Saint Louis Ethical Leader Calls For Second Amendment Repeal

ST. LOUIS, MO — James Croft joins a growing chorus of voices, including former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens and others, who say guns have little place in modern society. Croft is the outreach director of the Ethical Society of St. Louis — which he describes as a church-like community based on ethics instead of religion — and holds a doctorate in human development and education from Harvard University.

He traveled to Washington, D.C., March 24 to participate in the March for Our Lives, a student-led demonstration calling for gun reform — and one of the largest single-day protests in American history.

Croft said the Ethical Society of St. Louis is part of the American Ethical Union and one of many ethical societies across the country working nationally and in local communities to boost the voices of student activists.

"Many people are questioning long-standing cultural assumptions about guns," Croft said. "A new generation is telling us they want to change America's relationship to guns."

Croft believes that guns don't make us safer as a society or as individuals, pointing to research from Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Columbia University and others that show states with more guns and looser gun laws tend to have more murders, suicides and other forms of gun violence.

More than 30,000 Americans are killed by guns every year and twice that number are injured, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 13,000 are murdered. The rest take their own lives or are victims of shooting accidents. Almost half are children or young adults.

The gun violence epidemic is especially apparent in St. Louis. Last year the city cracked its 25-year murder record and per capita it ranks third for homicides in the United States and first for non-fatal shootings, according to data from the FBI and Major Cities Chiefs Association.

Women and people of color suffer disproportionately from gun crimes. According to the gun control group Everytown, 54 percent of shootings are related to domestic or family violence and the presence of a gun in the home makes a woman five times more likely to die from domestic violence. And high profile shootings like that of Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown or Stephon Clark are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to violence in communities of color.

Charles Mayo, a local activist, grassroots organizer and former gang member explained at a gun violence seminar last year that many young men in inner-city St. Louis think they need guns just to survive. "But we only talk about gun control when Sandy Hooks or Columbines happen," Mayo said. "We have mass shootings every day in our communities."

Croft blames what he calls "gun culture" in the United States. Originally from London, England, he says he comes from a culture in which hardly anyone has a gun — less than 2 percent of the population of the United Kingdom owns a firearm. Even UK police don't routinely carry firearms. Since Croft has been living in the United States — about a decade — he says there have been ten or more mass shootings. In the United Kingdom there have been none during that same time period. Likewise, there have been about two dozen fatal police shootings in the United Kingdom in the last 10 years. According to the Washington Post, there have been 277 in the United States just this year. There were close to 1,000 in 2017.

Gun culture is a culture of fear, Croft explained. "It increases people's fear of their neighbors. Organizations like the National Rifle Association try to convince people they might be attacked at any moment and so they have to carry a gun."

Croft said he was shocked at active shooter trainings required at some schools and churches, including his own secular congregation. "I think that's appalling," he said. "I don't think anyone should want to live in a culture where young people have to be afraid and teachers have to learn to barricade doors. And the only way I think it's possible to create a culture where people don't have to fear gun violence is to massively reduce the amount of guns in society."

Croft wants to start by banning the most deadly assault weapons like the AR-15 semiautomatic rifle used in many recent mass shootings. Such weapons are accurate, easy to use, and accept large magazines of devastating high-velocity ammunition. They're also modular and easily customized with various grips, stocks and sights that make shooting them easier in different scenarios — such as a crowded school.

He also wants to tighten background checks and require all firearm owners to get permits to buy any type of gun. He'd like to see a public awareness campaign much like the one around smoking, and a government-funded buyback program to get guns off the streets and out of homes.

"I know my view on this is a minority view in the United States," Croft said. "But it wasn't long ago that people routinely smoked cigarettes in restaurants and train carriages and even on airplanes. In a short amount of time, we've changed how the culture views smoking. And as a result of that, we've halved the percentage of the population that smokes since 1965 — which isn't very long, if you think about it. Just imagine how many lives we could save if we did the same with guns."

And, like Justice Stevens, Croft would go further, repealing or at least significantly amending the Second Amendment to the Constitution. "As an ethical leader, my concern is with what is right, not necessarily what is legal," he said. "And very often in history, we've found that laws are a very poor guide to what is actually right. It wasn't long ago in the United State that it was legal to own a human being. And no one today would say that it is right to own a human being, even though it was once legal.

"I'm also very conscious of the fact that the Second Amendment was written for a culture and society very different from our own. A democracy should evolve and change to serve its people as society changes, and there has been profound technological and cultural development since 1791.

"The Second Amendment was itself an amendment — a change — to the constitution," he added.

Croft is a civil libertarian and a self-professed advocate of human freedom, so in wanting to limit gun rights, he finds himself on the opposite side of the argument that he is used to. Proponents of the Second Amendment often say it was intended to be a hedge against tyrannical government — something Croft is more than a little concerned about himself. But, he finds their argument — that individuals with pistols or even assault rifles could challenge the United States military — absurd.

"Initially, it's an argument that should appeal to me as someone who believes strongly in individual freedoms," Croft said. "And I do recognize that governments are very often oppressive. Until very recently, the government of the United States did not allow me to get married. That is direct oppression by the government. But, I can't help but feel like most of the people who own guns right now would also not like me to get married.

"Research shows that the individuals who own the most guns in U.S. society right now are themselves the individuals with the most authoritarian tendencies," Croft said, citing research from Matthew MacWilliams at the University of Massachusetts. "So, as someone who loves freedom, I am very afraid of a society in which the people most likely to assert their individual rights to own a firearm are also the most likely to use firearms to impose their idea of what society should look like on other people. There's no guarantee that armed civilians will be against an authoritarian U.S. government — they may well support it."

Croft's views may not yet be the majority view, but support for stricter gun laws has surged in the wake of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. According to a recent poll from Politico, 68 percent of registered voters now support stricter gun laws, including a majority of Republicans. In other polls, support for gun laws is also at an all-time high, which may indicate that for proponents of gun reform, this time may really be different.

Photo by J. Ryne Danielson/Patch