public in favor of background checks

Guns and the Capitol

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Basic RGBShots were fired near the U.S. Capitol yesterday. This is all in a usual day in our country. Luckily no one was injured as officers fired at a woman driving erratically and attempting to harm officers. Bullets flying on our streets is never a good idea no matter who fires them. People are understandably frightened when they hear nearby gunfire.But officers took care of the situation as is their job. From the article:

 

 

“It was high anxiety,” said Yanta, who planned to discuss farming issues with Cuellar. “I didn’t get shaken up until I went into the building and realized what had transpired right in front of me.

“To be so close to something like that was very frazzling.”

People know what it means when they hear gunfire.

Inside the Capitol our lawmakers are up to doing the bidding of the corporate gun lobby again. When aren’t they? Let’s take a look.

The nomination of Judge Gorsuch, is, of course, being scored by the NRA:

The National Rifle Association is investing $1 million of its own money in the Senate confirmation battle over Judge Neil Gorsuch, President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee.

The group announced Tuesday that it’s buying up ads supporting Gorsuch in the states of Indiana, North Dakota, Missouri and Montana — all states Trump won in 2016 where Democratic senators are up for re-election in 2018.

None of the four senators has indicated their intentions on the nominee.

“Judge Gorsuch is an outstanding nominee and will protect our fundamental right to keep and bear arms,” Chris Cox, the executive director of the NRA’s lobbying arm, said in a statement. “We will be fully activating our five million members in support of his confirmation.”

They obviously believe that if Gorsuch is seated on the Supreme Court, he will act in their favor on gun deals. The NRA and others in the gun lobby spent a lot of money to get Donald Trump elected. They just knew he would do their bidding and he has not disappointed. Nor has Congress.

They must have forgotten that the man Gorsuch is replacing, Justice Antonin Scalia, made it clear that strong gun laws are constitutional.

The House voted to take the names of Veterans who have been diagnosed with severe mental illness off of the NICS list of prohibited gun purchasers. This makes perfect sense, don’t you think? I mean, it’s not as if veterans aren’t killing themselves with guns in great numbers. And sometimes others as well. Seems to make common sense to me and a whole lot of other Americans that protecting our Veterans from using a gun to end their own life is just a terrible and tragic idea. The overall suicide rate amongst our Veterans is high. Even some well-known military generals objected to this bill:

Earlier in the week, a coalition led by retired Gens. Stanley McChrystal, David Petraeus, Peter Chiarelli, and Wesley Clark wrote a letter to lawmakers saying the proposal would “put America’s veterans who need our support the most in harm’s way, by providing them with easy access to firearms.”

But Roe argued that in many cases, veterans who are deemed unable to handle their finances can be indirectly barred from buying a weapon, even if they pose no real threat to the public.

“It’s hard enough for some people to admit they need help,” he said. “Imagine how much more difficult it is when they fear they will be stigmatized and isolated … (or) that a VA bureaucrat may decide that they are incompetent and take away their constitutional rights.”

Stigmatized? I get the idea here. People with mental health issues do not want to be stigmatized and they shouldn’t be. But I don’t get the idea that one feels isolated without a gun. I don’t and most people I know don’t. Somehow I can’t believe that owning a firearm when one is deemed severely mentally ill and not being able to handle one’s own financial affairs is at the top of the needs list. If it is, one needs to wonder if that person should not have a gun in the first place. Some people should not be able to access guns.

Firearms make it so much easier and veterans are familiar with their use. From this article:

Dr. Charles Engel: Six of 10 gun-related deaths are suicides, and about half of all suicides are gun-related. Most suicides occur on impulse, and the availability of a gun makes it all too easy for a person experiencing suicidal thoughts to act on that impulse. Some have speculated that perhaps one reason that suicide is elevated among military personnel and veterans is their experience with guns. Exchanging hostile fire in battle, especially the experience of killing, may represent an important psychological threshold. The tragic psychological familiarity that comes with crossing that threshold may well increase the likelihood of subsequent self-inflicted injury in someone already thinking about suicide.

The Senate may or may not take up this bill and do something with it. Time will tell if this becomes a law. We will not be safer. Nor will our Veterans and their families. It is backwards and ludicrous that some believe the Veterans in this small category would be safer with a gun.

But never mind public safety. Some in Congress don’t care about that because they have taken a whole lot of money from the corporate gun lobby and are threatened by them if they don’t vote the right way.

The very same gun lobby minions in Congress seem to think it is a good idea to grant reciprocity for gun permit holders nationally. I think this is a very bad idea and so do many others. I agree with Everytown for Gun Safety and other organizations:

“Reciprocity would have a profound impact on state public safety, making the state with the weakest standards into the law of the land, and letting criminals and other dangerous people carry concealed guns in every state in the country,” the gun control group Every Town for Gun Safety said in a statement.

So someone from a permitless carry state where no background checks or training are required to carry a permit will now be able to carry in states that have much stronger gun laws. What could possibly go wrong?

People like George Zimmerman, infamous for his shooting of an unarmed black teen-ager, will be coming to a state near you. You will not be safer as a result. This is the antithesis of public safety.

And then there is the attempt by the gun lobby and it’s lapdogs in Congress to re-introduce silencers into our national gun culture.:

Not everyone is convinced that shooting-related hearing loss is a problem that needs another solution.

“You already have the answer,” said Kris Brown, chief strategy officer at the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. “There are things available on the market to protect hearing.”

The people who want to make silencers more easily available point to a range of other tactical benefits. Silencers decrease a weapon’s recoil and improve its accuracy, the American Suppressor Association says on its website. This lets shooters fire in rapid succession without losing track of the target, as silencer manufacturers note. Suppressors also reduce muzzle flash, allowing shooters to better disguise their location in low-light settings.

Although supporters of silencers tout these latter advantages in terms of sport shooting, the same characteristics might also appeal to a mass shooter or other criminal.

“There could be some instance where somebody uses it for nefarious purposes,” said Jack Rinchich, president of the National Association of Chiefs of Police. “They don’t want a loud report or a muzzle flash or a blast ― say a sniper or someone trying to shoot at police officers or other people from a distance ― and they want to suppress that noise.”

I’m sure that you remember the mafia shootings in the 1930s. Machine guns and silencers were regularly used to commit heinous crimes against innocent or unarmed victims. As a result, the nation decided that making these two types of firearms/accessories very difficult to obtain would be a good idea, thus the Gun Control Act of 1934. Since then, few, if any crimes and shootings have involved machine guns or silencers.

We have to remember that we don’t have universal background checks as a federal law. Until we do, if we make silencers legal to buy without the current strong restrictions, they will end up in the hands of those who should not have them. Why? Because they will be subject to sales with no background checks, as are all types of guns, because of private sellers on-line or at gun shows and other such venues. Who would get their hands on these then? We know the answer.

To say this is a bill that would protect hearing is ludicrous. There are many products that can protect hearing when shooting a gun at the range or while hunting.  Hunters want to hear other hunters shooting so they know where they are located and as self protection. In addition, the muting of a gun’s loud noise would make it more dangerous when a mass shooting is occurring. It was the noise of the bullets expelled from the assault rifle that alerted the teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School that a shooter was in the building so they could do their best to hide and save the children. It was the sound of gunfire that led officers to the location of the Virginia Tech shooter.

The gun lobby if using fake news to tell us the only way to protect hearing while hunting ( yes they try to make this sound normal by relating it to hunting) is to buy a silencer. Nonsense. My husband lost some high frequency hearing in one ear while hunting as a youth and young man. I do understand that people can lose their hearing from gunshots. A good friend of mine became permanently deaf when her father shot off an assault rifle at a range very close to her head. She has had a profound hearing loss since then and her life was changed forever. That was a senseless and careless use of a gun which she readily admits.

So yes, it is true that shooting a gun frequently, or even irregularly, can cause hearing problems. But to use selling gun silencers as a hearing protection and public safety bill is disingenuous.

Again I go back to the path that follows the money. The silencer ( suppressor) industry would love to sell more of their products and can’t wait for that to happen. As fewer people own guns, the gun industry needs a market for their goods. That lurks behind most of the gun lobby pushed legislation. If you watch the video here you can see that opinions about silencers, aka suppressors,  are all over the place as to need, personal preference, ability to buy them, cost, etc.

