“Reframing The Gun Debate”: Stop Calling Anti-Regulation, Pro-Proliferation Groups Like The NRA “Gun Rights” Groups
This time, nearly a month after the horrible mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., the public attention hasn’t ricocheted to the next story. On the contrary, sorrow has hardened into resolve.
This time, something can and must be done. And it looks as if something will.
The Washington Post reported Saturday that:
“The White House is weighing a far broader and more comprehensive approach to curbing the nation’s gun violence than simply reinstating an expired ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition, according to multiple people involved in the administration’s discussions.”
According to The Post’s sources, this could include measures “that would require universal background checks for firearm buyers, track the movement and sale of weapons through a national database, strengthen mental health checks, and stiffen penalties for carrying guns near schools or giving them to minors.”
And in addition to whatever legislative package the president may push, Vice President Joe Biden made clear Wednesday that the president wouldn’t shy away from using executive action.
“The president is going to act,” Biden said, according to CNN. “Executive orders, executive action, can be taken.”
So, as we move into this season of change on gun policy, let’s take a moment to better frame the debate.
First, let’s fix some of the terminology: stop calling groups like the National Rifle Association a “gun rights” group. These are anti-regulation, pro-proliferation groups. They prey on public fears — of the “bad guys with guns,” of a Second Amendment rollback, of an ever imminent apocalypse — while helping gun makers line their pockets.
(Sturm, Ruger & Company’s stock has gone up more than 500 percent since President Obama was first elected, and Smith & Wesson’s stock is up more than 200 percent.)
And the gun makers return the favor. According to a 2011 report by the Violence Policy Center, a group advocating stronger gun regulations:
“Since 2005, corporations — gun related and other — have contributed between $19.8 million and $52.6 million to the NRA as detailed in its Ring of Freedom corporate giving program.”
The report continued:
“The vast majority of funds — 74 percent — contributed to the NRA from ‘corporate partners’ are members of the firearms industry: companies involved in the manufacture or sale of firearms or shooting-related products. Contributions to the NRA from the firearms industry since 2005 total between $14.7 million and $38.9 million.”
Groups like the N.R.A. aren’t as much about rights as wrongs. The money being churned is soaked in blood and marked by madness.
Second, more reasonable people of good conscience and good faith, including responsible gun owners, need to talk openly, honestly and forcefully about the need for additional, reasonable regulations.
There is power in speaking up. We know the face of unfettered gun proliferation. Now it’s time to see more faces of regulation and restraint.
Retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal joined those ranks on Tuesday when he said on MSNBC:
“I spent a career carrying typically either an M16, and later an M4 carbine. And an M4 carbine fires a .223 caliber round, which is 5.56 millimeters, at about 3,000 feet per second. When it hits a human body, the effects are devastating. It’s designed to do that. And that’s what our soldiers ought to carry. I personally don’t think there’s any need for that kind of weaponry on the street and particularly around the schools in America. I believe that we’ve got to take a serious look. I understand everybody’s desire to have whatever they want, but we’ve got to protect our children, we’ve got to protect our police, we’ve got to protect our population. And I think we’ve got to take a very mature look at that.”
A “mature look” indeed. And that comes from a real soldier, not just someone who wants to feel like one.
Third, we must be clear that we are not talking about prohibition and confiscation but about de-escalation — in both the volume and lethal efficiency — and accountability.
No one is talking about forbidding law-abiding, mentally sound citizens to purchase nonmilitary-style weapons that don’t hold more bullets than we have digits.
The point is to ensure that we don’t sell military weapons with extended clips to the public and that the guns we do sell are purchased only by responsible people. And, once the guns are purchased, we need to ensure that they all remain in responsible hands. One place to start is to require background checks of all purchases and to track the guns, not just for the life of the purchaser, but for the life of the gun.
Last, we must understand that whatever we do now is not necessarily the whole of the solution but a step in the right direction on a long walk back from a precipice. Our search for solutions must be dynamic because the gun industry is wily and our quandary is epic.
We don’t want to pass the point where society is so saturated with the most dangerous kinds of weaponry that people feel compelled to arm themselves or be left vulnerable, if indeed we haven’t already passed that point.
According to The Associated Press, a small Utah town is making a “gun in every home a priority.” The A.P. reported:
“Spring City Councilman Neil Sorensen first proposed an ordinance requiring a gun in every household in the town of 1,000. The rest of the council scoffed at making it a requirement, but they unanimously agreed to move forward with an ordinance ‘recommending’ the idea. The council also approved funding to offer concealed firearms training Friday to the 20 teachers and administrators at the local elementary school.”
That is not where we want to be as a country.
By: Charles M. Blow, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, January 9, 2013
“Unpleasant Details”: Three Ways Sensible Gun Control Could Have Prevented Aurora Shootings
If the mass shooting this summer during a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises has receded in the public’s memory given the recent horror in Newtown, Connecticut, court proceedings in Centennial, Colorado, this week have thrust it back into view.
