Monday, January 27, 2014
Stop Gun Violence Now! ( Lets Bring The Love Back )
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
There's a question that's floating around social media that goes, "How did asking white people to pass background checks to buy a gun become more offensive than asking minorities to provide photo ID to vote?"
As shootings in public spaces like schools and movie theaters are seemingly more commonplace, more people are turning to guns for self-defense. But more gun owners do not make a country any safer.
Last week, a St. Louis-based KSDK-TV reporter caused an hour-long lockdownat Kirkwood High School in his attempts to "test" school security. What was this TV station thinking? As a parent in our climate of incessant school shootings, I am beyond angry a local television station tricked a school purely for a ratings bump.
Fifty years after President Lyndon Johnson declared a War on Poverty, the United States is still not a fair playing field for millions of children afflicted by preventable poverty, hunger, homelessness, sickness, poor education and violence in the world's richest economy with a gross domestic product (GDP) of $15.7 trillion. Every fifth child (16.1 million) is poor, and every tenth child (7.1 million) is extremely poor. Children are the poorest age group and the younger they are the poorer they are. Every fourth infant, toddler and preschool child (5 million) is poor; 1 in 8 is extremely poor. A majority of our one- and two-year-olds are already children of color. In five years children of color who are disproportionately poor, nearly 1 in 3, will be a majority of all children in America and of our future workforce, military and consumers. But millions of them are unready for school, poorly educated and unprepared to face the future.
Procedures were not clear. Classroom doors did not lock. Communication systems were not consistent; students received information sooner in many cases than did the faculty. I believe this lack of preparedness is true across our nation.
Despite the growing possession of arms, the gun debate is also something that continues to grow. Producers James Dann and Richard Morel explore the debate in 2nd Amendment.
In New York, we went to interview Erica Ford in Jamaica, Queens, where for 340 days she and her team, I Love My LIFE, had stopped violence -- not a single shot, not a single murder happened.
The Iowa Caucuses were held Tuesday night. No national cameras or crowds, just a dark night, snow and below-zero wind chills.
Concerned with the growing problem of gun violence in Newark, Jessica Mindich decided to think of a creative way to repurpose guns into jewelry: "There's an issue of illegal gun violence in Newark, and I saw an opportunity to help a city."
Homicide may be down nationally, but until we reach the corners of America that still suffer from daily violence, and where getting stopped, arrested, and locked up are a normal part of a young man's life, we are doing them an injustice.
Martin Luther King Day is as good a time as any to remind ourselves of certain inconvenient problems in America that are unfortunately not subjects for polite discussion. One of them is racial violence.
There will only be more Curtis Reeves cases and more George Zimmerman cases. All because we've been conditioned to believe that the law and the Constitution is on the side of the well-armed, heroic shooter, and very seldom on the side of the victim.
This is not your grandfather's gun industry that met the needs of hunters and sportsmen. Instead, gun companies are promoting assault rifles like the AR-15, AK-47, and numerous others as the profit center of last resort.
Rep. Leslie Combs, as the news reports, 'accidentally fired her handgun in her Capitol Annex office Tuesday...' Part of her initial response has rightly caused anger and outrage. In her words, 'Like I said, I am a gun owner... it happens.' Exactly. And too often.
The greatest threat in 2014 to the legacy of Dr. King's as we remember his birthday today is the silence and inaction of those people who so loudly proclaim their commitment to his "Dream" and their current commemoration of his birthday.
You do not honor men killed by gun violence by putting more guns on the street. Instead you work to reduce gun violence and work to bring reconciliation to a fractured nation.
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