GUNSENSE

BERNIE SANDERS, THE NRA & HIS GROWING GUN PROBLEM

Anyone who was listening to the Democratic debate on Sunday, March 7, and heard Sanders make the comment that the NRA promptly endorsed knew that this was a bad moment for him. If you're a progressive candidate of any sort, you don't want to wake up the next morning and find the NRA standing by your side, particularly when your opponent, Hillary Clinton, has been for months unflinching in her criticism of that organization and their reckless gun policies.  

But that happened to Sanders, and now, as if having the NRA sing your praises weren't bad enough, The Washington Post published on Friday, March 18, an op-ed by Mark and Jackie Barden. The title of the piece is chilling, direct, and heart-breaking:  "Sanders Is Wrong About the Lawsuit We Filed After Our Son's Murder in Newtown."

Their son, Daniel, of course, fell victim to Adam Lanza and his Remington Bushmaster AR-15 on December 14, 2012, at Sandy Hook Elementary. In a  matter of days, Senator Sanders had hit a dangerous double:  he gained the NRA as a supporter and the parents of a child murdered at Sandy Hook as an adversary. 

By any stretch of the progressive imagination, this was a bad run for the Senator from Vermont.  

But it speaks to one of the problems that faces the Senator as he turns to face a nation increasingly hostile toward the NRA and the destructive culture it has produced—he comes from a state that is a "gun-rights paradise" and has led the nation in allowing, even encouraging, unrestricted gun ownership. Sanders' constituency is about the size of Memphis, TN, but is 97% white, and as of 2012, was the most rural state in the Union. Vermont also has one of the lowest rates of gun-homicide in the country, a result of its largely rural population and still very active tradition of hunting, an activity, as opposed to self-defense, where gun-violence is relatively rare.

But Senator Sanders has now entered the national stage—diversity, complexity, and hard, nuanced choices are the order of the day, and he arrives there from a racially homogenous, rural, and gun-friendly state. His constituency is white, and they are well armed. Go after guns in Vermont, and you will go out of office.

So his problems now are more complicated, and he shows signs of lacking the tact to negotiate them. He finds himself wedged into the difficult position between a gun-toting constituency in Vermont and the NRA, the radical and dangerous organization that speaks for many of Sanders' supporters back home and has the potential to weaken his progressive stance.

That he has compromised here by leaning toward the gun manufacturers is particularly unfortunate for him. And particularly telling—the massacre at Sandy Hook has emerged, whether rightly or wrongly, as a litmus test on gun-control for our politicians, and Sanders has chosen sides. He has chosen to avoid directly confronting the gun manufacturers and their unfettered marketing of a specific kind of weapon to an untrained public—a weapon that is capable of killing quickly and widely, and would seem unnecessary for civilian purposes.

The law suit that the Bardens and others are filing against Bushmaster does not, as Sanders inexplicably indicated, hold Remington accountable for manufacturing the weapon that Lanza used in his killing spree. Manufacturers cannot, of course, be responsible for every misuse of their product. That is simplistic, and Sanders must know that, but his insistence on misrepresenting the law is baffling. The law suit, instead, holds Remington accountable for their marketing of the product, an entirely different issue:

Indeed, Remington promotes the AR-15’s capacity to inflict mass casualties. It markets its AR-15s with images of soldiers and SWAT teams; it dubs various models the 'patrolman' and the 'adaptive combat rifle' and declares that they are 'as mission-adaptable as you are;' it encourages the notion that the AR-15 is a weapon that bestows power and glory upon those who wield it. Advertising copy for Remington’s AR-15s has included the following: 'Consider your man card reissued,” and “Forces of opposition, bow down. You are single-handedly outnumbered.'

The law that looms both over Sanders' comment and the suit against Remington is called the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA). The bill was signed into law by George W. Bush on October 26, 2005, and was heavily supported by Wayne LaPierre and the NRA. It provides unprecedented immunity for gun manufacturers and their products, and is partly responsible for the violent ad campaigns that some of these manufacturers are now waging. The law does not, as the gun lobbyists rightly point out, give them immunity from selling defective products. Still, as many legal historians argue, in passing this law, Congress was particularly aggressive in allowing the gun industry this particular kind of shield. Clearly, no other product on the market has quite this kind of protection.

