronger gun laws and enforce the laws we have. This has been consistently shown in national and state polling for many years now. Even gun owners want reasonable gun laws.

So what are we waiting for? We are waiting for our leaders to get out from under the thumb of what was once a more powerful gun lobby. They are not your father’s or grandfather’s gun safety organizations any more. They are in existence to protect their own perceived power and the profits of the gun industry it represents.

The gun lobby doesn’t want us to know how easy it is for prohibited people to get access to guns. They don’t want us to know how easy it is for kids and teens to access the guns that are used in “accidental” shootings and suicides. 80% of gun deaths in Minnesota are due to suicide. In states that have required background checks on all gun sales, suicides have decreased as have domestic shootings. The proof is in the numbers and the inconvenient truth.

They don’t want us to know that American service members are shooting themselves on a regular basis. They don’t want us to talk about how easy it is to get a gun on internet sites. They don’t want us to know about the 89 Americans who die every day from gunshot injuries.

This is an inconvenient truth. But the public is way ahead of their leaders. It’s time for our leaders to catch up to reality and stop being afraid of the bully in the room. It’s time for us all to raise our collective voices and demand that something be done. That time is coming in Minnesota and all over our country where the majority has had #Enough. 

Where do the guns come from?

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68-per-cent-slide
From the Brady Campaign to prevent gun violence

Every day there are shootings in the homes of Americans all over the country. Some of them make the news, some don’t. Many are suicides which don’t often make the news but sometimes found in an obituary in a local paper not listing a cause of death. Many are domestic shootings that are arguments or disagreements about a separation that end in death. Some are children who find a gun and accidentally shoot someone in the home- a friend, a relative or him or herself. These do make the news.

Unfortunately or maybe fortunately, there are places where we can find out the truth about how often guns are used by children and teens and by lawful gun owners in “accidental” gun discharges. For example, in the AccidentsHappenGunsKill blog, 2 incidents were reported just today. One was a 3 year old New Orleans child who was shot and killed when the gun of his grandmother, a security guard, sleeping with a gun under a pillow, “accidentally” discharged.

Most gun owners are responsible with their guns. Many, but not all, lock their guns in safes away from the ammunition, where they are hopefully safe from small hands, teens, vulnerable adults and thieves. That’s all good. My last post was about gun safety. 

We know that teens cannot legally purchase guns. But sometimes parents give their teens guns for hunting or other purposes. They may think that teaching them about gun safety will make everyone safer. This is not always the case. A story that ran in the Star Tribune today highlighted the release of a Waseca, Minnesota teen from a prison facility for having plotted a school shooting and bombing after first killing his family. From this article:

If La­Due goes home, his par­ents have agreed to re­move any fire­arms from the house and deny him Web ac­cess. La­Due also could not leave the house ex­cept for authorized ap­point­ments.(…)

Police found La­Due in a Waseca stor­age lock­er in April 2014 af­ter a cit­i­zen saw him en­ter it sus­pi­cious­ly. He told auth­ori­ties of his plans to shoot his fam­i­ly, set a fire in the coun­try­side to dis­tract em­er­gen­cy of­fi­cials, and go to school with pres­sure-cook­er bombs and guns to kill as many peo­ple as he could.

Auth­ori­ties who searched the lock­er and the boy’s bed­room had said they con­fis­cated chemi­cals, sev­er­al guns, am­mu­ni­tion and a few com­pleted ex­plo­sives. Officers con­clud­ed that he in­tend­ed to car­ry out the mas­sa­cre with­in a week or two.

The case has raised ques­tions about what to do with the teen, who had plot­ted but nev­er hurt any­one. His par­ents have said they be­lieve he nev­er would have car­ried out the plan.

I have sympathy for this family. It has to be one of the worst things that could have happened short of the actual attack their son was planning. But parents need to realize that these things actually have and do happen in our country. The story does not mention where the teen got his guns nor any charges against anyone for the fact that this boy was in possession of the guns that he was going to use to carry out this attack.

This peaked my interest about how this boy got his guns and I had forgotten that, of course, the guns were given to him by his parents. Except for one, an SKS, that he got by forging his Dad’s signature and apparently bought it from a friend’s father.The majority of guns used by teens in school shootings come from their own homes and their parents. This report from the Brady Campaign to prevent gun violence, The Truth About Kids and Guns, reveals what is true but rarely spoken out loud, and most especially by the corporate gun lobby. In fact, 2/3 of the guns used in school shootings come from the homes of the shooters. Even if the teen doesn’t have their own guns stored in their bedroom as did the Waseca teen, teens and children know where the guns are in their homes. My own adult kids have told me that they knew where my husband’s hunting guns were stored even though we had not discussed this nor showed them.

