"We cannot allow gun violence to take any more children's lives..."

The Children’s Defense Fund (CDF), a member of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, has worked tirelessly during their 35 years of existence to better the lives of children. The driving force behind these efforts has been CDF President Marian Wright Edelman. Edelman was a longtime activist in the civil rights movement and later moved to the District of Columbia to found CDF.

Recently, CDF released its 2009 “Protect Children, Not Guns” report, which evaluates the impact of gun violence on America’s youth. According to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 3,184 children died from gunfire in the United States in 2006, a 6% increase from 2005. More preschoolers (63) were killed by firearms that year than law enforcement officers (48) in the line of duty. Since 1979, gun violence has ended the lives of 107,603 children and teens in the U.S. The data also reveals that black males ages 15 to 19 are almost five times as likely as their white peers and more than twice as likely as their Latino peers to be killed by firearms. Edelman firmly believes that “the United States does not provide a level playing field for all children, and our nation does not value and protect all children’s lives equally.”

Why does CDF continue to prioritize the issue of gun violence? Edelman says that “it is now more important than ever that we work to protect children from firearms in their homes, schools and communities.” In her mind, “we do not have a ‘child and youth problem,’” but a “profound adult problem.”

“It is up to every one of us,” Edelman states, “to let our elected officials know that we care deeply about controlling gun violence.” She feels that “stronger federal legislation could help protect more children” and outlines some key measures she would like legislators to act on.

First, she believes the “Gun Show Loophole” should be closed. While the Brady Law requires that federally licensed firearms dealers conduct background checks on every sale, the law allows private individuals to sell firearms without a license and avoid the required background checks, and these sellers frequent gun shows. One study estimated that 40% of all firearms in the U.S. are purchased without a background check. Edelman suggests that advocates push for passage of bipartisan bills to require background checks on all sales at gun shows, S.843 and H.R. 2324.

Edelman also believes that the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) should be strengthened. “The system could be strengthened by requiring states to provide more information to the FBI’s national database on prohibited persons, extending background checks to cover all purchases of firearms, and closing the [Terrorist Watch List] Loophole,” she says.

Finally, Edelman emphasizes the need to reinstitute the Assault Weapons Ban. While the ban, signed into law in 1994, banned 19 types of semiautomatic military-style firearms and high-capacity ammunition magazines, it expired in 2004.

Legislation is not enough by itself, however. Edelman believes “America has a deadly, historic romance with guns and violence. Our culture frequently glamorizes guns and violence in movies, television, music, and on the internet.” This culture of violence is “desensitizing” us “to the value of life,” according to Edelman, and “individuals and communities must act to end [it].”

Edelman envisions hard work on the road to a safer, more peaceful society: “Like the black students and other civil rights activists during the 1960s, we cannot wait placidly for change. They took control of their own destinies and fought inequality and discrimination—and we must do the same. We cannot allow gun violence to take any more children’s lives because of our complacency. We must take action now to let Congress know it must enact sensible gun legislation to stop the senseless killing of children and teens.”

“I want to look in the eyes of our children and promise them that they will be safe.”

A new article from the April 2009 edition of the National Rifle Association’s flagship magazine, America’s First Freedom, demonstrates the gun lobby group’s unerring capacity to smear anyone who stands in their way, no matter how sensible and well-intentioned their views. The piece, entitled “Arne Duncan: Education at the Extremez,” is a scathing attack on the new Secretary of Education, whom author David Kopel describes as “the most extreme anti-gun member of President Barack Obama’s Cabinet.”

What did Arne Duncan do to make the NRA so steamed? For starters, he was selected to receive a 2008 “Abraham Lincoln Award” from the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence (ICHV), a group that “advocates for policies designed to minimize the impact gun violence has on Illinois residents.” The award honors “individuals who have shown great political and personal courage in the fight to reduce gun violence …. [The award is] named for an Illinoisan who had the courage and conviction to work for change in our society. Abraham Lincoln was one of our greatest presidents, but tragically was a victim of gun violence.” Past ICHV Lincoln Award honorees have included mayors, members of the Illinois legislature, members of the U.S. Congress, and a U.S. President.

ICHV was recognizing Duncan, then the Superintendent of Chicago Public Schools, as “a longstanding proponent of reducing gun violence,” and as a public servant who “work[ed] within the Chicago school system to help make schools and communities safer for students and their families.”

Duncan’s second sin, in the NRA’s eyes, was to state that it is an “undeniable fact that guns and kids don’t mix” at the ICHV Awards Ceremony that year. One would think that is simple common sense, but the NRA quickly portrayed the statement as “an attack on the Scholastic Clays Target Program, gun clubs with small-bore shooting teams for teenagers, and parents who take their children hunting.”

