Guns In America

March 10, 2008 -- the NY Times Blog

Guns

By Will Okun

Will Okun is a Chicago school teacher who traveled with Nick Kristof in June to central Africa, on the win-a-trip contest. He blogged and vlogged as he went, and you can see his reports at www.nytimes.com/twofortheroad. He teaches English and photography in a Chicago school with many students from low-income and minority homes.

Like most schools in America, our high school on the Westside of Chicago has fights. When teachers or security finally break through
the circular mob of agitating spectators, we are usually separating two female students clinging to each other’s hair. Whether the conflict is over a boy, “he said she said,” disrespect, gangs, money or property, female fights at our school can be as commonplace as once a week. Although the students are suspended and must attend mediation upon their reinstatement, the physical results of their skirmish are usually minimal. Frequently, the girls are able to coexist in class and in school after their initial clash.

In my nine years of teaching, there has been less than one male fight per year. A major reason for the rarity of male fistfights is
that the potential for escalation is just too great. Conflicts do not end in mediation or fights, but rather in mob action or guns. In sickening irony, the omnipresence of gun violence is a deterrent to male conflict at our school.

Although it is illegal to own or possess a gun in Chicago, guns are everywhere on the Westside. I asked a 17-year-old student who is in a gang about his ability to obtain a gun and he confidently replied, “Easy.” I asked the same question of one of the school’s highest achieving males, and he too asserted that he could easily buy a gun from a childhood friend. A different student volunteered that he could get me a gun in two days.

“When I was growing up, we fought when there was a problem with someone else. But it was just a fistfight between the two people,
and when it was over, that was the end of it,” explains our school’s security guard, Officer William Smith. “Nowadays, most of these kids don’t even know how to fight. They just rely on these guns. You really have to watch who you talk to because you don’t know who is going to be the crazy one trying to prove themselves with a gun. It’s ridiculous.”

Former student Fred Reed has lost several friends and relatives to gun violence. “You have to walk away from a lot. For instance, dude deserves to be beat and I know I could beat his ass, but then what? No one is just going to take an ass-beating, they’re going to want to do something about it,” observes Reed. “Then you got to worry about him and his guys jumping on you. Or more than likely, he’s going to get a gun to show that he’s not a punk. That’s how a lot of these shootings happen, it’s over nothing.”

This past Friday, 15[-]year-old sophomore DeVonte Smyth tragically used a gun to end a feud with 18-year-old Ruben Ivy. In front
of school security and hundreds of witnesses, Smyth shot and killed Ivy as school let out at Crane Tech High School on the Westside of Chicago.

Ivy is the 18th Chicago Public School student killed this school year. Last week alone in Chicago, five people under the age of 18 were killed in gun violence (six more were wounded). A 20-year-old woman shot a 15-year-old honor student at a different Westside high school in a family dispute over a boy. “She took something that was so precious away from me,” said the girl’s mother, Kimberly Marsh. (We can only hope that females do not begin to also address their disputes with guns, although I bet gun violence among teen females will become a more common occurrence.)

On Saturday, Mayor Richard Daley, Police Supt. Jody Weis, Chicago Public School C.E.O. Arne Duncan and other community leaders hosted an anti-violence rally at an elementary school on the Southside. As expected, the meeting was poorly attended and there were very few teenagers or young adults in the crowd of less than 300.

“What is happening to America? We are talking about young offenders and young victims. Children are killing children. That young people are getting shot and killed is a disgrace to humanity,” steamed Mayor Daley. “In Washington they are having hearings about steroids. How does this help us? What does this have to do with the violence throughout America? It’s all about entertainment. But it’s not entertainment when the gun manufacturers own the legislature.”

Supt. Weis reiterated the essay of 1st grader Treyveon McCotrell by exclaiming, “Being able to able to play in a park or walk down the street should not be the goal of a child. These are not goals. Going to college, getting a job – those are the goals our children should have.”

Like Mayor Daley, C.E.O. Duncan argued the importance of parental responsibility before attacking gun violence. “Too many children speak of their goals with the phrase ‘if I grow up.’ We live in a society that values the right to bear arms over the lives of our children,” he concluded. “This is a problem throughout America that is different than other diseases because we know the solution. We must have gun reform but we lack the political courage to make the changes that are needed.”

On his website, Barack Obama writes that he is “in this race to tell the corporate lobbyists that their days of setting the agenda in Washington are over.” But does Obama have the “political courage” to stand-up against the N.R.A.?

In a now infamous 1996 questionnaire, an Illinois voter organization asked if Obama supported banning the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns in Illinois. Not surprisingly, his campaign answered, “Yes.” As a community organizer in low-income communities of Chicago, Obama surely saw firsthand the easy availability of guns as well as their devastating wrath. In his heart, I am convinced that Obama agrees with Mayor Daley, Arne Duncan and other urban community leaders who believe there is no positive role for handguns in our society. How can anyone witness the weekly execution of our nation’s students and believe otherwise?

Recently, however, Obama aides claim that the 1996 questionnaire was erroneously completed by a staffer, and that the answers are not reflective of his position on the issue of gun control. As many columnists have already noted, it is somewhat difficult to gauge Obama’s current position on gun control as there is no information about this volatile subject on his otherwise comprehensive website. Nor does he speak in detail about gun control in his campaign speeches. How can Obama speak so passionately about such a range of important issues and all but ignore the gun violence that is terrorizing his own city?

What would happen to Obama’s campaign if he supported stringent gun control laws, including a ban on handgun or assault gun manufacturing and ownership? Must a progressive leader still cower to the power of gun advocates in order to be elected to national office? Is Arne Duncan really correct, do “we as a society value the right to bear arms over the lives of our children?”