President Obama Introduces a Plan to Reduce Gun Violence
President Obama puts forward a specific plan to protect our children and
communities
by reducing gun violence, introducing legislative and executive action
that combined would close background check loopholes
to keep guns out of dangerous hands;
ban military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines,
and taking other common-sense steps to reduce gun violence;
make schools safer; and increase access to mental health services. January 16,
2013.
January 31,
2013
The New York Times
By ERICA GOODE and JACK HEALY
In their
fervor to take action against gun violence after the shooting in Newtown, Conn.,
a growing number of state and national politicians are promoting a focus on
mental illness as a way to help prevent further killings.
Legislation to revise existing mental health laws is under consideration in at
least a half-dozen states, including Colorado, Oregon and Ohio. A New York bill
requiring mental health practitioners to warn the authorities about potentially
dangerous patients was signed into law on Jan. 15. In Washington, President
Obama has ordered “a national dialogue” on mental health, and a variety of bills
addressing mental health issues are percolating on Capitol Hill.
But critics say that this focus unfairly singles out people with serious mental
illness, who studies indicate are involved in only about 4 percent of violent
crimes and are 11 or more times as likely than the general population to be the
victims of violent crime.
And many proposals — they include strengthening mental health services, lowering
the threshold for involuntary commitment and increasing requirements for
reporting worrisome patients to the authorities — are rushed in execution and
unlikely to repair a broken mental health system, some experts say.
“Good intentions without thought make for bad laws, and I think we have a risk
of that,” said J. Reid Meloy, a forensic psychologist and clinical professor at
the University of California, San Diego, who has studied rampage killers.
Moreover, the push for additional mental health laws is often driven by
political expediency, some critics say. Mental health proposals draw support
from both Democrats and Republicans, in part because, unlike bans on
semiautomatic weapons or high-capacity magazines — like the one proposed in the
Senate last week — they do not involve confrontation with gun rights groups like
the National Rifle Association.
“The N.R.A. is far more formidable as a political foe than the advocacy groups
for the mentally ill,” said Dr. Jeffrey A. Lieberman, chairman of psychiatry at
Columbia University and president-elect of the American Psychiatric Association.
Indeed, the N.R.A. itself, in response to the massacre in Newtown, argued that
mental illness, and not the guns themselves, was at the root of recent shooting
sprees. The group called for a national registry of people with mental illness —
an alternative that legal experts agree would raise at least as many
constitutional alarms as the banning of gun ownership.
For mental health groups, the proposals under consideration are tantalizing: By
increasing services for those with mental illness, they raise the possibility of
restoring some of the billions of dollars cut from mental health programs in
recent years as budgets tightened in the financial downturn. The measures also
hold out hope for improvement of a mental health system that many experts say is
fragmented and drastically inadequate. And some proposals — those to revise
commitment laws, for example — have the support of some mental health
organizations.
But some mental health and legal experts say that politicians’ efforts might be
better spent making the process of involuntary psychiatric commitment — and the
criteria for restricting firearms access once someone has been forcibly
committed — consistent from state to state. And some proposals have caused
concern, raising questions about doctor-patient confidentiality, the rights of
people with psychiatric disabilities and the integrity of clinical judgment.
Especially troublesome to some mental health advocates are provisions like New
York’s, which expand the duty of practitioners to report worrisome patients — a
model likely to be emulated by other states. New York’s law, part of a
comprehensive package to address gun violence, requires reporting to the local
authorities any patient “likely to engage in conduct that would result in
serious harm to self or others.” Law enforcement officials would then be
authorized to confiscate any firearm owned by such a patient.
John Monahan, a psychologist and professor of law at the University of Virginia,
said that such laws are often superfluous.
Although many mental health practitioners mistakenly believe that federal laws
like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act forbid them to
disclose information about patients, such statutes already include exceptions
that permit clinicians to give information to the authorities when a patient
presents a threat to others, Dr. Monahan said.
