Gunning for Guns

It’s been awhile: Ann’s retirement road trip, the Chamber Festival, family visits -- all just excuses. My real blockage to blogging has been struggling to speak about Seattle’s spate of violence – the innocent by-stander killings of Nicole Westbrook and Justin Ferrari; Cafe Racer and Town Hall; the woundings at Folk Life Festival, in Kent and Renton and all the gruesome rest. And now comes Aurora.


Can a Seattleite stand silently by while this epidemic of gunfire afflicts our community -- mocking the very concept of community? But what is one to say in view of the 5-4 ruling by Scalia et al? What to say when our spineless legislators are cowed by NRA's threats? What to say about the reality that some 250 million guns are sloshing about in 115 million households? What does one say, much less what can one do?

Saturday, The Seattle Times sanctimoniously said  about the re-opening of Café Racer, in the same issue headlined with the Aurora “Midnight Massacre”, that “This triumph of the human spirit celebrated in espresso, art, music, and fresh paint is deeply reassuring in trying times.” Trying times??? Christ almighty, is this the best we can do!?!

Let’s start with the Second Amendment. The Virginia Declaration of Rights and the Constitution of the Republic of Vermont (which my Waller forebears helped create and defend) are the roots of the Bill of Rights. The Federalist Papers little address them for they were a promised add-on should the states ratify. Congress debated them but briefly – less than two days. The context of these ten rights was concern for individuals, acting alone or in concert with their neighbors. The second right, to bear arms, clearly was focused on local community needs in the eighteenth century just ending – against hostile Indian tribes, against foreign powers like France and Britain, against a hypothetical national government that conceivably could go too far. For two hundred years the Supreme Court’s gun rulings upheld the linkage – clearly intended by our founders – between a “well regulated” militia and private ownership of arms. But Scalia’s majority has severed that linkage. Now there is a right to own a weapon unconnected with communal responsibilities. But any weapon? So far, the Court still allows some local regulation of what and how guns can be owned. We should take advantage of and work on those options. Total banning is unpopular and unconstitutional, but reasonable regulation is still acceptable.

Gun protectors always tell us “guns don’t kill people, people do.” OK, let’s look at the people.

Shooters are invariably young men. David Brooks writes compellingly about how we are failing young men, especially in school where boys’ active and rambunctious natures are unwelcome, setting some on a life path of frustration and alienation. Read “Time to Change the Cookie Cutter Approach to School.”

And then Brooks again, on income inequality’s impact on children: “The Opportunity Gap.” This was more visible in the epidemiological findings reported by Wilkinson and Pickett in The Spirit Level, a book the Occupy Movement should have enshrined as Gospel. It’s all there: the social ills and afflictions that accompany income inequality throughout the developed world. And ours, as you know, is growing to be the worst inequality among the developed economies. And this –- supposedly “the land of opportunity” -- is also becoming the least socially mobile among Western societies.

Frustrated, alienated young men without promise: mix their need to assert manhood, to even things up, with easy access to guns. I am mindful of the Berkowitz and LePage landmark studies demonstrating that the presence of a gun in a stressful situation stimulates thoughts of acting out mayhem and that such thoughts can result in actions. Guns can cause violence; guns shoot people up to shoot people.

What to do? I don’t have answers, but some notions:
About the second amendment: if the Court today accepts the legitimacy of local restrictions and regulations, why not
• A King county ban on assault weapons?
• On high-capacity magazines?
• On fully automatic, short barrel handguns?
• On gun shows?
In Okanagon County, such restraints may be neither needed nor acceptable. Fine; suit your needs. But here, in our increasingly heterogeneous metropolitan society where unfamiliarity constrains empathy, we need restrictions that make access to a gun less easy, less likely.

• How about licensing gun owners? A very committed Libertarian friend told me Thursday that he favored licensing and that such licensing qualification should include a personality test! This from a Libertarian, but one who sees guns as tools which should be only in trained, competent, trustworthy hands.
• How about titleing guns? We title autos and tax them. Autos cannot be sold without transferring title and registering it with the state. Sure, at the beginning thousands of scofflaws would pay no attention but over time, transfer of guns would become increasingly difficult and risky if titleing became the norm and penalties for possessing untitled weapons were stiff.
• Write your Representative
• and State legislators.

What to do re the NRA: this is no longer your kindly grandfather teaching a youngster how to safely plink at tin cans with a 22. That was the NRA of my childhood. Today's NRA is a cabal funded by and run for gun manufacturers and gun dealers. Dealers like those in Phoenix who looked the other way while selling 406 guns in six months (that’s more than two guns per day!), over $300,000 worth, to a guy on food stamps! They didn't know those guns were going out the front door and immediately into the hands of folks who couldn't pass a background check? Give me a break. Isn't abetting a crime a crime? Isn't combining to protect such abetting illegal? Why Shouldn't the NRA be subject to RICO, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act?
• How about writing the Justice Dept. and Attorney General Holder
• and Rob McKenna.
• Write Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell.
• Contribute to candidates who dare to face the NRA.

About Lobbying for Gun Regulation :
Join me in supporting the Bradys. Their rankings of states in terms of gun regulation places Washington State tied for 45th in the country, with 15 points out of 100. California gets 81; Arizona, 0. Even Alaska has tougher regulations than do we.
• Join the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
• Sign the Brady petition to close the gun show loophole.
• Sign the Brady petition to keep guns out of Starbucks. (Yes, Starbucks!)

Regarding Boys and Schools:
• Support charter schools and then lobby for sex-segregated classes in elementary and middle schools.
• In PTA’s and before school boards, encourage hiring male teachers trained to deal with boys, teachers that boys can relate to.

Re income inequality:
• Vote for candidates who seek short term stimulants to get people working again.
• Vote for candidates who recognize the pernicious problem and propose ways to redress inequality.

There’s no silver bullet for this epidemic of violence. But steady and resolute pressure can bring this community, this State, and this nation to its senses about access to weapons and to identification of and intercession with those who would wield them. It’s a long road, but we will never make progress unless each of us takes a first step.

Leave a comment rather than e-mail me. Let me and the few readers I have hear your thoughts. Start a debate and pass this on if you will. And thanks for persisting through this.