Shooting Deaths of Children Rose for Second Straight Year
I'm deeply disturbed that after a decade of decline, the number of firearm deaths among children and youths has increased for the second year in a row. Our 2009 "Protect Children, Not Guns" report released in September reveals that almost nine children and teens die from gunfire every day--one child death every two hours and 45 minutes. The report, based on the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), states that 3,184 children and teens died from gunfire in 2006, a six percent increase over 2005, a total of 17,451 were victims of non-fatal firearms injuries, a seven percent increase from the previous year. When people from other industrialized democracies learn of America's child gunshot death rates, they're equally troubled.
A major reason for these tragic young deaths is the prevalence and proliferation of guns. Americans possess more than 270 million privately owned firearms--the equivalent of nine guns for every 10 men, women and children. The United States is one of the few industrialized countries without common sense controls on gun sales. We regulate toy guns but not the real ones that snuff out tens of thousands of human lives every year.
Among the young people killed by firearms, 2,225 were homicide victims, 763 committed suicide and 196 died in accidental or undetermined circumstances. The overwhelming majority, nearly 90 percent, were boys. More preschoolers--63--were killed by firearms than law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty--48. The death toll among Black children is growing at an alarming rate. Black males ages 15 to 19 are almost five times as likely as their White peers and more than twice as likely as their Hispanic peers to be killed by a firearm.
The destructive impact of firearms affects all of us by increasing health care costs, overtaxing social services and decreasing national productivity. And the deaths from guns are causing widespread emotional instability and traumatizing survivors, leaving families and communities in distress. Gun violence is so pervasive in some Black communities that it constitutes a serious health risk. It's come to the point where many of the cases of post-traumatic stress disorder in Black neighborhoods are not only of veterans returning from war zones but also include children whose goals are merely to walk to the corner store in safety. Too many of them speak of the future in terms of "If I grow up" instead of "When I grow up."
John C. Raphael Jr., pastor of a Baptist church in New Orleans' Central City neighborhood, says for every murder of a young man, he sees two potential killings that may follow. Street associates of the victim may exact revenge on the presumed killer, or they may kill a friend of the victim who witnessed the murder even if he didn't talk to police. He explains that many young people have become numb to the killings that occur around them and accept them as normal.
We need stronger federal legislation to protect our children from gun violence. But, regrettably, in many of the states and at the national level it's an uphill fight to control firearm trafficking. Thirty-two states have no laws requiring sellers of firearms at gun shows to first conduct background checks on all buyers. This gun show loophole has been used to evade laws designed to make it harder for guns to get into the hands of children, criminals and the mentally unbalanced.
Gun shows are a huge market for the sale of guns by vendors with or without federal firearms licenses. Ten years ago, the two teen-aged shooters who killed 12 fellow students and a teacher at Columbine High School near Littleton, Colorado, in April 1999 got part of their arsenal illegally through a gun show. Congress must pass legislation to close the gun show loophole and strengthen provisions of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act requiring a National Instant Criminal Background Check System.
There is strong evidence that background checks can be effective. Between 1994 and 2007, background checks performed by federal firearms licensees resulted in denying guns to more than 1.6 million illegal buyers. It is also imperative that the federal assault weapons ban be reinstituted. According to the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, the ban reduced the incidence of assault weapons use in crimes by 66 percent between 1995 and 2001.
But the responsibility to keep our children safe cannot rest solely with our political leaders. There are things individuals and families can do, such as remove guns from homes, mobilize community support to protect children from gun violence, stress nonviolent values and conflict resolution, refuse to buy or use products for children and teens that glamorize violence, and provide children and teens positive alternatives to the streets where they can feel safe and protected.
We must hold our legislators accountable to implement these common sense gun safety measures. What's at stake is the safety of our children and communities, which are increasingly at risk.
