Michael R. Weisser's Blog, page 80

No Matter Who Wins In November, Gun Violence Still Needs To End.

Like it or not, the race for the White House is right now in a dead heat.  It’s not so much that Shlump-o is rising in the polls, but that HRC is slowly losing ground.  Even my friends who run the Huffington pollster are showing that over the past five weeks she has lost more than he has gained. So just as the Gun Violence Prevention (GVP) movement needs to suggest an intelligent and reasonable (read: it could pass) gun bill based on the premise that Hillary will still win, they also need to begin thinking about developing a post-election stance and agenda in case he whose real name is unmentionable chalks up the big W on November 8th.

           I know, I know, she’s still in the lead and the debate season has yet to begin. But the emails and her health issues didn’t help and all of a sudden a lead in Ohio has disappeared; what looked like a good shot in North Carolina and Florida is moving the other way.  Without those three states, particularly the Buckeye State, things don’t look all that good.  I’m not saying that we will be listening to an inaugural speech on January 20, 2017 that will commence with a recitation of the 2nd Amendment; I am saying right now that I wouldn’t necessarily give Mrs. Clinton the short odds.

My GVP friends need to ask themselves what they might do if the unthinkable becomes the thinkable over the next four years.  Because the truth is that even if our President didn’t have enough chips to pass Manchin-Toomey, he still has been a consistent and continuous voice on the question of gun violence, and one should never underestimate the value of the ‘bully pulpit’ when it comes to shaping public opinion about guns or anything else. So GVP may have to craft new messaging about gun violence that will not have the blessing or support of the Chief Executive, and what follows are some (albeit very) preliminary suggestions for what that messaging might contain:

Let’s stop venerating the 2nd Amendment. Enough is really enough.  The 2nd Amendment does not ‘guarantee’ our liberties; it doesn’t ‘protect us’ from terrorism or other threats.  It is simply a law which, according to the Supreme Court, allows Americans to keep a handgun in their homes for self-defense.
Let’s stop pretending that there is a difference between accidental shootings and intentional use of guns in homicides, suicides or aggravated assaults. You don’t make your home ‘safer’ by locking up your guns.  You make your home safe by not owning a gun.
Let’s stop promising everyone that gun violence can be reduced by limiting handgun and assault rifle magazine capacity to 10 rounds. What makes guns lethal is how they were designed, not how many rounds can be fired before it’s time to reload.

I’ve been in the gun business one way or another for more than fifty years and I don’t believe there’s some kind of ‘middle ground’ when it comes to the issue of guns.  Either you own them or you don’t; and if you do own them, at least you should have the honesty and the brains to admit that your guns represent a risk that could be completely eliminated if the guns weren’t there.  And that’s what GVP may be facing next year – a President who actually believes that guns don’t represent any risk at all.

But why wait until next year to take a firm and unyielding stance on the issue of guns? Because the truth is that what is really deplorable (to quote a certain Presidential candidate) is that more than 100,000 Americans are killed or badly injured with guns every year.  This extraordinary level of violence is what makes America truly exceptional, and there’s no reason to wait until the results are in on November 8th before figuring out what needs to be done.

Does The Gun Vote Still Swing Elections? Maybe It Swings Them Against Guns.

I knew that Marco Rubio was unfit to be President (as if the current Republican candidate could pass a fitness test) when he visited the Ruger gun factory back in January and declared that he believed in the 2nd Amendment because a gun was the only thing that stood between our safety and an imminent ISIS attack. Ruger then presented Rubio with a Hawkeye bolt-action hunting rifle that would be about as effective for defending against a terror attack as me using my pen knife against Godzilla or King Kong.

           Rubio’s back on the gun beat again, announcing a bill that would allegedly keep terrorists from getting their hands on guns. Rubio’s bill allows the government, following a Court hearing, to deny the purchase of a gun to anyone who has been the ‘subject of a terrorism investigation’ during the previous ten years.  The NSA, for example, tracks millions of electronic communications each year, many of them made by American citizens. Does this activity constitute an ‘investigation’ and, if so, to whom would the NSA turn over all those names?

