EDITORS NOTE: A longer article but chock full of important and eye-opening information.  If you care about the environment, it is well worth your time to read this and other articles cited in it.

A bottle of water. It looks ordinary enough. But take a closer look and you can almost hear the Jaws music start to play…

This is not your average Evian you can pop to the shop and buy (although you’re probably not doing that because of plastic water bottles’ contribution to pollution and global warming). This is a bottle of melted iceberg and it comes with a potent message: the Arctic is melting. 

As a matter of fact, on the Greenland ice cap alone, 17 million of these bottles are melting every second. 

Over the last 50 years (the equivalent of a nanosecond in the grand scheme of the universe timeline), the Arctic has warmed three times more quickly than the planet as a whole. Widely considered by polar scientists as the Earth's refrigerator due to its role in regulating global temperatures, its own temperature has risen by 3.1 degrees Celsius, compared to 1 degree Celsius for the planet, with each fraction of a degree having a devastating impact. Now imagine we’re the fresh veg inside that fridge… 

The "poster child" for the effects of the loss of sea ice on species is the polar bear, a species that could become extinct by 2100 if Arctic ice continues to melt at projected rates. Walruses and arctic foxes are also losing their homes. 

But, as climate scientists are fond of saying: "What happens in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic." Rising sea levels will force coastal communities inland, seasonal temperature differences will become more polarised, and extreme weather events will become more frequent, which will in turn lead to a refugee crisis, the likes of which we have not seen before. 

Arctic Basecamp is the group that have found themselves taking an unlikely career tangent to water bottling. 

They’ve taken these bottles (as well as a four-tonne melting iceberg from Greenland) and set up camp (literally) at a handful of world events such as COP26, the Davos World Economic Forum, and, in a matter of days, Glastonbury. While they’re there, they hand these bottles to key decision makers to make sure that the Arctic has a seat on the table. 

This year, they’re taking their melted Arctic message to the mother of all green festivals: Glastonbury. Founded with activism at its heart, it’s the perfect place for Arctic Basecamp to set up shop. If you’re heading to Worthy Farm this week, make sure to stop by and say “Hi”, and speak some science to power. They’ll be located in the “Green Futures” field.

Almost 5,000 kilometres away from Glastonbury Festival, the Arctic and its melting icebergs can sometimes seem distant and abstract. So to bring the polar region and its realities closer to home, Arctic Basecamp has come up with the “Arctic Risk Calculator.” Simply pop in your date of birth and it will tell you precisely by how much temperatures and sea levels have risen since you’ve been alive. Then get a ruler out to see what that sea level rise looks like, or imagine what would happen to the produce in your fridge if you turned it down that many degrees…

We met with Prof. Gail Whiteman, founder of Arctic Basecamp, to find out what it’s like going to the Arctic, what melted Arctic ice water tastes like, and why the Arctic is so important. 

Hi Gail, what do you do in a sentence?

I am the Founder of Arctic Basecamp, a not-for-profit science communication platform, and a Professor of Sustainability at the University of Exeter Business School (UK).

Let’s get the important stuff out of the way (joking). Have you been to the Arctic? Do you have to wear special clothing? And what did you eat?

Yes, I’ve been to the Arctic! 

You do need to wear special clothes and have special gear. On a research vessel, you have normal gear but also need to know how to use protective clothing in case you fall in the water.  

My PhD field work was in the sub-Arctic (just at the top of the treeline) when I lived with Indigenous Peoples in northern Canada for two years — the James Bay Cree.

On a scientific research vessel, the food is actually very good!  During my PhD, when I was in the hunting camps, we had to hunt and eat local animals, fish, and in the summer, blueberries.

OK, now for the actually serious stuff. What is Arctic Basecamp? Why did you start it?

The idea of Arctic Basecamp emerged from a scientific trip through the NorthWest Passage on a Canadian research vessel in 2010. It was so clear then that the sea ice was rapidly disappearing and this would cause severe global risks far away from the Arctic. But no one outside academia or outside the regional geography was concerned about that.  

