What do you call a law that allows a person to shoot and kill another human being when they could otherwise walk away safely?

I can only call it immoral.

With George Zimmerman soon headed to a pre-trial hearing to evaluate whether he will be protected by the “Stand Your Ground” law in Florida, it is important to understand exactly how the law has made permissible the use of lethal force and legalized acts of murder that previously never would have been deemed “justifiable homicides.”

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Recently, Conservatives have been making broad accusations that the Occupy Wall Street movement is “anti-Semitic,” despite no real evidence to indicate this is true.  Understandably, many of the Occupy protesters—including Jewish ones—are outraged.  To them, I can only say, “I know how you feel.”

I’ve worked in the gun violence prevention field now for 11 years.  In September of last year, I published a blog at Waging Nonviolence that debunked an argument that has become fashionable in right wing circles—namely, that gun control is “racist.”  Not long ago, you would have had to search the darkest recesses of the pro-gun movement to find anyone making this claim. But following the Supreme Court’s split ruling in McDonald v. Chicago—in which the Citizens United wing of the Court agreed with an African-American plaintiff that Chicago’s handgun ban was unconstitutional—it became all the rage.

While some moderate political commentators have flirted with the smear, the folks who are really pushing it are those you’d expect:  the Washington Times, the National Review, self-employed pro-gun bloggers, etc.  Which is why I was quite disturbed when I saw UCLA Law Professor Adam Winkler embrace the “gun control is racist” charge in his brand new book Gunfight.

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Those of us who work in the gun control movement understand as well as anyone why a push for nonviolence is desperately needed in the United States. Two incidents that occurred within the span of a week last month reminded me of how ingrained—and absurd—the culture of violence is in our country.

On December 9, I traveled to MSNBC’s studios in Washington, D.C. to appear on “NewsNation with Tamron Hall.” I was scheduled to comment on two new National Rifle Association (NRA) lawsuits in Texas. One lawsuit challenges a 42-year-old federal law that bars handgun sales to those under the age of 21 by federally licensed dealers. The other targets a 15-year-old Texas law that prohibits those under the age of 21 from carrying concealed handguns in public.

The NRA’s 18-year-old plaintiff in these cases, James D’Cruz, has made headlines by posting a series of violent and disturbing comments on his Facebook page over the past three years. Here’s a sampling of his musings, which bring to mind such infamous figures as Columbine shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, as well as Viriginia Tech gunman Seung Hui-Cho:

There is no redemption, There is no forgiveness. I will stare into your eyes as I pull the trigger and laugh as you hit the ground with your last, pathetic breath.

im bored…ill light someone on fire

an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind, thats why I take their heads.

Anyway, I walk into the MSNBC waiting room that day, and immediately see breaking news on their television screens. NewsNation was providing live coverage from Escondido, California, where law enforcement authorities were burning down a house that contained the largest stockpile of explosives ever found in a private dwelling (which made it too dangerous to enter and clear out by hand). It is unclear why the home’s owner, George Jakubec, was stockpiling high explosives, bomb-making materials, handmade grenades, guns, and ammunition. He is also suspected of robbing three San Diego banks.

After a few minutes, I was walked into a private studio, put in front of a camera, and even had a mike clipped on my suit jacket—but the images of this startling fire were just too good to resist. A voice in my earpiece told me they would not have time to air my segment. Could I come back some other time?

The irony of being preempted by a bomb maker as I was preparing to talk about a potential school shooter was not lost on me.

The following week, things got even stranger. I was called by the CBS affiliate in Pittsburgh (KDKA) to appear on NewsRadio 1020 with conservative host Mike Pintek. Mike wanted to talk about four shootings that had recently occurred in Western Pennsylvania.

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Prior to this summer, you would have had to explore the darkest corners of the gun rights movement to find anyone openly exclaiming that “gun control is racist.”  This assertion—and the corollary allegation that the civil rights movement succeeded not because of disciplined nonviolence, but because African Americans were willing to take up arms against their oppressors—emanated mostly from obscure right-wing and libertarian websites like LizMichael.com or The Campaign for Liberty.  The most-cited proponent was Clayton Cramer, a software engineer with a not-so-subtle agenda (that paved the way for Rand Paul), who has written that:  “Racism is so intimately tied to the history of gun control in America that we should…require that the courts use the same demanding standards when reviewing the constitutionality of a gun control law, that they would use with respect to a law that discriminated based on race.”

