To The Gun Lovers: Here's Why I Won't Stand With You Confronting White Supremacists If I Know You're Carrying Concealed

Mourners after the El Paso shooting targeting Latinx people according to the shooter's manifesto. Photo credit: DNYUZ

I live in Maine's 2nd district, now represented by a gun-loving combat veteran who I predict will do nothing to respond to the three mass shootings last week in the USA.

(Note: I do not count offering "thoughts and prayers" as doing anything.)

Rep. Jared Golden has his staff write back to me about gun control saying that my neighbors, his constituents, don't want it, and that he went to Congress to represent them. How much the corruption riddled NRA has to do with his position will remain a sore subject with liberals scrambling to defend Democrat Golden because he replaced the odious GOP incumbent.

Recently I got involved in a group on social media committed to standing up to anti-immigrant white supremacists here in Maine. A friend of a friend started a public group and it burgeoned quickly into a group with several angry-sounding males expounding the virtues of gun ownership and use. It wasn't taken kindly when I commented that I would not be joining in where guns were present to witness and document white supremacist activity, or to defend neighbors being snitched on to ICE storm troopers.

Apparently I am an old white boomer (redundant with old) whose privilege has protected me from violence and who doesn't understand. The fact that I am a woman and thus a default target of violence from childhood doesn't seem to occur to them.

My clearly stated objection -- that the probability of injury to everyone goes up significantly when loaded guns are present -- was mocked as "guns are icky" by the young men.

The group appeared to lack moderation and focus. Debate over strategy and/or tactics among activists who share a goal can be divisive, especially if conducted in public, so I left. I continued to think about and talk about the issue while absorbing news of three mass shootings by angry young white men in a week: Gilroy, El Paso and Dayton.

Here's one acquaintance's report on the Dayton shooter:

I don't know the shooters but I do know how they grew up: in a society steeped in violent images, with the opportunity to spend hundreds of hours pretending to shoot people on screens in order to "win." They also grew up surrounded by gun shops, gun shows, and heavy propaganda glorifying the death machine that is the U.S. military.

The Dayton shooter killed his own sister and 8 other people.

As reported in Heavy.com:

Betts was in ROTC in high school. A Dayton local newspaper purchased a social media background check on him that revealed he used words and phrases like “All Shall Be Annihilated,” “Bloodlust,” “Absolute Carnage,” and “Bloody Massacre.” 

According to a press conference given by Dayton Police Chief Richard Biehl, the weapon Betts used on Sunday morning was obtained legally. “The rifle was ordered online from Texas and transferred at an area firearms dealer,” said Biehl.

Many blame the demagogue with bad hair for hate language inciting the angry young white men of the USA, and its quite likely that his rhetoric is a factor.

But the violence that plagues us began long before he was "elected" to "lead" us.

Other countries similar to ours -- founded on attempted genocide of the indigenous people -- have achieved gun control effectively and drastically reduced the incidence of mass shootings: Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

Eric Garner being choked to death by armed police on Staten Island five years ago this week. They didn't use guns to kill him for selling loose cigarettes on the street, but they were emboldened by being heavily armed. Image credit: Wikipedia

Black and brown people in the USA continue to suffer extreme levels of violence from the trained and licensed gun-toting police, many of whom are clearly white supremacists hiding behind a badge and a uniform. (Many people of color believe carrying a gun will protect them, too; but it did not protect Philando Castile.)

I say disarm police, also.

I lived in Tokyo for four years and police did not carry guns. In the U.S. even "school resource officers" aka uniformed police carry guns. And they are often quite violent with students of color, and useless when a mass shooting is underway.

I say disarm combat veterans, also.

It will reduce the chances for them to shoot themselves or their families when experiencing PTSD symptoms that make them want to end it all.

These are short term solutions (that will not be used here in the gun-crazed USA). Long term solution for toxic gun culture? It might be to reduce the ratio of males to females significantly.

Could a Congress full of women like those of The Squad, i.e. not having clawed their way to the top of a system of violent patriarchy, pass meaningful gun control laws? 

Could an army of women who've had it with gun violence and were in charge of governance buy back a large portion of guns now in circulation? I think they could.

Veterans Responsible For Recent Gun Massacres #ThousandOaks #TallahasseeShooting

Facebook photo posted by Scott Paul Beirle, the yoga class killer.

We already know that the face of mass violence in the gun-infested USA looks male and very, very white. This week, it's looking increasingly like a white male veteran of the empire's many wars.

Scott Paul Beierle, age 40, shot and killed two women and injured several other people at a yoga class in Tallahassee on November 2. Five months ago he was fired from his job as a substitute teacher on the grounds of "unprofessional conduct." Students complained that he would fixate on girl students and stare them down, describing him as giving off a "psychopath vibe." He had been arrested more than once for assault, and investigated for harassing women. He was resentful about being rejected by women, a self-styled "incel" who couldn't get a date. He made videos that included racist rants and praise for another gunman who killed women who wouldn't go out with him. After he shot up the yoga studio, he turned his weapon on himself.

