GUNS, SCHOOLS AND KIDS, Part 7

ORGANIZING FOR A GUN-FREE CHILDHOOD

Whether your passion is recruiting and supporting candidates who will support gun control laws, or building common cause in local communities for gun-free zones, or raising money for educational efforts to create informed publics on behalf of reducing gun violence and its causes, I hope you’ll look into these organizations and find one to support – with participation even before dollars.  Or that you’ll start the conversation among your neighbors and colleagues and children about what needs to be done in your own community – or school – or home. And then do it.

Americans for Responsible Solutions

http://americansforresponsiblesolutions.org/about/

 Former Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and her husband Mark Kelly, a celebrated astronaut, founded Americans for Responsible Solutions to the rampant and senseless gun violence in our country. ARS raises funds for candidates for political office who are committed to regulating guns.

                 

This one is personal for me:  My daughter and I have shopped at the boutique linen store across the Tucson street from the Safeway where Rep. Giffords was gunned down at a “meet and greet” with her constituents. A friend had at the last minute canceled an appointment for that Saturday at the nail spa down the street.  Just a regular street, with regular stores, on a sunny Arizona day.  One of  Giffords’ staffers and 16 other people were shot, six of whom, including a judge, died that day. Giffords herself suffered brain injuries requiring long years of therapy and giving up her seat in Congress.   The press made much of the shooter’s history of mental illness and threatening demeanor; Arizona’s underfunding of mental health services briefly made the news.    Calls for even tighter background checks and gun access were deemed to be “politicizing the tragedy.” 

Gabby Giffords’ “district” is even bigger today as she and her husband Mark Kelly, the astronaut who logged the most days on the space station, transformed their loss into a new national organization to counter the NRA, call out a gun culture that rejects all legislative limits, and take on the NRA’s influence over Congress and state houses.  ARS raises money to recruit and promote candidates who will advocate what they term “responsible solutions” to the gun culture.  Check out their website to see whom they are backing in your state and how you can get involved to hold public officials’ feet to the fire once they’re elected.

Alliance for Gun Responsibility

http://gunresponsibility.org/

Vision: A community safe from the devastating consequences of gun violence.

The Alliance for Gun Responsibility "works to end the gun violence crisis in our community and to promote a culture of gun ownership that balances rights with responsibilities. Through collaboration with experts, civic leaders, and citizens, we work to find evidenced-based solutions to the crisis of gun violence in our community. We create innovative policy, advocate for changes in laws, and promote community education to reduce gun violence."

Everytown for Gun Safety Action

https://everytownresearch.org/

"Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund seeks to improve our understanding of the causes of gun violence and the means to reduce it – by conducting groundbreaking original research, developing evidence-based policies, and communicating this knowledge in the courts and the court of public opinion."                  

Mayors Against Illegal Guns and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America have joined to create Everytown for Gun Safety Action:

As mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg invited the mayors of America’s cities to join him in organizing to answer the National Rifle Association’s “report card” rating legislators on their stance (and votes) for or against gun control by creating a “report card” to inform voters which of their elected officials are working for gun control and gun safety.  (My letter urging our mayor at the time to not only join with Bloomberg, but take a lead in this organization given Houston’s extraordinarily high incidence of gun violence, was answered with a form letter saying essentially “thank you for sharing your opinion, but I’m a gun owner……”  After leaving office, the same mayor in an interview about the shootings at the Orlando night club said to the reporter that we have to do something about access to guns.  Can that sensible position be said out loud only when a politician is safely out of office?

Mayors Against Illegal Guns asked candidates for House and Senate seats to fill out a 10-part questionnaire “clarifying their positions on issues like background checks and [ammunition] magazine limits.”  Those already in office are  rated for their past statements and legislative votes on gun-related issues.  Their responses, according to the organization, are “used to rally voters for or against them accordingly.”  We should follow their example in quizzing candidates about their stands on gun control and let them know their answers will affect our votes.

