My local school district, the Ichabod Crane Central School District in New York’s Hudson Valley, recently held a vote on a capital improvement project with a price tag of $27,115,200. This massive project—passed by less than seventy votes—will update and modernize the district’s facilities and buildings and address long-deferred repairs to the deteriorating infrastructure of the district’s primary, middle, and high schools.

The project will address five key areas: health and safety,academics and program, physical education and athletics, building infrastructure, and site infrastructure. Upon reviewing the outline of the scope of work, my attention focused on a few of the bullet points listed under the “health and safety” category. There I discovered that the proposal calls for modest, enhanced security features for the campus’s three school buildings.These include security glazing film at the entry vestibules and the installation of bullet-resistant security transaction windows and drawers.

 Thankfully, my school district has so far escaped the tragedy of an active-shooter incident. Still, the threat is present and real. As we’ve learned from the tragedies at schools across the country, it takes just one angry, lost kid with access to deadly firearms to carry out a violent incident that becomes everyone’s worst nightmare. With that threat always present, school districts and communities are being forced to consider expensive security measures that would have been unthinkable in the past.  

 The range of security measures runs the gamut from modest retrofits, like those proposed by my local school district, to more extensive and expensive planning, such as complete building redesign, like the plan for the rebuild of the Sandy Hook Elementary School.  In answer to the public health crisis of school shootings, administrators and school boards are being forced to consider an array of new security measures, such as bullet-proof doors, replacement of entryways with a single, administrator- or security officer-monitored main entrance, safe rooms constructed of concrete, bullet-resistant window and door glass, and even building siting on raised ground and landscaping to increase visibility and control exterior access. And, of course, there’s the additional cost of human and behavioral security upgrades and training, such as generating active-shooter and evacuation plans, the hiring of additional security staff, and, in some districts, the dangerous and ill-conceived proposal that would allow teachers to be armed with firearms in the classroom.

 How did we get to the point where we have been forced to consider covering the costs of school security as a result of our schools devolving from being safe havens to places of danger that threaten the lives of children?

There are certainly many answers—both sociological and political—to that difficult question. But beyond any doubt, one of the primary answers is that the threat to our children is the inevitable result of the failure of our elected representatives in our states and at the federal level to muster the political will to pass common sense gun laws favored by an overwhelming majority of Americans, including gun owners and NRA members.

 Universal background checks. A ban on the sale of military-style weapons. These are measures that studies show will protect our children and make it more difficult for kids to harm kids. 

 What’s the result of failing to pass common sense laws that will keep our children safe?  Statistics show the story of our government’s malfeasance. Since 2009, there have been 288 school shootings. The U.S. has the highest rate of gun-related deaths,suicides, and homicides among the top thirty-four advanced economies in the world where access to firearms is restricted.

 The fact is that school-security measures come with a price tag that communities may simply be unable to afford. With all of the other costs that communities need to fund for the education of our children—facility maintenance and upgrades, teacher salaries, transportation, healthcare costs for school employees—we may ultimately be forced to face the impossible choice of choosing whether to fund improvement of the educational experience or voting to fund security measures. With that thorny dilemma poised to become reality, shouldn’t we be questioning who should be responsible for the cost of the security measures required to keep schools safe in a culture that is flooded with dangerous firearms?

 The answer may be that we need to begin a serious conversation about considering the creation of a school-safety tax to be levied on the industry that profits royally from the sales of the weapons that are harming our children. That is, the gun manufacturers.

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In 2017 there were 346 mass shootings. In 2018 there have been 307 so far. On average America has experienced one deadly incident per day this year. Thoughts and prayers are not enough.

The Shameful Toll of Mass Shootings

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I’m sure that the college students and mental health professionals who have been leading the effort to impose trigger warnings on textbooks and reading assignments do not realize it, but they could be at the forefront of a massive public safety campaign.

For the uninitiated: Trigger warnings on books are designed to protect readers from harmful content or ideas that might contribute to pre-existing mental health conditions.They are controversial in higher education circles. Some colleges and universities say that reading assignments should stand on their own, and they are not supposed to coddle students; others say that they are trying to be sensitive to their students’ issues and that readers deserve a warning if something is likely to cause a panic attack or contribute to PTSD.

Well, here’s an idea and it doesn’t require a pesky reading assignment:  how about trigger warnings where they really belong: on real triggers, on actual guns.

