Time To End Gun Violence Whatever It Takes.

September 9, 2024

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Last week the NRA unleashed its attack dog John Lott to explain to the American people why more gun laws don’t do anything to curb gun violence. And what was his proof? The fact that Dylann Roof killed all those folks in a Charleston, SC church with a legally-purchased Glock. And since background checks can’t predict whether someone who passes a check will then go on a rampage, and since everyone knows that criminals don’t obey laws, what’s the point of burdening all those law-abiding gun owners with more laws and regulations that keep them from enjoying their guns?

I’ll tell you the point. Laws work. And the reason they work is that every, single gun that gets into civilian hands first got there because of a legal, regulated sale. And if every transfer of a gun thereafter had to go through some kind of regulated exchange, don’t ask me how, don’t ask me why, but fewer guns would get into the ‘wrong hands.’ And if you don’t believe me, just take a look at the cogent and well-articulated piece in The Trace by Evan DeFilipis and Devin Hughes which explains, how gun laws reduce gun crimes.

 

Andy & Allison Parker

Andy & Allison Parker

Asking our lawmakers for proper and effective responses to gun violence will be the centerpiece of a national, community-based effort led by Everytown on July 10. They have created a series of public events in communities around the country with the most appropriate theme – Whatever It Takes. Some of the events will be fashioned around the general issue of gun violence; others will be remembrances of specific events; others will focus on convincing public officials that work remains to be done.

In Asheville, NC, there will be a meeting to remember the horrendous Virginia Tech massacre that killed 32 people in 2007, including a student named Julia Pryde, whose father will speak at the event. Raleigh, NC will be the site of a gathering to honor Kim Yaman, a survivor of the 1991 University of Iowa shooting , and at Hilton Head, SC, a group will remember 17-year old Dominique Xavier Milton-Williams, who was killed at Coligny Beach on July 19. A contingent will be in DC, of course, to present the case on Capitol Hill, and a group will visit the Nashua, NH office of Senator Kelly Ayotte who voted against expanding background checks after Sandy Hook but then pretended she voted for background checks when, in fact, she voted for a Republican-backed substitute bill that didn’t expand NICS checks at all.

September 11 will mark the 14th anniversary of the Twin Towers attacks, a day which, between the Trade Center, Pentagon and Shanksville, America lost 2,996 souls. A moment none will ever forget. Know how many Americans have been killed by gunfire in the last fourteen years? Try 470,000 and I’m undercounting by more than a bit. Know how many combat deaths we suffered in both World Wars, Korea and Viet Nam? About 50,000 less.

So there’s every good reason to mark these gun deaths tomorrow or any other day. In fact, perhaps Everytown should get some like-minded Senator or Congressman to introduce a bill that would officially mark Gun Violence Day every single year. And if the NRA, the gun industry and simple fools like John Lott want to tell you that none of these killings would have occurred if everyone was walking around with a gun, they can all lay brick. It’s time for honest people who put human life above childish self-defense fantasies, come together and do whatever it takes to get the job done.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should say Everytown didn’t coin the phrase ‘whatever it takes.’ It was actually first said by the father of slain TV journalist Allison Parker, who now knows first-hand the pain which comes from losing a loved one to this terrible state of affairs. Let’s help him and everyone else who somehow go on living even though their lives have been shattered by a gun. Time to get it done.

When It Comes To Gun Safety, Everyone Seems To Agree - Kind Of.

June 9, 2024

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Since I truly believe in the Mafia adage, “keep your friends close but your enemies closer,” I tend to watch Fox chat shows from time to time. And I have to admit that in all my wildest dreams I never believed I would see Sean Hannity being as polite and well-spoken to someone like Dan Gross who, as head of the Brady Center, must rank pretty high on the Fox Top Ten Enemies List. After all, in addition to being an outspoken gun-rights advocate, Hannity promotes gun products on his radio show and by putting his face and name on various gun websites. But there he was last night introducing his “personal friend” Dan Gross for a five-minute chat on where they agree and where they disagree about guns.

