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Three years after the Sandy Hook
Elementary School massacre in Newtown, Connecticut where a lone 20-year-old
gunman wielding an assault weapon snuffed out 26 child and teacher lives, our
nation has done shamefully little to protect children instead of guns. This
week more than ten thousand people attended over 100 Orange Walks in 43 states
to stand up and deliver a rallying cry that we must and can end gun violence in
America, according to Moms Demand Action – a cry that must continue and get
louder and louder until our tone deaf political leaders hear or are retired
from office.
New data this month from
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show 2,525 children and
teens died by gunfire in our nation in 2014; one child or teen death every 3 hours
and 28 minutes, nearly 7 a day, 48 a week. What is this moral perversity in our
midst that values guns more than children and human life?
In the three years since
Sandy Hook’s nightmare we have not passed even one common sense federal gun law
to reduce gun violence and deaths and protect children from our out-of- control
scourge of violence. Universal background checks work. The evidence is clear. The
overwhelming majority of gun owners and non-gun owners support stricter
background checks, yet the Congress has done nothing. How do we change this?
Seventy-eight children
under 5 died by guns last year – 30 more than the 48 law enforcement officers
killed by guns in the line of duty. Is there no shame in the shooters or in the
lawmakers who protect the shooters or in the industry who makes profits off the
blood of children? Shouldn’t Republicans, Democrats, and Independents of every
race, income, color and faith be able to
agree that child gun deaths are a moral blight on our nation which we have the
means but not the will to prevent and change course?
Last month our hearts at the Children's
Defense Fund (CDF) were broken by the death of our extraordinarily generous, creative,
and decades-long partner and board member Pat Fallon, cofounder of the award-winning
Fallon Worldwide advertising agency. Some of his agency’s most searing images depicted
the relentless carnage of gun violence that kills and maims thousands of
children year after year. CDF began our antiviolence campaign in 1994 after
Peter Hart Research Associates conducted intergenerational focus groups of Black
youths and adults. We were shocked to learn their number one concern was gun
violence: Black male youths didn’t believe they’d live to adulthood and Black
parents saw gun violence as the number one threat to their children.
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Then came Columbine with two White teen boys
wearing trench coats who shot and killed 13 people and injured 21 others in a
rampage at their school that shocked the nation. Shouldn’t it be illegal to sell
and buy these weapons of war in America that turn our streets, schools, and workplaces
into killing fields? Surely we are better than this. How can we let our
lawmakers stand by and do nothing to stop the slaughter of innocents? Since 1963,
over three times more children and teens have died from guns in America than
U.S. soldiers killed in action in wars abroad.
Pat Fallon and his creative
colleagues did everything in their power to help bring us to our senses over
the years to staunch the tide of gun violence with these and other powerful violence
prevention campaigns urging us to value our children more than our guns. Why is
a child’s right to live less important than a gunman’s right to kill and the gun
manufacturers’ profits?
Children are certainly
not the only ones in danger in our gun-saturated nation which accounts for less
than 5 percent of the global population but owns between 35 to 50 percent of
all civilian-owned guns in the world. Recent estimates of U.S. civilian gun
ownership are as high as 310 million — about one gun for each person. U.S.
military and law enforcement agencies possess approximately 4 million guns. Isn’t
there something horribly wrong with this picture? A gun in the home makes the likelihood of homicide three times
higher, suicide three to five times higher, and accidental death four times
higher. For each time a gun in the home injures or kills in self-defense, there
are 11 completed and attempted gun suicides, seven gun criminal assaults and
homicides, and four unintentional shooting deaths or injuries. Black, American
Indian, and Alaska Native children and teens are disproportionately likely to
die from a gun.
These horrendous facts are not acts of
God. They are our indefensible choices as Americans. We must urgently push
policymakers to confront and end our national gun violence epidemic as the huge
public health crisis it is and there are some steps we can all take now:
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End
the federal ban on gun research and fund research on effective gun violence
prevention strategies. Why is the National Rifle Association (NRA) so afraid of
the truth and why do our lawmakers and voters capitulate to NRA bullying? Almost
20 years ago Congress blocked the CDC’s gun research funding by 95 percent. The
agency’s budget that year was cut by the exact amount provided the previous
year to study prevention of gun injuries and fatalities. Similar restrictions
were put on research by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2011. Public
health professionals continue to believe studying our epidemic gun violence crisis
will lead to new understandings of its root causes and possible breakthroughs
in new approaches to reduce the daily death toll caused by guns. This is the
same process that occurred after focused research on automobile deaths in the
20th century. In 2013, President Obama signed an executive order
clarifying that the CDC and NIH are not prohibited from studying gun violence
and included $10 million in funding to study prevention of gun injuries and
fatalities. That funding was never approved by Congress. Over the years, some
academic institutions and organizations have stepped in to fund some excellent
research but a much more coordinated and concentrated research effort is
crucial to make gun violence reduction one of the first
major public health goals of the 21st century. It is time to fire
the NRA as our head of national security and of our national public health
research agenda. Even former Representative Jay Dickey (R-AR), author of the
current language banning gun violence research recently noted that “doing
nothing is no longer an acceptable solution.”
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Continue
to broaden the range of supporters for effective gun prevention action at the
federal, state, and local levels. Transforming change
is slow and very very hard. It requires dogged, sustained effort from a
critical mass of determined citizens. We
cannot stay numb, cowed or intimidated by bullies who value profits over human
life. Do not let your passion for stopping relentless gun violence wane however
long it takes. Insist political leaders support common sense universal
background checks including checks on private and internet sales. Restore the
assault weapon ban and limit the size of ammunition clips. Require that gun
owners carry liability insurance. Promote the development of smart guns; and require
guns be stored unloaded and locked in the home. And we must stop guns being the
only unregulated consumer product in our nation while killing tens of thousands
of children and adults every year.
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Pledge
to ASK about guns in the home where your children visit. Make
clear that you will not let your child play in a house with unlocked guns just
as you would not let your child ride in a car without a seatbelt. One in three
homes with children in the United States has a gun. If you don’t own a gun, one
of your child’s friends’ families likely does. It may be awkward to ask about
guns in the home but it may help save a child’s life. More than 19 million
parents and grandparents have taken the Asking Saves Kids (ASK) pledge promoted
by the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence and the American Academy of
Pediatrics to ask about guns in the homes where their children play. Join them today
and promote this important message in your community and on social media.
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Divest
in gun companies. Don’t invest in violence and death. Are
you one of the many Americans whose retirement plans include gun manufacturers’
stock? There are tens of millions of Americans with 401Ks. Let’s ask and check
now to see whether our 401K retirement funds are invested in gun and ammunition
companies and make a change if they are. Let’s ask if our religious,
philanthropic, nonprofit organizations and universities with endowments are
supporting gun violence through investments. Learn more.
In this season when
Christians profess to believe God entered history as a poor child seeking peace
in our world, let us protect children, not guns. As tireless fighter Pat Fallon
reminded us—we can and must do better.
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Marian Wright Edelman is President of the Children's Defense Fund whose Leave No Child Behind® mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities. For more information go to www.childrensdefense.org.
Mrs. Edelman's Child Watch Column also appears each week on The Huffington Post.
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