“law abiding” gun owners

Anniversaries and actions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But I digress.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

UPDATE:

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

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

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

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

Gun safety 101

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few reasons people shot peopleAmerica is awash with guns. So now what? People kill each other over things that shouldn’t result in someone becoming dead. If you don’t believe me look at what Parents Against Gun Violence puts together every month about the reasons people shoot each other. You can get on their Facebook page and click on the incident to see that they are not making this stuff up.

What should we do? For we are clearly not practicing gun safety in America. Obviously banning guns will never happen. How would it happen? Never mind though. That is what the gun extremists tell the world whenever they don’t want a reasonable gun law passed that would only make it harder for people who shouldn’t have guns to get them anyway.

What do they say about all of those “accidental” shootings that I read about every day? It’s mostly kids but even “responsible” gun owners discharge their guns unintentionally. When it’s kids and teens, those “responsible” gun owners have to be adults. For every gun in the hands of a child or teen must first pass through the hands of an adult.

Take this case as a tragic example ( only one of many)- Some Florida teens found a gun in a gun box in a garage. They passed it around and pulled the trigger feeling fairly certain that the gun was unloaded ( how would teens know this?). There was one round in the chamber after all and now a young boy is senselessly dead.

Why does this happen so often? It is happening often by the way. From the article:

BSO, coincidentally, has been planning to have a firearms safety class next Tuesday in Cooper City. The class will focus on safety lessons for children ages 11 to 14. It will discuss topics like properly securing firearms and the dangers of guns.

The Sheriff’s office wants to teach kids about gun safety. What’s wrong with this picture? They want to discuss properly securing firearms with teens? This is the wrong audience for that. Teens are not the gun owners. The adults own the guns. Teens can’t buy guns. Why aren’t the adults required to attend a mandatory class when they buy a gun to teach them that what they just bought is a dangerous product designed to kill another human being? What is wrong with us?

Meanwhile a “responsible” gun owner shot and injured his own daughter. Seriously. In what other country do parents “accidentally” shoot their own kids? Didn’t they have Gun Safety 101? Likely not. Actually very few people get proper training to shoot those deadly weapons they buy for self defense. How then, one wonders, will they know what to do if they actually need that gun to protect themselves or their family?  Because six states have passed laws that don’t even require a gun permit holder to touch a gun before carrying one around in public let alone any kind of training. Other states require permits but no training. Insane. But I digress. From the article:

The dad was trying to show his daughter how to draw a gun when the firearm went off, police said, according to NBC Miami.

You really can’t make this stuff up. Why would you show your daughter how to draw a gun? In what scenario should a young girl be expected to draw a gun on someone? In what safety course did this man learn that having a loaded gun while “playing” with it or showing it to someone else is a good idea?

My friend at New Trajectory blog has written a new post about people getting shot at gun stores. As I said, you can’t make this stuff up.

Meanwhile, while all of this, and much more more, were happening, the Gun Violence Archive is keeping track of numbers. It’s not a good trend. According to the folks at this site, the following is true:

We have had 36 more mass shootings this year than last.
We have had 866 more deaths.
We have had 2,973 more injuries reported.
We have had 1,456 more Officer Involved incidents.

At the bottom of this post is the graph showing the numbers. Can we say we have a national gun violence epidemic? The answer is quite equivocally YES. Check it out for yourself.

So what to do? The answer is not complicated. It’s pretty simple actually if we all use a little common sense and put our heads together to do what’s right for public health and safety. Requiring Brady background checks on all gun sales is the most important thing we can do. Fix the NICS so that all the crucial records of prohibited purchasers are in the system. Fix the system so that there is no “default proceed” for selling guns until a background check is completed. Stopping domestic abusers from getting guns. Requiring people to report lost or stolen guns is another. Strengthening gun trafficking laws is important as is passing stronger straw purchasing laws. The gun lobby loves to say we need to enforce the laws on the books. OK. How about this problem? Some judges are granting felons their gun rights back even when they shouldn’t. Is that a good idea? ASK if there are unsecured guns in the homes where your children/grandchildren play. Lock up your guns if you have them to reduce the chance that someone ( a child, teen, burglar, vulnerable, dangerously mental ill person, person with anger issues) isn’t able to get a gun anyway. Gun suicides take more lives than homicides.

So how about mandatory training and maybe even requiring insurance for owners of deadly weapons? Would that be so inconvenient? Because buying a gun is way too easy. Here’s what’s required now:

To buy one, I would need to fill out a 4473 — a six-page form from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

I’d have to write my name and address. My Social Security Number is optional. And there’s half a page of “yes or no” questions.

“Have you ever been convicted in any court of a felony, or any other crime, for which the judge could have imprisoned you for more than one year, even if you received a shorter sentence including probation?”

“Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?”

Arthur has to write down the type of gun — the make and model and the serial number. Then, he calls the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division, in Clarksburg, W.V., and he gives them only the most basic information: name, address, driver’s license number.

“They give me a ‘yay’ or ‘nay,’ and out the door you go,” he says. “It’s quick and easy. And we take credit cards.”

Quick and easy and out the door you go with your gun.  It should be hard to buy a gun.

But the corporate gun lobby has a hissy fit whenever any of these solutions are suggested. God forbid that we actually do something about the devastation of gun violence. Because what will happen to profits if people decide that guns are a danger to themselves or their families? What happens if training is required as it is to drive a car and more time and effort has to be expended to get a gun? What happens if people must have a background check no matter where they buy a gun?

Most likely fewer gun deaths and safer communities.

Until we can speak the truth about our American gun culture, even the pandering bought and paid for politicians will do insane things to get themselves elected. The most recent is Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s claim that Texans ( I’m sure all of them) make their bacon on the barrel of a machine gun. Watch this. Hmmm. The gun lobby gets angry with gun violence prevention advocates for not using the correct terminology. Doesn’t Senator Cruz know the difference between an automatic machine gun and a semi-automatic AR-15? Guess not. He was making his bacon on a semi-automatic. So if he gets that wrong, what else will he get wrong?

But why make a video like this in the first place when you are running for office? Is it cute? Is it showing respect for guns? Is it safe? Is it necessary to get elected to act like a clown to get into the good graces of the gun extremists?

This is the America we have. Is this the America we want or deserve?

This is why America needs a major tutorial about the role of guns and gun violence in our country. What our politicians should be doing is figuring out how to lower the rate of gun violence in America instead of cavalierly buying votes by showing prowess while making bacon ton he barrel of a gun.

Where is common sense?

Gun Violence Archive

The ripple effect of devastation from guns post July 4th holiday

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Water ripples background
Water ripples background

Gun violence has a ripple effect that spreads far beyond the victim and the immediate family. It is a public health epidemic. The corporate gun lobby is part of this ripple effect because were it not for their fierce opposition to doing the right thing to reduce and prevent gun violence, the ripple would be smaller. But the carnage continues daily and does not take a holiday.

Let’s review what happened in the past few days.

In Chicago, 10 were killed and 54 injured from bullets.

All over the country, young children were shot and killed or seriously injured in “accidental” shootings. Here’s a list of the ones we know about.

In Texas, a 3 year old found his grandfathers’s gun and shot himself in the face.

A 7 year old Chicago boy was shot and killed by stray bullets meant for someone else.

A 3 year old Michigan boy found a loaded gun in his home and shot and killed himself.

A 9 year old Florida boy was shot and injured by his 11 year old brother.

A 12 year old Texas boy shot himself in the leg as he was walking along a street. What in God’s name was this boy doing with a gun on the street? This is insane, to say the least.

A 14 year old Milwaukee boy is dead from a gunshot wound over a Facebook argument about a girl.

Under the category of “good guys with guns” comes the following:

A Wisconsin man was arrested for threatening to shoot “the usurper” President Obama when he spoke in LaCrosse last week. – an alleged “good guy” with a gun carrying out his rights.

A Texas man was shot and killed after carrying an assault rifle into a Texas hotel and shooting one person.– a “good guy” with a gun exercising his rights or someone with evil intent? It’s hard to know because anyone can carry an assault rifle around in Texas.

A Florida open carrier was arrested for terrorizing families at the popular Daytona Beach. Why carry an assault rifle at a place like this? ” Christopher Ray cited the fishing and hunting provision of Florida law that allows people coming from or going to fishing or hunting expeditions to have guns.” Good grief. It must be pretty dangerous on the beach and you just never know about those trolls and zombies lurking at hunting and fishing spots.

This is the America the corporate gun lobby and gun extremists have created.

In other tragic gun news:

A teen aged Georgia girl ( honor student) was struck by a stray bullet during July 4th celebratory gun fire and died. She was sitting on a couch in her own home. I wrote a previous post and have written before about celebratory gun fire on holidays. This is insane. But when so many people have guns everywhere and think it’s OK to bring them to public places to “celebrate” this is what we get.

I am adding this “celebratory gunfire” shooting. A 9 year old Tennessee girl was shot during a July 4th celebration. 

And I keep reading about more incidents so am adding one more to the list of celebratory gunfire on the Fourth of July. This time it’s a 7 year old Nebraska boy who was injured by a stray bullet. From the article:

Judging by the size and depth of the wound, police believe it was fired into the air from a five-mile radius, which would include Omaha.

“Just to be in your own yard and get struck by a bullet from the sky, you know, it is supposed to be fireworks coming from the sky, not bullets,” said grandfather Jim Riddle. “We thought it was a firework that hit him right here and then all of the sudden we found out it was a bullet laying on the floor after she lifted up the cloth, putting pressure on the blood.”

Senseless. Avoidable.

Where is common sense?

It’s not just kids who got shot over the holiday week-end. An awful incident happened in Hollywood, CA on Sunday when a man came behind a man and woman walking on the street and shot her in the head with a shotgun.

An apparent domestic shooting left 4 adults dead in South Carolina.

The man with a felony record who shot and killed a young woman on a San Francisco Pier claims he found the gun in a tee shirt and the gun went off when he picked it up. First of all, if that was true, what in the heck was a gun doing wrapped in a tee shirt on a very busy tourist and local attraction? Secondly, if this unbelievable tale is not true, what was this felon doing with a gun in the first place? Questions need to be asked and answered.