Well it turns out that Sean and Dan don’t seem to disagree, or at least I didn’t hear much last night that struck me as any real difference of opinion about the ownership and use of guns. Both stated that they supported the legal ownership of guns, both stated that they wanted everyone to lock their guns up or lock them away, and both stated that they wanted to keep guns out of the ‘wrong hands.’ Of course the devil’s always in the details, and if you got Wayne-o to calm down for a minute and stop worrying about Obama’s secret plan to disarm America before January 20, 2017, he’d be happy to come on the Hannity show and basically say the same thing.

brady2 But nice-sounding platitudes aside, I find it interesting that someone as pro-gun as Hannity would give Dan Gross an opportunity to appear before a large Fox audience to prove, if nothing else, that he’s not Lucifer in disguise. Because although Hannity threw in a couple of red-meat comments that are de rigueur on Fox when anyone mentions guns, such as his fear of the ‘slippery slope’ of gun control, he basically let Dan tell the audience how much gun owners had in common with supporters of the Brady Campaign, which is entirely contrary to what usually erupts from the NRA.

Ever since the Brady law was voted in 1994, the NRA and other pro-gun groups have kept up a steady drumbeat of anti-Brady commentary designed to convince gun owners that any expansion of background checks is nothing short of a conspiracy to take away all guns. Here’s a typical comment from the NRA in 2013 after Brady mounted a video to mark the 20th anniversary of the original background-check law: “The Brady Campaign’s proposed expansion of federal background checks would force even many family and friends to get government permission for firearm transfers amongst each other and subject all lawful gun transfers to federal paperwork and recordkeeping requirements, the prerequisites for a national registry.” Of course this statement is simply untrue, but it plays directly into the old slippery-slope gun control nonsense that Hannity found necessary to mention on the show.

I have been saying recently that the smartest thing Brady and Everytown have done is to move into the safety space which until now was owned lock, stock and barrel (pardon the pun) by the NRA. But while everyone’s in favor of safety, there’s one safety issue which puts the two sides as far apart as the Brand Canyon’s rims, and Hannity gave it away when he said that no matter how many laws were passed to prevent guns from getting into the ‘wrong hands,’ criminals wouldn’t obey laws anyway, so what was the point of passing more laws?

The pro-gun community falls back on this argument every time that any new measure is proposed that would increase regulation of guns. The problem is that if we only passed laws that criminals would obey, there wouldn’t be any laws at all. Which is actually what the pro-gun community would prefer as regards gun ownership, particularly when a Democrat happens to be renting living space at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C.

 

 

Guess Who Owns The Argument About Gun Violence? It Ain’t The NRA.

May 31, 2024

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Right after Sandy Hook we were treated to a rant from Wayne-o in which the head of the NRA blamed gun violence, among other things, on “a thousand music videos that portray life as a joke and murder as a way of life.” He then castigated “media conglomerates” for bringing murder and violence as entertainment motifs into every American home. In defending gun ownership following this horrendous gun violence event, the NRA found it expedient and effective to rally its troops around the idea that popular culture and gun culture don’t mix.

I think that June 2, touted as Gun Violence Awareness Day, may mark a true turning-point in the argument about guns. The pro-gun community can lobby all it wants for laws that make it easier to own or carry guns, but fewer gun restrictions won’t really matter if the country’s dominant culture becomes anti-gun. And while the NRA has been promoting gun ownership as their response to the “culture wars,” the millennial culture that is emerging and will define the country appears to be solidly anti-gun.

june2 How can I say that when recent opinion polls indicate that a majority of Americans believe that guns make America a safer place? I’ll tell you why. First, the surveys which ask Americans if guns make them safer also show that less than a majority actually own guns. Second, despite the Obama-driven spike in gun sales, the industry has not managed to penetrate new demographics such as women and minorities; most guns and ammunition sold in the last few years went to the same-old, same-old who bought those guns for the same reason that gun sales have spiked at other times, namely, the fear of losing their guns. Finally and most important, the social and political views of millennials are completely at odds with the socio-demographic profile of the gun-owning population, and as millennials become the dominant generation, this could have dire consequences for the health and even survival of the gun industry as a whole.

According to Pew, a majority of millennials support gay rights, less than a majority are patriotic, only one-third are religious and they voted Obama in 2012. As for Boomers, who buy and own most of the guns, they don’t support gays, they are fiercely patriotic, a majority are religious and they split their vote evenly in 2012. What these numbers tell me is that over the next twenty years, the gun industry better come up with a wholly different argument for owning guns.

Gun Violence Awareness Day, as reported ruefully by Brietbart and other pro-gun blogs, garnered support from movie, song and media personalities like Russell Simmons, Aasif Mandvi, Padma Lakshmi, Amanda Peet, Tunde Adebimpe and many, many more. I’m actually a pre-boomer, and I don’t have the faintest idea who any of these people are. But I do know the celebs who show up each year at the NRA shindig; guys like Chuck Norris and Ollie North. Wow – talk about young, hip and cool.

