* In the video above, I was able to speak with David Haynes, Managing Attorney for The Cochran Firm in Washington, D.C., about what we can do to solve the scourge of gun violence via our legal system.
Just as the National Rifle Association--or the murderer's lobby--has suppressed every other ounce of information possible on the deleterious effects of this country's unhealthy gun fetish, they do so with the clear statistical relationship between easy access to guns and domestic violence escalating into murder.
So it just might be worth taking a look, as it is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and in light of how often massacres such as the recent mass-killing at the Washington Naval Yard start as domestic incidents, and escalate from there. That happens over 50% of the time. In other words, more than half of the time when there is a mass shooting, it begins with a murder in the home.
Some other things you need to know:
* 46 women will be murdered with guns this month by a current or former boyfriends or husband.
* In the states that require that crazy Constitution-abrogating requirement that you have a 2-minute background check performed for all handgun sales, there are 38% fewer women murdered by intimate partners.
* The presence of a gun in a domestic violence situation increases the likelihood a woman will be murdered by 5x.
* American women are 11x more likely to be murdered by a gun than woman in other high-income countries.
This, folks, is what we call an epidemic. It must be stopped. And if there isn't the political will to pass simple common sense measures (like making it a national law that those with temporary restraining orders against them lose their gun rights--just another shocking loophole that still exists in many states), we must do so through whatever means necessary (to quote someone famous). Be it the courts (discussed more in the video above) or using our combined economic power, as advocated by Elliot Fineman, the President of the National Gun Victims Action Council (with whom I consult, full disclosure).
Fineman was responsible in February of 2012 for starting the boycott against Starbucks because they allowed guns in their stores--nothing like a latte, a luger and a lap child!--which led to the recent change in Starbucks' policy, a major victory for gun sanity.
Like Fineman, we all have voices. Let's use them, and stop more women from senselessly being killed because of the murderer's lobby and its allies in Congress.
