Munro Williams
New member
How to Organize a First Monday March
First Monday is an annual campaign launched on the first Monday in October, coordinated by the Alliance for Justice in conjunction with Physicians for Social Responsibility, for the purpose of focusing attention on social problems in need of creative solutions. The discussions and ideas that emerge at First Monday events, occurring in scores of city and campus forums across the nation, have helped to clarify a variety of difficult public issues that deserve serious attention.
This year's subject, gun violence, is particularly vexing. Every year, more than 30,000 Americans die from gunfire, more than 100,000 are injured-and still the government has done little to reduce the bloodshed. Poll after poll shows that Americans favor stronger gun laws. But even in the wake of the Columbine High School shooting in Littleton, Colo., when public demand for tougher gun laws may have hit a peak, Congress failed to respond in a meaningful way.
The subject of gun violence strikes a deep nerve in the U.S. To many, guns are revered as nearly sacred symbols of individual freedom. Guns, they believe, are literal bulwarks against governmental tyranny. Others, however, see guns as an extraordinarily costly threat to public health. If Big Tobacco can be brought to its knees, they believe, why not the gun industry? If teddy bears and toasters can be regulated for consumer safety, why not guns?
The issues surrounding gun violence are complex. Our purpose in devoting First Monday 2000 to this subject is to examine those issues in great depth and to assist you, as a participant, in understanding why we have tolerated gun violence for so long and what we might do about it. We're pleased that you have chosen to take part in this important event, and we look forward to working with you into 2001 to keep building the movement to end gun violence.
Part One: Introduction
CAMPAIGN OVERVIEW
First Monday 2000: Unite to End Gun Violence is a national campaign promoting education and action to reduce gun violence. The campaign is launched by the hundreds of events that will occur nationwide on the first Monday of October, October 2, 2000.(There was another on February 5 this year, and there may be more in the future)
City-wide events will feature public officials, survivors of gun violence, parents, students, doctors, teachers, law enforcement and other community leaders, and will spark discussion and activism to reduce gun violence at the local level.
First Monday 2000 is also organizing students at schools of law, medicine, nursing, social work and public health, as well as on college campuses and in high schools. For the past six years, First Monday has taken place at almost every law school in the country on or near the first Monday of October, to coincide with the first day of the Supreme Court term.
These events will help launch local activism to end gun violence that will continue beyond the first Monday in October and through 2001.
Many First Monday events will include a new, short documentary film featuring Martin Sheen and directed by award-winning filmmakers Liz Garbus and Rory Kennedy. The film will present the epidemic of gun violence in America and provide examples of successful activism by a range of citizens. Community and campus events will feature the film along with local advocates for justice and several opportunities for activism.
First Monday is an annual initiative coordinated by the Alliance for Justice that seeks to inspire and mobilize new advocates to further the cause of justice. First Monday highlights a different justice issue each year. In 2000 and 2001, First Monday is focusing on gun violence in America.
GUN VIOLENCE IN AMERICA
We Americans tolerate levels of gun violence that dumbfound the rest of the industrialized world. It's as though the carnage-more than 30,000 dead and 100,000 injured every year by guns-has numbed us. Too often, we shrug our shoulders at the news of another gun death because, after all, isn't that part of what America is all about? Isn't that one of the tradeoffs for maintaining a free society?
A GROWING ISSUE
But in recent years, as a series of teenage boys have burned the issue into the nation's consciousness by firing upon their schoolmates in various American small towns and suburbs, the issue of gun violence has changed. With the threat arriving upon the front steps of our suburban and rural schools, no longer do we consider gun violence to be solely an inner-city problem. In May, an estimated 750,000 women, men, and children attended the Million Mom March in Washington, by far the largest gun-control rally in the nation's history. In the wake of that event, MMM chapters have taken root all over the U.S. In addition, other new groups and other new efforts have arisen to do something about gun violence in the U.S. These efforts have bolstered those of such longstanding proponents of gun-violence prevention as the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, Handgun Control Inc., and the Violence Policy Center.(Two of which have called for a flat out BAN publically.)
Facts About Gun Deaths In The U.S.
In 1996, handguns were used to murder two people in New Zealand, 15 in Japan, 30 in Great Britain, 106 in Canada, and 9,266 in the U.S. (82 murdered in Strathclyde Scotland. What about NON GUN MURDERS?)
