California Governor Gavin Newsom has been blasting away at knuckle-headed Republican governors like Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott for their cruel indifference to other people. He’s already suggested he may sue DeSantis for kidnapping, after Florida sent two private planes with Venezuelan immigrants to Sacramento. Now, he’s going after Abbott for his refusal to take action against gun violence.
He wrote:
Texas… where elected officials are relying on Winnie the Pooh to teach their kids about active shooters because they don’t have the courage to keep our kids safe.
Texas… where Greg Abbott signed a law to send DNA kits to parents of school children so their bodies can be identified after a shooting.
Guns are the leading cause of death for kids in America. Kids!
We’re not talking about accidents, or cancer or something unpreventable. We know the steps to take to save our kids lives. But leaders like Greg Abbott lack the courage to act.
Until then… It’s Winnie the Pooh for Texas families.
Gavin Newsom
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thank you, Governor Newsom!!!
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👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽
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While red states claim they want to protect children from influences they consider inappropriate, their love of guns has a higher priority. Their solution to keeping children safe in schools is turning schools into fortresses, arming teachers and ordering DNA kits and body bags. A much more reasonable solution is some common sense gun control legislation that could, at the very least, keep guns out of the hands of the most dangerous people.
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Red states are worried more about books than they are about guns. They are eager to protect children from books. Not guns.
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“We know the steps to take to save our kids lives.”
There are a lot of kids dying from gun violence in places like Philadelphia and Baltimore and Chicago, too. What are the obvious steps we all know we need to take it save their lives?
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The Hill posted a commentary by the Mellman Group. It identifies what the majority of Americans support in terms of gun control.
The article tackles the many constructs of social conservatism (which after self-serving business and right wing religious interests are deleted, may not be so many).
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I think Bloomberg should arm all Black and Brown men and see if we get a national Mulford Act.
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The absurdity of Gallup’s “research polling” that proclaimed a rise in social conservatism was exposed recently in The Hill (Mellman Group commentary).
The majority public view about gun laws is included in the Mellman piece.
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“We know the steps to take to save our kids lives.”
I’m genuinely curious, if we know what the steps are, what are they specifically (can you list the steps here please)? Also what rate of success are we confident that these steps will make based on verifiable statistics in other similar municipalities?
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There is one step that’s obvious: ban civilian purchases or ownership of assault weapons.
Step 2: enact red flag laws, to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people.
Step 3: require all prospective gun owners to take a course in how to store and use a gun safely.
Step 4: require gun owners to store their weapons in a locked safe.
Step 5: review the gun control laws and regulations in nations that have low gun deaths and adopt them here. For example: Japan and Australia.
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@dianeravitch Do you have any evidence that any one of these specific changes will make a difference in school shooting death specifically?
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Look at the data on gun deaths in other countries that have such laws.
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The Republicans have made a big campaign issue of crime. They claim that Democrats are “soft on crime,” while they are “tough on crime.”
Don’t believe it. It’s a bald-faced lie!
Republicans oppose any legislation to limit access to guns. They vote against “red flag” laws, that seek to keep guns away from people who pose a danger to others. They oppose background checks. They oppose raising the minimum age for buying a gun from 18 to 21. They oppose laws that are commonplace in civilized nations.
The United States has the highest murder rate in the world. Could it be because we have so many guns and so few limits on guns?
Texas, for example, now allows anyone to carry a gun without a permit. Let that sink in: anyone can carry a gun without a permit.
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@dianeravitch
“The Republicans have made a big campaign issue of crime. They claim that Democrats are “soft on crime,” while they are “tough on crime.””
Perhaps it isn’t that republicans aren’t hard on crime, and that maybe you are conflating two separate issues…
Could it be that conservatives are aware that the leftist agenda is to ultimately abolish the 2nd amendment? So maybe conservatives (including republicans) are actually hard on crime but ALSO want to preserve their 2nd amendment rights? Are those too things mutually exclusive in your estimation?
