Will
We Ever Stop The Killings? Carnages In Muslim World
16 November 2009
By Sherwood Ross
Every time the young stick-up man tugged at my
companion’s purse with his left hand, she would pull
back, causing the muzzle of the pistol he held in his
right hand to swing back and forth. Its line of fire
each time was directed across my chest and if he
accidentally or deliberately squeezed the trigger this
piece might never have been written.
“Give him your purse!” I insisted, meaning that
hanging on to it wasn’t worth our lives. Still, she
refused and the tug-of-war in the parking lot of my
apartment building continued.
“Here!” I said to the gunman, pitching my wallet to
him, “take this!” He caught the wallet, turned and
fled across a wide, deserted ballpark. Even in the
darkness, we could follow him running for a long way,
silhouetted in the lights of the U.S. Capitol, lit up
at night ahead of him like a giant white cake.
A few days later I received a call from a Maryland
department store inquiring if I had sent a young man
to buy a TV set on my credit card. A store detective
arrested the youth and I dutifully showed up in court
on the day of the trial only to learn he had skipped.
Not long afterwards, a judge who lived in my building
made page one of the Washington Star for resisting the
gunmen who jumped him in the same parking lot. From
his hospital bed he told reporters we Americans had to
“stand up” to armed robbers, a noble sentiment spoken
through his pain, considering all the bullets they
pumped into his body.
We were lucky, my friend and I. We could have been
killed, as so many others are being killed each day.
As Jill Lepore writes in the November 9th “The New
Yorker,” the U.S. “has the highest homicide rate of
any affluent democracy, nearly four times that of
France and the United Kingdom and six times that of
Germany.” UK averages about 60 gun homicides annually
and Germany averages fewer than 200. More Americans
are being murdered on our city streets than in all our
foreign wars.
New York Times columnist Bob Herbert last April 24th
estimated 12,000 Americans are shot dead each year,
2,000 of them children, and 70,000 more are wounded
but, like the D.C. judge, survive. Do the math: the
total number of Americans shot dead each year is three
times that of all U.S. troops killed in Iraq in six
years of fighting. There is rage in our hearts; there
is war in our streets.
A big factor in the homicide rate is the availability
of guns. In a typical year, guns are responsible for
two of every three murders. There are 238 million
privately-owned firearms in USA. Big city mayors and
police chiefs favoring curbs on hand guns and
automatic weapons seem unable to overcome the clout of
the gun lobby in Congress. Americans have modified or
ignored much of the U.S. Constitution over the years
yet the National Rifle Association insists that the
2nd Amendment phrase “the right of the people to keep
and bear Arms, shall not be infringed” is sacrosanct,
even as innocent people are mowed down by the
thousands.
Wayne LaPierre, NRA executive vice president, writes,
“One of the ugly truths about many gun-control
advocates is that they're more concerned about pushing
for gun control than they are about reducing
violence.” Note how LaPierre disparages their motives,
when, in fact, some people become gun-control
advocates only after the murder or wounding of a
family member or friend. It’s quite likely that if
homicidal waves of handgun violence did not occur
nearly every day, as they do, nobody would bother
chalking the slogan “Gun Control Now!” on the NRA
wall.
“A vastly disproportionate number of murders and
murder victims are young adult men,” writes The New
Yorker’s Lepore. “When baby boomers reached that age
bracket, the homicide rate soared. Now that they’ve
aged out of their most lethal years, the rate has
fallen.” Fallen, yet still unacceptable. Marcus Baram
of ABC News reported last April 23 that teenagers in
Chicago are 10 times more likely to be the victims of
gun violence than their counterparts outside the city
limits. Between 2002 and 2006, more than 650 Chicago
teens were shot and killed! This is nearly as many as
all U.S. troop deaths since the start of the war in
Afghanistan. Are defenders of “gun rights” blind to
the fact we have a war raging in our city streets?
