Category Archives: Gun violence

Religious organizations divesting in gun companies, protecting our environment

Repost of an email from the Pension Boards of the UCC
[Editor: I usually refrain from posting articles from my faith community, the UCC.  But this report is an exception – it’s encouraging to hear about interfaith efforts to control gun violence and promote environmentally-friendly projects through responsible investment policies.  – R.S.]

Corporate Social Responsibility

FAITH & FINANCE IN ACTION
December, 2018

“…action to change laws, influence corporate behavior, and work together as a society to bring about life-sustaining change is the co-creative call of God in our lives to do much more.”

 —Rev. Richard Walters, Director
Corporate Social Responsibility for the Pension Boards

Working Together for Our Future

The Pension Boards, through its Faith and Finance Initiative, investment policies, and discernment around its social justice ministry, has responded to the overwhelming call of acting on the issue of gun violence in our country. The Pension Boards has joined with ecumenical partners in calling for specific action to reduce gun violence and live out our commitment to the UCC’s Three Great Loves initiative by engaging in life-sustaining rather than death-dealing action. An extension of our witness to the corporate world has resulted in bold action described in the article below. We invite your response.

The Pension Boards Adds Gun Screen to Investment Policy

Religious organizations, including the Pension Boards, have called for common sense measures to reduce gun violence without interfering in Second Amendment Constitutional rights of legitimate gun owners for several years, even before the most recent mass shooting at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue. PBUCC, however, decided that more action was necessary.

On August 1, 2018, the Investment Committee of the Pension Boards’ Board of Trustees voted to eliminate direct investment in U.S. companies engaged in the production of small arms ammunition or firearms, including pistols, revolvers, rifles, shotguns, or sub-machine guns, and that derive 10% or more of revenues from sales.

Prior to the vote, on May 9, the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Committee of the Pension Boards voted unanimously to recommend that the Investment Committee consider an appropriate screen, or policy, regarding firearms.  Read the full article.

Catalyzing Corporate Change

In the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) newsletter, read about the more than 100 corporate wins ICCR members scored during the 2018 proxy season, demonstrating the environmental/social concerns shared by mainstream investors. ICCR is a coalition of over 300 institutional investors working together to promote more just and sustainable corporate practices.  READ MORE

Green Bond Issuers

On page 11 of “A Just World For All: Strategies for Sustainable Investment,” read how notable green bond issuers held by the Pension Boards’ investment portfolio are using proceeds to finance environmentally-friendly projects.

Must watch video: Fareed Zakaria on CNN: Global Lessons on Guns

Repost from Youtube

CNN: Global Lessons on Guns – A Fareed Zakaria GPS Special

Breaking CNN News Today Nov 25, 2018

An incredibly important and informative analysis of gun violence in the U.S. and in various countries around the world.  Zakaria has been following this deadly issue for years, and presents here a carefully researched study with alarming results.  [NOTE: as of August 2019, the VIDEO that was previously viewable on Youtube can no longer be found anywhere on the internet.  If you can stand the obnoxious ads at the beginning of this audio, you can listen to Zakaria’s excellent analysis.]

NO LONGER AVAILABLE (saved here in case it returns somehow…)

Doctors clash with NRA over gun deaths – #thisisourlane

Repost from the Vallejo Times-Herald
[Editor: For fuller coverage and graphic images, see the Chicago Tribune.  – RS]

Doctors clash with NRA over gun deaths

By Lisa Marie Pane, The Associated Press, November 22, 2018
Dr. Deborah Greenhouse of Palmetto Pediatric in Columbia, S.C., works on her laptop. Greenhouse is one of several doctors joining a social media storm over guns and doctors, sparking a fight between the physicians and the National Rifle Association.  BRISTOW MARCHANT — THE STATE VIA AP

The photos from doctors came quickly and in succession: blood-stained operating rooms, blood-covered scrubs and shoes, bullets piercing body parts and organs.

The pictures on Twitter were an emotional response to a smack down by the powerful gun industry lobby, which took issue with the American College of Physicians’ call late last month for tighter gun control laws. The recommendations included bans on “assault weapons,” large capacity magazines and 3D printed firearms.

“Someone should tell self important anti-gun doctors to stay in their lane. Half of the articles in Annals of Internal Medicine are pushing for gun control. Most upsetting, however, the medical community seems to have consulted NO ONE but themselves,” the National Rifle Association tweeted.

Physicians across the United States seized on the phrasing, taking to Twitter with 22,000 comments and the hashtags #thisismylane and #thisisourlane, posting photos of their encounters with gun violence and offering their own personal stories of treating such
wounds.

The debate gained new urgency this week with the shooting death of an emergency room doctor outside the hospital where she worked, as physicians argue shootings are a public health crisis that they must play a key role in trying to stem. Dr. Tamara O’Neal was killed Monday outside a hospital in Chicago in what police say was a dispute with her ex-fiance. The shooter and two other people — a responding police officer and a resident in the hospital’s pharmacy — also died.

“It just shows that not only is this is in our lane, but this happens to us,” said Dr. Joseph Sakran, a trauma surgeon at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore who as a 17-year-old was shot in the throat by a stray bullet fired during a dispute at a high school football game.

Sakran created a Twitter account @ThisIsOurLane which in just two weeks has attracted nearly 15,000 followers. They include Dr. Peter Masiakos, a pediatric trauma surgeon in Boston, who wrote “The Quiet Room” just hours after the mass shooting at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, about breaking the news that a loved one has died.
“We need to start talking about this as a public health issue. Politics aside, we have a problem that no other country has, and we shouldn’t,” Masiakos said.

About 35,000 people each year are killed by guns in the United States, and about two-thirds are suicides. That’s about 670 people per week and among the largest number of civilian gun deaths in the world.

The world’s highest rate of gun deaths is in El Salvador with a rate of 72.5 per 100,00; the rate in the U.S. is 3.1 per 100,000. Among all European countries, the rate never breaks 1 gun death per 100,000, according to Small Arms Survey, a Switzerland-based research organization that examines firearms and violence.

Coverage of local protest against Trump firing of AG Sessions

Repost from The Vallejo Times-Herald
[Editor: Thanks to the Vallejo Times-Herald for it’s front-page photo of yesterday’s local protest against the ouster of U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions.  The Trump administration cannot be allowed to work this outrageous obstruction of justice!  Coverage of the MASSIVE nationwide protests was buried this morning by news of the California wildfires and mass murders in Thousand Oaks.  NOTHING in the SF Chronicle, but here’s the East Bay Times coverage.  (See also Google’s full coverage.)  And, oh by the way – that’s Benicia’s own Lee Wilder Snider, Susan Street and Donna Shehan front and center in the photo!  And I’m sure that’s Craig Snider behind Susan’s right arm.  See also “Oh, please – not again…”  – R.S.] 

Rapid Response

By Chris Riley, November 8, 2018 at 5:55 pm
Dozens of Vallejoans took to the street in front of the ferry building to take part in ‘Nobody is above the law-Mueller protection rapid response’ a nation-wide peaceful protest on Thursday in Vallejo. (Chris Riley–Times-Herald)