Bill Jenkins to Donna-Dees-Thomases

Here is a letter written by Bill Jenkins to Donna-Dees-Thomases, founder of the Million Mom March. The original Million Mom March took place in Washington, DC on Mother's Day 2000, and brought hundreds of thousands of Moms and their children and supporters to our nation's Capitol to protest the lack of Congressional action concerning the problem of gun violence.

Bill Jenkins grew up in a family of hunters and gun owners. But a gun incident altered his life irrevocably, and his insight into the gun control debate extensively. His letter is a concise summary of the status of our issue, straight from the heart of someone who knows too well what our work is really about.

"Dear Donna:

I am a college professor and an unwilling expert on the effects of firearms on our society. Two and a half years ago, I benignly believed the gun lobby's lines, and why not? I grew up in a house with hunting guns and learned how to shoot. My rural family members hunt regularly, and my brother is a competition shooter in his spare time. I naively thought that was the extent of the interaction with guns in my life.

Then, my 16-year-old son was murdered -- while he was working at his new job at a fast-food restaurant -- by a man with a handgun, during a robbery. I began researching the instrument of his destruction and tore back the cardboard facades and specious claims of the gun industry. I looked closely at the economics and marketing practices of an industry that has enjoyed enormous protection throughout its history. My conclusions shocked and sickened me.

With 250 million guns in society today, more than 1 million handguns alone are placed in circulation every year for a legitimate market of merely 60 to 65 million private gun owners. Hundreds of gun laws have been cobbled together by various localities in a desperate effort to protect themselves, yet these are often trumped by state laws where lobbying efforts are more focused and well-financed. Indeed, no concerted legislative action has ever been allowed to adversely affect the industry's bottom line directly. Instead, attention is diverted to postsale issues of possession and use. I see a silent and insidious third party to the issue, the one who built the fence between the vocal factions and those whose primary goal is to keep the argument raging for their own economic benefit. I see an industry that has allowed itself to be seduced by the easy money of a burgeoning illegitimate market. It resists voluntarily marketing products ethically and responsibly, incorporating sensible safety measures, establishing specific training requirements for buyers, and even guaranteeing that the purchaser of these products will be the end user.

A brief history is in order. In the 1970s and 1980s, facing a rapidly saturating market and foreign competition, the gun industry seems to have reinvented itself. It doesn't require much effort to observe the following un-ethical, yet profitable practices: It began marketing military and police-style weapons to private citizens, firearms which are not for defensive, nor sport, but are for attack and urban warfare. It began following the market trends of the illegitimate market, incorporating features that appeal to the criminal user. It began capitalizing on a growing attitude of uneasiness and paranoia in society, supplying a false and dangerous hope for protection from people using their products, effectively profiting from both sides at once. And it began manufacturing product far beyond any reasonable ability to sell it to the limited legitimate market. Make no mistake, this small group of people has benefited greatly and has blatantly used their profits to perpetuate their commercial and legal protection.

Who has suffered? The sportsmen and sportswomen have suffered as the reputation of something they have dearly loved and enjoyed has been ruined by irresponsible marketing, sales, and use. The police have suffered, having been shot at and ambushed by those with more firepower than any officer has ever carried. Families have suffered as children find a gun and kill unwittingly, or guns bought ostensibly for protection are turned on another family member or self. Society has suffered as ready access to a limitless supply of disposable guns enables and emboldens criminals. Our state legislatures have suffered as rural interests are pitted against urban interests by manipulating lobbyists. The gun industry has truly soiled its own nest. Sadly, it is our nest also.

Despite claims to the contrary, our children are not being sacrificed on the altar of personal freedom and protection. Our children are not being sacrificed on the altar of constitutional rights. Our children are not sacrificed on the altar of patriotic, democratic, and lifestyle values children are not being sacrificed on the altar of any ideology whatsoever. No, our children are being sacrificed on an altar dedicated to nothing more than base profit and commerce. And that I will not excuse.

In 1997, my son was one of more than 20 homicide victims in our county in Virginia. He was one of 115 Virginia children and teens who died from firearm use and misuse. He was one of 902 Virginians of all ages who met their end at the barrel of a gun. And one of the 32,436 Americans who died with a bullet in them that year.

From 1990 to today, more than 9,700 people in Virginia and more than 343,000 people nationwide have been killed with firearms. And for every firearm-related mortality, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates another three people have received nonfatal injuries.

Want to have some more fun with numbers? Let's say that each of those fatalities in the past 10 years has between five and six close family members or intimate friends in their lives, and that is a low estimate. That is nearly 2 million grieving parents, siblings, grandparents, children, spouses, and best friends, and I am one of them, and perhaps some of you are, too.

There are two ways to hunt. In one, the hunter takes time to learn quarry and its habits and life. The hunter enters the forest alone and tracks the quarry for hours or even days, hoping for a clear shot. This is how the gun industry has been fought in the past. Dedicated layers and lobbyists who have learned its every move have been fighting one-on-one. Sometimes they have gotten clear shots and scored minor victories.

But there is another way to hunt, and while less elegant, it is far more effective. The entire village enters the forest. Not highly trained, just willing participants. They beat the brush, driving the quarry to open ground, and surround it, and the hunt is over.

Now is the time to enter the forest.

We have the right to demand action. We have a right to demand safety. And above all, we have a right to demand peace. I am in awe of the success of your determined efforts to make these demands known. I appreciate it more than you could ever know. Thank you.

Sincerely,
Bill Jenkins
The Million Mom March-Virginia "