“Americans Are Paying The Price In Blood”: Guns Kill People In The US Because We Pervert The Second Amendment
America’s gun violence, like our grief in Oregon, seems to know no bounds, no limits, no end. The reason is deadly simple: our very lives are chained to a constitutional amendment that is willfully misinterpreted by many and perverted by gun rights advocates for political ends.
That sullied amendment is the United States constitution’s Second Amendment which states, “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” The gun industry and its supporters have turned that simple statement into a clever marketing tool, and Americans are paying the price in blood.
On Thursday, Roseburg, Oregon – a three-hour drive south of the Oregon’s largest city, Portland – was rocked by a deadly mass shooting that wounded seven people and took the lives of 10 others, including the gunman. Students were in classes at Umpqua Community College when a 26-year-old gunman shattered their world when he opened fire on them. They are, sadly, not unique: hardly a week has passed in the last three years without a mass shooting.
For 15 years, Ceasefire Oregon has fought the gun lobby – and people like Douglas County sheriff John Hanlin, the gun rights advocate who is investigating this latest shooting – and worked to pass reasonable, effective gun laws.
Hanlin is one of many who claim that the answer to gun violence is to help those who have mental health problems while the rest of us stock up on guns and ammo. Hanlin, gun extremists and groups like the National Rifle Association have scapegoated people with mental health problems for years – but they know that such people are far more likely to be victims of violence than the perpetrators of it (and far more likely to kill themselves than other people).
Gun rights advocates also claim that we need more guns to protect ourselves from gun violence. But with 310m firearms in the US, and despite the fact that one in every three Americans owns guns, more guns are not making us safer.
After the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012, we at Ceasefire Oregon worked with Moms Demand Action, Everytown for Gun Safety, Gun Owners for Responsible Ownership, the Brady Campaign and the Oregon Alliance for Gun Safety to pass a background check law despite opposition from a few Democratic legislators and a few Oregon sheriffs, including Hanlin. And, after years of work, Oregon finally passed a bill requiring background checks for almost all gun sales last spring.
But gun violence is a cancer in our nation and, just as no single drug will cure all cancers, no single gun law will cure all gun violence. Rather, we need comprehensive, effective legislation and caring, courageous leadership to change both America’s laws and Americans’ views on guns and gun violence. Too often, gun control advocates hear that nothing can be done to change things in this country, but that’s just not true.
Gun violence prevention researchers and advocates know that we can reduce gun violence by passing effective, common-sense laws, like background checks for all gun sales to stop criminals and those with demonstrated mental health issues and histories of violence from buying guns. Waiting periods between the time of gun purchase and possession can provide purchasers with a cooling-off period to help deter homicide and suicide. Instituting gun violence restraining orders can reduce violence by allowing family members and law enforcement to remove a gun from a loved one who is exhibiting warning signs of violence.
We can require – or at least heavily incentivize through liability statutes – that firearms be kept secured at all times with trigger locks or in a safe. We can reduce gun trafficking by allowing people to purchase only one gun per month. We can reinstate the federal assault weapons ban to ban the purchase and possession of high-capacity magazines and assault rifles, which are not necessary for the most dedicated home-defender or hunter.
And Americans can refuse to support lawmakers of any party who do not support “gun-sense” laws – like background checks, higher standards for gun ownership and funding for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms – at the ballot box. We can challenge all 2016 presidential candidates to issue a plan to cut gun violence by 50% before 2020 (the final year of the next president’s first term in office), and Ceasefire has done so.
We are citizens of a great nation, but our children, our mothers, our fathers and our friends are being mowed down, fed to the gun industry’s insatiable appetite for profit. Our founding fathers wrote the Second Amendment to protect our country. Now we must protect our country from those who pervert the Second Amendment.
We know this can be done. We know this must be done. Our national nightmare of paying into the gun lobby’s profit machine must be brought to an end.