Be that as it may, the gun issue is now beginning to move downstream to Senate races, and while there has been a lot of talk about how Kelly Ayotte’s refusal to vote for Manchin-Toomey back in 2012 might cost her a reelection in New Hampshire, the truth is that she’s up against a pretty tough competitor in Maggie Hassan, who would give her a run for her money, gun issues or not.

In Missouri, on the other hand, which is truly a gun-rich state, a GOP veteran, Roy Blunt, finds himself in a surprisingly tight race against a relative newcomer, Jason Kander, who has just released what I think is the most original political ad with a gun theme in the entire 2016 campaign.  The ad shows Kander, who served in Afghanistan with a National Guard infantry unit, assembling an AR-15 while he’s blindfolded and challenging Blunt to do the same.  The ad also makes clear that Kander, as opposed to Blunt, favors an expansion of background checks to secondary sales. The ad is a response to a completely-discredited NRA attack ad against Kander which accused him of voting against a bill that would have made it easier to use a gun against an attacker inside someone’s home, when in fact the actual bill, which Kander supported, expanded the right to use a gun outside the home.

Let’s get something straight.  Nobody who is perceived as being anti-gun in Missouri gets elected to anything.  That’s just the way things are.  But the fact that the NRA has put up more than $650,000 in television ads dissing Kander during this campaign tells you two things: first, it says something about the potency of expanded background checks as a campaign issue not just in Missouri but other states as well; second, it validates Hillary’s decision to ignore warnings about the strength of the ‘gun vote’ in deciding to make gun violence a centerpiece of her campaign.

We won’t know until the votes are counted on November 8th and the exit polls appear whether the blue team has been helped or hurt by coming out so strongly against violence caused by guns. But the fact that in the Gunshine State an incumbent like Marco Rubio in a tight campaign for reelection files a totally meaningless bill to prevent ‘terrorists’ from buying guns is another straw in the wind regarding how the gun issue has come into its own.

Until this year it was assumed that in gun-rich states you had to be pro-gun in order to get to the finish line with any chance of beating the other side. And this is still true to a certain extent.  But it’s the word ‘certain’ that may now start to be redefined.  And I’m not sure that I would take the short odds on redefining that word in favor of guns.

 

Why Do We Buy Guns? It Sure Isn’t Because We Need Them.

In 1883 a young New Yorker named Theodore Roosevelt went out on a hunting trip to the Dakota and Montana territories.  His goal was to get a trophy-sized American bison and mount the trophy in the family home at Oyster Bay.  The reason he went on this hunt, and he did bring back a bison trophy, was he had been told that the bison herd was about to become extinct.

           This was not the only game animal that was fast disappearing from its natural habitat; the white-tailed deer was also an endangered species by the end of the nineteenth century, the carrier pigeon was almost gone (and did disappear), and had it not been for the foresight and advocacy of conservationists and naturalists like Roosevelt and George Bird Grinnell, many other animal and game species would have also faded away.

How did this happen?  It happened because almost from the moment that Europeans arrived on America’s eastern shore, hunting became a commercial endeavor in response to a growing population that wanted and needed animal products both to consume for food and to use for clothing and other consumer wares.  Bear in mind that hunting in Europe, particularly England, was an activity reserved only for the nobility and the Crown.  Commoners, on the other hand, didn’t hunt, they poached, and as late as 1820 in Britain poaching was still a crime for which one could be hung.  But the United States had vast amounts of open space and if much of that space belonged to Native Americans nobody really cared.  These open spaces and the animals that roamed or flew there meant meat on the table for the average diet, leather coats for men, fur coats for women, feathers for decorative purposes and style – all of these products created opportunities for commercial endeavors resulting in the massive destruction of herds, fish and fowl.

