LouLife

How many kids have to die before we do something about kids and gun safety? Whether in Kentucky or somewhere else, eight kids die a day in the United Statesfrom gun violence. Eight kids! That’s every child on my son’s soccer team plus one, every day.

The most recent figures available, from the Centers for Disease Control and dated 2004, show that 55 percent of all murders of those under age 18 in the United States involved firearms. Consider only teenagers aged 13 to 19 years old and the figure goes up to a whopping 82 percent. Here in Kentucky, in 2004, 42 kids under the age of 18 died as a result of guns. That includes 20 suicides.

According to the Children’s Defense Fund, in 2003, 2,827 children and teens died as a result of gun violence — more than the number of American fighting men and women killed in hostile action in Iraq from 2003 to April 2006.

Want a bigger number? From 1979 to 2001, a total of 90,000 children and teens died from gunfire in this country. Ninety-thousand.

Seven years ago I was the Louisvillecoordinator for the Million Mom March. On April 14, 2000, more than a million advocates for sensible gun laws marched on Washington, D.C. Hundreds of thousands more held gatherings across the country. This was when the wounds of Columbine High in Littleton, Colo., were still fresh and the fear of another mass school shooting was not an “if” but a “when,” as many of us believed.

Several hundred of us marched in Louisville that day to ask for some fairly simple things: cooling off periods for gun purchases, background checks, safety locks for all handguns, the licensing and registering of all handguns, limiting purchases to one handgun per month, and the no-nonsense enforcement of existing gun laws. At that time, President Clinton was on board and he spoke out for new laws to protect our children. Funds poured in to the campaign and we were pushing our legislators to make changes.

Then George W. Bush was elected president for his first term and nearly everything we had worked toward came to a screeching halt. We called them “Common Sense Gun Control Laws” then, but few of them made it into law — common or otherwise. I came to the conclusion by the /files/storyimages/of 2001 that my time and efforts were of little consequence. I turned my information over to another local woman, who has since dropped out of the Million Mom March too. There is no longer a Louisville chapter of this organization.

Emergency personnel t/files/storyimages/to one of the Edwardsville, Ind., shooting victims on June 18

I still hope that 20 years from now we will have sensible gun-control laws because the shootings keep coming: Feb. 29, 2000, Mount Township, Mich.: A six-year-old kills a fellow six-year-old when he brings a handgun to their elementary school. March 21, 2005, Red Lake Indian Reservation in Minnesota: A student kills 10 fellow students and wounds dozens in the largest school shooting since Columbine. (Add these to our own state tragedy on Dec. 1, 1997, when Michael Carneal, 14, shot eight of his fellow students at Heath High School in Paducah; three students died.)

Then there was Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007: 32 students and teachers dead, the worst school shooting in this country’s history. The shooter at Virginia Tech was considered a young adult, so maybe he and the other slain students belong in another accounting. But if you ask their families I think that they would strongly disagree with that point of view.

And closer to home, in mid-June, a 15-year-old Edwardsville, Ind., boy shot and killed a police officer and critically wounded his partner when they arrived at his home after the boy’s mother called them to help settle her dispute with her child.

Why is this happening? Here’s the simple answer: It’s much too easy for our kids to get their hands on guns. It seems to me that we accept and tolerate this dangerous situation. Why did that 15-year-old Edwardsville boy have access to a high-powered rifle? What in the hell was he doing with an M1 World War II military weapon in his hands, all alone in his house, while his mother, who called police, stood outside with the officers? That’s the hard question that no longer gets asked.

We focus on the grief, as we should. The impact is enormous. The child’s and the officers’ families are shattered. Media reports have also focused on releasing information to police about juvenile criminal records. But what about the root of the problem? Easy access to guns is the biggest contributor to the death of that officer and that boy.

Gun violence involving kids is an epidemic — as is gun violence involving adults — and it doesn’t matter who you are or where you live; it will affect you. Here’s another alarming statistic: In 2006, 25 percent of the shooting victims at downtown Louisville’s University Hospital were under the age of 21.

