GUNSENSE

WELCOME TO Gunsense

I'm glad you found Gunsense, a blog that rose out of resistance to Arkansas legislation designed to put guns on our school campuses, but a blog that strives now, as I support the gun-violence prevention movement, to raise awareness about systemic violence in America and the need for creative strategies to address it. I will bring a range of responses, from nonviolence education to legislative initiatives, to these issues, but I am also interested in the intersection of social reform and spiritual practice. Much of what I have to say in this area looks toward Asia and its long, distinguished tradition of nonviolence, but I speak always with an American inflection. Facts, figures, statistics, theories, assumptions, opinions, spirituality—you'll find them all here.

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Together we can forge creative solutions!

THREE ARGUMENTS THE NRA MAKES IN THE WAKE OF A MASS SHOOTING—AND WHY THEY ARE FALSE

After every mass shooting in America, and depending tragically on how many are killed, our nation erupts in a polarizing debate about how the shooting could have been avoided. The NRA sees it as an opportunity to further their agenda of selling more guns to more people in more places.

Gun-violence prevention groups point to a country with a flawed background-check system and a love affair with the "assault rifle," which for ten years (1994-2004) in our country was banned.

The NRA's message is consistent:  more guns in the hands of more people will discourage and potentially stop these attacks. The gun-violence prevention groups consistently disagree.  

Who's correct, and what are the facts?

Here are three arguments the gun lobbies traditionally make after a mass-shooting, with the counter-arguments following them.  President Trump's Twitter stream made versions of these arguments today. You will hear them from our NRA-sponsored lawmakers in Congress, as well as in their counterparts in our state legislatures.

• More guns in more places will discourage these mass shootings.  More research is needed (and the NRA has done everything in their power to frustrate that research), but the numbers we do have show, in fact, that mass shooters ignore the possibility of facing an armed civilian. Once a person has decided to commit such a violent act, these kinds of logical considerations fall to the wayside.
  • The counter-argument: In fact, more guns not only fail to prevent these shootings, they increase the amount of gun violence in the community at large.  More guns, more gun violence. Details here. 
• Gun-free zones will always invite mass shooters.  Another version of the previous argument.  You will hear our legislators use the standard NRA rhetoric:  they will speak of "crazy killers," "sicko shooters"—our President's phrase—and "soft targets."  But in fact, it has been shown that school-shooters, specifically, do not choose their targets based on whether or not they are gun-free zones. Other considerations are far more important to them. 
  • The counter-argument:  In fact, these school shooters often return to schools where they experienced emotional trauma and never consider whether it has been designated a "gun-free zone" or not.  Details here.
• The increase in mass-shootings in America is due to violent video games, a decrease in family structures, a general breakdown in American society, or mental illness.  The idea here is to take the focus away from the guns, to stop us from looking at our flawed background-check system and the proliferation of assault rifles, and to insure that our gun manufacturers keep their bottom lines healthy.
  
  • The counter-argument:  The reason for the increase in our mass-shootings is embarrassingly simple.  Among developed nations, America offers the easiest access to lethal weapons, such as an assault rifle, of any country in the world.  And if the NRA has its way, that access will become easier and easier.  Details here.

The NRA has spent decades perfecting their propaganda regarding gun-violence in America. It is bold, loud, and often false.  Now, if we want to insure the safety of our students and citizens, we must begin to gather the information that will allow us to construct our own responses, based on facts and an insistence on public safety. Many groups are already doing this, and have been doing so for a long time. We are making progress, and with your help, we will continue to do so.

For an introduction to gun-violence prevention, and a list of those organizations that are doing such good work, see my piece, "Getting Started with Gun-Violence Prevention."

 

AFTER PARKLAND: TWO PIECES YOU NEED TO READ

After every mass shooting, a steadily growing number of Americans—concerned, activated, enraged—ask the inevitable and necessary question:  What can I do?

It's a good question, and two years ago, I posted a piece that offered advice to those who wanted to become part of the solution.  You can find it here.  It's still relevant.  And I encourage you to contact one of these organizations; they have carefully laid out ways for you to help that will fit both your schedule and your level of commitment.  We can't all be full-time activists, and the best organizations realize this.

