America’s Epidemic of Gun Violence

Gun violence is not just a crime and punishment or law and order problem. It is a public health crisis in our nation that affects every community and member of society from the youngest to the most senior. Women are far more at risk to be victims of fatal domestic violence, and guns play a significant role in that violence. Of the 1,591 female homicide victims in New York from 2003 to 2012, 522 were killed as a result of a domestic violence incident. Firearms accounted for the murders of 569 women in New York from 2002 to 2011. 

 

A new FBI report says violent crimes such as shootings and robberies are on the upswing; 2016 makes the first time violent crime rose in consecutive years in more than a decade. It rose 4.1 percent in 2016 over 2015 rates. Homicides climbing 8.6 percent, violence increased 3.9 percent in 2015, and killings jumped by more than 10 percent.

The truth is, where you live in this country has an outsized impact on your safety. The Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence ranks states by the relative overall strength or weakness of their gun laws, where higher scores represent tougher gun laws. Laws considerations include background checks, dealer licensing, waiting periods and assault weapons bans. In a nutshell, the weaker the gun laws, the higher the death rate by guns in states.

State governments can do a lot to control access to guns and ensure the safety of their citizens. For example, in 2016 Connecticut adopted new laws to victims of domestic abuse from gun violence. That was after overhauling its existing gun laws in 2013 as result of the Sandy Hook school massacre. New York’s SAFE Act was also a response to Sandy Hook.

Politicians often hate to talk about their stand on guns and gun violence, but asking hard questions before an election can illuminate the difference between candidates on these important questions of public safety.   

You can see a map of the country that will allow you to click on each state to review its score. Here is New York State’s scorecard from 2016:

Municipalities can also make changes. For the last four years, the state's 17 biggest jurisdictions outside of New York City have participated in Gov. Andrew Cuomo's GIVE -- Gun-Involved ViolenceElimination -- initiative. The program provides millions of dollars in funding, resources and training to the local agencies where 85 percent of upstate New York’s violent crime occurs. In 2017, GIVE provides $13.3 millions in technical assistance, training, equipment, and personnel to help communities reduce violent crime.

Nationwide in 2015, more than 1,600 women murdered by men and the most common weapon used was a gun. The report, titled "When Men Murder Women," is compiled annually by the Violence Policy Center. What they found was that a gun in the home, generally bought to protect residents from intruders, was far more likely to be lethally used against a woman by an intimate partner, such as a boyfriend or husband. Report authors cite U.S. Department of Justice findings that show women are not only far likelier than men to be the victims of domestic abuse involving a weapon, they are attacked in their own homes more than any other location.

When you look closely at the FBI’s report on 2016 crime statistics, one statistic jumps out: shootings by handguns. In fact, 73 percent of 2017’s recorded homicides were committed with a gun, the highest percentage ever reported. Handguns are literally everywhere. The number of pistols produced rose from around 728,000 in 2004 to 4.5 million in 2016.

It is all too easy to get a handgun. In 32 states, gun owners can sell weapons in unregulated private sales that don’t require background checks. According to data collected by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, seven of the 10 calibers of gun found at crime scenes in 2015 are typically associated with handguns.

This availability of guns – particularly handguns - is important not just in violent crime, because more than 60 percent of people in this country who die from guns die by suicide. Suicide is the second-most common cause of death for Americans between 15 and 34, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Across all ages, it is the 10th-most common cause of death, and caused 1.6 percent of all deaths in 2012.

Guns in the home make suicide easier and with greater chance for death in the first attempt.

“The high rate of gun suicides in the United States is not a new problem. Even in the 1980s and 1990s, when violent crime rates were much higher, gun suicides were still a more common cause of death than gun murders. But in recent years, as the gun homicide rate has flattened out, the gun suicide rate appears to be ticking back up slightly.”

The danger to children from unsecured guns is a clear and ever-present danger in too many homes. As one recent headline put it, A toddler has shot a person every week in the US for two years straight. A total of 668 children under the age of 12 were killed or injured by guns in 2016.

One recent Ohio State University study looked into this and found that exposure to gun violence does make a child more likely to pick up a gun and shoot it.

The study showed groups of kids, ages 8 to 12, different versions of the same movie. One had the gun scenes kept in, and one edited the gun scenes out. The children were then sent to a room to play where a real, unloaded gun was hidden amongst toys.

Stephen Cook, a pediatrician at the Golisano Children’s Hospital (in Buffalo, NY) says the results are interesting.

“When they looked at if kids found a gun, if kids had seen the movie with the gun violence, they picked up and held the gun for 53 seconds. Almost a minute. As opposed to the kids who saw the movie without gun violence. If they found the gun, they held it for about 11 seconds."

The trigger of the gun had a sensor on it to track how often it was pulled.

The kids who saw the guns in the movie pulled 2.8 times, while kids who had seen the edited version with no guns pulled the trigger .01 times.

[Only] 32% of children in the study who found the gun reported it to the researcher.

Guns are a particular problem for teenagers. Syracuse, NY is one of 10 cities with the highest rates of teen shootings, Syracuse, a university town that once cranked out air conditioners and televisions, now has a poverty rate of 35 percent. Social media accelerates the threats, and the danger. Teenagers whose brains are years from fully maturing are roaming the streets with a gun in one pocket and a smartphone in the other. "A juvenile with a gun is a heck of a lot more dangerous than a 24- or 25-year-old with a gun," said James Durham, the acting U.S. attorney based in Savannah. 

In the absence of federal leadership on gun violence, the states and localities can – and should – take up this work of ensuring public safety. Organizations like Moms Demand Action For Gun Sense In America was created to demand action from legislators, state and federal; companies; and educational institutions to establish common-sense gun reforms in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting. 