(As an aside, most guns used in mass shootings are legally purchased.)

The big and very serious question here is where is the responsibility of the adults in the room? This story from CNN profiles this teen whose heroes were the Columbine school shooters and the Boston Marathon bombers. From the story:

He purchased a black duster jacket so he could dress like Harris. “Kinda want to pay tribute to him,” he would later tell police. He hoped to time his attack to the Columbine anniversary, in honor of his idol.

He’d studied the Boston Marathon bombers. He thought their attack weak because they killed just three.

He planned to fill two pressure cookers with 6,000 ball bearings, as well as buckshot and screws. Each bomb would have cans of WD-40 strapped to it to magnify the blast. He would use flash powder, instead of black powder, to create a more powerful explosion than the ones in Boston.

John LaDue enjoyed playing the guitar before his arrest.

John LaDue enjoyed playing the guitar before his arrest.

He believed Adam Lanza was a coward for killing first-graders. “I wanted to target people in my grade who I knew.”

He named five students at his high school who he wanted to kill for specific reasons. Two were classmates who talked too much in German class and “got annoying.” A third called him queer on the school bus in seventh grade. He also would target the school resource officer.

So meticulous was his plan that LaDue told authorities he chose a bolt-action Soviet-style SKS rifle to use in the attack — a weapon without a large magazine like Lanza’s AR-15 or other semi-automatic rifles used in shooting sprees.

That way, he said, people lobbying for gun restrictions after his attack would have a weaker argument. “I kinda wanted to prove that wrong.”

The Columbine mass school shooting continues to cast a long shadow in our country. Other teens admire the shooters of the first mass school shooting in a K-12 school in our country that is still a marker for the others that followed.

And so today we have teens plotting similar attacks. And we have teens with access to guns they should not have. More from the article:

Police found seven guns in John’s bedroom: two near his bed and five in a safe in his closet. All but one of the guns belonged to his father.

David had taught both his children how to hunt and took them to gun safety courses. He trusted his son with guns to protect the family while he worked the overnight shift at a steel plant.

He had no idea that John had purchased a gun; he got it through a friend’s dad by forging his own father’s signature.

John’s sister, Valerie, knew about her brother’s fascination with explosives, but she viewed it like any big sister might: My brother is such an idiot. She says she didn’t know about his plot. He bugged her about getting a storage locker, saying his room was getting crowded and he wanted to move some stuff. She thought it was a weird idea and refused to help him. A friend’s mother did.

What were the adults thinking here? There are no charges against any of the adults because, of course, the gun culture in our country is such that there is a cavalier attitude by some towards the actual risks of guns in the home and safe storage is not considered to be important apparently. Yes, this was a foiled potential school shooting/bombing thanks to a citizen who reported suspicious behavior. And yes, the family of this teen is and was devastated by what happened. There is heartbreak and blame to go around. But until we wrap our heads around the idea that teens should not be keeping guns in their own bedrooms for many obvious reasons, we will run the risk of many more shootings- domestic, suicides, accidental discharges and intentional shootings. It doesn’t have to be like this.
One of my drumbeats in this blog is that guns are dangerous and deadly weapons designed to kill people. There are risks to owning them that must be taken seriously. Common sense tells us that with rights come responsibilities. We can only hope that the adults with guns will think twice about how their teens and children access the guns in their homes.

 

Why gun research matters

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ПечатьGuns matter. Gun deaths matter. Gun laws matter. Lives matter. Data matters. Research matters. Facts matter. What is becoming more and more necessary is good research into the causes and effects of gun violence in America.

Remember that Congress passed a law in 1996 to stifle and halt research by the CDC into what causes so much gun violence in our country. Representative Jay Dickey, who at the time pushed this law, was beholden to the corporate gun lobby and did their bidding. Now that he doesn’t have to worry about their bullying tactics any more he understands that the law was detrimental to our public health and safety and has said so publicly. Good for him. Let’s take a look:

“It is my position that somehow or someway we should slowly but methodically fund such research until a solution is reached,” he wrote in a letter released through the office of Rep. Mike Thompson (D-Calif.). “Doing nothing is no longer an acceptable solution.” (…)

The former GOP congressman, 75, reached at home Thursday, said “political purposes” should have never gotten in the way of the issue. He conceded he “should have done something” to see that the research continue.

