The Last Gun (36 page)

6. Learn from successful programs.
One of Wayne LaPierre's stock horror stories is that some eggheads in America think that we might learn something about gun control from other nations of the world. He's right. We can learn a lot from the successful experiences of other free and industrialized countries, including those that have sprung from the Anglo-Saxon heritage of which the NRA and the right wing are so protective. Other countries do not suffer the same torrent of needless gun death and injury for the simple reason that neither their citizens nor their leaders will tolerate it.

Moreover, some states in America have succeeded in
implementing reasonable and effective gun control programs. In California, for example, key stakeholders—including the foundation community, the gun violence prevention movement, and sympathetic lawmakers—decided to take on the gun lobby directly after a shocking series of high-profile shootings. They broke the gun lobby's grip on California politics. California is also a good example of how the first round of legislation may not solve a problem, and therefore continued work is necessary. The California assault weapons law was not perfect when it first went into effect, but advocates continued to study how it was working, how the industry was evading it, and what changes were needed to make it effective. In the face of ongoing industry attempts to subvert the law, these efforts continue to this day.

These ideas are intended to suggest taking a different approach to the problem of gun violence—not a third way, not a fourth way, but the right way. America will get the kind of gun violence prevention programs that it deserves only when, and if, the vast, silent majority realizes that strong and effective fact-based policies that significantly reduce gun death and injury are in their interest—and then does something about it.

Only weeks after the manuscript for this book was sent to the publisher, Americans voted in what Wayne LaPierre, the NRA's chief executive officer and executive vice president, predicted would be “the most dangerous and decisive election of our lives.” He asserted, “This election will decide not only the destiny of our Second Amendment rights, but everything that's
good
and
right
about America.”

LaPierre was right. The 2012 election was decisive. Voters all over America decisively rejected the NRA. They decisively rejected its angry worldview. And they decisively rejected all but a forlorn handful of the candidates that the NRA backed. President Barack Obama—whom LaPierre and the NRA political machine vociferously vowed to defeat—was elected to a second term. Mitt Romney's penitent pilgrimage to the NRA's 2012 convention did him no good. In fact, it arguably worked against him, as an example of his alleged tendency to flip-flop on issues.

Beyond Romney, the NRA's endorsement was decisively an electoral kiss of death. In six of the seven Senate races where the NRA spent more than $100,000, its candidate lost. Even though most incumbent House members who ran kept their seats, of those who lost their reelection bids, over two-thirds were endorsed by the NRA, whose paper tiger was once again shown to be a tissue pussycat.

The election of November 6, 2012, cast a historic shadow on the shrinking pool of aging white men who are the core of the NRA and the conservative coalition to which it has attached itself. Americans do not believe that the coalition's obsession with
race, ethnicity, guns, and violence defines what is right and good about this country. On the contrary, the election decisively validated the long-term trends cited in this book.

The urgency of the need for change was tragically underscored on December 14, 2012, when a young man named Adam Lanza walked into the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut—home of the National Shooting Sports Foundation—and shot to death twenty first graders and six school employees with a 223 caliber Bushmaster semiautomatic assault rifle. He then used a handgun to kill himself. Lanza had earlier killed his mother, Nancy Lanza, with a 22 caliber rifle.

Horrified by the sheer madness of this slaughter, many expected that the gun industry and its lobby would at last see the need for sensible gun legislation. That hope was dashed—and the intransigence of the gun lobby exposed—on Friday, December 21, when the NRA's leadership emerged in Washington, D.C., after a week of silence. In a defiant broadside, Wayne LaPierre blamed the news media, the film industry, and video games—in short, everything but guns—for causing America's gun violence problem.

The landmark election and the horror of Newtown challenge progressive leaders and policy makers as they have never been challenged before. They must act decisively to address the underlying causes of gun violence in America described in the preceding pages. If they do not, they likely and rightly will be swept aside in favor of new leadership.

This much is certain: the gun industry will dig in as it has always done, and continue to profit from fear and violence—until the very last gun.

