Personal statement on gun violence in the United States
Gun violence in the USA is a public health emergency.
This week my thoughts are with the people of Buffalo, NY; Laguna Woods, CA; and Uvalde, TX as they work through the most recent escalations of our national sickness.
But I am an elected official, so my thoughts are not enough.
I have a platform to call for action at the State and Federal levels, and that is what I have done and will continue to do, in any way I can. (I also want to say clearly that I have never—and will never—accept any sort of assistance (monetary or otherwise) from organizations like the NRA, who work against solving this problem.)
And I reject the notion we can’t solve this problem, because I think we can. I would not have run for office if I didn’t think we had the collective capacity to solve huge, important problems.
You may have ideas, and I want to hear them. As for my own, I offer the following places to start, both research-based. I emphasized some ideas that can be acted upon at the County level. Other ideas require us to put pressure on our State and Federal legislators, and again, I will continue to do so (and I hope you will join me).
Ideas from the Center for Gun Violence Solutions
The Center for Gun Violence Solutions (at Johns Hopkins University) released a report in April 2022 that focuses on the CDC’s 2020 gun violence data and offers a number of data-driven solutions:
Permit-to-purchase
Firearm removal under protection orders (e.g., domestic violence protection orders)
Funding for community-based violence prevention programs
You can read more about the report’s conclusions, and read the report itself, here.
Ideas from Richard Florida’s “The Geography of Gun Deaths”
There are a lot of ideas here, including:
Mandate safe storage
Require trigger locks
Ban assault weapons (note: I am not sure what definition of “assault weapon” Florida used—but the fact is that we need to take action in some capacity in this area)
Florida’s report also emphasized that lower gun violence correlates with a better life for all: Lower poverty, better access to education, and stronger economic development all correlate to lower levels of gun violence.
When I say that housing, jobs, food assistance, education, mentorship, assistance for new enterprises, and the like are essential violence prevention measures, this is what I mean. Don’t get me wrong—I strongly believe we need better, data-driven gun control at the State and Federal levels as well. But there’s a big picture here, and the County plays a role too. Here in Dane County, our budgets have made room for this stuff (and we have lower rates of gun death when compared to other counties in Wisconsin). But as I made clear in my campaign, I expect us to do more, and I will continue to fight for that.