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267 pages, Hardcover
First published October 4, 2016
“Do you love guns more than your children. How does the freedom to bear firearms measure against the freedom to know that your children will be safe in elementary school?
In more than half of American homes where there are both children and firearms, according to a 2000 study, the weapons are in an unlocked place, and in more than 40 percent of homes, guns without a trigger lock are in an unlocked place. Almost three-quarters of children under the age of ten who live in homes with guns say they know where the guns are. A 2005 study showed that more than 1.69 million children and youth under eighteen live in homes with weapons that are loaded and unlocked. According to a Department of Education study, 65% of school shootings between 1974 and 2000 were carried out with a gun from the attacker's home or the home of a relative. And the laws, it seems, are effective. One study indicated that in the twelve states where child-access prevention laws were on the books for at least one year, unintentional gun deaths fell by 23 percent."
"In most US cities where children were shot in the day profiled in this book, such a murder would have barely made through the 24-hour media cycle, a few seconds on the television, maybe, a few hundred words in the paper with a quote from the family member, maybe and that is it. If the perpetrator was caught, that too would be made a couple of hundred words.
The development of social media, citizen journalism, and new technology has made it more difficult for the established media to simply ignore gun deaths in certain areas."
"One should be cautious when drawing conclusions about people's characters from social media. On Facebook, nobody's children cry, nobody's marriage is imperiled, and everyone has beautiful days under the bluest of skies. These are performance platforms where we present versions of ourselves that are curated for public consumption”
"In several studies of gang homicides in Los Angeles, researchers uncover a range of characteristics that distinguish gang killings from other killings. They are more likely to take place on the street and involve guns and cars, take place in the afternoons and have the participation of people from the younger ages; usually, men."
“The gun problems starts with parents. It starts before someone brings a gun into their home. If parents can't decide to raise the children properly, they should not have children."
“Rights come with responsibilities. All freedoms come with some restrictions. ”
"So long as you have a society with a lot of guns- and America has more guns per capita than any other county in the world- children will be at risk of being shot. The questions are how much risk, and what, if anything, is being done to minimize it?"
“I don’t think the second amendment means what they think it means.”
Researching and writing this book has made me want to scream. But more than its making me want to scream at anyone in particular, it has mostly made me want to just howl at the moon. A long, doleful, piercing cry for a wealthy country that could and should do better for the youth and children – for my children – but that appears to have settled, legislatively at least, on a pain threshold that is morally unacceptable.
I want to bay toward the heavens, because while kids like those featured in this book keep dying, the political class refuses to do not only everything in its power but anything at all to minimize the risks for the kids who will be shot dead today or tomorrow.
Retired Chief Justice Warren Burger: the Second Amendment “has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud – I repeat the word ‘fraud’ – on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”
Did you know that on the very day of the Sandy Hook massacre, a mentally ill man ran amok with a knife in a Chinese elementary school and stabbed 24 people? Guess what? None of them died.
A 1998 study: “for every gun in the house that was used for self-defence in a ‘legally justifiable shooting’, there were four unintentional shootings, seven criminal assaults or homicides, and eleven attempted or completed suicide.”