Panel Discussion on Gun Violence: The Eugene City Club

Back on Friday, June 14, I was proud to join a panel discussion on gun violence, hosted by the City Club of Eugene, entitled "Finding Common Ground on Gun Control."  Coincidentally, this was the beginning of Father's Day weekend and the 6-month anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting.

The City Club regularly hosts speakers on a wide range of important topics, with professionals and politicians across the board.  So it was a great honor when they asked me to join them in this discussion.

I felt it was a very balanced discussion, with a local medical professional (Dr. Patrick Luedtke) to talk about statistics and the public health angle on the issue of gun violence, a local NRA member and essayist for gun rights and gun safety (Peter Loewy), and myself (Baldr Odinson), representing gun violence prevention efforts and concerns.

As written in the City Club's notice for the event:

Dr. Patrick Luedtke will present data on Lane County and Oregon firearm injuries and deaths and make general recommendations based on a public health approach to injury prevention. He is a Preventive Medicine and Internal Medicine physician. He is the Medical Director of Lane County’s Community & Behavioral Health clinics and the Senior Public Health Officer for the County. 

Peter Loewy will talk about creating a national movement to reduce the number of gun-related deaths and injuries without further infringing on Second Amendment rights. He is an NRA member and retired U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer who directed air traffic control towers and radar facilities. His letters and columns have recently been published in the Register-Guard. 

Baldr Odinson will focus on the broad, bipartisan support for universal background checks, proficiency training, child access protection laws, and waiting periods for gun purchases. He survived a shooting in his youth and now works to reduce gun violence through community action. Odinson is a blogger and Eugene’s point person for Ceasefire Oregon and the Ceasefire Oregon Education Foundation.

Dr. Luedtke gave some excellent statistics around the issue, including at the local, state, and national level, and stressed the need for safe gun storage and suicide prevention.

Peter Loewy is what I consider a mainstream NRA member and gun owner.  He is very much for universal background checks, safe storage of guns, and technology for tracing guns outside of government purview.  Here is a recent essay of his in the local newspaper.

The discussion was in four parts.  The first three parts were 10-minute presentations by each of the three speakers.  The fourth part was a Q&A session by City Club members, answered by the speakers.  Here is a brief news write-up of the event.

I would like to extend a thank-you to the City Club for hosting the event, and to the other speakers for taking part.

Here is audio of the full event, via KLCC radio.  

See below for video of each of the four parts, as posted by the City Club on YouTube, along with an excerpt that I appreciated most.

Dr. Patrick Luedtke:

Selected quote:  "I think overall we would agree that knowledge is power in training providers and the general public to recognize warning signs of suicide and homicide, something we've done for some years, is an evidence-based practice and helpful, but we also need to train gun owners to keep firearms from at-risk persons and we need to stress safe gun storage practices and each effective and practical steps that can be taken to save lives, reduce injuries, and prevent heartache."

Peter Loewy:

Selected quote:  "[A]n effective gun violence reduction program would embrace a very narrowly-defined goal to which most if not all parties can and will agree.  And that would be significantly reduce incidents of gun-related injuries, fatalities, and crime. Then, determine an equally-narrow approach that will effectively make firearms less available to those people who should not have access to them without infringing on Second Amendment rights. That would be, promote the secure, safe storage of firearms and ammunition when not in use. Thirdly, craft a working definition of what constitutes safe and secure storage of firearms and ammunition. And, finally (and this is the kicker), enlist the National Rifle Association, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, and their allied associations to use their resources to start a grass-roots movement to increase and make nearly-universal the practice of securely storing firearms and ammunition when not in use."

Baldr Odinson:

Selected quote:  "Across the nation there are... around 3,000 children killed every year at the end of a bullet in suicides, homicides, and accidents. Another 14,000 or so are injured.... This is a very serious public health crisis. This is how we view it at Ceasefire Oregon and how I view it. More needs to be done to reduce those numbers. If that many children were killed by anything else it seems to me like there would be a massive public outrage, and yet, somehow, when it's a gun involved, we just write it off as 'Well, that's just how it goes in America.' and we can't do that anymore. We just can't."