By: Penny Okamoto, The Guardian, October 2, 2015
“The Voice Of My Own Doubts”: The Conservative Case For Reforming America’s Sick Gun Culture
Yesterday, a man in Virginia murdered two people on live television. The news media exploded into a predictable shouting match about gun control, mental health, toxic masculinity, and the “politicization of tragedies.” There was also a new twist this time around, a debate about whether it was appropriate to share or broadcast the horrifying video of the killings. And then the killer uploaded his own video of the shooting.
At this point, a voice asserted itself in my conscience. It has become the voice of my own doubts about America’s gun culture. It was Irish-accented and belonged to a friend of my father’s. “But what about the guns?” he asked, looking at me gravely. “You must know.”
Almost any American who travels abroad and talks about politics hears something like that. Often in the first 10 minutes of meeting someone. In the rest of the world, it’s all they have to say: “What about the guns?”
I’m a conservative. I have friends who have guns. I’m convinced by some of the arguments for an armed citizenry. I told that Irish voice that his own country was freed from British rule by guns. That the number of privately owned Irish guns was of paramount concern to British ministers in the 1910s and 1920s, and that this was good evidence that an armed citizenry is a defense against tyranny.
I pointed out that because so much of America is rural, citizens need means to defend themselves and their property when the armed authorities are far away from them. I noted that America would face insurmountable obstacles in trying to confiscate guns, as so many Americans believe they are a necessary defensive measure against violence. I also observed that the same belief was held just a few hours up the road from him, in Northern Ireland, and that’s why Great Britain has considerably relaxed gun laws there compared to the rest of the country.
With the easy confidence of an American-Irish nationalist, I told him that the reason the Falls Road neighborhood wasn’t burned down again was three letters long: IRA. They had guns.
That was enough to not only impress my interlocutor, but to also silence him on the subject. But my conscience has been talking at me ever since. And on days like yesterday, it is screaming: What about the guns? I have no answers, but I have some doubts about our gun culture that American conservatives should consider:
An armed citizenry is not the same thing as an armed consumer public
In America we have background checks to prevent certain criminals from owning guns. It’s a system that presumes good citizenship on the part of everyone who has not been convicted of a crime. But not having a criminal record is a very different thing from being a responsible citizen. The only test most people have to pass to gain access to weapons of exceptional lethal power is this: Do you have enough cash or credit?
That’s not enough. Classical republican theory restricts arms ownership to those it deems responsible enough to uphold public order. Our system of guns as a consumer good, and our democratic presumption of good citizenship, puts guns into unsteady and untrained hands.
Making sure a person is qualified to own a gun is something responsible societies do. Many families, gun clubs, and organizations like the NRA do the work of training responsible, conscientious gun owners. It’s plausible that some kind of mandatory socialization in gun clubs for potential gun owners would be a good first step at preventing gun violence. It’s more plausible than simply wishing for more ‘good guys with guns’ at every possible location for a tragedy. As things stand, this constructive, social gun culture does not encompass the totality of gun owners; gun shops certainly don’t inquire about your sociability and training.
I know what conservatives are thinking: “So you think the government has the power to disqualify citizens from gun ownership?” The government will prove terrible at this task, and it defeats the purpose of an armed citizenry. And to be sure, I don’t want a government that can put a gun owner in prison for having the wrong politics. And of course, this power of restricting guns — like restricting the franchise to “responsible, invested citizens” — echoes a historical tie between gun control and racist efforts to confine blacks to a lower status. And yet, we still ought to consider stronger guarantees of responsible gun ownership. Perhaps tests that aim at qualifying the character of a gun owner, rather than searching only for a criminal disqualification.
Increased firepower among citizens is leading to an arms race with the state
There are plenty of horror stories about cops getting geeked-up in discarded military gear to deliver a warrant or make a drug arrest. They kick in a door, throw a flash-bang into a crib, or shoot to death an innocent unlucky enough to be holding a television remote that looks like a weapon. The militarization of the police has many causes, including our drug policies and federally subsidized military-grade equipment. But it is also the case that cops in America expect to go into gunfights, and naturally they want the bigger gun. Countries without as wide access to guns don’t have such heavily armed or fearful police.