From the beginning, Clinton has aligned herself against the law, and said that she would act to repeal it if elected. Repealing the law could potentially do much to alter the militaristic, macho culture that gun-manufacturers like to promote in their advertising. Sanders, on the other hand, voted for the law in 2005—his constituency would have supported it—but under increased national scrutiny, has recently back-pedaled a bit, indicating that he might consider repealing portions of it. He is clearly trying to avoid the issue. Clinton is embracing it.

Every political candidate at the national level is involved in the project of winning votes. Period. And in the most difficult moments, winning votes encounters a bedeviling problem:  What happens if personally held and private convictions, when publicly articulated, will not sway as many voters as a slightly modified version of those same convictions certainly would?

Most of the time, our candidates compromise, and offer up a version of their convictions that will appeal to the largest demographic that seems palatable to them at the moment.

Senator Sanders, of course, has made a career out of claiming that he refuses to make these compromises, and I respect him for that.

But as he enters the national spotlight, the Senator has found that life for a so-called "principled" candidate is hard. And compromises must be made.

The first one he made, of course, was running as a Democrat, the party that he has spent decades vilifying, condemning, and disparaging. But to mount a viable campaign for the Presidency, he also saw that he must become part of the system he disparaged for years. 

But now he finds himself praised by the NRA and corrected by a Sandy Hook family, and that's not a good mix for him.  

So maybe he's making compromises; maybe he's trying to garner votes from an unlikely demographic. Perhaps Senator Sanders is dog-whistling members of the NRA with his refusal to attack the PLCAA, hoping to attract a few of their votes. I can easily see how more moderate, gun-owning Democrats would desert Clinton and move toward Sanders based on this tactic alone (many gun-owners are single-issue voters, and their single issue is guns). Clinton has led Sanders, however, kicking and screaming, into a more centrist position concerning firearms (as he has led her on economic matters), but it is precisely this kicking and screaming that makes many gun-violence prevention advocates uneasy and unwilling to support him.

And since gun-violence in America is unparalleled among developed countries, for many voters this has become a central issue in the 2016 election. I count myself among that number.

 

 

 

 

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The Only Three Facts That Matter About Gun-violence: a Primer for Beginners

REMEMBERING SANDY HOOK THREE YEARS LATER

Amidst all of the tributes for Sandy Hook that will take place today, I would point to only one thing: our clear need to develop the space for an ongoing civil discourse about gun-violence and its effect on American life. Period.

There will always be divisions, anger, heated exchanges, but we must also have moments of reciprocated respect and civility. Moments—we can start with those, and only those.

Charles Blow in his New York Times op-ed today is already calling for such a demilitarized zone of discussion, and I'll close with his plea:

I thought of how productive it would be if more people with discordant views on gun regulations could have as civil a discussion as I had with my brother — full of mutual respect, adults disagreeing but not attempting to demonize, honestly searching for solutions.

The gun lobby poisons these conversations. It pumps out and promotes a never-ending stream of worst-case scenarios until it builds a level of fear and paranoia that only profits gun makers and grinds all progress to a halt.

So if you're concerned about gun-violence in this country, you might make room on your list of talking-points for civility and productive discourse:  ask for it when it seems to have disappeared, and cease the conversation when it refuses to return.

That's my resolution for the New Year, which nowadays begins on December 14.

3 HOPEFUL SIGNS THAT AMERICA'S GETTING GUNSENSE

After the Umpqua Community College shooting in Roseburg, Oregon, which occurred on October 1 and left ten dead and seven wounded, America sat up and noticed.  

As we always do.  

We were shocked, and we said so, and we prayed for the victims, and we denounced our legislators.

Since then, Mass Shooting Tracker has registered ten more mass shootings (fewer than one a day), and while these incidents received little coverage, our country seems to be growing increasingly impatient with the NRA's stranglehold on our politicians.  

Last night, as I stumbled on these postings, I entertained the hope that maybe, just maybe, the prevention of gun-violence in this country is inching its way up the importance-scale in the lives of everyday Americans—what the statisticians call the "saliency" factor.  

