Shannon Watts is the founder of Moms Demand Action, a nationwide organization that is working state-by-state and nationally for gun safety legislation.
After the most recent Texas massacre, Governor Greg Abbott apparently felt compelled to comment. His response? Misusing statistics, he claimed California, with its strong gun safety laws, has more firearm deaths than Texas. In fact, based on California’s larger population, Texas has far more deaths per capita.
Once again, I turn to historian Heather Cox Richardson:
“For years now, after one massacre or another, I have written some version of the same article, explaining that the nation’s current gun free-for-all is not traditional but, rather, is a symptom of the takeover of our nation by a radical extremist minority.
“The idea that massacres are ‘the price of freedom,’ as right-wing personality Bill O’Reilly said in 2017 after the Mandalay Bay massacre in Las Vegas, in which a gunman killed 60 people and wounded 411 others, is new, and it is about politics, not our history.”
Richardson traces the developments that have brought us to this lethal state in which the Second Amendment has been construed as sacrosanct.
The NRA was founded as a sportsman’s group that backed federal legislation to prevent children, criminals, and mentally ill people from possessing weapons. It made a sharp transition to right-wing action organization, stuffing the coffers of Republican politicians.
Now, more than ever, state and national Republican legislators continually repay the debt with their votes to block sensible gun legislation and ease access to more and more arms to Americans fearing for their safety and/or possessing a distorted notion of “freedom.”
I found Richardson’s column a worthwhile and sad rewrite of one she’s published a number of times in the past.
But look at this: results of an April 27, 2023 poll–from the folks at Fox:
–Requiring criminal background checks on all gun buyers (87%)
— Improving enforcement of existing gun laws (81%
— Raising the legal age to buy a gun to 21 (81%)
— Requiring mental health checks on gun buyers (80%)
— Allowing police to take guns from those considered a danger to themselves or others (80%)
— Requiring a 30-day waiting period for all gun purchases (77%)
Another 6 in 10 favor banning assault rifles and semi-automatic weapons (61%). On Tuesday, Washington became the 10th state to institute a general ban on assault weapon sales.”
Fred Guttenberg’s daughter Jaime was murdered in the Parkland School massacre. Since then, he has devoted his life to advocating for gun safety measures.
Doesn’t his tweet below bring the point home?
It doesn’t have to be this way! People in red, blue, and purple states agree. We can’t let a power-mad minority make us live in the chaos of their making.
Annie
annieasksyou... 
The evidence is undeniable: strong gun laws save lives.
https://giffords.org/lawcenter/resources/scorecard/
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Thanks very much, William. This is an excellent resource. I hope lots of readers will check it out and use it to contact their legislators.
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This speaks volumes … and not in any good sense, unless you live on the West Coast or New York!
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Or—if you’re mad enough to fight back in other states!
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Mad enough, for sure. After a while, the fighting takes a toll, but it’s time to dust myself off and get up and fight some more, isn’t it?
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‘Tis!
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Rules work very well when people want them to. Taking is hard to market as well. These weapons and the ammunition used in them require specialty materials for their manufacture. Buy the market.
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You had described what seemed to me to be a workable approach on my previous gun post, Richard. I think you should send it to the legislators seeking gun safety and maybe others in this effort. Can’t hurt, right?
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I’m just sick of it. Sick of ‘men’ who only feel manly if they have a hunk of steel that can kill people hanging from their belt. Sick of lawmakers who put their own profit over our lives. Sick of people misinterpreting the Constitution to match their own greedy whims. The United States has become, in my view, a third-world country where it is not safe to even shop for food.
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I wanted this post to encourage people to fight back via their legislators. It doesn’t have to be this way! Yesterday, a Texas state legislative committee approved legislation to raise the age for owning an assault weapon from 18 to 21. Everyone knows it won’t become law, but that’s never happened before—and the committee chair said very recently that he’d never do what he just did. The Uvalde parents, clear-eyed, are encouraged. They’re in this for the long game. I think that Fox poll is significant.