NRA LOBBYING LED TO LAW THAT STOPPED CDC FROM USING FEDERAL FUNDS TO STUDY GUN VIOLENCE

“Research will lead us to a solution,” Dickey said. “I have no idea what it’s going to be. I just couldn’t stay quiet any longer. It doesn’t look like anybody else is trying to get a solution.”

Dickey compared gun violence to car accidents. Highway regulation and research aren’t meant to deter car ownership — they’re meant for safety, he said.

“(Gun violence) is an insidious social problem that we have in America, and it’s getting worse, in my opinion,” he said.

Dickey said he was “almost numb” as reports emerged of Wednesday’s shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., in which 14 people were killed and 21 wounded.

“It’s just a shame … innocent people,” he said.

But years after that law went into effect, public shootings of 6 year olds in a school, Christian black people in churches, Muslims in homes, journalists on live TV, people sitting in movie theaters, horrendous domestic homicide/suicides, gang shootings in our inner cities, increased numbers of gun suicides by teens and rural white men, and toddlers killing themselves on a regular basis, the carnage continues unabated.

Former Representative Dickey spoke truth to power. He is right. It’s insidious and a shame. Too many innocent people are dying.

Others are doing the much needed research and presenting us with the proof that gun laws matter and can prevent some of the nation’s shootings. This New York Times comprehensive article, replete with useful charts and information, should be required reading for legislators and Congress:

In the past decade, Missouri has been a natural experiment in what happens when a state relaxes its gun control laws. For decades, it had one of the nation’s strongest measures to keep guns from dangerous people: a requirement that all handgun buyers get a gun permit by undergoing a background check in person at a sheriff’s office.

Here is one of the incredible graphs disproving the gun lobby’s argument that strict gun laws don’t matter. Gun trafficking from state to state is easy because we have made it easy. And thus, even if states or cities pass strong laws, gun violence continues. It’s a slippery slope.

Well researched graphs, maps and charts help us understand the causes and effects of our insidious and shameful national public health epidemic. For example:

An interactive map of where licensed gun dealers are located in the country makes it easy to find out how many there are near you.  As it turns out, there are more of them than there are grocery stores or McDonalds restaurants. It’s actually pretty darned convenient to find a gun dealer to do a Brady background check.

Minneapolis and St. Paul have had more gun homicides this year than in past years. And here’s a map to show where the shootings occurred:

More than 11 months later, with 2016 approaching, Minneapolis has seen 49 homicides this year, according to city data, considerably more than the 32 recorded in 2014 and the most since 2006.

St. Paul recorded 17 homicides in 2015, including a victim who died this year of an injury sustained in 2012, up from 13 in 2014.

Of the 65 homicides in both cities, 49 involved firearms. The rest were either stabbings or beatings.

The gun lobby often argues that guns are not responsible for the most homicides. They are wrong. Also, many of these gun deaths are happening in our core urban cities with the impacted communities being people of color.

Why does any of this matter? Because if we truly are serious about preventing the carnage, we need data to help us with solutions. Silencing research on guns and gun violence has a deadly affect on our communities. The corporate gun lobby’s insidious influence on policy is leading to devastating gun deaths and injuries.

We make it far too easy for citizens who shouldn’t have access to guns to get them anyway. Laws matter. With stronger laws will come a stronger public resolve that we take this seriously and we care about innocent people getting shot in our homes, schools, shopping malls, parking lots, hospitals, at holiday parties, churches, military bases, government buildings, etc. And please do remember that some of the shooters in these places obtained their guns legally. That is because in America we have such a cavalier and twisted outlook and attitude about guns because….. rights, because…. Congress, because…..second amendment absolutists, because…. corporate gun lobby, that there is a total lack of common sense.

More data lets us know which large cities have seen the most shootings of civilians by officers. Police departments all over America, including in Minneapolis, have been under fire for shootings of citizens, often black citizens. Looking at the data and learning from it can make our large cities safer.

It’s important to understand shootings by officers and shootings of officers so our communities can better deal with insidious gun violence that plagues our largest urban areas.

Here is information about how many officers have been killed in the line of duty and an interesting fact is that firearms have caused fewer deaths of officers in 2015 than in 2014. Traffic accidents have accounted for an increased number of officer deaths. And “other causes” have increased 70% over 2014. It seems like this is important information for the safety of officers while on duty.

Why again do we not want research and data on the subject of gun violence? You will have to ask people who hang around with the corporate gun lobby and your elected leaders. The answer is very important to public health and safety.

And while we are waiting for common sense to break out these are the daily reports in the media, on the internet or on blogs:

“Law abiding” DC area gun owner gets impatient when a holiday shopper has trouble with his credit card at an exit of a shopping mall and shoots at the man.