So it's time to share some good news.  Here are three recent indications that we are making, in fact, real progress toward real solutions in preventing the senseless gun-violence in this country that many are now comparing to a disease. I'd recommend that you follow the links and read the articles because they contain a lot of important information that I couldn't include in this piece. Plus, you'll start to feel hopeful, and we all need that.

1. A recent Gallup poll found that 55% of Americans support tighter laws surrounding the purchase of firearms.  This figure represents a sharp rise of eight points from last year, and registers a year-long movement toward support for stricter controls.  At the very least, this shows that the NRA's campaign to loosen our laws is no longer winning the hearts and minds of the American people.
2. A study of the NRA's membership reveals that its constituency is moving toward extinction, or irrelevancy (only 7% of American gun-owners now belong to the organization).  Largely white, male, rural, and comparatively uneducated, this demographic is being statistically diminished in the American population by the growth of Black, Hispanic, and to a lesser degree, Asian populations.  The bad news for the NRA is that these groups support strict gun-control by substantial majorities. Add to these populations, the majority of other Americans who support stricter controls on firearms, and the NRA's future begins to resemble the Brontosaurus—large, unwieldy, and harmless.
3. California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom recently unveiled a ballot initiative that, most significantly, would require background checks for the purchase of ammunition as well as ban possession of "large capacity" magazines. Most importantly, I would point to the fact that Newsom is explicitly taking on the gun lobbyists in his state, basing a political career on it, and bypassing the politicians who have been purchased by the NRA.  He is trying to float this initiative because he believes the people of his state are ready for these changes. It's a creative work-around that must be giving nightmares to the NRA.  This much is clear:  Newsom now considers the NRA to be both vulnerable and aligned against the interests of the people of California.  Even twelve months ago, this initiative would have seemed improbable, at least, if not impossible, and as we all know, as California goes . . . 

So in the wake of the horrific shootings that crowd our daily calendar, is it overly optimistic to hope that the American people are waking up?

Is it too much to claim that we are realizing that the will of a distinct minority can no longer indulge its interests and line its pockets while the majority of the country suffers the devastating consequences of gun-violence at such a high and unjustifiable level?

I don't think so.

I think our country is righting itself once again, as it always has, and we can be proud of the hard work that many have undertaken to move us toward real and equitable solutions to this national problem.

Thanks to everyone who has helped! We are making progress.

CONFESSION: I DON'T TRADE INSULTS WITH TROLLS ANYMORE (AND WHY YOU SHOULDN'T EITHER)

I've decided not to trade insults anymore with people who don't like the fact that I'm trying to  prevent gun-violence in America. Most of my friends made this decision a long time ago.

Why it took me three years to do it I don't know—and don't care to know—so I will probably relapse from time to time. My bad.

But here's the long and short of it:  insulting others, particularly if you're good at it, can become addictive, and it's a habit you should avoid.  It is, however, a constant temptation in the gun-violence prevention movement.

So for those of you new to this struggle, let me draw out the scenario that leads you into this nasty addiction, and I'll hope that you can avoid it and not make the mistakes that I made.  

We need you healthy and free of addiction.

I've sketched out the sequence of events that can lead you into this quagmire, and I hope you'll memorize them and so avoid the kind of trouble that dogged me for several years.

First, you post an article late one night that questions the current American gun-policy, sometimes with statistics.

Next, a troll makes a wise-crack (one that is often sexual in nature) and cites an article that supports his point. These people are usually white males, and if they have a picture associated with their account, it will either feature guns, or flags that they associate with an historical epoch that never existed as they believe it did, or sometimes dead animals, and most commonly a skull with a bandana and a badly written slogan—because skulls are scary to trolls and writing is not something your troll has tried very much.

If it's a photograph of the troll's face, he'll have a goatee and a shaved head; or it'll feature a cowboy hat, which dishonors cowboys, or a baseball cap, that disgraces ball-players, with a slogan that calls up a fantasy-league of forgotten dreams which they take to be history because Rush or Breitbart told them it was.  

They appear not to have engaged in any sort of physical exercise, unlike cowboys and baseball players, for many years. 

