November 8 was a banner day for the California Chapters of the Brady Campaign.  Chapter leaders met at a statewide conference at which we celebrated the passage of AB 962, regulating the sale of ammunition in California.
 
We also attended a Los Angeles benefit at which three eminent individuals and one law enforcement group received awards for their work in preventing gun violence.

L.A. Police Chief designate Charlie Beck presented the James S. Brady Law Enforcement Award to the Police Department's Gun Unit.  The Gun Unit's achievements are outstanding.  Through careful monitoring, it has kept the number of legal firearms dealers in L.A. at 17 for a population of 4,000,000 and has restricted the number of CCW permits to 23!

The next awardee was Marcellus Wiley, a former NFL player and now an NFL analyst.  He spoke eloquently about growing up in an environment in which he was surrounded by guns, becoming a gunowner himself, and ultimately giving up his gun because he realized that carrying a gun made him more vulnerable to gun violence than being unarmed.  He now urges others to follow his path.

Lastly, our own Brady Chapter Leader for L.A. Suzanne Verge and her husband Jeffrey Peak were honored with the Sarah Brady Visionary Award.  Suzanne has led her chapter for ten years and Jeff has assisted her as Secretary.  Suzanne's brother was murdered in 1978.  Her is her eloquent speech from the benefit.

December 10, 1978 -On a Sunday morning two weeks before Christmas,  memories of celebrating Thanksgiving and my mother's birthday were still fresh in our minds.
my Dad was at 8 o’clock mass with my sister Annette and brothers Mark and Patrick, I was 15 and of course sleeping instead of attending church, my brother Arthur had just graduated from college so he was following his dream, backpacking through New Zealand and Australia, and my brother, Peter, had gone out the night before and was staying with friends.

There was a knock on the door—and, just like that  - our world—as we knew it-- ended .
The Santa Monica Police had come to tell my mother those unthinkable and Incomprehensible words...my brother, Peter, had been murdered a mile from our home at the age of 18.
On that day, two families lives were changed forever. The man who killed my brother was a graduate of UC Berkeley’s Boalt Law School and his family was devastated as well.  I STRONGLY believe if there wasn’t a gun in that condo, at best there would have been a fist fight and my brother would have won it hands down...

For 20 years I did not know what to do with my grief and felt powerless over the situation. It took one person, Donna Dees Thomases to change my life.

Donna was watching the news in August 1999 when she saw the North Valley Jewish Community shooting in the San Fernando Valley.  She thought to herself, my kids go to a Jewish Day Care center, this could have been MY family.  She was outraged and called down to Washington DC and pulled a permit for a march for 10,000 people for Mothers Day 2000.  I had to go to the march in Washington, DC, I had to be the voice for my brother who was no longer with us.  I distinctly remember coming up the escalator and coming out of the Metro carrying my brother’s photo and seeing a sea of people...there were 750,000 people there. There marches all across country that day.  I remember seeing people carrying pictures, wearing t-shirts with their loved ones’ photo or carrying signs with photographs of loved ones lost to guns...I can still see the photo of the handsome young man in his tuxedo in his coffin.  There were too many of us...what was supposed to be a one day march turned into a grassroots movement.  I came home and started a chapter here in Los Angeles.

Now I am not asking you to organize a march or start a chapter but more importantly...please talk to one person about what you felt or heard tonight.  I believe one person can make a difference.  I know my brother Peter made a huge difference to our family. Donna Dees Thomases made a difference to me - she gave me my voice.  Please talk to them about the risks of owning a gun.  A gun in the home is 22 times more likely to be used against you than for self-protection.  That gun is more likely to be used against someone you know or love such as in my brother’s death or in a suicide or in a unintentional shooting.

The holidays are upon us and we know depression increases with the season.  Please talk to people...young and old about the risks of having a gun in the home. This Dec. 4th will mark the one year anniversary of our dear friends’ son Cameron's suicide.  Cameron was a beautiful 17 year old.  Our friends do not own or keep a gun in their home, but Cameron procured one through someone else's careless ownership. We may hear about the statistics tonight...about the risks and the number of deaths but I will tell you... my brother Peter is not statistic, Cameron is not a statistic, Matthew Blek is not a statistic, Kenzo Dix is not a statistic, Laura Wilcox is not a statistic and I could go on...

These are people who are missed every day. We can do better, we will do better... so please, tomorrow - tell people about what you have heard and together we can make difference.
 

