Ignorance of the Extreme Risk Protection Order Law May Be Fatal

Most people have heard the expression, ignorantia juris non excusat, although perhaps not in Latin. Broadly translated it means, "ignorance of the law is no excuse." But there’s another expression from Roman law, ignorant lures nocet, which means, "not knowing the law is harmful." In the case of Extreme Risk Protection Order Laws, that’s a better fit.

I wrote a Guest Commentary for the Yakima Herald, published Sunday September 10th, that asked the question, “Why aren’t we using our 'red flag' law?” The commentary spoke to our failure to effectively implement the Extreme Risk Protection Order law (RCW 7.105.100), especially in Benton and Franklin counties. The ERPO law has been in effect in Washington for over five years, and to say it has been used only sparingly is an understatement. The biggest impediment to the law's employment is the public’s ignorance of its existence. The League of Women Voters of Benton and Franklin counties is working to change that.

Sheriff's Deputy Ryan Clinkunbroomer

The critical importance of raising the public’s awareness of so-called 'Red Flag’ laws was brought home once again just recently, when a Los Angeles sheriff’s deputy was shot to death by Kevin Cataneo Salazar, whose family said he struggled with mental health issues, including “schizophrenia,” and wouldn’t take his medication. Law enforcement arrested the man and confiscated "several weapons" from his home. This case is eerily similar to the 2021 case of Ryan Kaufman here in Kennewick, reexamined in a February 2023 Tri-City Herald article by Cameron Probert.

Like Washington, California has a ‘Red Flag’ law, the court-issued Gun Violence Restraining Order (GVRO). This temporarily suspends a person’s access to firearms when they are found to pose a significant risk to themselves or others by having access to firearms, even if they obtained them legally, as the suspect in the deputy’s murder is said to have done. Only if the suspect had been evaluated by a competent behavioral health authority and certain conditions were documented, and if this was reported to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (“NICS”), might a gun dealer have refused to sell a firearm to the suspect.

'I want you to know that my son has schizophrenia and delusional perceptions and the police know this.'

Marle Salazar, mother of Kevin Cataneo Salazar, the killer of Los Angeles County sheriff’s Deputy Ryan Clinkunbroomer told this to reporters in Spanish. But her son had no record of being involuntarily committed to a mental institution, and only the police were in a position to address the situation Mrs. Salazar described to them. According to Mrs. Salazar, they told her son they couldn't help him.

It should come as no surprise that people are reluctant to have family members, especially children dear to them, involuntarily committed for mental evaluation, let alone hospitalization. But the tragedy is that 46% of people who die by suicide had a known mental health condition. Firearm deaths associated with mental illness are nearly always suicides, and a suicide attempt with a firearm is almost always fatal.


Suicide deaths are typically impulsive acts, and are the number one cause of firearm related death in the U.S. According to the Washington State Department of Health, in Washington over a 5-year period, 76% of firearm deaths were suicides. Don’t want to have a family member committed? At least remove their access to firearms. Petition for an Extreme Risk Protection Order, or ask your local police to do it.


Learn more about Extreme Risk Protection Orders:


In Washington, here:
https://protectionorder.org/erpo/faq-extreme-risk-protection-orders.html


In Benton County, here:
https://www.co.benton.wa.us/pview.aspx?id=873


In Franklin County, here:
https://www.franklincountywa.gov/591/Domestic-Violence-Civil-Protection-Order


Por instrucciones con formularios en español:
https://www.courts.wa.gov/forms/?fa=forms.contribute&formID=113


Remember, ignorant lures nocet, not knowing the law is harmful. In the case of gun violence, it may be fatal.

America's Schools Are Indispensable: Shame On Us

In a July 7, 2020, talk in the White House East Room, President Donald Trump said, “We want to reopen the schools. Everybody wants it. The moms want it, the dads want it, the kids want it. It’s time to do it.”

The President went on to laud the declining COVID-19 death rate. “You know, our mortality rate is, right now, at a level that people don’t talk about, but it’s down tenfold.  Tenfold.”

Over 137,000 Americans have died of COVID-19 to date (7/11/20), and 64,600 new cases were confirmed — about five times more than the entire continent of Europe. Several U.S. states, including Arizona and Florida, currently have more confirmed cases per capita than any country in the world.

Realizing that deaths lag emerging cases, Dr. Fauci cautioned against becoming complacent in light of the decreased death rate. Perhaps he’s visited some of the refrigerator trucks serving as morgues in Arizona and Texas.

Trump went quickly from talking about the coronavirus pandemic to the U.S. economy and a rebound in the Stock Market, likely revealing why he wants schools to open. Parents need to get back to work, and schools need to babysit their kids so they can do so.

