From The New York Times:
JOE NOCERA BLOG: The Gun Report: September 24, 2013
A day in the life of armed America.
http://nyti.ms/1bDDa9b
According to Slate’s gun-death tracker, an estimated 8,630 people have died as a result of gun violence in America since the Newtown massacre on December 14, 2012.
Thursday, September 26, 2013
Don't Do Your Kids Any Favors
When my son was in 5th grade, he attended a small two-room school in eastern Montana ranch country. In the spring, after the mud dried up, the schools within a 10-mile radius had a "play day," in which the kids competed in track events and a spelling bee (so that it could still count as a school day.) There were so few kids in these schools, two grades had to compete against each other. So, in his school, the 5th and 6th grades competed against the Albion school's 5th and 6th graders.
This year my son had mastered the Fosbury Flop and was ready to take on his nemesis, a 6th grader named Tom, in the high jump. The night before, my son was so nervous he was throwing up. Ever the mommy, I hugged him tight and told him, "Honey, don't worry about tomorrow. Your Dad and I will love you just as much no matter what happens." He looked me straight in the eye with a fierce look I didn't know a 10-year-old could have, and said, "I'm not doing this for YOU!"
At that moment, one that has stayed in my memory for 40 years, I realized that he had a life separate from mine and that winning the high jump competition was something that was important to him. He needed to beat Tom. As it turned out, neither boy beat the other. They jumped and jumped for what seemed like days but they both went out on the same height. Steve and Tom were both happy because they had fought and achieved their goal. Nothing was given to them just for showing up.
The following article reminded me of that day.
Losing Is Good for You
By ASHLEY MERRYMAN
LOS ANGELES — AS children return to school this fall and sign up for a new year’s worth of extracurricular activities, parents should keep one question in mind. Whether your kid loves Little League or gymnastics, ask the program organizers this: “Which kids get awards?” If the answer is, “Everybody gets a trophy,” find another program.
Po Bronson and I have spent years reporting on the effects of praise and rewards on kids. The science is clear. Awards can be powerful motivators, but nonstop recognition does not inspire children to succeed. Instead, it can cause them to underachieve.
Carol Dweck, a psychology professor at Stanford University, found that kids respond positively to praise; they enjoy hearing that they’re talented, smart and so on. But after such praise of their innate abilities, they collapse at the first experience of difficulty. Demoralized by their failure, they say they’d rather cheat than risk failing again.
By age 4 or 5, children aren’t fooled by all the trophies. They are surprisingly accurate in identifying who excels and who struggles. Those who are outperformed know it and give up, while those who do well feel cheated when they aren’t recognized for their accomplishments. They, too, may give up.
It turns out that, once kids have some proficiency in a task, the excitement and uncertainty of real competition may become the activity’s very appeal.
If children know they will automatically get an award, what is the impetus for improvement? Why bother learning problem-solving skills, when there are never obstacles to begin with?
Having studied recent increases in narcissism and entitlement among college students, Jean Twenge, author of “Generation Me,”warns that when living rooms are filled with participation trophies, it’s part of a larger cultural message: to succeed, you just have to show up. In college, those who’ve grown up receiving endless awards do the requisite work, but don’t see the need to do it well. In the office, they still believe that attendance is all it takes to get a promotion.
When children make mistakes, our job should not be to spin those losses into decorated victories. Instead, our job is to help kids overcome setbacks, to help them see that progress over time is more important than a particular win or loss, and to help them graciously congratulate the child who succeeded when they failed. To do that, we need to refuse all the meaningless plastic and tin destined for landfills. We have to stop letting the Trophy-Industrial Complex run our children’s lives.
This school year, let’s fight for a kid’s right to lose.
Monday, September 23, 2013
What Does Texas Think It's Doing?
Showdown Over Science in Texas
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/09/texas_science_textbooks_creationists_try_to_remove_evolution_from_classrooms.1.html
Creationists corrupted state education standards and may push evolution out of textbooks.
I'll let you read the article for yourself, but with all the executions, the gun nuts, and now the "creationists," you have to wonder if it's time to kick Texas out of the Union. Are all Texans bat-shit crazy, or are they just the ones that make the news?
Weekend Gun Report - Did Your State Escape?
Weekend Gun Report: September 20-22, 2013
What will Wayne LaPierre will say after each mass shooting, and how long will he wait to say it? It’s a question that’s turned into something of a media parlor game. On Sunday, LaPierre, the executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, went on “Meet the Press” and blamed last Monday’s shooting at the Washington Navy Yard not on the ease with which someone so obviously mentally ill couldlegally purchase guns, but on a lack of security at the shooting site.
“How could anybody look at what happened this week and say there was enough security there?” he said. “In a post-9/11 world, a naval base within miles from Congress and the White House” was left “completely unprotected.”
So, of course, we need more good guys with guns.
“All these brave men and women that are trained in firearms, that signed up to serve in the military, they’re largely disarmed on our military bases,” he said. “When the good guys with guns got there, it stopped.”
Here is today’s report.
