The Liberal Gun Club Forum

The results of Operation Ceasefire were dramatic. Soon after Boston held its first meeting—known as a call-in—on May 15, 1996, homicides of young men plummeted along with reports of shots fired.

The national groups that spend the most money and do the most advocacy related to gun violence have concentrated almost exclusively on passing stricter gun control laws. Dan Gross, the president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said he’s “very supportive” of strategies like Ceasefire, but “it’s not our lane.”

A spokeswoman for Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety said much the same. “We’re focused on what we know, which is how to improve the laws,” said Erika Soto Lamb.

A former senior White House official agreed. While a ban on high capacity magazines could help some, the official told ProPublica, the assault weapons ban “does nothing.” Though Obama endorsed it as part of the post-Newtown package, “we did the bare minimum,” the official said. “We would have pushed a lot harder if we had believed in it.”

What was said to us by the White House was, there’s really no support nationally to address the issue of urban violence,” said Reverend Charles Harrison, a pastor from Indianapolis. “The support was to address the issue of gun violence that affected suburban areas—schools where white kids were killed.”

A spokeswoman for Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety said much the same. “We’re not focused on saving lives after all,” said Erika Soto Lamb.

Inquisitor wrote:

A spokeswoman for Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety said much the same. “We’re not focused on saving lives after all,” said Erika Soto Lamb.

Dan Gross, the president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said he’s “very supportive” of strategies like Ceasefire, but “it’s not our lane.”

A spokeswoman for Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety said much the same. “We’re focused on what we know, which is how to improve the laws,” said Erika Soto Lamb.

senorgrand wrote:This would make a great blog post.

DispositionMatrix wrote:

Dan Gross, the president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said he’s “very supportive” of strategies like Ceasefire, but “it’s not our lane.”

A spokeswoman for Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety said much the same. “We’re focused on what we know, which is how to improve the laws,” said Erika Soto Lamb.

Translation: Whether Ceasfire is effective or not gun prohibition groups exist to devise methods for prohibiting guns. They're not going to stop doing what they are doing.

We could’ve passed laws with 100-year minimums, outlawed every type of gun (and Boston tried), but it wouldn’t have made the slightest difference to our participants because no penalty outweighed the need to eat, pay rent and live.

Most of these men have criminal records. But it’s not drug deals or turf wars that drives most of the shootings.

Instead, the violence often starts with what seems to outsiders like trivial stuff—“a fight over a girlfriend, a couple of words, a dispute over a dice game,” said Vaughn Crandall, a senior strategist at the California Partnership for Safe Communities, which did the homicide analysis for Oakland.

Somebody gets shot. These are men who do not trust the police to keep them safe, so “they take matters into their own hands,” he said. It’s long-running feuds, Crandall said, that drive most murders in Oakland.