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.

In today's NYT: His father's murder drives a Rabbi's Pursuit of Gun Control

Samuel G Freedman

In the months after his father’s murder in early 1999, those months stretching formlessly between the mourning ritual of shiva and the impending trial of a suspect, Rabbi Joel Mosbacher received many messages of solace. There was one type, however, that tested every atom of clerical forbearance he possessed. 

“People said in this trying-to-be-helpful way, ‘This will make you a better rabbi,’ ” Rabbi Mosbacher, 43, recalled. “And nothing made me angrier. I didn’t want to be a better rabbi. I wanted my dad back.” 

He wanted Lester Mosbacher, who had been shot dead in a petty robbery at his small business on Chicago’s South Side the day before he turned 53. He wanted the father who cheered the White Sox and gardened in the backyard and barbecued with a flashlight or umbrella if necessary. He wanted the grandfather for his firstborn son, just 11 months old at the time of the murder. 

As Joel Mosbacher raised his own family and advanced in his rabbinical career, moving from an assistant’s position outside Atlanta to a senior one in this New Jersey suburb, he recognized that no prayer, no fast, no act of religious charity could give him what he wanted. 

Yet on a Sunday afternoon this month, Rabbi Mosbacher stood before an assembly of 200 clergy members, congregants, politicians and police officials in a North Jersey church to tell, in the cause of gun control, the story of his father’s murder. 

“All he did was drive to work, as he had done for 35 years, and he was stolen from his brothers, wife, his children and grandchildren,” Rabbi Mosbacher said. “I’ve carried this story with me, this anger, every day for the last 14 years.” Then he made reference to a verse from Leviticus: “I won’t stand idly by my father’s blood.” 

What Rabbi Mosbacher was proposing was not just support for the gun control legislation then pending in the Senate. In fact, rather presciently, he warned the audience not to “hope for the best from the most dysfunctional institution in America.” 

Specifically, as a leader of the faith-based coalition New Jersey Together, he was propounding its proposal that local mayors, gun retailers, firearms manufacturers and large buyers like the military sign a “covenant” of gun overhaul measures. Among its 30 points, the covenant called for voluntary limits on selling certain types of weapons and large-capacity magazines, sale of guns only through federally licensed dealers and mandatory safety classes for buyers. (Because the covenant was just announced on April 14, the process of getting signatures has not begun.) 

to read more, click here

In today's NYT: How the NRA rates lawmakers -- an interactive map

Here's a link to a map that's searchable by zip code, for NRA ratings on House members and senators

On NPR last week -- the epidemiology of gun violence

(hosted by Neal Conan; Dan Keating of the Washington Post is guest)

KEATING: Well, I mean, it's an interesting - it's an exact mirror in terms of ratio. So a white person is five times as likely to die by a suicide by gun, than by a homicide. And African-Americans are five times as likely to die by homicide from a gun, than by suicide. So quite simply, you know, for every white person shot in a homicide, five shoot themselves; and for every black person who shoots himself, five are killed by homicide.

CONAN: And availability of guns, well, affects both statistics.

KEATING: Well, it's kind of interesting, because then what really drove my story was not just the disparity in the rates, but how that applies to guns and access to guns. So the people that suffer homicide among relatives, family, friends, tend to have a very anti-gun attitude. And so that's prevalent in the city across all races and in the African-American in both cities and African-American community of predominately homicide for gun deaths, and there's a strong urge for gun control both in the urban environment and in the African-American community.

But then as you move out of the city, suburbs and then rural, where the gun deaths shift to suicide, you also shift to a much lower desire for gun control, much more support for gun rights. And so what really is interesting to me about that is that when people die in a gun homicide, the gun is vilified. The gun is blamed, and people want to stop the guns.

But in gun suicide, the gun is not blamed. The gun is actually considered, you know, not the problem, and it's that, you know, they tend to more put a stigma on the person, oh there was something wrong with him. So in the reporting on this, it was - you know, and in talking to the experts, when you go to the academic experts and those kind of people, they have a very strong conviction, and they look at the data about access to guns and suicide, and how much more suicide there is in places where there are a lot of guns.

Gun violence facts, from the Brady Campaign

DID YOU KNOW? In one year on average, more than 100,000 people in America are shot or killed with a gun. Click here to see a fact sheet summarizing gun deaths and injuries over an average year.