And further Donald Trump Jr. is making the case for gun silencers.  That can’t hurt the cause in our current political configuration. The corporate gun lobby now has a seat in the White House.

I admit that many don’t see the harm in the use of silencers. They point to other countries, mostly European, who allow silencers. But those countries also have universal background check laws and other strong restrictions which make it unlikely that silencers would find their ways into the illegal market or into the hands of people who should not have guns.

I agree with the writer of this article.  This is a solution looking for a problem and looking for a way to make money.

Aren’t Congress members and our legislators charged with the safety of the public in their states and in the country as a whole? How did the narrative get high-jacked to make some people think that allowing more armed people, some with no training, to roam our streets and public places where families and the general public shop, work, go to school, have appointments with accountants, physicians, lawyers, tax preparers, other business people located in our cities?

It’s not normal for people to be carrying guns around in public no matter what the gun lobby claims. They want it to be normal. But it’s not. They have not convinced that many people so far as the public is largely in favor of common sense when it comes to gun laws and public safety.

As I said in my last post, it is a topsy turvy world as of the November. Literally everything is under attack. What we don’t need are people who are scared, feeling ill at ease, anxious, nervous, angry or depressed to get themselves armed and dangerous. And we don’t need the people who believe this is OK to be making gun policy.

My travels with no guns

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no guns allowedI posted earlier about a trip I was going to take with my family to Glacier National Park and to Seattle. I also posted about the gun laws in the states we would be traveling through on the Amtrak just as a way of comparison of gun laws. Montana, where we stayed for 4 days, has pretty loose gun laws and a high rate of gun suicides. From this article from The Trace, we find this:

Where the distinctive cause of death is gun suicides, the numbers also show much larger than usual shares of residents owning guns. Researchers led by epidemiologists at Columbia University calculated last year that Alaska, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming placed in the top six for state gun-ownership rates. At 62 percent and 57 percent, respectively, Alaska and Idaho are double the national gun ownership rate of 29 percent that the researchers used as a baseline.

The lethality of guns means that people who attempt suicide with them are more likely to succeed than those using other means.

In Montana, many of the gun deaths are suicides which we don’t usually hear about in the news unless it involves others as in mass shootings or domestic homicide/suicide. Of course we heard nothing about gun deaths while traveling but I do need to say that I did not see one gun while on our trip. I looked to see if anyone was open carrying. I suppose there could have been folks carrying concealed and I didn’t see it. But I also know that many of the people we saw were tourists with their families, likely with no interest in carrying a gun around.

While visiting Glacier Park we took a guided hike through the Trail of the Cedars to Avalanche Lake.

. Avalanche Lake

It was stunning and amazingly wild. There were signs along the way suggesting what to do if one encountered a Grizzly Bear which some folks we talked to had seen. Our guide was not carrying a gun. They have common sense measures to avoid bears or deal with one if sighted. The National Park Service issues these warnings and safety tips without mentioning carrying a gun. We could have purchased bear spray in many places along our way but didn’t.  In fact, we were disappointed that we did not sight a bear off in the distance.

We did notice however, that our hotel in Whitefish, Montana posted a sign saying that guns were not allowed. And as you can see by the top photo on this post, the famous Mercantile store in Polebridge, Montana, an outpost at the far north end of Glacier Park and very isolated, does not want either guns or bear spray inside.

Mercantile

I can see why. It was crowded inside- lots of tourists and locals go there for provisions as it is the only place around for many miles. It’s historical purpose was to provide explorers and early visitors to the Park with food and other needed items for their trip into the wilderness.

While there we enjoyed the baked goods, sandwiches and Huckleberries we bought before we went into the amazingly beautiful Bowman Lake campground located within Glacier Park showing us another blue-green glacial lake. The day was rainy with low clouds so we did not get the view we hoped for. But it was beautiful nonetheless. Bowman Lake

Seattle, of course, is located in a state where the citizens decided for themselves that they wanted to require background checks on all gun sales. It is a funky and unusual city hosting the Pike Street Market with a sea of humanity, and the Space Needle where tourists gather to wait to go up into the Space Needle for the spectacular view. Guns are not needed there either. One vendor in a wheel chair who promised my granddaughter and I 2 magic tricks for $5 called me a liar in a loud voice when I said “maybe later”. He was right of course. I had no intention of buying his magic tricks. It did not end in any confrontation but I suppose it could have and people have been shot for less in angry confrontations.