We’ve learned heretofore unknown and certainly unpleasant details from the day of the shooting. Prosecutors played a tape in which a panicked moviegoer calls 911, but the dispatcher can’t hear him over the sound of gunshots—30 of them in 27 seconds. An officer testified that, when there weren’t enough ambulances around, he crammed victims into the back of his patrol car. They were so badly injured that he testified he could hear blood “sloshing around” on the floor of his car when he made turns.
Other details that we heard piecemeal before have been confirmed: about the types of weapons Holmes used and his efforts to obtain them.
Crucially, looking at the evidence presented by prosecutors this week, it’s easy to see several points at which sensible gun control legislation could have stopped the slaughter. Here are the three most obvious ones:
Tracking large-scale ammunition purchases. Steve Beggs, an agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, testified that Holmes went on a buying spree starting May 10, 2012. By July 14, he had bought 6,300 rounds of ammunition, two pistols, a .223 caliber Smith & Wesson AR-15 assault weapon, a shotgun, body armor, bomb-making materials and handcuffs.
The large-scale bullet purchases are the big red flag here. Nobody is monitoring bulk ammunition purchases: Some states, like Illinois, Massachusetts and New Jersey, have limits on the amount you can buy and ask that dealers track their sales for law enforcement, but Colorado has no such rules. And the ones that do exist can easily be evaded by buying ammunition online anyhow, which is what Holmes did.
The federal government should be able to track bulk ammunition sales—there is clearly a controlling public interest when somebody is assembling an arsenal that could support a small militia. If authorities had even briefly question Holmes about why he was stockpiling so many weapons, it’s almost a certainty they would have noticed his extremely bizarre behavior: He was reportedly almost incoherent in the weeks leading up to the attack. The White House is said to be considering a national database to track the sale and movement of weapons, and it should absolutely include ammunition, too.
Online sales of ammunition should also be banned or highly regulated, since they create an easy way for people to stockpile dangerous weapons without ever showing their face. A 1999 bill in Congress to regulate the online sale of ammunition was never adopted, but should be now.
Better mental health screenings for weapons purchases. Holmes was not only stockpiling weapons but, as noted, exhibiting excessively strange behavior. He left a voicemail at a local gun range asking if he could join, but the message was reportedly incomprehensible. “It was this very guttural, very heavy bass, deep voice that was rambling incoherently,” the owner of the range told The New York Times. “It was bizarre on a good day, freakish on others.” Only weeks before his rampage, Holmes’ psychiatrist was alerting police at his university about his behavior—a drastic step for any mental health professional to take.
Yet, Holmes was able to obtain his weapons with ease. Note this exchange during yesterday’s court proceedings:
Holmes’ defense attorney Tamara Brady asked [ATF agent] Beggs if there is a legal process to keep from selling these items legally in Colorado to a “severely mentally ill person.” Beggs answered that there is not.
Biden’s task force on gun control has reportedly been exploring the idea of mandating state participation in the mental-health database and stronger mental-health screenings for gun purchasers—areas in which it might find common ground with the NRA. Those measures should certainly be part of the final package.
Banning assault weapons and large capacity magazines. Holmes used a .223 caliber assault rifle during the attack, which as noted was heard firing 30 shots in 27 seconds. Holmes also bought ammunition drums larger than the standard 30-round high-capacity clip, including one that held up to 100 rounds.
According to details disclosed in court, at most 90 seconds elapsed between the first 911 call and police intervention in the movie theatre, yet Holmes was able to shoot 71 people. Many gun-control advocates rightly find this to be an unacceptable level of firepower, and Biden’s group will almost certainly propose an assault weapons ban and high-capacity clips. In the Senate, Dianne Feinstein is moving towards strong legislation that would do the same.
What’s important is that, unlike the 1994 ban, the new laws should make all assault weapons illegal—the language should be strong enough that gun manufacturers can’t evade the ban with minor alterations to their weapons. Feinstein’s bill would make only one military characteristic illegal, whereas the 1994 ban had the threshold at two.
By: George Zornick, The Nation, January 9, 2013
“The Single Lethal Thread”: High-Capacity Magazines Put The “Mass” In Mass Shooting
Semiautomatic firearms with the capacity to accept a detachable high-capacity ammunition magazine are the single lethal thread that runs through the vast majority of mass shootings in the United States. From Cleveland Elementary School, in Stockton, Calif., where in 1989 Patrick Purdy opened fire with an AK-47 assault rifle equipped with a 75-round drum ammunition magazine on teachers and schoolchildren leaving five victims dead and 30 wounded, to the Sandy Hook Elementary School where Adam Lanza used a Bushmaster assault rifle equipped with a 30-round magazine to kill 20 grade schoolers and school staff, this lethal combination is what has defined our nation’s most horrific mass shootings.]
