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COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

Two homicides have happened in Columbia within the past two weeks that has shined light on the growing nationwide issue of gun violence.

Sgt. Brian Leer with the Boone County Sheriff's Office said gun violence is definitely picking up.

"We do see this every now and then it seems like in the spring/early summer when people start getting out more and the sun is up longer meaning people are stirring up longer," Leer said.

According to the Gun Violence Archive Data, there was a rise in gun violence at the beginning of the pandemic nationwide. There were 160 shootings from Jan. 1 to April 26 in which four or more people were injured or killed, compared to just over 90 during the same period in 2020.

Holly Hoechstenbach, better known as "Definitely Holly" is a gun rights activist who sees people focusing too much on the negatives of gun and not the positives.

"We need more law abiding citizens being armed to protect themselves and their loved ones," Hoechstenbach said. "You hear stories of gun violence and all these bad things happening, the mass shootings, but what people don't see as much is the stories about the grandma that was protecting herself in her house with her AR-15 or a man/woman protecting their family."

Friday evening, the Mom's Demand Action group for commonsense gun laws held a march, "to honor survivors of gun violence and demand action to end the epidemic, which kills 100 Americans every day and wounds hundreds more."

Spokeswoman for the group, Debbie Crossnoe, said the goal for them is not to abolish gun rights, but while working within the Second Amendment to add "commonsense" gun laws and add more gun safety.

Hoechstenbach said once more gun laws are added then rights of people and Second Amendment are affected and could head down a scary path and she thinks this could lead to socialism.

"It comes down to it doesn't matter if it's a gun or a knife or another type of weapon, it's the choices that people are making," said Leer. Leer said he unfortunately thinks that street violence is being glorified in different cultures and on social media.

Crossnoe said Mom's Demand Action has a be smart program to educate people on how to store guns safely. They also were provided gun locks from the sheriff's department that they give out for free to make sure guns are being stored safely.

Hoechstenbach said, "We can't stop people from doing crimes, but we can arm more law abiding citizens to help prevent those crimes from happening and to help protect families."

Crossnoe said in Missouri a large number of people are dying from suicide rather than homicide in gun shootings, the group provides education on this topic because a gun can be much more lethal than other types of suicide.

FBI firearm background checks also rose during the pandemic. From March 2020 to April 2021, the agency has seen 3 million background checks.

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Gun rights and gun violence activists speak out about the recent increase in gun related crimes - ABC17NEWS - ABC17News.com

Bodies are piling up all over the second amendment as two of Americas pandemics converge. The plague of gun violence and the inability to mount an effective response, even in the wake of multiple mass shootings, is, unfortunately, rooted in the other pandemic gripping the United States: anti-Blackness and the sense that African Americans are a dangerous threat that can only be neutralized or stopped by a well-armed white citizenry.

For too long, the second amendment has been portrayed with a founding fathers aura swaddled in the stars and stripes.

But a well-regulated militia wasnt, as the story goes, about how valiant and effective the militias were in repelling the British. George Washington was disgusted with their lack of fighting ability and the way the men would just cut and run from battling against a professional army. Nor was the militia reliable as a force to uphold the law. In Shays Rebellion, bands of armed white men, who were in the states militia, attacked the Massachusetts government because of foreclosures and debt seizures, demonstrating, again, how unreliable the militia were. Boston merchants had to hire mercenaries to put down the rebellion.

On the other hand, where the militia had been steadfast was in controlling the enslaved Black population. Access to guns for white people was essential for this function.

In 1788, at the constitutional ratification convention in Virginia, a major source of contention was that the draft constitution had placed the training and arming of the states militia under federal control. Virginians Patrick Henry and George Mason balked, and raised the specter of a massive slave revolt left unchecked because Congress could not be trusted to summon the forces to protect the plantation owners. Mason warned that if and when Virginias enslaved rose up (as they had before), whites would be left defenseless. Patrick Henry explained that white plantation owners would be abandoned because the north detests slavery. In short, Black people had to be subjugated and contained and state control of the militia was the way to do that.

