Published on Portside (https://portside.org)
Three
Strategies to Beat the NRA
Peter Dreier
Friday, June 24, 2016
The American Prospect
On Wednesday, Georgia Congressman John Lewis, a civil rights hero,
led a sit-in of fellow House Democrats on the House floor to demand action on
gun control legislation. Lewis strode to the lectern and called on his
colleagues to “occupy this floor.” Soon, about two-dozen lawmakers gathered
around him as he spoke. As more Democrats came into the House chamber,
including Senator Elizabeth Warren, they joined him, sitting with their legs
crossed on the blue-carpeted floor. They carried picket signs with photos of
the victims of gun violence and sang “We Shall Overcome,” changing the words to
include “We shall pass a bill someday.” Some members cried. The protest lasted
25 hours. By sitting down, they were standing up to the National Rifle
Association.
House Speaker Paul Ryan tried to shut down the insurrection, even
going so far as to declare a recess to cut off the official television feed.
But the protesters used Twitter’s Periscope service to film the rebellion and
fed it to C-SPAN, which in defiance of House rules that prohibit cameras on the
floor when the chamber isn’t in session, broadcast the sit-in anyway.
The protesting politicians were saying “enough is enough.” They
used this dramatic action to express what many Americans feel: We can no longer
tolerate the obscene levels of carnage in our streets, schools, universities,
houses of worship, shopping centers, and other sites. We need to join the rest
of the civilized world in enacting reasonable measures to keep military-style
weapons (like the AR-15 that Omar Mateen used in the Orlando nightclub
massacre) out of the hands of civilians, and to prohibit the sale of guns to
people with criminal records, mental illness, and terrorist affiliations.
By resorting to civil disobedience, the House members were
acknowledging that traditional efforts to push for stronger gun laws haven't
worked. Although polls show that a significant majority of Americans support
tougher gun laws, their voices have been drowned out by the NRA. Along with gun
and ammunition manufacturers, the NRA is responsible for the United States
having the weakest gun laws of any modern democracy. In fact, the NRA only
represents a tiny proportion of all gun owners, and most of them don't even
agree with the fanatic views of the group’s leadership—especially those of NRA
head Wayne LaPierre, who earned $985,885 in 2014. But the NRA is able to
mobilize a small but vocal number of people to support its extremist views,
with the financial support of the gun manufacturers who profit from weak gun
laws.
To successfully release the NRA’s political choke-hold on Congress
and on state legislatures, Americans need bold new strategies like this week’s
House floor sit-in. Until now, gun control advocates have largely stuck to one
strategy, what I call polite moral outrage and lobbying. This strategy has made
some inroads, but has failed to force enough politicians to vote for tougher
laws. A second approach—a movement of reasonable gun owners for reasonable gun
control—could have a huge impact by creating an alternative to the NRA.
Finally, gun safety advocates need a mass movement of civil disobedience.
That’s what Democrats were demonstrating on the House floor this week. To be
successful, this third strategy must include divestment from gun manufacturers.
These three approaches aren’t mutually exclusive. In fact, the
nation won't break the back of the NRA, and win stronger public safety
measures, until all three strategies are at work at the same time. Here’s how
this one-two-three strategy would work:
Polite Vigils, Prayers, and Lobbying
Americans are tired of the carnage created by gun-related
violence. In 2013, there were 33,636 deaths from firearm violence in the United
States, including 11,208 homicides—31 a day. Firearms were used in 69.6 percent
of all homicides that year. Many more individuals are injured—some seriously
and permanently—by gun violence. America’s gun death rate is far above that of
other Western industrialized nations. This epidemic of gun violence is tied to
the easy availability of firearms and weak gun violence prevention laws.
By now the cycle of outrage has become predictable. After each
mass killing—in Columbine, Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, Charleston, Aurora,
Roseburg, Phoenix, and now the deadliest of all, Orlando—people come together
to express their sympathy for the victims, their anger at the senseless
violence, and their determination to bring about change.
Often led by the families and friends of the victims, citizens
organize prayer services, candlelight vigils, and marches. Clergy, law
enforcement officials, and community residents pledge to bring about change.
They write emails to and visit their elected officials—city council members,
state legislators, and members of Congress—some of whom promise to take action.
Some newspapers publish editorials voicing sympathy, criticizing the NRA, and
demanding tougher laws.