Vice President Pence took the podium after the First Lady touted her “Be Best” initiative. Mrs. Trump stressed the importance of recess. Pence pointed out that some 7 million American children suffer from either mental illness or emotional disturbance, and stated that they principally receive care from health and mental services at their school. Might we ask why?

OECD Family database

The sad fact is that when it comes to caring for America’s children, we are all delinquent. Let’s start at the beginning.*

• In America, the infant death rate is twice as high as in similarly wealthy countries.
• In America, for every 100,000 live births, 28 women die in childbirth or shortly thereafter. In Canada, the same figure is 11. Black women in America die having a child at roughly the same rate as women in Mongolia.
• In America, we spend less of our gross domestic product on family benefits than all other OECD countries, save for Mexico and Turkey, whose combined GDP is less than a tenth of ours.
• In America, we do not guarantee impoverished parents welfare. The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program provides benefits to fewer than one in four poor families.
• In America, our child poverty rate is higher than in nearly all other OECD countries — two, three, or even four times as high as in nations comparable in terms of per capita income.
• In America, as many as 1.5 million families caring for three million kids live on less than $2 per person, per day, in cash income.
• In America, in any given year there are 2.5 million kids that experience homelessness.
• In America, we profess to support mothers, and encourage them to keep working when they have children, but we have no paid maternity, parental, or home-care leave entitlement. We are the only OECD country for which that is true.
• In America, both Republican and Democratic administrations claim to support early childhood education and care, yet as a percentage of GDP, we are truants, ranking practically at the bottom of the list on spending.
• In America, 10 to 15 percent of children in some states have no form of health insurance, no way to pay for vaccinations, medications, counseling, etc.
• In America, teenagers are 82 times more likely to die from a gun homicide than their peers in other wealthy nations.
• In America, rich kids have better schools than poor kids, largely because we link school funding to property taxes. As a result, the so-called “poverty gap” in standardized test scores is 40% larger today than it was a generation ago. Our kids rank in the bottom third of OECD countries in terms of reading and mathematics, and only three in five American kids are proficient in those subjects by 8th grade.

The area in which America is far and away the leader is in our criminal “justice” system. We have the highest rate of incarceration on Earth, and we lead in putting minors behind bars; fourteen states have no minimum age for when a child can be prosecuted and punished as an adult.

The United States of America is the only country that has not ratified the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Hillary Clinton wrote a best-selling book in 1996 addressing America’s dismal history of educating and caring for its children. It was titled, “It Takes a Village.” Clinton said “I chose that old African proverb… because it offers a timeless reminder that children will thrive only if their families thrive and if the whole of society cares enough to provide for them.”

Mrs. Clinton is well-known as a “policy wonk,” and her book is a study in specific policy fixes for America’s glaring deficits in educating and caring for its children. Critics at both extremes of the political spectrum had plenty to dislike about Clinton’s prescriptions, but Republican reaction was particularly scathing, assailing her vision as paternalistic, anti-religious, and that old reliable Republican bugaboo, socialistic.

What’s missed in all the nitpicking and gnashing of teeth over the book, is the fact that Mrs. Clinton presented a broad vision for dealing with childhood education and care, and an integrated, systematic approach for realizing that vision. How refreshing. This is something sorely lacking in today’s chaotic approach to societal division and disintegration; a situation now exacerbated by an unforgiving contagion equally poorly managed and contained.

The Trump Administration’s insistence that we must reopen schools in the Fall in light of America’s miserable excuse for a childhood education and care system is not just irresponsible, it is indefensible.

Show us you can manage the pandemic, Mr. Trump, then we’ll talk about reopening schools.
________________________________
*I have borrowed heavily in this list from the comprehensive article on this subject written by Annie Lowrey for The Atlantic, June 21, 2018. Refer to that article for original sources (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/06/how-america-treats-children/563306/).

TALKING PAPER: Addressing Gun Violence in America

Problem

More people in the United States are killed, or kill themselves by firearms than in any other advanced country in the world. There are more mass shootings in America than in any other country in the world.

Factors

The 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban outlawed 19 types of military-style assault weapons, but expired in 2004 and was not renewed.

In 1996, Congress effectively blocked government agencies from data collection and research on gun violence.

The AR-15 semi-automatic, assault-style rifle has been used in five of the six deadliest mass shootings in the last six years in the U.S.

Gun laws and their effective enforcement vary from state-to-state, background checks are uneven, and the FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) is flawed.

Recommendations

Make mandatory reporting by states and federal agencies to the NICS of all required data on those prohibited from purchasing firearms, including those adjudicated to be mentally ill, and increase incentives and/or penalties for compliance or non-compliance.

Establish a national universal background check system that effectively closes the gun show and on-line purchase loophole.

Promulgate standardized national qualification requirements and waiting periods for firearms purchases.