My guess is that each one of you has wondered how our country has arrived at this particular place—more guns than citizens, more mass shootings per capita than any other developed country, more legislators opining about the horrific nature of these slaughters while piously claiming that now is not the time to discuss these senseless tragedies.  The NRA and America have a long and complicated history—much too long for me to address in a blog posting—but there are two mini-histories, if you will, that are deeply relevant to our current problem with guns, and they're not complicated.  

If you take the time to read these two pieces, you will understand the broad outlines of the two trends that have most shaped the problem that we now confront.

The first piece here was published just after the Las Vegas shooting, and it's titled, "The NRA Wasn't Always Against Gun Restrictions."  You want to pay special attention to what happened to this organization in 1971, which is detailed in the section, "The Hardliners Took Over the NRA after an NRA Member Was Killed by Federal Agents." 

The name to remember is Harlon Carter, a Texas lawyer who turned the NRA into a conservative, pro-gun, anti-immigration lobby.

And by the way, if you're a fan of the Drive-By Truckers, you'll want to have a look at this video of the band's single, "Ramon Casiano," that details the murder of Casiano by Carter.  Carter is never mentioned by name, but it's a powerful send-up of the founder of the NRA's violent campaign, as well as the racism that powers it.

The second piece, "A Confirmed Decline in Hunter Participation Should Be a Call to Action for Sportsmen," tracks in effect the decline in sales of traditional hunting firearms.  Faced with this declining revenue, arms manufacturers had to appeal to another demographic simply because Americans have been steadily losing interest in hunting and the firearms that traditionally accompany that sport.

The argument the gun-lobby made was fairly simple:  you don't buy shotguns nowadays to shoot quail; you need military-style weapons to repel the hordes of heavily armed invaders that are currently planning to trample the borders of our country, our homes, our schools. 

An essentially militaristic advertising campaign and the fear-baiting that provided its fuel—it struck home with many Americans, and the gun industry began to recover its losses.

So—a growing lack of interest in hunting, which led to a drop in traditional firearms revenue, corrected by an NRA that has become increasingly militaristic in its appeal to self-defense and closely aligned with the gun manufacturers whose bottom line they have made their number one priority. 

And of course buying the politicians who will support their violent agenda—that too is a priority, and we have learned sadly that many of our legislators will simply work for the highest bidder.  That is old news, but it is always tragic news.

In short, we're confronting an unholy alliance between the NRA and the new demographic they have spent over forty years creating to bolster a revenue problem. The gun-lobbies have a head-start, and they are very good at what they do, but reasonable solutions appeal to reasonable people, and I still believe that we are ultimately a reasonable nation.  

We will prevail in this struggle because more and more Americans are becoming involved every day, and they are not giving up.  Patience and commitment at a sustainable level are the keys to success. 

Here in Arkansas, for example, Moms Demand has grown from a fledgling group of women in Little Rock to a broader-based organization that now has representation in many parts of our state, and they have accomplished this in only a couple of years.

And remember, the mid-term elections are coming.  And voting is activism in its purest form. 

THE NRA & HB 1249

If you had any doubt that the NRA is running the current bill, #HB1249, you might look at this recent posting on their lobbying website. You will see that it wrongly claims that "the Garner amendment maintains the excessive 16 hour training requirement."

Falsely representing the bill’s language allows the NRA to garner support for their extreme agenda, knowing as they do that their members will not read the currently amended bill.

But here are the facts. The language of the Garner amendment states that a "training program administered under this subsection may consist of up to sixteen (16) hours and may include:

(i) Active shooter training;

(ii) Defensive tactics;

(iii) Weapon retention; and

(iv) Handgun safety and maintenance."

Notice the language: a training program "may" carry a requirement of 16 hours, at most, but it isn’t required. And it "may" include those specific instructions, but they aren’t required either.

Add to this that the program’s cost cannot, according to the Garner amendment, "exceed a nominal amount," and you have a more accurate idea of what kind of training will be offered. Nominal, or minimal, at best.

It is also important to understand the sequence of these amendments. The bill, as sponsored by Representative Collins, began ONLY as faculty-staff carry with appropriate licensing.

Senator Hutchinson, on the Senate side, amended it with a few carve-outs and a minimum of 16 hours of active-shooter training.

Collins, of course, objected, and the so-called "compromise" that came out of the past weekend resulted in a bill that greatly expanded campus-carry to ANYONE—students, faculty, staff, and the GENERAL POPULATION—who is over the age of 25 and obtains the appropriate and now greatly weakened active-shooter training.