“The Only Black”
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s recent 5-4 ruling in McDonald v. Chicago, however, the “gun control is racist” argument is all the rage.  The June 28 decision overturned Chicago’s longstanding handgun ban and ruled that the Second Amendment applies to the states.  The lead plaintiff in the case, Otis McDonald, is a 76 year-old African-American who wants a handgun for self-defense.  “I would like to have a handgun so I could keep it right by my bed, just in case somebody might want to come in my house,” McDonald explained.  The problem is that criminals never visit McDonald when he is home—loaded shotguns have been stolen from his home on multiple occasions while he was away.  McDonald might have bought those shotguns to protect himself and his family, but they ended up on the street in criminal hands and might have been used to intimidate, injure or kill innocent people.

McDonald has long been a gun rights activist in Illinois, traveling to rallies in Springfield, Illinois, where he was “probably the only black person.”  When attorney Alan Gura selected him as the lead plaintiff in the case, he inquired, “Why would you name [the case] after me?  Is it just because I’m the only black [plaintiff]?”

Nonetheless, Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority in McDonald, imagined many other African-Americans in our nation’s history standing with the aged pro-gunner.  Specifically, Alito concluded that Reconstruction-era efforts designed to grant equal citizenship to black Americans were equally as much about gun rights as they were about civil rights.  He found a general right to bear arms within the “Freedmen’s Bureau Act of 1866,” a law that guaranteed blacks property ownership rights they were denied as slaves and created a federal agency to secure housing, establish schools, and litigate discriminatory policies for freedmen.  Alito also reasoned that the Fourteenth Amendment contemplated guns rights because the amendment was based on the “Civil Rights Act of 1866,” which used some of the same language as the “Freedmen’s Bureau Act” (but which Alito himself admits did not specifically mention any right to keep and bear arms).  Citing Congressional debate over the Fourteenth Amendment, Alito made reference to the following remark by Republican Senator Samuel Pomeroy from Kansas:

Every man….should have the right to bear arms for the defense of himself and family and his homestead.  And if the cabin door of the freedman is broken open and the intruder enters for purposes as vile as were known to slavery, then should a well-loaded musket be in the hand of the occupant to send the polluted wretch to another world, where his wretchedness will forever remain complete.

Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote his own concurring opinion, noted that blacks were disarmed by state legislatures and denied protection from white mobs:

The use of firearms for self-defense was often the only way black citizens could protect themselves from mob violence.  As Eli Cooper, one target of such violence, is said to have explained, ‘[t]he Negro has been run over for 50 years, but it must stop now, and pistols and shotguns are the only weapons to stop a mob.’

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On August 28, conservative radio/television host Glenn Beck, 2012 Republican presidential candidate Sarah Palin, the National Rifle Association, and the Special Operations Warrior Foundation will conduct the “Restoring Honor” rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. The date and location are significant. It was on August 28, 1963, on the steps of the memorial that Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington. Beck has billed the rally as a “non-political event” that will pay tribute to America’s service personnel and “help us restore the values that founded this great nation.”

Although unaware of the date’s significance at first, Beck has since claimed its selection as “divine providence.” He has further justified the planning of his event by saying, “Whites don’t own Abraham Lincoln. Blacks don’t own Martin Luther King … Too many have forgotten Abraham Lincoln’s ideas and far too many have either gotten just lazy or they have purposely distorted Martin Luther King’s ideas.”

Beck, of course, is the same man who told listeners on his March 2 radio show, “I beg you, look for the words ‘social justice’ or ‘economic justice’ on your church website. If you find it, run as fast as you can. ‘Social justice’ and ‘economic justice,’ they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes!”

The March on Washington and King’s life work, of course, were dedicated to the pursuit of social and economic justice. In his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, King stated that marchers had come to Washington “to dramatize a shameful condition. In a sense, we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of ‘Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’ … So we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.”

Social activists and civil rights leaders, concerned that the “Restoring Honor” rally will co-opt the historical significance of the March on Washington to advance a political message that is directly at odds with the vision of King, have planned their own event on the same day. The National Action Network, the National Urban League, the Center for Nonviolent Social Change, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, United for Peace and Justice, and others are sponsoring the “Reclaim the Dream” rally and march. The rally will take place on August 28 at Dunbar High School (1301 New Jersey Avenue NW—Mount Vernon Square/7th Street/Convention Center Metro Stop on Green/Yellow Line) in the District of Columbia from 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM. At 1:00 PM, participants will march from Dunbar High School to the site of the King Memorial on the National Mall. All Americans are welcome and encouraged to participate in these events.

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Normally, when I debate representatives from the National Rifle Association (NRA), hostile questions from the audience come from those with a decidedly Libertarian bent to their politics.  Typically, these individuals advocate for broader latitude on the part of Americans to respond to criminals with loaded firearms and lethal force.