Most states also have laws requiring mental health professionals to notify the
authorities and any intended victim when a patient makes a direct threat.
New York’s provision, Dr. Monahan said, differs from virtually every other
state’s laws in allowing guns to be taken not only from those committed against
their will but also from patients who enter treatment voluntarily.
“The devil is in the details,” he said of New York’s new law. “The two fears are
that people will be deterred from seeking treatment that they need or that, once
they are in treatment, they will clam up and not talk about violence.”
Most mental health experts agree that the link between mental illness and
violence is not imaginary. Studies suggest that people with an untreated severe
mental illness are more likely to be violent, especially when drug or alcohol
abuse is involved. And many rampage killers have some type of serious mental
disorder: James E. Holmes, accused of opening fire in a movie theater in
Colorado in July, was seeing a psychiatrist who became alarmed about his
behavior; Jared L. Loughner, who killed 6 people and injured 13 others in
Arizona, including former Representative Gabrielle Giffords, was severely
mentally ill.
But such killings account for only a tiny fraction of gun homicides in the
United States, mental health experts point out. Besides the research indicating
that little violent crime can be linked to perpetrators who are mentally ill,
studies show that those crimes are far more likely to involve battery — punching
another person, for example — than weapons, which account for only 2 percent of
violent crimes committed by the mentally ill.
Because of this, some criminal justice experts say it makes more sense to pass
laws addressing behavior, rather than a diagnosis of mental illness. In Indiana,
for example, firearms can be confiscated from people deemed a potential threat,
whether or not they have a mental illness.
Proposals in a number of states seek to redefine the threshold for involuntary
commitment to psychiatric treatment. But in doing so, they have reignited a
longstanding debate about the role of forced treatment.
In Ohio, lawmakers are expected to consider a proposal to increase access to
outpatient commitment instead of hospitalization, while also doing away with
language requiring people with mental illness to show a “grave and imminent risk
to substantial rights” of themselves or others before they can be committed.
In Colorado, where legislators are undertaking a broad overhaul of the state’s
mental health system proposed by Gov. John W. Hickenlooper, a Democrat, the
proposal also includes changing the criteria for involuntary commitment.
Under the state’s current laws, caregivers can place patients on 72-hour mental
health holds only if they are believed to pose an “imminent danger” to
themselves or others. The governor’s plan would allow caregivers to commit
people if they believe there is a “substantial probability” of harm. Virginia
and some other states already have standards based on “substantial probability.”
But some mental health advocates are wary about lowering the threshold. “The
evidence that we have tells us that that’s not an appropriate solution, it’s not
an effective solution to this problem,” said Jennifer Mathis, deputy legal
director at the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, an advocacy group for
people with psychiatric disabilities.
But Cheryl Miller — whose 21-year-old son, Kyle, was shot by the police last
June after he pointed a toy gun at them — believes that a revised law might have
saved her child.
Two weeks before Kyle was killed she took him to an emergency mental health
clinic to get him hospitalized. But the staff refused to commit him.
“I said, ‘I don’t want to take him home; he needs to go to the hospital,’ ” Ms.
Miller said. “They didn’t think so. It goes back to, was he an imminent danger
to himself? And it was ‘No.’ ”
January 30,
2013
The New York Times
By FERNANDA SANTOS and REBEKAH ZEMANSKY
PHOENIX — A
gunman opened fire at an office complex here on Wednesday, killing one man and
injuring two others before speeding away, the police said. Three other people
were hospitalized for stress brought on by the shooting.
A police spokesman identified the gunman as Arthur Harmon, 70.
The gunman opened fire just outside the lobby of the office complex after a
mediation session at a law firm in the building over a lawsuit he had filed
against a call center based in Scottsdale, Ariz., the authorities said. The call
center’s chief executive, Steven Singer, 48, who was at the session, was killed.
The shooting took place around 10:30 a.m. in the lobby of a three-story
commercial building on North 16th Street, in the heart of the city. The police
spokesman, Sgt. Tommy Thompson, said it was “not random.” The gunman “came here
for a reason,” he said from the scene.