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I am sorry, Annie … you are right, the post was obviously intended to encourage us to fight back! I think that in all cases, though, we interpret or feel the words we read in the context of our mood of the moment, and unfortunately at that moment, my mood was bleak — as it often is these days. We fight, we fight some more, and we keep on fighting, only to be told, as I was a few days ago, that I cannot be an “American” if I don’t support an unfettered 2nd Amendment. Don’t worry … I’ll get my mojo back in a few days … I hope.
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I hope so too! We need your mojo now more than ever!
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Lies, damn lies and statistics. We have statically always been a 3rd world country. Somalia the worlds anarchist run state has a 5.6 homicides per 100000. The USA stands upon 7.8 per 100000. Pass all the laws you want the people will remain the same. We might not be the good ones after all. This is not our fate.
There must be some kind of way outta here
Said the joker to the thief
There’s too much confusion
I can’t get no relief
Business men, they drink my wine
Plowmen dig my earth
None will level on the line
Nobody offered his word
Hey, hey
No reason to get excited
The thief, he kindly spoke
There are many here among us
Who feel that life is but a joke
But, uh, but you and I, we’ve been through that
And this is not our fate
So let us stop talkin’ falsely now
The hour’s getting late, hey
Hey
There is no way out, only through. We will do the work because the work must be done! We are allowed to bitch about to our hearts content, it just won’t change anything. If I tell you what I have taken from you you will need to tell me a joke.
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I’m so sad to see my state, Vermont, with a C- . . . same as Florida. I’m also disheartened and oh so disgusted. I’m told that the anemic or total hands-off approach to gun regulation assures political reelection. Apparently we have a lot of hunters who think their way of life will be threatened. We have a new representative in Congress now, a woman who seems to have good sense and a lot of energy. I’m writing her next. Thanks for the facts, Annie. You make my job easier.
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I remember Senator Bernie Sanders’ reluctance to support gun safety laws. He’s changed that stance, but I can see the reason for the C-. I hope your new legislator is strong. But maybe events have changed Vermonters too. So glad you find the info helpful, Denise.
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In addition to the measures included in the Fox poll, I think we need to ban the assault-style rifles and require training, testing, and re-testing for firearm ownership—just as we do for drivers licenses.
Have you seen this video from Arizona’s Secretary of State? https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1655204716354195463?s=20
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Thank you, Carol. This is great. The Fox poll includes 61% in favor of banning assault weapons. I also emphatically agree, and have written elsewhere, that guns should be treated like cars. That includes liability for gun manufacturers, who are now the only group protected from liability laws. The Fontes tape is excellent! I was impressed with him when he ran. I hope he goes far in politics. Many Constitutional scholars question Heller, but Fontes’s brief summary is super. I hadn’t seen it.
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Several points
1) It is the design and caliber of the bullets as well. The .223 caliber used in these weapons is a “military” designed to tumble and tear up flesh and bone when it strikes. Not a through and through wound from say a .30 caliber etc. So ban weapon and caliber.
2) Let the insurance companies take over. Mandate insurance for any and all weapons. The gov. mandates insurance for travel (auto), health, fishing, etc for any number of things that are otherwise “freedoms”. Let insurance and actuary tables lead. What a money maker for the dark forces. They will always choose money over any so called principle. God knows with the present dishonourable scotus no reasonable laws can be passed unchallenged.
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I agree, anynameleft—emphatically!
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How about a plan to restrict assault-style¹ firearms and replace them with “thoughts and prayers”. After all, it “thoughts and prayers” are good enough for families who have lost loved ones to mass shootings, they ought to be good enough for people who lose their guns.
¹ In case someone out there points out that the “AR” in “AR-15” does not stand for “Assault Rifle” and that they are semi-automatic and, therefore, technically not “assault weapons”, I am writing about how they are used, not how they are defined.
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