Gun Violence

By Christopher Wiggins

As the nation observes the sixth annual National Gun Violence Survivors Week, stories of survivors echo a poignant reminder of the ongoing crisis in America. National Gun Violence Survivors Week not only highlights personal stories but also casts a spotlight on the broader impact of gun violence in America. According to Everytown for Gun Safety, an average yeOar witnesses over 25,000 hate crimes in the U.S. involving a firearm.

The week also brings to the fore the disproportionate effect of gun violence on the LGBTQ+ community. Amid the backdrop of numerous homicides of transgender people and increasing firearm-related hate crimes and gun suicides, gun violence survivors like Sara Grossman and Vincent Perez share their harrowing journeys of loss, resilience, and advocacy.

“These numbers are harrowing — in no other country in this world do we experience the kind of carnage that we do in America via gun violence,” Grossman tells The Advocate.

Grossman, a Denver-based Moms Demand Action volunteer and senior fellow with the Everytown Survivor Network in Colorado, carries the weight of her friend Drew Leinonen’s death in the Pulse nightclub shooting. Leinonen was one of 49 people killed in the 2016 shooting, and 53 more people who were injured survived. Transforming grief into purpose, she and other friends of Leinonen founded The Dru Project in his honor, creating safe spaces for the LGBTQ+ community.

“I had to really sit and think about what meaning I can return to the world in his honor,” Grossman says.

In Oregon, Perez, who lives in Portland and is also a volunteer and senior fellow with Everytown, faced a life-altering tragedy when his partner, Shane Colombo, fell victim to gun violence.

In 2018, then in Chicago, Colombo, a 25-year-old who had beaten cancer as a teenager, was shot and killed by a stray bullet in the Rogers Park neighborhood just four hours after arriving in the city to start his Ph.D. in clinical psychology at Northwestern University. He was caught in the crossfire of a gun battle while running an errand to buy clothes hangers. Colombo chose Chicago to be with his Perez.

“It’s such a multifaceted mind fudge that people just don’t understand,” he says of the trauma of losing Colombo to such violence. Perez now channels his loss into advocacy, emphasizing the importance of mental health and equitable resources in gun law reforms.

As National Gun Violence Survivors Week concludes, the insights shared by Grossman and Perez underscore the larger narrative surrounding gun violence in the LGBTQ+ community, as illuminated by a 2022 Everytown report.

The report revealed that over 25,000 hate crimes involving a firearm occur annually in the U.S., disproportionately affecting queer individuals. LGBTQ+ youth face a significantly higher risk of experiencing weapon-involved bias-motivated violence compared to their non-LGBTQ+ peers. The alarming data, supplemented by research from the Human Rights Campaign, indicated that 17 percent of LGBTQ+ youth had been threatened or harmed with a weapon at school, a figure that rises to 29 percent among trans youth and 30 percent among questioning youth.

Everytown for Gun Safety’s research shows there's been a 93 percent increase in homicides of transgender people from 2017 to 2021. More than 70 percent involved a gun. It's alarming and underscores the specific vulnerabilities faced by the transgender community, particularly Black transgender women. This is part of a broader epidemic of gun violence affecting various segments of the population.

Speaking from his own experience and research, Perez highlights the grim reality this community faces. “There are over 25,000 hate crimes that involve a firearm in the U.S. in general and 69 per day,” he says. He draws particular attention to the specific risks faced by LGBTQ+ individuals. His advocacy work, rooted in his loss, aims to bring about legislative changes that protect not just the LGBTQ+ community but all Americans from wh

at he calls the “scourge of gun violence.”

According to a Pew Research Center analysis from last April, the United States saw the highest number of gun-related deaths in 2021 than any other year on record. This figure included record numbers of both gun murders and gun suicides, emphasizing that the crisis of gun violence is not confined to any single community. In 2021, 54 percent of all gun-related deaths were suicides, while 43 percent were murders, according to the report.

A December report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found a stark and alarming trend: the rate of suicides involving guns in the United States has reached the highest level since record-keeping began over 50 years ago.

In 2022, the rate increased by over 10 percent compared to 2019, with significant disparities among racial and ethnic groups. This increase in firearm suicides coincides with a rise in gun sales during the pandemic, suggesting a correlation between the availability of firearms and an increase in suicide rates, according to the report. The Trevor Project’s 2022 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health paints a grim picture of the mental health challenges faced by LGBTQ+ youth, with 45 percent seriously considering suicide. The need for affirming environments is critical, as positive school and home atmospheres have been shown to reduce suicide attempts among LGBTQ+ youth.

The role of misinformation and media literacy in the conversation about gun violence is another crucial aspect, survivors say. Grossman, who has a background in digital communications, emphasizes the need for disseminating accurate information.

“We live in two different worlds right now. A lot of people are really out there just looking for anger-tainment,” she says.

Human Rights Campaign's national press secretary Brandon Wolf, who survived the Pulse shooting, wrote about the loss of his friend Leinonen — the same friend whose killing inspired Grossman's work — in his memoirA Place for Us.

In a statement to The Advocate, Wolf said, “Hate is dangerous; armed hate is deadly. America's gun violence epidemic alongside rising anti-LGBTQ+ violence has devastating impacts on our community – empty seats at dinner tables, missing faces at birthday parties, and the scars of trauma that linger long past the shots that are fired.”

He added: “Whether it was the horrific assault on Pulse nightclub in 2016, the devastating attack at Club Q in 2022, or the ongoing violence being inflicted on LGBTQ+ people across the country, the fight to end gun violence is our fight. This Gun Violence Survivors Week, let's deepen our commitment to that work – and the work of honoring those devastated by it with action.”

For Grossman, her work with The Dru Project and involvement in Everytown have been lifelines, she says, offering a platform to advocate but also networks of support.

“The survivor group that I joined to become a fellow, some of those people are my closest friends,” she says, stressing the importance of community in healing.

Although Perez is now in a happy and loving relationship, the loss of Colombo will always stay with him, he says. He honors the loss through his involvement as an involuntary member of those touched by gun violence who have been brought into activism.

As National Gun Violence Survivors Week comes to a close, the stories of Grossman and Perez, among many others, continue to resonate. Their voices memorialize those lost and serve as a catalyst for change, demanding action from policymakers and the public to address this critical issue.

“It’s going to always sit with me,” Grossman says.

If you are having thoughts of suicide or are concerned that someone you know may be, resources are available to help. The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 is for people of all ages and identities. Trans Lifeline, designed for transgender or gender-nonconforming people, can be reached at (877) 565-8860. The lifeline also provides resources to help with other crises, such as domestic violence situations. The Trevor Project Lifeline, for LGBTQ+ youth (ages 24 and younger), can be reached at (866) 488-7386. Users can also access chat services at TheTrevorProject.org/Help or text START to 678678

The Age Of Insurrection

“As far as I’m concerned, I’m done with this,” investigative reporter David Neiwert told us, followed by a tremendous sigh, as if setting down an enormous weight that someone else would be obliged to pick up. “Next, I’m writing a book about whales.”

We were at the International Conference on Hate Studies,1 a biennial gathering of scholars, researchers, journalists, and fellow travelers who spend our time tracking fascists. There to speak on understanding and countering hate in the Northwest, Neiwert was a veteran in this crowd: his three decades of reporting on the Far Right includes several books on the subject, making him one of the beat’s key journalists.

In hand Neiwert had a preview copy of his latest book. His longest to date at over 500 pages, The Age of Insurrection: The Radical Right’s Assault on American Democracy 2 is the result of a career spent dredging the swamp of the American Far Right—and with it, nights attending militia meetings, days muddling through White nationalist demonstrations, and countless hours scouring fascist message boards. Through these efforts, Neiwert has built the most incisive, compelling, and accurate look at the Trump movement’s fringes through the former President’s rise and controversial final months.

I had first met Neiwert when he was promoting his 2017 book, Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump,3 a definitive chronicle of the rise of the Patriot, Alt Right, and MAGA movements that led to Trump’s election. Neiwert’s reporting had a unique quality: no matter how established he was in covering this world, he always found something new, injected a fresh perspective into the coverage, and explained to readers why it mattered to their daily lives.

