Gov. Martin O'Malley's Gun Policy

Captions: From left, Democratic candidate Gov. Martin O’Malley (MD), who spoke at Iowa City’s Labor Day picnic at City Park September 7, 2015; O’Malley campaign worker, Ben Kramer, who left Maryland to campaign for O’Malley in Iowa. I photographed Ben on June 4, 2015 at the Citizens for Community Improvement’s potluck/speech get-together at the Johnson County Fairgrounds in Iowa City. The featured speaker June 4th was Bill Stowe, CEO of Des Moines Water Works and member of CCI.

Since the Umpqua Community College massacre in Oregon, my political priorities have changed. Pres. Obama’s speech moved me to seek out the presidential candidates’ positions on guns. Of course, Republican presidential contender Ben Carson thinks we need more guns to solve the problem. I didn’t bother to research any other Republican positions on the issue because Republicans are owned lock, stock, and barrel by the National Rifle Association. So are a fair number of Democrats.

The Republican mantra right now is “Forget about guns. Guns are not the problem. Focus on mental health.” While I’m thrilled that Republicans (with the exception of Iowa’s current Gov.-for-Life, Terry Branstad) have discovered that mental health affects society in a serious way that they should pay attention to, access to guns remains problematic in terms of how much damage mentally ill individuals can inflict on society.

Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton immediately staked out a sensible position on guns in America. I was intrigued. Then I found out that Sen. Bernie Sanders has been supportive of the Second Amendment because he lives in Vermont, a hunting state. He voted against the Brady Amendment, a gun control measure, twice.

I supported the Second Amendment like Sanders as I saw our country drift toward wealth inequality, an entrenched oligarchy writing the laws for individual states and the nation (the American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC), and fascism (the National Security Agency’s (NSA’s) universal surveillance of the citizenry). I thought we might need an armed revolution, as opposed to the political revolution advocated by Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Then we had yet another mass shooting, a shooting of innocents that happens every few months in our country -- not in other industrialized countries; just ours.

A few days ago Ben Kramer, a young future law student from Maryland and a campaigner for Gov. Martin O’Malley, called me and renewed our acquaintance. I’d met him a few months ago when Bill Stowe, CEO of the Des Moines Water Works, came to speak to a Citizens for Community Improvement (CCI) meeting at the Johnson County Fairgrounds in Iowa City.

We met over lunch today and briefly shared family backgrounds and political interests. He studied at Pembroke College at Cambridge University in England, which surprised me because I am a Pembroke on my father’s side and my nine times great-grandfather, Roger Williams, who founded Rhode Island, studied at Pembroke College at Cambridge. But I didn’t know that Williams studied at Pembroke College at Cambridge. Ben told me that.

Ben’s grandfather went to Cornell University and became a veterinarian. I went to Cornell University and majored in English literature. (In those days you could still get a decent job with a degree in English lit.)

I asked Ben for the bullet points of Gov. O’Malley’s gun policy:

1. Stricter background checks (implemented in Maryland now)

2. Mandatory fingerprinting (implemented in Maryland now)

3. National gun registry

4. Enact a law that the federal government, which is the largest gun purchaser in the U.S., can only purchase firearms from manufacturers who use the latest firearms safety technology.

Now I’m undecided between Gov. Martin O’Malley and Sen. Bernie Sanders. They basically agree on everything except gun control. Suddenly, gun control has become a bigger priority for me and one I understand in a different way than I had before. The carnage must stop, whether we need a revolution or not. Preferably, our revolution would be political rather than armed in any case. I think we, Americans on both sides of the aisle, are getting readier to have a political revolution. Clearly, outsiders are preferred to insiders and our do-nothing Congress is reviled by all.