tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-44207406889470572024-03-13T12:17:49.257-07:00Bullet Counter PointsBullet Counter Points provides commentary on gun violence in America. You'll find interesting facts that contradict the conventional wisdom on firearms in America, news stories that missed the front page, and inspiring tales of efforts to prevent gun violence in communities across the country.stopgunviolencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806648144323303424noreply@blogger.comBlogger105125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420740688947057.post-10725627196183441582013-07-16T12:18:00.001-07:002013-07-16T12:20:08.661-07:00We've Moved!<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Bullet Counter Points</b> has moved!<br><br>
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The Staff of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence</p>stopgunviolencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806648144323303424noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420740688947057.post-91714868400798573932013-04-30T07:55:00.000-07:002013-05-01T10:25:50.732-07:00How the NRA Arms Criminals<p class="MsoNormal">While zealously promoting the most permissive of gun laws, the National Rifle Association (NRA) seems to at least pay lip service to the concept of keeping firearms away from dangerous people. Take for example, the words of NRA President David Keene, who says his organization wants to “<a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-3460_162-57560649/nra-we-will-oppose-semi-automatic-weapons-ban/">keep guns out of the hands of potential killers</a>.” But in truth not only does the NRA oppose laws that would <i>prevent</i> criminals from obtaining firearms in the first place, it goes a step further and supports efforts to <i>restore</i> “gun rights” to individuals who have lost them because of dangerous and/or violent behavior.<br><br>
Here’s four ways the NRA ensures that “bad guys” will always have easy access to guns:<br><br>
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qCARFct0PyY/UX_hKkXzSHI/AAAAAAAAB54/g4lFXHbkhrc/s1600/Keene+on+Face+the+Nation.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qCARFct0PyY/UX_hKkXzSHI/AAAAAAAAB54/g4lFXHbkhrc/s320/Keene+on+Face+the+Nation.jpg" /></a><b>1) Opposition to Background Checks</b>. Following the mass shooting at Columbine in 1999, the NRA actually <a href="http://youtu.be/zI6FnSytSYg">supported</a> efforts to require background checks on the private sales of firearms. Today, however, the NRA has flipped 180 degrees and adamantly opposes any and all efforts to expand background checks. Their opposition is in part due to the claim that background checks would place an undue burden on “<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/30/wayne-lapierre-background-checks_n_2582148.html">the little guy</a>,” meaning average law-abiding citizens. Law-abiding citizens, however, have no problems passing background checks. And approximately 90% of background checks are completed in a matter of minutes, so no “burden” exists.<br><br>
Meanwhile, a study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University found that nearly 80% of prison inmates incarcerated for gun-related crimes acquired their guns through private transactions. [U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Survey of Inmates in State and Federal Correctional Facilities,” 2004; and Daniel Webster, Jon Vernick, Emma McGinty, and Ted Alcorn, “Preventing the Diversion of Guns to Criminals through Effective Firearm Sales Laws” in “Reducing Gun Violence in America: Informing Policy with Evidence and Analysis,” 2013, p. 110.]<br><br>
We know that background checks work. Between 1994 and 2009, background checks conducted by federally licensed firearms dealers <a href="mailto:http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/01/30/nra-lapierre-to-tell-congress-more-gun-laws-not-serious-solution/">prevented</a> nearly two million <a href="http://smartgunlaws.org/prohibited-purchasers-generally-policy-summary/">prohibited purchasers</a> (i.e., convicted felons, those under active restraining orders for domestic abuse, dangerous mentally ill individuals, etc.) from buying guns. Still the NRA did everything in its power to make sure the recent Toomey-Manchin amendment—which would have required background checks on all private sales of firearms through “commercial” venues like gun shows and websites—failed in the Senate. The NRA’s efforts included grading all the votes on the amendment (including procedural ones) and sending a letter to Senators that called the campaign to expand background checks “<a href="http://www.nraila.org/news-issues/news-from-nra-ila/2013/4/letter-from-nra-institute-for-legislative-action-executive-director-chris-cox-to-the-united-states-senate-on-background-checks.aspx">misguided</a>.”<br><br>
<b>2) Support for “Restoration” Programs</b>. Prohibited under federal law from buying guns because of dangerous behavior? No problem, the NRA believes in second chances. In 1986, the NRA-drafted Firearm Owners Protection Act significantly altered federal law by allowing states to restore gun purchasing/ownership rights to convicted felons. Since that time, the NRA has <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/14/us/felons-finding-it-easy-to-regain-gun-rights.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0">lobbied aggressively</a> in the states to establish such restoration programs.<br><br>
Today, restoration is automatic for non-violent felons in at least 11 states. Several other states allow violent felons to petition to have their gun purchasing/ownership rights restored. The application and review process in many of these states is often superficial and deeply flawed.<br><br>
For example, in 2001, three police officers in Minneapolis were shot and wounded by a <a href="http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=MN&p_theme=mn&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0EFD144338D5BC1E&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM">convicted murderer</a> whose gun rights had been restored automatically in 1987. He had served a six-and-a-half year prison sentence for killing his estranged wife and a family friend with a shotgun. Then there was the case of Mitchell W. Reed from the state of Washington. He was disqualified from purchasing/owning firearms after a 1984 felony cocaine conviction (he also had seven prior misdemeanor convictions, including for assault). Nonetheless, in 2003, he <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/262216-mitchell-w-cady.html">successfully petitioned</a> to get his gun rights back in Snohomish County Superior Court. The following year, he began to physically abuse his wife, growing progressively more violent with each attack. He was then arrested in 2009 and charged with harassing and threatening to kill his wife’s ex-husband. While those charges were pending, he was again arrested, this time on second-degree assault charges after he beat up and tried to strangle his wife. He eventually pleaded guilty to third-degree assault and intimidating a witness, as well as fourth-degree assault and harassment.<br><br>
<b>3) Protecting Arsenals of Domestic Abusers</b>. The NRA also makes it difficult to remove firearms from violent individuals under active restraining orders for domestic abuse. In 1994, Congress passed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which forbid most domestic abusers subject to full restraining orders from purchasing or possessing firearms. However, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/18/us/facing-protective-orders-and-allowed-to-keep-guns.html?pagewanted=all">lobbying pressure</a> from the NRA caused lawmakers to exclude individuals facing <i>temporary</i> orders of protection.<br><br>
While some states like California, Hawaii, and Massachusetts do require the surrender of firearms by individuals under temporary protection orders, efforts to enact similar legislation in other states have been blocked by the NRA. The results in those states are often ugly.<br><br>
For example, in 2012 Washington resident Stephanie Holten received a temporary order of protection against her ex-husband. It did not require him to surrender his guns. The day the order was filed, Holten came home with her children to find her ex-husband waiting for them with a semiautomatic rifle. Luckily, she was able to call 911 and first responders arrived before anyone was harmed. Others have not been so lucky... In July 2010, Oklahoma resident Barbara Dye received an emergency order of protection against her husband, who she was in the process of divorcing. Two weeks later, her husband <a href="http://newsok.com/murder-suicide-leaves-elgin-residents-in-shock/article/3478169">shot and killed her</a> in a parking lot with a revolver.<br><br>
Guns and domestic violence are a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/18/us/facing-protective-orders-and-allowed-to-keep-guns.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0">toxic combination</a>. Approximately a quarter of women murdered every year are murdered with a firearm by their intimate partner. According to a study in <i>Criminal Justice Review</i>, one out of every five women slain by an intimate partner had a protective order against their killer. Despite these tragedies, the NRA continues to shut down legislation that would mandate that those under temporary protective orders surrender their firearms.<br><br>
<b>4) Altering Standards by which Courts Evaluate Gun Laws</b>. Having failed to convince the U.S. Supreme Court to broaden the level of scrutiny gun laws face in this country (an argument they pushed in their amicus brief in the 2008 case of <i>D.C. v. Heller</i>), the NRA is now pushing state courts to do so.<br><br>
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ukHggr_mrsE/UX_kB59oVRI/AAAAAAAAB6I/gnT04dnwBD0/s1600/Maddow+Graphic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left; margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ukHggr_mrsE/UX_kB59oVRI/AAAAAAAAB6I/gnT04dnwBD0/s320/Maddow+Graphic.jpg" /></a>The NRA has already accomplished this goal in Louisiana with Amendment 2, which was passed by legislative ballot referendum in November 2012. Amendment 2 subjects gun laws to “strict scrutiny,” which is the highest level of legal scrutiny. When a law is subject to strict scrutiny, it is presumed to be unconstitutional until proven otherwise—<a href="http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2013/03/guns_rights_amendment_helping.html">the same level of judicial protection that the right to free speech and racial equality receive</a>.<br><br>
Only an extremist would suggest that Amendment 2 is vindicating constitutional rights intended by our Founders, however. On March 21, 2013, Orleans Parish Judge Darryl Derbigny dismissed the case of convicted felon Glen Draughter, who had been caught riding in a car with a .40 caliber Smith & Wesson and an AK-47 with a 30-round magazine. Derbigny ruled that banning felons from owning firearms is unconstitutional under the strict scrutiny standard of review required by Amendment 2.<br><br>
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, who had promoted Amendment 2 as “<a href="http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2013/03/new_orleans_judge_rules_statut.html">an ironclad guarantee of freedom</a>” prior to the ballot referendum, suddenly didn’t agree with what it had wrought. After Derbigny’s ruling, the Jindal administration put out a <a href="http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2013/03/new_orleans_judge_rules_statut.html">statement</a> saying, “We disagree with the judge’s ruling. The amendment passed last session is not in conflict with Louisiana or federal law barring felons from owning guns.” The governor should have realized that it’s “buyer beware” when you let the NRA write your state’s gun laws.<br><br>
The NRA doesn’t shame easily, however, and is <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/id/26315908/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show/vp/51500271#51500271">pushing</a> similar legislative ballot referendums in Minnesota, South Dakota, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Alabama.<br><br>
With <a href="http://www.meetthenra.org/">gun industry executives</a> sitting directly on its Board of Directors, and millions of dollars rolling into its coffers every year in <a href="http://www.vpc.org/studies/bloodmoney.pdf">direct corporate contributions from the industry</a>, the NRA is interested in one thing and one thing only: profit. And at the end of the day, the money made from a gun sale is the same whether that sale is made to a “good guy” or “bad guy.” It’s time to get the fox out of the chicken coop and allow gun policy to be written by those with a legitimate interest in the safety of America’s families. Until then, expect the NRA to continue with its efforts to exploit the criminal market for financial gain.</p>
stopgunviolencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806648144323303424noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420740688947057.post-44760009188907233142013-03-20T07:46:00.001-07:002013-03-22T10:02:16.774-07:00Mass Shootings by "Good Guys"<p class="MsoNormal">Inevitably, when a gruesome mass shooting occurs in the United States, the gun lobby responds by stating that any reforms to our gun laws aimed at preventing future tragedies would affect only “responsible, law-abiding citizens.” Indeed, in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on January 30, 2013, National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre responded to the murder of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary by declaring, "<a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/339248/lapierre-law-abiding-gun-owners-not-blame-acts-deranged-criminals-andrew-johnson">Law-abiding gun owners will not accept blame for the acts of deranged criminals</a>."<br />
<br />
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5e00PlqizHk/UUnQVSIOn1I/AAAAAAAAB5g/_P2rYwwmi3E/s1600/Good+Guy++with+a+Gun.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5e00PlqizHk/UUnQVSIOn1I/AAAAAAAAB5g/_P2rYwwmi3E/s320/Good+Guy++with+a+Gun.jpg" /></a>But what about when the deranged criminals who kill innocent Americans en masse are “law-abiding gun owners” and “<a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/12/21/167785169/live-blog-nra-news-conference">good guys</a>,” at least as defined by contemporary American gun laws, which are the weakest in the civilized world?<br />
<br />
To be clear, the overwhelming majority of modern mass shootings were committed by Americans who <i>legally</i> purchased the firearms they used to kill with. <i>Mother Jones</i> <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map">analyzed</a> 62 mass shootings that have taken place in the United States since 1982. Of the 142 guns possessed by those killers, more than three-quarters were obtained legally.<br />
<br />
The following is a compilation of mass shootings by legally armed killers:
<ul>
<li>September 27, 2012 – Andrew Engeldinger kills seven and injures one in Minneapolis, Minnesota.</li><br>
<li>August 5, 2012 – Wade Michael Page kills seven and injures three in Oak Creek, Wisconsin with a gun purchased from a federal firearms licensed dealer in nearby West Allis.</li><br>
<li>July 20, 2012 – James Holmes kills twelve and injures fifty-eight in Aurora, Colorado with guns purchased over the Internet and from gun shops.</li><br>
<li>May 20, 2012 – Ian Stawicki kills six and injures one in Seattle, Washington with guns purchased from Bull’s Eye Shooter Supply in Tacoma, Washington.</li><br>
<li>April 2, 2012 – One L. Goh kills seven and injures three in Oakland, California with a gun purchased from Bullseye in Castro Valley, California.</li><br>
<li>February 22, 2012 – Jeong Soo Paek kills five in Norcross, Georgia.</li><br>
<li>October 14, 2011 – Scott Evans Dekraai kills eight and injures one in Seal Beach, California.</li><br>
<li>January 8, 2011 – Jared Lee Loughner kills six and injures thirteen in Tucson, Arizona with a gun purchased from Sportsman’s Warehouse in Tucson.</li><br>
<li>August 3, 2010 – Omar Thornton kills nine and injures two in Manchester, Connecticut with guns purchased from a dealer in East Windsor, Connecticut.</li><br>
<li>November 5, 2009 – Nidal Malik Hassan kills thirteen and injures thirty in Fort Hood, Texas with a gun purchased from a gun shop in Killeen, Texas.</li><br>
<li>April 3, 2009 – Jiverly Wong kills fourteen and injures four in Binghamton, New York with guns purchased from Gander Mountain in New York.</li><br>
<li>March 29, 2009 – Robert Stewart kills eight and injures three in Carthage, California.</li><br>
<li>June 25, 2008 – Wesley Neal Higdon kills six and inures one in Henderson, Kentucky with guns purchased online and from retailers in Champlaign, Illiniois.</li><br>
<li>February 14, 2008 - Steven Phillip Kazmierczak kills six and injures twenty-one in DeKalb, Illinois with guns purchased from Tony’s Gun & Ammo in Champaign, Illinois and from a website operated by TGSCOM, Inc.</li><br>
<li>October 7, 2007 – Tyler Peterson kills six and injures one in Crandon, Wisconsin with a gun given to him by the Forrest County Sheriff’s Department.</li><br>
<li>April 16, 2007 – Seung-Hui Cho kills thirty-three and injures seventeen in Blacksburg, Virginia with guns purchased from a website operated by TGSCOM, Inc.</li><br>
<li>October 2, 2006 – Charles Carl Roberts kills six and injures five in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania with guns purchased from local gun stores in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania.</li><br>
<li>March 25, 2006 – Kyle Huff kills six and wounds two at a rave afterparty in Seattle, Washington with guns purchased at sporting goods stores in Kalispell, Montana.</li><br>
<li>January 30, 2006 – Jennifer Sanmarco kills eight in Goleta, California with a gun purchased from a pawn shop in Grants and Gallup, New Mexico.</li><br>
<li>March 12, 2005 – Terry Michael Ratzmann kills six and injures one in Brookfield, Wisconsin with a gun purchased from a gun dealer in Waukesha, Wisconsin.</li><br>
<li>July 8, 2003 – Douglas Williams kills seven and injures eight in Meridian, Mississippi with guns purchased from a private dealer.</li><br>
<li>February 5, 2001 – William D. Baker kills five and injures four in Melrose Park, Illinois with guns that were purchased from Pepper Sports in Glen Ellyn, Illinois.</li><br>
<li>December 26, 2000 – Michael McDermott kills seven in Wakefield, Massachusetts with guns purchased from gun stores in Massachusetts.</li><br>
<li>December 30, 1999 – Silvio Leyva kills five and injures three in Tampa, Florida with guns purchased from Big E’s in Tampa, Florida.</li><br>
<li>November 2, 1999 – Bryan Uyesugi kills seven in Honolulu, Hawaii with a gun he legally purchased ten years earlier.</li><br>
<li>September 15, 1999 – Larry Gene Ashbrook kills eight and injures seven in Fort Worth, Texas with guns purchased from federally licensed firearms dealers seven years earlier.</li><br>
<li>July 29, 1999 – Mark O. Barton kills nine and injures thirteen in Atlanta, Georgia with guns purchased from a gun store in Warner Robins, Georgia.</li><br>
<li>March 6, 1998 – Matthew Beck kills five in Newington, Connecticut with a 9mm pistol that he had a permit for.</li><br>
<li>December 18, 1997 – Arturo Reyes Torres kills five and injures two in Orange, California with guns purchased from B&E Gun Sales in Orange County, California.</li>
<li>February 9, 1996 – Clifton McCree kills six and injures one in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.</li><br>
<li>April 3, 1995 – James Daniel Simpson kills six in Corpus Christi, Texas.</li><br>
<li>June 20, 1994 – Dean Allen Melburg kills six and injures twenty-three in Fairchild Air Force Base, Washington.</li><br>
<li>December 7, 1993 – Colin Ferguson kills six and injures nineteen in Long Island, New York with a gun purchased at Turner’s Outdoorsmen in California.</li><br>
<li>August 6, 1993 – Kenneth Junior French kills four and injures eight in Fayetteville, North Carolina.</li><br>
<li>July 1, 1993 – Gian Luigi Ferri kills nine and injures six in San Francisco, California with guns purchased at Super Pawn and Pacific Tactical Weapons in Las Vegas.</li><br>
<li>October 15, 1992 – John T. Miller kills five in Watkins Glen, New York with a gun purchased from Mumford Sports in Lichfield, Ohio.</li><br>
<li>May 1, 1992 – Eric Houston kills four and injures ten in Olivehurst, California with guns purchased from a local gun retailer.</li><br>
<li>November 14, 1991 – Thomas McIlvane kills five and injures five in Royal Oak, Michigan with a gun purchased from a local gun retailer.</li><br>
<li>November 1, 1991 – Gang Lu kills six and injures one in Iowa City, Iowa with a gun purchased from Fin & Feather in Iowa City, Iowa.</li><br>
<li>October 16, 1991 – George Hennard kills twenty-four and injures twenty in Killen, Texas with guns purchased from Mike’s Gun Shop in Henderson, Nevada.</li><br>
<li>September 14, 1989 – Joseph Westbecker kills nine and injures twelve in Louisville, Kentucky with guns purchased from Tilford’s Gun Sales in Louisville, Kentucky.</li><br>
<li>January 17, 1989 – Patrick Purdy kills six and injures thirty in Stockton, California with guns purchased from Sandy Trading Post in Sandy, Oregon on August 3, 1988, and Hunter Loan and Jewelry Co. in Stockton, California on December 28, 1988.</li><br>
<li>February 16, 1988 – Richard Farley kills seven and injures four in Sunnyvale, California with guns purchased from different sporting goods and gun stores in Northern California.</li><br>
<li>April 23, 1987 – William Cruse kills six and injures fourteen in Palm Bay, Florida with guns purchased from a gun store in Norwood, Ohio and The Oaks Trading Post in Melbourne, Florida.</li><br>
<li>August 20, 1986 – Patrick Sherrill kills fifteen and injures six in Edmond, Oklahoma with guns issued by the Oklahoma National Guard.</li><br>
<li>July 18, 1984 – James Oliver Huberty kills twenty-two and injures nineteen in San Ysidro, California.</li><br>
<li>August 20, 1982 – Carl Robert Brown kills eight and injures three in Miami, Florida with a gun purchased from Garcia Gun Center in Hialeah, Florida.</li></ul>
<p class="MsoNormal">And it’s not like these shooters were squeaky clean individuals. In many of these cases, the shooter was able to legally purchase firearms despite having a significant criminal, mental health, and/or substance abuse history.<br><br>
This includes the May 2012 shooting in Seattle, Washington, in which concealed handgun permit holder Ian Stawicki killed a total of five people. Friends and family members of Stawicki had seen signs of mental illness in him throughout his entire life. He was <a href="http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2018328041_stawicki01m.html">charged</a> with four domestic violence-related misdemeanors in 2008 after his girlfriend was injured in an altercation with him at their home. Two years later, Stawicki inexplicably accused his younger brother of causing him blindness and punched him repeatedly in front of their mother. He was charged with assault. All these charges were later dropped when his girlfriend and family declined to press forward with them. Nonetheless, Stawicki’s own father, Walter Stawicki, saw the potential danger and <a href="http://www.katu.com/news/local/Family-Seattle-gunman-had-a-concealed-weapon-permit-155993695.html">tried to have his son’s concealed handgun permit revoked</a>. Law enforcement told him that under the state’s existing “Shall Issue” law, there was nothing they could do.<br><br>
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-g22OW3GXR1Q/UUnRRsOBwtI/AAAAAAAAB5o/nmFbZnL708U/s1600/Aurora+Shooting.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left; margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-g22OW3GXR1Q/UUnRRsOBwtI/AAAAAAAAB5o/nmFbZnL708U/s320/Aurora+Shooting.jpg" /></a>Aurora, Colorado gunman James Holmes passed background checks and bought firearms despite seeking mental health treatment and <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57497820/james-holmes-saw-three-mental-health-professionals-before-shooting/">confessing his violent thoughts</a> to a psychiatrist at the University of Colorado. Dr. Lynne Fenton was so alarmed by her sessions with Holmes that she reported him to a campus threat assessment team as well as to campus police. Prosecutors also allege that Holmes threatened a professor at the university and was banned from campus at one point.<br />
<br />
Sikh Temple shooter Wade Michael Page legally bought the firearm he used to kill in Wisconsin and had also obtained permits to purchase handguns in North Carolina. This was despite the fact that Page had an extensive history of alcoholism, with <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/06/us/wisconsin-temple-shooting">prior guilty pleas</a> for DUI and criminal mischief offenses. Page had also been discharged after six years in the Army when he was caught doing exercises while intoxicated. Later, in 2010, Page was fired from a trucking company in North Carolina for driving under the influence. Then there was Page’s involvement in hate groups. In addition to two far-right wing punk rock bands (End Apathy and Definite Hate), Page was <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2012/aug/06/nation/la-na-nn-investigators-kept-tabs-alleged-sikh-temple-shooter-20120806">involved with many white supremacist organizations and was even suspected of funding a domestic terrorism group</a>. Because of this activity, Page was being monitored by both federal officials and anti-hate watchdog groups.<br />
<br />
Why are so many mass shooters “law-abiding citizens” and legal gun purchasers? Because the prohibited categories for gun purchasers are not particularly stringent and for the most part have not been updated since 1968. While the Lautenberg Amendment prohibits those with misdemeanor domestic violence convictions from purchasing firearms, other misdemeanor convictions (including for violent offenses) have no effect on a person’s ability to buy guns. In terms of mental illness, in most states only those who have been involuntarily committed or formally adjudicated by a court as a “mental defective” are prohibited from purchasing firearms. Many people who are dangerous mentally ill do not fall into one of these two narrow categories.<br />
<br />
Clearly, more needs to be done to keep guns out of the wrong hands. And until something is done, we will continue to see “law-abiding citizens” take innocent American lives in mass shootings.</p>
stopgunviolencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806648144323303424noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420740688947057.post-10807315444326080482013-01-15T07:11:00.001-08:002013-01-15T07:11:12.489-08:00I Am a Teacher, Hear Me Roar: Another Way to Protest Gun Violence<p class="MsoNormal">[The following piece is a guest blog by global educator <a href="about.me/laurencepeters">Laurence Peters</a>. The views expressed here are his own, not those of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence.]<br><br>
In 1994, perhaps one of the most remarkable events of the 20th century occurred. The former leader of the anti-apartheid movement, Nelson Mandela, who was held captive for 27 years, was elected prime minister of South Africa. This peaceful handover of power was achieved not on the battlefield as many had feared, but because the world had divested from South African companies.<br><br>
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kQOc_nomnGE/UPVxhAPm66I/AAAAAAAAB5E/KJxDdHWa6Ek/s1600/End%2BApartheid.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="320" width="260" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kQOc_nomnGE/UPVxhAPm66I/AAAAAAAAB5E/KJxDdHWa6Ek/s320/End%2BApartheid.jpg" /></a>This movement took time to grow and become mainstream, but grow it did, eventually going global. Picketing and demonstrations by student radicals on the campuses of the nations’ universities helped, but it was the attack on South Africa’s once vibrant white-dominated economy that really did the damage. In the 1980s, “<a href="http://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/08/protest-divestment-south-africa.asp#axzz2HR2J9EqF">between one-half and one-third of the S&P 500 did business in South Africa</a>, placing these companies among the best investments at the time.” The amount of stock held by North American pension funds was minute compared to the size of these companies, but it was a game-changer when major colleges decided they could not morally stomach doing business with South Africa’s apartheid economy. By the end of the 1980s, “90 cities, 22 counties and 26 states [in the United States] had taken some form of economic stance against the South African government” and the divestment movement began to spread to other countries. Finally, the South African government got the message: “Continue to do business the same way and expect to be isolated as a pariah in the world community.” <br><br>
Now think about the contemporary American experience with gun violence. With our political leaders continuing to fail to make such basic changes to the law as outlawing assault weapons or banning cop-killer bullets, the anti-apartheid movement should give us confidence that we <i>can</i> still affect change. <br><br>
As <i>Guardian</i> reporter Brett Scott <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/20/pension-fund-investments-firearm-companies">points out</a>, “We’re used to the narrative of how weapons companies support lobby groups such as the National Rifle Association, but we're seldom encouraged to think about who funds the weapons companies themselves.” It’s <i>us</i> funding them, through our pension funds, as police officers, doctors, teachers, etc. Just as with the South African situation, the percentage of stock held individually by these funds in these companies is quite small, but collectively it is a significant stake. We, too, have the capability to send a powerful moral message that is clearly heard in boardrooms across America. <br><br>
This kind of thinking is beginning to provoke some large-scale changes. Announcements from pension funds around the country suggest that teachers are finally exerting their long-neglected power. Shortly after the Newtown tragedy, the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (the largest educator-only pension fund in the world) announced that it would review its investments in the national and international firearms business, including the $600 million it had invested in the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, which owns a significant chunk of the gun industry. <br><br>
Not coincidentally, on the same day Cerberus announced that it was divesting itself from its gun industry properties (Freedom Group International), including Bushmaster, the firm that manufactured the AR-15 rifle Adam Lanza used to kill 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Cerberus, however, has so far failed to act on its stock ownership of two of the largest gun manufacturers in the world Sturm, Ruger & Co. and Smith & Wesson Holding Corp. <br><br>
The movement is gaining its legs. The California action seems to be moving the New York State Teachers’ Retirement System to review its stake in Sturm, Ruger & Co. and Olin Corp, which manufactures Winchester Arms. Other <a href="http://www.pionline.com/article/20121224/PRINTSUB/312249986/public-pension-plans-mull-purging-gun-investments">interested parties</a> taking a close look at their investments include Rhode Island Employees' Retirement System in Providence; Connecticut Retirement Plans and Trust Funds in Hartford; and the $37.5 billion Illinois Teachers' Retirement System in Springfield. What we now need is a <i>national</i> divestment movement to include the billions of dollars that state and municipalities across the country invest in firearm and ammunition manufacturers.<br><br>
Some pension fund managers will of course argue (as they have begun to do) that their role is not to decide the politics of the investments they make, but to simply serve fiduciaries. In other words, they claim their only mission is to ensure that members receive the highest return possible on their investments. But in a nation that suffers approximately 87 gun deaths per day, don’t they bear at least some level of responsibility for supporting the reckless marketing and sales practices of gun manufacturers? And even looking strictly at their financial argument, when bad publicity about gun manufacturers mounts following mass shootings tragedies like Newtown, these stocks are often highly volatile, and can create undisclosed legal liabilities.<br><br>