American may be more violent precisely because we have guns
We’re often told that Americans are just more violent than other people, and that’s why we have so many guns. And I agree, to a point. But the truth might be the other way around, and conservatives should make generous allowances for the pre-rational or the anti-rational in our politics. Our tools and our physical surroundings shape our self-conception and our intentions. A beautiful church sanctuary reminds us of the transcendent and sends a hush over us. A well-appointed room may cause us to stand straighter. And training with a hand gun, an object designed to kill other human beings, causes us to imagine situations in which we might kill another human being.
Doing this constantly makes us more likely to “see” a situation in which we could take lethal action. It may cause us to perceive more danger in the world than actually exists. Mentally unsound people are obviously much more likely to lose themselves in this kind of self-induced paranoia, but a stable person should be aware of that pull on their subconscious intentions as well.
It is this intuition about human nature that makes me recoil instinctively from certain guns, often marketed as “tactical,” which are designed to look sinister and appeal to young men who spent a lot of time in their adolescence playing Counter-Strike.
Firearm-related deaths are one of the only truly “exceptional” things about America, and that’s embarrassing
There are lots of places on Earth where you can make a prosperous living. There are lots of modern commercial nations. In history there have been empires that bungled through the Middle East like we do. And there are lots of countries that are torn by disorder and violence that are caused by an absence of state authority. America is really the only nation that is orderly with an almost unchallengeable state, and yet has a gun-death rate similar to much poorer Latin American nations experiencing low-grade civil wars and disorder.
Yes, many of our firearm-related deaths are suicides. But our firearm-related homicide rate is noticeably higher than every comparable industrialized nation. And furthermore, there seems to be a strong correlation between reduced access to firearms and a reduced rate of suicide.
None of these lines of thought has carried me all the way over to Mike Bloomberg’s side. Gun crime, like all crime, has been receding for most of my life. I recognize that most of the proposals made by gun-control groups in the aftermath of a tragedy would have done little to prevent the tragedy in the first place. I admire most of the gun-owners I know, many of whom have politics that are on the left or are outright radical. I have thought of purchasing weapons and training with them myself and I would regret the loss of my ability to do so. The concept of an “armed citizenry” makes sense to me, from my reading of history. And I think responsible citizens have a right to defend themselves against each other, even with guns. The results of preventing them from obtaining firearms lawfully can also be deadly and unjust.
But overall, the results in this part of the American experiment are not encouraging. If the Virginia killer did not have easy access to guns, if his scheme for murdering his former colleagues had to be accomplished with knives, hammers, or a home-made explosive device, the truth is that those murders would have been much less likely to occur. Conservatives who generally support the idea of an armed citizenry should let that thought sink in.
By: Michael Brendan Dougherty, The Week, August 27, 2015
“This Extremism Is Dangerous”: No Panic Buttons For The Public: Why Open Carry Is Bad For America
It’s official: the phrase “open carry” has entered the American lexicon. That’s because gun extremists from Virginia to Washington to Texas and all across the country have started showing up in restaurants, state capitols, and other public places openly carrying loaded semiautomatic rifles. Occasionally donning kilts or gas masks and other attention-getting attire, these extremists look as though they are headed to battle instead of visiting their legislators or picking up milk at their local Kroger grocery store.
Why are we seeing these open carry displays more and more often? Because the radical rhetoric of the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) leadership tells us that “the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” And that myth propels the idea that a loaded AK-47 is necessary when dining at Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers, just in case you encounter a bad guy.
Thanks to the gun lobby’s insidious and formerly unchecked influence in our state legislatures, open carry is legal in more than 40 states. And in a majority of those states, it’s perfectly legal to open carry a long gun with absolutely no training, permitting, or even a minimum age requirement.
Add to that cocktail of crazy the fact that our lax federal gun laws allow criminals and other dangerous people to easily access firearms. Given that millions of guns each year are sold without a criminal background check, there is no way to know if a person who is openly carrying a semiautomatic rifle is a responsible gun owner, or if that person is a threat to moms and our children (and the gas masks don’t help either).