These events often spawn new local groups. One of the most
effective is the Newtown Action Alliance [1], a
volunteer grassroots organization formed after a gunman killed 20 school
children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
It brings members to Washington, D.C., to lobby Congress and sponsors an annual
vigil for the victims of gun violence at the Washington National Cathedral. Po
Murray, one of its founders, says that its goal is to “change the culture,
change the conversation, and change the laws in order to end gun violence.”
In between these upsurges of activism, local and national gun
control organizations continue to do the hard and important work of keeping
their cause in the news. Groups like the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun
Violence, the Violence Policy Center, and the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence
conduct valuable research on the causes of gun violence, lobby public
officials, educate the public about policy solutions, and alert people about
pending bills so they can contact their political representatives. Compared
with the NRA, these organizations operate on shoe-string budgets.
Recently, they’ve been joined by some influential new players. In
2014, then-New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire businessman,
pledged to spend $50 million to jump-start a nationwide gun safety movement. He
invested in strengthening existing groups and started Mayors Against Illegal
Guns, which soon joined with another new group, Moms Demand Action for Gun
Sense in America, to become Everytown for Gun Safety [2]. Bloomberg
is pouring money into political races to defeat candidates who oppose
reasonable gun safety laws and are in bed with the NRA. He has recognized that
the battleground over gun control is primarily at the state level and has spent
big bucks trying to get states to adopt stronger gun rules and to stop efforts
to weaken existing laws. The effort has included some major successes,
including Colorado’s passage of universal background checks and other gun
control measures, and some defeats, including Everytown’s failure to stop the
Maine legislature from passing a law to allow gun owners to carry concealed
weapons without a permit.
This year, Bloomberg’s Independence USA PAC is gearing up to try
to defeat Republican Senate candidates who voted to oppose federal background
checks and other gun control measures. Also emerging as a political and
organizational gun safety powerhouse is Americans for Responsible Solutions,
founded by former House Democrat Gabrielle Giffords, of Arizona, after she was
shot by a would-be assassin in 2011. Earlier this month, Giffords’ husband,
retired NASA astronaut Mark Kelly, teamed up with retired U.S. Army general and
former CIA director David Petraeus to to launch yet another new group, Veterans
Coalition for Common Sense.
This strategy built around moral outrage, lobbying, and media can
be effective. Certainly it has influenced public opinion. A CNN/ORC poll
released this week found that 92 percent of American voters support “a
background check on anyone attempting to purchase a gun,” with only 8 percent
opposing. The same poll found that 85 percent of American voters supported
“preventing people on the U.S. government’s Terrorist Watch List or no-fly list
from owning guns,” with only 14 percent in opposition. Polls also consistently
show that a significant majority of Americans support laws to prevent people
with mental illness or criminal records from purchasing guns, the creation of a
federal database to track gun sales, a ban on semi-automatic weapons, and a
prohibition on the sale of assault-style weapons to civilians.
But public opinion, on its own, has little political influence. It
has to be mobilized and organized—not just during episodic upsurges of moral
outrage but on an ongoing basis. In this arena, these groups have until now
been outgunned by the NRA, which drowns them out because it is better organized
and more fanatical. Yes, in recent years, some cities and a handful of states
have adopted stronger laws, but more states, like Maine, have actually weakened
their existing laws. And in terms of getting something done in Washington, the
strategy of traditional lobbying and media campaigns has been almost a complete
failure. That’s where the two other strategies come in.
Gun Owners for Reasonable Gun Control
Few activists within the mainstream gun control movement are
themselves gun owners. But guns are a large part of American culture.
Most Americans don’t object to the manufacture and sale of rifles used in
hunting, a sport that millions of Americans enjoy in relative safely. That’s
why strategy two is built on leveraging the influence of gun owners who think
the NRA is too far outside the mainstream. A growing number of gun owners and
enthusiasts want the services that the NRA offers—such as safety courses and
consumer information about guns—but don’t like the NRA’s extremist agenda. So
the time is ripe for an organization of reasonable gun owners for reasonable
gun control.
The NRA was founded after the Civil War to advocate for hunter
training, marksmanship, conservation of nature, and gun safety. It was a
sportsmen’s club, not a political lobby group. In 1977, extremists within the
NRA hijacked the organization, strengthened its ties to gun manufacturers, and
vowed to fight all gun regulations.