Heidi Yewman, State President of Million Mom March in the state of Washington, has recently published an outstanding book, Beyond the Bullet, on the victims of gun violence.  This book is a must-read.  It tells the stories of 18 victims and survivors in their own voices.  It gets us past the horrifying statistics on gun injury and death in America and lets us share in the human pain of gun violence.
I was fortunate to be able to interview Heidi about her book.  Here is what I learned from her.
Q. How and why did you personally get into the gun control movement?
A.  I graduated from Columbine High School 13 years before the 1999 massacre. Dave Sanders, the sole teacher that died in the massacre was my basketball coach and typing teacher at Columbine. As I sat at his funeral I decided I needed to do something, be a part of the solution. I vowed to myself that I would get involved. A year later I was walking among thousands at the Million Mom March in Washington DC. I have been a part of the movement ever since.
Q. What made you decide to do your book?
A.  It started at the march. I was overwhelmed by all the people wearing t-shirts and holding signs that had a picture of their loved one along with the birth and death date. It was like they were screaming, "This person mattered and was loved!" I wanted to know the the story behind the poster and shirt. I wanted to know how you get up the next day, and the next day and the next day. I wanted to know the story behind the death and how it impacted them emotionally, physically and spiritually.
Q. What did you learn from writing your book?
A.  I learned that people grieve in different ways and in different time frames. I learned that gun violence is unnecessary and treating these deaths as just part of living in America is insulting to all involved. I was surprised by the lack of empathy shown by those who only look at statistics to justify pushing week gun laws. I have heard NRA members say that it doesn't matter when a gang member dies or that suicide statistics should not be included in gun violence statistics because the person didn't want to live anyway.
Q. What are the main messages of your book?
A.  The message of the book is that the lives of those killed by gun violence do matter. I want the reader to see that the mother of the gang member killed morns just as much as the mother of the honor roll student that was unintentionally killed. Suicide by gun is preventable and those whose lives were lost can not be discounted because "they didn't want to live anyway." My hope is that the reader will more deeply understand the real loss from gun violence as told by those who experience that loss everyday.
Q. What are the greatest needs of victims and survivors?
A.  Because grief is experienced in different ways there is no one need. What I heard over and over, though is that victims and survivors want to be heard. They want the life of their loved one to matter and they don't want their grief and loss to be minimized by cruel and unnecessary comments. One woman I interviewed whose son died from suicide said that people assumed her son was on drugs because they had sons the same age and didn't want to think that what happed to her could happen to them. She said it was hurtful and put her have to defend her son instead of just morn his death.
    Thank you, Heidi, for adding so much to our efforts to reduce gun violence both through this book and all the other work you do.

I urge you to read the review below of Lethal Logic: Exploding the Myths that Paralyze American Gun Policy (Potomac Books, 2009).  Lethal Logic was written by Dennis A. Henigan, Vice President for Law and Policy at the Brady Campaign.  The book contains an extraordinary presentation of how the gun lobby misrepresents gun violence in America and is a worthy addition to your reading/research collection.

The review was written by California's Griffin Dix who taught Anthropology at Santa Clara University. In 1994 his fifteen-year-old son, Kenzo, was shot and killed in Berkeley. He recently served as the Chapter-elected national Chairman of the Million Mom March’s National State Presidents Council.
________________
Four out of five Americans support specific measures to regulate firearms, such as requiring background checks at gun shows. In the 2006 and 2008 elections, candidates who explicitly backed such regulations defeated NRA-endorsed or “A-rated” candidates overwhelmingly. But now House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as well as the Democratic leaders of the Senate and the White House are universally afraid to even raise the subject. Why is that?

Part of the answer is that the gun lobby’s emotionally powerful, fear-inducing arguments work. In his new book, Dennis Henigan takes on the gun lobby’s policy-paralyzing slogans and answers them with sound logic and research.  A gun lobby golden oldie is: Guns Don’t Kill People, People Kill People, “one of the greatest advocacy slogans ever conceived,” says Henigan. But, he points out, cars by themselves don’t kill people either, yet no one argues against licensing drivers and mandating safety features like seat belts and airbags.

Unlike cars, guns are sold as weapons and attract many buyers who want to use them to commit crimes. These crimes are more lethal if a gun is used, and less lethal if a knife or fists are used. Citing studies by Frank Zimring of UC Berkeley, Henigan shows that Americans are not more violent than people in other countries but our violence is more lethal because our crimes—such as robbery and assault—more often involve guns. This is another way that, contrary to the slogan, guns do kill people.

However, Henigan says, most people who buy guns, even handguns, do not buy them for crime; they buy them for self-defense and bring them into their homes. Guns kill people there too; the presence of a gun in the home is associated with an almost three fold increase in homicide rates there and an almost five fold increase in suicide.

