Want To Do Something About Gun Violence? There’s A Meeting For You On November 3rd.

September 16, 2024

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I was born in Washington, DC and one of my earliest memories was being taken by my mother to a concert at the resplendent National Cathedral, the towering Gothic edifice which until the recent re-making of downtown, used to be one of the tallest building in our Nation’s Capitol. The ‘cathedral,’ as we all used to call it, was much more than the seat of Washington’s Episcopal Diocese; it was also a site that attracted visitors worldwide and had been the venue for many events that symbolized what America was all about.

Some Presidents , including both Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, journeyed up Massachusetts Avenue following their inaugurations to participate in prayer, other Presidents – Ford, Eisenhower – lay in repose at the Cathedral following their deaths. Although the Constitution still gives everyone the right to follow whatever religion we choose, or not to follow any religion for that matter, the Congress designated the Cathedral as the “national house of prayer,” and what the Rev. Eugene Sutton called a “soaring, majestic place” still evokes the same wonderment in me today as it did when I walked into the building for the first time as a six-year old little boy.

Leaving aside its historical, architectural and spiritual significance for a moment, the Cathedral has also not shied away from confronting public issues which impact all of us from day to day. And if you believe there’s any public issue that demands our attention more than the issue of gun violence, don’t waste your time trying to convince me that I’m barking up the wrong tree. I’m not saying there aren’t other issues that need to be addressed, but gun violence is the only public problem for which a loud and incessant chorus repeats ad nauseum that no issue exists at all. There’s no gun violence according to the NRA; there’s no gun violence according to the NSSF. In fact, the NSSF was just awarded a $2.4 million DOJ grant to help them continue their “effective” Project Chlldsafe program which is so effective that unintentional gun deaths and injuries have increased over the last few years.

If the National Cathedral is the nation’s house of prayer, it also functions as the nation’s public conscience. There is no religious organization that has been as consistently and publicly concerned about equality, promoting freedom of choice and freedom of being over all racial, religious and gender lines. In fact, the very last pulpit from which Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered a sermon before he was struck down by an assassin’s bullet was the pulpit at the National Cathedral. The Cathedral was the scene of lively debates about wars in Viet Nam and Iraq; its leadership, both religious and lay, spoke out about the injustices of Abu Ghirab and the Cathedral sponsors an ongoing initiative to help veterans overcome the wounds of war.

And now the Cathedral will become a focal point for voicing concerns about gun violence when they sponsor a national forum on gun violence scheduled for Tuesday, November 3rd. The meeting will bring together all the different constituencies who want to see some “common-sense” solutions put into place: political leaders, advocates, public policy experts and, most important of all, victims and survivors of gun violence themselves. There will be a webcast, exhibits and tables run by the advocacy groups; it’s an opportunity to strengthen and extend the concerns we all share about putting an end to the senseless and destructive use of guns.

I just looked at the latest video treats offered by the NRA, It’s a series called Freedom

Safest Place and it features some of our country’s most notable freedom-fighters like felon Oliver North and home-schooling expert Dana Loesch. I don’t notice that anyone who was injured with a gun ever comes out on behalf of the NRA. Isn’t it funny how the victims of gun violence always seem to end up on the other side of the debate? And that’s the reason why the people who come to the National Cathedral on November 3rd will ultimately win.

 

Book Review: Michael Waldman’s 2nd Amendment - A Biography

June 28, 2024

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I started to read Michael Waldman’s book, The Second Amendment, A Biography, with a certain amount of trepidation, because if nothing else, here’s someone who hits the ground running when it comes to anything having to do with public policy. And whether its voting rights, or election financing reform, or same-sex marriage or just about any other domestic policy that liberals want to own, Waldman has been in the thick of the argument ever since he took over the Brennan Center in 2005.

Why trepidation? Because although Waldman may have actually shot a rifle at least one time, let’s just say that he’s not much of a gun guy and his friends and policy associates don’t spend Friday afternoons popping some tops down at Franzey’s Bar & Grill.

