No More Sandy Hooks: NRA vs. War on Women and Children

In this season of peace and love, we need to unite and shout, “No More!” to the violence against women and children. We need to join Eve Ensler’s One Billion Rising campaign. If you are looking for spiritual solace, I highly recommend Rev. Dr. Roger Ray’s sermon “Kicking the Darkness Until it Bleeds Daylight” on December 16 which you can find in video and written format at his church’s sermon archives. It inspired this post.

The media will eventually get bored by Sandy Hook. The NRA will train their guns on anyone who has the audacity to shut down the gun manufacturer’s lobbying machine. They will spin this until we submit to their voracious appetite for profits.

But, women can shut that whole thing down. We voted and shut down 14 candidates for Congress and the Senate who minimized violence against women.

Y’all know how hard I campaigned against John Koster’s misogynistic attitudes. I am proud to report that Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-WA1) won and has already been sworn in! She kicked Mr. Koster’s butt to the curb with 51.56% of the vote.

Rep. Suzan Del Bene swearing in ceremony

Lobbying 101

If you aren’t registered to vote and don’t show up at the polls, no politician will take you seriously. Period.

Political campaigns have spooky, sophisticated databases that tell them exactly which constituents vote. If more people owning Hummers than owning a Prius show up at the polls, environmental issues won’t be taken seriously. They track trending issues on social media. This is why the DelBene campaign paid attention to the issue of violence against women. When John Koster made his stupid rape remark, her press secretary was ready to blast him. Eve Ensler picked up on the story in Paris, and it was an instant international story. Carpe diem! (Seize the moment!)

Framing the Issue

The words we choose to frame an issue are critical to success or failure. The massacre at Sandy Hook has been framed as a “school shooting” by a “mentally-ill, evil” person. This isn’t accurate. It was an escalation of domestic violence ~ Adam Lanza killed his mother Nancy Lanza before he massacred 20 innocent children and six adults who tried valiantly to protect them. Adam Lanza wasn’t mentally ill. He had Asperger’s which is a form of autism. People with Asperger’s tend to be brilliant and socially awkward. They don’t tend to be violent.

Nancy Lanza has been characterized as “demanding” which is code for “emotionally abusive bitch” in polite, affluent circles. Newtown, CT where they lived was one of the safest towns in America. She had to have been paranoid to own an arsenal of six guns including a Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle which was used in the massacre.

Know the Law

The NRA focuses on the words “right. . .to keep and bear Arms” like they are the only words that count in the Second Amendment:

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. [emphasis added]

The NRA’s favorite phrase is conditional. It is time for us to focus our attention on those conditions:

a well regulated Militia
security of a free State

Assault weapons are instruments of war. I think it is time to limit the manufacture (rather than sale) of these weapons to the quantity required by the military. No civilian has a legitimate purpose to possess (note I did not use the word own) an assault weapon.

We have a well regulated Militia. It’s called the National Guard. Every state has one. If mentally healthy, well-intentioned citizens want to be part of “a well regulated Militia,” they can join the National Guard.

We have bankrupted the country fighting foreign terrorists, but we spend a pathetically miniscule amount on assuring the “security of a free State” from the terrorists in our own homes. We the People will never be secure or free so long as paranoid nut jobs have arsenals of guns. Anybody who thinks they need an arsenal of guns by definition is delusional and paranoid and should thereby be denied a gun permit.

Statistics and Budget Allocations Matter

We spend our money on our priorities. Laws have no impact if funds aren’t allocated to enforce them.

I think one of the reasons the Violence Against Woman Act (VAWA) has trouble getting funded is that advocates are using the wrong statistics. They rely on the Department of Justice statistic that 25% of women have experienced violence. Instead, they should use the medical statistic of 44%. ObamaCares mandated domestic violence screening by medical providers. I think we’ll discover the number is even higher.

Why do I say this? 60% of the people on welfare are survivors of domestic violence and child abuse. It costs the State of Washington, for example, $12 billion each year. Now, that’s a number that will get a politician’s attention. Most of these people are disabled by PTSD and depression. Toss in the cost of SSI benefits and housing, and we have a number that will get VAWA adequately funded.

John Allen Muhammad, D.C. Sniper

Bring It Home

Sadly, people don’t care about an issue until it impacts them personally. It has taken the media 10 years to wake-up to the fact that the D.C. Sniper’s shooting rampage was an escalation of domestic violence. He too used a Bushmaster to massacre 17 people and injure 10 others. There are so many similar stories of an escalation of domestic violence that I can’t recall them all. These are the stories I’ve written about:

Shooting Rampages: Domestic Violence Leaves Home (March 30, 2009) ~ 48 people massacred and 17 wounded by five DV perpetrators in at least a half dozen states and D.C.
Wake Up: Shooting Rampages (April 6, 2009) ~ 53 people massacred by three DV perpetrators.
George Sodini: Misogyny + Guns = Shooting Rampage (August 5, 2009) ~ four people massacred by a stalker at a fitness club in Pennsylvania.
Isaiah M.K. Kalebu: DC Sniper Redo (July 27, 2009) ~ two murdered via arson, one stabbed to death, two rapes in Pierce County and Seattle, Washington.
Lakewood, WA: How Many More Murders Will It Take before the Callous Indifference Ends? (November 30, 2009) ~ four police officers assassinated in a coffee shop.
We Interrupt This Survivor Celebration to Protest Callous Indifference: Why 8 People are Dead in Seal Beach, CA (October 13, 2011) ~ eight massacred ~ one wounded in a spa.
James Eagan Holmes: No Warning Signs? Bullshit. (July 20, 2012) ~ the NRA targeted me for this post ~ he wasn’t a DV perpetrator, but he massacred 12 people and shot 71 people in a Colorado movie theater.
It’s October and There’s Another DV-Related Mass Murder at a Salon: Why Politics Matter (October 22, 2012) ~ three people massacred ~ four wounded in a Wisconsin spa.
2nd Amendment: “Security of a Free State” (December 14, 2012) ~ 27 people massacred ~ one wounded in Newtown, CT in a home and at Shady Hook elementary school.

Only one of these cases didn’t involve guns, and only one case wasn’t an escalation of domestic violence. I opted not to write about the shootings at the Tacoma mall several years ago or at the Clackamas Town Center last week and don’t know if there was a history of DV before either massacre. On Saturday, somebody shot 50 rounds in a parking lot at a shopping mall in Newport Beach, California.

Convicted DV perpetrators aren’t allowed to own handguns. As you can see, this does nothing to protect women and children from perpetrators who already own an arsenal of guns.