 

A Washington state man was arrested for possession an illegal gun and saying he wanted a .50 caliber rifle to shoot officers:

Today, the assistant U.S. attorney told the judge that Barbeau was trying to buy a .50 caliber rifle that would be quote “advantageous” in a shootout with law enforcement. And that he was seen in photos posing next to explosives that federal agents have yet to locate.

But hey, what’s the problem? These are readily available anywhere for the most part and his friends and family believe he is just trying to exercise his rights:

But his family says Barbeau is just trying to protect the rights of his fellow citizens, and sometimes gets caught up in inflammatory rhetoric.

“He gets pretty emotional when things are happening and injustices are happening around him. And he tends to say some things that maybe I wouldn’t say,” said Milam. ” But I don’t believe at all that he is out to start there is any part of him that is out to start anything with anybody.”

I, for one, am glad this guy is not on the loose with his guns.

Data matters. In the case above, the FBI had been following this guy because of threats to police officers. Not OK. Home grown terrorists have been responsible for more than a few high profile shootings in our country.

Research is happening now despite the gun lobby’s distaste for it and their resistance to facts. The tired old NRA and corporate gun lobby arguments are going to fall on deaf ears soon enough. Armed with research and facts, our country will demand, as the majority already have, that our leaders get down to business and do their jobs to keep us safe from devastating gun violence and terror attacks. This is not rocket science.

 

Arguing over gun safety reform

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arguingLast night I attended a Hillary for President organizing meeting in my city. Attendees were asked to go around the room and say why they were at the meeting, why they though Hillary would make a good President and what was something on their bucket list. Right out of the shoot, the local organizer told her story of how gun violence has affected her and why that is such an important issue in this campaign. A few people later, an older couple revealed that they were affected by the same shooting in our area that the organizer had talked about.

By the time it got to me, fully half or more of the people in the room said that gun violence prevention and gun safety reform were so important to them that that is one reason they wanted Hillary to win. They knew she would work hard on making the laws stronger to prevent the carnage in our country. Many in the room already knew my story but I told it anyway.

After the meeting I posted something on my Facebook page about the meeting and how happy I was that gun safety reform rose to the top of the list of concerns of those in attendance. I tagged some of the people who had been at the meeting. And wouldn’t you know it, as expected, a few friends of those I had tagged started right in on the tired old stupid arguments they get from the NRA and the talking heads opposed to any kind of gun reform.

As I was going to write about this today, I happened upon this blog written by a gun owner about why we need to pass stronger gun laws and why we have to stop listening to the NRA. From his blog:

Every time there’s a new mass shooting, you can already tell by the nature of the shooting what sort of standard, fear-mongering argument the NRA will bring forward; is it the “maybe teachers should have guns” argument? Is it the “regular citizens carrying would have prevented this” argument? Is it the “see, you can’t trust the police” argument? We all see it coming, they come right out with it, plain as day, and nobody bats an eye. Because Second Amendment.

And then he writes about all of the reasons resisting attempts at common sense make no sense ( language not mine):

The truth is logic won’t break this problem; you can waste your life explaining that fat guys in Crocs carrying assault rifles through Wal-Mart isn’t what the Founding Fathers meant by “well-regulated”. You can try showing how nobody has ever “come to take your guns” even though every four years you idiots fall for that line and continue voting Republican. You can explain that the number of mass shootings in this country has skyrocketed in tandem with gun sales. You can show pictures of dead schoolkids. It doesn’t matter. The NRA has too much power, because lobbying. Because campaign contributions.

So here’s my take:

If you don’t support universal background checks, it’s because you wouldn’t pass one. You don’t count. BOOM.

If you think assault rifles are used for hunting, you don’t count. If you need a 30-round clip to take down a whitetail deer, hunting is not your fucking sport. Go take up bowling. BOOM.

If you have ever said the words “take our guns” and meant it, you don’t count. You’re a conspiracy theorist, and not the kind of fella we want to see armed. Seven years, and Obama hasn’t taken one single gun. Stop that. You sound crazy. The NRA sells you that bullshit every election, and it’s time to grow up. BOOM.

If you use the “cars are lethal, too” defense, then you are ipso facto in support of registration, regulation, licensing, insurance, periodical safety examination and extensive training. BOOM.

If you think the NRA “does a lot of good” or has any of your interests in mind, you don’t count. You’re fucking stupid. BOOM.