Follow Marian Wright Edelman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ChildDefender
Jan Egeland: An Arms Trade Treaty Is Necessary and Possible
Governments are meeting this month in to discuss a crucial treaty that could save thousands of lives. Negotiators will tell us that it can't be done, that we have to live with automatic guns and other weapons of mass misery.
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here a novel idea, enforce the laws that have already been written
Thanks to the, well, dogged post-ers who follow me from thread to thread. You never disappoint. Here's a quotation relevant to the strategies some of you are following in what you feel are arguments -- I'm hearing the futility argument quite a bit here, today. It's from the same source as I cited below.
"In his 1991 book The Rhetoric of Reaction, Albert O. Hirschman identified three arguments that are commonly mustered against proposed "progressive" reforms.FN One argument contends that the proposed reform will have results exactly the opposite of those intended by the reform's proponents; the second is that the reform will have no effect at all; and the third is that the reform will come at the cost of degrading fundamental rights or values-freedom itself, for instance.FN The labels for these three arguments form the subtitle of Hirschman’s book: "Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy."FN"
19 posts on this blog this evening. 2 for you and 1 for me. All the rest, 16 from the pro-gun, no controls group harrassing you. It is shame to leave the blogs when a good witer posts something worthy. But I think we ought to let the pro-gun group talk to themselves. There is nothing we can do about them. Nothing.
Peace,
DW
what you meant to say is that you are "outgunned" on this subject and need to leave for more "feel good" sections of huffpo.....
Being pro-choice on gun ownership and being "no controls" are not the same.
I believe that mentally competent adults with clean records should continue to have the choice to purchase, own, and use non-automatic, non-sound-suppressed firearms under .51 caliber (plus shotguns) that meet the existing criteria for civilian (NFA Title 1) small arms under the National Firearms Act. I am OK with background checks for purchase, the prohibition on possession by violent criminals, the requirement of a non-arbitrary license in order to carry a concealed firearm, and the existing Federal controls on armor-piercing ammunition.
That is a LONG way from "no controls."
The only reason there are so many more people here who disagree with you is because that's how it is everywhere. Gun banners are the minority in America. Live with it
SL,
You mean the same worthless, blind hole source you cited over on the 'Mark Sherman-Chicago Handgun Ban’ thread?
For the readers here, going through the provided link, all you will get is a tiny excerpt that proves nothing! An internet search gains you nothing unless you want to purchase a book on-line.
As I indicated over on the other thread, your tactics really help your credibility!
Old SF MJT
SL: I commented last night adding to your information about the playbook used by those who go against progressives, essentially those who cannot fathom independent thinking. I was obviously too critical of the tender sensibilities of the pro-gun group because my post didn't get posted. More on that later. You remain an excellent resource, as are many writers who post at HuffPost but don't get nearly the attention they deserve because of right wing bullies on the threads.
I hope there will be marked improvement soon.
Peace,
DW
Hey, DW,
Thanks and great posts. In an opposite way from the enthusiasts, YOU never disappoint -- you always provide good points, acute thinking, and some great lines.
I don't know, though if I get the, uh, ATTENTION of the acolytes as much as you do; I may have to concede that honor to you. They seem to get more personal when they charge after you. I'm sure they'll work to balance things out.
But as I've said many a time, the day hasn't come that insults from gun proponents matter to me. In a tiny, tiny way, it's affirming to have my predictions confirmed with such clock-like regularity but that's about it. Occasionally I've seen an interesting insult -- got a really nuanced one about a sock the other day -- but otherwise their level of insult is generally about the same level as their logic and their supposed facts.
DW--if it is a "progressive value" to violate the rights of others, that tells me that progressives have a major problem. SInce self defense is a fundamental right-so is being armed (to help ensure self defense is effective--and I acknowledge it will never be 1005 effective--just more so than a disarmed populace)
Usurping the rights of others to forward your own agenda is not at all progressive, as you and many like you, pretend.
