Let's talk about how guns kill people

ed note: These are the thoughts of the head editor and do not reflect all of SeedSing. We believe in giving everyone a voice and welcome any respectful dissent.

Let me find the words.

There was another senseless killing of two innocent people by a person with a gun. Allison Parker and Adam Ward were doing their jobs. Their particular television jobs at Virginia station WDBJ did not cause anyone undo harm. They were not out destroying people's lives. Allison Parker and Adam Ward were living their lives, going to work, and looking forward to good life ahead of them. A gun ended those dreams.

I am not going to go over the crime. I will not mention the name of the person who killed Allison Parker and Adam Ward. I will not speculate why the crimes were committed. You can find that information out there on the internet. The only thing I want to talk about to prevent more senseless deaths like Allison Parker and Adam Ward is how they were killed by a gun. Guns kill people, guns have killed a lot of people this year alone. That is the purpose of a gun, to kill. I love when people use the concept of a swimming pool is less safe for your home than a firearm. So every time I jump in the pool, I am less safe than every time my untrained self handles a loaded firearm? Swimming pools are for swimming, guns are for killing. The gun is way more effective at killing someone than a swimming pool is.

The pro gun argument is filled with false statistical comparisons. I get tired of hearing about how we have more guns and less crime. Crime is down for a large number of reasons, the amount of guns is not one of them. There is no credible information that can link drops in violent crime with increased gun ownership. If this was the case, our urban areas would be virtual crime free utopias. The increase in gun ownership has added to the number of accidents and suicides. Every pro gunner leaves those statistics out of their arguments. More guns means more effective ways to kill and be killed.

The weapon used to cruelly kill Allison Parker and Adam Ward was a handgun. This is another incident of a handgun being used to kill a person. I have rarely seen stories about responsible hunters going out and using a handgun for sport. Yet the NRA makes damn sure that anyone, even people who cannot pass a background check, can get their hands on a handgun. People that want to kill can easily go out today, purchase a handgun, and then complete their task of killing a person with a bright future. We can thank the rich old white men at the NRA for the privileged of living in this society. 

I am tired of these killings. Crime has existed since we climbed out of primordial sludge, that is not what tires me out. I am tired because we can do something about these senseless killings. Allison Parker and Adam Ward were killed because a madman could get a handgun thanks to the NRA and their bought politicians in Washington DC. We have the ability to stop these killings. The cowards in our federal government will wait out the initial public sadness, and then they will talk about how our gun laws need to be relaxed. This happens every time, and I am pissed off about it. I want to live in a society where random crime is not enhanced by guns. Guns kill people.

I am sad for the people who know and love Allison Parker and Adam Ward. They will never be given comfort by the idiots in DC and the NRA because of greed. We are supposed to be the greatest society in the history of mankind, we can do better. The NRA wants a world where we are less safe. The cowards and DC have no care for the American people. I have one thing to say to the both of them.

Guns kill people.

RD Kulik

RD is the Head Editor for SeedSing. Do you disagree - tell us.

The Republican Hate Trap

It has been a bad week for the Republican Party.

A no good, very bad week.

I am not talking about their failure (once again) to get rid of Obamacare. I am not talking about their failure (once again) to ban gay marriage. This is also not about their victory to eliminate any talk of meaningful gun control in light of another mass killing. The Republican Party's bad week is about how all of those events caused the party's leaders to embrace the typical hate filled white christian majority victim hood that is losing the party voters and any national future.

The Republican party has been fighting the reforms of the New Deal for multiple generations. Their current leaders can not have a meaningful thought about domestic policy without attacking reforms enacted nearly eighty years ago. The programs of the New Deal have been large a part of american society,  removing them would cause a massive  economic crisis. The Republican party has been so invested in dismantling the New Deal,  they have no plan to deal with the catastrophic aftermath of their goals.