It's getting late now, and you're tired, but you can't stop.  You're credibility is on the line, after all. (No it's not, but the fog of war, and all that . . . )

So you drop a link that sources numbers supporting your original posting, and the troll will then attack your new source as being unreliable, un-American, and cited only by cowards like yourself who are having, by the way, children with your sister; or at least that's the implication because, as you'll note, these words are poly-syllabic and beyond the reach of your troll. If he attempts those words, however, he will mis-type them because typing is not something your troll has tried very much either.

And you respond that his source is equally unreliable (I've never indulged the sexual slurs), and that the webpage he cites has one of those twirling globes that even your mother, who is 93, thinks are dated and stylistically embarrassing.

At this point, neither of you has convinced the other one to abandon his opinion and run in slow motion through fields of flowers to embrace at sunset.  

But a lot energy has been spilled in erecting this red-faced standstill, and it's really late.

Now, your troll ramps up the name-calling to the point that you wonder if it might be actionable. (It's at least "totally gross" in my 6-year-old daughter's sense of the phrase.)  

At this point you will lapse into an emotionally exhausted silence, desperately trying to convince yourself that you've gained an intellectual superiority of some sort because you baled out just before a defamation suit against you became conceivable.  

The point is you haven't done anything productive. Those who are quietly watching this online exchange are only impressed by how quickly adults can begin to behave like children in a school-yard spat.

In fact, you've taken time away from other tasks that might actually help you move others toward the solutions that we need. And so your adversary has, in fact, won because his diversionary tactic has succeeded. (Which I believe, by the way, is a conscious strategy of the gun-fringe.)

O, and I forgot this part:  Just before the exchange grinds to its halt, you'll often get a mini-lecture dimly related to American history and the founding of our country.  Names are dropped.  Like Thomas Jefferson or James Madison, whose prose so intimidates your troll that he wrongly assumes that you too will be intimidated too by a language that you've mastered and he hasn't.  

Don't go there.  Just don't. 

The only productive place you go now is to bed. It's late; you've wasted a lot of time and even more energy.

Tomorrow you will do much better.

And everyone will be stronger, happier, and more willing to tackle the real problems that lie before us.

And the trolls can't deal with that.

 

GETTING STARTED WITH GUN-VIOLENCE PREVENTION

If you want to become involved in the gun-violence prevention (GVP) movement, the options might seem a bit daunting at first. 

Do I need to join an organization? 

Do I have to engage those social-media platforms that further drain what little time I have to commit to this cause?  

And with my limited time, how can I locate the most reliable websites with the most reliable information? 

And most importantly, what is the most efficient—meaning, the least time-consuming, yet effective—way to have an impact on this problem?

I will try to answer those questions for you.

But first of all, let me say that I do understand your questions. I work a full-time job at an American university where I teach, write, and direct a large program.  With my wife, I am also raising a family.

I figured I didn’t have time for GVP activism either. 

Until I did.  Until our state legislators tried to put guns on our public college and university  campuses.

Until I felt what many Americans have felt about our country’s dysfunctional relationship with firearms—that it has to be made healthy again because too many innocent men, women, and most tragically, children are being sacrificed to it.  My particular focus has been guns-on-campus, but I now support a broad range of gun-violence causes.

Over the past three years, as I have undertaken this work, I have met exceptional folks who have devoted their lives to reducing gun-violence in this country, and if you get involved, you will meet them too because they are very generous with their time.  

These are the brave souls who are in the trenches and running the GVP organizations; the first-responders to every piece of legislation that furthers the gun-lobbyist’s agendas; the watchdogs to every ploy by the NRA to increase the presence of firearms in American life, and the fact-checkers for all of the misinformation disseminated by the radical gun-fringe in this country.

They do the heavy-lifting, and they do it every day. But they need your help.

So I have put together a primer on how the rest of us can pitch in and sleep better at night, knowing that we have made a contribution, and can still survive our busy days, taking care of our families and our loved ones.  

And even ourselves, if we think about it!

What follows then is the road-map that I wish I had several years ago when I began. 

Three words are useful in organizing this road-map:  LEARN, JOIN, ACT.

If you approach each one of these stages in moderation, you'll make real and long-lasting contributions to eradicating this national embarrassment.

LEARN

First, spend some time learning the terminology and the specific challenges that you might face as you wade into these waters. Like any socio-political movement, GVP has its own vocabulary and acronyms, and you'll need to know the fundamentals.