In almost any other rich nation, Beierle would not have been allowed to own the gun he used to murder his victims before turning the weapon on himself.

Scott Bierle was a veteran. Little is known about his time in the Army during 2008-10. He joins the ranks of the 20 veterans who commit suicide each day in the USA.

Ian David Long was the 28 year old veteran who shot up a country music nightclub in Thousand Oaks, California on November 8. He killed 13 people -- if you include his own suicide --and wounded many others.

According to ABC News article, "Thousand Oaks shooter was part of 'new generation of veterans' psychologist says":

The U.S. Marine Corps confirmed Long served from 2008 to 2013, and was deployed to Afghanistan from November 16, 2010, to June 14, 2011...

"There's no front line. These wars have been fought primarily through improvised explosive devices," clinical psychologist Dr. Elena Klaw told ABC7 News. "So that means that every man, woman or child that you see could be an enemy."

Dr. Klaw is also the director of Veterans Embracing Transition at San Jose State University. She explained the combat experienced in the Iraq or Afghanistan wars could impact a veteran's transition to civilian life. 

"You can't tell who's an enemy, and who's a combatant and who isn't," she continued. "So that required an enormous amount of what we call hyper vigilance." 

"Veterans have told me that the hardest part of their service has been coming home," Klaw said.  

Long's neighbors told the media they suspect he suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD.

Another mental health care provider did not agree. From CNN's story about the tragedy:

Thomas Burke, a pastor who served with Long in the same US Marine Corps regiment, said Long's battalion arrived during intense fighting in Helmand province.But Burke warned against too quickly blaming Long's actions on trauma experienced during war. 

"PTSD doesn't create homicidal ideation," Burke said. "We train a generation to be as violent as possible, then we expect them to come home and be OK. It's not mental illness. It's that we're doing something to a generation, and we're not responding to the needs they have."

A meme that's making the rounds: in the last 50 years, more people in the U.S. have died from gunshot wounds than ALL the people in the U.S. who died in all our wars.

Another angle on this story: the migrant waves from Central America and Mexico are made up of desperate people fleeing both poverty and epidemic gun violence. TeleSUR news reports that 2,000 guns made in the U.S. enter Mexico EVERY DAY.

Our endless (largely ignored) wars against people all over the planet, our fatally lax gun control, and our culture of  "entertainment" like video games where children are trained to kill for wins, have converged to create a perfect storm of violence.

From the VA:

From 2005 to 2016, Veteran and non-Veteran adult suicide rates increased 25.9 percent and 20.6 percent, respectively...

Veterans who are in crisis or having thoughts of suicide – and those who know a Veteran in crisis – can call the Veterans Crisis Line for confidential support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year. Call 800-273-8255 and press 1, chat online at VeteransCrisisLine.net/Chat, or text to 838255.

Happy veterans day.

Seeding Sovereignty: The Notion That There Is A Rise In Gun Violence In This Country Is Actually A Misunderstanding Of History

From the indigenous feminist youth leaders of Seeding Sovereignty comes this concise pamphlet lending clarity to the raging debate about the alleged "sacred" right to guns enshrined in the U.S. Constitution's 2nd Amendment.

I share it here because it supports my deeply held conviction that heeding indigenous wisdom about how to live is imperative if human beings are to continue as a form of life on this planet.


Created by Christine Nobiss with art by Jackie Fawn, the pamphlet is based on a new book from scholar Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment. Published by City Lights Books in San Francisco, the new book is available here. Dunbar-Ortiz' award-winning An Indigenous Peoples History of the United States, published in 2015, is one of the most horrifying books I have ever read -- a careful documentation of attempted genocide.

The Second Amendment 

A Sacred Covenant of Ethnic Cleansing and Slavery Between the Nation State and Settler Militias 

There is a myth that has infiltrated the core of the American imagination. It is the belief that the Second Amendment is a result of the Revolutionary War, thus, a right to self-defense and to protect the country from any enemies that might arise. It is also believed that if the government fails to protect its citizens, the citizens have the right to revolt. However, the historical context that led to the creation of the Second Amendment is actually based on the process of land annexation and the mitigation of local populations through assimilation, genocide or slavery‐‐much of which took place at the point of a gun. The colonists that built this country ousted the British for many reasons, but fundamentally, “what colonists considered oppressive was any restriction that British authorities put on them in regard to obtaining land.” (Dunbar-Ortiz, 24) 

The Second Amendment is actually a sacred religiopolitical covenant between the Nation State and the settlers of this continent that recognizes the fundamental ideology of land expansion through ethnic cleansing and slavery. It is nothing more than recognition that this country was founded on the actions of generations of Europeans with a maniacal lust for Indian killing and the control of Black people. Men were expected to bear arms (at one point it was the law) in order to protect themselves, their families, the State and the process of westward expansion. In essence, extreme violence was a god given right and an obligation of the average “citizen” that took on the singular role of a vigilante and that formed into small groups that cleared the way for the rise of the American government. The average citizen was a raider, a ranger, a frontiersmen, a marauder, a pirate and the average colony was a settler militia, an armed household, and a slave patrol. 

