Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)-Guest Blogger
We have discussed the thousands who have been killed by guns in this country on several occasions on Professor Turley’s blog and we have seen some of the same responses from both sides of the discussions about reasonable restrictions on gun ownership and use. Some say that any restriction on gun ownership, no matter how small, is a violation of their Second Amendment rights.
Some of those who are in favor of reasonable gun control measures, point to the sheer numbers of women and children and men who die each day due to senseless murders and sorrowful accidents. Emotional arguments and reasons have been offered by both sides of the discussion, but yet not a single worthwhile National gun control measure has become law and the killings and deaths continue unabated.
To my dismay and shock, not even the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings, where 20 small school children and 6 staff members lost their lives to an arguably mentally ill shooter, produced any resulting legislation that could be argued offers some relief in the ever larger numbers of gun deaths.
While researching this article I had trouble finding articles written on this subject after April of 2013. There were many articles, including articles on this blog from December of 2012 through April of 2013, but very little since. In light of the dearth of media interest since April of this year, I am curious about what it will take for the United States of America to decide it is time to stop killing itself?
In June of this year, I did find one article that discussed how little had been done since Sandy Hook and the article argued that the number of gun deaths since Sandy Hook has continued unabated.
“In the first week after the Newtown, Conn., massacre on Dec. 14, more than 100 people in the U.S. were killed by guns. In the first seven weeks, that number had risen to at least 1,285 gunshot killings and accidental deaths. A little more than three months after Newtown, there have been 2,244. The Huffington Post has recorded every gun-involved murder and accidental shooting death reported in U.S. news media since Newtown, revealing an epidemic that shows no signs of abating. The horrors cannot be contained behind yellow police tape or find resolution in a courtroom. For the victim’s families, the grief deforms all it touches. There’s the fear that the radio will play her favorite ballad. An airplane overhead, like the kind he flew, will strike panic. Home is not safe. One month, two months, two years, nine years since those fatal shots — the grief never leaves.” Huffington Post
The Huffington Post article that I have linked to above, discusses several shootings over the years and the damage it has done to families of the decedent’s and how difficult it has been to cope with their respective losses. It is always hard to lose a loved one, but it seems that losing a loved one to gun violence, misuse or accident is especially hard to recover from.
My intention with this article is not to argue the plusses and minuses of gun control legislation and to instigate partisan arguments as to who has the better argument about why Americans seems obsessed with guns. My intention is to discuss when will Americans do something, anything, to reduce gun violence?
The killing of 20 little children produced a hue and cry around the country and indeed, around the world. However, legislation to possibly ameliorate this epidemic of gun killings never materialized. You may blame Congress and its inability to pass any legislation on any subject. You can blame gun owners and gun manufacturers for their alleged stubbornness to back substantive gun control measures. You can even blame the conditions in the inner cities that seem to breed violence on the streets.
I submit the blame belongs in the lap of every American citizen. This epidemic of gun killings can’t be attributed to just one cause or one political party. It can’t be blamed on just one gun manufacturer or gun lobbyist. Only the collective pressure from an engaged citizenry can produce enough political power to attack the problem on all fronts.
Getting into politician’s faces, gun lobbyists faces, gang members faces and yes, our children’s faces and engaging and educating all concerned that if we do not take a stand after so many deaths, when will we? It may take reasonable gun control legislation. It may take reeducating our young people and it may take increased job opportunities to reduce poverty and the despair that goes with poverty. But without all of us drawing the line and saying that this country will no longer accept needless deaths, the change will never happen.
Stand up in your communities and let your fellow townspeople and city councils know that nothing will stand in your way to reduce the epidemic of gun deaths in almost every community. Educate your children about the dangers of misusing or playing with guns and make locking up your guns a reality. Let your legislators know that mental illness can’t be ignored. What do you think you can do to reduce gun deaths?
Can gun control legislation help reduce the number of deaths? Can Second Amendment advocates cooperate with gun control proponents to find a reasonable, yet effective middle ground? Are there any amendments to the Constitution that could somehow help reduce the number of gun deaths? Can America actually look to other countries for examples of a better way to handle guns in a civilized society?