Neiwert’s new opus, The Age of Insurrection, continues in this vein, leading the reader through a complicated and multitudinous world of conspiracy grifters, armed insurgents, and online cultists. The book has a certain breathlessness to it. Covering one of the narrowest time frames in Neiwert’s canon, the book strings together a narrative so overwhelming, with such a broad cast of characters, that it’s surprising he was able to capture it in as few pages as he did. 

From the opening page, Neiwert’s prose feels like a gunshot: The Age of Insurrection starts with the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and never truly leaves it behind. Instead, Neiwert focuses on the years and months leading to January 6. He places the insurrection in context by weaving together chapters on groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, the QAnon movement and the online conspiracy world, White nationalism during and after the Alt Right, and, especially, the worldview that these groups have tried to construct from a hodgepodge of rumors, half-truths, and bold-faced lies. The book is rich in detail and delivered through classic nonfiction storytelling, a craft Neiwert has honed for many years. He first tracked this story as a newspaper reporter in Idaho chasing violent militants at Aryan Nations, then across the country at the Southern Poverty Law Center, and more recently, while reporting for Daily Kos. The Age of Insurrection is the culmination of his feverish journalistic coverage of the Far Right’s activities during Trump’s presidency. 

The book is broken down by activist type and time period, taking readers through the various stages that mobilized subgroups of America’s Far Right: Trumpism’s turn to seditious conspiracy, followed by QAnon’s break with reality, and the return of this unhinged style of politics into the mainstream electoral realm. In doing so, Neiwert examines how the insurrection, which is often discussed in isolation as a singular, if catastrophic event, was actually the culmination of hundreds of smaller insurrections. As Neiwert observes in the book’s “postscript,” the Far Right isn’t just preparing for war, they are already “at war.”4 The final third of the book focuses on this culture of insurrection, as cultivated by the Trump years, and its result on January 6, 2021. Neiwert’s detailed reporting drills home the significance of the violence the U.S. has collectively endured and can leave a reader feeling brutalized: it’s been a hard few years for many—especially marginalized communities facing far-right violence, such as homes with trans children and activists fighting police brutality. But the author never fails to remind us that people put up a fight. Everyday community members refused to accept this slow-moving coup, acting in ways big and small throughout. The “age of insurrection” was also an age of resistance. It still is. 

Rather than provide an encyclopedia, Neiwert zooms in on a few subjects and regions to share his vantage point with readers. The Pacific Northwest—particularly, Oregon and Washington, where he resides—is central to Neiwert’s account of organized violence on the Far Right. A quick look at the region’s past and present illustrates why this focus is warranted. As a center of the Klan in the 1920s and neonazi skinheads in the 1980s, and where Anti-Racist Action and antifa came into their own, the Pacific Northwest is where activists continue to face off in the streets over which political vision will prosper. The region’s growing rural Patriot movement and far-right backlash to “blue state” values has also generated a vanguard of militant antifascist resistance. Neiwert’s attention turns here to increasing clashes between Proud Boys and other far-right groups and antifascists. Amid tear gas fog and street fights at these confrontations, Neiwert and I shuffled between these groups, fending off angry “patriots” asking if we were “antifa,” and watching as police turned their attention on the antifascist crowd. Age of Insurrection captures the heat and paranoia in the air at those events, which have wafted into the suburbs and exurbs and become the country’s general tenor.

Like his books Alt-America and Red Pill, Blue Pill 5, Neiwert discusses how conspiracy theories and misinformation have enabled these movements to capture the political imaginations of those they hope to recruit. Antifa conspiracy theories are a mainstay of this process of recasting social progress as being piloted by covert malevolence. Neiwert chronicles how a small radical movement became the outsized boogeyman that justified some of the Far Right’s worst excesses in streets and statehouses across the country. Far-right radicals and Patriot stalwarts live in a different world than the rest of us, seeing around every corner “communist subversion” and “queer perversions” that threaten to erode the stable lives they and many other working-class conservatives believed they were promised. In such a heightened state of fear, anything becomes possible, including violence as a seemingly pure, restorative act—thus wiping away the possibility of a “peaceful transfer of power” that supposedly defined the American experiment.

Early in Trump’s presidency, in 2017, I heard Neiwert say to a crowd, “I’m not ready to give up on America.”6 He spoke with a kind of optimism then. Readers of his latest treatise might wonder which part of that America is left, whether its democratic values are reclaimable, or if it was always an illusion. The last eight years have shattered any collective belief of forward momentum built into this country’s DNA, whether from the failure to stop a careening Far Right, our inaction on climate change, the Black Lives Matter movement’s magnifying glass on structural and institutional racism, or the January 6 insurrection’s frightening image of our future.

The Age of Insurrection ends suddenly, which makes sense. We started at the conclusion, which became our lens for the entire journey: we know we will end with the doors to the Capitol bursting open and an occupation afoot. As the Trump administration came to an end, Trumpism went into overdrive. The January 6 insurrection was not a capstone to Trump’s reign, but a manifesto of resistance for what came next: an extralegal assault on U.S. democracy from opponents who deem fraudulent its political legacy. We are now living in the book’s aforementioned Age of Insurrection, and the years discussed in the book are simply a prelude. While Neiwert analyzes their impact, he also catalogues them in a narrative framework, acting as our memory by documenting stories that would be unbelievable if they weren’t set on the page. In a certain sense, the book doesn’t end as much as it leaves us in the present, an unwritten sequel that continues the same terrible story we have experienced. 

As Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci wrote from an Italian prison, a revolutionary change in society requires a shift in values, identity, and sense of reality from the masses who would have to enact such a revolution.7 While the violence of January 6 may seem like the real threat to America, it was ancillary developments, conspiracy theories, disaffection, and the breakdown of civil relationships and family bonds that made up the bulk of Neiwert’s horror as he watched the values that he treasured in America crumble. Age of Insurrection plows through all this at a breakneck pace. The book’s concluding abruptness may be its most profound commentary: nothing has ended.

This continuing violence brings us back to the conference. Neiwert’s sense of exhaustion was not new, nor was it uncommon among our peers. In regular meetups over the past ten years, we’ve shared recent scoops, imperiled projects, and “war stories” about this work and its personal cost. But as years went by, and as Trump’s ascent changed the political landscape, fatigue set in. We are tired. Dave’s not the only one.

At post-conference drinks, some of us shared hopeful stories about communities we had been traveling in: mutual aid projects during the pandemic, growing progressive religious groups, the labor movement’s return. Dave smiled wistfully, drinking quietly. 

“I appreciate your optimism, but I’m not sure I share it,” he told me as we called it a night. “It’s not necessarily that I think the Right is going to win in the end. It’s just that a lot of people might die along the way.”

This review from the Fall 2023/Winter 2024 issue of The Public Eye is republished with the permission of Political Research Associates, Religion Dispatches’ parent organization. -Religion Dispatch

Endnotes

1 The conference is hosted by Gonzaga University’s Center for the Study of Hate. 

2 David Neiwert, The Age of Insurrection: The Radical Right’s Assault on American Democracy (Brooklyn: Melville House, 2023).  

3 Neiwert, Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump (London: Verso, 2017).

4 Neiwert, The Age of Insurrection, 450. 

5 Shane Burley, “Conspiracy Theories Are Killing Us — and Trump’s Departure Hasn’t Ended Them,” Truthout, March 14, 2021, https://truthout.org/articles/conspiracy-theories-are-killing-us-and-trumps-departure-hasnt-ended-them/. 

6 David Neiwert, talk at Powell’s City of Books, November 5, 2017. 

7 Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks (New York City: Columbia University Press), 2011

How America Changed

By Michael Dimock And John Gramlich

Donald Trump stunned the political world in 2016 when he became the first person without government or military experience ever to be elected president of the United States. His four-year tenure in the White House revealed extraordinary fissures in American society but left little doubt that he is a figure unlike any other in the nation’s history.

Trump, the New York businessman and former reality TV show star, won the 2016 election after a campaign that defied norms and commanded public attention from the moment it began. His approach to governing was equally unconventional.