That’s when LaPierre joined the organization. He’s worked for the
NRA since 1978 and served as its top official since 1991. He is the
organization’s hit man when it comes to intimidating elected officials to
oppose any kind of sensible gun control laws. The NRA even defends the right of
Americans to carry concealed weapons in bars, churches, schools, universities,
and elsewhere. This poses a huge threat to police and civilians alike. For
example, one in five law enforcement officers slain in the line of duty is
killed with an assault weapon.
The NRA has two knee-jerk responses to the epidemic of gun
violence. The first is that the Second Amendment gives all Americans the right
to possess guns of all kinds—not just hunting rifles, but machine guns and
semi-automatics. Efforts to restrict gun sales and ownership are, according to
the NRA, an assault on our constitutional freedoms. The second is the cliché
that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” To the NRA, weak gun laws
have nothing to do with America’s exorbitant number of gun-related killings.
This contradicts research compiled by the Law Center to Prevent
Gun Violence [3] documenting that states with stronger gun
laws have fewer gun-related deaths. States with the weakest laws are also the
source of the most crime guns, even in those states with tougher laws.
Most gun-related deaths are committed by people who purchase their
weapons legally. Others purchase or steal them illegally, but their ability to
access guns is due to lax gun ownership laws. The NRA’s job is to make it
easier for people to buy and use guns. And so far it has been very successful.
Since the 1994 assault-weapons ban expired in 2004, Congress hasn’t enacted any
major gun regulations.
Under LaPierre’s leadership, the NRA has strengthened its ties to
the gun manufacturers. The NRA’s board includes many gun industry
representatives, like Stephen Hornady, whose company, Hornady Manufacturing,
sells armor-piercing bullets under the slogan “Accurate. Deadly. Dependable.”
The profits of these corporations (such as Remington Outdoor, Beretta,
Sturm Ruger, Smith & Wesson, and Olin), and the profits of Walmart (the
nation’s largest seller of guns and ammunition) and other retailers, grow when
there are few restrictions on the sale and ownership of guns and ammunition.
“There is a lot of profit to be made for all of this sorrow, all
of this death, and all of this destruction,” explained Dr. Sheldon Teperman,
director of trauma surgery at the Jacobi Medical Center in New York City, who
routinely deals with gunshot victims.
LaPierre has also linked the NRA to the far right, including the
Tea Party. LaPierre is a regular presence at gatherings of extreme right-wing
groups, whose paranoid warnings about the threat of tyranny and Obama’s secret
plan to confiscate all guns are meant to scare Americans into buying more guns
and joining the NRA. For example, in a speech at the 2012 Conservative
Political Action Conference in Washington, LaPierre said that Obama was part of
a “conspiracy to ensure re-election by lulling gun owners to sleep.” Obama’s
plan, he said, was to “erase the Second Amendment from the Bill of Rights and
excise it from the U.S. Constitution.” Donald Trump is echoing this NRA mantra
on the campaign trail with his attacks on Hillary Clinton as a Second Amendment
foe.
LaPierre speaks for the ultra-right-wing “survivalist” wing of the
NRA, whose members and activities overlap with racist hate groups who believe
they need to prepare for an armed struggle against their own government. He is
a brilliant tactician and strategist who is able to marshal the loud voices of
a relatively small group of people to stymie reasonable gun control laws.
“We must declare that there are no shades of gray in American
freedom. It’s black and white, all or nothing,” LaPierre said at an NRA
meeting. “You’re with us or against us.”
In fact, only a tiny proportion of the nation’s gun owners are NRA
members. About 90 million Americans own guns. The NRA claims to have about four
million members. Even if they aren’t exaggerating, that is less than 5 percent
of all gun owners.
A national Public Policy Polling survey of gun owners [4], conducted
last November, found that 83 percent support criminal background checks on all
sales of firearms, while only 14 percent oppose them. Gun owner support is
strongly bipartisan, with 90 percent of Democrats and 81 percent of Republicans
endorsing background checks. Among gun owners, 66 percent say they would be
more likely to vote for a candidate who supports background checks. Only 29
percent feel that the NRA represents their thinking when it comes to background
checks. Gun owners also say the NRA is out of touch with them on these issues.
The NRA’s positions, in fact, are not only at odds with those of most Americans
and most gun owners, but even of many NRA members. The poll found that 72
percent of NRA members support background checks.
So why is the NRA so powerful? Gun ownership is highly
concentrated. Twenty percent of gun owners possess about 65 percent of the
nation’s guns. The NRA is able to mobilize a small but very rabid and vocal
group of gun owners—as well as owners of gun shops—to attend rallies, write
letters to newspapers and comments on blog sites, and contact elected
officials.
Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the nonprofit Violence
Policy Center, says that the NRA’s most vocal members are no more than a
quarter of its members—perhaps 750,000 people—for whom “guns are their life.”
They can make lots of noise but they don’t represent most NRA members who don’t
fall for LaPierre’s extremism.
Many gun owners are fed up with the NRA, but efforts to create an
alternative gun organization have met with little success so far. One such
group, the American Hunters and Shooters Association, began in 2005 and lasted
for five years. Its president, Ray Schoenke, a one-time Washington Redskins
football player and a successful businessman, had wanted AHSA to bridge the gap
between urban liberals and rural gun owners. But the group focused almost
entirely on supporting pro-gun control political candidates, did not provide
services to its members, and could not sustain itself financially.
Last October, two days after the shooting at Umpqua Community
College in Oregon, Mark Carman—an evangelical Christian, former police officer
and military veteran, and a Republican from Nashville, where he now works as a
music producer—posted a video on his Facebook page titled, “I Love My Guns—Responsible
Gun Owners.” He dangled his Ruger SR9 in front of the camera. “I like it,” he
said. “I love firearms. I do.” Then he called for the expansion of background
checks and the creation of a gun registry.
Within 10 days, more than 1.8 million viewers had watched Carman’s
video. So he created a website and a Facebook page called the American
Coalition for Responsible Gun Ownership (ACRGO)—to challenge the gun lobby.
According to its website, the group seeks ”responsible gun ownership legislation
to assure that firearm owners shall engage with reasonable due diligence in the
purchase, sale, possession and/or use of all firearms.”
The following month, a delegation from ACRGO—along with members of
Gun Owners for Gun Control, organized by the progressive Netroots group
MoveOn.org Civic Action—came to Washington, met with White House senior advisor
Valerie Jarrett and members of Congress, and delivered 1.1 million signatures
on a petition calling on Congress to take bold action in closing some of the
loopholes in the firearms purchase process.
The response to Carman’s video suggests that there is a
potentially large constituency of gun owners for reasonable gun control, but
Carman isn’t interested in building a new organization. “I was totally unprepared
for what happened,” he explained. ACRGO, he said, “is just me, a website, and a
Facebook page.”
A moderate group could not only steal some members from the NRA
but, more importantly, recruit unaffiliated gun owners who don’t support the
NRA’s close ties with the gun industry and don’t think the NRA speaks for them.
It could grow into a kind of AARP for gun owners—one that provides services
(such as gun safety courses) as well as mobilize its members to support
reasonable gun laws and candidates who voice similar views—and poses a
challenge to the NRA.
In fact, the NRA’s incendiary rhetoric has alienated many of its
members. David Taylor, a retired Army officer and a two-time All-American in
rifle shooting from Roswell, Georgia, was part of the delegation that met with
Valerie Jarrett last November. “I was a member of the NRA for more than 10
years,” Taylor explained, “but resigned my membership when its agenda turned
from promoting gun safety and responsible ownership to one of uncompromising opposition
to any kind of gun control.”
Taylor follows in the footsteps of President George H.W. Bush. In
1995, Bush withdrew as a Life Member of the NRA after LaPierre sent an
incendiary fundraising letter sent to the group’s members, claiming that if
assault weapons were banned, “jack-booted government thugs” would “break in our
doors, seize our guns, destroy our property and even injure or kill us.” We
need more NRA members to publicly follow the example of David Taylor and Poppy
Bush.
Civil Disobedience and Divestment
Throughout American history, all successful movements have
included both reformers and radicals. Reformers work “inside” the system to
bring about modest but important changes. Radicals work “outside” the
system to push for more dramatic improvements. In truth, both are needed and,
in most movements, reformers and radicals work together. In fact, ideas that
were once considered dangerously radical—women’s suffrage, Social Security, the
minimum wage, and consumer protection laws—later became considered common
sense. Radicals not only have bolder ideas but, in addition to such established
tactics as voting and lobbying, they employ bolder actions like civil
disobedience and boycotts. The successes of the women’s suffrage, labor,
environmental, civil rights, and LGBT movements all utilized these audacious
tactics.
Last week, in the wake of the Orlando massacre, The Nation
published an editorial entitled, We Need a Radical Movement for Gun Control [5]. “When the
normal political system fails,” the editors wrote, “it’s time to act up!”
House Democrat John Lewis, now 76, knows something about this.
