For many in the African-American and Latino communities, gun control is literally a matter of survival, as the vast majority of them live in urban areas long plagued by gun violence. Although a native of New York City, Senator Sanders has lived in overwhelmingly white and predominantly rural Vermont -- where gun control is anathema -- for most of his life. But for Bernie to win the Democratic nomination, he can't afford to alienate the party's predominantly urban base on this issue.
“I come from a state that has virtually no gun control and it turns out one of the safest states in the country," said Senator Bernie Sanders. "I come from a state where tens and tens of thousands of people hunt and do target practice. "
"I understand that guns in my state are different than guns in Chicago or Los Angeles,” Sanders said. “People in urban America have got to appreciate that the overwhelming majority of people who hunt know about guns and respect guns, and are law-abiding people, that’s the truth. And people in rural America have got to understand that in an urban area, guns mean something very, very different.”
He's right about one thing: The debate over gun control is indeed a culture war between urban and rural America. But what Senator Sanders must understand is that urban Americans comprise an overwhelming 80 percent majority of the nation's population. Senator Sanders should know that better than anybody, as he -- like myself -- was born and raised in New York City, where, in the bad old days of the crack cocaine wars of the 1980s, as many as 2,000 people were murdered every year -- the vast majority of those murders committed with guns.
As one who has lived in Vermont for more than 20 years, I can tell you something else about Vermont: It is also the most rural state in the Northeast, which has a very strong hunting tradition that dates all the way back to when Vermont was an independent republic before it became the 14th state of the Union in 1791. After two decades, I'm very happy and proud to call Vermont my home; I love living here.
Defenders of the Second Amendment can argue until their faces turn red about the CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT to bear arms, but what about the FUNDAMENTAL HUMAN RIGHT to live free from gun violence?
That said, however, the junior senator from my adopted home state must also understand this: Not only do urban Americans vastly outnumber rural Americans, but urban America is also far more racially and socially diverse than rural America (Vermont is the second-whitest state in the Union -- after Maine -- whose population of 630,000 is 95 percent white).
No presidential candidate can win the Democratic nomination without the support of African-Americans and Latinos, who form a significant proportion of the Democratic Party's primary voter base (Latinos alone now outnumber whites in California and New Mexico, and will outnumber whites in Texas before the end of this decade, according to the Census Bureau).
And for black and Latino Americans -- the overwhelming majority of whom live in urban areas where gun violence is an almost-daily occurrence -- freedom from gun violence is quite literally a matter of survival.
I nearly lost a nephew to gun violence 10 years ago. He was wounded in a drive-by shooting while he was sitting on his front porch reading the newspaper. Defenders of the Second Amendment can argue until their faces turn red about the CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT to bear arms, but what about the FUNDAMENTAL HUMAN RIGHT to live free from gun violence?
Senator Sanders cannot win the Democratic Party's presidential nomination unless and until he listens to and takes seriously the growing demand of the nation's 80 percent urban majority -- with which he has no contact with here in overwhelmingly rural Vermont -- for action to reverse the spiral of gun violence. Unless and until he does so, he will surely lose.
As for the NRA and other Second Amendment defenders, I am fed up with their callous disregard for the victims of gun violence and their loved ones -- of whom an obscenely disproportionate percentage are African-American. The Charleston church massacre was the final straw for me.
I am fed up with the rural minority effectively telling the urban majority to go screw themselves on the matter of guns and gun violence. What's acceptable in Vermont and other rural places is NOT acceptable in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles and many other cities where gun violence is a plague.
I am fed up with the extremist national leadership of the NRA who insist that the right to bear arms includes the right to possess high-powered, so-called "assault" weapons that were originally designed to be used by the military in combat during wartime. No hunter in his or her right mind would use them.
For the NRA and other Second Amendment defenders to oppose common-sense measures such as background checks of would-be gun purchasers and banning high-powered military-style assault weapons from civilian use is an obscene insult to the countless victims of gun violence in this country.