Other presidents tried to unify the nation after turning from the campaign trail to the White House. From his first days in Washington to his last, Trump seemed to revel in the political fight. He used his presidential megaphone to criticize a long list of perceived adversaries, from the news media to members of his own administration, elected officials in both political parties and foreign heads of state. The more than 26,000 tweets he sent as president provided an unvarnished, real-time account of his thinking on a broad spectrum of issues and eventually proved so provocative that Twitter permanently banned him from its platform. In his final days in office, Trump became the first president ever to be impeached twice – the second time for inciting an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol during the certification of the election he lost – and the nation’s first chief executive in more than 150 years to refuse to attend his successor’s inauguration.

Trump’s policy record included major changes at home and abroad. He achieved a string of long-sought conservative victories domestically, including the biggest corporate tax cuts on record, the elimination of scores of environmental regulations and a reshaping of the federal judiciary. In the international arena, he imposed tough new immigration restrictions, withdrew from several multilateral agreements, forged closer ties with Israel and launched a tit-for-tat trade dispute with China as part of a wider effort to address what he saw as glaring imbalances in America’s economic relationship with other countries. 

Many questions about Trump’s legacy and his role in the nation’s political future will take time to answer. But some takeaways from his presidency are already clear from Pew Research Center’s studies in recent years. In this essay, we take a closer look at a few of the key societal shifts that accelerated – or emerged for the first time – during the tenure of the 45th president.

Deeply partisan and personal divides

Trump’s status as a political outsider, his outspoken nature and his willingness to upend past customs and expectations of presidential behavior made him a constant focus of public attention, as well as a source of deep partisan divisions.

Even before he took office, Trump divided Republicans and Democrats more than any incoming chief executive in the prior three decades.1 The gap only grew more pronounced after he became president. An average of 86% of Republicans approved of Trump’s handling of the job over the course of his tenure, compared with an average of just 6% of Democrats – the widest partisan gap in approval for any president in the modern era of polling.2 Trump’s overall approval rating never exceeded 50% and fell to a low of just 29% in his final weeks in office, shortly after a mob of his supporters attacked the Capitol.

Republicans and Democrats weren’t just divided over Trump’s handling of the job. They also interpreted many aspects of his character and personality in fundamentally opposite ways. In a 2019 survey, at least three-quarters of Republicans said the president’s words sometimes or often made them feel hopeful, entertained, informed, happy and proud. Even larger shares of Democrats said his words sometimes or often made them feel concerned, exhausted, angry, insulted and confused.

The strong reactions that Trump provoked appeared in highly personal contexts, too. In a 2019 survey, 71% of Democrats who were single and looking for a relationship said they would definitely or probably not consider being in a committed relationship with someone who had voted for Trump in 2016. That far exceeded the 47% of single-and-looking Republicans who said they would not consider being in a serious relationship with a Hillary Clinton voter.

Many Americans opted not to talk about Trump or politics at all. In 2019, almost half of U.S. adults (44%) said they wouldn’t feel comfortable talking about Trump with someone they didn’t know well. A similar share (45%) said later that year that they had stopped talking politics with someone because of something that person had said.  

In addition to the intense divisions that emerged over Trump personally, his tenure saw a further widening of the gulf between Republicans and Democrats over core political values and issues, including in areas that weren’t especially partisan before his arrival. 

In 1994, when Pew Research Center began asking Americans a series of 10 “values questions” on subjects including the role of government, environmental protection and national security, the average gap between Republicans and Democrats was 15 percentage points. By 2017, the first year of Trump’s presidency, the average partisan gap on those same questions had more than doubled to 36 points, the result of a steady, decades-long increase in polarization.

On some issues, there were bigger changes in thinking among Democrats than among Republicans during Trump’s presidency. That was especially the case on topics such as race and gender, which gained new attention amid the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements. In a 2020 survey that followed months of racial justice protests in the U.S., for instance, 70% of Democrats said it is “a lot more difficult” to be a Black person than to be a White person in the U.S. today, up from 53% who said the same thing just four years earlier. Republican attitudes on the same question changed little during that span, with only a small share agreeing with the Democratic view.

On other issues, attitudes changed more among Republicans than among Democrats. One notable example related to views of higher education: Between 2015 and 2017, the share of Republicans who said colleges and universities were having a negative effect on the way things were going in the U.S. rose from 37% to 58%, even as around seven-in-ten Democrats continued to say these institutions were having a positive effect.

A dearth of shared facts and information

One of the few things that Republicans and Democrats could agree on during Trump’s tenure is that they didn’t share the same set of facts. In a 2019 survey, around three-quarters of Americans (73%) said most Republican and Democratic voters disagreed not just over political plans and policies, but over “basic facts.”

Much of the disconnect between the parties involved the news media, which Trump routinely disparaged as “fake news” and the “enemy of the people.” Republicans, in particular, expressed widespread and growing distrust of the press. In a 2019 survey, Republicans voiced more distrust than trust in 2o of the 30 specific news outlets they were asked about, even as Democrats expressed more trust than distrust in 22 of those same outlets. Republicans overwhelmingly turned to and trusted one outlet included in the study – Fox News – even as Democrats used and expressed trust in a wider range of sources. The study concluded that the two sides placed their trust in “two nearly inverse media environments.” 

Some of the media organizations Trump criticized most vocally saw the biggest increases in GOP distrust over time. The share of Republicans who said they distrusted CNN rose from 33% in a 2014 survey to 58% by 2019. The proportion of Republicans who said they distrusted The Washington Post and The New York Times rose 17 and 12 percentage points, respectively, during that span.3

In addition to their criticisms of specific news outlets, Republicans also questioned the broader motives of the media. In surveys fielded over the course of 2018 and 2019, Republicans were far less likely than Democrats to say that journalists act in the best interests of the public, have high ethical standards, prevent political leaders from doing things they shouldn’t and deal fairly with all sides. Trump’s staunchest GOP supporters often had the most negative views: Republicans who strongly approved of Trump, for example, were much more likely than those who only somewhat approved or disapproved of him to say journalists have very low ethical standards. -Pew Research 

Asexuality

New research on asexuality shows why it’s so important for doctors and therapists to distinguish between episodes of low libido and a consistent lack of sexual attraction

By Allison Parshall

In graduate school people often asked Megan Carroll whether she was gay. Her sociology dissertation was on inequalities within communities of gay fathers, so her research participants were curious about how she identified. “I would say, ‘Oh, I'm maybe mostly straight? I don't really know. It's complicated.’”

It was, at the time, the closest she could get to the truth. She'd had crushes on both boys and girls in high school and had been in a relationship with a man; being around her romantic interests sent her heart fluttering in her chest. But nothing like that happened when she considered having sex with any of them—she simply wasn't interested. Her friends assured her she just needed to meet the right person, someone who would light her fire.

When that hadn't happened by the time she was 18, Carroll thought she might simply have a low libido and went looking for an explanation. Thinking her birth control might be to blame, she spoke with a nurse, who suggested that perhaps her boyfriend was “just a bad lover.” Then Carroll wondered whether it was the pills she was taking to treat her depression. Over the next 12 years she visited multiple therapists, psychiatrists and physicians and tried different antidepressants—including a less commonly prescribed drug that gave her tachycardia, or a faster heart rate. Eventually she settled on one that had shown no measurable effect on sex drive in clinical trials.

Throughout these years of experimentation, Carroll's libido—the physiological desire for sexual stimulation and release—did fluctuate. But what remained constant was that her libido was rarely, if ever, directed at another person, even her crushes.

In 2016 Carroll stumbled on a Facebook post about asexuality. She'd heard the term, typically defined as experiencing little to no sexual attraction, but had never felt that it applied to her. Then Carroll read a comment that mentioned demisexuality, a specific experience of feeling sexual attraction only after developing an emotional bond with someone. The idea that asexuality was a spectrum opened an entire world that had never been discussed in her gender and sexuality courses—one in which sexual desire was not necessary for a fulfilling life.

Because this idea subverts a cultural assumption about what it means to be human, it is often difficult for asexual people to recognize, let alone embrace, their identity. “Your very existence is, in some way, in opposition” to the societal norm, says CJ Chasin, an asexual gender and sexuality scholar at the University of Windsor in Canada. Even after realizing she probably was asexual, Carroll still visited doctors to experiment with her medications before finally accepting that she just is the way she is.

