MICHIGAN CHAPTER
Doctors join drive to thwart gun law
Saturday, February 24, 2001
By Steven Harmon
The Grand Rapids Press
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As a pediatrician who has worked in intensive care units, Dr. Nick Kokx has been at the bedsides of children wounded by gunfire.
Worried that the new concealed weapons law might increase the number of wounded children, he has begun to collect petition signatures at his office as part of an effort to stall the law, scheduled to take effect in July.
"This is not a problem we can immunize our children with, or where we can walk into a room with a syringe," Kokx said. "If we increase the number of times children see a pistol as a way we ensure our own security, what kind of message does that send to kids?"
Kokx's Comstock Park office has become an unofficial clearinghouse in West Michigan for gathering signatures to suspend the law and hold a referendum. He and a few other pediatricians this month convinced the Michigan chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics to join the coalition organizing the petition drive.
"I felt pediatricians needed to become actively involved," Kokx said.
This week, all 1,600 pediatricians in the state received petitions to distribute and have signed.
Kokx has distributed 500 petitions -- which can hold 15 signatures each -- and has another box of 500 ready to hand out. His patients' parents often sign and take a sheet back to their neighborhoods to fill out.
Persefoni Underwood signed the petition at Kokx's office and took two sheets home.
"I think it's a good thing," she said. "Pediatricians are in the business of taking care of kids and they're concerned, so I highly respect that."
Underwood said that when she was a fifth-grader in Kalamazoo in the early 1980s, her best friend was killed by another child in an accidental shooting on a school bus.
Doug VanderWoude, a gun buyer at Al and Bob's Sports in Grand Rapids, said the pediatricians are missing the point.
"I think it's terribly misguided," he said. "I don't think it's their place unless they understand the issue. And obviously they don't. If anything, people getting a concealed weapons permit will save kids lives."
He said that school shootings could be averted if more peoplehad the right to carry concealed weapons.
The new law would not allow permit holders onto school grounds, child care centers, churches, theaters, stadiums, or other similar public places.
Still, there will be plenty of places where guns are allowed that children will be, Kokx said.
"There will be loaded concealed weapons in parks, Little League games, hockey games, McDonald's, the mall," he said.
The organization leading the petition drive, People Who Care About Kids, must collect 151,300 signatures from registered voters by March 27 to persuade the courts to keep the law from taking effect.
The coalition, involving the Million Moms March, the Catholic Conference and the Michigan Association of Police Chiefs, among others, aims for more than 230,000 signatures to make up for those that may be ruled invalid.
Organizers say they are about halfway done.
"If I was absolutely confident, I wouldn't be biting my nails and staying up all night," Kokx said. "I'm scared to death this will take effect. It will be a lot harder to turn this back after July 1."
Even if the signatures are collected, the petition movement will likely face a challenge in court.
The Michigan Constitution prohibits referendums on laws that include state funding -- a component of the concealed weapons bill. But opponents say the funding was added as a rider to make it referendum-proof, and Michigan courts have historically frowned on that.
Under the lame-duck legislation signed by Gov. John Engler, county gun boards must grant concealed weapons permits to applicants if they are 21, have no recent criminal history, no mental problems and can pass the required training course.
Michigan State Police say the law could more than double the number of permits, from 51,954 to about 125,000.
West Michigan officials are bracing for a sharp jump in applications. A 1998 Press investigation found that Kent County issued just 72 permits in 1997 compared to about 4,000 handed out in Macomb County.
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For informed information about CCW statisics, keep scrolling down...
Source: The Detroit News-Published: January 14, 2001 Author: John R. Lott Jr.
Should Michigan keep new concealed weapon law?
By John R. Lott Jr.
Now that Gov. John Engler has signed the concealed
handgun law, opponents have vowed to launch a petition
drive to prevent the law from evergoing into effect.
Atty. Gen. Jennifer Granholm and new Wayne County
Prosecutor Michael Duggan are alarmed that the law
will endanger Michiganians' lives. Yet, as the
experience in the other 31 states indicates, a year
after the law is in effect, newspaper articles around
the state will announce that none of these horror
stories have occurred.