• Over a million people have been killed with guns in the United States since 1968, when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated (Childrens’ Defense Fund, p. 20).
  
• U.S. homicide rates are 6.9 times higher than rates in 22 other populous high-income countries combined, despite similar non-lethal crime and violence rates. The firearm homicide rate in the U.S. is 19.5 times higher (Richardson, p.1).
  
• Among 23 populous, high-income countries, 80% of all firearm deaths occurred in the United States (Richardson, p. 1).

• Gun violence impacts society in countless ways: medical costs, costs of the criminal justice system, security precautions such as metal detectors, and reductions in quality of life because of fear of gun violence. These impacts are estimated to cost U.S. citizens $100 billion annually (Cook, 2000).

DID YOU KNOW? Where there are more guns, there are more gun deaths.

• An estimated 41% of gun-related homicides and 94% of gun-related suicides would not occur under the same circumstances had no guns been present (Wiebe, p. 780).

• Higher household gun ownership correlates with higher rates of homicides, suicides, and unintentional shootings (Harvard Injury Control Center).

• Keeping a firearm in the home increases the risk of suicide by a factor of 3 to 5 and increases the risk of suicide with a firearm by a factor of 17 (Kellermann, 1992, p. 467; Wiebe, p. 771).

• Keeping a firearm in the home increases the risk of homicide by a factor of 3 (Kellermann, 1993, p. 1084).

DID YOU KNOW? On the whole, guns are more likely to raise the risk of injury than to confer protection.

• A gun in the home is 22 times more likely to be used in a completed or attempted suicide (11x), criminal assault or homicide (7x), or unintentional shooting death or injury (4x) than to be used in a self-defense shooting. (Kellermann, 1998, p. 263).

• Guns are used to intimidate and threaten 4 to 6 times more often than they are used to thwart crime (Hemenway, p. 269).

• Every year there are only about 200 legally justified self-defense homicides by private citizens (FBI, Expanded Homicide Data, Table 15) compared with over 30,000 gun deaths (NCIPC).

• A 2009 study found that people in possession of a gun are 4.5 times more likely to be shot in an assault (Branas).

Back on Monday: Joe Nocera's Hammer report

The new meme among gun absolutists appears to be hammers. “Why did you elect to report on guns as a choice of weapon, when according to current F.B.I. stats, bear claw hammers and baseball bats are the number 1 and number 2 choice of weapon?” wrote a pro-gun reader: “Guns are 3rd.”

When I was interviewing Second Amendment absolutists for Saturday’s column, I heard the same thing. So of course, Jennifer Mascia and I looked into it. Guess what? It doesn’t appear to be true, as Slate reported in February. According to F.B.I. data, if you add up all the non-gun methods used to kill people in 2011 (fire, drowning, poison, strangling, hammers, etc.), you get 4,081 non-gun homicides. That’s fewer than half of the F.B.I.’s reported 8,583 gun homicides in 2011. Guns killed more than 17 times more people than hammers and are responsible for nearly 70 percent of total murders. Indeed, Slate reported, “only 496 people were killed by blunt objects, a category that includes not just hammers and baseball bats but crowbars, rocks, paving stones, statuettes, and electric guitars.”

to read more, click here

From Joe Nocera's Gun Blog: The kind of sorrow that settles into your bones

After Roger Hartley lost his friend Mark Hummels to gun violence in January, he realized Hummels was the ninth person he knew who’d been killed or injured by a gun. So he posed a question to his Facebook friends: “How many people have you known who’ve been the victims of gun violence? Suicide, accidental, murder. No politics. No judgment. Just a number.”

The responses poured in. Hartley realized that virtually everyone had a number: one, a dozen, twenty. Joe Heim, an articles editor at The Washington Post Magazine, had gone to Berkeley with Hummels, and decided to take the question to various Washingtonians. He found that even the mayor has a number. (Three.)

Aurora Vasquez, whose niece was shot and killed by her boyfriend, counts only one. That is enough.

“Rest assured that this kind of sorrow, it’s the kind of sorrow that quite literally settles into your bones,” she told Heim. “And it never goes away. And nothing is ever the same.”

to read more, click here.

In yesterday's NYT: Say Goodbye to the Assault Weapons Ban

By DAVID FIRESTONE

Fans of military-style assault weapons can stop worrying — their gun lobby has done its work, and all but assured that Congress will not pass a ban on their dangerous toys.