Impanel a “firearms policy advisory committee” to develop a comprehensive report for Congress on firearm purchase and ownership policy changes aimed at both keeping firearms out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them, and reducing the confusing, bureaucratic hassle of purchase and ownership for law-abiding citizens.

Fund research by the CDC into firearms related death and injury, as the major health crisis it is.

Background

The Epidemic of Gun Violence in America

More Americans have died from gunshots in the last 50 years than in all of the wars in American history.

More people in the United States are killed, or kill themselves by firearms than in any other advanced country in the world. Compared to other such countries:

• Gun homicide rates were over 25 times higher
• For young Americans 15- to 24-years-old, gun homicide rates were 49 times higher
• Gun suicide rates were 8 times higher
• Unintentional gun deaths were over 6 times higher

Gun homicide is the 3rd-leading cause of death for American men 15 to 29.

There were 61,527 incidences of gun violence in America in 2017 (not including suicides), accounting for 15,593 deaths, an average of 1300 per month. There were 346 mass shootings.

There are more mass shootings in America than in any other country in the world.

There are twice as many suicides by gun in America as homicides, and suicides are a leading cause of death in America (see chart). More than a third of women who commit suicide use a firearm; over 55% of men use a firearm.

Firearms and Gun Control

The 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban (FAWB), signed by then President Clinton, outlawed 19 types of military-style assault weapons. A clause directed that the ban expire in 10 years unless Congress specifically reauthorized it, which it did not.

Going back to 1982, more semi-automatic handguns have been used in mass shootings than semi-automatic rifles, like the AR-15. However, the AR-15 has been used in five of the six deadliest mass shootings in the last six years in the U.S.

Under federal law, one must be 21 to buy a handgun from a firearms dealer. Eighteen year-olds can buy an AR-15.

Gun laws and their effective enforcement vary from state to state. There is a 3-day waiting period in Florida to purchase a handgun, but no waiting period to purchase an AR-15 -- the weapon used in the MSD High School mass shooting on February 14, 2018.

The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (Brady Act) of 1993 mandated that Federal Firearm Licensed (FFL) dealers run background checks on their buyers.

In 1998, the FBI launched the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) “to instantly determine whether a prospective buyer is eligible to buy firearms.”

Background checks are only required if a firearm is purchased through an FFL, which includes retailers and some individuals. Background checks are not required if a firearm is purchased online, through a gun show, or through some private sales. A recent estimate is that 22% of sales take place in this way. Some states (including Washington) have passed new laws expanding Brady background checks to all gun sales.

Mental illness in and of itself is not necessarily a disqualifier for firearm purchases. Furthermore, reporting on mental illness by states to the NICS is voluntary, and spotty.

Washington Gun Laws

Washington gun laws require a 5-day waiting period before purchasing handguns. No such waiting period is required for semi-automatic rifles, such as the AR-15.

A current bill before the Washington Senate, SB 6620, would require the same background check procedures to purchase semi-automatic rifles as is currently required for handguns, and would raise the age for purchase to 21.

The Washington Senate passed SB 5992 on February 27, 2018, banning bump stocks, an accessory that allows semi-automatic rifles to simulate automatic fire.

In 2016, Washington voters approved Initiative-1491, Extreme Risk Protection  Orders. It is now  7.94 RCW. It temporarily prevents individuals who are at high risk of harming themselves or others from accessing firearms by allowing family, household members, and police to obtain a court order when there is demonstrated evidence that the person poses a significant danger, including danger as a result of a dangerous mental health crisis or violent behavior.I-1491 passed 70% to 30% state wide, but by narrower margins in the 4th Congressional District. WA is currently one of only five states to have adopted such “red flag” laws.

In 2014, Washington voters approved I-594 by a vote of 59% to 41%, Universal Background Checks for Gun Purchases. The measure applies currently used criminal and public safety background checks by licensed dealers to all firearm sales and transfers, including gun show and online sales. The measure was defeated in the 4th CD, 42% to 58%. An opposing measure, I-591, which would have prohibited the restrictions imposed under 594, was defeated state wide, but approved 56% to 44% in the 4th CD.

Lack of Data and Research Impede the Development of Comprehensive Strategies to Reduce Gun Violence

In 1996, a Republican-controlled Congress in effect banned research on gun violence by cutting the CDC’s funding by the exact amount that was used for gun-related public health research at that time. In 2015, a GOP-led panel blocked a proposal within the House Appropriations Committee that would have reversed the ban.

The newly passed Omnibus Spending Bill H.R. 3354, says the CDC can't use taxpayer funds to promote gun control, but also states the CDC can still conduct research. It remains to be seen whether funding for such research will be provided.

The government’s antipathy towards gun violence research has cast a pall over topic as a health issue. In relation to mortality rates, peptic ulcers are researched more than gun violence. Gun violence research was the least-researched cause of death and the second-least funded cause of death after falls.

