Browse: Home » Gun Control

Gun Control

Brace for inevitable inaction: UCSB shooting

originally published in The Herald

There is arrogance to hindsight, a reflex to rattle off lessons learned when the same narrative plays out, week after week. A mentally ill young man stockpiles guns and ammo and murders at random.

We know how to curtail the risk — not eliminate it, human nature is immutable — but lawmakers choose not to act. And as a society, we make a decision by not making a decision.

“We’re all proud to be Americans. But what kind of message does it send to the world when we have such a rudderless bunch of idiots in government?” asked Richard Martinez, father of Christopher Michael-Martinez, 20, one of Friday’s mass shooting victims near the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The story arc is identical, just switch out the venue and the narcissistic killer. Real victims whose lives are abruptly cut short and the grieving families who never actually heal — that is the too-tangible thread.

Continue reading →

May 27, 2014 phjackson Leave a response , , ,

Common sense and firearms: I-594 and I-591

originally published in The Herald

If you can’t convince them, confuse them. It’s a shrewd, if cynical axiom that could pay off for opponents of gun-sale background checks.

This fall voters will weigh in on two competing initiatives, I-594, which requires background checks on firearm sales and transfers, including online sales and gun shows; and, I-591 which prohibits background checks “unless a national standard is required.” (The latter qualifer a reminder of big-footing feds.)

An April 15 Elway poll illustrates the confusion, with 72 percent of respondents likely to vote for background checks, 55 percent likely to vote for the initiative with the “unless a national standard” language, and 40 percent inclined to vote for both (!) To quote “Alice in Wonderland,” “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Presupposing that impossible happens and both measures pass, the Legislature will need to disentangle the mess (more counter-logic, but possible) or the state Supreme Court will decide. Dave Ammons, communications director for the Secretary of State and a longtime Associated Press scribe and analyst, figures the court is the more likely resolver (the justices may need to read their Lewis Carroll.)
Continue reading →

April 18, 2014 phjackson Leave a response , , ,

For gun-injury research: Gun violence in America, Part 4

originally published in The Herald

Historian Richard Hofstadter called it the paranoid style in American politics. The NRA’s bloviating Wayne LaPierre is Exhibit One, an angry mind hankering to enshrine George Orwell’s “1984” catchphrase, that ignorance is strength.

The child massacre in Newtown cast into relief LaPierre and the NRA’s decades-long campaign to supplant health research on firearms and violence. Research and facts a hazard? In the paranoid war on firearms data and public health, the paranoid are winning.

Dr. Fred Rivara of the UW’s Department of Pediatrics and Seattle Children’s Hospital experienced the NRA’s data stiffling first-hand. Throughout the 1980s and 90s, Rivara and his colleague, the Rand Corporation’s Dr. Arthur Kellermann, conducted firearm-injury research. The hammer fell in 1996, when an NRA-obsequious Congress whacked $2.6 million from the Centers for Disease Control. As Rivera and Kellermann note in an online essay for the Journal of the American Medical Association, $2.6 million just happened to be the amount dedicated to firearm-injury research. They quote the Appropriation language which underlines the point. “None of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.” The inference is that empirical, control-tested data might demonstrate a relationship between gun control and a public good (say, fewer murdered children.) What if the opposite is true, and the NRA’s prescription of armed guards at schools has merit? As the National Academy of Sciences reported in 2004, there is inadequate data to determine what’s effective. Doctors and social scientists need to analyze inputs, but the NRA and its minions in Congress — and even the Washington Legislature — will have none of it.

Continue reading →

December 28, 2012 phjackson Leave a response , , , ,

The time for real decisions: Gun violence in America, Part 3

originally published in The Herald

An Everett-born Jesuit priest, the Rev. Patrick J. Conroy, sits in the nation’s capital, forbidden to buttonhole politicians. A different kind of crucible, a Political Science major, an aspiring politico and Snohomish High grad, squelched.

As chaplain of the U.S. House of Representatives, Conroy offers spiritual ballast, not policy guidance. Last Wednesday, on the heels of the child massacre in Newtown, Conroy crossed the numinous with hard sense. “As we continue to recover from such a great tragedy, endow the Members of this House and all our governmental leaders with the wisdom to respond with whatever policies and laws might be needed to ensure greater peace and security in our land,” Conroy prayed.