Senate Democratic leaders have decided not to include the ban, proposed by Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, in the official gun bill that will reach the floor in the next few weeks. It was always a long shot, but now Democrats have officially given the ban the cold shoulder.

Ms. Feinstein will probably manage to bring up the ban as a separate amendment, putting senators on record and letting the public know how they stand when given a chance to prohibit the kinds of guns used in so many massacres. As an independent measure, however, it’s guaranteed to fail. And it’s not even clear that an important piece of the ban, outlawing high-capacity ammunition magazines, will have enough support for a simple majority, let alone the 60 votes needed to get past a Republican filibuster.

Forcing supporters of gun control to hold votes on separate amendments carries significant danger. If Democrats like Ms. Feinstein get to introduce amendments, then Republican senators will do so, too. And they will almost certainly submit proposals designed to put red-state Democrats on the spot, like new limits on the responsibilities of federal firearms agents, or a bill requiring every state to honor other’s gun permits. If those kinds of measures pick up 15 Democratic votes, they could poison the entire gun package, making it unpalatable for gun-control supporters.

to read more, click here

GunCrisis.org: Seeking solutions to Gun Violence in Philadelphia

Their mission statement:

On the average, at least one person has been murdered in Philadelphia every day over the last 25 years — and more than three-quarters of them have been killed with a gun.

The Gun Crisis Reporting Project is a nonprofit, open source journalism organization intended to fill the gaps in gun violence reporting, seeking not to blame but contending that there is an epidemic of homicide by gunfire in Philadelphia and similar cities — and seeking solutions.

We will strive to bear witness to this crisis but avoid the perpetuation of fear, stereotypes and polarizing debates. We are interested in the theory that youth violence would be best addressed as a public health challenge — but will seek innovative solutions and evidence of violence reduction in every corner.

We study the landscape and the roots of the crisis, strive to illuminate the individuals and organizations working to intervene and disrupt violence, and expand the community of citizens who refuse to rest until we make a difference.
And we rememebr the victims.

to read more, click here

Heeding God's Call -- an Interfaith Group Preventing Gun Violence

Heeding God’s Call is a faith-based movement to prevent gun violence. We unite people of faith in the sacred responsibility to protect our brothers, sisters and children.

• We embrace Dr. Martin Luther King’s hope for peace and safety in our communities.
• We resist apathy to this epidemic of violence, because fear, closed doors, and separation will not end it.
• We unite to bring God’s vision of a peaceable kingdom, without the violent loss of over 30,000 American lives by gunfire each year.

To read more, click here

Trailer for Trigger -- the ripple effect of gun violence

In today's NYT: In some states, gun rights trump protection orders

By MICHAEL LUO

Published: March 17, 2013 Comment

Early last year, after a series of frightening encounters with her former husband, Stephanie Holten went to court in Spokane, Wash., to obtain a temporary order for protection. 

Her former husband, Corey Holten, threatened to put a gun in her mouth and pull the trigger, she wrote in her petition. He also said he would “put a cap” in her if her new boyfriend “gets near my kids.” In neat block letters she wrote, “ He owns guns, I am scared.”

The judge’s order prohibited Mr. Holten from going within two blocks of his former wife’s home and imposed a number of other restrictions. What it did not require him to do was surrender his guns.

About 12 hours after he was served with the order, Mr. Holten was lying in wait when his former wife returned home from a date with their two children in tow. Armed with a small semiautomatic rifle bought several months before, he stepped out of his car and thrust the muzzle into her chest. He directed her inside the house, yelling that he was going to kill her. 

“I remember thinking, ‘Cops, I need the cops,’ ” she later wrote in a statement to the police. “He’s going to kill me in my own house. I’m going to die!” 

Ms. Holten, however, managed to dial 911 on her cellphone and slip it under a blanket on the couch.  The dispatcher heard Ms. Holten begging for her life and quickly directed officers to the scene. As they mounted the stairs with their guns drawn, Mr. Holten surrendered. They found Ms. Holten cowering, hysterical, on the floor. 

For all its rage and terror, the episode might well have been prevented. Had Mr. Holten lived in one of a handful of states, the protection order would have forced him to relinquish his firearms. But that is not the case in Washington and most of the country, in large part because of the influence of the National Rifle Association and its allies. 

to read more, click here

In last Thursday's NYT: Assault weapons ban clears Senate Judiciary Committee

By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

Published: March 14, 2013 

WASHINGTON — The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday approved a measure to reinstate a ban on assault weapons in the first major Congressional test of the issue since the law expired in 2004. But the ban remains unlikely to clear the full Senate. 

