GUNSENSE

HOW DO YOU DEFINE HOME? GUN VIOLENCE ON THE DOMESTIC FRONT

 James Gilligan, one of this country's foremost authorities on violence, writes:

The use of violence as a means of resolving conflict between persons, groups, and nations is a strategy we learn first at home. All of our basic problem-solving, problem-exacerbating, and problem-creating strategies, for living and dying, are learned first at home. (From Violence: Our Deadly Epidemic and Its Causes, p. 5).

For many unfortunate women and children, home is a place that defies our common conception of the word—comfort, security, refuge. For these women and children, home is a very dangerous place to live. The numbers are clear:

1. In a study of 23 high-income nations, 87% of the children under the age of 15 killed by guns lived in the United States.
2. More than half of our youth who commit suicide do so with a gun obtained from their home. And more often than not, with a gun that belonged to their parents.
3. In 2010, of females killed by a firearm, more than 2/3 were killed by an intimate partner.
4. Domestic violence assaults involving a firearm are 12 times more likely to result in death than those involving bodily force.
5. Abused women are 5 times more likely to be killed by their abuser if their abuser owns a firearm.

Add to these dire statistics the simple fact that of all OECD countries with a per-capita income over $15K, the United States accounts for 30% of the population and 90% of the firearm homicides, and we begin to understand the magnitude of this problem.

America is a very violent nation, and much of this violence is directed toward our women and children. We must do something about it.

And we can, even though problems of this sort rarely admit of simple solutions.

Here are four legislative fixes that will work and that we must continually demand of our elected officials.

1. Ban all convicted abusers, stalkers, and people subject to related restraining orders from possessing guns.
2. Provide all records of prohibited abusers to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS.
3. Require a background check for all gun sales. Period.
4. Ensure that all abusers surrender their firearms once they become prohibited.

With these four simple solutions in mind, and with organized initiatives at the local, state, and national level, we can make a difference and begin to rehabilitate our country.

And don't forget to check out Women Against Gun Violence. They've been around for over two decades, and they're a deep source of information about gun-violence as well a model for the social organization needed to accomplish our goals.

 

REFORMER! KNOW THYSELF! GUN-VIOLENCE PREVENTION & SELF-KNOWLEDGE

“The more you develop [nonviolence] in your own being, the more infectious it becomes . . . —Gandhi |

Gandhi’s idea about nonviolence, or set of ideas, really, speaks directly to the gun-violence prevention movement for several reasons—long-term reasons, but reasons that provide an unshakeable foundation for an enduring action.

Gandhi situated fundamental political action within the only arena that we can continuously access and daily strengthen: our own hearts and minds. This kind of internal disarmament had been part of Christian nonviolence for centuries, but as the twentieth century dawned, social reform had become a more pressing concern, particularly with the advent of World War I. Gandhi's reminder of the older tradition is important, though, because he tells us, in effect, that we can always “be political,” we can always practice our political chops, even in our cars, waiting at a stop-light, as long as we understand how he understood the phrase, "political action."

His understanding is a lot different from the way that phrase might be understood in Western circles.

Gandhi placed special emphasis on the mind’s role in perceiving and understanding the world around him. That role is pivotal, so pivotal, in fact, that the mind is seen to determine, for all practical purposes, whatever aspect of the world it is currently processing: weather, war, hunger, love, attack, boredom. The mind is not a clear lens. It is dusty, and its dust arises from our own self-interests.

Our minds so heavily skew our perceptions that we believe these skewed perceptions to be, in essence, an accurate report of what's happening. Nothing more, nothing less.

We rarely believe what we see; we do regularly, however, see what we believe.

Gandhi’s assumption is that the mind’s default setting renders a picture of the world that simply doesn’t exist. And with that idea in hand, he turns to the world of social and political reform: our actions in that world will never have the desired effect because they are being designed and implemented to reach a goal, a place in the world, that doesn’t exist.