At the top of the Space Needle the view was spectacular. This was also a very crowded place with shoulder to shoulder visitors. The beauty was incredible on the clear day we visited. Mount Ranier was showing off for us. It is unimaginable that anyone would want or need to carry a gun there where tourists were crowded in from countries all over the world to see the view from the top.

Mt. Ranier

(By the way, our bags were searched there as well for weapons or other contraband or dangerous items.)

So in the wilderness, the parks and the big cities, I saw no need for a gun. The Amtrak train depot had explicit instructions for declaring any guns and that they had to be packed in stored luggage and not on the train. In small compartments and aisles on trains that are jerking around and coming to sudden stops, one can see why a gun would just not work out well.

In 2009 Congress passed a Credit Card bill necessary for the economic recovery. In the sausage making of the bill and the need for the corporate gun lobby to get its’ fingerprints on just about anything, an amendment was added to the bill to allow guns in our National Parks. It was a bad idea. Most people thought it would not be a problem. But as we know, we are beginning to see the results of our guns everywhere gun culture where “accidental” discharges are happening just about anywhere some person with a gun who doesn’t understand that they are not needed everywhere, drops a gun or a gun drops by itself through carelessness and discharges. Sometimes there are deaths and injuries, other times not.

More guns are not making us safer.

There have been incidents of gun discharges in our National Parks. According to this article, they may be an anomaly but if one person were to be killed we would likely not call it an anomaly.

Last week a careless man carrying a gun into the Old Faithful Lodge, “accidentally” discharged his gun. Guns are not allowed in the Lodge but they are allowed in the Park. The result? A shot rang out where hundreds of tourists were trying to enjoy their vacation. From the article:

Charissa Reid, a spokeswoman for the park, said a maintenance worker reported to park law enforcement Wednesday afternoon that a gun went off inside a men’s bathroom at the Old Faithful Lodge.

No one was injured. The shot is believed to have been accidental, based on statements from multiple witnesses, including at least one who was in the bathroom at the time.

Park rangers are investigating but have not been able to identify the man with the gun. He is presumed to have fled after the incident. (…)

People are allowed to carry guns inside Yellowstone National Park. A ban on firearms inside park boundaries was lifted in 2010. But people aren’t allowed to bring guns into any of the park’s buildings or any of the buildings operated by the concessionaire company, like Old Faithful Lodge.

Shooting a gun inside Yellowstone National Park is illegal.

I have a question. If shooting a gun inside of the Parks is illegal, why carry one in the first place? Just asking.

Another place that guns will not be allowed this year is at the Minnesota State Fair. From the article:

No weapons of any sort will be allowed on the fairgrounds, he said. No fireworks — “we have plenty of our own.” Ditto for alcoholic beverages.

No need for guns at a State Fair. Most state fairs do bag searches and require people to go through metal detectors. As it turns out, guns have been banned from the State Fair for a long time now and the gun rights activists don’t like it. But I am guessing they among the small minority who think guns are a good idea at a fair, teaming with people, small kids running around and babies in strollers. We know that loaded guns have been “accidentally” discharged in many public places. This is about public safety and nothing else. The gun rights folks cannot guarantee that everyone with a gun will be safe with that gun while carrying. Guns are lethal weapons designed to kill or harm others. There are no reasons to take chances in public places where families and large crowds of people gather.

As more people own and carry guns, it is inevitable that more crazy and dangerous incidents will occur in public places and anywhere, for that matter. It is time to ask serious questions about the need for so many guns in public places and get answers as to why they are necessary. Guns in public places have created a real conundrum. It is not working out as many thought it would. They are not being used for self defense often enough to allow for loaded guns in public places. But rather enough incidents of “accidental” discharges have occurred to make us all wonder why they are allowed to be carried in the first place. And our children are clearly at risk from loaded guns at home and other places.