Still, the committee’s passage of the bill, along with three other measures that previously cleared the panel, demonstrated momentum by lawmakers who have sought new gun regulations after the school shooting in Newtown, Conn. 

Taken together, the votes show a willingness by lawmakers to confront the pro-gun lobby, which has stifled new gun limits for years. As recently as last year, it would have been unthinkable for these bills to have even been considered in a Senate committee. 

But those measures — which include a ban on high-capacity magazines and enhanced background checks for gun buyers — will now be considered by the full Senate, where gun rights sentiments run far deeper than in the committee, to say nothing of the House, where members are even less avid to take up new gun curbs. 

The renewal of the assault weapons ban, an earlier version of which was rejected by the full Congress in 2004, even with the tacit support of President George W. Bush, is almost certain to fail in the Senate, should Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, even allow it on the floor.

“The road is uphill. I fully understand that,” Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, the author of the bill, said after its passage by the committee. “My passion comes from what I’ve seen on the streets,” she said, adding, “I cannot get out of my mind trying to find the pulse in someone and putting my fingers in a bullet hole.” 

Mr. Reid said on Thursday that he had talked with Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who leads the committee, and had promised a vote on some type of bill that considers the committee’s actions, probably by mid-April. 

While the plan has not been formulated, it will probably include a limited gun safety bill focused on stemming gun trafficking and enhancing background checks to compel states to better comply with laws on reporting records regarding criminals and mentally ill people. But even those measures will not have broad support, and 60 votes will be needed to cut off debate and move to a vote. Lawmakers will probably work with a measure passed by the committee last week that would make the already illegal practice of buying a gun for someone who is legally barred from having one — known as a straw purchase — a felony and increase penalties for the crime. 

to read more, click here.

Joe Nocera's blog: gun violence, day by day

Joe Nocera is an op-ed columnist for the New York Times.  Each day, since Feb 1st 2013,  his blog has been recording gun violence incidents in the US -- they google "shooting" each day, and choose from the results.

That is what my assistant, Jennifer Mascia, and I did last week in compiling the stories for today’s column. The column gives only the smallest of hints as to how many shootings there are on any given day; my guess is that even Google doesn’t find them all. To give you a fuller picture, we’ve reconstructed the Google search for “shooting” from Monday to Saturday last week. Since the Newtown shooting on December 14, the United States has suffered 18 gun deaths per day, for a total of 1,330. In case you were wondering.

Every day, when Jennifer Mascia and I compile this report, we are stunned at the number of children who are accidentally shot — and often killed — because a gun-owning adult in their household has put a loaded gun someplace where they can get their hands on it and shoot it. We have three such examples in today’s report, one of which resulted in the death of a 4-year-old in Houston. Other nations mandate that gun owners keep their firearms in safes bolted to the floor. Why don’t we?

Today on NPR: Zombies aside, gun control faces obstacles

Two more gun control bills are heading to the Senate floor after narrowly winning approval from the Senate Judiciary Committee this week. The legislation requiring background checks for nearly all gun sales will likely face stiff opposition in its current version, but it's the second proposal, banning assault weapons, which may get particularly heated pushback from lawmakers.

Maybe if zombies attacked, you might need a semiautomatic assault weapon for self-defense. That was one concession Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., was willing to make this week when the Senate Judiciary Committee was debating the assault weapons ban. But short of an entire zombie takeover, Leahy says he's always been perfectly satisfied with his .45-caliber at home.

to read more, click here

In today's NYT: Focusing on violence before it happens

By ERICA GOODE

 LOS ANGELES — In the days after the elementary school massacre in Newtown, Conn., Tony Beliz and his staff at the county’s mental health department here made a series of calls.

They checked in with a 16-year-old boy with a fondness for bomb-making chemicals who, two years before, told them, “I have to get rid of the bad people in this world,” and described a “special plan” he said he would put into action in a few years. 

They called the mother of another teenager — they have nicknamed him “Jared Loughner,” after the man who shot Representative Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson in 2011 — who was obsessed with weapons and killing, had access to firearms and had extensively researched school shootings. 

