Janet Harris, Ph.D., my editor at Brown Books Publishing Group whose expertise and kindness were infinitely appreciated.
The Brown Books Publishing Group—it was a privilege to coordinate with Milli Brown, CEO; Beth Robinson, Acquisitions Director; Kathy Penny, Project Coordinator; Omar Mediano, Art Director; and Danny Whitworth, Designer.
Saul Turtletaub who suggested I write this book.
Alvin Glazier who always was and will be a friend and extended family.
Lois and Ben Lefton who are gifts.
Eric, my son; his wife, Nancy Reisman; and their three children, Jordan, Allie, and Ben who are sources of pride.
Rachel, Daniel, and Sarah—Susie’s children who elicit joy and live in their mother’s image.
David, my gentle husband, an extraordinary friend and partner. The blend of his sensitivity and legal brilliance is a blessing—unsurpassed.
Preface
Guns have many names—assault weapons, firearms, pistols, revolvers—but they all have the same potential effect: death.
Martin Luther King Jr., John Lennon, John F. Kennedy Jr., Robert F. Kennedy—all American icons, were all victims of gun violence.
Our society vividly recalls the 1993 mass shooting on the Long Island Railroad carried out by a madman. The gunman murdered Dennis McCarthy, Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy’s husband. Her son Kevin was permanently paralyzed, and James Gorycki died due to the same gunfire. These three men had become friends over the years as the result of traveling to work every morning on the same train. Congresswoman McCarthy’s response to the tragedy was in the Ottawa Sun: “I know it’s in the Constitution. But you know what? Enough! I think there should be a law—and I know this is extreme—that no one can have a gun in the US. If you have a gun, you go to jail. Only the police should have guns. It’s ridiculous.”
In 1999, the country was horrified by the mass shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, in which fifteen people died and twenty-three were wounded.
The mass murders in 2007 at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, resulted in thirty-three dead and seventeen wounded.
In 2009, there were thirteen dead and thirty-four wounded at the Fort Hood, Texas, mass shooting.
The nation was again rocked just after the New Year in 2011 when a deranged shooter opened fire on Arizona’s Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, seriously wounding her and killing five people, including federal judge John Roll and nine-year-old Christina Taylor Green.
Then in 2012, the nation saw a rash of gun-related deaths and mass murders taking place like a spreading cancerous growth.
February A student at Ohio’s Chardon High School, T. J. Lane, went on a shooting rampage. Armed with his grandfather’s .22-caliber Ruger semiautomatic, he went to the high school, killing three students and injuring two others. On March 1, a New York Times article about the shooting written by Sabrina Tavernise and Jennifer Preston quoted neighbor and former sheriff Carl Henderson, who stated: “It was not unusual for guns to be kept in homes in this area.” I was amazed when I read that Henderson also said, “It’s too bad because no one would ever think something like this would happen.” The “Stand Your Ground” law was brought to public attention as the result of George Zimmerman’s shooting of seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida. Twenty-four states have passed this law, giving individuals the right to carry semiautomatic weapons if they reasonably believe their lives may be in danger. Zimmerman had a legal gun permit, which is disturbing enough considering his history, but the “Stand Your Ground” law is a malignancy.
April One L. Goh, a former student at Oikos University in Oakland, California, shot and killed seven people.
July Devastation occurred at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. The gunman, James Eagan Holmes, dispensed tear-gas grenades and then shot into the audience with multiple firearms, killing twelve and injuring fifty-eight.
August Wade Michael Page, a US Army veteran, opened fire at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, killing six and injuring four.
October Another shooting occurred at Salon Meritage hair salon in Seal Beach, California. The gunman, Scott Evans Dekraai, killed eight.
December Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher’s murder-suicide in early December 2012 caused great anguish within the sports world and the nation. Belcher shot and killed his girlfriend, Kasandra M. Perkins, and then turned the gun on himself. Following this tragedy, noted sportswriter and newscaster Jason Whitlock wrote an article that correctly stated the obvious: “What I believe is, if he didn’t possess/own a gun, he and Kasandra would both be alive today.” In mid-December, the nation was stunned when news spread of the deadly massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. The gunman, Adam Lanza, was armed with three weapons when he went on a rampage that claimed the lives of seven adults and twenty children, who were only six to seven years of age. After seeing the arrival of first responders, Lanza committed suicide. Emotions were visible throughout the nation. People stopped in their tracks on the street, some shaking their heads in disbelief, others conspicuously crying. This atrocity deeply affected everyone because so many of the massacred victims were innocent children.
The Huffington Post conducted a survey just four months after the Newtown massacre. The survey recorded more than 2,240 gun deaths during this time period due to homicides and accidental shootings across the United States.
Further heartbreak occurred on January 29, 2013. Hadiya Pendleton, a fifteen-year-old honor student at Chicago’s King College Prep High School, was shot and killed while standing with her friends inside Harsh Park. The tragedy occurred only one week after she performed at the second inaugural events for President Barack Obama. The crime took place within a mile of President Obama’s Chicago home.
The gunmen—Michael Ward, eighteen, and Kenneth Williams, twenty—confessed that Pendleton was not the intended victim. They mistook the group she was standing with for members of a rival gang. The two were arrested and indicted for multiple counts of first-degree murder, attempted murder, and aggravated discharge of a weapon in addition to numerous other charges.
In mid-August 2013, three trigger-happy teens, in Duncan, Oklahoma, shot and killed twenty-two-year-old Christopher Lane of Melbourne, Australia. Lane, an Australian collegiate baseball player, was shot in the back while he was jogging by Chancey Allen Luna, sixteen, James Francis Edwards Jr., fifteen, and Michael Dewayne Jones, seventeen. When questioned by the police about their crime, they said it was for “the fun of it.”
There is a multitude of willful, intentional gun violence, but accidental deaths caused by guns also deserve mention. Indicative of this anguish was the unintentional shooting that occurred in Toms River, New Jersey, in April 2013. A six-year-old boy died after being shot by his four-year-old friend, who found a gun in his home.
David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, conducted a study of accidental gun-related deaths from 2003 to 2007. Published in 2011, the study concluded that around six hundred and eighty Americans were killed accidentally by guns each year and that half of those victims were under twenty-five years of age. Further results indicated that children in the United States were eleven times more likely to die from an accidental gunshot wound than children in other countries.
“New Fashion Wrinkle: Stylishly Hiding the Gun” was the headline of a New York Times article on April 23, 2012, written by Matt Richtel. Mr. Richtel described in minute detail the growing popularity of garments manufactured to carry hidden weapons. Such a trend is beyond ludicrous.
At the Second Annual Sportsmen and Outdoor Awareness Day held in Albany’s legislative office building on January 25, 2011, Assemblywoman Michelle Schimel, who has fought arduously for tighter gun-control legislation, delivered an appeal to the attendees just after the tragic shootings in Tucson. In an impassioned statement referring to the powerful gun lobby, she said:
In light