Heeding God's Call meeting in Refuge in Christ Church, Chester: 5/19/2013

More than 40 congregants from Swarthmore Presbyterian, Swarthmore United Methodist, Refuge in Christ, Chester Eastside Ministries, Sacred Heart of Manoa, Temple Shalom, Ohev Shalom, Beth Israel, Chester Friends' Meeting, Marcus Hook Baptist Church, and Chester House of Restoration met today at Refuge in Christ Church, Chester, this afternoon, to form a Delaware County Chapter of Heeding God's Call.

Bryan Miller spoke about how guns reach the street.  Almost all the guns traced from crime scenes are from straw purchases.  US law requires that gun purchasers be checked against an FBI database to be sure they have not committed a felony or domestic violence misdemeanor, that they have not been committed to a mental institution.  PA requires that gun purchasers be at least 18.  Gun stores need maintain records of all gun purchases for at least 20 years.

However, there is considerable demand for guns from people who couldn't pass a background check.  In a straw purchase, an entrepreneur (usually a man) who wouldn't be able to pass the background check pays another person (usually a woman) to accompany him to a gun store and to purchase guns on his behalf.   Once they leave the store, he has a car full of guns that can't be traced to him.  Like any entrepreneur, a gun trafficker depends on volume for a profitable business.  (A few states, including NJ, limit handgun sales to one a month, but PA is not among them).

If (as often happens) these guns are used to commit a crime and are traced through store records to the straw purchaser, she will say it was stolen or lost.  (A few states, including NJ, require gun owners to report lost or stolen guns, but PA is not among them).

PA's relatively lax gun laws are a major reason Philadelphia closed 2011 with the highest per-capita murder rate in the US.

Most gun stores won't sell to straw buyers, but a few will.  Heeding God's Call aims to peacefully persuade those few stores to adhere to a code of conduct (pioneered by Walmart:  videotaping all gun purchases, employee training, software that flags purchasers to whom guns used in crimes have been traced).  Faith leaders of the various congregations meet with gun store owners to explain the code of conduct.  Where a gun store refuses to comply, Heeding God's Call members hold weekly or bi-monthly prayer vigils (always with police permits).

Many chapters also hold prayer vigils at sites of homicides. 

We formed a committee to work toward a Call to Action in 2-3 months:  identifying which gun stores are sources of trafficked guns, raising awareness in the community.  A Call to Action is typically held in a church, would bring together representatives of the many faith communities in Chester and surrounding towns.

Bryan came to gun violence prevention after his brother, Michael Miller, an FBI agent, was shot and killed in 1994, a few days before Thanksgiving.

In Parents Magazine -- Guns within Reach

More than 1.5 million children live in households where firearms are kept unlocked and loaded, and over 100 innocent kids are killed every year. Read this to make sure your child stays safe.

 

By Jeannette Moninger from Parents Magazine

 

Matthew Bellamy loved to hunt with his dad, Chip, near their home in Little River, South Carolina. "We started talking to him about the dangers of guns when he was 3," says his mom, Mylissa. Safety was a top priority for the Bellamys. They always triple-checked their weapons to make sure they were unloaded and kept them locked in a gun safe. But these precautions didn't protect 11-year-old Matthew when he and a 12-year-old friend found a hunting rifle lying on a bed at the friend's grandparents' house three years ago. Assuming the gun was unloaded, Matthew's buddy, who also hunted, picked it up. As he handed the rifle to Matthew, it fired accidentally. The bullet struck Matthew squarely in the chest. He died on the way to the hospital. "We took the right steps to keep guns away from our kids and their friends," says Mylissa. "It never occurred to us to ask others whether they did the same."

With an estimated 270 million civilian-owned firearms in the U.S. -- nearly one for every man, woman, and child -- the odds are good that there's a gun (if not several) located someplace where your child spends time. If that fact doesn't give you pause, this one will: A study published in Pediatrics found that nearly 1.7 million children under age 18 live with a loaded and unsecured gun in the house. It could be on a closet shelf, in a drawer, or under a mattress -- where a child can easily reach it. Yet few parents raise the issue of firearms before letting their kid play at someone else's home. "Most parents who own guns are responsible about keeping them locked, unloaded, and stowed away safely," says Beth Ebel, M.D., a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics' (AAP) Council on Injury, Violence, and Poison Prevention. "Yet nearly 40 percent of gun-owning households with children have an unlocked gun to which a child might gain access."