And when it came to killing off all those animals, what could be more efficient than using a gun?  But with all due respect to how Davy Crockett ‘kilt him a bar when he was only three,’ very little of this hunting activity was done either then or now for sport.  Know how many hunting licenses were sold in 1955?  Roughly 14 million.  Know how many were sold in 2014?  Roughly 14 million. That’s an astonishingly flat trend line for nearly sixty years.  But there’s only one little problem.  During that same period, the country’s population grew from 166 million to 319 million, an increase of nearly 100% while the number of hunters hasn’t changed at all.  In other words, hunters constituted 8% of the national population in 1955, now they constitute a whole, big 4%.

Let’s remember something else.  Guns aren’t like television sets, laptop computers or cars.  They don’t wear out. And hunters are a funny breed because once they find a gun that really shoots perfectly for them, the last thing they’re going to do is trade it in.  There have been some product changes that have kept the hunting gun market from total collapse, most of all more powerful calibers like 44 magnums replacing the venerable 30-30 for deer, or 3 ½ inch magnum shotgun shells for those hy-flyers zipping by or those turkeys cluckety-clucking through the woods.

Take a look at Pamela Haag’s study of the marketing strategy adopted by Winchester Firearms which recognized that the idea of the gun as a necessary ‘tool’ was failing to attract consumers before World War I.  So Winchester began marketing its products to what they referred to in company discussions as ‘gun cranks’ –  people who wanted guns even if they didn’t particularly need them for any practical use.

Sound familiar?  The gun industry now sells guns as protection against crime, even though the number of times that people use guns as protective devices is actually little to none.  In 1910 Winchester discovered that people would buy guns even though there was no practical reason to own a gun.  Boy, things have really changed.

 

How Many People Are Victims Of Gun Violence? Beats Hell Outta’ Me And The CDC.

Thanks to Nashville and the Grand Ol’ Opry, Tennessee prides itself as being the place we think about when it comes to country music. But how ‘bout being the place we all think about when it comes to getting accidentally shot with a gun?  Right now, according to the CDC, Tennessee not only ranks first in the number of accidental shooting deaths, but ranks so far above every other state that something is really going wrong every time someone who lives in the Volunteer State picks up a gun.

In 2014, we don’t have more recent numbers, 586 Americans killed themselves or others using a gun that was declared to have been an accidental shooting. Believe it or not, 105 of those deaths occurred in Tennessee.  Now how did a state that contained 2% of the entire U.S. population in 2014 rack up 18% of the accidental gun deaths that year?  I’ll tell you how they did.  The numbers simply aren’t any good.

But it’s not the fault of the good folks in Tennessee.  There’s a group down there, they call themselves the Safe Tennessee Project, and they have been tracking accidental shootings for the last several years, along with promoting a child access prevention (CAP) law which, like most states, Tennessee doesn’t have. This group brought the media’s attention to the alarming increase in accidental gun deaths, and they also talked to the staff at the state’s Health Department which verified that the number of accidental shootings was correct.

There’s only one little problem.  It turns out that in 2014, Tennessee was only one out of eight states that reported a ‘reliable’ number for accidental shooting deaths to the CDC.  That’s right – eight.  And the accidental gun deaths in these states amounted to 324.  There were 11 other states that furnished ‘unreliable’ numbers (meaning that you can’t rely on them for accuracy) and the remaining 31 states didn’t report anything at all.

There is another database out there, the National Violent Death Reporting System, which collects and evaluates information on violent deaths that not only gets information from the standard medical sources used by the CDC, but also picks up data from medical examiners and even funeral directors in cases of a violent demise. But its records are so scant that for 2013 it listed the total number of accidental gun deaths at 128, so we can forget them altogether in terms of helping us out.

Don’t think for one second that gun violence numbers are all screwy only when it comes to accidental deaths.  How about the hottest button of all, what is called ‘legal intervention,’ which is a polite way of categorizing people, mostly Black people, shot by cops. In 2014 our friends at the CDC put this number nationally at 464, the FBI, which also tracks this issue, said it was 444.  But the Washington Post put the 2015 number at 990, and so far this year the number stands at 681.

