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.

• Thousands of people formed a human chain in Okinawa, Japan yesterday to protest the movement of a US military base there.

• 500 Afghan villagers demonstrated outside their governor’s office on Friday to protest a recent US-backed raid that killed civilians.

• Thousands of villagers in India facing displacement by steel giant POSCO are staging sit-in protests during what they have dubbed “resistance week,” which lasts through May 21.

• Communications worker union members marched through Johannesburg, South Africa demanding wage increases.

• Women vendors in Nagamapal, India staged a sit-in yesterday to protest continued price hikes. The sit-in condemned a government official’s visit to the region and shops and businesses were also closed in protest

• 160 Russian tractor factory workers have begun a hunger strike after not being paid for five months. They are also fundraising for a plane ticket for President Medvedev to come and mediate.

• A gay pride parade meant to protest rights violations against sexual minorities was violently disrupted by police in Belarus on Saturday.

• People gathered in the Maldives last week, clad in red shirts, to protest rising electricity tariffs.

• Saturday was International Day of Protest for Lolita’s Retirement, in support of an orca whale at Miami’s Seaquarium, who lives in the smallest whale tank in North America and possibly the world.

• Gun control activists protested outside an NRA conference in Charlotte, NC, saying discussion of gun violence was missing from the conference.

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.

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 »