The Nation State did not create the Second Amendment to protect its citizens from invasion but to allow its citizens to invade. It is written permission to continue on with the doctrine of discovery, manifest destiny, westward expansion, i.e., the work of the white supremacist. As Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz writes, “The astronomical number of firearms owned by US civilians, with the Second Amendment considered a sacred mandate, is also intricately related to militaristic culture and white nationalism. The militias referred to in the second amendment were intended as a means for white people to eliminate Indigenous communities in order to take their land, and for slave patrols to control Black people.” (Dunbar-Ortiz, 57) 

This violent approach to Indigenous and Black populations is still practiced in current day American society. For instance, Native Americans have the highest police murder rate per ethnic group in the country and the vast majority of these deaths are through the use of a firearm. According to a CNN review of the Center for Diseases Control, “for every 1 million Native Americans, an average of 2.9 of them died annually from 1999 to 2015 as a result of a legal intervention”. For the Black population the number is 2.6, for the Latinx it is 1.7, for Whites it is 0.9 and for Asians it is 0.6. This is a startling statistic because Native Americans only make up 0.9% of the population. However, these deaths are probably under reported just like the other epidemics that Native Americans face, such as missing and murdered women, abuse, rape, stalking, runaway children and violence committed by non-tribal members. According to Matthew Fletcher, director of the Indigenous Law and Policy Center, “The data available likely does not capture all Native American deaths in police encounters due to people of mixed race and a relatively large homeless population that is not on the grid." 

The notion that there is a rise in gun violence in this country is actually a misunderstanding of history. There was just a period in time in the late 19th and early 20th century where guns were not essential for the coercive control of brown people as the government had created reservation internment camps and implemented Jim Crow laws to segregate “problem populations”. However, the rise of the NRA, gun lobbying and the mass production of automatic weapons tied to a long held gun fetish in the American imagination has given white supremacists updated permission to dust off their ancestors weapon of choice and reenact the violence that this country was founded upon. America is a young country and lacks a distinct culture of its own, but one thing is certain--Americans covet their sacred right to free real estate, cheap labor and the gun, thus, the Second Amendment is but permission to steal, kill and dominate in order to fulfill this expectation. 

For more information on Native Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter and to challenge racial and economic injustice go to the Equal Justice Initiative at eji.org 

To demand that our lives and safety become a priority and that we end gun violence and mass shootings in our society, go to csgv.org, marchforourlives.com, sandyhookpromise.org or momsdemandaction.org

Much of the information in this publication was inspired by the words of Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, in her recent book Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2018. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is the author of many books, including An Indigenous Peoples History of the United States. Her body of work is held in high esteem by the women of Seeding Sovereignty for its integrity, honesty and academic activism.

Black Lives > Your Guns, And Other Signs Of The Times #DisarmPolice

Yup, Maine Legislature, that's you they're talking about. Image courtesy of LumenARRT!

As reported by NewsCenter Maine in Augusta last night:

"Maine itself has a lot of trouble with passing laws that make guns safe," said Anita Clearfield, a member of LumenARRT!

"The legislators are afraid to do that.

You can see by their ratings with the NRA who's got an A plus rating, to know who's voted."

Most of the 400 or so who gathered with my family in Waterville yesterday were students, teachers or those who love them. You could guess who the writing teachers were.

My sister Hope proudly copied her math-ish sign from one in Washington DC before we headed to our local march. Here she is with Mindy Bergeron-Lawrence, local reproductive rights activist.

Photo: Roger Leisner, Maine Paparazzi

My husband, Mark Roman, a former NRA member who turned against the gun lobby as they became increasingly belligerent and dangerous, created a sign targeting what he sees as a big part of the problem:

Some other notable signs of the times in central Maine:

The problem is, until you solve this problem, we've still got a big problem:

Maine's capitol lit up by LumenARRT! last night

Yesterday in Waterville I listened to a teacher of the year, a principal, and a former student who's now a teacher, bear witness to how frightened kids are today, and how traumatic it is to have lockdowns, lockouts, and shooter drills in school.

Oh, and the biggest roar from yesterday's crowd ? When a speaker said:

Arming teachers is a very bad idea. 

(Music teacher Shannon Thurston also got a big response when she noted that school budgets don't even have adequate funding for tissues.)