Duncan likely had a different type of hunting on his mind—during the 2007-08 school year, a record 34 Chicago Public School students were killed, the overwhelming majority with firearms. It was for this reason that Duncan refused to accept ICAHV’s Lincoln Award that evening, saying:

"I wish we could stand here today and declare victory over gun violence ... I want to look in the eyes of our children and promise them that they will be safe—and that their only concern is whether they did their homework, not whether they can walk to school. I wish we could preserve their innocence long enough to foster a love of learning instead of a fear of death. I wish that our society valued children more than it values violent rituals and traditions that might have been at home in a frontier society two centuries ago but make absolutely no sense today. I wish for all of these things—but none of them are yet true ... And so, while I am deeply honored to be here...I cannot accept your award. I don’t feel I have earned it. I don’t feel any of us have earned it. Instead I would ask us all to remember the horror and tragedy of children who live with death every day. I would ask us all to renew our commitment to reducing gun violence.”

While Duncan spoke that night about youth who had recently been killed in Chicago, the problem is certainly not limited to the state of Illinois. The NRA is apparently unaware of—or simply doesn’t care about—a series of gruesome shootings involving children that have occurred in the five months since Duncan attended the ICHV awards ceremony, including the following incidents:

“11-Year-Old Boy Kills Future Stepmother, Brother”
“Ohio Teen Convicted of Killing Mom Over Video Game”
“Angry Ohio Boy, 4, Shoots Baby Sitter”
“Brother Shot Girl in the Chest”
“12-year-old Arizona Boy Guilty in Mom’s Shooting”
“Boy, 8, Shot to Death in Massachusetts Gun Show Accident”
“Boy, 8, Admits Shooting Dad, Neighbor in Video”
“Father's Gunshot Kills Boy, 12”
“10 Year Old Killed, Brother and Father Charged”
“Real Gun Mistaken for a Toy; Girl Shoots Brother”

In the America’s First Freedom article, author Kopel also expresses outrage that Duncan spoke at a protest outside Chuck’s Gun Shop in Riverdale, Illinois, on May 26, 2007. For those not familiar with Chuck’s Gun Shop, it is the leading supplier of firearms to criminals among all federally licensed gun dealers in America. From 1996-2000, 2,370 guns were traced from crime scenes to the store (to put that in perspective, only five other dealers in the entire country had more than 1,000 guns traced to crime during this period). Chuck’s sits in a suburb directly outside Chicago. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has confirmed that most of Chicago’s crime guns come from dealers in-state (“We are our own worst enemies as a dealer state,” said ATF agent Thomas Ahern of the Chicago Field Division). Criminals go outside Chicago to make purchases because the city’s gun laws have made it virtually impossible for them to get firearms there.

Interestingly, Kopel spends almost half the article commenting on an inappropriate and ill-advised remark that Chicago Pastor Michael Pfleger made at the protest, in a weak attempt to guilt Duncan by association. He curiously fails to identify others who spoke that day, like Annette Holt, the mother of a 16-year-old who was shot and killed on a Chicago Transit Authority bus days before the event as he heroically tried to save another patron. Perhaps a grieving mother like Holt, whose organization Purpose Over Pain supports a wide range of state and federal gun control measures, simply isn’t as convenient a target.

And the NRA might have another motive in defending Chuck’s Gun Shop. In 2006, the store won the NRA’s Dealer Recruiter of the Year Award for getting the most patrons to join the organization.

Americans like Arne Duncan who care deeply about the disproportionate toll that gun violence is taking on children in this country and want to do something about it? The only place they’re “extreme” is in the eyes of the National Rifle Association.

“I don’t keep a gun in my house, because I value my life.”

In August we blogged about an article in Esquire that looked into the background of Steven Kazmierczak, the grad student who shot and killed six people (including himself) and wounded 18 others at Northern Illinois University on February 14, 2008. The author of the article, David Vann, debunked the media’s simplistic portrayal of Kazmierczak as “an award-winning sociology student and a leader of a campus criminal justice group” who presented “no red flags.” Vann’s research uncovered something strikingly different—a young man with a lengthy and disturbing history of mental illness and volatile behavior.

Vann’s latest work, Legend of a Suicide, is a collection of stories and a novella that explores a more personal topic—the death of his father. Vann’s semi-autobiographical account—which incorporates both metaphor and allegory—is being published this month and has already garnered substantial praise. The book received the Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler commented, “This is one of the most striking fictional debuts in recent memory.” Legend of a Suicide can be purchased through the University of Massachusetts Press website.

The young character at the center of Legend, “Roy,” shares a passion for firearms with his father. Vann confirms that this is based on truth: “I grew up in a hunting and fishing family in Alaska and rural northern California, so I was shooting guns at an early age. I was given a pump pellet gun at age 7, a 20-gauge shotgun at age 8, and a Winchester .30-.30 rifle—like in the westerns—at age 9. When I was 11 years old, I killed my first two deer with that Winchester. California law said I had to wait until I was 13 to legally kill a buck, but family law said 11, and killing my first buck included eating the heart and liver.”

Recalling his Esquire article about Steven Kazmierczak, Vann drew parallels between himself and the troubled student: Kazmierczak was trained by the U.S. Army not to have any emotional or psychological response to killing a human being. In the shooting at Northern Illinois University, he killed without any sign of emotion at all…and I do think that hunting trained me in a similar way. We killed everything that moved in Alaska or California, hundreds of animals. The second deer I shot, at age 11, was paralyzed, hit in the spine. My father made me walk up behind it and put the .30-.30 rifle to the back of its head to finish it off, execution style. I still find that tremendously upsetting.”