I was therefore taken aback—and pleasantly surprised—to have my credentials as a practitioner of non-violence called into question during a debate with the NRA’s Outreach Director in late February of this year.

The audience was not our typical group of American college students.  This time, our debate was occurring in front of a group of British high school students visiting Washington.  Specifically, these were 16-19 year-olds from Shrewsbury Sixth Form College and Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College in Darlington.

When the Q&A eventually began, their professor/chaperone stated outright that my opponent would likely be getting most of the questions, and encouraged the students to save some for me.  Still, I was caught quite off-guard when a young man stood up and asked me if I thought it was appropriate to shoot an intruder in my home.  It was clear from his tone that he did not think it was appropriate.

I told him that I’d likely never find out, because I do not keep a firearm in my home and would never consider doing so—particularly given the fact that my wife and I now have children.  That said, I added, I have no problem with another American citizen keeping a firearm in his/her home for self-defense and using it if absolutely necessary.  The NRA’s outreach director then chimed in and said he was happy to hear me say that.  He, of course, had zero problems with blowing a home intruder away.

Another young Brit who was sitting in the audience that day later summed up the students’ reaction in a blog:

We were surprised to hear that Ladd Everitt of [the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence] saw shooting intruders in his home as an acceptable option … I’m not unrealistic, and I know that people’s instincts are to protect themselves and their loved ones.  But when a weapon is introduced, the situation is more likely to become fatal—something [he] told us in [his] talk.  I think the worry for me personally was that people would become judge, jury and executioner in these situations.  While I agree that it is fair to protect yourself, I don’t agree that you can unnecessarily injure or kill someone.  This becomes a whole lot easier when guns are involved, and that is why we see groups like [his] as so important.

As I headed home after the debate that day, I felt a strange combination of emotions:  Disappointment in myself that I had somehow let these students down, and excitement (and even inspiration) regarding their attitudes toward nonviolence.  Being an American, I was stunned.  You see, here we embrace “justified violence” from sea to shining sea, whether it’s the guy in Georgia who wants to carry a loaded handgun into an airport or the Hollywood producer behind “Shoot ‘Em Up.”

I wondered why these British students embraced the principles of nonviolence so readily and confidently.  In all my years speaking to American students, I’d never seen anything like it.  Is it simply because—whatever their concerns about self-defense—they understand that the gun death rate is 30 times lower in their country than in the United States?  [I mean, let’s face it, if an armed society was a polite society, the U.S. wouldn’t have higher homicide and gun death rates than virtually every other industrialized democracy on the planet.]

Or is it something more?  Don’t these kids play the same video games, watch the same movies (think “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels”) and listen to the same music that our kids do?

I can’t claim that I’ve quite sorted it all out yet, but I will say that the experience filled me with a profound sense of hope that is still resonating with me now, months later.

Professor Colman McCarthy, the Founder and Director of the Center for Teaching Peace in Washington, D.C. once commented that, “The most revolutionary thing anybody can do is to raise good, honest and generous children who will question the answers of people who say the answer is violence.”

I was reminded of his words a few weeks back.  I was sitting in my dining room, talking to my friend Jeremy and his family about my work at the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence.  We were discussing the gun lobby’s current campaign to allow individuals to carry loaded handguns in public spaces across America—churches, parks, schools, government buildings, child day care centers, metro transportation, airports, etc.—when Jeremy’s nine year-old son Colin piped in.

“There are people who think you can prevent violence with guns?” he asked.

“That’s right,” we told him.

“Cuckoo,” Colin replied, tracing rings around his ear with his finger.

I was pleasantly surprised.  It’s not that Colin isn’t a great kid; he is.  But he’s been obsessed with guns since he was a baby.  I distinctly remember a boy of two—denied toy guns by his parents—running around with a vacuum cleaner tube and “shooting” everything around him.  Now, a few years later, he’s graduated to air guns, water guns and violent video games like Commando 2.  This fascination with firearms that boys seemingly acquire upon exiting the womb is both awe-inspiring and disturbing.

So how does this young boy, who delights in shooting his guests with his Nerf N-Strike Maverick Blaster rifle, have the maturity to grasp the enormous danger that real guns represent to our society?  Why is he is able to embrace the thrill of violence in fantasy while rejecting it completely in reality?

Professor McCarthy says, “Peace is the result of love,” but cautions, “If love was easy, we’d all be good at it.”  He also warns, “If we don’t teach [our children] peace, someone else will teach them violence.”