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acjohnson1985 The Republicans voted for a hardened criminal who then became President, and they are “tough on crime”? If you were here in my house, you would be able to hear my head explode. CBK
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@Catherine Blanche King
“The Republicans voted for a hardened criminal”
🤣🤣🤣
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The Second Amendment explicitly refers to the need for a well-trained militia. It does not say anything about the individual’s “right” to own military-grade weapons.
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@dianeravitch
“The Second Amendment explicitly refers to the need for a well-trained militia. It does not say anything about the individual’s “right” to own military-grade weapons.”
This is a very misleading statement from you Diana…
The Supreme Court 2008 case District of Columbia v. Heller and 2010 case McDonald v. City of Chicago disagrees with you.
Court precedent matters more than your personal opinion.
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My “personal opinion” is based on a reading of the plain language of the Second Amendment.
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Everyone can own a musket? Why not? Should everyone have the right to an AR-15? Only the military and police.
Assault weapons were banned from 1994-2004. GW Bush did not renew the ban. The country was safer for 10 years.
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@dianeravitch
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Again this is your opinion, which is juxtaposed with court precedent that I already listed (2008 case District of Columbia v. Heller and 2010 case McDonald v. City of Chicago) that has upheld the reading that I am in alignment with (my opinion)…
Are you familiar with how court precedent works? I suggest you read those rulings if you want to get a deeper understanding and more objective reasoning on the 2nd amendment…
A militia IS the people BTW. Your argument is not helping you…
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A “militia” is not “the people.” I am part of the people. I am not part of a militia. I don’t own a gun.
Do you own a gun? How many guns do you own? Do you belong to the NRA? Do you support any form of gun control? Do you think gun owners should be licensed? Do you think the age for gun purchase should be 21? Do you think gun owners should be able to open carry?
As the current Supreme Court has shown, precedent is in the eye of the beholder. Roe v. Wade was a precedent until it wasn’t.
If the membership of the Supreme Court changes, if the American people get sick of sacrificing the lives of their children to the zealotry of the NRA, the Second Amendment may yet again be interpreted as it was written: to apply to a militia, not to every citizen, regardless of their age, sanity, or criminal history.
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Step 6: Confiscate by force the 400 million guns in the possession of Americans.
Step 6 is the tricky one.
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One through five would dramatically reduce gun deaths.
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Why go to the hardest step first, FLERP, unless you want to undermine any change at all?
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https://www.vox.com/2015/8/27/9212725/australia-buyback
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https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/16/us/chicago-gun-buybacks/index.html
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Diane, I’m all for the other five steps you list. Absolutely. I’m just saying I don’t think they will have a lot of impact on gun violence. Any marginal impact is good, though.
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FLERP, at the present time, the GOP will not enact any of those measures, 1-5. Instead, states like Texas and Florida have passed laws legalizing open carry of guns. Anyone can get one without a permit and openly carry it.
A couple of days ago, a write woman in Florida killed her next door neighbor, a black woman, who came to her door to ask her not to yell at her four children. The white woman claimed “stand your ground” defense for killing her neighbor.
We are a sick society.
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I think @FLERP! might be on to something… So essentially the abolition of the second amendment is what needs to be done to save the kids from school shootings?
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No one is calling for the confiscation of all guns, that is a right wing fear-mongering gambit. It’s impossible to have a sane or rational discussion about gun control with right wingers and the current GOP. The GOP won’t even go along with banning semi-automatic assault style guns/rifles. We can’t even agree on the terms since the GOP plays word games. Somehow this country managed to severely restrict the purchase and ownership of fully automatic guns or machine guns, so there is a slight glimmer of hope that we will do the same for the sale of semi-automatic rifles but I have my doubts with ghouls like Marjorie Taylor Green and Matt Gaetz.
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@Jersey Joe
“…so there is a slight glimmer of hope that we will do the same for the sale of semi-automatic rifles but I have my doubts…”
How do you feel about semi automatic pistols with 10 round cartridge capacity? Is that safe for all law abiding American’s to own in your opinion?
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Diane, the GOP is a garbage party. We know that. Or at least everyone reading your blog does.
But . . .
You say that your steps 1-5 would “dramatically reduce gun deaths” in the U.S. It’s not clear to me that it would. That’s a question for expert analysis.
