Today and Next Week RE. Gun Violence
Last edited Sat Mar 23, 2013, 07:45 PM - Edit history (3)
As we head into this coming week. Whether Easter and Passover are special to you or not, there is a LOT going on...
This original post has become a list, in no particular order. I hope it makes gun control advocates feel better. Especially if you were disappointed in the Assault Weapons Ban legislation this past week.
Obama in Jerusalem
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Has anyone been listening to the NPR series on guns?
http://www.npr.org/series/174736481/guns-in-america-a-loaded-relationship
I heard this segment while driving around yesterday:
http://www.npr.org/2013/03/22/175072456/state-laws-govern-gun-purchases-very-differently-across-the-country
Melissa Block talks to Daniel Webster, director of the John Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, about the wide variation in gun laws from state to state, and how those laws correspond to gun violence.
DANIEL WEBSTER: "In Virginia, if you want to purchase a gun, you can either choose to go into a licensed gun dealer, pick out whatever you want, a quick background check. You know, you're in and out of there 20, 30 minutes with no problem. In New Jersey, for example, it would be very different. Your first step is you'd have to go and apply for a license at a local law enforcement agency. They would fingerprint you, photograph you. They would have up to 30 days to complete a very thorough background check, and then you would make your way to a licensed gun dealer. And then, of course, private sales are very different in those two comparisons as well. In Virginia, if I happen to know someone, maybe I met him online, maybe I saw him in a gun show, as long as I had the cash, I can pretty much make that exchange. No background check, no records, no regulation whatsoever. New Jersey, private transactions, you have to first verify that the person has a valid handgun purchase license." (more at link)
More articles in the series at link:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/03/20/174750864/how-a-patients-suicide-changed-a-doctors-approach-to-guns
= new reply since forum marked as read
Last edited Sat Mar 23, 2013, 06:59 PM - Edit history (2)
http://www.demandaction.org/march28?akid=449.145224.DtdIhc&rd=1&t=2
On March 28th, supporters across the country are joining a National Day to Demand Action to end gun violence. Get involved right now by committing to call your Senators. Here's how it works:
Complete the form to the right, including the time you want to make your call.
You'll receive a text message reminder on the 28th with a number to call.
You'll dial the toll-free number in the text message and hear some simple instructions and talking points before being connected to your Senators.
An overwhelming majority of Americans support reform, but to make sure that reform is meaningful we need Congress to pass the strongest possible legislation.
Commit to making a call on March 28th and tell your Senators you Demand Action.
This just in --March 22:
"It will have significance in the fact that it's a city doing it, not a state or a federal agency," said Tim Burgess, the Seattle City Council member who has led the subcommittee promoting the cause. "It's our statement against what Congress has prohibited for 17 or 18 years now. Shame on them for that."
"One of the big needs right now is that there's still a lack of data on the problems of gun violence," said Dr. Frederick Rivara, a professor of pediatrics and a researcher at Harborview Injury Prevention and Research Center at the University of Washington School of Medicine.
SEATTLE
Watch Gun Violence Reduction Town Hall Discussion with Michael Moore live Sat Mar 23, 2013 8:45pm EDT
In contrast:
Thousands protest NY SAFE Act in Albany
On Monday, March 25 at 10:30 am Eastern, more than 20 Episcopal bishops from throughout the church will lead hundreds of clergy and lay people in praying the Stations of the Cross in Washington, DC, as they process along Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House to the U. S. Capitol to challenge violence, especially the epidemic of gun violence that claims so many thousands of American lives each year.
The service will begin outside St. John’s Episcopal Church, Lafayette Square, http://www.stjohns-dc.org/ at the corner of 16th and H Streets, Northwest, across from the White House, and conclude on the west lawn of the U. S. Capitol some two and a half hours later.
The specially written Stations of the Cross, focusing on the tragedy of gun violence, are available here https://www.ctepiscopal.org/Content/Holy_Week_Witness_Liturgy.asp for personal use, and can be adapted for use in local contexts.