Among the injured was Mark Hummels, a lawyer at Osborne Maledon, who was
representing Mr. Singer, according to a statement released by the firm. He was
shot in the neck and lower back and remained in serious condition after surgery
at John C. Lincoln Hospital, the statement said.
A woman in her 30s was being treated at the hospital for gunshot wounds that did
not appear to be life-threatening, the police said.
Some witnesses told the police that they saw an “older white man” talking to two
people before he opened fire. Others heard gunfire from inside their offices and
hid under their desks.
Don Jacksa, a software engineer who works in the building, said he and his
co-workers “locked the doors and waited.” Jeremiah Barnes, a driver for a
rehabilitation clinic, said he was on his way out to lunch when he spotted a
white car driving erratically in reverse out of the parking lot, barely missing
incoming cars.
A middle school near the scene of the shooting was placed on lockdown as SWAT
teams scoured the office complex, looking for the gunman.
In the afternoon, officers entered Mr. Harmon’s home, some eight miles north of
the office complex, but emerged several minutes later, empty-handed. As of early
Wednesday evening, he remained at large. Sergeant Thompson said he should be
considered “armed and dangerous.”
One neighbor said Mr. Harmon was a retired salesman, reserved yet friendly to
those he knew. Another neighbor said he liked to sit in his front yard, drinking
beer, and to work on his car.
Timothy
Williams contributed reporting from New York.
January 30,
2013
The New York Times
By STEVEN YACCINO and CATRIN EINHORN
CHICAGO —
When students filled the halls of King College Prep here on Wednesday, there was
a sea of purple and red.
Purple was the favorite color of Hadiya Pendleton, 15, a classmate and member of
the school’s majorette team, which had just returned from Washington after
performing at an event celebrating the inauguration of President Obama.
Red symbolized gun violence, because Ms. Pendleton was killed on Tuesday by a
gunshot to her back while hanging out with friends in a park not far from Mr.
Obama’s family home.
The details of her death shook Chicago and gave fuel to gun-control advocates in
the running debate over firearms. The story traveled back to Washington on
Wednesday, where Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, mentioned Ms.
Pendleton during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing about gun violence, and
the White House press secretary, Jay Carney, called it “another example of the
problem that we need to deal with.”
The shooting was not unfamiliar for some in Chicago, where gun violence has
contributed to at least 40 deaths this year and more than 500 homicides in 2012.
“But you don’t think at 2 in the afternoon at a park you’re going to lose the
one you love and care about,” said Klyn Jones, a friend who was with Ms.
Pendleton on the day she died.
Friends described Ms. Pendleton as a girl with an easy smile and generous
nature. She loved Latin class and had worked hard on her overhand serve for the
school volleyball team.
The inauguration trip was an inspiration, Ms. Jones said. “He was an
African-American from Chicago, and she is too,” Ms. Jones said. “It goes to show
that as long as you put your mind to something, you can do it and affect the
world.”
But on Tuesday, Ms. Pendleton and about 12 friends were at a park on the city’s
South Side, not far from the University of Chicago campus. When it started to
rain, they all took shelter under a canopy. Ms. Jones said she looked up from
her phone and saw a man jumping a fence.
He ran toward the group and started shooting, then jumped into a vehicle, which
drove away, according to the police.
“It is believed that the offender mistook the group for gang members and fired
at them,” said Joshua Purkiss, an officer with the Chicago Police Department.
Another boy was shot once in the leg, but is in good condition. A third victim
had a graze wound.
Ms. Jones said a friend cradled Ms. Pendleton’s head in her lap as they waited
for the ambulance. Ms. Jones held her hand. They thought she would pull through.
At the hospital, they received the news.
January 30,
2013
The New York Times
By PETER APPLEBOME
NEWTOWN, Conn. — In riveting testimony repeatedly interrupted by standing
ovations, parents, public officials, law enforcement officers and school
employees issued a full-throated call on Wednesday night for strengthening the
nation’s gun laws in the wake of the massacre of 26 children and educators at
Sandy Hook Elementary School in December.