Handguns comprise one-third of the firearms in the U.S. But they are used in more than 80 percent of the homicides. (They are after the 9mm especially)
More than half of firearms fatalities in the U.S. each year are suicides. (They want the public health approach,not crime approach)
m 1988 to 1997, an annual average of 36,255 people died from gunshots in the U.S.(Declining each year)
Every two years, more Americans die from firearms injury in the U.S. than were killed in the entire 11-year Vietnam War.(Self defense is included as well in the total)
GUN 'RIGHTS' AND THE GUN LOBBY
At the same time, however, the National Rifle Association is reporting swelling membership. Gun owners, believing that the growing gun-control mood endangers their perceived Constitutional rights to "keep and bear arms," are turning to the NRA and contributing hefty sums to buttress the organization's reputation as one of the most powerful special interests in the nation. The NRA has pledged to spend some $15 million to support its favorite candidates this fall, but the monetary influence of the organization explains only part of its punch. Its ability to mobilize concerted actions by its members-letter-writing, e-mail, and phone campaigns directed at officeholders identified as "anti-gun"-is legendary. (Sounds like what an anti-rights lawyer told me)
The great power of the NRA rests in its contention that gun ownership enjoys the constitutional protection of the Second Amendment-despite the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that such an individual right does not exist. As the late U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren E. Burger wrote during the bicentennial of the Bill of Rights in 1991, "There is no support in the Constitution for the argument that federal and state governments are powerless to regulate the purchase of such firearms." Burger(One person) blamed the NRA for fomenting this myth. "This has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word 'fraud,' on the American public by special interest that I have ever seen in my lifetime." The NRA's political influence is even more astonishing because poll after poll shows that Americans-even most gun-owning Americans-favor stronger gun laws.
IT'S ABOUT THE SECOND AMENDMENT The gun lobby argues that the U.S. Constitution provides an absolute right to individuals to own and carry firearms. According to a 1995 poll, 75 percent of the American public agrees.
The U.S. Supreme Court has never ruled that such an individual right exists.
Starting with the Supreme Court's 1939 decision in U.S. v. Miller, the Court has consistently found that the "right of the people to keep and bear arms" refers to creation of state militias. Today, the descendants of these state militias exist in the form of state National Guards. (Where the hell does it say that??? - Read Fed 46)
SUCCESSFUL ACTIONS Despite the NRA's opposition, a variety of gun laws at national, state, and local levels have been passed and been proven effective. The 1993 Brady Law requires a background check for most gun purchases and has helped reduce illegal gun trafficking. The 1994 Crime Bill banned the manufacture and sale of a variety of assault weapons. A Domestic Violence Offenders Gun Ban was passed in 1996. Virginia passed the nation's first "one-gun-a-month" legislation in 1993 to cut off illegal gun trafficking. Several California cities and towns have banned the sales of "junk guns" (cheap handguns unfit for sport and used primarily for crime).
One of the most potentially important governmental actions in the fight against gun violence was the recent decision of the Massachusetts attorney general's office to begin regulation of firearms under the office's consumer-protection powers.(Complete Recall??) Incredibly, firearms are specifically exempted from the same kinds of federal consumer-product regulations that govern design and construction of virtually every other product to ensure public safety. If guns were regulated as consumer products, the government could require that they not be sold without such safety features as load indicators and trigger locks, and like other products, defective products could be subject to recall.
FACTS ABOUT AMERICANS' POSITIONS ON GUN LAWS
Sixty-three percent of Americans support tougher gun laws, according to a September 1999 Washington Post/ABC News Poll.
The vast majority of Americans support design features by gun manufacturers to reduce gun violence, according to a 1998 survey reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Three-fourths of the respondents to a 1998 survey by the National Opinion Research Center(FUnded by the Notorious Joyce Foundation) at the University of Chicago support federally mandated safety regulations for the design of guns.
