A: My name is Ladd Everett and I am the President of the D.C. Chapter of the Million Mom March.
Q: People have heard about the Million Mom March, but can you tell us a little more about what that organization does?
A: Sure. The organization was started in 2000. There was a large march on the National Mall in that year. About 750,000 people came out to the Mall that day to call for sensible gun laws. And a great deal of the impetus for that were the Columbine shootings which happened a year earlier. And folks were very upset by that. And that kind of brought home to a lot of people who had previously felt safe in their communities that gun violence was certainly, by now, a national problem that needed national attention by the administration and Congress.
So the organization began that day with a huge rally on the Mall and marches across the country in other cities. And then it became a grassroots organization that has chapters in approximately seventy-five cities and towns across the country. And the Million Mom March is now an organization that is still calling for sensible gun laws, but also working very closely with victims and survivors of gun violence across the country.
Q: The case that we’re looking at here in this documentary is one that deals with D.C.’s gun laws. Can you give us a little bit of background on what those laws are, for starters?
A: You bet. The D.C. gun laws, as they now exist, came to existence in 1976, and at that point, the city enacted a ban on handguns. Folks who had previously owned handguns were able to keep those pistols and revolvers, but there are now strict requirements for how they can operate them. They need a license, for instance, to carry them even within their own homes. Long guns, rifles, and shotguns still are legal, but there are very stringent requirements in terms of the safety and storage of those guns. If you keep a long gun at home, you have to have that gun unloaded and either either disassembled or with a trigger lock on it - and that would also include folks who own grandfathered handguns that owned them before 1976. So D.C. does have very strict gun laws.
Q: So we’re here thirty-some years after those laws were first passed. What are the results that you’ve seen here on the streets?
A: D.C.’s homicide rate has been dropping steadily over the past ten years. When drugs were a big issue in the late eighties or throughout the 1980’s, the homicide rate in D.C. was extremely high. There were a lot of killings with the crack epidemic and the drug situation in general. But over the last ten years the D.C. police and community groups here in the city and others have done a really fantastic job in getting that rate steadily down. Last year we had 195 homicides in the District, as of April 2006, that rate was down 20% from the year before.
So we have a situation where just over the last ten years in 1996 we’re talking about 396 homicides, that was down to 195 homicides just last year. And it’s really been a collective effort in the city to get that rate down and save lives.
Q: This litigation that’s proceeding through the courts now, the Parker versus District of Columbia case … has the Million Mom March here in D.C. taken a formal position about that litigation?
A: Well, we’ve been very active in defending D.C.’s gun laws in general. The court cases are extremely important and that’s one avenue in which groups like the National Rifle Association and the Cato Institute are attacking D.C.’s gun laws. But it’s not the only one. There’s also legislation that’s being introduced, basically in every session of Congress, to repeal our gun laws; and the Million Mom March, D.C. Chapter has taken a very active position. We are defending D.C.’s gun laws.
We feel the police and our governments, our elected officials, the community groups in the city, have done a fantastic job in getting that homicide rate down and saving lives. And our elected officials feel, literally to a man and a woman, that those laws need to be protected, and that allowing more guns into our city at this point would be extremely dangerous and really make the D.C. police job far, far more dangerous than necessary.
Q: And tell me a little bit about the consequences that one might see on the streets here in D.C … say this litigation goes forward and D.C.’s gun laws are found to be unconstitutional by the courts, what happens then?
A: There would be extreme consequences for D.C. if our gun laws were repealed. It’s a situation now where you’re not just talking about handguns again being legalized in Washington; and the reason for that is that the federal ban on assault weapons expired in September of 2004. Basically, Congress let that law lapse, and there is no more federal ban on semi-automatic assault rifles. And I’m talking now about guns like the Uzi, the AK-47, AR-15, Tek-9; extremely dangerous guns that really have one purpose, and that’s to kill a large number of human beings. There’s no hunting purpose or anything else for those guns.
So we’re talking about a situation in D.C. where if our gun laws are repealed, those guns would become legal on our streets. Furthermore, according to the letter of the law or the legislation we’ve seen come through Congress, or should our gun laws be declared unconstitutional in the courts; you could have a situation, and you very well might, where adults and even some teenagers would be able to openly or in a concealed manner, carry these guns down our streets. And you’re talking about a situation where, with a lot of the gang fighting we have in D.C. and, you know, a homicide rate that, although it’s been declining is still serious, you have a situation where you really don’t want to be allowing a lot of guns into D.C. That’s not the way to prevent violence and get that homicide rate down and save lives.