If you want another way to circumvent the bought-and-paid-for politicians who have refused to listen to rational arguments, you now have another way to make your voice heard. Call your local pension fund. Tell them you want them to divest 100% from investments in firearms and ammunition manufacturers.<br><br>
Working together, we can end the epidemic of gun violence in America. The divestment strategy worked in South Africa. It can work here, too.</p>stopgunviolencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806648144323303424noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420740688947057.post-50491934508758658722013-01-11T08:02:00.000-08:002013-01-11T08:02:15.359-08:00"I know I for one will never touch a firearm again." <p class="MsoNormal"><i>[The following piece is a guest blog by gun owner David Myles. The views expressed here are his own, not those of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence.]</i><br><br>
Before you read this, take a moment to look at the pictures of the children and their teachers who were murdered a few short weeks ago.<br><br>
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NpHUfcT-Wlg/UPA3aeNKNII/AAAAAAAAB4w/uf_iDP6AVB8/s1600/Newtown%2BFaces.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="240" width="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NpHUfcT-Wlg/UPA3aeNKNII/AAAAAAAAB4w/uf_iDP6AVB8/s320/Newtown%2BFaces.JPG" /></a>I like guns and love the range, but I would trade every day of enjoyment I got out of skeet shooting, every rabbit I've cooked, and target I've blasted to hell (including an old Chevy that pissed me off) for the lives of those children, and all the children that—if if the NRA has its way—will die next, and the ones after, and after that, world everlasting.<br><br>
Leaving out the sit-down with a psychiatrist talk we need to have about the argument that you should keep your gun because you might have to shoot at the police one day (for anyone thinking that a gun will protect you from tyranny, I'd like to see you go up against a drone with a Bushmaster), the only "weapons" you need these days are good information and your vote; and the only tyranny you need to worry about is the tyranny of an armed society which provides naught but the illusion of safety and the horrors of incidents like Newtown.<br><br>
Here is my proposed path to stopping gun violence...<br><br>
Ammunition must be stored at a licensed gun range. It is already illegal to fire your weapon within shouting distance of a home. When at the range you may fire as many rounds as you wish. Hunting licenses will also issue an ammo permit for your hunting weapon. There will be no more stockpiling of ammunition outside of licensed storage facilities. You may load your own shells, equipment, primer, and powder will be issued after a rigorous background check and standard military psych test. You may not posses more than one full magazine of ammunition in your home or on your person, for self-defense. May your God have mercy on the family member you are more likely to kill than an intruder. May your God have mercy on those of of you that will die alone in despair, by your own hand, with your own weapon.<br><br>
Liability insurance is required if you have more than ten rounds of ammunition, multiple assault-style weapons, or a concealed carry permit. As the Constitution guarantees the right to keep and bear arms, nothing is mentioned about modern firearms and ammunition. Criminal and civil penalties will apply to those who fail to provide proof of insurance. Localities are encouraged to pass these laws for municipalities and counties.<br><br>
All bullets are to be microstamped so crime guns can be traced to their source.<br><br>
I understand that most gun owners live in the murky, scary world of criminals, rapists, and "commies who run our government" and I pity them for the utter terror in which they walk through the world. But I am tired of innocents dying to maintain their false sense of security. Aren't you? The real problem is that quaking gun owners, hiding in their military-style bunkers oiling and stroking their rifles with soft velvet hands, with their fear of attack and violence, and obsession with the fact that they have no reason with which to face the world, are supporting policies that are killing our community's men, women, and children, and ultimately, even themselves.<br><br>
<i>"I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the same coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."<br><br>
- Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, July 12, 1810</i><br><br>
Please be part of the solution. I know I for one will never touch a firearm again. </p>stopgunviolencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806648144323303424noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420740688947057.post-46026328743961638192012-11-08T08:35:00.001-08:002012-11-08T08:42:24.716-08:00From Young Man To Young Man<p class="MsoNormal">
[The following blog is by CSGV intern Jack Anthony.]<br><br>
<i>“My mom pushes me to do better, she always tells me to never settle. I think the kids that are on the street not doing anything with their lives don’t get the type of support they need from family. They probably don’t have anyone to look up to.” - Dajae Coleman, “My Belief Statement”</i><br><br>
On the night of September 24, Dajae Coleman, 14, was fatally shot in the chest as he was walking home from a party less than a mile from his home in Evanston, Illinois. A fight had broken out at the party, supposedly involving the female cousin of the shooter, Wesley Woodson III. She texted him to say she had been in the altercation. He arrived wielding a 9mm and gunned down Dajae in what prosecutors are calling it a “<a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-10-03/news/ct-tl-evanston-teen-killed-20121002_1_youth-violence-dajae-coleman-evanston-township-high-school">case of mistaken identity</a>.”<br><br>
Woodson, 20, has been charged with first-degree murder and aggravated discharge of a firearm without bail. According to Evanston Police Commander Jay Parrot, “<a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-10-03/news/ct-tl-evanston-teen-killed-20121002_1_youth-violence-dajae-coleman-evanston-township-high-school">Woodson has gang affiliations and this was a retaliatory act upon an innocent group of teens with no gang affiliations</a>.”<br><br>
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-TYcswc0yBnI/UJvfRFmYC0I/AAAAAAAABxU/t9NLuO3N8Qg/s1600/Dajae%2BColeman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="300" width="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-TYcswc0yBnI/UJvfRFmYC0I/AAAAAAAABxU/t9NLuO3N8Qg/s400/Dajae%2BColeman.jpg" /></a>Dajae was described by Evanston Township High basketball coach as a “<a href="http://www.suntimes.com/news/15331298-418/14-year-old-boy-shot-dead-in-evanston.html">tremendous athlete and a tremendous person…a guy who led by example</a>.” Dajae was also a leader in the classroom. To be a good student at Evanston Township High is no small order. 100 percent of the class of 2011 scored above the national average on the ACT and 43 of the 693 members of the current senior class received <a href="http://www.eths.k12.il.us/national_achievement_and_national_merit_programs_recognize_eths_students_/?Archive=y&pg=7&F_All=y">National Merit Awards</a>. Dajae’s middle school teacher Willa Williams wrote, “<a href="http://www.urbanfaith.com/2012/09/dajae-coleman-had-a-reason-to-live.html/">Dajae had dreams, Dajae worked hard all the time, and Dajae was first true to himself and his family</a>.” Finally, when Dajae wasn’t studying or playing sports, he held a job at a local community center.<br><br>
Dajae’s father, Richard Coleman, described his son in the following words: “<a href="http://www.suntimes.com/news/15331298-418/14-year-old-boy-shot-dead-in-evanston.html">He wasn’t one of those guys. He wasn’t someone who you’d think would get killed like this. But really, in the society we’re living in, he actually was one of the good ones, the innocent ones that leave early. He told me he wanted to be an engineer or maybe a doctor, I told him that’s a lot of work. And he said, ‘You know me dad, I can do it</a>.”<br><br>
I am now 18 years old, the time when teenage aspirations begin to turn into a working reality. Dajae was about to seize this opportunity. He was a great student at a great school, the kind of kid that politicians claim we need to invest in. He was doing everything right in his life. Why was it cut short? Because he was near a petty argument he had nothing to do with? It’s time for politicians to talk about the flaws in our gun laws that abetted this tragedy.<br><br>
In a phone interview, Commander Parrot told me that the 9mm gun used to kill Dajae has yet to be recovered. “There are a few ways these gang members get guns,” he said. “In Chicago, if you have a license you can buy a gun, but some sometimes guns are stolen and they scratch off the serial number; sometimes guns are transferred through straw purchases; and sometimes they buy them in other states and bring them over [into Illinois].”<br><br>
As commander Parrot suggested, many of Illinois’ crime guns do indeed come from out of state. A 2011 <a href="http://www.mayorsagainstillegalguns.org/downloads/pdf/trace_the_guns_report.pdf">study</a> by Mayors Against Illegal Guns shows that Indiana and Mississippi are the two main exporters. Most of the crime guns recovered in Chicago, however, are originally bought in Illinois. Just one county– Cook County—is estimated as being the source of 45% of the state’s crime guns (based on a <a href="http://www.suntimes.com/news/crime/14715658-418/chicago-gangs-dont-have-to-go-far-to-buy-guns.html">study</a> from 2008 to 2012 by <a href="http://crimelab.uchicago.edu/">the University of Chicago Crime Lab)</a>. And the biggest supplier in Cook County is Chuck’s Gun Store, estimated as the source of about one in five crime guns in Illinois. Roseanna Ander, executive director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab said that the data “<a href="http://www.suntimes.com/news/crime/14715658-418/chicago-gangs-dont-have-to-go-far-to-buy-guns.html">suggests a key strategy in keep guns off the street is for law enforcement agencies to target the local gun stores most likely to sell firearms to straw purchasers</a>.”<br><br>
Given this data, it’s shocking how little Illinois does to crack down on illegal gun trafficking. For example, in Illinois there is no limit on bulk purchases of handguns—which are popular among straw purchasers. Residents are not required to report firearm thefts, or register the guns they buy. There is no regulation on private firearm sales in Illinois—residents can sell guns to one another without conducting background checks or keeping records of sale. Finally, there is no state-level regulation of gun dealers in Illinois and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF)—due to a lack of manpower—is only able to inspect the inventories of federally licensed firearms dealers once every ten years on average. Does Illinois really expect us to believe it’s doing everything in its power to stop gun crime?<br><br>
On a human level, from young man to young man, I’m writing about Dajae Coleman so that all his talent, his promise, is not diminished by the horrible act that stole his life. In the slaughter of this young man, we see a broken promise of politicians. A principal function of our government is the establishment of justice and the preservation of “<a href="http://www.usconstitution.net/xconst_preamble.html">domestic tranquility</a>.” How many more victims of gun violence will it take before we start to realize that life is liberty? No one is free who has to worry about being shot on his way home. A society in which thugs and vigilantes establish their own code of “justice” is no society our Founders would approve of. Nor a society that any of us should accept.<br><br>
Dajae did everything he could to make his life and those around him better. Shouldn’t we hold our elected officials to the same standard?</p>
stopgunviolencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806648144323303424noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420740688947057.post-73927124282405850012012-02-27T10:43:00.002-08:002012-03-15T09:34:41.068-07:00Where’s the Part About the Guns?<p class="MsoNormal">Normally when a representative for the National Rifle Association (NRA) visits the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), we’re talking about NRA Executive Vice President and CEO <a href="http://meetthenra.org/nra-member/Wayne%20LaPierre">Wayne LaPierre</a>, and he’s there to promote <a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/201202100014">a range of bizarre conspiracy theories</a> concerning gun confiscation and the Obama Administration. Over the years, Wayne and the NRA have learned that there’s no better fundraising tool than good ol’ fearmongering. This year, however, a far more interesting and revealing moment occurred at CPAC when NRA President <a href="http://www.meetthenra.org/nra-member/David%20A.%20Keene">David Keene</a> presented Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli with the “Defender of Freedom Award” on behalf of the NRA and the American Conservative Union (for which Keene served as Chairman from 1984-2011).<br><br>
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bdG3To7xhpo/T0vTWXn7djI/AAAAAAAAA8E/i2jrEWzH3WE/s1600/Keene%2Band%2BCuccinelli.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="206" width="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bdG3To7xhpo/T0vTWXn7djI/AAAAAAAAA8E/i2jrEWzH3WE/s320/Keene%2Band%2BCuccinelli.jpg" /></a>To put it lightly, Ken Cuccinelli has been a controversial figure since entering Virginia politics in 2002. In the words of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Washington Post</i>, “<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/29/AR2009102904197.html">Mr. Cuccinelli has profited from an affability and quick wit that have tended to mask his extremist views. As a lawmaker in Richmond, he has displayed contempt for non-English speakers; for those who care about global warming; and for the First Amendment. Many of his fellow Republicans regard him as occupying the far-right fringe of the party, the ultimate small tenter</a>."<br><br>
The NRA’s president saw things quite differently when he honored Cuccinelli on February 9<sup>th</sup>, however. Before bestowing him with a document signed by Founding Fathers James Madison and James Monroe, David Keene called Cuccinelli “<a href="http://cpac2012.conservative.org/cuccinelli-freedom-at-stake-if-obamacare-not-stopped-in-court/922/">a man of faith … a man…healthily suspicious of government in all circumstances … a man who has never turned his back on his values, has never turned his back on his beliefs, and has never refused to stand up when principle demanded that he do so</a>.” “<a href="http://cpac2012.conservative.org/cuccinelli-freedom-at-stake-if-obamacare-not-stopped-in-court/922/">He has never, in fact, varied from the beliefs that motivate him and motivated our Founders</a>,” said Keene. Keene also praised Cuccinelli for filing a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of “Obamacare” (i.e., the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010). The NRA president made absolutely no mention of the Second Amendment or
Cuccinelli’s record on the gun issue.<br><br>
Curiously, neither did Cuccinelli. After thanking the NRA for the award, Cuccinelli launched into a bizarre tirade on a host of issues that—at first glance—have nothing to do with the NRA’s mission or
political agenda.<br><br>
First, Cuccinelli suggested that the Constitution shouldn’t have been ratified, remarking, “<a href="http://cpac2012.conservative.org/cuccinelli-freedom-at-stake-if-obamacare-not-stopped-in-court/922/">James Monroe voted against the U.S. Constitution because he didn’t think it was cautious enough with respect to federal power. Seems like he had a crystal ball, one might think. But that’s the role of states when the federal government oversteps its boundaries. And the worst example of course is the health care bill [the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act …signed by the president on March 23, 2010. And about 34 minutes later, give or take, we filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia … Seventeen blocks to the east, 235 years to the day, before we filed that suit, and before the president signed that bill, Patrick Henry gave his
‘Give Me Liberty, Or Give Me Death’ speech … And that seemed very appropriate, given that that legislation represents one of the greatest legislative invasions of liberty in the lifetime of anyone in this room. And that suit we filed is not about health care. It’s about liberty … We know
that it has to be stopped. Certainly the Founders would think so</a>.”<br><br>
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OnPICwHNH-A/T0vXvq4pB_I/AAAAAAAAA8Q/j6xfuAuJo4s/s1600/Cuccinelli%2BAFP.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="240" width="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OnPICwHNH-A/T0vXvq4pB_I/AAAAAAAAA8Q/j6xfuAuJo4s/s320/Cuccinelli%2BAFP.jpg" /></a>Turning to the topic of the environment, Cuccinelli said, “<a href="http://cpac2012.conservative.org/cuccinelli-freedom-at-stake-if-obamacare-not-stopped-in-court/922/">[W]e sued the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency]—which I have taken to calling the Employment Prevention Agency, because they are so good at that—for their greenhouse gas endangerment finding … Virginia and Texas will argue on behalf of 16 states that they broke the law .. And when the EPA said that the CO2 that
you are exhaling right now—let’s all annoy [EPA Administrator] Lisa Jackson together [exhales loudly]. Hi, Lisa. When they passed that regulation in violation of the law they brought on enormous consequences, many of which they hadn’t calculated and which they said they hadn’t calculated. Those are the economic consequences. The only science behind that regulation is political science</a>.”<br><br>
Finally, Cuccinelli directed his wrath at organized labor: “<a href="http://cpac2012.conservative.org/cuccinelli-freedom-at-stake-if-obamacare-not-stopped-in-court/922/">You all are familiar with the National Labor Relations Board’s assault on South Carolina and Boeing. Make no mistake about it, that is an assault on the right to work…the right to hold a job without being coerced into joining a union … We have never seen such an across-the-board assault on the rule of law by any administration in the lifetime of anyone in this room. It has never happened. The Constitution gets not no respect. States gets no respect. The courts get no respect. Federal law itself that they find
inconvenient gets no respect. And when we don’t have enough politicians in Washington who adhere to the constitution and the rule of law, state attorneys general become the last line of defense</a>.”<br><br>
Not a single word about guns…<br><br>
One might be amazed at how blatant this whole episode was, but the truth is that Cuccinelli’s
extreme views on a host of non-gun-related issues are in lockstep with <a href="http://meetthenra.org/">members of the NRA leadership</a>. A recent examination of the NRA by the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence revealed that the organization is largely lead by individuals with a vested interest in conservative politics—including social and economic issues. Whether it’s <a href="http://meetthenra.org/issues?field_issue_value_many_to_one=Gay+Rights">fighting
the advance of LGBT rights</a>, <a href="http://meetthenra.org/issues?field_issue_value_many_to_one=Immigration">engaging
in immigrant bashing</a>, or <a href="http://meetthenra.org/issues?field_issue_value_many_to_one=Poverty">supporting the “1%”</a>, the NRA never met a progressive cause it wasn’t prepared to gun down.<br><br>
While superficially bipartisan, the NRA is closely aligned with the most extreme elements in the Republican Party and has brought a number of the GOP’s most influential operatives into positions of power within their organization. The GOP and NRA are now locked in a symbiotic relationship where
Republican legislators advance the NRA’s extreme agenda while the NRA musters its hardcore supporters to serve as attack dogs for a wide-ranging conservative agenda. Honoring Cuccinelli—a charismatic pied-piper of the far-right wing movement—makes that job that much easier.</p>stopgunviolencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806648144323303424noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420740688947057.post-13748159730891035172012-01-31T13:21:00.001-08:002012-03-15T09:34:56.540-07:00Gun Politics (as Usual) in D.C.<p class="MsoNormal"><b>[This blog is a report by CSGV Director of Communications Ladd Everitt, who attended a D.C. Council hearing yesterday on the “Firearms Amendment Act of 2011.”]</b><br><br>
Yesterday, I attended a public hearing of the D.C. Council’s Committee on the Judiciary regarding a new piece of gun-related legislation, Bill 19-614, the “Firearms Amendment Act of 2011.” The hearing provided a perfect snapshot of the way gun politics operate in the District, with the usual cast of characters in lead roles on the pro-gun side.<br><br>
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Y4_dvKZjCPk/TyhcUBXeqVI/AAAAAAAAAyU/lVLlzi0AuPI/s1600/Phil%2BMendelson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="204" width="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Y4_dvKZjCPk/TyhcUBXeqVI/AAAAAAAAAyU/lVLlzi0AuPI/s320/Phil%2BMendelson.jpg" /></a>Everyone is familiar with the District of Columbia’s tough gun laws, but the “Firearms Amendment Act” would actually address many of the criticisms of pro-gun activists and eliminate some existing regulations. Specifically, Bill 19-614 would:<br>
<ul><li>Allow D.C. residents to take their guns to firearms safety and training courses before they have officially registered them with the city.</li><br>
<li>Eliminate the vision testing requirement to register a firearm. Those who are legally blind would still be prohibited from registering firearms.</li><br>
<li>Accept military training, or the possession of a state firearms license for which comparable training was required, to satisfy the District’s mandatory training requirement to register a firearm.</li><br>
<li>Repeal the requirement that registered handguns undergo ballistics identification testing.</li><br>
<li>Require the Metropolitan Police to take photographs for use in the registration application process, rather than requiring applicants to supply their own photographs.</ul>
<p class="MsoNormal">All of these changes were initiated by Judiciary Committee Chairman Phil Mendelson (D-At Large), who sought to accommodate pro-gun activists in the District after meeting with them personally to hear their concerns. You never would have known that sitting through yesterday’s hearing, however. Pro-gun activists spent the morning and afternoon browbeating Mendelson and issuing additional demands in a manner that was frequently impolite and sometimes downright rude.<br><br>
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GT-gh1FROBs/Tyhcc2kT7PI/AAAAAAAAAyg/JSv4eQW3w9o/s1600/Miller%2BTwo%2BGuns.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="240" width="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GT-gh1FROBs/Tyhcc2kT7PI/AAAAAAAAAyg/JSv4eQW3w9o/s320/Miller%2BTwo%2BGuns.jpg" /></a>First up to testify was Emily "<a href=https://twitter.com/#!/EmilyMiller/status/164371293045669888>I'm meh on voting rights</a>" Miller, the Senior Editor of the <i>Washington Times</i> Opinion pages (<a href=http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/may/27/the-un-gun-grabber/>which embrace even the most bizarre conspiracy theories perpetuated by the NRA</a>) . Miller has become something of a cause célèbre in the pro-gun movement because of her “<a href=http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/guns/>Emily Gets Her Gun</a>” blog at the <i>Times</i> website. The blog basically gives Miller a platform to complain about D.C. gun laws ad nauseam. But there are fun features for people who really like weapons, too, like gun porn photos and a <a href=http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/guns/2011/dec/12/miller-which-gun-should-emily-buy/>poll</a> that allows them to vote on which semiautomatic handgun Emily should buy to take down “bad guys” with.<br><br>
Miller spent about 20 minutes at the hearing complaining about the process needed to satisfy the training requirement for registering handguns in the District, which is strange, because <a href=http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/guns/2011/nov/14/miller-taking-dc-gun-safety-class/>she successfully completed that training more than two months ago</a>, and Bill 19-614 would make it even easier for future applicants to do so. Nonetheless she made it clear to Chairman Mendelson that the list of <a herf=http://mpdc.dc.gov/mpdc/frames.asp?doc=/mpdc/lib/mpdc/info/pdf/firearms_instructors.pdf>46 certified firearms instructors</a> supplied by the Metropolitan Police Department (MPDC) was grossly insufficient. Why? Because she did not want to travel to the home/office of one of these “armed strange men” and put herself at personal risk to undergo the training. [Miller was presumably referring to pro-gun activist Ricardo Royal, one of the 46 who was on hand to testify.] <br><br>
Let me get this straight… Miller is scared to spend a few hours with a firearms instructor that’s been certified by the MPDC (i.e., multiple, thorough background checks), but thinks she’ll be safer if the “strange men” of Washington, D.C. can arm themselves under far less stringent oversight? At the hearing, Miller praised Virginia laws that allow someone to walk out of a store with a handgun in just 10 minutes, no training required. “It’s much easier to shoot a gun than drive a car,” she told Mendelson. “Anyone can do it.” Except perhaps Miller. She inadvertently revealed that she has sometimes violated the basic rules of firearms safety that were taught to her by instructors (e.g., by placing her finger on the trigger of a gun before she was prepared to fire it).<br><br>
Miller also showed little grasp of facts, boasting at one point that “gun ownership is at its highest [level] in 30 years.” In reality, data from the General Social Survey tells us exactly the opposite—that <a href=http://www.vpc.org/studies/ownership.pdf>only one in five Americans now owns a firearm</a>.<br><br>
Finally, Miller apparently associates with criminals. “Anecdotally, a lot of people have come up to me and said, ‘I have a gun, I don’t register it,’” she told Mendelson. So much for that “law-abiding citizens” thing the NRA likes to shout about.<br><br>
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sPOGVM0dVUM/TyhclW2HyJI/AAAAAAAAAys/mfS0F-8RngM/s1600/Miller%2BTweet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="153" width="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sPOGVM0dVUM/TyhclW2HyJI/AAAAAAAAAys/mfS0F-8RngM/s400/Miller%2BTweet.jpg" /></a><br><br>
Back to the topic of “strange men,” the next pro-gun activist to testify, James Collier, told Mendelson that he wanted the city to legalize the civilian version of the military’s M-16 rifle (the semiautomatic-fire-only AR-15) so he could shoot feral pigs in the swamps of South Carolina with it. No, I didn’t make that up.<br><br>
George Lyon, the President of the D.C. Chapter of the Community Association for Firearms Education (CAFE), said he needed to carry a loaded handgun while walking his dog at 1:00AM. The dog wasn’t on hand to offer his own view about the wisdom of such behavior.<br><br>
NRA Lifetime Member/Plaintiff Absalom Jordan compared D.C.’s elected officials to Virginians who sought to keep schools segregated from the 1950s-70s. He also falsely accused Mendelson of offering Bill 19-614 only because of the threat of gun lobby litigation—which was later rebutted by pro-gun witnesses.<br><br>
But the strangest man of all is <a href=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/josh-horwitz/dick-heller-in-his-own-wo_b_128559.html>Dick Heller</a>, the lead plaintiff in the Cato Institute lawsuit that overturned D.C.’s handgun ban in 2008 (the five Supreme Court Justices who wrote the <i>D.C. v. Heller</i> opinion are the same five who decided corporations have a right to free speech in <i>Citizens United</i>). Heller’s testimony took the form of a bizarre presentation on “Firearms Development” in which he showed Mendelson multiple home-printed photos of guns. During this presentation, Heller claimed that the AR-15 assault rifle is “the most safest rifle…to use” and proudly told a story about how his friend in West Virginia bought his five-year-old daughter a pink AR-15. Heller also expressed support for allowing D.C. residents to carry loaded, concealed handguns in public with no screening or training, including on college campuses.<br><br>
Heller didn’t want to talk much about his current lawsuit against the District of Columbia, which has gone nowhere. As Daniel Vice, the Senior Attorney for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, noted at the hearing, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has <a href= http://dccircuitreview.com/2011/10/21/d-c-circuit-upholds-semi-automatic-rifle-ban-under-intermediate-scrutiny/>upheld</a> D.C.’s licensing/registration laws and its assault weapons ban in <i>Heller II</i>, writing, “none of the District’s registration requirements prevents an individual from possessing a firearm in his home or elsewhere.”<br><br>
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GFgn8OpToeM/TylzUc3Z-PI/AAAAAAAAAzE/JShASfRrCWI/s1600/Dick%2BHeller.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="320" width="213" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GFgn8OpToeM/TylzUc3Z-PI/AAAAAAAAAzE/JShASfRrCWI/s320/Dick%2BHeller.jpg" /></a>For more information on Dick Heller, visit the <a href=http://www.hellerfoundation.com/>Heller Foundation</a> website, where Heller supports voter suppression backed up by the threat of political violence, claims the American Nazi Party is supporting the Occupy Wall Street movement, and quotes <a href=http://meetthenra.org/nra-member/Jeff%20Cooper>virulent racist/insurrectionist Jeff Cooper</a>. To put it simply, the fact that longstanding, democratically-enacted gun laws in the District were overturned on this man’s behalf is nothing short of shameful.<br><br>
Not a single pro-gun witness thanked Chairman Mendelson for sitting down with them, listening to their concerns, and offering the “Firearms Amendment Act of 2011.” They were there only to harangue him and make additional demands.<br><br>
Like Mendelson, MPDC Police Chief Cathy Lanier stood in stark contrast to the pro-gunners with her willingness to listen, reach compromise, and accommodate. In her testimony at the hearing, Chief Lanier defended the city’s licensing-registration process, laying out four ways that it helps preserve public safety: 1) It allows law enforcement to verify the eligibility of firearm owners; 2) It ensures that firearm owners have a body of knowledge about D.C. gun laws and firearms safety; 3) It allows police to quickly distinguish between legal and illegal firearms in the field; 4) It helps track firearms that have been lost, stolen or used in a crime.<br><br>
But Lanier also suggested several ways that the process can be made more convenient for gun owners. She said the department believes it can use information technology to eliminate subsequent visits to MPDC for background checks when registrants renew their licenses. She also was open to revisiting training requirements, suggesting that classes can be shorter and conducted at MPDC facilities. Finally, <a href=http://dcist.com/2011/07/sykes_to_sell_transfer_guns_at_mpd.php>the MPDC is now providing office space for Federal Firearms Licensee Charles Sykes</a>, so registrants no longer have to make multiple trips between his office and MPDC headquarters.<br><br>