The sheer brutality of human bondage, where plantation owners were notorious for barbarities such as scalding, burning, castrating and extracting the tongues or eyes of slaves, had created an overwhelming fear among whites of the enslaveds capacity and desire for retribution. A series of revolts in the 1600s and 1700s terrified white residents and led to a slew of laws forbidding Black people from having any weapons, including guns. The militias all-important role was to quash those revolts, especially if the uprising was widespread, as in the 1740 Stono Rebellion in South Carolina.

This function of the militias was so important during the war of independence that governments such as that in South Carolina devoted the lions share of their white manpower to the containment of the enslaved. As a result, the colony did not have enough white men to join the Continental Army and repel the British. The calculus was simple: it was more important to the plantation owners in the colonial government to maintain slavery and control Black people than to fight for American independence.

In other words, concerns about keeping enslaved Black people in check are the context and background to the second amendment. The same holds true for today.

In May 2000, NRA president Charlton Heston invoked the constitution and then asserted, as he held a 19th-century-era rifle over his head, that the only way that Al Gore and other liberals would take his gun would be from my cold dead hands. That unyielding statement was a response to his people supposedly being under attack. Three years earlier Heston had declared: Heaven help the God-fearing, law-abiding, Caucasian, middle-class, Protestant or even worse admitted heterosexual, gun-owning or even worse NRA-card-carrying, average working stiff.

Nearly two decades later the Colorado congresswoman Lauren Boebert, who bragged about carrying her Glock to work in Washington DC, echoed that same defiance and fear as she wrote to her followers: I told Beto [ORourke] HELL NO to taking our guns. Without weapons, she exclaimed in a fundraising ad, her overwhelmingly white constituency would be left defenseless against gang members, drug runners and thugs, pejoratives that are often deployed as synonyms for African Americans.

Previously, Dana Loesch, NRA spokeswoman, had painted a similar picture of them screaming racism, breaking windows, burning cars, bullying and terrorizing the law-abiding. And, she added, when the police are called to stop this madness, they get outraged. The only way we save our country and our freedom, she asserted, is to fight this violence of lies with the clenched fist of truth. Clearly, the same clenched one that Heston held over his head holding a gun.

Thus, the slaughters in Sandy Hook, the Pulse Club in Orlando, Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston and San Bernardino did not lead to any meaningful gun safety laws despite the staggering casualties. The rampant anti-Blackness that dominated Barack Obamas presidency helped to short-circuit a tangible, legislative response. Instead, the fear of being left defenseless to a nation with a sizable Black population and Black leadership was palpable. Gun sales soared by 158% as did the rise of anti-Black rightwing militias.

The Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson, who has an A rating from the NRA, sums it up. He didnt fear white insurrectionists who stormed the US Capitol, injured 140 police officers, built a gallows to hang Mike Pence and hunted for Nancy Pelosi; he would have been afraid, however, if it had been Black Lives Matter. Indeed, because that fear and the second amendment mean that Black lives dont matter. And whites and others caught in the crosshairs of mass shootings are the collateral damage and pay the price.

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Americas gun obsession is rooted in slavery - The Guardian

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Elections (Second Amendment) Ordinance: IHC issues notices to secretaries of ministry of law, ECP - Business Recorder

Carolyn Banks| Special to the Advertiser

A gunman killed nine people last week at a rail yard in San Jose, Calif., before dying of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, authorities said.

There have been at least 200 mass shootings in the first 132 days of this year, Reuters reported, quoting data from the Gun Violence Archive. CNN, citing the same archive, said the San Jose shooting was the 232nd mass shootingthis year, with 17 recorded in a single week in May.

Meanwhile in Texas, lawmakers last week approved legislation that permits people to carry handguns without a permit and without instruction of any kind. Surprised? Dont be. In 2015, our legislature said that guns could be carried on college campuses.

And Texas isnt alone. When the governor signs the bill, Texas will join at least 20 other states that allow handguns to be carried without a permit.

I suggest that the United States add a new cabinet position Secretary of Slaughter. That person could keep tabs on the number of mass shootings as they occur and post the pertinent information online. Whether 15 or 200, we are in Guinness World Records territory here.

Think of the possibilities. There could be a mass shooting of the week that people could vote on. We could rank the murders that took place over a seven-day period and have people fill out cards putting them in some kind of order. Dont we already do this for baseball and football? Murder, obviously, is as big as anysport.