Surely, one factor contributing to the homicide rate
is poverty. How many times have you read about youths
from affluent suburbs arrested for armed robbery? Can
you think of one? Not only are children in blighted
cityscapes---where supermarkets and chain retail
outlets fear to tread-- deprived of legitimate job
opportunities but if they commit crime, do time and
are set free, their criminal past makes it tough for
them to find gainful work. It’s not uncommon for six
or seven out of every ten ex-cons to be returned to
the Big House within three years of their release, the
Justice Department reports. Worse, as “economy
measures,” legislators right now are closing down
prison drug rehab, educational, and vocational
programs that would give ex-cons a fighting chance to
succeed. There’s money for wars in three countries in
the Middle East and money to operate a thousand
military bases around the world but we short-change
our own.
Another contributing factor to the high homicide rate
may be the stiff sentences politicians’ mandate,
enacting laws that limit the sentencing discretion of
judges. In his treatise “On Crimes and Punishments,”
published in 1764, Italian nobleman Cesare Beccaria
wrote, “The countries and times most notorious for
severity of punishment have always been those in which
the bloodiest and most inhumane of deeds were
committed.”
Famed Chicago lawyer Clarence Darrow argued harsh laws
did zero to deter crime. In 18th Century England, he
noted, pickpockets worked the crowds at public
hangings even though picking pockets was punishable by
hanging. Today, stiff sentences have contributed to
putting a record 2.3 million Americans behind bars, so
many that judges from Alabama to California are
ordering governors to make their prisons livable.
Legislators are considering paroling oldsters rather
than building more lock-ups.
In Congress, bills are being debated (1) to require
criminal background checks for all would-be buyers at
gun shows, reversing the no-questions-asked practice;
(2) to limit bulk sales of handguns; and (3) to ferret
out that small minority of reckless licensed gun
dealers whose sales account for 60% of crime scene
weapons. Such laws can work. Sen. Frank Lautenberg
(D.-N.J.) claims since enactment of his bill
preventing domestic abusers from buying a gun, more
than 150,000 attempted gun purchases have been
blocked.
In California, Governor Arnold Schwarzenneger recently
signed a law obligating sellers of handgun ammunition
to record the names of buyers and other information
about their purchase. A similar law in Sacramento from
mid-January, 2008, through August, 2009, helped police
find 229 prohibited people who had illegally bought
ammunition---173 of them with previous felony
convictions. And by matching ammo purchases with names
on the state’s prohibited persons file, the Sacramento
D.A. could charge 181 illegal ammunition buyers with
felonies, according to an article on the Huffington
Post.
Californians are reacting to a series of horrific
shooting murders. For one, there was the Los Angeles
city worker on Feb. 25, 2005, who sprayed his boss and
another employee with AK-47 bullets after being
reprimanded for showing up late for work. For another,
there was the murder at a traffic stop of four Oakland
police officers last March 21 by a shooter with a long
criminal record. Other states need to follow
California’s initiative.
Another anti-violence step would be to pay children to
stay in school. This could put money into the pockets
of young males who might otherwise pull stick-ups,
such as the one in Washington referred to above. One
organization, the Network for Teaching
Entrepreneurship, (NIF-ty for short) advises public
school children on how to earn money buying and
selling, and many trained kids open their own retail
outlets. NFTE founder Steve Mariotti, a former Ford
auto executive, got the idea after he was mugged
jogging in Manhattan by some youths for the few bucks
he was carrying. His outfit reports it has helped
230,000 young people run businesses in 22 states and
13 countries.
Beyond these steps, educators need to press for
courses to teach non-violence in our public schools.
After all, American children are deluged with
violence-filled Hollywood movies and video games where
killing is trivialized. The Non-Violence Project USA
Inc., whose symbol is a handgun with a knotted barrel,
is one non-profit that engages teens in pro-social
activities, recognizing the wisdom of Mahatma Gandhi’s
observation, “If we are to achieve real peace, we
shall have to begin with children.”
Executive Director Diane Landsberg of the Miami
chapter in Coral Gables, Fla., says, “We have become a
very rude and impatient society. We are taught to rush
but not to wait. Courtesy and politeness matters. In
order to get respect you’ve got to give respect.” One
positive action might be for the NRA’s LaPierre to
show his critics some respect, to give their ideas a
chance, as in Sacramento, to make a difference.
(Sherwood Ross is a public relations consultant for
good causes. He formerly worked as a reporter for the
Chicago Daily News and as a columnist for major wire
services. Reach him at sherwoodross10@gmail.com)
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