During the 1960s, as a young college student, he risked his life in the cause
of civil rights. As an elected official, he has continued to put his body on
the line for social justice. He is both a reformer and a radical, an insider
and an outsider. He understands that there are times when candlelight vigils,
prayer services, and well-mannered lobbying aren’t enough. That’s why he
persuaded a number of his House colleagues—most of whom had never before
engaged in any kind of protest—to join him on the House floor to express their
frustration and anger at the failure of the Republicans (and a few Democrats)
to embrace even modest gun safety legislation.
Lewis clearly hopes that this high-profile protest—which generated
enormous media attention because of its dramatic and unusual show of conscience—will
catalyze a wider protest movement that includes civil disobedience. Surely
Lewis has in mind the four African American college students who, on February
1, 1960, sat in at a lunch counter at the Woolworth’s five-and-dime story and
refused to leave in order to protest Jim Crow racial segregation. They had no
idea if their sit-in would work, but they had faith that their action would
encourage others to join them. Their action inspired students at other colleges
across the South to follow their example. By the end of March 1960, sit-ins had
spread to 55 cities in 13 states. Many students, mostly black but also white,
were arrested for trespassing, disorderly conduct, or disturbing the peace. One
of them was Lewis, then a student at Fisk University in Nashville.
At the time, even many liberals—black and white—thought that the
protesters were too radical. But their actions galvanized a new wave of civil
rights protests. That April, several hundred sit-in activists formed the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which became the “radical”
wing of the civil rights movement. Its growing base of supporters played key
roles in the freedom rides, marches, and voter registration drives that
eventually led Congress to enact the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting
Rights Act of 1965.
We need a comparable nonviolent protest movement now to stir
things up on gun safety and challenge the influence of the NRA. There are
already signs that a radical wing of the gun control movement is taking hold.
On Tuesday, 18 activists affiliated with the peace group Code Pink were
arrested after protesting outside the NRA headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia.
The event came hours after the Senate had rejected proposals from both parties
designed to keep extremists from acquiring guns and to require background
checks for many firearms purchases.
The Orlando shooting has catalyzed the LGBT community to get more
involved in the gun issue. It is likely that their involvement will inject new
energy and its passion for civil disobedience into the gun control movement. We
could soon see more civil disobedience actions at NRA’s offices as well as
similar protests at gun shows, the headquarters of major gun manufacturers, the
homes of the CEOs of major gun makers, NRA board members, and NRA leader Wayne
LaPierre, and at the offices of Congress members and state legislators who are
under the thumb of the NRA.
Elected officials would be welcome to participate, but for such a
strategy to be effective, it has to enlist ordinary Americans, including people
who own guns, people who have been injured by gun violence, and the families of
those who were killed in mass shootings and by the more mundane but
still-deadly rash of daily street murders.
As with all social justice campaigns involving civil disobedience,
such actions might invite criticism that they are “going too far.” But such
protests force people to pay attention, to think about an issue they had
previously ignored, and often to revise their views. They also galvanize more
people to take action so that the political snowball gets bigger and bigger.
Such actions, which sometimes involve some people getting arrested, help give
issues a sense of moral urgency. They state clearly that we can’t continue with
business as usual. The crisis has gotten too serious. It is time to act.
For those reluctant to participate in public protest, civil
disobedience can take another form. Many movements have employed boycotts and
divestment strategies to challenge powerful institutions to change their
policies. The most famous boycott took place in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955
after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to comply with that city’s
segregated bus seating laws. For over a year, citizens boycotted the buses,
which eventually helped dismantle the city’s segregation law. In the 1970s,
many Americans boycotted grapes, wine, and lettuce produced by non-union
workers to put pressure on big agricultural growers to improve working
conditions and wages for migrant farmworkers, a campaign led by Cesar
Chavez.
Divestment is another boycott strategy. The idea is to get pension
funds, universities, churches, and other institutions to remove their
investments from corporations engaged in socially irresponsible activities. In
the 1980s, divestment from companies doing business in South Africa effectively
helped dismantle that country’s racial apartheid system. Today, many
environmental activists—including students at over 300 colleges and
universities—are pushing their institutions to unload their stocks in energy
companies that promote fossil fuels that are destroying our planet. Several
major institutions—including Stanford, Columbia, and Syracuse universities—have
already done so.
The same strategy can exert pressure on the gun lobby. A group
called the Campaign to Unload [6] has
been working in the trenches with people affiliated with universities,
churches, union, and government pension funds to promote gun industry
divestment. The effort has won some significant victories.