The difficult question is, how do we get guns out of the hands of criminals?
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I have been trying to copy a graph from the World Bank that shows the gun death rate for many nations. I can’t copy it.
The U.S. has far, far more gun deaths than any other nation. So I posted it.
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ac-
Your piddling gun stash crafted from yesterday’s technology won’t protect you.
Next up- indiscriminate ownership of nuclear weapons (after they are scaled down for individual operation). The nuclear weapons industry-owned GOP politicians have the playbook to fit the weapons into the category of 2nd amendment- bearing arms rights. A wealthy libertarian can wipeout leftist voters. A right wing religious man like Robert P George can make cower those who believe that man’s law trumps the demands of God’s Judeo-Christian Bible.
Your fears are mindlessly narrow. Your very real nemesis is the profit-takers and authoritarians.
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@Linda
“Your piddling gun stash crafted from yesterday’s technology won’t protect you.”
ummm…
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ac
By “piddling,” I meant, for example, any amount less than what a Uihlein or Koch might want to acquire. You may recall that Trump said he could get away with killing someone on 5th Avenue. As president, he had at his disposal the weaponry of the US military.
Personalizing the statistics-
Three out of 5 gun deaths are suicides. Nine out of 10 firearm suicides are successful. Research shows White men are at high risk. In general, suicide is the 4th leading cause of death among 35-44 year olds and 5th among 45-54 year olds.
What I wrote in the 2nd paragraph applies to outcomes from public policy. IMO, adults should have the right/freedom to choose suicide. The pain it causes others tempers my opinion..
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Greg, the funny thing is that today — 25 years after Australia bought back 650,000 guns — there are more guns in Australia than ever before. More than 3 times as many as in 1997 — about 3.5 million legal, registered guns and a few hundred thousand unregistered “grey market” guns. So Australia apparently has nearly ten times as many guns as the U.S.
https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2021/04/28/new-gun-ownership-figures-revealed-25-years-on-from-port-arthur.html#:~:text=to%2025.5%20million.-,Australian%20civilians%20now%20own%20more%20than%203.5%20million%20registered%20firearms,grey%20market%E2%80%9D%20of%20undeclared%20weapons.
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oops, wrong spot.
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The death rate by gun per 100,000 people is:
0.18 in Australia
4.12 in the US
—World Bank
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Despite Australia having a order of magnitude more guns than the U.S.
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From that website that FLERP posted: Quote – The proportion of Australians who hold a gun licence has fallen by 48 percent since 1997.
The proportion of Australian households with a firearm has fallen by 75 percent in recent decades.
Data indicates that people who already own guns have bought more rather than an increase in new gun owners.
Australian civilians now own more than 3.5 million registered firearms, an average of four each. Private gun owners also hold an estimated 260,000 illegal firearms in the “grey market” of undeclared weapons.
“It’s clear that those who already own guns have bought more, while those who don’t own guns are becoming more numerous. Polling confirms this, with the proportion of Australian households with a firearm falling by 75 percent in recent decades.”
Australia’s firearm policy response instigated by the Port Arthur Massacre on 28 April 1996, remains an example of the significant impacts and possibilities of firearm injury prevention. END QUOTE
Looks like the Australian gun bans worked, Australia has far fewer gun massacres and gun deaths than previously.
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They may have worked in Australia, but I’m not aware of any evidence of gun buybacks making a dent in crime in the U.S.
And the main reason I cited that article was to respond to the suggestion that taking 400 million guns out of private hands in the U.S. was feasible. Australia got 650,000 out of private hands, which is not remotely comparable to 400 million. And the 650,000 Australia bought back represented only 20% of all the guns in Australia.
My overarching points:
Gun control laws make sense even if they don’t have dramatic impacts on gun violence.
Gun control laws probably will not have any dramatic impact on gun violence in the U.S. because (1) there are so many guns already in circulation, (2) it’s impractical to imagine the government buying back or seizing all those guns, and (3) the people who commit the most gun violence in the U.S. don’t give a crap about following gun laws.