Americans have been spectacularly unsuccessful in legislating almost any kind of gun control.  Maybe we should narrow our sights, so to speak. Maybe we could focus on trigger control.

In truth, it would be possible to do this tomorrow if the NRA (Normally Recalcitrant Assholes) got out of the way. Technology exists that would enable gun manufacturers to produce “smart guns”—weapons that could not be fired unless the fingerprint of the legitimate owner was putting pressure on the trigger. This would not solve the problem created when the gun owner goes ballistic and decides to invade a classroom, but it would certainly solve the trigger problem when a child obtains a gun or the firearm is stolen.

The idea of a smart gun seems especially relevant now, when the NRA (see above) and many Republican-controlled state legislatures are attempting to legalize guns on college campuses. What could possibly go wrong with this idea? Perhaps nothing.

Let’s put a trigger warning on every door and hope that the guns are smarter than the people who carry them.

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One hundred thirty-two Missourians lost their lives, and 164 have been injured during the first 3 months of 2017 due to gun violence. Nine of the deaths were children, five of them from St. Louis.

Why do I know this? As a member of the Common-Sense Gun Solutions Committee for Women’s Voices Raised for Social Justice, I monitor the on-line Gun Violence Archive to report on the number of people who have died as the result of gun violence. I learn their names. I find their photos. I gather information on their lives.   Where did they go to school? Where did they work? What impact did they have on their friends, family and co-workers?

Women’s Voices is more widely known in the community as an organization that attends community health fairs to distribute gun safety information and gun locks to families with unsecured firearms in their homes. And that is a good thing; more than 1,500 locks are now with St. Louis area families. But we do more. We advocate for gun violence prevention.

When our elected officials and the public read a crime report that a 25-year-old woman was shot to death in Columbia, or that a 12-year-old in Otterville was killed by a bullet to his head, they may skim the article and move on. But if they see a photo of the proud, smiling young woman in her Hardee’s uniform and learn she had worked her way into a management position and leaves behind two young children; or if they learn the boy from Otterville played summer baseball, loved the outdoors and dinosaurs, they may take a few more moments and ask themselves: why did this happen, and how could it have been prevented?

When we read one day that a six-year-old killed herself with a gun left loaded and unlocked, but we never learn where she went to school or see a photo, how can we have any empathy for her grieving family? When a 15-year-old is shot down in a blaze of bullets and an eight-year-old is critically wounded, and the following day the story is dropped, what are we to understand?

Has gun violence become so common that just reporting when and where it happens and giving the number of dead and injured is enough?

We believe readers need and deserve more. We believe in vigils where people remember the victims. We believe in marches with posters of those lost. We believe the lives of the victims matter and their stories should matter to all of us.

If the print news media would give us a glimpse into their lives, tell us their stories, perhaps more of us will work to end the violence.

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Most of the world’s firearms are privately owned, says The Small Arms Survey.

And which country has the most privately owned firearms per capita? [Firearms as defined, by the Small Arms Survey, include improvised craft guns as well as handguns, rifles, shotguns, and machine guns.]

You probably won’t be surprised to learn that this particular distinction goes to the United States.

In 2007 the Small Arms Survey estimated the number of civilian firearm ownership world-wide at approximately 650 million weapons out of some 875 then in existence. National ownership rates range from a high of 90 firearms per every 100 people in the United States, to one firearm or less for every 100 residents in countries like South Korea and Ghana. With the world’s factories delivering millions of newly manufactured firearms annually, and with far fewer being destroyed, civilian ownership is growing.

 

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The sad details surrounding the suicide of Missouri State Auditor Tom Schweich continue to emerge. But something is missing in the reporting: the gun behind the tragedy.

Today, news reports revealed that Martha Fitz, an aide to former U.S. Senator John Danforth was on the phone with Schweich’s wife when Schweich killed himself.

According to the Kansas City Star:

At 9:40 a.m., Kathy Schweich called Fitz. A few minutes into that conversation between the two women, Tom Schweich took the phone.

“He spoke solely about his outrage concerning the rumors that were being spread about his religion, and how he could respond to those rumors,” Fitz wrote in a statement. “I told him I thought it best to let others stand up for him.”

At that point, Fitz wrote, Schweich threatened to kill himself and handed the phone back to his wife.

“Seconds later I heard Kathy say, ‘He shot himself!’” Fitz’s statement says.

Schweich’s spouse called 9-1-1 on another phone. Fitz and Kathy Schweich remained on the phone together until paramedics arrived.

