Take a Stand Against Gun Violence

April 26, 2013

Smith & Wesson 442, left, and Glock 21 guns on display. (AP Photo/The Grand Rapids Press, Cory Morse)

After legislation to expand background checks, crack down on gun trafficking and straw purchases, renew a ban on assault weapons and limit high-capacity magazine sizes all failed to garner the votes needed to overcome Republican filibusters in Congress on April 18, 2013, gun control advocates regrouped on the issue. If you’d like to take action on gun control, here are some things you can do.

Honor the 26 lives lost at Sandy Hook Elementary School by making the Sandy Hook Promise.

Get the facts: Learn more about the solutions that reformers would like to see made law — Mayors Against Illegal Guns, Americans for Responsible Solutions, The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence all have suggestions.

Call Congress: In the days after gun control legislation failed to pass in the Senate, Mayors Against Illegal Guns wrote on its “Demand Action” website, “if Congress won’t act, we’ll change Congress!” There are still many months until the next election day, but you can let your congressional representatives know that this is an important issue for you — and one you’ll consider when you vote. Both the Senate and the House of Representatives have online directories of their members’ office numbers. Mayors Against Illegal Guns also offers to call you first and walk you through critical talking points, then connect you to your Senator’s office.

Tell your friends: Tell your friends, families and followers that gun control legislation is important to you by making it your Facebook status update or Tweet it out using #DemandAPlan.

In your state: By April 2013, Connecticut, New York and Colorado had all enacted stronger gun control laws. See how your state compares to others on gun control, and contact your governor to ask for action.

In your city: More than 750 mayors are members of the Mayors Against Illegal Guns coalition. Find out if your mayor is involved, and if not, recruit your mayor.

PSA - Demand a Plan

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TOPICS: Social Change

TAGS: assault weapons, Aurora, columbine, gun, gun control, gun violence, mayors, newtown, take action