But the bottom line is that since January 2009, only 2,115 total firearms have been registered in the District of Columbia. Mendelson had it exactly right when he said at the hearing, “People in the district, it’s an urban environment, there isn’t a lot of hunting in the city … Within the culture of the city, [there is] not as much of a desire to have guns as was thought or speculated.”<br><br>
We should salute Mendelson and other D.C. Council members for being willing to listen to <i>all</i> D.C. residents and consider <i>all</i> points of view, no matter how extreme. That’s democracy at work. At the same time, we should be aware that pro-gun activists do not appreciate such gestures and will not stop until they have imposed their far-right-wing political values on our city and eradicated our gun laws entirely—even if/when this involves voiding the democratic decisions of D.C. residents. Monday simply provided additional evidence of that unfortunate fact.<br><br>
<b>[To watch a full video of the hearing, click <a href=http://dc.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=21&clip_id=1033>here</a>. Dick Heller’s testimony starts at the 3:29:40 mark and is worth watching.]</p></b>stopgunviolencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806648144323303424noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420740688947057.post-58174449056881621202011-10-24T06:15:00.000-07:002012-03-15T09:35:56.586-07:00Making Sense of the NIU Tragedy<p class="MsoNormal">Back in August 2008, Bullet Counter Points talked to journalist/author David Vann about a fascinating article he had just written for <i>Esquire</i> entitled “<a href="http://www.esquire.com/features/steven-kazmierczak-0808" target="_blank">Portrait of the School Shooter as a Young Man</a>.” The article dug into the past of Northern Illinois University (NIU) school shooter Steven Kazmierczak, and what it uncovered was truly frightening. Kazmierczak had attempted suicide three times, taken eight different medications for mental illness, and been institutionalized on five different occasions. Despite this history, he was still able to legally buy guns in Illinois and then kill 6 and wound 18 in a gruesome mass shooting at NIU on February 14, 2008.<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Last-Day-Earth-Association-Nonfiction/dp/0820338397" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="280" width="180" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Q-rFr19ekk4/TqVmW7e9WbI/AAAAAAAAAjc/e8XzK2dTeGg/s1600/Last%2BDay%2Bon%2BEarth.JPG" /></a>But the information Vann had uncovered was far too extensive for just a magazine article. So he set about to write a full-length book about Kazmierczak and the massacre at NIU. It was released on October 20 and is titled <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Last-Day-Earth-Association-Nonfiction/dp/0820338397" target="_blank"></i>Last Day on Earth</i></a> (after a Marilyn Manson song that Kazmierczak listened to just before the shooting). We were able to ask Vann a few questions about his book and this horrific tragedy and here are his answers: <br /><br />
<b>Going back to your original article in <i>Esquire</i>, why did you decide to learn more about Steven Kazmierczak and the horrific mass shooting at NIU?</b><br /><br />
I wanted to write an article about how armed suburban youth are. I inherited my father’s guns after he killed himself with a gun, when I was 13, and I led a double life in which I was a straight-A student by day, then wandering our neighborhood at night with his .300 magnum rifle (a rifle for hunting bears), shooting out streetlights and sighting in on the neighbors through their windows. I think it’s frightening how many kids and teens have access to guns in America, so I wanted to write about that. But my editor at <i>Esquire</i> suggested I look at Steve’s story, since he was an A student and everyone seemed very surprised by his shooting. <br /><br />
<b>Why did you decide to contrast your own life with Kazmierczak’s in <i>Last Day On Earth</i>?</b><br /><br />
I wanted to try to answer the question of why Steve crossed the line and I didn’t. When I was 13, I was angry, alone, and had access to all these guns. Looking back, it seems possible I could have ended up killing someone, but I didn’t. I wanted to understand why I didn’t and why he did. What I found was that there were half a dozen strong influences on Steve’s life that made his shooting possible, influences I didn’t have in my own life. These included military service, time in the mental health system, libertarian politics, a mother who loved horror movies, etc. <br /><br />
<b>The picture painted of Steve’s parents is one of indifference—two people who were more than happy to place their son’s care into other hands and be rid of him (He “was a pretty good guy,” was all his dad would say after the murders). But we know surprisingly little about Steve’s mom, who perhaps was the most powerful figure in his life. There are hints of serious mental health issues, but why is she so shrouded in mystery?</b><br /><br />
Steve’s sister Susan wouldn’t talk with me. I do have transcripts of all the interviews that law enforcement did with her, so I know everything she told police. And I asked Steve’s high school and junior high friends and girlfriends about his mother, and I have his own comments about his mother in his emails. He said, for instance, that she never forgave him, despite his earning nearly perfect grades in college. And, as I describe in the book, I have the accounts of his mental health history, in which he ran away from the institution in the Chicago area and begged his mother to take him back; accounts of his fights with her in which he called her a whore; his godfather’s claims that Steve’s mother was mentally ill, etc. So there is quite a bit about her in the book, and her death was perhaps the main event that precipitated his regressive slide into becoming a killer. But I wasn’t able to meet or interview her, since she was dead, and Susan wouldn’t talk with me, so I can’t provide a full portrait. I was very careful in the book not to make anything up or to try to draw conclusions that would go too far. I stuck to the 1,500 pages from the police file and the interviews, and the book, as a result, is a mountain of thousands of facts you can rely upon. But sticking to the facts also means there are gaps in the narrative. <br /><br />
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bLhZns2pb_M/TqVohPVqW4I/AAAAAAAAAjo/_NN9egTv3tE/s1600/NIU%2BShooting.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="238" width="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bLhZns2pb_M/TqVohPVqW4I/AAAAAAAAAjo/_NN9egTv3tE/s320/NIU%2BShooting.jpg" /></a><b>Steve’s infatuation with violence starts perhaps earlier than his depression, with the abuse/sodomy of animals, shooting at cars, bombmaking, etc. Like the Columbine story, you wonder why no one picked up on these obvious red flags in his background—that perhaps he was not only a threat to himself, but others. Yet that element seems to be absent from his experience with mental health treatment as a teenager. How could they have missed it?</b><br /><br />
His parents knew he was mentally ill and asked the high school for help, but they refused. Soon afterward, Steve attempted suicide. In the bombmaking episode, which is earlier, in junior high, another kid was the instigator and had told a dozen kids how to make the bombs. The police saw Steve as a frightened, repentant kid. And the truth is that Steve was always afraid of getting into trouble and he wasn’t as scary as many of his friends. At least three kids in his neighborhood became drug dealers, for instance. There are so many violent, frightening kids in America, it was difficult for someone like Steve to stand out. Even in the end, after the shooting, many at NIU were surprised to learn the shooter was Steve because they had assumed the shooter must have been one of several other grad students who were scarier. <br /><br />
<b>You hint briefly at Steven’s embrace of libertarianism as a factor that drove him to commit the murders. What role do you think it played?</b><br /><br />
Libertarianism favors the individual or small group above society and is therefore antithetical to most of what holds our society together. It’s very frightening. Most of our mass murderers have been libertarians. It’s the perfect political belief for them and fits well with Nietzche’s concept of the “superman,” someone above moral code. I don’t think Americans realize how frightening and dangerous libertarianism is. I would count it as the number one warning sign for a potential shooter, and it’s particularly dangerous when combined with former military service. <br /><br />
<b>There is a fascinating chapter in your book where you talk about entering your neighbors’ houses during the day while they were away and looking for their guns. How often did you find them? Does it give you any perspective on the problem of gun theft today?</b> <br /><br />
In 1980, it was very easy to get into someone’s house. Most people didn’t have answering machines yet, so I’d let the phone just keep ringing while I was in their house. And I didn’t have to break anything, because they all left their bathroom windows open a bit for air. I didn’t steal anything, but I did look through all their stuff, and they all kept their guns in the same places: in their closets or under their beds. It was very easy to find the guns, and they weren’t locked, and they had ammunition available. Nearly everyone had several guns in their home. The potential for gun theft is frightening, as is the access kids and teens have to guns. Even locked and hidden guns can be a problem. I know someone whose daughter committed suicide with a pistol that was locked with ammunition in a separate location. Over time, she was able to find the key to the lock and where the ammunition was kept. <br /><br />
<b>What role does Steve’s taste for men play in his psychological make-up? Why did he hide his bisexuality/homosexuality so carefully? Did he reach a point where the sexuality of his partners no longer even mattered?</b><br /><br />
<i>Last Day On Earth</i> has much more information about Steve’s sex life than my <i>Esquire</i> article had, including the creepy emails he exchanged with one of his girlfriends which were a confusion of sex, mass murder, and racism. By the end, sexual despair was an important driving force for him and he was exhausting himself. One night, he had sex with at least three different women, for instance. He may have been sexually abused before junior high, but I wasn’t able to find any proof, only hints. Sex was secretive and shameful for him from the first, though, and he was attracted later to Marilyn Manson’s androgyny. He shaved his pubic hair and eyebrows and wanted to be dominated. He was with men in high school and also near the end, and part of his love of the movie “Fight Club” was a denial of his homosexuality (that movie is about the denial of homosexuality through a hyper-heterosexual alter-ego, played by Brad Pitt). Steve’s sister Susan is gay, and he told her near the end that he thought he might be gay, and I think this was a move in a good direction for him, accepting his sexuality, but it didn’t last long. He went back into denial. I want to be clear in this answer that I’m not saying homosexuality was a problem for him, only his denial and shame around it. And there’s too much in the book about his sexuality to really summarize effectively here. <br /><br />
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-toL8MMjC3Fk/TqVom73645I/AAAAAAAAAj0/DQpAVFE8ngw/s1600/Kazmierczak%2BSaw.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="219" width="292" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-toL8MMjC3Fk/TqVom73645I/AAAAAAAAAj0/DQpAVFE8ngw/s320/Kazmierczak%2BSaw.jpg" /></a><b>Steve’s racism also had a conflicted feel to it, particularly since he apparently dated (and really cared for) an African American girl at one point.</b><br /><br />
I think Steve’s racism was an important part of how he was able to commit mass murder. As James Baldwin pointed out so well more than 50 years ago, you can’t be racist without hating yourself, and Steve’s final act was one of self-erasure in more ways than just his suicide and the killings, but also in staging it in the one place where he had succeeded and made something of himself. And racism is of course always conflicted. One of his college roommates reported to police that Steve struggled to recover from a former relationship with an African-American woman, a relationship that ended because of stress and strain over race. <br /><br />
<b>Steve’s interaction with the military is almost exactly the situation we saw with Jared Loughner, the Tucson shooter. They bring these young men in, determine that they have severe problems, and then discharge without notifying any other federal agency of these issues. So both are free to buy guns legally—and in Steve’s case, he’s also been taught to kill without emotion because he’s completed Basic Training.</b><br /><br />
The Army realized Steve was a danger to himself and others, so they kept him in a psychiatric ward with precautions against suicide and then dumped him in his hometown, Elk Grove Village, without any notifications to anyone that he might be a danger. I think we should consider this a criminal act and work to prevent the military from doing it. People discharged from the military in this way also should of course never be able to buy a gun. But it’s important to remember the larger problem here. Most of our mass murderers who were old enough to have served in the military did. And this is because the military teaches not only how to kill a person with a gun but also how to do that killing without feeling anything, with no emotional or psychological response. Steve explained this to his best friend. He mentioned several times that he’d been trained to kill without feeling anything, and indeed in the mass murder he committed, he appeared to feel nothing at all. The teacher in the classroom said that when Steve pointed the pistol at him, it made him think of someone who’s painting a room and realized they’ve missed a spot. <br /><br />
<b>Steve’s decision to go to NIU was a double-edged sword. On one level, it allowed him to leave his past behind to a degree and define a new, more satisfying life for himself. On another, as a therapist had warned, it allowed him to ignore his mental health issues and eventually led to a “hard crash.”</b><br /><br />
The mental health system did not serve Steve well. I think it only amplified his problems. And though one therapist did warn him against setting out too quickly, I hate to give the therapist any credit, because the fact is that Steve became worse in the mental health system, not better, and he did improve in all ways at NIU. I think there was no downside to his success at NIU, and I think if he could have stayed at NIU longer, without moving to the University of Illinois (UI), he might not ever have killed. <br /><br />
<b>The double life Steve lived at NIU is fascinating. His professors and many of his friends knew him as this quiet, incredibly polite, well groomed young man who was thoughtful, sensitive, highly intelligent, and always eager to help other students. In reality, he spent much of his time obsessing over mass shootings, playing first person shooter video games, trolling for sex on the internet, fighting with his family, and agonizing over his mental illness. Only a select few knew about this side of him.</b><br /><br />
In the book, I describe the timing and all the transitions, and the timing is very important. When these professors and friends knew him, his life actually was better. And as his life took a dive, he was more removed from them and moved away at UI. The key is that he was regressing to who he was in high school and junior high, and that former life really was perfectly shaped for mass murder. His professors and friends at NIU, with the exception of Jessica Baty, didn’t know this past, so they couldn’t get the Steve they knew to fit with this killer. There was a 5-year gap they couldn’t cross. The FOID card he acquired for buying guns legally only checked the past 5 years for mental health history, so that system also couldn’t know who he really was. Background checks obviously have to go all the way back. If we learn one simple thing from his story, it should be that. But of course the gun nuts will howl and claim we’re taking away everything American. <br /><br />
<b>In your life, you experienced a turning point when you were able to escape your teenage angst and let those emotions go. Kazmierczak seemed so close to that at one point in NIU after being given the Dean’s Award and graduating, only to fall into despondency and insanity again when he just can’t make it in a work environment and his mother dies. It’s perhaps the most tragic and powerful moment in your book—that thought of “what could have been.”</b><br /><br />
Steve had this tremendous drive to reshape himself—the true American dream—which is not really about money, but about the larger reshaping of identity and worth. And it’s amazing he could get that Deans’ Award after his terrible mental health history and the years in which it seemed he had no future at all. And I do think he almost made it. The combination, though, of his mother’s death and the move to UI was just too much. His last semester at NIU, his grades didn’t matter (they wouldn’t transfer over to UI), so he started going to the shooting range instead of classes. From my own experience of shooting things for three years after my father’s suicide—years in which I told everyone he had died of cancer since I was so ashamed of his suicide—I think that guns are a dangerous substitute. I don’t think guns are ever really about guns but always about something else; and those who want guns are in denial of that something else. <br /><br />
<b>Another fascinating discovery is that Steve was a proud NRA member who bragged about this affiliation to his friends. Steve’s comment about Illinois’ FOID licensing system is also telling, particularly since it never stopped him from buying guns: “It’s back to the days of the Hitler regime. The government is trying to track us.” He reads gun magazines, indulges conspiracy theories about Timothy McVeigh, cites <i>the Turner Diaries</i>. This kid was fully submerged in the gun culture and its extreme ideology.</b><br /><br />
Steve’s views really were right in line with the views of the pro-gun lobby, with his libertarianism, paranoid beliefs about the federal government, desire for secrecy, love of guns, interest in crime, etc., but he actually thought it was ridiculous that he was able to buy a gun legally after his terrible mental health history. He wrote a paper titled “(NO) Crazies With Guns,” and here’s an excerpt: “I have only five words for you: From my cold, dead hands. Those words spoken by Charlton Heston, and immortalized by the popular press, have come to symbolize the pro-gun lobby’s arguably firm and unshakeable ideology with respect to their opposition to anti-gun (whether real or perceived) legislation. With that being said, what if those so-called cold, dead hands happen to not only contain a firearm, but also a half-filled bottle of anti-psychotic drugs?” <br /><br />
<b>It’s a telling statement about our country that Steve and Seung-Hui Cho both purchased weapons/apparel from the same online gun dealer, Eric Thompson, who was totally unrepentant and went to Virginia Tech AFTER both tragedies to promote his business to students. You can’t help but think, too, of the t-shirts Steve wore—like the one of the handgun superimposed over the American flag.</b><br /><br />
The Glock 19, which Steve and Cho both used (and which Jared Loughner in Tucson also used), is made to kill a lot of people very reliably at close range in a short period of time. Mass murder is an American right, and there are lots of weapons to choose from: We have high-capacity handguns; short-barreled riot shotguns; assault rifles that can easily be converted to machine guns; .50-caliber sniper rifles, etc. It’s the Wild West but with better equipment. In some states, it’s now legal to wear a pistol on your hip in a bar. We just had a mass-murder in California yesterday, and we’re going to have more. One weekend while I was in DeKalb investigating, April 19-20, 2008, there were 36 separate shootings in Chicago, with 9 homicides. Weapons included an AK-47 assault rifle. Is it “media spin” to mention this? <br /><br />
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rZRGvOvwGtA/TqVopvgObrI/AAAAAAAAAkA/Q7Kb-vAOGTE/s1600/Kazmierczak.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="212" width="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rZRGvOvwGtA/TqVopvgObrI/AAAAAAAAAkA/Q7Kb-vAOGTE/s320/Kazmierczak.jpg" /></a><b>What role did high-capacity ammunition magazines play in the NIU shooting?</b><br /><br />
Steve bought several 32-round magazines for the shooting but ended up not using them. I think this was because he wanted to begin with the “shock and awe” of the shotgun first, which wouldn’t kill anyone (he was using only birdshot) but would create confusion. In order to use the shotgun first, he had to tuck the pistols away, and I think there was no way of doing that easily with the longer magazines. But the Glock 19 has a high-enough capacity standard magazine to be very deadly. It killed everyone in Steve’s shooting, and it killed most of Cho’s victims at Virginia Tech. We should of course step back a moment and wonder why we want citizens to have high-capacity magazines. In what situation do we want a citizen to be able to kill a lot of people quickly, without having to change magazines? What is the situation, exactly, that the gun nuts are imagining? Invasion by zombies is the only one I can think of. <br /><br />
<b>Steve told Jessica “If anything happens, don’t tell anyone about me.” And she hasn’t. It’s obvious in the book that disturbs you deeply. It’s the moment in <i>The Last Day on Earth</i> where it’s clear this book is personal to you. Your fury at her is barely veiled, and you go as far as to suggest that she is as mentally ill as he was. It’s almost as if you’re bitter at these people—Jessica and many of Steve’s other NIU friends—for defending someone they considered a friend even after he takes so many innocent lives in a cold-blooded way, even after all the facts about Steve’s past are laid bare to them. And yet even you express sympathy for Steve in the last two lines of your book.</b><br /><br />
I do have sympathy for all who were affected by Steve’s shooting, including Jessica. And as I mention in the book, I have sympathy for her especially because of the Valentine’s Day gifts he sent to her, one of them an engagement ring. She thought she was going to be proposed to, and instead he committed mass murder. But I don’t like lies, so I don’t like that she lied to me and tried to cover up the story. I don’t have any negative feelings toward his professors and fellow grad students at NIU. They really didn’t know who he was. He had reinvented himself in the previous five years and kept his past a secret from them. And I certainly have full sympathy for anyone going through suicide bereavement. I have sympathy, also, for Steve, who really struggled and almost succeeding in escaping his terrible past, and I think the end must have been bitter to him. But of course our sympathies in the end have to be with his victims—including the larger community affected—and by the time I finished writing the book, I couldn’t help but think of Steve as a monster, despite all my attempts to remain sympathetic. He planned the killing at least 11 days in advance, and he was chirpy in his emails and such right up to the end, so that makes him a monster. <br /><br />
<b>It’s interesting that the owner of Tony’s Guns & Ammo, the place where Steve purchased some of his guns & ammo, voluntarily surrendered his Federal Firearms License after the murders. To your knowledge, what were the police or ATF investigating him for at that point?</b><br /><br />
It seems it was because Steve traded in his old guns at the store and Tony didn’t report this to police. I think it’s possible the ATF is hiding something, too, since their initial reports and all witness reports are consistent with a Remington 870 shotgun but they later claimed it was a Sportsman 48 (and perhaps this is what Tony put on the sales form). Perhaps they were just covering up the fact that gun forms could go through with the wrong model listed, or perhaps I just don’t have the full information, but it’s very strange. <br /><br />
<b>What ultimately can we take from Kazmierczak’s story? Is there anything positive to learn from this tragedy? Could it have been prevented?</b><br /><br />
If the FOID card had checked lifelong mental health history instead of just five years of history, I think the shooting could have prevented, because I don’t believe Steve would have obtained firearms illegally. There are many other lessons we could learn from this shooting, also, as I’ve described above in answer to other questions. Because I had access to the full 1,500 pages of the police file, we have a very complete portrait that can help us identify risk factors. But the biggest risk factors (such as gun ownership, libertarianism, poverty, former military service, an interest in horror movies, etc.) are major currents in American culture, so unless we can change our entire nation in fundamental ways, we should expect many more shootings to come. One positive part about Steve’s story is seeing how close education came to preventing the shooting. Education does lead people away from all of the risk factors.</p>
stopgunviolencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806648144323303424noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420740688947057.post-13281647607304826062011-07-11T06:25:00.000-07:002012-03-15T09:36:10.286-07:00Getting to Know "Doc" Holliday<p class="MsoNormal">One of the great legends of the American Old West surrounds the 1881 shootout at the O.K. Corrall. The “winners” of this gun battle against the Clanton-McLaury gang—the Earp brothers and John Henry “Doc” Holliday—are still household names today because of popular films like “Tombstone” (1993) and “Wyatt Earp” (1994) and two recent books: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Last-Gunfight-Shootout-K-Corral/dp/1439154244">“The Last Gunfight” by Jeff Guinn</a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Doc-Novel-Mary-Doria-Russell/dp/1400068045/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1310344291&sr=1-1">“Doc” by Mary Doria Russell</a>.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JvPW75fpEqc/Thr8dw-nlMI/AAAAAAAAAio/1Bmv8Wnx7Vw/s1600/Mary%2BDoria%2BRussell.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 246px; height: 320px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JvPW75fpEqc/Thr8dw-nlMI/AAAAAAAAAio/1Bmv8Wnx7Vw/s320/Mary%2BDoria%2BRussell.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5628088272646804674" /></a>We were fortunate to catch up with <a href="http://www.marydoriarussell.net/">Mary Doria Russell</a> to ask her some questions about her new novel and the fascinating life of her lead character. Mary is the author of four previous best-sellers: <i>The Sparrow</i>, <i>Children of God</i>, <i>A Thread of Grace</i>, and <i>Dreamers of the Day</i>. Because of her historical knowledge about the Old West, and her familiarity with law enforcement (having grown up the daughter of a sheriff), she was able to provide valuable insight into the issue of gun violence and gun laws in the U.S. today.<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><br /><br />What attracted you to the character of Doc Holliday?<br /><br /></b>I’m always interested borderlands, and in people who cross boundaries and defy categories. The characters in my novels are often migrants or foreigners, half-castes or marginal natives who don’t quite fit the place they're in and who have developed a somewhat distanced and ironic view of their world.<br /><br />John Henry Holliday certainly fits that pattern, but it's important to realize that he was a real person—not just a fictional character—and he'd beaten some formidable odds simply by surviving infancy. He was born in Griffin, Georgia, in 1851 with a cleft palate and a cleft lip. His uncle, Dr. John Stiles Holliday, performed a successful surgical repair of that birth defect, although the achievement was kept private to protect the family's reputation for “good breeding”—a term taken literally until quite recently. [Editor’s Note: Mary has established the Doc Holliday Memorial Fund at The Smile Train, an organization that provides free cleft palate and cleft lip surgeries to children around the world. To contribute, go to <a href="http://www.marydoriarussell.net/">www.MaryDoriaRussell.net</a> and click on DONATE]. When the toddler began to talk, it was obvious that he would have a significant speech impediment, so his mother developed a form of speech therapy to improve his diction. Alice Holliday was also an accomplished pianist who began her son's lessons as soon as he could reach the keyboard.<br /><br />The Hollidays were Georgia gentry, and John Henry was meant to be a minor aristocrat in a South that ceased to exist after the Civil War. Instead he went to the best dental school in the North, earning the degree of Doctor of Dental Surgery when he was still only 20 years old. He was a skilled and serious professional who expected to live a quiet life in the East but just as he was beginning to establish his adult life, he was diagnosed with advanced pulmonary tuberculosis. So he went West in 1873, at the age of 22, hoping that the dry air and sunshine of the Great American Desert would restore his health.<br /><br />Talk about crossing borders and never truly really fitting in!<br /><br />In the movies, the “legendary gambler and gunman Doc Holliday” usually arrives in town with a bad reputation and a hooker named Big Nose Kate. The real John Henry Holliday had studied the Greek and Latin classics as well as rhetoric, history and mathematics. At the Philadelphia College of Dental Surgery, his coursework included metallurgy, chemistry, physiology, gross anatomy, dental histology, oral pathology, in addition to surgical practicum. Plus, he played classical piano!<br /><br />Now, few of us have read Homer or Virgil in the original languages, but at least we've seen the movie “Troy” on television! We may not be able to play Chopin or Beethoven, but most of us know who they were. So if we'd been dropped into Dodge City in 1878, our frame of reference would be more like Doc Holliday's than Wyatt Earp's. With John Henry Holliday as the focus of the novel, I was able to write in a very different way about the frontier. That was the era of Western boomtowns and cattle drives and pioneers, but also of Tolstoy and Dickens and Flaubert, of the ballet “Coppelia” and the opera “Carmen.” Rockefeller had founded Standard Oil. Electric lights and the phonograph and the telephone were developed about the time that Doc Holliday met Wyatt Earp in Dodge City. John Henry Holliday's knowledge and sensibilities bridge those worlds for us. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><br /><br />How did Doc Holliday—an educated, talented, skilled man—become involved with violence and gunplay?<br /><br /></b>Reluctantly, and as rarely as possible! Keep in mind that this was a sick young man, a six-footer who never weighed much more than 150 and was closer to 100 pounds when he died at just 36. One of the few true things Bat Masterson said about John Henry Holliday was that Doc “could not have whipped a healthy 15-year-old boy in a go-as-you-please fistfight.” As Doc himself told Wyatt Earp, “The only time I'm not nervous is when I'm working on someone's teeth.”<br /><br />I believe Doc initially played up his dangerousness. Today, the same sort of scared, skinny boy in a rough neighborhood might try to seem more “gangsta” than he is. As time went on, however, Doc's reputation took on a life of its own. After the gunfight in Tombstone, the journalists of his day invented “The Infamous Gunman and Gambler Doc Holliday,” a character who could sell a lot more newspapers than Dr. John Henry Holliday, D.D.S.<br /><br /><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">There is so much mythology surrounding Holliday's marksmanship and the shootout at the O.K. Corral. How much of it is accurate?