Page 12
December 4, 2019
O PINION
More Truths About Guns in America
Common sense gun
safety laws work
m arian w right e delman
On Nov. 6, 17-year-old
Da’Qwan Jones-Morris, a for-
mer Children’s Defense Fund
Freedom Schools scholar from
St. Paul, Minn., was killed when
he was accidentally shot in the
chest by a 15-year-old friend playing with
a stolen gun in our gun saturated nation.
Da’Qwan and a group of friends were
playing video games after school when the
boy who had stolen the gun a few days ear-
lier pulled it out of his bag to show it to
the 15-year-old, who fired it without realiz-
ing it was loaded. Da’Qwan, a high school
senior, was the co-captain of his football
team and excited about applying to college.
His mother said she always sought out pos-
itive opportunities like the CDF Freedom
Schools program, sports, and the church
choir to keep her son busy—but she still
couldn’t keep him safe.
When will parents be able to protect
their children from guns? CDF’s Protect
Children Not Guns 2019 report sets the re-
cord straight about critical truths you need
to know about gun regulations, gun laws,
and the gun industry in America to fight the
scourge of gun violence in our nation that
takes 3,410 child lives a year—one every 2
hours and 34 minutes.
It is outrageous and irresponsible that
the only unregulated consumer product in
America is one that takes the lives of nine
children and teens a day and injures anoth-
er 50.
The Consumer Product Safety Com-
mission can regulate teddy bears and toy
by
guns but not real guns. A 1976 amendment
to the Consumer Product Safety Act spe-
cifically states that the Commission “shall
make no ruling or order that restricts the
manufacture or sale of guns, guns
ammunition, or components of
guns ammunition, including black
powder or gunpowder for guns.”
This disgraceful restriction remains
in effect today.
The gun industry has been
granted broad immunity from lia-
bility lawsuits, preventing consumers from
holding negligent gun manufacturers and
dealers accountable for irresponsible be-
not cover private sales at gun shows, sales
over the internet, and between individ-
uals. These hugely dangerous loopholes
allow people unable to pass a background
check—including those convicted of vio-
lent crimes and domestic abuse—to easily
obtain a gun.
But common sense gun safety laws work
and have effectively reduced gun violence
without preventing law abiding citizens
from owning guns.
A study with data from 54 U.S. cities
found diverting guns to criminals is much
less common in states that license retail gun
sellers; require careful record keeping that
Federal law requires anyone purchasing a
gun from a federally licensed dealer to complete
a background check but does not cover private
sales at gun shows, sales over the internet, and
between individuals.
havior unlike every other major industry.
The Protection of Lawful Commerce in
Arms Act —passed by Congress in 2005
with pressure from the NRA—grants gun
manufacturers and dealers broad immunity
from federal and state liability lawsuits. No
other industry enjoys such blanket immu-
nity. Given these special protections, gun
manufacturers and dealers face virtually no
penalties for failing to make guns safer or
preventing their guns from getting into the
wrong hands.
Virtually anyone can buy a gun with-
out a background check under current law.
Federal law requires anyone purchasing
a gun from a federally licensed dealer to
complete a background check but does
can be reviewed by law enforcement; re-
quire potential buyers to apply for a license
directly with a law enforcement agency; and
conduct regular compliance inspections.
Requiring background checks for pur-
chases through licensed and private sellers
prevents guns from getting into the wrong
hands. More than 3 million firearm purchase
applications have been denied since the
1994 Brady Law, which instituted a feder-
al background check requirement for sales
through licensed dealers. Evidence from
California suggests extending background
checks to cover not only licensed but private
sellers substantially decreases illegal straw
sales in which a purchaser buys a gun for a
person who isn’t eligible to buy it.
Firearm prohibitions for high-risk
groups reduce the risk of violent crime. A
California study suggests denying handgun
purchases to people who have committed
violent misdemeanors is associated with a
decreased risk of arrest for new gun and/or
violent crimes.
Child access prevention laws save lives.
Studies of child access prevention laws re-
quiring gun owners to store guns so chil-
dren and teens can’t access them unsuper-
vised have found they reduce accidental
child shootings as much as 23 percent and
adolescent suicides 8 percent.