Quite the contrary. Stripping the rights of others for your own perceived advancement, or self-importance, is simply tyranny in a very basic form.
You masquerade your ideas as "progressive" for the sole purpose of making them more palatable to the public. You wish to be percieved as forward thinking, yet at the end of the day, your agenda to control others is little different than the agendas of those who supported slavery...more closely defined as reversion than progression.
Thank you for your eloquent and well-supported article, Ms. Edelman. The statistics are horrifying and I need no more than them to be for all common sense gun control. If some disease were killing kids like this, the whole country would be trying to cure it...
I want much more gun control than you do, but I support all the initiatives you mention. However, I see responses here raising one of my least favorite counterarguments.
"The rhetoric that is arrayed against gun controls is formidable but does not stand up to dispassionate analysis. Purveyors of the perversity or futility arguments tend to rely, implicitly or explicitly, on the following syllogism: Gun regulations apply only to the formal gun market; criminals get their guns through informal channels; therefore, regulations cannot influence the availability of guns to criminals.(FN) This logic, however, is faulty; the conclusion does not follow from the premises. Even regulations that do not apply to the informal market may nevertheless influence the informal market, and hence alter the availability of guns to criminals. Furthermore, the first premise is flawed. Some steps can be taken to disrupt the informal market directly. "
"Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy": An Economic Analysis of the Attack on Gun Control
Author(s): Philip J. Cook and James A. Leitzel
Source: Law and Contemporary Problems, Vol. 59, No. 1, Kids, Guns, and Public Policy
(Winter, 1996), pp. 91-118
Published by: Duke University School of Law
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1192211
Passing laws that criminals will not obey is an exercise in futility; and it is unconsionable to disarm the lawabiding while the criminals are well armed--SL, your ignorance of the BOR is astounding.
"John C. Raphael Jr., pastor of a Baptist church in New Orleans' Central City neighborhood, says for every murder of a young man, he sees two potential killings that may follow. Street associates of the victim may exact revenge on the presumed killer, or they may kill a friend of the victim who witnessed the murder even if he didn't talk to police."
And we are supposed to believe these hardened killers would be concerned about violating gun laws?
Anyway, it's time to end your grossly misleading policy of lumping everyone age 1-19 into a single catagory of "children and teens killed by guns". A 19-year old gang member who dies in a shootout with the police due to his involvement in a robbery does not belong in the same catagory as a 4-year old murder victim.
Effective laws, ROTFLMFAO!
Since 1994, there have been 87.17 million checks which resulted in 1.45 million valid rejections of the mentally unstable and felons. Right at 58% of the rejections were known felons (933,000) but the trend is also changing as from 1994 to 2007, there has been a 68% reduction in the number of felons attempting to buy from a legal source, remember this point, the Brady Background check only focuses on controlling purchases from a legal source.
Why is the reduction if the number of felons attempting to buy from a legal source important? The USDOJ, a world recognized survey and data collection agency performed a survey in 1997 of felons and where they acquired their firearms. The results were, 80% street buys, 12% retail stores, 2% gun shows or only 14% at legal sources. If there has been a 68% reduction since 1994, that roughly translates to 68% multiplied against the 14% legal source = a 9.52% increase in purchases from the street or roughly 90%.
Did we forget to mention the effectiveness of the Brady Background Check is also reported on? Since 1999-2007, the report shows that only 9,470 of those 1.45 million rejections were prosecuted. Wow, the poster child of gun control laws is only enforced at .65% (less than 1%) of the time AND DOESNT PREVENT STREET BUYS. Unfortunately for the anti’s, there are over 1.44 million potential answers to that question!
Same things could be said for booze, and prescription drugs, Fact is that unless we live in a total police state the flow of contraband will never be completely under control.
"There is strong evidence that background checks can be effective. Between 1994 and 2007, background checks performed by federal firearms licensees resulted in denying guns to more than 1.6 million illegal buyers. "
And yet the gun control forces refuse to prosecute the people who get caught illegally trying to buy firearms.