</b><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.amazon.com/Doc-Novel-Mary-Doria-Russell/dp/1400068045/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1310395410&sr=8-1"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-chUqT9aiB-4/ThsLGG1jRyI/AAAAAAAAAjA/5kWv1RPiyW0/s320/Doc.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5628104358871910178" /></a>The mythology isn't accurate, and neither was Doc! The most careful biographers—the ones who've gone over court records and contemporaneous newspaper reports to verify or debunk all the accusations—believe that John Henry Holliday was in five confirmed shooting affrays in his 15 years in the West.<br /><br />At 3:00 A.M. on New Year’s Day in 1875, he and Charles Austin fired their pistols within Dallas city limits. While the peace was disturbed, neither man was hurt.<br /><br />When Doc was 25, he was attacked and seriously wounded by Henry Kahn after a quarrel over cards, which Kahn started. Recovery took five months, and Doc needed a walking stick off and on for the rest of his life.<br /><br />In 1880, a year before the famous gunfight, he got into an argument with the gambler Johnny Tyler over who was allowed to run card games in which Tombstone saloons. Milt Joyce decided to end the argument by picking Doc up bodily and flinging him into the street. Infuriated, Doc obtained a gun (it was illegal to carry one in Tombstone), returned to the saloon and emptied the revolver, hitting Joyce in the palm and a bartender in the big toe. I'm not downplaying those injuries—Milt Joyce almost lost the hand, and the bartender was lamed—but they are hardly evidence of deadly accuracy.<br /><br />During the 1881 gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Tom McLaury was hit in the chest by a shotgun blast at a distance of six feet; he is believed to be the only man John Henry Holliday ever killed. Again, accuracy was not an issue when the weapon is a scattergun at two yards.<br /><br />Finally, in 1884, Billy Allen threatened to kill Doc over a $5 loan that Doc—destitute and very ill—couldn't pay back on time. When Allen came after him, Doc defended himself with a pistol, wounding Allen in the right upper arm, at close range. Doc feared for his life, so I'm guessing he didn't deliberately try to “wing” Allen. I think that was just the best he could do. At 122 pounds, he was sick and shaky; the pistol was heavy for him. It's important to note that Doc did everything he could to avoid that confrontation, including asking for an extension on the loan and then appealing to the Leadville, Colorado police for protection from Allen. They declined to get involved until after the shooting.<br /><br />Allen went down and if it were a movie, Doc would have “finished the job.” In real life, with Allen disabled, he allowed himself to be arrested without protest and stood trial for attempted murder. Doc pointed out in court that Allen outweighed him by 50 pounds, and noted, “If he'd got hold of me, I'd have been a child in his hands.” The jury could see that was true, and quickly acquitted Holliday on grounds of self-defense.<br /><br />That's it. Everything else is fiction. And no, he didn't really knife a guy, as depicted in the movie “Tombstone.”As his long-time companion Kate Harony wrote of Doc, “Being quiet, he never hunted trouble.”<br /><br />Kate also disputed Doc's reputation as a drinker. “He was not a drunkard. He always kept a bottle near, but when he needed something for his pain, he would only take a small drink.” Bourbon is, in fact, effective for calming a cough and also helped mute the chest and bone pain he suffered throughout his adult life. Tuberculosis is an awful disease.<br /><br /><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">Americans typically think of “the Wild West” as a place where gun laws were weak and permissive. Is that what you found in your research for the novel Doc?</b><br /><br />Well, it depends on when and where you're talking about. Typically, western boomtowns mushroomed into existence in a place that was generating gigantic piles of cash—the buffalo killing fields; gold and silver mining camps; a railroad under construction, etc. For the first two to three years in these places, there was a total absence of law just when the population consisted of minimally educated, testosterone-driven young men, most of whom had a family history of what we consider violent abuse today, but which came under the heading of “Spare the rod, spoil the child” back then. <br /><br />Huge quantities of alcohol were made available by enterprising entrepreneurs, and there were few recreational alternatives to drinking. Whores, mostly young runaways or orphans, were vastly outnumbered and frequently fought over. Boredom, simmering rancor and the assiduous cultivation of grudges led to manly moments of indignation. Disagreements were likely to get physical. And the entire country was awash in firearms after the Civil War. <br /><br />Then, as now, enraged young men used what came easily to hand. So it's true that in those first couple of years in any given settlement, there was a lot of gun violence and many deaths, though stand-up shoot-outs in the street are almost entirely a movie fantasy (the gunfight at the O.K. Corral was one of very few such fights in real life). Frontier shootings were nearly always the result of momentary fury, drunken foolishness, or plain clumsiness in a place where guns were as common as trousers. <br /><br />Soon, however, a city government would be organized by local businessmen, who noticed that dead men make poor customers. In Dodge City, for example, it was illegal to discharge firearms within the city limits except on the Fourth of July and New Year's Day. The rest of the year, when you came into town, you were required to surrender your firearms in the first place you entered. Most public buildings had peg racks for the purpose and you were given a claim number; when you left town again, you could retrieve your gun. If you were discovered to be carrying a gun, and the police officer decided you were not on your way in or out of town, you would be arrested, jailed and fined. The police commonly pistol-whipped anyone who showed the slightest sign of resistance to being disarmed. Concussions must have been epidemic, but that was considered more humane than shooting the idiot.<br /><br />During the cattle boom of the 1870s and '80s, all the Kansas cow towns had gun control ordinances, and those laws were enforced by men like Virgil, Wyatt and Morgan Earp; Ed, Bat and Jim Masterson; by Bill Tilghman and Dave Mather. They all had formidable reputations. Their presence on the police force made these laws stick, despite the fact that the towns were seasonally flooded by thousands of young cowboys with no head for liquor, intent on blowing three months' wages as quickly as possible in saloons, gambling halls, and brothels.<br /><br />And while the gunfight in Tombstone had many causes, what finally set it off that afternoon was a misdemeanor: carrying firearms inside city limits.<br /><br /><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">Wyatt Earp is purported to have written, “Doc was a dentist not a lawman or an assassin, whom necessity made a gambler.” Do you agree with that assessment?</b><br /><br />The whole quote is “Doc [Holliday] was a dentist whom necessity had made a gambler; a gentleman whom disease had made a frontier vagabond; a philosopher whom life had made a caustic wit; a long lean ash-blond fellow nearly dead with consumption, and at the same time the most skillful gambler and the nerviest, speediest, deadliest man with a gun that I ever knew.”<br /><br />I suspect that whole quote is bogus, although Wyatt always defended Doc's good character. You can usually tell when a ghostwriter or a journalist put a colorful quote in Wyatt's mouth. Wyatt was not well educated and not terribly articulate.<br /><br />If you want an authentic quote about Doc Holliday, I believe this one by Virgil Earp, who said, “Tales were told that [Doc] had murdered men in different parts of the country, that he had robbed and committed all kinds of crimes, and yet when people were asked how they knew it, they could only admit it was hearsay, and nothing of the kind could really be traced up to Doc's account.”<br /><br />Unlike Wyatt and Morgan, Virgil never really warmed to Doc, but he was a fair man and that's a fair statement. Everyone who really knew Doc agreed that he was a fine dentist, a quiet person who bore his illness with fortitude, and a gentleman who was grateful for the smallest kindness when he was ill. And he was generous when he tipped!<br /><br /><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">Holliday was once asked if his killings had ever gotten on his conscience and was reported to have said, “I coughed my conscience up with my lungs, years ago.” But Kate Harony, his long-time companion, remembered a different Doc Holliday, saying that after the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, he came back to their room and wept.<br /><br /></b><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nBsLBC5kWis/Thr8hetsUxI/AAAAAAAAAiw/fJX_l6z9Bjc/s1600/Doc%2BHolliday.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 295px; height: 320px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nBsLBC5kWis/Thr8hetsUxI/AAAAAAAAAiw/fJX_l6z9Bjc/s320/Doc%2BHolliday.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5628088336463450898" /></a>Again, the quote about Doc’s conscience is probably bogus. But, yes, Kate wrote that he came back to their room after the gunfight, sat on the side of the bed, and said over and over, “This is awful. This is just awful.” That was his private reaction to the only killing he ever did.<br /><br />He was also horrified when the incident made national news. Soon after the gunfight, he wired his family in Georgia to assure them that he had been deputized before the event and was acting within the law, but the damage was done. The papers identified him as a professional gambler, and that was something he'd hidden from his family for years.<br /><br />It's hard for us to understand now, but in those days, a professional gambler was beyond the pale. As John Henry Holliday's cousin Margaret Mitchell wrote in <i>Gone with the Wind, </i>“A man could gamble himself to poverty and still be a gentleman, but a professional gambler could never be anything but an outcast.” When John Henry Holliday's father found out his son was gambling professionally, he never spoke his son's name again. The Hollidays were besieged by reporters after the Tombstone event, and began to run them off by claiming that they were no relation to that man.<br /><br />That was devastating for John Henry. He was profoundly ashamed of how his life turned out, but really—what were his alternatives? He'd arrived on the frontier just as the Crash of 1873 sent the country into a depression that lasted for years. Who had money for dental care? It was play cards, beg, steal, or starve in the street. So he played cards.<br /><br /><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">How did their participation in violence affect Holliday and the Earp family?</b><br /><br />That's a difficult question to answer. And I'm not sure I should try, in the context of an interview like this. As a novelist, I can draw plausible conclusions about the mental states of the people I write about, but it's all conjecture.<br /><br />We know that Nicholas Earp beat the daylights out of all his sons, and that had a big effect on all of them. Beaten boys often repeat the cycle: bullying others and abusing their own kids. Sometimes, however, they rebel against the abuse by becoming protective of others. Such men are often drawn to law enforcement, and the Earp brothers follow that pattern.<br /><br />We also know that the older brothers—Newton, James and Virgil—served in the Union army during the Civil War. James was horribly wounded in battle and lost the use of his left arm. Newton and Virgil served until the end of the war. We now know that post-traumatic stress is common among combat veterans, but the older brothers' lives are not well documented and in any case, the symptoms of PTSD would not have been mentioned in their time. Wyatt, Morgan and Warren Earp were too young to enlist, as was John Henry Holliday, who was just 13 when the war ended. As mentioned above, he was severely injured and permanently lamed in 1877; we may presume that a gunshot wound like that would have had significant emotional aftereffects as well.<br /><br />We do know, however, that the gunfight at the O.K. Corral changed the lives of everyone who participated—even peripherally—and all for the worse.<br /><br />Tom and Frank McLaury were killed, as was Billy Clanton. Virgil and Morgan Earp were seriously wounded, and John Henry Holliday was grazed by a bullet; Wyatt was unscathed physically. Ike Clanton lost a beloved brother, and filed murder charges against the Earps and Holliday, who were only exonerated because—quite frankly—Wyatt and Virgil seem to have perjured themselves to protect Morgan and Doc. Sheriff John Behan has been denigrated as a coward and a conniver ever since the incident, and the men on both sides of the fight have been vilified for over a century.<br /><br />Vendettas happen when people do not believe that the police or the courts can be relied on to serve justice. No justice, no peace. I think that is what happened in Arizona. Friends of those who died during the shoot-out decided the law wasn't going to punish the killers, so they took it on themselves. Virgil Earp was ambushed; a shotgun blast destroyed his arm. Morgan was shot in the back and died in Wyatt's arms. In reaction, Wyatt, Doc and several others hunted down those they held responsible for crippling Virgil and murdering Morgan. The Earp posse wore badges at the time, but Wyatt was certain the men would not be convicted if he brought them in for trial, so he gunned them down personally. We'd call those deaths “extra-judicial executions” today.<br /><br />Wyatt was led to believe he'd be pardoned by the territorial governor, but that never happened. All the men in the Earp posse were wanted for murder the rest of their lives and had to flee across the Arizona border. Any arrest elsewhere could have resulted in extradition to Arizona, where they might be tried for murder, if not lynched. Direct retaliation was a constant threat for all of them. And they all had to deal with their (now deserved) reputation as killers.<br /><br />For the next 50 years, Wyatt was suspicious of anyone who approached him. Even the little kids were unwelcome because he suspected “they just wanted to shake the hand of a killer.” Wyatt lived into his 80s, long enough to see the gunfight in Tombstone be turned into movie entertainment. He was really bitter about that.<br /><br /><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">What would the Earp brothers have thought of contemporary laws that allow cursorily screened individuals with a day-class in training (if that) to carry loaded, concealed handguns into bars?</b><br /><br />I suspect Virgil would have snorted, "Idiots making laws for idiots..."<br /><br />Wyatt might have thought, "That's going to set public order back 150 years."<br /><br />And Morgan would have told Doc, "You've got to be more careful now. I can't always be around to protect you."<br /><br /><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">Have you or your family been impacted by gun violence or the threat of it?</b><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-npIbXh8g7p0/Thr8kk3YW8I/AAAAAAAAAi4/A-XHEcGUYqU/s1600/OK%2BCorral.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 194px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-npIbXh8g7p0/Thr8kk3YW8I/AAAAAAAAAi4/A-XHEcGUYqU/s320/OK%2BCorral.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5628088389654305730" /></a>Well, now, my father was a career cop. He was an MP in the Marines during the occupation of Japan, and later a village constable, a county deputy in a cruiser, a plain clothes detective, and an undercover narcotics officer. He also served five terms as the sheriff of DuPage County in Illinois, just west of Chicago. So I grew up with guns and cops. Police work was dinner table conversation in our house.<br /><br />But I should point out that my father never once fired his gun in anger. That's typical. Most cops go their whole careers without pulling a trigger except at the gun range. If they do shoot someone, they're taken off active duty, there's an investigation, and every decision they ever made comes under scrutiny by people who have no idea what that job is really like.<br /><br />Believe nothing you see in the movies or on TV. Nothing.<br /><br /><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">Do you still own a gun or have one in your house?<br /><br /></b>My dad always wanted me to keep a pistol in the house “for protection.” I always told him, “I believe in statistics. Any bullet fired in the middle of the night by a startled, stupefied homeowner is more likely to hit a family member, a pet, or a neighbor in the house next door than an alert intruder.”<br /><br />A few years ago, my father—an ex-Marine, career policeman, five-term sheriff—was showing a pistol to one of the grandkids. It went off and the bullet went through the sliding glass door and into the neighbor's back yard. Dad was stunned and said, as people always do, “I was sure the gun wasn't loaded.”<br /><br />It was: Q.E.D.<br /><br />So no guns in my house. But I have a very ferocious dachshund.</p>stopgunviolencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806648144323303424noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420740688947057.post-60141688581332161742011-06-20T08:16:00.000-07:002012-03-15T09:36:23.573-07:00The Inconsistent Insurrectionist<p class="MsoNormal">Though Stephen Colbert and his political satire show <i>The Colbert Report</i> are found on Comedy Central, they occasionally provide serious and noteworthy news missed by the major media networks. Such was the case on June 7 when Colbert aired a segment focusing on comments made by U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) on Sean Hannity’s radio show on May 27.<br />In that conversation with Hannity, Paul stated:<br /><blockquote><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UBEKOLqTSJY/Tf-OCU5JWNI/AAAAAAAAAig/8JFfH7PBgWE/s1600/pauls%2Bcomments.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 222px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UBEKOLqTSJY/Tf-OCU5JWNI/AAAAAAAAAig/8JFfH7PBgWE/s400/pauls%2Bcomments.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5620367030600947922" /></a><a href="http://libertymaven.com/2011/05/27/rand-paul-fearless-superstar-of-liberty/11675/">I would say the reason we failed in Ft. Hood is people who were mentioning that this man was either unstable or was radicalized to a radical form of Islam. People knew that and that’s what we need to target our resources towards—people who would attack us—and not spend time searching and patting down 6 year olds ... I’m not for profiling people on the color of their skin, or on their religion, but I would take into account where they’ve been traveling and perhaps you might have to indirectly take into account whether or not they’ve been going to radical political speeches by religious leaders but it wouldn’t be that they are Islamic. But if someone is attending speeches from someone who is promoting the violent overthrow of our government, that’s really an offense that we should be going after. They should be deported or put in prison.</a></blockquote><br /><p class="MsoNormal">Sen. Paul then doubled down on his comments at a <a href="http://www.courier-journal.com/videonetwork/974726996001/Sen-Rand-Paul-talks-about-terror-suspects-in-Bowling-Green">press conference</a> in Bowling Green, Kentucky, on June 3:<br /><blockquote><a href="http://www.courier-journal.com/videonetwork/974726996001/Sen-Rand-Paul-talks-about-terror-suspects-in-Bowling-Green">I think we’ve taken too much of the approach that everyone is a possible terrorist … We are not spending enough specific time on those who are coming from certain countries … I want targeted action towards terrorism … We’re…searching millions of innocent Americans and wasting time on that, and not doing a thorough job on those who are coming from these Middle Eastern countries who I think need to be thoroughly vetted before they enter our country.<br /></a></blockquote><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-sJLCNUGVNko/Tf-K58e_OUI/AAAAAAAAAiY/7gB47bJeL5w/s1600/wanted%2Bfor%2Blistening.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 324px; height: 184px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-sJLCNUGVNko/Tf-K58e_OUI/AAAAAAAAAiY/7gB47bJeL5w/s400/wanted%2Bfor%2Blistening.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5620363588074944834" /></a><p class="MsoNormal">But if Paul truly believes that anyone who attends speeches “promoting the violent overthrow of our government…should be deported or put in prison,” then he, too, should begin packing his bags. Colbert pointed to Paul’s attendance at the <a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/201104130021">Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot</a> in Westpoint, Kentucky in April of this year, where the lead singer of the band Pokerface gave the following speech:<br /><blockquote><a href="http://www.hulu.com/watch/247847/the-colbert-report-the-word-hear-no-evil#s-p4-sr-i1">[Obama] is basically the exclamation point on the globalist takeover of the United States ... Too many of us are waking up and too many are heavily armed. They are going to push and we are going to shove back. The second American Revolution will commence.</a></blockquote><br /><p class="MsoNormal">Violence against government was certainly the fad at Knob Creek, with vendors selling a wide range of “<a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/201104130021">Militia literature</a>,” including the <i>U.S. Militiaman's Handbook</i>, “<a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/201104130021">a step-by-step guide for ‘R-2,’ the second American Revolution</a>.” Here’s one excerpt from the handbook: "<a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/201104130021">When municipal, township, county, or local area law enforcement agents attack or seek to confine or control the U.S. Militia or its individual members, those agencies should be totally eliminated in the initial attack ... Do not allow any law enforcement agents to escape. Kill them all</a>."<br /><br />Then there was March 27, 2010, when Sen. Paul attended and spoke at a Second Amendment Rally in Frankfort, Kentucky where a Congressional candidate named Matt Locket made a speech openly embracing insurrectionist ideology. Citing Federalist Alexander Hamilton (who would have found his ideas treasonous at best), Locket said: <br /><blockquote><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nUv2xs6gmIo/TeWMPKSSYFI/AAAAAAAACpk/IZEttUMc4No/s400/rand+militia+3.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 212px; height: 320px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nUv2xs6gmIo/TeWMPKSSYFI/AAAAAAAACpk/IZEttUMc4No/s400/rand+militia+3.JPG" border="0" alt="" /></a><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUnRCbNKflQ&feature=related">We cannot stand by and let our rights to firearms be taken away ... Alexander Hamilton...states clearly that there exists the right of self-defense against a tyrannical government and it includes people with their arms ... Are we there or are we close to a tyrannical government? ... We need to tell the government...to fear us because it’s we the people that are in charge—not them!</a></blockquote><br /><p class="MsoNormal">And Rand Paul has made his own share of not-so-subtle threats toward our government. In June 2010, he attended a gun show in Louisville and said, “<a href="http://www.fox41.com/story/12640051/only-on-fox-rand-paul-at-gun-show?redirected=true">We must be ever vigilant of our Second Amendment rights. We must continually remind Washington that a majority cannot vote to take away our Second Amendment rights</a>.” At the Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot in August 2009, Paul made bizarre, paranoid comments about “Big Brother” and the enforcement of U.S. gun laws: <blockquote><a href="http://thetruthaboutguns.com/2010/06/robert-farago/republican-u-s-senate-candidate-rand-paul-hearts-guns/">They can come into your house. They can plant listening devices in your house ... And let’s say they happen to be in your house snooping about something they thought you said something bad about the government and they find you’ve disabled your trigger locks or you’ve maybe done something to your guns that they say is illegal ... This is not to say we’re all criminals and afraid of the government, but we want our privacy.</a></blockquote><br /><p class="MsoNormal">Later in the same speech, he hypothesized that Americans could elect the next Adolf Hitler if they fail to remain “vigilant”:<br /><blockquote><a href="http://thetruthaboutguns.com/2010/06/robert-farago/republican-u-s-senate-candidate-rand-paul-hearts-guns/">If we get economic calamity even worse than we have now, you will lose your rights if you’re not vigilant and watch. What happened in Germany when the Weimar Republic printed up so much money you could carry it around in wheelbarrows? There was a collapse and they actually voted in a Hitler. You could get something like that in our country if we’re not careful and vigilant.</a></blockquote><br /><p class="MsoNormal">It seems clear from Sen. Paul’s statements that he’s particularly concerned about potential violence against our government by Muslims. And he has no problem with our government going after them aggressively—civil rights be damned. When it comes to the Senator’s white, gun-toting, government-hating friends who are ready to launch a bloody revolution, however, all bets are off. Any U.S. government that would address <a href="http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/rightwing.pdf"><i>that threat</i></a> is akin to a mass murdering dictator who butchered six million people.<br /><br />Unfortunately for Paul, you can’t embrace a double standard and say that the threat of political violence is justified depending on one’s citizenship status or religion. You either believe that political violence is legitimate in our democracy or you don’t. Our Founding Fathers certainly stood in the latter camp.stopgunviolencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806648144323303424noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420740688947057.post-15171461848022603192011-06-09T08:43:00.000-07:002012-03-15T09:36:38.973-07:00Al Qaeda: "America is absolutely awash with easily obtainable firearms."<p class="MsoNormal">The assassination of Al Qaeda’s mastermind, Osama bin Laden, demonstrated that the U.S. government can act with great resilience when it comes to combating terrorism. But a new <a href="http://mediamatters.org/embed/clips/2011/06/03/17319/gadahnterrorvid">Al Qaeda video</a> released on jihadi websites last Friday provides a terrifyingly simple blueprint for mass murder that should have all Americans deeply concerned. In the video message, Adam Gadahn, an American-born Al Qaeda spokesman, calls on Muslims to purchase firearms at American gun shows and engage in one-man “lone wolf” operations to target “<a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/al-qaeda-video-buy-automatic-weapons-start-shooting/story?id=13704264">enemies of Islam</a>,” “<a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/al-qaeda-video-buy-automatic-weapons-start-shooting/story?id=13704264">major institutions</a>” and “<a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/al-qaeda-video-buy-automatic-weapons-start-shooting/story?id=13704264">influential public figures</a>” in the United States.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cU0WD37EXhk/TfDxKqF0VeI/AAAAAAAAAhI/YIT5espKFlA/s1600/abc_gadahn_jef_110603_wg.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 180px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cU0WD37EXhk/TfDxKqF0VeI/AAAAAAAAAhI/YIT5espKFlA/s320/abc_gadahn_jef_110603_wg.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5616253900730684898" border="0" /></a>Gadahn, who has been on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted Terrorists List for over ten years, instructed would-be terrorists as follows:<br /><blockquote>America is absolutely awash with easily obtainable firearms. You can go down to a gun show at the local convention center and come away with a fully automatic assault rifle, without a background check, and most likely without having to show an identification card. So what are you waiting for?</blockquote><br /><p class="MsoNormal">Gadahn was describing what is known as the “<a href="http://www.csgv.org/issues-and-campaigns/gun-show-loophole">Gun Show Loophole</a>,” which allows anyone—including terrorists—to walk into an American gun show and buy firearms from an unlicensed seller without undergoing a criminal background check. Under current federal law, anyone “engaged in the business” of dealing firearms must obtain a Federal Firearms License (FFL), conduct background checks on purchasers, and keep a record of all gun sales. Private individuals not “engaged in the business” of dealing firearms (e.g., those who sell guns as a “hobby” or from their private collections), however, are not subject to any of these requirements. Because there is no paper trail associated with private sales, law enforcement has no way of monitoring them.<br /><br />Unfortunately, the Gun Show Loophole remains fully or partially open in 33 states today. The National Rifle Association (NRA) has always insisted that the loophole is a “<a href="http://www.nraila.org/media/misc/fables.html">fable</a>,” in spite of acknowledging that there are individuals “<a href="http://www.nraila.org/media/misc/fables.html">who occasionally [sell] firearms under limited circumstances</a>” that are “<a href="http://www.nraila.org/media/misc/fables.html">not required to obtain the federal license…or to complete a background check</a>.” The NRA’s relentless fight against closing the loophole began in the immediate wake of the Columbine massacre in 1999, despite the fact that teenage killer made it clear that, “<a href="http://csgv2.blogspot.com/2009/11/point-of-no-return.html">The biggest gaping hole is that the background checks are only required for licensed dealers...not private dealers</a>.”<br /><br />The NRA’s opposition to closing the Gun Show Loophole is not shared by its membership, however. In a <a href="http://www.mayorsagainstillegalguns.org/html/media-center/washington_121009.shtml">survey</a> of 832 gun owners, including 401 NRA members, Republican pollster <a href="http://www.luntzglobal.com/team.php">Frank Luntz</a> and <a href="http://www.mayorsagainstillegalguns.org/html/home/home.shtml">Mayors Against Illegal Guns</a> found that 69% of NRA members favored "requiring all gun sellers at gun shows to conduct criminal background checks of the people buying guns." Overall, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/realpolitic/gabrielle-giffords-remind_n_854791_86321905.html">86% of Americans favor closing the Gun Show Loophole.</a><br /><br />The Gun Show Loophole is not the only weak link in America’s gun laws abetting terrorists. Fears concerning the “<a href="http://www.mayorsagainstillegalguns.org/html/federal/terror_gap.shtml">Terror Gap</a>” have also resurfaced with the new Al Qaeda video. While those on the FBI’s Terrorist Watch List are currently prevented from boarding airplanes, they are free to purchase all the firearms they want at American gun stores and gun shows. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has reported that <a href="http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d10703t.pdf">between 2004 and 2010, suspected terrorists purchased guns on 1,119 occasions</a>.<br /><br />There have been numerous attempts in Congress to address the Terror Gap, but none have been successful. Most recently, on May 12, 21 Republicans* on the House Judiciary Committee <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/security/2011/05/12/176607/republicans-terror-watch-list-guns/">killed an amendment</a> that would have prevented firearms sales to those on the Terrorist Watch List.