Category Archives: Guns and Gun Violence

Attorneys for Jones, Pearson Warn Tennessee GOP Against Further Retaliation

“The world is watching Tennessee,” the lawyers wrote, adding that any retributive action would be unconstitutional and “require redress.”

By Jessica Corbett.  Published 4-10-2023 by Common Dreams

Justin Jones being sworn in as a Tennessee representative after being expelled only four days ago. Photo: Dulce Maria Torres G/Twitter

Ahead of the Nashville Metropolitan Council voting Monday to reappoint Tennessee Rep. Justin Jones to the state House of Representatives, attorneys for him and ousted Rep. Justin Pearson warned Republican legislators not to further retaliate against the pair.

The letter from the six attorneys, including former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, to Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton (R-25) came after Republicans in the chamber voted last Thursday to expel Jones (D-52) and Pearson (D-86) over their protest in support of gun control after the Covenant School shooting in Nashville.

Continue reading
Share Button

‘Absolutely Insane’: Greg Abbott Seeks Pardon for Man Convicted of Murdering BLM Protester

“If a fiction author wrote this, no one would believe it,” said one trial attorney.

By Brett Wilkins  Published 4-9-2023 by Common Dreams

Garrett Foster is seen here with his fiancée Whitney Mitchell, who was present when Foster was murdered. (Photo: Garrett Foster/Facebook)

 Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott drew widespread condemnation from legal experts after he said Saturday that he is “working as swiftly” as the law allows to pardon a man who was convicted the previous day of murdering a racial justice protester in 2020.

Daniel Perry, a U.S. Army sergeant, was convicted by an Austin jury on Friday of murder and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon for the fatal shooting of 28-year-old Garrett Foster, an armed Air Force veteran participating in a Black Lives Matter protest in the Texas capital following George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police.

Continue reading
Share Button

US right exploits Nashville school shooting to marginalize trans people

Right encourages hate towards trans community to avoid focus on gun control – but not everyone is fooled

By Chrissy Stroop  Published 4-5-2023 by openDemocracy

A protest at the Tennessee Capitol for stricter gun laws in the state. Photo: Shannon Watts/Twitter

 So far in 2023, there have been 90 incidents of gunfire at primary and secondary schools in the US. The most recent happened on 27 March at the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, a small private Christian school with classes ranging from preschool through to sixth grade (up to 12 years old). The Nashville shooter slaughtered six innocent victims, including three nine-year-olds, before being killed by the police.

According to the Gun Violence Archive, it was the 130th mass shooting of the year, meaning that mass shootings are currently occurring at a rate of about 1.5 per day in the so-called “land of the free”.

Continue reading
Share Button

‘Our Blood, Your Hands’: Students Stage National Walkout to Demand Gun Control

“We’re determined to be the last school shooting generation,” asserted protest organizer Students Demand Action.

By Brett Wilkins.  Published 4-5-2023 by Common Dreams

Students from Boulder High School march through Boulder, Colorado Photo: Paige Leonard/Twitter

 Students across the United States walked out of their classrooms Wednesday to take part in a nationwide protest demanding gun control legislation amid relentless shootings that have already claimed more than 10,000 lives in a little over three months this year.

Wednesday’s National School Walkout followed a smaller demonstration Monday in Nashville, Tennessee, where six people including three 9-year-old children were shot dead last week at the Covenant School.

Continue reading
Share Button

US Increases Dominance as World’s Top Arms Exporter

“The impacts of the global arms trade aren’t just about the volume of weapons delivered,” said one expert, citing “a few examples of how U.S. arms deliveries can make the world a more dangerous place.”

By Brett Wilkins.  Published 3-13-2023 by Common Dreams

U.S. Air Force members load 155 mm M777 towed howitzers onto a C-17 Globemaster III on March Air Reserve Base in California on April 27, 2022. (Photo: U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Shawn White)

A Sweden-based research institute published a report Monday showing that the United States accounted for 40% of the world’s weapons exports in the years 2018-22, selling armaments to more than 100 countries while increasing its dominance of the global arms trade.

The report—entitled Trends in International Arms Transfers, 2022—was published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and listed the United States, Russia, France, China, and Germany as the world’s top five arms exporters from 2018-22. The five nations accounted for 76% of worldwide weapons exports during that period.

The five biggest arms importers over those five years were India, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Australia, and China.

The United States saw a 14% increase in arms exports over the previous five-year period analyzed by SIPRI. U.S. arms were delivered to 103 nations from 2018-22, with 41% going to the Middle East.

“Even as arms transfers have declined globally, those to Europe have risen sharply due to the tensions between Russia and most other European states,” Pieter Wezeman, senior researcher at the SIPRI Arms Transfers Program, said in a statement. “Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, European states want to import more arms, faster. Strategic competition also continues elsewhere: Arms imports to East Asia have increased and those to the Middle East remain at a high level.”

According to the report, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine early last year “had only a limited impact on the total volume of arms transfers in 2018–22, but Ukraine did become a major importer of arms in 2022.”

Ukraine was the 14th-largest arms importer from 2018-22 and the third-biggest last year.

