Blogging for gun safety reform and changing the conversation about the role of guns and gun violence in our communities. Common sense gun laws and gun safety reform and gun rights are not mutually exclusive.
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.
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.”
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:
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.
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.
I was planning to write about something else today. But I can’t. I hardly know where to begin. I spent most of yesterday trying to carry out my life while watching the news, sharing Facebook posts, Tweeting and making phone calls about the heinous shooting at the Charleston AME church. We are all saddened to sickness. We are again, in America, in shock over yet another mass shooting. And we are numb. But we should not stay numb. Lives are lost every day. This time it was 9 innocent black Americans praying in their church. This time it appears to be a hate crime carried out by a young man who, according to some reports and photos on Facebook, has sympathies to the White Supremacist movement.
It’s unimaginable. It’s about race. It’s about guns. It’s about hate. It’s about intolerance. It’s about domestic terrorism. Racial injustice is among us and it’s evil and hateful.
There is so much to say. There is nothing to say.
The conversation about race in America is too important to ignore. The conversation about the role of guns and gun violence in America is too important to ignore. One of the commenters on a news show this morning said that if you can’t be black while attending church, where can you be black? Good question.
It is an evil act. It’s the act of a “lone wolf” or is it? It was perpetrated by someone who should not have had a gun. His roommate said he had been planning this for a while. Why didn’t the roommate say or do something in time to stop him? Do we just shrug our shoulders when people talk like this and we know they have guns? What is wrong with us? From the above article:
Meek said Roof recently used his birthday money to buy a Glock pistol. When the two of them were drinking together a few weeks ago, Roof began railing about black people and remarked that he had “a plan,” Meek said. He did not say what the plan was, but Meek said it scared him enough that he took the gun out of Roof’s car and hid it in his house until the next day.
What is wrong with our country when young people express those kind of sentiments?
What is wrong with our leaders? President Obama held a press conference today and commented with resignation. He knows we need to do something but he knows we won’t. He knows our leaders have no spine. He knows our leaders run the other way when the issue of doing something about gun violence comes up. He understands and he doesn’t.
The world thinks we are crazed and a dangerous place to live. We can’t go to church to pray without a gunman shooting innocent people. We can’t go to movie theaters without a gunman shooting innocent movie goers. We can’t send our kids to school in the morning knowing they will come home alive in the afternoon. We can’t send our kids to college without fear of a mentally ill student with a gun shooting up the campus and maybe, just maybe, our child will be one of the victims. We can’t even work on an American military base without fear of a gunman shooting up people who have given their lives to protecting us from harm. We can’t go to a spa without a domestic abuser who gets his gun on line with no background check shooting up his ex wife and many innocent others. We can’t go to a Sikh Temple without a gunman who doesn’t like people who are not like him shooting them in his hatred. We can’t go to shopping malls without a deranged gunman shooting people for no apparent reason. We can’t work in a police station without an anti government nut case shooting up the station hoping to kill those he hates. We can’t sit in a restaurant without fear of someone shooting us up or accidentally dropping his gun ending in the body of a patron just out to eat. We can’t be at home without fear of young children getting their hands on a gun and shooting themselves or a sibling. We can’t walk down the street in some neighborhoods without fear of being shot by a stray bullet. For that matter, we can’t even sleep at home without fear of a stray bullet making a hole in the house walls and shooting a sleeping child. We can’t be in a city hall without a gunman who got a gun through a straw purchase shooting at police officers in the building. We can’t be at gun ranges either or gun shops without fear of people getting shot “accidentally.”
Why? Why? Why did this shooter have a gun? He got it as a gift from his father. Was that a good idea given that he may have had some problems? He had been arrested twice in recent months. Why did he have a gun? He had been expressing white supremacist and racist sentiments.
I say it’s crazy. I say it’s time for our leaders to stop crying and whining and saying they are sorry. If they are so sorry why aren’t they doing something about it? For they can if they want to. Why don’t they want to? Questions have to be asked.
When we talk about solutions, we don’t spend enough time talking about the real things we can do to keep guns out of the hands of the people who commit these crimes. Solutions that almost everybody supports, like:
Expanding Brady background checks to all gun sales, so that felons, domestic abusers, and the dangerously mentally ill can’t walk into gun shows or go online and buy guns with no questions asked.
Shutting down the 5 percent of “bad apple” gun dealers that knowingly do business with gun traffickers and straw purchasers and supply almost all crime guns in our nation.
Educating parents about the risks of unsafe access to guns in the home, knowing that nine kids are shot unintentionally in America every day and in more than two-thirds of school shootings, the gun comes from the home of the attacker or a relative — including the shooting at Sandy Hook.
We need to educate America that guns are dangerous weapons. Not everyone should have a gun. Indeed, there are plenty in our country who shouldn’t for various reasons. But they have them anyway.
It’s not just about laws. It’s about a culture of guns that is unique to America. It’s about thinking differently about guns.
So let’s get this straight. When the corporate gun lobby stops all reasonable measures to stop some of the shootings, we have daily carnage on our streets, in our churches, in our homes and everywhere else. And when our leaders subscribe to the idea that they can’t stand up for the victims, the carnage continues unabated. And when we don’t make it difficult for people to get guns or use those guns once they get them, we see regular mass shootings and shootings every day that take the lives of 80 Americans.
“We do know that once again, innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun,” Obama said at the White House. “At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this kind of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. It doesn’t happen in other places with this kind of frequency. It is in our power to do something about it.”
Let’s do something.
Enough.
We grieve with the families and the Charleston community.
In memory of the victims. Let us pause to remember the lives lost. Let us remember the people whose families and friends are grieving and will miss them forever:
“I have no choice,’’ it reads. “I am not in the position to, alone, go into the ghetto and fight. I chose Charleston because it is most historic city in my state, and at one time had the highest ratio of blacks to Whites in the country. We have no skinheads, no real KKK, no one doing anything but talking on the internet. Well someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me.”
In one picture, Mr. Roof is shown posing with wax figures of slaves. In others, he posed with a handgun. He is alone in all the photos, which appear to have been taken at a slave plantation, Sullivan Island, S.C., and at the Museum and Library of Confederate History.
The website links to several pages of long racist rants. Some describe Hispanics as enemies and say that “Negroes” have lower I.Q.s and low-impulse control. The writings are not signed.
/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3808074/gunsper-capita2.0.jpg)
commongunsense 