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Ross G. Drago
Dear Bill Moyers,
I have a low tech solution to gun control. Please read my article if possible. It explains it in Paint Rag Magazine, my on-line art and awareness magazine how to warn people when someone has an automatic loaded weapon within firing range of us all.
Here is the address of the article: http://paintragmagazine.com/?page_id=3192
I believe that it can solve the problem simply, cheaply and create a social awareness whenever anyone steps out with an assault weapon that is loaded, without trying to pull guns away from those who keep them. Please read it if you possibly can.
With great respect for you,
Ross G. Drago
rdrago@energyart.com
Kathleen Boettcher
I want these websites to have direct communication to members of congress. I would gladly click on a choice saying support President Obama’s gun proposals.
http://www.facebook.com/gramma.conners Gramma Gail Conners
NOW is the time to provide regulations that will affect the horror of violence, not only Newtown, all the inner cities.
http://www.facebook.com/lisa.korell.98 Lisa Korell
You people need to go back an look at the progression of the Holocaust. You want your rites stripped from you. It begins here. Guns are not bad it is the people the perps that use the guns that are bad. Get educated and stop following a dictator.
Anonymous
Meanwhile, well over 3,000 people have been killed with guns since Newtown. Including 58 more children. (That’s 58 in addition to, not including, the Newtown twenty.)
I don’t know why this database, maintained by Slate magazine, isn’t a front page feature on every news website every day.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2012/12/gun_death_tally_every_american_gun_death_since_newtown_sandy_hook_shooting.html
Fritzie Borgwardt
Response to solicitation from Jon Carson, BarackObama.com:
Dear Jon-
I cannot donate for philosophical reasons, but I can give you the thinking behind what could be a valuable PR talking point, worth far more than $4 to your cause.
When the motive involves making money, the argument is impure.
Re: Gun control: When was the last time people felt the need to take up arms against the government? The Civil War? Did that not involve preserving economic gain for the rebels? What motive do the parents of the dead children have? It is not money.
Such is the case on every single issue we face. Bradley Manning is far less a traitor than those who have chosen to play their shell game turning our democracy into a plutocracy, one that is all about money, and nothing about one man one vote, or the public good.
As for our economy: Margaret Thatcher said, “The problem with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” To that I would say, the problem with unbridled capitalism is that eventually, you run out of the little people’s money.
Fritzie Borgwardt
steven sanders
After the Civil War, Congress passed a law forbidding the Jim Crow Laws. In the 1870′s a southern, racist Supreme Court overturned this law as unconstitutional. In so doing they threw out the basic Rule of Law. They did this in an effort to re-institute slavery. You can read about how slavery was recreated in the U.S. for fifty years, between the 1880′s and the 1930′s in the excellent book, ” Slavery By any Other Name”. Knowing how the ex-slaves had successfully used Civil Liberties in their defense, this Supreme Court decided that there were no individual Civil Liberties. All the Constitutional Liberties were States Rights only. The greatest fear in the south was that black people would fight back against re-enslavement. After all many were Civil War Veterans. They therefore decreed, based on there being no individual Civil Liberties, that the 2nd Amendment was a State Right, not an individual one. This was done for the primary purpose of re-enslaving black people. Though it also served a purpose in disarming women. Susan B. Anthony and other feminists throughout the 19th and 20th century fought for the right for women to carry weapons to defend themselves. Up until the corp o-government press began telling us drugs and guns were evil and we needed to outlaw them. At one time women would use their hat pins to defend themselves from rapists. This was before Women’s Suffrage. Men knowing that no woman can be raped because she only needs to keep her legs together and women are hysterical, outlawed hat pins. I was reminded of this in the early 1970′s when a woman who was attacked by a date rapist, pulled a knife from her purse and frighted him off. The man, angry, went to the police and reported her. She went to prison for the felony of carrying a concealed knife in her purse. About a year later I read about a black woman on death row. She had gone to the police to tell them her ex-boyfriend was going to kill her. They told her they could do nothing. Now they would tell her to get a restraining order. So she carried a knife in her purse for defense. He found her standing in line at a movie theater with some friends and he began to strangle her to death. She stabbed him and he died. It’s a felony to carry a knife in your purse. Death from a felony is automatically 1st degree murder. It’s also apparently assumed the victim must have been ‘laying in wait’. Things have changed. Hopefully today she would only get life in prison. Soon after the waiting period for buying guns was enacted a woman went to the police to tell them her ex-husband was going kill her. They told her they could do nothing. She went to buy a gun but she couldn’t because of the waiting period. That night he broke in and beat her to death in front of her two small children. It turns out the waiting period hasn’t saved anyone. It’s the victims who need a gun right away not the perpetrator. After all the most common weapon used in violence in our country is the baseball bat. We’re not going to make that illegal. PBS recently surprised me in a report on guns. They admitted that the gun prohibition laws had been started because black people had started to arm themselves in self defense. Of course as is common they told a partial truth. They didn’t mention that they were arming themselves because they were tired of being shot down by the police for walking or driving while black. Something that continues to this day. They didn’t mention that it was part of the war on blacks along with the drug prohibition laws. They didn’t mention how these two laws had been used to strip us of our 4th and 5th Amendment rights. A black friend of mine, now in his 70′s has told me that our prison industry is the new slavery. I guess there will be a new book one day entitled “The 3rd American Slavery: 1970-?”