Stand with Hillary - Fight the NRA!

She’s the only presidential candidate to say that she’s going to fight the NRA, and I’m proud to stand right beside her in this fight. Over 33,000 thousand Americans are dying per year from gun violence — the majority of them children. They have become innocent victims in our inability to regulate an industry that literally profits off the death of these children. Every gun and bullet used to kill a child has an industry of manufacturing and marketing behind it that has funded one of the most powerful lobbyists that currently exists in this country, the NRA. So powerful, in fact, that despite the minority of Americans, and even the minority of gun owners, that are members of the NRA, they somehow wield more power than the majority of American citizens, and the majority of gun owners (myself included), in our country. They use intimidation, money (that is protected by industry immunity), and an arbitrary grading scheme to further their propaganda — and profit driven model — that our country is safer when we have more guns. They forbid us from doing gun violence research and they have lobbied for immunity of their industry, knowing full well how legally vulnerable they are. The NRA, to me, is the exact type of oppressive power that the 2nd Amendment was designed to protect us from — yet they use it against us, and mostly against our children. Just like we vaccinate our children from deadly diseases, it is time to vaccinate our children from the irresponsible, profit-driven goals of the gun industry. And it is also time to vote for candidates that will lead this fight, not cower in the corner with a false sense of security and righteousness on the issue.

Between 2001 and 2012, 6,410 women in the U.S. were murdered by an intimate partner using a gun. I knew one of these women, and also the sweet toddler girl that was killed with her. For obvious reasons, I will not use their real names and will refer to them as Mother and Baby Girl. I first met Mother when I was looking for daycare for my son. She happened to be picking up Baby Girl when I was visiting my providers home. Mother is actually the reason that I chose this provider, as she gave a very convincing recommendation, noting that she continued to bring Baby Girl there even though she had recently moved to a different area. My son and Baby Girl where nearly the exact same age, and they became attached to each other very quickly. The daycare provider said they were attached at the hip, and I regularly heard from Mother about how much baby girl talked about my son at their home. They were the only two at that small daycare, so they grew very close.

So, this is the part where I start to hurt. This happened almost four years ago now and it still hurts terribly bad. One day in July, I dropped my son off at daycare. Baby Girl wasn’t there, but I didn’t think anything of it at the time. I went to work, and the day went on. My husband picked up my son in the afternoon and he came home that afternoon with a very grim look on his face. We waited until our toddler toddled his way to his play area, and then he told me what our daycare provider had just told him — Mother and Baby Girl had been shot and killed by her husband, Baby Girl’s father. I cried non-stop for weeks (Yes, I’m crying right now). I texted my daycare provider — was she okay, and did she need some days off? What should we do? She got back to me and said she would be open, so please bring my son. When I dropped him off the next day, she answered the door, eyes bloodshot and face swollen from crying. She told me Mother was trying to leave her abusive husband. I felt so bad that in her time of mourning I was dumping my kid on her, but she insisted that everything would be okay and she really needed my son to distract her. We cried and we hugged, and then I left my son in her care. She had cared for Baby Girl since she was a newborn — it was like she had lost her own Baby Girl, and she had also lost a friend. And my son, only a toddler, had already lost a best friend to gun violence.

I kept thinking about Mother’s last moments. Did she see Baby Girl get shot before she was shot, or did Baby Girl see Mother get shot before her father turned the gun on her? There was an older son also, and the police found him unconscious in a closet with burns and a belt wrapped around his neck. Did he see his mother and baby sister get shot? He survived, with scars that no child should ever have to live with, but he did survive. With these images in my head, I was always crying. The father turned the gun on himself and committed suicide.

In the days following, I read all the obituaries, all the news stories about what happened. But one stuck out to me more because it was less about the circumstances around the killings and more about the circumstances around the domestic violence. I found out through this one article that Mother had been trying to leave her abusive husband for a very long time, for years. It was so painful to read a timeline of police calls, court appearances, protection orders, more police calls, canceling of protection orders, divorce proceedings, and then an announcement that Mother was pregnant with Baby Girl, and finally, telling a judge that she wanted to try and keep her family together. It was painful to read knowing how her story ended. We live in the state of Maryland, where we are fortunate to have better gun control than most of the states in the Union. So, I kept asking myself as I read this story, “what kind of community would allow this man to own a gun?” As it turns out, despite Maryland’s decent gun laws, there are still loopholes that exist that allow people with a violent history to own a gun, and to keep it in the home. These loopholes exist through out the U.S., especially in states with weak gun laws. Recently, Democratic legislators in Maryland have introduced three new gun control proposals as part of their 2016 legislative priorities. One of these proposals is incredibly important to keeping women and children in Maryland alive:

The third measure would mandate courts to inform persons convicted of domestic violence to surrender their guns to a federally licensed firearms dealer or to local police within 48 hours of being convicted. It also would establish a mandatory five-year prison sentence for anyone found with a gun after being convicted of domestic violence.