Reducing gun violence in the U.S. may require a combination of policing and prosecution, on the one hand, and laws that at a minimum don’t eliminate penalties for possessing illegal guns. The way many states are going, one day there will be no such thing as an illegal gun.
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@ FLERP. Then control ammunition sales too. Guns last forever but we only have a three year supply of ammo.
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I think that was an old Chris Rock bit. Make bullets cost a million dollars per. Not worth wasting them on some stupid dispute.
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FLERP said: “So Australia apparently has nearly ten times as many guns as the U.S.” Huh?
From CNN, 6-2-22: There are more guns in the US than people.
There are about 393 million privately owned firearms in the US, according to an estimate by the Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey – or in other words, 120 guns for every 100 Americans. That’s the highest rate of any country in the world, and more than double the rate of the next country on the list.
A majority of those guns, however, are owned by a minority of people, studies show.
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yeah, my brain stopped working (moreso than usual) while I was typing that. what i should have said was that per capita gun ownership is about 4 times larger in australia than in the u.s.
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I think I misstated it again there. Should be that guns-per-capita are about 4 times larger in Australia than in the U.S.
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lol i screwed it up again. ok no more from me today trying to quantify gun ownership in Australia.
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As we all know FLERP! never has any reasonable points to make or arguments to illuminate or explain. He seems to be on a jag today. Topics are tailor made for his scary, fictional little world. But since he posted it, it’s interesting to read the three paragraphs IMMEDIATELY after the selective snippet (with zero context as usual) cited. The article he cited to prove his point does exactly the opposite:
“It’s clear that those who already own guns have bought more, while those who don’t own guns are becoming more numerous. Polling confirms this, with the proportion of Australian households with a firearm falling by 75 percent in recent decades.”
Australia’s firearm policy response instigated by the Port Arthur Massacre on 28 April 1996, remains an example of the significant impacts and possibilities of firearm injury prevention.
Global health and policy expert Professor Negin says: “Australia remains an exemplar of what committed public health action can achieve in terms of reducing firearm violence.”
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Look, it’s Greg Brozeit, the ginormous jackass who is incapable of having a disagreement without insulting someone!
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In Australia from 1997 to 2020, there was a dramatic decrease in the male suicide rate which appears to have coincided (may correlate; be a causal factor) with public policy about guns.
In the US, 3 out of 5 gun deaths are suicides.
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Linda, that may not bother Greg Brozeit, who as you recall, has encouraged me to kill myself on more than one occasion.
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Flerp!
You have a cool avatar, looks like a quilt. Want to trade?
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NEVER!
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FLERP
Your name is already all caps and has an explanation point. The red, pointy avatar has style consistency with your brand. : – ) Honestly, don’t you think you would be happier with an avatar that spoke of your position among the avant -garde?
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From my cold, dead hands!
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Quilt avatar guy-
Sign me up for your course that teaches the finer points in negotiation.
Off topic, do you think Trump is having trouble finding lawyers for the documents case?
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He’ll find someone (hasn’t he already?). It’s a high profile case and a fantastic resume line . . . . as long as you don’t end up going to jail. Which is one of the big reasons he’s had trouble finding counsel. He’s burned so many lawyers already. He’s the biggest pain in the ass of a client in history. I wouldn’t take the job — the stress would kill me.
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Qualifiers to his description as a pain in the ass are superfluous.
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Reported today- Todd Blanche has a problem with a client (not Trump).
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The amount of over sensationalism on this blog is saddening… I’ve asked every one of my questions to a LLM AI model this morning and none of them are hyper polarizing and tribal as virtually ALL of your responses… So sad… Diane you should consider taking a more objective approach to your reporting rather than encouraging tribalistic hive-mind in your followers.
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I don’t write “hyper polarizing or tribal responses” to anything. Please cite chapter and verse.