Without better data on guns, gun owners, gun deaths, gun injuries, the nexus of mass shootings and mental illness, guns and gangs, the “gun culture,” and any number of other factors, the explosion of proposals for curbing gun violence that come after yet another incident of carnage is essentially shooting in the dark.

What We Know

Too many states, and some federal agencies (e.g., military) fail to submit records to the FBI’s NICS that establish someone is prohibited from owning a firearm under current law, either due to criminal history or adjudicated mental illness.,

Universal background checks appear not to be enforced aggressively in some states (including Washington). Eleven states and the District of Columbia have adopted universal background checks.

Straw purchase of firearms is a significant source for illegally acquired firearms, defeating the purpose of background checks.

Mass shootings by people with serious mental illness represent less than 1% of all yearly gun-related homicides, and perpetrators of mass shootings are unlikely to have a history of involuntary psychiatric hospitalization (their illness has not be adjudicated). Thus, databases, such as the NICS, intended to restrict access to firearms and established by firearm laws that broadly target people with mental illness will not capture this group of individuals.

States with right-to-carry (RTC) concealed handgun laws have seen an increase in violent crimes by 13 to 15 percent within 10 years of the law’s enactment.

The Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act, H.R. 38, passed on Dec 6, 2017, amends the federal criminal code to allow a qualified individual to carry a concealed handgun into or possess a concealed handgun in another state that allows individuals to carry concealed firearms. Rep. Newhouse (R-WA4) was a co-sponsor.

Twenty-three states have adopted “stand your ground” laws since Florida implemented its law in 2005. A study released in 2016 showed that the implementation of Florida’s stand your ground law was associated with a 24.4% increase in homicide and a 31.6% increase in firearm-related homicide.

Washington State law (RCW 9A.16.060), includes a “Castle Doctrine,” which permits the use of deadly force under certain circumstances, e.g., against intruders, but is limited to real property, such as one’s home, yard, or private office; there is no duty to retreat.

Gun Violence is a Disease

Tired of seeing gun violence victims in the emergency room, Dr. Garen Wintemute of the UC-Davis School of Medicine has "joined the ranks of gun control advocates trying to stop the carnage by getting criminals' guns off the streets." But Wintemute has taken a unique approach: he addresses gun violence as a public health problem. He said, "If we were talking about an infection as opposed to a bullet, and we had 30,000 to 40,000 deaths a year, no one would question whether this was a health problem." Wintermute, a "one-man band who is a professor of epidemiology and preventive medicine, a practicing emergency room doctor and director of his own Violence Prevention Resource Program," has assembled, interpreted and published statistics and facts on gun violence, testified before Congress three times and in 1997 was named one of 15 "heroes of medicine" by Time magazine. His message is that "guns need to be made safer to prevent unintentional tragedies, and their access made as difficult as possible for the perpetrators of intentional ones." Instead of outlawing guns completely, Wintemute wants to "stop or reduce the chances of injury-by-gunshot occurring in the first place." But he says there is "no one thing" that will prevent such occurrences, and instead pushes for a comprehensive approach that includes restricting how many guns can be purchased, reducing the number of inexpensive guns and using computer data to identify gun dealers that sell to criminals (Vanzi, California Journal, 3/00 issue). This was written by Max Vanzi for the California Journal in March 2000.

Here's what Dr. Wintermute said in an interview with Frontline on the gun industry in California. He was asked why he got into advocating for research into gun violence.

Most of the people who die after being shot never even make it to an emergency department. They die where they're shot.

"I'm an ER doc. I practice emergency medicine, and I used to do it full time. It occurred to me as it does to many people in that specialty that it's not enough just to treat trauma. We need to prevent it. And that's particularly the case with regard to firearm trauma, gunshot wounds. And here's why. Even in these days, in big cities with regionalized fancy trauma systems, most of the people who die after being shot never even make it to an emergency department. They die where they're shot. And of those people who do make it into the emergency medical system, a trauma team and all of that, of those who die, better than 95% die within the first 24 hours. And what that says to me and to a lot of other people is that we're probably already saving pretty much all the lives we're going to be able to say through advances in medical care. And if we want to expand our ability to save people from dying from a gunshot wound, we need to keep them from getting shot in the first place. And that's why so many people in emergency medicine and trauma are involved in the prevention side as well as the treatment side."

http://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/is-gun-violence-a-public-health-crisis/

Extreme Risk Protection Order

A university psychiatrist was so worried about James Holmes' behavior that in early June she began the process of getting the school's "threat assessment" team involved in his case. Holmes, charged with killing 12 people and wounding 58 others at an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater on July 20, threatened a university psychiatrist about six weeks before the massacre and was barred from campus as a result.