But the problem is pretty straightforward: people are dying needlessly because America has let the gun lobbyists and manufacturers set the policies that will most line their pockets. And our politicians, in the face of this money, feel that they are powerless to resist this carnage. The fundamental concept and wedge-issue is gun-control, and the best introduction to this topic comes from the The New York Times.  Read this piece carefully, and you will have a grasp of the basics:

• "Gun Control Explained"

As I read more and more over the past few years, I kept a list of the pieces that I found most helpful, and I have posted them on my blog, Gunsense. You will be interested in some topics, in others, not as much.  That's as it should be.  At this stage, you're discovering what part of this movement most attracts you, and reading through the relevant literature is the best way to locate your major interest.  You will find the specific list here:

• "Talk Back to the NRA"

JOIN

This is my favorite part of the process because here I get to list the pages and websites run by those dedicated folks I mentioned above. Note:  this is a highly selective list, and there are many more organizations and individuals doing vital work. You will find them as you work through this list and broaden your field of reference, and I encourage you to begin building a stockpile of your own trusted sources. I have listed here both websites and Facebook pages. Find a few that you like and join them, like them, get on their mailing lists, drive their numbers up, and you will heighten their profile and deepen your knowledge. I haven't annotated these entries.  Suffice it to say that they are all major national organizations, often with state branches tailored to the agendas of your own region.

I have worked most often and most successfully with the first one listed here, Moms Demand, and I have had very productive interactions, both on and off-line, with its founder, Shannon Watts.  Her group is efficiently organized on a national basis—she is, after all, the mother of five children, so efficient organization is a job requirement that all mothers will understand—and she has made it a Moms Demand goal to  accommodate all levels of commitment and knowledge about the issues. No one will feel out of place at a Moms Demand meeting.  The other groups, many of them older, have different and equally effective perspectives on the American gun-violence problem, and all of them are worth investigating.

• Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America
• Students Demand Action:  End Gun Violence in America
• The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence
• The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence
• Women Against Gun Violence
• Everytown for Gun Safety
• Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence
• Americans for Responsible Solutions
• Parents Against Gun Violence
• Violence Policy Center
• No Notoriety
• Gun Violence Archive

 ACT 

You will eventually want to do something, right? Perhaps the most effective, traditional, and least time-consuming way to act is so simple that it defies credibility:  call your Congressmen and Senators and give them your opinion on the issue. Congressional staffers who work the phones tally the calls (pro and con) and report the results to their legislators.  The gun-lobbyists have been very successful in this simplest of all political actions, and it has had a real effect on their success.  We can do the same thing. Pick up the phone and call.  Many of the organizations that I listed will keep you informed of what you need to consider, when to call, and what to say.  It's an action that is extremely influential and very efficient. Here are a few websites that will help you locate your representatives quickly:

• Find Your Representative
• Find Your Senators

Also you'll find a helpful round-up of thirty decisive actions that you can do immediately to help in this cause:

• 30 Gun Control Actions You Can Take Now

And remember: as soon as you begin visiting these sites, you will find plenty of other ways to become involved and help push this cause forward.  You have lots of support, however you wish to become involved.

Of course, social media plays a large role in the GVP movement, and you'll need a Facebook page to access some of the sources listed above and a Twitter account, if you choose to help out in Twitter campaigns, or even if you want to use Twitter simply to follow GVP news in general. But that's another posting.  

IN ARKANSAS

The conventional wisdom with gun-violence prevention always encourages local and state action first, often inspired and fueled by the national organizations. I live and work in Arkansas, and gun-violence prevention in this state, while alive and well, does not currently have a great deal of resources, aside from the energy and devotion of its proponents, which are substantial and focused. 

Those of us who are active in this area have good working relationships with the state legislators who support our goals, and we have created a social-media presence as well. If you live in Arkansas, you can start here: 

• Central Arkansas Brady Campaign Chapter
• Moms Demand Action AR — the FB page for our state
• Gunsense — my own FB page, dedicated to state and national GVP
• Arkansans Against Guns on Campus — a FB page administered by one of my colleagues
• Gunsense — my blog, which you're currently visiting, and the only one devoted to GVP in the state (that I can find).
• @sidburris — this is my Twitter account, and I generally try to tweet & retweet, on a daily basis, the major voices in gun-violence prevention, as well as brief forays into nonviolence and community-building through mindful awareness.  I generally follow-back, as soon as possible.

