Mar 30 2012
Children’s Defense Fund Highlights Effects of Gun Violence on Children
Police video released yesterday of George Zimmerman being taken into a police station about 35 minutes after he was detained for shooting Trayvon Martin may further erode Zimmerman’s claim that he shot the teenager in self-defense. The grainy video captures Zimmerman’s face and head, albeit from afar, and there are no obvious injuries to his nose and skull or blood stains on his shirt. Zimmerman told police that he was attacked by Martin and violently beaten in a struggle before shooting the boy on February 26th in Sanford, Florida. Zimmerman’s attorney has said the video proves nothing, and that paramedics likely cleaned up Zimmerman’s wounds before police took him into custody. Zimmerman was released and no charges have been filed due to his self-defense claim, leading to a nationwide movement calling for justice for Trayvon Martin with protests, ‘Million Hoodie Marches,’ and solidarity actions by professional athletes and elected officials in recent days.
Trayvon Martin was only 17 years old when he was shot and killed in Florida, a state with some of the most lax gun control laws in the nation. He became one of thousands of children and teens in the US to be killed as a result of gun violence each year. The Children’s Defense Fund has just released a new report, “Protect Children, Not Guns,” dedicated to the memory of Trayvon Martin. The organization found that in 2009 just under 3,000 children and teens were killed after being shot. Eighty-five preschoolers were killed with guns in 2009, almost double the number of law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty the same year. The report also finds that Black youth are more likely to be killed as a result of gun violence than their peers. In a stark juxtaposition, the Children’s Defense Fund reports that 44,038 black youth have been killed since 1979, which is 13 times more than the number of black Americans of all ages who died by lynching over an 86 year period from 1882 to 1968.
GUEST: Catherine Beane, Director of Policy and Practice for the Children’s Defense Fund
Visit www.childrensdefense.org for more information and to download the report.
2 Responses to “Children’s Defense Fund Highlights Effects of Gun Violence on Children”
I listened to this segment on the radio this morning and wow, your guest sounds like she just want to ban guns. She talks about how California gun control is a good start but not enough, California gun laws are not enough for her? I live in California and enjoy going to the range, the laws here don’t prevent shootings nor do they prevent criminals from obtaining weapons from personal experience, what it also does is make firearm ownership expensive bureaucratic and undesirable to the California law abiding citizen, we are also sitting ducks because criminals who commit crimes will not follow laws thus they will be successful in their attack because CCW permits are still a pain to obtain and the law abiding California citizen will continue to easy prey, and law enforcment will only make it on time to take a victim report. This Martin case wow the media is making this seem like a black and white issue, right vs left, and an act of racism, When Hassan shoots up fort hood the same media outlets urge us not to jump to conclusions and wait for the facts, so how about they not jump to conclusions before we get all the facts. Ohh and cars kill and injure more people in one week then do firearms in a whole year, Im an EMT I deal with this stuff, secondly if this defense fund was really all about protecting children than they should be trying to get cars out of the hands of people, this issue is not about gun control to keep us safe, it is to have control over a disarmed people.
How about next time instead of inviting a control freak as your guest to talk about an issue you also invite somebody with a different opinion so we get to listen to both sides.