GUNSENSE

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.

PROFESSOR WILBANKS & HIS FAMILY: ANOTHER AMERICAN MURDER-SUICIDE

Professor James Wilbanks was the shooter—that much we know. And he was also an Assistant Professor of Management at the College of Business, University of Arkansas-Little Rock. And a part of me wishes I didn't know that.

On Friday, February 20, he shot his wife, his sister, his two dogs, and himself. He also set his house on fire.

According to Capt. Hansard of the Maumelle police, "the case is now closed."

Our first business, and it is a business that we know all too well, is to mourn this tragedy. Of course, we will never really know what caused the Professor to take this horrendous path in his life, so our only defensible responses are those of compassion and, as time passes, prevention.

We wish his friends and his family, as well as his colleagues at the College of Business in Little Rock, the strength to find peace in the coming days.

Professor Wilbanks

We will eventually want to know if there were any warning signs that we might use, indicators that will allow us to recognize others who pose similar risks to our communities and to our schools. Prevention should always be the first line of defense, particularly when our students are concerned, and strengthening these preventive measures should always be our priority.

After all, we know these stories too well—over the same weekend, there were murder-suicides in Georgia, New York, and Missouri, as well as here in Arkansas.

We even have a name for it now; it's called "familicide."

But Arkansans surely took special notice of this story, not only because it concerns a Professor in the Arkansas system, but also because guns have been much on the minds of all Arkansans since the 90th General Assembly convened in January.

In that Assembly, there are currently bills to allow guns on college campuses, in parking lots, in polling places; to allow 18-year old veterans to obtain concealed-carry licenses; to allow gun-owners to stand their ground if they feel threatened. Have I missed anything? Probably.

So it is also our duty to ponder the future that our General Assembly is designing for us—a future with guns in places where once their presence was insulting to our shared and hard-won civility: in our schools, in our polling places, in our parking lots at work, and even in our churches. Now, all around us, we can feel that civility unraveling. 

Professor Wilbanks

Next, we have been told, our college and university students should be able to carry their firearms to class.

We are becoming an uncivil nation.

America is already one of the most heavily armed countries in the world, and the most violent among developed nations, and yet some of our legislators seem frantically trying to add more firearms to the few places where they have historically been unwelcome. It borders on manic legislation, but it is, in my opinion, a very dangerous mania to indulge.

The photographs here of Professor Wilbanks, released this morning by The Campaign to Keep Guns Off Campus, are from his Instagram account, and they are publicly available to those who have the free app. In the picture above, he is wielding an M249 Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW, for short), the work-horse light machine gun of the American military since the US invasion of Panama in 1989. From the backdrop in the photograph, Professor Wilbanks would seem to be at one of the so-called "machine-gun" boutiques in Las Vegas. The Las Vegas Machine Gun Experience, advertised in the photograph, offers shooting scenarios that allow their patrons to fire automatic weapons in imaginary engagements, such as "Spec Ops," "SWAT," or even "D-Day."

The other range mentioned on the backdrop, Discount Firearms—Las Vegas, offers its customers similar fantasy-focused missions.

Playing army, in effect, for adults. Battle-rattle for civilians.

If you've never looked at these sites, or were even unaware of these fantasy shooting-boutiques, you will learn a great deal about America's militarized gun-culture by paying them a visit. And even more importantly, you will see how the gun industry is marketing and selling its lethal product.

We owe it to Professor Wilbanks, to his family, and to all of our loved ones, to understand more about this culture, its genesis, its development, and its effect on our citizens.

But we start with this observation: far too many people in our country are dying from gun-violence, and we must bring all of our resources to bear on this national disgrace.

And we take action, having made that observation, by joining together to resist those legislators who would put at grave risk the security of our college campuses.

 

 

 

 

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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THANKS TO REPRESENTATIVE LEDING FOR LISTENING

In case you ever wondered about the efficacy of letting your Representatives know where you stand on the issues, check out the tweet below that was posted by Representative Greg Leding this morning. Our individual voices matter, and when we think about the minimal effort it requires nowadays to express them, we have little choice but say what we think about the issues that matter the most to us.

And thanks to Representative Leding, not only for listening, but also for letting us know that he's listening. 

That matters. That empowers. In short, that rocks.

Since Tuesday evening, I've received more than 400 emails from Arkansans thanking me for my vote against guns on campuses. #ARleg #HB1077

— Greg Leding (@gregleding) February 12, 2015