Another master-stroke in planning this event was using orange to build identity and awareness for the folks who get involved. Orange, or blaze orange as it is known, has always been worn by hunters and many states require it for anyone goes out after game. Brady and Shannon’s Moms, among other organizations, have lately moved into the safety space which was owned lock, stock and barrel by the NRA. Guess who now shares and could soon own that space?

Until recently, the playing field where gun violence arguments played out was controlled by the NRA. But right now the field is tilting the other way. And notice how millennial culture has no problem attaching the word ‘violence’ to the word ‘guns.’ This alone should make the NRA wonder if their message can win or even compete for hearts and minds. The NRA always assumed that gun owners would defend their guns while everyone else just sat by. After June 2nd, I wouldn’t want to take that assumption to the bank.

The Be Smart Video On Sets A New Standard On Gun Safety.

May 7, 2024

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This week a new gun safety campaign was launched by Everytown and Moms Demand Action called Be Smart, and you can usually judge the value of such efforts by the degree to which the pro-gun media weighs in on the other side. They weighed in right away with multiple blogs and, as always, the infantile Breitbart response. And one of the pro-gun bloggers got it right when she wrote that “allowing the anti-gun side to control the gun safety message is a big mistake.”

Until recently, the pro-gun gallery has owned the issue of gun safety, which they mostly define as keeping guns out of the ‘wrong’ hands, i.e., crooks, creeps and other undesirables who want access to guns for no other reason than to inflict harm. The NRA has given a new hip-and-cool look to their Eddie Eagle program which has allegedly distributed millions of flyers although it’s unclear whether this effort has had any real impact at all. The NSSF gives away cable locks and has been running a public service campaign with the ATF about the danger of “straw” sales. They also promote a competitive shooter with instructions for talking about gun safety with children, as if being a competitive shooter gives you the slightest credibility when it comes to knowing how to communicate with kids.

melissa Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against any of the gun industry’s safety programs. But opposing background checks for private gun transfers makes it pretty hard to argue that you’re all that worried about criminals and other disqualified individuals getting their hands on guns. The new Be Smart campaign, on the other hand, goes beyond the usual arguments about gun safety that you get from both sides, and this is what makes it such an interesting and potentially effective effort which the gun folks better not simply deride or ignore.

The centerpiece of the program is a video narrated by Melissa Joan Hart, which for no other reason than she votes Republican makes it difficult for the pro-gun chorus to simply brand her as another liberal, gun-grabbing, Hollywood star. But aside from the image, what we get are serious comments about issues the gun industry would rather you and I forget. For example, there’s a very sober message about teen suicide and how much easier it is to commit suicide with a gun. For another, Melissa actually uses the phrase ‘risk factors’ when talking about gun-owning families where there is evidence of mental illness or substance abuse. The most important comment, however, is when she notes that “kids are naturally curious,” and that a gun is therefore a risk unless it is locked up “one hundred percent of the time.”

I’m really happy to see these issues injected into the gun safety debate and let me break it to you gently: Melissa’s being perfunctory when she mentions her concern about the 1.7 million kids living in homes where guns are loaded and unlocked. It’s children living in every home where there is a gun who are at risk, because sooner or later every one of those guns will be left around. If you haven’t figured it out yet, let me break it to you gently: We are human. We are careless. We forget.

The industry’s approach to gun safety is that they want it both ways. People should own guns to defend themselves, but the reason guns are touted as the best defense against crime is because of their lethality and nothing else. Sooner or later, if you are a gun-owner who believes that owning a gun makes you safe, that gun is going to be left out, unsecured and unlocked, which poses a risk to the kids.

I have a suggestion for trigger-heads who get nervous giving up space in the gun-safety debate to folks who aren’t particularly enamored of guns. Start talking about gun safety in a realistic way. Stop pretending that guns aren’t a risk just because we “always” lock them up or lock them away. There’s still only one way to guarantee that you can’t have an accident with a gun.

 

Wayne LaPierre Wasn’t The Only Person At Nashville Talking About Guns.

April 17, 2024

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Now that the NRA annual big deal has come and gone, there will be the usual post-mortem as to whether the show was the biggest and the best, which Republican candidate gave the best speech and, of course, whether the Donald is still looking for that birth certificate. You can get a taste of all this and more on the NRA website where most of the celebrity speeches have been posted, but what I found interesting was a comment made by Wayne-o in his annual attempt to scare gun owners into buying more guns.