Q&A session:

Selected question and answer: 

Question (directed at Baldr): "There are numerous quotes from the Founders that provide many gun enthusiasts with a mentality much like the Founders which is one from freedom from government, tyranny, and oppression. My question to you is, Do you feel like the time to fear government tyranny is over, or should we always maintain and foster an atmosphere of vigilance." 

Answer (from Baldr):  "Luckily we have a turnover of the government every four years, legally and non-violently, with checks and balances, too. Article III section iii of the Constitution specifically says that it is the militia's duty to prevent insurrection. So the Founders did not write into the Constitution the ability to overthrow them. Rather, they put in checks and balances. ..."

Our society needs more conversations like these.  Let's all take part.

Turning Points: A Local Eugene Man Discusses His Mission to Stop Gun Violence

I was recently interviewed by University of Oregon Journalism student Olivia Brand.  Olivia had an assignment to pick a topic of public impact and interview people related to it, and chose Gun Control as her topic.  I applaud her taking on such an important and sometimes divisive topic. 

We met at the university library for the interview, then had a short photo shoot at the location of where a rally would be staged the following weekend (so, unfortunately, there weren't any people at the plaza during the photo shoot, though I was able to display some signs to passing traffic and talk to a few people walking by).

You can read the interview and see the photos, HERE.  There are also links there to her interaction with the pro-gun community.

Here is an excerpt from her write-up and blog post:

Although Odinson volunteered for other community programs, it was not until his first child was born that he became active with gun regulation organizations. Odinson wants no child to be exposed to the gun violence that he saw as a teenager. He now works to stop gun violence because he, “…want[s] a better world for my kids, than the one I grew up in.” Through his volunteering, Odinson leads marches, conducts vigils, and blogs in order to make people aware of the issues of gun violence.  His motivation to stop gun violence stems from his experiences and his feeling that, “… pro gun activists tend to think of guns as often as a symbol of justice, […] protecting the American way, but it ceases to become that when you’re at the wrong end of the barrel and you’re holding a dead teen’s head in your arms, and it becomes exactly what it [a gun] was designed to be, a lethal weapon, that unfortunately once again wound up in the wrong hands.”

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A Panel Discussion On Gun Control With The ITN Network’s YouTube “Truthloader” Program

Yesterday, I was fortunate enough to take part in an international panel discussion on U.S. gun control topics on ITN’s “Truthloader” YouTube Channel program.

It was a good discussion.  For the most part people didn’t try to talk over each other (except for interruptions from the gun guys).  Good points were made.  And the gun guys did a GREAT job of exposing their paranoia about tyrants and all-out gun bans.  A definite win for common sense legislation.

Watch HERE:

Panel members included:

• Dan Bell – Moderator
• Colin Goddard – Brady Campaign Against Gun Violence
• Baldr Odinson – Ceasefire Oregon and blogger
• Marcus Wilson – Centre for Armed Violence Reduction and the International Action Network on Small Arms
• Paul Markel -- Columnist with the Ammoland website and host/producer of the Student of the Gun TV show
• Dan Abraham -- TheFireArmGuy YouTube channel

Baldr Interviewed On The Francene Marie Show

Last week I had the honor of being interviewed by Francene Marie Morris of the Francene Marie Show, which is broadcast on five different CBS-affiliated radio stations, primarily WFNZ, out of North Carolina.

The main topic was shootings involving children, such as those featured at the Kid Shootings blog, but topics went beyond that to general gun violence prevention efforts.

Click below to hear the full interview:



Thank you, Francene Marie, for having me on your show and for covering this critical topic.  It's time to make a new trajectory for our communities away from gun violence.

Michael Moore on Gun Violence in the U.S. In Light Of The Recent Aurora Mass Shooting

(image from a previous interview)

Last night, Michael Moore was interviewed on the Piers Morgan Show, regarding gun violence in the United States.  As always, I enjoyed very much the discussion, as Michael Moore has a way of getting to the heart of the issue and is never shy about blaming both sides of the political aisle for idiotic thinking.  The same day, Moore had an article at the Huffington Post Politics blog which had much the same message as what he had to say on the Piers Morgan Show.