Ever hear of something called ZIKA?  As of last week the CDC reported 18,773 cases in the United States, a number broken down to all 50 states and U.S. Territories, as well as whether the infection was caused by a mosquito-borne virus or was a travel-associated germ.  In fact, the total number of residents of the 50 states who have so far contracted the disease because of a mosquito bite they received where they live stands at 43!  That’s right – with all the big hue and cry about the public health threat posed by ZIKA, the odds that someone living in the 50 states will contract the disease without going to Puerto Rico are zero to none.

ZIKA is considered a ‘nationally notifiable’ condition; i.e., it must be reported to the CDC. Know what a condition known as gun violence that kills more than 30,000 Americans each year is considered?  To Gun-nut Nation it’s not a public health problem at all. Unfortunately, the CDC appears to agree.

Is Trump Appealing To Racism When He Supports Armed Citizens? You Betcha.

Back in 2008 Obama had his ‘guns and religion’ moment, which briefly appeared to undo his Presidential campaign, now Hillary has created her moment too with the comment about ‘deplorables.’  And while you might think that an entire national campaign never really rises or falls on a few words, just ask George Bush, the first George Bush, whether or not he’s still asking people to read his lips.

On the other hand, go back to a Reuters poll in June, and maybe the deplorability needle gauging the attitudes of Trump supporters is set just about right.  Because in that poll, half the folks who described themselves as supporting Trump said that Blacks were more ‘violent’ than Whites, and also said that Blacks were more ‘criminal’ than Whites.  And there is no question that Trump has been echoing and encouraging those attitudes every chance he gets, and in that respect he’s getting plenty of help from the NRA.

This whole notion of walking around with a gun in your pocket to protect yourself and others against the criminal ‘element’ has been a watchword of NRA gun propaganda since the 1980s, when the gun industry discovered that White America was no longer going out hunting but was afraid of crime.  Gallup has been asking this question since 1965: ‘Is there any area near where you live – that is, within a mile – where you would be afraid to walk alone at night?’ The affirmative response hit its high-water mark in 1982 with 48% saying ‘yes.’  And it was in the 1980s that the NRA unleashed ads which, for the first time, explicitly promoted gun ownership as a response to crime, and they have been running with this notion ever since. And who exactly are all these criminals committing mayhem in the streets? If you need help figuring out the answer to that question, you need a functioning brain, never mind another gun.

There really are people out there who believe they can protect themselves and others by walking around armed even if they have little, practical training or experience in using a self-defense gun.  Never mind civilians, by the way, even with some degree of training, most cops can’t protect themselves or anyone else with their gun.  A study by the Police Policy Council found that when a New York City police officer encountered an armed suspect, the average ‘hit probability’ was 15 percent!  A study by the RAND Corporation set the number at 18 percent.  Now we’re not talking about internet scam-artists like the United States Concealed Carry Association or a former town constable named Massad Ayoob who earns a nice living going around the country as a reincarnation of Jeff Cooper’s Principles of Personal Defense. We’re talking about the RAND Corporation, okay?  But why trust them when you have such noted researchers as Dana Loesch and Ted Nugent telling you that you’ll always be safe as long as you carry a gun?

The Supreme Court may have gotten it right back in 2008 when it said that the 2nd Amendment gave Americans a Constitutional protection to keep a loaded handgun in their home.  But that’s all the Court said.  It didn’t say there was any Constitutional protection for citizen-protectors who believe it is their duty to walk around armed in their neighborhood streets. Sorry, even though George Zimmerman was found innocent of second-degree murder, he wasn’t exercising any Constitutional ‘right’ when he gunned down Trayvon Martin in 2012.

My issue is not whether guns do or don’t make you safe.  And it certainly isn’t whether or not anyone should own a gun.  The issue is the fact that a gun is a very lethal product in even the most capable hands, and to pretend otherwise has become a not-so-disguised way to promote and exploit racism and fear.  And God only knows that we have been getting a big dose of both from a certain New York City landlord in the current Presidential campaign.