Nothing that we do is insignificant because anything that we do will raise awareness of this problem among others.

As Mahatma Gandhi, wrote: "The 'fabric of society is not finished . . . It is on the loom, and it is made up of constantly changing relationships."  

We can do much now to change our destructive relationship with guns and strengthen the fabric of our society.  Thank you for wanting to help out!

 

 

PROFESSOR SCHMIDT DEAD AT DELTA STATE UNIVERSITY

 

I did not know Professor Schmidt, who was murdered in his office today at Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi. I do not know the details of the case. I do not know if the shooter has been apprehended at this time.

Professor Schmidt's life was no more valuable than the other 30,000+ who will perish this year from gun-violence. Nor was his life less valuable. But each of these deaths is a diminishment, a degradation, a blemish.

Among developed nations, America claims 30% of the population and 90% of the gun fatalities. I know that suicide accounts for 60% of that number, which only deepens the tragedy and extends the front lines of the engagement that we all face.

This is now part of our legacy to the modern world. It is not the only legacy. But this is the one that casts a long shadow because it involves survivors and mourners, the larger extended community that is left, often alone, to deal with this national problem and the personal loss the problem entails. It is a legacy that multiplies long after we have turned our attention to the most recent murder, and so the effect grows and grows and grows in the wake of our legislators' apathy, and finally the mood of the nation—if there is such a thing—is affected, and that mood seem perceptibly to grow darker and darker. 

At this point, I am supposed to point to all of the good work being done by our heroic gun-violence prevention activists, and so it is right and proper to consider this my salute, because they are doing heroic work, and they are having a real and growing effect. But just now my heart is not in the optimistic mood.

So maybe there is a national mood, after all, and maybe my heart is registering that mood, and because my own heart is weary of this mood, maybe our hearts will carry us to the tipping point, where the majority who support reasonable gun legislation and background checks will regain their voice and maybe our legislators will begin to listen to those voices.

That is the best that I can say today, and it is the best that I can hope for tomorrow.

MARILYNNE ROBINSON, FEAR, CHRISTIANITY, GUNS & AMERICA. WHEW.

Marilynne Robinson's recent piece, "Fear," in The New York Review of Books, carries several obsessions, and it might be helpful to list them and get them out of the way:

1. Christianity, and its current status in American life
2. A defense of Christianity regarding its current status in American life
3. Fear in American life, and why this fear is un-Christian
4. Guns and why guns will not alleviate America's fear of losing its religion, i.e., Christianity (to bring R.E.M. into the mix)

Ms. Robinson is a very learned woman, a gifted novelists whose fiction I adore, and a Christian historian who has forgotten more about Christianity than I will ever know.  I would suggest that anyone who is remotely interested in visiting that busy intersection where Christianity, guns, gun-violence, and our "Christian patriot militia" are currently congregating read her piece, and read it now.

The essay seems to me, at least, not fully assembled, which is why I listed its component parts. As I read the essay, I mentally supplied a good number of the links between those parts, and it's always dangerous to leave that job to a reader.  Still, I read the piece sympathetically, if a bit skeptically.

Still, this much is clear.  Ms. Robinson is embarrassed by those who would drag Christianity into the violent corners of American life, and then militarize the faith in an ill-fated, even suicidal, attempt to guard the faith, while ostensibly protecting something or someone else: like Kim Davis, or gender equality, or Cliven Bundy, or whoever has recently misread the Bible and made a public spectacle of their misreading.

She's right.  It is embarrassing.

All of which brings me to my point in drawing your attention to this piece. Ms. Robinson is approaching the gun-violence problem in America through her deep sense of Christian history and tradition. She is not quoting statistics; she is not taking on the gun-lobbyists; she is not foaming at the mouth on Twitter with Dana Loesch.

She is bringing a larger, historical context to bear on the problem. It doesn't fit Twitter, it won't play on Facebook, and Instagram has no room for it. You couldn't even read it from a bannered podium at a gunsense rally.