The appeal to fear first started with Wayne’s predecessor, Harlon Carter, who ran the NRA from 1977 until 1985. It moved into high gear when Charlton Heston was featured in a series of anti-crime television ads that showed the former Hollywood liberal walking down back alleys in Washington, D.C. while saying that the streets were “ruled by criminals” and that criminals should be “banned” rather than guns.

Unfortunately for the NRA, the problem with using crime as a rationale for owning guns is that violent crime in the United States keeps going down. For that matter, so does the percentage of older, White men, who just happen to be the demographic that buys and owns most of the guns. So sooner or later, if these trends continue, the NRA is going to have to craft a new message and find a new reason for all those guys and gals walking around armed.

They began to take a new approach last year before the mid-term elections with a series of cable ads that featured the “five million NRA members” standing up for honesty, truth and various so-called core values, while at the same time swiping at you-know-who in the White House and the elitist culture that is undermining everything we hold dear. The problem with this ad campaign, however, is that it doesn’t do what the NRA has been most successful at doing for the last twenty years, namely, ginning up fears about something that can only be overcome if you go out and buy a gun. But Wayne-o and his PR staff have evidently come up with their latest scare technique, which came at about the 4th minute of his speech to NRA members when he mentioned that “terror cells” were operating in cities all across the United States and that a major terrorist attack was about to take place.

At last year’s meeting Wayne-o told the audience that terrorists were just one of a large group that were threatening America, a group which included home invaders, drug cartels, campus killers, airport killers, power-grid destroyers - it was quite a list. This year he got his act somewhat more focused, pulled the ‘terror cells’ out of his hat, and then reminded his listeners that only a national CCW law and every NRA member renewing their dues would truly make Americans safe.

Meanwhile, outside the NRA meeting, Shannon and the Moms held a rally to promote a different idea about whether guns make us safe. Immediately after the rally, various pro-gun bloggers went out of their way to assure their readers that the small attendance at Shannon’s rally showed that the anti-gun forces would never be a match for the NRA.

I have gone to more than 20 NRA meetings and for people who like guns, the exhibit hall is a cross between a swap meet and a Scout jamboree. As for core values, just wander into the sales area and see how much the NRA charges for a t-shirt or a hat. In all the years I went to the annual meeting, the only person demonstrating outside the hall was some old guy with a ‘Prey To Jesus’ placard, and not the Moms who have chapters in all fifty states. The NRA’s attempt to use terrorism as a bogey-man to sell more guns is a new riff on an old strategy that sooner or later will wear out. Shannon and her Moms are truly new, different and here to stay.

Everytown Does A New Video And It Really Hits The Mark.

April 7, 2024

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Shannon and the Everytown chicks have just posted a new video which you should watch and push out to all your friends. It’s a collection of excerpts from various appearances by Wayne-o starting with a rather statesmanlike comment quoting Churchill to a descent into lunacy about how a Glock or S&W will protect you from destruction of the national power grid. The NRA didn’t invent the culture of fear, but they go out of their way to convince their members that the world is going to hell in a hand basket unless everyone goes out and buys a gun.

I like Everytown’s video for two reasons. First, it’s artistically done and its theme, “fear is not the American way,” is a strong response to the endless fear-mongering by the NRA to promote the false idea that we are weak and therefore need to be afraid. I also like this video is because it’s funny as hell. The five kids are remarkably cute; they riff their lines with a combination of innocent panache and joyful delight – the video-ending flip of the script is a moment to behold and I guarantee that you’ll play those few seconds again and again.

everytown logo What both disarms and concerns me about pro-gun video messaging is they take themselves so friggin’ seriously. I have watched hundreds of minutes of Billy Johnson, Colion Noir, Dom Raso and other NRA commentators, and they never crack a smile, not even a little grin. The NSSF video on gun safety featuring Julie Golob had some good-looking kids giving brief testimonials, but if you turned off the sound you’d think they were all describing a funeral or some other tragic event.

I shouldn’t be surprised by the lack of humor on the pro-gun side. The last time I went to the NRA show the featured comic at the banquet was Dennis Miller, who’s about as funny as swallowing a bar of soap. But the real reason the marketers promoting the NRA brand take themselves and their message so seriously is because they don’t want their audience, or their would-be audience, to misunderstand what guns are all about.

The NRA began selling guns for self-protection back in the late 1980s when urban crime appeared to briefly spiral out of control. In 1992 the violent crime rate was 757 per 100,000, in 1983 it was 538, an increase of 40% in just nine years. Nine years later, in 2001, it had dropped back down to 504, but the psychological damage had been done. At the beginning of the twenty-first century Americans believed they were under threat from crime; they still believe today that crime is seriously on the rise.