(Slight tangent:  The previous night, Piers Morgan interviewed pro-gun advocate John Lott, Jr., and the civil liberties lawyer and legal scholar, Alan Dershowitz.  That debate was awful, if you could call it a “debate.”  Though I agree with many of Dershowitz’s and Morgan’s views and disagree with Lott’s (who, I feel, is dangerously misleading people with extrapolated data on the value of having concealed weapons in public, in contrast to every other researcher in the field), Dershowitz and Morgan were very disrespectful, basically shouting down Lott and refusing to let him speak – even belittling him.  I say let Lott speak his mind.  From what I’ve seen and read, his arguments are easy to refute in reasoned debate.  This sort of “interview” is the reason I don’t normally watch the Piers Morgan show, or others like it.  Far be it for me to defend the pro-gun folks, but Lott’s reaction to this disrespectful behavior was more tolerant and kind than I would have been in his shoes.  Anyhow, back to Michael Moore….  )

As you may recall, Moore made the award-winning documentary, “Bowling for Columbine” in 2002, which was about gun violence in America, with a focus on the 1999 mass shooting at Columbine High School.  That documentary has now celebrated a 10-year anniversary.  Sadly, very little positive change has been made to gun regulation in America.  In fact, gun laws have been significantly relaxed since then in many ways.  Not surprisingly, massacres like that in Columbine and Aurora have been steadily increasing in frequency, and, despite all the consoling words from politicians after each one, almost none of them have tried to enact any legislation aimed at stopping the next one.

In both the interview and in the HuffPost article, Moore poses a very important question: why is it America leads the advanced nations in gun-related deaths?  From the article (bolding and italics not added):

But here's the difference between the rest of the world and us: We have two Auroras that take place every single day of every single year! At least 24 Americans every day (8-9,000 a year) are killed by people with guns – and that doesn't count the ones accidentally killed by guns or who commit suicide with a gun. Count them and you can triple that number to over 25,000.  

That means the United States is responsible for over 80 percent of all the gun deaths in the 23 richest countries combined. Considering that the people of those countries, as human beings, are no better or worse than any of us, well, then, why us? 

He goes on to point out the huge gulf between other advanced nations and our, in terms of numbers of people shot to death.  Fewer than 20 in Japan, for instance, and around 200 in Germany.  Canada has only around 180.  America: tens of thousands.

In most countries, even a relatively “small” mass shooting, with just three or four victims, is headline news and worthy of debate in their parliaments.  Here, you’re lucky to find it on page 2 of the local paper, and forget about politicians actually proposing solutions.  Hell, even the shooting of a fellow congresswoman, Gabby Giffords, failed to enact any new legislation.  If anything, Arizona, the state in which the shooting occurred, has become even more lax than before.

In nearly every other way, our culture is just as violent as those other nations’.  Moore points out that we have similar histories of attacking other countries and genocides.  Our kids watch the same violent movies, play the same violent video games, and listen to the same music with awful lyrics.  Rates of divorce are comparable if not less problematic than them.  From the article:

They'll say it's the violent movies and video games that are responsible. Last time I checked, the movies and video games in Japan are more violent than ours – and yet usually fewer than 20 people a year are killed there with guns – and in 2006 the number was two!  

Others will say it's the number of broken homes that lead to all this killing. I hate to break this to you, but there are almost as many single-parent homes in the U.K. as there are here – and yet, in Great Britain, there are usually fewer than 40 gun murders a year.  

People like me will say this is all the result of the U.S. having a history and a culture of men with guns, "cowboys and Indians," "shoot first and ask questions later." And while it is true that the mass genocide of the Native Americans set a pretty ugly model to found a country on, I think it's safe to say we're not the only ones with a violent past or a penchant for genocide. Hello, Germany! That's right I'm talking about you and your history, from the Huns to the Nazis, just loving a good slaughter (as did the Japanese, and the British who ruled the world for hundreds of years – and they didn't achieve that through planting daisies). And yet in Germany, a nation of 80 million people, there are only around 200 gun murders a year. 

So what’s the difference? 

I would point out here that those other countries have far more regulation of guns to keep them from getting into the wrong hands, as he had demonstrated so very well in “Bowling for Columbine.”  But Moore doesn’t stop there.  He points out two other factors in his article:  “We Americans are incredibly good killers,” what with our international invasion strategies, and “We are an easily frightened people and it is easy to manipulate us with fear.”  If you doubt that last point, just look at the surge in gun sales since the Aurora shooting.  The NRA loves to manipulate our fear.

