Open Democratic Platform Meeting

The message from the Obama campaign was exciting: Every four years, the Democratic Party assembles a platform that outlines the party's position on a number of issues. Traditionally, the drafting of the platform is not open to ordinary people. This year, that's going to change. For two weeks in July, people all across America will hold Platform Meetings in their own communities to discuss the issues and share their input. The outcome of these meetings will be reviewed by the Drafting Committee as it creates the final Platform.

Members of New England Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence, States United to Prevent Gun Violence, New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, Ceasefire New Jersey, Gun Free Kids, and Freedom States Alliance met to draft a Democratic Platform statement on gun violence prevention. We are extremely proud of our Platform statement and share it with you here.

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The Democratic Party believes that all Americans have the right to be free from gun violence in our homes, schools, places of work and on the streets of our communities. Easy access to firearms by terrorists, felons, domestic violence offenders, violent teens, the mentally ill and many others who we all agree should not possess guns continues to put tens of thousands of Americans at risk every year for death or injury due to gun violence.

This significant ongoing threat to the safety of our communities across the country is due in part because more than 500,000 guns are sold or transferred each year without the simple and beneficial performance of background checks on the purchasers.

More than 30,000 Americans are killed each and every year with firearms. This is a staggering sum. In addition, guns wound and injure more than 70,000 citizens every year. Unregulated guns sold to unauthorized people are used daily to rob, intimidate, wound and kill law abiding Americans. It is the illegal trade in firearms that fuels the criminal market.

Without doubt, the devastation caused by gun violence and the illegal gun trade is a critical public health, safety, social and economic issue costing thousands of lives and billions of dollars every year. The Democratic Party can and must do more to prevent this tide of violence against law abiding Americans. Safe and secure barriers must be placed between firearms and terrorists, criminals and unlawful people who seek to possess guns.

The recent Supreme Court decision, District of Columbia v. Heller, supports this view and confirms that sensible regulation as to who may possess firearms, what kinds of guns may be possessed and other life-saving restrictions are acceptable under the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The decision clearly states that, while the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm in the home for self-defense -- the right is not unlimited.

Maintaining our current patchwork of local, state and federal laws and regulations leaves too many loopholes for terrorists and criminals to exploit. These loopholes grant too many opportunities for guns to get into the wrong hands. We must work to ensure that only law abiding Americans possess weapons, and that terrorists and criminals cannot utilize the current lax and unregulated secondary sales market for weapons to get their hands on guns.

Nothing herein is intended to restrict the law abiding American who has passed a Brady background check from possessing a weapon if he/she wishes. Therefore, we resolve to:

- Strengthen the national Brady background check system to incorporate all necessary records including criminal, domestic violence, and mental health records from all 50 states and all territories.

- Institute a universal background check system to ensure that all gun sales in all 50 states and territories are subject to a Brady background check.

- Fully fund the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms so that it can conduct regular and frequent inspections of Federal Firearms Licensed Dealers to prevent unlawful sales.

- Require that all persons who sell guns of any kind through employment at a gun manufacturer or through a Federal Firearm Licensed Dealer pass a Brady background check.

- Strengthen programs designed to trace crime gun purchases to shut down unscrupulous dealers.

- Remove the Tiahrt restrictions on the ability of local law enforcement to access important gun trace information and give police officers across the nation the tools they need to solve gun crimes and fight the illegal arms trade.

- Institute a national ballistics program to initiate microstamping technology on all weapons manufactured or sold in the United States, so that crime guns and casings can be traced quickly to the original sale.

- Support manufacturers who voluntarily develop and sell childproof handguns.

- Strengthen and make permanent the federal Assault Weapons Ban and the ban on large capacity ammunition magazines and clips.

The Spy Who Came To All Our Dinners

The headline from Mother Jones is quite disturbing: There’s Something About Mary: Unmasking a Gun Lobby Mole. The story details Mary McFate, a prominent member of the gun violence prevention movement who, as it turns out, is also a spy for the NRA.