Five people were injured from bullets outside of Minneapolis bars on Saturday night. Guns and alcohol just don’t go together.

Chicago had a deadly week-end. Check out this article:

Looking weary and visibly frustrated, Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy delivered a press conference Sunday afternoon addressing the high levels of gun violence Fourth of July weekend in Chicago, attributing much of it to lax gun laws.

As of 3 p.m. Sunday, Chicago police confirmed nine shooting deaths and at least 40 others wounded in shootings since Thursday afternoon. Earlier this week, McCarthy promised “all hands on deck” for the holiday weekend. (…) McCarthy displayed an array of firearms on a table at the press conference, saying that Chicago Police seized “about one illegal gun per hour” over Fourth of July weekend thus far. (…)

He used one shooting, “an absolute tragedy,” to illustrate his point — the slaying of 7-year-old Amari Brown in Humboldt Park Saturday night.

Amari was shot, along with a 26-year-old woman, just before midnight. Sunday morning, police said they were not the intended targets of the shooting; McCarthy confirmed that police believe the target was Amari’s father, who he said is a “ranking gang member” with 45 previous arrests, including for illegal gun possession.

McCarthy said he was most recently arrested on a gun charge in April, but then released the next day. “If Mr. Brown is in custody,” McCarthy said, “his son is alive. That’s not the case. Quite frankly, he shouldn’t have been on the street.

“It’s real simple,” he continued. “Gun possessors are potential murderers. If they don’t learn a lesson for carrying the gun, they keep carrying the gun. They get into an argument, now instead of fighting, they shoot.”

McCarthy said there need to be stricter gun laws and blamed “the gun lobby” for the lack of political motivation to pass them.

There is blame to go around and the corporate gun lobby is right in the middle of it. The Brady Campaign held a recent rally outside of Chuck’s gun shop outside of Chicago to highlight “bad apple gun dealers” who contribute to the carnage.

This Chicago mom comments on the violence in Chicago and how her children have to live as a result:

Lula Hill has a strategy for keeping her three sons alive.

It begins just before they leave for school in the morning. She rubs their foreheads with anointing oil and says a prayer that God might protect them when they are not in her sight.

Then there are the more practical steps, like teaching the boys to stay away from the windows of their own home, on the South Side Chicago neighborhood of Roseland. Jaden, the youngest, who is 8, knows why.

“A man might have a gun in his hand, and he can look through the window and see me and he can shoot,” he said. “That makes me feel, like, scared because I don’t want to get killed.”

These are the practicalities of life and family as another summer of violence breaks over Chicago.

Unfortunately, prayers will not keep her kids safe. Changing the laws and the conversation are the only hope this mother, and the many other parents like her have. Kids should not have to worry about being too close to windows in their homes because of bullets flying on the streets or for fear of someone with a gun looking in and aiming at him/her. This is the America we have, though. In some urban areas, kids are growing up with gun violence all around them.

My good friend and fellow activist for gun violence prevention posted about the “ripple effect” of the shooting that changed her life when her daughter got access to a gun and shot and killed herself leaving behind children and a grieving family and friends. It was 4 years ago today and my friend posted all of the things she is angry about that her daughter or her grandchildren or herself can no longer do. From her Facebook post ( just some of what she wrote):

” Every day I miss hearing her come in the door calling out Mom! Even the times when she was angry. I miss the time she changed the ringtone on my phone for her to play Stewie (from Family Guy) yelling out Mom in so many different and annoying ways. I miss that her kids may not always remember the different facets of Angela. I miss listening to her laugh as she would play dominoes with her friend Jodie, or giggle with her kids and when they were upset she would get them laughing by telling them not to laugh, she would say do not laugh, whatever you do DO not laugh, I do not want to see you laugh and in no time they would be giggling so sweetly. I remember her coming over and the kids running in all excited that they had rescued a turtle. They saw one on the side of the road so Angela pulled over and carried it across the street so it would not get run over by a car. I asked her are you sure that was where he was headed and she laughed. I miss her so much not only because of the times we spent together, but for the times we will miss.
I am angry that it has been 4 years and nothing has changed.

I am angry that I have friends that have been working hard to make changes since 1989 and nothing has changed.

I am angry that the system failed my daughter and so many other daughters and sons, siblings and spouses, so many loved ones.

I am angry my grandchildren are growing up and my daughter is missing all of it.(…)

I am angry that like her siblings, her children will meet milestones in their lives and like their Aunt and Uncles there will be someone missing.

I am angry that every day new people join our ranks of grieving survivors….
I am angry at the people and politicians that believe we want to take away everyone’s guns and abolish the 2nd Amendment, because they believe this false information people will continue to die every day from gun violence.

I am angry that since Sandy Hook there have been at least 125 school shootings and nothing has changed. (…)

I am angry that to some the answer is we need to arm more people…. Yet the death rate by gun violence keeps climbing.

I am told guns don’t kill people, people kill people…. With this I cannot argue, so let’s cut the gun violence by keeping guns out of the hands of those that should not have a gun. Felons, domestic abusers, those that are considered a danger to themselves or others.

I am angry that gun owners think because they are responsible gun owners that we shouldn’t have universal background checks. It isn’t the responsible gun owners I fear, it is the irresponsible ones. The ones that leave their guns where children can find them and use them. Those who will without a second thought give guns to anyone and call it their constitutional right and not give it a second thought as to what could happen. We have laws about stealing and robbery and those aren’t in place to stop the lawful…

I am angry when people look at me and say if she hadn’t had a a gun she still would have committed suicide…. Yes that is possible she may still have but then again had she chosen another method she could have possibly changed her mind.

I am angry that in 2012 – 32,288 people died from gun violence and 64% of them where suicides and yet people still will say to me she could have picked another way…. When there is a gun in the home it is more likely to be used in suicide, domestic violence or accidently than in defense.

We need to work together, we need to sit down and discuss and find an equitable solution. We need a universal background check that would prevent a lot of senseless murders and suicides. We need more education on gun safety to protect our children from accidental shootings.

In 2013 there were 41,149 suicides: 10,062 were by suffocation – 6,637 were by poisoning (pills) – 21,175 were by gun…. Do you still think we do not need a background check that includes severe depression and severe mental illness?

Please lets open the discussion and save lives.”

Diane’s daughter had serious mental illness and had been hospitalized. Yet she was able to purchase a gun anyway. And now, Diane is living with the ripple effects of the violence that takes way too many lives and leaves families and communities devastated.

Suicide by gun takes more lives than homicide by gun. It is a serious national public health problem. Easy access to guns makes it all too easy to take your own life and leave behind the devastating ripple effects.

I am angry that Diane had to post this today. I am angry that many of us have been working for many years to get our elected leaders to stand with us and do the right thing. I’m angry that too many of our leaders have chosen the money and the corporate gun lobby over common sense. I’m angry that the devastation continues unabated because we have not had the courage to have a serious national conversation about the role of guns and gun violence in our country.

Diane’s voice is just one of many. She is representing a lot of Americans and also a majority of Americans who just know that what we are doing now is not working and we need to work for change.

If anyone wants to know why the majority of Americans want something to change about our gun culture and our gun laws, just read what I wrote. And then read this article about why we are doing virtually nothing- post Charleston and post Sandy Hook and post Aurora and post the daily parade of gun deaths and injuries:

All of this has produced a certain level of cynicism among those who support gun restrictions, as expressed by the President when he said he didn’t expect reforms any time soon.

Each time that a massacre has occurred, we have seen not only a striking mobilization against any new restrictions but an equally striking absence of strong pressure to address this issue.

A significant number of liberal Democrats, who in previous years had strongly supported gun control, have remained noticeably silent on the issue. They are resigned to defeat.

The President often finds himself standing alone when calling for gun control. But those who say federal legislators can “never” pass gun restrictions should look to moments like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or the Affordable Care Act of 2010 to see how those predictions can turn out to be wrong.

The good news is that there has been some progress in states like Maryland and New York, which have attempted to move forward even as gridlock reigns supreme on Capitol Hill. But for an effective response to the kind of gun tragedies we see so often, supporters will need stronger mobilization to counteract what their opponents have achieved.

The country needs to do a better job dealing with its gun problem. Otherwise, it will be all too soon that we’ll find ourselves going through this again.

We can write and think about this all we want to. But what we need is action. Lives depend upon us putting our heads together to do the right thing. In the name of the victims, this needs to change. Act now to ask Congress to pass a universal background check bill. Act now to work with your own state legislators to pass a similar law. We can save lives if we stand together and have the will. Will we?

We are better than this.

UPDATE:

This article adds to the gun deaths by stray bullets over the holiday week-end. A Colorado man about to roast marshmallows with his family at a camp site was hit by a stray bullet and died of his injuries. From the article:

Family members said they had heard distant gunshots a while before Martin collapsed. They reported the gunfire to a ranger, because using firearms is prohibited in that area of the national forest.

Now, the family is urging whoever fired the errant shot to come forward.

“It just happened. You never know when you’re going to go. You can be sitting at a campfire waiting to roast marshmallows with your grandchildren talking to your son in law and you’re just done,” Carlie said.

At this time, sheriff’s officials said it appears that Martin was killed by an errant bullet fired by an unknown person. They do not believed it was intentional at this time. However, that has not been ruled out, sheriff’s officials said.

Does anyone remember that our Congress passed a bill allowing guns in our national parks? Seems like a great idea because… rights. Where is the right to be free from stray bullets while camping in our nation’s parks? There really are places where guns are not needed.

UPDATE #2:

The articles keep coming. In what can only be called a senseless, stupid and dangerous incident, a South Carolina man getting even with a group for shooting bullets into the air over the July 4th holiday shot off his own gun at a car, hitting and injuring his own friend.

This is one of the results of the guns everywhere American culture.

UPDATE #3:

The reports of celebratory gunfire injuries keep coming in. In the Kansas City area, it appears that 3 people were injured by stray bullets flying in their neighborhoods. All were lucky no one was killed. This is the definition of insanity.

