Thousands of people across the country have poured into the streets -- from New York to Sanford, Florida -- to demand justice for Trayvon Martin. Hundreds of thousands more stepped up to protest online. In response to the public outcry, the Sanford chief of police has temporarily stepped down and the state prosecutor has stepped aside. But nearly one month after 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was stopped, stalked, shot and killed while walking home from a convenience store, armed only with a bag of Skittles and a can of iced tea, his killer, George Zimmerman, has not been arrested. Today, the Children’s Defense Fund released its new report, Protect Children, Not Guns 2012, dedicated to the memory of Trayvon Martin and the thousands of children and teenagers killed by guns in America, including the 5,740 children killed in 2008 and 2009 according to the latest data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Where is the outrage over every single one of the thousands of children and teens killed by guns -- too many by gun slinging Americans unrestrained by common sense gun control laws. Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, also known as the “shoot first, ask questions later” law, is now under national scrutiny. But will it and others be changed to protect children rather than gun owners and sellers?
April 16 marks the fifth anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre where 32 students and faculty were killed by a gun, 25 others were injured, and many more were traumatized. Each year since then has seen gun victims -- young children, teenagers, young adults, a member of Congress, a federal judge and many more. Days, weeks, months and years go by and little or nothing -- except fleeting headlines, tears, trauma and talk -- is done to protect children instead of guns.
By any standards of human and moral decency, children in America are under assault, and by international standards, America remains the unchallenged world leader in children and teen gun deaths.
Analysis of the most recent data from 23 high-income countries reported that 87 percent of all firearm deaths of children under 15 were in the United States. The rate of U.S. gun homicides for teens and young adults 15 to 24 was 42.7 times higher than the overall gun homicide rate for that same age group in the other countries.
Why are common-sense gun regulations so shockingly absent in our country? Even in the wake of the Tucson tragedy and the near-fatal shooting of one of their own, Congress failed to act. Calls for banning high-volume ammunition clips and tightening up the federal background check system were ignored. Our leaders once again capitulated to the powerful gun lobby over the rights of children and citizens to life and safety. In November 2011, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act. If a similar bill is passed by the Senate and becomes law, a person with a permit to carry a concealed handgun in one state -- a person like George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida -- could carry that concealed weapon in another state even if it was against the second state’s law. Proponents of such dangerous laws maintain the fiction that guns promote personal safety. It is long past time to acknowledge gun violence as a hugely serious threat to children, teens, and overall public health and safety.
Our leaders in Washington, D.C. are not alone in refusing to make America safer. Forty-two states have adopted preemption laws to ensure state legislatures control of gun policy, impeding the ability of cities to develop local solutions to gun violence in their own communities. In 2011, Kansas, Mississippi and Utah enacted laws allowing concealed weapon permit holders to carry loaded, concealed firearms in or on the grounds of elementary and secondary schools. With all eyes on Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, few noticed a law passed last year that, if upheld, threatens loss of a medical license for doctors who ask patients about whether a gun is in the home although it is not at all unusual or inappropriate for pediatricians particularly to ask patients and parents of patients about possible safety hazards in the home including guns.
We have so much work to do to build safe communities for our children. We need leaders at all levels of government who will protect children over guns. We need a relentless, powerful citizens’ voice to break the gun lobby’s veto on common sense gun policy. Our laws must control who can obtain firearms and close the gun show loophole, require consumer safety standards and childproof safety features for all guns, and strengthen child access prevention laws that ensure guns in the home are stored safely and securely. And all must take action and ask political candidates this fall what steps they will take to protect children from guns. We must remove guns from our homes where children so often find them and put themselves and others in harm’s way and combat cultural glorification of guns and violence. As a nation, we must aspire and act to become the world leader in protecting children against guns rather than leading the world in child victims of guns. Every child’s life is sacred and it is long past time that we protect it.
Follow Marian Wright Edelman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ChildDefender
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Would you deny other Bill of Rights because innocent die from it, like a serial killer gets released because the cops violated their Miranda rights? It's always the ACLU and progressives that shout out " that's the price of freedom" when it comes to our other rights. Many in lawenforcement will tell you without those Bill of Rights they can sure reduce crime significantly. Are you for denying other Bill of Rigths to reduce murder?
More grief from gun slingers than concern over the dead, innocent or no, man, woman, or child.
There is light at the end of the tunnel, however.
One of the sites I visited mentions that most deaths occur to other gun toters.
If it's a regular thing, they will cycle themselves out over the next half century.
Maybe we can just bury their guns with them, eh?
What does Stand Your Ground have to do with the thousands of lives of "children and teens" lost? How many had to do with such a law? How many had to do with people legally carrying in a school zone? I would be surprised if the number was more than about 2 or 3, NATIONWIDE.
How would changing laws about licensed people carrying around school zones affect the problems the article mentions?
In 2008 and 2009, TOTAL, for CHILDREN (meaning under 18), the number of legal interventions was 11.