We are better than this. It’s time for all of us to put our heads together and work out the best way to keep Americans safe from gun violence. Since the majority wants that to happen anyway, it’s our leaders who have the onus to make it happen. It’s up to the rest of us to pressure our leaders, change the conversation and eventually the culture of gun violence that only occurs in America.

We’ve had #Enough.

 

UPDATE:

Speaking of traveling, we did rent a car while visiting Glacier Park. This Tennessee family found a loaded gun in their rental car where 2 small children were sitting. Luckily they found the gun before something tragic occurred. This is just not OK. There are too many careless gun owners out there not thinking about the consequences of their carelessness. There are no excuses for carelessness with guns.

 

“Good guy with a gun” myth

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frog_heartIt’s a myth propagated by the corporate gun lobby mostly in the figure of Wayne LaPierre of the NRA that a “good guy with a gun” can stop a “bad guy with a gun”. This presupposes that the only folks with guns who mean evil intent are the “bad guys”. Let’s look at this mythical thinking in the first linked article above:

That argument was put to the test last weekend in Las Vegas, Nevada, when two “bad guys” with guns, Jerad Miller and his wife, Amanda, shot and killed two police officers. To be clear, the Milers were, in the eyes of the NRA, “good guys” until that exact moment when they used those guns to do “bad” things.

After the cold-blooded shooting, the Millers headed to a Wallmart for a final confrontation with police. Inside, there was a good guy — Joseph Wilcox, a 31-year old Las Vegas resident with a concealed carry permit and a gun in hand. Rather than running away, he took out his weapon and approached Jerad Miller from behind. It was a heroic and selfless act and one for which Wilcox deserves nothing but praise.

But it was an act that cost Wilcox his life.

Unbeknownst to him, there was more than one shooter, and when Wilcox approached Jerad Miller, he was shot in the back and killed by Amanda Miller.

While the NRA claims that a more armed population can prevent these types of mass killings, we know this is not true — and a tragic death like Wilcox’s is a far more likely outcome.

How does the gun lobby respond to this recent shooting in a Grand Forks, North Dakota Walmart store? From the article:

The gunman in Tuesday’s shooting had two passengers in the car when he pulled up to the Wal-Mart in south Grand Forks, Grand Forks Police Department spokesman said Wednesday.

Police Lt. Derik Zimmel said the two people stayed in the car while Marcell Travon Willis, 21, entered the Wal-Mart around 1 a.m. Within seconds, Willis allegedly shot two Wal-Mart employees, including 70-year-old Gregory Weiland, who died as a result.

Lisa Braun, 47, was injured from a gunshot wound. She was still in “satisfactory condition” as of 8:15 a.m. Wednesday, according to an Altru Health System news release.

Willis then shot at a third, unidentified Wal-Mart employee and missed before turning the gun on himself and ending his own life.

The shooter was stationed at the nearby Grand Forks Air Force Base:

Sean Willis of Nashville, Tennessee, said only that his son had been in the military for about three years and was originally from Springfield, Tennessee.

Sgt. David Dobrydney, a base spokesman, said he couldn’t yet release any information about Willis due to Air Force regulations.

So far we don’t know why the shooter did this and then took his own life with the gun. Most likely we will learn more in the coming investigation. But I think it’s safe to say that the shooter was a “law abiding” gun owner and therefore one of those “good guys” with a gun that the gun lobby is talking about.

Mr. LaPierre?

The words uttered by Mr. LaPierre dropped like a thud on the American public. The inane response to a terrible national tragic shooting just seemed to puny and ridiculous and just plain incredulous. But this must be what the corporate gun lobby and its’ minions actually believe. They are wrong but they continue believing in myths. The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence took on this myth in an article about a poster boy for the “good guy” with a gun myth. They write about a case of an Alabama “good guy” with a gun who shot another in a presumed robbery but got away with the shooting. From the article:

Who Will Protect Us from the “Good Guys”?
Folks like Wayne LaPierre and Cam Edwards and “More Guns, Less Crime” Author John Lott might think our country is better off when criminals under indictment for rape are allowed to own guns and carry them in public.  Rational Americans might disagree, and ask, “If these are your ‘good guys,’ who are your ‘bad guys’?”  Perhaps then-NRA President Karl T. Frederick had this quandary in mind when he told Congress in 1934, “I do not believe in the general promiscuous toting of guns.  I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses.”

