An Appeal To Fathers To Oppose “Stand Your Ground” Laws

Today I celebrate being the father of my two small children, and for them to celebrate me.  Since we just got back from a week-long vacation, I plan to take it easy and hang out at home, opening whatever heartfelt gifts they give me, doing fatherly things like cooking out and doing home improvement projects, and giving them lots of hugs.  I love my children, and would never want anything bad to happen to them.

Sadly, each year, around thirty thousand people are shot and killed in America.  Three thousand of them are children and teens.  Another 17,500 children and teens are injured by gunfire.  The vast majority of these children (and adults) have fathers who love them as much as I love my own.  I can only imagine the grief and torment these fathers must go through upon learning that the children they nurtured and tried to keep safe are now dead or injured by a bullet.

One father is speaking out about the death of his child: Tracy Martin, father of Trayvon Martin – a boy shot down by an over-zealous gun nut who used Florida’s "Stand Your Ground" (SYG) law as an excuse to stalk and ultimately shoot and kill an unarmed teen.

Here is Mr. Martin’s appeal:

Like Tracy Martin, I urge all readers to contact their state governors and legislators and ask them to review their state’s “stand yourground” laws. 

And what will those governors find?  The Tampa Bay Times recently did a study of Florida’s law.  What they found was shocking.  No doubt many of the cases were truly justified shootings.  But, as you'll see by the findings, the potential for abuse is very, very high.  Justice has not been done.


From the review:

• People often go free under "stand your ground" in cases that seem to make a mockery of what lawmakers intended. One man killed two unarmed people and walked out of jail. Another shot a man as he lay on the ground. Others went free after shooting their victims in the back. In nearly a third of the cases the Times analyzed, defendants initiated the fight, shot an unarmed person or pursued their victim — and still went free.

• Similar cases can have opposite outcomes. Depending on who decided their cases, some drug dealers claiming self-defense have gone to prison while others have been set free. The same holds true for killers who left a fight, only to arm themselves and return. Shoot someone from your doorway? Fire on a fleeing burglar? Your case can swing on different interpretations of the law by prosecutors, judge or jury.

Some of their findings suggest racism in the successful outcome of SYG trials. Two-thirds of the defendants used guns.  In 75% of the cases (148 out of 200), the victim wasn’t even committing a crime that led to the confrontation.

70% (135 out of 192) of the victims were unarmed during the confrontation.

In a quarter of the cases (53 out of 200), there were no witnesses to the shooting.  That means that, if the victim died, the case comes down to the word of the shooter against that of a dead man.  In over half of the cases (110 out of 200), there was either no physical evidence or it is unclear if physical evidence was found.  Given that people who have successfully used the SYG defense include drug dealers and gang members, these data are truly alarming.

HERE is a database of findings from the study.

These results stand in stark contrast to the argument by the NRA, who crafted these laws, that only law-abiding citizens would use SYG laws, and only to protect themselves against imminent and lethal danger.

25 states currently have SYG laws, and the NRA and other gun lobbies are pushing to have them in all 50 states.

Today, if you are a father, love your children and hold them tight.  But also keep in mind that too many die from gunfire each year.  Don’t let your child be one of these.  Fight hard for sensible gun law reform, so that you won’t be the next grieving father on YouTube urging other fathers to do the same.

Two Great Pieces From The New Yorker

How extreme is the gun lobby agenda to get guns everywhere?  They have a clear scheme for more guns, in more places, for more people, no matter how unpopular or dangerous.

As evidence, consider the following blog post from Susannah Griffee at the New Yorker:  "Guns, Everywhere":
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/04/guns-everywhere.html#ixzz1sjm7Gvoa

From the blog post:

The United States has the highest rate of gun ownership by civilians in the world. Depending on the state, guns may be allowed in churches, on college campuses, and even in bars. In this week’s New Yorker, Jill Lepore writes about the powerful gun lobby and the consequences of America’s attachment to deadly weapons. Below, a look at some of the more unusual—and, arguably, more dangerous—gun laws passed in recent years, and the states that passed them first:

Go to the post.  There you will see the extreme nature of the gun lobby.  What states currently allow for, and when did they start to allow for:

• Guns in Bars
• Guns in Churches
• Guns on College Campuses
• Guns at Work

The article gives years, names states, and some "fun facts" about those movements.  Makes me sick.  And now, in my state (Oregon), the gun lobby is pushing for guns in grade schools!

As you see in the excerpt above, Griffee links to an article by Jill Lepore, entitled "The Lost Amendment."