Sandy Hook Promise

http://www.sandyhookpromise.org/

Mission:  Prevent gun-related deaths due to crime, suicide and accidental discharge so that no other parent experiences the senseless, horrific loss of their child.

The parents of the children murdered by a man armed with his own personal arsenal are the bravest people we could know.  The nation was sure that the killing of these little children would move Congress to act immediately on gun control legislation that had for decades been stopped by the NRA.  The NRA was so sure the deaths of these little children would prompt quick Congressional action that they immediately went on the assault, claiming in truly twisted press conferences  that we needed more guns, not fewer, and in the hands of more people:  If the teachers had been armed, their logic went, the children could have been saved.  For once, the NRA seemed to lose its cool, to show fear – fear of losing control of the politicians it had courted and cultivated, intimidated and bankrolled.

                

In the end, the NRA won the legislative battles. But the parents of Sandy Hook rose above that tyranny to persist in their legislative efforts, in their advocacy for those “special provisions” we need to protect our kids.  Just as they teach with such grace and strength what it means to grieve the loss of a child, they teach through Sandy Hook Promise, raising awareness, raising funds, raising voices.  Their first actions were to create safe play spaces in honor of every child who died. On their children’s birthdays, on the anniversary of the shooting, on normal days when children should feel safe at school, the Sandy Hook parents remind the nation the work of making childhood free of gun violence is not finished.

Moms Rising

http://www.momsrising.org/issues_and_resources/inspiring-gun-safety

"Moms as a collective voice on behalf of children’s well-being – health, safety, education for children; and policies supportive of families:  family leave, etc.  Sharing information on legislation, products, current issues; inviting collective advocacy through digital communications."

And I'm issuing an open request for readers to suggest others.  Please comment and distribute widely!

To share your thoughts, click on the word “comments” below.

GUNS, SCHOOLS AND KIDS, Part 6

Keeping Our Children Safe 

A Subaru ad opens with a parent saying ‘you can’t take that,’ while pulling a ninja martial arts weapon from his son’s camp bag.  In scenes that follow a dad yells “hey, you can’t….” to a young daughter poised to ski down the stairs; a mom scans a son’s laptop with a “you can’t ….” expression of concern for on-line hazards.  Cut to scene of teenage boy picking up the car keys and calling out to mom, “I’m taking the car.”  But instead of “car” he names the Subaru:  yes!  It’s safe.  Mom approves.

Subaru's marketing department brilliantly captures every parent’s nightmare:  that midnight call that their child has been in a wreck.    Only a parent’s caution – no skiing down the stairs! no bad stuff on internet! – can keep our kids safe.  Good parents, caring parents,-- parents who want their kids to be safe-- will buy this model of car.

Imagine an different ending for that ad:  a parent declining to buy a gun no matter how many ads claims that “guns don’t kill,” a parent choosing to shop where a “No Guns” sign is prominently displayed in the window, a parent speaking up against teachers being armed at school, a parent hosting the outings and sleep-overs if they know there will be guns at the other children’s homes, a parent calling out a parent who has a gun in her purse or his car.

Image credit:  http://texasweaponattorney.com/2016/01/04/understanding-texas-handgun-signs/

Those parents need the rest of us – their village – to back them up, to speak up for a gun-free culture for their children, and to do so with a collective voice and strong collective action.

Where do we start?  No strong federal legislation came out of the shootings at Sandy Hook or the many gun killings since then. But it is not true that “nothing changed.” 

First, parents are taking individual action in their shopping, their voting, their talks with their kids.

And all over the country  -- our country!—people are organizing for smart gun control legislation, for accurate and systematic and sustained collection and publication of data on gun-related violence.  Parents and others are pushing for solid research on the effects of gun violence on communities, on children’s physical and mental health, on families, on mass incarceration, on money in politics, on local economies.

From the parents of children murdered by the gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary, to the billionaire mayor of New York, to a congresswoman herself severely injured by an assassin who managed to kill her staffers, bystanders and a judge, Americans are organizing to counter with reasoned argument and passionate claims on our morality the systemic violence of the National Rifle Association, its “owned” members of Congress, and the lucrative network of gun dealers and trainers. 