Oh, and Moore points out a third reason that he feels separates us from those other countries:  simple lack of caring, real caring, for our fellow citizens.  From the Piers Morgan interview:

"We have to see that we're a part of each other, and we have to take care of each other. The reason why they have universal health care in Canada and Britain, these other places? Because they believe if one suffers, everybody suffers," he tells the "Piers Morgan Tonight" host. "That is not our mentality, our mentality is 'I got mine, you get yours, and the hell with everybody else.'"

It’s the image of the rugged, individual manly American with a gun strapped to his side, handling his own problems and leaving yours alone – from John Wayne to Bruce Willis, isn’t that the image projected in the movies?  The only time they care to help others is through violent vigilantism.  Isn’t that how the gun nuts like to see themselves? 

To me, that’s just selfishness.  “No man is an Island.”  With the exception of a few loonies out there living “off the grid” in cabins and writing their manifestos, we all rely on each other to have a civil society.  It’s time to act like it.  It’s time to be “involved in mankind.”  Instead of reaching for the gun to solve our problems and keeping it loaded at all times, let’s instead reach for the door of our local non-profits and actually give of our time and money to worthy causes that help people with the issues that lead to crime, like poverty and mental problems, support our government and police programs that protect our safety, and call for meaningful restrictions of weapons to keep them out of the hands of those we aren't able to help.  I do all of those things, in every way I can.  I demand that our legislators and our President do the same.

"Guns In Our Lives" Interview on OPB -- Part II

Last Tuesday, on Oregon Public Broadcasting's radio's "Think Out Loud" program, host Emily Harris interviewed Penny Okamoto, executive director of Ceasefire Oregon, an organization working to prevent gun violence, and Kevin Starrett, president of the Oregon Firearms Federation, a hard-line pro-gun organization.

The link to the episode's home page:  http://www.opb.org/thinkoutloud/shows/reality-guns/.  There you can listen to the entire episode as well as download the .mp3 file of it.

In my last post, I examined roughly the first half of the show and interview, with contrasting opinions on how to view a recent accidental shooting of a child and comparisons between death by car vs. death by guns.  What follows is a review of the second half....

Next the show took a call from a caller named Heather, from Oregon City (the same city where the accidental shooting had been the week before).  Heather described how her two boys had grown up around their father's guns, had been in Boy Scouts and learned gun safety, and had family friends in law enforcement who had guns and shown the boys safety training.  Even so, after an incident when Heather's 7-year-old son had found a gun under a friend's parents' bed, and the lack of concern or compassion by those parents when confronted, she asked her husband to remove guns from their own home.  She felt her sons were simply too curious and impulsive, just like, well, nearly all children are.  They didn't even allow squirt guns.

Yet, despite all of her precautions, Heather's sons had been in the attic and found an unlocked gun there, tucked away and forgotten.  Her 15-year-old said to his younger brother, "See, the safety's on.  Click, click!" then he pointed the gun at his brother and pulled the trigger, thinking it was unloaded.  The gun fired, and the younger boy was shot and injured (eventually making a full recovery).  Heather admitted that it was her and her husband's own fault for not thinking to search the attic and took responsibility for the accident.  She added that, though some blame lay on the 15 year old, children of that age are not fully developed and mature enough to resist their impulses.

(Around 30% of homes with children also have firearms.  40% of those keep the guns unlocked, a quarter of which are kept loaded [ LINK].  In 2007 alone, at least 613 children died from accidental shootings [LINK].)

When asked for their reaction to the caller's story, the responses from Okamoto and Starrett once again illustrated a major difference between the two sides:

Okamoto's response:  "As a gun owner you need to be prepared to be responsible.  When you purchase that weapon, you need to be prepared to say, 'Am I willing to bring this into my house where someone, my son, my daughter, could accidently shoot himself, shoot herself.'"  "Some 60% of gun deaths are suicides.  That gun owner needs to think about the reasons for having that gun and be prepared to take responsibility.  Heather's case was different because they didn't even know there was a weapon in the attic."  She later added, "Ceasefire teaches children gun safety in what to do when they find a weapon."