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@dianeravitch This whole article is written to be hyper polarizing. It’s tribal in its very nature… You actually believe those Winnie the Pooh illustrations is somehow a result of:
“DeSantis and Greg Abbott’s cruel indifference to other people.”?
or that “Guns are the leading cause of death for kids in America. Kids! ”
That is just flat out lying.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the leading cause of death for children in the United States is accidents, such as motor vehicle crashes, drowning, fires, and falls. In 2018, there were 6,178 deaths among children and adolescents aged 1 to 19 years old due to accidents. This accounted for 80% of all deaths in this age group.
The second leading cause of death for children in the US is congenital defects, such as heart defects and Down syndrome, which accounted for 6,074 deaths in 2018.
The third leading cause of death is cancer, which accounted for 5,507 deaths in 2018.
Source: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm
I get the same type of “run, hide, fight” propaganda at my last three (very liberal) employers… This type of teaching isn’t conservative in the least. This is a liberal way of thinking about how to deal with gun violence… If we were actually serious here we’d talk about other things than just firearm restrictions/regulations as somehow being all that is needed to solve gun violence in schools…
Not once have you mentioned here that the vast majority of gun violence in schools is connected to unaddressed mental health issues…
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Guns are the leading cause of death among children and young people.
That’s a fact!
Do you find facts hard to bear?
What kind of snowflake are you?
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ac,
The argument about mental health is a bit undermined when it’s uttered by a Republican. The GOP is against spending on social safety net types of line items in the budget.
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@Linda,
” The argument about mental health is a bit undermined when it’s uttered by a Republican. The GOP is against spending on social safety net types of line items in the budget.”
Respectfully, this is just a sad response. No cited source, nothing… Once again I have no idea what you are even referring too when you say “GOP is against spending on social safety net types of line items in the budget”
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ac,
I’m glad that you write at the blog. I have various options for learning views from the political right. However, your expression of the views seem better at eliciting good responses from various blog commenters.
In answer to your question, don’t Republicans pursue smaller government and lower taxes? Has the GOP ever advocated for shifting money from guns to butter (how economists characterize the decision about scarce resources?)
Btw- the CDC has updated (2020) its data. The changes were news…well….everywhere except inside the right wing echo chamber. The Kaiser Family Foundation used the most recent data for its post about Global Health Policy, “The US is the only country among its peers in which guns are the leading cause of death among children and teens.”
I attempt to review a lot of sources for info. I feel like I can take what Diane posts to the bank, as the idiom goes.
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@Linda
“Btw- the CDC has updated (2020) its data. The changes were news…well….everywhere except inside the right wing echo chamber. The Kaiser Family Foundation used the most recent data for its post about Global Health Policy, “The US is the only country among its peers in which guns are the leading cause of death among children and teens.””
Did you realize that study includes numbers from 18 and 19 year olds?
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmc2201761
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So 18 and 19 years olds don’t matter?
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@dianeravitch
“So 18 and 19 years olds don’t matter?”
You’re using whataboutism to deflect from the obvious reason I pointed out 18-19 year olds aren’t children and are used to inflate your convenient statistic to further the liberal narrative.
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@dianeravitch If you wanted to have a serious dialog you’d be willing to admit that guns ARE NOT the number 1 cause of death in children, BUT it is a very high reason, disturbingly high… Then we could at least carry the conversation further… but you aren’t willing to budge and would rather dogmatically adhere to “being right”… Wouldn’t it be better to agree that the data clearly can be manipulated using the tactic that was used here (over inflating the statistic universe)? The conversation of what could be the cause of the higher death rates in American children would be a lot more fruitful if an open mind could be had.
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AC, does it really matter whether guns are the #1 or #2 cause of death among children and teens?
How many children killed by gunfire is acceptable? I say none.
You didn’t answer any of my questions: do you belong to the NRA? How many guns do you own? Do you own an assault weapon?
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@Linda and @dianeravitch
You should try looking yourself:
https://wisqars.cdc.gov/data/lcd/home
Visit the CDC WISQARS database site -> click “I Agree” -> click the “Filter Data” big purple button on the right -> Change the date range years “From” (I chose 2018) “To” 2020 -> Change the “Age” filter to “Select a custom age range” -> Change the Age range drop downs to “From” 1 “To” 17 -> Click the blue “Apply Filters” button.