My “task” after that trip was to figure out a way to get this message out of the Arctic and into the discussions of global decision makers. That’s why we set up Arctic Basecamp at the World Economic Forum at Davos. Our mission is to “speak science to power” in order to encourage urgent and transformative climate action. We are a unique science communication platform that tries to convey the science in an understandable way in unusual places. We work with celebrities like Rainn Wilson, who is on our board,

business and policy leaders, scientists, NGOs and youth activists — for example, Greta Thunberg camped with us in Davos in 2019. We bring youth climate leaders from around the world each year with us to Davos, including Indigenous youth from the Arctic.  

But because we want to reach out beyond the elite crowd at Davos, we have also recently launched the online “Arctic Risk Calculator” which identifies the global risks from Arctic change and helps to curate the data into meaningful “alerts” about climate risks.

Why is the Arctic so important?

The Arctic is the poster child for the need to stay below the +1.5C emissions target, and it’s warming at least three times as fast as the rest of the planet. Climate research shows a strong and direct correlation with rising CO2 emissions and loss of Arctic ice. Science also shows that the Arctic is the barometer of global risk — what

happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay there. 

A lot of people will know the ice is melting and that’s bad news for polar bears. But what other impacts is it having?

The science is clear — the dramatic changes in the Arctic region are an irrefutable warning sign of the impending global climate emergency. Yet, there remains a significant gap in public awareness and in-depth understanding of the magnitude and breadth of the global risks as a consequence of Arctic change — from extreme weather, storm surges, and global sea level rise, to changes to global precipitation and snowfall patterns. There is also a large disconnect between scientific monitoring of early warning signs of the impending risks from Arctic change and discussions by key global policy makers, business leaders, and local communities and citizens. 

Arctic warming can cause extreme weather across the Northern hemisphere. The catastrophic and costly storms, heatwaves, wildfires, and other extreme weather hammering the world’s cities and regions have been linked to changes in the rapidly warming Arctic. Between 2010 and 2019, record-breaking storms, floods, and other natural disasters were the costliest in modern history with losses totaling US$2.98 trillion.

Arctic change will also affect global food and water security because of the central role it plays in the world’s climate system. 

Some of the world’s most populated places are on the shores of rising oceans. Seas are rising faster now than over any century in the past 3,000 years. Coastline flooding of low-lying cities and regions as well as devastating coastal erosion will worsen and happen more often in the decades ahead.

Tell me more about the bottled water you took to COP26.

At COP26 in Glasgow, Arctic Basecamp handed out “Arctic Melt” bottles made from real melt water from Greenland. We wanted to put fresh, natural, unadulterated climate facts right under the noses of world leaders, COP26 delegates, climate deniers, and reporters in Glasgow. We brought the Arctic right into the heart of COP26 — “a single serving of alarming climate facts.” Each limited edition bottle contains messages of risk and the advice not to waste these precious glaciers. It was a literal “Bottled Warning” on the need to make bold and ambitious commitments on pledges for emissions reductions and climate action.

How did you actually bottle it? 

We worked with Qajak Brewery in Narsaq, a Greenlandic enterprise, to collect Greenland glacial meltwater at source and the water was then bottled by an independent bottler based in Irvine, near Glasgow. It arrived on a ship from Greenland, via Iceland, and transported along with our iceberg to Scotland where Graeme Lindsay from Uisge Source treated the water and bottled it in his factory. All transportation was offset by Ecologi.

What does Arctic water taste like? 

It’s very neutral tasting because there are no minerals in it. But I don't know how I feel about actually drinking it. The water can of course be drunk but we hope people see it as a symbol of the climate crisis happening in the Arctic right now. 

What was the response like?

People are always astounded to learn that over 17 million bottles of our water melt off the Greenland Ice Sheet per second. That is a lot of meltwater. That's over 13 million litres per second. We also had one global policymaker visit us at COP26 three times!

Why Glastonbury?

We believe that ordinary people have a tremendous amount of power to force politicians and companies to act faster on climate change. 

What’s one thing you wish people knew about the Arctic?