They contacted a 20-year-old who in 2010 was fantasizing about killing members of his family and carrying out a shooting at school. 

The young men had been brought to the attention of the School Threat Assessment Response Team program overseen by Dr. Beliz, one of the most intensive efforts in the nation to identify the potential for school violence and take steps to prevent it. The program, an unusual collaboration involving county mental health professionals, law enforcement agencies and schools, was developed by the Los Angeles Police Department in 2007, after the shooting rampage at Virginia Tech University, and was taken countywide in 2009 by Dr. Beliz, a deputy director of the mental health department. 

In the national debate that has followed the killings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, much of the focus has been on regulating firearms. But many law enforcement and mental health experts believe that developing comprehensive approaches to prevention is equally important. In many cases, they note, the perpetrators of such violence are troubled young people who have signaled their distress to others and who might have been stopped had they received appropriate help. 

“When we looked at kids who had committed attacks, the vast majority had come to the attention of an adult for a behavior that was concerning but would not necessarily cause someone to conclude they were planning an attack,” said Bryan M. Vossekuil, former executive director of the National Threat Assessment Center, part of the Secret Service, and a co-author of a 2002 guide to threat assessment in schools published by the service and the federal Education Department. 

Many secondary schools and universities around the country have protocols for dealing with students who threaten violence. And cities besides Los Angeles have started programs intended to identify students at risk. But criminal justice experts say that the program in Los Angeles, financed under California’s Mental Health Services Act, is noteworthy for the sharing of information among agencies and for the degree of follow-up in keeping track of worrisome students over time. 

“I think L.A. really is a shining star and a standard in relation to how a big city can actually collaborate,” said J. Kevin Cameron, an expert on school shootings and executive director of the Canadian Center for Threat Assessment and Trauma Response, who has consulted with the program. 

to read more, click here

Last week in Media, PA: Democracy Unplugged discussion on gun control

Dayenu fact sheet

God Bless America

To read about the facts behind the poster, click here

from Pediatrics: Firearm-Related Injuries affecting the pediatric population

• From the American Academy of Pediatrics

Policy Statement

Firearm-Related Injuries Affecting the Pediatric Population

1. COUNCIL ON INJURY, VIOLENCE, AND POISON PREVENTION EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

The absence of guns from children’s homes and communities is the most reliable and effective measure to prevent firearm-related injuries in children and adolescents. Adolescent suicide risk is strongly associated with firearm availability. Safe gun storage (guns unloaded and locked, ammunition locked separately) reduces children’s risk of injury. Physician counseling of parents about firearm safety appears to be effective, but firearm safety education programs directed at children are ineffective. The American Academy of Pediatrics continues to support a number of specific measures to reduce the destructive effects of guns in the lives of children and adolescents, including the regulation of the manufacture, sale, purchase, ownership, and use of firearms; a ban on semiautomatic assault weapons; and the strongest possible regulations of handguns for civilian use. ...



Of all injury deaths of individuals 15 through 19 years of age in the United States in 2009, more than 1 (28.7%) in 4 were firearm related, and of those younger than 20 years, nearly 1 (19.5%) in 5 were firearm related.¹ These firearm deaths result from homicide, suicide, and unintentional injury (Fig 2). Black Americans are particularly affected; injuries from firearms were the leading cause of death among black males 15 through 34 years of age in 2009.² Although national data cannot fully document urban and rural differences in the patterns of injuries from firearms that involve children, local data indicate that children in rural areas as well as in urban areas are at risk for firearm-related mortality.^3–5

...
The United States has the highest rates of firearm-related deaths (including homicide, suicide, and unintentional deaths) among high-income countries.⁹ For youth 15 to 24 years of age, firearm homicide rates, as documented by Richardson and Hemenway,⁹ were 35.7 times higher than in other countries. For children 5 to 14 years of age, firearm suicide rates were 8 times higher, and death rates from unintentional firearm injuries were 10 times higher in the United States than other high-income countries. The difference in rates may be related to the ease of availability of guns in the United States compared with other high-income countries. This is particularly true for suicides, as guns carry a high case-fatality rate.¹⁰ Suicides among the young are typically impulsive,¹¹ and easy access to lethal weapons largely determines outcome.

to read more, click here

From the American Academy of Pediatrics: Federal Advocacy to Prevent Gun Violence

Federal Policies to Keep Children Safe

 

AAP's Recommendations to the White House Since the tragic shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. that took the lives of twenty students and six educators, the Academy has been engaged in a thoughtful, organization-wide response and call to action to assure the future safety and protection of our nation’s children.