ASK about guns on Father’s Day

commongunsense, , , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

ASK

Today is national ASK day- a day to call attention to the fact that too many children have easy access to loaded guns. Children are curious and will touch guns even if adults have told them not to. It’s the adults who are responsible to secure their guns safely from children and teens. Kids should not be made responsible for this as toddlers. Yes, toddlers do find guns and shoot others or themselves with guns they find in their homes. If you want your own child or grandchildren to be safe from gun violence, asking about unsecured guns is your job. More on this at the end of this post.

Just as it is an adult’s responsibility to understand that an adult child or friend who has serious problems should not have a gun. And it is the country’s responsibility to make sure seriously troubled individuals, felons, adjudicated mentally ill people, those with restraining orders for domestic abuse, drug abusers, terrorists and others who could be dangerous with guns should not have them. It should be difficult to obtain a gun since they are weapons designed to kill people. Guns are unique in this way and need to be treated differently from other products on the market. There is no right to do whatever you want to do with a gun or to have one if you shouldn’t.

In the midst of national ASK day, long planned by the Brady Campaign, we are dealing with the after effects of one of our nation’s most heinous shootings. It’s hard to say that because they are all heinous and they all leave families bereft and the nation reeling. But this one feels worse. The victims were targeted specifically for their skin color by a white man who hated them for their skin color.

The nation is grieving for the 9 victims of the Charleston “Mother Emanuel” church shooting. The nation is asking why. The dust won’t settle for quite some time. There will be funerals. There will be attempts at healing. There will be community gatherings. There will be discussions- or there should be discussions about the role of guns and gun violence and about racism and the ugliness that caused the shooter to kill 9 people with no remorse. There will be a very public and emotional trial which will re-victimize the survivors. It’s an ugly picture of America. The gun rights folks are trying to change the subject blaming it on anti-depressants ( even though there is no evidence that the shooter was on them), religion, and even the victims themselves have been blamed by at least one NRA member. Shameful. Offensive. Insensitive. Ugly.

The truth of the matter is that the shooter was a racist with white supremacist views. He set out to kill black people and he chose the Mother Emanuel church on purpose for its’ historical significance to the black community. He was a school drop-out with no job. He appeared to be a troubled young man.  He actually talked about this kind of violence with his room mate and a girlfriend and his room mate took his gun from him at one point because of his talk about violence. But his girlfriend got the friend to give it back. She just has to be re-thinking that decision and agonizing over it. This is why gun violence restraining orders are a good idea. They can prevent shootings like this.

There is talk about whether or not the shooter could have passed a background check. Apparently he bought the gun from a gun dealer but then we heard his father gave him the gun. Did he have a pending felony charge making him a prohibited purchaser? We don’t have all the facts yet. It will take a while to sort out. We do know though that in South Carolina it wouldn’t matter if he had been charged with a felony because he could easily buy a gun from a private seller on-line ( Armslist.com) or at a gun show with no background check. That’s why requiring background checks on all gun sales can make a difference.

And elected leaders are either running towards the discussion about the need to change gun laws or running way away from it. As just one ridiculous example, former Governor Rick Perry, Republican presidential candidate, suggested that the Charleston shooting was an “accident”. Come on. This should be a hot topic in the upcoming election. If it’s not, there’s something wrong with us. I guess we already know that. Jon Stewart of the Daily Show, as always, did a great job of talking about our fetish with guns and the results of it in a recent show. Watch Stewart below:

Can we move on after this horrific shooting? We will. But for goodness sake, let us not move on and ignore the elephant in the country. What about gun violence? What are we going to do about it? Will we let the corporate gun lobby hold us hostage again like they did after the Sandy Hook shooting?  Will our leaders at long last decide they don’t need to be afraid of the gun lobby’s threats and money? For that would be a great day in America. The rest of the world would cheer for us since now they can only wonder why we allow these kinds of shootings over and over and over again:

“We don’t understand America’s need for guns,” said Philip Alpers, director of the University of Sydney’s GunPolicy.org project that compares gun laws across the world. “It is very puzzling for non-Americans.”

A frontier nation like the U.S., Australia had a similar attitude toward firearms prior to a 1996 mass shooting that killed 35. Soon after, tight restrictions on gun ownership were imposed and no such incidents have been reported since.

A similar effect has been seen elsewhere.

“The USA is completely out of step with the rest of the world. We’ve tightened our gun laws and have seen a reduction,” said Claire Taylor, the director of media and public relations at Gun Free South Africa.

Ahmad Syafi’i Maarif, a prominent Indonesian intellectual and former leader of Muhammadiyah, one of the country’s largest Muslim organizations, said the church shooting shocked many.

“People all over the world believed that racism had gone from the U.S. when Barack Obama was elected to lead the superpower, twice,” he said. “But the Charleston shooting has reminded us that in fact, the seeds of racism still remain and were embedded in the hearts of small communities there, and can explode at any time, like a terrorist act by an individual.”

America is awash with guns as President Obama stated in remarks about the Charleston shooting. Take a look at these graphs in a Vox.com article showing the proliferation of guns in a country that can’t seem to get together to stop the shootings:

Despite signs of decline in gun ownership, the US still has a huge number of private guns. In 2012, Americans owned an estimated 270 million guns, almost 42 percent of the total number of civilian-owned guns on the entire planet:

gun_violence_graphic1

In developed countries, there is a strong correlation between the number of guns and incidences of gun violence. In 2012, the US, which has the most guns per capita, also had the most firearm-related homicides of developed countries. Japan, which has the lowest rate of gun ownership, had the least:

When there are so many guns, there will be so many shootings. Period.

And while we move on, there are things we can do aside from passing stronger gun laws like ever popular universal background check requirement.

We can get parents and grandparents to ASK if there are unsecured guns in the homes where their kids/grandkids play and hang out. Why? Because that is a way to reduce gun deaths and injuries. There are plenty of stories to tell about parents who didn’t ask and now are living with the memory of their deceased children. Take this family, for example. Their daughter was shot by a friend when the children found a gun in the friend’s home. It doesn’t have go be this way. We actually can prevent gun deaths and injuries. Guns need to be stored securely away from kids and teens to avoid “accidental” gun deaths and suicides.

Check out the website of the ASK campaign for more information about how to ask along with materials and some videos about the awkward conversation that parents must ask to protect their children from an avoidable and senseless death. It’s just common sense, of course. Check it out:

The conversation might be awkward but not nearly as awkward as the conversation will be if your child or a friend’s child finds a loaded gun and fires it accidentally- killing or hurting someone else.

It’s Father’s Day. Fathers and mothers should be asking this question. No father wants to have to talk about his daughter like the Brooklyn father in the article above. He won’t be getting a father’s day hug or gift from his daughter this father’s day.

Some families in Charleston will be missing their fathers on this day. And some fathers won’t have their sons or daughters to wish them a happy father’s day on this day. These families will never be the same. The community and the church will never be the same. The violent and unexpected nature of gun deaths never goes away for the families who experience it. I know that from personal experience. It feels like the family has been violated.

The reaction of the families of the shooting victims is an example of grace and forgiveness in the face of tragedy. These are real people with real emotions who loved their family members and who will miss them and grieve for them. The shooter took someone away from them. Do shooters ever think about that when they fire their guns? Shooters rarely think about those who will be left behind with the holes left in their hearts and their lives that survivors will live around as they try to come to grips with their losses.

We are broken. We are Charleston. We are Mother Emanuel. We stand with the victims and survivors. We need to change our country.

Let’s do some common sense things this father’s day. Stand with the families of the Charleston shooting victims and support their healing. Demand that our leaders get to work and pass stronger gun laws and stop being afraid of the corporate gun lobby.  Demand a change to the conversation about the role of guns and gun violence in America- the only country that experiences such carnage. Think about being a responsible gun owner if you are one and store your guns safely. If you are a parent, think twice about giving your troubled young adult child a gun. The Charleston shooter’s father will be having a terrible father’s day today.

And ASK about unsecured guns in places where your child plays. We can save lives if we all get together and talk about the epidemic of gun violence and solve this problem together for the sake of our children and our families.

Happy Father’s Day.

Should we be afraid of the gun extremists?

commongunsense, , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

zombieThis will be a long read because there is so much going on in the insane gun world that it takes a lot of space to write about it. And write about it is what many are doing. It’s hard to deny that our gun culture is so out of whack and so out of tune with what Americans want that it is becoming a tragic and deadly joke to the rest of the world. The fact that it is not lighting a fire under the pants of our elected leaders is a national shame.

I wrote a recent post about gun free zones in which I took issue with the corporate gun lobby’s specious claim that shooters look for gun free zones when they want to shoot people. It is, of course, a lie. This nonsensical and hypocritical claim has led the gun extremists to pushing for guns everywhere as they have convinced lawmakers that it will only be them- the “good guys” with guns who show up in places where guns are not allowed to save the rest of us from certain death.

I had an exchange with one of my readers on my last post about how he believes his children are not safe in their schools ( gun free zones) which is why he has chosen to carry a gun at his child’s school which he says he has worked out with administrators in the school. It is concealed so others don’t know he is carrying. I countered with the facts. Children are actually more safe in their schools than they are in their homes. This great and extensive report by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, “The Truth About Kids and Guns points out that 87% of firearms deaths for children 10 and under happen in their own homes- not considered to be gun free zones, by the way.

Let’s look again at the gun free zones nonsense. I pointed out how police officers are frequently attacked by guys with guns. It’s a fact. So the idea that someone with a gun is looking only for gun free zones for their attacks is disproven by the facts. And another example of this has played out in Dallas, Texas where an armed and angry “good guy” with a gun opened fire at a police station where we can presume those inside are armed:

Mr Brown told a news conference that the shoot-out began at about 12.30am local time, when the suspects parked in front of the building and began firing.

He said at least one suspect fled the scene in a van which rammed a police cruiser before leading officers on a chase that ended in an ongoing stand-off at a car park in the city of Hutchins, where more gunfire was exchanged.

Mr Brown said the suspect driving the van told officers that he blames police for losing custody of his son and “accusing him of being a terrorist”. The gunman also said he had explosives in the van, which appeared to be fitted with gun ports in the sides.

Let’s read this again: “”accusing him of being a terrorist””. Hmmm. An angry armed guy in an armored van with possible explosives. What should we call him? Is this what the Texas legislature had in mind when they just passed the law allowing for open carry of any kind of gun on the streets of their cities?