On an intellectual level I understand these things happen all the time. I even take some pride in thinking the organizations I am involved with are such a threat to the gun lobby they will pay someone to spy on us. And I hope they paid lots, and lots, and lots of money to their mole. I hope this duplicity cost them dearly.

But on an emotional level I am devastated. I have worked with Mary McFate for years. I go back over our encounters with the new knowledge that every interaction I had with her was a lie. I shake my head thinking of some of our conversations, remembering her probing questions, and wonder what really happened on her lobbying trips to Capital Hill supposedly on behalf of gun violence preventions groups.

This revelation has sent a shiver through many of our groups. Our coalition work requires a basis of trust and openness with each other. We will not let the likes of Mary McFate poison this foundation but we will look at new members with the seasoned eye of someone who has been terribly wronged.

I echo the words from the Mother Jones article: the McFate operation, says Miller, "would confirm for me the way that the gun lobby works, which is no rules, no question of fairness or honesty. Anything that they can do they will do to protect the profits of the gun industry."

All liberals should be killed

On Sunday, Jim Adkisson, a 58-year-old self-described “loner” walked into a church in Knoxville, Tennessee. He was carrying a guitar case and wearing a fanny pack. In the guitar case was a shotgun and in the pack more than 70 shells for the gun.
Adkisson targeted the Unitarian Universalist Church because of its liberal teachings and his belief that “all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, that Democrats had tied this country's hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of media outlets."
Adkisson’s plan was to shoot until police arrived and shot him. "He certainly intended to take a lot of casualties," said Knoxville Police Chief Sterling Owen.
Fortunately, soon after Adkisson opened fire in the crowded church he was tackled by three church members who forced him to the floor. But not before his shotgun blasts had left two church members dead and several others wounded.
An acquaintance described Adkisson as someone who hates "blacks, gays and anyone different from him.” A 2000 Protection From Abuse order against Adkisson told of a threat he made to his wife to “blow her brains out and then do the same to himself.” A friend described an incident where Adkisson had been drinking heavily and then put a gun to his wife’s head.
Adkisson was a hateful, violent, dangerous man. Yet nothing in U.S. gun laws prevented him from obtaining the shotgun he used to kill two people on Sunday. How can that be?

Guns on campus? No, thank you.

There are more and more news stories about efforts to change state laws and allow concealed weapons on college campuses. Currently, Utah is the only state that specifically allows concealed weapons at public universities but bills to allow concealed handguns on campus have been introduced in 17 states. Thankfully, they have failed in 15 of these states (and have not been resolved in the remaining two).

Who are these undergraduates who harbor cowboy fantasies of triumphing in the big OK Corral shootout? They worry about being in campus “gun free zones” and grump about how they need their gun in order to protect themselves and feel safe. In reality, the guns these boys carry will never be used to stop a mass-shooting, chances are they will never be used at all. And if they are used, statistics show that they will almost certainly be used to harm the gun owner or someone he knows, not some faceless criminal.

There is no evidence that concealed weapons laws have made states safer. In fact, the evidence points the other way. Where there are more guns, there are more homicides. And as for the fantasy that one of these pistol packing pupils will stop another Virginia Tech from happening - adding more guns to a shooting incident will lead to more chaos, more chance for innocent people to be hit and greater confusion for law enforcement in sorting out who the criminal is. Highly trained police officers have a hard enough time hitting their targets in a gunfight, barely trained students would be a danger to everyone.

More guns on campus would undoubtedly lead to more gun suicides on campus. An in-depth study by Allan Schwartz in the May 2006 Journal of American College Health found that the suicide rate for college students has declined dramatically in the last 50 years, a direct result of “firearms having been effectively banned from campuses.”

Guns are not conducive for an atmosphere of open learning, most teachers and students would feel intimidated, not safer, knowing there was someone in the classroom with a concealed weapon. The presence of a gun may escalate an incident, especially when alcohol is involved. A September 2002 study in the Journal of American College Health stated: "Given that alcohol is widely thought to contribute to violent behavior generally and to a majority of college student suicides, rapes, and other violent crimes, we find it quite troubling that almost two thirds of students with guns at college report binge drinking." The study also concluded that "gun-owning colleges students are more likely to drink frequently and excessively and, when inebriated, to engage in activities that put themselves and others at risk, such as driving under the influence, vandalizing property, and having unprotected sex."