But what she has to say, and what dozens like her are saying about gun-violence in America, are having an impact on the conversation. 

And lest we forget:  we have scores of gun-violence prevention advocates, the first-responders, who spend their days in the trenches, correcting every false statement from the gun lobbies, organizing the rallies that keep this issue in the headlines, and approaching our elected leaders who have simply looked away toward the gun-lobby dollars as our country continues along its armed and dangerous path.

The work of these advocates is endless, dangerous, and heroic.

I could name names, but if you've spent any time on this blog or read my Twitter feed, you know who they are.

Let me end with an analogy. While climate-change has created many of the natural disasters that have kept our first-responders busy saving lives and property, and while these first-responders are deservedly in the headlines, there are thousands of anonymous scientists and climatologists working on long-term solutions that might one day relieve our first-responders of their increasingly frequent and burdensome obligation to repair the damage that our damaged climate is dealing out to us on a daily basis.

So our firemen and our scientists are working quietly hand-in-hand, buying time, ameliorating disaster, and concocting solutions.

And so it is with gun-violence prevention in America. While the lobbyists and activists work selflessly to restore sanity to America's gun policies by confronting those who would further relax gun laws in our country and militarize our culture, others are quietly teaching classes in gender politics, racial violence, nonviolence, or writing about the world's wisdom traditions—read "world religions"—and how guns and violence have no historical place in them, or designing curricula that foreground love and compassion, and how love and compassion are options that all of us can choose and deploy and, in so doing, win for ourselves and our country a measure of peace and tranquility. 

Yes, many people are doing that. And doing it very quietly and very effectively.

Having periodically spent a few months as a first responder when the Arkansas legislature was in session in 2013 and 2015, I know that my heart and my talents lie in the other camp, the camp that's set up just behind the front lines, where all of us back here feel doubly obligated to produce results because of the hard work that's going on up there on those front lines.

But we're working together, and we're fortunate to have each other as allies. And we're getting results too, which is why we each continue in our camps.

 

 

NO, JOHNNY, MLK WOULDN'T HAVE SUPPORTED THE AMERICAN GUN LOBBY

Mention the name Martin Luther King, Jr. online in connection with nonviolence or reasonable gun-control measures, and soon enough, you’ll be reminded of how ignorant you are and that, in fact, King applied for a license to carry a firearm and was denied one, but obviously supported concealed carry and any other form of armed resistance that your troll cares to attribute to him.

As always, this incident from King’s life is taken out of context and is grossly misrepresented. Here’s what happened.

On the evening of January 30, 1956, Martin Luther King’s house was bombed in Montgomery, Alabama. King was at a meeting at the time, but his wife, Coretta, and his infant daughter, Yolanda (not three months old), were home. Because they were in the back of the house at the time of the explosion, they miraculously escaped injury. When King heard the news, he rushed home to find a group of angry and armed African-Americans vowing revenge. His response to them was unequivocal and clear:

If you have weapons, take them home.  If you do not have them, please do not seek them. We cannot solve this problem through violence. We must meet violence with non-violence. Love your enemies; bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you.

Still, King’s advisors were concerned, and they urged him to consider the matter of self-defense. The threats against King’s life from the white racists in the area were constant, violent, and often specific. And the bombing gave King pause. Finally, at the urging of his colleagues, he applied for a license to carry a gun in his car. Of course, his application was denied.

But then King had one of the most important realizations of his life. In Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story, King describes it:

Meanwhile I reconsidered. How could I serve as one of the leaders of a nonviolent movement and at the same time use weapons of violence for my personal protection? Coretta and I talked the matter over for several days and finally agreed that arms were no solution. We decided then to get rid of the one weapon we owned. (131)

King refused to arm himself, even in the most dire circumstances.

So King would not have supported the American gun lobby, sponsored by the NRA, that dominates the current gun-discussion with intimidation and fear-mongering; and your troll's attempt to recruit King to the gun lobby's camp is fatuous and a sign either of desperation or ignorance.

Probably both; they often travel side-by-side.

King meant what he said: violence is not the way.