So what are we to do? The answer to that question, conceptually speaking, is easy: we need to reconfigure those default settings so that we perceive the world, and our own place in it, more accurately. Then our actions will become more effective because they are designed to operate in a world whose true qualities, not our projected qualities, we are beginning to understand.

Buddhism, Hinduism, and other wisdom traditions from Asia have produced multiple ways for gaining this understanding. They have composed over several millennia a number of user's manuals for the mind, so to speak, and they have outlined scores of ways to put these user's manuals to good use in our daily lives.

As a general rule, Westerners lump all of these methods under the general heading, "meditation," and as long as we understand how varied are the practices that fall under that heading, it's a good place to begin because it emphasizes the fact that the problems we are trying to solve out there—gun violence, racism, poverty, the penal system—have their root in here, in our own minds. 

So, while we are working away at those problems that surround us, we might as well also address the roots of those problems. And since we can't address someone else's roots, we have no choice but to address our own. When we do that, to return to the original quotation that began this posting, our own internal renoviations become "more infectious," which means that world around us benefits from the work that we are undertaking within us.

That alone is a pretty serious insight because it radically redefines the notion of our place in the political arena, and it has been sending yogis to caves in the Himalayas for thousands of years. It also explains why being around people who do these internal explorations at a very high level, like the Dalai Lama, are so charismatic: we like being "infected" by them.

It also gives the deeper background to the bumper sticker you often see with a picture of Gandhi accompanied by the slogan: "Be the change you want to see in the world." (No matter that Gandhi never said that. What he did say was longer, less sloganistic, and more subtle. Still you get the point.)

But the results are clear: trolls stop getting under our skin, though they continue to troll us, and our focus remains; the mindless serve-and-volley with angry gun-huggers on Twitter seems more and more pointless, and we find ourselves gradually working effectively above the fray; and we begin to sense the undefined but deeply powerful community that ultimately claims all of us because we have seen love as the only common bond that survives the struggles or hardships that come with real social reform. 

Gandhi had a clear awareness of this continual back-and-forth between internal renovation and social action—how the two can sharpen and dull one another—and it came to him early. Remembering Pretoria, South Africa, where he began his career, he wrote that "the religious spirit within me became a living force." 

It's a model that can benefit all of us, as we continually balance our social action, however we define it, with our hard-won self-knowledge, however we decide to acquire it.

 

 

BREAKING: MADISON & JEFFERSON OPPOSE ARKANSAS #HB1077

Our Founding Fathers carry so much weight nowadays in the gun-discussion that it's highly significant when they weigh in on topics like campus-carry, right?

So it turns out that Thomas Jefferson, who designed and built the University of Virginia, and James Madison, who wrote the Second Amendment and sat on UVa's Board of Visitors, had very clear opinions on this issue.

They didn't support campus-carry, and they wouldn't have supported Charlie Collins' HB 1077, the bill that would allow faculty and staff to carry loaded handguns on Arkansas college campuses. And unlike Representative Collins, Jefferson and Madison thought their Board ought to have a say in the governance of their university. And they didn't write legislation, like HB 1077, that would prohibit their Board from governing.

But that's just Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. What did they know about guns, law, governance, and higher education?

And then there's Admiral William H. McRaven, who is now the Chancellor of the University of Texas system, which is also one of the largest public state-university systems in the country.

Read about him. He's had some experience with guns and the people who use them—he spent his military career, after all, in special operations.

He was also the guy who designed and executed Operation Neptune Spear. You might want to read up on that too.

Long story short: Operation Neptune Spear is the code-name for the mission that took down Osama bin Laden. Admiral McRaven is also against campus-carry. You can download his full statement about that subject here.

But here's my opinion, and it's not complicated: when it comes to campus-carry, I'm not going to second-guess the folks who wrote the Second Amendment, the Declaration of Independence, and the guy who nabbed Osama bin Laden and now oversees the University of Texas system, housed in one of the most gun-friendly states in the Union. 

