NRA Launches Counterattack and Congress Has Its Back

National Rifle Association Executive Vice President, Wayne LaPierre, declared this past election “the most dangerous … in our lifetime”. The NRA’s fund-raising promotions said it “could mean the difference between the survival or destruction of our Second Amendment freedoms”.

Their alarm was puzzling. Four years ago the President pledged to fight for renewal of the assault weapons ban, but during his presidency Obama stayed away from the issue. He made a moving statement when Trayvon Martin was killed in February, triggering controversy over the “stand your ground” laws sweeping the nation, but no call to action. When Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot along with eighteen others in Tucson, six of them killed, he said, “We cannot and will not be passive in the face of such violence". But passivity followed.

But then came Newtown. The murder of 20 children struck home with the father of two young daughters. Having now announced that changes in gun controls will be a "central issue" of his second term, Obama has committed himself to do battle with the NRA and its backers in Congress and will be reminded of his renewed pledge incessantly if he drifts off the mark.

Who can say whether the passage of months will again — as it always has — erode resolve and see the nation’s leaders drift away from action, if not by the President, then by a Congress that did nothing even when one of their own was shot. The question this time is whether public pressure will be sustained enough to outweigh the gun lobby and its money. The second question is whether gun controls will make any difference.

LaPierre's first move was to propose that there be more guns; he petitioned Congress to appropriate funds for armed guards for every school in the nation.

His NRA has become a formidable force over the decades. Membership has risen from 2.4 million members in 1982 to 4.3 million today, who give it an arsenal of money. They send the organization more than $100 million in dues annually. Corporate sponsors and advertisers in its publications pump in $80 million more. In election years, the NRA spends even more than that — $244 million in 2010 — to make sure beholden lawmakers in Washington and throughout the country win or keep their seats.

Its message that guns equal freedom sits well with the American public. Back in 1959, Gallup found that 60% of us favored a ban on handguns. By 2011 that had
Gun proponents say teachers should be issued firearms as in Israel
dwindled to 26%. Small wonder, considering that over 70 million Americans are estimated to have guns and that there are now 88.8 guns per 100 persons, far in excess of any other country, as this table shows.

The NRA lobbies to expand the freedom to bear arms and vigorously fights any attempts at its curtailment. The most important restriction — the 1994 ban on manufacture of semi-automatic assault weapons and magazines holding more than ten bullets — was allowed by legislators, always fearful of the repercussions of going against the NRA, to expire in 2004. That law prohibited the AR-15, equipped with a 100-bullet magazine, that the shooter in the Aurora, Colorado, movie theater used to kill 12 people and wound 58, a massacre that would have been worse had the gun not jammed.

One after another attempt to put limitations on guns has been thwarted since the Clinton administration, which had enacted a number of restraints. Guns are anathema to cities with their concentrated populations, yet even in New York state a bill was defeated that would have required a unique code to be etched onto a gun’s firing pin to stamp shell casings with the gun's identity. Massachusetts couldn’t pass a law limiting an individual’s purchase of guns to one a month. Virginia overturned its one-gun-a-month rule.

Instead, rights were enhanced. Every state now permits carrying a concealed weapon of some sort — some with, some without a permit. A dozen states are considering doing away with the need for those permits. Oklahoma became the 25th state to permit “open carry” — guns worn visibly on the person, even in bars. The House of Representatives in 2011 passed a law requiring all states to honor the concealed carry laws of a visitor’s state, irrespective of the states' own laws. A major step forward for the NRA was the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act that blocks any federal law suit that attempts to hold a gun manufacturer liable for bloodshed from the use of its weapons.

LaPierre, on the NRA website, says, “It's time to acknowledge what we know in our hearts to be true, that the best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun”. That’s the ready response of those who argue that crimes would be throttled if all were allowed to carry weapons — and in full view, to cause the bad guy to cool his temper and switch the safety back on. What if the teachers in Newtown had guns in their desks and had been trained how to use them? How many lives might have been saved, they ask?

But in other cases, this is a solution that doesn’t work. In Tucson there was a good guy with a gun, but he could do nothing. In a crowd, it was too dangerous for him to fire. Two unarmed people wrestled Jared Loughner to the ground when he stopped to reload. And how many would have died in Aurora if a firefight had broken out in a darkened movie theater?

As to whether renewal of the ban on assault weapons would work, the 1994-2004 law only banned continued manufacture; it did not call for confiscation of guns already in circulation. A University of Pennsylvania study concluded that many loopholes lessened the ban's effectiveness, not least because there were already 1.5 million assault weapons in circulation and 25 million large-capacity (i.e., more than 10 bullets) magazines. As Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer pointed out, "A reservoir that immense can take 100 years to draw down".

Even if there are changes around the edges, the NRA has won the war for guns. Even the well-to-the-left magazine The Nation says, “it’s no wonder that gun control has shriveled into a Worthy Cause”. Massachusetts Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan knew that years ago, pointing out that even if the sale of all new guns were forbidden, there were already guns enough out there to last 200 years. “These mostly simple machines last forever”, Moynihan said. “On the other hand, we have only a three-year supply of ammunition.”

The NRA is imbued with a “slippery slope” mentally which is why they open fire when even sensible steps are proposed. This is why so little stands in the way of a mentally disturbed person equipping himself for a rampage. There is no excuse for assault rifles, other than stored at gun clubs. These are weapons that have no use other than to kill as many people as possible, but the NRA pressures Congress to do nothing. A ban on high-capacity clips and magazines that hold more than a few bullets would at least render a gunman vulnerable while reloading. They are unrestricted. Ammunition can be bought over the Internet; Aurora’s James Holmes had amassed 6,000 rounds that way. Moynihan’s answer was to heavily tax ammunition. “Guns don’t kill people; bullets do”, he said.

That still leaves the gaping “gun show loophole”. Guns can be bought and sold with no waiting period and no background check otherwise required by federal law — and there are some 5,000 of these swapmeets a year across America. Adam Gadahn, an American-born member of Al Qaeda, put out a video that said, “America is absolutely awash with easily obtainable firearms. You can go down to a gun show … and come away with a fully [semi, actually] automatic assault rifle, without a background check, and most likely, without having to show an identification card”. He spurred fellow terrorists to carry out attacks with, “So what are you waiting for?”

It is a “system” so full of such holes that 247 people on the terrorist watch list legally bought guns in 2010. A bill that would prohibit that was defeated along party lines in May 2011. With a Congress like that, why do we have a Department of Homeland Security?