 

Taking Guns Away From At-Risk Individuals Does Save Lives.

When the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) announces that it is teaming with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) to reduce gun suicides, you know that something new and different is happening in the gun business.  Because until this moment, the gun industry has never shown the slightest interest in doing anything about the fact that 20,000+ Americans kill themselves each year by using guns, in fact, the party line has always been that guns and suicide have nothing to do with each other at all.

Meanwhile, close on the heels of this announcement comes a study (Dan Friedman has written a good summary in The Trace) by one of our most prolific and respected gun-violence researchers, Jeffrey Swanson, whose team evaluated the results of a Connecticut law which allows individuals and/or law enforcement to petition the courts for temporary removal of guns from someone who is believed would otherwise be at risk to harm himself or someone else.  The law, passed in 1999, has been copied in Indiana and California, and has always been a hot-button issue with Gun-nut Nation, which usually views any attempt to regulate guns for any reason to be an infringement on their beloved 2nd-Amendment rights.

Be that as it may, the fact is that suicide has been increasing of late, and while there has not been any causal link between service in Iraq and Afghanistan and suicide, military veterans of all ages are at greater risk for attempting a life-ending event than for the population as a whole. And everyone from the NRA to Obama to Trump tries to present themselves as the best friend that military vets ever had.

Which brings us back to Swanson’s study, which is the first attempt to look at the results of the Connecticut law in terms of whether or not temporary, court-ordered firearm seizures really do make a difference in preventing life-ending events with the use of a gun.  The CT law was actually passed not so much in response to suicide risk, but as a result of a terrible mass shooting incident where a pissed-off State Lottery employee stabbed and shot four of his bosses after he was denied a salary increase, then killed himself. But of the 762 cases of firearm seizures examined in this study, one-third were initiated out of concerns that the individual might try to harm someone else, while two-thirds of the seizure warrants were issued because it was believed that the affected individual was going to hurt himself.

Swanson’s team not only carefully reviewed the circumstances surrounding the issuance of these firearm-seizure warrants, but also attempted to follow the life paths of individuals who lost their guns.  It turns out that while the number of people who both lost their guns and still committed suicide was much greater than the normal suicide rate, not one of those suicides occurred during the 12 months that these individuals had their guns removed, and the number who later used guns was far below the usual rate for successful suicides using a gun. In other words, laws allowing a court to decide whether someone might harm themselves with a gun can, in fact, save lives.

I do have one major issue which is not intended as a criticism because it goes beyond the parameters of the article itself.  There were 762 firearm seizures ordered in Connecticut between 1999 and 2014.  But how many gun-seizure petitions were denied?  And how many people knew someone who was behaving in a way that made them appear to be a threat and yet decided that it wasn’t their ‘place’ to say anything or didn’t want to ‘get involved?’  There were people in San Bernardino who knew the two shooters were stockpiling weapons; there were people in South Carolina who heard an armed Dylann Roof make racist threats. Have we become so inured to violence that we need law to tell us that someone who exhibits great anger is someone who shouldn’t have access to a gun?

 

It’s Time For The Gun Violence Prevention Community To Figure Out What Hillary Should Do.

Even though the polls are tightening, I still believe Americans will exercise their good judgement on November 8th and reject the scam marketing plan masquerading as the Republican Presidential campaign.  In which case, the Gun Violence Prevention (GVP) community better start figuring out what Hillary should do to help reduce gun violence over the next four years.

           Here is what her campaign website says: “We can – and must- end the epidemic of gun violence.” The site then lists the following actions that she might take: (1). Expand background checks to secondary sales; (2). get rid of the industry immunity from torts; (3). keep guns out of the ‘wrong’ hands, including domestic abusers, criminals and the severely mentally ill. Now I’m going to quickly skip over the fact that several of the policies being promoted by her campaign either already exist or cannot be put into effect – the bottom line is that Hillary is clearly taking aim at the problem of gun violence, no ifs, ands or buts.