For the most recent comprehensive public opinion polls on gun violence, see: http://www.norc.uchicago.edu/online/gunrpt.pdf
PATCHWORK GUN LAWS
But state laws remain a patchwork-a situation that weakens the efforts of states that do have tough gun laws. Crime guns recovered by police in such states as Massachusetts and New York, where gun laws are relatively strong, tend to originate from states with weaker laws.(That's illegal) More than half of all states now have passed "concealed carry" laws allowing adults who do not have felonies or evidence of serious mental illness on their records to carry concealed firearms without having to demonstrate a particular need for carrying a gun. Some states have adopted licensing, ballistic "fingerprinting," or child-access-prevention (CAP) laws. But laws requiring such common sense measures remain the exception, rather than the rule.
Frustrated by the heavily NRA-influenced legislative channels, gun-violence-prevention proponents have been eyeing the courts as a potential venue for achieving more responsible practices from gun manufacturers. Influenced by the success of the settlements against Big Tobacco, activists, lawyers, and politicians have filed a number of lawsuits seeking to extract damages to offset the public health costs inflicted on cities and other locales and to change gun makers' business practices so that guns are made safer and are less accessible to unauthorized users.
State Gun Laws Recently
Have Been Ranked by Two Organizations
Open Society Institute - http://www.soros.org/crime/junreport.htm
Handgun Control, Inc. - http://www.handguncontrol.org/stateleg/reportcard2k.asp
A $100 BILLION ANNUAL PROBLEM?
The effort to reduce the levels of gun violence in the U.S. is expanding and is being conducted on many fronts. But the problem, including the persistent influence of a gun lobby that is so effective in cowing lawmakers from enacting stronger laws to reduce the bloodshed, is deeply ingrained in our society. According to government and industry estimates, there are enough guns in the U.S. to arm nearly everyone. It's estimated that the people injured by gunfire every year-more than 100,000 of them-require some $20 billion in medical treatment. By some estimates, lost productivity and other costs raise the annual price tag for gun injuries in the U.S. to $100 billion. (That's a scary arguement that could hurt us BAD.)
The appalling cost to our nation - thousands upon thousands of lost and damaged lives along with the related monetary costs - caused by guns is obvious. It's time to enact common-sense gun laws and take other reasonable steps to reduce the carnage. Our purpose with First Monday is to activate people to work for solutions to this problem.
COSPONSORS
Our cosponsors are an important part of what makes First Monday happen.
:barf:
Well, there they go again...
First Monday is an annual campaign launched on the first Monday in October, coordinated by the Alliance for Justice in conjunction with Physicians for Social Responsibility, for the purpose of focusing attention on social problems in need of creative solutions. The discussions and ideas that emerge at First Monday events, occurring in scores of city and campus forums across the nation, have helped to clarify a variety of difficult public issues that deserve serious attention.
This year's subject, gun violence, is particularly vexing. Every year, more than 30,000 Americans die from gunfire, more than 100,000 are injured-and still the government has done little to reduce the bloodshed. Poll after poll shows that Americans favor stronger gun laws. But even in the wake of the Columbine High School shooting in Littleton, Colo., when public demand for tougher gun laws may have hit a peak, Congress failed to respond in a meaningful way.
The subject of gun violence strikes a deep nerve in the U.S. To many, guns are revered as nearly sacred symbols of individual freedom. Guns, they believe, are literal bulwarks against governmental tyranny. Others, however, see guns as an extraordinarily costly threat to public health. If Big Tobacco can be brought to its knees, they believe, why not the gun industry? If teddy bears and toasters can be regulated for consumer safety, why not guns?
The issues surrounding gun violence are complex. Our purpose in devoting First Monday 2000 to this subject is to examine those issues in great depth and to assist you, as a participant, in understanding why we have tolerated gun violence for so long and what we might do about it. We're pleased that you have chosen to take part in this important event, and we look forward to working with you into 2001 to keep building the movement to end gun violence.
Part One: Introduction
CAMPAIGN OVERVIEW
First Monday 2000: Unite to End Gun Violence is a national campaign promoting education and action to reduce gun violence. The campaign is launched by the hundreds of events that will occur nationwide on the first Monday of October, October 2, 2000.(There was another on February 5 this year, and there may be more in the future)
City-wide events will feature public officials, survivors of gun violence, parents, students, doctors, teachers, law enforcement and other community leaders, and will spark discussion and activism to reduce gun violence at the local level.