For one night at least, in the same high school auditorium where President Obama
comforted the victims of Sandy Hook and issued his call for action on guns, the
legislative muddle of competing lobbies and gun agendas was washed away by the
grief of Sandy Hook and demands for measures to make sure something like it
never happens again.
David Wheeler, who lost his son, Benjamin, on Dec. 14, told a state legislative
panel studying gun violence, mental health and school safety that his
first-grade son died because an unstable suicidal individual “had access to a
weapon that has no place in a home.”
At the end of his three-minute remarks, he told a panel that Thomas Jefferson
said government was instituted to protect our unalienable rights to life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness. He said that those words and their order
were no accident.
“The liberty of any person to own a military-style assault weapon and a
high-capacity magazine and keep them in their home is second to the right of my
son to his life,” he said. “His life, to the right to live of all of those
children and those teachers, the rights of your children, of you, of all of us.
Let’s honor the founding documents and get our priorities straight.”
Testimony included repeated calls for improved mental health services and
reflections on the responsibilities of parents. But the main focus was on the
weapons used at Sandy Hook and in other mass slayings in the United States.
Brad Greene, who spoke surrounded by supporters of an antigun march scheduled
for Feb. 14 in Hartford, said he and others had received a chilling education in
the nation’s gun laws.
“We have come away appalled at what our laws allow,” he said. “We are
incredulous at the type of assault and semiautomatic weapons and magazine clips
that are considered legal. What is the logic behind allowing anyone with a wad
of cash to buy an arsenal without a background check? It’s beyond our
comprehension.”
Unlike the committee’s first hearing on Monday in Hartford, at which gun rights
supporters from across the state turned out in force, proponents of gun control
in green ribbons and stickers reading “We Demand Change Now” were by far the
most conspicuous presence — both in testimony and in the audience, which filled
the Newtown High School auditorium. And local officials and residents, still
scarred by the tragedy, demanded it lead to change, no matter how hard the
legislative obstacles.
Susie Ehrens, whose daughter, Emma, escaped from the school, appealed to the
legislators to act as if it were their own children who did not come home alive
that day.
“We are Americans,” she said. “We stop being the world’s greatest country when
we allow our most vulnerable citizens to be slaughtered because we might offend
people by taking away their guns. We stop being something to be proud of when we
love our guns more than we love our children.”
Jim Gaston, a member of the Newtown Board of Selectmen, said he was a gun owner,
owned rifles and enjoyed shooting.
“As a gun owner and someone who enjoys the sport,” he said, “I can assure you
there is absolutely no reason that civilians need to have or should have access
to high-powered assault weapons or mega-magazines.”
After the families, officials and school personnel testified, other members of
the public spoke against new gun rules as well as for them.
David Barzetti said his 5-year-old son played with Jesse Lewis, one of the
children who was killed. He said he understood the anguish over gun issues but
did not believe more laws were needed.
“We are divided into two groups, one that thinks if we keep people from owning
guns it can stop another 12/14 from happening,” he said, referring to the date
of the shooting. “The other group wants to protect ourselves from others like
Adam Lanza.”
He said gun control laws did not reduce crime and that gun owners should have
choices of what weapons to own. “Obviously we don’t need an assault rifle to
kill a deer, but we also don’t need to take away a 500-horsepower vehicle from
an owner who wants to own a high-powered vehicle. That’s their choice.”
There were some vivid windows into the horror Dec. 14. Mary Ann Jacob, a school
staff member, recalled the way it began as a routine Friday morning, how
Victoria Soto, one of the teachers, grumbled that it was a bad day because she
had spilled her coffee. Then came strange sounds that Ms. Jacob could not
decipher until it became clear that hundreds of bullets were rocketing through
the school.