Horrifying. Emotionally devastating. Beyond comprehension, for his family and friends. Unimaginable, some would say.

Or, maybe it’s not completely unimaginable. It’s a terrible, shocking, sad story, to be sure. But there’s something missing in the news reports. Nobody’s talking about the gun.

We may never understand why Schweich, who had recently announced his run for governor—a big plan for the future—became so desperate that he would take his own life.

But we do know that he had a gun close at hand. So close that, when he threatened to kill himself, he had the means to do it.

We don’t know where he kept the gun. We don’t know how long he had it. But we know that there was a gun in his house—did his family even know about it? And when he became despondent—it was all too convenient to just pick it up and pull the trigger.

No waiting period. No time for further reflection and possible self-preservation.

He may have had pre-existing mental-health issues. Maybe he had been depressed for a long time. I don’t know, and I wouldn’t hazard a guess. I’m simply saying that, having a gun in the house enabled him to act impulsively.

Did he keep a gun in the house for self-defense for himself and his family? After all, that’s the conventional wisdom. I don’t know why Schweich had a gun. But I do know that, like so many others, in the end, it didn’t serve its intended purpose.

It wasn’t used against an invading stranger. It didn’t keep him safe. It didn’t protect his family. In the end, it hurt so much more than it helped.

Another gun death; another possibly preventable tragedy.

But, in an America held hostage by the NRA and its Second Amendment propaganda, we don’t want to talk about that.

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There are two ways to solve the gun crisis in America that have yet to be discussed. First, there is one group above all others that is the source of most of gun violence in this country. According to the US National Library of Medicine/National Institute of Health one group of Americans caused 85.3% of all deaths by firearms in this country between 1976 and 1987. That is a pretty overwhelming statistic. Obviously, if we can get the guns away from this group then we can drastically reduce the amount of gun violence in this country.

The deadly group? Men. All we have to do is make sure men are never allowed to own, touch, or have any access to guns. Women can continue to have all the 2nd Amendment freedoms that they enjoy today. Men, not so much. With over 85% of all gun violence fueled by testosterone, I have no idea why this hasn’t been tried already (other than the fact that men make the laws, control almost everything, and would cry as though their favorite team just lost the Super Bowl were anything even close to this tried).

Imagine a world where buying a phallic stand-in would have to involve something that was not directly about snuffing the life out of another living being. I hear fast cars are a pretty good substitute for inadequate man pipes. Perhaps men could take up archery. Granted, getting a concealed carry permit for a long bow and a quiver doesn’t have the same thrill of stealth, but it’s a great way to play out your Green Arrow fantasies. Perhaps a Paleolithic spear thrower is more your style. Going old school.

It all sounds quite silly, but gun violence is never very funny. Having one group perpetuating so much more violence than another does point out that the testosterone-possessors among us need to be severely regulated. As the familiar phrase goes, “Everyone is a responsible gun owner until they aren’t.” So what can be done?

Enter the second way to regulate guns! We need to look at an approach taken by the very people who scream the loudest if gun ownership is threatened. After all, they’re masters at knowing how to take away a protected right.

Imagine that there’s only one store in your state that sells guns and it’s nowhere near you. Now imagine that there is no one in your state willing to sell guns, so a guy flies in once a week, on Friday, to open the shop. Now imagine that your state legislature passes a law that makes it mandatory to talk to the gun guy 3 days before you’re allowed to buy a gun from him. Oops, since he’s only there once a week, that means you’ll not only have to pay to fly to that one location where there’s a shop, but you’ll also have to get a hotel for a week. Don’t despair!

Those same lawmakers have also mandated that you not only get lectured by the gun guy against owning a gun, including made-up stuff about guns exploding in people’s hands all the time, or spontaneously burning down houses, but you also have to go for a long lecture from a bunch of people who don’t know anything at all about guns except that they hate them. These people will get to talk for several hours about the evils of guns and no one will check to see what they say is true. After you get this mind-numbing, one-sided, mandated lecture, you’re free to talk to the gun guy one more time, when he flies to the state. If you still want the gun, you get to wait until the gun guy returns (which includes getting to pay all those hotel fees, round trip airfares, or whatever). Yay! He’s back. One final lecture and you’re the proud owner of a small handgun (there are size limits)!