And did you know you could order a Zombie Apocalypse Assault Vehicle and Troop Transport.” vehicle through Facebook? The now deceased attacker had mental illness and anger issues according to his family and clearly had a fascination with guns. He had had prior problems with the law when he tried to choke his own mother but charges were dropped. Where did he get his guns? I think this statement needs more explanation actually ( from the above linked article):

The police report said he was then reported on the same day to be in Paris,Texas, about 100 miles away, where he grabbed weapons and body armour and talked about “shooting up schools and churches”. Andrew Boulware and his father, Jim, confirmed the incident.

So many red flags here. This is why laws such as the recently passed Gun Violence Restraining Order in California are so important. Family members know if a relative has mental illness and shouldn’t have guns. Laws such as this one in addition to requiring background checks on all gun sales can save lives. In this case, only the suspect died but all were lucky that many others were not injured or killed based on the mental state and bad intentions of the attacker. People with mental illness and anger issues such as this man had should not have access to guns.

And seriously, do people actually believe in zombies? Is there an alternate universe that I don’t know about?

Dear God.

But, according to this article, it’s really easy to become a terrorist like this guy in our own country. We talk a lot about those ISIS and other foreign terrorists attacking us. Let’s talk about our own home grown terrorists. I think that is what the guy in the zombie apocalypse van can be called. Check out this article from the Daily Beast about the ease of getting armored vehicles, clothing and guns, of course, right here in our own communities.

Where is common sense? We will see more of this because we are doing absolutely nothing to stop it. This one was in Dallas. The next one could be in your community. And that is not fear and paranoia. That is real. We are not talking about the zombies so feared by the gun extremists. We are talking about severely mentally ill people without the support they need to keep themselves and others safe from harm. We are talking about people with anger issues with guns. We are talking about the gun extremists themselves.

And almost at the same time that this incident was taking place the Governor of Texas was signing the new Open Carry and Guns on Campus bills into law. He signed the bills at a gun range. You just can’t make this stuff up. I’ve talked about Open Carry a lot so won’t get into that in this post.

Today my home town newspaper ran this editorial piece about guns on college campuses:

There has been no major demand on college campuses from students who want to bring guns to school. Instead, pro-gun laws have been foisted on colleges and universities that don’t want them. Why? Because of the power of the gun lobby.

But students don’t desire firearms. A 2013 poll published in the Journal of American College Health found that 78 percent of students at 15 Midwestern colleges and universities rejected guns on their campuses. Almost 80 percent of students said they would not feel safe if faculty, students and visitors carried concealed weapons on campus, and 66 percent said they did not feel that carrying a gun would make them less likely to be threatened by others. The American Association of State Colleges and Universities and more than 420 colleges and universities in 42 states have joined the Campaign to Keep Guns off Campus to fight pro-gun laws.

And they are right. Guns do not belong on campuses any more than they belong at schools or in places of worship or in hospitals. College campuses are supposed to be sites of learning, lively debate, quiet contemplation and study. (…)

We don’t need vigilantes. We have professional law enforcement, which sometimes has problems, but is still accountable to us.

As powerful as the gun lobby is, this year so far has not been a complete triumph for the gun rights movement. It lost a battle to get the Florida Legislature to approve a law allowing guns on campuses. And even though Texas passed its gun law, some pro-gun groups saw the law as a defeat because legislators amended it to permit university presidents to set limits on the buildings into which students can bring guns.

Let’s hope that the defeat in Florida and the amendment to the Texas law are just the beginning of a pushback against the gun lobby’s excesses. The last thing we need is more armed students on college campuses.

Gun lobby excesses is the right wording. There are so many examples in every day America of the excesses of the gun lobby and it’s followers. Why isn’t the message getting to the people we have elected to serve the majority and protect the public health and safety? Oh right- corporate gun lobby.

As just another example of a gun extremist acting out his rights as a “good guy” with a gun, let’s look at this heinous shooting at an Iowa shopping mall:

Iowa mall cop — with a Facebook account loaded with open-carry and right-wing memes and photos of multiple weapons — is under arrest for shooting and killing a fellow mall worker because she filed sexual harassment complaints against him.

According to The Gazette, Alex Kozak was taken into custody after shooting 20-year-old Andrea Farrington three times in the back while she was at work at the Iowa Children’s Museum in the Coral Ridge Mall in Coralville, Iowa.

Police say that the 22-year-old Kozak left the mall and went to his home and retrieved a 9mm Glock handgun before retuning and shooting Farrington late Friday night..

KCJJ reports that a cousin of Farrington’s said that Kozak had been harassing the victim for at least six weeks and that she had complained to his superiors about unwanted advances he had made toward her. (…) Kozak — who is currently being held on $10 million bail — is married to Kellie Kozak, who recently posted pictures on her Facebook page of a visit to Costco where her husband can be seen carrying a sidearm. According to his father-in-law, Kozak didn’t always carry a weapon, saying, “If circumstances were that it’d be best not to have a weapon present, he didn’t have a problem with that.”

You really ought to check out the Facebook screen captures ( in the article) from the page of the shooter’s wife. Dare to speak out against gun insanity and meet with this in your face behavior. The staff at the Costco store the shooter and his wife visited were perhaps prescient. Even though these 2 tried to force their open carry behavior on the clerks and customers, they didn’t want it. Did they sense this guy could be a killer with that gun he carried so proudly and arrogantly?

The shooter had a legal permit to carry that gun. No comment.

The thing is, the majority of us don’t want openly carried or concealed carried guns in public places. Yes,people have a right to own guns but where is the line drawn between civility and harassment and being in the faces and spaces of others?

New York Times columnist Gail Collins wrote this column about the in your face nonsense of open gun carriers. From her column:

We’ve moved from the right to bear arms to the right to flaunt arms.

While the airport setting gives the incident a particular flair, this kind of thing has been happening quite a bit. In Michigan, the City of Grand Rapids has been in a legal battle with a man who took umbrage when police stopped him while he was walking down a residential street on a Sunday morning wearing camouflage, with a pistol strapped to his leg and singing “Hakuna Matata” from “The Lion King.”

Very few states have flat-out rules against openly carrying guns in public. It’s just something that never came up. “It’s not a practical thing to do,” said Laura Cutilletta of the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. But it turns out that anyone with the legal right to carry a concealed weapon — which, in some states, doesn’t even require a permit — generally also has the legal right to walk into a McDonald’s with a gun sticking out of his waistband. (…)

The open display of weaponry freaks out average citizens, especially the ones with children. It outrages police. At one point, even the National Rifle Association said the open carry demonstrations were “downright weird.” But the organization quickly backtracked, apologized, blamed the post on an errant staffer, and averred that “our job is not to criticize the lawful behavior of fellow gun owners.”

You’d think that lawmakers would move quickly to make it illegal, but with a few exceptions, there’s more enabling going on than anything else. After a Kalamazoo man walked into the public library’s summer reading party for children with a 9-millimeter gun strapped to his waist, worried officials asked the State Legislature to add libraries to a very small list of gun-free zones. The Legislature did nothing.

“Look, I got a gun!” yelled a man who walked into a park where kids were playing baseball in — yes! — Georgia. “There’s nothing you can do about it.” The police, who were summoned, determined he was absolutely right.

There’s nothing we can do about it because our state legislators have enabled the corporate gun lobby and gun extremists and left the rest of us with this kind of uncouth and impolite behavior. They ought to be ashamed or embarrassed. Are they? Not so far but if this kind of public display of bravado with loaded guns continues, they will eventually have to take responsibility for allowing themselves to be duped by the gun lobby and fix the problem. It’s already too late but they could at least try. “Better late than never.”

Some people think this is the answer. It has merit and if the insanity continues, who knows? But for some who have been hiding behind the second amendment for opposition to common sense measures to stop the shootings, these are “fighting” words. More on this another time.

I could go on and on and on. The result of our American gun culture brought to us by the corporate gun lobby is that more people are now dying of gunshot injuries and more are surviving thanks to modern medical techniques. I will list a few more but just know I’ll be back to talk about how we can stop at least some of our nation’s senseless gun deaths.

Can we prevent all shootings? Of course not. But we surely have to practice some common sense and do a much better job of keeping guns away from those who shouldn’t have them. But further, we need a serious national discussion about the role of guns and gun violence in our communities. Too many people are dying in preventable shootings. More guns everywhere is proving to be deadly to our fellow citizens. The gun extremists are afraid of zombies and certain trouble in every nook and cranny of our communities. We should be afraid of those who are afraid of the zombies.

UPDATE:

Remember the man in the zombie van who shot up a Dallas police department? I wrote about it above and wondered how he got his guns. Well they were “legal” guns which were taken from him but returned after charges were dropped in an incident where he tried to choke his own mother:

Lamar County authorities say the weapons found on James Boulware, the man killed by Dallas police following a weekend attack on police headquarters, match guns and ammo confiscated then returned to Boulware two years ago:

A long range hunting rifle with scope. A 12 gauge shotgun. A Ruger rifle. A 45-revolver. A 9-millimeter, semi-automatic pistol. A camouflage flak jacket and body armor and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.

That’s just some of the arsenal of weapons confiscated by Lamar County Sheriff’s deputies in May of 2013 after arresting James Boulware on assault charges out of Dallas.

An arsenal of weapons was confiscated then returned after charges against James Boulware were dropped in a 2013 assault. Brett Shipp investigates.

Seems like a pretty #badidea to me. But when our gun laws are so lax that law enforcement and judges can’t do a thing about removing guns from those who clearly should not have them, this is the result. There are some people who should not have guns. We can do something about this if we make changes to strengthen our laws.

UPDATE#2:

So I want to add another article about that “zombie apocalypse” van used by the attacker of the Dallas police station. There are other folks in our country who feel a need to own one of these vehicles. From the article:

Why does he own it? Mr. Funicello, who runs a mixed martial arts gym called the Spartan Academy, said the question should be: Why not?

“This is America,” he said. “I should be able to have a howitzer or a bazooka if I want one. If I wanted to buy a fire truck, I could.”