That the changes in the Arctic and the Antarctic will determine the fate of humanity.  

What gives you hope right now?

Some days, that becomes a really hard question to answer. I had a big dip when I watched Don’t Look Up and felt crushed by the similarity with climate science and the dangerous lack of global action. But eventually I got my hope back because at the end of the day, there is love and there is ingenuity in the world. We can do this! But we have to face the facts and find the courage to make the impossible possible. 

Finally, how much have the Arctic temperature and sea levels risen since you’ve been alive?  

I was born in 1965 and here are my shocking climate numbers:

• Global temperature rose 1.32 °C | 2.37 °F
• Arctic temperature rose 3.45 °C | 6.22 °F
• Sea level rose 138.60 mm | 5.46 inches
• September Arctic sea ice declined by 53.34 %
• CO2 in atmosphere rose 98.88 ppm | 31.17 %

Global Citizen is partnering with Arctic Basecamp to amplify the call for action to tackle the devastating impact that climate change is having on the Artic, and on vulnerable and marginalized communities around the world. Head over to our Climate Action NOW page and see how many actions you can take today to defend the planet. You can also download the Global Citizen app, and take Challenges that help drive climate action in your own life, and call on world and business leaders to take urgent climate action now. 

Related Story:      15 Grassroots Organizations That Are Saving the Planet

Andrea Jenkins  ( 1961 - )

Andrea Jenkins made history in 2017 when she became the first African American, openly transgender woman elected to public office in the United States. As a politician, poet, activist, and community historian, Jenkins strives to bring “the notion of love into the public discourse.”

Andrea Jenkins was born on May 10, 1961. Assigned male at birth, she grew up with her mother, Shirley Green, one sibling, and two of her cousins in the North Lawndale neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side. Jenkins’s father battled heroin addiction and spent much of her childhood in prison. Shirley worked as an office administrator. Jenkins described being raised by her mother in a “pretty authoritarian” but “very loving” manner with an emphasis on education. She spent every weekend at her grandparents’ house in the Chatham neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. Chatham, a middle-class African American neighborhood, was in stark contrast to Jenkins’s “hard-working and low-income” neighborhood, and she thus says she “experienced all of Chicago from the deep poverty to the striving middle-class Black Chicago.” She was also aware of her family, who had from to Chicago from Alabama as part of the Great migration, history. Those experiences and history “deeply informed [her] life.”

Jenkins spent her childhood participating in Cub Scouts and playing football at Robert Lindblom Math & Science Academy on the South Side. She also loved literature and poetry. She remembered learning “everyone can be a poet” when Gwendolyn Brooks, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet laureate of Illinois, visited her First Grade class. Her early high school mentors included poet Haki Madhubuti, one of the founders of the Black Arts Movement and Third World Press (now the largest independent African American-owned publisher in the U.S.). Jenkins recalled her experience with Madhubuti at 14 really got her involved with “Black history, Black culture, the 1960s Black arts movement” since “Haki was really a believer that you must use poetry for social justice.”

It was a lesson she kept close to her heart as she continued to write poetry that often focuses on the intersection of race, social justice, gender, and sexuality. She has published several acclaimed volumes of poetry, including The T is Not Silent (2015). At the beginning, her own gender identity was “never a subject” of her poetry. “I was thinking about it,” Jenkins said in an interview, “but I would never, at that point in life, express my inner gender identity thoughts in a poem.”

In 1979, Jenkins started at the University of Minnesota, an overwhelmingly white school at the time. She was shocked at the differences in resources and access between white and non-white students. She also experienced racial stereotyping on campus. She lived in male dorms and eventually joined a fraternity. When speaking of these college years, Jenkins said “In many ways a lot of my life was really trying to hide from what I knew to be true inside myself…I knew I was a girl, but I didn’t want people to reject me.” One of her fraternity brothers, her roommate, “outed her;” the fraternity expelled Jenkins from the house and she was forced to return to Chicago since she had no where else to live. When Jenkins told her mom why she was back home, she came out as bisexual (Jenkins still identifies as bisexual). Her mom took her back in, assuming her sexuality was just “a phase.” Jenkins recalled, “I knew at this time I was trans, but again I could just not accept it for myself, and so consequently could not tell my parents or anybody about it.” While in Chicago, she made her first foray into politics by working on Harold Washington’s successful mayoral campaign in 1983, making him the first African American mayor of Chicago.