On January 3, 2013, Democratic Reps. Diana DeGette of Colorado and Carolyn McCarthy of New York introduced legislation to ban high-capacity ammunition magazines. The bill would ban the sale and transfer of ammunition magazines with a capacity greater than 10 rounds. Both lawmakers know all too well the damage high-capacity ammunition magazines can inflict. In 1993, McCarthy lost her husband in a mass shooting on the Long Island Railroad, where Colin Ferguson, armed with a 9mm Ruger pistol and four 15-round ammunition magazines, opened fire on commuters, killing six and wounding 19. DeGette’s congressional district was the site of the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, where Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold armed with guns that included an Intratec TEC-DC9 assault pistol and high-capacity ammunition magazines killed 13 and wounded 23. In July 2012, James Holmes armed with firearms that included a Smith & Wesson M&P15 assault rifle equipped with a 100-round drum magazine, opened fire at the Century Aurora 16 movie theater near Representative DeGette’s district, killing 12 and wounding 58.
As McCarthy stated in announcing the introduction of the bill last week, high-capacity ammunition magazines “help put the ‘mass’ in ‘mass shooting.'”
By: Josh Sugarman, Executive Director, Violence Policy Center; Published in Washington Whispers, Debate Club, January 8, 2013
“The NRA Is A Public Health Hazard”: Five Reasons Why The NRA Must Be Stopped
When National Rifle Association chief Wayne LaPierre called on Congress to place an armed guard in every school in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, it showed that he has no intention of doing anything to stop deranged people from using military-style weapons to kill people in large numbers. LaPierre made it clear that the NRA isn’t interested in ending gun violence. In his theatrical and defiant Dec. 21 press conference a week after 26 Sandy Hook children and teachers were shot to death, LaPierre called for even more guns in schools.
In the debate about gun violence, the NRA will rely on time-tested scare tactics. Here are five reasons why the NRA must be defeated:
1. NRA leaders’ immoral interpretation of the Second Amendment presents a serious public health risk.
LaPierre essentially argues that the right to bear any kind of firearm for any reason without any rules – including limits on criminals’ access to the most dangerous weapons ever manufactured – is more important than others’ right to live. This is not what most NRA members or Americans support, and it’s not what the Second Amendment says.
2. The NRA does not represent the views of most NRA members and gun owners.
Recent polling underscores this point. For example, 74 percent of NRA members (and 87 percent of non-NRA gun owners) support requiring criminal background checks on all gun buyers. The NRA rank and file also supports barring people on terror watch lists from buying guns (71 percent) and believes the law should require gun owners to alert police to lost and stolen guns (64 percent). NRA policy makers oppose these proposals.
3. The NRA represents gun makers, not gun owners.
LaPierre’s NRA is not the voice of law-abiding gun owners and sportsmen. It is the lobbying arm for gun manufacturers opposed to a ban on the assault rifles they make. These weapons include the Bushmaster used in Newtown, Conn., and many other recent shootings. The manufacturer calls this rifle the “ultimate military combat weapons system,” and the NRA gave the Bushmaster its “Golden Bullseye Award” in 2011.
It’s no surprise that the firearms industry contributes significantly to the NRA. In fact, less than half of the NRA’s budget comes from membership dues, and contributions from weapons makers and ideological donors (including the Koch Brothers) are rising. From 2004 to 2010, the NRA’s corporate and other fundraising revenue grew twice as fast as member dues, according to a Forbes piece on “The NRA Industrial Complex” by Peter Cohan. The Violence Policy Center estimates that between 2005 and 2011 the firearms industry donated as much as $38.9 million to the NRA. Lee Fang explains in The Nation that there are dozens of insidious ways that gun makers influence the NRA beyond direct cash contributions.
4. The NRA lies to the public and its members.
The NRA lies to law-abiding gun owners who want their rights protected by saying that a ban on military-style weapons with massive magazines would mean the government will come for hunting rifles next. The group says that if we close loopholes that allow people to get around criminal background checks, it’s only matter of time before the Second Amendment would be repealed. These are flat-out lies that the NRA uses to buttress its “slippery slope” opposition to sensible gun laws like those overwhelmingly supported by individual NRA members. They use the imaginary slippery slope to justify doing nothing.
5. The NRA uses its power to silence responsible politicians and quash constructive efforts to reduce gun violence.
The NRA is a dangerous force in American politics. Not even the atrocity in Newtown has tempered the organization’s extremism and rigid opposition to any effort to address gun violence. Expect to see the NRA use its considerable resources to ruthlessly attack every legislative proposal to address this crisis. LaPierre will employ negative television ads and direct mail marketing to attack the President, the Vice President and the members of Congress fighting for change.
