MICHAEL ERNEST KERR
GREEN PARTY CANDIDATE FOR 2022 CALIFORNIA CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT 10
MICHAEL KERR FOR CONGRESS WITH PEACE AND JUSTICE
“CENSORSHIP AND THE TRUTH ARE NOT COMPATIBLE”
2022 Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action Candidates Gun Survey
Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action are committed to creating a movement and culture that is diverse, inclusive, and equitable, and being intentional about the intersectional nature of our work. To that end, candidates who apply for the Gun Sense Candidate distinction should not only be ready to commit to governing with gun safety in mind but must also commit to ensuring that their words and actions promote equity across all communities.
My 2022 Campaign Survey Responses – Michael E. Kerr
I commit to governing with gun safety in mind and promoting equity across all communities. Yes
Addressing Gun Violence in America
Every day, more than 110 people in the United States are killed with guns and 200 more are shot and wounded. The gun homicide rate in the U.S. is 25 times higher than that of other high-income countries. Data and research show that common-sense public safety measures can reduce gun violence and save lives.
1) Do you believe that Congress has a role to play in addressing gun violence in the United States?
Yes
Background Checks
Federal law requires that a person pass a background check before buying a gun from a licensed firearm dealer. Since 1994, more than 4 million illegal gun sales have been blocked, including to convicted felons, domestic abusers, and people prohibited due to mental illness. But the federal background check law does not apply if a person buys a gun from an unlicensed seller. This unlicensed market has flourished online, where each year more than a million ads offer firearms for sale that would not legally require a background check. This loophole means that criminals can easily buy guns from strangers they meet online or at gun shows, with no background check and no questions asked.
2) Do you support expanding the federal background checks requirement, which currently enables prohibited people to buy a gun from an unlicensed seller with no questions asked?
Yes
Charleston Loophole
Federal law requires that licensed gun dealers run background checks on all potential gun buyers. But the Charleston loophole in the law allows sales to proceed after three business days—even if a background check is not yet complete (named after the loophole the Mother Emanuel AME Church shooter exploited to acquire his firearm). Each year, this loophole puts thousands of firearms in the hands of people who are legally prohibited from possessing them. The surge in background checks during the pandemic exacerbated this loophole, and the FBI flagged nearly 6,000 gun sales in 2020 where a purchaser who could not legally possess a firearm was allowed to buy one. The total number is likely even higher, as it is estimated that over 400,000 background checks were never finished and wiped from the system.
3) Do you support addressing the “Charleston loophole” and ensuring background check operators have more time to complete their work before a gun sale may proceed?
Yes
Background Checks Denial Notification
When a person tries to buy a gun illegally, it is a warning sign: prohibited people who fail a background check are at a 28 percent higher risk of arrest in the five years after the denial compared to the five years preceding it. Those purchase attempts are also illegal, and in many states law enforcement regularly investigates and charges law-breakers. However, state and local authorities need that critical information from the federal government to determine when people in their jurisdictions are looking to get armed outside the law.
4) Do you support requiring the Department of Justice to inform state authorities when a person tries to buy a gun illegally and fails the background check?
Yes
Red Flag Laws
When a person is in crisis, loved ones and law enforcement are often the first to see signs that they pose a threat. Red Flag laws, also called extreme risk laws, allow them to seek help from a court to temporarily remove guns from dangerous situations. If a court finds there is evidence that a person poses a significant risk of injuring themselves or others with a firearm, the court can issue an emergency order, temporarily prohibiting the person from purchasing and possessing guns. Nineteen states and DC have enacted these laws, including fourteen since the Parkland shooting in February 2018, and they have been shown to reduce the rate of firearm suicide.
5) Do you support empowering family members and law enforcement to petition a judge for a red flag order (often called an “Extreme Risk Protection Order”)?
Yes
Secure Storage
Secure firearm storage can reduce the risks of suicide, unintentional shootings, and school shootings. It is estimated that 5.4 million American children live in households with at least one firearm that is loaded and unlocked. Between March and December of 2020, there was a 31 percent increase in unintentional shooting deaths by children of themselves and others compared to the same time period in 2019. Youth firearm suicide has increased significantly, and in the vast majority of suicides by children, the gun used belonged to a family member. Similarly, up to 80% of school shooters obtain their gun from their home or the home of relatives or friends. Storing guns locked and unloaded is associated with a 78 percent lower risk of self-inflicted firearm injuries and an 85 percent lower risk of unintentional firearm injuries among children and teens.
6) Do you support policies requiring gun owners to store their firearms securely — locked and inaccessible to unauthorized users, including children and prohibited people?
Yes
Suicide by Gun
Six out of 10 of all gun deaths in the U.S. are suicides. Gun suicides claim the lives of nearly 24,000 people in America every year–that’s an average of 65 deaths a day. But many of these deaths could be prevented if guns were taken out of the equation: while 90% of gun suicide attempts prove fatal, 4% of attempts by other methods result in death. In addition to enacting legislative solutions like the Extreme Risk Protection Order and secure firearm storage requirements, building public awareness about the suicide risked posed by firearm access is crucial to saving lives.
7) Do you commit to educating the public about the unique role firearms play in America’s suicide epidemic?
Yes
Protecting Victims of Domestic Abuse
Women in the U.S. are 21 times more likely to be killed by gun homicide than women in other high-income countries. And when a gun is present in a domestic violence situation, the abused woman is five times more likely to be killed. Federal law prohibits many domestic abusers from possessing firearms, including abusive spouses. But it does not generally cover abusive boyfriends or other intimate partners, even though American women are as likely to be killed by abusive boyfriends or unmarried intimate partners as by abusive spouses.