Yup. This is America……

Guns at “dress-up” affairs

commongunsense, , ,

formal gownYes, apparently some folks feel threatened by zombies and other natural or man-made disasters at weddings and proms. Let me get to the wedding part first. A Kentucky law abiding sheriff’s deputy had a rude awakening when he decided that he needed his gun while attending a wedding. I mean, you never know what awful thing is going to happen requiring a gun while 2 people and their guests enjoy a happy couple professing vows to stay together no matter what. Back to the law enforcement officer and his troubles…… his gun discharged when it fell from his pocket to the floor. And the rest…..

McCracken County deputy Cory Golightly escorted his mother to a wedding on May 2. The wedding wasn’t in McCracken County. It was at the Bardwell Baptist Church in neighboring Carlisle County.

Nevertheless, Golightly saw fit to carry a gun in his jacket. To the wedding. In church.

Between the ceremony and leaving for the reception, the gun fell out of Golightly’s jacket and shot his mother through the abdomen. This was no superficial wound. The woman underwent abdominal surgery at a local hospital, where she is reportedly in stable condition.

Deputy Golightly, meanwhile, is on paid administrative leave while an investigation is completed. According to McCracken County Sheriff Jon Hayden, the gun, a .38 revolver, was not a department-issued weapon.

Hmmmmm. No words.

And this one, with the photo,  went around on Facebook and got a lot of well deserved attention. A group of Colorado prom goers posed for a group photo all decked out in their finest. They were also all decked out with a confederate flag and some assault guns. Nice. From the article:

Eight high school students in Parker, Colorado, posed for a prom picture with a large Confederate flag and guns, television station KDVR reported on Monday.

The students from Chaparral High School took the photo to commemorate their prom, which was held on Saturday in Denver. The group picture was snapped at a home and featured three boys in suits and five girls in fancy dresses. While the boys held the Confederate flag, two of the girls held guns.

The mother of one of the boys in the photo spoke anonymously to KDVR about the incident, saying the behavior displayed in the photo was unacceptable and explaining that her son made a mistake.

Yes, indeed-a mistake was made. The thing is, kids often model parents’ or other adults. As long as our cavalier attitude about guns encourages this kind of behavior, what are we expecting of our kids? Some of the parents were taking photos, obviously not believing that this was a really bad idea.

Where is common sense?

These incidents are not so uncommon, actually. I know I wrote about the one where the bride shot her own niece at her wedding. Yup. It happened:

Police said George and her new husband emerged from Jimmy K’s Bar and Grille in New Brighton, about 30 miles north of Pittsburgh, when an argument broke out over who should drive home.

The defense said the handgun went off as George was trying to move it from her husband’s opened glove box to a deep center console to put it in a safe place.

“Tina George loved this girl,” said defense attorney Stephen Colafella, who urged jurors to acquit his client on the grounds of “excusable homicide by misadventure.”

“She’s left with the aftermath of this, just like everyone else in this room,” he said.

But Assistant District Attorney Brittany Smith said the gun was in the console and George was removing it from there when it went off.

“When you pick up that gun, your mind should tell you you have a duty of care to the people around you,” Smith told jurors.

“A duty of care to the people around you….” Of course. When you are handling a gun while drinking alcohol and arguing, something like this is almost inevitable. It doesn’t have to happen but too many gun owners, even law enforcement officers, apparently don’t take their responsibilities as seriously as their rights. And their minds must be muddled by the idea that gun accidents, homicides and suicides only happen to other people. When you bring your gun along, you had also better bring your duty of care and responsibility as well.

And that, dear readers, is where we are going wrong. This can happen to anyone’s family. It happened to mine. Just because it hasn’t happened yet to yours doesn’t mean it won’t. So I would suggest that you hop on board the train of common sense and join in efforts at true gun safety reform that can save lives. Be a part of the change in the conversation about the role of guns and gun violence in our communities. We can save lives if we make up our minds that senseless gun deaths don’t have to continue at pace with auto accidents or, outpacing them soon enough in some states.

We are better than this.

Armadillos and the targets of bullets

commongunsense, , , , , , , , ,

armadillo

I’ll get to the Armadillo in a minute. But first….

A man walking a hiking trail in Arizona was hit by a bullet from somewhere in the distance. The bullet is still lodged in one of his wounded legs and now he is wondering if the bullet came from a nearby shooting range. From the article:

Sawyer said he was hiking the Max Delta Loop Trail around 10:30 a.m. on a Saturday, he didn’t immediately realize he was shot.

“I was like I don’t know what’s wrong; something’s wrong with my legs,” said Sawyer.

The bullet went all the way through his right leg and lodged in his left leg. He manages to make his way down the mountain and to a ranger station where he called for help.

There are two gun ranges north of the trail at the base of South Mountain. One belongs to the Phoenix Police Academy; the other is a private gun club called the Phoenix Rod and Gun Club.

Investigators say no one was shooting at the Police Academy at the time.

According to a police report, detectives believe the bullet that hit Sawyer came from the gun club, as does Sawyer’s attorney Garvey Biggers.

“We know for a fact there were three competitions going on, all ages were shooting that day, from children to adults… so if you have an inexperienced shooter, you could easily lose control of your weapon,” said attorney Garvey Biggers.

Sawyer’s legal team says the range is exactly 540 meters from where Sawyer says he was on the trail.

Is it possible for a bullet to travel 540 meters?

“Yes, no doubt about it,” said Biggers.

Of course, the owners of the gun range are disputing the hiker’s story. They wouldn’t want to be held responsible for flying bullets that travel far enough to hit innocent hikers on walking trails.

In my neck of the woods, we often hear gun fire at our cabin and at the cabins of good friends. There are more than a few shooting ranges in our area. People love to shoot their guns at targets or practice their shooting skills before hunting season or just for sport. And they are mostly safe. But guns are dangerous weapons designed to kill. Bullets travel far and often stop when they hit an innocent person at a distance. There need to be very strict regulations and safety practices for those who shoot guns at shooting ranges or those who choose to fire off their guns for fun on private property.

Remember this one? Florida law comes down on the side of allowing gun owners to shoot off their guns in residential neighborhoods close to families and children. Where is common sense? From the article:

That changed in 2011 when Gov. Rick Scott signed a measure putting teeth into the state restriction. Now local officials could be fined, removed from office and held responsible for their own legal bills if they’re sued over local gun ordinances.

In January, Volusia County municipal managers began communicating by email about the issue of the firing of guns on private property. Ponce Inlet Town Manager Jeaneen Witt wrote in a Jan. 10 email to South Daytona City Manager Joe Yarbrough that a resident in her city was setting up a shooting range on his property. Witt expressed her concern over the powerlessness of local governments to control the use of firearms and suggested lobbying legislators to set a criteria such as lot sizes and buffers.

This is the gun lobby at work “protecting” us all and it’s state legislators failure to stand up to the gun lobby.

Where is the right of people to feel safe in their neighborhoods from potential flying bullets?

It happens. This Kentucky woman was lucky she didn’t get hit by a stray bullet while using the bathroom:

A Lexington woman says a neighbor target practicing in his yard shot a bullet into her home over the weekend.

Fairshinda McLaughlin said she and her family were outside enjoying the spring weather at their home on Lexington’s outskirts Sunday afternoon when they heard a loud noise.

“I thought it was a bomb. I thought a propane tank or something exploded, It was that loud,” she said.

That sound was a stray bullet crashing through her bathroom window.

McLaughlin called the police, and officers discovered the source of the bullet – a neighbor about a mile away firing at targets in his yard.

McLaughlin said she was just about to go use that bathroom.

Seriously folks. Can we talk about this dangerous culture of anything goes with guns anywhere? I could provide many more such inane and dangerous examples.

And then, of course, this one went around on social media because it was so stupid and ridiculous:

A Georgia woman was accidentally shot by her son-in-law on Sunday while he was attempting to shoot an armadillo.

According to WALB, 54-year-old Larry McElroy was outside when he fired his 9 mm pistol at the armadillo. The bullet killed the animal and ricocheted off of its shell.

The bullet then struck a nearby fence, went through the back door of his mother-in-law’s home, through the recliner she was sitting in and struck her in the back.

Fortunately for all, she was not badly hurt. Bullets don’t know where to stop. Can we talk about gun safety reform?

Recently in Vermont, a 6 year old boy was doing some target shooting with his family when he was accidentally shot:

The boy, his father and two other children were taking turns shooting at a target with a .22 caliber pistol, under the supervision of the father.

While the boy was shooting, the handgun failed to discharge. The child subsequently lowered the still-loaded firearm, but before his father could intervene, the gun discharged. The bullet hit the boy in the lower leg, White said.

Some of my critics would tell me that it’s OK for 6 year olds to be out shooting at targets. I would argue otherwise. Supervised or not, 6 year olds don’t seem old enough to handle the responsibility of holding a deadly weapon. Guns and kids just don’t go together well. Numerous incidents of “accidental” shootings by children are reported every day in media sources. I write about them. I also write about how these can be avoided.

The first question I want to ask is if adults really think children can handle guns? The second question I would ask is why we want young children near guns? The third question I would ask is why children aren’t participating in the activities more suitable to young children like just playing, riding bikes, going to the playground, playing soccer or softball or swimming, etc.?

And one important question to ask is if there are guns in the homes where your children play and hang-out? The Brady Center’s ASK campaign is encouraging parents to ask this very important question. It’s not a frivolous question nor should it be controversial. Here’s why. Yesterday charges were filed against an Idaho couple who left unsecured loaded guns around in their home which resulted in one child shooting and killing a friend:

Prosecutors are charging Rusty and Ashlee Lish with one count each of misdemeanor injury to a child for the accidental shooting death of Noelle Shawver that happened nine months ago.

Shawver died on July 30th after being accidentally shot in the chest by another five year old at Lish’s Chubbuck home.

According to police reports Noelle Shawver was playing with another 5-year-old in the master bedroom of the Lish’s Chubbuck home.

Court records say people in the home heard the gun go off and when they went into the room, they found Shawver with gunshot wound to the chest.

Shawver was taken to Portneuf Medical Center where she died from the wound.

