gun control

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Paying for Their Convenience

The passing of James Brady sadly reminds us that firearms regulation has slid to the bottom of the legislative agenda during his lifetime. His twelve-year campaign following his head injury from an assassin’s bullet resulted in  landmark gun control legislation.  The eponymous Brady Bill required waiting periods and background checks for gun purchases, but it has been eroded by built-in limitations.

During the campaign to pass the bill, Brady mocked the NRA’s contention that the waiting period was an inconvenience to law-abiding gun purchasers. Describing his own helplessness to bathe and dress himself, he cracked, “I guess I’m paying for their ‘convenience.'”

Brady and his wife Sarah renewed their efforts to regulate the purchase of firearms following the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in 2011. They “sent recommendations to to a White House task force on preventing gun violence, calling for universal background checks” (New York Times, August 5, 2014).  They campaigned relentlessly until his death at age 73.

The ruthlessness of the National Rifle Association to confound every attempt, no matter how small, to regulate the purchase of guns is a disgrace to legitimate gun-owners. There is a broad expanse around the rights of a gun owner that the NRA is willing to defend to the death of countless victims of gun violence. Every attempt at regulation is characterized as an assault on the Second Amendment with a kind of paranoia that you do not want to encourage in someone licensed to own a gun.  They have championed the carrying of guns in schools and universities, thinking themselves protectors of citizens against the violence that permissive gun laws engender.

How many legislators and school children will be sacrificed before Congress stands up to the NRA? Why is the political courage to move against easy access to guns in such short supply?   What reasonable limitations on the purchase of guns will legislators make in defiance of the National Rationalization Association?

With the passing of James Brady, others must take up his cause and assist his widow, Sarah, to make gun ownership a privilege, rather than a right.  In fact it will take a battalion of courageous legislators to make sane gun control a reality.  Even a bi-partisan team may not be influential enough to overcome the stubborn and the craven who will defend against any regulation, no matter how weak.

James Brady committed his life to responsible gun ownership, but one man’s determination was not enough to thwart the gun lobby. Many others will have to step up to defend the innocent from “paying for their convenience.”

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Desperation: Not a Winning Strategy

When a teenager reacts to a new curfew accusing parents of being “Nazi dictators,” parents smile at the comparison. Sometimes kids have a hyperbolic way of arguing that reflects their desperation to have it their way. That same desperate voice comes from many gun rights activists. But on Wednesday the parents, uh rather the U.S. Senate, caved on the curfew, uh rather the background checks for gun buyers.

Every law passed in this land could be defeated if legislators listened to arguments about extreme outcomes, the so-called “slippery slope.”  Background checks lead to a gun registry. A gun registry leads to confiscation. Confiscation leads to law-abiding citizens being attacked in their own homes. Suddenly the mere screening of gun buyers has created a reign of terror in America, with innocent citizens threatened.  Why aren’t we smiling at these nightmare scenarios, instead of taking them seriously?

Somehow the scenario of millions of desperate gun owners sitting at home, ready to blow away anyone who touches their weapons scares me more than background checks.  Certainly there are plenty of gun owners who do not stay up at night worrying about someone coming to their house to take their weapons, and many of those pressed for background checks this past month. But there are apparently too many who live with their guns cocked and ready for action, those who shoot first and ask questions later.

In fact, background checks would probably allow most of the hair-trigger gun owners to keep their guns at the ready to defend their rights or perceived intrusion on their rights.  They will still have the power to intimidate anyone who suggests they are the least bit paranoid. They still have the right to threaten their elected representatives with loss of funding or support.  Background checks would not change any of that.

Extreme defensiveness and unwillingness to compromise are not the hallmarks of survival in this country. Notice the fate of Prohibition, which gripped our country for a less than a decade.  Learn a lesson from the labor movement, which became too greedy in the latter twentieth century.  Or watch what happens to politicians who have fought immigration reform in the twenty-first century. Those who “evolved” lived to fight another battle.  Those who made a Constitutional issue over the slightest gesture of reform have become irrelevant.

So today a desperate minority has been allowed to make the rules or rather, to dismiss the rules.  But adult restraint is coming, and those who shout for their rights, will soon be grounded or at least put on a curfew. Because shouting “Nazi dictator” does not make it so.

 

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Politicians Behaving Well

The peril of the “Background Checks” gun bill is featured in the New York Times, today, April 15.  While the uncertain passage of the bill alarms reformers laying siege to the Capital, the “deep divisions” within both parties deserves an historical footnote in this debate.  U.S. Senators are planning to vote for a bill on its merits.

Probably it would be overstating to say that all  of the U.S. Senators are voting their convictions or even to fairly represent their constituents.  Many remain beholden or in craven fear of the National Rifle Association and will do what it takes to maintain their sacred NRA rating.  These are not the politicians behaving well.