So, this bill is NOT a compromise bill, even though I have heard that language already coming out of Little Rock.

It is a greatly expanded version of the original #HB1249 that Collins proposed, and one that increases EXPONENTIALLY the number of people who will be allowed to carry weapons on our campuses.

And it will be seen privately, at least, as a substantial victory both for the NRA and the Arkansas legislators that they support.

Those are the facts regarding this bill.

HOW TO CHECK THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY'S CALENDAR

Now that HB 1249 has reached the Arkansas Senate Judiciary Committee, you might want to track its progress.  

Note this scheduling matter, however:  The House Judiciary Committee meeting, where we received so much support on Tuesday, January 31, was scheduled at a specific, pre-announced time specifically so that our Chancellors, Presidents, and law-enforcement officers, whose schedules are very tight, would have an opportunity to provide their testimony.  The Senate Judiciary Committee will address HB 1249 according to different concerns and pressures.

It is easy to check the calendar, however. Here's a step-by-step guide.

1. Go the home page for the Arkansas General Assembly.
2. Once there, you should see "Today's Meetings." Look through the agenda and see if the Senate Judiciary Committee is meeting on that day.
3. If not, at the bottom right-hand side of "Today's Meetings," you will see two further designations:  "Weekly Agenda" and "Monthly Agenda." 
4. By clicking on these, you will see, obviously, what has been pre-scheduled under each designation, although the "Weekly Agenda" will be the one that is most useful, particularly since it has a search option at the top that allows you to designate which week you would like to view.
5. So by clicking on the "Weekly View," you are led to this page, and once there, you will see that a Judiciary Committee does, indeed, meet on Tuesday, February 7, but it is the House Judiciary Committee and not the Senate Judiciary Committee, the one that interests us.

We will, of course, be trying to keep abreast of developments in the Senate regarding HB 1249.  But it's not a bad idea to keep your eye on the calendar.  Hearings are often scheduled at the last minute, and sometimes the schedule is changed, even after a bill have been given its place on the agenda. Constant vigilance is the order of the day, but we have a lot of people helping us, and we will do our best to keep everyone informed.

Your first visit to the website can be time-consuming, but I hope this guide makes it more efficient. And keep us posted if you see the bill in motion!

MANY THANKS FOR YOUR HELP ON AR HB 1249!

As most of you have heard, HB1249, Representative Collins’ bill to put guns on our campuses without allowing our Boards to opt out, passed through the House Judiciary Committee this morning.

This was expected.

The crowd in opposition to the bill was overflowing. UAPD Police Chief Gahagans led off the testimony against the bill, and he was extraordinary: measured, authoritative, a true and rare expert in every sense of the word. President Welch, from ASU testified, as well as President Bobbitt. Everyone provided forceful and credible opposition. The community’s position on this unpopular bill is clear, and I want personally to thank everyone who joined our efforts. (I was unable to go because of teaching obligations, and so have now mastered the skill of lecturing and checking messages simultaneously!)

The bill will now go to the House floor, and then next week on to the Senate. It hasn’t yet been assigned a Senate committee.

In my opinion, it is very important that we see our efforts in a larger context. As I have often said—and so speak only for myself—my primary goal has always been to leave a public and articulate record of my disapproval of this destructive and dangerous bill, and together, we have done this and are continuing to do it.

This record will be vital as we approach the mid-terms in 2018, the next legislative session in 2019, and of course the national election in 2020. We are all constructing important narratives that will shape opinion as we move forward, and the fact that we are able to do this together is significant.

We will, of course, do everything that we can to make our opinions known as the bill passes into the Senate next week, and eventually the Governor’s office, if it finally lands there. Our Governor has expressed his support of the opt-out clause, but nothing is certain, especially since his veto, if it were exercised, only requires a simple majority to override.

But finally, I want to thank this organized and dedicated community. Opposition to the gun bill now is the strongest that it has ever been in this state, and I would hope that together we can parlay this energy into the kind of change, in other areas, that our state deserves.

So again, thank you very much for your support!

PROGRESS REPORT: ARKANSAS GUNS-ON-CAMPUS, 2017: HB 1249

First of all, I would like to thank all those who have voiced their concern about Representative Charlie Collins' new gun bill, recently introduced to the 91st Arkansas General Assembly.  Your support has been invaluable, and because of it, we are dramatically raising awareness about this dangerous piece of legislation.