Investigators say inside the master bedroom they found the .22 caliber rifle involved in the shooting, a loaded 12 gauge shotgun with a round in the chamber, a loaded 7 millimeter rifle and a loaded Glock handgun, all unsecured and within reach of the children. (…)

“Even though the adults weren’t actors they provided the setting that allowed this young boy to go in and point the gun and pull the trigger,” said Herzog.

According to police reports multiple officers at the scene located several loaded and unsecured guns in the master bedroom area of the home, where Shawver and the other child were playing.

“It’s a horrible tragedy,” says Herzog.

Police say of the four guns found in the room the children were playing all were within reach, and no locks or other security measures were located on any of the weapons. Herzog says he hopes this case brings awareness to gun safety.

“The Lish’s are going to be in a position where hopefully they can do some good and increase public awareness about firearms in the home and overall the community can get some benefit from it,” said Herzog.

Will these parents get involved in public awareness about the risks of loaded, unsecured guns in homes? We can only hope. They are poster parents for the reason parents ought to use common sense and ask about guns in other parents’ homes. No one ever believes something like this can happen. But happen it does- too frequently.

We need to have a serious national discussion about the public health and safety problems presented by the over 300 million guns owned by Americans. In no other country is this a problem. Why are we not having the discussion? One answer is pretty clear. The corporate gun lobby doesn’t want that discussion because if the risks of guns in homes is revealed and discussed, perhaps parents will think twice about buying guns for whatever reason they do. Yes, some people believe they need guns for self protection. They must believe the horror stories of home invasions, the need for guns to protect themselves from national disasters, from some invisible enemy or whatever the gun lobby is telling them.

The NRA’s own Wayne LaPierre has been busy warning Americans about all of the dangers out there that should remind people they must have guns to defend themselves. And he’s not afraid to mention the beheadings and murders committed by terrorists, or other such awful things that could actually befall us if we don’t have our guns for protection. See it for yourself below in his words at the 2015 CPAC conference:

I wonder if the parents ( above) now charged with recklessness and negligence with their guns believed that the nightmare the gun lobby warned them about was actually one that happened because of their own guns not because of something for which they thought they needed those guns? I wonder if that father who allowed his 6 year old to shoot at targets because, well because……. thought his own gun would injure his own child instead of some invisible enemy lurking dangerously outside of his home.

Aren’t we better than this? We need this discussion about the risks of guns. It is beginning in spite of gun lobby efforts to stop it. Here’s a great article by Harvard public health researcher David Hemenway about the public health risks of guns:

So I decided to determine objectively, through polling, whether there was scientific consensus on firearms. What I found won’t please the National Rifle Association. (…)

I also found widespread confidence that a gun in the home increases the risk that a woman living in the home will be a victim of homicide (72 percent agree, 11 percent disagree) and that a gun in the home makes it a more dangerous place to be (64 percent) rather than a safer place (5 percent). There is consensus that guns are not used in self-defense far more often than they are used in crime (73 percent vs. 8 percent) and that the change to more permissive gun carrying laws has not reduced crime rates (62 percent vs. 9 percent). Finally, there is consensus that strong gun laws reduce homicide (71 percent vs. 12 percent).

Of course, it’s possible to find researchers who side with the NRA in believing that guns make our society safer, rather than more dangerous. As I’ve shown, however, they’re in the minority.

Scientific consensus isn’t always right, but it’s our best guide to understanding the world. Can reporters please stop pretending that scientists, like politicians, are evenly divided on guns? We’re not.

OK. The evidence from researchers and professionals in many fields agree. Guns in the home are a risk to those in the home. Duh. There is evidence. What are we doing about it? So far, ignoring it but it can’t be ignored for much longer. It’s time for a change in the conversation that can lead to a change in both policy and our nation’s fascination with guns.

Gun rights advocates are wrong about kids and guns

commongunsense, , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment
children shot
From Gun Death Tally- Faces of the Dead

I had a recent exchange with a gun rights advocate on my Twitter feed about keeping kids safe from guns. It all started when I posted this article written by my friend Cliff Schecter for Daily Beast. The article is about a cartoon made by someone at the NRA attempting to get kids to like guns and believe that if only they know some safety rules, a gun will never be used irresponsibly by them or anyone around them. From the article:

Think of it as a Joe Camel for the modern age. With armor-piercing bullets.

Ostensibly, it’s part of their “Eddie The Eagle program,” which instructs kids to run away from guns left lying around because bigger people in their lives still can own a firearm. And own them they do, as well as enjoying the freedom (!) to leave them pretty much any damn place they please. And because of the NRA’s efforts in parts of the South, West, and Midwest, these edified souls can now leave them in more places where a little one can find them—because nursery schools, parks, libraries, airports, and churches just didn’t have the same loving feeling without the guns.

So after creating the situation that puts over 650 in a hospital per annum and killed 62 kids a year from 2007 to 2011, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control (do you see why the NRA suppressed funding for gun studies for so long? For the NRA, statistics are bad), what to do to stop it?

First, they created Eddie The Eagle, who I guess is supposed to be like Smokey Bear, Old Glory, and one of the few animals not yet shot by Ted Nugent all wrapped into one. But now they have him in animated form, where he and his friends sing, dance, play video games, use the phrases the kids use (“like a true fashionista, heyyyy!”) and forget to run away from a gun, but promise the next time they see one, they’ll boogie on out of the room posthaste.

Schecter goes on to point out what is pretty obvious to most- unsecured loaded guns in homes with children are a really bad idea. More from the article:

Which they won’t because—as a piece on ABC News recently detailed—even after being instructed not to touch a gun, kids (who didn’t know they were on camera) will go right for them anyway:

More than 50 teenagers participated in the samePrimeTime experiment and many, including those who had recently received warnings to stay away from guns, responded similarly, agonizing over whether to tell an adult, playing with the gun, and aiming it at one another.

Even warning and educating kids about the danger of guns can have absolutely no effect on their behavior, the ABC News investigation shows. One teenager whose friend was recently killed in a shooting didn’t even hesitate before grabbing a gun.

But hey, in the video—in an effort to show how serious he is about preventing this kind of a tragedy from occurring—Eddie’s friend Officer Wingman tells the kids in quick succession: “You guys made the right decision. It’s always the best choice to get away from a gun. Who wants pizza?”

As the photo above shows in stark reality, way too many small children have been killed by guns just in the month of March of this year. Does the gun lobby care about these mostly avoidable deaths? Does seeing the faces of the actual dead even make a dent in the thinking of those who believe we are safer with loaded guns everywhere we go? How can the man who was arguing with me on Twitter actually believe that just properly training children about guns will do the trick? He has no common sense. Another gun rights advocate chimed in on this Twitter exchange saying  that it’s no different than teaching kids not to touch matches and knives as well. As responsible adults, haven’t we learned the hard way that telling small children not to touch doesn’t work? Often it evokes the opposite response- touch whatever it is you have just admonished a child NOT to touch.

You can read the articles about how each of these children pictured above died by a firearm injury if you click on the photo on this Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Gun-Death-Tally-Faces-of-the-Dead/552514904768968) page. The fact that we are now keeping track of these deaths is both a good thing and also a reflection of our gun culture. We have it all wrong. Many, if not most, of these deaths could have been prevented with some common sense and an awareness of the risks of guns in the home.

David Waldman who is keeping track of gun deaths and injuries for Daily Kos in a blog called GunFail, has also published a map of unintentional shootings of children 18 and under in 2014. Stunning. Click on the circle on the map for the article. No other civilized country not at war publishes statistics like this. We are better than this.

The answer is to keep dangerous things away from children in the first place. Should we teach young kids how to use matches responsibly? Should we teach our young kids how to cut apples with a sharp knife?

They’ve got it wrong. Look at the photo. Can we train 3 year olds to use guns responsibly? Of course not. From the linked article:

A 3-year-old boy picked up an unattended gun inside a home and it went off, shooting a 1-year-old boy in the face and killing him Sunday afternoon, police said.

The 1-year-old was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead.

Image source: WEWS-TV

Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams said investigators are trying to determine where the gun came from.

Full details about the shooting on the city’s east side weren’t released, but Williams said at least one adult was home when it happened.

“It’s a sad day for Cleveland,” he told reporters outside the home. “This fascination that we have with handguns, not just in this city but in this country, has to stop. This is a senseless loss of life … and it’s directly related to guns. We need to really take a hard look at the things that we’re doing out there on the state, local, and the national level to get some of these guns out of our communities. Because nothing good ever happens.”

“…Because nothing good ever happens.” We are better than this.

We can’t even train 9 year olds to shoot Uzis correctly. Go figure:

The new report, released by the Mohave County Sheriff’s Department on Tuesday, sheds some new light on Vacca’s death. Among other things, it reveals that the girl said immediately after firing the gun that it was too powerful for her and had hurt her, something that delayed her family from immediately realizing that Vacca had been shot.

Duh! Come on. What adult in their right mind thinks a 9 year old should be able to handle an Uzi? It’s that fascination with guns that is leading to unintentional and sometimes intentional deaths. 8 children a day die from gunshot injuries in homicides, suicides and “accidental “shootings and many more are injured. That is simply not OK and it’s wrong. It’s wrong for so many children to die or become victims of gunshot injuries every day in a country that is supposed to be “exceptional.”

What is wrong with the “responsible” adults here? And can we talk about the dangers of domestic disputes involving loaded guns? Women and children and sometimes entire families are wiped out in just seconds by an angry person with a loaded gun. Guns are not making us safer.

The adults in the corporate gun lobby are busy trying to convince us all that loaded guns should be a “normal” part of our lives. “Law abiding” gun owners should be allowed to carry their guns in places where families gather to play, eat, learn and work. No problem, right? And also to carry these guns openly so we can all get used to armed people walking around on our streets and eating in restaurants where we all assume we will be safe. And so our legislators got deceived and believed them. Did legislators understand that “law abiding” gun owners like this one would threaten coaches and parents at a youth softball game when his granddaughter didn’t get to play?:

Caller: “We’ve got a parent that just pulled a gun at a softball game! He’s leaving the Chandler softball field right now!”

That frantic 911 call came just minutes after a girls’ little league softball game ended in Chandler Tuesday.