From the article by Lepore:

The debate over the Second Amendment has been fierce and terrible, with bad arguments on both sides, and bad will all around. It began in the nineteen-sixties, when there was a great deal of violence and much concern about it. It took another turn on Friday, when, at the N.R.A.’s annual meeting, in St. Louis, Newt Gingrich said, “The Second Amendment is an amendment for all mankind.”

As I wrote in this week’s New Yorker, no amendment received less attention in the courts in the two centuries following the adoption of the Bill of Rights than the Second, except the Third (which dealt with billeting soldiers in private homes). It used to be known as the “lost amendment,” because hardly anyone ever wrote about it. The assertion that the Second Amendment protects a person’s right to own and carry a gun for self-defense, rather than the people’s right to form militias for the common defense, first became a feature of American political and legal discourse in the wake of the Gun Control Act of 1968, and only gained prominence in the nineteen-seventies. A milestone in its development came when Orrin Hatch, serving on Strom Thurmond’s Senate Judiciary Committee, became chair of the Subcommittee on the Constitution. Hatch commissioned a history of the Second Amendment, resulting in a 1982 report, “The Right to Keep and Bear Arms,” which concluded, “What the Subcommittee on the Constitution uncovered was clear—and long lost—proof that the second amendment to our Constitution was intended as an individual right of the American citizen to keep and carry arms in a peaceful manner, for protection of himself, his family, and his freedoms.”

She then goes on to discuss the rise of the flawed "insurrectionist" interpretation of the 2A and the formation of citizen militias.

Wait...   If the Second Amendment is so crucial to the idea of "protecting our freedom," as Orrin Hatch and the NRA would have us believe, then why was it essentially ignored for the first 192 years of our country??  Somehow our country survived nearly two centuries without widespread home ownership of handguns, assault rifles, or anything beyond hunting rifles (and not really all that widespread even for those, in many areas).  Our leaders, including some really liberal ones (whom the ultracons associate with, gasp!, communist tyrants), did not take advantage of all those weaponless masses and form a tyranny.  So why is now any different?  I'll tell you why.  It's because the gun manufacturers have teamed up with the NRA to make more money by expanding gun ownership.  Never mind all the deaths.  Look the other way.  There's money to be made off of people's fears.

Lepore finishes her article as such:

In his remarks before the N.R.A. last week, Gingrich offered a human-rights interpretation of the Second Amendment. “A Gingrich presidency,” he said, “will submit to the United Nations a treaty that extends the right to bear arms as a human right for every person on the planet.”

The United States has the highest rate of civilian gun ownership in the world, twice that of the country with the second highest rate, which is Yemen. The United States also has the highest homicide rate of any affluent democracy, nearly four times higher than France or the United Kingdom, six times higher than Germany. In the United States in 2008, guns were involved in two-thirds of all murders. Of interest to many people concerned about these matters, then, is when the debate over the Second Amendment will yield to a debate about violence.

As she points out, America is far and away the murder capital of the world, for any nation not at war on its territory and, not coincidentally, the undisputed capital of firearms ownership.  If Gingrich and others like him had their way, they would spread that bloodshed worldwide.

We as a country already labor under 110,000 shootings a year.  With increasing gun ownership has come increasing shootings, and the more lax the gun laws in a state, the higher the number of fatal shootings.  These are undisputed facts from the statistics.  The world watches us in horror, wondering when our citizens will stop drinking the Kool-Aid given to us by the NRA, as the NRA pushes for ever more extreme laws (or removal of laws) to expand those horrors.  At some point, American legislators will wake up to the danger.  Already there is vast support (around 80%) for stronger gun regulation, in every poll I've seen.  Soon we will reach a tipping point when people tire of the bloodshed, speak out, and  demand that we return to sane gun regulation.

Political Cartoons for the Trayvon Martin Shooting and Florida's "Shoot First" Bill

(UPDATED -- scroll to end for most recent)

With the outrage felt by the nation at the shooting of Trayvon Martin, and the potential that the shooter could get away with it because of Florida's "shoot first, ask questions later" law, political cartoonists have been busy trying to capture the issue.  Here are many of the political cartoons I have seen for this issue:

UPDATE (4/7/12):

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UPDATE (4/12/12):

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UPDATE (5/10/12):

UPDATE 7/14/12:

UPDATED 7/9/13:

UPDATED 7/11/13:

UPDATED 7/14/13:

UPDATED (7/19/14):  HERE are 25 more examples of political cartoons, as well as works of art.
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