“Make no mistake,” she said. “If there was a police officer in our building that
day, he would be dead. Adam Lanza did not knock on the door and ask for
permission to come in. He shot his way through the door barely seconds after he
got out of his car.”
She added, “Nobody needs a gun that can kill 26 people and shoot hundreds of
rounds of ammunition in three minutes.”
January 29,
2013
The New York Times
By MONICA DAVEY
CHICAGO —
Not a single gun shop can be found in this city because they are outlawed.
Handguns were banned in Chicago for decades, too, until 2010, when the United
States Supreme Court ruled that was going too far, leading city leaders to
settle for restrictions some describe as the closest they could get legally to a
ban without a ban. Despite a continuing legal fight, Illinois remains the only
state in the nation with no provision to let private citizens carry guns in
public.
And yet Chicago, a city with no civilian gun ranges and bans on both assault
weapons and high-capacity magazines, finds itself laboring to stem a flood of
gun violence that contributed to more than 500 homicides last year and at least
40 killings already in 2013, including a fatal shooting of a 15-year-old girl on
Tuesday.
To gun rights advocates, the city provides stark evidence that even some of the
toughest restrictions fail to make places safer. “The gun laws in Chicago only
restrict the law-abiding citizens and they’ve essentially made the citizens
prey,” said Richard A. Pearson, executive director of the Illinois State Rifle
Association. To gun control proponents, the struggles here underscore the
opposite — a need for strict, uniform national gun laws to eliminate the current
patchwork of state and local rules that allow guns to flow into this city from
outside.
“Chicago is like a house with two parents that may try to have good rules and do
what they can, but it’s like you’ve got this single house sitting on a whole
block where there’s anarchy,” said the Rev. Ira J. Acree, one among a group of
pastors here who have marched and gathered signatures for an end to so much
shooting. “Chicago is an argument for laws that are statewide or, better yet,
national.”
Chicago’s experience reveals the complications inherent in carrying out local
gun laws around the nation. Less restrictive laws in neighboring communities and
states not only make guns easy to obtain nearby, but layers of differing laws —
local and state — make it difficult to police violations. And though many
describe the local and state gun laws here as relatively stringent, penalties
for violating them — from jail time to fines — have not proven as severe as they
are in some other places, reducing the incentive to comply.
Lately, the police say they are discovering far more guns on the streets of
Chicago than in the nation’s two more populous cities, Los Angeles and New York.
They seized 7,400 guns here in crimes or unpermitted uses last year (compared
with 3,285 in New York City), and have confiscated 574 guns just since Jan. 1 —
124 of them last week alone.
More than a quarter of the firearms seized on the streets here by the Chicago
Police Department over the past five years were bought just outside city limits
in Cook County suburbs, according to an analysis by the University of Chicago
Crime Lab. Others came from stores around Illinois and from other states, like
Indiana, less than an hour’s drive away. Since 2008, more than 1,300 of the
confiscated guns, the analysis showed, were bought from just one store, Chuck’s
Gun Shop in Riverdale, Ill., within a few miles of Chicago’s city limits.
Efforts to compare the strictness of gun laws and the level of violence across
major American cities are fraught with contradiction and complication, not least
because of varying degrees of coordination between local and state laws and
differing levels of enforcement. In New York City, where homicides and shootings
have decreased, the gun laws are generally seen as at least as strict as
Chicago’s, and the state laws in New York and many of its neighboring states are
viewed as still tougher than those in and around Illinois. Philadelphia, like
cities in many states, is limited in writing gun measures that go beyond those
set by Pennsylvania law. Some city officials there have chafed under what they
see as relatively lax state controls.
In Chicago, the rules for owning a handgun — rewritten after the outright ban
was deemed too restrictive in 2010 — sound arduous. Owners must seek a Chicago
firearms permit, which requires firearms training, a background check and a
state-mandated firearm owner’s identification card, which requires a different
background review for felonies and mental illness. To prevent straw buyers from
selling or giving their weapons to people who would not meet the restrictions —
girlfriends buying guns for gang members is a common problem, the police here
say — the city requires permitted gun owners to report their weapons lost, sold
or stolen.