Let’s hear how you would resolve America’s penchant for shooting its own people! This is a “war” that we cannot afford to lose.
rafflaw,
Thanks. It’s not “maybe,” though.
Instant manhood, for the boy in a hurry.
Obviously, we must elect the right people who aren’t afraid to create gun-free zones, militarize the police, increase the incarceration rate, put everyone under surveillance, regulate speech, have zero-tolerance for kids who are bullies or are pretending to have guns, and keep citizens from knowing about US-sponsored violence against citizens in foreign nations.
Oh wait, our bold leaders have been doing all that. Never mind.
Bob Kauten,
Interesting point that maybe our society is mentally ill since it seems to be infatuated with guns.
I think that one can ethically make the argument that more people are killed by Doctors today than by guns. Chemo and radiation account for less than a 3% cure rate but that is the MO of the American Murder Association. Also a high number of gun deaths are suicides. We are in fact a society suffering mentally from the lack of liberty, an essential component of happiness and the negative ramifications are significant. Some are willing to live in the shackles the revere, but that is not the majority. Some are willing to place the shackles on others for their own benefit and they are numerous in todays world.
@hskiprob…corruption?, in government? You don’t say?
By all means, let us give them MORE POWER! Why on earth would we allow people to retain the tools to fight, right? (end sarcasm)
@ron, Did you know that crime rates are being manipulated by law enforcement agencies. Just google NYPD corruption. There is a very good book and case on the issue where a Cop audio tapes his precinct for two years and shows they are not writing up all the criminal reports and discouraging the victims to file. And don’t be naïve and say that it’s just in NY.
Simple, when we stop the confiscation of property by government!!!!
Oro Lee: That is a great quote from de Tougueville. I have Democracy In America and I need to read it more often. I just found my copy and am about to plunge in. I have to have my half blind guy turn the pages because my dog paws wont do it.
DavidMS,
My point was that the entire culture is mentally ill, diagnosed or not. I know that formally declared mentally ill persons are prohibited from buying guns.
Obsession with guns and violence is looked upon as normal, in this culture. Insanity is normal, in this culture.
crime rates are very low : http://tinyurl.com/7n667dk
US jails more than 2.3 million people currently : http://tinyurl.com/q59pju6
So you’re solution to a low crime rate and bulging prisons is to make more people criminals, so that you can arrest them?
Oh yeah, happy Columbus day.
Four hundred years later, Cat. Richard H. Pratt, spoke these words at a convention promoting the cultural genocide of native people —
“A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one, and that high sanction of his destruction has been an enormous factor in promoting Indian massacres. In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.”
Bob Kauten,
“Violently insane at home, and abroad.
Violently insane adolescents shouldn’t have access to guns.”
They shouldn’t have access to drones either.
Americans are a violent people and always will be. The advancement of Western Civilization rests mainly upon killing other (lesser) people and taking their lands, and every bit of it legal. In that we’ve killed or run off most of the people on the desirable lands, advancement now rests from taking from each other. This will be done by a militarized police state serving the interests of their overlords, just as in the days of yore.
From Book I, Chapter 18, On Democracy in America, by Alexis de Tocqueville (1835), who personally witnessed the removal of tribal nations from their homelands –
“The Spaniards pursued the Indians with bloodhounds, like wild beasts; they sacked the New World like a city taken by storm, with no discernment or compassion; but destruction must cease at last and frenzy has a limit: the remnant of the Indian population which had escaped the massacre mixed with its conquerors and adopted in the end their religion and their manners. The conduct of the Americans of the United States towards the aborigines is characterized, on the other hand, by a singular attachment to the formalities of law. Provided that the Indians retain their barbarous condition, the Americans take no part in their affairs; they treat them as independent nations and do not possess themselves of their hunting-grounds without a treaty of purchase; and if an Indian nation happens to be so encroached upon as to be unable to subsist upon their territory, they kindly take them by the hand and transport them to a grave far from the land of their fathers.
