How did gun sales trump public safety?

“My friends know that I’m a pretty strong constitutional conservative,” wrote one of my Facebook friends last Wednesday afternoon, “But I’m not sure how a law that would have strictly forbidden a national gun registry is supposed to lead to a national gun registry. Feeling lost,” he concluded with a sad-faced emoticon.

He was referring to the fact that despite 90 percent of Americans supporting legislation to institute criminal background checks for all gun purchases, including online and at gun shows, the U.S. Senate was unable to pass it.

How did this happen?

Well for one thing, gun lobbying groups and right-wing pundits smeared the proposed legislation. To manipulate individual gun owners, and more importantly Congress, to protect all gun sales, they misrepresented the bill as mandating a national gun registry.

As the New York Times reported: “The National Rifle Association mobilized members to blanket the Senate with phone calls, e-mails and letters.”

On Fox News, Eric Bolling argued the legislation mandated a national gun registry, even though it specifically strengthened an existing law outlawing such a registry. And on his April 10 program, right wing radio announcer Mark Levin implied the law would create a database of gun owners and perhaps even lead to genocide. Another Fox News contributor, Erick Erickson, tweeted liberal doctors might one day diagnose Christians as “too crazy for gun ownership.”

Where do they get this stuff? They make it up to get credulous voters to advocate for their point of view. And apparently it works on Congress people, too.

As The New York Times article noted, our Senator Charles E. Grassley contributed nothing more to the debate than the tired old saw: “Criminals do not submit to background checks now. They will not submit to expanded background checks.”

Yet a recent NBC news report noted: “The numbers show that background checks do keep guns out of the hands of at least some people who are not supposed to have them. Nearly 1.8 million applications for firearm transfers or permits were denied between the passage of the [Brady Handgun Violence Protection Act] law in March 1994 and December 2008, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The FBI and state law enforcement denied firearm purchases to 153,000 people in 2010 alone, the most recent year for which data is available.”

And another recent New York Times story, titled “Seeking Gun or Selling One, Web is Land of Few Rules,” reported: “A 2011 undercover investigation by the City of New York examined private party gun sellers on a range of Web sites, including Armslist, to see if they would sell guns to someone who said that they probably could not pass a background check. (Federal law bars sales to any person the seller has reason to believe is prohibited from purchasing firearms). Investigators found seventy-seven of 125 online sellers agreed to sell the weapons anyway.”

Ultimately, those sellers chose the money from the sale over the safety of the public. Profit before people.

If that’s what we value, we really are lost.

Will guns protect us from government?

Since the events in Newtown last December, I’ve engaged in a number of conversations about public safety, specifically about how to responsibly regulate gun ownership. And I’m always amazed at the people who are convinced we need those guns to protect ourselves from our own government.

First, if we are truly a democracy, “we the people” are ultimately the government. So to paraphrase a Frank Zappa song, “If government is the problem, then we’re the problem . . . and maybe even a little ugly on the side.”

Next, these folks never seem to acknowledge that weapons rarely have been the key to resisting government tyranny. Plenty of bloodless coups have occurred via the use of other means. And I propose that, to some degree, folks who are paranoid about our government have already missed the boat.

Why? While they were watching FOX News, a handful of mega-wealthy corporate moguls bought up our press and rigged our system via campaign contributions and lobbying and have already taken over the government.

And to add insult to injury, via groups like the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), they’ve been taking citizens’ membership and purchase dollars to write laws that further decrease our ability to get ahead and lead a secure life. Not only do we serve their interests when we unquestioningly consume the information they present, but we pay the bill for them when we pay our dues or purchase their products. How’s that for a deal?

Government is just the straw man they’ve set up to take the blame while they shift our tax dollars to offshore accounts and steal our resources. We’ve been lulled to sleep with their slogans and infotainment, and we mutely accept that nothing we do can change it.

Poppycock!

The power of people uniting for action has always countered these powerful minorities. Why do you think corporate powers hate unions?

As one reader noted in a response to an earlier column, less than 10 percent of workers belong to unions today. But when media repeats the same tired stories of egregious union workplace requirements without providing the context of labor history in this country, people come to view unions negatively. The more isolated workers feel, the easier it is for business to limit wages, benefits and health and safety regulations. If workers fear losing their job, they’ll be easier to control. And these lowered expectations then extend to other workers in non-union industries.

So you can holler about keeping your guns to fight the tyranny of the government. But I say you’ve already lost the battle to the real power in the U.S. – corporate special interests. And your guns won’t protect you from that – only a united and well informed populace willing to speak up will.

Look at whole picture to solve violence problem

Since the Newtown, Conn. school shooting, I’ve observed you cannot say the phrase “gun control” without someone launching a hissy fit about Second Amendment Rights and regulations leading to all guns being banned.

Calm down, people.

First, let’s admit we have a problem with violence in this country, and gun violence is part of that. When guns are everywhere (and they are), they become part of the problem. As researchers at Harvard found, more guns equal more homicide. http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/research/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-and-death/index.html

Next, let’s be honest about the fact that we’re looking for a solution – any solution. And human nature being what it is, we want that solution to be simple. Just give us the Staples “Easy” button.

It ain’t gonna happen. Did your parents ever tell you life was simple? Or as I like to ask, “Do you see in color?”

