Join March Against Gun Violence
Wednesday is the anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington, made famous by Martin Luther King’s stirring oration. We remember the Rev. King’s “dream,” but he was not a dreamer. The March on Washington was a demand for changes in the law to provide equal rights to all Americans.
Wednesday in more than 20 cities across America, activists will once more march for basic rights. There will be candlelight ceremonies, rallies, marches and “lie-ins,” where 32 people — the number who die each day from gun violence — will lie down to protest the flood of illegal guns in our country. The protest will join together the RainbowPush Coalition, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, the Million Moms March and dozens of other groups.
Why the protest? Gun violence is up, and gun law enforcement is down. The guns are not made in our cities. For the most part, they are not sold there. But a disproportionate number of their victims are there.
Who supplies illegal guns? Studies by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives show that 1 percent of the gun dealers supply a stunning 57 percent of the guns used in crimes. A handful of dealers — spurning the laws and checks that screen out those with a criminal record or “straw purchasers” for others — profit from trafficking in illegal gun sales.
Background checks are required on all federally licensed gun dealers. But four of 10 guns in the United States are sold without any such check. Felons, the mentally imbalanced and those on the terrorist watch are free to purchase guns. And in many states, there are no limits on the number of guns someone can buy at one time.
Most of these sales without checks take place at gun shows. Thirty percent of trafficked guns, according to the ATF, are sold at gun shows or flea markets. The gun lobby has blocked efforts to require background checks on any gun purchase.
The demands of the protesters are just common sense:
1. Enforce the laws we do have; lift the shackles on the ATF to enforce the law. ATF is notoriously underfunded. The Department of Justice estimates it would take 22 years for it to inspect all federally licensed dealers given current manpower. Its enforcement powers have been crippled by limiting its ability to suspend licenses and issue fines to gun dealers that trample the laws.
2. Extend background checks to all gun sales. In the age of al-Qaida, with gun violence growing, let’s make no exceptions. Every sale requires a background check — no check, no sale.
3. Ban large-volume sales of guns. Someone coming into a gun show to purchase 10 or 20 weapons at once isn’t going hunting for deer. Some states have limits, but many do not. Limits make the use of straw purchasers more difficult.
These commonsense measures are vital. Gun violence now violates basic civil rights. It terrorizes people on their own streets and in their own homes. It is time to crack down on gun traffickers. It is perverse that politicians respond more to the extremist arguments of the gun lobby than to the common sense of their own communities. Wednesday, we march to say it is time to act — and to hold responsible those who stand in the way.
The Rev. King understood that segregation must be challenged by the oppressed, for it would not be challenged by the oppressors. Easy access to guns must be challenged by its victims, for it will not be opposed by those who profit from it. In the age of al-Qaida and Virginia Tech, terrorists can still buy guns without a background check. It is time to march.
© 2007 The Chicago Sun Times
Why no mention of the assault weapons ban that BushCo ended? Assault weapons were used in the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre.
assault weapons were not used by the shooter at virginia tech. he used a glock 9mm pistol and also had a walther pistol in his posession. these guns are not assault weapons.these guns especially the glock are used by many police departments in the us and abroad.
license cars? License guns!
The National Rifle Assn has been saying for years that we as a people should be armed and prepared in case our government got out of control. I, for one always believed that was not something that we needed to worry about. However, in light of the developements of the present administration it is starting to look as if they may have been right. If Bush can disappear anyone including citizens, we have reason to fear our own government, something that is new to my thinking. The violent treatment of protestors is not a good sign for a “free” country. We do need to enforce those gun laws that are still on the books and keep monitoring the situation.
Guns should be banned completely. Hunting is a an archaic sport of cruelty that need not be embraced by our culture any longer. In 2007 we need to start realizing that just as private citizens have rights to peace, so do animals in forests, in the sky, in the oceans.
Guns should simply be banned reducing violent crime to apprpoximately 30% of it’s current rate.
Gun control such as that in Britain and other civilized countries is the only way to go, and as I already done said somebody messing with the wrong brother man, ya’ll!
What a brilliant idea!
The only people who should have guns are authorized Party agencies like…
The Renmin Wuzhuang Jingcha Budui
The Department of Homeland Security
The Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei
The Gosudarstvennoye Politicheskoye Upravlenie
The Ministerium für Staatssicherheit
We will be much safer then.
I done and said somebody messing with the wrong brother man, Jesse L Jackson Sr, ordained Baptist minister and proud member of the social gospel tradition, ya’ll!
As to the above reference to only those in key roles of political, legal or other roles of power over us having guns, let me just say I’m not in the least calling for a ban on all guns. For some to have shot guns and hunting rifles which people use for hunting wild game is one thing, and I advocate that the law not interfere with that, and as far as I know British law hasn’t banned these guns either, but rather has strict control over guns as whole which leads to a much lower level of gun violence. As to concerns about the neo cons having the fire power to do us in, if we had all the assault rifles and hand guns we could buy and push came to shove, what could we do with that against tanks, machine guns, and jet fighters which they could and likely would turn loose on us.
Face it. If it ever comes to that we’ll have to do some heavy duty improvising no matter what. Maybe some folks would make Molotov Cocktails to knock out tanks. Then how about those jet fighters that would be acoming at us? That’s what we’re up against on that. Maybe you’re view of the right to bear arms is a very liberal one, such as we all have a right to have tanks, anti tank missiles, anti air craft missiles.
In this country’s uprising against George III, very few had guns. That’s just plain fiction. The rebels had to attack the sovereign’s army installations and or military to get these including cannon and ammunition with exception of those various colonial militias had at the time.