Over the past two decades psychological studies have shown that asexuality should be classified not as a disorder but as a stable sexual orientation akin to homosexuality or heterosexuality. Both cultural awareness and clinical medicine have been slow to catch on. It's only recently that academic researchers have begun to look at asexuality not as an indicator of health problems but as a legitimate, underexplored way of being human.

In biology, the word “asexual” typically gets used in reference to species that reproduce without sex, such as bacteria and aphids. But in some species that do require mating to have offspring, such as sheep and rodents, scientists have observed individuals that don't appear driven to engage in the act.

This behavior is more analogous to human asexuality, a concept rarely mentioned in medical literature until recently. In a pamphlet published in 1896, pioneering German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld described people without sexual desire, a state he called “anesthesia sexualis.” In 1907 Reverend Carl Schlegel, an early gay rights activist, advocated for the “same laws” for “the homosexuals, heterosexuals, bisexuals [and] asexuals.” When sexologist Alfred Kinsey devised his scale of sexual orientation in the 1940s, he created a “Category X” for the respondents who unexpectedly reported no sociosexual contacts or reactions—exceptions from his model whom he estimated made up 1.5 percent of all males between the ages of 16 and 55 in the U.S. Asexuality was largely absent from scientific research over the subsequent decades, although it was occasionally referenced by activists and scholars in the gay liberation movement. -Scientific America

UK Govt Considers Havoc Of Porn Epidemic On Society

The Government has launched an investigation into pornography’s devastating impact on society as part of a review of current regulation following the passing of the Online Safety Act.

The Call for Evidence, which is part of the Independent Pornography Review, will collect views on “the impact of pornographic content on relationships, sexual behaviours, mental health and people’s views of women and girls”.

It is set to address the separate regimes covering online and offline pornographic material to ensure restrictions are consistently applied.

‘Abhorrent’

Baroness Bertin, who is leading the review, said there is a “whole tonne” of “completely abhorrent” online pornography, which the British Board of Film Classification would prohibit from sale on DVD or video.

She called for the loopholes to be shut, so content involving child-like actors or those purporting to be family members would no longer be available either online or offline.

The Peer stated: “The damaging impact that extreme pornography is having on society cannot be allowed to continue unchecked.”

Violence

National Police Lead for Child Protection Ian Critchley welcomed the review as he warned teenagers and under-tens have increased access to “violent pornography and indecent images of children”.

He said it would “provide a greater evidence base allowing us to better understand the impact violent pornography is having on the behaviour of young people and adults who continue to pose the greatest risk of harm to children”.

Baroness Bertin is expected to publish her findings later this year.

Child abuse

Earlier this month, it was revealed that more than half of child abuse cases in England and Wales are now committed by other children.

The National Analysis of Police-Recorded Child Sexual Abuse & Exploitation Report found that 52 per cent of 106,984 offences recorded by 42 police forces in 2022 were committed by ten to 17-year-olds, at an average age of 14.

The report called it a “growing and concerning trend (previously thought to be a third) involving a wide range of offending” from sharing indecent images to rape.

Republican Attacks On LGBTQ+

"It is time to advocate for the real needs of our students and to stop playing politics," says Democratic Rep. Mark Takano of California.

By Mark Takano

I’m a former teacher and an openly gay man. Before I ever stepped foot in the halls of Congress, I spent the 1980s and 90s working in California public schools, and I can tell you: we’ve been here before. What Republicans are trying to do to our students and public education will send us back 40 years.

When I began my career in the 80s, California was just a few years out from a defeat of the Briggs Initiative — a piece of state legislation that would have banned all openly gay and lesbian teachers from working in California public schools. I was a high school student when that proposition was debated and listened to state legislators talk about how such a ban was necessary to “defend our children.” They claimed that the presence of LGBTQI+ teachers and the mere discussion of LGBTQI+ topics was an effort to “recruit” children into the “homosexual lifestyle.”

In the four decades since we’ve come a long way with LGBTQI+ rights – but the rhetoric is just the same as it was 40 years ago. Today, in a frenzied effort to create new culture wars targeting the LGBTQI+ community, anti-equality politicians are staking the health, well-being, and safety of our educators and our children on their messaging campaigns.

More specifically, anti-equality Republicans are asking families, teachers, and students to carry the cost of their political gain and turning a blind eye to the myriad of other consequences that will come from enacting anti-LGBTQI+ laws through Congress in addition to the legislation sweeping through state legislatures.

As we approach Harvey Milk Day this month – named in honor of an LGBTQI+ civil rights hero that spearheaded the charge to defeat the Briggs Initiative – I’ve been thinking about a quote of his from the campaign against the anti-gay laws that swept the country in the 1970s:

Once and for all, break down the myths, destroy the lies and distortions. For your sake. For their sake. For the sake of the youngsters who are becoming scared by the votes from Dade to Eugene

Openly LGBTQI+ role models are far more numerous today than when I first began teaching, and our language is constantly expanding to describe the beautiful array of identities and experiences that exist. Educators, parents, and community advocates are publishing books that help LGBTQI+ kids see themselves represented, educate their peers, and put tools in the hands of teachers.

At the same time -- and likely directly in response to this progress -- I listen to my colleagues use their platform in the House of Representatives to use the same tactics that State Senator John Briggs tried back in the 1970s: using fear to whip up a moral panic for political gain.

In the first education-related bill that the Republicans have brought to the Floor this Congress, they chose to use committee time and taxpayer dollars to pass H.R. 5, the “Parents Bill of Rights,” through the House of Representatives, a bill which opens the door to book bans and would require schools to forcibly out trans youth, even if it puts them in harm’s way. In the name of preserving the rights of a small but vocal minority of parents, H.R. 5 places further bureaucratic burdens on teachers and further marginalizes an already vulnerable group of students.

As a teacher, I can tell you the cost of these kinds of insidious measures on children.

When I was training to be a teacher in the late 80s, I remember the vicious and relentless bullying that a transgender student of mine went through. I know of instances where students were outed by staff and faced severe punishment at home. Later in my career, I learned of one student who was viciously beaten by his father and transferred out of the district after his family was informed that he had been caught being physically affectionate with another boy.

As a Member of Congress, it’s my job to support the most vulnerable members of our community. We must focus on making our children feel safe and supported so that they can reach their fullest potential. We must tackle the crises in our education systems that threaten safety and support in our schools including underresourced teachers, the youth mental health crisis, gun violence, and gaps in educational equity. As a member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, and a Co-Chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, I will continue to use my position to do just that.

It is time to advocate for the real needs of our students and to stop playing politics. Politicians with a platform, teachers with lived experience, activists brave enough to speak out, and those who fight for full equality in this country must speak up.

LGBTQI+ students deserve to know that elected officials aren’t working against them, but rather working to ensure they can be successful in the future.

I think about my former students all the time. I may no longer be their teacher, but I’ll never stop fighting in the halls of Congress for their right to receive an education in a safe and affirming environment. -Advocate 

Rep. Mark Takano, a Democrat from California representing the state's 39th district, is co-chair of the Equality Caucus.

History Of Book Burning

By Brad Dress

Local and state GOP leaders are mobilizing across the country to ban books, many of which deal with racial politics or the LGBTQ community.

The nonprofit free expression organization Pen America estimated in April that since 2021, more than 1,500 books have been banned in 86 school districts across 26 states.

The censorship efforts have now gained the attention of Congress, which held its second hearing on the issue last week, as well as more than 1,300 children’s book authors who signed a letter to lawmakers warning of a “dehumanizing form of erasure.”

While the bans mark a new trend, there is a long history of trying to erase unpopular or allegedly offensive literature.

History tells us that banning books in certain situations often leads to more drastic efforts to restrict access to them, said Jonathan Friedman, the director of free expression and education at PEN America.

“It’s very clear to anybody involved in this that it always seems to start with just a few books in school, but then all of a sudden we’re talking about not just public schools but public libraries,” Friedman said.

“When you look across the landscape of the country in the past few months, we see a lot of different censorship taking place, and any of them could continue to be mimicked or scaled up,” he continued.