Call me crazy, but I'll defer to Madison, Jefferson, and McRaven on these matters. I'm happy to have them on my team opposing Representative Collins' bill to put guns on our campuses.

Arkansas, however, is not the only state facing these bills. At Florida A&M, for example, Police Chief Terence Calloway has clearly articulated his opposition to a similar bill. 

Simply put, campus gun-bills are based on unsound policy, reflect theories of irresponsible governance, and are deaf to the wishes of the affected constituency.

And this is why so many authoritative voices have aligned against it, across this country, and across the centuries that span our history.

Let's hope our legislators are listening.

 

 

GUN VIOLENCE IS ROBBING AMERICA OF ITS FUTURE

Just so we're clear: in 2015, gun violence will be the leading cause of death among young people under the age of 25. 

We're killing our collective future.

Gun-violence has become a a national health epidemic. There is simply no other way to understand it. And, in fact, several organizations are beginning to discuss it in precisely this way. And new discussions lead to new solutions.

But one fact remains indisputable and should concern all Americans: of the 32 countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the U.S. claims 90% of the firearm homicides, but only 30% of the population. 

America has a violence problem. Period. And we don't know how to handle firearms. Period. The two elements, violence and incompetency, combine to yield these horrific numbers.

But it gets worse. Much of this gun-violence is located within the younger community. Look at this video released by Generation Progress. It's brief, to the point, and heart-breaking.

You can help. Have a look at Generation Progress and their current work on gun-violence prevention. Or contact me through this blog in the comment section, and I will be happy to connect you to the gun-violence prevention organization that most fits your own needs and aspirations. The work done to foster gun-violence prevention doesn't stream from a single, monolithic organization, but instead is a grass-roots movement that comes at the problem from every angle and uses every approach: legislation, awareness-raising, nonviolence education, petition circulation, data-analysis, blogging, canvassing, marching —you name it, there's an organization that will suit you. 

Together, we will remove this national stain from the American character.

WHEN CONGRESS SELLS OUT TO GUNS, WE ALL LOSE

Congress no longer passes bills opposed by the N.R.A., even if the intent is to save the lives of police officers. http://t.co/glfbwNOrTM

— NYT Opinion (@nytopinion) March 7, 2015

 Let's make sure we understand the full implications of this tweet. We have a Congress that is hog-tied by the NRA; and we have an NRA that is driven by the profit-margin of the gun lobby; and we have untrained, gun-toting amateurs being manipulated by both our Congress and the NRA.

And don't forget: our Congress and the NRA  are laughing all the way to the bank, as we the people continue to slaughter ourselves through incompetence, faulty patriotism, and military-grade weaponry that belongs in the hands of our troops. 

While the Second-Amendment zealots continue to rant about taking their country back, it's important to realize that these very same zealots are the ones who gave it to the NRA in the first place. They are now irrelevant to the national discussion. Children are dying because of their gullibility and because of Congress's greed. Period.

Those of us who still believe in responsible gun-ownership, training, and an authentic respect for the Second Amendment must take our country back. 

That's all there is to it.

GUNSENSE ROCKS: VEDDER, PEARL JAM & THE GOOD RAGE

I woke up the other morning and thought to myself, I wish someone over the age of forty would just come unglued in public and start screaming about how wrong violence is, and how we're up to our necks in guns and gun-violence, and then I thought how much I needed that cleansing-rage-kind-of-thing because we are, in fact, shooting ourselves to pieces every day—more than any other developed nation—and coming up with stupid, dogmatic, and illiterate reasons for explaining it. 

I woke up, and I thought that.

Then, I stumbled on this clip from the July 11, 2014 Pearl Jam show in Milton Keynes, England, part of the band's Lightning Bolt tour. Skip to 4:10 into the clip, where Vedder begins an impassioned reaction to the violence that clogs our daily headlines. If you don't have time to watch the clip, you can read a transcription of Vedder's monologue here.