But the mere evidence of shattered party loyalty proves that the ruthless anti-Obama coalition or even the Democratic majority are not dictating how Senators vote on this bill. We are witnessing a debate on the merits of gun control in this bill, a debate that reflects real divisions among regions and interests in the country.

Some Senators are responding to the groundswell of public opinion and the heart-rending stories of the Newton parents. Susan Collins and John McCain have already spoken in favor of the bill despite the strong opposition they face in their home states.  Both Senators are not known for slavish party loyalty, but both deserve credit for bucking a strong pro-gun voting bloc in their states.  Their early commitment to the bill could cost them their re-election.

Other Senators take their representation of a gun rights constituency seriously, such as Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieux.  She frankly admits her vote will be dictated by a strong majority in her state. Although voting your conscience has a little more glamor, the vote to represent those who elected you is a credible motive.  We like to think our representatives will express our values in Congress even to the subordination of their own.

Regardless of which side of the aisle you cross from, the crossing involves a moral choice, a choice dictated by conviction of the merits of the bill under consideration, not the pressure of lobbies or of party fidelity.  It is an inspiring trend, even if it is fleeting.

Regardless on which side of the issue you stand, you have to enjoy this moment, this historical interlude when Washington is bristling with real debate instead of horse-trading and political threats.  These are the “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” moments we learned about in U.S. History, the struggle for consensus amid honest differences.

Eventually there will be arm-twisting and surreptitious trading of gun votes for immigration votes.  The old sausage grinder will turn out the final votes for passage or defeat.  The winners will crow and losers will carp and the parties will position themselves for the next vote.

Let’s not forget this fine moment when Senators behaved as our elected representatives and cracked the dubious coalitions forged by their parties.  Like a wayward child, the Senate should be praised for the moments it takes its responsibilities seriously and votes with conviction. What a country!

 

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The NRA: Defensive and Distraught

There’s something scary about armed citizens who will not negotiate.  Even armies occasionally meet in the middle of a battlefield to consider their losses and make treaties.  This has never been the NRA’s way. It has always been “Taking my gun from my cold dead hands,” as Charlton Heston famously declared.

Rhetorically struggling, the NRA continues to hold its ground in Washington.  Even the once-favored universal background check  is losing currency in Congress.  How is this possible, when NRA’s  public defense of Second Amendment rights has declined to an adolescent protest that we can’t enforce the gun control laws we want to pass?

Is this really a legitimate argument against passing a law: that crimes will still be committed and enforcement will be problematic?  Isn’t this an argument against laws enforcing seat belt use, or proscribing pornography or marijuana? You can’t control it, so why bother making laws against it?  It’s almost like wishing the offenders of the law “good luck,” because we don’t like the law either.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. The NRA is losing the public battle against reasonable gun control legislation, so its Congressional attack dogs, like Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Oklahoma Senator Darrel Imhof labor over the enforcement issue. Criminals will continue to find guns. Straw purchases will continue.  God-fearing gun owners will face confiscation.  What proposed law would take guns from legitimate gun owners? It is not these laws, but any laws that the NRA resists.

This is why the NRA can not earn my respect. Every gun control law comes down to whether you can defend your home against lawlessness or government intrusion. Every gun control law trespasses on the Second Amendment.  Every law compromises your freedom.  In the realm of gun control, the NRA is no different than anarchists.

The NRA’s rhetorical stand against gun control legislation has lost its potency. Public polling continues to favor universal background checks and limits on gun magazines.  The proscription of certain assault weapons lag a little behind in the polling. But gun control advocates would still bring it all to a vote. Let’s see who will go on record against these measures.

Sunday night Sixty Minutes brought seven victimized families from Newtown, CT back into the public spotlight. They showed them passing out literature prior to the Connecticut’s passing of the country’s strictest gun control law. They documented the grim resolve of each family to make this cause a life commitment.  The victimized mothers and fathers argued persuasively that a smaller gun magazine would have saved some children’s lives on December 14, 2012.  None of them asserted radical positions on gun control. Some even defended the legality of some assault weapons.

That is the difference between the NRA and its opponents. The NRA does not know the meaning of “concession” or “compromise.”  It fights behind a battle front that never moves or regroups.

Eventually this rhetorical strategy will stumble, because the United States is not a “take-no-prisoners” society.  Battle fronts in Congress move every month on matters like immigration and education.  Gun control will be no different. The whimper and the bluster will eventually give way to reason, because we will not forget Rep. Gabby Giffords, Aurora or Newtown.  The rhetorical battle is already won, and the political battle is ripe for negotiation.