Still, for all the regulations, the reality here looks different. Some 7,640
people currently hold a firearms permit, but nearly that many illicit weapons
were confiscated from the city’s streets during last year alone. Chicago
officials say Illinois has no requirement, comparable to Chicago’s, that gun
owners immediately report their lost or stolen weapons to deter straw buyers.
Consequently those outside the city can, in the words of one city official,
carry guns to gang members in the city with “zero accountability.”
And a relatively common sentence in state court for gun possession for offenders
without other felonies is one year in prison, which really may mean a penalty of
six months, said Anita Alvarez, the Cook County state’s attorney, who said such
punishments failed to serve as a significant enough deterrent for seasoned
criminals who may see a modest prison stint as the price of doing business.
“The way the laws are structured facilitates the flow of those guns to hit our
streets,” Garry F. McCarthy, the Chicago police superintendent, said in an
interview, later adding, “Chicago may have comprehensive gun laws, but they are
not strict because the sanctions don’t exist.”
In the weeks since the mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., Toni Preckwinkle, the
Cook County Board president, has introduced a countywide provision requiring gun
owners beyond the city limits to report lost or stolen guns, though a first
offense would result simply in a $1,000 fine. In the city, Mayor Rahm Emanuel
has pressed for increased penalties for those who violate the city’s gun
ordinance by failing to report their guns missing or possessing an assault
weapon.
“Our gun strategy is only as strong as it is comprehensive, and it is constantly
being undermined by events and occurrences happening outside the city — gun
shows in surrounding counties, weak gun laws in neighboring states like Indiana
and the inability to track purchasing,” Mr. Emanuel said. “This must change.”
State lawmakers, too, are soon expected to weigh new state provisions like an
assault weapons ban, as Chicago already has. But the fate of the proposals is
uncertain in a state with wide-open farming and hunting territory downstate.
“It’s going to be a fight,” said State Representative Jack D. Franks, a Democrat
from Marengo, 60 miles outside Chicago. Complicating matters, an appellate court
in December struck down the state’s ban on carrying guns in public, saying that
a complete ban on concealed carry is unconstitutional. Illinois is seeking a
review of the ruling, even as state lawmakers have been given a matter of months
to contemplate conditions under which guns could be allowed in public.
Many here say that even the strictest, most punitive gun laws would not alone be
an answer to this city’s violence. “Poverty, race, guns and drugs — you’ve got
to deal with all these issues, but you’ve got to start somewhere” said the Rev.
Jesse L. Jackson, who was arrested in 2007 while protesting outside Chuck’s Gun
Shop, the suburban store long known as a supplier of weapons that make their way
to Chicago.
At the store, a clerk said the business followed all pertinent federal, state
and local laws, then declined to be interviewed further. Among seized guns that
had moved from purchase to the streets of Chicago in a year’s time or less,
nearly 20 percent came from Chuck’s, the analysis found. Other guns arrived here
that rapidly from gun shops in other parts of this state, Indiana, Wisconsin,
Kentucky, Mississippi, Georgia, Iowa and more.
“Chicago is not an island,” said David Spielfogel, senior adviser to Mr.
Emanuel. “We’re only as strong as the weakest gun law in surrounding states.”
Recent tragic events have linked mental illness and violence. Some people — I,
for one — consider this link dangerously stigmatizing. People with mental
illness are far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators.
Moreover, psychiatrists have limited capacity to reliably predict violence.
Nonetheless, these events increase pressure to identify people who might
conceivably commit violent acts, and to mandate treatment with antipsychotic
medications.
For a tiny minority of patients who have committed serious crimes, mandated
treatment can be effective, particularly as an alternative to incarceration. But
for most patients experiencing psychotic states, mandated treatment may create
more problems than it solves.
For many medical conditions, better outcomes occur when patients share in
treatment design and disease management. Imposed treatments tend to engender
resistance and resentment. This is also true for psychiatric conditions.