Wiliam Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote Monday that “the impacts of the global arms trade aren’t just about the volume of weapons delivered. The question is how those weapons are likely to be used, and the extent to which they promote stability versus fueling conflict or propping up repressive regimes with abysmal human rights records.”

“On this score the United States has much room for improvement,” he continued. “Transfers to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for use at the peak of their brutal war in Yemen, and sales to major human rights violators from the Philippines, Egypt, and Nigeria are a few examples of how U.S. arms deliveries can make the world a more dangerous place.”

“There are a number of promising steps that Congress can take—as articulated by a new coalition, the Arms Sales Accountability Project—that would mandate closer scrutiny of U.S. sales,” Hartung asserted.

“There is also some useful language in the Biden administration’s new arms transfer policy directive, that, if implemented, would significantly rein in the most egregious sales,” he added. “Only time will tell if U.S. policy can be moved towards one based on arms sales restraint rather than arms sales promotion.”

This work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Share Button

Why aren’t child soldiers treated as human trafficking ‘survivors’?

Child soldiers are often shunned when they return from war. This is no way to treat ‘survivors’

By Benedetta Wasonga.  Published 2-22-2023 by openDemocracy

Child soldiers in South Sudan. Photo: UNMISS/flickr/CC

What happens to child soldiers once the fighting is over? How do they re-integrate into society, and who supports them to find a new place in civilian life? These questions are not as easy to answer as one might think. In post-conflict settings in Africa, former child soldiers return traumatised. Warring parties have used them not only as fighters, but also in many other jobs. Some, especially girls, have also been subjected to gender-based violence.

Yet, for the most part, they are not greeted warmly by those back home. International organisations do not trip over themselves to provide them with services. They are instead met, for the most part, with suspicion. And because they are not seen as ‘survivors’, there are few places they can turn to for help. Continue reading

Share Button

‘Death Sentence for Women and Families’: US Court Blocks Domestic Violence Gun Ban

“There is no real doubt that the 5th Circuit’s decision is going to lead to more abusers murdering their wives and girlfriends,” said one gun control advocate. “It will also increase mass shootings.”

By Brett Wilkins  Published 2-2-2023 by Common Dreams

People participate in a March 24, 2018 “March for Our Lives” protest for gun control laws in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. (Photo: Peter Cedric Rock Smith/flickr/cc)

The right-wing 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday struck down a federal law barring people with domestic violence restraining orders from owning firearms, a ruling that gun control advocates said will cost lives.

A three-judge panel of the New Orleans-based appellate court said in its decision that the overturned law is an unconstitutional impediment to the right to bear arms. The judges based their ruling on New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, a June 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down that state’s limits on carrying concealed guns in public. Continue reading

Share Button

Pain of police killings ripples outward to traumatize Black people and communities across US

RowVaughn Wells, in gray jacket, mother of Tyre Nichols, who died after being beaten by Memphis police officers, is with friends and family members at the conclusion of a candlelight vigil for Tyre, in Memphis, Tenn., on Jan. 26, 2023.
AP Photo/Gerald Herbert

 

Denise A. Herd, University of California, Berkeley

As the video goes public of Black police officers in Memphis beating Tyre Nichols to death, it is a stark reminder of George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020. That set up the largest protests in U.S. history and a national reckoning with racism.

But beyond any protests, every police killing – indeed, every violent act by police toward civilians – can have painful and widespread consequences.

Each year, U.S. police kill about 1,000 people, which equals approximately 8% of all homicides for adult men. This risk is greater for Black men, who are about 2.5 times more likely to be killed by the police than white men. Continue reading

Share Button

First-of-Its-Kind Study Links US Gun Violence Epidemic to Climate Emergency

The research follows several international studies showing the connection between extreme weather events and domestic violence.

By Julia Conley  Published 1-3-2023 by Common Dreams

Protest against new gun laws at the MN State Capitol in 2018. Photo: Fibonacci Blue/flickr/CC

Researchers in the U.S. have linked the climate crisis and the extreme weather patterns it causes to the country’s epidemic of gun violence in a first-of-its-kind analysis, showing that thousands of shootings in the U.S. in recent years were attributable to higher-than-average temperatures.

As Environment Journal reported Tuesday, experts at Boston University School of Public Health and University of Washington School of Social Work analyzed 116,000 shootings in 100 of the country’s most populous cities between 2015 and 2020 and found that 7,973 took place during periods of unseasonable heat, concluding that about 7% of shootings could be attributed to extreme heat. Continue reading

Share Button

Republican Policies Are Killing Americans: Study

“Changing all policy domains in all states to a fully liberal orientation might have saved 171,030 lives in 2019,” researchers estimate, “while changing them to a fully conservative orientation might have cost 217,635 lives.”

By Kenny Stancil  Published 10-26-2022 by Common Dreams

Main Street, Mount Hope, West Virginia. Photo: Tim Kiser/Wikimedia Commons/CC

The Republican Party’s regressive policies are not just unpopular, but a new study out Wednesday suggests they are also deadly to those who live under them.

Working-age mortality rates have been rising for decades across the United States, but premature deaths are more pronounced in states where “conservative” policies predominate and less common in states that have adopted more “liberal” policies, according to peer-reviewed research published in PLOS ONE. Continue reading

Share Button