According to Patrick Blanchfield in The Nation magazine, “as of July 2016,  some 14.5 million Americans have been licensed to carry a concealed weapon, but 11 states don’t require a license; some states require training for a license, some don’t. And according to Blanchfield, sometimes “training” means listening to a lecture at the level of “don’t point your gun at things you don’t mean to shoot,” and “treat all guns like they’re loaded.”  According to the author, the NRA not only has a network of fire-arms trainers in various states but also participates in drafting any gun-related laws through its Institute for Legislative Action.  Training by NRA instructors represents a huge income stream for the NRA.  Blanchfield puts the number of NRA instructors nationwide at 55,000, with at least a million “students” taking the training:  Solid income stream + new cohort of anti-gun-control Americans.  Blanchfield was writing from his investigation into the Front Sight Firearms Training Institute and Resort, 550 acres of Nevada dedicated to shooting – at a level described as beyond military or law enforcement training.

The article is chilling for the claims made by the Front Line owner that “only a gun” can stop [fill in the blank naming a crime or threat].  It is also chilling as a window into the vast network of money, political connections, corporate incarnations of “training,” and of course gun dealers that work together very closely to assure that there will be more guns in more hands in more places with less regulation and more normalization of a gun culture.   To justify their rigid defense of access  even to militarized weapons in civilian hands, they carefully coordinate messages of danger-without-a-gun in ads and magazines and online streaming: messages of fear.

We can’t let manufactured fears dominate our actions to limit guns in the lives of our children. They deserve better.  My next post will list some of the ways parents and others are getting together to challenge the intransigence and  the seeming immovable force that is the gun industry in our country.     Kindred spirits finding each other and working together to create those “special provisions” our children deserve.

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GUNS, SCHOOLS AND KIDS, Part 5
Guns in the hands of kids

It’s alarming to read about the number of children killed by gun violence and by gun-related accidents.  Even more alarming is that some of the time it’s children themselves, having access to firearms in the home, inadvertently committing homicides or suicide.  This disturbing trend includes very young kids....not just teenagers being harmed or doing harm to others, but small, innocent children. 

According to The Trace 75 percent of children killed with guns in 2015 were under the age of 12.  In that same year, a toddler in America shot someone about once a week.  A good number of them inadvertently shot themselves.  Why would a parent, a grandparent or any responsible adult leave a loaded gun in a mom's purse, the nightstand, dad's pocket, a closet that is the perfect place for hide and seek.  This is not a hallmark of responsible gun ownership.

This is not just a horrifying, traumatizing epidemic, but a disgraceful rebuff of UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child, which says that we need to put in place “special provisions” to assure children’s rights to life, health, and well-being. 

Some of the best teachers I’ve met and spoken with use the concept of “making good decisions” to enforce positive discipline in their classrooms.  Great teachers know kids aren’t “bad,” they sometimes make “bad choices,” and the consequences must be addressed.  But how can we expect our kids to make good choices, when the adults around them are making such poor decisions?  A child doesn’t know a toy gun from a real one (nor do some police officers, apparently) and cannot be expected to “make good decisions” when the adults around them are irresponsible.  

This is not to call out gun owners as "bad parents." Rather, what we hope to say is that allowing conditions where kids could pick up and discharge a loaded gun is not the example we want to set for kids to make good choices.   Adults should bear the consequences for their bad choices, not the kids, and certainly not with their lives or their innocence.




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GUNS, SCHOOLS, AND KIDS Part 4
Why Are They Surprised?

If you don’t watch the nightly news on TV, you may be missing how much gun violence there is in your city and how far that gun violence reaches into almost every age group and neighborhood.

In Houston, where I live, fully the first 10 minutes of each night’s broadcast follows a too-familiar formula:

“Last night/this morning/earlier today a man/woman/child/shopper/bystander/convenience store clerk/intruder was shot by an estranged spouse/former employee/angry driver/homeowner/toddler/business owner/teenager.  The shooting happened in the victim’s home/in a parking lot/inside a store/at the grandparent’s home/across the street from the school.”