I was gratified to hear reference to the mammoth violence budget of the Pentagon as part of the problem, despite the fact that the event was a thinly veiled Democratic Party get-out-the-vote effort. 

I also appreciated a minister who noted  my sign referencing the latest egregious killing by police of an unarmed black man, father of two Stephon Clark.

Powerful moment. Stephon Clark's brother comes face to face with police officers at the protest downtown. "20 times," he says to each of them #StephonClark pic.twitter.com/vSe4S3JhFr

— Liz Kreutz (@ABCLiz) March 24, 2018

That reminds me of the best article I read yesterday: An Incomplete List of Things Black People Should Avoid Doing So They Won't Be Killed by Police by Michael Herriot in The Root. It's bitterly funny in style but is also a catalog of the many, many men and women gunned down by police who have no business carrying guns.

I lived in Tokyo for four years. Shortly after I arrived there, I saw a drunk man screaming in the face of a stoic police officer as I walked through a park near my apartment. Some impressive de-escalation skills were on display. I kept expecting the cop to clock the guy but it never happened.

There was no danger that the cop would shoot the aggressive man, because police in Tokyo were armed with bicycles and flashlights, not guns.


I may have been the only one in Waterville yesterday with a sign calling to disarm police, but then it was a very white crowd. Many people agree with me that armed police are part of the problem -- not part of the solution.

neither of these statistics are ok. this post is not to say one of these is more traumatic than the other but to put things into perspective and draw attention to the overall misuse of guns and power in this country. #MarchForOurLives #DisarmPolice pic.twitter.com/xeeUYNhHZ7

— Solidarity Cville (@SolidCville) March 25, 2018

Cycle Of Violence Turning Into A Cyclone In USA

"We are fed up" sign against femicide held by a woman in Uruguay. Photo: Reuters

It would be impossible to keep up with all the incidents of gun violence resulting in innocent deaths in the USA this week.







There are a couple that stood out, though.

Yesterday 36 year old military veteran Albert Wong took three women hostage at a VA home in Yountville, California and all four were dead of gunshot wounds when police finally made it into the room.

The late Jennifer Gonzales, Jennifer Golick and Christine Loeber were mental health workers, employees of a nonprofit that treated veterans with PTSD. May these martyrs to gun violence perpetrated by men rest in peace.

Reports are that Wong suffered from PTSD, but no motive for the murders and suicide has been named.



Secondly, a football player was charged with manslaughter after shooting and killing a 17 year old girl in a high school classroom. Michael Barber of Birmingham, Alabama also shot  himself in the leg with the gun. Why was there a gun on campus? Why weren't the school's metal detectors in use that day? We may never know. Nor would answers be much consolation to the family and friends of the late Courtlin La'Shawn Arrington, who will now never attend nursing school as she had planned.

Then, in just plain old violence, videos have surfaced of a black dishwasher assaulted violently by police in Asheville, North Carolina for jaywalking. A policeman was allowed to resign but that is hardly likely to redress the racial injustice of beating and tasering a restrained man for being guilty of walking home while black.





Yup, Johnnie Jermain Rush did jaywalk -- across an empty street on his way home from a 13 hour shift at Cracker Barrel.

Also, the demagogue with bad hair has let it be known that the widely unpopular military parade he ordered for Veterans Day will not include tanks because -- wait for it -- they tear up the pavement.

Violence against roads is a concern, but not violence against people who are actually shot or run over by tanks funded by the 54% of U.S. tax dollars going to the Pentagon these days. Nor is there much concern for the collateral damage of churning out PTSD sufferers who return home and enact violence on themselves and others. Because, hey, "there's plenty of good money to be made supplying the Army with the tools of the trade."

I keep saying I'm too old to leave the USA, and I probably am, but it's tempting.



Look what women in Latin America did this week to protest femicide and other forms of violence suffered disproportionately by women and girls.

Only a women's general strike in the U.S. -- sort of like the one Iceland had in the 1970's -- has any chance of ending the cycle, or cyclone, of violence we find ourselves in.

A stop to business as usual might stop humanity circling the drain sooner rather than later.

Students will walk out of high schools all over the country this coming week, on March 14, to protest lack of congressional reform of gun policies.

I tried to organize a solidarity action at my elementary school but was told it was forbidden by my very timid principal. If I wanted to go up to the high school to join in the action there (organized by a girl I mentored in middle school!) I'd have to get coverage of my class and use personal time.

All my personal time for the year got used up in the Aegis 9 trial so I guess I'll cave to the bureaucracy on this one.

But I'll still fantasize about the immense power of all working women -- teachers, nurses, cooks, admins, managers, drivers, CEOs -- just stopping what they're doing until the weapons are all buried in a vault somewhere. 

Of course caregivers for the young or infirm would not want to stop work, nor would they need to.

The rest of us could do it on behalf of everyone being swept away in this endless cyclone of violence.