First Monday 2000 is also organizing students at schools of law, medicine, nursing, social work and public health, as well as on college campuses and in high schools. For the past six years, First Monday has taken place at almost every law school in the country on or near the first Monday of October, to coincide with the first day of the Supreme Court term.
These events will help launch local activism to end gun violence that will continue beyond the first Monday in October and through 2001.
Many First Monday events will include a new, short documentary film featuring Martin Sheen and directed by award-winning filmmakers Liz Garbus and Rory Kennedy. The film will present the epidemic of gun violence in America and provide examples of successful activism by a range of citizens. Community and campus events will feature the film along with local advocates for justice and several opportunities for activism.
First Monday is an annual initiative coordinated by the Alliance for Justice that seeks to inspire and mobilize new advocates to further the cause of justice. First Monday highlights a different justice issue each year. In 2000 and 2001, First Monday is focusing on gun violence in America.
GUN VIOLENCE IN AMERICA
We Americans tolerate levels of gun violence that dumbfound the rest of the industrialized world. It's as though the carnage-more than 30,000 dead and 100,000 injured every year by guns-has numbed us. Too often, we shrug our shoulders at the news of another gun death because, after all, isn't that part of what America is all about? Isn't that one of the tradeoffs for maintaining a free society?
A GROWING ISSUE
But in recent years, as a series of teenage boys have burned the issue into the nation's consciousness by firing upon their schoolmates in various American small towns and suburbs, the issue of gun violence has changed. With the threat arriving upon the front steps of our suburban and rural schools, no longer do we consider gun violence to be solely an inner-city problem. In May, an estimated 750,000 women, men, and children attended the Million Mom March in Washington, by far the largest gun-control rally in the nation's history. In the wake of that event, MMM chapters have taken root all over the U.S. In addition, other new groups and other new efforts have arisen to do something about gun violence in the U.S. These efforts have bolstered those of such longstanding proponents of gun-violence prevention as the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, Handgun Control Inc., and the Violence Policy Center.(Two of which have called for a flat out BAN publically.)
Facts About Gun Deaths In The U.S.
In 1996, handguns were used to murder two people in New Zealand, 15 in Japan, 30 in Great Britain, 106 in Canada, and 9,266 in the U.S. (82 murdered in Strathclyde Scotland. What about NON GUN MURDERS?)
Handguns comprise one-third of the firearms in the U.S. But they are used in more than 80 percent of the homicides. (They are after the 9mm especially)
More than half of firearms fatalities in the U.S. each year are suicides. (They want the public health approach,not crime approach)
m 1988 to 1997, an annual average of 36,255 people died from gunshots in the U.S.(Declining each year)
Every two years, more Americans die from firearms injury in the U.S. than were killed in the entire 11-year Vietnam War.(Self defense is included as well in the total)
GUN 'RIGHTS' AND THE GUN LOBBY
At the same time, however, the National Rifle Association is reporting swelling membership. Gun owners, believing that the growing gun-control mood endangers their perceived Constitutional rights to "keep and bear arms," are turning to the NRA and contributing hefty sums to buttress the organization's reputation as one of the most powerful special interests in the nation. The NRA has pledged to spend some $15 million to support its favorite candidates this fall, but the monetary influence of the organization explains only part of its punch. Its ability to mobilize concerted actions by its members-letter-writing, e-mail, and phone campaigns directed at officeholders identified as "anti-gun"-is legendary. (Sounds like what an anti-rights lawyer told me)
The great power of the NRA rests in its contention that gun ownership enjoys the constitutional protection of the Second Amendment-despite the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that such an individual right does not exist. As the late U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren E. Burger wrote during the bicentennial of the Bill of Rights in 1991, "There is no support in the Constitution for the argument that federal and state governments are powerless to regulate the purchase of such firearms." Burger(One person) blamed the NRA for fomenting this myth. "This has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word 'fraud,' on the American public by special interest that I have ever seen in my lifetime." The NRA's political influence is even more astonishing because poll after poll shows that Americans-even most gun-owning Americans-favor stronger gun laws.
IT'S ABOUT THE SECOND AMENDMENT The gun lobby argues that the U.S. Constitution provides an absolute right to individuals to own and carry firearms. According to a 1995 poll, 75 percent of the American public agrees.
The U.S. Supreme Court has never ruled that such an individual right exists.