Elliot Rodger’s parents battled in court over what sort of treatment their son should receive. Antipsychotic medication? More psychiatric treatment? In May 2014, Rodger used firearms as part of a mass killing near the University of California Santa Barbara campus.

In December 2014, Marcus Dee shot Nadia Ezaldein to death in a Nordstrom store then put the gun to his head and killed himself. Seven months earlier, a petition for a protection order against Dee stated that he physically abused Ezaldein; cracked her ribs, fractured her jaw, slashed her clothing, and shoved a gun in her mouth.

Virtually without exception, individuals who act out with a gun, either against others or themselves, exhibit signs that alert family or community members to the potential for violence. Under a new law introduced in the Washington State legislature, family members and law enforcement would be able to petition a court to temporarily suspend someone’s access to firearms based on documented, sworn evidence that they pose a threat to themselves or others.

Contact Sen Sharon Brown and Rep Dan Newhouse and ask that they support the “Extreme Risk Protection Order” legislation.

A "Testy Exchange"

The Tri-City Herald (9/24/14) used the incident of a man brandishing a gun in a dispute over a parking space to highlight plans for expanded parking at the Kadlec Regional Medical Center. The photo accompanying the article was captioned, “Limited parking near Kadlec leads to testy exchange.”

“Testy exchange?” Have we become so inured to gun violence in America that brandishing a gun in a dispute over a parking space is labeled “testy?” Have we lost our collective mind? Or have we just lost heart over the seeming inability to do anything about America’s gun violence?

In the same week we read about the “testy exchange” in a hospital parking lot, we read about a Florida man who shot his daughter and six grandchildren to death, then killed himself. We read about a “weapons enthusiast” in Pennsylvania who shot to death a Pennsylvania police officer and wounded another in an ambush.

As of the writing of this piece, other “testy exchanges” since January 1, 2014, have resulted in 8,972 gun deaths and 16,293 injuries.

It’s time we overcame the pernicious influence of the NRA and the gun industry and did something about America’s gun violence, at least here in Washington. Pass I-594.

Universal Background Checks

Universal background checks wouldn't have stopped
the Navy Yard mass shooting, or the
Hialeah apartment shooting

Santa Monica rampage

Pinewood Village Apartment shooting

Mohawk Valley shootings

Newtown school shooting

Accent Signage Systems shooting

Sikh temple shooting

Aurora theater shooting

Seattle cafe shooting

Oikos University killings

Su Jung Health Sauna shooting

Seal Beach shooting

IHOP shooting

Tucson shooting

Hartford Beer Distributor shooting

Coffee shop police killings

Fort Hood massacre

Binghamton shootings

Carthage nursing home shooting

Atlantis Plastics shooting

Northern Illinois University shooting

Kirkwood City Council shooting

Westroads Mall shooting

Crandon shooting

Virginia Tech massacre

Trolley Square shooting

Amish school shooting

Capitol Hill massacre

Goleta postal shootings

Red Lake massacre

Living Church of God shooting

Damageplan show shooting

Lockheed Martin shooting

Navistar shooting

Wakefield massacre
or the...

SUPPORT GUN CONTROL!

Guilty?

George Zimmerman is innocent.

Trayvon Martin was shot dead by Zimmerman.

Therefore, Martin must be guilty.

Of what is he guilty?

An Extrajudicial Killing: Trayvon Martin, 1995 - 2013

Senator Richard Durbin Speaks Out On Gun Violence in America, May 15, 2013

Yesterday, May 15, 2013, on the Senate floor, Richard Durbin, the Illinois Democrat, gave a nine-minute speech about the continuing gun violence in the months since Newtown, and the Senate’s inability to pass a universal background check bill. Durbin speaks with passion about the issue. This is well worth watching.

Poem of the Gun and the Children

Actual stories in

April and May

this year

in the USA

Authorities in southern Kentucky say a 2-year-old girl

has been accidentally shot and killed by her 5-year-old brother

A 6-year-old boy shot in the head by his 4-year-old playmate

died of his wounds as investigators in a New Jersey town tried

to determine how the boy got the gun

A 5-year-old girl was shot and killed by her 8-year-old brother

in Western Alaska, Alaska State Troopers said Tuesday

An 11-year-old boy shot his 7-year-old brother in the hand

A 9-year-old girl was accidentally shot in the leg by her 7-year-old brother

A 2-year-old in Georgia was shot in the back by a 9 or 10-year-old who

found a gun in a van they were all playing in

The 14-year-old Moses Lake boy arrested in the shooting

of his parents over the weekend apparently was angry

A 3-year-old boy who found a gun in a backpack

and shot himself died Tuesday night, authorities said

A 13-year-old boy accidentally shot his 6-year-old sister in Oakland Park

The girl, Angela Divin, was hospitalized in critical condition

The brother, whose name was not released

accidently pulled the trigger of a handgun he found

A 4-year-old boy in Brighton, Ala., was hospitalized in critical condition after being shot The boy and a 4-year-old girl were in a bedroom when one of them got hold of a gun, authorities said. Police were not sure which child had the gun

and the incident was under investigation.