THE ONLY THREE FACTS THAT MATTER ABOUT GUN-VIOLENCE: A PRIMER FOR BEGINNERS

If you're new to the gun-violence prevention (GVP) movement, and wade into the social-media environment brandishing the hashtag #gunsense, you might be overwhelmed at the intensity of the disagreements. 

Gun-violence in America is a big issue now, although you wouldn't know it by looking at our elected officials in Congress. They won't talk about it—it's poison to their electoral health; it drains their coffers.  So Congress has punted.

It's up to the rest of us to address this issue.

I became aware of the movement through a long-term interest in nonviolence, but an Arkansas bill, introduced in 2013, to put guns on our college campuses, brought me into the political fray. 

I've been here for two years; so I'm a neophyte. But I've learned a few things during those two years that I wanted to pass on to those who are just getting started. When I become discouraged—which happens regularly—I remember three facts, and these three facts alone have always reminded me why this movement is so important. And why it's worth our time to continue, even when we feel dispirited.

1. Of the 32 countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) with per capita annual income higher than $15,000, the U.S. has 30% of the population but 90% of the firearm homicides (source).
2. Children between the ages of 5 and 14 in the United States are 17 times more likely to be murdered by firearms than children in other industrialized nations.
3. Women are 16 times more likely in America to be killed with a firearm by a male acquaintance than by a male stranger (source).

America has a problem with violence. We are also charitable, democratic (loosely and plutocratically defined), inventive, dynamic, engaged, diverse. 

But we are also a violent people. And the roots of this violence are not clearly understood.

But we know this: not only are we killing each other at a rate higher than other countries in our peer group, but we are also killing women and children at an accelerated rate.

We're mowing them down, in fact.

First, this is inexcusable. Second, it is a national embarrassment. And third, we can solve the problem and move gradually toward a less violent culture (it is already happening in certain areas of American life, and much heroic work is being done across the spectrum of American social justice).

So the next time you are confronted with that tired and worn-out maze of statistical arguments that would have you believe that swimming-pool drownings (#poolsense), or suicide by hanging (#ropesense), or medical malpractice (#doctorsense) are the real problems, remember these numbers: 30/90, 17, 16.

And this sentence: we live in a country that claims 30% of the OECD's population, 90% of its gun fatalities, and in a country where our young people are 17 times more likely to die by firearms than in other developed nations, and where women are 16 times more likely to die at the hands of men they know than at the hands of men they don't know.

We say this to ourselves, and then we get back to work.

 

 

HB1077: HOW TO PASS AN UNWANTED BILL & WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT

I have just learned that there is a chance that #HB1077, Representative Charlie Collins' bill to put guns on our state college campuses will be voted by the general Senate out of the Senate Judiciary committee, where it faced substantial resistance.

The Senate has very different rules from the House, and an unpopular bill can be shielded from public scrutiny by using this desperate, and essentially undemocratic, tactic.

If this happens, the bill will then go to the Senate floor where it will pass. 

I have also been told that this might happen as early as tomorrow.

Here is what you need to know:

1. The bill is being moved out of committee to avoid public scrutiny and opinion. The sponsors' experience in the House committee taught them a very important lesson: the Arkansas faculty, staff, students, and administrators do not want this bill.
2. Further revelation of this fact exposes the legislation for what it is: an NRA intrusion into Arkansas higher education.
3. They have chosen to do this during Spring Break, hoping that the affected constituency would not notice.
4. This represents a failure of leadership on many levels, too many to enumerate at this time. So now we must step up.
5. It is important as we move forward that we leave this historical record of our resistance to this bill—Representative Collins has said publicly on numerous occasions that if this bill passes, he will then consider a student-carry bill in the next session (2017). These moves are all taken from the NRA playbook, and we have to compile publicly accessible records of our resistance to the minority, though well funded, opinion. 

Here is what you need to do:

1. If you have a Twitter account, please tweet your resistance. Include primarily #HB1077 as a hashtag, and then as you have room, #arleg, #arplx, #NoCampusCarry; and RT similar tweets that embody your opinion. TWEETS MATTER—THEY ARE READ!
2. Send an email to our senators immediately. Here is their email list; you can copy and paste:

 [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]

Thanks in advance for your help. We can make a difference simply be leaving a record.