These irrational, outdated, tactics infect the current Republican voter outreach strategies. The Affordable Health Care Act was not a perfect law,  far from it. The law did succeed in giving healthcare to more at need Americans. Since the passage of the ACA,  the only action from the elected republicans is to act like petulant children and try to repeal the law. They tried,  and tried,  and tried,  and on and on. There was no plan, only a tantrum. Lower income Americans were beginning to see clearly that the republicans had no interest in helping them. These potential voters were mostly lost to any national campaign by the Republican party.

The need to cater to the outdated and hateful religious right has caused the Republicans to alienate a very powerful and engaged voter group, gay men. The actions of the Supreme Court were long overdue, and many Americans were happy that this embarrassment had been corrected. The response from all the national Republican leaders was predictable, silence or hate. The hate, coming from supposed Christians, was ugly and useless. Christian conservatives always vote in the exact same numbers, and they always vote Republican. If one national Republican realized that gay men tend to be more conservative on fiscal issues,  that person could start to cultivate new voters. Instead the legacy of hate and obstruct stops any movement in bringing in these new, valuable, voters.

Where the Republican hate trap reared its ugly head the most is the aftermath of the Charleston Church massacre. Our government is filled with cowards when it comes to stemming gun violence. The tricky part for the Republicans is they needed a distraction from having to talk about the gun problem in America. The media decided that distraction was going to be the Confederate flag. The hate trap was set, because now Republicans who defended a symbol of hate had to now openly attack it. This was not a good plan to a few deep south Republicans (see Haley Barbour). These politicians defending the Confederate flag kept reminding voters of the parties history of racism. The brain trust that is Sean Hannity even used his tired tactic of false equivalence and demanded rap music be banned along with the Confederate flag. Hannity is whining because he cannot embrace his symbol of hate,  so attacks something else ethnic that he hates. Every single guest on Hannity's radio and television shows will have to defend the Confederate flag and attack rap music. Good bye millennial voters, good job Sean.

The Democratic Party has not been very proactive in creating positive social change. The national leaders usually sit back and wait for social changes to become more viable. This allows the Democrats the luxury to co-opt these movements and be seen as the party of all people. Their biggest asset in claiming the progressive mantle is that the Republicans can not claw out of their hate trap.

Thank God.

RD Kulik

RD is the Head Editor for Seed Sing. He enjoys watching hateful people dig themselves into holes. Fox News is one of his favorite entertainment options. He needs you to write for Seed Sing.

The Problem is Gun Culture

(Ed. note: Seed Sing is a community of voices. The author is expressing his opinion and invites any questions and criticisms. Write for Seed Sing.)

It saddens me to think about the number of times President Obama has had to address the nation after a mass shooting or a race related death. We have nine people dead because in the killers eyes they were a problem. This killer was a racist, a terrorist, and a monster. His motivation was hatred, his tool was a handgun. The same motivation and tool can be attributed to the majority of mass killings in the United States. A large part of my sadness stems from the actual violence and loss of life, but there is another part to my sadness related to modern American gun culture. 

I spent a few years working as an advocate to stem gun violence, or in other words I was a lobbyist working against the NRA. I was somewhat unique in the gun violence prevention movement, I did not have a gun violence victim profile and I was not very interested in banning guns. The primary reason I worked on the issue was the allure of the challenge. I am very socially liberal, but libertarian in my view of personal responsibility. The gun issue stood on the intersection of personal responsibility and social consequence.  I approached the guns as a public relations problem. People either were yes or no on guns. I wanted to make people on the no side become yes on something reasonable. It is always better to argue an issue from the yes perspective. The particular issue I was brought in to manipulate was carrying a concealed weapon (CCW). I would use polls, business testimonies, and advertising to convince the legislators that CCW is not wanted. Never was there a mention of guns, death, or violence. There was some success, and some failure, but the narrative of gun violence prevention was changing.