Partly because the slogans are so effective, we don’t do a good job of thinking about gun policy in this country, says Henigan. In answer to the gun lobby’s arguments, he offers a wealth of logical, research-based counter-arguments.  But are logic and facts enough?

The fearful emotions aroused by the gun industry slogans can easily override logical arguments, even those in favor of laws proven successful at helping prevent criminals—not law-abiding citizens—from obtaining guns. The success of the gun lobby demonstrates political psychologist Drew Westen’s dictum that, “In politics, when reason and emotion collide, emotion invariably wins.” (The Political Brain, p. 35) In fact, the most compelling parts of Lethal Logic are the case studies showing the lethal effects of our loophole-ridden laws on ordinary, unsuspecting Americans.

These are the words of Loren Lieb, the mother of one of the children shot ten years ago at the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Granda Hill, California.  Loren is a Vice President of the California Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

August 10, 1999. The day started like any other. Everyone in my house was still asleep when I left for work at 6:30 a.m. I always went to work early so I could come home in the early afternoon to pick up my kids, 6-year-old Josh and 8-year-old Seth, from Camp Valley Chai at the North Valley Jewish Community Center, a few miles from our house. Everyone was asleep, so I left without saying goodbye, or I love you.  
The day started like any other, but ended like a nightmare. Later that morning, my husband called to tell me, in a strained voice, that there was a “man with a gun” at the camp. I couldn’t make any sense of the statement. Why would there be a man with a gun at a summer day camp? Had he shot anyone? Why wasn’t he captured?
I left my office in downtown Los Angeles and drove 40 minutes to the camp, all the while listening to radio reports of the shooting, which said that 6- and 8-year-old-boys had been shot. The streets near the JCC were closed for several blocks. The five lanes of Rinaldi Street were filled with police cars, ambulances, fire trucks, and news vans, and hundreds and hundreds of frantic parents. Immediately, a complete stranger told me she thought that one of the victims was named Josh. The next thing I heard was a police officer calling through a bullhorn for the parents of Josh Stepakoff. I ran under the yellow tape and he grabbed me firmly by the shoulders, looked my straight in the eye and kept repeating, “He’s going to be okay.” Of course was grateful to know that he would be OK, but how could something like that happen to a 6-year-old child in a supposedly civilized country?
Josh was shot twice: once in the leg, the bullet going straight through the bone, and once in the hip with the bullet stopping under the skin near his spine. It was many hours before we learned the whereabouts of Seth.
To commemorate the anniversary of the shooting, Josh Stepakoff, a survivor and now 16, is organizing with another survivor a Victory Over Violence 10K Run on October 4, 2009.  The run is being organized to raise awareness about gun violence in our community and to raise money for survivors of gun violence.

August 10 marks the 10th anniversary of the the shooting at the North Valley Jewish Community. At about 10:30 a.m., a neo-Nazi with a semi-automatic weapon and hundreds of rounds of ammunition entered the front door of the Center. He found himself face-to-face with a receptionist, and young campers and their counselors who were returning to the building after playing a game.

He began firing his weapon,  sweeping it from side to side, unloading about 70 rounds in a matter of seconds. He wounded 5 people: the receptionist, a 16-year-old counselor, and three young campers who were 5 and 6 years old, and terrorized hundreds more. After fleeing the Center, the shooter car-jacked a car and drove a short distance to Chatsworth where he brutally murdered postal worker Joseph Ileto as he delivered mail. He later fled to Las Vegas where he turned himself in.

The Victory Over Violence Run is being held on October 4, 2009, on the campus of California State University, Northridge (CSUN). The San Fernando Valley Chapter of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and Women Against Gun Violence (WAGV) are collaborating on the event, with CSUN Hillel as the campus sponsor.

Spread the word, sign up for the run, and be part of the solution for a Victory Over Violence!

Gun violence shatters the lives of our loved ones, their families and friends.  The shooting and death of Matthew Blek at age 21 in New York shattered the lives of his parents, Mary Leigh and Charlie Blek and many, many others.  

Matthew's shooting also resulted in an extraordinary gain for the movement to prevent gun violence because Mary Leigh and Charlie Blek have since given their all to the Million Mom March (Mary Leigh is President Emeritus of MMM) and Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.  They have been outstanding and inspiring leaders of the movement and have worked in every conceivable capacity. They still do.

They are willing to share a coda in the story of the loss of their son-- a letter from the police officer, Jerry Castro, who accompanied Matthew in the ambulance that carried him to the hospital where he died.  As Mary Leigh says in her message below, she endured agony imagining Matthew's last moments.  We are grateful for her willingness to recount that agony and share the letter she received from Officer Castro many years later after the shooting.