Starrett's response:  "This was a situation where there was a terrible shooting that took place because, however well-trained these people felt they had trained their children, it wasn't sufficient.  But it is far easier to gun-proof your children than to child-proof your guns." (I disagree with that statement!)  "My children grew up in a house with a firearms instructor, and wouldn't in a million years dream of pointing a gun at another person.  You have to take into account the maturity and the ability of each child involved."  When the host pointed out that the caller questioned the maturity of a 15-year-old, Starrett added, "Well, you know, I have an 11 year-old who would never point a gun at another person.  So, yeah, obviously every child is different.  Kids go through extensive driver's ed and still go out and get killed in crashes because they have their friends in the car and they drive too fast and they exercise poor judgment.  That is a responsibility of the parent to inculcate their children with the best information they can."

The contrasting responses are pretty typical of the two sides, I feel.  Like Starrett, most pro-gun folks I've talked to or exchanged comments with on this blog use the "not my child" response.  Parents are rarely willing to believe that they could have failed to instill sound judgment in their children -- until it's too late.  I agree that children differ in maturity and impulsivity, but even the most responsible child will have moments of impulsive behavior, and you can't very well control the actions of their friends.  I'm thinking the caller, Heather, probably would have used the "not my child" excuse about her sons prior to their own accident, too.

Okamoto's response, however, suggests that all gun owners should be prepared for the worst scenario and take responsibility for it.  Guns and children don't mix. 

[Among gun-owning parents who reported that their children had never handled their firearms at home, 22% of the children, questioned separately, said that they had.  When household guns are kept locked up, youths typically know where the key is kept, the combination, or are able to break into the gun cabinet.]

The host, Emily Harris, next asked Okamoto and Starrett, "Do you share some common ground on who shouldn't have a gun, like people who have mental illnesses perhaps, or experiencing them at moment, or people who have felony backgrounds?"

Starrett:  "I certainly think that anyone who is pre-disposed to acting violently or is not mentally competent should not have a gun.  I think the difference is that I believe that many of the proposed solutions are fantasy.  And in fact, I think in many cases are counter-productive.  Trish [the Oregon State Police ID Services representative from earlier in the broadcast] was discussing the mental health changes that were made in 2009.  Their records are frequently faulty and people who are entitled to guns are denied or delayed."  He went on to complain of false-positives, where law-abiding people are confused as criminals and have to defend themselves at their own cost to qualify for gun purchase. 

When asked by Emily about "false-positives", Trish indicated that she is "not aware of that being a problem."

Okamoto's response about common ground:  "I have no idea.  I know we shouldn't have felons with guns, or people with restraining orders, or people who have been adjudicated mentally ill.  One of the problems we do have, however, is that when people go to purchase a weapon they go to a federally-licensed firearms dealer, they go to a gun show, they have to have a background check.  But if you're a felon, a drug user, any of these prohibited classes, you don't have to go to a federally-licensed dealer, you can just go to anyone." 

Emily asked, "Is that the root of the movement to ban guns?  How do you handle that problem?"

Okamoto replied, "First, we would ban assault weapons, not guns in general.... But this has nothing to do with banning guns.  It has to do with keeping an eye on who has access to weapons.  Who's getting these weapons?  How are the children getting weapons?  You have to remember, every time a child has a weapon ... it's gone through the hands of an adult first.  And it's so easy to get weapons in Oregon."

It's interesting to note the difference in the two responses.  Both agree that violent people and the mentally ill should not have guns.  The difference is that Starrett, and organizations like OFF and the NRA, offer no solutions to do anything about it.  Okamoto and organizations like Ceasefire Oregon and the Brady Campaign to Reduce Gun Violence at least offer real solutions, like expanding background checks, increasing funding to update databases with mental health records for those background checks, and child access prevention laws, all of which are actively opposed by the pro-gun side.

Finally, when asked what legislation they would like to see, Starrett replied, "Top priority: to clean up the pistol license system so that people aren't being denied and that people from other states would be welcome here as well [regarding conceal carry permits from out of state]." 

Okamoto replied, "Universal background checks and prevention of access by minors."