Start with Florida. Between 1987, when Florida's
concealed carry law took effect, and July 31, 2000,
565,000 licenses have been issued. Only 113 had
been revoked because of any type of firearms related
violation (two-hundredths of 1 percent). But even this
overstates the risks. While a precise breakdown is not
available, almost all of these cases apparently
resulted from people accidentally carrying a gun into
a restricted area (like an airport). No one claims
that these unintentional violations posed any harm.
>From 1996 through 1999, the first four years that
Texas' concealed handgun law was in effect, 215,000
people were licensed. Permit holders are extremely
law-abiding compared with the rest of the state, with
licensees being convicted of any crime at less than 5
percent of the rate of other adult Texans.
Arizona between August 1994 (when its law went into
effect) and Dec. 31, 1998 issued more than 63,000
permits, but only 50 permits were revoked for
any type of legal violation - few cases involving a
firearm violation.
In Oklahoma, during the three years after it passed
its law, the state has issued 25,262 permits, and only
revoked 20 (less than .08 percent). Yet, these
revocations include at least a few permit holders
whose licenses were ended simply because they died.
The Oklahoma Supreme Court also recently ruled
that other permits had been improperly revoked.
In Virginia, "not a single concealed-carry permit
holder has committed a violent crime," according to
the Richmond Times-Dispatch. After Nevada's first
year, "Law enforcement officials throughout the state
could not document one case of a fatality that
resulted from irresponsible gun use by someone who
obtained a permit under the new law," reported the Las
Vegas Review-Journal. Similar findings have occurred
in Kentucky, North Carolina and South Carolina.
Concerns that permit holders would lose their tempers
in traffic accidents have been unfounded. Only one
time has a permit holder used a concealed handgun
after a traffic accident, and that use was ruled as
justifiable self-defense.
Worries about risks to police officers have also
proved unfounded. No permit holder has ever killed a
police officer, though there are police who have said
they would not be alive today if it hadn't been for a
citizen with a permitted concealed handgun.
National surveys of police show they support concealed
handgun laws by a 3-1 margin. The exemplary behavior
of permit holders has even caused former opponents in
law enforcement to change their positions. Glenn
White,
president of the Dallas Police Association, provides a
typical response: "I lobbied against the law in 1993
and 1995 because I thought it would lead to wholesale
armed conflict. That hasn't happened. ... I think it's
worked out well, and that says good things about the
citizens who have permits. I'm a convert."
There is also not a single academic study that claims
right-to-carry laws have increased state crime rates.
The debate among academics has been over how large the
benefits have been.
Opponents of Michigan's new law know that time is
against them, and it is why they are so desperate to
keep the law from ever going into effect. No state
has ever rescinded its law because they haven't run
into any problems.
Granholm and Duggan's scare tactics will lose
credibility once people see that it is criminals and
not law-abiding citizens who have the most to fear
from Michiganians being able to defend themselves.
John R. Lott Jr. is a senior research scholar at the
Yale University Law School and the author of "More
Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control
Laws" (University of Chicago Press).
Michigan's CCW fight takes fun out of games at metro business
February 14, 2001
BY TAMARA AUDI
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
With its green indoor turf, a parking lot that could
double as a minivan showroom and a popular soccer
clinic for toddlers called Wee Kickers, Total Soccer
in Wixom seemed an unlikely battlefield for the
national gun debate.
But it was there on a Friday night, as the last games
of pickup soccer were ending, that pro-gun forces
dealt a blow to gun control. As battles go, it wasn't
much to watch. The gun-control soldiers carried
petition sheets and pens, and wore sweat suits,
ponytails and tight smiles. They spoke in low voices.
This is how soccer moms fight.
They were defeated by the only group powerful enough
to beat them: other soccer moms.
Gun-rights mothers threatened to pull their kids off
Total Soccer teams if the gun-control mothers --
mostly members of the Million Mom March -- did not
stop collecting signatures at the facility for a
petition that could overturn Michigan's new
concealed-weapons law. The pro-gun mothers used the
word "boycott." Petitioners were asked to leave. And
Total Soccer learned its lesson.
"It was enough to make you think if a company takes a
political stand, it's going to hurt you in the long
run," said Wendy Woods, a Total Soccer manager. She
said the petitioners were well-mannered and
friendly. Some were even familiar faces in the
tight-knit soccer community. But management said it
feared as many as 20 of 600 teams might be eliminated
by a boycott. "Whether we support what
they're doing or not, it ends up being not worth it."