Remember baseball cards? We could have mass shooter cards. I can hear it now: Ill trade you a Dylann Roof for a Derek Chauvin.

Oh-oh. Scratch Derek Chauvin. Although his crime looms large, he was only convicted of one murder. Generally, the FBI defines mass murder as a number of murders (four or more) occurring during the same incident, with no distinctive time period between the murders. So, Derek Chauvin is three shy of the label.

If the murderer cools off, that is, takes some time between kills and moves to a new location, he or she is a spree killer, which is a subset. And, of course, a serial killer does it one at a time, possibly with long stretches between kills. To be designated a serial killer, a person has to have murdered at least three people.

But even so, mass murders are stealing the show. Just turn on your TV if you dont believe me.

When we think of mass murder, we think of guns, and yes, guns are the weapon of choice. There have been mass stabbings, but not so many in the U.S., largely because of the prevalence of guns here. In 2019, in a New York suburb, five people were stabbedand slashed with a machete in what was called the "Hanukkah stabbing. But all survived except for one who died three months later of his injuries. Knives even machetes are just not as effective at dealing death, especially in a crowd of people.

But there are other means. The West Fertilizer Company explosion in West, Texas, in 2013, could be categorized as an unsolved mass murder. Fifteen people died that day, more than 200 were injured and hundreds of homes and buildings were damaged or destroyed. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said the fire that caused the blast was intentionally set. The alleged arsonist, who could be considered a mass murderer, has yet to be found.

And dont forget Timothy McVeigh, whose Oklahoma bombing scored 168 dead. That was an explosion too. And just as in West, ammonium nitrate was the weapon.

Do I sound cavalier about these atrocities? Do I sound as though they dont affect me in the least? Let me tell you, its a pose. I am outraged by each and everyone. And I am saddened, too.

We cant ban fertilizer, the most available source of ammonium nitrate, but we can and should do something about the guns in our midst. I dont think this will happen in Texas, because our governor, Greg Abbott, lauds the recent no-permit carry, saying it is the strongest Second Amendment legislation in Texas history.

I propose that, if the new cabinet position is approved, Abbott fill the slot as Secretary of Slaughter. That would be fitting. According to what Abbott has said and done, our Second Amendment wins out over the Fifth Commandment. Remember it?It says, Thou shall not kill.

Banks is a contributing columnist for the Advertiser. She lives in Bastrop and is the author of several novels. See her work atcarolynbanks.com.

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Commentary: Does the Second Amendment trump the Fifth Commandment? - Austin American-Statesman

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JERRY DAVIS, San Clemente

The self-righteousand blatantly incorrect notions of those whothinkgovernment is intruding into our lives are laden with hypocrisyand little truth.

Lets start with guns. The NRA is hardly a credible source to quote. It is now bankrupt thanks to financial corruption by its leaders. Eighty percent of Americans when polled said they want sensible guncontrol,including background checks.

What are the laws recently passed to get rid of guns? None. In fact, many states, and most recently Texas, are set to pass laws allowing open carry without a permit.

Totalitarianism coming to our country due to gun regulation? That might come as a surprise to our EU allies, Australiaand Japan, all of which have strict gun regulation.

As for God and our Founding Fathers, many of our Founding Fathers were heavily influenced by deism. Deists valued reason over religious dogma. They believed in a higher power but not necessarily a supernatural deity.

They must have felt strongly enough about this that they included separation of church and state in the Constitution. The Founding Fathers may be spinning in their graves at the thought that God created this nation.

On the topic of government intrusion, there seems to be little concern about too much government when politicians try to pass laws to prevent people from loving and marrying whomever they choose, or telling women that they do not have the right to make their own decisions about their well-being. They have no problem eliminating anti-discrimination laws, or with laws making it harder to vote.

The hypocrisy is stunning.

Rather than quoting scripture and denying historical facts, or inventing divisive issues based on fear, our leaders might better serve us by focusing on realproblems based on accurate and historical facts.

Finally, resorting to name-calling and labeling using loaded language like Marxism and socialism are tactics used by those who are without ideas.

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Letter to the Editor: Second Amendment and Big Government - San Clemente Times