Throwing books into a raging bonfire likely won’t happen in the 21st Century — although one Tennessee lawmaker recently said he would “burn ’em,” when asked what he personally would do with books he objected to.

But Friedman told The Hill that “censorship begets censorship.”

Bills creating state-authorized committees to review and decide on what types of books are stacked on library shelves are already in the pipeline, while censorship also weighs on the country’s writers and impacts the type of work they produce, he added.

Here’s what history tells us about book censorships and the targeted burnings of literary and religious works.

Book burning in the ancient world

Book burning has often been tied to conquest and imperial governing. The first emperor of China orchestrated the first known recorded instance of government-sanctioned book burnings in 213 B.C.

Qin Shi Huang wanted history to begin with him, hence his designation of himself as the first emperor of China despite his known predecessors. Naturally, books offered a competing narrative.

When his chancellor Li Si suggested burning all books except the official history of the Qin state, Shi Huang readily agreed. During his book burning campaign, the emperor also infamously ordered the deaths of hundreds of Confucian scholars, who were buried alive.

The Roman Empire burned up countless books over the course of its long reign. The first emperor, Augustus — objecting to books of “prophesies and destinies” — ordered more than 2,000 books to be reduced to smoke and ashes, according to “Book Burning” by Haig A. Bosmajian.

One of the greatest losses of literature was at the Library of Alexandria, established under Alexander the Great in northern Egypt around 331 BC. The library was burned down at least three times over hundreds of years and is now permanently erased.

At one point, the Library of Alexandria held over half a million documents from multiple nations, including present-day Syria, Greece, Persia, Egypt and India.

The Muslim ruler Caliph Umar took over the city of Alexandria in 640 AD and dealt the library a final blow, reportedly using its contents as tinder for the city’s bathhouses, according to Mid-Content Public Library.

According to some accounts, Umar said the works “either contradict the Qur’an, in which case they are heresy, or they will agree with it, so they are superfluous.”

Book burning in the post-Roman Empire

Religion played a major role in some of the largest book burning events after the Roman Empire began to decline around 500 AD.

In the late 15th century, the Italian and Dominican preacher and religious reformist Girolamo Savonarola helped drive the Medici family out of the city of Florence and established a new government.

In what became known as a “bonfire of the vanities,” Savonarola oversaw a literal bonfire containing books, pictures, jewelry, clothing, paintings and anything else he collected from residents of the city and found objectionable.

The Catholic Church organized numerous book burnings throughout the medieval period. In the 13th century, Pope Gregory IX ordered the burning of the Jewish theological work The Talmud along with “those books in which you find errors of this sort you shall cause to be burned at the stake,” according to the Jewish Virtual Library.

As a consequence of the order, 24 wagonloads containing thousands of volumes were burned in France in 1242.

Works of religion were frequent targets by the Catholic Church. Holy Roman Emperor Charles V joined others in burning and censoring works from the theologian Martin Luther, whose teachings paved the way for Protestantism.

Other book burning or censorship campaigns were waged by Pope John XXII, Pope Adrian VI and King Henry VIII, among many other leaders during the medieval period who targeted literature and religious works they disagreed with.

Book burning and censorship in the modern world

As the world entered the 20th century, book burning was largely frowned upon. But plenty of instances of mass censorship and the permanent erasure of works still occurred.

Nazi Germany’s incineration of 25,000 “un-German” works on May 10, 1933, is perhaps the most infamous book burning event because photos and videos of the event can still be seen today.

Mao Zedong, the Communist leader in China, burned works and books during his Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and ’70s, a campaign of censorship continued by the current Chinese government. In 2002, Radio Free Asia reported that thousands of books from the predominately Muslim Uyghur ethnic minority were burned. The Uyghurs continue to be subjected to detention camps in Xinjiang today.

A Sinhalese Buddhist mob torched 95,000 volumes from the Jaffna Public Library in Sri Lanka in 1981.

From 1955 to 1971, thousands of books and works were burned by the South African government during apartheid, according to the University of Pretoria.

Major book burning events have occurred in the past two decades as well.

In Bosnia, 2 million books were said to have been burned by Serbian nationalists in 1992. In Timbuktu, Mali, ancient writings were put to the flame in 2013 by Islamist fighters.

And the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria burned down the Mosul University library in Iraq around 2015.

Censorship campaigns in the U.S.

The U.S. has struggled with censorship before. J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” series has long been targeted for supposedly promoting witchcraft. Kurt Vonnegut’s science fiction novel “Slaughterhouse Five,” the Qur’an and even records from The Beatles have also been burned and banned by individual actors or groups.

But the number of book bans in the U.S. today is unprecedented, said Friedman from Pen America. The researcher said since his April report, at least 200 more books have been banned in states across the country.

“There are lists of books being shared around the country and communities of people are being encouraged to ban those lists,” Friedman said. “I think those lists are more extensive than anything we’ve seen before.” -The Hill 

Inequality, Poverty, and Injustice

 

By Jody Tishmack

“Depicting a topic as expansive as inequality in a single frame is a challenge, especially since unequal experiences are often lived adjacently, but separately. Photographer Johnny Miller has successfully achieved a method of visualizing inequality—by using a drone to spotlight from above how rich and poor can inhabit spaces that are right next to each other, but so different.”

Inequality occurs when there is a disproportionate distribution of resources, wealth, or legal status in a society.  When our access to resources or wealth are insufficient to meet our needs we enter a state called poverty, a lack of material wealth.  Without wealth we also lack access to justice because we can’t afford to hire legal representation when we need it.  The widespread existence of inequality, poverty, and injustice in our society disproves the American constitution, that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”  Even if we were to change the language to “all persons are created equal” we still have to acknowledge that America is far from equal.

This month we celebrate the signing of the US Constitution on September 17, 1787. ” Only thirty-nine of the fifty-five delegates to the convention actually signed the new document, with many of those who refused to sign objecting to the lack of a bill of rights.  At least one delegate refused to sign because the Constitution codified and protected slavery and the slave trade.”  Two hundred and thirty three years ago a majority of our founding fathers signed a document that would become the guide for our union, laying out ideals of how they believed we should live together.  Yet today we see protests and riots by citizens who are angry with the systemic injustice and inequality that still exists within our country.  We are witnessing how a pandemic has reduced many families to poverty.  Where do we go from here? How do we address systemic inequality that has led to poverty and injustice?

“History doesn’t repeat itself,’’ Mark Twain supposedly observed, “but it often rhymes.” That may explain why the period that Twain dubbed “the Gilded Age” seems so familiar today.  That period (roughly 1870-1900) shares much with our present time: economic inequality and technological innovation; conspicuous consumption and philanthropy; monopolistic power and populist rebellion; two presidential elections in which the popular vote loser won (Hayes in 1876 and Harrison in 1888); and change — constant, exhilarating, frightening.”

Most of us have played the popular game Monopoly, where players compete to gain control of all the money and property.  Each player starts with the same amount of money from which to buy property and build homes or hotels. Players move around a game board by the a roll of the dice. Thus, there is an element of skill (players must choose when to buy or trade property, when to build houses or hotels) and an element of chance (the roll of the dice).  The game ends when one player has successfully ‘monopolized’ (owns) all the money and property.

In the game of Monopoly the playing field is equal, every player starts the game with the same amount of money.  Every player has the same opportunity to roll the dice and advance (unless they go to jail).  Every player follows the same set of rules.  Imagine instead if one person started the game with a hundred times more money than the other players?  What if one player was allowed to roll the dice twice in every turn?  What if one player always had a get out of jail free card?  If the rules were rigged for one player it would be impossible for any other player to win the game.  We probably wouldn’t want to play!  Strangely many Americans don’t think about the unfair advantage that wealth gives, making it easier for a few to win at the expense of everyone else.  We don’t think of income inequality or access to opportunity for advancement as unfair.

In life we do not all start with same amount of money, nor do we all have the same chance to ‘roll the dice’ and advance.  CEO compensation has grown 940% since 1978 yet the typical worker compensation has risen only 12% during that time.  Access to wealth and education are not distributed equally, they are concentrated in the hands of an ever smaller percentage of our population.  If you are born into a poor family it is unlikely you will become rich (professional athletes are one of the few exceptions to this).  If you are born into a wealthy family it is more likely you will stay wealthy and even continue to build wealth because money and investments can work for you.