Patients with psychotic symptoms often feel that their own experience is
dismissed as meaningless, like the ravings of an intoxicated or delirious
person. Decisions to decline antipsychotic medications are often regarded mainly
as a manifestation of illness — an illness the person is too sick to recognize —
even though many people might reject antipsychotics because of metabolic and
other toxicities.
When a clearly troubled person firmly believes that he or she needs no help,
there are no simple answers. These situations are particularly agonizing for
families. Safety is paramount — and at times can be elusive. Still, if
psychiatrists humbly try to understand the person on his or her own terms, do
not dismiss the person’s experience as meaningless and truly respect the
person’s choices about treatment, sometimes this opens the way to an effective
treatment relationship. For some suffering and alienated people — certainly not
all — feeling respectfully understood can be a critical step toward recovery.
Mandated treatment is a blunt instrument that may drive more people away from
seeking care than it compels into care.
CHRISTOPHER GORDON
Framingham, Mass., Jan. 28, 2013
The writer is
a psychiatrist and an associate clinical professor
January 29,
2013
The New York Times
By HENRY FOUNTAIN
A man in
Wisconsin viewed it as a technical challenge. Another, in New Hampshire, was
looking to save some money. And in Texas, a third wanted to make a political
point.
The three may have had different motivations but their results were the same:
each built a working gun that included a part made in plastic with a 3-D
printer.
What they did was legal and, except for the technology and material used, not
much different from what do-it-yourself gunsmiths have been doing for decades.
But in the wake of the shootings in Newtown, Conn., and the intensified debate
over gun control, their efforts, which began last summer, have stoked concerns
that the inexpensive and increasingly popular printers and other digital
fabrication tools might make access to weapons even easier.
“We now have 3-D printers that can manufacture firearms components in the
basement,” said Representative Steve Israel, Democrat of New York. “It’s just a
matter of time before a 3-D printer will produce a weapon capable of firing
bullets.”
A 3-D printer builds an object layer by layer in three dimensions, usually in
plastic. To effectively outlaw weapons made with them, Mr. Israel wants to
extend an existing law, set to expire this year, that makes weapons that are
undetectable by security scanners — like a printed all-plastic gun — illegal.
But there are also major technical obstacles to creating an entire gun on a 3-D
printer, not the least of which is that a plastic gun would probably melt or
explode upon firing a single bullet, making it about as likely to kill the
gunman as the target.
In the meantime, Michael Guslick in Milwaukee, Chapman Baetzel in Dover, N.H.,
and Cody Wilson in Austin, Tex., did something much simpler and, for now, more
effective. They printed the part of an AR-15 assault rifle called the lower
receiver, the central piece that other parts are attached to. Then, using
standard metal components, including the chamber and barrel — the parts that
must be strong enough to withstand the intense pressure of a bullet firing —
they assembled working guns.
In all, the three men, who have written about their efforts on the Web, have
fired hundreds of rounds, although the plastic receivers eventually deform,
crack or otherwise fail from heat and shock. But Mr. Wilson, for one, is working
on a fourth-generation design that he says should be more durable.
A lower receiver is the only part of an AR-15 that, when bought, requires the
filing of federal paperwork. But it is legal to make an AR-15 — and many other
guns — for personal use as long as there is no intent to sell them. And if the
lower receiver is homemade, no paperwork is required.
Amateur gunsmiths have made lower receivers for years, in metal, although the
process requires a certain level of machining expertise. Inexpensive 3-D
printers have grown in popularity — their rise has been compared with that of
personal computers in the 1980s — in part because they are easy to use. It is
not even necessary to know how to create the design files that instruct the
device to print bit after bit of plastic to build the object, as there are files
for tens of thousands of objects available on the Internet, created by other
users and freely shared.
Still, some tinkering is usually required. Mr. Guslick, who works in information
technology and describes himself as a hobbyist gunsmith, printed his receiver on
a machine he bought online through Craigslist. He used a file and abrasive paper
to make the piece fit properly, but over all the project was not much of a
technical challenge. “Anybody could do this,” he said.