Law enforcement leaders have come out in opposition to open carry because it forces them to ask questions that jeopardize their ability to ensure public safety, like “Does this person have a permit? Is he a felon?” And it’s a drain on law enforcement resources as well. As this video posted by open carry extremists highlights, there is nothing normal about seeing men marching around carrying rifles; it causes genuine concern. Subsequently, when people call 9-1-1, a police officer must be dispatched and forced to deal with difficult open carry extremists.
In Texas, an open carry activist with an arrest record for interfering with police duties recently posted a video threatening Texas state legislators with death if they oppose legislation to legalize unlicensed open carry of handguns. These same gun extremists were responsible for forcing the Texas state legislature to install panic buttons in their chambers last month.
This extremism is dangerous and, not surprisingly, encouraged by NRA leaders given their support and continued push for open carry expansion. For decades, the NRA has attempted to normalize behaviors that are unsafe, and expanding open carry is simply an attempt by the gun lobby to make it acceptable for anyone to openly carry guns anywhere.
In Tennessee, the law allows permit holders to carry guns openly or concealed, but last year, the NRA sponsored legislation that would remove the permit requirement to open carry in Tennessee. This would have made it legal for stalkers and certain other criminals to openly carry loaded handguns in Tennessee, and it would be legal for anyone to openly carry a loaded gun without any gun safety training whatsoever.
But just like Rick Perry (someone I never thought I would cite as an example), who said this week that he was not “all that fond of this open carry concept,” Moms are not willing to go down the NRA’s slippery slope. We know that respecting the Second Amendment requires responsible gun ownership and practicing gun safety.
The safety of our children and families in our communities is paramount, and open carry is not a step in the right direction. We refuse to have to consider whether people who are open carrying around our children and families are members of law enforcement sworn to protect us, or if they are activists making a political statement, or dangerous criminals we should run from.
And while we wait for legislators to do their jobs instead of catering to extremists’ tantrums and pass laws that protect people instead of gun lobby profits, we expect businesses to do their part. Simply following state and local laws is not enough. In states where no background check is required to buy a semiautomatic rifle and carry it openly in public, businesses have a duty to protect their employees and customers.
This is why Moms are asking retailers like Kroger and restaurants like Raising Cane’s to prioritize customer and employee safety. And it’s why we’ve worked with other restaurants and retailers like Chipotle, Sonic, Starbucks and Target to stand up to this extremist behavior and ask their customers to leave their firearms at home.
Open carry extremists have shined a bright light on the NRA’s vision for the future of America, and it’s not pretty. Moms won’t let the concerted efforts by the gun lobby and open carry extremists to put our families and communities at risk go unchecked. With rights come responsibilities, and for the safety and security of our restaurants, state capitols, and other public places, we must push back on armed intimidation. After all, there are no panic buttons for the public.
By: Shannon Watts, Founder, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America;The Blog, The Huffington Post, February 13, 2015
“Bought And Paid For”: Pennsylvania’s Shameful NRA Sellout
Two days after losing his reelection bid, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett signed a bill with an amendment that allows the National Rifle Association (NRA) to sue cities and towns that pass ordinances regulating firearms by claiming they infringe upon individual rights. Until the gun lobby’s dream amendment got tacked on in the final hours of the legislative session, Act 192 had nothing to do with guns; it criminalizes the theft of secondary metal, like copper wire, and it had broad support.
With Democrat Tom Wolf replacing the Republican Corbett, the NRA and its allies in the legislature had to act quickly. In his haste, Corbett even signed the wrong version of the bill, and had to be called back for a second signing. Outraged at how gun enthusiasts rammed through the amendment, Democratic State Senator Daylin Leach recruited several other elected officials plus the cities of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Lancaster to challenge the law’s constitutionality.
