Dr. Warren J. Blumenfeld

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Forget About ‘Gun Control,’ Let’s Repeal the Second Amendment

So after suffering the effects of yet another mass shooting in our country, this time in Las Vegas, Nevada where currently  58 people have died and approximately 520 others were wounded, let’s look at the firearms laws in the state of Nevada.

  • No permit required to purchase a firearm;
  • No gun registration required;
  • No gun owners’ license required;
  • No permit required to carry concealed long guns;
  • No laws restricting the sale and ownership of assault weapons;
  • No restrictions on the capacity of firearms magazines
  • No restriction on the number of firearms an individual may own!

The suspected shooter had with him 23 firearms at the time of his attack on a crowd attending an outdoor country music concert in Las Vegas.

After each incident of mass shootings, we hear the obligatory “I send my thoughts and prayers to the survivors and to the loved ones of those who have died” coming from politicians and other officials. Well, I hate to break it to you, but “thoughts and prayers” simply aren’t cutting it! They aren’t helping to reduce the chances of another incident tomorrow or next week or next year.

Each time I hear of another incident of gun violence in a long and tragic chain, I think back to the very first thing that caught my eye as I entered the grounds of the Ames, Iowa Republican Party Presidential Straw Poll in the summer of 2011. Three young children, I would guess between the ages of 4 -7, sporting day-glo orange baseball caps with “NRA” imprinted atop, and round stickers on their small T-shirts announcing “GUNS SAVE LIVES.”

But, really, do these “guns save lives?” Do laws expanding gun possession, concealed or not, actually “save lives”?

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, gun-related violence has reached epidemic proportions in our country by snuffing out the lives of upwards of 30,000+ people and wounding many more annually. On average, guns end the lives of more than 80 people in the United States every day.  Each year, gun violence affects over 100,000 people in some way.

Many of the guns used in these killings reach military level weapons power, guns which currently remain legal. Today in the United States, there are 88.8 firearms per 100 people.

Of the increasing number mass murders in the United States since 1982, most of the shooters obtained their weapons legally. Demographically, the shooters in all but a very few cases involved males, usually white, with an average age of 35 years.

Should any limits be placed on the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution, which reads: “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”?

We seem somehow only to spout the second clause in that sentence while forgetting the first, especially the term “well-regulated”!

I propose that we reevaluate the political right’s obsession with the so-called “freedom” to bear arms because it is not only “criminals who kill people” as Second Amendment advocates claim. Therefore,

  • We must ban and criminalize the possession of automatic and semi-automatic weapons.
  • We must close loopholes such as buying a weapon at a gun show.
  • We must ban the purchase of firearms and ammunition on the internet because some people are still doing this legally.
  • We must increase the waiting period and make background checks more rigorous and effective.
  • We must limit the number of firearms any individual can own.
  • We must limit the number of bullets any firearm clip can hold.
  • We must ban and criminalize the purchase and possession of armor piercing bullets, and also hollow-tip bullets.
  • We must rethink the “logic” of permitting concealed weapons, especially in places like houses of worship, colleges, bars, restaurants, and political rallies.
  • We must interface all databases monitoring firearm ownership to assess the firearm-owning population more accurately and effectively.

To be perfectly honest, though, I want the Second Amendment repealed! It is an Amendment for goodness sake. It is not some sort of divinely-inspired mandate from a superior being well beyond our comprehension. It was created, rather, by our intelligent but flawed “founding fathers” who probably did not want totally unlimited and unrestricted rights to bear arms.

Even if they did advocate for unrestricted firearms ownership, these are the same men who owned slaves, committed genocide against and expelled native peoples, withheld enfranchisement from women, engaged in and killed one another in duels, and so on. Actually, I’m really surprised the National Rifle Association hasn’t advocated for the return of lethal dueling matches. Maybe that’s next on their agenda. (Go see the Broadway show “Hamilton” to see how that turned out!)

As we all know, in the current political climate, the chances for comprehensive common sense gun control in the United States is only a pipe dream as long as the National Rifle Association controls Congress and state legislatures, for if they did not, we would have seen effective laws passed years ago resulting in countless lives saved.

Nevertheless, this utter stupidity in our system of firearms laws must end. Enough is enough is enough is enough already! Actually, it is far past that time.