Academy leadership and staff are working closely with partner organizations to raise the voice of the nation's pediatricians on Capitol Hill and among state legislatures to ensure that appropriate legislation is developed to promote children's safety.

Specifically, the Academy is advocating to Congress and the Adminisration the following priorities (for a comprehensive overview, read this summary ):

• Firearm safety: Enact stronger gun laws, including an effective assault weapons ban; mandatory background checks on all firearm purchases; and a ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines.
  
• Prevention and public health: Allow federal agencies to conduct research on the causes and prevention of gun violence, and stand by the President's clarification that the Affordable Care Act does not prohibit doctors from asking their patients about guns in the home. 
• Access to mental health services: Improve the identification of mental illnesses through increased screening, addressing inadequate insurance coverage and high out-of-pocket costs that create barriers to access, strengthening the overall quality of mental health access, and expanding the Medicaid reimbursement policy to include mental health and developmental services.
• Reducing gun violence in the media and educating children: Develop quality, violence-free programming and constructive dialogue among child health and education advocates, the Federal Communications Commission, and the television and motion picture industries, as well as toy, video game, and other software manufactures and designers, to reduce the romanticization of guns in the popular media as a means of resolving conflict.

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In today's NYT: Charity takes gun lobby closer to its quarry

By MIKE McINTIRE

On a Monday evening in early February, two months into a national debate over gun violence after the massacre at a Connecticut elementary school, representatives of the firearms industry were wining and dining lawmakers in Washington. 

The occasion was the “Changing of the Guard” reception and dinner for the incoming leadership of the Congressional Sportsmen’s Caucus, which counts more than 250 members in the House and Senate. Hosting the gathering was a little-known but well-connected organization, the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation. 

Despite its low profile, the foundation has close ties to members of Congress, allowing its donors, who give as much as $100,000 a year, to mix with lawmakers at shooting contests, banquets and wine tastings. The food and drink at last month’s gathering were paid for in part by the National Rifle Association and the trade group for the gun industry. 

Over the past year, sportsmen’s caucus members have clinked glasses and puffed cigars at a “Wine, Wheels and Wildlife” fund-raiser at a North Carolina vineyard, a “Whiskies of the World” and cigar reception on Capitol Hill, and a “Stars and Stripes Shootout” in Tampa, Fla., where the top shooting awards went to a Republican congressman and a lobbyist for the N.R.A. Such events provide the firearms industry and other foundation donors with a tax-deductible means of lobbying the elected officials who shape policies important to their businesses. 

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In The Atlantic: Gun violence in US Cities compared to the deadliest nations in the world

(for comparison, the murder rate in Chester was 64/100,000 in 2010, 62/100,000 in 2011, so comparable to Honduras, or New Orleans).

"We can't put this off any longer," President Obama implored the nation last week as he introduced 23 executive actions designed to reduce gun violence in America. While the United States has the highest level of gun ownership per capita in the world, its rate of gun homicides, about three per 100,000 people, is far lower than that of Honduras, the country with the world's highest gun homicide rate (roughly 68 gun murders per 100,000 people). But America's homicide rate varies significantly by city and metro area, as I pointed out here at Cities a few weeks ago.

The map below compares the rate of gun murders in American cities to nations around the world. Building upon Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data used in that post, Zara Matheson of the Martin Prosperity Institute compiled additional data from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and other sources collated by The Guardian. (While international crime data suffer from significant reporting and comparison issues, homicide data is more reliable. As the Urban Institute's John Roman points out, it is the one type of crime that is "hard to fake" and also most likely to be reported.)

To read more, and see the map, click here.

In today's NYT: To reduce suicide rates, new focus turns to guns

By SABRINA TAVERNISE

Published: February 13, 2013 669 Comments

DAYTON, Wyo. — Craig Reichert found his son’s body on a winter morning, lying on the floor as if he were napping with his great-uncle’s pistol under his knee. The 911 dispatcher told him to administer CPR, but Mr. Reichert, who has had emergency training, told her it was too late. His son, Kameron, 17, was already cold to the touch. 

Guns are like a grandmother’s diamonds in the Reichert family, heirlooms that carry memory and tradition. They are used on the occasional hunting trip, but most days they are stored, forgotten, under a bed. So when Kameron used one on himself, his parents were as shocked as they were heartbroken.

