Posted on 03/13/2008 1:42:32 AM PDT by neverdem
Why it's been years since significant federal legislation
The scenario is all too familiar: A disturbed gunman opens fire in a school, an office, or a shopping center and, before horrified spectators, slaughters innocent men, women, and even children. After the massacres at Columbine High School, Virginia Tech University, and Omaha's Westroads Mall, the question is always the same: How could this tragedy have been prevented? Inevitably, there are calls for tougher gun control, and routinely they are followed by arguments about Second Amendment rights, along with protestations that "guns don't kill people; people do." In the end, the reactions to these tragedies serve only to remind how deeply divided Americans are when it comes to guns.
Related News A Key Case on Gun Control Gun Control Laws Controlling Guns in Philadelphia Excerpts From Friend-of-Court Briefs Video: D.C. Gun Unit Video: District of Columbia v. Heller Four out of every 10 Americans own a gun. And nearly 3 out of 4 believe that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual the right to have a firearm. Recent Gallup polls show that only 38 percent of Americans think the most important way to combat gun violence is through stricter gun laws; 58 percent believe more should be done to enforce current laws instead. And more than two thirds oppose an outright ban on handguns.
Lost momentum. Perhaps that's why, despite the steady toll of gunshot violence, it's been nearly 15 years since there has been a significant push for gun legislation on the federal level. Back in 1993, a Democratic-controlled Congress passed the Brady bill, which imposed background checks on gun buyers, and the following year, Congress banned private ownership of assault weapons. But the momentum didn't last. Months later, Republicans took over Congress, and in 1996, the House voted to repeal the assault weapons ban. Although the Senate failed to follow suit at the time, in 2004 Congress let the ban expire.
The Democrats learned the perils of reviving the gun control issue during the 2000 presidential campaign when candidate Al Gore pledged to limit handgun sales, crack down on gun shows, and support state registration of firearms. It was a liberal position that some think cost him the vote in a few southern, pro-gun states, including his home state of Tennessee. For many Democrats, the lesson was clear: Gun control was a losing—and consuming—issue. "You can talk about guns, or you can talk about everything else," says Dane Strother, a Democratic media consultant. "If you start talking about guns, everyone bridles, be it pro-gun or antigun. You'll never make it to healthcare. You'll never make it to the economy."
That attitude has carried the day as Democrats have tried to pick up more seats in pro-gun states like Missouri and in the Southwest. Many of the Democratic victories in 2006 came from conservative candidates like Virginia Sen. Jim Webb, a gun-owning former marine whose senior aide was arrested last year for accidentally carrying Webb's gun into a Senate office building.
In the 2008 presidential campaign, neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama has talked much about gun control. Both Democratic candidates have endorsed the idea of tracking down illegal guns, but both have dropped their onetime support for licensing gun owners and registering new guns. At their Nevada debate in January, Clinton said she would reinstate the assault weapons ban. And Obama vowed to increase access to data that help trace the origin of guns used in crimes. But he acknowledged the gun control divide when he said: "We essentially have two realities when it comes to guns in this country.... We can reconcile those two realities by making sure the Second Amendment is respected and that people are able to lawfully own guns, but that we also start cracking down on the kinds of abuses of firearms that we see on the streets." Republican candidate John McCain has long endorsed an individual right to have guns.
Under Republican leadership, Congress did little to toughen gun control laws, and what Congress has done since then has largely been to relax laws. In 2003, for instance, it passed an amendment to block the government from publicly releasing most data that trace guns used in crimes. And in 2005, Congress gave gun manufacturers immunity to lawsuits if their firearms were used in crimes. The only significant federal gun control legislation, which increased funding for mental health background checks, was passed in December, under Democratic leadership and in the emotional wake of the Virginia Tech massacre. Other than that, says Andy Goddard, whose son was injured in the shooting, "people don't know how poorly protected they are."
In the states, however, the debate over gun control is as robust as ever. In a number of major cities, rising crime rates have pushed the issue to the front of the public agenda. Gun control advocates, led by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, have been pushing for laws that would help target illegal gun trafficking: allowing states access to gun-trace data, requiring background checks at gun shows, and forcing gun owners to report lost or stolen weapons. "We have more than 250 million guns in this country, and not all of those guns are in the hands of rational people," says Jim Sollo, vice president of the Virginia Center for Public Safety, a gun control advocacy group.
NRA power. But supporters of gun control say that the strength of the National Rifle Association in many states makes it nearly impossible to even discuss laws targeting illegal guns. The powerful group has about 4 million members nationwide, a $20 million to $30 million lobbying budget, and a strong youth group raising a new generation of members. In particular, NRA foes point to the group's successful efforts to gain passage of state "pre-emption" laws that limit local power over gun laws. It has played a role in state and federal elections, for instance, joining the broader Republican-led upset of South Dakota Sen. Tom Daschle, a Democrat, after he supported gun control amendments to the manufacturers' liability legislation.
Not surprisingly, moderate and Democratic states, where the NRA is less influential, have voted for the greatest number of gun control laws. California, for instance, passed a law last year requiring that manufacturers stamp every firearm with a unique imprint so ammunition fired from it can be traced. (Opponents argue that releasing this sensitive information would harm investigations.) And in January, New Jersey legislators passed laws calling for owners to report lost or stolen guns, requiring criminal and mental health background checks for ammunition purchases, and increasing penalties for illegal gun possession and trafficking.
The fault lines in the gun debate aren't entirely partisan; they often mark divisions between rural areas, where hunting is deeply embedded in the culture, and urban communities, where guns are linked with drugs and crime. These cultural differences affect constituents' views: City dwellers tend to want more gun control than rural people do. And in rural districts, even Democrats often support the NRA.