How and about gun shows, did you know that at one time, most the the firearm vendors at gun shows were FFL holders?
Did you also know that FFL holders have to do background checks regardless of where they sell, be it store front, kitchen table, or gun show?
Did you know that the gun control special interest lobby successfully lobbied Congress into making it harder and more expensive to get an FFL and as a result, most of the vendors at gun shows allowed their FFLs to lapse?
Looks like "common sense" gun control backfired pretty badly.
Actually, I think their "common sense" gun control did exactly what they wanted.
They don't really want background checks on all gun sales. They want to stop as many gun sales as possible. That's why they made it harder and more expensive to get an FFL. And that's also why they are trying to close the "gun show loophole". To decrease the number of people who can legally sell guns. Their end goal is a situation much like Mexico where there is only one gun store in the entire country and it's run by the government.
"Our 2009 "Protect Children, Not Guns" report released in September reveals that almost nine children and teens die from gunfire every day"
Hmmm... 9*365=3285
Year 2006, age 0 thru 17 = 1593 (Source: Centers for Disease Control)
You have to include 18 and 19 year old adult "teens" to get to 3218 (not the 3,184 stated in the article).
"A major reason for these tragic young deaths is the prevalence and proliferation of guns."
No, not really. The major reasons are economics, education, and ethics.
"The United States is one of the few industrialized countries without common sense controls on gun sales."
There is that famous euphemism again, "common sense".
Ms Edelman.
There are background checks required for every new and used gun bought in a store in EVERY state. CO's gun show loophole was closed years ago.
How about we ban crack moms who 'raise' their kids on TV. I'll admit guns make killing a little easier and less messy than a turkey knife or a brick, but lets think why kids are killing each other. The gunmobile doesn't come by and shows these kids how cool guns and killing are, instead music, TV, and games do this. When have you ever heard or seen a gun commercial on TV or radio? How many times have you seen 'Grand Theft Auto' for sale on TV shows aimed at young teens (who arent old enough to purchase the game)?
The kids are getting pregnant at a fast rate and earlier age? What do we ban for that.
Instead of banning a symptom of a much larger problem lets look at why kids kill each other not how, the poor teen that was killed recently in Chicago could have been shot, but those folks decided to beat him to death, should be ban hard soled shoes next? No, lets crack down on worthless parents.
Yes, Ms. Edelman, go on.
Ignore the 5000 pound gorilla in the room, to the demise of all these youths.
Blaming guns for the behavior of young black urban men will not solve any of our problems. You know it, and I know it, the electorate knows it, and the legislature and the judiciary knows it.
If you don't change your tune and begin to tackle relevant problems, you shall become as irrelevant as Jesse Jackson.
or as irrelevent as Helmke, Henigan and Sugarmann
Rifles (all types combined) accounted for 3.0% of murders in 2007, and 2.6% in 2008. Out of 14,180 total murders, all styles of rifles combined were used in 375, down from 450 in 2007.
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/data/table_20.html
This despite the fact that more Americans now lawfully own "assault weapons," as defined by H.R.1022 et seq, than hunt.
BTW, the 1994 Feinstein law did not, in fact, ban any guns. It banned the marketing of new civilian guns under any of 19 banned names, and required new civilian AK's, AR-15 type rifles, etc. to have nonadjustable stocks and smooth muzzles. It did not ban them, and in fact sharply increased sales, such that by 2004 "assault weapons" had become the most popular civilian target rifles in the United States. Nor did it restrict AR/AK magazine capacity/availability/price, though it did raise the price of magazines for many popular civilian pistols.
It did ban guns. an AK-47 means a huge number or gun types. It also DIRECTLY restricted AR/AK magazine capacity (10 rounds maximum), and in fact the guns themselves as they had to be modified to be legal in CA.
