The numbers surrounding gun-related deaths in America are always grotesque to the point of surreal. In the hundred days since the Newton, Conn., massacre, 2,444 people have been killed by guns in America. That’s 2,444 dead in three months.
Ten of those deaths were in Charlotte.
If you’re horrified by those numbers and think Congress has to take some action, do yourself, the city and the country a favor and call U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan today.
Hagan is a middle-of-the-road Democrat up for re-election in 2016, and she’s getting enormous pressure from gun-control foes who demand that she vote against any and all attempts to get America’s addiction to firearms under even minimal control. Hagan could very well wilt under that pressure, which is why you should call her. Whereas before, Hagan talked a good game about the need to look at access to guns, mental health care and violent video games, she’s now a good bit wobblier on the issue, saying that North Carolinians only want “common-sense measures” – a statement that translates to, “I wouldn’t dare support an assault-weapons ban, but I might get behind universal background checks, seeing as how even 85 percent of gun owners support them.”
Universal background checks would close the loophole that allows anyone and everyone to buy firearms at private sales and gun shows without a background check – or, as some of us call it, the “Recipe for National Suicide.” The problem here is that the gun-rights fundamentalists of the NRA and groups like Grassroots North Carolina will raise unholy hell – and give money to Hagan’s GOP opponent in 2016 – even for voting for universal background checks. Gun-rights fundies nearly always conflate even the slightest speedbump on the way to accumulating a personal arsenal as “the first step to banning all guns! It’s like Hitler!” What’s worse is that such illogic and paranoia actually make sense to them.
The NRA and supportive groups like Grassroots NC are well-organized and busy whipping up their members’ militia-grade fears of their own government. If moderates in Congress, such as Hagan, only hear from the shoot-’em-up crowd, she could easily cave on even something as commonsensical and desperately needed as stringent background checks. Let Hagan know your views on keeping weapons out of the hands of criminals and the insane. Reach her by phone at 202-224-6342; by snail mail at 521 Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C., 20510; by fax at 202-228-2563. Or, contact her via her Charlotte office at 1520 South Blvd., Suite 205; phone 704-334-2448; or fax 704-334-2405. Hagan is also on Facebook and Twitter.
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This article appears in Mar 20-26, 2013.
Well … I am “NRA Life” and I am hoping that she DOES vote FOR gun control because she would surely lose her seat in the next election and there are other candidates who would be much more trustworthy and dependable, when it comes to upholding their Oath of Office. either way, the Socialist authoritarians are going to lose on this issue.
Sorry, wrong country.
Why does everyone only pick out the portions of the 2nd Amendment that fits their needs.. and totally leave out quoting “WELL REGULATED (read = “rules” and “control”) MILITIA”
So I’m sorry ..unless you are in a well regulated militia .. you don’t have an unalienable “right” to own any gun you want with no regulations.
2,444 people have been killed by guns….What about drunk drivers, Drugs, Abortion Clinics? Check those numbers out! Guns are not the problem and stricter background checks will not fix criminals getting their hands on them. If Hagan supports this I will not vote to elect her again.
Chip:
Where do you think the bad guys get their guns? Is there a criminally owned gun factory? Do they make them in their basements?
THEY BUY THEM OPENLY IN OUR ALMOST TOTALLY UNREGULATED GUN SYSTEM!
Since the NRA and their paranoid followers fight to the wall against any effort to keep track of where the guns are, a person who does not have a criminal record can buy as many guns as he/she likes and then sell them to anyone he likes, criminal or not. After just a couple of unrecorded sales, no one has any idea where the gun is.
Your delusion that guns make you safer is the reason that so many people die in gun related incidents every day.
In 2006, 642 people died in the United States from the accidental discharge of firearms.
16,869 gun suicides.
Family and intimate assaults involving a firearm were 12 times more likely to result in death than non-firearm associated assaults between family and intimates.
In 2004, there were 3,308 unintentional drownings in the United States, an average of nine people per day.(CDC 2006)
Senator Hagan must support more stringent pool controls!
Do you know what a red herring is?
nobody has died at a abortion clinic
Page D1 of today’s (Tuesday’s) Observer reports that “100,000 people die each year from hospital-acquired infections”, which is more than twice as many as die by gun-wielding killers. Senator Hagan, it is time to ban hospitals.
Yet another moronic red herring that has nothing to do with the discussion in progress.
I’m a registered Democrat and support gun rights. The best thing would be to Enforce the laws on the books already instead of making more laws. You do notice drugs are illegal, illegal immigrants (undocumented workers) are illegal, but that doesn’t seem to matter. Did you also notice that in Africa they may not use as many guns to kill people but machetes. Should we also make those illegal? What about hammers, they kill more than rifles a year? Our schools have always had armed police offers at our schools. Guns and tazers. Shootings basically happen at unarmed places. They don’t happen where people are armed. I will not vote and will campaign against Kay Hagen should she vote for more Gun Laws and I have never campaigned for anyone before. This will generate more grass roots support against these politicians than anything else.
Thanks for your comment, John Prysock. It’s true that if existing gun laws were enforced properly, we’d have fewer gun deaths, which is one of the NRA’s favorite arguments. The cold hard fact, though, is that since the late 1970s, Congress — at the NRA’s behest — has gradually, and deliberately, chipped away at the ATF’s ability to enforce gun laws, or even get correct information from gun shops. They have impeded the ATF’s ability to function and have created roadblocks that have limited how ATF can collect and share information to detect illegal gun trafficking, how it can regulate firearms sellers, and how it partners with federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies. So the NRA and gun advocates can’t have it both ways: you can’t say “just enforce the laws on the books” and then turn around and hobble the agency that is responsible for doing exactly that.
After we strip out the silly red herrings (“hammers kill more people than rifles”?) Which current gun laws are not being enforced? That is a common NRA bumper sticker that has no basis in reality. Criminals have easy access to guns because the NRA and their puppets in Congress obstruct all efforts to keep track of where the guns are and who is selling them to whom.
“Our schools have always had armed police offers at our schools.” ” Guns and tazers.”
I don’t know where YOU went to school, but we have not ALWAYS had armed police officers in our schools. I NEVER attended a school that had a police officer stationed there. Perhaps your school could have used fewer police officers and more English teachers.
“Shootings basically happen at unarmed places. They don’t happen where people are armed.”
Perhaps you can sell that faulty theory to the families of the 127 armed police officers who were killed last year.