But you need to hear his voice to get the cleansing: it’s strident, dramatic, zealous, and committed. I don't care how much wine he had. I don't care that he ended his monologue on his knees with a sing-a-long to Edwin Starr's "War." (Which, by the way, landed at number 5 on the Billboard Year-End Top 100 for 1970, and which song I loved at the time.)

But more than anything else that happened to me that day, I loved Vedder's whole messy, over-the-top, enraged, declaration of no tolerance for no peace.

At the same time that Vedder delivered his declaration, however, tensions were escalating between Israel and Palestine, and as a result, many pro-Israeli parties felt that Vedder was taking the Israelis to task, even though he never mentioned them by name. 

Vedder responded five days later on the Pearl Jam website with a brief and pointed posting entitled, "Imagine That—I'm Still Anti-War." 

Without apology, he uses John Lennon's "Imagine" to defend the pure and necessary idealism that stoked his rage that night in Milton Keynes. "Call me naïve," he wrote, but "I’d rather be naïve, heartfelt and hopeful than resigned to say nothing for fear of misinterpretation and retribution."

And when I heard this clip, and read Vedder's explanation of his stance, I realized how important it is for people in his position—visible, adored—to lose their patience with violence, and to do it publicly, to abandon the reasoned approach of diplomacy and negotiation, and simply to shriek at the brutality and barbarousness of war.

Because rock 'n' roll makes its strongest appeals without the shackles of reason.

And so here's what I said to myself that day: stop acting like an adult, and do it now, before we're all dead.

And besides, people like Vedder, speaking from their podium, help folks like me and all the  others who are working, backs bent and out of sight, in the vineyards of gun-violence prevention. Or social justice. Or women's health. Or literacy. Or immigration. Just working for the love of it.

I was drawn to Vedder's howl because I have been helping to defeat a bill that would put guns on our college campuses in Arkansas. The political process, while it tolerates every sort of human foible, also depends on a kind of decorum, a sense of dialogue and propriety that is essential to the process. 

But how often have I wanted simply to scream at the top of my lungs that the bill we are considering is dangerous, uncivil, ill-conceived, badly written, unpopular, and unwanted? That it puts our children at risk? That it puts a gag order on the Board of Trustees, who coincidentally have voted unanimously for two years to prohibit guns on our campuses? That it is fueled by one of the country's most powerful gun-lobbies, simply to maintain its healthy profits? 

How many times? Too many to count.

Like everyone in this campaign, I sometimes feel as though I walk around with a continual, low-grade, barely suppressed howl rumbling deep inside of me.

I needed Vedder's public howl. It was righteous, and it was right.

And it felt good to hear it. Thanks, Eddie.

Howard Zinn (and you) were right: You can't be neutral on a moving train. And what's more, you shouldn't be.

 

 

 

THE NEW GUNS-ON-CAMPUS BILL IN ARKANSAS: SAY WHAT?

Make no mistake about it.

Representative Charlie Collins' House Bill 1077, the bill to put guns on Arkansas college campuses, has now one purpose and one purpose only: to silence the Boards of Trustees who have long and successfully overseen higher education in Arkansas.

Why do I say that?

Because for two years running, the Boards have voted unanimously to prohibit our faculty and staff from carrying their weapons on our campuses. So the sponsors of the bill have decided that it is time to remove the Boards’ power of governance on the gun-issue.

Consider the bill's history. In 2013, when Representative Collins introduced the previous campus-carry bill, the outcry against it was so great that a reasonable compromise was reached. Faculty and staff, with concealed-carry permits, would be allowed to carry their handguns on campus unless the various Boards of Trustees voted once a year to opt out of the law and prohibit concealed-carry on the campuses they governed.

In 2013, then, the amended bill made it through the General Assembly and became Act 226.

The resistance to Collins' bill, however, remained unabated and clear:  over the next two years, the Boards across the state twice voted unanimously to prohibit their faculty from carrying handguns on their campuses.

So, Collins' latest version, HB 1077, simply removes the Boards of Trustees from their long-standing role of governance.