Those policies and laws to ensure greater peace are nearly as absent as the wisdom to curtail gun violence. Even facts are elusive. After heavy lobbying by the National Rifle Association, Congress de-funded research by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) concerning guns and public health. The NRA’s Wayne LaPierre said in 1995, “The problem that I see with what the CDC is doing is that they are not doing medicine, they’re doing politics.” On Friday, the same LaPierre promoted a police-state approach to Newtown, with NRA-trained guards stationed at every school in the country. Enough. The NRA’s mission is to sustain the NRA, not the public interest.
Continue reading →

December 23, 2012 phjackson Leave a response , , ,

Advancing mental health: Gun violence in America, Part 2

originally published in The Herald

Gun violence generates a latticework of fix-something brainstorms, from arming teachers to repealing the Second Amendment. Arguments, both ad hominem and rational, cross-hatch the public square, but unite on mental health.

Here, consensus runneth over: Mental-health services must be enhanced, with an emphasis on intervention and access to care.

As an action-forcing horror, the Newtown shooting teased up a stereotype, of those living with mental illness gravitating to violence. In fact, the mentally ill are much more likely to cause harm to themselves than to others. Violence manifests when severely ill patients go untreated. While disease stigmas fester, they aren’t changeless. Cancer was stigmatized. So was AIDS. Education is the antidote, setting mental health on par with the broader spectrum of community health needs. (Parity means just that.)
Continue reading →

December 21, 2012 phjackson Leave a response , , ,

Leadership on gun control: Gun violence in America, Part 1

originally published in The Herald

In times of crisis or shock, overreaction is hard-wired. A political spasm, an upwelling of sentiment, is followed by amnesia. A few public memories, such as the 9/11 terrorist attacks, are forever. The horror and scale impress on lives and pass along to future generations. That is the case of the Newtown massacre. Too many murdered children.

The salient lesson from 9/11 was, in all things, judgment. The Patriot Act passed by Congress was freighted with a number of ill-considered measures, including “sneak and peek” searches and warrantless surveillance. The Iraq war was lit on a false premise. The touchstones for federal action after Newtown will be what works and who benefits.
Continue reading →

December 20, 2012 phjackson Leave a response , , ,

The horror in Newtown: Elementary school murders

originally published in The Herald

Children magnify the rawness of insensible death.

Friday’s massacre at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school, the unfathomable number of murdered kindergarteners, the visitation of evil in the time of Advent. As we wrote earlier this year, how do Americans make sense of the senseless? Elie Weisel said years ago, “Words, they die on our lips.”

“The majority of those who died today were children, beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old,” President Obama said on Friday. “They had their entire lives ahead of them: birthdays, graduations, weddings, kids of their own.” The president, that taciturn profile of reserve, was weeping. Edmonds Police Chief Al Compaan told The Herald, “You just can’t imagine. All these kids, why?”
Continue reading →

December 16, 2012 phjackson Leave a response , , , ,

Fathoming the fathomless: Colorado shooting

originally published in The Herald

On Friday the tattoo of gunfire in an Aurora, Colo., theater echoed across the American West. Raw, unfettered violence visited upon the innocent. Twelve dead. Fifty-eight injured. How do Americans make sense of the senseless? As Elie Wiesel wrote years ago, “Words, they die on our lips.”

The narrative of James Holmes, the 24-year-old graduate student who opened fire on an audience settling in to watch the latest Batman film, doesn’t bear repeating. An anchorless man with a weapon is a modern archetype. Mass killers are often delusional, living with mental illness. Some are political zealots. As defined by St. Thomas Aquinas, some are simply evil. Pusillanimous, unstable folks brandishing firearms are also as predictable as they are enigmatic. As Snohomish County Prosecuting Attorney Mark Roe noted in an email, “I really wish we could make this Colorado guy anonymous, quit showing his smiling picture, and realize that we are giving him exactly what he wants.”

Continue reading →

July 22, 2012 phjackson Leave a response , , ,

Can we discuss Tucson in a way that lets us learn?

originally published on Crosscut.com on January 11, 2011

Beyond the raw horror of Rep. Giffords’ attempted assassination, it will shape thinking for years to come.

The raw horror of Saturday’s shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords has already become shorthand. It stings, and Arizona’s lax gun laws may partly be to blame, concludes the New York Times. It stings, and this is what you get when you incite the lesser angels, argue Democrats and Republicans alike.

“We all know that there are unstable and potentially dangerous people among us,” writes former Sen. Gary Hart. “To repeatedly appeal to their basest instincts is to invite and welcome their predictable violence.”

Hart is spot on, but a gut check is needed to divine the exploiters. In determining whether facts are cited authentically, historians employ the “drunk leaning on a lamppost” test: Is the light getting used for support or for illumination? Both?