You may think this is ridiculous because, after all, the right to bear arms is the law. You should be protected. Roe vs. Wade made abortion legal. And yet the above is basically the reproductive law in several states. Just substitute doctor for “gun guy” and “legal medical procedure” for “gun”. Cheer up, though, because I could be discussing “admitting privileges” for gun shop owners and so sorry, you’ll have to go to Mexico and risk dying from defective arms.

So what’s the big difference? Guns are used to kill, so it can’t be about “saving lives.”Both are legal. You tell me. Why is one law backed up by billions of dollars, countless lobbyists, an enormous and powerful organization and the worshipping voices of millions of fans of things that blast holes into animals and people, and the other consists of women (because there isn’t a single law on the books restricting the rights of the father of those precious cells). It’s time to go all “pro-life” on the NRA.

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With polling numbers showing that a majority of Americans support sensible, effective measures like those proposed by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, why is it so hard to enact policies that protect the public?  Here is a partial list of the obstacles:

Campaign contributions and lobbying

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, in the 2010 election cycle, the Institute for Legislative Action, the lobbying arm of the National Rifle Association, gave contributions to candidates totaling $1,200,910. Two-thirds of that total went to Republicans in the House and Senate. The NRA has 4 million members. Its stated lobbying mission is “to defeat restrictive gun-control legislation, pass pro-gun reform legislation, and to educate the public about the facts concerning the many facets of firearms ownership.” The organization’s annual lobbying budget for 2010 was $2,045,000.

Vacancy at the top of ATF

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is the federal agency tasked with combating illegal gun trafficking. In 2006, during the Bush administration, Congress gave the Senate the power to confirm the director of the agency. Since that year, the agency has not had a Senate-confirmed director.  In those four years, while the agency’s officially confirmed directorship has gone unfilled, 50,000 more Americans have been killed by firearms.

Continuing the saga of the headless agency, on November 17, 2010, President Obama nominated as his choice for director Andrew Traver, a 23-year veteran of the ATF and chief of ATF’s Chicago office.  Traver’s nomination was supported by the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the Gun Violence Reduction Project, a national program supported by police chiefs. The nomination, however, received strong opposition from the NRA, due primarily to Traver’s advocacy for banning the sale of assault weapons. The Senate Judiciary Committee, during the lame-duck Congress, did not take up the nomination, which means that President Obama is required to resubmit Traver’s nomination during the new Congress.

Blocked research

On January 25, 2011, journalist Michael Luo published a story entitled, “N.R.A. Stymies Firearms Research, Scientists Say” in the New York Times. Luo interviewed scientists who reported suppression of data gathering at the National Center for Injury Control and Prevention.  He writes:

In the wake of the shootings in Tucson, the familiar questions inevitably resurfaced:  Are communities where more people carry guns safer or less safe?  Does the availability of high-capacity magazines increase deaths?  Do more rigorous background checks make a difference?

The reality is that even these and other basic questions cannot be fully answered, because not enough research has been done.  And there is a reason for that.  Scientists in the field and former officials with the government agency that used to finance the great bulk of this research say the influence of the National Rifle Association has all but choked off money for such work…

…The amount of money available today for studying the impact of firearms is a fraction of what it was in the mid-1990s, and the number of scientists toiling in the field has dwindled to just a handful as a result, researchers say. . . . The dearth of money can be traced in large measure to a clash between public health scientists and the NRA in the mid-1990s.  At the time, Dr. Rosenberg and others at the CDC were becoming increasingly assertive about the importance of studying gun-related injuries and deaths as a public health phenomenon, financing studies that found, for example, having a gun in the house, rather than conferring protection, significantly increased the risk of homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance.

Initially, pro-gun lawmakers sought to eliminate the injury center completely, arguing that its work was “redundant” and reflected a political agenda.  When they failed they turned to the appropriations process.

Proliferation of illegal guns and the crisis of deadly crime that their availability fosters are not inevitable. Obstacles to fixing the problem, such as effective leadership, data gathering, and limiting the influence of special interests are identifiable and actionable with enough political will. If polling numbers are accurate, contrary to popular political narrative, the majority of gun owners and non-gun owners agree on the need to control illegal guns. Federal laws already on the books could be highly effective.  Currently, twenty out of twenty-two of those laws are not aggressively enforced.  As Mayors Against Illegal Guns points out, laws are passed to satisfy public outcry, but the necessary funding to put them into effect is not. Fixing that one piece of the puzzle would be a beginning.

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