It doesn’t really matter whether guns can or cannot protect us from crime. What matters is what people think about the world around them, particularly the world in which they work and live. And as Barry Glassner, the foremost authority on the culture of fear reminds us, “Americans have remained inordinately fearful of unlikely dangers,” and when the danger is unlikely, the response, such as carrying a gun, is just as misdirected as the fear itself.

Next week the NRA comes to Nashville for the annual big-deal event, and I can guarantee you that speakers like Perry, Santorum, Rubio, Cruz and Palin will be trying to outbash each other to see who can ratchet up the highest level of fear; fear of Obama, fear of Isis, fear of losing all those guns. It’s too late for this year but maybe in 2016 the gun-sense groups can get together and hold their own big event. Every organization can have a booth, there won’t be any problem finding vendors to sell the usual junk and most of the big-time rock bands would probably show up for free. I’ll even read some of my gun blogs – that would draw quite a crowd. Call it the Convention of Hope; that’s a nice antidote to the NRA’s peddling of fear. And it just might work. It might.

 

Everytown Starts Their Own ‘March Madness’ Campaign And May All The Teams Lose.

March 26, 2024

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Leave it to Shannon and the chicks (as in women, not in birds) to come up with a new twist on America’s national bash known as ‘March Madness’ by starting their own campaign to prevent colleges from becoming the latest venue where anyone and everyone can carry a gun. The Everytown group has just posted a new graphic identifying the states where bills have been introduced that would allow guns on campus, of which four such attempts have gone down the tubes but twelve more remain to be finished up. The campaign has gotten a boost from Bryant Gumbel, whose commitment to reducing gun violence is so pronounced that he’s been attacked by Ted Nugent, who might do himself a favor and stick to strumming his guitar.

Most of the folks who honestly believe that guns would make campuses safer are reacting to a recent spate of news stories regarding campus rape. And while nobody wants to walk around a college campus in fear of being attacked, the question which needs to be addressed is whether carrying a gun would really make anyone on campus more safe. The truth is that college campuses, particularly the larger schools with residential populations, happen to be places where certain types of behaviors are unfortunately all too common, and such behaviors are guaranteed to make students much less safe when combined with access to guns.

march I am referring to two issues that are generic to campus life: alcohol and suicide. According to the NIH, four out of five college students consume alcohol and half of those student drinkers admit to binge drinking as well. More than 1,800 college students die from alcohol-related injuries, and nearly 700,000 students report being assaulted by another student who had been drinking prior to the attack. Nearly 600,000 students each year end up in the campus health station because they injured themselves while under the influence of alcohol, and nearly 100,000 reported that they were sexually abused by someone who was under the influence during the attack.

Proponents of campus guns will tell you that these statistics prove the necessity of getting rid of gun-free college zones, but what they don’t want to do is look at the possible use of guns by the students who drink and then assault someone else. Even the average gun nut (myself included) will admit that guns and alcohol don’t mix, and it’s to Everytown’s credit that the announcement of their March Madness campaign focused specifically on the degree to which alcohol impairs judgement, particularly the mental stability required to behave safely around guns. As for suicide, it happens to be the second leading cause of death for college students, and if anyone tells you that a suicidal person is less prone to end their life because they have access to a gun, you’re not talking to someone who possesses even a shred of intelligence, never mind common sense.

Last week the debate on campus guns got particularly loud in Florida, due largely to the energy and effort of the gun-totin’ Grandma, a.k.a. Marion Hammer, the Gunshine State’s lobbyist for the NRA. She sent out a call to all the gunnies in Florida, telling them that their constitutional “rights” were being violated if they couldn’t bring their guns into classrooms and dorms. This is a rather odd view of the 2nd Amendment, given the fact that the Supreme Court in the landmark Heller decision, specifically noted that Constitutional protections of gun ownership did not preclude the government from banning guns in “sensitive” places such as schools. But leave it to the NRA and Grandma Hammer to explain the Constitution whichever way they can.

Most proponents of colleges as gun-free zones cite the degree to which campuses are also usually crime-free zones. What I like about the Everytown campaign is that it brings us squarely back to the real issue, namely, that someone walking around with a gun is a greater risk to himself and others than when the gun was left at home. Let’s see how Everytown’s tournament plays itself out.

Amazon has it.

Gun Trafficking in America - cover

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