While in her mid-20s, Jenkins married a woman and had a daughter who remains “the absolute love of [her] life.” She also began work as a vocational counselor for Hennepin County, a role she would have for over a decade. At 30, she divorced her wife and came out as a trans woman. “I just really realized that I [couldn’t] go on any more, hiding the truth from myself. Hiding the truth from those who I love. If I am going to thrive in life, I have to come to grips with who I am, and I have to accept it,” Jenkins said in an interview. While Jenkins began her transition, she also returned to college and finished her B.A. in Human Services from Metropolitan State University at age 38. She went on to complete two more degrees: an M.A. in Community Development from Southern New Hampshire University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Hamline University.

Jenkins’s political career began in 2001 when she served on the successful campaign of Minneapolis City Council Candidate Robert Liligren. She then became one of his staffers. In 2005, City Council member Elizabeth Gidden hired Jenkins as her aide. While working for Gidden, Jenkins won the 2011 Bush Fellowship “dedicated to transgender issues,” helped establish the Transgender Issues Work Group, and organized a City Council summit on transgender equality and the problems facing the transgender community in Minnesota, both in 2014. After 12 years as a Council aide, Jenkins began curating the Transgender Oral History Project at the University of Minnesota’s Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies. A primary focus of her curation is to grow the collection of trans narratives by recording oral histories. In 2015, Jenkins served as the grand marshal of the Twin Cities Pride Parade.

When Giddens decided not to seek reelection in 2016, Jenkins ran for the open seat. She was also motivated to run because of the 2016 presidential election and wanted to make changes around issues of equity in Minneapolis. Jenkins took her mom to the polls, and later said “I do want to just acknowledge the tremendous feeling of voting for oneself, it’s unlike anything you can imagine.” Jenkins won her 2017 election to represent Ward 8 with 73% of the vote. She was one of a few transgender candidates who won their elections during that cycle. Her colleagues in the City Council then elected her Vice President of the Council.

In the Summer of 2020, Jenkins was again thrust into the national spotlight after the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis. Floyd was a resident of Jenkins’s districts. In the wake of Floyd’s murder, Jenkins insisted racism was a public health crisis and played a central role in re-examining the funding and structure of Minneapolis’s police department.

In 2022, Jenkins won reelection to the Minneapolis City Council with 86% of the vote. Her colleagues then unanimously made her President of the Council, another historic first for an openly transgender person. With her new mandate, Jenkins wants to bridge gaps in her community, fight for accountability within the city’s police department, and expand access to affordable housing, health care, and living wages. She hopes her public service “serves as an inspiration for other trans and gender-nonconforming people.”

While her jurisdiction may be limited, Jenkins continuously hears from transgender people from all over the country seeking guidance and help. In an interview with The Washington Post, Jenkins said “Transgender people have been here forever…I look forward to more trans people joining me in elected office and all other kinds of leadership roles in our society.”

Works Cited

“About Andrea Jenkins,” City of Minneapolis, https://www.minneapolismn.gov/government/city-council/ward-8/about-andrea-jenkins/

“Andrea Jenkins,” National Black Justice Coalition, https://beenhere.org/2017/05/10/andrea-jenkins/

Brooke Sopelsa, “Andrea Jenkins is First Openly Transgender Black Woman Elected in U.S.” NBC News, November 8, 2017, https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/andrea-jenkins-makes-history-first-openly-black-trans-person-elected-n818966

Madeleine Carlisle, “America’s First Openly Trans City Council President Wants to Heal Minneapolis,” TIME, January 25, 2022, https://time.com/6141967/andrea-jenkins-minneapolis-trans-issues-policing/