As the gun battle intensifies in Michigan, some of the
fiercest fighting is going on in the oddest places:
churches, ice rinks, movie theaters, parent-teacher
group meetings and Main Street shops. And the
most powerful fighters, it turns out, are the women
who support these places with their money, time
and children.
Gun-control advocates have until March 28 to collect
151,000 valid signatures to try to put the
concealed-weapons law on a ballot before voters. The
newly passed law gives Michigan residents age
21 and older the right to carry concealed weapons with
a permit. The law, which takes effect July 1,
bans weapons from certain public places, including
bars, schools and sports arenas.
The Million Mom March is not the only group gathering
signatures. The effort is coordinated by People
Who Care About Kids, a group organized by Wayne County
Prosecutor Michael Duggan. But ever
since the Million Mom March grabbed national attention
at its Washington, D.C., event last Mother's
Day by using motherhood as political currency, women
in gun-rights groups have taken on a higher
profile.
Second Amendment Sisters (SAS), the pro-gun answer to
the Million Mom March, has been
recruiting women in Michigan. Next month, along with
the Michigan Coalition of Responsible Gun
Owners, SAS will host a Shop 'n' Shoot weekend in
Frankenmuth exclusively for women. So far,
about 35 women have signed up for shooting lessons and
bargain-shopping.
Both sides of the gun debate are tapping feminine
instincts. The Web site of the Million Mom March
ties into Valentine's Day today with the message "It's
A Labor of Love." The SAS site counters with
"Happy Valentine's Day! Is your love protected?"
Although they were defeated at Total Soccer, the
Million Mom March and the concealed-weapons
petition are winning on other fronts. Last weekend,
petitions were passed out in 50 churches and
synagogues in metro Detroit, Duggan said. So far,
125,000 signatures have been collected. And some
religious leaders embrace the cause, despite pressure.
"There were some people in the congregation who were
not happy because they felt we were mixing
politics and religion. And one person objected as an
NRA member," said the Rev. John Budde, pastor
of the Holy Family Catholic Church in Novi. NRA is the
National Rifle Association.
That hasn't stopped gun-rights proponents from trying
to push petitioners out when they see them. The
chat room of the Michigan Coalition of Responsible Gun
Owners Web site is filled with comments
from members looking to thwart petitioners at the
businesses where they are collecting signatures.
"I don't want to give money to any business that's
going against our interests -- and a lot of members
feel the same way," said Ross Dykman, the coalition's
executive director.
Dykman said he has written letters to some businesses.
But what has really rattled business owners are
complaints from consumers, especially women, said
Dykman and representatives for some businesses.
So far, gun-control petitioners have been asked to
leave Total Soccer, MJR Theaters in Waterford
and the Meijer store in Plainwell, near Kalamazoo. A
Meijer spokesman said the chain does not allow
any group to solicit on its property. The owner of the
MJR Theaters chain said he had second thoughts
after learning more about the CCW law from gun-rights
advocates.
"I think in a large degree the Million Moms claim to
have a monopoly on the women's point of view
and it's very effective when our women members stand
up and say that's not the case," Dykman said.
Pat Alzady, a member of SAS, said businesses and
churches are not the place for political debates.
"It's disruptive," she said, adding that SAS only
passes out literature at gun shows and other places
where they are welcome.
Million Mom March members around the country said
similar skirmishes are taking place in their
communities.
At a recent Million Mom March chapter meeting at a
church in Wakefield, Mass. -- a Boston suburb
where a software designer shot and killed seven
coworkers Dec. 26 -- gun-rights supporters picketed
carrying pink posters. One of them, a woman, came
inside and talked to the group about feeling
protected by her gun, said Katina Johnstone, the
northeast U.S. regional director for the Million Mom
March.
In Michigan, the quiet war of e-mails, phone calls,
letter-writing and Web sites will soon give way to a
more public battle. The groups are to meet May 13 in
Lansing. The Million Mom March and the
Michigan Coalition of Responsible Gun Owners plan
Mother's Day rallies at the state Capitol.