Artists Against Gun Violence Flash Mob
Artists Against Gun Violence is gathering the Chicago arts community together for a flash mob to raise awareness and call attention to the impact of gun violence and the dire need for action. Hundreds of Chicago artists will gather at Daley Plaza on Sunday, March 24, 2013 from 10AM-12:30PM. You must sign-up on the Eventbrite page to participate in the Artist Against Gun Violence Flash Mob. Please Click Here to sign-up. Everyone will meet at Ballet Chicago at 10AM on 17 N. State Street. At noon the group will head over to Daley Plaza together. Everyone should meet under the Picasso at Daley Plaza by noon.
This Flash Mob will definitely be moving, though provoking, and perhaps even a little shocking. The Artists Against Gun Violence plan to leave their mark… literally. At a specific moment all performers will freeze their hands in the air slowly melting to the floor in a lifeless position. Then participants will trace an outline of their bodies with chalk and write a word or statistic inside the form such as GUN, KATE, age 6; ENOUGH, 30,000 a year. The result-a visceral, expressionistic, literary reminder of countless lives lost.
Every year, more than 30,000 Americans are killed as a result of gun violence. Artists against Gun Violence is using artistic expression as a means of expanding society’s understanding of the true impact of gun violence and the need to take action to make our communities safer.
http://nowyouknowevents.com/ai1ec_event/artists-against-gun-violence-flash-mob/?instance_id=
http://creativekidsagainstgunviolence.com/
oh well. Maybe some people will appreciate the links. 
thanks
Even though I'm not a churchgoer I'm glad to see a LOT of the churches are talking about this for a change. VERY encouraging!
Hoping DUers who are church members are working to get the dialogue going in their church.
Support Obama's Initiatives, so well thought out. He is trying:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/16/read-obamas-plan-to-reduce-gun-violence/
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Yeah I'm angry right now too. But I know we cannot let up, can't put up with this any longer. It is killing us all in so many ways.
after the movie Bowling for Columbine. I saw the movie way back so wonder what he's going to say that's new...
http://new.livestream.com/ARTNOTWAR/reducinggunviolence/images/14302437
Maybe I will comment to myself on it 
yep...
Map of gun deaths
2,243 DEAD
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ March 23, 2013
Previously posted by WillyT: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022556432
NRA chief says Bloomberg can't 'buy America' amid $12M gun control ad blitz
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/03/24/bloomberg-mayor-group-tout-big-gun-control-push/#ixzz2OToTm4nV
From the article:
Amid these hurdles, Bloomberg announced the ad buy Saturday. He said they were meant to bring the "voices of Americans -- who overwhelmingly support comprehensive and enforceable background checks -- into the discussion to move senators to immediately take action to prevent gun violence."
Bloomberg defended the ad buy Sunday , speaking on the same program as LaPierre, saying it would be a "great tragedy" if the momentum for gun control generated after the Newtown mass shooting withered. At the same time, Bloomberg said "I think we are going to win this."
We was blunt about the purpose of the ad buys. "We're trying to do everything we can to press upon the senators this is what the survivors want."
Bloomberg
March 24, 2013 (CHICAGO) (WLS) -- Gun violence was on the minds of several hundred men who marched for peace over the weekend.
The "1,000 Man March" wove its way through the Austin neighborhood Saturday.
In addition, to calling attention to what they say is a need for stricter gun control in the city, participants also wanted to encourage men in their communities to become fully engaged fathers to help steer their kids away from guns.
March 24th, 2013
11:26 AM ET
Colorado governor entangled in 'nightmare' gun case
"I felt like I was caught in a nightmare I couldn't wake up from. All these things were happening to people that I loved. And they didn't seem to be connected in any way," Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, said on CNN's "State of the Union." He added his own security was being bolstered in the aftermath of the crime.
"We know Evan was connected to the white supremacist group. We can't see clearly what a motive was," he continued, referring to Evan Spencer Ebel, whom authorities have linked with the slaying of Tom Clements, the director of Colorado's state corrections system.
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By all accounts, Ebel came from a privileged upbringing. His father, Jack Ebel, an attorney and former oil executive, counts Hickenlooper among his friends. The two met in the 1980s while working for the same firm.
"From the beginning his son just seemed to have this bad streak - this streak of cruelty and anger," Hickenlooper recalled to CNN chief political correspondent Candy Crowley. "And yet, they did everything they could. They worked with Evan again and again, but to no avail. He had a bad, bad streak." Clements was also a friend, Hickenlooper said, and one of the "elder statesmen" in Colorado's government.