“Minneapolis City Council President Andrea Jenkins,” The Takeaway, WYNC Studios, February 4, 2022, https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/takeaway/segments/blackqueerrising-minneapolis-city-council-president-andrea-jenkins

Oliver Laughland, “Andrea Jenkins: the first Black openly transgender woman to hold US public office,” The Guardian, March 11, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/mar/11/andrea-jenkins-first-black-transgender-woman-us-public-office-minneapolis-george-floyd

Tat Bellamy-Walker, “Andrea Jenkins makes history as 1^st openly transgender city council president,” NBC News, Jan 11, 2022, https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-policy/andrea-jenkins-makes-history-1st-openly-transgender-city-council-presi-rcna11829

How to Cite this page

MLA – Rothberg, Emma. “Andrea Jenkins.” National Women’s History Museum, 2022. Date accessed.

Chicago – Rothberg, Emma. “Andrea Jenkins.” National Women’s History Museum. 2022. http://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/andrea-jenkins

Image Credit: "Andrea Jenkins - Minneapolis City Council" by Tony Webster, CC BY-SA 2.0.

Additional Resources

“Andrea Jenkins for Ward 8,” https://www.andrea-jenkins.com/

“Andrea Jenkins Minneapolis Poet,” https://andreajenkins.webs.com/

Erik Tormoen, “Q&A: Andrea Jenkins, Minneapolis’ New City Council President,” Minnesota Monthly, April 14, 2022, https://www.minnesotamonthly.com/lifestyle/people/qa-andrea-jenkins-minneapolis-new-city-council-president/

Cecilia Chung  (1965 - )  Cecilia Chung is a groundbreaking advocate for the transgender community and those living with HIV/AIDS. For decades, she has worked on the local, state, and national levels to end the discrimination and violence that her communities face.

Cecilia Chung was born in Hong Kong in 1965. Chung was assigned male at birth and from a young age, she described feeling different and misunderstood in her gender identity, but didn’t know how to express it. In grade school, she realized she was attracted to boys and, as a teenager, thought it meant that she was gay.

Chung immigrated to the U.S. with her parents in 1984. They settled in Los Angeles, but Chung soon moved to San Francisco to attend the City College of San Francisco. She transferred to Golden Gate University and graduated in 1987 with a degree in International Management. After college, she worked in finance and as an interpreter for the Santa Clara County court system. At the age of 22, Chung began her gender transition. Living as her authentic self brought significant challenges for Chung. Her parents opposed her transition and Chung did not speak to them for over three years. She lost her job at in the court system, likely due to her transition, and then became homeless.

Chung turned to sex work in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood in order to survive. She also started using drugs and soon learned that she was HIV positive. But Chung never regretted transitioning. She said that this difficult period in her life "sounds painful, but it's actually more painful to not know who you are. I would rather be really trying hard to survive than to look in the mirror and not see myself." These experiences led Chung to devote her energy to working on behalf of the transgender community and those living with HIV/AIDS.

In 1994, she joined the city’s Transgender Discrimination Task Force, which issued a landmark report on the injustices that trans individuals faced every day. The task force’s efforts led the city to enact several pioneering anti-discrimination policies. She also worked as an HIV test counselor and a counselor for residential facilities, and then as a caseworker for a housing program.

In 1995, two men attempted to sexually assault Chung. She fought back and one of the assailants stabbed her in the arm. She suffered a punctured artery, a severed tendon, and nerve damage. Chung was rushed to the emergency room, where she was joined by her mother, whom the hospital notified of the attack.

Though it took some difficult conversations, Chung and her family reconciled before long. Chung also continued her groundbreaking work as an advocate for transgender rights. She was the first transgender woman and first Asian individual elected to chair the Board of Directors of the San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Celebration. She was also the first transgender woman and first person living openly HIV to lead the San Francisco Human Rights Commission.

Chung joined the Board of the Asian Pacific Islander Wellness Center in 2002 and worked on their mobile HIV testing project for transgender youth. In 2004, Chung served as one of the founding organizers of Trans March, an annual event that now takes place in cities across the country. The following year, she was named the first Deputy Director of the Transgender Law Center and in 2011, Chung served on California’s Civil Rights Enforcement Working Group.