Pennsylvania law says amendments must be germane, and empowering the NRA to sue municipalities for enacting gun laws is far afield from Act 192’s intent. Leach, a lawyer, wrote the brief himself, and the lawsuit is before the Commonwealth Court. “The Pennsylvania legislature is essentially a wholly owned subsidiary of the NRA,” he says, explaining that the NRA saw an opening in the closing days of Corbett’s term to “sneak it in” while it had the votes and a proven ally in the governor’s office.
The NRA quickly used its newfound legal power, suing a number of municipalities and threatening others to get them to back down. The amendment as written says an organization does not need what’s known as “standing”—in other words, the NRA doesn’t have to prove someone has been harmed by a gun safety law. It can just outright sue, and if it wins, the city or town has to pay the group’s legal expenses. But there’s no risk to the NRA; if it loses, it doesn’t pay the winning side’s legal expenses.
Ed Foley, the mayor of Jenkintown, a borough in the Philadelphia suburbs, told the Daily Beast that the NRA forced him “to choose between public safety and financial solvency.” Foley describes Jenkintown on his Twitter account as “0.6 square miles of the best place to live, dine, shop, and raise a family.” With a population of 4,500 and a budget of $6.5 million, “We can’t afford to defend a law suit even if we win it, and if we lose, we have to pay their legal fees. That’s a form of blackmail,” he says, “or maybe extortion is a better word.”
Under the threat of a lawsuit brought by the NRA, an ordinance in place since 2010 requiring Jenkintown residents to report lost or stolen firearms at the police station was rescinded in a public meeting. “It was a hold-your-nose vote,” says Foley. “It’s such an innocuous law, and it doesn’t do anything to restrict anybody’s right to have a gun. I don’t know why the NRA isn’t a bigger supporter of the police. The police want the law.”
The NRA never plays defense, it always goes on offense, says Jim Kessler, a co-founder of Third Way, a moderate Democratic group. “Even after Sandy Hook, they were trying to expand their reach and loosen gun laws,” he says. The nation may have recoiled in horror at the massacre of 20 first graders, but the NRA’s response is always more access to guns, not more restrictions. A movement to expand gun rights is growing, fueled by a libertarian streak on the right and the left, and it is playing out on the state level. In Florida, a campus shooting in November prompted a House panel to approve guns on college campuses, a first step to overturning a state ban on concealed weapons on university grounds.
Gun safety advocates favor ballot measures like the one Washington state passed in 2014 requiring background checks while gun rights groups work their will through state legislatures. State Senator Leach tells the story of the time when he had the votes to overturn the “Florida loophole” in Pennsylvania law. Then the NRA lobbied each member one by one “and they came back ashen-faced.” When Leach asked, “’Are you still with me?’ most didn’t respond; one said, ‘I’ve got to fuck you, buddy.’” The Florida loophole allows people who can’t get a gun under Pennsylvania’s very low standards to go online, get one from Florida, and Pennsylvania will respect that. “We would never do that on marriage,” says Leach. “ Let another state decide what to do in our state.” As for his colleague’s X-rated comment, he says, “I appreciated his candor, and that’s the Democratic caucus. I’m sure the Republican caucus is far worse.”
Not everyone is afraid of the NRA. Pittsburgh Mayor William Peduto declared in a statement that the city would not be deterred from enforcing its requirement that lost and stolen firearms must be reported: “Too many people are being killed in the streets of Pittsburgh and other cities with stolen guns. It’s a common-sense requirement, which is why police across the state support the regulation, as do many members of the NRA.”
Mayor Richard Gray of Lancaster, a city of some 60,000 known for its distinctive Amish population, is also determined to protect its requirement that lost or stolen firearms are reported to the police within 72 hours. “The NRA is trying to bully smaller communities,” Gray told the Beast. “I learned in junior high school the one way to deal with a bully is to stand up to him, so we’re not backing down. And if they lose, over a hundred communities will pass the same law. I guarantee it.”