“I beat myself up quite a bit over not having a gun safe or something to put them in,” Mr. Reichert said. But he said even if he had had one, “There would have been two people in the house with the combination, him and me.” 

The gun debate has focused on mass shootings and assault weapons since the schoolhouse massacre in Newtown, Conn., but far more Americans die by turning guns on themselves. Nearly 20,000 of the 30,000 deaths from guns in the United States in 2010 were suicides, according to the most recent figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The national suicide rate has climbed by 12 percent since 2003, and suicide is the third-leading cause of death for teenagers. 

Guns are particularly lethal. Suicidal acts with guns are fatal in 85 percent of cases, while those with pills are fatal in just 2 percent of cases, according to the Harvard Injury Control Research Center.

The national map of suicide lights up in states with the highest gun ownership rates. Wyoming, Montana and Alaska, the states with the three highest suicide rates, are also the top gun-owning states, according to the Harvard center. The state-level data are too broad to tell whether the deaths were in homes with guns, but a series of individual-level studies since the early 1990s found a direct link. Most researchers say the weight of evidence from multiple studies is that guns in the home increase the risk of suicide.

To read more, click here.

In today's NYT: research on the effects of Violent computer games

By BENEDICT CAREY

Published: February 11, 2013

  The young men who opened fire at Columbine High School, at the movie theater in Aurora, Colo., and in other massacres had this in common: they were video gamers who seemed to be acting out some dark digital fantasy. It was as if all that exposure to computerized violence gave them the idea to go on a rampage — or at least fueled their urges. 

But did it really? 

Social scientists have been studying and debating the effects of media violence on behavior since the 1950s, and video games in particular since the 1980s. The issue is especially relevant today, because the games are more realistic and bloodier than ever, and because most American boys play them at some point. Girls play at lower rates and are significantly less likely to play violent games. 

A burst of new research has begun to clarify what can and cannot be said about the effects of violent gaming. Playing the games can and does stir hostile urges and mildly aggressive behavior in the short term. Moreover, youngsters who develop a gaming habit can become slightly more aggressive — as measured by clashes with peers, for instance — at least over a period of a year or two. 

Yet it is not at all clear whether, over longer periods, such a habit increases the likelihood that a person will commit a violent crime, like murder, rape, or assault, much less a Newtown-like massacre. (Such calculated rampages are too rare to study in any rigorous way, researchers agree.)

To read more, click here.

You can help! Write your legislators

You can help!
1. Click on these links for letters you can send to your federal legislators (2 US Senators and 1 Congressman); or, if you drop them off in the Ohev office, we will mail them for you!

Media Residents  
Wallingford and Swarthmore Residents  
Other Pennsylvania Residents Non-Pennsylvania Residents

2. Click on this link for phone numbers for your legislators.

3. Click on one of the links to look up who your legislators are:

Pennsylvania State Legislators
U.S. Congressman
U.S. Senators

In today's NYT: Hadiya Pendleton's funeral

By MONICA DAVEY and STEVEN YACCINO

Published: February 9, 2013 

CHICAGO — By the hundreds, mourners filed into the pews of a packed church on this city’s South Side on Saturday, clutching one another, weeping and wearing buttons adorned with the smiling face of Hadiya Pendleton, a 15-year-old girl whose death has come to represent the miserable cost of gun and gang violence. 

“She is a representative not just of the people in Chicago, she is a representative of people across this nation who have lost their lives,” said Damon Stewart, Ms. Pendleton’s godfather, as he urged people not to politicize her death. 

An array of Washington officials — the first lady, Michelle Obama; Arne Duncan, the education secretary; and Valerie Jarrett, a senior White House adviser — were among dignitaries seated in the front row. Ms. Pendleton, a member of her high school’s majorette team, traveled to Washington to perform during President Obama’s inauguration festivities only a week before she was fatally shot here. 

Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who has met with the girl’s family and spoken emotionally of her dreams for her future, attended, too, as did Gov. Patrick J. Quinn, who had alluded to Ms. Pendleton in his State of the State address. 

