BillMoyers / Moyers and Company – 2017-10-04 00:59:29
What More Is There To Say on Gun Laws?
There comes a point where you feel like there’s
nothing more to say about gun violence
that hasn’t already been said
BillMoyers / Moyers and Company
(October 3, 2017) — Over the years, we’ve done many, many stories on gun violence in America.
In the days following the Sandy Hook massacre, Bill Moyers urged us to remember the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre by name. He read out the names of all 26 victims and observed that “laws are hard to come by, civilization just as hard. But democracy aims for a moral order as just as possible — which means laws that protect the weak, and not just the strong.”
On the one-year anniversary of the tragedy at Newtown, we explored the role of guns in America’s national psyche throughout history.
And talked to Francine and David Wheeler, the parents of 6-year-old Ben, who died at Sandy Hook. The Wheelers became hopeful activists working doggedly for gun law reform.
Then Bill Moyers read this essay on Moyers & Company about the work of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.
We excerpted a book written by a longtime lawyer at the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence outlining the powerful myths that the National Rifle Association broadcasts to its members through advertising, direct mail and other means, and how those myths need to be destroyed or “our national paralysis on gun violence is likely to persist.”
We excerpted a chapter from The Last Gun, a book about lax gun laws and rampant gun violence in Florida written by Tom Diaz, who Bill also interviewed on Moyers & Company. Diaz talked about the infamous Stand Your Ground laws and how a lethal combination of self-defense laws and concealed carry laws — championed by the NRA and the gun industry — makes us more vulnerable to gun violence.
We posted cartoons by Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist Mark Fiore, including “George Zimmerman, Off The Hook” and “The Selective Hearing of Gun Violence.”
In 2015, we posted analysis by legal reporter Dorothy Samuels, who argued that the Roberts Court upended the well-established meaning of the Second Amendment, by declaring that it protects an individual right to a gun, at least for self-defense in the home.
After the Charleston AME Church shooting, Tom Engelhardt reflected on the very real dangers lurking in our own backyards, introducing his post with these words: “While I write this dispatch, I’m waiting patiently for the next set of dispiriting killings in this country. And I have faith.”
After the Pulse shooting in Orlando, we ran an interview with John Morse, an ex-state senator from Colorado who helped shepherd a package of gun-control measures through that state’s legislature after the Aurora mass shooting. He was run out of office shortly afterward by single-issue guns rights voters. He concluded we need to see the same passion from those on the other side.
In the summer of 2016, we posted a chart showing how NRA spending on the gun issue dwarfed the other side. Money spent lobbying against gun control laws was seven times the amount spent in support of them: $41 million to $6 million.
We applauded House Democrats, led by Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), in their sit-in on the floor of the House chamber in a powerful stand against gun violence.
In July 2016, we reprinted a hopeful piece in which Paul Waldman, a writer for The American Prospect, who wondered if 2016 could be the turning point on guns. He thought that the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile could be a turning point in an election year where the presidential candidate leading in the polls was also calling out the NRA on a regular basis. We all know how that turned out.
Later that year, we interviewed two hopeful leaders in the gun control movement about the gun debate’s state of play in Washington.
In January, public intellectual Henry Giroux wrote about America’s love affair with violence and how we are “a culture that threatens everyone and extends from accidental deaths, suicides and domestic violence to mass shootings.”
Earlier this year, we reprinted a story from Mother Jones by Mark Follman, about a small Kansas community seeking to understand a recent massacre — and using a cutting-edge strategy to stop the next one.
And finally, in one of our most popular posts, gun activist Cliff Schecter presented a list of five things you can do to say “no” to the new normal of gun violence in America. Then in 2015, we updated the list with five more ways to say no to gun violence.
There are many more stories in our archive. You can see them all by looking at stories tagged “guns.” We encourage you to watch and read our collection of stories, posts and videos. But mostly, we encourage you to call your congressional and state representatives and tell them that you’re tired of the call for prayers, you’re tired of the condolences — you want action.
Posted in accordance with Title 17, Section 107, US Code, for noncommercial, educational purposes.