2-year-old Caroline Sparks died after her 5-year-old brother accidentally shot her with his gun, authorities said — a weapon marketed for children as "My First Rifle"

Like the Alabama and South Florida shootings, the shooting in rural Burkesville, Ky., has not resulted in any criminal charges.

A five-year-old boy in Denton, Texas was left in critical condition

after he was shot in the head by his eight-year-old friend Saturday morning

According to the Denton Record-Chronicle, the police said the two boys were alone in the bedroom when the older child found a .22 caliber rifle, pointed it at the other boy, and shot him.

12-year old and 11-year children were in an apartment in Camden, Pennsylvania, under the care of a 19-year old, when the younger child got hold of a loaded unsecured gun and unintentionally shot the older child in the nasal area of his face luckily not killing him.

Police are working to figure out who owns the gun

SUPPORT GUN CONTROL

Response from Sen Cantwell on My Email re Gun Control

Dear Dr. Badalamente,

Thank you for contacting me to express your views on gun ownership and violence prevention. I appreciate hearing from you on this important issue.

I support the Second Amendment and the rights of law-abiding Washingtonians who own guns. I also remain focused on addressing the deeply troubling violence in this country and making our state and our country as safe as possible for all people, including our most vulnerable citizens, our children. I believe both of these goals are important and can be simultaneously accomplished through common-sense gun violence prevention measures and the enforcement of existing laws.

Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) introduced the Safe Communities, Safe Schools Act of 2013 (S. 649) on March 21, 2013. This proposed legislation included provisions to expand background checks for private and interstate firearms transfers and would have made it a federal crime to traffic in firearms. Additionally, the bill would have authorized funds for the Secure Our Schools grant program under the Department of Justice to help equip schools with safety features and resources, including surveillance equipment and hotlines for reporting potentially dangerous situations.  On April 11, 2013, by a vote of 68 to 33, the Senate voted to move forward with consideration of the bill before the full Senate. During debate over this bill, the Senate voted on several amendments regarding gun violence prevention.

On April 11, 2013, Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA) introduced a bipartisanamendment to S. 649 to expand background checks to sales at gun shows and online sales. The amendment would have provided exemptions for background checks in the cases of private sales between family members and friends. On April 17, 2013, by a vote of 54 to 46, the amendment failed to attain the 60 votes necessary to move forward in the Senate.  I voted in support of this amendment.

On April 17, 2013, the Senate also considered an amendment regarding assault weapons by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). The amendment would have banned certain military-style, semi-automatic weapons, and make it illegal to produce, import, or sell magazines with capacity over ten rounds. The amendment failed by a vote of 40 to 60. I voted in support of this amendment to keep military-style weapons off the streets. 

On April 18, 2013, Senator Reid announced the Senate would put aside consideration of S. 649 to move forward with other legislative matters.   The Senate may take this bill up for consideration at a later date.

Along with addressing gun violence, making services for the mentally ill and their families more accessible will encourage those suffering from mental illness to seek needed care and support. While mental illness is not the cause of violent behavior, mental health care is a critical component of our healthcare system and an individual's overall health status. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, approximately one in 17 Americans suffers from a seriously debilitating mental illness. I care deeply about mental health care and understand the important role access to behavioral health services plays in the lives of both those who suffer from mental illness and their family and loved ones.  This is why I voted in support of a bipartisan amendment introduced by Senators Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Lamar Alexander (R-TN) , the Mental Health Awareness and Improvement Act of 2013, which would improve upon existing mental health programs currently funded under the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Education.  This amendment included measures to help school officials recognize and identify mental health conditions and improve suicide prevention and behavioral care resources.  This amendment passed the Senate by a vote of 95-2.

Thank you for expressing your thoughts on this issue. Please be assured I will keep your thoughts in mind as the Senate continues to address this issue.

Sincerely,  
Maria Cantwell 
United States Senator 


For future correspondence with my office, please visit my website at 
http://cantwell.senate.gov/contact/ 

Video: The Gun Show Loop Hole

What Do We Do Now?

Yesterday, Wednesday, April 24th, 2013, the Senate failed to pass the Safe Communities, Safe Schools Act of 2013 (S.649), a bill that would have closed the gun show loop hole and strengthened the background check system. After the Newtown tragedy, after all those innocent children were shot down, after all the grief and outrage over lax gun control, after more than 3500 shooting deaths in America to date since Newtown, our Congress failed to act. What do we do now?