And this strategy has hardly gone unnoticed by Gun-nut Nation.  The NRA has probably spent more on anti-Hillary advertising than anything coming out of the pockets of cheapskate Shlump; a day doesn’t go by in which I and every other NRA member doesn’t receive an email from Chris Cox reminding me that I better remember who the real enemy is when I go to cast my vote; and Wayne-o has just surfaced with a new statement which predicts a ‘massive’ anti-gun attack if Hillary isn’t sitting on her duff in the Chappaqua house next year.

The bottom line is that even if there is a chance for a legislative initiative next year to reduce gun violence, it will be tough and bitter fight.  In fact, the worst thing that could happen to the NRA and other pro-gun organizations would be a Shlump win, because such an event would mean, if nothing else, that gun ownership would be left undisturbed.  And since the only thing that really sells guns is the possibility that guns won’t be sold, a redecorated White House courtesy of Melania and Ivanka would portend a general collapse of the gun business for the next four years.

But even if guns stopped selling the way they have recently sold, there are enough of them around to result in 30,000+ gun deaths every year.  So for those who actually believe that there actually might be a connection between gun violence and the existence of guns, the discussion about what steps should be taken to reduce this scourge shouldn’t wait until after November 8th – it should begin now.

Let me make one thing very clear.  I support all the remedies listed on the HRC website, but I also believe that, at best, they would have a marginal effect.  Now marginal is much better than nothing, don’t get me wrong.  But short of getting rid of guns, and that ain’t going to happen, there’s no magic bullet out there, pardon my pun.

On the other hand, HRC’s proposals are a tactical approach to the problem, and what is needed in the GVP discussion going forward is a more strategic point of view.

Fact: A majority of Americans believe that a gun in the home makes you safer, even though all the credible research on this issue shows it not to be true.
Fact: A majority of Americans believe that violent crime is on the increase, even though the FBI says that violent crime continues to decline.

If we are going to ask gun owners to jump through more hoops to maintain access to their guns, and most gun-prevention solutions will require current gun owners to modify their behavior to some degree, then we need to give these folks viable options to mitigate the fears which provoke them to buy guns. After all, you’re still afraid of the uncertainties of everyday life, but that doesn’t mean you feel compelled to walk around with a gun. Why not?

When Is A Sporting Gun Not A Sporting Gun? When It’s A Gun.

One of the issues that pervades and distorts the ongoing debate about gun violence is whether guns are designed for ‘sporting’ as opposed to ‘non-sporting’ use.  This attempt to differentiate between ‘sporting’ and ‘non-sporting’ goes to the heart of the 2nd Amendment because the courts have always held that this difference is the basis upon which Constitutional guarantees of gun ownership rest; namely, civilian ownership of ‘sporting’ guns are protected by the 2nd-Amendment, ‘non-sporting’ (meaning military) guns are not.

           Since 1968, the ATF has been granted the authority to classify guns as ‘sporting’ or ‘non-sporting’ when it comes to allowing the import of gun manufactured overseas.  Most of the criteria that ATF uses to determine whether an imported gun does not meet the criteria for ‘sporting’ use ended up being incorporated into the 1994 assault weapons ban and these design features (rifles with pistol grips, flash hiders, etc.) effectively keep many types of what are generally called ‘assault rifles’ from being shipped in from overseas.  But ever since the assault weapons ‘ban’ ended in 2004, with the exception of a few states that opted to maintain the ban, or have subsequently reinstated it, the question of what really constitutes a ‘sporting’ as opposed to ‘non-sporting’ weapon remains confused.

Ten years ago or so, when the gun makers realized that hunting, a true sporting activity, was dying on the vine, they began promoting the idea that ‘black’ guns like the AR-15 were no different from any other type of ‘sporting’ gun.  And their rationale for this argument was that the civilian version of the AR lacked one essential feature of the non-sporting (i.e., military) gun, namely, that it could not be fired in full-auto mode.  And because the AR could only be fired in semi-auto mode, this made the gun no different from any other traditional semi-auto hunting gun, many of which had been around for 50 years or more.