If you haven't read the bill, and would like to do so, you can access it here: HB 1249. Several of my colleagues and I have been actively opposing Representative Collins' bills since he began introducing them in 2011, and the support we have received this year has been truly remarkable.  

We deeply appreciate the help, the assistance, and the advice from so many perspectives—together we are making real progress in raising awareness about the dangerous implications of this legislation.

Our ultimate goal, of course, is to prevent the bill from passing, but with the current alignments in the Assembly, we have always felt that if this were not possible, we would at least leave a public and responsible record of our opposition to it.  

That was a secondary goal, and because of the support we have received, we will certainly accomplish that.  

So again, thank you for your help.

If you're new to this legislation, here's a few things you need to know. And here, too, I will chart the progress of the bill as it moves through the two chambers of the General Assembly.

1. The new bill differs from Act 226 (the current law regarding campus-carry on public institutions of higher learning in our state) in that it removes the opt-out clause: our Boards of Trustees would no longer have the right to opt out of campus carry for the schools that they have been overseeing throughout the history of higher education in Arkansas.  We feel this is an unnecessary intrusion into the local governance of our colleges and universities, a governance that has worked so successfully for so long.
2. The bill was filed on Monday, January 23rd, but its hearing in the House Judiciary Committee (where it begins its life) was postponed until Tuesday, January 31st. We're not certain why the bill was delayed, but it does give us some time to call the members of the Committee and voice our opinion (linked above).
3. After the bill leaves the Judiciary Committee, it would go to the House floor, presumably the same week. If it receives a successful vote there, the Bill would then, the following week, go to a Senate committee (as of yet undetermined), and if it makes it out of that committee, on to the Senate floor for a final vote. So if everything proceeds normally (which we hope it doesn't), the process would take two weeks once it begins on Tuesday, January 31.  Of course, things can and do change unexpectedly, so while the bill is in motion, it's important to keep abreast of its progress. You can do that by accessing the page for the General Assembly. The menu on the left side of the page will direct you to the bill's progress.
4. We are planning a Capitol "meet-up" on Tuesday, January 31.  For details, go to our Facebook page for the event.
5. We also have a Facebook page for all things concerned about gun legislation in Arkansas, Arkansans Against Guns on Campus, and it will have the most recent information about the bill's progress, and any action steps that you might take. Stop by, if you haven't already, and give us a "like." We appreciate your support.
6. If you use Twitter, the relevant hashtags are #arleg, #arpx, and, specifically, #HB1249 for this bill. But any and all of these hashtags will often lead you to tweets concerning this legislation.
7. This week alone we have seen public opposition to the bill arrive from the Chancellor's office at the University of Arkansas, the mayor's office in Fayetteville, as well as from the Chamber of Commerce in Fayetteville.  You can find a helpful summary of these three positions at the Fayetteville Flyer.
8. Also President Chuck Welch of Arkansas State University has publicly opposed #HB1249 through his Twitter account.
9. President Houston Davis of UCA came out against #HB1249 on the University's Facebook page.
10. Also, if you are an employee of the University of Arkansas, you should know the Board's policies regarding political activity.  They are clearly articulated here.
11. The bill passed out of House Judiciary today, January 31, with the vote being 11-5. It proceeds later this week to the House floor, and next week on to a Senate committee, as of yet to be identified.
12. HB 1249 has landed in the Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Jeremy Hutchinson. It's in our favor that the committee has a very full agenda because it buys us some time to continue to make our points known.  
    1. Note:  if you'd like to check the legislative calendar, go the General Assembly home page. Once there, you will see a calendar titled, "Today's Meetings." Just below it, on the right-hand side, you will see the labels, "Weekly View," and "Monthly View."  Clicking on the "Weekly View" will obviously take you to the calendar for the upcoming week.  Scroll though and you'll see that a Judiciary Committee does, indeed, meet on Tuesday, but it's the House Committee. And as you look through the Monthly View, you'll see that very little has been scheduled.
13. HB 1249, as of Wednesday February 8, has been special-ordered to be heard in the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, February 15.
14. HB 1249 was passed in the Senate Judiciary Committee after much testimony against it, 7-1, on February 15.
15. HB 1249, when it arrived on the Senate floor on February 16, passed with a hostile amendment, offered by Jeremy Hutchinson. The amendment required enhanced training of no fewer than 16 hours. Because the bill received this hostile amendment, it will return to the Senate Judiciary Committee for further deliberations, most likely next Monday, February 20, although the situation is very fluid. Details to follow.
16. HB 1249, in its newly amended form, which amendment was created over the weekend, passed the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, February 21. The new bill, which heads next to the Senate floor next, is a radical expansion of the bill with the hostile amendment.  This new bill allows the general public, as well as faculty and staff, over the age of 25 to carry on campus as long as they have a CHL that "may" require no more than 16 hours extra training. And that extra training is not mandated in the bill.
    1. Note—this last amendment, which expanded the original bill, is seen as the third amendment. The first amendment was simply to acquire a co-sponsor, Linda Collins-Smith.  The Hutchinson amendment would then have been the second, and this last one the third.
17. HB 1249, in its newly amended form, on Wednesday, February 22, passed the Senate floor vote, 21-10.
18. On Monday, February 27, HB1249, the Garner-amended bill, was re-referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee to work out a compromise between it and the Collins-Smith amendment.  Today, Senator Garner (the Senate sponsor of the bill) changed his mind and supported Collins-Smith's request to re-refer the bill to Committee. In doing so, he went against the compromise he made with the Governor and Senators Hendren and Hutchinson, a compromise he says he can no longer support, and he gave an impassioned defense of a pure 2A bill with no training. He went on to inform the Senate that he has now filed a separate bill for permit-less carry statewide. A representative from the NRA was in the chamber for this speech.  After Senator Garner's speech, the Senate then voted 21-10 (with all 9 Democrats and Republican Jeremy Hutchinson opposed) to send the bill back to Committee where a new "compromise" can be worked out between the bill as it stands and the Collins-Smith amendment. If they can come to consensus, the bill, once again, will most likely be a more lenient version.

