Women and Children Last

If you’re a taxpayer you need to understand the toll the NRA takes on you.

They are literally the force most responsible for tearing this nation apart. Most gun owners don’t even belong to the NRA. Most gun owners aren’t hunters. And most gun owners favor both stricter criminal background checks and stricter laws governing registration and training. The NRA favors none of this. Why? Because the NRA isn’t an advocacy organization for sportsmen and women, it’s an advocacy organization for gunmakers. And gunmakers? They’re a tiny industry. The market cap of all gunmakers in this nation combined is less than $11 billion. In context, Apple’s market cap is $903 billion. Why make the comparison? If Apple spent anywhere near as much on lobbying as the NRA spends lining the pockets of members of Congress, its shareholders would riot. For gunmakers, however, the Second Amendment has become critical to staying in business. And make no mistake, that business is shrinking. Gun owners are older, whiter, and more male. Like the Republican party itself, that demography spells doom for the NRA.

And so does the fact that if you’re a female gun owner in this country, and a Republican, a November Pew Research study found that you’re far more likely to favor restricting access to assault weapons:

About six-in-ten Republican and Republican-leaning women who own guns say they would favor banning assault-style weapons (60%) and creating a federal government database to track all gun sales (57%).

In other words, the NRA not only doesn’t speak for all Americans, even in more rural Americans in districts like our own, they don’t even speak for the majority of gun owners, let alone the majority of what is an increasingly diverse, more female, more culturally diverse nation that, yes, includes many law-abiding gun owners. But there’s a danger in this discussion, and that’s the idea that by simply being an upstanding gun owner rather than one who’s presumably mentally unstable shields you from the dangers of gun ownership.

This simply isn’t true.

Guns are far more likely to be used as a threat against women in abusive relationships, and guns are especially deadly to children. According to the American Association of Pediatrics, “The overall rate of firearm-related deaths for US children younger than 15 years of age is nearly 12 times greater than that found for 25 other industrialized countries, and the rate of firearm-related homicide is nearly 16 times higher than that in all the other countries combined.” And a New York Times study found that adolescent and pre-adolsecent boys are especially at risk of accidentally killing themselves with a gun. And if there’s a gun in your house somebody in that house is far more likely to die of suicide than if there’s no gun.

Here’s the link back to state politicians: Guns cost us, every single one of us.

It’s not just that an accidental death or suicide by a firearm, violence that is far more likely than a mass shooting, would be devastating to a family. This is certainly true. But it’s also true that we are all paying the literal cost of too many firearms, and the millions of dollars we must spend on lockdown drills, false alarms, extra police, extra security, extra surveillance.

More guns aren’t making us free. They’re making us slaves to a system that requires more and more effort to protect ourselves from ourselves.

And the cost is both social and literal. At an anti-gun rally at SUNY New Paltz this past week, that was part of the March 14 national walkout, a woman stood up to talk about how her five-year-old son in elementary school in Highland has to take part in weekly lockdown drills. She wondered aloud about what lessons we’re teaching our children when this is how we devalue them — how we put owning guns ahead of prizing human life.

If you’re crass enough to think about such things, consider the cost of paying politicians with NRA money—and how imbalanced that cost is against what we all pay for the deaths and injuries caused by guns.

A 2013 Urban Institute study found that the annual cost of medical treatment for the 36,000 victims of firearms assaults who went to the emergency room was $630 million. They go on to say that, “As a comparison point, total Medicaid expenditure for the single state of Wyoming in 2010 was just $534 million.” Guess who pays for this treatment? According to the study, the vast majority of coverage for gun injuries and deaths comes from taxpayer funds, because the vast majority of victims are on Medicaid or are uninsured. That same study noted that gun violence in a community has a severe impact on economic growth, literally devaluing property, and a Realtor.com study found even having a gun range near your home can drag down property values as well.

Who benefits from the NRA’s largesse, besides the gunmakers? Your local legislator, of course. Thanks to the work of Carla Nordstrom for Seeds of Democracy, we’ve learned just how many of our state legislators are on the NRA’s dole:

Rep. Faso is not the only elected official in the 19th CD who was endorsed by the NRA. All of the state senators in our CD were endorsed by the NRA:

2016 Candidate NRA ratings and endorsements
NY Senate District 39 Bill Larkin A rating and NRA endorsement
NY Senate District 40 Terrance Murphy 93% rating and NRA endorsement
NY Senate District 41 Sue Serino 93% rating and NRA endorsement
NY Senate District 42 Kathy Marchione A+ rating and NRA endorsement
NY Senate District 42 John Bonacic A rating and NRA endorsement
NY Senate District 46 George Amedore A+ rating and NRA endorsement
NY Senate District 51 James Seward A+ rating and NRA endorsement
NY Senate District 52 Frederick Akshar 93% rating and NRA endorsement
2018 is an election year for the New York State Senate.

If you feel strongly about doing something about the gun situation you need to help find candidates to put NRA endorsed candidates out of office. This year I’m a one issue voter and that issue is stopping gun violence.

And while Governor Cuomo this week called on school officials not to penalize students who walk out to protest gun violence, what you can do is to call Cuomo (1-518-474-8390) and tell him to also use his voice against members of the legislature who take money from the NRA. Cuomo has used tough talk against the NRA. But he’s used zero political capital in past fights against state politicians who take NRA money. Yes, he’s called for the ouster of NY State representatives to Congress, but let’s be clear: The governor works with the Senate and the Assembly. His cozy relationship with both allows him to call the shots, a situation he likes.

If our Governor actually believes over 30,000 deaths a year are unacceptable, and having our children live in fear is unacceptable, he needs to work to change Albany. Our society is literally held hostage by one terrorist lobbying organization. We have to have an open discussion about the kind of world we want for our children and ourselves. And we have to make it clear we’re not just dumping John Faso, but any representative who treats human life so cheap. Our representatives work for us, not the NRA, and we have to make it clear that we’re sick of them voting for a minority industry that’s costing us billions, and tens of thousands of lives every year.

Contributed by the IndivisibleNY19 Team