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On CSPAN: link to Gabby Giffords' testimony

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From Today's NYT: Gabriel Giffords Testifies in Senate

WASHINGTON — The universe of potential changes to federal gun laws seemed to shrink Wednesday during an occasionally tense Senate hearing on gun violence as lawmakers and proponents of more gun rules tussled with gun rights advocates over the availability of some types of weapons and ammunition. In the end, chances for a ban on assault weapons dimmed, and compromise seemed elusive.

The hearing, the first held by the Senate Judiciary Committee since the mass shooting last month at a Newtown, Conn., school, began on a poignant note as former Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who was critically injured in a 2011 shooting, addressed the committee slowly but with passion, essentially begging panel members to come up with legislation to address gun violence.

“Too many children are dying,” she said to a packed, hushed hearing room. “Too many children.”

to read more, click here

Swarthmore-Wallingford Interfaith Ministerium - Statement on Newtown

Gun violence and public health: Resources

Here are some resources on gun violence and public health:

Faith-based Resources:

Faiths United to Prevent Gun Violence
Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism

The sacred Jewish text the Mishnah teaches that every human life is unique and precious, created in the divine image.  In the Mishnah, our sages tell us that carrying a weapon is disgraceful; as it says (in Isaiah),“They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks…” (Shabbat 6:4).

Conservative and Masorti Jews join the world in mourning the victims of the senseless murder in Newtown, Conn., including 20 innocent children and their teachers and beloved principal. 

The United States has recently witnessed the wanton killing of innocents by gunfire across the country, both in terms of mass killings in Colorado, Arizona, Wisconsin and Connecticut, among others, as well as hundreds of shootings, many fatal, in crimes, acts of passion and accidents each and every day. 

In 1993, 1995 and 2012, United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism went on the record asking that action be taken to reduce the danger to our society from the too easy availability of guns, and in 1990, 1995 and 2011, the Rabbinical Assembly passed similar resolutions calling for very strict regulations on the manufacture, importation and sale of guns.

The leadership of Conservative Judaism, which includes the Rabbinical Assembly, United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the Jewish Theological Seminary, Cantors Assembly, Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs, Women’s League for Conservative Judaism, the Jewish Educators Assembly, and the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies reiterates its call for:

Stopping sales of assault weapons for non-combat use;
Creating a system to tighten and monitor sales of ammunition to individuals;
Creating a system to lengthen purchase time for all weapons to ensure that a complete background check be made before sales of guns;
Creating a system for coding all ammunition sold in the United States to be traceable to its purchaser;
Requiring gun manufacturers to install the already developed system which codes ammunition with traceable markings for each gun; and
Banning online sales of ammunition.

We ask that all Americans contact their elected and appointed governmental officials at the local, state and federal levels to echo the words of President Obama on December 16, as he addressed the families of Newtown: “We have to change.”  The President vowed to use “the power of this office” to do whatever it takes  to engage with law enforcement, mental health professionals, parents and educators in an effort to prevent more tragedies like Newtown.We call for Americans of all faiths to plan for major advocacy in the coming weeks and months to show massive support for strong gun control legislation and enforcement in the United States.  (Press release, 12/17/2012, United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism)

 United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism Stands Against Gun Violence

Organization Resources: 
Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence
Coalition to Stop Gun Violence
Women Against Gun Violence

Public Health Resources:

Curbing Gun Violence:  Lessons from Public Health Successes
Gun Violence Must Stop.  Here's What We Can Do to Prevent More Deaths
Position Statement of the Interdisciplinary Group on Preventing School and Community Violence

...Prevention is the core of pediatric work. We aim to protect children from all things that can harm them. ... In 2010, gun-related injuries accounted for 6570 deaths of children and young people (1 to 24 years of age). That includes 7 deaths per day among people 1 to 19 years of age. Gun injuries cause twice as many deaths as cancer, 5 times as many as heart disease, and 15 times as many as infections (from the New England Journal of Medicine)
Preventing Gun Deaths in Children

Risks and Benefits of a Gun in the Home
The role of research in addressing the public health problem of gun violence 

Newspaper articles

Geoffrey Canada (head of the Harlem Childrens Zone):  New York's Newtown -- The epidemic of city children killed by handguns has haunted me throughout my career.

From the Washington Post:   
Predicting Violence is a Work in Progress

From the New York Times:
Full transcript of Obama's Gun Control Proposals (Jan 16 2013)
Legislative Handcuffs Limit A.T.F.'s Ability to Fight Gun Crime
Senator Unveils bill to Limit Semi-Automatic Arms