    And then it will head back to the Senate floor again.

19. On Wednesday, March 22, Asa Hutchinson signed HB1249 into law, with no carve-outs for athletics, hospitals, and day-care centers. He acknowledged at the press conference that he knew firearms would be allowed into the stadium. An uproar arose gradually across the state, and by the end of the week, the House had recessed to work on an amendment.  
20. That amendment was SB724, providing carve-outs for athletics, day-care centers, and the hospitals. The bill went through the Senate Judiciary committee and the Senate floor vote and ultimately arrived in the House Judiciary committee, where it was passed on Wednesday, March 28. 
21. On the same day of that vote, the SEC released a statement in support of the athletics carve-out. 
22.  On Wednesday, March 29, an amendment to HB724 was passed clarifying language concerning the hospital's opt-out. 

 

 

AS IT HAPPENED, I WAS IN BATON ROUGE WHEN THE ATTACK TOOK PLACE

I was in Baton Rouge, visiting family, when the shooting started.

I was never in any danger; I had no desire to move toward the cordoned-off area, either during the event or after the shooter was down and the area declared safe. 

Like the rest of the country, I followed it on Twitter, the local news station, and the other platforms that shared information as it became available.

Reports, as always, were ceaseless and draining, often qualified with the adverb that's working overtime nowadays, "allegedly," and I tried to remain calm.

I wasn't alone. Everyone tried to remain calm.  

The phone rang as friends and relatives from around the country called to make certain that we were safe. Human beings caring about human beings. No one takes it for granted any longer.

But Baton Rouge has problems that are longstanding and difficult to solve for a host of reasons that I'm not qualified to address. So I won't.

But personal testimonies and postings about the troubled city have been appearing everywhere, and I find "Maggie's" a credible one. If you have a few moments, you might want to look at it.

But I also remembered a passage from the "Preface" to Nietzsche's Human, All Too Human, where the German philosopher speaks about the "chills and fears stemming from isolation," a condition that has become an increasingly prominent aspect of American life:

Whoever guesses something of the consequences of any deep suspicion, something of the chills and fears stemming from isolation, to which every person burdened with an unconditional difference of viewpoint is condemned, this person will understand how often I tried to take shelter somewhere, to recover from myself, as if to forget myself entirely for a time . . . 

And so all of us, citizens of a nation now sharply divided, and in the face of these daily executions, are trying to recover ourselves however we can, as we wait for the next event. And even when we wait in a crowd, surrounded by our fellow citizens, or our colleagues, or our family, we understand what Nietzsche meant when he spoke of the "chills and fears stemming from isolation" that come at us as we hold radically different opinions about seemingly intractable problems.