Vann also remembers his father owning a .300 magnum rifle (for hunting bears) and a .44 magnum pistol. The .44 was kept under the seat of his father’s car for personal protection. Tragically, instead of being used for self-defense, Vann’s father used the handgun to take his own life. “I saw that guns are simply too powerful, too easily misused,” Vann recalls. “My father’s .44 magnum pistol had a hair trigger. I had fired it once, and it went off before I expected it to, with just a faint touch.” Vann is also cognizant of research that shows that many gun suicides are attempted in the heat of the moment, without significant premeditation: “When I think of my father sitting at his kitchen table in Fairbanks, Alaska, alone, with the gun to his head, it bothers me that he only had to want suicide for an instant. It’s just too fast and too easy, and there’s no turning back.”

Nor was this his family’s only tragic experience with gun violence: My stepmother lost her parents to a murder/suicide. Her mother killed her father with a shotgun and then killed herself with a pistol. They were a wealthy couple with a large house on a hill overlooking an entire valley in California. Their lives should have been considered good, but in a moment of anger, guns made killing very easy and quick.”

Ironically, Vann would inherit his father’s gun collection after his suicide. Instead of using these firearms solely to hunt, however, he capitalized on the opportunity to blow off steam and avoid dealing with complicated emotions like shame and rage. “I learned to break the .300 magnum rifle into several parts and stuff them down the back of my jacket,” he remembers. “I’d ride my bicycle into the hills above my suburban Californian neighborhood and shoot out streetlights from hundreds of yards away. That rifle sounded like artillery, but I was never caught.” More ominously, Vann notes: “I also sighted in on our neighbors in the afternoons and evenings, right from my bedroom. I had a shell in the chamber and the safety off, and I’d be looking at someone’s face through the crosshairs as they stood in front of a living room window. I was a straight-A student, would become valedictorian, was in student government, sports, band, etc. No one would have guessed I was living a double life.”

But Vann says that his fascination with firearms is now a thing of the past: “It’s extremely rare that anyone is able to defend their life or the lives of their loved ones with a firearm. If you don’t do drugs or engage in crime, you’re unlikely to ever confront a gun. The only way you’re really put into an increased level of danger is if you own a gun. I don’t keep a gun in my house, because I value my life.”

Vann also has some important advice for families dealing with issues of depression: “One of the most critical steps is to ask for outside help. Right before his suicide, my father convinced our family that he was fine. He sounded reasonable and clear-headed. Professional help, from a therapist or psychiatrist, is necessary.”

It’s been 28 years since Vann’s father’s suicide, so he’s had the time and distance to transform family tragedy into art. The stories in Legend of a Suicide are simply beautiful, reinventing a terrible past and making sense out of chaos.

Boy Killer Back in the News

Next month will mark the ten-year anniversary of the tragic Jonesboro shootings. On March 24, 1998, two boys, Mitchell Johnson (13 years old) and Andrew Golden (11 years old), pulled a fire alarm in their rural Arkansas school. Using four guns stolen from Golden’s grandfather, the two then opened fire on their classmates and teachers as they filed out of the building. In just over four minutes, Johnson and Golden killed five and wounded 10 others.

At the subsequent trial, Johnson and Golden were each convicted of five counts of murder and sentenced to confinement until age 21. Upon their release, Johnson and Golden’s records were adjudicated. With their convictions expunged, the two acquired the ability to legally purchase and possess firearms.

Soon thereafter, on New Year’s Day 2007, Johnson, now 23, was pulled over and found to be in possession of a loaded 9mm handgun, a 20-gauge shotgun, and ¾ of an ounce of marijuana. In his company was Justin Trammell, age 22, who was convicted six years earlier of murdering his father with a crossbow in Benton County, Arkansas. The silver 9mm Lorein pistol in the car was a gift that Johnson had received to practice “target shooting.” Because his earlier criminal record had been wiped out, authorities decided to charge Johnson with one felony count of possession of a firearm while either a user or addicted to a controlled substance.

U.S. Attorney Bob Balfe, who prosecuted the case, stated: "We strongly believe Mitchell Johnson is a person who shouldn't have a gun, especially when he's using controlled substances." He added, "We wanted the victims in the previous case to understand that we in law enforcement know who he is, we're taking that into account, and we're going to do everything we can to keep our community safe."

Although we applaud the federal government for taking steps to prevent gun violence by aggressively prosecuting a gun-wielding ex-convict, we have some questions regarding Johnson’s case…

Why did Arkansas not have a law on the books in 1998 to charge juveniles as adults in capital murder cases? That law has since been changed, but was there no other legal recourse available at that time to prohibit Johnson and Golden from purchasing and owning firearms in the future?

Why would any family member/friend of Johnson think it would be a good idea to give him a 9mm handgun as a Christmas present?

Why did it take over a year for someone to tip the police off about Johnson’s involvement with drugs and guns?

We sincerely hope that this is the last time these two young men will make national headlines—for their sake, and for the sake of the surviving family members of the Jonesboro victims.