Video: Man accused of pointing gun at people during little league softball game

When one Davenport player didn’t get put in during a game in Chandler, police said her grandfather wasn’t happy.

He went to his car, got his gun, came back and pointed it at the children, parents and the coach. Good grief. This could have ended very badly. Was this man held responsible for his actions or did he get off because- because- because- rights? From the article:

“This is not behavior that’s acceptable to any of us — Davenport, or Chandler, or any of the softball leagues in Lincoln County,” Hulsey said. “This is far, far away from what we teach our girls.”

Gibbs was arrested and is facing charges of pointing a firearm and disturbing the peace, but police said he could be facing even more charges in the future.

“This is not behavior that’s acceptable to any of us…” What do we want to teach our children about guns? What was learned at the softball game? That guns solve problems? That a coach should be shot over not playing a child in a game? That’s it’s OK for a man to point a loaded gun around at a park? That children should model adults and when they get old enough to carry a gun, they, too, can bring a loaded gun to a softball game and threaten a bunch of people with it? Seriously. Where is common sense?

Our children are at risk. They are at risk, not mostly from strangers or criminals out to kill them. They are risk from their own families with guns. Take this 8 year Georgia boy, now tragically and avoidably dead at the hands of his own father because he was an angry man with a gun.

This is a scenario played out on a regular basis all over America. And what do we do? We run away from any sensible discussion or solutions. Why? Because… because…because.- rights.

Right. We are better than this. The gun rights extremists are wrong. Guns are a risk in homes and in public places where they are now carried. And what we are getting is dead children. Also dead adults. This does not seem like the kind of communities we want for our children and families. Let’s get to work to change the conversation about the role of guns and gun violence in our communities. We can change things if we have the common will to do so and if our fascination with guns also includes a fascination with protecting innocent victims from injuries and deaths inflicted by the guns.

UPDATE:

I found this article written by a Harvard student for the Washington Post which confirms what I have written in my post about the gun lobby’s position regarding gun safety and children:

Because of this difficulty, each time the NRA has been confronted with the child-death problem, it has adopted what might be called a “Look—what’s that over there?” strategy. The organization tries to paint media coverage of the deaths as the true problem; when a 9-year old killed her shooting range instructor with an Uzi, the NRA called the outcry “exploitative” and a “trick” by “anti-gun advocates in the media.” Alternatively, spokespeople point to other ways children die, and other kinds of gun deaths, to downplay the seriousness of the issue. The NRA has a habit of suddenly become very interested in bicycle accident statistics when the issue is raised, and Gun Owners of America insists that children are “more likely to die by choking on their dinner,” as if choking deaths is at all pertinent to gun deaths. Occasionally, they go as far as Tennessee State Rep. Glen Casada, who when speaking in support of the state’s new NRA-promotedguns-in parks bill, called these deaths “acts of God,” about which nothing could possibly be done.

Of course, we know one thing that could be done: We could admit that there are too many guns and get serious about reducing their number. These child-deaths are a uniquely American problem; in other countries, simply accepting such an endless string of accidental killings would be unthinkable. And as the child accident statistics have poured in, so have those on the efficacy of gun control: It’s becoming harder and harder to deny that more guns equals more violence. We also know that massive restrictions can have major positive effects. The word “Australia” is verboten among the gun rights crowd now that Australia has succeeded in cutting its firearm death rate by 59 percent after passing sweeping prohibitions on gun ownership. In fact, the Australian case offers such rock solid evidence of the life-saving potential of gun control that the pro-gun side has struggled to offer any response, except to yelp, “But you’re talking about confiscation!” (To which one might reply: “And?”) So there is a way to avoid having our preschools look like a Peckinpah film. It just involves some tough measures. (…) Since they strongly oppose both ownership restrictions and parent accountability, one might expect the NRA to emphasize safety. Yet the prevailing attitude appears to be that even talk of basic responsible ownership is for wusses and Constitution-haters. The NRA has waged all-out war against pediatricians and the CDC for recommending gun safety to parents, lobbying hard for laws to prohibit doctors from even discussing firearms risks with families. They’ve also stood staunchly against any effort to require that guns be kept safely stored out of the reach of children. The massive Nashville conference schedule contains endless presentations on the necessity of an armed citizenry, but apparently not a single event on safety or training. There are all kinds of rousing flourishes about “our role as an Armed American Citizen in the future challenges to our nation,” and how one’s weapon must always be at the ready because “danger can lurk around any given corner.” There are even sessions to discuss new strategies for skirting or dismantling the measly remaining gun control laws.

(…) The tradeoffs between safety and accessibility put the NRA in a bind. Either it must acknowledge that these deaths will be a logical consequence of its policies, or it must retreat from its absolutist position on regulation. Neither seems likely, which is why the organization will spend its time in Nashville listening to Nugent and studying military history, carefully avoiding the one conversation it is desperate not to have.

As I say often, this is the national conversation we must have about the role of guns and gun violence in America.

Guns and mass shootings- as American as apple pie and country music

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

apple_pie_american_flagIt’s the land of “milk and honey”. It’s the land of the free. It’s the land of rock and roll and country music. It’s the land of apple pie and barbecue. It’s the land of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. It’s the land of wide open spaces and crowded cities. It’s the land of cowboys. It’s the land of slaves. It’s the land of Native American reservations. It’s the land of plenty and the land of slums. It’s the land of oceans, mountains, deserts and lakes. It’s the land of guns. It’s the land of school shootings. It’s the land of child shootings and gun suicides. It’s the land of domestic shootings and officer shootings. It’s the land of the corporate gun lobby.

An article about how America dealt with the Columbine shooting caught my attention this morning.  Yesterday was the 16th anniversary of that heinous shooting that seemed to be a marker for all that followed. It is why so many Americans showed up to march on Mothers’ Day of 2000 in the Million Mom March. Americans were horrified that they could watch a mass school shooting on TV and wanted not to do that again. We were hopeful that common sense would prevail and something would change. What seemed to change was the fervor of the gun rights extremists in the face of possibilities to do something about school shootings and everyday shootings. Instead of working together to stop the violence, the gun lobby dug in its’ heels and ever since has become more and more resistant and militant. Their iconic leader, Wayne LaPierre appears to be more unhinged with every passing NRA convention and every mass shooting.

But I digress. More from the first linked article, above:

After Columbine there was a general sense that something had to be done. That kids getting killed at school was a thing we weren’t going to be okay with. “Never again,” as they say.

It wasn’t some fanciful impossibility. The British did it after Dunblane. And so we did that. Everyone got together and passed sweeping gun control legislation and there was never another mass shooting in America.

Except not really. Because the “never again” response—though shared by many—was not shared by all. (…)

Both responses, “never again” and “don’t bother trying,” offer statements about the USA. The former says “America is the greatest country on Earth. We went to the moon. Surely, we can stop kids from getting shot to death at school! If the Brits can do it, so can we. ” The latter says, “No, we can’t. We’re America. The greatest country on Earth and the cost of the liberty that makes us so is that our kids may get shot to death at school.”

Every time there is another mass shooting and nothing happens it becomes a little easier to believe that the “don’t bother” crowd is right.

Don’t bother.

It’s OK by us if our kids may not come home on a day we put them on the school bus and expect to see them later that day at home. It’s OK by us if 3 year olds shoot one year olds. It’s OK by us if law abiding gun owners shoot themselves when adjusting bra holsters or guns fall out of pockets and shoot private parts. It’s OK by us if a 2 year old shoots his own mother after finding her loaded gun in a special purse for carrying a gun around  in public. It’s OK by us if stray bullets kill kids in their homes while they are sleeping. It’s OK by us if a gun nut father shoots and kills his own 3 year old daughter “accidentally”. It’s OK by us if domestic abusers use guns to kill their intimate partners. It’s OK by us if our young men of color are shooting each other on our city streets. It’s OK by us if police officers shoot to kill unarmed young Black men. It’s OK by us if police officers are shot and killed in ambushes. It’s OK by us if teens shoot themselves over a bad day with a gun found at home. It’s OK by us if innocent people are killed in road rage incidents. It’s OK by us if a grandpa shoots his own granddaughter when he mistakes her for a robber. It’s OK by us for a white guy patrolling a neighborhood to kill an unarmed black teen. It’s OK by us when a volunteer reserve sheriff’s deputy mistakes a taser for a real gun and shoots and kills a black man. It’s OK by us for gun nuts to carry assault rifles around in public places where families gather. It’s OK by us when……

And when someone bothers to do something about our nation’s public health and safety epidemic, it’s not OK with the gun rights extremists. It’s not OK with the gun lobby to suggest that gun safety reform will make us safer without infringing on their “God given” rights to do anything they want with their lethal weapons. Apparently it’s not OK for performers to have the freedom to perform benefit concerts for causes of their choice.

The gun nuts have come unglued over country singer Tim McGraw’s upcoming performance to benefit the Sandy Hook Promise organization. I wrote about this in my previous post but the furor is worse than ever. It’s bothersome that facts don’t matter in this case. Of course the Sandy Hook Promise is not “anti-gun” but that doesn’t bother the gun nuts.

So let’s be bothered by the extremism and myths about gun violence. We should be bothered enough to do something about this national epidemic. Changing the conversation is a first step. Even that would bother the gun extremists. Strengthening our laws to reduce and prevent some of our gun violence would not be bothersome to gun rights no matter what is hyped about it. Let’s make America the land of gun safety reform and the public health of our children and families. That we haven’t bothered to do that so far is a national tragedy.

Why the guns for self defense argument just doesn’t work or “This shot’s for you”

commongunsense, , , , , , , , 6 Comments

clip_art_beer_can

(This post will be cross posted on commongunsense.com)

As my readers know, I write often about stupid and dangerous things that happen with guns- and often by “law abiding” gun owners. So here are just a few for your entertainment.

First- this article lists 5 incidents since 2010 where male gun carriers have shot their private parts. Seriously- I don’t make this stuff up. From the article:

The Internet is abuzz this week with the unfortunate mishap of one security guard in Trinidad who accidentally shot his dick off with a .38 firearm. That sucks, but this isn’t the first time that a potential Darwin Award nominee robbed himself of manhood. At least five similar incidents have been reported in the United States within the last three years.