See, I studied drawing, which is really the practice of observing, analyzing and problem solving to create, in traditional studio drawing, a two-dimensional depiction of three-dimensional objects. One of the first things you learn is you can’t create a realistic depiction with only black and white. The two extremes alone create an abstraction.

So, you introduce every shade of gray from black to white. With the full range of values, you can create an amazing reproduction of reality.

Except, to complicate things further, we also see in color.

The gun “control” battle is like that. We want to blame one thing for events like the Sandy Hook massacre: guns; mentally ill, crazy or evil people; poor mental healthcare; violent video games and movies; unequal economic opportunity . . . and so on.

But reality is more complicated. The ugly truth is probably that ALL these things contribute to violence in America. Unfortunately, as a consumer society, we’ve had black/white, either/or dichotomies sold to us via infotainment and advertising – to the point we accept them as reality.

As Exhibit A, I give you our Congressional Republicans who determined, with the help of Newt Gingrich in the 90s, Democrats are the enemy. Perhaps this is why Congress can’t pass a budget.

And as Exhibit B, I’d present gun control. Or perhaps it might be better to call it public safety.

Because that’s really the issue – how can we keep each other safe in a society that values, and in many places, needs its guns? How do we balance public safety with regulations to ensure responsible gun ownership?

A full range of options exist, from registration and liscensure, limits on certain types of weapons, buy-back programs, etc. -- or everything from black to white. I like Iowa author Jane Smiley’s suggestion to require liability insurance on guns. She writes: “According to the Public Services Research Institute ‘the average cost of a gunshot related death is $33,000, while gun-related injuries total more than $300,000 for each occurrence,’ some 4.7 billion smackers every year. You and I are paying for most of these costs.”

Smiley has a couple of other suggestions worth reading, too, as she kicks off this conversation. [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-smiley/a-few-remedies-for-the-ri_b_2323494.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false]

Solving this problem will mean calming down and talking to each other.

It will mean balancing individual rights of gun ownership with the common good of public safety. As Smiley notes, there are remedies, if you’re willing to see them.

So I repeat, “Do you see in color?”

Personal liberties and public good: Where’s the balance?

Last weekend’s horrific massacre in Aurora, Colo. has reopened questions about gun control in America. With 12 people dead and 58 injured after a gunman fired assault weapons inside a movie theater, media are asking what legislation, if any, has been passed to protect the public.

The gun control debate has been around for years. In fact, 30-plus years ago, I wrote a research paper on it for my government class.

As the daughter of a farmer, I grew up with guns in the house. My father was never a hunter or gun enthusiast; he simply used the weapons to take care of dangerous or unwanted animals.

My brother, on the other hand, became interested in hunting as a teenager. He learned to use Dad’s guns to hunt with the neighbors.

So I grew up with an appreciation for guns’ usefulness. But I was also taught healthy respect for them and their power to take life. They were a tool used in necessity. And when I conducted research for my paper, I looked at both sides of the issue – from the dangers guns posed to people in communities struggling with violence to the needs of rural residents for hunting and protection.

But even 30 years ago, the number one force blocking any and all forms of gun control was the National Rifle Association (NRA).

Today, the NRA is the nation’s largest lobbying force. Most recently, they successfully blocked extending a ban on assault weapons, which most Americans, including NRA members, support.

NRA leadership, including NRA President Wayne LaPierre, successfully trots out two canards to block any gun control measures: that they will take away citizens’ 2nd Amendment rights and that “guns don’t kill people, people do.” Both arguments oversimplify a complex issue and completely ignore public safety.

They also divert attention from the organization’s business goals. For the NRA is nothing more than a business whose nominal mission is to represent and protect the interests of gun owners. But like many other large organizations, leadership manipulates the organization to empower and enrich themselves.

As Alan Berlow relates in the first of a three-part series on the NRA in Salon Magazine (http://www.salon.com/2012/07/24/nras_doomsaying_sham/), the NRA’s leadership is happy to sell products (including concealed carry hoodies and liability insurance for shooting someone) and to e-mail alerts to solicit donations to their political action committee. Yet research shows these same leaders, who draw six-figure or more salaries, don’t donate themselves. As Berlow writes:

“Former NRA lobbyist Richard Feldman has suggested one reason NRA big shots are happy to sit on their wallets. In his book ‘Richochet: Confessions of a Gun Lobbyist,’ Feldman calls the NRA a ‘cynical, mercenary political cult … obsessed with wielding power while relentlessly squeezing contributions from its members.’ According to Feldman, NRA leaders ‘weren’t interested in actually solving problems, only in fueling perpetual crisis and controversy’ because ‘that was how they made their money.’”

Meanwhile, the NRA blocks compromise on gun laws that could protect the public.

As Edith Honan notes in a Reuters article recent polling by Republican pollster Frank Luntz shows gun owners, including NRA members, favor some ownership restrictions.

“Seventy-four percent of the current and former NRA members and 87 percent of the other gun owners supported criminal background checks of anyone purchasing a gun, according to the poll.” The results showed support for other checks as well.

In the wake of the Aurora massacre, we need to get beyond black-and-white arguments about guns and explore compromises. I think actor Jason Alexander said it best in an essay last weekend: “We will not prevent every tragedy. We cannot stop every maniac. But we certainly have done ourselves no good by allowing these particular weapons to be acquired freely by just about anyone... but this is not the time for reasonable people, on both sides of this issue, to be silent. We owe it to the people whose lives were ended and ruined yesterday to insist on a real discussion and hopefully on some real action.”