According to national polls, greater than 90% of Americans favor background checks for all gun sales. This overwhelming sentiment for universal background checks, a key feature of S.649, didn't sway Senate Republicans, despite the bill being co-sponsored by a Republican, Pat Toomey (R-PA). Four Democratic senators, facing re-election in conservative, gun-friendly states, failed to support the bill; Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Mark Begich of Alaska, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Max Baucus of Montana. All but four Republicans voted against the bill.

So, what do we do now?

The NRA and gun lobby have proven effective in turning their strident opposition to gun control into grassroots support for candidates, as well as cold hard cash for campaigns. The problem, as I see it, is that public sentiment has not, at least in the minds of the senators who opposed gun control, translated into tangible support for their campaigns. Nor has it in their minds, translated into effective opposition to their campaigns. We have to change that. Here's how:

• build a powerful grassroots effort through networking, physical and virtual
• ensure our efforts are well-publicized by writing letters to the editor, blogging, posting on Facebook, posting on Google+, and by finding opportunities to speak at public events
• tell members of Congress what we're doing through direct emails, and posts on their Facebook pages
• build coalitions with outdoor sporting organizations that support sensible gun control
• ensure that the Democratic National Committee knows that we consider gun control a make or break issue for democratic candidates
• support the campaigns of candidates who support gun control

The first thing I did today was to email my Washington State senators, Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray and thank them for supporting the measure.

Next, I went on line to Organizing for Action and made a donation, and signed up as a volunteer, doing the sort of thing I'm doing now.

Next, I emailed the four democratic senators who voted against the bill and gave them a piece of my mind. I told them I intended to contact the DNC and demand that they withhold support in the 2014 election. I also went to their Facebook page and made my views known. Once again, they are:
Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota
Mark Begich of Alaska
Mark Pryor of Arkansas
Max Baucus of Montana

I'll also email the Republican senators who supported the measure; Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Susan Collins of Maine, Mark Kirk of Illinois and John McCain of Arizona

In order to make my concerns about these senators known to the Democratic Party, I will write to the Democratic National Committee and tell them that I will withhold financial support to the party as a whole as long as it supports these senators, or any Democratic senators who don't support gun control. My donations to elections will be candidate specific, and gun control will be the top priority. Yes, there are other crucial issues, but in order to get this thing done, we have to be as single minded as the NRA.

I am making a recurring donation to one of the organizations below that promote gun control. Pick one you like and do the same.

• Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence
• Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence
• Mayors Against Illegal Guns
• States United to Prevent Gun Violence
• Coalition to Stop Gun Violence
• Campaign to Close the Gun Show Loophole
• Americans for Responsible Solutions

When you go to one of these web sites promoting gun control, "like" the site, or otherwise network it to your friends. For example, you can do this on Americans for Responsible Solutions here.

I am once again emailing my local representative, 'Doc' Hastings and demanding that he support sensible gun control legislation. I've done this before, and I'll do it again and again, and the next time he runs for election, I'll support his opponent, as I've done in the past. Yes, Hastings may be hopeless, but he won't get a free pass from me. Here's his contact information:

Washington, D.C. Office
1203 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-5816
Fax: (202) 225-3251

Tri-Cities Office
2715 St. Andrews Loop, Suite D
Pasco, WA 99301
(509) 543-9396
Fax: (509) 545-1972

Yakima Office
402 E. Yakima Avenue, Suite 760
Yakima, WA 98901
(509) 452-3243
Fax: (509) 452-3438

I am continuing to make my voice heard locally by writing letters to the editor and op-ed pieces, by blogging, and by employing Facebook, Twitter, and other social media. I hope you'll do the same.

And remember who you're doing this for. Not the kids who died at Sandy Hook. It's too late for them. Do it for their loved ones and for yours.

The NRA Identifies the Root Cause of America's Gun Violence

You have to hand it to the NRA and their supporters. After a successful campaign to stop research into gun violence, they’ve established, by virtue of their own intuitive genius, that the real problem behind America’s preeminent place in gun homicides is crazy people.

In 1996, Congress, prodded by the gun lobby, effectively halted research on gun violence. The NRA trumpeted their part in stone walling research, stating that, "These junk science studies and others like them are designed to provide ammunition for the gun control lobby by advancing the false notion that legal gun ownership is a danger to the public health instead of an inalienable right”(2011).

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) were more than a little chagrined at hearing the NRA’s characterization of their research as “junk science,” but had little choice but to continue work on bioterrorism-related research, food-borne and water-borne diseases, and other “junk science” research conducted by the CDC to protect the American public -- from everything except guns.

America has more homicides by gun than all of the other high-income OECD countries combined. Not to worry though. The NRA has a solution -- more guns.