January 6, 2013

The shooting incidents in this appendix are a snapshot of gun death and injury in the United States as reported in the news media during one randomly selected week. This snapshot, however, illustrates only a small fraction of all gun deaths and injuries that actually occurred during that week. This appendix demonstrates that most gun death and injury in the United States is not reported in the news media at all. As a result of this media whiteout, Americans are poorly informed about the extent of gun violence occurring around them every day and everywhere.

These shooting incidents were as many as could be found in U.S. news media during the week of Monday, August 1, 2011, through Sunday, August 7, 2011. They were gathered by extensively searching Google and Nexis. The fifty-two shooting incidents that were found are summarized below. They resulted in seventy gun deaths and twenty-two nonfatal gun injuries.

However, as discussed in
chapter 1
, there have been an average of 582 gun deaths per week in the United States during the twenty-first century. This is more than eight times the number of deaths that this survey found in news media. Likewise, if this was an average week, 1,319 persons were injured by guns but did not die—almost sixty times as many gun injuries as were reported in the media during the week in question. Nevertheless, these incidents fairly illustrate that the range of gun violence in America goes far beyond the stereotypical, mistaken belief that it happens
mostly in the course of other crimes. In fact, as these anecdotes and national data show, routine gun violence in America includes suicide, murder-suicide, rage killings, mass murders, and domestic violence.

Probable suicide: Fort Huachuca, Arizona. U.S. Army Sergeant First Class Jose J. Algarin-Colon, thirty-eight, was found dead in his quarters of a gunshot wound. Base officials refused to say whether Algarin committed suicide. However, he had been arrested and escorted back to his quarters by military police the same day for bringing his personal handgun to the base's headquarters.
¹

Suicide: Lee, New Hampshire. Andrew Hubbard, twenty-seven, killed himself with a shotgun after being involved in a car crash. Neither driver was seriously injured in the head-on collision, but Hubbard grabbed a shotgun out of the back seat of his car, then fatally shot himself behind the premises of a nearby business.
²

Murder-suicide: Hillsboro, Wisconsin. Joseph C. Satterlee, fifty-five, rammed his wife's car on a street with his own vehicle, climbed into her car, and shot her to death with his .357 Magnum revolver. He then shot himself to death. Satterlee fired a total of eight rounds from his six-shot revolver, pausing once to reload. His wife, Anita K. Satterlee, had filed for divorce on June 20, 2011.
³

Murder-suicide: Kensington, Maryland. Police officers found the bodies of Margaret F. Jensvold, fifty-four, and her son Ben Barnhard, thirteen, in their residence in a Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C. Investigators concluded that Jensvold, a psychiatrist, had shot her son to death and then killed herself. The son had a number of special needs, and Jensvold was reportedly distressed that the local public school system would not pay for his attendance at a private school.
⁴

Murder-suicide: Deerfield, Ohio. Troy Penn, an eighteen-year-old high school senior, shot and killed his ex-girlfriend, seventeen-year-old Amanda Borsos, with a shotgun in an outside pet exercise area at Four Paws Pet Care and Kennel. He then went home and killed himself with the same gun.
⁵

Homicide: Alice, Texas. Mitchell Christopher Soliz, twenty-six, allegedly shot Juan Antonio Sifuentes III, twenty-seven, to death while he was visiting Soliz's home. Sifuentes was the grandson of Juan Antonio Sifuentes, a singer in the Tejano Roots Hall of Fame. Soliz was arrested on suspicion of murder.
⁶

Homicide (police legal intervention): Chicago, Illinois. Claude A. Ellis, thirty-five, was shot to death by police after he allegedly attacked two officers, striking one of them in the face and injuring the other. Police had been called to Ellis's home on a domestic violence complaint. Ellis reportedly had five previous felony drug convictions.”
⁷

Homicide: Richmond, California. Vincent Stephenson Jr., eighteen, was shot and killed in a drive-by shooting while he was standing outside a residence.
⁸