<br /><br />These Republican votes reflect the sentiments of the NRA, which opposes efforts to close the “Terror Gap,” claiming they would “<a href="http://www.nraila.org/Legislation/Read.aspx?ID=6817">deny a constitutionally protected, fundamental, individual right to keep and bear arms without due process of law</a>.” <a href="http://www.mayorsagainstillegalguns.org/html/media-center/washington_121009.shtml">Luntz’s survey</a> again indicates that the NRA is not representing the views of its membership, as 82% of NRA members support closing the “Terror Gap.”<br /><br />According to a spokesman for the Justice Department, the Obama administration “<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/07/white-house-taking-seriously-al-qaeda-gun-show_n_872413.html">supports closing the gun show loophole</a>.” But Americans shouldn’t have to wait for a terrorist to open fire in a shopping mall or a corporate headquarters for terrorist violence to be thwarted. Will Adam Gadahn’s eye-opening message to terrorists be enough for legislators to “connect the dots” and take action? We should all hope so.<br /><br />* The <a href="http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2011_rpt/fisa-reauth.html">21 Republicans</a> who voted “No” on the amendment were: Smith, Sensenbrenner, Coble, Gallegly, Goodlatte, Lungren, Chabot, Issa, Pence, Forbes, Franks, Gohmert, Jordan, Poe, Chaffetz, Griffin, Marino, Gowdy, Ross, Adams, Quayle.</p>stopgunviolencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806648144323303424noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420740688947057.post-36634684132551180112011-05-25T08:35:00.000-07:002012-03-15T09:36:52.768-07:00Capitol Hill Champions of NRA “Values”<p class="MsoNormal">On May 12, the Senate Ethics Committee asked federal agencies to investigate a former colleague, saying they had found “<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ethics-committee-to-unveil-ensign-probe-findings-in-senate-speeches/2011/05/12/AFhRvA0G_story.html">substantial and credible evidence</a>” that Nevada Republican John Ensign broke federal laws while trying to cover up an extramarital affair with a former campaign aide. The <a href="http://ethics.senate.gov/downloads/pdffiles/Public%20Report_Preliminary%20Inquiry%20into%20the%20matter%20of%20Sen%20Ensign.pdf">75-page report</a> from the committee came just two weeks after Ensign <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/21/john-ensign-resigns-reports_n_852285.html">hurriedly resigned his Senate seat</a> in the midst of the ethics probe.<br /><br />Ensign now joins a growing list of National Rifle Association (NRA) champions on Capitol Hill who have been tarnished and/or ruined by extramarital sex scandals. For an organization that trumpets its “<a href="http://www.nraam.org/events/cavfe.html">celebration of American values</a>,” it smacks of cynicism and hypocrisy. The following is a rogues’ gallery of these NRA stalwarts:<br><br /><ol><li><b>Former Senator John Ensign (R-NV): </b>When the NRA decided to torpedo a District of Columbia voting rights bills in February 2009, <a href="http://csgv2.blogspot.com/2009/03/dangerous-gambit.html">it was Senator John Ensign to whom they turned</a>. Ensign introduced an <a href="http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=111&session=1&vote=00072" target="new">amendment to the “D.C. House Voting Rights Act”</a> that would have gutted the District’s gun laws and prevented the D.C. Council from legislating on firearms in the future. As one D.C. resident put it at the time: “<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/02/AR2009030202311.html">If this amendment becomes law, it would make me frightened to work and live in a city that has been my home for thirteen years</a>.” Unfortunately, the Ensign Amendment was the perfect “poison pill” amendment, and <a href="http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/articles/38982/how-the-gun-lobby-shot-down-dcs-congressional-vote-the">it denied D.C. residents their best change to obtaining voting representation in the U.S. Congress for decades</a>.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cn51pM6sBYk/Td0pVtXczMI/AAAAAAAAAg8/iL0jm8CuZxM/s1600/Ensigns%2BHamptons.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 249px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cn51pM6sBYk/Td0pVtXczMI/AAAAAAAAAg8/iL0jm8CuZxM/s320/Ensigns%2BHamptons.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5610686163705449666" /></a>In a <a href="http://www.nraila.org/News/Read/NewsReleases.aspx?ID=12167">press release</a>, <span class="newsbody">NRA-Institute of Legislative Action (ILA) Executive Director Chris Cox praised Ensign’s leadership saying, </span>“The NRA would like to thank the lead sponsor, Sen. John Ensign for his efforts to reform D.C.’s gun laws.”<br /><br />The Senate Ethics Committee began a <a href="http://ethics.senate.gov/downloads/pdffiles/Public%20Report_Preliminary%20Inquiry%20into%20the%20matter%20of%20Sen%20Ensign.pdf">two-year investigation</a> into allegations against Ensign after receiving a complaint on June 24, 2009 from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). The focus of the investigation was an affair between Ensign and Cindy Hampton, a former campaign aide and the wife of Doug Hampton, the Senator’s administrative assistant and close friend. The committee uncovered a $96,000 "gift" that Ensign's parents gave to the Hamptons after Doug Hampton learned of the affair and the couple stopped working for Ensign. They also learned that Ensign steered Doug Hampton into a lobbying job (despite a federal law that bans staffers from lobbying the Senate within a year of leaving positions in the chamber) and actively assisted him by calling federal agencies and officials to promote the interests of Hampton's clients.<br /><br />The committee concluded that Ensign made false statements to the Federal Election Commission and obstructed their investigation into his conduct. The investigation has been turned over to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution. This is the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ethics-committee-to-unveil-ensign-probe-findings-in-senate-speeches/2011/05/12/AFhRvA0G_story.html">first time since 1995</a> that the committee has had to refer a case about a current or former Senator to federal investigators.<br /><br /></p></li><li><b>Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK):</b> Senator Tom Coburn’s colleagues have given him a nickname that describes his propensity to place holds on bills which he doesn’t care for: “<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/11/AR2006021101024.html">Dr. No</a>.” And Coburn has made it abundantly clear that he opposes “<a href="http://coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/legislationissues?p=SecondAmendment">any and all efforts to mandate gun control on law-abiding citizens</a>.” In 2009, Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) introduced the “Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act” for the purpose of establishing “fair and transparent practices relating to the extension of credit under an open end consumer credit plan.” Coburn saw his opportunity and attached a totally unrelated <a href="http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:SP01067:">amendment</a> that now allows individuals to carry loaded firearms in National Parks (up until that point National Parks had astronomically low violent crime and homicide rates). “This common-sense measure, offered by Senator Tom Coburn,” <a href="http://www.opposingviews.com/i/nra-praises-congress-for-allowing-guns-in-national-parks">said the NRA</a>, “gives law-abiding gun owners the option of protecting themselves in our federal parks and refuges.”<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GQKz43xJTA0/Td0pSYxjkyI/AAAAAAAAAg0/qwsmCOtX4Io/s1600/Tom%2BCoburn.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GQKz43xJTA0/Td0pSYxjkyI/AAAAAAAAAg0/qwsmCOtX4Io/s320/Tom%2BCoburn.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5610686106638193442" /></a>Curiously, the recent ethics probe involving former Senator John Ensign has revealed that Senator Coburn <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/12/tom-coburn-john-ensign_n_861287.html">played an integral role</a> in covering up Ensign’s extramarital affair. According to the report of the Senate Ethics Committee, after confronting Ensign about the affair, Coburn became the intermediary between Ensign and his lover’s husband, Doug Hampton. Coburn allegedly negotiated the payment made by Ensign’s family to Hampton down from $8 million to $2.8 million. When the affair was finally over, Coburn <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/12/tom-coburn-john-ensign_n_861287.html">participated in discussions</a> regarding how to relocate the Hamptons to Colorado and provide them with money for their transition.<br /><br />In speaking about congressional ethics, <a href="http://coburn.senate.gov/public/?p=CongressionalEthics">Coburn has stated</a>, “I believe disclosure and transparency is the best disinfectant against corruption because I trust the wisdom of the electorate far more than I trust politicians.” Apparently, he didn’t get his own memo.<br /><br /></li><li><b>Former Senator Larry Craig (R-ID):</b> Former Senator Larry Craig has served as <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/08/31/nra-stays-mum-on-whether-_n_62716.html">a member of the NRA’s Board of Directors since 1983</a>. He was the floor leader in the Senate who shepherded the “Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act” to passage in 2005. This legislation gave the gun industry unprecedented immunity from civil lawsuits based on claims of negligence and has denied countless victims and survivors of gun violence their day in court.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UnJgRZkphrE/Td0pPDULm_I/AAAAAAAAAgs/9YQq8XOkEUw/s1600/Craig%2BBathroom.jpeg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 241px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UnJgRZkphrE/Td0pPDULm_I/AAAAAAAAAgs/9YQq8XOkEUw/s320/Craig%2BBathroom.jpeg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5610686049338235890" /></a>In May 2006, NRA-ILA awarded Craig the Harlon B. Carter Legislative Achievement Award, “<a href="http://www.nraila.org/Multimedia/MMPlayer_Set.aspx?ID=75">the Institute’s highest honor</a>.” As <a href="http://www.nraila.org/Multimedia/MMPlayer_Set.aspx?ID=75">he presented Craig with the award</a>, NRA-ILA President Chris Cox stated, "We'd be here until the early morning hours if I told you everything that this freedom fighter has done for all of us over the years."<br /><br />On June 11, 2007, Craig was arrested in a men's restroom at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport for lewd conduct when he solicited an undercover police officer for sexual activity. Craig initially claimed he was innocent, but then <a href="http://www.thesmokinggun.com/file/us-senator-gets-flushed?page=7">pled guilty</a>. For his behavior, Craig was harshly criticized by none other than Senator John Ensign, who called him, "<a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,295596,00.html">embarrassing not only to himself and his family but to the United States Senate</a>." Craig served out his remaining Senate term, but did not seek another term in November 2008.<br /><br />Perhaps most disturbing about Craig is his hypocrisy. He was an aggressive opponent of gay rights during his years in the Senate. He voted “yes” to implement the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy for the U.S. military, which led to the dismissal of thousands of gay service members. Even after his guilty plea, he told one constituent, “<a href="http://pageoneq.com/news/2007/craigdadt082807.html">It is unacceptable to risk the lives of American soldiers and sailors merely to accommodate the sexual lifestyles of certain individuals</a>.”<br /><br /></li><li><b>Senator David Vitter (R-LA):</b> Senator David Vitter has a long history of doing the NRA’s business. In July 2006 Vitter attached an amendment to the FY 2007 Department Of Homeland Security Appropriations Act to prohibit the confiscation of privately held firearms during a national emergency or natural disaster. The impetus behind the amendment was a conspiracy theory developed by the NRA about the mass confiscation of firearms in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. In truth, <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-12-26-1535681768_x.htm">private investigators hired by the NRA could only locate 75 gun owners who would claim their guns had been taken without good cause</a>. The reality of Katrina was that citizens who remained in the city following the flood were quite well armed, and <a href="http://www.propublica.org/article/post-katrina-white-vigilantes-shot-african-americans-with-impunity">in some cases preyed on those moving through their neighborhoods to evacuation staging areas</a>.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5TSY3QTN2DI/Td0pHSLoKDI/AAAAAAAAAgk/Sbod-dG4vRw/s1600/Vitter%2BPress%2BConference.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 209px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5TSY3QTN2DI/Td0pHSLoKDI/AAAAAAAAAgk/Sbod-dG4vRw/s320/Vitter%2BPress%2BConference.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5610685915889936434" /></a>In February 2008, Vitter (along with Senator Larry Craig) <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/02/14/sullivan_atf_confirmation_blocked/">blocked the confirmation</a> of Michael J. Sullivan as head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), claiming (with no apparent evidence) that Sullivan had been "overly aggressive" in enforcing gun laws during his term as the Acting Director of ATF.<br /><br />By then, however, Vitter’s own reputation had been tarnished. In July 2007, his <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/07/09/national/main3037338.shtml">phone number was included</a> in a published list of phone records of Pamela Martin & Associates. The company was owned by Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the "D.C. Madam" who was later convicted of running a prostitution ring. Vitter and his lawyers then <a href="http://theboard.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/22/senator-vitter-finds-a-new-use-for-campaign-funds/">sought permission</a> from the Federal Election Commission to use campaign funds to pay for significant legal and public relations expenses. He later apologized to his wife, family and the state of Louisiana.<br /><br />Ironically, Vitter was initially elected to Congress after Rep. Bob Livingston resigned following an adultery scandal. At that time, Vitter <a href="http://www.davidlister.com/labels/Religion.html">exclaimed</a>, "It's obviously a tremendous loss for the state. I think Livingston's stepping down makes a very powerful argument that Clinton should resign as well and move beyond this mess”—a reference to the Monica Lewinski scandal. Vitter has yet to move beyond his own mess and remains in office to this day.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-btjZH7Kunxs/Td0pCyTFy7I/AAAAAAAAAgc/nFlCK9zmGMI/s1600/Souder%2BJackson.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 214px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-btjZH7Kunxs/Td0pCyTFy7I/AAAAAAAAAgc/nFlCK9zmGMI/s320/Souder%2BJackson.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5610685838611827634" /></a></li><li><b>Former Representative Mark Souder (R-IN):</b> The NRA was proud to announce that Rep. Mark Souder was the sponsor of the House version of the “<a href="http://www.nraila.org/News/Read/NewsReleases.aspx?id=13726">Second Amendment Enforcement Act</a>” in April 2010. The bill <a href="http://www.csgv.org/storage/documents/why%20is%20the%20second%20amendment%20enforcement%20act%20so%20dangerous.pdf">sought to</a> legalize assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines, repeal the District's licensing and registration system, allow some convicted substance abusers and violent misdemeanants to purchase and own firearms, roll back important regulations curbing illegal gun trafficking, and prevent the D.C. Council from enacting gun-related legislation in the future.<br /><br />Just one month later, Souder <a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/house/mark-souder-to-resign.html">announced he would resign</a> from Congress after his affair with a female staffer, Tracy Meadows Jackson, came to public light. "I wish I could have been a better example," <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/05/18/exclusive-indiana-rep-mark-souder-resign-amid-affair-staffer/">Souder stated</a>. "In this poisonous environment of Washington, D.C., any personal failing is seized upon, often twisted, for political gain.” The situation must have been terribly embarrassing for Souder: He was elected as a <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/05/18/exclusive-indiana-rep-mark-souder-resign-amid-affair-staffer/">family values Conservative</a> in 1994.</ol></li><br /><p class="MsoNormal">Who will be the next NRA champion on Capitol Hill to “celebrate American values”? Only time will tell...</p>stopgunviolencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806648144323303424noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420740688947057.post-44990305954139160002011-03-28T06:21:00.000-07:002012-03-15T09:37:08.007-07:00The Truth About Guns in Switzerland<p class="MsoNormal">In Switzerland—a nation in which a “well regulated Militia” still plays a leading role in national defense—guns are a hot issue. A February referendum on new gun policy proposals quickly turned into a national debate on Switzerland’s gun culture and citizen/soldier tradition. The resulting dialogue in this landlocked nation of mountains and lakes has been fascinating and shed light on some long-perpetuated myths about Switzerland’s gun laws.<br /><br /><b style="">Responding to Tragedy</b><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dVAFeTYkmWY/TZCQN9109kI/AAAAAAAAAfs/0NWLEVfp3UI/s1600/Switzerland%2B1.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 239px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dVAFeTYkmWY/TZCQN9109kI/AAAAAAAAAfs/0NWLEVfp3UI/s320/Switzerland%2B1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5589125707179816514" border="0" /></a>In 2007, a broad alliance of approximately 80 NGOs launched the referendum effort with the backing of center-left political parties in the Swiss government. The referendum called for militia firearms, which are now stored at home, to be stored in public arsenals. It also called for a <i style="">national </i>gun registry and a ban on the sale of fully automatic weapons and pump-action shotguns. Jacques de Haller, the president of the Swiss Medical Association, described the referendum as follows: “<a href="http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/Doctors_back_anti-gun_move_to_save_lives.html?cid=29182208">It is about public health and suicide prevention. This is our core business, to save lives ... As we learn from observations in England, Scotland, Australia and Canada we can conclude that there is a correlation between stricter gun laws and fewer suicide cases with firearms. There is a lower suicide rate altogether</a>.” Criminology professor Martin Killias of Zurich University added, “<a href="http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2049136,00.html">I believe that if the initiative was accepted and the guns would have to be deposited in arsenals, gun violence would decrease</a>.”<br /><br />Opponents of the referendum argued that its proposals would undermine trust in the nation’s citizen army. The Swiss government openly worried that soldiers wouldn’t complete mandatory militia target practice if their guns weren’t handy. Right wing groups appealed to anti-immigrant feeling in the country, telling Swiss they had better remain armed against foreign criminals.<br /><br />The pro-gun Swiss lobbying group Pro-Tell, for their part, sounded more like America’s National Rifle Association (NRA). “<a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,480545,00.html">No gun law will ever stop the crazy man from doing outrageous things</a>,” they counseled. Then gun rights activists in America interjected themselves into the debate with customary hyperbole: “<a href="http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/Specials/Gun_debate/Campaign/Entrenched_views_prevail_in_Swiss_gun_debate.html?cid=29356690">If this rush to disarmament continues, Swiss citizens may awake one morning to find that an airborne army has taken control of their country</a>.”<br /><br />In truth—referendum or no referendum—Switzerland’s gun laws have been progressively tightening over the previous decade, in large part due to several high-profile cases of suicide and homicide. One such<a href="http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/Home/Archive/Army_weapons_kill_300_people_a_year.html?cid=5631990"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> incident</span></a> that alarmed the Swiss public was a 2006 murder-suicide involving champion skier Corinne Rey-Bellet. Rey-Bellet’s husband killed her and her brother with his militia rifle before turning the gun on himself. Then, three days before the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007, a Swiss man opened fire with his army rifle at a hotel restaurant in Baden, killing one and wounding four.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-csHiVrjTenY/TZCQUz4hH0I/AAAAAAAAAf0/hFKPvWZT6h0/s1600/Switzerland%2B3.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 277px; height: 210px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-csHiVrjTenY/TZCQUz4hH0I/AAAAAAAAAf0/hFKPvWZT6h0/s320/Switzerland%2B3.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5589125824765828930" /></a>According to the Small Arms Survey, Switzerland ranks fourth in terms of gun ownership among nations, with 46 guns per 100 people. An estimated 600,000 Swiss citizens engage in target shooting as a sport. There are consequences to this gun proliferation, however: Switzerland and Finland—another country with a high rate of gun ownership—typically compete for the highest annual rate of gun death in Western Europe.<br /><br /><b style="">“<a href="http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/Specials/Gun_debate/News/Results/Gun_vote_was_about_national_identity.html?cid=29488450">It was a question of national identity</a>”</b><br />A January poll indicated that 52% of Swiss citizens supported the gun policy referendum, with only 39% against it. But opponents of the referendum closed that gap quickly through grassroots organizing and successful message framing. When the Swiss finally voted on the referendum on February 13, it failed to pass, with 56.3% of voters and 20 of the 26 Swiss cantons (member states) rejecting it.<br /><br />Swissinfo.ch read the result this way: “<a href="http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/Specials/Gun_debate/News/Results/Gun_vote_was_about_national_identity.html?cid=29488450">Opponents of a motion to tighten Switzerland’s gun laws succeeded by framing the debate as a loss of freedom, security, values and tradition</a>.” “<a href="http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/Specials/Gun_debate/News/Results/Gun_vote_was_about_national_identity.html?cid=29488450">A gun in the cellar has become a metaphor for a traditional, well-fortified and independent Switzerland</a>,” said the <i style="">St. Galler Tagblatt</i>.<br /><br />Daniel Mockli, a security expert at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, expanded on the latter point: “<a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703313304576132092823540026.html">This is a country where you are both a citizen and a soldier. We have a militia here and the gun reflects a sense of responsibility and trust given you by the state. Here the debate on guns is about national security, whereas in the U.S. it is about protecting yourself</a>.”<br /><br />Dora Andres, the president of Switzerland’s sports shooting association, alluded to Swiss fears of a “nanny state”: “<a href="http://ca.news.yahoo.com/swiss-vote-proposal-tighten-gun-laws-end-tradition-20110213-002646-806.html">Switzerland is different. In many countries, the government doesn't trust its citizens and feels it has to protect them. In Switzerland, because we have a system of popular referendums, the state has to have faith in its citizens</a>."<br /><br />But ultimately, even for those on the far right wing of the debate, the vote was a referendum on the Swiss military establishment. The right wing Swiss People’s Party celebrated the vote by declaring that, “<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12441834">A disarmed army is a weakened army. The Swiss people have recognized this. With today’s’ 'no' on the weapons initiative, they have clearly rejected those army abolitionists</a>.”<br /><br /><b style="">Switzerland’s “Draconian” Laws</b><br />What was conspicuously absent from Swiss reaction to the referendum was any suggestion that it was an affirmation of the right to <i style="">individual </i>self-defense.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YACRfAE2pPA/TZCQb_7WxvI/AAAAAAAAAf8/udppyMPCEoc/s1600/Switzerland%2B2.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 192px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YACRfAE2pPA/TZCQb_7WxvI/AAAAAAAAAf8/udppyMPCEoc/s320/Switzerland%2B2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5589125948258043634" /></a>In the United States, the Second Amendment’s “well-regulated Militia,” which today is maintained by the states and federal government in the form of the National Guard, has been mythologized by the gun lobby into a loosely regulated system of individual gun ownership that contributes nothing whatsoever to the “<a href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0307_0174_ZO.html">common defense</a>.” Aggressive lobbying by the National Rifle Association (NRA) led the conservative wing of the Supreme Court to overturn 200 years of precedent in 2008 and <a href="http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/07-290.pdf">assert</a> that one need not serve in <i style="">any militia </i>to enjoy a broad right to keep and bear arms. The NRA has been largely successful in convincing legislators and jurists that access to guns should be completely unfettered by any type of obligation to country or one’s fellow citizens.<br /><br />That’s not the case in Switzerland, where members of the militia and private citizens alike are tightly regulated in regards to gun ownership. Despite NRA claims like, “<a href="http://www.miller-mccune.com/politics/the-swiss-and-their-guns-27329/">young adults in Zurich are subject to minimal gun control</a>,” the truth is that Switzerland has very strict gun laws that American gun rights groups would consider “tyrannical.”<br /><br />For starters, it’s important to differentiate between military and private gun ownership...<br /><br />In Switzerland, all able-bodied men between the ages of 18 and 30 are conscripted for three months and issued either an assault rifle or a 9mm pistol (the automatic or rapid-fire function is removed from these firearms so they fire only in semiautomatic mode) <i style="">after</i> completing basic military training. These firearms are kept in the home and are to be used only for military purposes, not for sports shooting or personal defense. After initial training, members of the militia are required to do three or four weeks of military service a year until they have served a total of 260 days or reached age 34. Additionally, a law enacted in 2008 requires all army ammunition issued to militia members to be stored in a central arsenal. This citizen’s militia complements a small number of full-time military personnel to constitute Switzerland’s army.<br /><br />Many Swiss men buy their service firearms after they finish military service. Since January 2010, however, they are required to obtain a permit to do so, and must provide some justification for keeping the gun.<br /><br />[Editor’s note: Swiss women may volunteer to serve in the armed forces and can now join all units, including combat troops. <a href="http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/3431.htm"> Currently 1,050 women are active-duty members of the Swiss military</a>.]<br /><br />Laws governing the private ownership of firearms are equally strict. In 1999, a federal law on arms, arms accessories, and ammunition (the Arms Act) came into effect. The Arms Act requires a permit for each transaction involving firearms or relevant parts of firearms purchased from an authorized dealer's shop. Permits for purchasing firearms are issued by the cantons. Buyers are carefully screened and have to meet a number of requirements (i.e., minimum 18 years of age, absence of any apparent risk to the buyer or third persons, no entry in the Register of Convictions for violent crimes and/or misdemeanors, etc.). Subsequent transfers of firearms among private individuals have to be documented through a written contract, which must be kept for at least ten years. Additionally, several cantons require citizens to register firearms.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2ualtC7OP1U/TZCQjIMfqOI/AAAAAAAAAgE/JBI5LqtsrtU/s1600/Switzerland%2B4.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 180px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2ualtC7OP1U/TZCQjIMfqOI/AAAAAAAAAgE/JBI5LqtsrtU/s320/Switzerland%2B4.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5589126070736496866" /></a>Any person wishing to carry a gun in public must obtain a separate, special permit from their canton. The screening process is essentially the same as for the purchase of firearms. In addition, applicants must demonstrate a legitimate need to protect themselves, other persons, or goods against <u>specific</u> risks. Applicants must further pass two tests, one on the correct handling of firearms and one on legislation concerning the use of firearms. Permits are valid for five years. Certain exceptions to these rules are made for hunters, those performing military service, and those participating in shooting events.<br /><br />In the United States, military weapons are more strictly controlled than in Switzerland. The National Guard and the regular Army are armed by the federal government and service members are not allowed—under any circumstances—to bring their weapons home or use them for personal self-defense.<br /><br />But it’s in the laws for private firearms ownership where the you can really see the real contrast with the Swiss system. In an overwhelming majority of states in the United States:<br /></p><ul><li>Individuals with misdemeanor convictions (including for violent offenses) can legally buy guns and obtain permits to carry concealed handguns.<br /><br /></li><li>Those obtaining concealed handgun permits are not required to demonstrate any specific need (or threat) to carry a weapon in public.<br /><br /></li><li>Law enforcement officials have no individual discretion in denying gun purchases or concealed handgun permits.<br /><br /></li><li>Private sales/transfers of firearms are completely unregulated, with no background checks or paperwork required.<br /><br /></li><li>Only a handful of states require licensing and registration, and typically just for handguns. </li></ul><p class="MsoNormal">It is no surprise that the United States has an astronomically higher gun death rate than any other industrialized democracy.<span style=""> </span>The critical concept of civic duty—which is such a central element of Switzerland’s gun culture—has been eviscerated in the United States over time by the gun lobby.<br /><br /><b style="">A Bold Persistence</b><br />In Switzerland, the national debate about guns is not likely to go away anytime soon. Despite the failure of the recent referendum, its proponents have no intention of giving up their campaign. Ebo Aebischer, a Reformed Church minister who works with families of suicide victims, said, “<a href="http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2049136,00.html">We will be proposing a professional [rather than a conscript-based] military. If successful, such an initiative would fulfill the demands of the current one: army weapons would no longer be allowed in the home and the expensive shooting practices would drop by the wayside. That way, the savings arising from the abolition of shooting practices could be invested in suicide prevention</a>.”