8) Do you support legislation to close the “boyfriend loophole,” expanding the current federal law to bar gun possession by all intimate partners, regardless of marital status, who are convicted of domestic violence and/or subject to final protection orders?
Yes
PLCAA Repeal
In 2005, at the strong urging of the gun lobby, Congress passed PLCAA, one of the biggest giveaways to private industry in American history, giving bad actors in the gun industry more protection from litigation than makers and sellers of cars or tobacco products. The gun lobby celebrated the passage of PLCAA on the day it was signed, calling it the “most significant piece of pro-gun legislation in twenty years.” Repealing PLCAA would hold bad actors in the gun industry accountable to the same rules as every other consumer product industry.
9) Do you support legislation repealing PLCAA’s special protections for the bad actors in the gun industry?
Yes
Funding for Gun Violence Research
Funding for the Centers for Disease Control and other public health agencies to study gun violence has been severely depressed for several decades, in large part due to gun lobby efforts to suppress public knowledge in this critical area. Congress has clarified that it is appropriate for the federal government to conduct research into the causes and solutions of gun violence. Congress has appropriated $25 million a year for the past two fiscal years to study gun violence, but this amount pales in comparison to the scope of the problem.
10) Do you support robust federal funding—at least $100 million annually—for research on the causes of gun violence, its consequences for public health and common sense solutions to curb gun violence?
No
Funding Community Violence Intervention
Community-based violence intervention programs apply a localized approach to address gun violence in neighborhoods with particularly high rates of gun violence. Numerous studies demonstrate that evidence-informed intervention and prevention — for example, through street or hospital-based outreach — can reduce gunshot victimizations among people at the highest risk of being shot. Governments have begun providing critical funding for these life-saving programs, however, the high levels of city gun violence since 2020 requires sustained federal funding to support these proven interventions.
11) Do you support robust federal funding for localized violence intervention programs that support people at the highest risk of being shot and killed?
Yes
Gun Trafficking
The U.S. has a gun homicide rate 25 times higher than other high-income nations, and yet we lack strong federal laws to crack down on illegal gun trafficking networks. Prosecutors who want to stop traffickers must instead rely on a weak, outdated law that prohibits “selling guns without a federal license.” And when convicted criminals or gun traffickers use straw purchasers to buy guns on their behalf, prosecutors often have no crime to charge other than a paperwork crime. The laws that apply to gun sellers haven’t been updated in decades. Modernizing these laws—to ensure that high volume sellers using online marketplaces must obtain licenses—and creating strong federal trafficking and straw purchasing laws would enable law enforcement to keep illegal guns off our streets.
12) Do you support modernizing the laws on commercial gun selling and the establishment of new federal crimes for straw purchasing and gun trafficking?
Yes
Police Use of Force and Accountability
Police violence is gun violence – 95% of deaths of civilians caused by police are with a firearm, and Black people are victims at a disproportionate rate. Police shootings have a corrosive impact on our communities as they foster distrust which makes it harder for law enforcement to keep communities safe. Critical reforms should include: a strong legal standard barring the unnecessary use of force and a standard requiring officers to intervene to stop abuse, a commitment to de-escalation, deploying formal tools to identify misconduct, a thorough and independent review system for use of force incidents, and transparency about use of force and other policies and procedures.
13) Do you support police accountability measures that promote de-escalation, promote transparency, and that aim to eliminate unnecessary use of force?
Yes
Concealed Carry Reciprocity
The standards for who may carry a hidden, loaded gun in public have always been a matter of state law. The concealed carry standards vary widely across states: while some states require that a person receive live-fire safety training and have no violent criminal offenses on their record, a growing number of states allow carry by people with no permit—or background check—whatsoever. And yet even as some states are gutting their own permit systems, the gun lobby wants to enact federal “concealed carry reciprocity,” which would force each state to accept the carry standards of all other states, making the weakest link the law of the land.
14) Do you oppose “concealed carry reciprocity,” which would gut state gun laws, requiring each state to allow people from all other states to carry concealed handguns in public, regardless of whether they would otherwise qualify to carry and regardless of whether they have any permit whatsoever?
Yes
Guns In Schools
There is no evidence that arming teachers can help to stop active shooters—and on the contrary, an armed teacher is more likely to shoot a student bystander or be shot by responding law enforcement than to be an effective solution to an active shooter in a school. However, the gun lobby is promoting laws to arm teachers and school staff—and while law enforcement has on average 21 weeks of basic training, gun lobby bills often require no minimum training at all for teachers. This policy is broadly opposed by law enforcement, parents, and teachers.
15) Do you oppose allowing federal funding to be used to bring guns in K-12 schools, outside of law enforcement and trained security staff?
Yes
Have you ever volunteered with Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America or Students Demand Action for Gun Sense in America?
No
Have you been personally affected by gun violence?
I am a member of the Oscar Grant Committee where we actively help families that have lost loved ones to unwarranted police violence.
Would you like to provide any additional background for any of your responses?
Much of my 50 years of activism has been focused on the U.S. military and foreign policy crimes against humanity! As bad as gun violence is in the United States, it is dwarfed by the violence our government has unleased on the people (mostly people of color) of the world through unilateral wars, coups, weapons sales, militarization of dozens of countries around the world. MLK said “America is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world” and it is even worse now!
Thank you for completing the 2022 Moms Demand Action Gun Sense Candidate questionnaire.
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My 2022 Campaign Questionnaires & Issues
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