Now don’t get me wrong. You don’t have to be a gun guy to say something smart about guns. But Waldman’s resume reads like the exact opposite of someone who would give gun owners a break, and let’s not forget that he runs a public policy institute named after a Supreme Court justice who probably would have been just as happy if the 2nd Amendment didn’t exist. So I figured the book to be just another one of those “it’s time to defang the NRA” deals, with the usual elixir of anti-gun proposals like more background checks, another assault weapons ban and, for good measure, let’s get rid of all the damn things anyway.

scalia I was wrong. Leaving aside the early chapters on the how’s and why’s the 2nd Amendment even got into the Constitution, the book’s real strength is Waldman’s ability to tie the narrative of recent gun jurisprudence to the general rightward drift of American politics and American law. I have been waiting for someone to explain how judges like Scalia defend the notion of 2nd Amendment ‘originalism’ in order to promote a conservative, current-day agenda and Waldman nails this one to the wall. Going back to the 1980’s, he charts the confluence of conservative energies represented by politicized evangelicals, right-wing think tanks and specific-interest groups like the NRA, all combining to support a judicial agenda that seeks to roil back or dilute progressive programs and reforms.

It’s not so much that gun control is at the top of the progressive agenda; it ebbs and flows as high-profile shootings come and go. But a majority of gun owners, particularly people for whom guns are a serious part of their life-styles, tend to be politically conservative anyway, so using fears of gun restrictions to enlist them in the anti-liberal crusade works every time.

A close reading of sources from the debates over the Bill of Rights makes clear that individual gun ownership represented the ability of citizens to protect and defend their political rights; rights to free speech, free assembly, due process and the like. But the argument for gun ownership advanced by the NRA today, Olliver North’s appeals to patriotism notwithstanding, is based on the alleged social value of guns to protect us against crime. The NRA would never argue that the Glock in my pocket should be used to stop cops from coming through the door, but they insist that the same Glock is my first line of defense when a bad guy breaks down that same door.

Waldman clearly understands that by using the 2nd Amendment to justify gun ownership as a defense against crime, the pro-gun community has successfully restated the history of the 2nd Amendment to buttress a contemporary social justification for owning guns. Neither will be readily undone as long as gun control advocates believe they can respond to this strategy by stating and restating the “facts.” Remember “it’s the economy, stupid?” Now “it’s the guns.”

Can The NRA Sell Their Message To The Millennial Generation?

May 5, 2024

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Even though violent crime has declined by more than 50% over the last twenty years, it’s not surprising that Wayne LaPierre and other promoters continue to justify gun ownership as our first, last and most sacred form of personal defense. After all, guns are found most frequently on farms, rural communities and smaller towns. Bye-bye farms and rural living, bye-bye guns. Thirty years ago a majority of small arms manufactured in the United States were rifles and shotguns; now more than 60% are handguns and the percentage would be even higher were it not for a surge in assault-style rifles which are often sold as weapons that can be used by the ‘good guys’ to keep the ‘bad guys’ out of sight.

Going forward the news for the gun industry and its advocacy organizations like the NRA doesn’t hold any silver linings, at least any that can be found in a very detailed poll conducted by the Pew Foundation on the outlook of the Millennial generation, aka, persons aged 18 to 29. The Pew poll summed up Millennials as follows: “They are more ethnically and racially diverse than older adults. They’re less religious, less likely to have served in the military, and are on track to become the most educated generation in American history. Their entry into careers and first jobs has been badly set back by the Great Recession, but they are more upbeat than their elders about their own economic futures as well as about the overall state of the nation.”

Wow. That’s hardly the profile of the NRA stalwarts who gathered last week in Indianapolis to hear Wayne LaPierre, Chris Cox, Oliver North and the other harbingers of doom tell them that the country was quickly going to hell in a handbasket and that only a gun and a good dose of patriotism would keep the criminal hordes away from knocking down their doors. In the first four minutes of her speech, Sarah Palin referred to the anti-gun threat sixteen times and made it clear that only a Republican sweep in November would guarantee American freedom and basic rights. And what did the audience look like that whooped and hollered as these well-worn bromides were being served? Mostly male, mostly 50 or older and totally White.

The NRA and the gun industry have done a really great job making that kind of audience feel like they are under attack. They’ve done an equally good job pushing the idea that modern life is fearful and fear can be overcome if you own a gun. The problem is, that even after a prolonged recession when many younger people had great difficulty finding jobs, the Millennials are the most optimistic and the least fearful of all population groups, and remain the most convinced that their future dreams will come true. They aren’t tying these thoughts to a Republican win in November; they see the world through their own eyes, and those eyes aren’t focused on the NRA.