We feel helpless and angry. We feel alone.

So let's first recognize that we have become a country whose citizens are continually seeking shelter in ways that are both productive and destructive, and let's learn to tell the difference between the two. 

But let's not ignore the feelings that are leading us to seek shelter. And again: that we are now a country whose citizens are seeking shelter however they can and whenever they need to do it.

The hardest part? Learning to recognize those chills and fears, and to say to ourselves, now I must take shelter. Now I must take care of myself.

These are wretched feelings. And they are spreading. And each of us will deal with them in different ways; we will attempt to recover as best we can, even when it means recovering from ourselves and our obsessive attention to our own feelings and opinions, and to the political embarrassments and assaults that our media daily serves up. 

But this is necessary work that we all must undertake, and it is work that we must give everyone the space to undertake.

At this point, I don't know anything else to say or do: take shelter when necessary, on your own terms, and encourage others to do the same.

 

SPEAKER RYAN, THE GOP, AND GUN-VIOLENCE: A NATIONAL DISGRACE

Speaker Ryan & a gun bill? Not right now.

Everyone knows that American gun-violence has been in the news lately. Everyone also knows that Americans, by huge majorities, support universal background checks on the sales of all firearms and that these very same Americans have informed their Congressmen of their preferences.

And still Congress has done nothing. Why?

Let's review.

—On June 12, 2016, Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old security guard, entered Pulse nightclub in Orlando, FL, killing 49 and injuring 53 before he was shot and killed by law-enforcement officers.

—Early Tuesday morning, July 5, 2016, Alton Sterling was wrestled to the ground by two policemen and fatally shot in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The video leaves unanswered questions about the legitimacy of the lethal force employed by the officers.

—On July 6, 2016, Philando Castile was shot and killed by a police officer in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, a suburb of St. Paul. Again, the only video of the event raises several questions concerning the actions undertaken by the officer on the scene.

—On July 8, 2016, Micah Xavier Johnson, killed five policemen and injured eleven others in Dallas, Texas during a peaceful protest regarding the recent police shootings.

—Between the shooting in Orlando and the shootings in Dallas (June 13 to July 7), there were 42 mass shootings in America, leaving 38 dead and 155 wounded, according to The Gun Violence Archive.

—On Wednesday, June 22, 2016, Congressman John Lewis and others staged a sit-in the well of the House of Representatives, demanding a vote on a No-Fly-No-Buy bill.

Americans had had enough, and these Congressmen who staged the sit-in were doing what they could to respond to the people's legitimate concerns about gun-violence.

Congressman Lewis and his supporters never got their vote.

And now Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, has not only delayed, and for all practical purposes, killed the process of bringing a gun-bill to the floor, he has also threatened to penalize those who staged the sit-in in June.

So—in the face of the recent carnage in America, our Speaker is worried about whether Congressman Lewis has violated Parliamentary procedure in his peaceful demonstration in the House well.

Speaker Ryan, and those among the GOP who support him, are no longer credible representatives of the American people. Their allegiance is sworn to the NRA and the funding from the gun-lobbies that secure their jobs.

If the recent blood-shed cannot move them to action, then they will not be moved. Period.

Gun reform will come to America; it is, in fact, already happening.

But it is happening despite the work of the GOP-controlled Congress, and not because of it.

We move forward, then, around the obstructionists, or over them, or under them, or through them. But we will mover forward.

It saddens me to say this, but Paul Ryan and his supporters are no longer credible witnesses to the violence that has infected our country.

They have become its enablers, and history will see them as what they are: part of the problem and not part of the solution.

 

WHEN A BAD GUY WITH A GUN STOPS FIVE GOOD GUYS WITH GUNS

 

The screen cap above is taken from the website of the Academy of Combative Warrior Arts in Richardson, Texas, just outside Dallas. We learned recently that Micah Johnson, an Army veteran who killed five Dallas policemen at a protest march, had not only continued military drills in his yard after being discharged, but had also received tactical training at this Academy. While the Academy website promotes training in self-defense, it also offers training in assault tactics. It's a full-service organization, offering specialized programs for men, women, children, and Christians who are doing missionary work in countries that might not want them there. Here is their description of the assault-tactics program:

Reality is highly dynamic, you will be drawing your firearm, moving, shooting on the move, fixing malfunctions, etc. all under high levels of stress. Most people never get to train these skills as they are not typically allowed on the static gun range. With this disconnect in mind, we have created what we call A.C.W.A. - T.A.P. (Tactical Applications Program), which consists of real world applications of dry fire drills and scenario based interactions. These drills work to instill and hone these missing skills, creating a firm foundation for you to work from. You can see some basic fundamental drills in the video clip above, this is only the beginning.

