Guns, Guns, Guns........
Contributor
Written by
Eva Feindler
March 2017
Contributor
Written by
Eva Feindler
March 2017

THE PERSONAL IS POLITICAL… GUNS, GUNS, GUNS, GUNS…

 

So what is my deal with guns? What does it mean and why am I so anti-gun?

I have never held a gun and I have only seen a gun twice. Once was a couple of years ago at a rifle range event at an upscale country resort. People lined up to take three shots at a target on a bale of hay in the woods. It was in the kind of the countryside where hunting does take place, but I stayed back, covered my ears and walked on by. The other time was maybe 20 years ago when a friend’s youngest sister had become a police officer and she showed me her gun in a holster, sure to point out that the safety was on. What about other experiences?

I wonder if there was an old family trauma about guns? Is it about having few boys that played “cops and robbers” games (common in my generation) in the family while I was growing up? Is it related to my parents’ experiences about World War II? My college years during the end of the Vietnam War? Is about my political views? Is it about a family tragedy, still unsolved, years ago when a relative was murdered? Is it about being a mother? Is it about being a psychologist? I don’t know, but I feel compelled to figure it out as the political is also personal and the tragedies related to gun-violence occur too often.

According to the Mass Shooting Tracker (that we even have this data cruncher is painful), there have been 318 mass shootings in the country this year. A mass shooting is determined by the number of victims, which must add up to four or more, excluding the shooter. So when is this going to end? Or will it ever end? And why are we so out of step with other civilized and educated countries? Arguments from presidential candidates and civilians alike volley back and forth continually on how to solve the issue. This can easily be defined as a national epidemic. What are the solutions? More guns for protection? Stricter gun laws so weapons don’t get into the wrong hands? What do we need guns for? How do others here, there, and everywhere feel about guns? Thinking about it makes me so emotional, which certainly doesn’t lead to a clear understanding at first.

Back in April of 1999, I was on a 10 person APA task force constituted after the Columbine tragedy. We studied psychological risk factors, debunked an FBI report of “Profiles” of school shooters, developed violence prevention and intervention programs, did PSAs, public appearances as experts and more.  We figured out some of the risk factors that when combined might lead a young person to seek revenge and attention by committing deliberate violent acts. But, I continue to despair about the impact of all of that work- the violence just keeps happening. Now it is not just high schools, but elementary schools, colleges and Universities.  For me, the 2011 massacre of six year olds at Sandy Hook meant that nothing is really off limits. Shootings, studied intensely by psychologists trying to figure out risk factors in adolescents, still happen despite all of the research in the18 years since Columbine.

School shootings extend to colleges as well.  Sadly, since the fall 2015 semester began, shootings on college campuses include: Northern Arizona University, Texas Southern University, Winston-Salem State University, Umpqua Community College, Delta State University , Sacramento City College, and Savannah State University. How safe are college campuses? Actually how safe is any place that has an open and welcoming nature, a steady flow of people coming and going, and a relatively low police presence? When the official memo from our Public Safety department, entitled “Active Shooter: How to respond”, came across my desk in October, I felt a certain dread. It evoked in me both a sense of responsibility to have our own community members know what to do and to protect our “family.” It also evoked a kind of shock that we too needed to consider guns and violence in our presence. I doubt the Umpqua Community College professors had ever walked through an active shooter drill in between lecture preparation and term paper grading. The whole idea brings me back to being in elementary school in the late 1950’s doing drills, marching quietly into an air raid shelter. As an eight-year-old, I am not sure that it resonated much for me then… However, active shooter drills on college campuses TODAY seem horrifying, and yet are they necessary?

While having my morning coffee and reading the newspaper, I have been overwhelmed by the headlines over this past month:

10/12/15: “Gun debate finds new twists and turns”

10/12/15: “State colleges prepping for more shooters on campus”

10/15/15: “Get tougher on gun traffickers” editorial

10/18/15: “Gun violence studies underfunded”

10/20/15: “More prison time for crimes with illegal guns”

But the one that really drew me in was this headline and story in the NYT on Sunday October 11, 2015: “Guns took his daughter; Anger fuels his rage”. Here it is the inevitable link to my professional career…anger. I can no longer look away with my distaste for guns and all of the political debate over gun control, which is bound to be a major issue in the 2016 presidential campaign. Despite politicians and concerned citizens becoming more outspoken about gun violence in the wake of each new shooting, the debate hasn’t changed much. Psychologists do know a lot about the relationship of anger and aggression but I wonder how this can be helpful in the political arena.

There are things that parents have tried to do. “Apostrophe Laws”: have you ever thought about this advocacy movement by parents? Amelia’s Law, Megan’s Law, Kendra’s Law, Leandra’s law, Lauren’s Law, Jacob’s Law? In just about every state, grieving parents who lose their children in horrible ways, seek to redeem their loss: “People needed to know that my daughter stood on this earth,” said one parent. They propose legislation to spare others the same fate and to memorialize their own child. Both the general public and government officials generally honor these wishes. However, lawmaking by anecdote in which parents’ emotional appeals trump more dispassionate assessments and logic, might not be the best foundation upon which to develop new laws. But who is going to say no to them? This is an example of personal becoming political and a way for the sorrow and anger over the senseless loss of children to be channeled for positive outcomes. Favorable media coverage and coordination with local, state and Federal legislators then build support for the law’s passage and perhaps for the re-election campaign of certain legislators.