Understandably, the nation's focus has been on tightening gun laws in the wake of the tragic school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, which took the lives of 20 children and six adults. However, the biggest threat to our kids' safety likely isn't assault rifles, a lack of school security, or weapons that fall into the hands of the mentally ill. It's the guns that are commonly found in our own homes. Each year, nearly 140 minors are accidentally killed and more than 3,000 are injured by firearms, most often at home or while visiting a friend, relative, or caregiver. About a quarter of victims under age 14 unintentionally shoot themselves. And, according to data from the Harvard School of Public Health, these estimates are certainly low, because many unintended shootings are incorrectly labeled as homicides.

Although the AAP recommends that all kids' environments be free of firearms, many loving families choose to own weapons. If yours is among them, it's your job to take every possible precaution (see "Take Our Gun-Safety Pledge," below). But you still can't let down your guard. As the Bellamy family learned too late, other gun owners may not be as careful, so it's crucial to protect your child.

to read more, click here

 

In last week's NYT: Two killings and two guns, unattended

On the afternoon of Aug. 7, 2012, Greg Imhoff — a big, friendly 61-year-old construction superintendent from Madison, Wis., who had moved to Florida with his partner, Shari Telvick — went to check on the home of a neighbor.

The neighbor, Richard Detlor, was a friend, someone Imhoff had known back in Madison, where the Detlors still lived for part of the year. Whenever the Detlors went back to Wisconsin, Imhoff would look in on their house, something he did for many of his neighbors. 

It is impossible to know whether, on that August afternoon, Imhoff ever saw the stranger in the house with the .22 caliber revolver; all we know for sure is that Imhoff was shot in the head. When Telvick and a friend found him that evening, he was lying in a pool of blood, dead. 

The killer turned out to be a man named Billy Ray Retherford, who was on the lam after killing a woman two weeks earlier and was hiding in the Detlors’ empty home. The next day, Retherford was killed in a shootout with the police. He was using the same .22 handgun. 

The gun, however, was not his. It belonged to Richard Detlor, who, according to the police report, had left it, loaded, in the nightstand by his bed before departing for Wisconsin several months earlier. 

When Imhoff’s murder was brought to my attention recently, I was stunned that a supposedly “responsible gun owner” would leave a loaded gun in a house that was empty for months at a time. Yes, the odds of someone breaking into the house and using the gun were small, but they weren’t zero. That the Detlors didn’t take the simple precaution of unloading their gun and locking it up struck me as incredibly negligent.

to read more, click here

Today on NPR -- almost 20% of suicidal teens live in a house with a gun

Nearly a third of children and adolescents screened in an emergency department program are at risk for suicide, and of these, 17% report knowledge of a gun in or around their home.

"Nearly half of youth suicides involve firearms, and 90% of individuals who attempt suicide with guns kill themselves," said study author Stephen Teach, MD, from the Children's National Medical Center in Washington, DC.

Suicide is among the leading causes of death in young people aged 10 to 24 years.
Researchers say the emergency department may be an excellent screening opportunity to assess teens for suicide risk because this is sometimes the only consistent source of medical care for young people.

"This is particularly true for the most disadvantaged adolescents in our nation," said Dr. Teach, explaining the rationale for his program here at the Pediatric Academic Societies 2013 Annual Meeting.

Dr. Teach and his team developed a simple instrument based on the gold standard, the Suicidal Ideation Questionnaire. They distilled the questionnaire down to its most critical elements.

"It's a fairly simple thing to administer in the hurly burly of a busy emergency department," Dr. Teach said. The Ask Suicide-Screening Questions has only 4 points:

1. In the past few weeks, have you wished you were dead?
2. In the past few weeks, have you felt that you or your family would be better off if you were dead?
3. In the past week, have you been having thoughts about killing yourself?
4. Have you ever tried to kill yourself?

to read more, click here.