A wealthy family can provide many privileges that a poor family cannot; better food and housing, better health care, cleaner neighborhoods, economic stability, and less exposure to crime.  Opportunities for advancement, such as going to college or finding a high paying job, are similar to a roll of the dice in Monopoly.  Yes, we need to work hard in college and do well once we find a good job, but if you are poor these opportunities are out of your reach.  And ‘justice for all’ is meaningless when people cannot afford an attorney and the one provided you free of charge is more interested in plea deals than justice (which means jail time).

Not only does wealth bring us advantages it prevents disadvantages.  A family with little or no debt has more opportunity to buy their first home, to move for a better job, or better schools for their children.  When disaster or emergencies strike, a family with savings in the bank is more likely to get through without major set backs, more likely to recover with less deprivation or feelings of depression.  There are significant differences in mental health between people who live on the edge of poverty and those who have savings that can see them through a downturn.

We all need a safety net when the economy takes a downturn, when someone loses a job or becomes seriously ill.   Situational poverty affects both Black and White Americans at one time or another in their life.  Few Americans have any savings to fall back on when disaster strikes.  “… more than 40 percent of Americans between the ages of 25 and 60 will be poor for at least a year.  Over the same period, more than half will be poor or nearly poor, with income at 150 percent of the poverty line, or about $27,000 annually for a family of three.”  Poverty in the US. is a much larger problem than we think it is, and it’s one that most Americans will face.  It’s a situation that many Americans are currently facing due to the pandemic and the shut down of business in America.

“We live in a world of widespread economic fragility, of insecurity, of what some have come to call precarity.  “According to one recent survey, about one-in-four Americans have no savings at all.  US household economies are fragile, so it often just takes one crisis to push a family over the edge—from just getting by to not getting by at all: an injury that makes it impossible to work, a sudden physical or mental illness, a death in the family, a car breaking down, or even the birth of a new baby. ”  All of these can be traumatic economic events for a family with little or no savings and no margin for error—events that families should be able to recover from, with time, but if you have little backup and the next crisis hits, you are broken.   Americans can’t necessarily count on the social safety net to be there when we need it.  And most of us will need it at some point!

“Don’t fight poverty because you feel sorry for other people; fight poverty because the odds are increasingly high that you and your family will be poor someday, too.”

Think back to the game of Monopoly and ask yourself if you would want to play the game if the rules allowed the same person to always win? Probably not.  So why do so many Americans still believe the ‘American Dream’ exists for all of us, that if we work hard we can get ahead in life?  How is it part of the American Dream when only the rich are getting ahead (and by extension their offspring), and the majority of children and grandchildren will be poorer than their parents?

We know that income inequality leads to poverty and injustice, so why are we not all clamoring for better wages and less wealth concentration? Why is it only a “progressive” idea that tax policies need to redistribute wealth and prevent its concentration?  Perhaps it’s time we all ask how much wealth do we need to secure a good life?  And does extreme wealth offer any benefit to society?  How much should anyone be allowed to profit from your labor? Does our economic system really reward those who work the hardest or only those with the greatest access to capital?

Income inequality affects us all and the gap between the richest Americans and the rest of us continues to grow.  Yet many poor White Americans don’t support policies to redistribute wealth or believe it with benefit them.  They have been mislead by politicians into believing such changes will largely benefit Black Americans at the expense of White Americans.  In some ways both liberal and conservative politicians make arguments that support this view.  Conservatives support policies that continue to give the lion’s share of wealth to the already wealthy, reducing the amount that would go to lower-income Americans.  They condemn Liberal policies that focus on income policies (e.g., welfare, food stamps, cash assistance, etc.) that “grow” government.  Democrats support redistribution policies that emphasize merit, providing most families with just enough income to survive but not to thrive.  Rarely does either political party enter into debates on or build coalitions for building wealth in all  families, making it possible for every family to live a good life.  Income inequality is left unchallenged because many people perceive wealth inequality as the natural result of different paths (including different amounts and application of effort and ability), rather than a social problem.  To put is simply, we need to stop thinking that being rich or poor is based on something you did to deserve it, that it can’t be changed with government policy.

Republicans have successfully—and with little apparent opposition—framed public conversations about redistributive policies as a subversion of traditional American values and culture, while promoting the ideal of wealth.  Trickledown economic policies benefit the wealthy and ask lower-income families to pay for policies that disproportionately benefit the wealthy.  Conservative politicians use race to portray White interests as opposing Black interests, reinforcing a White-against-Black mentality and portraying Blacks as lacking the character necessary to build wealth.  From this colorized perspective, wealth inequality is not caused by inadequate access to wealth building institutions (access to mainstream financial institutions) or regressive incentive structures (means-tested public assistance programs that set the asset threshold of low-income families hoping to qualify for assistance).  Instead, they reinforce the incorrect perception that wealth inequality exists because low-income families have not exerted the required effort, or lack the innate ability, to build wealth.

Democrats are also concerned that redistribution policies will negatively impact our current economic system.  They continue to frame wealth inequality as a problem to address after America wins the war on poverty, rather than considering wealth inequality an unjust and an integral part of our current economic system.  Liberal researchers have also unintentionally helped to create an “us-against-them” mentality among low-income households, particularly among poor White Americans, by focusing mainly on the wealth inequality of Black Americans, while ignoring the role that wealth inequality plays in the lives of low-income White Americans.

Even the media has played a significant role in the colorization of poverty by disproportionately depicting poverty using images of persons of color.  Images that focus attention on Black Americans has resulted in many White Americans underestimating the degree to which wealth inequality impacts their own lives.  They attribute the Black/White wealth gap to a lack of effort and ability by low-wealth Blacks.  This perception, coupled with the deep historical racial divides in America, highlight the need for data that challenge the assumption that wealth inequality is “only” a Black problem.

While Black experience with wealth building is complicated by a long history of exploitation and oppression in America, it should not be used to obscure the struggles that many White households face and the perilous way they, too, are exposed to threat of economic devastation in the current economy.  When economic resources are increasingly scarce for the middle and lower classes, inter-group conflict and racial resentment is exacerbated. President Barack Obama echoed this insight:

“You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”  (Smith, 2008, April 11).

Many working class White Americans say they feel ignored by those perceived as elitists, such as educated professionals and lawmakers.  Facing financial hardship and feeling their interests eroded, some working-class Whites have come to see economic insecurity through a racial lens, often attributing it to the influx of non-White immigrants and to the “special treatment” afforded non-Whites or Blacks.  Stories shared on social media of an end to the White majority in America, coupled with a steady influx of immigrants from non-White countries, may cause some Whites to feel that they need to do something to preserve White economic and political power.  Among White conservatives, Obama’s presidency—rather than improving their understanding of race and racial inequality—led to increased feelings of racial resentment, frustration, and being “othered”.  Feelings of being “othered” increased their desire to associate themselves with higher-income Whites, such as Trump.

Discussions of wealth-inequality in the news or on social media have been unbalanced and often interpreted as blaming or categorizing Whites as privileged, in a way that obscures the substantial status differences between White Americans at the top 10% of income and the bottom 50%.  If asked, most White Americans would tend to say they earn the average income when if fact they likely qualify as poor.  Often, poor and middle-class White households are angered by the message that Blacks have been oppressed by Whites, and the only way to fix this injustice is to take wealth from Whites—a group to which they belong, and give it to Blacks.  They don’t stop to consider that they too have been disadvantaged by wealth inequality.

Conservative politicians capitalize on what White Americans feel—if not experience—the desire to construct a just world in which effort and ability determine success and failure.   What they don’t tell us about their policies is that they won’t reward our efforts, lift us out of poverty, or allow us to achieve higher incomes.  If anything our effort under the current economic system simply increases the profitability of the company for which we work and the gains go to the shareholders not to the workers.