Here are more facts about kids and guns: In the United States today, nearly eight young people aged 19 and under are killed and 45 are non-fatally wounded every day. In 2004, 1,804 children were murdered in gun homicides, 846 committed suicide with guns, and 143 died in unintentional shootings. A total of 2,793 young people were killed in the U.S.that year. For children 14 years old and under, total gun deaths in 2003 were nearly 12 times higher in the U.S.than in 25 other industrialized countries combined!

As the mother of a 12-year-old, I worry about gun violence every day. I still keep up with the issue — who is saying what and which legislators are pushing for sensible guns laws. I give money to candidates who support these laws. I write letters to my legislators. I wish I could do more.

It frustrates me when I consider how much power and money the gun lobby has over our lives and how it has turned the issue in its favor. Thinking back, maybe we should have used the words “gun responsibility” instead of “gun control.” I think that would resonant with more people because it doesn’t have the point-blank finality of “control.” Control denotes power, and power and money are of great importance to so many people in the gun debate. The “gun control” phrase also opened the door to a fear by gun owners, unfounded I think, that any restrictions would be a first step toward taking away their rights to own any firearms.

The Brady Campaign is working nonstop to get the message out that there are solutions to gun violence. Sarah Brady, wife of former Ronald Reagan aide and gun victim James Brady, for whom the campaign is named, has said, “We can ban military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips that make it so easy to kill quickly. . . . We can require Brady background checks for all gun sales, including at gun shows. . . . We can stop large-volume gun sales that supply illegal gun traffickers. These are just some of the steps we can take to make it harder for the wrong people to get guns.”

Unfortunately, Kentucky gets a big “F” from the Brady Campaign on laws in place to shield families from gun violence. Though the state has a law making it illegal to carry concealed weapons onto school grounds, our state doesn’t have a CAP (child access prevention) law that would hold gun owners responsible for leaving guns accessible to children. In addition to the concealed-weapon law, we have two others: a juvenile possession law on handguns and a statue regulating the sale of handguns to juveniles. They mean that a person has to be 18 or older to purchase a handgun, but there are no state restrictions on giving rifles, shotguns or even assault weapons to kids — or doing so without a parent’s permission!

Indiana scores a grade of “D.” Hoosiers have a partial CAP Law that makes it a felony for anyone to “knowingly, intentionally or recklessly” provide a firearm to a juvenile under the age of 18 years of age, except for sporting use. Indiana’s law does not specify what “recklessly” means. Indianagun buyers also have to undergo a partial background check at the state level (again, with the exception of rifles, shotguns and many assault weapons). Go to www.bradycampaign.org to get the full record on Kentuckyand Indiana gun laws.

If states and the federal government are not doing much to enact common-sense guns laws to help keep our kids safe, what can we as individuals do in the face of such overwhelming odds? I believe we must first understand that gun violence happens at all socio-economic levels. Virginia Tech and Columbine are examples, as are Paducah, Ky., and Edwardsville, Ind. — all involved people and situations in middle-class, mainstream America. All it took was an available gun and a curious or angry kid or two.

Here are some things that I have done to protect my child: If my son is going to another kid’s house and I don’t know the family, I ask the parents if they have any unlocked guns in the house. If they think I’m weird, so be it. It could save my child’s life. I talk to my son about guns and how dangerous they are and tell him repeatedly to never touch a firearm. I’ve made him promise more than once that if any of his friends comes forth with a gun that he will get as far away from them as possible. Call home, run home, go to a safe place. Basically, just get out alive.

I’ve never wanted to take all guns away from all people. Among other reasons, one lies very close to home: My husband of 13 years actually owns a 9-millimeter handgun, which I have never laid eyes on. He follows the safe ownership guns laws; unload it, lock it up; lock and store ammunition separately; and hide the keys where children can’t find them. Our son has never seen or handled this weapon.

I believe that gun violence and kids is a solvable problem. We have the numbers and the political power to get it done. We can make it harder for children to get their hands on guns through strong gun laws. That is what we marched for in 2000, and it’s what we should march for in 2007 — a million moms, a million dads and everyone else who wishes to protect our youth from these deadly weapons.   

Freelance writer and public relations consultant Pam Gersh may be reached at editorial@loumag.com.