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I am Not a Queer Dinosaur Because I Accidentally Misgendered You

In my university course of 320 students, I try to remember everyone’s pronouns, but I find it impossible. This is the case as well even in my much smaller courses. Whenever I am unsure, I ask students again, or I use the pronoun “they.” But students often get very upset and enraged when I and any of my colleagues unintentionally misgender them.

Several of my colleagues have quit the profession of teaching because of what they increasingly see as a “tyranny of language” (a language that is in perpetual flux and changes virtually by the day, with differing preferences and requirements of each individual).

Virtually every generation “individuates” (distinguishes, separates, individualizes itself) from those that have gone before, and particularly those closely preceding. And this is how it should be if the human spirit is to continually progress, create, innovate, and soar.

As I write this, I am not going to list my queer activist credentials, and I certainly will not claim that the oppression I experienced was worse than that suffered by young people today because I subscribe to activist and poet Audre Lorde’s dictum that “there is no hierarchy of oppression.”

The times in which I lived as a young person were somewhat different, though, from today’s realities, and my experiences reflected the social environment of those times.

I travel around the United States and to other countries giving presentations and workshops on university and high school campuses and at professional conferences on topics around social justice issues. Recently, after I spoke about the topic of heterosexism at a U.S. east coast university, during the question/answer session a student asked me what my undergraduate LGBTQ student group was like when I was attending college.

“Was there much resistance from the administration and from other students?” the student inquired. More questions followed: “Were bisexuals and trans people welcomed?” “Did the cis and trans people work well together?” “Was the group’s focus political or mainly social?” “Was there a separate ‘coming out’ group for new members?” “What kinds of campus activities did your group sponsor?”

As the student asked me these questions, my head began to whirl with visions of my undergraduate years. I stopped long enough to inform the student that I graduated with my B.A. degree on June 13, 1969 – 15 days before the momentous Stonewall rebellion, an event generally credited with sparking the modern movement for LGBTQ liberation and equality.

Though I later learned that some universities like Columbia, Cornell, and Stanford had officially recognized “gay” or “homophile” student groups before 1969, as a graduating senior in 1969, the concept of an “out” person, let alone an organized, above-ground student organization was not even in my range of possibilities.

I must express, however, that it hurts me deeply – and others of my generation have stated this to me as well – whenever a young person treats me as if I am a mere dinosaur from a prehistoric era or as an oppressor with little or no awareness or sensitivity when I use a gender pronoun in error or when I employ a term that either seemed innocuous or appropriate yesterday but somehow has morphed by some new convention into an insensitive label of derision and pain.

I am grateful to young people for giving me the language to finally come out of yet another closet, this time as “agender.” I was always conscious of feeling uncomfortable with society placing me into the gender binary category of “male,” while I also never identified as “female.”

With that stated as a caveat, though, before I hand off my torch to someone in the current generation to continue lighting the path forward, I feel compelled to assert that because of people of my generation and those that have gone before us, today’s youth have the luxury – yes luxury – of criticizing (and at time attacking) us when we misgender. Today’s youth are symbolically standing on our shoulders as they sometimes look down on us.

I personally am doing the best I can to incorporate the continually-changing terminology, for in the final analysis, we are in this process and goal of social justice together, synergistically, figuratively, and literally between the generations.

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Hillary Clinton Has Become a True Champion to the LGBT Community

 

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., stated that “[t]he arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

We can also view the notion of moral progress as a spiral stretched out. We commence our travels forward, and then we begin to circle up, back, then down, then we continue the process over and over again through time. But as we begin moving forward on each consecutive revolution of the spiral, we stand a bit further ahead, further onward than we did at the previous cycle.

The march toward social justice, therefore, cannot be represented as a continually forward procession, but rather, it advances and retreats. With each retreat, though, we stand closer to our goals than we did previously. The metaphor represents the movement of individuals, nations, and the world at large.

Democratic presidential candidate, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton gestures to supporters as she arrives to speak Saturday, June 13, 2015, on Roosevelt Island in New York.

Democratic presidential candidate, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton gestures to supporters as she arrives to speak Saturday, June 13, 2015, on Roosevelt Island in New York.

On the final evening of the Democratic Presidential Convention, the legendary Carol King performed her popular and very moving “You’ve Got a Friend.” The careers of Carol King as a song writer and performer, and Hillary Rodham Clinton as a community organizer, lawyer, and politician run parallel in their trajectories.

