An Antigun Firefight

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An Antigun FirefightPosted April 1, 2002By Sam MacDonald Thousands of gun-control supporters march every year on The Mall in Washington. Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) brims with confidence when he talks about the gun-control proposal he introduced in the House on March 20. At a press conference to unveil the measure, he predicted that the Gun Show Background Check Act of 2002 (HR4034) will not be an issue in the November elections because it already will have passed. His confidence in this major expansion of gun control stems from the willingness of many Americans to accept infringements on constitutional proscriptions after Sept. 11."Now we've got the terrorist issue," Conyers says in response to a question from Insight. "There are very few in the general population who are going to tolerate a loophole through which these weapons are allowed into the war to support terrorism. That is a no-brainer at this point." But, unfortunately for those who share Conyers' view, infighting within the gun-control ranks has been doing more to damage his bill's chances than anything the National Rifle Association (NRA) can muster.Immediately after 19 terrorists hijacked four fuel-filled passenger planes and shattered America's illusions about homeland security, advocates of gun control began a mad scramble to adjust their message to the new political opportunity - something they have done consistently following every major gun crime or violent tragedy since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy 40 years ago.One of the first gun-control groups to deliver the rhetorical makeover was the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Just seven days after the disasters, this organization issued a press release headlined: "In the Wake of the Terrorist Attacks, Sarah Brady Warns About the Risks of Guns in the Home." It cited the case of a 3-year-old Virginia boy who killed himself with a handgun his father purchased in response to Sept. 11. "While the Brady Center recognizes that people react to crises in different ways," said the opportunistic release, "this tragedy is a painful reminder, especially to parents, that a gun in the home is far more likely to be used to kill or injure a loved one than be used in self-defense. This nation has lost far too many lives in the past week. Please don't let someone in your family become yet another casualty of a senseless act of violence."The Brady Center expanded this theme on Dec. 19, 2001, when it issued Guns and Terror: How Terrorists Exploit Our Weak Gun Laws, a 35-page report that features an ominous-looking man in Middle-Eastern garb peering through the scope of a rifle. None of the 19 terrorists was armed with a rifle or gun, but the report claimed that "[f]or terrorists around the world, the United States is the great gun bazaar." When the NRA pointed out that the Sept. 11 hijackers used box cutters, not firearms, to commandeer the four doomed airliners, the Brady Center retorted: "For all the failings of our airport-security system, at least it deterred the terrorists from using guns."The Brady Center report further criticized Attorney General John Ashcroft for refusing to use records of gun owners generated by the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) to search for terrorists. And it claimed that terrorists buy firearms at U.S. gun shows.Gun-control advocates at the Violence Policy Center (VPC) entered the fray on Oct. 10, 2001, with a report called Voting from the Rooftops: How the Gun Industry Armed Osama bin Laden, Other Foreign and Domestic Terrorists and Common Criminals with 50-Caliber Sniper Rifles. The study charges that terrorists purchased 25 high-powered, military-style sniper rifles from Barrett Firearms Manufacturing Inc. in the late 1980s and shipped them to Afghanistan. Barrett responded that it sold the guns to the U.S. government, which provided them to Afghan forces resisting the Soviet invasion. Gun-rights groups reject the notion that American firearms are fueling world terrorism as silly or worse. In an interview with Insight, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre called the Brady Center and VPC efforts "pathetic." According to LaPierre, "There is no doubt the gun-ban movement is trying to capitalize on this tragedy. I think the American people see right through it." A Feb. 27 article in the New York Times details how Democrats in Montana are attempting to distance themselves from their party's traditional support for gun-control measures. LaPierre is confident that similar movements across the country will stymie efforts to connect guns with terrorism."Look at Minnesota with [Democratic Sen. Paul] Wellstone," LaPierre says. "I think Wellstone has voted against gun owners and hunters every chance he has had in the past. That state has hundreds of thousands of hunters and gun owners. They might as well be represented by [New York Democratic Sens.] Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer." As a result, LaPierre predicts, Wellstone's stance will be worth several percentage points to any pro-gun candidate who opposes him. Michael Barnes, president of the Brady Center, points to a different story in the Times that claims Republican leaders in Illinois have begun to embrace gun-control measures. He also notes that voters in Minnesota recently defeated a measure to enact "shall-issue permit regulations" that would allow more people to carry firearms. "In the huge majority of congressional districts," Barnes tells Insight, "candidates would be better off having [Brady Center Chairwoman] Sarah Brady stand by their side rather than [NRA President] Charlton Heston." Barnes adds that it is especially important to talk to people about "the easy access to guns at a time when we're under threat by terrorists."Politicians who advocate stricter gun-control laws were quickly running with the ball. In December 2001, senators including Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Schumer introduced a bill that would force Ashcroft to retain NICS gun records for use in criminal investigations - a move that Second Amendment advocates say amounts to national gun registration. They had fought for a permanent gun-owner database before, but after Sept. 11 they added new urgency by calling it the "Use NICS in Terrorist Investigations Act."Another gun-control measure that has been publicized since Sept. 11 was proposed early in 2001 by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.). This bill, like the one Conyers recently introduced in the House, is designed to close an alleged gun-show loophole that advocates claim allows terrorists to purchase firearms. When the measure was proposed last year, a relatively new organization called Americans for Gun Safety (AGS) pledged to spend at least $1 million on an ad campaign to support it. By October, the campaign included