—Jennifer Mascia
Friday:
A 3-year-old boy is in critical condition after he accidentally shot himself in the chest with a handgun in Horseshoe Bay, Tex., Thursday. A 5-year-old was shot in the back and wounded on the northeast side of Indianapolis, Ind., Friday night. An 8-year-old boy was shot and wounded by his 11-year-old brother when a gun the two were playing with accidentally discharged in Gary, Ind., Thursday afternoon. A young girl was shot and killed on a Pensacola, Fla., street Thursday night.
24-year-old Monique Smith was shot five times after a football game in Memphis, Tenn., Thursday night, and her ex-boyfriend, 29-year-old Vernon Walton, was arrested at the scene. A 16-year-old boy was shot and wounded while leaving his apartment building in the Gravesend section of Brooklyn, N.Y., early Thursday. Jason Scott McClay was found shot and killed in aisle 14 of the Rite Aid he managed in Chester, Pa., just before closing Thursday night.
Johnny Tinsey, 36; Rubin Austin, 25; and an unidentified 29-year-old woman were killed and 10 others were wounded in shootings across Chicago, Ill., late Thursday and early Friday. 24-year-old Jimmy Chandler was shot and killed in the Potrero Hill neighborhood of San Francisco, Calif., Thursday evening. A man was shot several times in Bakersfield, Calif., late Thursday. Zhonton Zhavet Berry, 27, was found dead of a gunshot wound in an apartment in east Charlotte, N.C., late Thursday.
Four people were wounded in three separate shootings in Newark, N.J., Thursday night. A 26-year-old man was shot in the leg in Jacksonville, Fla., Thursday night. 58-year-old Keith Stengel was shotand killed during a robbery in Fort Myers, Fla., Thursday evening. 35-year-old Barbara Mason was shot in the arm during an attempted rape in south Fort Myers early Friday. A 38-year-old man was killed and a 27-year-old man was seriously wounded in a shooting following an argument over two women at a home in Gifford, Fla., Friday afternoon.
Rod Bradway, a police officer in Indianapolis, Ind., was shot and killed while responding to a domestic disturbance on the city’s northwest side early Friday. Miguel Angel Contreras, 26, was shot and killed on the porch of his family’s home in southeast Austin, Tex., early Friday. A man was shot in the back after a verbal altercation in Watsonville, Calif., Friday afternoon. 26-year-old Sophon Kao and 24-year-old Jerry Chim were shot and killed and two women were wounded while celebrating a birthday in Long Beach, Calif., Friday night.
A 24-year-old man was killed and two people were injured, one critically, when someone opened fire on a party with a shotgun in Bozeman, Mont., early Friday. One person arrived at a northeastPortland, Ore., hospital with a gunshot wound Friday night. One person was shot several times and critically wounded in the parking lot of a community center in the Park Hill neighborhood of Denver, Colo., Friday evening.
Three people were shot and killed in an apparent robbery at a pawn shop in Danville, Ky., Friday morning, including the store’s owners, Michael Hockensmith, 34, and his wife Angela Hockensmith, 38, and a customer, Daniel P. Smith, 60. Two men were injured in a shooting at a shopping center in Louisville, Ky., Friday evening. A woman and a man were shot and wounded during a gun battle inMiddletown, Ohio, Friday afternoon.
Three people were wounded in a shooting in Elfrida, Ariz., early Friday. One person was critically wounded in a drive-by shooting in Miami, Fla., Friday afternoon. A man was shot and wounded inYork, Pa., Friday night. Jazz Beady, 26, who shot in the head in York on Sept. 13, died Friday, a week after he sustained his injuries. A man was shot in Salem, Va., Friday night. Logan Treguier, 20, was killed in a shooting in Colorado Springs, Colo., late Friday.
Three people were wounded in a shooting in Mesa, Ariz., Friday evening. Rick Hammad, 42, was shot and killed in Grand Rapids, Mich., late Friday. A state trooper was shot and wounded by a bank robber as he made his getaway in Dutzow, Mo., Friday morning. A man was found lying in a Taco Bell parking lot in Jackson, Tenn., with gunshot wounds to both legs Friday night. 50-year-old Joseph Gales was shot and killed in Bonita Springs, Fla., Friday morning.
A restaurant manager was shot after three masked gunmen forced their way into S & S Cafeteria in Macon, Ga., Friday night. 59-year-old Susan Brown was shot and killed in Arlington, Tex., Friday evening, and her husband, 51-year-old Ricky Lynn Brown, was arrested.
Saturday:
A 7-year-old was shot in the leg when someone fired on a house in the Pleasant Grove area of Dallas, Tex., Saturday night. Four people were shot and wounded at a nightclub in Palm Springs, Fla., early Saturday. Kristofer Nuland Stafford, 23, was shot and killed in a road rage incident in Las Vegas, Nev., early Saturday. Two men were wounded in a shooting in Atlantic City, N.J., early Saturday. A man was shot and killed near a park where children were playing in Miami Gardens, Fla., Saturday evening.
Timothy Bouder, 53, was shot in the head and neck and wounded after a quarrel over a woman in northwest Carlisle, Pa., Saturday afternoon. A woman and a man were killed in a shooting at an apartment complex in Eden Prairie, Minn., Saturday morning. Adriana Bonet, 25, was killed and 24-year-old Jonathan Rosario and 19-year-old Jaton Pearson were wounded when someone opened fire near a pizza place in Springfield, Mass., early Saturday.