Why? Because they were not governing the way Representative Collins had hoped they would govern. 

On February 5, 2015, Collins' new bill—the one that silenced the Board of Trustees—was introduced to the House Education Committee, and once again Collins' attempt to put guns Arkansas college campuses failed: it didn't get the votes required to move out of committee. The affected constituency—faculty, staff, students, and administrators—didn’t want amateurs carrying their weapons on their campuses, they made their opinions known, and our legislators listened. The bill died in committee.

At this point, Collins did what most legislators do when their bill has failed: he added the amendments that would secure the support of a few of those who had originally voted against the bill. He returned with his newly amended bill on February 27. I don't know what deals were struck, if any, to secure the needed votes, but the bill moved forward on a voice vote. The amendments were basically three in number, and not one of them, in my opinion, is substantive. (The video archive for the session is accessible here.)  

• The one that took up the most time in discussion concerned the additional training for those who wished to carry their handguns on campus—training that would focus on "active-shooter" scenarios. Representative Baltz, who introduced this amendment, said that those who wished to carry their weapons on campus "have to attend an active-shooter class." Apparently, Representative Baltz didn’t understand, or hadn’t read, the amendment he was introducing. Such training is not required; the bill only says that the schools "may" require it, and that the costs of the additional training, should any school choose to require it, must be borne by the school that so chooses! It’s not even an unfunded mandate; it's an unfunded suggestion. And with the current financial hardships that face higher education in Arkansas and across America, the last thing that universities will consider in their strained budgets is "active-shooter" training, particularly in a state where the Boards have unanimously said that they do not want guns on their campuses. So this is a meaningless amendment. It only serves as a distraction from the real purpose of the bill: to silence the Boards of Trustees.
• The bill also stipulates that those who carry their weapons on campus must register with campus security or the local jurisdiction. Here is Mr. Baltz’s explanation of this amendment: “If there is a shooting on the campus, they [law enforcement] are going to be coming in there looking for the bad guy with the gun, and for the safety of the student, for the safety of the teacher, and for the safety of law enforcement, everybody has to be on the same playing field.” I must confess that the logic of this explanation defeats me. First, voluntary registration of a concealed firearm is unenforceable. Second, I assume from Representative Baltz’s statement that when the security officer arrives on the scene, he or she will have memorized the faces of those who have registered their weapons, and will be able instantly to distinguish the “bad guy” from the faculty or staff member? Or perhaps our security officers are required to memorize serial numbers too, or maybe drivers-license numbers as well, and during an active-shooter situation, request these numbers from those who are currently engaged in exchanging gun-fire? Again, this amendment does nothing to enhance campus safety, and it is badly conceived. Again, it simply distracts attention from the real focus of the bill: to remove the Boards of Trustees from their governing capacity.
• Finally, the bill designates child-care centers on college campuses as gun-free zones. Are we to take this as innovative legislation? That we don’t want loaded handguns around toddlers? This amendment, then, was simply inevitable. Parents would have risen in revolt had this carve-out not been included, and no elected official could have survived that confrontation.

So we are left again with the real purpose of this bill, the one that Representative Collins hasn't addressed in any detail or with any credibility: to nullify, on this one issue, the Boards of Trustees' capacity to govern the colleges and universities they have overseen for decades.

That, in my opinion, is an unconscionable overreach of an elected official's entrusted power.

And it is disheartening to see Representative Collins so blatantly disregard the democratic process that allows the citizens of our state to have a voice in determining our future.

 

HYPOCRITE ALERT! NRA, HB1077 & ARLEG IMPLICATED!

.@AR_Logic_Bomb—Visitors to #NRA HQ must surrender their weapons. Molon Labe? Yeah, the #NRA just did. #p2 | http://t.co/bB9b8kHuwu

— SJ Burris (@sidburris) March 3, 2015

Of course, while the NRA works overtime to make sure our own places of business, and our schools, and our restaurants, and our parking lots, and our gyms, and our locker rooms, and our homes, and our, well, you get the point, have guns, they have decided that you cannot carry guns into their headquarters, their own place of business.