No, the 1994 Feinstein law most assuredly did *not* ban any guns, including civilian AK derivatives. I own one, a 2002-model Romanian SAR-1 that I purchased new in 2003 (yes, during the Feinstein era), which I shoot competitively (IPSC/USPSA) and recreationally. Here it is in its original 2002 ban-era configuration:
http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/forums/uploads/1132600920/gallery_260_23_74799.jpg
Circled areas show how the ban-era carbine differs from a pre-1994 or post-2004 civilian AK. As you can see, this carbine has a smooth muzzle and gas block in order to comply with the Feinstein law. It would not have been legal to market this carbine under the banned name "AK-47" between 1994 and 2004, but that would have been somewhat misleading anyway as true AK-47s are restricted Title 2 weapons and always have been.
The 30-round magazine in the photo is also a ban-era import, imported circa 2002 in full compliance with the Feinstein law and purchased for $9.99 in 2003.
You appear to be confusing the Federal Feinstein law with California's Roberti-Roos law. The California law did actually ban the new manufacture/importation of some guns in California, and restricted the importation and transfer of new full-capacity magazines. The Federal non-ban did not, and far more civilian AK's and AR-15 type rifles were sold between 1994 and 2004 than in the previous three decades combined.
"According to the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, the ban reduced the incidence of assault weapons use in crimes by 66 percent between 1995 and 2001."
What the Brady Campaign doesn't tell you is that according to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports, the so-called "assault weapons" only constituted for approx. 3% of homicides after the ban's sunset. So is banning the most used and least abused firearms really worth a +/- 1% change in our murder rate? I don't think so.
Out of those "almost nine children and teens [who] die from gunfire every day", how many of them are adolescent gang bangers? How many were killed while committing a crime?
I ask because whenever the "it's for the children" line is trotted out in support of stricter gun control, "children" often includes 16-19 year old delinquents, who willingly engage in risky and/or criminal behavior.
I come to this line in your article and realize that i'm probably right: " Black males ages 15 to 19 are almost five times as likely..."
Did you also know that ages 14-25 are the peak ages for criminal activity? Did you know that living in urban areas provides more opportunities for crime (more offices, shops, houses, cars, etc)? Did you know that being a child in a working class home also makes you more likely to engage in criminal behavior? Sadly, all three of those criteria encompass a large number of black male youth. Naturally, black 15-19 males will be more likely to be killed by a firearm, because they are more likely to be engaged in criminal behavior.
If the death of Derrion Albert teaches us anything, it's that even in the presence of draconian gun laws, misguided youth will still find a way to commit violence. So instead of attacking the tools violent people use by adding to our 20,000 already existing federal firearms laws, why not work to address the causes of violence?
Ms Edelman--since approximately 3000 of the deaths are murder or suicide--it certainly looks like it is CRIME that is the problem--the demographics you listed indicates that most of the people murdered were involved or affiliated with criminal activity (either gangs or drugs)--which tells me that the best way of dealing with that problem is dealing with the crime (since to legally purchase handguns, the person needs to be 21), and in terms of the suicides, gun control has proven to be totally unrelated
Our schools are suffering. Our kids are bombarded by a one-two punch of relentless marketing and poor nutrition, not to mention a dearth of role models with decent impulse control. Don't blame the NRA for this one - our collective malaise allowed this to happen.
We need better schools, better food, better parenting skills, improved education standards, and a strong job market - and that's just for starters. We have to realign the way we see ourselves as well as the world around us. We're not consumers, we're citizens. Part of the problem with America today is that there's not enough Americans who act like citizens, but we can do something to change that.
I'm not trying to go all Lykurgos on the public or anything, but I do believe our nation needs to take a very long look at its society, culture, lifestyle, etc. and see if we really like what we see. There's always room for improvement. In order to make America better for our children, we have to become better Americans ourselves.
And trotting out the discredited notion that our Second Amendment rights are expendable is not the way to achieve this goal.
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