May the story of the Blek family and of Officer Castro's gesture in writing them be of comfort to other victims and survivors of gun violence.



From Mary Leigh Blek:



I want to share something very special, personal and extraordinary

that came into my inbox today.  I think you will appreciate the

importance of this to me and it will again reaffirm the goodness and

kindness of people.  I was told that Matt was in a great deal of pain

from his injuries and I agonized over the fact that he was blinded in

one eye, his vocal chords useless and he was drowning as his lungs

filled with blood. I have relived that perceived ambulance ride over

and over again in my mind, I felt he must have been terrified and in

such pain....and all alone.

You can imagine my emotions when I received the message below.



From Retired Police Officer Jerry Castro:



Hello Mary Leigh,

   I hope it's okay that I am contacting you.  I honestly had no

idea it would be this easy, but when I started to research the

incident and your name, everything fell into place.  I had no idea

that you and your husband have dedicated your lives to a cause you

believe in. You have made great changes and have most likely saved

many lives.

   I'm looking back now that I am retired, married, and have four

children.  I regret rushing the two or three minutes we had to speak

to one another 13 years ago outside the Queens court room.  I am the

police officer  that was first on the scene when your son Matthew was

shot. Out of all my years working the streets of NYC and all the

victims I have come in contact with, besides Sept. 11th,  your sons'

incident sticks with me the most.  I do wish I would have taken more

time to sit down with you and answer every question you may have had.

I don't know if there are any questions you may have or even if you

would ask any at this point. When I rode in the ambulance with your

son, I knew he wasn't our "typical" victim. I knew he was an innocent

kid in the wrong place at the wrong time. I believe we developed a

bond in the 10-15 min ride as I continued to speak to him and we

looked at each other. He was remarkably calm, and I think he was at

peace with what was happening.  I know its risky contacting you after

so many years and I'm not quit sure if it was the right thing to do. I

want you to know I have prayed for your family, and something good

came out of that awful night.  Matthew would be proud of you.

  God Bless,

Jerry Castro

The California Chapters of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence are proud to present WOUNDED IN AMERICA, a show of oral histories and photographic portraits of gun violence survivors, at the Grace Cathedral in San Francisco from January 13 to March 27, 2009.

The exhibit features 25 survivors of shootings involving domestic violence, hate crimes, accidents, gang crimes, suicide attempts, stalking, robberies, and police interventions.  The survivors tell us about their lives before their shooting and the life-changing consequences of becoming a victim of gun violence (please see www.woundedinamerica.org).

Wounded in America was created by a husband and wife team, photographer Robert Drea and writer Stephanie Arena, who have documented stories of gun violence across the U.S.  Initially drawn to the subject of gun violence by a teen-age killing in their own neighborhood, Drea and Arena decided they wanted to bring the subject of gun violence closer to home than occurs with “unfathomable statistics.”  Their moving portraits and stories connect American viewers to the personal and devastating effects of living in a violent gun culture.  The exhibit, previously shown in the Los Angeles area, was incredibly well received.

We urge you to visit Wounded in America with your family, friends and colleagues from the Brady Campaign.  We would love you to send us your reaction.  You can write me at ellenboneparth@gmail.com.

Don’t miss this compelling and heart-rending exhibit.

______________________________________________________________________

The Grace Cathedral is a magnificent site for showing Wounded in America. Admission is free.  Here is information about how to get there by public transportation and where to park.

Public Transportation

The California Street Cable Car stops at California and Taylor.

The 1 California bus stops at Sacramento and Jones (westbound) or Clay and Taylor, one block north (eastbound).
The Powell-Hyde and Powell-Mason Cable Cars stop at Powell and California, two blocks east.
The 27 Bryant bus stops at Leavenworth and California, one block west (northbound) or Hyde and Sacramento, two blocks west (southbound).

All of the above lines connect with Market Street buses, streetcars, subways, and BART.

Parking

Daytime street parking near the Cathedral is limited to two hours, except on Sundays. There is no parking on the right (north) side of Sacramento Street on weekdays from 4 PM to 6PM, and if your car is parked there it will be towed.

The garage on the Cathedral property is operated on a lease basis by Ampco System Parking, and the rates for the garage are as follows:

Early Bird Special Rate: Monday through Saturday - arrive between 6:30 AM and 10 AM, Sunday - arrive between 6:30 AM and 11 AM, Leave no later than 6 PM

Flat rate: $11.00

Regular rate (If you arrive after 10 AM Monday through Saturday, or after 11 AM Sunday) $2.50 every 20 minutes, maximum $27.00 within a 24 hour period.