Starting with the Supreme Court's 1939 decision in U.S. v. Miller, the Court has consistently found that the "right of the people to keep and bear arms" refers to creation of state militias. Today, the descendants of these state militias exist in the form of state National Guards. (Where the hell does it say that??? - Read Fed 46)
SUCCESSFUL ACTIONS Despite the NRA's opposition, a variety of gun laws at national, state, and local levels have been passed and been proven effective. The 1993 Brady Law requires a background check for most gun purchases and has helped reduce illegal gun trafficking. The 1994 Crime Bill banned the manufacture and sale of a variety of assault weapons. A Domestic Violence Offenders Gun Ban was passed in 1996. Virginia passed the nation's first "one-gun-a-month" legislation in 1993 to cut off illegal gun trafficking. Several California cities and towns have banned the sales of "junk guns" (cheap handguns unfit for sport and used primarily for crime).
One of the most potentially important governmental actions in the fight against gun violence was the recent decision of the Massachusetts attorney general's office to begin regulation of firearms under the office's consumer-protection powers.(Complete Recall??) Incredibly, firearms are specifically exempted from the same kinds of federal consumer-product regulations that govern design and construction of virtually every other product to ensure public safety. If guns were regulated as consumer products, the government could require that they not be sold without such safety features as load indicators and trigger locks, and like other products, defective products could be subject to recall.
FACTS ABOUT AMERICANS' POSITIONS ON GUN LAWS
Sixty-three percent of Americans support tougher gun laws, according to a September 1999 Washington Post/ABC News Poll.
The vast majority of Americans support design features by gun manufacturers to reduce gun violence, according to a 1998 survey reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Three-fourths of the respondents to a 1998 survey by the National Opinion Research Center(FUnded by the Notorious Joyce Foundation) at the University of Chicago support federally mandated safety regulations for the design of guns.
For the most recent comprehensive public opinion polls on gun violence, see: http://www.norc.uchicago.edu/online/gunrpt.pdf
PATCHWORK GUN LAWS
But state laws remain a patchwork-a situation that weakens the efforts of states that do have tough gun laws. Crime guns recovered by police in such states as Massachusetts and New York, where gun laws are relatively strong, tend to originate from states with weaker laws.(That's illegal) More than half of all states now have passed "concealed carry" laws allowing adults who do not have felonies or evidence of serious mental illness on their records to carry concealed firearms without having to demonstrate a particular need for carrying a gun. Some states have adopted licensing, ballistic "fingerprinting," or child-access-prevention (CAP) laws. But laws requiring such common sense measures remain the exception, rather than the rule.
Frustrated by the heavily NRA-influenced legislative channels, gun-violence-prevention proponents have been eyeing the courts as a potential venue for achieving more responsible practices from gun manufacturers. Influenced by the success of the settlements against Big Tobacco, activists, lawyers, and politicians have filed a number of lawsuits seeking to extract damages to offset the public health costs inflicted on cities and other locales and to change gun makers' business practices so that guns are made safer and are less accessible to unauthorized users.
State Gun Laws Recently
Have Been Ranked by Two Organizations
Open Society Institute - http://www.soros.org/crime/junreport.htm
Handgun Control, Inc. - http://www.handguncontrol.org/stateleg/reportcard2k.asp
A $100 BILLION ANNUAL PROBLEM?
The effort to reduce the levels of gun violence in the U.S. is expanding and is being conducted on many fronts. But the problem, including the persistent influence of a gun lobby that is so effective in cowing lawmakers from enacting stronger laws to reduce the bloodshed, is deeply ingrained in our society. According to government and industry estimates, there are enough guns in the U.S. to arm nearly everyone. It's estimated that the people injured by gunfire every year-more than 100,000 of them-require some $20 billion in medical treatment. By some estimates, lost productivity and other costs raise the annual price tag for gun injuries in the U.S. to $100 billion. (That's a scary arguement that could hurt us BAD.)
The appalling cost to our nation - thousands upon thousands of lost and damaged lives along with the related monetary costs - caused by guns is obvious. It's time to enact common-sense gun laws and take other reasonable steps to reduce the carnage. Our purpose with First Monday is to activate people to work for solutions to this problem.
COSPONSORS
Our cosponsors are an important part of what makes First Monday happen.
:barf:
Well, there they go again...