Help Bring an End to the Insanity: Stop Gun Violence!

The Coalition to End Gun Violence

Stop Handgun Violence (Local Org)

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• Guns and Our Kids: Every day, 12 children 19 years of age and under are killed by gunfire. In 1998 3,792 children ages 10-19 were killed by a gun.
• Suicide: In 1997 there were 17,566 deaths due to suicide involving firearms. The presence of a gun in a home increases the likelihood that a suicide will occur. Methods that reduce the accessibility of handguns can help save thousands of lives each year.
• Statistics:Firearm-related suicides account for only 0.6% of total suicide attempts, but comprise 78.2% of suicide fatalities. Guns work---they kill those who are at their most vulnerable moment when they really do not wish to die.
• Justifiable:In 1996, according to the FBI, there were only 176 justifiable handgun homicides compared with a total of 9,390 handgun murders in the United States. Keeping a handgun in the home for self-defense places a gun owner and his/her family in great jeopardy. A gun in the home is 4 times more likely to be involved in an unintentional shooting, 7 more likely to be used in a criminal assault or homicide, and 11 times more likely to be chosen as a method of suicide than it is to successfully be used against an assailant. In fact, research indicates that the use of a firearm to resist a violent assault actually increases the victims risk of injury and death.
• The Second Ammendment: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed." The gun lobby perpetuates several myths about the Second Amendment in order to justify its extreme positions. These falsehoods jeopardize efforts to pass anti-gun-violence laws and undermine the true intentions of our Constitution. Many Americans have been lulled into inaction and apathy by the gun lobby?s well-organized misinformation campaign.
• Fact: While the gun lobby focuses its arguments on the second half of the Amendment, the right to keep and bear arms as stated in the Constitution is fundamentally based on states need for a well-regulated militia. The Second Amendment was adopted to ensure the right of states to maintain their own militia to protect themselves against foreign and federal encroachment. It does not guarantee an individuals right to own firearms for self defense.
• Fact: No federal court, including the U.S. Supreme Court, has ever overturned a gun control law on the grounds of the Second Amendment. The federal judiciary, including the Supreme Court, has been remarkably consistent in finding that the Second Amendment protects a state?s right to keep a well-regulated militia, rather than an individuals right to bear arms. In United States v. Miller, Miller claimed that his Second Amendment rights were violated by a federal law that prohibits the possession of sawed-off shotguns. The Court ruled, In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a [shotgun] at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. The federal courts have always upheld gun control laws when they have been contested on Second Amendment grounds.
• Beware: The NRA will try to confuse the issue by citing cases in which gun control legislation has been contested, but not on Second Amendment grounds. For example, in U.S. v. Lopez, gun control legislation was struck down because the Gun Free School Zones Act was said to violate the Interstate Commerce Clause. Along the same lines, the recent Supreme Court challenge to the Brady Law was based on the Tenth Amendment, regarding the separation of federal and state powers, and has nothing to do with the Second Amendment.
• Fact: The founding fathers never intended to provide individuals with the right to firearms ownership. As the Bill of Rights was being drafted, the founders deliberately wrote the Second Amendment so that it binds firearm possession to the military needs of the state. Therefore, the gun lobby distorts the words of the founding fathers when it ignores the importance of state militia in the Second Amendment.
• Fact: Arming all citizens does not prevent or eliminate systems of oppression. The gun lobby often cites the Holocaust, violence in Bosnia, hunger in Somalia, and racism in the U.S. as problems that would have been or could be overcome if only oppressed individuals were armed. Yet it is precisely the rampant proliferation of guns that can make tragedies such as these possible. There are numerous countries which have extensive restrictions on firearm ownership that have not fallen into tyranny, such as Canada, Japan, and Australia. Clearly, democracy still thrives in nations with few firearms. Furthermore, in recent history, many oppressive governments, such as those in Eastern Europe and South Africa, have been overthrown by citizens working through activism and nonviolent protest, not by individuals taking up arms.