A man was shot in a separate incident in Springfield Saturday night. Charles Johnson, 22, was shot and killed after an argument over a necklace at an apartment complex in Tulsa, Okla., Saturday afternoon. A double shooting in Daly City, Calif., Saturday night sent two people to the hospital, one of whom is in critical condition. Adrian Anderson, 23, was shot and killed while sitting on the front porch of a home in Long Branch, N.J., Saturday morning.
A woman was killed and her brother was wounded in a drive-by shooting in Inglewood, Calif., Saturday afternoon. A shooting left a man in critical condition in Fort Wayne, Ind., Saturday night. 20-year-old Donald Bernard Lewis was shot and killed on the campus of Savannah State University in Savannah, Ga., early Saturday. Darryl Jackson, 30, was shot in the foot and Cleon Norwood, 47, wasshot in the stomach when someone opened fire at a bar in Central Islip, Long Island, N.Y., Saturday morning.
Willie Casey Jr., 47, was shot and killed in an apartment in Augusta, Ga., early Saturday. A man died in a shooting at a Dallas, Tex., nightclub early Saturday. A man was shot multiple times on the east side of San Antonio, Tex., Saturday afternoon. Three men were wounded in a shooting in the 5th Ward of Paterson, N.J., early Saturday, just three blocks from the scene of the fatal shooting of a 33-year-old man 24 hours earlier.
A 43-year-old man was shot and wounded in Port Arthur, Tex., early Saturday. A man was shot and wounded in Hazelwood, Mo., early Saturday. A 39-year-old Arizona Department of Public Safety officer was shot multiple times during a traffic stop in Payson, Ariz., Saturday night. Three people were killed in three separate shootings within the span of a few hours in Compton, Calif., Saturday night into Sunday morning.
A 22-year-old man is in critical condition following a shooting in the Crescentville neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pa., Saturday night. A man and a woman were wounded in a drug-related shooting at a motel in Richland County, S.C., Saturday. Jordan Bounsinh, 22, was shot and killed after a fight escalated outside of a Mobil Gas Station in Rockford, Ill., early Saturday. Robert Jackson, 34, was shotand killed in the Woodmere neighborhood of Baltimore, Md., early Saturday.
A 35-year-old man and a 55-year-old woman were shot during an altercation in north Houston, Tex., Saturday night. 64-year-old Joseph A. Buck was shot and killed in Cooperstown, N.Y., early Saturday, and police arrested his son, 33-year-old Michael Buck. Robert Butler, 17, was found shot to death in Tallahassee, Fla., Saturday night. A “staff shooting death” took place at the federal prison inFairton, N.J., Saturday.
Sunday:
One person was killed and at least six people were injured when a fight escalated to gunfire in the Old Town area of Wichita, Kan., early Sunday. Two men and a woman were killed and four others were wounded in a shooting at the Elks Charity Lodge in Muskegon, Mich., early Sunday. Joseph Connell, 39, and Olga Connell, 46, who were married in June, were found shot to death in a Wilmington, Del., condominium early Sunday.
33-year-old Andres Lopez was killed and a woman was injured in a shooting in Fort Myers, Fla., Sunday morning. A nightclub valet was shot and killed and a security guard was wounded in Pico Rivera, Calif., early Sunday. Two men were shot in separate incidents in southeast Washington, D.C., Saturday and Sunday. A man was injured in a shooting during a fight at a frat party near Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Mich., early Sunday.
A 28-year-old man was shot several times in the Clifton Heights neighborhood of Louisville, Ky., early Sunday. A man was shot in the stomach and wounded near the Fair Grounds in New Orleans, La., Sunday evening. A 30-year-old man who was shot in the torso in Pasadena, Calif., early Sunday is not cooperating with police. 22-year-old Palagor Jobi was shot and killed outside a bar in Burnsville, Minn., early Sunday. A 40-year-old man was shot and critically wounded in north Philadelphia, Pa., Sunday evening.
A man was shot and killed near his home in New Cassel, Long Island, N.Y., Sunday afternoon. A 16-year-old boy was shot and seriously wounded in Greensboro, N.C., early Sunday. A 21-year-old man was killed and three others were wounded in a shooting near Hyde Park in St. Louis, Mo., early Sunday. 28-year-old Jonathan Gardner died after a bullet traveled through a wall and struck him in the chest in Columbus, Ohio, Sunday afternoon.
A woman was shot in the head and killed while driving in Columbia, S.C., Sunday morning. Three people were injured in a shooting at a Columbia club early Sunday. A 20-year-old woman and her 21-year-old brother were shot by the woman’s ex-boyfriend, who was later killed by police, in the Frankford section of Philadelphia, Pa., early Sunday. A man was shot and killed by a pedestrian he hit with his car in Kansas City, Mo., early Sunday.
Derrick Ross, 20, and his brother, Adam Ross, 23, were shot in Atlantic City, N.J., Sunday afternoon. A student at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore in Princess Anne, Md., was wounded in an off-campus shooting early Sunday. A man was shot and critically wounded after an altercation with his neighbor in Fort Worth, Tex., early Sunday. Two people were hospitalized after a shooting inCharlotte, N.C., Sunday morning.
A man was shot and wounded in the parking lot of the Red Door Lounge in Colorado Springs, Colo., early Sunday. A man in his late teens was shot and wounded after someone opened fire at a Detroit, Mich., liquor store Sunday afternoon. At least 24 people were shot, five of them fatally, in Chicago, Ill., since Friday.
According to Slate’s gun-death tracker, an estimated 8,434 people have died as a result of gun violence in America since the Newtown massacre on December 14, 2012.
Sunday, September 22, 2013
If We Could See Ourselves As Others See Us
If we could see ourselves as others see us, we would have to see that we are close to having the rest of the world intervene to stop the gun violence that our government allows to continue. This article from The Guardian shows us what people in other countries think of the way we fail to protect our citizens.
The death toll from firearms in the US suggests that the country is gripped by civil war
Henry PorterSaturday 21 September 2013
The Observer
http://www.theguardian.com/
----
Last week, Starbucks asked its American customers to please not bring their guns into the coffee shop. This is part of the company's concern about customer safety and follows a ban in the summer on smoking within 25 feet of a coffee shop entrance and an earlier ruling about scalding hot coffee. After the celebrated Liebeck v McDonald's case in 1994, involving a woman who suffered third-degree burns to her thighs, Starbucks complies with the Specialty Coffee Association of America's recommendation that drinks should be served at a maximum temperature of 82C.
Although it was brave of Howard Schultz, the company's chief executive, to go even this far in a country where people are better armed and only slightly less nervy than rebel fighters in Syria, we should note that dealing with the risks of scalding and secondary smoke came well before addressing the problem of people who go armed to buy a latte. There can be no weirder order of priorities on this planet.
That's America, we say, as news of the latest massacre breaks – last week it was the slaughter of 12 people by Aaron Alexis at Washington DC's navy yard – and move on. But what if we no longer thought of this as just a problem for America and, instead, viewed it as an international humanitarian crisis – a quasi civil war, if you like, that calls for outside intervention? As citizens of the world, perhaps we should demand an end to the unimaginable suffering of victims and their families – the maiming and killing of children – just as America does in every new civil conflict around the globe.
The annual toll from firearms in the US is running at 32,000 deaths and climbing, even though the general crime rate is on a downward path (it is 40% lower than in 1980). If this perennial slaughter doesn't qualify for intercession by the UN and all relevant NGOs, it is hard to know what does.
To absorb the scale of the mayhem, it's worth trying to guess the death toll of all the wars in American history since the War of Independence began in 1775, and follow that by estimating the number killed by firearms in the US since the day that Robert F. Kennedy was shot in 1968 by a .22 Iver-Johnson handgun, wielded by Sirhan Sirhan. The figures from Congressional Research Service, plus recent statistics from icasualties.org, tell us that from the first casualties in the battle of Lexington to recent operations in Afghanistan, the toll is 1,171,177. By contrast, the number killed by firearms, including suicides, since 1968, according to theCentres for Disease Control and Prevention and the FBI, is 1,384,171.
That 212,994 more Americans lost their lives from firearms in the last 45 years than in all wars involving the US is a staggering fact, particularly when you place it in the context of the safety-conscious, "secondary smoke" obsessions that characterise so much of American life.
Everywhere you look in America, people are trying to make life safer. On roads, for example, there has been a huge effort in the past 50 years to enforce speed limits, crack down on drink/drug driving and build safety features into highways, as well as vehicles. The result is a steadily improving record; by 2015, forecasters predict that for first time road deaths will be fewer than those caused by firearms (32,036 to 32,929).
Plainly, there's no equivalent effort in the area of privately owned firearms. Indeed, most politicians do everything they can to make the country less safe. Recently, a Democrat senator from Arkansas named Mark Pryor ran a TV ad against the gun-control campaign funded by NY mayor Michael Bloomberg – one of the few politicians to stand up to the NRA lobby – explaining why he was against enhanced background checks on gun owners yet was committed to "finding real solutions to violence".
About their own safety, Americans often have an unusual ability to hold two utterly opposed ideas in their heads simultaneously. That can only explain the past decade in which the fear of terror has cost the country hundreds of billions of dollars in wars, surveillance and intelligence programmes and homeland security. Ten years after 9/11, homeland security spending doubled to $69bn . The total bill since the attacks is more than $649bn.
One more figure. There have been fewer than 20 terror-related deaths on American soil since 9/11 and about 364,000 deaths caused by privately owned firearms. If any European nation had such a record and persisted in addressing only the first figure, while ignoring the second, you can bet your last pound that the State Department would be warning against travel to that country and no American would set foot in it without body armour.
But no nation sees itself as outsiders do. Half the country is sane and rational while the other half simply doesn't grasp the inconsistencies and historic lunacy of its position, which springs from the second amendment right to keep and bear arms, and is derived from English common law and our 1689 Bill of Rights. We dispensed with these rights long ago, but American gun owners cleave to them with the tenacity that previous generations fought to continue slavery. Astonishingly, when owning a gun is not about ludicrous macho fantasy, it is mostly seen as a matter of personal safety, like the airbag in the new Ford pick-up or avoiding secondary smoke, despite conclusive evidence that people become less safe as gun ownership rises.
Last week, I happened to be in New York for the 9/11 anniversary: it occurs to me now that the city that suffered most dreadfully in the attacks and has the greatest reason for jumpiness is also among the places where you find most sense on the gun issue in America. New Yorkers understand that fear breeds peril and, regardless of tragedies such as Sandy Hook and the DC naval yard, the NRA, the gun manufacturers, conservative-inclined politicians and parts of the media will continue to advocate a right, which, at base, is as archaic as a witch trial.
Talking to American friends, I always sense a kind of despair that the gun lobby is too powerful to challenge and that nothing will ever change. The same resignation was evident in President Obama's rather lifeless reaction to the Washington shooting last week. There is absolutely nothing he can do, which underscores the fact that America is in a jam and that international pressure may be one way of reducing the slaughter over the next generation. This has reached the point where it has ceased to be a domestic issue. The world cannot stand idly by.
• This article was amended on 21 September 2013. The original mistakenly said that Edward Kennedy was shot in 1968. This has been corrected
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Thursday, September 19, 2013
Is Your Kid Too Smart To Try Drugs? Think Again
Maia Szalavitz is a neuroscientist journalist (my dream job!) for Time, and she asks the question: "Smarter Kids Are Smart Enough to Avoid Alcohol and Drugs, Right?"
The latest study of twins is part of an emerging body of work that suggests kids who develop language and intellectual skills earlier are more likely to drink and take other drugs than their less intelligent peers.
For decades, scientists had documented that those with lower IQ and less education were more likely to become addicted to alcohol or other drugs. The latest data doesn't contradict those findings, but drug use is not the same as drug addiction - and a great deal of research shows that higher intelligence is a protective factor against alcoholism and addictions, even though smarter people are more likely to drink or try drugs.
Intelligence can serve as a vehicle for moderation when it comes to alcohol or drug use. The smarter you are, the more you appreciate the dangers and risks of excessive use. From all the reports of alcohol poisonings among college students, though, you wonder about their intelligence. Apparently, higher intelligence spurs more curiosity and openness to new experiences - including experimenting with alcohol and drugs.
So, I will be ready when my #3 grandson is a teenager. He has always been the one who thinks, "I wonder what would happen if . . ."
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
Good News in the War on Drugs
In a new book, "High Price," Dr. Carl Hart shares his findings from his research at Columbia University on crack cocaine and methamphetamine. This research seems to contradict the conventional wisdom about drug addiction.
In a study of addicts, Dr. Hart recruited subjects by offering them a chance to make $950 while smoking crack. At the start of each day, a nurse would place a certain amount of crack in a pipe - the dose varied daily - and light it. While smoking, the subject was blindfolded so he couldn't see the size of that day's dose.
Then, after that sample of crack to start the day, each participant would be offered more opportunities during the day to smoke the same dose of crack. At the same time, they were offered an alternative of a cash payment which they would collect when they eventually left the study in place of that chance to smoke another dose. When the dose of crack was pretty high, the subjects generally chose the cocaine, but when the dose was smaller, he was more likely to pass it up for the cash.
"They didn't fit the image of the drug addict who can't stop once he gets a taste," Dr. Hart said. "When they were given an alternative to crack, they made rational economic decisions." He also found that when he raised the alternative reward to $20, every single addict chose the cash. They knew they wouldn't receive it until the experiment ended weeks later, but they were still willing to pass up an immediate high.
"If you're living in a poor neighborhood deprived of options, there's a certain rationality to keep taking a drug that will give you some temporary pleasure, "Dr. Hart said. "The key factor is the environment, whether you're talking about humans or rats," according to Hart. "The rats that keep pressing the lever for cocaine are the ones who are stressed out because they've been raised in solitary conditions and have no other options. But when you enrich their environment, and give them access to sweets and let them play with other rats, they stop pressing the lever."
So why is there all this focus on specific drugs? One reason is convenience: it' much simpler for politicians and journalists to focus on the evils of a drug than to grapple with the underlying social problems. But Dr. Hart also puts some of the blame on scientists.
"Eighty to 90 percent of people who use crack and methamphemine don't get addicted' but in the scientific literature nearly 100 percent of the reports are negative. There's a skewed focus on pathology. We scientists know that we get more money if we keep telling Congress that we're solving this terrible problem."
My question is this: what would the results of this study have been if the recruits had been Wall Street hotshots? There are a lot of cocaine users who are not black men from low-income neighborhoods.
Comments on this topic are welcomed!
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
Thank You, Justice Ginsburg
Second Amendment 'Outdated'
In the wake of the Colorado recall election and a fierce, nationwide debate over gun rights and gun control, Justice Ginsburg also comments on the past, present and future of the Second Amendment. She cites her dissent in District of Columbia v. Heller, and says her "view of the Second Amendment is one based on history."
She continues, "The Second Amendment has a preamble about the need for a militia...Historically, the new government had no money to pay for an army, so they relied on the state militias. And the states required men to have certain weapons and they specified in the law what weapons these people had to keep in their home so that when they were called to do service as militiamen, they would have them. That was the entire purpose of the Second Amendment."
But, Justice Ginsburg explains, "When we no longer need people to keep muskets in their home, then the Second Amendment has no function, its function is to enable the young nation to have people who will fight for it to have weapons that those soldiers will own. So I view the Second Amendment as rooted in the time totally allied to the need to support a militia. So...the Second Amendment is outdated in the sense that its function has become obsolete."
As for the Heller case, decided by the Court in 2008, Justice Ginsburg says, "If the Court had properly interpreted the Second Amendment, the Court would have said that amendment was very important when the nation was new; it gave a qualified right to keep and bear arms, but it was for one purpose only—and that was the purpose of having militiamen who were able to fight to preserve the nation."
Find Your State - Which is the Winner This Week?
According to Slate’s gun-death tracker, an estimated 8,145 people have died as a result of gun violence in America since the Newtown massacre on December 14, 2012.
This is a copy of Joe Nocera's blog post in the NY Times. I congratulate Joe and Jennifer Mascia for their valuable work.
Weekend Gun Report: September 13-15, 2013
This week, the California State Assembly is set to vote on a measure requiring anyone who wants to purchase ammunition to obtain a permit requiring that they pass a background check. Similar bills have been proposed—then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger even signed an ammunition control bill into law in 2007, only for it to be stymied on appeal—but have failed, thanks to the National Rifle Association’s financial backing. State Senator Kevin de León, who represents areas of Los Angeles, points out that a criminal can walk into a Big 5 or Wal-Mart and purchase ammunition, no questions asked. In fact, it’s easier to purchase a pallet of ammunition in California than a pack of cigarettes or allergy medicine.
Senate Bill 53, which passed the state senate in August, requires all ammunition vendors to obtain a license to sell ammunition from the Department of Justice, and ammunition purchasers to submit to a background check. The N.R.A. has publicly opposed it, alleging that it would “encompass all hunting rounds that have no association with crime whatsoever,” and went so far as to say the bill “unconstitutionally and discriminately impacts the underprivileged, who are most likely to need to exercise their rights to keep and bear arms for self defense.”
Here is today’s report.
—Jennifer Mascia
Friday:
2-year-old Kyle Moses was shot in the head and killed by his father, who was upset the child’s mother was with another man, in Tununak, Alaska, early Friday. A 9-year-old boy was shot in the chest and wounded while playing in his grandmother’s backyard in Pine Lawn, Mo., Friday night. A 9-year-old boy was shot in the arm as he and two other boys played with a gun in Tampa, Fla., Friday.
A 14-year-old girl was shot in the leg when two groups of men opened fire on each other on the South Side of Chicago, Ill., Friday afternoon. 17-year-old Shyheim Buford was shot in the chest and killed in Wilmington, Del., Friday night. Jason Guymon was shot and wounded by a neighbor during an altercation that erupted when the victim’s friend rode a horse down a shared lane in Missoula, Mont., Thursday evening.
Valerie Robinson, 42, was shot and killed at the Katy, Tex., high school where she worked by her estranged husband, 54-year-old Gregory Robinson, who then shot and killed himself after a standoff with police Friday morning. Two men were injured in a drive-by shooting in Salt Lake City, Utah, late Thursday. A man in his 20s was shot and killed on the southeast side ofKansas City, Mo., Thursday night.
A shooting on Roanoke Island, N.C., sent one person to the hospital Thursday night. One person was shot and wounded in Roanoke, Va., late Friday. A man was shot and critically wounded at a hotel in Phoenix, Ariz., Thursday night. A 19-year-old was shot in the chest during a fight at aGilbert, Ariz., apartment complex Friday night.
One person was wounded in a shooting outside the Oakland, Calif., hotel where the Ohio State University men’s football team were staying Friday evening. 30-year-old Holly Wilcox was shot in the arm at a hotel in Fallon, Nev., Friday afternoon. Two men were shot during an altercation in a car parked outside a home in La Quinta, Calif., early Friday.
Kerry Eck, 25, was shot and killed after an altercation over the sale and possession of narcotics in Wagener, Ga., Thursday night. Two people were wounded in a shooting in the Allison Hill neighborhood of Harrisburg, Pa., Friday night. Two men were killed in a shooting on the east side of Detroit, Mich., Friday morning. A man was shot in the head and another person was wounded outside Boulevard Townhomes in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., early Friday.
Kenneth Peppenelli was killed and Christine Peppenelli was wounded in a possible domestic shooting at a mobile home community in Orange City, Fla., Friday. A man on a bike was shot in the leg on the west side of Saginaw, Mich., Friday night. A man was shot and injured in North Plains, Ore., Thursday night. The bullet-riddled body of 24-year-old Vernon Davis was found in front of a garden apartment in Northeast Washington, D.C., early Friday; it was one of ten shootings there in a 48-hour period.
33-year-old Tyrone Terry was found shot dead in a grassy area near the parking lot of an apartment complex in Southern Pines, N.C., late Thursday. A 31-year-old man was shot to death in southeast Atlanta, Ga., early Friday, and a 30-year-old woman was charged with murder. A man wasshot and killed outside a home in Miami Gardens, Fla., Friday afternoon.
A shooting left a man and a woman dead in an apartment complex in southeastFresno, Calif., Friday evening. Aaron Addison, 22, was shot several times and killed in Fort Myers, Fla., Friday afternoon. An 18-year-old man wasshot and critically wounded in the Sherman Park neighborhood ofMilwaukee, Wis., Friday afternoon. An officer was wounded during an accidental shooting at an Oklahoma City, Okla., shooting range Friday afternoon.
Warren Duvant, 22, was shot in the groin during a dispute over a moped inClover, S.C., Friday afternoon. A man was wounded in a drive-by shooting inGulfport, Miss., Friday night. A woman checked into a Selma, Calif., hospital with gunshot wounds late Friday. 24-year-old Timothy Charles and 21-year-old Kirt Swan were shot and wounded in the courtyard of Pulse Nightclub in New Haven, Conn., late Friday. Ramon Prieto, 31, was shottwice and wounded during an altercation on the porch of a home on the west side of Fort Meade, Fla., late Friday.
Saturday:
A 11-year-old boy was shot in the arm by his 13-year-old sister in a home inIndianapolis, Ind., Saturday night. Gerard Gomez, 16, was shot and killed at the Residence Inn in the Tysons Corner area of Vienna, Va., early Sunday. 25-year-old Nelson B. Castillo was shot and killed in the Roslindale section ofBoston, Mass., just before midnight Saturday.
Three separate shootings in Boston sent seven people to the hospital in a 14-hour span on Saturday. Four people were shot with a 40-caliber semi-automatic and wounded after an argument broke out at the Vortex nightclub in Marion, N.C., early Saturday. Two women, ages 19 and 39, and an 18-year-old man were killed in a drive-by shooting in the Baden neighborhood ofSt. Louis, Mo., Saturday evening.
21-year-old Michelle Parker and 22-year-old Michael Parker Jr. were killed in a murder-suicide by gun at a Mesa, Ariz., apartment complex Saturday morning. 25-year-old Devery Bell was killed and another man was wounded in a shooting at an apartment complex in south Birmingham, Ala., early Saturday. A woman was shot and wounded in the Morton Simpson public housing community in Birmingham Saturday night.
A 32-year-old man was shot multiple times and killed while sitting in a truck inCamden, N.J., Saturday afternoon. One person was killed and another person was injured in a shooting in a house in Jacksonville, Fla., Friday night. Two men walked into an Albany, N.Y., hospital with gunshot wounds before dawn Saturday. A man and a woman were shot and killed in a parked car in the West Ward of Newark, N.J., Saturday afternoon.
A man was shot and wounded in Charlotte, N.C., early Saturday, and his brother was arrested. A 55-year-old man was found shot in the head on the floor of an apartment in south Knoxville, Tenn., early Saturday. Two men were killed and a woman was injured in a domestic shooting in a Kansas City, Mo., apartment Saturday afternoon. A man was wounded in a drive-byshooting in Hamilton, N.J., Saturday afternoon.
51-year-old Zelda D. Kollock was killed in a domestic shooting in Richland County, S.C., Saturday night. Jeremy Draper, 25, was shot in the arm in southeast Portland, Ore., early Saturday. Harry Short Jr. was shot and killed at Club Ciroc in Columbus, Ga., early Saturday, and one of the club’s armed security guards was charged with murder.
A man was injured in a shooting near Hilltop Mall in Richmond, Calif., early Saturday. 45-year-old Jerome Goosby was killed and Walter Pickens was injured in a shooting outside the Elks Club in Beaver County, Pa., early Saturday. Richard Alequin-Hernandez, 25, and Jose Santiago, 20, were shotand killed less than 100 feet from a children’s playground in Holyoke, Mass., early Saturday.
Miguel Delgado, 19, was shot in the head and killed during an argument in the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago, Ill., early Saturday. Elsewhere inChicago, nine people were wounded in shootings on Saturday, including a 14-year-old girl caught in the crossfire. A man and a woman were shot and injured in Norfolk, Va., Saturday night.
Steven Edward Briscoe, 54, was found shot to death at his home southwest ofLawrenceburg, Ky., Saturday night. One person was shot and injured inSpencer, Okla., early Saturday. A man was shot and killed at a motel on the southwest side of Oklahoma City, Okla., early Saturday. At around the same time in Oklahoma, one person was killed in a shooting at a home inMidwest City, and another person was shot and killed at an apartment complex in Norman.
A shooting victim stumbled through the door of a drug store in Mobile, Ala., early Saturday. A man was shot during a drug-related dispute in Wichita, Kan., early Saturday. Jonathan Duque, 26, was shot three times and wounded during a fight at a gas station on the northeast side of San Antonio, Tex., Saturday. Demetrius Morales was shot in the neck during an argument with his wife at their home in Tulsa, Okla., early Saturday.
Two men, 30 and 48, were shot and wounded during a home invasion inKilleen, Tex., early Saturday. One person was shot after two rival motorcycle gangs got into a fight at a Phoenix, Ariz., bar early Saturday. One person was shot and wounded at an apartment in Salem, Mass., early Saturday. A man in his 30s was found shot in the neck and critically wounded in Fort Worth, Tex., early Saturday.
55-year-old Charles Turner was shot to death in a parking lot in south Dallas, Tex., Saturday afternoon. Richard Register, 41, shot and killed his estranged wife, Ebony Parson, then shot and killed himself at a bingo hall in Conway, S.C., late Saturday. 20-year-old Samson Oyelaja was shot and wounded during a marijuana robbery in Hope Mills, N.C., Saturday.
A drive-by shooting in Fayetteville, N.C., seriously injured a man Saturday. A 53-year-old man was shot and wounded after an argument in a massage parlor in the Chinatown neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pa., late Saturday. A man died in a shooting in the McElderry Park area of east Baltimore, Md., late Saturday. A 40-year-old man was shot and wounded in Hazelton, Pa., Saturday afternoon.
Phuoc Huu Nguyen, 35, was found dead of gunshot wounds after a fight broke out in a parking lot in Falls Church, Va., Saturday evening. A man was shotin the leg during a party at an apartment complex in Vallejo, Calif., early Saturday.
Sunday:
Six people were injured, one critically, in a suspected gang-related shooting in the parking lot outside Aladdin’s Hookah Lounge in Yakima, Wash., early Sunday. Five people were wounded in a firefight in a parking lot in Colorado Springs, Colo., early Sunday. Four or five people were struck by bulletsafter an altercation between two groups in the parking lot of a convenience store in St. Joseph, Mo., early Sunday.
Two people were shot and wounded at a fraternity party in Charleston, Ill., early Sunday. A 77-year-old Missoula, Mont., homeowner shot an intruder in the torso early Sunday. A 37-year-old man was shot in the head and killed inBaltimore, Md., early Sunday. Kathleen N. Battle, 21, suffered a gunshot wound to the leg when her friend, Jacob E. Richardson, 22, showed her hisgun and it discharged near Longwood University in Farmville, Va., Sunday evening.
A shooting in Richmond, Va., sent a man to the hospital Sunday evening. Nikia Mills, 27, and Shenise Miller, 23, were injured by debris from a drive-byshooting in Palmetto, Fla., Sunday morning. An 18-year-old man was shotand wounded in the Foxhurst section of the Bronx, N.Y., Sunday afternoon. A man was shot in the shoulder during an argument between two groups of men in a deli at a mall in Virginia Beach, Va., Sunday afternoon.
A 27-year-old man was shot in the chest multiple times and killed on the west side of Cleveland, Ohio, early Sunday. 25-year-old Kendall Green was found shot to death on the front porch of a home in Glen Burnie, Md., early Sunday. One person was killed and at least one other person was injured after a dispute escalated to gunfire at a Snellville, Ga., home Sunday night.
Police in Portsmouth, Va., found a man shot to death in a 7-Eleven parking lot early Sunday. A man was killed after being shot in the head in North Hollywood, Calif., Sunday afternoon. One person was shot in the face and wounded at a Circle K convenience store in Tangipahoa Parish, La., early Sunday. A man is in critical condition after being shot in the head while driving in Lexington, Ky., Sunday night.
A man was shot in the back on the east side of Saginaw, Mich., Sunday evening. A man and a woman were shot and wounded after an argument near the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, Ga., Sunday afternoon, just before the Falcons’ first regular season home game. A 35-year-old man walked into aBaltimore, Md., hospital with a gunshot wound to the foot early Sunday.
A 24-year-old man was shot multiple times and seriously wounded in southwest Baltimore Sunday evening. A man in his 30s was shot and killed by the boyfriend of the woman he was with in Independence, Mo., early Sunday. 22-year-old Vidal Rodriguez was shot and critically wounded at a party in Austin, Tex., early Sunday. A 46-year-old man suffered a gunshotwound to the leg in Evanston, Ill., early Sunday.
A man showed up at a Hartford, Conn., hospital with a gunshot wound to the calf he sustained at a party early Sunday. A man was found shot to death in a home in Marshalltown, Iowa, early Sunday. A man was arrested forshooting and critically wounding a 16-year-old boy who broke into his car inAlbuquerque, N.M., early Sunday.
Two men, 18 and 34, were injured in a gang-related shooting in South Los Angeles, Calif., early Sunday. A shooting over a girl at a mobile home park sent one man to the hospital in Greenville, N.C., Sunday night. Two people were shot and wounded in a drive-by shooting in southeast Washington, D.C., early Sunday. A man was shot in the foot in a parking lot nearTillman’s Corner, Ala., Sunday evening.
Sidney Thomas, 32, who suffered from mental and physical disabilities, was found lying on a sidewalk dying of a gunshot wound in Shreveport, La., early Sunday. A man and a woman were shot and wounded after they got into an argument with a man about cutting in line at a Subway restaurant inAtlanta, Ga., Sunday afternoon. Two men, 38 and 61, died of gunshotwounds in an apparent murder-suicide near Carencro, La., early Sunday.
A woman was shot in the chest and wounded by her husband during an argument at their residence in Mountain Home, Idaho, early Sunday. Justin Galloway, 31, was shot in the leg outside JoJo’s Famous Chili Dogs inToledo, Ohio, early Sunday. At around the same time in Toledo, an 18-year-old man walked into a store and told a clerk he’d been shot. A man was hospitalized after being shot in the arm in Peoria, Ill., early Sunday.
According to Slate’s gun-death tracker, an estimated 8,145 people have died as a result of gun violence in America since the Newtown massacre on December 14, 2012.
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