If Millennials maintain this very distinct world view as they get older, the problem of gun violence may take care of itself. Because even though many younger people think that guns are “cool,” (after all, they were raised on video-games,) they don’t see the world as a dark or forbidding place. And it’s that dark and dangerous world that the gun industry and the NRA has been using to sell more guns since everyone started leaving the farm.

evolve-badgeWant to see the kind of gun message that Millennials will like? Take a look at this video produced by my friends Jon and Rebecca Bond for their organization called Evolve. It’s, hip, it’s cool, it delivers a serious point about guns but makes it in a clever and sophisticated way. I have never seen a message like this coming from the gun industry because they haven’t figured out how to speak to the generation that will either become or not become their customers and supporters in the years ahead. And if they don’t figure out how to do it the Bonds and other Millennial-conscious organizations will end up owning the debate.

Which Republican Will Win The Concealed-Carry Vote?

April 28, 2024

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I haven’t yet had time to listen to the speeches delivered at the just-concluded NRA meeting in Indianapolis, but within the next few days they will probably be posted by the NRA. I won’t bother to listen to Palin and Oliver North because they are just show up for a speaker’s fee, but I will pay attention to Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal and Rick Santorum, because this trio are prominently mentioned as potential Republican standard-bearers in 2016. I did find a report on Rick Santorum’s speech on a CNN blog, which quoted him as saying that he was in complete agreement with the NRA as regards using guns to protect all of us from crime. In fact, Santorum came up with a catchy little phrase which I suspect he’ll trot out a few more times before the election really begins to take shape. At the NRA show and again on a Sunday television interview he said, “a well-armed family is a safe family, a well-armed America is a safer America.”

Wayne LaPierre

Wayne LaPierre

And if you want to know who all these well-armed Americans are protecting us from, a complete list was furnished the NRA audience by America’s chief crime-fighter, Wayne LaPierre, who painted this portrait of a society on the edge of chaos and collapse because the following people are running around: “terrorists, home invaders, drug cartels, car jackers, ‘knock-out’ gamers, rapers, haters, campus killers, airport killers, shopping mall killers, and killers who scheme to destroy our country with massive storms of violence against our power grids or vicious waves of chemicals or disease that could collapse as a society that sustains us all.”

I can’t think of a more effective way to stop chemical attacks or the spread of the plague than a loaded .38 on my night-table or an assault rifle propped up behind the front door. Okay, so Wayne-o is given to a bit of hyperbole when he gets up in front of the faithful, and he knows he won’t get air-time unless he says something that’s just a little bit beyond belief. The only problem is that the NRA is staking out such an extreme position that to wind up as the most pro-gun candidate in a field of pro-gun candidates is to push yourself so far to the edge that there’s no way to go but down.

At one point LaPierre rhetorically asked the audience whether they would trust the government to protect them and of course the answer was a resounding ‘no.’ But while the NRA only ramps up its anti-government rhetoric when the government happens to be controlled by the Democrats, the notion that we all have to walk around with guns because, as LaPierre says, “we’re on our own” in facing this terrible, crime-ridden world, cuts both ways. The truth is that if you get elected President, the first thing you have to do before moving into the White House is to take an oath in which you promise to defend America against its enemies. What’s Santorum going to do if he’s standing there with his hand on the Bible? Ask Wayne LaPierre to serve as Secretary of Defense?

The NRA’s been able to grow its membership and flex its political muscle for one reason and one reason only: there’s a very liberal, very progressive politician sitting at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue who doesn’t buy the argument that walking around with a concealed weapon makes you safe. Even if the NRA could produce a legitimate study that showed this to be the case, which they haven’t, by the way, it probably wouldn’t change Obama’s mind anyway. But Obama’s out of here in slightly more than 28 months, and we could wind up with a President who really does believe that the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center could have been shot out of the sky if someone in one of the twin towers had been armed with a gun. Which will make it rather difficult for the NRA to pretend that we need to arm and protect ourselves because the government isn’t up to the job.

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