The NRA, of course, for almost four decades now, has been creating the kind of fear in our citizens that has generated these kinds of organizations. They have been militarizing our country, encouraging untrained amateurs to buy military-grade weapons in fear of being attacked by looters, drug-addicts, and minority populations.  These so-called training academies do little to prepare its students to address the kinds of gun-violence we have seen recently, and that is why armed civilians rarely, if ever, are able to stop such a slaughter.

But what happened in Dallas last week reveals a paradox the no one in the gun-community wishes to discuss. Bad guys can also enroll in these programs. And so a bad guy with a gun killed five good guys with a gun. The bad guy had been trained to do this, both by the Academy and by his time in the military.

The score then, coming out of Dallas, is sobering:  one bad guy with a gun took down five good guys with guns.

In other words, 5-1. 

The bad guy won.

And we taught him how to do it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FOR MY STUDENTS: ALTON STERLING, PHILANDO CASTILE, AND THE DALLAS SHOOTINGS

Knowing that I was involved in the gun-violence prevention movement, one of my students asked me this morning to respond to the shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, as well as the shootings in Dallas last night.

It is a difficult moment for our country now, and very often, it is equally difficult to respond coherently to these events, even as the details of the tragedies are unfolding.

Still, I found the request reasonable, even necessary. Here is what I wrote:

I stand with all innocent victims of gun-violence. And I view the senseless taking of life, whether by snipers or unnecessary police-shootings or accidental shootings or suicides facilitated by the easy availability of guns, as symptomatic of a country whose gun lobbies have established the gun as a reasonable, though military solution, for settling civic and psychological problems.

The point is that gun-violence has been taking American lives now in practically every corner of the population for a very long time, although police violence in the black communities has finally and rightly risen to national attention. There are many ways to respond to gun-violence in our communities, and when faced with this kind of brutality, most of us want to help. That is a very human and essential reaction.  

One strategy, however, will not work for every community. We have to be creative; we have to share our ideas; and we have to respect the different approaches that we will encounter. I have for the past two weeks, anticipating the Dalai Lama's birthday on July 6, been posting on my Facebook page, once a day, pictures of peace-workers who realized that violence is never the appropriate response to violence—and to be sure, cultivating fear, division, paranoia, and insecurity, which the NRA, and the politicians they fund, do so well, is a potent form of violence.

I posted these pictures because I take these people as my models.

Their vision and method of working are two-fold, and by example they make two recommendations:

1. Work in your immediate arena, doing what you can, where you can, when you can (social media, talking, writing, connecting, organizing, raising awareness).
2. Tap the long-term, unfolding commitment to the principle that peace and nonviolence are the most effective responses to violence, particularly for the long term. Last night's protest in Dallas had embraced this philosophy. And the workers I most admire and who continue to be my teachers have all, without exception, acted with the same conviction.

It is not a solution that everyone will accept, or that works for everyone, and I often fall short of its ideals, but I believe that this path, the path of nonviolence, of civil disobedience, is the right path.

After the initial shock of the tragedy passes, many people return to their normal lives, but it is then that the real work of gun-violence prevention begins, continues, and develops. But I do feel that each of us, if we are to be responsible citizens, must choose a method to respond to this violence, a method that is sustainable over the long-term.  

This choice will be and should be different for everyone.

The point is not to over-react, and not to undertake activities that we can't sustain—the NRA and Congress depend on this draining burst of hyper-activity, knowing that the American people will soon forget, at which point the gun-lobbies and the NRA can get back to making money and buying our elected officials. This is what they do best, and tragedies of this sort provide only a momentary inconvenience for them.

So, it is better, in short, to tweet once a day in support of a GVP organization for three years than it is to tweet 100 per day for a month.

Find your pace, an activity, a method that works for you, and stick to it. Many of my friends do far more than I do, many do far less.

It doesn't matter.

The long-view is the important view. Thanks for reaching out. I hope you are well.