. These are the new Jim Crow laws. I will probably surprise you when I tell you I don’t like guns. Social scientists say we read the books supporting our position and then pretend we know. I come from an odd childhood. I study all sides. I’ve studied statistics and I’ve gone over the facts over and over hoping they will add up to gun control working at least a little. They don’t. The Supreme Court told us the police can’t protect us and have no responsibility to do so. The case was in Washington DC. A group of men broke into some women’s home. One of them managed to call the police reporting the men were raping the others. Afterwards they found her and raped her too. They forced them to perform sex acts on each other and abused and raped them through the night. In morning they left. The police never came. I understand they were never apprehended. In many major cities they don’t even process rape kits. It was after this we got the Supreme Court case from DC about the right to have a gun. I don’t want one. But how dare people tell women they can’t defend themselves. How dare people write off the hundreds of thousands of women and children who have been raped or murdered because of weapon prohibition laws over the last 40 years. Do your homework and you’ll find out that hundreds of thousands of women and children are raped every year because of the prostitution prohibition laws. Drug Prohibition has destroyed tens of millions of lives. We have put millions of innocent people in prison who weren’t guilty of what they were convicted of. So why aren’t these the pressing issues. For 40 years our brainwashing machine, the television has told us drugs are bad, guns are bad, trust the police. We’re authoritarians. I don’t expect anyone to change their mind because these aren’t rational issues. Drugs, Guns, ‘creationism’, anti abortion, homophobia. These are “Holy Crusades”. But please remember, there is a constitutional way to remove the 2nd Amendment. But if you accept the 1870′s Supreme Court decision, how can you then claim any civil liberties? If you say there is no 2nd Amendment right then you agree with our current Supreme Courts right to decide what ‘civil privileges’ they will allow us. The Constitution is a package deal. Give away a piece and give away all of it. Is this the time in history to be in-powering the police state?
steven sanders
Perhaps because it’s not useful information by itself. We need to know how many of these deaths are suicides, which would take place with or without guns according to experts. In the U.S. we lie with statistics. According to experts suicide is not the 3rd largest cause of death for children in our country, but at least the 2nd and it could be number one. We also need to know how many were killed by people defending themselves. It might be useful to know how many were killed by police for walking driving or living in their homes while black. However if it is human lives that count and not just those killed with guns then we should look at all murders by all causes. It would be useful to compare the overall murder rate based on the amount of gun control, affluence, toxic metal exposure in the area, educational opportunities, jobless rate, etc. If you should find a site which provides useful statistics I would be very interested.
1938marine
The carnage across America with the use of fire arms is insane, that too many of our lawmakers want to do nothing positive about it is insane.
russ
Bill, you are wrong on this issue. Even the Justice Dept said the proposed legislation would not work. You say “Get the Facts” but the sources you list only supply distorted and emotion laced reason. Bloomberg is his own corporate sponsor using millions of his own money to force legislators to his point of view. C’mon Bill, you and your team can do better than this.
Russ
More disinformation. Generally people do not own “automatic assault weapons.”
Anonymous
red herring, change the subject, pretend you are making a relevant distinction – assault weapons are dangerous automatic or not
Anonymous
…You can look at the link above and see exactly how all those deaths came to be.
By the way, at least six more innocent children have died at the end of a gun since Newtown, in the 20 days since my original comment, bringing the total to 64.
Obfuscation won’t bring any of them back.
Ned Stotesbury
DUI deaths are now about 10,000 same as gun murder rates. Do we ban the bars? http://zautos.com/dui-fast-facts/
Linda Gonzales
I appreciate your insight on so many other issues, but on this one I have diverged over the years. One reason is because I now understand the importance of supporting the US Constitution in it’s entirety. Another reason is because I myself have looked at the source material for all the gun statistics and found as John Lott did that More Guns means Less Crime. I realize that there are many criminals that carry guns and use them in violent crimes. But, there are more citizens that carry guns and use them for protection. The real life changer for me though was actually getting involved, and going to the gun ranges, and meeting the people that are firearms enthusiasts. I’ve taken many firearms training classes now and found these people to be diverse in their beliefs, accepting and caring individuals with strong family bonds. They are quite literally the hero’s of our society and gun control laws seem to be hindering their ability to have access to firearms and related products, and not adversely affecting the criminals who don’t follow the law to begin with.
I find drone bombing moral offensive, I find animal slaughtering and suffering reprehensible, but AR15′s? No, not now that I’ve shoot many different types of firearms. For a petite woman, like myself, I am much more competent with my AR than a shotgun for home protection. Don’t attempt to judge others when you don’t understand them or their needs. Of all the problems in the world right now, law abiding citizens are not one of them. So, please don’t advocate for changing the law to make these people criminals. Thank you.
Linda Gonzales
Thank you!
steven sanders
There is no “disinformation”. I did not say anything about fully ‘automatic assault weapons”, as no one is attempting to make them legally available to the general populous. Trying to put words in another persons mouth to discredit them is incredibly dishonest.