One Year Since Sandy Hook

A year ago, on the heels of the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, I posted an essay entitled America and Guns. I wanted to express my outrage at how our country was doing little or nothing about its exorbitant gun fatalities.  A year later and – believe it or not – I’m even more outraged.

On December 10, Mother Jones Magazine reported that 194 kids have been shot to death since Newtown.  Of these 194, the vast majority – 127 – were killed at home due to unsecured guns (this despite the National Rifle Association’s claim that more guns in the hands of adults will protect children).

On December 11, NBC News Investigations reported on December 11 that a total of 173 children under 12 years old had been killed by guns in 2013.

The Children’s Defense Fund reports that the gun death rate for children in the U.S. is 4 times higher than Canada (the next highest rate) and 65 times greater than Germany or Britain.

There are more statistics, some of them much higher than those I’ve cited.  Although not many.  Why not?  Because the NRA and its allies in Congress have pushed for legislation making it harder for the federal government to collect data.

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After the Newtown horror, there was a lot of talk about having a “national conversation.”  President Obama called for a number of legislative measures, including a ban on military-style assault weapons, a limitation of 10 rounds on magazines, enhanced background checks, and the closing of loopholes in gun trafficking.

All of his measures were defeated in the Senate in April by a majority of Republicans and a handful of red-state Democrats.

After Newtown, the gun lobby tried to divert the issue away from guns, and pointed to mental health as the culprit.  Inadequate mental health resources may certainly be part of the problem – at least with regard to mass murders and murder-suicides.  But what have we accomplished this past year with legislation supporting mental health initiatives?

In an interview with National Public Radio (NPR), Sita Diehl, director of state policy and advocacy at the National Alliance of Mental Illness (NAMI), noted that 36 states increased their funding for mental health in 2013.  But she says this was “a drop in the bucket” after four years of radical cuts to mental health during a recession.  She said most of the funding in 2013 was through state bills being considered even before the Newtown shootings.  Diehl gives the feds “a C-minus, maybe a D.”  She said there’s been “lots of talk, no action.”

“After these sorts of shootings, there’s a lot of talk, and a lot of policymakers saying we need to do something about the mental health system,  But then, when push comes to shove and the budget debates occur, mental health seems to lose out.”

So here we are, a year later, with yet another school shooting in the news – Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colorado.

Maybe it’s time we had another “national conversation.”

America and Guns

It’s been almost a week since the horrible massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School.  Unless one is a parent of a child who was killed there, no one can fathom the hell they’ve undergone.  But because this was such a brutal act, and the victims were innocent children, the entire nation feels a deep, deep wound.  Just last night I found my wife in tears.  When I asked her why she was crying, she told me she just saw a photo of one of the kids.

America was born out of violence.  If our colonist forefathers hadn’t said “Enough is enough” and shouldered their muskets to throw off their tyrannical governors, we would still be British subjects.  Since then we’ve employed violence for good and ill: to maintain a union of states; to free the slaves; to wrench land away from Native Americans and Mexicans; to topple fascism; to try to prevent the spread of ideologies we don’t like; to avenge ourselves against terrorism.

Hunting game is one of the most popular pastimes in America and a tradition that’s passed down from parent to child.  Our favorite sport, football, requires the athletes to practically dress in suits of armor to prevent serious injury (and it’s only now that we’re beginning to see a link between football and brain trauma).  Most evening television dramas feature a large dose of crime and violence, and it proliferates in Hollywood movies, video games, and many of the most popular types of music, particularly with young people.  One could almost argue that violence is in America’s DNA.

But there comes a point – and the slaughter at Sandy Hook may finally be that tipping point – when one has to emulate the forefathers, and say “Enough is enough.”  There’s something wrong when an entertainment industry and their Washington watchdogs deem it unacceptable to show two people making love, but it’s perfectly fine to show a man sticking a gun barrel in his mouth.  And there’s something wrong when it’s illegal to grow or smoke a plant that makes your head a little fuzzy, but it’s ok to go out and buy a weapon with a high-capacity magazine, whose sole purpose is to mow down masses of humans.

We’ll probably hear a lot of talk in the next few months about who is to blame: liberals or conservatives, parents or teachers, gun makers or Hollywood, the NRA or CBS.  Most of the talk now is about having a “national conversation.”  I’m not sure yet what’s meant by “conversation” and why it wasn’t held a long time ago, before Sandy Hook, Portland, Aurora, Tucson, Red Lake, Paducah, Columbine, etc. etc.  For me it’s pretty evident what needs to be done, at least with regard to guns.  We need far stricter gun laws at the federal level, beginning with an absolute ban on sale AND ownership of any type of weapon or ammunition (assault, high-capacity, whatever) that isn’t considered a handgun for self-protection, or a rifle for hunting or target shooting.  We also need to close the so-called “loophole” that exists to enable criminals, juveniles, and those with a history of mental illness to purchase guns at unregulated gun shows.  We also need background checks and licensing and registration of any and all firearms, similar to the licensing and registration requirements for operating automobiles.

Of course, arguments for the above legislation have in the past met with head-on opposition from the National Rifle Association (NRA), the oldest and most powerful lobby in America.  The NRA – or at least the leaders and most members – believes that any attempt to regulate the sale and possession of firearms is a violation of the Second Amendment to the Constitution – the right for a country to maintain a “well regulated Militia,” which guarantees that the right “to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”  It’s cloaked itself in the Second Amendment to time and again stonewall legislation that would address the hundreds of gun deaths that occur every day in America, not to mention the new American ritual of mass murder in public places.

And this is what lawmakers will be up against when they try to toughen America’s gun laws.  How should we interpret the Second Amendment, which was worded in 1791 in such a vague manner that multiple interpretations have been argued for decades?  Should we continue to adhere to a strict interpretation, as the NRA argues?  Or agree that gun manufacturing, sales, and ownership are permitted in America, but with sensible regulation and restriction?

It seems to me the Second Amendment has increasingly become a noose, and one that is getting ever-tighter around our neck.  For too long our politicians have cowered under the laser gaze of gun manufacturers and a powerful lobby’s “scorecard.”  But who elects these politicians?  In truth, there’s a lot of blame to go around: parents who won’t take time with their kids; an entertainment industry whose motto is “give the people what they want;” a gun lobby that has fought common-sense gun legislation at every turn; and voters who continue to vote for politicians who are bought and sold by special interests.

We’ll never totally eradicate gun deaths and events like what recently occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary School and Portland, Oregon.  But we can at least try to minimize them.  It’s time to show the rest of the world that America has civilized a little since the days of the Old West, and violence is not in our DNA.  We owe it to the memory of 6-year-olds Jack Pinto and Noah Pozner, who were buried Monday in Newtown, Connecticut.  And to all the victims, at Sandy Hook and elsewhere, whose senseless deaths by firearms could have been prevented.