In 2013, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System
(CalPERS) and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS), both
large public pension funds, moved to divest from manufacturers of assault
weapons. That year, a pension fund for Chicago public employees (the
Municipal Employees Annuity and Benefit Fund) voted to withdraw its holdings in
three companies—Freedom Group, Sturm Ruger, and Smith & Wesson—that
manufacture assault weapons, while the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund, which has
$9.5 billion in assets, voted to divest its investments with gun makers. Last
December, Letitia James, New York City’s elected public advocate, sought to
pressure TD Bank—which provided $280 million in financing to Smith &
Wesson—to cut its ties with the gun manufacturer. In a letter to the bank,
James wrote, “If you want to do business with New York City, you can’t be in
bed with companies that manufacture the agents that kill our children and
families.”
In 2014, at the urging of faculty and students, Occidental College
in Los Angeles became the first higher education institution to pledge to stay
away from any investments in companies that manufacture military-style assault
weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines for general public sale.
Students at the University of California—which has an endowment of $88 billion,
one of the largest in the country—have asked the university’s board of regents
to follow Occidental’s example. The regents have never voted on an official
policy, but according Dianne Klein, media director for the University of
California’s Office of the President, the university has sold all is stock in
firearms manufacturers and distributors.
Earlier this year two Silicon Valley entrepreneurs—Keywon Chung
and Michael Shilman—created a new tool, Goodbye Gun Stocks, that makes it easy
to find out if a retirement fund or investment portfolio contains stocks from
gun and ammo manufacturers and retailers. The tool covers more than 12,000 stock
funds (and Thrifty Savings Plans for federal employees) based on Securities and
Exchange Commission data, which amounts to $5.9 trillion in investments. Over
$17 billion of those assets are invested in the consumer gun industry—about 35
percent of U.S. stock funds. You can type in the name of an investment fund,
and it will show the percentage invested in nine public gun-associated
companies—Olin, Ruger, Smith & Wesson, Vista Outdoor, Big 5 Sporting Goods,
Dick’s Sporting Goods, Cabela's, Sportsman's Warehouse, and Walmart. The tool
also helps find alternative funds (with comparable or even better performance)
that have no—or fewer—gun stocks. It provides side-by-side comparisons of
different funds in terms of their investment in gun stocks. The Vanguard funds,
for example, hold $5.7 billion in these stocks compared with Fidelity’s $791
million.
A parallel group, Unload Your 401K, lets you enter your 401K
provider to see whether it contain gun stocks. The group urges Americans to
demand that the managers of their 401K portfolios (such as Fidelity,
Prudential, Vanguard, and Merrill-Lynch) divest from gun stocks. Since it
launched its divestment campaign against manufacturers of assault weapons and
high-capacity ammo clips, ten hedge funds and money managers have divested
their gun holdings, valued at $170 million.
If more institutions and individuals withdraw their investments
from gun and ammo manufacturers that profit from the violence that is
destroying our communities, particularly low-income and minority neighborhoods,
it would pressure these corporations to change their practices. It would also
compel more elected officials to side with the views of ordinary Americans and
not the gun lobby.
“For years, the NRA dominated the political playing field on the
gun issue,” said Mark Glaze, president of the Campaign to Unload. “It will take
years—and several election cycles—to dismantle the NRA’s influence.”
The Orlando massacre may be a turning point in galvanizing a
stronger movement for sensible gun control. Three strategies—traditional
advocacy, mobilization of sensible gun owners, and civil disobedience—point the
way. Even as we grieve, we can move forward. We can stop the madness.
Peter Dreier teaches politics and chairs the Urban & Environmental
Policy Department at Occidental College. His latest book is The 100 Greatest
Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame (Nation Books,
2012).
Links:
[1] http://newtownaction.org/
[2] http://everytown.org/
[3] http://smartgunlaws.org/
[4] https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/17054452/PPP-GunOwnersPollResults-11.17.15.pdf
[5] https://www.thenation.com/article/we-need-a-radical-movement/?nc=1
[6] http://www.campaign2unload.org/
[2] http://everytown.org/
[3] http://smartgunlaws.org/
[4] https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/17054452/PPP-GunOwnersPollResults-11.17.15.pdf
[5] https://www.thenation.com/article/we-need-a-radical-movement/?nc=1
[6] http://www.campaign2unload.org/
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives."
Eugene Victor Debs
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