The problem with this argument, of course, is that it’s not true.  Oh well, oh well, just because something isn’t true doesn’t mean we shouldn’t say it anyway. Right, Mr. Trump?  But the truth is that the current battle gun allows its user to set the firing mode as either a 3-shot burst or semi-auto pull.  So if a soldier decides that the particular tactical situation of the moment requires that his gun operate in semi-auto mode, should we say that he or she is now going into battle with a ‘sporting’ gun?  Give me a break, okay?

The gun industry has always claimed that ‘sporting’ guns, are not designed to be used for shooting humans, as oppose to ‘non-sporting’ (military) guns that are considered weapons of war. This is also not true.  The first gun that was ever invented came out of China in the 13th Century, utilizing a new technology called gunpowder to push a solid, ball-shaped object, out of a metal tube with the gases created by igniting the powder creating the necessary pressure to put the cannon ball into flight.  This technology and the corresponding weapons began to appear in Europe in the 15th Century, and very quickly the same technology appeared in weapons that could be used by individual soldiers – which is how and why the small arms industry was born.

In this country, some of these military designs were adapted for hunting use, but non-commercial hunting was and never has been more than a marginal social and sporting activity, and commercial hunting was generally outlawed because otherwise the various species would have been killed off – and some like the bison almost disappeared.

The point is that what the gun industry calls ‘sporting arm’ were never designed to be used for sporting purposes at all.  The fact that a relatively small population enjoys shooting their guns at paper targets on a range or trying to bag that elusive White Tail doesn’t change the fact that guns were designed and are still designed to do one thing, and we all know what that one thing is.

 

What’s The Difference Between Homicide & Suicide? Where You Point The Gun.

Our friends at The Trace have just published an article on guns and suicides which shows that states with high per-capita gun ownership also tend to have higher-than-average suicides committed with guns.  Roughly one out of two successful suicides involve a gun, and it is the only type of suicide plan that rarely, if ever, fails.  So having access to a gun when something as impulsive as suicide is involved, becomes a very dangerous state of affairs.

           The idea of a link between gun ownership and suicide is not new.  In fact, two of the true gun-violence research pioneers, Art Kellerman and Frederick Rivara, published research on this point in 1992, for which the NRA did not give them an award at their annual meeting that year or any other year.  In fact, it was this research among other efforts that was cited by the NRA as ‘proof’ that CDC-funded gun research was nothing more than anti-gun advocacy masquerading as science and led to the defunding of said research.

I happen to think that perhaps we should start taking the NRA and its various mouthpieces at their word and suggest that perhaps the medical community should forego any further treatment of NRA members altogether.  I mean, what the hell.  Since they have decided that getting your head shot off isn’t a medical ‘problem,’ obviously no other injury that a person might suffer should qualify as a medical problem either, right?

Now obviously I’m being a bit sarcastic here to make a point, which is that gun violence is gun violence whether you point the gun at yourself or at anyone else.  The difference, and it’s the only difference, is that it’s a lot easier to shoot yourself than to shoot anyone else, particularly if the ‘anyone else’ happens to be moving around.  And the fact that the official line from Gun-nut Nation is that suicide and guns have nothing whatsoever to do with each other only tells you how far from reality that bunch has strayed.  So let’s get back to reality.

Here’s reality: In 2014, the national gun-suicide rate (per 100,000) was 6.34.  The rate for Whites was 8.3, for Blacks it was 2.75.  Where do all these White suicide victims live?  In small towns particularly in Western states.  This is what the Kerry Shaw says in The Trace, this is what everyone says. And while a state like Montana has a gun-suicide rate seven times higher than New York State, comparing suicide rates at the state level can sometimes obscure as much as it explains. For example, Essex County, which is the far Northern chunk of the Adirondacks, has a gun-suicide rate of more than 10, which isn’t up to Montana but it’s not far behind.  The difference is that New York’s statewide population is overwhelmingly urban and suicides, particularly older suicides, tend to take place in small, rural towns, no matter where they are located.

