December 2012

Guns and violence; A rant; A new resource In This Issue SAVVY – Lessons to be learned from gun control in Australia and California SKILLS – A biopsychosocial view of guns and violence SOUL – Ranting and cultural competence SHARING SOLUTIONS – The new Motivational Interviewing edition SAVVY I am no gun expert – either in handling a gun or in the research on guns and violence.  However it is hard to keep silent in the wake of two shocking gun violence killings within three days of each other – December 11 Clakamas Mall shooting in Orgeon with two deaths in addition to the shooter’s life (and there would have been many more death had his gun not jammed) – and the December 14 school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut leaving 20 schoolchildren, 6 teachers and staff members, the gunman and his mother dead. On December 18 in my local “big city” newspaper, The Sacramento Bee, Will Oremus, a staff writer for SLATE shared his viewpoint on the gun control lessons the USA might learn from a mass shooting in Australia. I remember being shocked in April of 1996, when hearing about the gunman who had opened fire on tourists in a seaside resort in Port Arthur, Tasmania, the quiet island state off the southeast tip of the big island country of Australia. It was the kind of event you couldn’t imagine happening there in that tiny community, just like Newtown, Connecticut. By the time the gunman was finished, “he had killed 35 people and wounded 23 more. It was the worst mass murder in Australia’s history.” I will extract from Will Oremus’ article that you can read in full at http://www.sacbee.com/2012/12/18/5060929/mass-shooting-in-australia-provides.html It is worth pondering what the Australian government did just twelve days after the April 28 shooting.  I understand Australia’s population of about 23 million is just 60% of California’s population, let alone the whole USA. But even California, which has the toughest gun-control laws in the USA, couldn’t mobilize support for the range of changes Australia made less than 2 weeks after their mass murders. TIP 1 Consider this list of gun-control measures. Could they work in all parts of the USA? The Australian government in 1996 was able to craft a bipartisan deal with state and local governments to enact sweeping gun-control measures: Massive buyback of more than 600,000 semi-automatic shotguns and rifles, or about one-fifth of all firearms in circulation in Australia. Prohibition of private sales. Requirement that all weapons be individually registered to their owners. Requirement that gun buyers present a “genuine reason” for needing each weapon at the time of the purchase. Self-defense did not count. In 1989, California became the first state to ban the manufacture, transport, import or sale of assault weapons. Other key gun-control laws in California as listed in The Sacramento Bee, December 19, 2012, p.A18: Require gun buyers to undergo background checks and mandate that handgun buyers obtain safety training and certificates. Require gun sales to go through licensed gun …