an advertisement in Capitol Hill's influential Roll Call newspaper attempting to tie gun shows to the proliferation of terrorism.Despite the similar goals of the two main antiloophole proposals, participants at the Conyers press conference had little good to say about the McCain-Lieberman proposal. There was even more animosity toward AGS. Conyers says his proposal requires tighter limits on sales at gun shows than does the McCain-Lieberman bill. According to Conyers, federal law requires federally licensed firearms dealers to check a prospective buyer's background with NICS. He says that, under the law, some sellers at gun shows do not need a federal firearms license and therefore are not restricted by the background-check requirement. While the McCain-Lieberman proposal imposes limits on gun-show merchants who do not have a federal firearms license, Conyers says it does not go far enough. In particular, he complains that the other bill does not allow enough time for federal officials to complete checks initiated at gun shows. His proposal would establish a three-day time limit, which currently is the norm for guns purchased at shops. Conyers also complains that the McCain-Lieberman proposal and a similar bill introduced in the House would provide $150 million to fund the expansion of Project Exile, an experimental, zero-tolerance, violence-reduction measure introduced at Richmond, Va., in 1997 and then adopted statewide in 1999. Bipartisan observers, including many gun-rights organizations, have credited that policy with slashing the crime in the Old Dominion by prosecuting gun crimes in federal rather than state court and imposing harsh prison terms on violators. Andr?s Soto, policy director of the Pacific Center for Violence Prevention (PCVP), is an opponent of Project Exile. Taking the podium before Conyers, he called it "a racist, antifederalist distraction promoted by the gun lobby." According to Soto, the money for Project Exile is included in the McCain-Lieberman proposal "as a cynical attempt to craft a so-called middle ground in gun legislation by kowtowing to the gun lobby while trying to address the gun-show loophole." A report distributed by PCVP charges that the program disproportionately affects minorities, does nothing to prosecute gun violence, increases recidivism and fails on a host of other fronts. A written statement provided by Conyers also complains of alleged racial disparities in the program. Conyers and those assembled to support him say they prefer a bill introduced by Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), which advocates gun-show restrictions closer to the Conyers proposal and does not include funding for Project Exile. When asked how he thought the Senate would proceed, Conyers deferred to an aide who said Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) has promised to consider the Reed bill first. The aide says he expects McCain-Lieberman will come into play "only if the Reed bill doesn't pass, which it will."Asked if differences between the McCain-Lieberman and Reed bills indicate a rift between gun-control advocates, Soto replies that "the established gun-control organizations - such as the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, the Brady campaign and a number of California groups - all support the Reed bill and I'm sure will be supporting the Conyers bill. McCain-Lieberman and Castle-McCarthy [its House equivalent] are sponsored by Americans for Gun Safety, a new group that has emerged on the scene attempting to fit into the debate and, you know, is primarily sponsored by Republican money, so they are not really, in a sense, part of the traditional gun-control club."An article detailing this apparent rift appears in the April 8 edition of the American Prospect, a liberal political magazine. A spokeswoman from the VPC e-mailed the article to Insight before the Conyers press conference, and copies were available on a table outside the room where he spoke. It details how "multimillionaire business executive and political neophyte" Andrew McKelvey founded AGS in the wake of the 1999 Columbine High School massacre. According to the American Prospect, smaller state groups initially appreciated AGS money and power but began to chafe as the 2000 election approached because the organization acknowledged a constitutional right to own guns, a position that eventually led the group into its alliance with the McCain-Lieberman camp. "The resulting fight might just tear the gun-control movement apart," the liberal journal warns. Matt Bennett, director of public affairs at AGS, says he is not taken aback by the assaults at the press conference or the charges in the article. "They were introducing the House counterpart to a bill we oppose," Bennett tells Insight. "It wasn't surprising that they were saying unkind things about us. We're not really a part of the gun-control movement; we're a gun-safety group." He calls groups such as Soto's and the VPC "the fringe left of the movement."Bennett has few hopes for Conyers' bill or its counterpart introduced by Reed. "The reason we oppose the bill is that it has no hope whatsoever of becoming law," he says. He notes that a bill similar to Reed's passed the Senate during the Clinton administration, but only after the president lobbied extensively for it and Vice President Al Gore cast the tie-breaking vote.According to Bennett the article in the American Prospect "totally and utterly fails to address the problem that faced the gun-control movement after the 2000 election. It was dead. It was utterly dead." He charges that Gore lost rural states such as Tennessee because of his stance on guns: "Gun issues were putting the [Democrats] at peril. They overplayed their hand in 1999 after Columbine, and voters were responding to that. Democrats were running away from the issue." He says the author got it wrong "because he was being spoon-fed the story by the far-left groups."Bennett says McCain-Lieberman offers the only real chance for success. "The only reason guns are being talked about in a serious way right now is because John McCain has put it on the table." As for Soto's charge that AGS is funded by Republican money, Bennett responds, "We're funded by [McKelvey], who happens to be a Republican. There's one guy. If you want to call that Republican money, I guess you can." For now, neither the House nor Senate has scheduled votes on the new gun-control proposals despite Daschle's promise to move on the issue early in the year. But an aide in Reed's office says he is confident that Senate Majority Leader Daschle will make good on his promise to bring the proposal to a vote before considering the McCain-Lieberman bill. Whatever the result, there is a major gun-control fight brewing in the Senate - one likely to put the members of that body on record during an election year concerning one of the thorniest issues in American politics http://www.insightmag.com/news/225508.html