Republicans have created a political  platform that pits ‘us-against-them’ while expanding economic advantage (i.e. tax breaks) to wealthy White Americans, and bail outs for banks.  Neither party wants to address the real needs of poor and middle-class Americans—particularly regarding policy intended to redistribute wealth—instead they focus on issues related to race and nationalism.  This focus complicates efforts to demonstrate that wealthy Whites have manipulated the economic system to maintain, and even build, their own wealth on the backs of not only Blacks, but also poor and middle-class Whites.

Historically those who hold the wealth and political power have used differences in our cultural values to create an “us” against “them” mentality that keeps poor whites and poor blacks from working together to redistribute wealth.   It was the billionaire Koch brothers who provided early funding for the Tea Party movement, who re-packaged populism in a reactionary and overly racial wrapper, rather than allowing it to target more precisely the origins of inequality.

Court houses across our country depict a figure that represents the ‘Lady of Justice‘.   She is a blindfolded woman carrying a sword and a set of scales to symbolize “fair and equal administration of the law, without corruption, favor, greed, or prejudice. The blindfold represents objectivity and impartiality, that justice should be meted out without fear or favor, regardless of money, wealth, or power. She holds scales to represent the weighing of evidence, evidence must be weighed on its own merit. The sword represents punishment, signifying that justice can be swift and final. She holds the sword below the scales to show that evidence weighted on its merit in a court of law come before punishment. The snake under her foot represents evil, and lies, and the book is the law, the constitution from which justice is administered.”

Justice should be blind, it should not make distinctions based on our skin color, gender, sexual status, or wealth.  Our access to justice should not be determined by our ability to pay for an attorney.  We live during a time when far too many Americans live in ‘precarity’, having too little access to resources.  Yet when Progressive Democrats call for political action to address these issues, when Black Lives Matter supporters call for justice in policing, there is push back from those who feel threatened by these demands.  Wealth inequality is an American problem that truly threatens everyone’s ability to secure advancement through effort and ability.   When income is unequal, we are rewarded or punished based on the circumstance into which we are born, not our effort to rise up from them.

In a democratic society enacting and implementing any meaningful legislation requires coming together, which is why we should be suspicious of political rhetoric that divides us.  We need to recognize our common interest in addressing wealth inequality and work together to pass legislation that limits wealth concentration and redistributes it from the top down.  Imagine what  our society would look like if the distribution of wealth was a bell curve, if the majority of Americans, even the majority of world citizens were able to live a middle class lifestyle.   Yes, we need to address the wealth gap that exists based on our gender or skin color, but the treatment needed for all inequality is the same:  re-distributive wealth policies. Too much wealth concentrated in the hands of too few, makes the American dream unattainable for everyone else.  The dream of seeing your children attain a better life than you is a human dream of every parent.  Equality and justice for all cannot exist when too few have too much, and the majority have too little. - Resilience 

Guns in America

 By Dave Saldana

While it’s clear that America has a gun violence problem, these staggering statistics shed new light on just how pervasive it is

June 3, 2022, was National Gun Violence Awareness Day. By then, there were already 235 mass shootings in the United States since the start of the year. If that pace continues, there will be 586 mass shootings in America by New Year’s Eve. As shocking as those gun violence statistics are, they would be an improvement over the prior two years. According to the Gun Violence Archive, there were 692 mass shootings in 2021, and 610 in 2020. And these numbers don’t include the roughly 20,000 other gun homicides, 25,000 gun suicides and 115,000 non-fatal gun injuries—including the 18,000 children shot and killed or wounded every year.

Gun violence doesn’t just affect the victims. The trauma also impacts survivors, their families and their communities, as well as society at large. Too often we can develop “trauma fatigue”—even as we’re trying to help the victims and families of shootings and do our part to prevent school shootings and gun violence in general—which makes us feel helpless in the face of the relentless violence. While the American Psychological Association recommends that we acknowledge our feelings, it’s also important to try to understand what’s happening and why it’s so hard to stop gun violence in America. After all, while gun violence isn’t a uniquely American phenomenon, what does seem particular to this country is the dizzying rate at which it happens and the lack of action by legislators, which is in stark contrast to how other countries respond to mass shootings.

The following statistics paint a very clear picture of the gun violence we’re facing in this country and how we can take action to help lessen it.

How many people die from gun violence each year?

While mass shootings gain national attention, and deservedly so, they are responsible for just a small fraction of gun violence in America. It’s important to remember that gun deaths also include homicides, suicides, accidental shootings and other tragedies affecting thousands of families across the country.

Every day in America, an average of 321 people are shot, according to Brady United. Of that number, 111 die: 42 are murdered and 65 die by suicide; one is shot and killed by accident, another is shot by law enforcement and another dies of an undetermined cause.

The gun violence statistics are even more grim when it comes to kids: Every day, 22 children aged 17 and under are shot. Five die, three of them murdered and two killed by suicide. Eight are shot by accident and survive, and eight are shot by a gun left unsecured and unattended at home. Gun reform advocates say that these numbers could be greatly reduced if Congress passed a few key commonsense gun laws.

How much damage does gun violence cause?

A helpful measure of the extent of the damage gun violence causes in America is how it compares with other occurrences in everyday life, from car accidents to cancer.

In 2021, 45,034 people died by gunfire, while 42,915 died in motor vehicle accidents. While these numbers may seem comparable, they’re more lopsided than you might realize, since car owners far outnumber gun owners: There are an estimated 234.9 million licensed drivers—and only 81.4 million gun owners.

The number of Americans killed by guns annually (about 43,000) is on par with those who die from breast cancer (43,000) and pancreatic cancer (49,000), according to the American Cancer Society. These numbers are based on five-year death averages.

Are guns the problem?

In 2018, the Small Arms Survey reported that Americans collectively own 393 million guns. That’s more guns than America has people. The population of the United States stood at 332 million in 2021, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. While the number of new guns since 2018 can’t be determined precisely, about 21.5 million guns were legally purchased in America in 2020, and almost 19 million were bought in 2021.

In 2020, 44% of Americans reported that they or someone in their household owned a gun, per an annual Gallup poll on guns in America. The typical American gun owner is White, male, between the ages of 30 and 64, has a household income of less than $100,000, lives in the suburbs or a rural area and is registered to vote as a Republican.

About two-thirds of gun owners have more than one firearm, and, at least statistically speaking, the average gun owner has eight firearms.

Most gun owners have a handgun or pistol (72%). The next most popular firearm is a rifle, including semi-automatic (62%), followed by a shotgun (54%). Since the federal assault weapons ban lapsed in 2004, AR-15 military-style rifles have become one of the most popular weapons among gun enthusiasts, with about 20 million in circulation in the United States.

About 40% of gun owners have at least one gun that is loaded and easily accessible to them at all times, and 63% say they have at least one gun that is never locked up.

Does having more guns make us safer?

If the gun lobby is correct, more guns in society makes for a safer society. But gun violence statistics tell a different story. Researchers at Stanford University found states that adopted right-to-carry concealed handgun laws saw their violent crime rates increase by 13% to 15% within 10 years. And according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, states with stricter gun regulations have fewer gun deaths per capita, while states with looser gun laws have much higher rates of gun deaths.

Gun rights advocates frequently point out Illinois as an example of a state with strict gun laws that nevertheless has a relatively high occurrence of gun violence. However, that’s only part of the story: The state’s largest city, Chicago, is just a short drive from the borders of Wisconsin and Indiana, two states with comparatively lax gun laws. In fact, last year the city sued a gun store in Gary, Indiana, about 30 miles from downtown Chicago, that had sold more than 850 guns recovered during criminal investigations in Chicago. The same store was linked to 44% of federal gun prosecutions in northern Indiana between 2014 and 2021.

Hawaii ranks fourth on the Giffords list of strictest gun laws, and it’s 50th in the rate of gun deaths, with 3.4 per 100,000 population. At the other end of the scale, Mississippi ranks 45th on the Giffords list and has 28.6 gun deaths per 100,000 people—the worst in the country.

According to David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, the presence of a gun is more likely to make a hostile interaction turn deadly. One study, released in April 2022, found that living with a gun in the house more than doubled the likelihood of being killed by a domestic partner, while a 12-year study published in 2020 in the New England Journal of Medicine found that men who owned guns were three times more likely to die by suicide. Hemenway also notes that according to the National Crime Victimization Survey, about 100,000 people report using a firearm to defend themselves against crime every year, but that number is in line with the use of other weapons in self-defense, such as mace or a baseball bat.