For instance, the NRA is pushing for laws to prohibit private businesses from barring employees from keeping guns in their cars in a company parking lot. A measure to that effect introduced in Georgia, although it has stalled, won support from a number of Democrats, particularly those from rural areas. In Arizona, state Republican Rep. Jonathan Paton introduced such legislation after hearing from a constituent who drove an hour each day through a dangerous border area to work. "There's a lot of rural no man's land between where some people work and where they live," he says. "This is about people's right and whether they feel safe or not."
Part of the challenge in going after guns used in crimes is the lack of solid research on exactly which laws help reduce gun violence. Researchers agree that where there are more guns, there are more likely to be accidents with guns. But beyond that, a 2003 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded, there is "insufficient evidence" to measure the efficacy of various gun control laws, largely because of limited data.
For instance, laws requiring owners to protect children by keeping their guns locked or unloaded reduced deaths among children in Florida, research shows, but not in California or Connecticut. Laws allowing individuals to carry concealed weapons, which advocates say tend to discourage criminals from shooting, have brought little meaningful decrease in crime. And the research is mixed on whether mandatory waiting periods reduce the likelihood of suicides by impulsive gun buyers.
The effect of bans. The District of Columbia gun ban now before the Supreme Court has been at the center of contrasting research. A 1991 study found an almost 25 percent decline in homicides and a 23 percent drop in suicides by firearms following the ban and no similar drop in neighboring Maryland and Virginia, which don't have bans. But a study published five years later argued that the assessment wasn't valid because it compared D.C. with prosperous suburbs rather than with another city, such as Baltimore, where homicides also declined during the same period.
On the streets of D.C.'s rougher neighborhoods today, it's hard to see how the handgun ban has made much of an impact on crime. Last year, homicides—about 80 percent of which are caused by firearms—were up 7 percent from the year before, to 181. That makes D.C.'s one of the highest per capita murder rates in the country. If the gun ban is struck down, the District will very likely see an increase in firearms ownership and perhaps a rise in burglaries by criminals trying to obtain guns.
But a new police unit formed to target illegal guns may be doing more for public safety than a ban alone. Every day about two dozen officers fan out across the city's roughest neighborhoods, stopping drivers and pedestrians for traffic and other offenses and executing warrants in search of illegal guns. Some days the officers come up dry. But in the first three months of the program, they seized nearly 120 guns, increasing the city's average monthly recovery by about 35 percent from the previous year. The city would have a program without a ban, and judging from those in possession of the guns, the program would most likely work just as well. Says police officer James Boteler Jr.: "Most of the guns we're recovering are from people who, even without the ban, would not be allowed to have one anyway." But, he adds, the ban doesn't hurt, either.
She served as an editor and reporter for two years at the University of California-Berkeley’s Daily Californian, a daily student newspaper with a circulation of 10,000.
I don't keep up on this stuff very much. I pretty much figure that we're on a steady path to UK/AU style "safe" society with only slight detours tolerated. IMO it's inevitable, since both sides of THE Political Party are on the same plan. (Our President wanted to renew the law that was passed on the premise of it expiring!)
For Your Viewing [dis]Pleasure
Read it. I won't excerpt it, it's not that long, and it really does merit an honest read of the whole thing.
While we certainly face pressures toward total prohibition, and eternal vigilance is warranted, things are going pretty well for us now. Federally you can buy pretty much anything you want (and can find a seller) save new MGs (wait for Heller part 3), and an increasing number of states are loosening their restrictions. If you’re in a restrictive jurisdiction, move - there’s plenty far more free.
Much of the fear is brought on by the frenzied media-driven rhetoric on both sides. Disconnect from that, do your own thing (legally), and you’ll find that - while sometimes annoying - the infringements are manageable and you can pretty much do what you want. (Don’t misunderstand that as tolerating/ignoring infringements!)
Yes, keeping up with this stuff is hard. There IS a great deal of vebiage, binding and not, flying around and keeping it all straight is difficult.
Do a background check and urine test on them and we could find out pretty quick.
The free press is failing (intentionally misleading?) everybody where discussions about our 2nd A. protections are concerned; the press is evidently as ignorant of the Constitution and its history as most people are. More specifically, regardless that no discussion about our 2nd A. protections is complete without mention of how the 2nd A. relates to the 14th Amendment, the referenced article makes no mention 14th Amendment (corrections welcome).
The reason for this is that John Bingham, the main author of Sec. 1 of the 14th Amendment, included the 2nd A. when he read the first eight amendments as examples of constitutional statutes containing privileges and immunities that the 14th A. applied to the states. So there is no doubt in my mind that the 2nd and 14th Amendments protect the right to keep and bear arms from the federal and state governments as much as any other personal right protected by the Constitution's privileges and immunities.
See the 2nd A. in the middle column of the following page from the Congressional Globe, a precursor to the Congressional Record. The page is a part of one of Bingham's discussions about the 14th Amendment.
http://tinyurl.com/y3ne4nNote that the referenced page is dated for more than two years after the ratification of the 14th Amendment. So Bingham was evidently reassuring his colleagues about the scope and purpose of the ratified 14th Amendment.
Again, how can the free press protect our constitutional freedoms when the press doesn't know the Constitution and its history in the first place?
Thanks for the link.
Philly is a “Democrat Stronghold” - read: “cesspool.”
Now there is an interesting thought.
You made me think about those imbeciles investigating steroid use.
By all means test Congress for foreign substances, and do it randomly.
Oh well ... it is a great idea, but will never happen until ...
ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒE
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.