by Cynthia Price
Legal News
As difficult as it is for the average American to erase the memory of the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre, Colin Goddard has a much tougher time.
Goddard, former ROTC candidate, and strong athlete, made the mistake of being in his French class as shooter Seung-Hui Cho decided to take out a few more Virginia Tech students before killing himself.
Last week Goddard came to Grand Rapids, accompanying the film about his life, Living for 32, a documentary by director Kevin Breslin and producer Maria Cuomo Cole, the daughter and sister of New York governors Mario and Andrew Cuomo and wife of fashion designer Kenneth Cole.
“Living for 32” is a reference to the number of people killed every day in the United States as a result of gun violence, though some place the death toll even higher.
While the Virginia Tech statistics of 33 dead, 25 injured do not make it the worst school massacre in U.S. history — that record is held by Michigan’s own community of Bath near Lansing in 1927, where the perpetrator used explosives — it does rank first in the number of victims if counting only shootings. The recent Newtown Sandy Hook killings rank second in the number dead from school shootings at 28.
The Progressive Women’s Alliance (PWA) and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America Grand Rapids Chapter co-sponsored showing of the film.
Immediately before Goddard was shot the first of four times by the deranged killer, he called 911 on his cell phone; another student completed the call after his wound prevented him. It was as a result of that call that law enforcement officers, who had had reports of some shootings in a dorm room (two were killed there), arrived at the university.
Seung Hui-Cho’s suicide came only ten or so minutes later, but not before he shot Goddard point blank another three times. Goddard hazily remembers medics coming in and attaching different color tags to people in the ill-fated classroom: red for severe injury, black for death.
When all was said and done, ten of his 17 classmates were dead. Comments Colin, “There were people all around me who did nothing different from me. I just got lucky.”
After a grueling recovery, Goddard went back to school, but when he saw news of another gun tragedy after graduation, he decided he had to do something, to speak up “for the 32.”
He is now a campaign director and spokesperson for the Brady Campaign, named after Ronald Reagan’s press secretary Jim Brady who was shot in 1981 when someone tried to assassinate Reagan.
After a long battle, the so-called Brady Bill became the law of the land, requiring that a National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) be set up. This has been in effect since 1998.
Local attorney Kathleen Ley Bruinsma, a PWA member, led the charge in bringing Goddard and the film to Grand Rapids. “My practice is commercial litigation, but I’m also a policy activist on the side. I’m on the steering committee for PWA.” She also works on women’s reproductive issues and voting rights.
Though she works for the Grand Rapids office of the Bloomfield Hills firm Myers Nelson Dillon & Shierk, Bruinsma emphasizes that she is acting completely independently of that firm. “I’m just really lucky that the work that I do is liens and lien priorities so there’s no conflict with the legislative advocacy.”
Bruinsma also serves on Mayor George Heartwell’s Task Force for Gun Policy. It is no secret that Mayor Heartwell is interested in furthering some forms of gun control, as are over 900 of his fellow members in Mayors Against Illegal Guns.
Living for 32 goes on to show the results of Colin Goddard attempting to purchase guns at gun shows while wearing a hidden camera. The only real requirement under these circumstances is that the purchaser have a driver’s license, but dealer after dealer lets him off the hook when he says he left it in the car or lost it.
Polls since the Newtown Massacre at the end of 2012 indicate that upwards of 80% of United States citizens support background checks for all gun sales or transfers, and a CNN survey in April 2013 indicated that the number is as high as 86%.
Nonetheless, there is a vocal minority who feel that any restriction on currently-held gun rights is a slippery slope to removing all Second Amendment rights. The powerful National Rifle Association is a staunch defender of the right to bear arms, and believes that law-abiding citizens cannot fight back against lawless individuals without access to gun ownership.
What people concerned about gun violence are urging right now is that the Congressional House of Representatives bring HB 1565, the King-Thompson Bill, to a vote. The bill expands and coordinates NICS record-keeping and applies it consistently.
As Bruinsma comments, “If you don’t have a criminal record or severe mental health issues, you shouldn’t worry about a background check. It’s not a radical notion.”
She adds that PWA co-hosted the film screening and Goddard visit “because we support the reining in of unchecked gun sales as an important part of reducing the epidemic of gun violence in the U.S.
“One of the most important takeaways from this film and the discussion that followed,” she says, “is that gun violence can and does happen to anyone, regardless of where and how they live. It can happen to white middle-upper class college students while they are sitting in class; it can happen to children of color in our inner cities; it can happen to crowds sitting in a theater to watch a movie; it can happen to a little girl talking to her U.S. Congresswoman (and that Congresswoman); it can happen to suburban kindergartners in their classroom.”
Nicole Robertson of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense says she was drawn to the movement to prevent the mentally ill or criminal from getting guns when she sat down to talk with her children after Newtown and found “my kindergartner already knew what a lockdown drill is.” Deploring the effect that such knowledge has on the innocence of childhood, she joined the group of “regular people who are finally starting to say we’ve had enough.”
More information about Moms Demand Action is on the Grand Rapids Chapter Facebook page at www.facebook.com/MomsDemandActionMIGrandRapids.
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