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On Gun Violence, ‘We Need the Federal Government to Take Bold Steps’ - CounterSpin interview with Ernest Coverson on guns & human rights
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Janine Jackson interviewed Amnesty International USA’s Ernest Coverson about guns and human rights for the August 16, 2019, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
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Janine Jackson: When Walmart responded to the early August mass murder by a white supremacist by announcing they’d stopped selling certain video games, and the National Rifle Association responded to that and a subsequent mass shooting by likening those seeking gun regulations to mass murderers, as likewise seeking to “take away our God-given rights ”—well, it’s a hard thing to measure, but you almost felt you could hear vast numbers of Americans saying, “You have got to be kidding.”
Public conversation seems to have advanced to the point where it’s understood that the reason the United States has so many incidents of gun violence is because the United States has so many guns. The crisis is neither natural nor necessary, and not so much a matter of a lack of public appetite for regulation, as of a political system in which that public interest does not translate into policy or law. If the US gun nightmare is the result of choices, work like that of our next guest is aimed at helping us make the choices to escape it. Ernest Coverson is End Gun Violence campaign manager at Amnesty International USA. He joins us now by phone. Welcome to CounterSpin, Ernest Coverson
Ernest Coverson: Thank you, thank you.
JJ: Well, Amnesty recently issued a travel advisory for the United States, due to high levels of gun violence. It came days after the El Paso and Dayton mass murders, but it wasn’t just about them, and it wasn’t a merely symbolic gesture. What was the purpose of that advisory?
EC: Thank you again. I mean, the purpose of the advisory and the travel warning was to bring attention to the gun violence that has taken place here in the USA, and the lack of effort that our government, specifically Congress, has done to help eliminate or help to bring down, put laws in place that will help curb that violence in the US. And so Amnesty International USA decided to take a measure that will help to highlight that issue with this travel warning.
JJ: It’s not surprising to me that people are interested in, or concerned about, mass shootings, even if they are far from the most common gun violence in the US. I always think that’s a weird argument to have, when people say, “Well, yes, it’s terrible when a white supremacist feels inspired by the president to kill brown-skinned people. But what about Chicago?” You know, there’s this unsubtle subtext where somehow the real question is whether gun violence can be blamed on black people or on white people. And I wanted, therefore, to kind of get at the work that you do, which looks at things differently. What does it mean to think about gun violence with a human rights framework? How does that affect the conversation?
EC: It brings it to a different level. Because, right, as you say, the media many times highlight those mass shootings; those are the ones that get the splash for the news cycle. But, correct, the everyday shooting that takes place in a Chicago, or in a Detroit or St. Louis, etc., doesn’t get that.
And so, finding this as a human rights issue by Amnesty International, which is a human rights organization, takes it to a different level, and really humanizes that if we’re going to fight for human rights, the ultimate human right is the right to life. And these shootings, these killings, that are happening on a daily basis are eliminating that right. And so I think our value added to this conversation, of changing the narrative as a human rights issue, just elevates that conversation, that these are humans, despite what people want to think or say, what community they come from, they’re still human, and they have the right to life.
Amnesty International USA
JJ: And the report—your work, including Amnesty’s recent report, “In the Line of Fire: Human Rights and the US Gun Violence Crisis”—points out that gun violence disproportionately is affecting young people of color, and also women, who are victims of domestic violence. So you’re really talking about communities that are impacted and, as you’re saying, it’s day to day, it’s not a matter of flares of incidents, but it’s something that… the work has to happen within community to address the layers of impact, right?
EC: Correct. And you have organizations and groups in both of those communities that’ve been doing work on a daily basis, that’s impacting or making change that way. And I think one of the additional value-adds from Amnesty is showing the intersectionality of all of this, that we can’t continue to work in silos of doing this gun violence work, that urban areas’ gun violence, domestic violence, suicide rates from gun violence, all talked about in the report, all tie together, and you have to come together as one human community to really address these issues, and not let one take precedence over the other, but really look at them in totality.
JJ: One of the points that the advisory makes, which I think is maybe surprising to people, but the US actually has obligations under international human rights law that are relevant here, aren’t there?
EC: Yes, they are. As the world community, there are human rights law that govern, through the UDHR, and the United Nations and others, that these are the international human rights laws. And so the United States has been failing, to a certain extent, to hold up to what that standard is across the world.
JJ: And the failure, as I understand it, is at the federal level, maybe most importantly. Some states are trying to cobble together some regulations, but it’s really something that requires federal leadership.
EC: Correct. And because you see, as we have now the Universal Background Check legislation, that was passed by the House back in February, has been sitting in the Senate since then, S.42, not moving on that. There are states across the country that have been incrementally passing laws and passing ordinances that are doing things in a particular state, but we do need the federal government to take some of those same bold steps.
JJ: Media can be so scenario-focused that data can have a hard time really getting through. So if you talk about background checks, for example, it seems like someone always pops up to say, “Well, yeah, but what about this case I can imagine in which background checks would be insufficient?” And it’s kind of a funny way to go about it, to say we shouldn’t take these measures if by themselves they wouldn’t eliminate the possibility… So talk a little more, just about the reforms that you are calling for. And it’s not that any of them are magic; it’s that together, they can help improve this crisis. What are you calling for?
Ernest Coverson: “We can’t continue to work in silos of doing this gun violence work, that urban areas’ gun violence, domestic violence, suicide rates from gun violence, all talked about in the report, all tie together, and you have to come together as one human community to really address these issues.”
EC: Right, great point. And all of these, correct, are not one magic event, but all of those together will do that.
So a case in point, we’re looking at getting the background check, enhancing background checks, S.42, which is the federal legislation that we’re looking at, that will help increase the background information that’s from states that may not be in federal databases, and so as individuals, we want to just enhance that background check, and make sure that information is passed along.
We’re also looking at assault weapon ban legislation, so assault weapons, militarized weapons, should not be in the hands of just regular, common citizens, that those are particularly for military usage. And so we’re looking to get the assault weapons ban passed as well.
Then also we’re looking, and the president has kind of spoke about as well, around emergency restraining protective orders, or purple or red flag laws, which allow family members, concerned folks, that know if individuals have weapons but are not in a correct state of mind at the time, can alert authorities to say, “Hey, this individual is not in a right state of mind, but also has access to weapons.” We may want to do a quality check on that individual, just to make sure he or she doesn’t now go and do some of the things that happened in El Paso and in Dayton over the past couple of weekends ago. Those are some of the legislative changes that we’re looking to get taken up by the federal government.
JJ: Let me just ask you, finally: We did see a large number of the Democratic presidential candidates attend an Everytown for Gun Safety event in Des Moines just recently. Do you see political—I said earlier, vast majorities of the US population are interested in gun regulation; it’s a matter of getting politicians to take it up—do you see hope on the political front?
EC: I do. I think that once we get folks to move out of a moment and really into a movement, that the political dynamics will change as well, and that we don’t let the news cycle dictate how we feel about getting these changes done and this legislation passed. But, yes, I am hopeful that we will make this happen.
JJ: We’ve been speaking with Ernest Coverson, End Gun Violence campaign manager at Amnesty International USA. You can find their work, including the report, “In the Line of Fire: Human Rights and the US Gun Violence Crisis,” online at AmnestyUSA.org. Ernest Coverson, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.
EC: Thank you again.
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