I must have had my own good influences because, like Colin, I grew up with a gun obsession.  One of my prized possessions as a boy was a plastic M-60 rifle, complete with unfolding tripod.  My friends and I loved to get our toy guns out and play “war” around our elementary school.  I was also in the first generation of video gamers, and played all the shooters:  Postal, Castle Wolfenstein, Doom, Duke Nukem, Quake, Soldier of Fortune, you name it.  And movies?  Die Hard, Predator, Assault on Precinct 13—I loved all that stuff.

Yet I never had the desire to own any real firearms, or mimic the “protagonists” of these games/movies in real life.  I was a big fan of Marvel Comics growing up and it always struck me that Captain America never carried a gun—the bad guys he brought to justice did.  Today, as a husband and father, I have become a passionate advocate for nonviolence.

Professor McCarthy’s dream is to add comprehensive peace studies programs to the curriculum at the nation’s K-12 schools and colleges.  “Every member of Congress was in first grade someplace,” he says.  “Maybe if we taught them a little bit about Gandhi, Martin Luther King, the first day, we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in.”

That’s a goal that’s worth working for, but until it is realized, we should all endeavor to learn from kids like Colin.

As Mother Theresa once said, “So often people say that we should look to the elderly, learn from their wisdom, their many years.  I disagree.  I say we should look to the young: untarnished, without stereotypes implanted in their minds, no poison, no hatred in their hearts.  When we learn to see life through the eyes of a child, that is when we become truly wise.”

Amen.

Leo Tolstoy

One idea that I find intriguing is the notion that peace can be obtained through anarchy, which Webster’s defines as “a utopian society of individuals who enjoy complete freedom without government.” One of the original proponents of this concept was Leo Tolstoy. Tolstoy believed that all violence was wrong, including personal self-defense against imminent attack. Furthermore, as Peter Kropotkin wrote: “Robbers, [Tolstoy] says, are far less dangerous than a well-organized government.”

These convictions continue to inspire pacifists today. Colman McCarthy, the Director of American University’s Center for Teaching Peace, bemoans the fact that, in the minds of his students, the word “anarchy” invariably means “chaos.” His reply? “Instead of fantasizing about the pending calamites that might happen, think about the calamities that are happening now; war, poverty, and the degradations of violence sanctioned by political power and laws.”

McCarthy worries that youth that “dress in all black and mass-migrate to protests at the World Bank” have given anarchists a bad name by engaging in “verbal violence.” But these are not the people I would worry about if the government was disbanded.

Instead, my mind turns to the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when a heavily armed private militia patrolled the streets of predominantly-white Algiers Point and shot African-Americans at will.

I think about Glenn Beck’s 2014 civil war scenario called “The Bubba Effect,” where angry Americans hole up in armed camps in the South and West and shoot anyone who comes near their land.

I think of Chris Broughton bringing an AR-15 assault rifle to a health care reform rally in Phoenix and declaring, “We will forcefully resist people imposing their will on us through the strength of the majority with a vote.”

These are some of the people who we’d be counting on to live peacefully among their fellow human beings in an anarchy? And we’d expect them to embrace an egalitarian—and possibly collectivized—society?

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I work in a field where violence is part of daily life. At the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, my day will typically start with a run through the national headlines, where one can readily find gory details about the 30,000+ gun deaths that occur each year in the United States. If that doesn’t sufficiently dampen my spirit, I can easily scroll to the comment threads of these articles and see pro-gun activists minimize this loss of life and argue for even weaker gun laws.

It can be depressing—and also intimidating. Recently, I spoke to gun violence prevention activists in Virginia who were preparing to support their mayor at a city council meeting. You see, this mayor had the temerity to join a group called Mayors Against Illegal Guns and that outraged the Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL), who believe there should be no regulations concerning gun ownership. One other thing about VCDL: their members pack heat 24/7, including at city council meetings. Several well-meaning individuals concerned about gun violence felt compelled to stay home that evening after considering the prospect of facing 60 some-odd armed men at the meeting.

I really can’t blame them. I’m not scared of these guys myself (I’ve been around them long enough to think of them more as weird uncles, or the like), but what am I supposed to tell the mother of two young children who’s trying to be supportive and do the right thing? “Don’t worry about that guy with the Glock 40 and ‘Guns Save Lives’ decal on his jacket”? That would be a tough pitch even for Ricardo Montalban.

If one person can inspire the courage necessary to face such situations, however, it is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I find myself repeatedly going back to a passage in his autobiography that is striking—and absolutely inspiring.

As we all know, Dr. King faced constant threats to his life during his time as a prominent civil rights leader in America, and was eventually felled by an assassin’s bullet in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. During his life, he wrestled often with the question of whether or not to carry a gun for self-defense. After his house and the house of a friend were bombed in 1956, Dr. King wrote the following: Read the rest of this article »