Tag: gun deaths

Honor Thy Children (to save humanity)

Posted on by kathiemm

by Kathie MM

Cloe Axelson in a WBUR Cognoscenti article tells us, “The kids have something to say, and we should listen.” And she’s right.

Axelson’s article focuses on student activists who survived last February’s mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in which 17 died.

Parkland was not the first example of a mass school shooting in this country; given that the United States has become a nation in which nearly 100 people die daily from guns, it is unlikely to be the last. [I hope you are as horrified to read these words as I am to write them and are thinking of ways to fight the NRA’s deadly work for the arms industry.]

One of the highlights of Axelson’s article is her reminiscence about another young student, Mary Beth Tinker, who was suspended from her middle school in Iowa in the 1960s for wearing a black arm band to school to protest the Vietnam War. The ACLU took her case on behalf of student rights to free speech all the way to the Supreme Court, where she won her case in a 7-2 decision. 

I have same hypotheses about the child-rearing Mary Beth and other student activists experienced.  I believe that in general, they were not bullied and beaten by their parents.  They were not sent off to military schools to straighten them out.  They were not told to shut their traps, mind their own beeswax, watch out or they’d get what was coming to them, obey…or else.

More likely, young activists like these are allowed to ask questions, wonder about injustices, read widely, educate themselves about society’s ills, and even speak out about problems they see in their communities and beyond—nurtured rather than suppressed, taught to love rather than to hate, urged to strive for a better society rather than become bullies themselves.

“Beating the devil” out of kids is not a path to a better world. Corporal punishment can beat out a lot of potential for developing a universal ethic and sense of justice—and perhaps destroy our only hope for survival of the planet. If you want to stop violence in and to the world, work to end violence in the home.

And inspire yourself! Hear Mary Beth today in this brief video.

https://nowthisnews.com/videos/news/mary-beth-tinker-talks-about-her-role-in-the-history-of-student-rights

Remember what they do

Posted on by kathiemm

New Orleans march against violent crime in response to multiple recent murders. Marching to City Hall from Poydras Street. the GNU Free Documentation License. Author: Infrogmation.

by Sarah Mensch

Every day, 93 Americans are killed by gun violence. I am twenty-one years old. In my lifetime, more than 630,000 people have been killed by guns in the United States.

That many victims, many of them children, could fill NRG Stadium, where this year’s Super Bowl was held, about ten times.

In 1996, Congress eliminated $2.6 million from the budget of the Centers for Disease Control. That money was restored, but only with the stipulation that neither it, nor any other funding to the CDC, be used for research on gun violence and its effect on the American public. This makes obtaining reliable gun violence statistics difficult. Given the political power of the National Rifle Association, passing gun control legislation is even more difficult.

Earlier today Kathie Malley Morrison  asked me if I personally knew any victims of gun violence. At first, I described myself as “one degree of separation”  from several gun violence victims, but then remembered a former camp counselor of mine who was killed in late 2006. Kathie told me that years ago one of the girls who grew up in her small town neighborhood was shot and killed by her husband in front of their two small children.

With an average of 30,000 people killed by guns in the US each year, I think it would be hard to find someone who was more than one degree of separation from a victim of some sort of gun violence. Yet most people do absolutely nothing to prevent this violence.

The available gun violence statistics are dismal, to say the least. Americans are 20 times more likely to be killed by a gun than people in other developed nations. In 2016 alone, there were 58,205 instances of gun violence in the U.S. and there is no real end in sight—despite all the violence, 45% of Americans believe that Americans are safer with more guns rather than fewer.

Resolving to end gun violence in a country where the media flaunt and profit from portrayals of violence isn’t easy, but I want to suggest two ways readers of this article can help.

  1. Make a donation to Everytown For Gun Safety, a nonprofit gun safety advocacy group. Donations are tax-deductible. If you don’t want to contribute financially, consider signing up for Everytown’s mobile list of Gun Sense Activists for texts with ways to help make your community safer.
  2. When you hear about upcoming gun control legislation, go to this site to find out how to contact your state’s senators and representatives and tell them how you think they should vote. You’re their elector, which means you’re their boss. If calling your representative sounds intimidating, check out this comic for some easy guidelines for doing so .

Sarah Mensch is a psychology major at Boston University. She is thrilled to be working on a Directed Study focusing on the effect of the media on gun violence under the supervision of Dr. Malley Morrison. When Sarah graduates, she aims to go on to graduate school to earn an MSW and become a therapist. In her spare time, Sarah enjoys pursuing her minor in Deaf Studies, photography, and exploring Boston.

Violence in your backyard: Poverty in America

Posted on by kathiemm

Recent posts have linked poverty to violence in Greece and Africa. But poverty means violence here in America, too, and the forces that breed poverty and violence can reach into every home if they are ignored.Homeless campsite

A few examples of the link between poverty and violence in the United States:

  • Gun deaths are higher in states with higher levels of poverty and lower incomes
  • Poverty is a major contributor to domestic violence (opens in pdf)
  • Deaths due to poverty-related factors are as common as deaths due to heart attacks, strokes, and lung cancer
  • On average, in Camden, NJ, the poorest city in America, someone was shot every 33 hours in 2012.

We can afford to do better.

The U.S. is the richest country in the world, has the largest number of billionaires in the world, and has the highest gross national product.

It also ranks first (opens in pdf) in defense expenditures and military weapons expenditures.  Indeed, the military budget is so large, the Pentagon had a surplus of $105 billion at the end of FY2012.

A small portion of this money could reduce the violence of poverty—and the costs of that violence– dramatically.

UNICEF has shown that nations can lift children out of poverty and nations around the world are doing just that.

The U.S., however, is lagging in this effort.  We have the second highest rate of child poverty among developed nations. This is indefensible.

For more faces of poverty, check out these photos.

Poverty is violence.  It costs money. It costs lives. We must do better. To address violence, we must address poverty.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology