A Philly Tragedy Reminds Us of America’s Gun Lust

There’s a story out of Philadelphia that’s enough to break your heart.

On April 21, a man shot his girlfriend to death in front of her 11-year old daughter, then turned the gun on himself and committed suicide. Aleen Ali, 45, a supervisor at the city’s Department of Human Services (DHS), walked up to the car of Angela Jeffreys, 34, who was about to take her daughter to school, and stood silently as he started firing. Jeffreys, a clerk at the Criminal Justice Center, was a single mother who also had two other children – one in high school and another in college. Ali left a wife, also an administrator at DHS, and an 18-month-old baby. Jeffreys’ daughter was taken to the local police station, still wearing her school uniform. The police found eight shell casings.

So now, after this senseless loss of two lives, four children have lost a parent. And for what? I am sure that at this point, someone reading this commentary will recite the usual gun rights drivel, that guns don’t kill people, people kill people, that although this was a tragedy, nothing could be done. Most of all, I just love the argument that the second amendment gives us a constitutional right to own as many guns as we please, and that we need more guns to protect us from the “criminals”. Well, I disagree. Many people are pretending they are unaware that more of these deadly incidents are occurring these days.

In Pittsburgh, there was the racist man who killed three police officers. He hated Obama, and said he would defend himself if anyone tried to take his guns. In Binghamton, NY, there was the Vietnamese immigrant who killed 13 people at an immigrant services center, and then committed suicide. And in California, an unemployed hospital technician shot his five children and wife to death before taking his own life.

And it all seems to point back to the same thing: this country has too many guns, over 200 million privately-owned weapons to be exact. That includes handguns, rifles, and shotguns, and millions more are added to that amount each year. In my humble opinion, the existence of so many guns seems to be particularly hazardous in a pathologically unstable nation such as the United States. This nation boasts an alarming combination of systemic chronic unemployment and a lack of opportunity, with substantial segments of the population with low levels of education and no marketable skills, and inadequate methods of conflict resolution. Throw in widespread undiagnosed and untreated mental illness, and a rise in activity among right-wing extremist hate groups, and you have a recipe for disaster. Plus, to make things worse, we are exporting our violence to Mexico with a drug war fueled by American weapons.

Not wanting to go off half-cocked without looking at the destruction caused by guns in America each year, I decided to consult the statistics. And I must say, the statistics are sobering:

Now, if these are acceptable statistics, then there is nothing left to say. And we will chalk it up as a small price to pay for preserving our freedom to shoot each other up when we want to do so.

But if reason prevails, it is clear that such levels of violence are incompatible with a stable, viable society. Why is it easier, in the so-called land of plenty, for a poor person to find a gun – or a prison cell, for that matter – than it is to find a job, a quality education, or even a nutritious meal? Why do some state legislatures legalize the carrying of concealed weapons, in some cases to the workplace and on college campuses? How did an obscure and anachronistic amendment dealing with standing militias suddenly morph into a private right to on-demand firearm possession? Exactly what is going on here?

An old colleague of mine who has since passed said it best. He defined a law as that which is bought and paid for. And what we’re seeing now with the gun control war is a perfect example of that.

There is a reason why the Senate defeated the bankruptcy reform bill, which would have allowed bankruptcy judges to renegotiate mortgages and help people stay in their homes. The loan sharks – the mortgage banks that received all that bailout money – used millions of that bailout money to pay the senators to kill it. As Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois said recently, “And the banks – hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created – are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place.” No principled stands, no acting for the good of the county, just money.

If the Employee Free Choice Act (EPCA) does not pass, it is because Home Depot, Wal-Mart, Bank of America and others will buy off the Congress. Similarly, if universal healthcare fails in the Congress, then someone will have paid for that, too.

There is a reason why you have three-strikes laws and other draconian sentencing policies that have caused prisons to burst at the seams with overcrowding in California and other states. Private prison corporations and correctional officers’ unions paid for those laws and got their money’s worth. And there is a reason why nearly two-thirds of the prisoners in America are people of color, and yet the legal profession is over 90% White. Someone has paid for the laws and policies that set all of this in motion.

And as for the gun lobby, the weapons manufacturers, they have poured millions into the Congress. Politico reported that between 1997 and 2006, the National Rifle Organization (NRA) spent almost $16 million on outside lobbyists that worked alongside its five in-house lobbyists. And between 1990 and 2006, the NRA spent $16 million in campaign contributions – 83% to Republicans – not to mention the millions of dollars it spent in advertising. Their ultimate goal is a nation without gun laws. We shall see if they get their way.

No good can come from the barrel of the gun, and this nation’s long tradition of gun worship has been a story of violence, fear and intimidation, genocide, lynching, shortened lives, unrealized dreams and devastated communities. We cannot begin to count the number of orphans and widows this nation has created in the process. But society can decide if it wants this gun madness to end.