Ironically, the best known and earliest example of this apostrophe lawmaking is the “Brady Bill: Handgun Violence Prevention Act”, named after President Regan’s press secretary who was shot in the head while protecting the President from a would-be assassin. The Cleary Act is a close second. It was signed into Law in 1990. Known as the Campus Awareness and Security Act, it was named to memorialize a 19-year-old college freshman who was raped and murdered in her dorm by another student. This law requires that all colleges maintain and disclose annual reports about crimes on their campuses. The Mathew Shepard and James Byrd Hate Crimes Prevention Act (2009) is another important one named after two men brutally killed. The Adam Walsh Child Prevention and Security Act (2006) was named after a 6 year-old abducted from a department store then viciously murdered. New Jersey’s Megan’s Law (1994) mandates registration of convicted sex offenders with community police departments. Amber Alert… And the list goes on.

I wonder though, is this an exploitation of the media’s attention to highly emotional losses of innocent victims by politicians for their own personal advantages? Or has this process given victims a voice in necessary changes to the criminal justice system?  Is this “yellow journalism,” or “tabloidism,” a sensationalism approach to coverage? Is it all about market-driven journalism?

I think about how MADD got started and the continued presence of this movement in our culture ever since. Grieving parents viewed themselves as relatives of crime victims and they used their grief and outrage to launch and sustain a multi-pronged national advocacy approach. It was 1980 when the founder’s 13-year old daughter was killed by a drunk driver. By 1984, she stood with President Reagan as he signed legislation that raised the drinking age, lowered the blood-alcohol content criteria and by 2000, alcohol related fatalities had dropped 40%. These are impressive results for when the personal becomes political. Maybe this type of advocacy is more effective when fueled by the strong emotions of parents. Or maybe the times have changed, and the gun lobby PACs have far greater power than movements by grieving parents.

What can explain the frustrating process encountered by the Sandy Hook parents to get gun control legislation approved (universal background checks)? According to an article in the NYT:

“In the 12 months after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., almost every state enacted at least one new gun law, according to a database compiled by the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Nearly two-thirds of the new laws ease restrictions and expand the rights of gun owners. Most of those bills were approved in states controlled by Republicans.”

Some states, including New York, have passed tougher gun laws since the Newtown massacre. But federal legislation that would have expanded background check requirements for gun buyers fell short by five votes in the senate in April 2015, despite lobbying by some Sandy Hook parents. While the country is polarized over gun control, parents share a common passion for ensuring their children's safety. These parents will raise awareness about programs that could be implemented locally to prevent violence, such as those aimed at reducing social isolation of children, encouraging the reporting of threats and early identification of mental health issues.

The Sandy Hook Promise, formed shortly after the December 14th massacre of 26 people is a grassroots group involving several people who lost loved ones in the Newtown school shooting. They have launched a new campaign to address gun violence, reaching out to parents around the country after seeing its push for new federal legislation fall short in Washington. With the goal of turning the tragedy into transformation for a horrified nation, they aim to recruit 500,000 parents and celebrities across the country. "I think the lesson that we've learned and the lesson that we've heard from all of these other parents that we've talked to around the country is we don't want to wait for DC," said Nicole Hockley, whose son Dylan was among 20 first-grade children killed in Newtown along with six educators. "Parents don't want to be just told what to do by DC, we don't want to have laws forced on us. Let's tackle the problem ourselves within our communities and in our own schools and let that spread out to affect the nation and affect legislation that way instead of being told what to do."  For Sandy Hook Promise, the campaign fits in with its original plan to open a dialogue at the local level to pave the way for change. "This, as we've always said, is a marathon, not a sprint," Hockley said. "Get other people involved because you need a lot of people in a lot of communities to make change happen."

So what are the themes here for me and for the reasoned debate about gun control? I was having dinner conversation with a friend who is a criminal defense attorney about writing this article, and he casually said……”it is about race and gender.” So, I took a look at that and found that most school shooters are white males (97 percent are male and 79 percent are white). Over the last three decades, 90 percent of high school or elementary school shootings were the result of white, often upper-middle class, perpetrators. Are these shootings a direct reflection of white male privilege and the consequences that occur when groups like the NRA control influential conservative leaders? Is this too political to consider? How does this translate to the work that we psychologists do?

In 2012 CNN reported that there have been only two female school shooters: In 1979, Brenda Spencer, who was 16 at the time, opened fire on an elementary school across from her San Diego, Calif. home, killing the school principal and a janitor. In 1985, 14-year-old Heather Smith shot her ex-boyfriend and another boy at her Washington State high school before committing suicide. When I analyzed college campus shootings during last summer, we looked at 23 incidents of campuses casualties since 2010 and all but one was perpetuated by a male, average age 28 years. So, now we must include gender in our discussions about guns and gun control. But how?

So, my concluding thoughts on a very complicated and emotional issue:

  • For the families of gunshot victims– does being part of the grieving process make legal responses bad policy? How does policy assist them in their own acceptance and grief?
  • How can we research the mental health services that have been provided and have maybe prevented episodes of gun violence? Do we really know what works to prevent further gun violence perpetrated by teens and young adults?
  • How will the roots or antecedent conditions which provoke gun violence change over the next few decades or will there be minimal change? Does the political have to change first?
  • Is it about the guns or about people who use the guns? Or both? Or is it about access and control?
  • As a psychologist, could I see a client who was vehemently “pro-gun”? Do I make faulty assumptions about a person who is “pro-gun” as part of their identity?  What happens when it enters my office?

I have only worked with two perpetrators of gun violence in my long career and it was not easy. One client shot another woman when she was 17, and it was deliberate. She spent 8 years in jail after conviction, and treatment was part of her post-release plan. That is a case study in and of itself. But I was able to develop genuine empathy for the emotional and distorted decisions she made as a teenager. Without that, the work could not have proceeded. I wish that there were easier solutions to this tragic situation, and I wish that I was clearer in my thinking about all of the issues. But for now, I wanted to share my experiences and my confusion in hopes of having further dialogue about how this very political issue is both personal and professional for me. I welcome your comments.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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