<br /><br />Perhaps more importantly, younger Swiss are the most likely of any demographic to favor additional curbs on gun ownership. One president of a pistol shooters association, perhaps indicating what the future holds, recently said the average age in Swiss gun clubs is now “<a href="http://ca.news.yahoo.com/swiss-vote-proposal-tighten-gun-laws-end-tradition-20110213-002646-806.html">closer to 50 than to 40</a>.”</p>stopgunviolencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806648144323303424noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420740688947057.post-58724877333338888852011-03-15T07:53:00.000-07:002012-03-15T09:37:20.488-07:00The Forgotten Guns in the Workplace Tragedy<p class="MsoNormal">In recent years, the National Rifle Association (NRA) has authored and successfully advocated for legislation to <a href="http://www.nraila.org/Issues/factsheets/read.aspx?ID=193">allow employees to bring firearms—including handguns and assault weapons—with them to work</a>. Such laws have been enacted in at least nine states and typically require employees to keep their guns secured in their vehicle in company parking lots. In passing this legislation, state legislatures have ignored studies that show: 1) <a href="http://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/cftb0215.pdf">Approximately 81% of workplace homicides are committed with a firearm</a>, and; 2) <a href="http://www.lcav.org/statistics-polling/gun_violence_statistics.asp#15">Workplaces where guns are permitted are five to seven times more likely to be the site of a worker homicide</a>. Additionally, <a href="http://heraldbulletin.com/business/x233969970/NRA-wants-Indiana-lawmakers-to-ban-employers-from-gun-related-questions">the NRA is now asking</a> lawmakers to support legislation that would allow individuals to sue their employers if they are asked questions about whether they bring firearms to work.<br /><br />A horrific tragedy that was almost totally ignored by the media and American public illustrates the importance of preventing workplace violence before the first shot is ever fired—in part because untrained civilians cannot be depended upon to respond to such crisis situations effectively.<br /><br /><b style="">“A very gruesome scene”</b><br />January 7, 2010 started like any other day at ABB, Inc., a firm that makes large transformers for power utilities in St. Louis, Missouri. But just after dawn, as workers from the night shift departed and employees arriving for daytime hours settled in, everything changed.<br /> <br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QEqxGDijCfI/TX-C1LFsJ5I/AAAAAAAAAfE/F6X5fummhV0/s1600/Timothy%2BHendron.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 180px; height: 245px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QEqxGDijCfI/TX-C1LFsJ5I/AAAAAAAAAfE/F6X5fummhV0/s320/Timothy%2BHendron.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5584325912984037266" /></a>It was 17 degrees and snowing with 34 MPH wind gusts when ABB employee Timothy Hendron drove up to the front gate of the plant in a Nissan Altima at approximately 6:30 AM. On his hips in holsters were two handguns: a Hi Point .45 caliber semiautomatic and a Hi Point .40 caliber semiautomatic. In the back seat were two long guns: a Tri Star .12 gauge pump action shotgun and a Romarm Cugir 7.62 x. 39 caliber semiautomatic AK-47 rifle. Hendron wore a camouflage storage pouch around his waist stuffed with ammunition. Attached to his belt were additional ammunition magazines. Guard Shakira Johnson, who was manning the security booth that morning, noticed nothing unusual and waved him through the gate.<br /><br />Hendron parked near the plant’s loading dock and entered a building where a group of employees were gathered for a morning meeting. Hendron immediately leveled his shotgun and opened fire on this group, which included employees Jerry Brown, Rick Lawrence, Derrick Harris, Vickie Wilson, Tony Edwards and Darrell Buckley. They scattered in terror. Most of them ran up a flight of stairs and eventually made their way to the roof of the building. Brown sustained a gunshot wound to his leg, but still managed to escape with this group.<br /><br />Buckley was shot in the back by a second shotgun blast as he fled toward the office of supervisor Cory Wilson. Buckley and Wilson, 27, hid in a storage closet in the office as Hendron approached. When Hendron reached the office, he fired 30 rounds with his AK-47 rifle through the door of the closet, striking Wilson fatally and wounding Buckley in the abdomen and chest. Buckley managed to call both his wife and 911 as he lay bleeding. He told police he could hear Wilson struggling to breathe, until ultimately the breathing stopped altogether.<br /><br />After shooting up Wilson’s office, Hendron moved to a different area of the building, where he shot Keith Garner and Terry Mabry in the leg. Hendron then stepped outside onto the sidewalk next to the building and opened fire on employees attempting to escape down an access road in their vehicles. He wounded John Green in the wrist and fatally shot Carlton Carter, who slumped lifeless over his steering wheel.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5UTyNn7ZHzQ/TX-DhUZRy7I/AAAAAAAAAfM/Vk-wGGxdD-o/s1600/ABB%2B7.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 214px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5UTyNn7ZHzQ/TX-DhUZRy7I/AAAAAAAAAfM/Vk-wGGxdD-o/s320/ABB%2B7.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5584326671396359090" /></a>By this point, St. Louis Police Department officers had responded to the scene after multiple 911 calls. They observed Green and Carter’s cars driving erratically while under fire, but didn’t know whether they were involved in a gunfight with one another or victims of a separate shooter. At this point an officer called in to dispatch to instruct other responders to pull back from the plant “<a href="http://www.csgv.org/storage/documents/report%20on%20abb%20mass%20shooting%20in%20st.%20louis.pdf">because the shooter was using an assault rifle and his position could not be determined</a>.” <br /> <br />Meanwhile, after shooting Green and Carter, Hendron spotted Stephen Sharp II and Matt Elder carrying Terry Mabry (who couldn’t walk due to his wounded leg) across the parking lot in an attempt to move him to cover. Sharp and Elder were forced to leave Mabry when they heard Hendron’s gunshots closing in behind them. Sharp decided to run to his car to retrieve his .380-caliber Walther PPKS semiautomatic handgun.<br /> <br />Hendron rounded a corner and spotted Mabry lying on the ground. ABB employee Mark Campbell was watching Hendron from a distance while hiding behind a car in the parking lot. He saw Hendron stand directly over the wounded Mabry and shoot him twice with his assault rifle. Hendron then leaned down near Mabry’s face and screamed before shooting him three more times. Another witness stated that what Hendron yelled was “<a href="http://www.csgv.org/storage/documents/report%20on%20abb%20mass%20shooting%20in%20st.%20louis.pdf">I got you now!<span style=""> </span>You’re going to get what you deserve!</a>”<br /><br />By this time, Sharp had retrieved his semiautomatic pistol and taken cover behind a car. As Hendron fired 10 to 15 rounds at guard Cordin Hudson inside the security post, Sharp took aim. He fired eight rounds at Hendron—missing every time—before running out of ammunition. Sharp then left cover, sprinting across the parking lot to get away. Hendron fired on Sharp, critically wounding him in the abdomen and bringing him to the ground. Sharp laid still and played dead in fear that Hendron would shoot him again if he moved. The tactic saved his life.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IOi1yuN7RQM/TX-EInfvMMI/AAAAAAAAAfU/_z2v7jTbQeE/s1600/ABB%2B6.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IOi1yuN7RQM/TX-EInfvMMI/AAAAAAAAAfU/_z2v7jTbQeE/s400/ABB%2B6.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5584327346538623170" /></a>Hendron then walked back into the ABB plant, entered a private office, and took his own life.<br /><br />When police entered the building minutes later, SWAT commander Michael Deeba found Hendron seated by a desk with a gunshot wound under his chin and one of his handguns near his feet. Hendron’s assault rifle and shotgun were sitting on the desk. Deeba, taking no chances at this point, handcuffed Hendron’s hands to the arms of the chair he was sitting in.<br /><br />The police later collected ballistic evidence indicating that Hendron fired approximately 115 rounds during the rampage. The plant was pockmarked everywhere with bullet holes. Hendron had killed three ABB employees and wounded five (two critically).<br /> <br /><b>“We should have seen it coming”</b><br />The subsequent police investigation of the shooting painted a portrait of a disgruntled employee turned mass murderer.<br /><br />Hendron’s co-workers recalled that he used to be a “<a href="http://www.csgv.org/storage/documents/report%20on%20abb%20mass%20shooting%20in%20st.%20louis.pdf">happy-go-lucky guy</a>” who would crack jokes and play billiards with co-workers at local bars/restaurants. Over the past five or six years, however, Hendron had become withdrawn and stopped socializing. In the words of one co-worker, he simply “<a href="http://www.csgv.org/storage/documents/report%20on%20abb%20mass%20shooting%20in%20st.%20louis.pdf">clammed up</a>.”<br /><br />Many recalled that Hendron’s behavior had changed after the shift he supervised at ABB was terminated. Hendron was relocated to an administrative position, but didn’t get along with his new boss, so he opted to return to the assembly line alongside individuals he used to supervise. Later, he was passed over as supervisor when his old shift was restored. A much younger man, Cory Wilson, got the job (which made investigators speculate that Hendron had specifically targeted Wilson in the shooting). By this point, Hendron was acting “<a href="http://www.csgv.org/storage/documents/report%20on%20abb%20mass%20shooting%20in%20st.%20louis.pdf">despondent</a>,” “<a href="http://www.csgv.org/storage/documents/report%20on%20abb%20mass%20shooting%20in%20st.%20louis.pdf">agitated</a>” and “<a href="http://www.csgv.org/storage/documents/report%20on%20abb%20mass%20shooting%20in%20st.%20louis.pdf">extreme</a>.”<br /><br />Kathleen Hendron further explained that her husband felt "<a href="http://www.csgv.org/storage/documents/report%20on%20abb%20mass%20shooting%20in%20st.%20louis.pdf">ostracized</a>" at ABB for trying to start a union and participating in a lawsuit against the company over its pension plan. She told police he was worried about his impending performance as a witness in the case. He was scheduled to testify in Kansas City on January 11, 2010. Hendron was also paranoid—and became convinced that people from ABB were coming to his property and “<a href="http://www.csgv.org/storage/documents/report%20on%20abb%20mass%20shooting%20in%20st.%20louis.pdf">messing</a>” with his car and home.<br /><br />Hendron bought his .45 caliber handgun on January 23, 2008 and the .40 caliber handgun on April 4, 2008. The AK-47 rifle and shotgun were purchased the day before his shooting rampage on January 6, 2010. There is no waiting period for firearm purchases in Missouri.<br /> <br />In hindsight, ABB employee Jeff Ray told police, “<a href="http://www.csgv.org/storage/documents/report%20on%20abb%20mass%20shooting%20in%20st.%20louis.pdf">We should have seen it coming</a>.” Others concurred, saying they knew Hendron was “<a href="http://www.csgv.org/storage/documents/report%20on%20abb%20mass%20shooting%20in%20st.%20louis.pdf">capable of doing something like this</a>.”<br /> <br /><b style="">Wolves, Lions and Lambs</b><br />Recently, NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre told a Conservative Political Action Conference audience that "<a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20031399-503544.html">the best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun</a>." LaPierre called for an “armed citizenry” to take back our nation’s streets and communities because—as he sees it—everyone is safer when "<a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20031399-503544.html">the wolves can't tell the difference between the lions and the lambs</a>." <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0561diDgvVk/TX-Ek_NF0CI/AAAAAAAAAfc/S9K4SwAU7dU/s1600/LaPierre%2BCPAC%2B2011.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 134px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0561diDgvVk/TX-Ek_NF0CI/AAAAAAAAAfc/S9K4SwAU7dU/s320/LaPierre%2BCPAC%2B2011.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5584327833939202082" /></a>The inference is that would-be murderers will be deterred if they have reason to believe that a potential victim could be armed. Or, if killers can’t be deterred, armed citizens will rise up to shoot and stop them.<br /><br />It didn’t quite work that way at the ABB plant on January 7, 2010. Stephen Sharp II was able to get his handgun, take aim at Hendron, and fire eight shots. But he missed every single time, and the “lion” quickly became a “lamb” as an enraged Hendron turned his gun on Sharp. One witness recalled Hendron shouting at Sharp, “<a href="http://www.csgv.org/storage/documents/report%20on%20abb%20mass%20shooting%20in%20st.%20louis.pdf">I’m going to get you. You shot at me. I’m going to get you!</a>” Sharp was critically wounded by Hendron and had to play dead until police arrived to help him.<br /><br />Nonetheless, the NRA actively pushed a <a href="http://www.nraila.org/News/Read/InTheNews.aspx?ID=13738">guns in the workplace bill</a> in the Missouri legislature in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. It passed the Missouri House before being shelved in the Senate.<br /> <br /><b style="">An Ounce of Prevention</b> <br />The problem with relying on a “good guy” to shoot a “bad guy” is that mass shootings are characterized by panic and pure chaos. The potential for collateral damage in a crossfire is enormous and the killer will always define the rules of engagement.<br /><br />A preferable strategy is to make sure the shooting never starts in the first place. There is a lot more our country could be doing to prevent homicidal individuals like Timothy Hendron from acquiring small arsenals (in this case two handguns, a shotgun, an AK-47 and hundreds of rounds of ammunition).<br /> <br />For years, dating back to the Brady Bill, the NRA has opposed waiting periods for firearm purchases. In this case, a waiting period <i style="">could </i>have made Hendron think twice before committing mass murder. The fact that he was able to acquire an assault rifle and a shotgun in a matter of minutes the day before the shooting left him little time to reflect on the consequences of his planned actions.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WXvSTTgOvRw/TX-FxfH3cNI/AAAAAAAAAfk/GvEEkRqqbdc/s1600/AK-47%2BRomanian.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 158px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WXvSTTgOvRw/TX-FxfH3cNI/AAAAAAAAAfk/GvEEkRqqbdc/s320/AK-47%2BRomanian.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5584329148177281234" /></a>The ABB shooting rampage was also facilitated by the immediate access that Hendron had to military-style weaponry. Even had Hendron been a prohibited purchaser under federal law, he could have easily acquired the assault rifle and high-capacity ammunition magazines used in the shooting through an <a href="http://www.lcav.org/states/Missouri_State_Law_Summary.pdf#page=15">unregulated private sale in Missouri</a>—no background check, no paperwork, cash and carry. Hendron’s weapon of choice—a semiautomatic AK-47 with banana clips—not only made it easier for him to wound and kill multiple victims, but also prevented responding law enforcement officers from immediately entering the plant to subdue him. First responders had to wait for a SWAT team with an armored vehicle because they feared they would be outgunned.<br /><br />The ABB massacre joins a <a href="http://www.vpc.org/fact_sht/VPCshootinglist.pdf">growing list of mass shootings</a> made more lethal due to assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines. And the NRA continues to <a href="http://www.nraila.org/Issues/FactSheets/Read.aspx?id=238&issue=019">fight</a> all efforts to prohibit such items from being sold in the civilian market.<br /><br /><b style="">“I feel like my civil liberties are being taken away from me.”</b><br />ABB is certainly not the only company to experience the trauma of workplace violence. A 2008 <a href="http://www.asisonline.org/foundation/guns.pdf">report</a> from the ASIS Foundation found that workplace violence affects more than two million workers in the United States each year and accounts for about 20% of all violent crime.<br /><br />The House of Delegates of the American Bar Association passed a <a href="http://www.abanow.org/2007/02/aba-house-of-delegates-approves-resolution-on-right-to-exclude-people-with-firearms-from-private-property/?audio">resolution</a> critical of laws allowing employees to bring their guns to the workplace, noting that such laws conflict not only with traditional private property rights, but also with employers’ obligations under federal law to provide a safe workplace.<br /><br />Unfortunately, many Americans do not feel safe at work. The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence recently received the following emails from concerned individuals that live in states that allow guns in the workplace:<br /><br /><blockquote>I am a manager for a glass shop. The owner of the company I work for has recently hired a former employee back as a tech for me to manage. He has informed me that he previously fired the employee due to complications stemming from an addiction to prescription pain medication. This employee now comes to work daily carrying a small semiautomatic pistol. He makes no attempt to "conceal" his weapon and regularly carries it in his waistband or sets it out in the open near his workspace or in the open in the company vehicle. I have voiced my concern with my employer several times, but to no avail. My employer does not confront the issue. I thought the idea behind a concealed weapon was that no one was to see or know that you had the weapon. Also upon reading I found that employers must ensure a safe work environment and as they cannot ban an employee from bringing a weapon to work, must ensure that the employee keeps the weapon "locked up in their vehicle in the parking lot." <br /><br /><br />I work at a fortune 500 company in Florida and here in the Gunshine State citizens could basically do whatever they want. After the recent events in Arizona, I am scared to work at my employer because at my employer we deal with not just angry customers, but a very intense atmosphere. Also, I don’t only work inside the building, but I work as a repair man for which I deal with even angrier people because they are paying for something that isn’t working correctly. In the atmosphere we live in now, I feel like my civil liberties are being taken away from me. Not sure what to do.</blockquote> <br /><p class="MsoNormal">No American should have to go to work and fear for their safety. Peace of mind starts with a workplace that has a no-weapons policy. In the words of the ASIS Foundation: “<a href="http://www.asisonline.org/foundation/guns.pdf">Enforcing a no-weapons policy for employees as allowed by law is a fundamental component of establishing effective countermeasures [to workplace violence]. Weapons policies should be written, made known to all employees, and consistently enforced. Employer policies prohibiting firearms have been shown to reduce the incidence of homicide in the workplace, and they demonstrate a commitment to safety</a>.” <br /><br />But equally important are policies that keep individuals who are unstable or violent from stockpiling firearms. President Obama put it well in an editorial he wrote for the <i style="">Arizona Daily Star</i>: “<a href="http://azstarnet.com/article_011e7118-8951-5206-a878-39bfbc9dc89d.html">I'm willing to bet that responsible, law-abiding gun owners agree that...an unbalanced man shouldn't be able to buy a gun so easily; that there's room for us to have reasonable laws that uphold liberty, ensure citizen safety and are fully compatible with a robust Second Amendment ... Porous background checks are bad for police officers, for law-abiding citizens and for the sellers themselves. If we're serious about keeping guns away from someone who's made up his mind to kill, then we can't allow a situation where a responsible seller denies him a weapon at one store, but he effortlessly buys the same gun someplace else. Clearly, there’s more we can do to prevent gun violence</a>.”<br /><br />Yes sir, there is.</p>stopgunviolencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806648144323303424noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420740688947057.post-51918492941475956452011-01-25T07:10:00.000-08:002012-03-15T09:37:42.576-07:00"Buy it from somebody like me that don’t give a &*%@."<p class="MsoNormal">A story from the state of Washington reinforces the dangers of the <a href="http://www.csgv.org/issues-and-campaigns/gun-show-loophole/">Gun Show Loophole</a> and the threat it poses to America’s law enforcement officers. It also highlights the investigative benefits of requiring multiple sales reports from federally licensed firearms dealers (FFLs)—a topic that has been <a href="http://www.atf.gov/press/releases/2010/12/122210-melson.webcast.wmv">in the news lately in regards to the illegal trafficking of firearms across the U.S. border into Mexico</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_4osl4oebPqg/TT7v7jDi6zI/AAAAAAAAAeQ/ib7ndnp1X7I/s1600/David%2BDevenny.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 320px; FLOAT: right; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5566149995777944370" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_4osl4oebPqg/TT7v7jDi6zI/AAAAAAAAAeQ/ib7ndnp1X7I/s320/David%2BDevenny.jpg" /></a>The story begins on the evening of October 31, 2009, when Seattle police officers Timothy Brenton and Britt Sweeney were sitting in their patrol cars discussing a recent traffic stop. Without any warning, a man approached in a white Datsun 210 and shot them both, killing Brenton and wounding Sweeney. He then successfully fled the scene.<br /><br />Police confronted Christopher Monfort, 42, at his apartment six days later after a tip identified him as a suspect in the shooting. When Monfort drew a gun in response, he was shot, injured, and arrested. Authorities found an <a href="http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattle911/archives/186117.asp">arsenal of firearms</a> inside his apartment, including a Kel-Tec SU-16 semiautomatic rifle, a Mossberg shotgun M59O series, an Auto-Ordnance Corporation .45 caliber pistol, a Winchester model 70 7mm rifle with scope, a FN Herstal BelgiQue rifle, and an Interordnance of America M-59/66 7.62 x 39 caliber rifle. They also recovered numerous improvised explosive devices. <br /><br />The Kel-Tec rifle was linked to the shootings of officers Brenton and Sweeney and traced back to its original purchaser. That purchaser indicated that he sold the rifle to David Devenny, 68. <br /><br />Local, state and federal authorities were already well-acquainted with Devenny. In 2007, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) investigated a Canadian citizen who bought multiple firearms from Devenny—illegally—at Washington gun shows. Devenny is not an FFL, but because of the Gun Show Loophole, he was able to sell firearms at these events as a private individual without conducting background checks on purchasers or maintaining records of sale.<br /><br />Devenny himself became the target of ATF investigations in May 2009 when the agency received a multiple sales report indicating that he had purchased nine handguns from one federal firearms licensee in a period of just five business days. When he bought these weapons, Devenny signed a form that stated, “I further understand that the repetitive purchase of firearms for the purpose of resale for livelihood and profit without a Federal firearms license is a violation of the law.”<br /><br />During a conversation with an undercover ATF agent at Devenny’s home in January 2010, Devenny “<a href="http://www.theolympian.com/2010/11/20/1446299/man-may-have-sold-gun-that-killed.html">admitted that he was the one that sold the gun that ‘killed the cop and wounded that lady cop.’</a>” Devenny allegedly sold the Kel-Tec rifle at a gun show in Puyallup, Washington, on October 24, 2009, one week before it was used to kill Brenton. Devenny explained that “<a href="http://www.theolympian.com/2010/11/20/1446299/man-may-have-sold-gun-that-killed.html">he did not know to whom he sold the gun because he did not keep records</a>.” <br /><br />On February 5, 2010, Devenny sold a .40-caliber Glock pistol and a Norinco SKS rifle to an ATF informant who told Devenny that he was under a restraining order that was in place to prevent him from “<a href="http://www.theolympian.com/2010/11/20/1446299/man-may-have-sold-gun-that-killed.html">harassing, stalking and threatening an intimate partner</a>.” On November 15, 2010, an undercover ATF agent and a confidential informant with a felony record went to Devenny’s home. The agent informed Devenny that the informant had two prior felony convictions. Nonetheless, Devenny sold the informant two firearms for $850. He even threw in a free box of ammunition.<br /><br />In multiple conversations with undercover agents and informants, Devenny made his business practices patently clear. “<a href="http://www.theolympian.com/2010/11/20/1446299/man-may-have-sold-gun-that-killed.html">What I don’t know, I don’t care about … It’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell</a>,” he stated. “<a href="http://www.theolympian.com/2010/11/20/1446299/man-may-have-sold-gun-that-killed.html">Buy it from somebody like me that don’t give a **** [about a customer’s prior conviction for domestic violence] … Just as long as you forget where it came from</a>.” Devenny also bragged that he “<a href="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2013474923_gundealer20m.html">made good money</a>” during eight years of selling firearms without a federal firearms license. <br /><br />When authorities arrested Devenny on November 19, they recovered 42 guns and $32,000 in cash from his home. He has been charged with illegally selling firearms to individuals he knew were prohibited purchasers under federal law.“<a href="http://www.komonews.com/news/local/109283389.html">This is about public safety</a>,” said U.S Attorney Jenny Durkan. “<a href="http://www.komonews.com/news/local/109283389.html">Illegal gun sales are a threat to our police and our communities. We will continue to prosecute felons who possess guns illegally. And we will prosecute the people who put those guns in their hands</a>.” <br /><br />And alleged cop killer Christopher Monfort? He has been charged with aggravated first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder in regards to the shooting of officers Brenton and Sweeney. King County prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. <br /><br />Having benefitted from the anonymity of private gun sales, Monfort has also emerged as <a href="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/theblotter/2012844322_chris_monfort_2nd_amendment_ad.html?syndication=rss">high-profile gun rights advocate</a>. At his trial on March 11, 2010, he parroted the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/josh-horwitz/second-amendment-remedies_b_616191.html">National Rifle Association’s insurrectionist interpretation of the Second Amendment</a>, telling the court, “<a href="http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/dailyweekly/2010/03/christopher_monforts_courthous.php">There is a reason why there is gunpowder and explosions on the 4th of July, to remind us, to remind us, that we are in charge. Freedom is not free</a>.”<br /><br />Certainly one family in America now understands that freedom is not free—that of <a href="http://www.odmp.org/officer/20104-officer-timothy-q.-brenton">Officer Timothy Brenton</a>, who served the Seattle community faithfully for nine years before giving his life in defense of public safety.</p>stopgunviolencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806648144323303424noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420740688947057.post-26635258451078251792010-12-20T06:58:00.000-08:002012-03-15T09:37:57.470-07:00Virginia's "Phantom Menace"<p class="MsoNormal">An all-too-common argument voiced by opponents of sensible gun legislation is the false claim that there is no such thing as the <a href="http://www.csgv.org/issues-and-campaigns/gun-show-loophole">Gun Show Loophole</a>. The loophole, of course, refers to the fact that private individuals who are “not engaged in the business of dealing” firearms can sell guns at gun shows to purchasers without conducting background checks or maintaining any records of sale. <br /><br />Recently, those who would dismiss the danger of totally unregulated gun sales have been vocal in the Commonwealth of Virginia, <a href="http://www.csgv.org/issues-and-campaigns/gun-show-loophole/virginia-campaign">where the Gun Show Loophole remains a hot issue</a>.<br /><br />For starters, <i style="">Richmond Times-Dispatch </i>columnist Bart Hinkle published an <a href="http://findarticles.com/p/news-articles/virginian-pilot-ledger-star-norfolk/mi_8014/is_20101205/loopy-logic-loopholes/ai_n56415517/">editorial</a> on December 5 where he attacked “<a href="http://findarticles.com/p/news-articles/virginian-pilot-ledger-star-norfolk/mi_8014/is_20101205/loopy-logic-loopholes/ai_n56415517/">the so-called ‘gun-show loophole.’</a>” He referred to a 1997 survey in claiming that only 1 or 2 percent of offenders obtain their weapons from gun shows. <a href="http://www.csgv.org/storage/documents/CSGV_2007_Gun_Show_1_Percent_Memo.pdf">That survey, however, was based on the personal statements of convicted criminals and made no attempt to investigate the veracity of their claims or identify, confirm, and trace the crime guns they reported</a>.<span style=""> </span>Hinkle also claimed that “private, person-to-person sales is not limited to gun shows, so calling it a ‘gun-show’ loophole is disingenuous.” If you want to strictly talk semantics, Hinkle is right. Private sellers can also sell guns without any oversight through newspaper classified ads, over the internet, across a kitchen table, or even on a street corner. But does Hinkle think that is supposed to make Virginians feel <i style="">safer</i>?<br /><br />Thankfully, Andrew Goddard—whose son Colin was shot four times during the Virginia Tech tragedy and survived—was on hand to respond to Hinkle’s column. In a December 10 letter to the <i style="">Virginian-Pilot</i>, he pointed out that in 2009, “<a href="http://hamptonroads.com/2010/12/denial-gun-shows">the [Virginia] State Police arrested 68 people attempting to buy guns at Virginia gun shows who were ineligible</a>” to purchase firearms under federal and state law. Goddard continued: “<a href="http://hamptonroads.com/2010/12/denial-gun-shows">These were people who knowingly attempted to buy traceable guns from licensed dealers and voluntarily submitted to a background check. Hinkle would have us believe the ludicrous idea that no ineligible buyers went to the tables of unlicensed sellers nearby and bought identical but untraceable guns that they knew were being sold 'cash and carry' with no questions asked</a>.”<br /><br />The next denial came from Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell on December 13. <a href="http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/investigators&id=7841676">In a report by a New York affiliate of ABC News</a>, reporter Jim Hoffer confronted the governor about the Gun Show Loophole. When asked about why the loophole has been left open in Virginia, McDonnell replied, “<a href="http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/investigators&id=7841676">It’s not open</a>.” When told that individuals could indeed purchase firearms in Virginia without undergoing a background check, McDonnell replied, “<a href="http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/investigators&id=7841676">Well, not at a gun show</a>.”<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_4osl4oebPqg/TQ9yQLk6TDI/AAAAAAAAAd8/XuK44yN-AZ4/s1600/Roanoke%2BGun%2BShow.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_4osl4oebPqg/TQ9yQLk6TDI/AAAAAAAAAd8/XuK44yN-AZ4/s320/Roanoke%2BGun%2BShow.