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Vigils in Vancouver, across U.S., for gun victims

Sorrow over gun violence unlikely to prompt change in federal law

The Columbian
Published: January 8, 2012, 12:00am

Vancouver vigil for victims of gun violence

When: 3 to 4 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 8. Candles will be provided.

Where: St. Paul Lutheran Church, 1309 Franklin St., Vancouver.

Speakers: Columbine survivor Andrea Banister, Vancouver Mayor Tim Leavitt.

WASHINGTON — At an early-learning center in Eatonville, mourners will light candles Sunday to honor Margaret Anderson, 34, the ranger and mother of two toddlers who was shot and killed New Year’s Day while she tried to set up a roadblock in Mount Rainier National Park.

That same evening, at the mall of the University of Arizona in her hometown of Tucson, Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords will hold a glow stick and listen to a symphony orchestra at a vigil to recognize the first anniversary of the shooting that killed six people and critically wounded her.

Vigils are planned in more than 30 cities to remember the thousands of Americans who are murdered in the United States each

year, most of them with guns. For gun-control advocates, it will be a day to “light a candle against the darkness of gun violence” and to demand that Congress tighten the nation’s gun laws.

Vancouver vigil for victims of gun violence

When: 3 to 4 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 8. Candles will be provided.

Where: St. Paul Lutheran Church, 1309 Franklin St., Vancouver.

Speakers: Columbine survivor Andrea Banister, Vancouver Mayor Tim Leavitt.

Congress did nothing of the sort after the Giffords shooting last year, and the odds are good that nothing will happen this year.

Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., a gun-control proponent who gets failing grades from the National Rifle Association, said it’s just a matter of political reality on Capitol Hill. He wants Congress to overturn a law that took effect in 2010 that allows loaded guns in national parks, but he’s not optimistic.

“The problem is, the NRA’s got a majority in the House and Senate — that’s the reality of it,” said Dicks, an 18th-term congressman.

John Velleco, director of federal affairs for the Virginia-based Gun Owners of America, said Congress should instead loosen existing gun-control laws to make it easier for citizens to defend themselves with firearms.

“I think the vigils completely miss the point because they’re assuming that more gun-control laws will lead to fewer crimes, but we find that the opposite is true,” he said. “The more gun-control laws you have, the easier it is for criminals to commit crimes.”

While homicide statistics vary each year, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said that 12,996 Americans were murdered in 2010, the most recent year for which statistics are available. Of those, more than two-thirds — or 8,775 — were killed by guns, according to the FBI.

“Our gun homicide rate is 20 times the combined rates of other western industrialized nations,” said Dennis Henigan, acting president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, which is organizing many of the weekend vigils. “This is a uniquely American problem. It is time for Americans to insist that the time for action has come.”

In a report released Friday, the Violence Policy Center, a Washington, D.C.-based gun-control organization, said the nation’s homicide statistics do not reflect the growing number of Americans who are shot each year but survive because of advanced trauma care. From 2000 to 2008, more than 617,000 Americans suffered nonfatal gunshot injuries, the study found. In 2008, the number of fatal and nonfatal gunshot wounds hit 110,215, the most during the nine years surveyed.

“America is paying a very high price for policy decisions made on the local, state and national levels that make increasingly lethal firearms readily available,” said Kristen Rand, the center’s legislative director. “These numbers make clear that denying America’s gun crisis will not make it go away.”

The Brady campaign’s “Too Many Victims National Candlelight Vigil” will include events in Washington, where Jim Brady, the former press secretary to Ronald Reagan who was wounded in an assassination attempt against the president in 1981, will light a candle with his wife, Sarah Brady.

Other vigils are planned across the country, including in Portland and Vancouver.

Mount Rainier death

The vigil to honor Anderson will take place at 5 p.m. (PST) at the Eatonville Early Learning Center, where her two daughters — ages 1 and 3 — attend day care. Her husband, Eric, is also a ranger at Mount Rainier.

Anderson was shot by Iraq War veteran Benjamin Colton Barnes, 24, as she tried to stop him at a roadblock aimed at preventing cars without snow chains from traveling on mountain roads.

Until February 2010, loaded guns were not allowed in national parks. Under intense pressure from gun-rights groups, Congress voted to allow loaded guns as long as they were permitted by state law.

Velleco said the Washington state shooting “just proves the point that we need to allow the law-abiding citizen to have the ability to defend themselves,” particularly in remote national parks where help can be hundreds of miles away.

“The criminals are intruding on these lands, so it would be ridiculous to restrict people’s rights to defend themselves with firearms in the places where they might need them and be helpless otherwise,” he said.

As a ranger charged with law enforcement, Anderson would have been armed while on duty.

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