A Common Sense Lancaster Legal Defense Fund was launched in mid-January, and has collected almost $10,000 in small contributions. Gray says the NRA is “a paper tiger,” and if challenged can be defeated. He said in a statement announcing the Fund that statewide legislation to make reporting of lost or stolen guns mandatory was introduced in the Pennsylvania legislature in 2007, but it never got out of committee. He noted that the new law granting unprecedented legal power to the NRA was needed, according to its prime sponsor, “to stop little tyrants at the local level from enacting their own gun-control measures.” Now it’s up to the voters and the courts to judge where the tyranny lies, whose rights are being trampled, and whether Act 192 will be allowed to endure as the will of the people, or the product of a process bullied by the NRA.
By: Eleanor Clift,
“HO, HO, NO!: The NRA’s Twisted List For Santa
You might have heard that the U.S. Senate last week finally voted to confirm the president’s nominee for surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy.
You also might have wondered what all the fuss was about. The vote on America’s top doctor was held up for nearly a year, thanks to a campaign by the National Rifle Association. Dr. Murthy was endorsed by the medical community, but the NRA’s lobbying machine turned his nomination into a political battle. All because Murthy believes that gun violence, which kills an average of 86 Americans every day, is a public health issue.
For most of us, acknowledging that America has a gun violence problem is stating a fact. For the NRA’s leadership, it’s heresy.
The gun lobby’s goal is to expand its customer base—and boost gunmakers’ bottom lines, no matter the risk to public safety. So a new surgeon general committed to reducing gun violence isn’t what the gun lobby wanted for Christmas.
The NRA’s wish list looks more like this:
• Guns for felons. The NRA has fought for the rights of felons to buy and own firearms. That means successfully restoring gun rights to convicted murderers, robbers, rapists, and people guilty of transferring explosives to international terrorists.
• Guns for terror suspects. The NRA has opposed efforts to block terror suspects from buying guns. Today the FBI can stop terror suspects from boarding a plane, but not from purchasing firearms.
• Guns for domestic abusers. The NRA objects to restraining orders that require domestic abusers to give up their guns. This year, six states—including Scott Walker’s Wisconsin and Bobby Jindal’s Louisiana—defied the gun lobby and enacted laws that will help keep guns out of the hands of abusers.
• Guns for the mentally ill. The NRA opposed a new California law that will help prevent gun deaths, homicides and suicides both. Police and family members now can present evidence to a judge, who can order temporary custody of a mentally ill person’s guns for a brief, emergency period.
• Gun gag orders. The NRA objects to doctors asking patients basic questions about gun ownership. For example, before Congress repealed it in 2012, an NRA-authored gag order barred doctors and military officers from talking about guns with service members at risk of suicide.
• Guns on campus. The NRA has pushed for “campus carry” laws—despite near unanimous opposition from college presidents, law enforcement, and parents—and for arming educators in K-12 schools.
• Guns in bars. The NRA has pushed to allow guns in bars—despite the fact that 40 percent of people convicted of homicide had been drinking alcohol at the time of their offense.
• Guns in restaurants and grocery stores. The NRA supports the open carry of guns in cafes, burrito shops, and the produce aisle. They reiterated their position in June, after a staffer first made the mistake of calling open carry demonstrations “weird” and “scary.”
• Gun lawsuits. The NRA wants the ability to sue local officials for passing laws that protect public safety. They push for so-called “preemption” bills in statehouses—which allow them to file expensive lawsuits against towns, cities, and even mayors and city commissioners.
• Guns for everyone, no questions asked. The NRA opposed Washington State’s gun-sale background checks ballot measure this year. The measure passed with 59 percent of the vote. Like background check laws across the country, it will help keep guns out of dangerous hands, reduce gun crime, and save lives.
That’s the gun lobby’s wish list for America—more guns for everyone, everywhere, anytime.
The new surgeon general certainly has his work cut out for him. But in 2014, numerous states passed common-sense public safety laws, showing that the momentum for gun safety is building. And just like Dr. Murthy’s confirmation, that’s bad news for the NRA.
By: John Feinblatt, President of Everytown for Gun Safety; The Daily Beast, December 23, 2014
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