Why Can’t We Pull the Trigger?
Even with a string of deadly shootings, gun control is untouchable in politics
by Bruce Barry
Should the sniper spree in the Washington area that ended last week reinvigorate public debate on gun violence and the regulation of firearms? The National Rifle Association, of course, hopes not. Its executive director Wayne LaPierre decries “opportunistic attempt[s] by gun control groups and some politicians to never miss a chance to trade on a tragedy and politicize the debate.” It is testament to the orotund power of the NRA that such a view is taken seriously—that in the most violent industrialized nation on the planet, the issue of gun policy is regarded as irrelevant to a highly visible orgy of semi-televised gun violence.
With the approach of next week’s crucial mid-term elections, it’s nothing short of astonishing to see a continuing absence of meaningful political engagement on the issue of gun violence. The pro-gun lobby has cowed moderates and liberals into treating the issue as political suicide—which many think is just what happened when the Republicans took Congress in the 1994 elections. Michigan Congressman John Dingell, a senior House Democrat, said a few years after that watershed election year that congressional passage of the Brady bill earlier in 1994 and a ban on assault weapons “cost us control of the House.”
It would be reasonable to think, though, that brutal school killings, documented on front pages all across the country, would shake at least a smidgen of gun-control torpor, particularly during an off election year. But, amazingly, no. After the Columbine massacre and other school shootings in 1999, momentum grew in Washington around proposals to address gun show loopholes, trigger locks and the legal age for buying guns, among other regulations. But the NRA locked and loaded, politicians ran for cover and none of these measures became law. Nothing changed.
Fast forward to 2002, when a couple of lunatics roam the D.C. suburbs with a Bushmaster XM-15 assault rifle (the company’s sales motto: “The Best—By a Long Shot”) that could easily have been purchased legally. For a brief interlude during the cable networks’ endless coverage of parking lot crime scenes, there was talk of ballistic fingerprinting—a mild and eminently sensible law enforcement technology that has more to do with solving crimes than regulating guns. But even this, in the NRA’s orbit, “infringes on the rights of tens of millions of law-abiding Americans.”
With gun violence safely off the political radar screen, campaigns of both parties substitute gun-happy dogmatism scripted by the NRA. Tennessee GOP gubernatorial candidate Van Hilleary: “I will never support any measure that infringes on our right to own a gun.” Republican Senate hopeful Lamar Alexander: “Criminals—not guns—cause crimes.” Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Bredesen “will not support or pass new gun control laws that infringe on law-abiding sportsmen and law-abiding citizens.” Democratic Senate candidate Bob Clement: “I own guns, and I don’t want anyone taking my guns away from me.”
While office seekers fiddle behind their Second Amendment bravado, Tennessee burns with elite status among the states in gun violence. According to the Washington-based Violence Policy Center, which compiles statistics from the FBI and other sources, Tennessee ranks eighth among states in the rate of children killed by handguns, and has the fifth-highest rate of children who commit murder with a handgun. Tennessee is seventh in percentage of homicides with child victims in which a handgun was used, and fourth in the rate of females murdered by males in single victim/single offender incidents (most with guns). Tennessee’s candidates this year have been conspicuously silent on all of this.
The broader national statistics on gun violence are familiar and numbing, but worth repeating every so often: There are more than 200 million guns in circulation in the U.S., roughly a third of which are handguns; close to 30,000 deaths a year are caused by gunfire. And then there are the staggering cross-national comparisons: The U.S. has a gun homicide rate per 100,000 population of 4.0, compared to 0.2 in Spain and Germany, 0.3 in Holland and 0.03 in Japan (to name a few of many, all of which require licensing and registration).
The NRA and its fellow travelers have fought a propaganda war against the power of these numbers for years, perpetuating the fantasy that gun violence in America is wholly unrelated to the availability of guns. With so many guns out there, a new regime of regulation would take years to make a palpable difference, even if the political will did magically materialize. So instead, we become immune to the carnage, let politicians of both parties act as NRA mouthpieces and spread the gospel of gun violence to the next generation. In a recent survey of state gun laws, the Open Society Institute noticed that a 12-year-old in North Carolina needs a parent’s permission to play little league baseball, but not to own a rifle. Is this a great country or what?
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