"Guns In Our Lives" Interview on OPB -- Part I

Saturday morning there were more random shots fired in my neighborhood, the second time in a week in my normally-quiet part of town.  So it was with renewed interest that I listened to a debate between Ceasefire Oregon's executive director and the president of the extreme pro-gun Oregon Firearms Federation on Oregon Public Broadcasting this Tuesday.

On Tuesday morning, Oregon Public Broadcasting's radio show "Think Out Loud" featured an hour-long segment on "Guns In Our Lives."  In case you missed it, you can find it at THIS page, where you can hear the broadcast, download the .mp3 file, and read comments from listeners on both sides of the issue.

The show was roughly in two portions.  The first portion had the host, Emily Harris, talking with a local gun dealer, Michael Knoetig, and Trisha Whitfield, from the ID Services of the Oregon State Police.  The second part was much more interesting, but more on that later, including in a second, follow-up post.

Knoetig talked about his gun shop, his feelings about the importance of Conceal Carry, which his main focus is on for sales of weapons (he mainly just echoed the argument that society has bad people and the cops are too far away to help you, thus you should arm yourself at all times), and comparisons with his native Germany.   Regarding Knoetig, I felt particularly drawn to two parts of the conversation.  The first was about growing up with guns in Germany.  Conceal Carry is not allowed there, gun regulation is very strict.  Hunting is allowed, but is highly regulated.  Knoetig would compete with target shooting as a teen, but the gun had to be unloaded until arriving at the event. 

It is interesting to note that, as he mentions, the crime rate is lower in Germany.  According to 1998 data (the latest I can find that compares both Germany and us in the same year), Germany had a death by firearms rate of 1.57 per 100,000 population, compared to the U.S., which had a rate of 10.2.  Murder rates in general, including non-firearms, is five times greater in the U.S. than in Germany.

Another interesting point from Knoetig:  In Oregon, there is NO requirement that the buyer of a gun have any training whatsoever, unless they are wishing for a conceal carry permit.  That's right, like most states, you don't need even a minute of training, even safety training, to purchase a firearm in Oregon.  When Emily Harris asked Knoetig how he reacted if a buyer seemed inexperienced, he merely answered that he encourages them to take one of his free classes.   But he sells guns to them anyway.  My thought:   Why not?  It's not HIS problem if they are endangering themselves and others, right?  Who is he to question that right?   He's only the source of deadly weapons, is all. 

Trisha Whitfield from Oregon State Police next outlined the requirements for background checks.  I can't say there were any real surprises.  Basically when a gun is purchased, sellers like Knoetig have the buyer fill out a form.  The form asks ID information like social security number, driver's license number, whether they've been convicted of any illegal activities, abuse drugs, arrested for DUI, and so forth, and a thumbprint.  The form information is phoned into the Oregon State Police ID services unit, and the thumbprint is FAXED (and we know how reliably the resolution is for faxes!).  The information is fed into the available databases, including NICS.  98% of calls are returned with an approval, delay, or deny within only 2-5 minutes.  A few are delayed due to slowness in record retrieval or some mix-up (and can be delayed even for months).  Denial could be due to actually admitting to abuses or crimes, or if the database indicated convictions or mental illness.  Whitfield emphasized that the 2-5 minute review is based only on the databases they access, which may not be updated sufficiently, or the buyer's own self-reporting.  In 7 months of business, Knoetig has never had a denial.  No details were given about requirements for Conceal Carry, except that it is handled by the Sherriff's Association and can vary from county to county.

And then the show gets much more interesting:  an interview with Ceasefire Oregon's executive director, Penny Okamoto, and the president of the Oregon Firearms Federation, Kevin Starrett.  Ceasefire Oregon works to prevent gun violence in Oregon through advocating for stricter legislation of firearms and community education about the dangers of firearms.  OFF is a hard-line, pro-gun group that bills itself as "Oregon's only no compromise gun lobby" which seeks to fight or repeal existing gun control legislation, including opposition of criminal history background checks or the retention of records of those checks (examples).