It really is simple – more guns will not make people safer.

Supreme Court Rules 2nd Amendment Right an Individual Right but Not an Unlimited Right

In a landmark decision today the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment grants an individual right to keep and bear arms. District of Columbia v. Heller struck down the District of Columbia’s handgun ban but also made it clear that the Constitution allows for reasonable restrictions on access to firearms.

“Today the Supreme Court took away the single biggest excuse for not passing tough gun laws to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and dangerous individuals,” said Cathie Whittenburg, Director of New England Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence (NECPGV). “The ‘slippery slope’ argument is gone.”

The gun lobby has long argued that common sense restrictions on guns are, in fact, nothing more than initial steps down a “slippery slope” that leads to a general gun ban. By holding that the Second Amendment prohibits the D.C. handgun ban, the Supreme Court has assured gun owners that there is no such “slippery slope”.

In affirming the ability to restrict the sale and possession of firearms the Court ruled:

Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose. The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.

The Court also noted that “The Constitution leaves the District of Columbia a variety of tools” for combating the problem of handgun violence, including the current firearm licensing requirement and “some measures regulating handguns.”

“While we are disappointed with today’s ruling and disagree with the individual right interpretation NECPGV will continue to push for reasonable, common sense gun violence prevention laws,” said Whittenburg.

NECPGV advocates for laws that require background checks on all gun purchases; limiting handgun purchases to one per month; require gun owners to report lost or stolen firearms to law enforcement officials; crack down on illegal guns and gun trafficking; and regulate military-style assault weapons and .50 caliber sniper rifles.

Today's Headlines

The Supreme Court will soon be handing down their ruling on the 2nd Amendment. The gun laws in this nation are absurdly weak. Let us hope the Supreme Court decision does not make them even weaker. Here is a sampling of today's headlines that reflect this nation's easy access to guns:

Texans Fuel Mexican Drug Wars with 'Virtual Arsenals' of Easy-buy Guns

New York Must Not Tolerate 'Absurdly Easy Access to Guns' Among Youth

27 Handguns, Machine Pistols Seized from US-Canada Gun Runners

Georgia is 'Leading Source' of Crime Guns, Trafficking to Other US States

Two guns were used in Oklahoma roadside killing of 13-year-old and 11-year-old girls

Maine Crime Guns Go North and South

Two years ago Stop Handgun Violence unveiled a new 250-foot billboard near Fenway Park in Boston. The message: “Stop Traffic – Background Checks Stop Crime” pointing to four states that provide high numbers of crime guns to Massachusetts. One of the states was Maine.
ATF gun trace data shows that Maine is the second leading crime gun source state for Massachusetts and that the number of guns traced back to Maine has risen over the past few years.
Maine’s weak gun laws allow criminals easy access to guns. In May, 2006, a Lynn, Massachusetts man pleaded guilty to being an unlicensed arms dealer after being charged with trafficking 28 handguns. The majority of these guns had been purchased in Maine through ads in a local swap and sell guide. These were private sales with no background checks, no records kept, no questions asked.
But Maine guns aren’t just trafficked south into Massachusetts, they are also smuggled north into Canada. Canadian police were busy this week seizing guns smuggled from Maine into Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. In Halifax, police seized assault rifles from at least two addresses. The guns included Uzi and Mac-10 submachine-guns and AR-15 assault rifles.
In New Brunswick, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police worked with the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency and the ATF on an operation that lead to the arrest of 33 people on charges of illegal importation of firearms, drug offences and possession of child pornography. Unfortunately, police believe that the group had already trafficked 99 percent of the guns smuggled into Canada before the raid.
Maine legislators hide behind Maine’s low crime rate as a reason to not pass stronger gun laws. But it is obvious that Maine’s weak guns laws are a danger not just to Mainers but also to its neighbors to the north and the south.