The reporter, standing in front of crime scene tape and the blurred lights of ambulance or police cars, puts the microphone up to a distraught neighbor/teacher/mother/coach/employer/cousin/friend dismayed that such a violent act could happen in this neighborhood/park/school/shopping center/hospital/family’s home.   The victim was a great guy/a caring mom/a loyal employee/a trusted friend. The shooter is described as no one we would ever suspect/a loner/a quiet neighbor/someone always talking about his guns/an angry man/a troubled teen.  The suspect got away/is in custody/has no prior record/is well known to police/said he didn't know why he pulled the trigger.

It would be easy to dismiss these police-blotter news leads as sensational journalism.  But the shootings are too numerous, the stories too similar. The formulaic reporting is evidence of the frequency of these shootings: the daily occurrence of gun violence that takes human life, destroying the lives of the victims and their shooters.  The reporters have a formula for their stories because we have not yet come to grips as a society with the scale, scope and harm done by guns in America.  We have not created those “special protections”  of smart laws to control guns, to work out peaceful ways of resolving conflicts, to create social stability essential for protecting each other – and our communities – from a gun culture that becomes so “normal” that a reporter just has to fill in the blanks to get the latest shooting ready for the 10 o’clock broadcast.    


In case we forget, here is how big the problem is and why as parents and teachers and neighbors and voters, we can’t let it continue:

2015 statistics
There were 372 mass shootings in the US in 2015, killing 475 people and wounding 1,870 people.  A total of 13,286 people were killed (excluding suicide) in the US by firearms in 2015, and 26,819 people were injured.

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GUNS, SCHOOLS, AND KIDS, Part 3
Gun Silencers

“It’s easier to buy a silencer…..”

Yes, it is.  It is very easy to buy silence about gun violence.  The NRA has been doing it for years.


Actually, the NRA has made the US Capitol building its marketplace and a few key members of Congress its silencer sales force.  You would never know that gun violence is a major public health crisis in this country if you checked the statistics of any state public health department or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  Even though there are more gun-related deaths each year than fatal cases of the flu, you can probably find the data on the flu, maybe even displayed by location or the age of the patient.  But a search for information on gun deaths will just yield silence.

That silence has been bought and paid for by the National Rifle Association through its influence on the way Congress allocates the tax dollars for research.  From Daily Kos:

     “The research 'ban' is one of the most pernicious impacts of the extremists in charge of the National Rifle Association. NRA arm-twisting led to the rider the senators talk about in the letter being passed in 1996. It was first added to an appropriations bill by Jay Dickey Jr., then a Republican Congressman from Arkansas. Congress followed up by shifting $2.6 million that the previous year had been budgeted for gun violence research into traumatic brain injury research, instead.

     After that first vote, Knight-Ridder investigated and found that 75 percent of the lawmakers who backed the Dickey Amendment had received $1.6 million from the NRA that same year. Only six of the 158 members who opposed the measure had received support from the gun lobby.”

Questions:  why so little info?  No maps of gun violence, no mandated collection of data from states, or from coroners, ER's, police responding to domestic violence calls?  Why no documenting of cases of gun violence involving mental illness? no "duty to report" for pediatricians (as in the case of other forms of child abuse)?  no map of the geography of gun violence by type of weapon, source of weapon, age and circumstances of the shooter?  

We don't have this information because the  NRA has found the silence easier to buy than a refrigerator.  Just like the ad says:

"Now that our [brand name] kiosk units are becoming accessible across the country, we feel it's divine intervention that our Silencer Shop mobile app is now ready for use, too. (Thank you, suppressor gods!)"

"With our new kiosks, we've gone digital!"

"Take your time picking the right suppressor for your needs"

"Fortunately, buying a [silencer] is a simple process that generally requires less paperwork than buying a refrigerator!"

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