The organization is a leading force for gun violence prevention, with chapters in all 50 states and a powerful grassroots network of moms that has successfully effected change at the local, state and national level. Their Be SMART program provides five simple steps that we can all take to prevent children from accessing guns. 

In December 2013, Moms Demand Action partnered with Mayors Against Illegal Guns to unite a nationwide movement of millions of Americans working together to change the game and end the epidemic of gun violence that affects every community. 

Find out what your community is doing to promote gun safety and what local candidates for elected office stand for when it comes to gun violence. You can step up on this issue to take action if your community is not making this a policy priority.

The Child Care Crises

The Child Care Crises

The Unites States tops the list as the most expensive place to raise children. Families will pay an average of $233,610 from birth through age 17 — or about $13,000 a year — according to government figures released in January. Families in urban areas in the Northeast, such as New York and Boston, were likely to pay even more — an average of $253,770, or roughly $14,000 a year — because of higher housing and child-care costs, according to a report by the Department of Agriculture. In fact, average child-care costs exceed the costs of in-state college tuition across the nation.

But rural families are also under the child care gun, and often with fewer choices, lower quality available care, and less in their paychecks to start with.

Here’s a case in point drawn from CAP’s Mapping America’s Child Care Deserts:

In Livingston County, New York, licensed child care is even sparser. The area is largely rural, with small towns and cities scattered among rolling hills and farmland. Many families only have one or two licensed child care providers from which to choose—if they are fortunate. In the Livingston County seat of Geneseo, a city of roughly 10,000 residents, there are only three licensed child care providers, with a combined capacity to care for fewer than 75 children. In areas such as these, parents are forced to make difficult decisions that might include finding unlicensed child care, leaving the workforce, or patching together a network of family and friends. For many families, these options are not ideal for children or for parents.

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/early-childhood/reports/2017/08/30/437988/mapping-americas-child-care-deserts/

The cost of child care is a significant burden for parents who need it to support their families. The Center for American Progress looked at the data from the National Survey of Children’s Health found that just in 2016, nearly 2 million parents of children age 5 and younger had to quit a job, not take a job, or greatly change their job because of problems with child care.

According to a 2016 “Care Index” report by New America, a Washington, D.C. think tank, $9,589 per child, represents nearly a fifth of annual median household income and 85 percent of the yearly median cost of rent. And no state in the country had a system of care that scored well in each of three key areas of affordability, accessibility and quality, the report went on to say.

One of the hardest hit segments of society for child care are the more than 4.8 million undergraduate parents on campuses nationwide, who make up one quarter of all students and are a significant portion of those parents trying to better their economic situation by going back to school.

And the fact is, as data from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics shows, the vast majority of undergraduates are now classified as nontraditional, whether because they have dependents, are a single caregiver, delayed post-secondary enrollment, do not have a traditional high school diploma, are employed full-time, attend school part-time, or are independent of their parents for financial aid reasons. In all, 74% of all undergrads in 2011-12 had at least one nontraditional characteristic and about one-third had two or three.

As AAUW research from 2013 shows, child care on campus is a critical need for moms in school. The report Women in Community Colleges: Access to Success showed there are more than 4 million women attending two-year public institutions or community colleges, and more than 1 million of them are mothers. Compared with students without dependent children, student parents are more likely to drop out of school, and they most often cite caregiving responsibilities and limited financial resources as their reasons for leaving. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, less than half of the more than 1,000 community colleges in the United States offer on-campus child care for students.

Additionally, student parents rack up more student debt than most (25% more for a bachelor's degree, on average), and drop out at higher rates than their child-free peers (only 27% of single student parents finish a bachelor's degree within 6 years, versus about 56% of their child-free peers). For this group in particular, the cycle of enrolling and dropping out can compound an already vicious cycle of poverty, both for moms and eventually for their kids, too (research shows kids of parents without a degree don’t fare as well as the those of college grads).

http://www.refinery29.com/2017/09/171700/student-parent-campus-childcare-issue-ccampis

And it is not just child care where America lags behind. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, United States lags behind other industrialized nations when it comes to enrolling children in preschool. While the average enrollment for other “first world” countries is 73%, in the US, just 43 percent of 3-year-olds were enrolled in preschool.

Both before school day and after school day care is needed to help working families meet the challenges of both educating their school-age children and feeding and housing them. States and the federal government must step up to help fund these gaps in coverage. Tax credits are a useless tool for the vast majority of parents who don’t make enough to earn them.

In the modern world, America has to have a frank and open discussion about the cost, quality, accessibility, and supply of child care – and about the need for universal Pre-K. Policy makers can’t just leave child care and early education on the table when it comes to building a 21^st century workforce and workplace.

This isn’t rocket science. Other nations have figured out the link between high quality, affordable and accessible child care and a strong economic prosperity for all. According to A Blueprint for Child Care Reform:

The United States can do better for the millions of families struggling with the high cost of child care. Prioritizing child care puts families first and helps children succeed in school and life. It’s an investment in our education system and our future workforce and is one the country cannot afford to ignore. This report outlines a progressive vision for child care reform that guarantees financial assistance on a sliding-scale basis for middle- and low-income families with children ages 12 or younger and children with disabilities up to age 18.

Here’s a link to a North Country Matters show I did with Blue Carreker, the Upstate Organizer for the Citizen Action of New York & Public Policy and Education Fund of New York, about the crises in child care in New York State. Lack of quality, affordable childcare is a drag on our economy. We discussed the gap between the needs and the available services and what can be done to bridge those gaps. (April 21, 2017)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVzcL6XLuCY