I honestly can’t believe this isn’t already a law, but that’s how powerful the gun lobby is, made even more powerful by an industry that has manufacturing and sales immunity to protect their profits, and therefore their power. I hope to God this passes because it’s exactly laws like this that will save people’s lives. If we had more courage and willingness to stand up to the gun industry sooner, then Mother and Baby Girl would still be alive. Hillary is going to stand up to them, and I'm going to be fighting right alongside her every step of the way.

Domestic Violence and Guns are a Deadly Mix — The Worst States

Here are three lists of ten states, not all of them on the same list, but some are, with the highest rates of domestic violence and domestic violence gun deaths, as well as the weakest gun laws. The sources of these ranks are linked in the column headers. Disturbingly, we see many states that are on two lists, and one state, Vermont, that is on all three. The rankings that are highlighted in the DV rates column are influenced by the statistics that are included in the gun violence deaths column, so there is some overlap here. But I think it’s important to separate domestic violence from domestic violence deaths, particularly in the context of states with weak gun laws, because guns are also very commonly used as weapons of intimidation to keep women and children from leaving abusive homes. So even though there are some states, like Arizona, that are not ranked in the top ten for domestic violence gun deaths, we can be legitimately suspicious that the weak gun laws in these states have lead to higher rates of domestic violence and higher rates of women and children staying with their abusers. For the one state that is on all three lists, Vermont, it is obvious that women and children in that state are at extremely high risk for both domestic violence and gun deaths. It’s also worth noting that, despite it’s weak gun laws, Vermont did not show up on the recent list of the ten states with the worst rates of gun violence. However, that makes it even more disturbing that gun violence in Vermont affects women at a higher rate than the general population, and only emphasizes the tragic connection between domestic violence and weak gun laws.

Domestic Violence Rates Women Gun Violence Death Rates Ten States with the WeaKEST Gun Laws Domestic Violence and Women Gun Deaths by State (RAnked Highest to Lowest) + Ten States with Weakest Gun Laws Alaska South Carolina South Dakota New Mexico Alaska Arizona Maine New Mexico Mississippi Vermont Louisiana Vermont Wisconsin Nevada Louisiana Idaho Tennessee Montana Rhode Island Oklahoma Wyoming Texas Vermont Kentucky Kentucky Maine Kansas Arizona Michigan Oklahoma

These weak gun laws also contain some horrifying realities when we ask ourselves the question: Why doesn’t she leave? Let’s continue using Vermont as our example, since it seems to be the best at highlighting our concerns. In Vermont, it is only a $50 fine to point a loaded weapon at your wife and children, and you still get to keep your gun. Why would any woman put her life, and the life of her children, more at risk when it’s clear that the legislation is not on her side, but on the side of the abuser. In Vermont, there is no waiting period between the time of purchase and the actual physical transfer of a firearm, which really raises the stakes for women who are trying to leave. In 1990, when Sanders was endorsed by the NRA, he also took the position on a national level that there didn’t need to be a waiting period for handguns, which is the most common weapon used in domestic violence killings.

When Obama announced his executive actions to curb gun violence at the beginning of this year, he asked Americans to become single-issue voters for gun violence prevention to fight the pro-gun rights voters. I heard his request and I am ready to serve. When the candidates for the Democratic nominee vote the same 97% of the time, one must look very carefully to see where the differences are. But in the case of Sanders, and his repeated votes in lock step with the gun lobby, as well as his continued rhetoric agreeing with the gun lobby, the difference is obvious. For this reason, I have become a single-issue voter, and I stand with Hillary and Obama to fight, not protect, the gun industry.

On his lack of progressive values regarding gun violence prevention, Bernie says, “This should not be a political issue. What we should be doing is working together, and, by the way, as a senator from a rural state that has virtually no gun control, I believe I am in an excellent position to bring people together.” There's no proof, given the horrifying statistics in his state that he willfully ignores, that he’s the one to bring people together on gun violence prevention. There’s no proof, given his weak record of standing up to the gun lobby, and in some cases even protecting them, that he would be the leader that progressives — and mothers in particular — are desperately looking for in this revolution. I have become a single issue voter, and that’s why I'm voting for Hillary.