This week, Hickenlooper signed into law new gun control measures requiring universal background checks for gun sales, restricting the size of ammunition magazines and making buyers pay for their own background checks. The laws, which at one time would have seemed impossible in Colorado, came after a spate of deadly shootings in the United States, including the movie theater massacre in Aurora, Colorado, last summer.
Gov John Hickenlooper, Colorado
Sun Mar 24, 2013 at 10:00 AM PDT
Stand With Dianne -- Put it on your "To Do list"
Sometimes it comes down to how much you want something.
Enough to interrupt and change your routine, or just enough to shrug your shoulders, and sigh "Oh Well."
Lawrence O’Donnell has challenged us to stop taking congressional obstruction in stride, and to start calling our Senators and giving them a piece of our outrage. Not a bad idea. He even made it Tweetable, given the way social media works these days.
O’Donnell: The assault weapons ban is not dead
In his latest Rewrite segment, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell said, “There was going to be a vote on the assault weapons ban on the Senate floor whether Harry Reid included it or not. What we know now is that vote will be up to Dianne Feinstein. If she offers it on the Senate floor (as an amendment) and fights for it, there’s a chance — there’s always a chance it could pass.”
O’Donnell said it will take voters calling and emailing their senators to encourage them to stand with Senator Feinstein. O’Donnell encouraged Twitter users to use the hashtag #StandWithDianne.
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If you care about the assault weapons ban, and you can tweet with the best of them, let the world know WHY limiting the weapons of war to 10 blasts at a time is vitally important, given the brave new world we now live, and sometimes randomly die, in.
Let them be, our wake up call ...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/feature/wp/2013/03/22/gun-deaths-shaped-by-race-in-america/
Gun deaths shaped by race in America
Posted by Dan Keating on March 22, 2013 at 11:19 pm
Gun deaths are shaped by race in America. Whites are far more likely to shoot themselves, and African Americans are far more likely to be shot by someone else. The statistical difference is dramatic, according to a Washington Post analysis of data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A white person is five times as likely to commit suicide with a gun as to be shot with a gun; for each African American who uses a gun to commit suicide, five are killed by other people with guns.
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Gun homicides, especially mass shootings, tend to spark demands for change. Although suicides account for almost twice as many gun deaths as homicides nationwide, they tend to be quiet tragedies, unnoticed outside the hushed confines of family and friends.
Suicide is “absent from the discussion of gun policy,” said Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research in Baltimore. “The availability of firearms does indeed increase the risk of suicide, but most people don’t see it that way.”
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The article compares the experiences of a black family and a white family
‘A different mindset’
Janett Massolo, who is white, works at a suicide-prevention center in Reno, Nev. She provides training in suicide prevention and counsels families that have lost a member to suicide. She understands their grief — nearly 17 years ago her daughter Shannon killed herself. Shannon was a 15-year-old high school student. Her behavior was sometimes erratic, but her mother put it down to teenage volatility. After Shannon’s best friend shot herself to death, she told her mother that she was appalled. “How could anything get that bad?” she said.
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Her father’s handgun had been in an unlocked drawer; the bullets were elsewhere in the bedroom. Massolo said her daughter would not have had time to get the gun, find the bullets, load the gun and kill herself in the time she was next door. Massolo concluded that Shannon had planned her suicide.
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“That’s something we’ve dealt with,” Massolo said in a recent interview. “We taught her how to kill herself. But we were trying to teach her how to be safe. It’s a different mind-set out here about guns. I know the East Coast doesn’t think that way.”
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Shanda Smith, who is black, has a totally different view of guns and their place in society. Nearly 20 years ago, her two children were shot to death on their way to a church Christmas party in the Congress Heights neighborhood of Southeast Washington.
Rodney Smith, 19, was home on break from the University of Kansas, where he had a football scholarship. He had borrowed a relative’s beat-up Camaro Z28 and was driving his sister, Volante, 14, and two younger children to the party. Boo, as his sister was called, was in the passenger seat. As the car approached the church on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, someone ran up to it and fired a handgun at Rodney and Boo. Smith’s two children were in body bags being loaded into an ambulance when she got to the scene. It would turn out that the Smiths were killed in a case of mistaken identity.