Just like the Arkansas General Assembly, who doesn't want guns in the Capitol, where they work.

#HypocriteAlert.

ARKANSAS GUNS ON CAMPUS BILL TO REAPPEAR AS EARLY AS 2.26.15

ALERT FOR ALL ARKANSAS FACULTY, STAFF, STUDENTS, AND CITIZENS

Charlie Collins’s HB 1077, the bill to allow faculty & staff to carry concealed weapons on Arkansas college and university campuses, might re-appear, amended, in the Education Committee as early as Thursday, February 26. We need all concerned faculty, students, staff, and citizens to send emails to the following committee members, expressing your opinions about this legislation. Our initial success in stalling this bill occurred partly because of the outpouring of resistance against it, and we deeply appreciate your willingness to take the time from your busy schedule to express your opinions on this vital issue. Here are the names and emails of three committee members that you might contact. Thanks in advance for your time and effort.

Representative Bruce Cozart (Committee Chair): [email protected] 

Representative Charlotte Douglas: [email protected] 

Representative Bill Gossage: [email protected]

  

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CONCEAL-CARRY LICENSEES: NEW NUMBERS SHOULD GIVE US PAUSE

The Violence Policy Center, for decades one of our countries most respected advocates for gun-violence prevention, released in February a startling set of numbers regarding concealed-carry licensees. These numbers ought to influence dramatically our final estimation of HB1077, the bill introduced by Representative Charlie Collins that would allow faculty and staff to carry their weapons on Arkansas college campuses.

The Center discovered that from May 2007 to February 2015, concealed-carry licensees were responsible for at least 722 murders and 28 mass-shootings. (Read the recent New York Times editorial on these findings here.)

Before you pull out your calculator and start figuring the yearly or monthly or daily kill-rates, consider the phrase, at least? Why this troubling phrase? 

It's troubling because we don't know the real numbers. It's troubling because the NRA doesn't want us to know these numbers. Because the NRA in conjunction with Congress has prohibited for two decades the Center for Disease Control and Prevention from conducting research on gun-violence.  And even though this ban was supposedly lifted two years ago, the CDC still cannot get funding from Congress to undertake the work that so desperately needs to be done on this debilitating problem. 

So the VPC's numbers come only from news outlets and the very limited state data that is publicly available. The real numbers, then, are higher.

That's why the NRA has blocked access to the facts.

But how much higher is anybody's guess. So one of the many tragedies surrounding this suppression of data is that we have little reliable information about the extent of concealed-carry gun-violence, information that we should have before enacting any legislation that relies upon such license-holders to secure the safety of our children.

That's just common sense.

The point to all of this? We now know, at least, that our preconception of these licensees—law-abiding, upstanding gun-handlers—was simply mistaken. Many of them, of course, are exactly that: law-abiding and upstanding. But now we know that a number of them, a number larger than we had expected, are not.

So we simply don't know how widespread gun-violence is among concealed-carry license holders. But we do know this: it is more extensive than we had expected.

The conclusion is obvious: we shouldn't entrust these people with the safety of our students until we correct this mistake and obtain a clearer picture of their profile. They are, after all, the very people that we are allowing to carry guns into our classrooms.

In light of this new evidence, a few questions come to mind.

• Are we ready to grant this under-researched and armed population instant and legal access to our students, faculty, and staff?
• Do we want them carrying concealed firearms into our classes, departmental meetings, hallways, cafeterias, and libraries?
• Have we ever granted such potentially dangerous liberties to such an ill-defined, under-studied, and untrained group of citizens who are carrying lethal weapons?
• Are we ready to carry out this experiment—currently being attempted by 1.2% of our college campuses—with our children?

Let's take a deep breath before we act so rashly, particularly on behalf of campuses that have never once experienced the problem the bill is designed to solve.

Our children are worth the extra effort.

 

 

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