Homicide: Phoenix, Arizona. Edgar Sigala, twenty-four, was shot and killed outside a Baskin-Robbins ice-cream shop. His companion, an unidentified twenty-six-year-old woman, was seriously injured. Jose Acuna, twenty-two, was arrested and charged in the shootings.
⁹

Unintentional fatal shooting: St. Petersburg, Florida. Wilfredo LaFontaine, fifty, accidentally shot himself to death while simultaneously talking on the phone to his girlfriend and cleaning his handgun. The girlfriend heard a “pop” over the phone and rushed to their apartment, where LaFontaine was found slumped against a door. He explained he had been cleaning his gun. He died later at a hospital.
¹⁰

Homicide: Pensacola, Florida. Elena Rendell, seventeen, allegedly shot and killed her adoptive sister, Christina Sneary,
fourteen, with her father's 9mm handgun during an argument between the siblings over a cell phone. Authorities charged Rendell with manslaughter.
¹¹

Suicide: Jersey City, New Jersey. A twenty-three-year-old man whom police did not publicly identify shot himself in the head with a handgun while sitting in a Cadillac sedan on a public street.
¹²

Murder-suicide: Windsor, North Carolina. Frank Cowan, eighty-seven, shot to death his wife, Dorothy Cowan, eighty-six, and then killed himself with the same gun.
¹³

Homicide: Staten Island, New York. Shytik Bowman, seventeen, was shot to death in the course of an apparent street robbery. Authorities later charged Stanley Bowens, twenty-one, with the murder, which allegedly happened when Bowman was being robbed of a bracelet worth less than fifty dollars.
¹⁴

Homicide and nonfatal shooting: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Kimberly Wade, forty-five, was shot in the stomach when at least one gunman sprayed her house with bullets. Shortly thereafter, her son, Chris Michaux, nineteen, was shot to death outside a friend's house.
¹⁵

Murder-suicide: Santa Clarita, California. Martin Fred Strassner, sixty-four, picked up his in-laws, Leo Moss, ninety-five, and Jean Moss, ninety, from an assisted-living home. He drove them to his own residence, where he parked in the driveway. He shot both of the Mosses to death with a handgun while they were sitting in the car, then turned the gun on himself and committed suicide.
¹⁶

Would-be robber shot with own gun: St. Petersburg, Florida. Almedin Muratovic, twenty-five, attempted an armed robbery of a twenty-five-year-old woman at an automated teller machine. The woman's twenty-nine-year-old boyfriend jumped out of his car and wrestled with Muratovic, who was shot with his own
22 caliber handgun during the struggle. Muratovic was charged with two counts of attempted armed robbery.
¹⁷

Homicide and nonfatal shooting: Detroit, Michigan. Alphonso Thomas, thirty-six, an employee of the Pretty Woman Lounge strip club, was shot to death by an unidentified person who was apparently refused admission to the club, pulled out a handgun, and started shooting. A manager of the club was also shot.
¹⁸

Homicide: Tucson, Arizona. Loran Langston, thirty-four, was shot to death after an altercation with his neighbor Brian Dillon, forty. Dillon claimed he shot Langston in self-defense. No arrest was made pending investigation.
¹⁹

Homicide (mass family murder): Ocala, Florida. James Edward Bannister Sr., thirty-one, allegedly shot to death eight-year-old CorDarrian Hill, six-year-old CorDerica Hill, fifty-two-year-old Bridget Gray, and twenty-seven-year-old Jocalyn Gray. He then set fire to the home. Bannister has been indicted on four counts of first-degree premeditated murder with a firearm and one count of arson of a dwelling.
²⁰

Homicide, nonfatal shooting: Jacksonville, Florida. Marquis Bing, eighteen, was found shot to death in a car. An unidentified injured woman was also in the car. Police later arrested Clarence Lee Jones, twenty, for the murder. Another suspect, Joseph Donte Patterson, eighteen, was arrested for attempted murder. Patterson allegedly also discharged a firearm in the incident, but his shots did not hit anyone.
²¹