A Familiar Tragedy

I am constantly amazed at how easy it is to overlook the obvious until somehow the facts connect to our own experiences. Eleven days ago, as I was recovering in the hospital from back surgery, I heard the news of the Fort Hood massacre. Naturally, most of the news coverage focused on the number of dead and only briefly mentioned that 31 people were wounded.

As I was attempting to cope with the pain of a highly-controlled, planned-in-advance surgery, I found myself thinking of the pain and agony of those 31 human beings who were dealing with the trauma of unexpected gunshot wounds. I was forced to reflect how often we concentrate on the death totals of gun violence in America and overlook the fact that every day in our country 215 people are shot with guns and survive. What about them? They deserve more from our society, both in terms of resources and support.

I was also struck by the irony that Fort Hood is located in Killeen, Texas. Killeen is where one of the deadliest rampage shootings in American history took place in 1991, when an unemployed ex-Navy enlistee crashed his pickup truck into a popular cafeteria, pulled out two handguns, and killed 23 people before taking his own life. That tragedy held the "record" for America's worst shooting massacre until 2007, when a Virginia Tech student shot and killed 32 students and faculty. In another tragic twist, it turns out the Fort Hood shooter was a graduate of Virginia Tech in 1997.

The state of Texas reacted to the 1991 shootings in Killeen by enacting a law freeing up gun owners to carry concealed handguns in public. At the behest of the National Rifle Association, many other states followed suit. Perhaps predictably, the reaction from the gun lobby was similar after the Fort Hood shootings. Describing military bases as “gun-free zones,” commentators like John Lott have blamed the tragedy on their strict rules concerning concealed, private handguns. “The law-abiding, not the criminals, are the ones who obey the ban on guns,” says Lott.

Of course, there is an irony here as well. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood Shooter, held a concealed handgun permit in the state of Virginia. Furthermore, Virginia permits are recognized as valid in the state of Texas. Hasan, by Lott’s definition, was one of the “law-abiding citizens” who would have made his fellow service members safer by carrying a concealed handgun on military installations.

That type of “logic” is exactly what our service members don’t need, and hopefully it will be rejected by the U.S. Congress as it considers how to respond to the tragedy. For now, however, we should all turn our thoughts to the families who have lost loved ones, and to the 31 brave Americans who have long recovery processes ahead of them.

Playing with (FOX)fire

The FOX television network and the Republican Party were major promoters of the “Tea Parties” that were held around the nation on April 15. These events, which were promoted as protests against tax policies, seem to have turned into a foul mix of anti-Obama and anti-government diatribes.

According to Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank, here in Washington, D.C., demonstrators carried signs with such slogans as “The Audacity of the Dope,” “One Big Awful Mistake America,” “Napolitano—Obama’s Gestapo Queen,” “Obama Bin Lyin” and “Hey Big Brother: Show us Your Real Birth Certificate.”

While such verbal assaults on the President and/or the government are fully within bounds of political dissent—and can even be clever—many of the things said at the various events bordered on incitement to insurrection. At a rally in Austin, Texas Governor Rick Perry suggested that Texans might at some point get so fed up they would secede from the Union. Here in the District, radio talk show host Mike Church treated the crowd to a mock fascist salute and said that “It’s time to have a little revolution, I think. We don’t have to fire weapons. You should own them, you should have a lot of ammo to go with them, but you don’t have to shoot them.” “Unless we have to!” someone yelled back.

My esteemed colleague, CSGV Executive Director Josh Horwitz, is publishing an exciting new book on this topic next month, “Guns, Democracy and the Insurrectionist Idea.” He also has a marvelous new blog on the Huffington Post, “Insurrection Goes ‘Mainstream.’”

The blog focuses on the role of national news media outlets in promoting insurrection. In addition to the endless promotion of the “Tea Parties” on all of FOX’s “Fair & Balanced” programs, Fox News personalities Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Neil Cavuto and Tobin Smith were among the featured speakers at various Tea Party sites. Smith even began his presentation at the District of Columbia event by saying “On behalf of the Fox News Channel, I want to say welcome to the Comedy Channel of America, Washington, D.C.” He ended his speech by exhorting the audience to “Keep watching FOX, will you?”

I cannot help but wonder if the Fox News Channel—in its relentless and forceful denigration of our current government—is not playing with fire.

Beyond the Inner City

There has always been one argument for not getting involved in the gun control issue that has confused and frustrated me. As I travel around the country, I often hear people say that gun violence is primarily an, “inner city, gang-related” problem.

This argument is deeply flawed on multiple fronts. First, it is factually incorrect. The FBI reported 14,860 total murders in 2005, only 850 of which were gang killings. That year, the ten states with the highest rates of gun death per capita in the U.S. were Louisiana, Alaska, Montana, Tennessee, Alabama, Nevada, Arkansas, Arizona, Mississippi, and West Virginia—all predominantly rural states.

Secondly, there is a racial bias that is inherently embedded in the argument—suggesting that black Americans are the main victims and perpetrators of gun violence—therefore whites need not take the issue seriously. Out of the 31,446 gun deaths that occurred in America in 2005, 21,958 of the victims were whites. In terms of gun homicide, 5,266 of 12,352 victims in 2005 were white. The Department of Justice reports that from 1976 to 2005, 86% of white murder victims were killed by whites. Finally, there were more than 17,000 gun suicides in the U.S. in 2005, and 15,681 of these victims were whites. That’s a great deal of white on white gun violence that some would like to sweep under the carpet.

The sheer lunacy of the “inner city argument” was highlighted for me last week with news of yet another heinous shooting. I was aghast when I learned that eight-year-old Christopher Bizilj had died while shooting a fully automatic Uzi at a gun show in Westfield, Massachusetts. Westfield has been described as “a small city with the close-knit feel of a rural New England town” with a population of approximately 40,000.

I still remember, too, a seminal event that pushed me to become involved in gun violence prevention. On August 1, 1966, a white student at the University of Texas at Austin shot and killed 14 people and wounded 31 others from the observation deck of the University's 32-story administrative building. The gunman went on this rampage shortly after murdering his wife and mother as they lay sleeping.

Such shootings are just one small indicator of the inclusive nature of gun violence in America. These deaths, injuries, physical and psychic trauma affect all of us—regardless of age, race, class or geography.