Are Mass Shootings Getting Worse?

A mass shooting is defined as one in which four or more people are shot in a single event, not including the perpetrator. The first recognized mass shooting in America occurred in 1966, when a sniper at the University of Texas killed 17 people from his perch in a clock tower. Between then and 2020, 1,449 people have been murdered in mass shootings, and an additional 2,141 have been wounded. And here’s another staggering fact: In the 10 years from 1966 to 1975, there were 12 mass shootings; from 2011 to 2020, there were 160. About 30% of mass shootings happen in workplaces, and about 25% occur in schools.

Since 2020, mass shootings have been on the rise, with the Washington Post noting that there have been at least four mass shootings every week in 2022. According to one ex-gunman, here’s how we can stop the next mass shooter.

Are some guns more deadly than others?

Though “assault” weapons tend to make headlines, they were responsible for only 32% of the deaths in mass shootings from 2009 to 2018. At least one handgun is used in an overwhelming majority of mass shootings (81%), and in a smaller majority (60%) of mass shootings, only a handgun is used—but often in combination with a high-capacity magazine.

Though handguns remain the most common type of weapon used in non-mass shootings, accounting for 62% of homicides in 2019, AR-15 and similar semi-automatic weapons cause more deaths more quickly than other types of firearms and were used in the deadliest of America’s mass shootings, including in Las Vegas (58 people killed), Orlando (49 people killed), Newtown, Connecticut (27 people killed, mostly children) and Uvalde, Texas (21 people, including 19 children, ages 10 and 11).

All told, firearms are used in about three-fourths of all homicides, while stabbings cause about one in 10 murders, beatings without weapons cause under 5% and other murders using blunt force weapons, poisonings, fires and explosions make up just over 10%.

Where does America rank in global gun ownership and violence?

America is armed with 120.5 guns for every 100 residents, whereas the figures for other countries are far lower. The countries with the next-highest rates of gun ownership are Yemen (52.8 guns per 100 people), Serbia (39.1), Montenegro (39.1) and Uruguay (34.7). Canada, our northern neighbor, also has 34.7 guns per 100 people—less than a third of the gun ownership rate in America. In fact, although the United States accounts for 4.4% of the world’s population, we have 42% of the civilian-owned guns in the world. Other countries, such as Italy, also have gun cultures, but mass shootings there are rare, and gun violence statistics are markedly different.

In 2021, the United States ranked 10th among the world’s highest rates of gun deaths, with 12.21 per 100,000 people, behind countries such as El Salvador, Venezuela, Guatemala, Honduras and Jamaica, which struggle with drug trafficking and gang activity, according to Ali Mokdad, a professor of global health and health metrics science at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. When compared with only high-income countries, the United States ranks first. Even Mexico, our southern neighbor purported to be rife with drug-trafficking gangs, had just 6.34 gun deaths per 100,000 residents in 2021.

Is mental illness the problem?

Many gun control opponents say that the key factor in gun violence in America is mental illness. In the wake of the Uvalde school shooting in May 2022, Texas Governor Greg Abbott said, “Anybody who shoots somebody else has a mental health challenge.” Mental health experts and criminologists who research mass murderers condemned Abbott’s claim as false and unjustly scapegoating people who suffer from mental illness.

A 2021 Rand Corporation study found that people with mental health problems are no more likely to engage in gun violence than others, and in fact are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators. It’s worth noting that other countries have similar rates of mental illness but nowhere near the same level of gun deaths.

About 17% of Americans suffer from some form of mental illness. That’s about the same as in France, but France deals with fewer than three gun deaths per 100,000 residents, compared with 12.2 gun deaths per 100,000 Americans. And Australia has a more than 19% rate of mental health problems but just 1.04 gun deaths per 100,000. Why does Australia have so few gun deaths while the United States has so many?

In 1996, a gunman killed 35 people and wounded 23 more in a café in Port Arthur, Tasmania. The government responded by passing a sweeping gun law, banning the import and sale of automatic and semi-automatic rifles, instituting a mandatory 28-day waiting period to buy a gun and creating a government buy-back program that took 700,000 guns out of private hands and destroyed them. The result: one mass shooting in 25 years and a 60% drop in gun homicides.

Of course, Australia doesn’t have the Second Amendment to contend with. A far-reaching weapons ban in the United States to match the one in Australia would require amending the Constitution.

What also stands out is America’s passion for guns: 120 of them for every 100 Americans. Even Canada, the closest country on the list, has fewer than 35 guns for every 100 Canadians. Despite sharing American movies, TV, music, video games and other aspects of a culture that firearm enthusiasts often blame for gun violence, as well as having a 15% rate of mental illness, Canada has just 2.05 gun deaths per 100,000 population. No other country’s rate tops two per 100,000.

Almost half of all Americans (44%) know someone who has been shot. Nearly every American will know at least one victim of gun violence during their lifetime. By comparison, the likelihood that any individual will be shot in Singapore—the country with the lowest gun fatality rate in the world—is calculated to be one in a million. In Japan, the odds are two in a million. In America, it rockets to 1,060 in a million.

Who is most affected by gun violence?

According to the New England Journal of Medicine, guns kill about twice as many kids as cancer, and about as many as drowning, congenital malformations, heart disease, fire-related injuries and lung diseases combined. About a third of households with children have a gun.

Women are also often victims of gun violence. Guns are used in about 56% of intimate-partner homicides, and the victims are overwhelmingly female. Here are more startling facts about domestic violence.

How many people are affected by school shootings?

Survivors of mass shootings and other gun crimes face lifelong trauma, and some of them struggle for many years, while others never fully recover. Often, people who have been shot experience post-traumatic stress disorder, unemployment and drug and alcohol abuse. The American Psychological Association estimates that among those who have survived a mass shooting, around 28% develop PTSD. Those who aren’t shot but witness gun violence up close, as well as loved ones of the victims, are also impacted.

A growing number of gun violence survivors facing lifelong recoveries are children. According to a recent report by the Washington Post, since the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado, more than 300,000 children have been traumatized by school shootings.

What does gun violence cost, in dollars and cents?

One of the most surprising statistics you learn here may be how gun violence affects America’s economy. A 2019 report from the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee concluded that the costs of lost income, employer costs, health care, and police and criminal justice expenses due to gun violence amount to a staggering $229 billion every year. A 2021 study by Everytown for Gun Safety puts the figure at $280 billion annually. Everytown’s numbers include a $34.8 million daily taxpayer tab for medical care, first responders and criminal justice, as well as $1.4 million in economic productivity that employers lose every day when their workers are victims of gun violence.

The chart below shows a few things that the $280 billion Americans spend on gun violence could buy instead.

Could gun law reforms keep us safer?

Though Americans have been polarized on many issues in recent years, they almost universally agree on the importance of universal background checks. In a 2021 Quinnipiac poll, 89% of Americans surveyed said they support requiring background checks for all gun sales.

Red flag laws, sometimes known as extreme risk protection orders (ERPOs), let family members or police petition a judge to remove guns from a person they believe to be at high risk for injuring themselves or others. Currently, such laws are on the books in 19 states and enjoy broad support: 77% of Americans want family members to be able to request a red flag intervention, and 70% say police should be able to. President Biden announced in April 2022 that the Justice Department would issue a model red flag law for states to use in creating their own legislation.

Support for “stricter” laws governing the sale of firearms in general is less robust, however. In 2020, only 57% of people surveyed in a Gallup poll wanted to see laws strengthened—down from 64% the previous year—while 34% want current laws to remain in place. Just 9% of people think gun laws should be less strict than they are now.

Congress recently passed commonsense gun legislation intended to keep us safer. A bipartisan effort, it was signed into law by President Biden on June 25, 2022. While it was less robust than gun control advocates had originally hoped, and a Supreme Court decision that same week expanded gun rights in another arena, it was the first meaningful gun safety legislation since the 1994 assault weapons ban that helped reduce the murder rate during the 10 years it was in effect. -Readers Digest