The Tucson tragedy will insinuate itself in the collective memory of a new generation. Younger citizens, those recharged by the 2008 Obama campaign, may now think twice about a career in public service. Or perhaps they’ll feel more emboldened to give back.

Generation Xers replay the clouded image of President Ford wincing at the echo of Sara Jane Moore’s missed gunshot or John Hinckley Jr.’s rampage outside the Washington Hilton Hotel that nearly killed President Reagan. Both were senseless acts, however uncrowded by politics. All the while, we knew about the age of political assassinations that extended from President Kennedy to Martin Luther King, Jr. to the unsolved Shoreline murder of the Urban League’s Edwin Pratt. Politics as a career? A mostly honorable but dangerous profession, we Xers thought.

In the Pacific Northwest the coarsening of political speech, and what flows from it, is no abstraction. This winter my Seattle commuter bus will not be adorned with an “Israeli War Crimes” banner. That’s because last month King County Executive Dow Constantine put the kibosh on an ad blitz underwritten by the Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign. Yes, it was a retroactive decision that felt heavy-handed. Yes, given the potential for escalating divisions and anti-Semitic backlash, I’m grateful. It would have defined political-hate speech down and made it normative. It might have (with a double emphasis on “might”) invited the violence of someone unstable.

So I’ll use Saturday’s raw horror as shorthand. I hope it’s more for illumination than support.

January 11, 2011 phjackson Leave a response , , ,

Gun crazy

originally published on Crosscut.com on November 30, 2009

Gun violence is a hallmark of the American West. It’s as if bloodletting by firearm is hard-wired, as natural as breathing.

Sunday’s execution-style murders of four Lakewood police officers at the Forza coffee shop in unincorporated Pierce County echoed the horror of the Oct. 31 slaying of Seattle police officer Timothy Brenton. How do we make sense of the senseless? As Elie Wiesel wrote years ago, “Words, they die on our lips.”

A tragedy this grave and unspeakable will spur recrimination. Should Washington state extend sentences for all violent offenders? The answer may be existential. Human nature is base and inscrutable. We’re as likely to mitigate violence as remedy the seven deadly sins.

For Western lawmakers, gun control is the third rail. Still. Even liberal icons such as Idaho’s late, great Frank Church knew better than to savage the National Rifle Association. A couple years ago, I referred to this as the Northwest thread in the political fabric — Big Government Libertarianism. West Coast politicians harmonize the value of New Deal-era government intervention with the Northwestern value of libertarian hands-off-ness.

These same lawmakers, however, would be horrified by the mad injustice that unfolded in a Lakewood coffee shop on Sunday.

The debate over gun violence brings out the worst in us. Years ago historian Richard Hofstadter referred to the “Paranoid Style in American Politics.” As Hofstadter understated in 1964, “American politics has often been an arena for angry minds.” (For years I presupposed the gun debate hinged on the West’s urban-rural divide. It doesn’t quite factor, however, in light of the scholarship of Stanford’s Richard White and others who’ve documented the West’s primarily urban character).

The latest nudge at gun control is Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels’s proposed gun ban in city parks and community centers. The mayor has a point. Could there be a compelling reason to pack heat at a neighborhood park? Roaming packs of berserking 5-year-olds? Revenge upon that Czech immigrant who tries to castle twice at chess?

The Nickels initiative triggered a response from Snohomish County Councilmember John Koster who will, according to the Everett Herald, propose an ordinance to lift the firearm ban in Shohomish County parks. “The code is in conflict with state law,” Koster is quoted as saying.

Nickels and Koster are principled public servants. They’re also strategic thinkers, and the current battle serves as a proxy war for gun rights.

Legally speaking, Councilman Koster is likely right and Mayor Nickels is likely wrong. A gun ban contravenes state law. An extended legal fight won’t benefit anyone except, perhaps, the attorneys involved.

All the while, both lawmakers owe the public a “yes, and” pledge: Yes, I’ll pursue this gun-control question AND I propose the following: For example, develop programs in restorative justice to help young offenders make personal amends; enhance neighborhood watch programs; increase access to crime data; no parole for violent convicts; hire more street cops; and invest in gang-crime prevention programs with proven outcomes. The list, of course, goes on.

The Northwest’s epidemic of gun violence demands more than grandstanding or symbolism. It can’t go unchallenged. What, then, will actually work and who, over the long term, will benefit?

November 30, 2009 phjackson Leave a response , , ,