BOOM. These are the arguments I had last night. They make no sense. No, background checks on all gun sales will NOT lead to registration or confiscation. That’s a fact. No, expanded background checks will not affect “law abiding” gun owners. No expanded background checks will not stop all shootings but they just make sense given our current status with mass shootings, domestic shootings, terror attacks and the shootings that take the lives of 89 Americans a day.

Why in the world would we not require Brady background checks on all gun sales?  We require the same license test for all drivers. We require the same registration for all car owners.We require all people who work with our children to get a background check. No one is treated differently. Why? For public safety and protecting innocent people from being harmed.

But to me, the worst and most insidious argument is that we shouldn’t pass any gun laws because laws don’t work anyway and criminals won’t follow them. This is one of the more ridiculous arguments used by these folks. We do have a country based on laws, thank goodness. Without them, we would be a lawless society similar to some of the third world countries we criticize.

We know that some people don’t follow laws. There are consequences for that. Some people speed or drink while driving and end up in serious trouble with the law. Or worse, they manage to cause death or injury to innocent people. Some people rob others. Some people steal money from others or a business. Some people abuse their partners. Some people harass and threaten others. Some people beat their children. Some people traffic young girls.

There are laws against all of the above. Most people follow the laws. Why? Because they want to be safe and they don’t want to spend time in jail or kill or injure someone else.

So let’s look again at our laws. As of now, domestic abusers, felons and those adjudicated mentally ill can’t buy guns from licensed dealers. I think most would agree that’s a good thing. And if they don’t, they don’t deserve to say anything about any of this. And since the Brady law was passed twenty years ago, over 2 million of these folks have been stopped from buying guns. That’s a good thing, isn’t it?

That being the case why does anyone think it’s a good idea for those very same prohibited people to be able to buy guns from private sellers? Unless of course the people who object the loudest are, indeed, someone who can’t pass a background check.

As for the argument that we aren’t enforcing the laws already on the books, no one can really say which laws those are. One of the problems in our country is that our laws have so many loopholes thanks to the corporate gun lobby, that they aren’t working as well as they should be. That is intentional on the part of the NRA and others so they can come back and say that our laws don’t work.

As long as these arguments go unchallenged, dangerous people who shouldn’t have guns, including terrorists, will get guns. One has to wonder if that is what the gun lobby actually wants. Because then they can continue to stoke up the fear and paranoia that drive people to the gun stores and drive up gun company profits. Follow the money.

All the way around the arguments are insidious and make no sense. But they have gotten away with them because not enough of the 90% or so of Americans who want the laws to change are making enough noise. Check out this article about making more noise and changing the conversation at long last:

Reasonable people can disagree about the availability and volume of guns in a free society. But understand this: In the decade between 2003 and 2013 — the most recent data available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — 337,135 people in the United States died because of a homicide, suicide or accident caused by a gun. And owning a gun or being in possession of one does not reliably help people remain unharmed. Study after study has found that, including this one funded by the National Institutes of Health. Those are just the facts. Nothing more.

Yet, witness the response to the New York Times’ front-page editorial last week about the toll of gun violence and the absence of political action. There are those who have taken to social media, to their blogs and to the airwaves with all of their frustrated might. But few have a response that does not rely on either an NRA talking point or the scientifically debunked idea that mental illness is the only issue in need of attention here. These folks are outraged and on fire. (…)

Policy reforms and debate are one response to compelling events, to new research, and to tragedy in any functioning and healthy democracy. One wonders what anyone arguing against any discussion of gun control at this moment would have thought of the workplace safety laws that followed the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. What might they have made of the effort to make lynching a federal felony crime after incredibly brave Americans such as Ida B. Wells made the gruesome handiwork of lynch mobs plain?

Was this work also gauche, imprudent, a waste of time? These issues were polarizing. There were powerful, well-organized and deep-pocketed forces opposed to reforms. And at points, there were also lone champions, activists and voices who refused to abandon their cries for change.

Reform might be difficult, complicated or unlikely. Debate about it may rally those on either side of the cause. But that really is not a valid reason to abandon all efforts to create change.

So the corporate gun lobby would love to have us abandon our efforts to create change in gun laws and to the conversation about guns and gun violence. But we will not do that. In fact, we are getting stronger. The more people understand about what the corporate gun lobby has accomplished, the more repulsed they are.

Why have the argument at all? When the majority of Americans want gun safety reform, it should happen shouldn’t it? Arguing makes no difference. What does make a difference is making a very loud noise with our elected leaders. Or making sure they are not re-elected. Shaming them is also good. For if the Senators who voted against a law to keep terrorists from buying guns in this country after the San Bernardino shooting aren’t ashamed of themselves, something is wrong.

We are better than this.