“The Spaniards were unable to exterminate the Indian race by those unparalleled atrocities which brand them with indelible shame, nor did they succeed even in wholly depriving it of its rights; but the Americans of the United States have accomplished this twofold purpose with singular felicity, tranquilly, legally, philanthropically, without shedding blood, and without violating a single great principle of morality in the eyes of the world. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO DESTROY MEN WITH MORE RESPECT FOR THE LAWS OF HUMANITY.”
There is a word for that last sentence (emphasis added, btw), for making the impossible seem matter of course. It’s “exceptional.”
Maybe they will use the manchurian candidate…???
… http://www.amazon.com/Bluebird-Deliberate-Creation-Personality-Psychiatrists/dp/0970452519 ….
It would be more interesting to find out how former CIA director Hayden
and the trojan horse fascists in the government would try to kill snowden…
do you think they will use a gun…????
… http://www.justiceonline.org/blog/legal-director/former-nsa-and-cia-director.html …
Make life valuable again. Make that a priority teaching in school. Outlaw abortion. Make free sterlizations for the people who do not want children. Legalize most drugs. Teach the Constitution in public school.
Well Lawrence Illinois did try to do something, they came up with their version of a “sensible gun law”….which would have banned ALL semi auto rifles, pistols, shotguns, and some BB guns!!!
That’s the biggest problem with the people against guns, they do not want just sensible gun laws, they want to ban them all. And they have been caught on video saying as much.
So I tend not to trust them.
Plus the fact that our state has Chicago/Cook County which has some of the strictest gun laws already, and one of the highest murder rates.
All of Illinois has a FOID card requirement, to get a FOID card requires a background check, and you need one for firearms or ammo purchases.
According to FBI stats violent crime has been cut in half the last 20 years. (Like maybe from states passing CC laws?)
Plus they are missing the biggest problem with banning something…IT DOESN’T WORK.
Doesn’t work with drugs, didn’t work with liquor, and it won’t work with guns.
But some of these problems are related, like Chicago’s murder rate, the biggest percentage of those are gang/drug related.
Anyone remember prohibition?
Why did they legalize booze again after a 13 year ban on it? Was it NOW found to be healthy for people?
No they got rid of prohibition because of all the gangs, murders, corruption, & cost of imprisoning people for it.
Ok, now how do you suppose we could get rid of our gang, murder, corruption, & ever increasing prison costs?
Legalize all drugs, and get these freaks off the worst of them, so they aren’t out killing innocent people and each other in turf wars.
Use the revenue from them to try to rehabilitate users, like they have done with cigarettes & alcohol.
You want some “common sense” laws…then stop and think about it…
There is some schmuck on national television every night ranting about guns in America. He is from some part of Britain which does not exactly speak the King’s English so he is hard to understand sometimes due to his East Ender accent. If we were living in 1776 he would be out there directing the Redcoats to come to your home to get your musket. The right to bear arms is written into our Constitution for a reason. Give it up and only bears will have the right to arms. Then you will really be in trouble.
Follow…
This is more than just a simple 2nd Amendment issue. Oddly and irrationally so many lovers of the Constitution only like the enforcement of that Amendment, but that’s for another time. For many reasons Americans are a violent bunch and have been throughout their history. From the Revolutionary War to the decades long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the need to kill for right or wrong is strong. Gun manufacturers are given immunity for any harm caused by their products and Congress is in the hip pocket of gun lobbies and companies. Violence sells in the US. From violent video games to ultimate fighting to football; Americans are attracted to violence. The ridiculous drug war – that is really designed for corporate prison profits and bloated government security budgets – is a main driver of gun violence and will kill thousands more until drugs are made legal. Americans like to kill, feel comfortable knowing they can kill, and are ambivalent to accidental deaths by guns, suicide by guns and mass shootings by guns. If Americans gave a damn about 300,000 people dying each decade from guns, they would have demanded the same level of response as they did when 3000 people were killed during 9/11. Bottom line: America is a violent country, it needs its violence and many feel ‘safer’ knowing they can use violence to stop real or imagined violence towards them or others.
“Bottom line: America is a violent country, it needs its violence and many feel ‘safer’ knowing they can use violence to stop real or imagined violence towards them or others.”
JamieD,
Sadly what you say is all too true.
Criminals? Look at the animosity here, a spiral and an available gun, we may say happy trails to some folks here!