Q: When you talk to your neighbors up and down the street here, what’s their position? What’s the general consensus of the average citizen here in D.C. vis-à-vis the gun laws and their effectiveness?
A: Overwhelmingly, when I talk to residents of D.C. and in particular, victims and survivors of gun violence, I come across very few people that would like to see our gun laws overturned. I have met a few folks in my time who wanted a handgun for personal protection and did have problems with parts of our laws. But overwhelmingly, and again in particular the victim and survivor community, I see folks who are fighting to keep our laws exactly as they are and to keep guns off our street.
One of the real serious problems here in D.C. is gun trafficking. Even though our laws are incredibly strict, or very stringent, you have a situation where thousands and thousands of guns are being trafficked into D.C. every year. Last year alone, the police took more that 2,300 guns off of crime scenes in D.C. So that’s over 2,000 guns that they’re just collecting off crime scenes. And, of course, they’re getting only a small portion of all the guns in our city.
So, you have sixty percent of the guns that come into D.C. are trafficked in from Maryland and Virginia. Ninety-seven percent of the guns used in crime here in D.C. do not come from our city. So, when looked at it that way, D.C.’s gun laws have been incredibly effective. Only three percent of the guns used in crimes here actually come from our city. The rest of those are coming from traffickers who are exploiting loopholes in federal laws to bring guns, you know, in a very profitable manner unfortunately, into our city where they sell them to criminals and others. And then those guns are used in the commission of crimes.
Q: What’s your commentary about the Second Amendment? What does it mean? What are your reflections on that?
A: Well, when the Second Amendment was written, we were talking about a time where our Founding Fathers, and in particular Anti-Federalists, were very suspicious of the power of the federal government. I mean their fresh experience was with the English, and oppression from the English. And the Anti-Federalists and our Founding Fathers wanted to put checks on the power of the federal standing army into the Constitution. And one of the ways that they designed to do this was to empower the state militias. The state militias were organizations where basically large segments of the adult white male population were required to serve in a militia; required to come out in certain times of the years for military exercises. And then in the event of certain insurrections within their borders - let’s say riots or slave rebellions, Native American incursions, or possibly invasions from foreign powers such as the British - to take up their guns, their private weapons, and to defend the United States. So you had a situation where they purposely put these checks into the Constitution. And they also purposely made sure that the state militias would be privately armed; where it wouldn’t be the federal government who provided their arms, but private citizens.
We now have a situation where the state militias are no longer necessary. They are no longer really affordable. They are kind of very anachronistic in today’s society. They haven’t existed in well over a hundred years. And the nearest equivalent now would probably be the National Guard. But the National Guard is very distinct in that it had a more limited membership than the state militias. And also, the National Guard now has weapons provided by the federal government.
So the question really becomes, what does the Second Amendment mean in today’s society? You know, the exact statement of the Amendment is, “A well regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” Well, when there are no more well regulated militias, when those are no longer necessary, not only for the security of states but for the security of the nation as a whole, where does that leave us? The Supreme Court has ruled many times, or has ruled in several cases on the Second Amendment, most primarily in U.S. versus Miller in 1939, and they have construed the Second Amendment as a collective right, not an individual right; meaning that the Second Amendment should be viewed through the prism of militia membership and the necessity of owning weapons for service in a militia.
I strongly feel that in today’s society it is not an individual right. It is a collective right. And furthermore, the Supreme Court, to this day, has never struck down a gun control provision as being unconstitutional under the terms of the Second Amendment. So I feel it’s something, the Second Amendment, that needs to be very carefully studied in light of today’s realities. We live in a country today where approximately thirty thousand people are dying from gun violence every year. And as I said before, state militias are no longer serving any purpose in terms of ensuring the security of our citizens.
So when we have a case when many Americans are feeling unsafe in their neighborhoods, they’re feeling unsafe in their schools, they’re feeling unsafe at work; we have a situation where we need to take a very close look at the Second Amendment and a very close look at our gun control laws, and see if we’re really adequately protecting our citizens, and really what that Amendment means in light of today’s realities. And in light, also, of how powerful these weapons have become. We’re no longer talking about muzzle loading muskets or, you know, the guns of the Revolutionary War or Civil War period. We’re talking about guns today that fire an extremely high rate; guns that are made, in some cases when we talk about assault weapons and semi-automatic assault rifles, to kill large numbers of people in a very short period of time, that are used for killing human beings. And we need to take a very serious look at really what that means today and how the Second Amendment should apply. |