Yep, 11. And that includes legal interventions by police or where a duty to retreat would not have been a factor.
Really? I know this pi s se s people off, but it it does put things in perspective.
Over 800,000 abortions every year since 1998.
I'm pro-choice so save your diatribes.
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6001a1.htm?s_cid=ss6001a1_w
It is a favorite Russian copy of a "tommy gun"...a .45 shell, lead, fat, rips flesh.
Miserable thing to fight with. No accuracy to speak of, but, lay out a burst in the general direction.
M-16, small, hard head shell. Flies "neat" and spinning.(if the person takes care of their weapon) however, the M-16 is NOT for sale on the open market at all.
Missy Sarah sports the AR-15 (semi automatic, I think) and the closest most civilians will get to a 16. I have no idea as i have never shot the 15...but the M-16 almost makes a person think they are shooting a toy.
Lacks the kick, which works to the advantage of the infantryman. He can lay out a 3 shot set quickly and accurately. My own personal choices?
mini gun. 3000-6000 rounds per minute, short bursts if you don't have the cooling system. Will clear trees. (also illegal)
Break away side by side. for scrounging packs of wild dogs.
Melt the handguns down, make statues or tools or ANYTHING except another handgun.
END the sales of new handguns.
Also End this insane bit of law about "standing ground"?!
What the heck is THAT!? A LAW that says ANYBODY can TRACK AND KILL innocent people because they aren't known?
OUTRAGEOUS!
Boy oh boy, I don't think I could write a blog post like that...without cursing the ground gun toters walk on and destroy.
now, Heller...If we're looking for a "professional" why not go to some folk with experience?
What did James Earl Ray think of guns?
Lee Harvey Oswald?
Charles Whitman?
Oh...that isn't fair.
Tell you what...how about we ask Dr. Martin Luther King, jr.?
John Kennedy?
of course, we CAN'T ask them, or the 16 dead (32 wounded) by the Marine Corp Engineer, Whitman.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman) (Interesting read, this, as it brings up a subject FEW gun slingers care to even TRY to answer to. They RUN from it, actually)
But, we can all of us buy alcohol, even though there had been an amendment banning such. Where I WANT to go is a land where I can live without fear of being shot by some mad man with a gun.
Sadly, that perception is becoming more and more valid.
I would much prefer to live in a society with much stronger gun control laws.
The only thing that NEEDS changed isn't Heller.
It's Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, and ...well. The only thing that needs to change is a lot.
Have to stop the NRA from buying government
Have to change laws so NOBODY can buy the government...and then when the rats abandon the sinking ship, no more double dipping monies, then lots more can be done for the rights of innocent people for a change.
Fight in your state to make the change you wish to see. You live in your state. You however do not live in all fifty states and if the citizens of those other 49 states do not agree with your opinion then that is their legislative right as a soverign State within these United States of America.
The whole point of State governments is to make legislation in matters not essential to the survival and welfare of the States, and have more to do with direct influence on the actual people. Gun control does not effect the general welfare of the United States, and has more to do with the general welfare of the people within those States, thus making them State laws.
We have all sorts of laws trying to keep drugs away from people too . . .
How's that worked out?
Sadder still that those who do so expand the meaning of "children" to include people in their twneties, all in an attempt to justify violating the clear intent of the Second Amendment.
Outrageous when those who would disarm the law-abiding citizen dip their hands in the blood of the innocent and attempt to smear it on those who defend our rights, those who spend the most time teaching safety, those who do the most to keep guns out of the hands of those who have no legal right of have a firearm.
We need more gun control laws. We allow the government to control the manufacture and distribution of drugs, man-made chemicals designed to have a specific effect on the human body, so why do we not allow the government to exert control over machines that cause such destruction to the human body? Gun owners should have to be screened and all of their weapons registered. Gun owners need to be held accountable for the actions of those who use their weapons.
"Gun owners should have to be screened and all of their weapons registered." We already get screened-it's called the national background check.And registration does not stop crime.There's a reason why Canada halted their registration fraud.
"Gun owners need to be held accountable for the actions of those who use their weapons." Now that sounds like punishing those who do not commit any crimes.Did you mean holding the criminal accountable,or all gun owners?
It is NOT the children being used here.
It's people with guns that have no social morality to speak of.
It's the r4eadiness of people to pull out a pistol to accentuate their "rights"
It's about people (and I use THAT term lightly) who hunt down KIDS of different races to shoot them down as they grovel in the street for their lives.
You .......
Semper fi
However, her idea was that there is more of an outcry in FAVOR of GUNS than in favor of INNOCENT LIVES lost to guns.
So, however you THINK she distorted it, you are wrong.
Just look at a few pages of comments and see...
Children and innocent people mean nothing. EVEN LESS because they didn't buy a gun.
But oh my god, that one and a half pound of steel in your paws...oh baby baby baby...
THAT'S what the gun club wants to preserve.
power.
loud noise.
death.
Andrew Jackson; most badass, British hating, war hero, backwoods, country, tall haired President ever.