If these cases don’t sway macho man constitutionalists to support gun control, then I don’t know what.

The language is not mine but that of the writer of the article. But it’s graphic enough. You can read the 5 incidents for yourself. There are quite a few others out there of guns falling out of pants pockets or being left in men’s washrooms by “accident” because having a gun in a holster when “doing your business” just must be pretty inconvenient. Anyway, these things happen. Why do they happen? Are there just too many irresponsible gun owners carrying guns around who shouldn’t be? Are we not letting people know how risky it is to carry a loaded gun around? The gun lobby makes it seem as if having that gun with you will save you or someone from certain death or being robbed, or whatever they can scare up. This is what happens when fear and paranoia drive the discussion about a serious national public health epidemic. For surely, these guys have had major health costs, physical disabilities and long term emotional difficulties after their shooting incidents.

Second, I want to illustrate how when a gun is at the ready, simple arguments between friends or relatives can turn ugly quickly. Guns and alcohol don’t go together well as we have already discussed a lot on this blog. But when these 2 friends argued about whether a “Bud” or a Busch would be the beer of choice, one of them got shot. Seriously. I don’t make this stuff up. From the article:

An argument between a 64-year-old man who wanted a Budweiser beer and his friend who handed him a can of Busch instead ended when the disgruntled recipient shot the other man in the arm, wounding him in a Louisiana parking lot, police said on Friday.

Budweiser, you may remember, put up that much loved and sort of sensitive “lost dog” commercial for the recent Super Bowl that seemed to be a pitch for fatherhood. The Busch website appeals more to those who “earn it” – a bit more of a macho appeal. Women, of course, also enjoy drinking beer, me among them. We live in a city with an emerging micro brewery industry so trying out new locally brewed beers on occasion is something we do with friends. I have yet to argue with anyone who gave me a beer I didn’t like. And even if I did, I wouldn’t end the argument with a gun because I don’t carry one.  But I digress.

There has been a discussion on a Facebook page to which I belong about the beer shooting incident. Lots of great quips about the irony of the choice between a Budweiser or a Busch beer- “This shot’s for you” was one. Here are a few others: “Stand your ground against bad beer.” ” Busch Beer. Head for the mountains. Just don’t get ambushed by your Bud.” You get the picture. How insane is this? It’s so typically American to read a story about 2 guys in an argument over a beer getting out their guns to solve the dispute. And need I remind you that these are the “good guys with guns.” You might appreciate this cartoon:

Your fly is open
From Mike Thompson ( http://www.freep.com/opinion/mike-thompson/)

Swaggering around with holstered guns in public is a pretty macho thing to do for some. Many say that carrying a gun is an extension of manhood. For most people it’s just plain crazy as the cartoon above reflects.  As much as these guys want to make women feel a need for guns for self defense, the gun world is still a mostly male place. Deceiving women into believing they will be safer from rape and domestic abuse is dangerous but it is one way to get women to purchase guns. Owning a gun is an awesome responsibility that comes with major risks, especially for women.

And speaking of guys with guns , there is an attempt by the gun lobby to use women to promote their agenda of guns everywhere passed. But not so fast. Women who are in the process of being raped are just not going to be able to use that gun in the manner pushed by the gun lobby. Most recently the discussion about women and guns has turned to the problem of date rape on college campuses. Here’s why this is a problem, according to this article:

We’re glad to see that people in legislature around the country are beginning to take this issue seriously and try to institute some reforms. Unfortunately the concept of introducing guns into this equation — the people who are suggesting that just don’t understand the issue. First of all, most of these assaults take place when they’re incapacitated. There’s no way they could use a gun. But even if they’re not completely incapacitated, they’re often drunk or have drank a lot. When you introduce a gun into that situation it becomes extremely dangerous. And the people being assaulted are often being assaulted by friends or acquaintances. It’s very unlikely someone is going to pull a gun in this situation. The end result will not address the problem, but it will result in substantially more injuries and death.

Check out what the NRA’s own Wayne LaPierre has to say about rape and the need for guns on campus for women in the video below from the Tonightly Show on Comedy Central: ( the clip about guns on campus begins at 2:47 in the video. Fear, fear, fear and the shameless promotion of it to drive women to gun stores is just plain wrong.

This cynical and misogynistic view of guns and self defense is recognized as such by people with common sense such as this writer for Harvard University Institute of Politics:

Isn’t it refreshing to see a speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference’s annual convention espousing female empowerment to loud applause?

In the case of NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre’s speech last Friday, no, it is not. LaPierre, who said, “the one thing a violent rapist deserves to face is a good woman with a gun,” delivered an argument for women’s armed self defense that made a mockery not only of women’s rights, but also of conservative principles.

LaPierre was repeating a common trope among gun rights activists that easy gun access allows women to defend themselves against domestic violence. Never mind the various studies debunking this myth, including one showing states with higher gun ownership see more violence against women than states with lower gun ownership, even after accounting for confounding factors like urbanization and income. Even if it were true that guns kept women safer – or any of us, for that matter – his recommendation is offensively flawed on multiple levels.

First is the implication that it is the responsibility of the woman, not, say, the police, to defend herself from sexual assault. Interestingly, conservatives, the NRA included, used to oppose this kind of gun-toting vigilante justice. In the late 1960s, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, the founders of the California-based Black Panthers, advocated individual gun ownership to allow blacks to defend themselves in a nation where police were reliably racist and racists were reliably violent. In response, California conservatives proposed a law banning loaded weapons from city streets. Then-governor Ronald Reagan supported the law, calling guns a “ridiculous way to solve problems that have to be solved among people of good will,” and claiming that the law “would work no hardship on the honest citizen.” The NRA also supported this measure, as well as the gun-control measures passed at the national level in the ’60s.

Things have changed since the 1960s. Domestic shootings are a leading cause of death for women in the work place. Women are more likely to be killed by a gun by an intimate partner than to use a gun for legitimate self defense. In America, women are more likely to die from gunshot injuries than in any other democratized country and many mass shootings are the result of domestic disputes gone very wrong. This article from Slate explores the myth that women should have guns to prevent rapes: ( the article mentions a statement by a Nevada Assemblywoman, Michele Fiore about the need for guns to stop campus rape)

There is an odd kind of disconnect in the argument that allowing guns on college campuses will reduce rates of sexual violence. As the New York Times reported on Wednesday, several states have introduced measures to legalize firearms on campus. And many conservative lawmakers, perhaps spotting an opportunity in current debates about college sexual assault, have claimed that such a policy amounts to rape prevention.

Lawmakers in 10 states have introduced so-called campus carry bills, though some have made their claims about sexual assault and safety more explicit than others. As a sponsor of a Nevada bill allowing students to carry firearms, Republican Assemblywoman Michele Fiore told the Times, “If these young, hot little girls on campus have a firearm, I wonder how many men will want to assault them. The sexual assaults that are occurring would go down once these sexual predators get a bullet in their head.” (…)

It remains unclear how much data, or, frankly, how many dead women, will be required before gun advocates accept this basic fact. In domestic violence incidents, a gun increases the risk of homicide by a staggering 500 percent. A 1998 study on women and self-defense found that for every time a woman used a handgun to kill an intimate partner in self-defense, 83 women were murdered with a handgun by their intimate partners. And data has consistently shown that the presence of a gun in the home is associated with a higher risk of homicide, suicide and accidental injury and death.

Fiore’s rhetoric in support of the measure also invokes the danger of stranger rape, despite the fact that most campus assaults don’t fit this scenario. But even if we narrow our focus to incidents of sexual violence that involve strangers in the night, given the data on how infrequently women successfully use a gun in self-defense, such a measure still offers very little in the way of safety for victims. Instead, by introducing guns into an ostensibly gun-free zone, Fiore is arming the very men she claims would be frightened by such a measure.

And now rape survivors themselves are protesting the gun lobby’s use of their plight to pass guns on campus bills. From the linked article:

“If my rapist had a gun at school, I have no doubt I would be dead,” Lauren Gambill, one of the activists working with Know Your IX, wrote in a recent petition aimed at the politicians currently debating proposed campus carry bills. “That’s why I started this petition asking legislators in these states not to allow guns on campuses and put survivors like me in even more danger.”
A different petition from the two groups asks supporters to “tell lawmakers to apologize for blaming victims of sexual assault, and to stop exploiting campus sexual assault to push the gun lobby’s agenda.”
From what we know about the way sexual assault operates on college campuses, adding guns to the mix doesn’t make much sense. Most sexual violence between students takes place under the influence of alcohol among people who already know each other. It’s not clear that college women will actually feel comfortable wielding a firearm against one of their friends.

When the “guys with the guns” get to make the rules about guns and gun safety reform in America, the facts about women and children being killed by guns get lost or are denied. Let’s look at the video, again, of the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre making his claim about the Founding Fathers and guys with guns:

Most of the gun owners in America are guys. Most of our politicians are guys. We need to take a new look at the role of guns and gun violence in our country from a different perspective than that of the corporate gun lobby. The Board of Directors of the NRA, for example, consists of these guys. Is there a coincidence between these glaring facts and the disdain exhibited by the mostly male dominated gun rights community towards organizations like Moms Demand Action for Gunsense, the Million Mom March/Brady Campaign Chapters and other organizations whose volunteers and leaders are mostly women? I think not. Rude, offensive and threatening comments are made daily towards the women in these groups. I have been on the receiving end of many of them. When we testify at hearings on gun bills, for example, we are called hysterical and fear mongering. We don’t know what we are saying. Of course, it is often women who testify for common sense. And the mostly men on the other side presume that they know a lot more than we do and love to tell us so.

I am only reporting the facts and making some conclusions based on the facts and observations of reality. You can make your own but the evidence shows that arguments between 2 guys more often end in shootings. Domestic arguments most often end with a woman being injured or killed by men with guns. Women are typically not “accidentally” shooting themselves in the numbers that men do. Women are most often raped by men. But women are also, as I’ve pointed out, less safe with guns.

Arguments over a Bud or a Busch should not end with a gunshot. Carrying guns should not end with private parts being shot.