The top three leading causes of death according to the CDC in the USA ages 1 through 17 between the years of 2018 and 2020 are as follows:
Unintentional Injury
12,632
Suicide
5,159
Homicide
4,489
Even if you assume that ALL child suicide and homicide is caused by firearms the total still wouldn’t make it number 1. It might make it number 2, but again you’d have to drill much further into the actual underlying causes of child suicide and homicide to even begin to promote it as gospel truth…
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Here is news for you, AC.
Firearms are the Leading Cause of Death for Children in the United States But Rank No Higher Than Fifth in Other Industrialized Nations
Firearms are now the number one cause of death for children in the United States, but rank no higher than fifth in 11 other large and wealthy countries, a new KFF analysis finds.
Guns – including accidental deaths, suicides, and homicides – killed 4,357 children (ages 1-19 years old) in the United States in 2020, or roughly 5.6 per 100,000 children.
In each of the peer countries, guns kill fewer children than motor vehicles, cancer, congenital diseases, and other injuries, and often behind other conditions such as heart disease.
The U.S. is the only country among its peers that has seen a substantial increase in the rate of child firearm deaths in the last two decades (42%). All comparably large and wealthy countries have seen child firearm deaths fall since 2000. These peer nations had an average child firearm death rate of 0.5 per 100,000 children in the year 2000, falling 56% to 0.3 per 100,000 children in 2019.
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@dianeravitch
“Guns – including accidental deaths, suicides, and homicides – killed 4,357 children (ages 1-19 years old) in the United States in 2020, or roughly 5.6 per 100,000 children.”
You consider 18 and 19 year-olds to be children? If I exclude 18 and 19 year-olds is it still the first cause of children mortality?
This type of statistic is so disingenuous because the numbers they are using from the CDC are for “suicide” and “homicide”…
What is the percentage of children suicides in the United States that use something other than a gun? Serious question, I have no idea what the answer is. Also same question for homicides.
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ac,
Re: 4:15 reply –
I don’t always bring my “A” game answers, either. Next time?
Btw- I liked your fun quip, “Respectfully,…”
I didn’t foresee the, “sad response,” assessment that was going to accompany it. Regards.
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AC is correct about the leading cause of deaths among the age group we commonly consider to be “children.”
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Quibbling about 18-19 year olds (58% still live with their parents and by law they can remain on their parents’ insurance) seems like a point without a purpose.
We can all agree that, in most circumstances, lives shouldn’t be cut short by guns. There are public attempts to protect children and teens from accidental deaths like drowning, lightning strikes, prohibitions against their employment in dangerous work, etc.
Is anyone going to review the statistics about those under 20 in the US who die as a result of firearms and say the answer is to do nothing? How, in good conscience, can any of us accept conservatives’ outrage at a teen reading Lady Chatterly’s Lover, but tell ourselves there’s nothing we can do when AK 47’s mow down children and teens?
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I listened to an interview of David Hogg, Parkland Shooting survivor. His understanding of the depth of the gun issue is breath taking. I took my son to the March for Our Lives protest in DC and the most profound part of that experience was seeing how privileged students in AP classes were learning the burden faced by urban black students in violent neighborhoods and acting on it. In his interview, Hogg acknowledges that our gun problem is not only access to weapons, but the helplessness that comes from poverty. Our society has always struggled with the consequences of being underprivileged, but coupling that with access to deadly weaponry has become catastrophic. As with the public schools, we will not make meaningful progress with gun violence until we confront poverty. I am not talking about so called hand-outs, but infrastructure. As a principal managing a pre-k-5 program in a high poverty school it was very apparent to me that wrap-around services for young families, around employment, child care, health care etc., is critical to reduce the desperate nature that perpetuates violence. Add to this the profound loneliness so well documented in America today and we are preparing a powder keg that is so evident today. I really like the fact that Governor Newsom is willing to confront the political abusers who are so willing to light this fire of violence for their own ends. It’s time for others, Democrat, Republican, or Independent, to join him and understand that reversing course requires broad based support of local communities to overcome much of the hopelessness felt by too many in the richest country in the world.
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