Well-designed assault weapons bans
reduce homicides, suicides and mass
shootings. An Australian law banning and
buying back assault weapons—including
semi-automatic rifles, pump-action rifles
and shotguns—was associated with lower
homicide and suicide rates. No mass shoot-
ings occurred in the decade following the
law’s enactment compared with 11 in the
decade before.
The majority of American voters, in-
cluding gun owners, support common
sense gun safety regulations. As of Au-
gust 2019, 60 percent of voters supported
stricter gun laws and 93 percent of voters
and gun owners supported universal back-
ground checks. Three in five voters (60
percent) favored a nationwide ban on as-
sault weapon sales and about 3 in 4 Ameri-
can voters (72 percent) said Congress must
do more to reduce gun violence.
The American people want change. Our
children are crying for it. Please make sure
your lawmakers know and act on the truth
about guns.
Marian Wright Edelman is founder and
president emerita of the Children’s Defense
Fund.
America’s Racial Wealth Divide is Shocking
Inequality
holding down
entire country
d edriCk a sante -m uhammad
Americans are more
aware than ever that
America has a race prob-
lem — and, more spe-
cifically, a racial wealth
divide problem. As re-
searchers from the In-
stitute for Policy Studies
and I found earlier this
year, median white families are 41
times wealthier than median black
families in the United States.
As our country becomes more
diverse, this shocking racial
wealth divide is no longer a chal-
lenge for disenfranchised minori-
ties alone. It’s a threat to the entire
American middle class.
by
Let me show you how.
Since the early 1980s, median
wealth among black and Latino
families has been stuck at less
than $10,000, while median white
wealth has grown to $140,000.
Yet in spite of this growing white
wealth, this huge divide
means that national me-
dian wealth has actually
declined.
The racial wealth di-
vide, in short, is weak-
ening our country as a
whole.
Contributing to this
divide is ongoing racial inequali-
ty in the two largest assets in most
Americans’ portfolios: business
ownership and homeownership.
For the last 40 years, black and
Latino homeownership rates have
stayed below 50 percent, while
white homeownership has re-
mained steady at about 70 percent.
And although 13 percent of
the U.S. population is black, only
2 percent of U.S. businesses em-
ploying more than one person are
black-owned. Hispanics are 17
percent of the population but own
just 6 percent of these businesses.
How do we fix this? By making
smart investments.
The white middle class was
built by major investments pro-
moting education and homeown-
ership, among other things, after
World War II. But African Amer-
icans, Latinos, and Native Amer-
icans were almost entirely left
out of these programs. Now these
groups deserve significant invest-
ments of their own.
What could that mean, exact-
ly? This year, my colleagues and
I presented several options in an-
other report called Ten Solutions
to Bridge the Racial Wealth Di-
vide.
One of our ideas is to create
Baby Bonds — that is, govern-
ment-seeded investment accounts
— for every child born in this
country. Sen. Cory Booker offered
a similar proposal in a 2018 bill
called the American Opportunity
Accounts Act.
We also call for significant in-
vestments in affordable housing
and homeownership. Sen. Eliza-
beth Warren’s American Housing
and Economic Mobility Act and
Sen. Bernie Sander’s “Housing
for All” plan would both be a good
start.
We also believe that Congress
should finally establish a commis-
sion to study reparations, and that
all government agencies should
improve their data collection on
race and wealth.
For another thing, we could
start enforcing laws already on the
books.
My organization, the National
Community Reinvestment Coali-
tion, advocates requiring the Con-
sumer Finance Protection Bureau
to collect and disclose better data
on loans made to minority, wom-
en-owned, and small businesses.
Under the Dodd-Frank Act, it’s
already supposed to do that.
For centuries, America has
turned its back on struggling fam-
ilies of color. This year, it’s time
we turned our back on the racial
wealth divide. We need stronger
data, better monitoring, and bold
policy proposals across the board.
The data is right there: By
bridging the racial wealth divide,
we can reduce the economic in-
equality that’s holding down our
entire country.
Dedrick
Asante-Muhammad
is the chief of Race, Wealth and
Community at the National Com-
munity Reinvestment Coalition.