The NRA is a political bully, and the politics of destruction is its trademark. Politicians have feared the NRA because of its willingness to target them with smear tactics and because of its reputation for defeating opponents at the polls, even though this reputation is undeserved and wildly exaggerated.
If public officials can talk with their constituents about the need for sensible gun laws, they’ll persuade most folks. But when the NRA gives an “F” grade to politicians who want to stop gun violence in America, and when it even lobbies to limit public and private data-gathering on guns and gun violence, this organization is having a chilling effect on public policy and debate. It intimidates good people from trying to do the right thing. It protects the status quo.
That’s why we have to aggressively take on the NRA and support the Biden Commission and members of Congress working on a comprehensive solution to gun violence. Washington must address the epidemic of mass killings, the daily shootings in our cities, the culture of violence and the need to expand access to mental health services.
We should start immediately by enacting commonsense gun laws such as those advocated by Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Carolyn McCarthy and supported by those members of Congress who opposed gun legislation prior to the massacre in Newtown. Won’t the nation be safer if we reduce the number of military-style assault rifles on the streets? Won’t fewer people be shot and killed in an America without large-capacity magazines? Won’t we be safer without the gun-show loophole that allows firearms buyers to evade background checks? The NRA doesn’t think so, and the gun manufacturers who set the NRA agenda simply don’t care. After Sandy Hook, the NRA issued a proposal that would make schools more dangerous, not safer.
The NRA doesn’t offer solutions. It works to keep things the way they are, not to reduce gun violence in America. We have to put the NRA on notice that its days of steamrolling Congress are over. The NRA is a public health hazard that must be stopped.
By: Ethan Rome, Executive Director, Health Care for America (originally published on the Huffington Post), January 7, 2013
“Freedom To Live In Fear”: One Wonders How Much More Of This “Freedom” We Can Take
“Everybody got a pistol. This must really please the NRA” — from “Gun” by Gil Scott-Heron
So maybe the NRA is about to get its wish.
Here we are, a little over three weeks after the massacre at an elementary school in Newtown, CT, a little over two weeks after the National Rifle Association said there should henceforth be armed guards at every school, and at least one school system, Marlboro Township in New Jersey, is taking its advice. Under a 90-day pilot program in partnership with local police, students who returned to school last week found their campuses patrolled by armed officers.
But here’s the thing. If this is truly a good idea — “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” said NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre in a news conference — then why stop there? After all, it is not just our schools that are being shot up. So let us follow this advice to its logical end.
Consider:
Four firefighters in upstate New York were shot, two of them killed, on Christmas Eve when they responded to a call and were ambushed by a man with a semiautomatic rifle. So we should have armed guards on all our fire trucks.
Two customers were killed two days before Christmas when armed men opened fire with semiautomatic handguns inside a grocery store in Delray Beach, FL. So we should have armed guards at all our grocery stores.
Two people were killed and one injured on Dec. 11 by a gunman who started shooting at a shopping mall near Portland, OR. So we should have armed guards at all our shopping malls.
Two people were killed and two others injured Nov. 6 when an employee started shooting inside a chicken-processing plant in Fresno, CA. So we should have armed guards at all our chicken-processing plants.
One man was killed and five others wounded in a shooting at a New Year’s Eve party in a private residence in Lakewood, CA. So we should have armed guards at all our private residences.
One man was killed, a pregnant woman and her unborn child wounded, in a Dec. 9 drive-by shooting on a street corner in Miami. So we should have armed guards on every street corner.
That list, by the way, represents only a random sampling of recent shootings, most so run-of-the-mill, so plain-vanilla ordinary, they didn’t even make news outside their local areas, which should give you an idea of how common gunfire in this country is. According to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, nearly 98,000 of us are shot each year, a figure that includes law enforcement activity. That’s nearly 268 a day, 11 every hour.
By the reasoning of the NRA, you do not address that sad state of affairs by crafting laws that strive to balance the rights of responsible gun owners with the need to block the irresponsible, the dangerous, the criminal-minded, the unhinged, from access to these WMDs. No, by the NRA’s reasoning, the solution to too many guns is more guns still.
The organization frames this as a defense of freedom. To which the best rejoinder is provided by Gil Scott-Heron in the song quoted above: “Freedom to be afraid is all you won.”
It is a trenchant observation. Just the other day, two seventh-graders in Tillamook, OR. found a handgun, with a round in the chamber and the safety off, on the floor in a movie theater. It had apparently slipped out of the holster of one Gary Warren Quackenbush, 61, who said he felt the need for protection as he watched The Hobbit.
Quackenbush reportedly feared someone might shoot up the place — as happened in Aurora,CO, last July during a Batman movie. So add movie theaters to the list of places we should have armed guards. We are a people shot through with fear, a nation under the gun.
And one wonders how much more of this “freedom” we can take.
By: Leonard Pitts, The National Memo, January 7, 2013
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