It should also be mentioned that as the suicide-prone population ages, the use of a gun becomes more frequent.  The rate of gun-suicide for White victims above the age of 60 is 13.36, which is 60% higher than the rate for all White suicide deaths.  On the other hand, the gun-suicide rate for Blacks who are 60 and up is the same as the overall gun-suicide rate for African-Americans. Why is it that Blacks seem so resistant to suicide, in particular gun-suicide, whereas suicide and gun-suicide rates for Whites are three times higher and keep going up?  We have absolutely no idea, and it’s an issue which never seems to get discussed within the GVP community.

It should be discussed because it certainly wouldn’t hurt to figure out why gun violence seems to be endemic to certain population groups whereas other groups appear to be resistant to the gun-violence scourge.  After all, it’s not as if there is anyone in this great land of ours who can’t easily and readily put their hands on a gun.

The NRA Used To Own The Politics Of Guns But Not Any More.

When Hillary decided that gun violence would become a signature issue of her Presidential campaign, she was warned by all the ‘experts,’ including husband Bill, that she was making a big mistake. You don’t mess with the NRA; that’s been the mantra since Al Gore lost his White House bid because allegedly the NRA prevented him from carrying his home state.  And Obama also learned that messing with the NRA could cost him dear; he couldn’t even get a puny, little gun bill through Congress after the horrendous massacre at Sandy Hook.

 

Shannon Watts

When it comes to putting up the green to persuade our elected representatives how to vote, the NRA doesn’t really hold a candle to what flows into campaign coffers from big-league players like the banks, the insurance companies, the lawyers; i.e., the folks whose decisions really make a difference in all our lives.  For that matter, the NRA doesn’t even come close to the lobbying efforts of environmentalists.  I mean, who’s going to argue with a tree? Finally, it really doesn’t take much of a political backbone if you’re from Oklahoma, Missouri, or some other gun-rich state, to stand up and pledge allegiance to the 2nd Amendment, and funny, but just about all the dough that the NRA passes out around Capitol Hill goes to Members of Congress with safe seats in red states.

But where the NRA has always sat on top of the heap is when it comes to promoting or challenging gun laws at the local and state levels since it has always been assumed that their vast membership can provide the necessary ‘feet on the ground’ every time a local political event takes place.  After all, what other gun organization claims a membership of 4 million?  Or is it 5 million?  I’ve heard both numbers over the years, but either way, these folks can and do generate lots of emails and telephone calls to elected officials if and when the gang in Fairfax wants to make some noise about guns.

When it comes to creating political noise about guns, until recently the pro-gun folks more or less had the field to themselves.  Organizations like the Brady Campaign, Violence Policy Center, Coalition to Stop Gun Violence and others have done important work to heighten public awareness about gun violence, as well as conducting research and engaging in lobbying on the Hill, but these groups and others did not focus on building the kind of grass-roots, action-oriented member activity for which the NRA constantly pats itself on the back.

I don’t think that Hillary would have been willing to put gun issues on the top of her campaign agenda were it not for the fact that organizations pushing for more sensible gun regulations are now equal, if not ahead of the NRA when it comes to the number of feet on the ground.  First and foremost in this regard is the Everytown-Moms Demand Action combine spearheaded by Shannon Watts, who understood that the issue of gun violence could be raised at the point where everyone sooner or later appears, namely, the entrance to the supermarket, the shopping mall, we all go out and buy stuff we do or don’t need.  And the key to Shannon’s success was the awareness that decisions about things like family safety are usually vested in the family Mom; hence the name of her organization, hence finding women who will get up and lead, hence a remarkable record of growth and achievement in less than four years!

Every once in a while there’s a setback, a campus-carry bill is vetoed in Georgia but becomes law in the Lone Star State.  The latter won’t be the first time that the hard work of Moms and other groups will go for naught. But if Hillary moves back into the White House in 2017, it will be in no small measure due to what groups like Moms Demand and others have done to elevate the discussion about guns.  And that’s a good thing.