It also begs the question of how many other NRA “Armed Citizens” have criminal records and histories of violence, a topic which Media Matters recently explored.  As Timothy Johnson of Media Matters pointed out, the NRA’s glorification of individuals like Marlo Ellis “demonstrates how the show must scrape the bottom of the barrel to find actual cases of self-defense with a gun for its audience.”

The thing is, when all of those “good guys” with guns are walking around in public with their guns as they now are everywhere, how do we know what will happen? How will we know when one of them snaps or is suicidal and takes the lives of innocent people? How can we tell these “good guys” from the “bad guys”? And when we allow people with no permits or training to now carry guns as we have done in several states, we will open up our communities to more of these kind of shootings. It is inevitable.

And why wouldn’t the “bad guys”- and by that term I assume the gun lobby means criminals and domestic abusers and others who are otherwise prohibited from owning and carrying guns- also then carry their illegally or, actually, legally purchased guns in public? And what I mean by legally purchased is the policy of allowing private sellers to sell guns at gun shows, through Internet sites ( Armslist.com) on Facebook, in daily newspapers and/or flea markets and other venues. It’s legal because we have not passed laws to require those gun sales by private sellers to undergo background checks.

Which brings me to my point. We have no idea if someone obtained their gun with a background check or not. And in states that don’t require background checks before granting carry licenses, we surely can’t guarantee that the person with the gun is law abiding. Without background checks on all gun sales, the person carrying with a license that doesn’t require a background check and a gun purchased without a background check could be the next Jared Loughner or the next Radcliffe Haughton.

The public has common sense when it comes to background checks. 92% of Americans (and including gun owners) believe all gun sales should come with a background check. Of course. Why in the world did anyone believe it was a good idea in the first place to not require background checks for all gun sales? It slipped through the cracks of the Brady Law when it passed in 1993 in part because then there were only occasional private sellers. Now is different. Private sellers often have exhibits of guns similar to those being sold down the aisle by licensed dealers where background checks are required. And a whole new market has opened up on the internet at places like Armslist.com, even on Facebook and in ads in local newspapers for just a few. Yesterday there were 3 guns for sale by private sellers in my home town newspaper. How about yours? I assume they will be sold with no background check. In my state of Minnesota today there are multiple listings of guns for sale by private sellers- presumably with no background check. In fact, this website called gunlistings.com makes it very easy to find gun ads in papers all over the country. Interestingly enough, there is advice for the buyer and the seller here:

For ensured safety when buying or selling your guns you should meet at a FFL dealer and conduct the transaction through the gun dealer. (transfer fees vary by dealer)

It is up to the buyer and seller to determine if transfering the gun through an FFL is required by law.
If you choose to conduct a transaction privately always meet in a public place!

Always consult federal, state, and local laws before conducting firearms transactions.

At least that advice was given. We have no idea if it’s taken. And we can see how easy it is to find guns for sale from private sellers.

Consider the reason we need a national law. Some states require background checks on all or most gun sales and some don’t. Naturally those who don’t want to go through a background check know where to go to get their guns. And when they are allowed to buy as many as they want, it doesn’t take too much imagination to understand what happens with those guns.

We need to finish the job started in 1993 and require all gun sales to go through Brady background checks. The Brady Campaign’s Finish The Job campaign asks you to sign a petition to send to Congress to pass the background check law they refused to pass after the horrific Sandy Hook school shooting. If we don’t pass this law, we are not doing our job to protect our communities from devastating gun violence. We also know that even this will not stop all shootings or all “bad guys” from getting guns. There are straw purchases, stolen guns, bad apple gun dealers and lots of trafficking. But it is one way to make us safer. Saving lives is what this is all about and if we can save lives, why wouldn’t we? And the bigger question is why the corporate gun lobby is so opposed to keeping guns out of the hands of the “bad guys” instead of a laser focus on arming who they believe to be the “good guys”.

It’s time for a change of conversation and a change to our gun las. We need action and we need those who support background checks to speak out and bring others with them. Lives depend on it. We are better than this as a country.