The host, Emily Harris, starts off the conversation by asking about each of their reactions to a shooting that occurred a few days before in Oregon City, where a 13-year-old boy shot and wounded his friend in the head with a 12-gauge shotgun in an apparent accident, after the gun had been left, loaded and unlocked, where the boys could access them after a duck hunt.  The response, I feel, highlights what is one of the greatest differences between the pro-gun and pro-control sides:

Starrett:  "My reaction was the same as when I hear about teenagers dying in terrible car wrecks or someone passing away in a house fire.  It's a terrible thing."  He mentions how it appeared to be an accidental discharge, then added, "It's a terrible thing when a person is hurt with a power tool."  Then mentioned how his heart went out to the family.

Okamoto:  "It was completely heartbreaking, especially because whenever you're dealing with guns, every shooting is preventable.  I would have to say that this was in Oregon City.  Had this been in Portland, Mayor Adams' ordinances ... are already in effect.  The gun owner would have been charged [referring to the Child Access Prevention ordinance].  Ceasefire Oregon right now is working on a Preventing Access to Minors Bill that would be statewide."  (CAP laws have been proven successful in reducing deaths in other places).

This is a very telling comparison between the way the two sides see the same sort of tragedy.  Note that Starrett's reaction indicates no difference in his mind between deaths from gun violence and deaths from fires or power tools, even when children are involved.   Okamoto's reaction indicates that gun deaths are separate from the others.  Regulation to make parents more responsible might have helped prevent the tragedy.

Emily Harris then goes on to mention one comment on their blog comparing gun deaths to deaths by cars, suggesting "car" and "gun" could be used interchangeably in conversation.

Starrett once again sees little difference:  "I think there is an important parallel here.  Cars kill far more people than guns do, and yet if on the many occasions, daily occasions, when we hear of people being killed in car accidents, many of which were caused by gross negligence by people or teenagers drinking or that kind of thing -- in the wake of a story like that, you would never invite a representative from AAA to come on and defend car ownership."  Later adding, "You wouldn't see me coming and demanding that Penny give up her driver's license."

Okamoto responded, "It's a parallel that is pulled out only when it's useful.  Guns are made to kill people.  Cars are not.  Cars are basically for transportation.  Sometimes people do die in car accidents.  One of the reasons that the number of people dying in car accidents has decreased is because so many people have worked on making cars safer and making people safer drivers.  The gun lobby doesn't work on making guns safer. ... There's no license, no registration, no requirement for training [for guns].  Anyone can buy a gun from anyone in Oregon.  You don't have to be a licensed firearms dealer."  Then, as a further analogy, she adds, "And there's an interesting parallel that wishes to be made.  If we put children in car seats when they're in cars, then why can't we have some type of law that prevents children from gaining access to weapons, or more preferably, makes gun owners more responsible.  If you have a gun, you own it, and some child accesses it, you're responsible.  You have to be a responsible gun owner."

I'm certainly with Okamoto on this one.  Pro-gun extremists extol the virtues of their weapons for their ability to protect them against bad guys in their homes and on the streets.  This is because guns offer better "stopping power" to kill an attacker quickly and efficiently.  It's what handguns in particular are designed to do.  That's why pro-gun folks carry guns instead of other weapons, like knives or bats.  They are deadly.  They are MADE to be deadly.  And advertisements in gun magazines make no beans about it.

Yet any time the discussion turns to the deaths of innocents, suddenly they describe gun deaths as no different from any other sort of death, like from fires or power tools or car wrecks, and the guns themselves go from being described as deadly efficient weapons to some seemingly innocuous lump of metal which happens to be deadly in the wrong hands.  It hearkens back to the tired, nonsensical slogan of the NRA, "Guns don't kill people, people kill people," as if the gun or lax gun laws had nothing to do with it. 

But we on the gun control side see gun deaths very differently.  Every death is preventable.  Unlike cars, which have regulations on both the vehicle manufacturers and the drivers to reduce deaths, as well as licensing and mandatory training, guns are loosely regulated, with few such demands for safety.  Odd, given that death is their primary purpose.  100,000 people are shot each year, 33,000 of which die from their wounds.  3,000 of those deaths are children.  Commonsense legislation, like strengthening background checks and child access prevention laws, can reduce deaths.  Such things are actively opposed by organizations like OFF and the NRA.

My next post will discuss roughly the second half of the interview, including the discussion around one caller's experience of another child shooting involving her sons.

To be continued....  (See NEXT POST)