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5552782487882189874" /></a>Hoffer had a surprise for McDonnell, however, informing him: “<a href="http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/investigators&id=7841676">We’ve witnessed [it] firsthand. We’ve gone to a Roanoke Gun Show just a few weeks ago and saw how easy it is for anyone, including a criminal if they wanted to, to buy a gun and not have a question asked, not even asked about their name</a>.”<br /><br />Hoffer was referring to a brand new undercover video he filmed with <a href="http://csgv2.blogspot.com/2010/11/one-who-cant-walk-away.html">Colin Goddard</a>, who is now working with the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. During that shopping spree at a Roanoke gun show, Colin purchased the following firearms from private sellers in the span of just one hour: a .40 caliber Sig Sauer Pro semiautomatic pistol, a Mossberg Shotgun, a Tec- 9 semiautomatic assault pistol (along with 50-round ammunition clips), and a .22 caliber semiautomatic carbine. He paid $2,000 in cash, never underwent a single background check, never presented any identification, and never even gave his name. At one point in the video he asks a seller, “<a href="http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/investigators&id=7841676">Cash and carry, yeah?</a>” to which the seller responds, “<a href="http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/investigators&id=7841676">Yep, cash and carry!</a>” Stranger yet was that after completing his day at the gun show, Goddard was required to undergo a background check when he turned his firearms over to the Henrico County Police. “<a href="http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/investigators&id=7841676">If <i style="">I</i> know it’s so easy</a>,” Goddard says, “<a href="http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/investigators&id=7841676">I’m sure the person who is trying to bypass a background check also knows that this is an easy way to [buy guns]</a>.” [A <a href="http://www.atf.gov/press/releases/2010/09/090710-dc-front-royal-man-indicted-on-firearms.html">recent case</a> from Front Royal, in which an unlicensed dealer was indicted for selling firearms to convicted felons, shows how true this is.]<br /><br />Confronted with the fact that he was part of a video that directly disproved his misstatements, McDonnell told Hoffer, “<a href="http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/investigators&id=7841676">The [choice] that we made in Virginia is to not regulate the private sales of firearms</a>.” That policy choice, of course, is not popular with Virginia residents. A <a href="http://vacouncilofchurches.org/pipermail/coordinatingcabinet_vacouncilofchurches.org/attachments/20091020/241a3e0e/attachment.pdf">2009 poll from Rasmussen Report</a> showed that 76% of Virginians think the Gun Show Loophole should be closed. Indeed, even <a href="http://www.mayorsagainstillegalguns.org/downloads/pdf/luntz_poll_questionnaire_and_responses.pdf">69% of National Rifle Association members support closing the loophole</a>.<br /><br />So, please no more denials. It is a fact that criminals and the dangerously mentally ill can and do buy firearms at Virginia’s gun shows without a background check. The only open question is why McDonnell and his friends still think this is a good idea.</p>stopgunviolencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806648144323303424noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420740688947057.post-89211750418509676102010-11-22T10:35:00.000-08:002012-03-15T09:38:14.353-07:00Heeding God's Call in Maryland<p class="MsoNormal">The involvement of faith leaders in efforts to strengthen gun laws in the United States goes back decades if not further. The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, for example, was originally founded by the United Methodist General Board of Church and Society and other religious organizations in mid-1970s. An exciting campaign known as “Heeding God’s Call,” however, is providing the faith community with new opportunities to take the lead in reducing gun violence in our country. Originally started in Pennsylvania, Heeding God’s Call has now spread south into Maryland.<br /><br />The <a href="http://www.heedinggodscall.org/content/about-us">mission statement</a> of Heeding God’s Call calls for the campaign to “unite people of faith in the sacred responsibility to protect our brothers, sisters and children.” The campaign realizes it mission by: 1) Helping local faith communities organize advocacy campaigns to encourage gun shops to adopt a code of conduct to deter illegal purchasing and trafficking of handguns; 2) Providing support and resources for faith communities to form multi-racial, ecumenical and interfaith partnerships working together, on both social and legislative levels, to prevent gun violence; 3) Serving as a “connection point” for congregations and partnerships to connect with, learn from and support the work of gun violence prevention organizations and efforts already in place, and ; 4) Advocating for faith communities to make commitments to raise voices and take action to prevent gun violence.<br /><br />Started in 2008, the <a href="http://www.heedinggodscall.org/content/notorious-gun-shop-end-era">signature victory</a> of Heeding God’s Call came in September 2009 when the sustained protests of faith leaders in Philadelphia pressured the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to shut down Colosimo’s Gun Center, a store that was the source of one out of every five crime guns recovered in the city. That same month, a Heeding God’s Call campaign took root in the Pennsylvania state capital, Harrisburg. Now, in 2010, new groups have sprung up in Baltimore and Prince George’s County, Maryland.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_4osl4oebPqg/TOq6Nv9SCpI/AAAAAAAAAdc/W3ylqGtsaIo/s1600/HGC%2BBaltimore.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_4osl4oebPqg/TOq6Nv9SCpI/AAAAAAAAAdc/W3ylqGtsaIo/s320/HGC%2BBaltimore.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5542447036807383698" /></a>On October 20, faith leaders from Baltimore gathered at Clyde’s Sport Shop in Lansdowne, Maryland. They asked the store’s owner, Clyde Blamberg, to sign a <a href="http://www.heedinggodscall.org/content/code-conduct">10-point Code of Conduct</a>. This voluntary code asks gun dealers to implement marketing safeguards to prevent illegal “straw” sales; such as videotaping gun sales, deterring fake IDs, and conducting background checks on all store employees. A 2008 <a href="http://www.abell.org/pubsitems/arn108.pdf">report</a> from the Abell Foundation found that Clyde’s was the second largest source of crime guns seized in Baltimore during the period January 1, 2006 through March 31, 2007. <br /><br />"<a href="http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2010-10-20/news/bs-md-hermann-gun-store-protest-20101019_1_baltimore-gunsmith-gun-shop-clyde-s-sport-shop/2">We are not implying that you break the law</a>," Bishop Douglas Miles of Koinonia Baptist Church told Blamberg. "<a href="http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2010-10-20/news/bs-md-hermann-gun-store-protest-20101019_1_baltimore-gunsmith-gun-shop-clyde-s-sport-shop/2">I'm sure you faithfully follow the procedures. We just want to ask you to help us to help prevent the havoc that is going on in our communities</a>.” “<a href="http://www.explorebaltimorecounty.com/news/109244/religious-leaders-put-lansdowne-gun-shop-spotlight/">We need people voluntarily who will decide to do the right thing. We can’t just depend on the law to have good communities, we need people of good will</a>,” added Rev. Dr. Eugene Sutton, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland. <a href="http://www.baltimorebrew.com/2010/10/20/clydes/">Standing with Miles and Sutton</a> were Rev. Peter Nord, Presbyter Executive of the Presbytery of Baltimore; <span style=""> </span>Rev. Jack Sharpe, President, Central Maryland Ecumenical Council; Rev. Wolfgang D. Herz-Lane, Synod Bishop, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; Imam Earl El-Amin, Muslim Community Cultural Center of Baltimore; Rev. John R. Schol, Baltimore-Washington Conference United Methodist Church; Dr. Arthur Abramson, Executive Director, Baltimore Jewish Council; Rev. Dr. John Deckenback, Central Atlantic Conference United Church of Christ; and Rev. Denis Madden, Auxilliary Bishop, Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore.<br /><br />“<a href="http://www.explorebaltimorecounty.com/news/109244/religious-leaders-put-lansdowne-gun-shop-spotlight/">We’re not interested</a>” was Blamberg’s immediate response (Clyde’s supporters find no fault with his business practices, instead pointing a finger at the “<a href="http://home.comcast.net/%7Eclydessportshop/THENnNOW/gunprotest/protestSUN.html">culture</a>” of “<a href="http://home.comcast.net/%7Eclydessportshop/THENnNOW/gunprotest/protestSUN.html">black males in the city</a>”).<br /><br />The Baltimore group is not giving up so easy, however. “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV_pFSjbUfU">With a primary goal to reduce the flow of illegal handguns on city streets</a>,” Heeding God’s Call will return to Clyde’s Sports Shop on December 11 at 3:00 PM to again ask Blamberg to sign the Code of Conduct.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_4osl4oebPqg/TOq6SP9i7PI/AAAAAAAAAdk/3qLrZsXxys0/s1600/PRISCM%2BRealco.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 294px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_4osl4oebPqg/TOq6SP9i7PI/AAAAAAAAAdk/3qLrZsXxys0/s320/PRISCM%2BRealco.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5542447114117901554" /></a>Blamberg is not the only gun dealer in Maryland who has been approached by the faith community. On <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/stopgunviolence#p/u/22/e4vhzAsA_mQ">November 13</a>, the Partnership for Renewal in Southern and Central Maryland (PRISCM) conducted a prayer vigil and protest at Realco Guns in Forestville.<span style=""> </span>60 people attended the event, including religious leaders, gun violence survivors, and elected officials. They were responding to a recent <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/23/AR2010102302994.html"><i style="">Washington Post</i> investigation</a> that revealed that more than 2,500 guns used in crimes have been traced back to Realco in the past 18 years. In addition, nearly one in every three guns confiscated by authorities in the District of Columbia and Prince George's County was purchased from the dealer.<br /><br />“<a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/stopgunviolence#p/u/22/e4vhzAsA_mQ">We’re not here today to necessarily gang up on Mr. [Carlos] del Real, who is the owner of this shop, but we are here to bring attention to this shop</a>,” said Youth Minister Raimon Jackson of Gethsemane United Methodist Church. “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/stopgunviolence#p/u/22/e4vhzAsA_mQ">We are here to...let him know that our community will no longer stand for...the traces of guns that are found in connection with this shop</a>.”<br /><br />Minister Rosita Barnes of St. Paul's Baptist Church contributed a prayer: “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/stopgunviolence#p/u/22/e4vhzAsA_mQ">Lord we ask that you would touch the buyers, the would-be buyers and the sellers...We pray that each would-be buyer in this shop—or anywhere else—looks deep within themselves where we believe [they] will find God and ask the question, ‘Lord, what shall I do?’</a>”<br /><br />The faith leaders in Prince George’s County presented del Real with a copy of the Code of Conduct.<span style=""> </span><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/13/AR2010111303780.html">He accepted it, but like Blamberg, refused to sign</a>. Like their counterparts in Baltimore, however, these faith leaders were not deterred. They announced they, too, would be coming back, and soon.</p>stopgunviolencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806648144323303424noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420740688947057.post-7376481557708681862010-11-15T06:47:00.000-08:002012-03-15T09:38:25.941-07:00One Who Can't Walk Away<p class="MsoNormal">On the morning of April 16, 2007, students and teachers alike went to their classrooms at Virginia Tech as if it were any other school day. Before the morning was over, 32 of them were murdered, and an additional 17 wounded, in <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/16/AR2007041600533.html">the deadliest shooting rampage</a> in the nation's history. The shooter, <a href="http://livingfor32.com/story.html">Seung-Hui Cho</a>, had previously been evaluated in a psychiatric facility. A judge determined that Cho “present[ed] an eminent danger to [him]self or others as a result of mental illness, or [was] so seriously mentally ill as to be substantially unable to care for [him]self.” According to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/21/us/21guns.html">federal law</a>, Cho should have been prohibited from buying firearms, but because of a loophole in Virginia law he was able to pass background checks and <a href="http://www.governor.virginia.gov/TempContent/techPanelReport.cfm">purchase two handguns</a>.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_4osl4oebPqg/TOFKFgOrGxI/AAAAAAAAAdU/2ptl6rZ2nD4/s1600/Living%2Bfor%2B32.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 162px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_4osl4oebPqg/TOFKFgOrGxI/AAAAAAAAAdU/2ptl6rZ2nD4/s320/Living%2Bfor%2B32.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5539790475053701906" /></a>Colin Goddard was one of the students wounded on that snowy day in April. <span style=""> </span>He was shot four times by Cho—in his left knee, left hip, right shoulder and right hip. A new, critically acclaimed short documentary, “Living for 32,” tells the story of the Virginia Tech tragedy through his eyes (a trailer for the film is available <a href="http://livingfor32.com/trailer.html">here</a>).<br /><br />In the film, Kristina Anderson, another survivor who was shot that day, says, “There’s three ways that I’ve seen that people react to things like this. The first is they completely deny it. The second way is probably that they admit it, but also don’t want it to have any effect on their future life and they go on. [The] third person can internalize it, turn it around and put it towards their future to kind of make something come out of that; and that’s a survivor’s mission. It’s usually something that was so traumatic, and so powerful, and so life changing to you that you have to do something about it ... You can’t walk away from it.”<br /><br />Colin Goddard is the latter type of person. He doesn’t believe that he was “saved” as part of some divine plan. “I was one of seven students to survive out of a class of 17,” he says. “I don’t know why. I know that there were people who were killed all around me who did nothing different than I did. I just got lucky.” Not wanting future Americans to have to rely on similar good fortune, Goddard has chosen to use his story to promote and create a safer America.<br /><br />Soon after graduating from Virginia Tech, Goddard began interning for the <a href="http://www.bradycampaign.org/">Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence</a>, where he offered to go undercover to expose one of the most dangerous aspects of our nation’s weak gun laws: the Gun Show Loophole. <a href="http://www.bradycampaign.org/colin">Goddard traveled to gun shows</a> across the country and <i style="">legally</i> bought everything from an AK-47 to the exact model of handgun that he was shot with with nothing but cash. He never underwent a background check as part of these “private sales,” and in some cases didn’t even have to show identification. Goddard’s father, Andy, explains that his son secretly filmed these purchases to, “make it easy for people; put it right there in front of their faces; hang it in front of them on the TV screen and say, ‘Look, this is legal, all of this is legal; everything that was done is legal. Do you want it to be legal? Do you think that that makes you safe, that this kind of thing’s legal?’”<br /><br />In “Living for 32,” however, Colin Goddard learns that changing things is tough <a href="http://www.mayorsagainstillegalguns.org/downloads/pdf/luntz_poll_questionnaire_and_responses.pdf">even when the overwhelming majority of people are on your side</a>. On July 14, 2010, Rep. “Bobby” Scott (D-VA)—the Chair of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security—<a href="http://csgv2.blogspot.com/2010/07/like-buying-candy-bar.html">co-hosted a Congressional Forum</a> with Reps. Mike Castle (R-DE), Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) and Mike Quigley (D-IL). The forum was designed to explore the merits of <a href="http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h2324/show">H.R. 2324</a>, the “Gun Show Loophole Closing Act of 2009.” Goddard provided <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU4_fSJiHb8">moving testimony</a> at the forum—Rep. Castle described Goddard’s words as the “<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-helmke/most-compelling-testimony_b_647658.html">most compelling</a>” he had ever heard during his time in Congress.<br /><br />Nonetheless, H.R. 2324 has not received a full hearing or a vote on the House floor despite having 112 co-sponsors. “I didn’t think that changing some laws in Washington was going to happen by me telling my story,” Goddard states. “As I learn more I’ll change my strategy, I’ll change it up to do whatever I have to do to get what I want changed ... It’s not changing the whole world, it’s not getting guns from every man. [I’m] talking about two or three small little things that I think would make America a better place.”<br /><br />“Living for 32” documents Goddard’s courageous journey from tragedy to triumph—which is still in its infancy. The film has received a strong reception after multiple public screenings across the country. <a href="http://incontention.com/2010/10/13/ampas-cinema-eye-honors-narrow-doc-short-fields/">The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced</a> that “Living for 32” is among the eight finalists for this year’s Best Documentary Short award.<br /><br />The film’s next big screening will take place at New York University’s Skirball Center for Performing Arts on Wednesday, November 17, from 6:00-8:00 PM. Members of the public are invited to attend and can RSVP <a href="http://livingfor32.com/nyu_rsvp.html">here</a>.<br /><br />It will be just one more night of work for Colin Goddard. “There is no meaning in our tragedy,” Kristina Anderson reflects in the film. “We didn’t ask for this, but unfortunately there are people that don’t have a voice anymore, and so it’s kind of like we should speak for them ... I think that’s what Colin has done.”</p>stopgunviolencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806648144323303424noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420740688947057.post-7230682182829458142010-11-08T06:11:00.000-08:002012-03-15T09:38:42.194-07:00A Winning Issue<p class="MsoNormal">It has already been well chronicled that gun control supporters fared well in the November 2 elections. As <a href="http://www.bradycampaign.org/media/press/view/1314/">the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence pointed out</a>, candidates who endorse common-sense gun laws won Senate races from both sides of the aisle. Victorious on Tuesday were the following Democrats: Barbara Boxer in California; Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand in New York, Ron Wyden in Oregon; Barbara Mikulski in Maryland; Daniel Inouye in Hawaii; Richard Blumenthal in Connecticut, Michael Bennet in Colorado; and Chris Coons in Delaware. Then there is the incoming Republican Senator from Illinois, Mark Kirk, who currently serves as the Co-Chair of the Task Force on Illegal Guns in the U.S. House of Representatives.<br /><br />Much was made of the fact that the National Rifle Association (NRA) endorsed many Blue Dog Democrats running for re-election in the House, but the support of the gun lobby did little to improve their fortunes. <a href="http://www.bradycampaign.org/media/press/view/1315/?s=1">Of the 49 Democratic incumbents who lost in the November 2 elections, 29 (59%) had an A rating from the NRA, 27 were endorsed by the NRA (55%), and 25 (51%) received financial support from the NRA</a>. On the flip side, <a href="http://www.bradycampaign.org/media/press/view/1315/?s=1">only three of the 101 Democratic House incumbents who co-sponsored legislation to close the Gun Show Loophole (H.R. 2324) lost on Tuesday</a>. The loophole allows private individuals to sell firearms at gun shows without conducting background checks on purchasers or maintaining records of sale.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_4osl4oebPqg/TNgHtx5jpuI/AAAAAAAAAdM/AmWfNpPMfq8/s1600/Gerry+Connolly.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 233px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_4osl4oebPqg/TNgHtx5jpuI/AAAAAAAAAdM/AmWfNpPMfq8/s320/Gerry+Connolly.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5537184224922281698" /></a>One particularly interesting House race took place in Virginia’s 11<sup>th</sup> Congressional District, where first-term Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly faced off against Keith Fimian, a local businessman. The 11<sup>th </sup>is as “<a href="http://jonathanturley.org/2010/11/04/shooting-yourself-in-the-foot-nra-candidate-loses-in-nra-home-district/">an odd-shaped Congressional District stretching from the rural Virginia horse country near Warrenton, then meandering east through the battlefields at Bull Run, and finally racing north headlong towards the uber-metropolian suburbs of Fairfax and Arlington. Nestled near the armpit of the District lies the impressive headquarters of the National Rifle Association</a>.” In 2009, the 11<sup>th</sup> supported the Republican slate, voting for Bob McDonnell as Governor, Bill Bolling as Lieutenant Governor, and Ken Cuccinelli as Attorney General.<br /><br />The NRA’s endorsement in its home district went to Fimian. The gun issue did not figure large in the race, however, until Fimian made the following controversial comments:<br /><br /><blockquote><a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/10/virginia-candidate-on-how-guns-could-have-prevented-the-virginia-tech-shooting/65387/">I think that at Virginia Tech, if one of those kids in one of those classrooms was packing heat, I think that would not have happened … The perpetrator of that crime would have thought twice before walking into a classroom if he thought there was any chance of someone being armed and preventing him from doing that</a>.</blockquote><br /><p class="MsoNormal">Gerry Connolly immediately bucked the “conventional wisdom” among Democrats in rural and conservative districts that the gun control issue is “untouchable” and “a loser.” James Walkinshaw, Connolly's campaign manager, told the press that “Keith Fimian's extreme position on guns and outrageous comments about the Virginia Tech tragedy serve to show yet again that he is too extreme for Northern Virginia. Fimian's opposition to closing the Gun Show Loophole, his callous lack of regard for the victims of the tragedy, and belief that guns should be allowed on our schools and college campuses are way out of the mainstream.”<br /><br />Survivors of the shooting at Virginia Tech also took great offense to Fimian’s remarks. Omar Samaha, who lost his sister Reema during the tragedy, appeared in a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qhORTQknuM&feature=related">television ad</a> sponsored by Americans United for Safe Streets (AUSS). "Ask Keith Fimian why he's protecting criminals, instead of protecting us,” he implored his fellow Virginians. Retired Lt. Col. Peter Read, whose daughter Mary was also killed, accepted an apology from Fimian for his remarks, but noted, “He has yet to decide his answer on the simple question of whether he'll support background checks for every gun sold at a gun show. I need my representative in Congress to know the answer to that question.” <br /><br />The pressure to clarify his stance on these issues became so intense that Fimian’s campaign literally began to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trlKZhSYxcY&feature=related">run</a> from questions.<br /><br />Overcoming a massive wave that saw the Republicans gain 60+ seats in the House, Connolly prevailed in the 11<sup>th</sup> on Election Day. He currently holds a 935-vote lead over Fimian, with only 300 ballots left to be counted. As one voter told <i style="">The Connection Newspapers</i>, “<a href="http://www.connectionnewspapers.com/article.asp?article=345639&paper=72&cat=104">I heard some comments that one of the candidates made about Virginia Tech, and I decided to come out and vote for the other guy</a>.”<br /><br />Even the blog Red NoVA had strong words on the matter: “<a href="http://rednova8.com/wordpress/?p=3285">Keith’s comments saying that if a student was ‘packing heat’ there would have been fewer deaths were incredibly insensitive and damaging to his cause … To make matters worse, this entire drama unfolded on every network news station in the DC region</a>.”<br /><br />Time will tell if other Democrats in the Commonwealth and across the country catch on, but public safety was clearly a boon to the party in an otherwise disastrous 2010 election. Resources also make a difference—AUSS spent $450,000 on ads and mailers in the VA-11 race and it paid off. Far from a liability, strong support for policies to keep guns out of the hands of criminals is a career booster.</p>stopgunviolencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806648144323303424noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420740688947057.post-75769377739031500042010-10-04T06:09:00.000-07:002012-03-15T09:38:59.024-07:00Celebrating Death<p class="MsoNormal">Late last month, the National Rifle Association’s Institute of Legislative Action (NRA-ILA) posted an <a href="http://www.nraila.org/News/Read/InTheNews.aspx?ID=14307&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter">alert</a> highlighting an editorial by the founder of <a href="http://www.libertyunderfire.org/">www.libertyunderfire.org</a>. Quoting the first paragraph of the editorial, the alert read:<br /><blockquote>In light of the double murder in a prominent California city where two 16 year old thugs with baseball bat and knife bludgeoned an elderly couple to death after first robbing them in the hopes of acquiring more money for their frequent marijuana usage, I wonder if this tragedy may have been avoided had the victims used a gun to protect themselves. Many crime victims also are victims to our society's undying trust that if we are law abiding, others around us will be also, and those who are not will be dealt with swiftly by law enforcement. Such is naive, impossible and a great American myth.</blockquote><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_4osl4oebPqg/TKnYfRkIkTI/AAAAAAAAAc0/LoQ3BQfujmA/s1600/Beg+for+Easy+Death.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 225px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_4osl4oebPqg/TKnYfRkIkTI/AAAAAAAAAc0/LoQ3BQfujmA/s320/Beg+for+Easy+Death.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5524184449749127474" /></a><p class="MsoNormal">A typical gut reaction to the story would be, “Sure, it <i style="">would </i>be great if all elderly couples were armed and ready to deal with murderous thugs.” After all, this was a horrific tragedy that involved the senseless loss of precious lives in a heinous crime. Caught up in emotions like anger and fear, one might forget that <a href="http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/offenses/expanded_information/data/shrtable_12.html">only 86 Americans were murdered during home burglaries in 2007</a>. During that same year, of course, there were 613 accidental firearm deaths, 12,362 firearm-related homicides, and 17,352 suicides committed with a gun (CDC data, <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/fatal.html">WISQARS tool</a>). Furthermore, the FBI has confirmed through its <a href="http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2007/offenses/expanded_information/data/shrtable_09.html">Uniform Crime Report</a> that victims know their murderers personally more than ¾ of the time (i.e., they are family members, friends, boyfriend/girlfriend, co-workers, acquaintances, etc.).<br /><br />That has not stopped the NRA from perpetuating the myth that one must constantly have a loaded gun at the ready to deal with evil, faceless criminals, however. Since 1958,<i style=""> </i>the NRA has published a column in its <i style="">American Rifleman </i>magazine entitled, “<a href="http://www.nraila.org/armedcitizen/">The Armed Citizen</a>.” The column highlights “incidents of law-abiding Americans using firearms to halt or prevent crime” and elevates “justified” killers to the status of cult heroes.<br /><br />Even assuming that the gun lobby has little regard for the Ten Commandments, a closer look at their “Armed Citizen” clippings reveals an overall picture that is far from black and white in terms of guilt and innocence. It seems that the only requirement for inclusion in the column is if a “good guy” shoots a “bad guy(s),” no matter what the particular circumstances of a given case are. Keep in mind, too, that many of these incidents take place in states where the laws governing the use of lethal force have been dramatically liberalized by <a href="http://csgv2.blogspot.com/2009/12/thats-not-civilized-society.html">NRA-drafted “Castle Doctrine/Shoot First” statutes</a>.<br /><br />Here are some recent examples of “Armed Citizens” Tweeted on the <a href="http://twitter.com/NRANews">NRA News feed</a>: <br /><!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br /> <!--[endif]--></p> <ul style="margin-top: 0in;" type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style="">On <a href=http://twitter.com/NRANews/status/24391900558>September 10,</a> an auto sales store owner in Imperial, Missouri, was sleeping at his business when he heard the sounds of a door rattling and glass breaking. Confronting a burglar at the door, <a href="http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/article_9a17c08c-bcd1-11df-92c4-00127992bc8b.html">he fired two shots from a revolver, killing the man</a>, who was in his late 30s/early 40s. The would-be robber had no weapon of any kind and there was no indication that the shop owner’s life was under threat.<br /><!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br /> <!--[endif]--></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="">On <a href="http://twitter.com/NRANews/status/25032338500">September 16</a>, Michael Pickering was at home in Caddo Parish, Louisiana, when Robert Lee Green, 48, appeared at his kitchen door and began knocking aggressively. Pickering, who knew Green personally, opened the door and told him to leave. According to Pickering, Green then rushed into the house. <a href="http://www.ksla.com/Global/story.asp?S=13171432">Pickering shot him in the head with a handgun, killing him instantly</a>. Green had no weapon on him when he was killed. Pickering was taken into custody and an investigation is ongoing.<br /><!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br /> <!--[endif]--></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="">On <a href="http://twitter.com/NRANews/status/25358417759">September 17</a>, Theodore Vinnet, 82, heard a noise outside of his window in St. Rose, Louisiana, and suspected someone was robbing his carport. According to Vinnet, he opened the window and blindly fired a round from his shotgun to scare the burglar. Instead <a href="http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2010/09/st_rose_man_suspecting_burglar.html">he shot Morris Paul Jr., 39, wounding him</a>. There was no indication that Paul had a weapon or made any threats to the homeowner. Vinnet failed to report the incident to police and was arrested later that day and charged with aggravated battery.<br /><!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br /> <!--[endif]--></li><li class="MsoNormal" style=""><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_4osl4oebPqg/TKnY156SUMI/AAAAAAAAAdE/cFYAMTsIxIk/s1600/Oyola+Aponte.