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Guns That Don't Kill People

 It’s truly troubling to read the letters from dismayed NRA supporters. Leave it to “bleeding heart liberals” to exploit the shooting deaths of a couple of dozen children and adults at Sandy Hook Elementary (and a few thousand other shooting deaths since then) to promote so-called “sensible” gun control.

We feel for gun owners who’ve accumulated an impressive collection of firearms, only to realize that their guns don’t kill people. How can they be expected to “stand their ground” armed only with non-killing semiautomatics? And when marauding gangs intent on pillage, rape and murder attack them in their homes, these patriots can use their crates of ammunition only as barricades, and their non-people killing guns as blunt instruments.

More vexing still for our “well regulated militia” is the realization that protecting the constitution (or selected parts thereof) is immeasurably more difficult without guns that kill people. For how can they hold back the “jack-booted government thugs” bent on wresting the last vestiges of their freedoms from their cold, dead hands?

Perhaps the NRA’s campaign to stop the study of gun violence was ill-advised. Some additional research might have shown that guns do indeed kill people, even gun owners. Now wouldn’t that be ironic?

Since the Newtown shooting, 2,857 people have been

shot to death in America as of March 21, 2013.

Americans own over 300 million guns, about one

gun for every man, woman, and child in the nation. 

Between 1955 and 1975, the Vietnam War killed over 58,000 American soldiers; less than the number of civilians killed with guns in the U.S. in an average two-year period.

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ATF Losing the War

The Branch Davidian massacre in Waco, Texas, occurred twenty years ago today, February 28, 1993. This event, and the Ruby Ridge siege, which took place in Idaho six months earlier, August 21 -31, 1992, are perhaps the causes célèbres of the more fanatic of today’s gun rights advocates. The memory of these events and the myths that have grown up around them have hardened the stance of America’s “armed militia” against even the most reasonable of gun control measures, and further, they have made an enemy of the government organization assigned the mission of regulating guns and America’s gun industry, The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, a division of the Justice Department; an organization whose agents NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre referred to as “jack-booted government thugs.” This is unfortunate, because at the urging of the NRA, Congress has managed to hamstring the ATF and thereby make a mockery of America’s existing gun laws.

The ATF has been in a 40-year losing battle with the gun industry and its loyal supporter, the National Rifle Association. Today’s ATF is leaderless. Ever since 2006, when Congress, at the behest of the NRA, decided that the Senate should have the say-so in who ran the ATF, no nominee has been confirmed, not even George W. Bush’s nominee, Michael J. Sullivan. The NRA claimed Sullivan was “hostile to gun dealers.”

Sullivan’s nomination was blocked by a Senate hold placed by none other than Republican senators David Vitter, best known for his involvement in the 2007 DC Madam scandal, Larry E. Craig, arrested for lewd conduct (“I have a wide stance”) in a Minneapolis-St. Paul men’s room, and Michael Crapo, a professed Mormon, arrested for DUI in 2012 and whose driver’s license is still suspended, along with any action on confirming a permanent head of the ATF. 

President Obama nominated Andrew Traver to be director of the ATF but that nomination stalled in the Senate last year. Currently the ATF is led by B. Todd Jones as interim director. Obama intends to nominate him to lead the Bureau, but opponents are already lining up against him. In the meantime, he is doing the best he can with the little he’s been given to work with. As Erica Goode and Sheryl Gay Stolberg wrote in the New York Times, “The agency’s ability to thwart gun violence is hamstrung by legislative restrictions and by loopholes in federal gun laws...For example, under current laws the bureau is prohibited from creating a federal registry of gun transactions.”

The ATF must do its work trying to trace guns manually, because the NRA has been nothing less than belligerent in its opposition to the ATF entering the digital age.

And the ATF gets short shrift when it comes to funding. Again quoting Goode and Stolberg, "While other law enforcement agencies like the FBI have benefited from greatly increased budgets and staffing, the ATF’s budget has remained largely stagnant, increasing to about $1.1 billion in the 2012 fiscal year from just over $850 million a decade ago.”

The ATF has fewer agents today than it did 4 decades ago. According to Sari Horwitz, writing for the Washington Post, “The agency, which has a budget of about $1.1 billion, is charged with investigating gun trafficking and regulating firearms sales. However, it is able to inspect only a fraction of the nation’s 60,000 retail gun dealers each year, with as much as eight years between visits to stores.”

In an earlier post, I said that for the NRA,” the slaughter of 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School, along with the 6 adults who tried to protect them, was collateral damage, just as is the 1318 reported gun deaths so far since Newtown.”

That post was way back on January 28, 2013; all of twenty-eight days ago. We’ve had another 953 gun deaths since then, so the count now is 2271. Without an effective ATF, the count will keep going up and up and up, no matter what new laws are introduced.

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