So I thought. My career did not last long in the gun violence prevention movement. Many of the primary players have been there for years, and the majority were victims of gun violence. More states were passing laws that loosened restrictions on gun ownership. The old guard went back to their old methods. New gun violence prevention groups would rise up after the latest shooting and come up with "new" ideas on curbing the violence. The debate resorted back to yes and no. The media would treat any gun violence news as a debate between an old white guy from the NRA (or the US Congress) and some non-media savvy victim of gun violence. The idea of working to stop gun violence was the most pure Sisyphean task one could image.

My ambivalence to guns changed on December 12th, 2012. The deaths of twenty children and six school staff members at the hands of a person wielding legal weapons caused me to take a side in the gun debate. I started to firmly believe something needed to be done by our government to regulate and ban most firearms. With my professional experience I set out to have a discussion with people on the dangers of firearms.  What I received in return was mostly anger from the pro gun people. The debate quickly turned into why these 26 (28 including the killer and his mother) died and evolved into a discussion about not limiting guns. 

On Wednesday nine people, who were in church, were killed in Charleston South Carolina by a monster with a gun.  It is now Friday and I have heard little about the victims and more about why guns need less regulation. I am confused and pissed off about the society I live in.

The pro gunner's arguments have not changed in the ten years since I left the gun violence prevention movement. Here are some examples of their arguments followed by my hypothetical responses. 

GUNNERS: Guns don't kill people, people do.

ME: The famous comedian Eddie Izzard famously said "Well I think the gun helps". 

GUNNERS: If someone in the church had a gun, this would not have been as bad.

ME: How many times have you heard about a "good" CCW license holder stopping any mass shooting, zero? 

GUNNERS: You are using this tragedy to push your liberal agenda.

ME: I am sorry, tell me once again when we had any kind of reasonable gun control legislation in the last twenty years.  Also when should we talk about gun violence? When everyone has been killed?

GUNNERS: FREEDOM!!!!!!

ME: ???????

There is no way to have a rational discussion with people who use innocent deaths to protect their beliefs. I will admit that guns may not be the problem, gun culture is the problem. Why do we give the gunners a rational position in our society. What is a gun used for. I will give the gunners credit for the hunting argument. Their are a lot of hunters who use rifles.  What about assault rifles and handguns? Those weapons are not used by serious hunters. What in the world are people using assault rifles and handguns for? The answer I normally get is that those guns are for sport shooting and protection. First, you do not need to have those weapons in your home if they are used for sport shooting. Second, what do you need protecting from. Statistics are numbers and have no political motivation.  The incident of accidental death and suicide is a lot larger than the number of people who have successfully used these weapons for protection. We have trained police who can protect you from the "bad guys". I lived in the urban core for most of my twenties and thirties. I know of more people in the suburbs with handguns and assault rifles than I ever knew in the city. 

The best way to approach the problem of gun violence is to marginalize the gun culture. People who make guns a religion need to be treated as non-rational beings. I love Star Wars, yet I do not demean people who do not like it (I privately judge them).  You can love guns, but you do not need to be obnoxious about it. Many people love expensive sports cars, even if they cannot afford them.  One does not need to own a gun to enjoy them. Do you really love guns. Go to a regulated shooting range, play a first person shooter. You do not need to have the extra ability to kill someone with your hobby.

Once the gun culture is marginalized in society, spineless politicians will stop bending over backward for the NRA. Gun manufacturers depend on the NRA to continue a campaign of misdirection, lying, and fear mongering. The fact that the media does not marginalize the NRA makes our congress even more ineffectual. The gun violence prevention movement is way too emotional and fractured in their beliefs to be an effective counterbalance to the NRA. Bringing the gun violence prevention movement together as one voice is a non-starter. Pushing the same boulder up the same hill is going to give you the same results.

The best way to honor the people killed by guns is to do whatever possible to not add new gun violence victims. Forget about the guns and focus on the culture. Once everyone truly sees that the narrative states we honor the dead by demanding more guns, people will wake up and see the insanity. We will demand real discussion, from rational people. Change will start to happen.

Be kind to each other.

RD Kulik 

RD Kulik is the founder and Head Editor for Seed Sing