On this we agree: Congress must act on gun violence

Twenty-five years ago Thursday my dear friend was murdered on his college campus by a fellow student with a semi-automatic weapon that he purchased with no waiting period and bullets he ordered by mail.

With his long dark hair often pulled into a ponytail, a wisdom beyond his 18 years, and an ability to befriend anyone he met, Galen’s death instantly rocked the lives of everyone who knew him. In a tragic coincidence, the Sandy Hook massacre occurred on the anniversary of Galen’s death exactly 20 years later.

{mosads}Galen’s father, Gregory Gibson, wrote in the New York Times five years ago that because of our collective failure to agree on sensible solutions to gun violence, “children will continue to pay for a freedom their elders enjoy.” Sadly, this observation has never been more true. But it doesn’t have to be.

The gun lobby in America has done a miraculous job convincing Americans – and its own members – that we are divided on this issue when nothing could be further from the truth.  

I am a member of the Board of Directors for Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, yet I have a lot in common with most of the NRA’s nearly 5 million members – and likely so do you. In a recent Quinnipiac poll 94 percent of voters who responded, including in households with a gun, support requiring background checks on anyone purchasing a gun. Seventy five percent of Americans favor a 30 day waiting period for all gun sales.

Even a clear majority of the  National Rifle Association’s own members support common sense solutions to prevent gun violence, including background checks and keeping guns out of the hands of criminals. Congress should act immediately to reflect this mandate, but appears shackled by lobbying dollars spent by the NRA. Since 1998, the NRA has donated $4.23 million to current members of Congress. In 2016 alone, the NRAs overall spending reportedly surged to more than $419 million.

Despite its outsize spending, the NRA’s reported membership amounts to just 1 percent of the American population – a tiny sliver of the American electorate. That’s a stark contrast with the 60 percent of the American population that feel that laws covering the sale of firearms should be made more strict.

It is plain that even in this divided era, an overwhelming majority of Americans are on the same side of the gun issue: the side that wants to keep our children and communities safe. Yet shamefully, although groups like the Law Center have already done the difficult work of drafting model laws, and despite the human and financial cost of gun violence, Congress has done nothing.

In the wake of recent tragedies like Las Vegas and Sutherland Springs, why does Congress continue to refuse to act? Gun violence has hurt Americans in concert venues, churches, schools, and at home. It increases the probability of domestic violence deaths, raises the likelihood of fatalities by those who intend to injure others and among those who attempt suicide – including a disproportionate number of veterans, places children and young people at special risk, and disproportionately affects communities of color.

Journalists, including those writing for the New York Times, have written that Americans have determined that relatively unregulated gun ownership is worth the cost to society. Dan Hodges, a British journalist, wrote in a post on Twitter two years ago, “that “In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control. Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over.”

Is it really the majority of Americans who have made the calculation that we value guns over the lives of our children? Or is it our unaccountable representatives in Congress?

Instead of working together to pass legislation that reflects majority public opinion on regulations that protect communities – like banning bump stocks, universal background checks or mandatory waiting periods, or stricter regulation of ammunition sales – the House passed the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act that undermines state laws that have proven effective at reducing gun violence and pushed for laws that favor the interests of gun manufacturers like the so-called “Hearing Protection Act” that limits the transfer tax on silencers. Even after agreeing that bump stocks should be banned after the Law Vegas massacre – Congress ultimately did nothing.

For the overwhelming majority of you who believe that common sense gun legislation is the right thing to do, on this five year anniversary of Sandy Hook it’s time to send a simple message to your congressional representative: take action, show up at a town hall meeting, give their office a call, send an email, post on their Facebook page, but make clear they need to act to keep our children and communities safe.

I also urge you to join and to show your support for Giffords Law Center, so that they can continue to monitor, track and advocate for laws that keep all of us safe.

Congress’s continued failure to act on behalf of their constituents over these many years flagrantly defies the will of the people who they purport to represent. Don’t let them get away with it for another election cycle. Together we must hold them accountable at the ballot box and insist that they act on the wishes of you and me and the overwhelming majority of Americans.

Jeanna C. Steele is board member of Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.