Carol King began as a song writer for other people and groups to perform. She advanced the careers of many other entertainers. At a certain point during her career, she made the decision to step into the recording studio and onto the live stage to present her talent, her creativity, and her art directly to her audiences, and in so doing, King provided the sound track of many of our lives.

Likewise, Hillary Rodham Clinton began as an impassioned and dedicated student in the law translating what she learned to help children, people of color, people with disabilities, and others who traditionally were underserved by the “justice” system. Hillary performed this work, often silently, outside the bright lights of publicity, fame, and fortune because she felt a passion to learn and to serve. In so doing, she advanced the lives of many.

Rather than intentionally going after the spotlight, the strong bright glow found and focused on her every move after she married a future governor of Arkansas. She utilized her increased visibility by continually tapping into her talent, intelligence, and creativity in the work she loved, which her daughter Chelsea on stage at the convention described as “the calling of her life.”   

Hillary was instrumental in the passage of the 1975 federal law, Education for All Handicapped Children Act (reauthorized as the Individuals with Disabilities Act in 1990, 1997, and 2004). This federal law contains a mandatory provision stating that to receive federal funds, every school system in the nation must provide a free, appropriate public education for every child between the ages of 3 – 18 (extended later to 3 – 21) regardless of the severity of the student’s disability. As First Woman (not “Lady”), she worked to ensure that more than 8 million previously uninsured children received health insurance.

In September 1995, as thousands from around the world meet in Beijing, China, for the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, First Woman Hillary Rodham Clinton, representing the United States, gave a speech arguing that “Human rights are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights once and for all!”

While her assertion may seem obvious to many of us in the United States today, this was not always the case as it still remains an outlandish notion in many countries around the world. Therefore, as a founding purpose, the conference organizers “determined to advance the goals of equality, development, and peace for all women everywhere in the interest of all humanity.”

In a comparable presentation, as U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered a historic speech at the 2011 United Nations gathering in Geneva, Switzerland, in recognition of International Human Rights Day. The speech focused on the rights of LGBT people internationally. She referenced the monumental United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights ushered through the seemingly insurmountable process to ratification by Eleanor Roosevelt.

Though the Declaration as approved did not cover indigenous people around the world, children, and people with disabilities, Hillary argued forcefully also for the inclusion of LGBT people:

Yet in the past 60 years, we have come to recognize that members of these groups are entitled to the full measure of dignity and rights, because, like all people, they share a common humanity….[Therefore also,] gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights.

Unfortunately, Hillary’s assertion is still not so obvious to many people in the United States, as it remains contested in many states to this very day.

Today, LGBT people face legalized discrimination around the world. In 10 countries, people who engage in same-sex sexuality face the death penalty, and in 65 others, they risk other forms of punishment.

Hillary powerfully argued that nations must work to protect the rights and safety of people who may not follow culturally defined norms of gender identity and expression and sexuality. She eloquently reasoned that countries must abolish laws criminalizing LGBT people on the basis of who they are, who they love, and how they express their identities. In addition, she proclaimed:

It is a violation of human rights when lesbian or transgender women are subjected to so-called corrective rape, or forcibly subjected to hormone treatments, or when people are murdered after public calls for violence toward gays, or when they are forced to flee their nations and seek asylum in other lands to save their lives.

Hillary refused to entertain the often common but scurrilous argument that homosexuality and gender non-conformity are simply “Western inventions.” She did her homework by enumerating the countries, “Western” and non-Western alike, that have either passed or have committed to pursue legislation protecting the human and civil rights of LGBT people.

In the German language, mensch translates as “a human being.” In the Yiddish of Eastern European Jews, mensch represents so much more. A mensch is a special kind of human being: a kind, caring person, someone who loves and gives everything they can back to humanity, someone with a noble character.

Yes, Hillary (and Bill) haven’t always seen LGBT rights as human rights and human rights as LGBT rights. And yes, Hillary, like everyone who puts themselves out in the world and takes risks to effect change, has made mistakes, some blatant. And in the glare of the spotlight, Hillary hasn’t always shown her Menschlichkeit (menschness) to the fullest.

However, in traveling her moral spiral of progress, Hillary has bent toward justice. And yes, she is a true mensch.

Hillary, from First Woman of Arkansas, to First Woman of the United States, to Senator, to Secretary of State, to (hopefully) First Woman and mensch to serve as President of the United States, will continue traveling her moral spiral and advance the moral progress of our country “toward a more perfect union,” for as she said during her convention speech, as long as “…we work together, we will all rise together.”

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