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 167px; height: 200px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_4osl4oebPqg/TKnY156SUMI/AAAAAAAAAdE/cFYAMTsIxIk/s200/Oyola+Aponte.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5524184838536581314" /></a>On <a href="http://twitter.com/NRANews/status/25358477100">September 21</a>, 15-year-old Otilio Rubio, 16-year-old William Murphy, 17 year-old Zachary Garcia and 15 year-old Austin Clements randomly chose a house to break into in their Davenport, Florida neighborhood. Homeowner <a href="http://www.theledger.com/article/20100922/NEWS/9225060">Jose Luis Oyola-Aponte, 37, fired a handgun at Rubio and Murphy, hitting Rubio in the head and Murphy in the abdomen</a>. Rubio died the next day at the hospital. Oyola-Aponte initially told police that the Rubio was in his home with another boy when he shot them. Later he changed his story, stating that Rubio had one leg in his window when he shot him. Murphy was shot as he stood outside the house. When police searched Oyola-Aponte’s home, they found a bag of cocaine in a fanny pack, which resulted in his arrest for possession of drugs and intent to sell. There is no indication that the teenagers were armed with weapons of any kind during the break-in. Only Rubio had any previous criminal history.<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br /> <!--[endif]--></li></ul> <br /><p class="MsoNormal">Why would <i style="">anyone </i>glorify a substance abuser and possible drug dealer who shoots two teenage boys, killing one? And isn’t it patently obvious that all of these incidents could have—and should have—been resolved without the use of lethal force? It is understandable that Americans would want to take reasonable precautions to defend themselves and their families from crimes. But when individuals open fire on unarmed perpetrators—some of whom have yet to commit any crime—it is hard to argue that justice is being done. Our country has never defined property theft as a capital crime—and for good reason.<br /><br />The NRA might feel that it is “naive” for Americans to have faith in law enforcement, but these trained professionals are there for a reason. One of their primary duties is to ensure that conflicts in local communities do not escalate into unnecessary violence. Whatever the NRA thinks can be accomplished by Americans shooting each other (beyond increased gun sales), it will never lead to a more peaceful society.</p>stopgunviolencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806648144323303424noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420740688947057.post-62967987325058910012010-09-20T06:35:00.000-07:002012-03-15T09:39:15.862-07:00A Serious Violation<p class="MsoNormal">Despite the critical mid-term elections that are rapidly approaching, the Democratic Congress has seemingly forgotten its base (and agenda) and is instead taking orders from the National Rifle Association (NRA). Two Congressional committees are currently planning hearings on <a href="http://e2ma.net/go/6785682422/208306900/215308716/1404253/goto:http:/www.bradycampaign.org/xshare/pdf/fedleg/ATF_Reform_Act_fact_sheet.pdf">H.R. 2296/S. 941</a>, the NRA-drafted “Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) Reform and Firearms Modernization Act,” which would severely limit ATF’s ability to shut down corrupt gun dealers.<br /> <br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_4osl4oebPqg/TJdlq47-YYI/AAAAAAAAAck/I3ClZ4wRMu8/s1600/LaPierre+CPAC.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 202px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_4osl4oebPqg/TJdlq47-YYI/AAAAAAAAAck/I3ClZ4wRMu8/s320/LaPierre+CPAC.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5518991655878680962" /></a>Under the legislation, it would be “<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/06/AR2010090603088.html">all but impossible</a>” for ATF to revoke the licenses of rogue dealers, even when they repeatedly break federal gun laws. The legislation would require ATF to show that a federally licensed dealer knew the specific law he/she was violating and intentionally disregarded that law, an unusually high and difficult burden of proof. The bill also creates a classification system for violations, but the ATF would only be allowed to revoke a license based on a “Serious” violation. “Minor” violations, such as “losing” hundreds or perhaps thousands of guns, would not warrant revocation of a dealer’s license. H.R. 2296/S. 941 would also allow dealers who have their licenses revoked to transfer their remaining inventory to their "private collection" and sell these guns for 60 days <b style="">without conducting background checks on purchasers</b>.<br /><br />The Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), had arranged a hearing on S. 941 for September 14, but chose to postpone it because of a “scheduling conflict.” Some speculate it was because of pressure from the Obama administration and grassroots activists who were outraged about Leahy’s priorities. A new date for the hearing has yet to be scheduled. Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA) is also planning to hold a hearing on H.R. 2296 in the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security, date and time TBD.<br /> <br />Gun rights advocates have argued that H.R. 2296/S. 941 is necessary to prevent “heavy-handed” enforcement by the ATF. The NRA claims that it is all too common for the ATF to revoke licenses for “<a href="http://www.nraila.org/Legislation/Federal/Read.aspx?id=6016">insignificant technical violations—such as improper use of abbreviations or filing records in the wrong order</a>.” The problem is they have not produced a single example of a case where this occurred.<br /><br />In truth, the ATF rarely uses its power to revoke federal firearm licenses. <a href="http://www.atf.gov/publications/factsheets/factsheet-ffl-revocation-process.html">In 2007, the agency conducted 10,000 inspections and revoked only 100 licenses—which represents just 0.1% of the total population of federally licensed firearms dealers in the U.S.</a> <br /><br />So why is the NRA pushing H.R. 2296/S. 941? It is well aware that <a href="http://www.mayorsagainstillegalguns.org/downloads/pdf/trace_report_final.pdf">just 1% of federally licensed gun dealers are the source of more than 57% of guns recovered in crimes nationwide</a>, and this small group of extremely bad apples is who the ATF targets for revocation. The NRA wants to protect their profits, and some of these dealers have extremely close ties to the gun lobby.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-helmke/nra-campaigns-to-protect_b_710496.html">Sandy Abrams, a former NRA board member, was cited for more than 900 violations of federal law before his Valley Gun license was revoked in 2006</a>. At the time, Valley Gun was <a href="http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/gun-lobbyist-and-gun-dealer-sandy-abrams-heads-to-trial-for-illegal-assault-weapon-sales-cited-for-900-federal-gun-law-violations-over-nearly-a-decade-58684057.html">ranked 37<sup>th</sup> out of 80,000 gun dealers in the country in terms of the number of guns it sold that were later linked to crimes. Almost 500 crime guns were traced back to Abrams’ store in one four-year period alone</a>. The Department of Justice referred to Valley Gun as a “<a href="http://www.bradycenter.org/xshare/pdf/reports/death-valley.pdf">serial violator</a>” and stated that Abrams had “<a href="http://www.bradycenter.org/xshare/pdf/reports/death-valley.pdf">endangered the public by failing to account for hundreds of weapons</a>.” Abrams saw it differently. “<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/22/AR2006072201032_pf.html">Forms fall behind the counter. Or maybe someone throws it away</a>,” he explained to authorities.<br /><br />It’s clear why the NRA wants H.R. 2296/S. 941 to become law, but the bigger question is why are Democrats moving the legislation? One would think that Democrats would want to <a href="http://www.kansascity.com/2010/08/24/2173082/enthusiasm-gap-confronts-democrats.html">motivate their base</a> to vote in the November elections. Gun owners have not traditionally been part of that base. <a href="http://observationalism.com/2008/11/10/more-exit-poll-comparisons-2000-2004-2008/">Over the past three presidential elections, voters in gun-owning households have voted Republican 61%-63% of the time</a>. Nor have Democrats received significant largesse from the gun industry. <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000000082">78% of the money the NRA has contributed in the 2010 election cycle has gone to Republicans</a>.<span style=""> </span>And progressives are certain to take offense at Democrats’ support for an organization that has consistently undermined their agenda (i.e., <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2010/0618/Did-Democrats-deal-with-the-NRA-kill-campaign-finance-reform">see the DISCLOSE Act</a>).<br /><br />Additionally, it seems odd that Democrats would take action on legislation that law enforcement has serious concerns about. The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) says H.R. 2296/S. 941 would “significantly impede criminal investigations and diminish the ability of law enforcement to protect their communities from the crime and violence associated with the illegal use of firearms.”<br /><br />The IACP recognizes the obvious: In a country in which illegal firearms trafficking is epidemic, the ATF needs <i style="">more </i>authority and resources to put corrupt gun dealers out of business, not <i style="">less</i>. <b>Concerned citizens can call Speaker Nancy Pelosi at (202) 225-0100. Tell her to cancel hearings on the "ATF Reform and Firearms Modernization Act" and table this dangerous legislation immediately.</b></p>stopgunviolencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806648144323303424noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420740688947057.post-42632870974234940402010-09-13T06:55:00.000-07:002012-03-15T09:39:29.840-07:00What's so Funny About Shooting Government Officials?<p class="MsoNormal">When National Rifle Association (NRA) President Charlton Heston hoisted a rifle above his head at the organization’s 2000 convention and shouted the words “from my cold dead hands,” there was no joke about it. He was conveying a serious threat by expressing the organization’s belief that the Second Amendment provides <i style="">individuals </i>with the<i style=""> </i>right to take violent action against our government—“<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rS8_kSGzVo">one bullet at a time</a>”—when <i style="">they</i> deem it has become “tyrannical.” Since <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/josh-horwitz/from-the-ballot-to-the-bu_b_136211.html">the conservative wing of the Supreme Court gave legal backing to this dangerous “Insurrectionist Idea” in 2008</a>, there have been a significant number of <a href="http://www.csgv.org/issues-and-campaigns/guns-democracy-and-freedom/insurrection-timeline">violent acts</a> by those who fear and hate our government.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_4osl4oebPqg/TI4whaxY51I/AAAAAAAAAcU/ssWyzPnRtZ8/s1600/Trigger+the+Vote.bmp"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 172px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_4osl4oebPqg/TI4whaxY51I/AAAAAAAAAcU/ssWyzPnRtZ8/s320/Trigger+the+Vote.bmp" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5516399944255727442" /></a>The NRA, however, now appears to find its advocacy for insurrectionism humorous. In a bizarre new <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MHpvTj86f0&feature=player_embedded">video</a> released in late August as part of its “Trigger the Vote” campaign, a group meeting is being held to discuss what should be done about the government coming to take away people’s guns. An old woman in the group, in an expletive-filled tirade reminiscent of Heston, states that if the government wants her gun, “they’ll have to pry it from my cold dead hands.” Martial arts expert/celebrity Chuck Norris then busts into the room and tells the participants that “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MHpvTj86f0&feature=player_embedded">there’s only one way to protect our rights</a>,” by registering to vote.<br /><br />The use of Chuck Norris as a voice of reason is curious, to put it mildly. Just last year, Norris told conservative radio/TV host Glenn Beck, “<a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,501929,00.html">I don't use [guns] for hunting. I'm not a hunter. But the thing is, it's for protection ... If the government decides to become a tyrannical government, our guns are to protect us against that. And that's really what the Second Amendment is all about</a>.” Norris even warned in March 2009 that a “<a href="http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=91103">second American Revolution</a>” will happen “<a href="http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=91103">if the state of the union continues to turn into the enemy of the state</a>.” Norris clearly buys into the insurrectionist ideology his new ad so casually dismisses.<br /><br />The “Trigger the Vote” campaign is a sharp departure from previous NRA rhetoric, and raises questions about the organization’s motives. The NRA’s embrace of insurrectionism—formalized through its <a href="http://www.nraila.org/heller/proamicusbriefs/nra_amicus_heller.pdf">amicus brief</a> in the 2008 <i style="">D.C. v. Heller</i> case referenced above—has received significant press attention as of late, particularly after armed Americans began to appear at town hall meetings, presidential speeches, and other political events. The NRA might be trying to distance itself from this type of behavior with the “Trigger the Vote” campaign. It is also undoubtedly attempting to reach out to more moderate swing voters before a critical mid-term election.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_4osl4oebPqg/TI4woRunufI/AAAAAAAAAcc/uxljXdd-CyE/s1600/Heston+Cold+Dead+Hands.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_4osl4oebPqg/TI4woRunufI/AAAAAAAAAcc/uxljXdd-CyE/s200/Heston+Cold+Dead+Hands.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5516400062087281138" /></a>Even long-time NRA supporters, however, are beginning to question its wisdom on the subject of guns, democracy and freedom. Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who <a href="http://thetruthaboutguns.com/2010/07/robert-farago/the-national-rifle-association-hearts-senator-harry-reid/">has done much to advance the gun lobby’s agenda</a>, recently ran <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/harryreid2010#p/a">ads</a> against Republican Senate candidate and Tea Partier Sharron Angle that strike directly at the Insurrectionist Idea. In one <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoU7cVpq4YM">ad</a>, the president of the Peace Officers Research Association of Nevada states that Angle’s “<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/josh-horwitz/second-amendment-remedies_b_616191.html">Second Amendment remedies</a>” are a clear call for “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoU7cVpq4YM">armed resistance</a>” and denounces them as “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoU7cVpq4YM">crazy</a>” and “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoU7cVpq4YM">way over the line</a>.”<br /> <br />Two weeks after Reid’s “Over the Line” ad ran, the NRA chose not to endorse him in the upcoming election. This prompted some to <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dennis-a-henigan/nra-snubs-harry-reid-less_b_700852.html">speculate</a> that the NRA was punishing him for rejecting their extreme ideology. The NRA denied this, however, claiming that its decision had to do with Reid’s support of Supreme Court nominees Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.<br /><br />The bottom line, however, is that no matter how hard you try to mask insurrectionist ideology with a public relations campaign, if you put lipstick on a pig, it’s still a pig. If the NRA is sincere in its desire to condemn insurrectionism, it should have its legal counsel issue a statement making it clear that the Second Amendment does not provide individuals with the right to shoot government officials when they feel “oppressed” or sense “tyranny.”<br /><br />Until then, when the NRA chooses to joke about this topic, all Americans should ask: What’s so funny?</p>stopgunviolencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806648144323303424noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420740688947057.post-64571129777584863872010-08-30T08:23:00.000-07:002012-03-15T09:39:45.042-07:00"We have rights as well."<p class="MsoNormal">A place of worship is a sanctuary and an asylum. It is a place for families and friends to gather and celebrate their religion— a place of prayer that should be safe and free of violence. This may all be compromised in Louisiana by the passage of <a href="http://www.legis.state.la.us/billdata/streamdocument.asp?did=722965">Act 944</a>, which allows certain citizens with concealed handgun permits to bring their firearms into places of worship.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_4osl4oebPqg/THvO1mwStJI/AAAAAAAAAb8/G4Ke_t6tIws/s1600/Guns+in+Church.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 214px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_4osl4oebPqg/THvO1mwStJI/AAAAAAAAAb8/G4Ke_t6tIws/s320/Guns+in+Church.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5511225989349422226" /></a>Under Act 944, churches, synagogues, and mosques are allowed to choose which concealed handgun permit holders—if any—are allowed to bring guns onto their premises. If a place of worship does allow some parishioners to carry handguns, they must announce that decision to their congregation. To attain a concealed handgun permit in Louisiana, applicants must undergo an instant computerized background check and complete nine hours of gun safety training (a one-time requirement). If a permit holder is selected to carry a gun in a place of worship, he/she is supposed to complete eight additional hours of training per year. However, <a href="http://www.tri-parishtimes.com/articles/2010/08/20/page_1/135_50_concealedcarrypermitpg1.txt">according to the Louisiana State Police, it is up to the place of worship—and not law enforcement—to determine what type of training is acceptable and enforce this policy</a>.<br /><br />Advocates of the bill claim that the law will make churches safer and make it easier for people to protect themselves, but opponents argue exactly the opposite. Laura Cutilletta, a senior staff attorney for the Legal Community Against Violence, says, “<a href="http://www.tri-parishtimes.com/articles/2010/08/20/page_1/135_50_concealedcarrypermitpg1.txt">Studies show that the more guns are around, the more opportunities there are for injury and death … If you bring guns into places of worship, they are increasing the danger to the families that are going there</a>.”<br /><br /><a href="http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2010-02-21/news/os-nra-gun-instructor-shoots-student-022020100220_1_gun-safety-nra-church-s-communications-director">During a February incident in an Orlando church, a man was shot in the foot after an NRA instructor’s handgun accidentally discharged during a gun safety class</a>. If highly-trained professionals have accidents with their guns, how can we assume that average citizens with minimal training will perform better? <br /><br />The rules regarding the use of lethal force in Louisiana are also a concern. A few years ago, the state eliminated residents’ duty to retreat to avoid violent conflicts. In the past, if it was possible for a person to remove him/herself from a violent situation without using deadly force, they were required to do so. But the new law reads, “A person who is not engaged in unlawful activity and who is in a place where he or she has a right to be shall have no duty to retreat before using deadly force…and may stand his or her ground and meet force with force.” Residents are now justified in shooting and killing someone if they believe they are in imminent danger of receiving “great bodily harm.” Are parishioners in Louisiana’s places of worship more likely to confront deranged mass murders or engage in mundane confrontations with friends, neighbors and acquaintances—confrontations that could escalate into something more dangerous because of the presence of firearms? It’s a question that should have been asked before Act 944 was signed into law.<br /><br />Religious organizations in Louisiana are divided over the issue of concealed weapons in churches. Bishop Sam Jacobs of the Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux has stated that concealed weapons will not be allowed in any Catholic churches in the state. In contrast, Pastor Steve Folmar of the First Baptist Church of Houma has stated that members of the congregation will be allowed to carry weapons if they wanted to. “<a href="http://www.tri-parishtimes.com/articles/2010/08/20/page_1/135_50_concealedcarrypermitpg1.txt">By and large, anyone with a permit is a law-abiding citizen and would not be a person with a probability for endangering other people</a>,” he stated.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.lcav.org/states/louisiana.asp#carryingconcealedweapons">Louisiana, however, is a “Shall-Issue” state, which means that as long as an applicant passes an instant computerized background check and meets a set of basic requirements, the state <i style="">must</i> issue a permit</a>. Unfortunately, dangerous individuals can slip through the cracks of this minimal screening. For example, a person who was convicted of a misdemeanor crime of violence may attain a concealed handgun permit as long as five years have passed. Additionally, residents who have previously been the subject of restraining orders can also obtain permits. Mental health screening is also quite menial. <br /><br />CSGV board member and Presbyterian minister Jim Atwood has stated that it is a travesty that a place of worship would be associated with any policy that promotes violence. “The truest form of religion is about life and peace,” he said. “It is not advocating trust in deadly instruments. There is no such thing as security in the world, but we human beings spend our lives seeking it in wealth, position, power, and guns. True security is loving God with all our hearts, minds, and strength; and our neighbors as ourselves.”<br /><br />Bishop Sam Jacobs of Louisiana sees it as a human rights issue: “<a href="http://www.tri-parishtimes.com/articles/2010/08/20/page_1/135_50_concealedcarrypermitpg1.txt">Our churches are places of worship and sacred spaces. Yes, we respect the rights of someone to carry a concealed weapon if they have a permit. But at the same time, we have rights as well and we do not wish our rights to be violated to honor that person’s right</a>.”</p>stopgunviolencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806648144323303424noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420740688947057.post-16985276782241828322010-07-26T18:18:00.000-07:002012-03-15T09:40:07.829-07:00"Like Buying a Candy Bar"<p class="MsoNormal">On July 14, U.S. Rep. “Bobby” Scott (D-VA)—the Chair of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security—co-hosted<a href="http://www.bobbyscott.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=512&Itemid=62"> a Congressional Forum</a> with Reps. Mike Castle (R-DE), Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) and Mike Quigley (D-IL). The forum was designed to explore the merits of H.R. 2324, the “Gun Show Loophole Closing Act of 2009.” <br /><br />The “Gun Show Loophole” is a serious gap in our nation’s gun laws which allows individuals to buy firearms without undergoing a background check.<span style=""> </span>Federal law mandates that all federally licensed firearms dealers (FFL’s) administer background checks to purchasers. In 37 states, however, the Gun Show Loophole allows “private sellers” who are “not engaged in the business of dealing” firearms to sell guns without processing background checks or keeping records of sale.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_4osl4oebPqg/TE41xf0G_yI/AAAAAAAAAas/D2mW8C05gDo/s1600/Colin+Goddard.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_4osl4oebPqg/TE41xf0G_yI/AAAAAAAAAas/D2mW8C05gDo/s320/Colin+Goddard.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5498391319535877922" /></a>The forum began with a series of undercover videos that illustrate how easily the Gun Show Loophole can be exploited. One <a href="http://www.gunshowundercover.org/main.cfm?actionId=globalShowStaticContent&screenKey=cmpContent&htmlKey=sales2&s=gunshow">video</a> from the City of New York showed investigators buying firearms from private sellers at seven gun shows in three states. The city’s investigators conducted “integrity tests” where they told the sellers outright that they “probably couldn’t pass a background check.” Nonetheless, 19 out of 30 private sellers sold them guns anyway in violation of federal law. One private seller from Ohio was caught on tape bragging that he had sold 348 assault weapons in the previous year (no federal agency monitors private individuals’ income to determine if their principal source of livelihood is firearm sales). He then told the investigator not to worry about not being able to pass a background check, stating, “<a href="http://www.gunshowundercover.org/main.cfm?actionId=globalShowStaticContent&screenKey=cmpContent&htmlKey=sales2&s=gunshow">I don’t care ... I wouldn’t pass one either, bud.</a>” <br /><br />Those present then heard testimony from two panels of law enforcement officials, municipal officials, and gun violence survivors. Some of the most informative testimony came from <a href="http://blog.bradycampaign.org/?p=2523">Gerald Nunziato</a>, a retired Special Agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). Nunziato worked for the ATF from 1970 to 1999 in Michigan, Ohio, Florida, Maryland and Washington, D.C.<span style=""> </span>Nunziato’s extensive experience with illegal firearms trafficking investigations showed him that “gun shows are a major outlet for burglars to sell stolen firearms and a place for criminals to shop for the types of firearms they desire.” Nunziato observed that criminals frequently “sought out the known firearms traffickers who would go to gun shows to obtain the type of weapon they needed.” “Buyers at gun shows have a huge selection of firearms and the sellers of stolen firearms and those with criminal intentions have little fear of being detected,” he stated. Perhaps most disturbingly, Nunziato noted that during his time as head of the ATF’s National Tracing Center, 45% of guns used in crime nationally were untraceable, in large part due to unregulated private sales, which leave no paper trail for law enforcement to follow.<br /><br />Colonel (Retired) <a href="http://blog.bradycampaign.org/?p=2523">W. Gerald Massengill</a>, a former Superintendent of the Virginia State Police, also provided compelling testimony. Following the 2007 mass shooting at Virginia Tech, Massengill chaired the Virginia Tech Review Panel, which <a href="http://www.vtreviewpanel.org/report/report/13_CHAPTER_VI.pdf">recommended requiring background checks for <i style="">all </i>private sales, including those at gun shows</a>. A firm believer in Second Amendment rights, Massengill stated the problem very simply: “A gun can be legally bought from a private sale at a gun show in Virginia today with no questions as to your identity or background—much like buying a candy bar in a candy store. It seems to me that common sense tells us that such sales are not in the interest of public safety ... We, as a society, need to do all that’s reasonable and prudent to ensure that firearms cannot go, unabated, to felons and the adjudicated mentally ill.” The <i style="">Virginia Statehouse News</i> has posted two videos of Massengill discussing the Gun Show Loophole outside the forum <a href="http://virginia.statehousenewsonline.com/335/retired-virginia-police-superintendent-col-gerald-massengill-talks-about-need-for-background-checks-at-gun-shows/">here</a>.<br /> <br />Virginia Tech survivor <a href="http://blog.bradycampaign.org/?p=2481">Colin Goddard</a> was the final—and perhaps most powerful—speaker at the forum.<span style=""> </span>Goddard was shot four times in 10 minutes at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007; 10 minutes that, he said, changed his life forever. Although Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho acquired his handguns legally through FFLs, Goddard noted that “he could have easily attended any of the dozens of gun shows that take place throughout Virginia each weekend and bought the same weapons from a ‘private seller’ with no background check into his mental history, and no questions asked.” Goddard knows this first-hand, as last summer he travelled to gun shows in Texas, Ohio, Maine, Minnesota, and Virginia and recorded <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baPgr_tw79Q">undercover videos</a> of private firearm sales. He and a friend were able to buy semiautomatic handguns and assault weapons without showing any ID or undergoing any background checks. Goddard even purchased the same handgun that was used to shoot him—cash and carry. No transaction took more than five minutes to complete. “Why should sellers at one table be required to run background checks, when the sellers, literally two tables down—with the exact same weapons—are allowed to sell their guns to anyone who just has the cash in hand?” Goddard asked those in attendance. “It’s no mystery why the guns sold by so-called ‘private sellers’ are often more expensive than the exact same model sold by licensed gun dealers. Purchasers who know they can’t pass a background check are willing to pay a premium. One seller told me straight up, and I quote, ‘No paperwork, no tax, that’s gotta’ be worth something.’” As Goddard noted, “For gun traffickers, domestic abusers and felons who can’t pass a background check, that’s worth plenty.” Rep. Castle described Goddard’s testimony as the “<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-helmke/most-compelling-testimony_b_647658.html">most compelling</a>” he has heard during his time in Congress.<br /><br />The National Rifle Association continues to oppose closing the Gun Show Loophole and claims that gun shows are frequented not by criminals, but by millions of “<a href="http://www.nraila.org/media/misc/fables.html">law-abiding citizens, collectors, hobbyists, hunters, target shooters, law enforcement officers and memorabilia shoppers</a>.” Why then, <a href="http://blog.bradycampaign.org/?p=2523">Gerald Nunziato</a> asked, is the carrying of loaded firearms strictly prohibited inside gun shows? The lawless and dangerous atmosphere inside these events was highlighted this month when the <a href="http://trib.com/news/state-and-regional/article_8ca58b45-3fd5-5dec-9ed4-8552bf189280.html">Wyoming Department of Revenue suspended sales tax collections</a> at gun shows because of violent threats that were being received by the state’s field tax agents. Dan Noble, director of the department’s excise tax division, said that “<a href="http://trib.com/news/state-and-regional/article_8ca58b45-3fd5-5dec-9ed4-8552bf189280.html">every one</a>” of his state agents has experienced “<a href="http://trib.com/news/state-and-regional/article_8ca58b45-3fd5-5dec-9ed4-8552bf189280.html">animosity</a>” from gun show attendees, and “<a href="http://trib.com/news/state-and-regional/article_8ca58b45-3fd5-5dec-9ed4-8552bf189280.html">because there are guns there...I don’t want to put my people at risk</a>.”<br /><br /><a href="http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-2324">H.R. 2324</a>, the “Gun Show Loophole Closing Act,” currently has 109 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives. <span style=""> </span>Its Senate counterpart, <a href="http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s111-843">S. 843</a>, the “Gun Show Background Check Act,” has 17 co-sponsors.<span style=""> </span><b style="">You can help by calling your Members of Congress today at (202) 224-3121. Ask them to co-sponsor H.R. 2324/S. 843 and encourage their colleagues to do the same</b>!</p>stopgunviolencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806648144323303424noreply@blogger.com0