Chung’s advocacy work rose to the national level in 2013 when President Barack Obama appointed her to the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS. She served two terms on the council, retiring at the end of President Obama’s time in office. In 2015, Chung founded Positively Trans, a network intended to address the stigma and inequities faced by transgender people, particularly people of color, living with HIV. The network is supported by the Transgender Law Center and the Elton John AIDS Foundation and focuses on story-telling, policy lobbying, and leadership development.

Today, Chung is the Director of Evaluation and Strategic Initiatives for the Transgender Law Center, as well as a member of the San Francisco Health Commission. Chung’s long record of public service has been recognized with the Levi Strauss & Co. Pioneer Award; the San Francisco AIDS Foundation Cleve Jones Award; the Human Right Campaign Community Service Award; and as a California State Assembly’s Woman of the Year award, among others. Her life story also inspired a character on the ABC miniseries When We Rise (2017), which documented the history of the LGBTQ+ movement from the 1970s-2010s.

Chung continues to make history as a passionate civil rights advocate and dedicated public servant.

By Mariana Brandman, NWHM Predoctoral Fellow in Women's History

Works Cited

“About Cecilia Chung.” Cecilia Chung.com. Accessed May 26, 2022. http://www.ceciliachung.com/bio

“Cecilia Chung: 2018 Phoenix Award Honoree.” APIQWTC. 2018. Accessed May 26, 2022. https://apiqwtc.org/phoenix-award-honoree/2017-cecilia-chung/

“Cecilia Chung joins the Transgender Law Center team as a Senior Strategist.” Transgender Law Center. Jan. 18, 2013. Accessed May 26, 2022. https://transgenderlawcenter.org/archives/3086

Ford, Olivia G. “This Positive Life: Cecilia Chung on Violence, Gender, Prisons, Family and Healing.” The Body. May 16, 2013. Accessed May 26, 2022. https://www.thebody.com/article/this-positive-life-cecilia-chung-on-violence-gende

Glover, Julian. “'Possibilities are limitless': Trans activist shares journey from homelessness to policy advocacy.” ABC 7 News. June 21, 2021. Accessed May 26, 2022. https://abc7ny.com/cecilia-chung-transgender-law-center-positively-trans-our-america-who-im-meant-to-be/10734669/

Knight, Heather. “Cecilia Chung, transgender health advocate.” SFGate. Jan. 12, 2013. Accessed May 26, 2022. https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Cecilia-Chung-transgender-health-advocate-4189493.php

Pham, Xoai. “Honor Trans Elders: Cecilia Chung Is the Mother We All Wanted.” Autostraddle. May 7, 2020. Accessed May 26, 2022. https://www.autostraddle.com/honor-trans-elders-cecilia-chung-is-the-mother-we-all-wanted/

How to Cite this page

MLA – Brandman, Mariana. “Cecilia Chung.” National Women’s History Museum, 2022. Date accessed.

Chicago – Brandman, Mariana. “Cecilia Chung.” National Women’s History Museum. 2022. www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/cecilia-chung

Image Credit: “Cecilia Chung at Trans March San Francisco 20170623-6639.jpg" by Pax Ahimsa Gethen, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Current circumstances in this country - and indeed around the world - demand we demonstrate the courage demonstrated by these words of Elie Weisel.  It is certainly easier to offer the encouragement of our words but sit back and let others do the work of protesting.  Now is not the time for that posture. 

Bad things happen when caring people do nothing.  That's at least partially why we're in the mess we're in.  So prepare yourself to stand shoulder to shoulder with other caring people when you are asked to do so.  The survival of our democracy may depend on it.

EDITORS NOTE:  Hans Nordlinger posted these comments on our FaceBook page in response to an appeal to join in the March For Our Lives.  It is, of course, his opinion, but we believe it is well worth the read.

I’m a veteran, I spent 43 years in and with combat arms in the military. I hunted for game for 50 years.

I state the foregoing to attest to my experience in knowing the difference between weapons designed to kill lots of people quickly, and weapons designed for killing game and self defense.

I support the 2d amendment.

We must regulate weapons that are capable of wounding and killing lots of people quickly,

Regulation must include,

registration,

background checks,

a permit,

secure storage,

transfers to only a person who has a class III weapons permit.

A federal agency to implement regulate and enforce the law,

A sever set of penalties for violating the law.

I read the law that stopped the unchecked slaughter of people in the 1920s 1930s by weapons capable of wounding and/or killing lots of people quickly, the National Firearms Act of 1934, known as the NFA.

The NFA meets all the requirements to regulate weapons of mass destruction. Penalties for violating the NFA are severe, a $250,000.00 fine and 10 years in federal prison, for the first offense. That penalty applies to anyone who possess, buys, or sells a class III weapon of mass destruction, or violates the act in any way.

After the NFA was enacted, in 1937, class III weapons were turned in, or people went through the process to keep their class III weapons.

The NFA effectively regulated weapons of mass destruction until gun manufacturers developed the AR-15, as a civilian model in the 1960s-70s, a semiautomatic weapon loaded by external quick change high capacity magazines, capable of wounding and killing lots of people quickly, but evaded the NFA.

Since the advent of the AR-15, we have seen the slaughter by semiautomatic weapons loaded by external quick change high capacity magazines for decades.

People want to ban AR-15, or assault rifles.

I don’t use the term, AR-15, or “assault rifle”, because using those terms begs an argument about what is, or is not an assault rifle. The term “ban” raises a 2d amendment issue. The term assault rifle also does not cover the other semiautomatic weapons loaded by external quick change high capacity magazines designed to wound and/or kill lots of people.

I use the term, “semiautomatic weapons loaded by external quick change high capacity magazines”. I know that is a long description, but it describes accurately the weapons being used, to kill lots of people quickly.

Semiautomatic weapons loaded by external quick change high capacity magazines, whether they be handguns, long guns, look like military weapons, or don’t look like military weapons, provide shooters the capability of firing a large number of bullets quickly, replacing the external magazine quickly, and continuing to shoot another magazine of bullets, creating massive numbers of wounded and killed victims.

Semiautomatic pistols have quick change magazines holding 9-14 bullets. A shooter with a semiautomatic pistol loaded with 14 bullets can fire 14 bullets in 7 seconds, reload in three seconds and fire 14 more bullets in 7 seconds, and keep doing that until he runs out of loaded magazines, killing or wounding dozens of people. Semiautomatic hand guns do not have the power or range of a long gun, and do not out gun the police, but are deadly and fire lots of bullets.

Semiautomatic hand guns are used in 77% of mass shootings.

A shooter using a semi automatic rifle loaded by external quick change 30 round magazine can shoot 30 bullets in 20 seconds, change magazines in 3 seconds and shoot 30 more bullets in 20 seconds, and keep up that firepower until he runs out of loaded magazines. Semiautomatic rifles fire high velocity bullets that cause more damaging and fatal wounds, and out gun law enforcement.

Semiautomatic weapons loaded by external quick change high capacity magazines, are not now classified as class III weapons under the NFA.

THE ANSWER IS SIMPLE;

Amend the NFA, and reinstate its original powers

Add semiautomatic weapons loaded by external quick change high capacity magazines to the NFA list of weapons of mass destruction.

Staff and fund the ATF to implement the amended law for all people who now own semiautomatic weapons loaded by external quick change high capacity magazines, register, conduct the background checks, issue permits, inspect storage facilities, enforce the law, and prosecute violators.

To facilitate the program, a buy back program will encourage voluntary turn in of these weapons by those who do not want to go through the process to legally own a class III weapon.

The NFA has worked since 1934, even though it has been weakened by amendments by the republicans.

Criminals and crazies will continue to commit crimes and attacks, however we can regulate the weapons designed to kills lots of people quickly, reduce the deaths, and make sure they don’t out gun the security and law enforcement officers.

We must stop the slaughter, America did it in 1934, we can do it again.