Mr. Baetzel, who made his receiver on a 3-D printer he built from a kit, said
the part worked fine until he cracked it when bumping the gun while putting it
in his car. He has since printed a replacement along with a modified grip and
stock which, he said, has made the gun sturdier.
For Mr. Baetzel, who works as a software tester, the motivation for printing gun
parts was economic. “Shooting is an expensive sport,” he said. He figured he
could save perhaps $40 by making the receiver rather than buying one.
Only Mr. Wilson, a law student who prints his receivers on friends’ machines,
had overtly political motives, wanting to demonstrate what he called the
absurdity of gun-control laws. He took his efforts even further, printing
high-capacity magazines like those that would be banned under recommendations
proposed by President Obama and successfully testing them this month on a firing
range south of Austin. He has posted the drawing files at his Web site,
defcad.org, so that others can print the magazine.
“It’s unbannable,” he said. “The Internet has it now.”
Mr. Wilson also has a project to develop a fully printable one-shot weapon,
although he has not made much progress. He is seeking a firearms manufacturer’s
license, which he would need to even make prototypes of a complete weapon.
He gets advice and technical help from a network of about 15 collaborators
around the world, and has posted other printer files at his site, including Mr.
Guslick’s file for a lower receiver.
Mr. Baetzel posted his files on his own blog, Ambulatory Armament Depot, after a
printer file-sharing site, Thingiverse, forced him to remove them in December. A
spokeswoman for MakerBot, a 3-D printer manufacturer that sponsors Thingiverse,
pointed out that the site’s terms of service prohibit content that “contributes
to the creation of weapons.”
Mr. Guslick, who is currently machining a few metal lower receivers, said 3-D
printers were far from the best tool for gun-making, an opinion shared by Neil
Gershenfeld, a professor at M.I.T. and director of the school’s Center for Bits
and Atoms.
“A well-equipped machine shop for a long time has been able to make gun parts,”
Mr. Gershenfeld said. “Three-D printers make not very good ones.”
The types of computer-controlled tools found in a machine shop — primarily laser
cutters and milling machines — are expensive. But smaller and cheaper versions
are now available to dedicated hobbyists, though they do not yet have quite the
mass appeal of 3-D printers.
Yet the printers have other drawbacks besides the use of plastic. They are slow,
often taking hours to build an object, and the results, while impressive to the
eye, can be too crude for extremely close-fitting parts.
And as Mr. Guslick pointed out, anyone who is desperate for a weapon “has the
ability to assemble a zip gun from parts bought in a hardware store for $15.”
The National Rifle Association did not respond to messages requesting the
group’s position on 3-D manufacturing. But for gun-control advocates, the real
worry regarding 3-D printers and other machines is what the future might bring
in the way of technological advances.
“Down the road it’s going to be a big concern,” said Josh Horwitz, executive
director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. “We don’t know how that’s going
to come about and don’t know what technology.”
Mr. Baetzel, for one, said he did not worry about what other people might do
with the technology. “I follow the laws,” he said. “I personally think everyone
else should follow them.”
He said he did not post his designs hoping that someone would use them
illegally. “It was more, ‘Look at this cool thing I did.’ ”
Senate
hearings on stronger gun controls are scheduled to begin on Wednesday before a
divided Congress and a nation agonizing over how to prevent more of the carnage
that killed 20 schoolchildren and six adults last month at a Newtown, Conn.,
elementary school. The gun lobby’s opposition to reasonable controls is already
fierce, and political courage is, as ever, wavering in Congress. But this
singular opportunity to curb the gun violence must not be wasted in more of the
posturing in Washington that tolerates 30,000 gun deaths a year.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hear a raft of proposals,
including a vitally needed ban on fast-firing semiautomatic weapons, like the
military-style Bushmaster assault rifle the Newtown gunman used in his killing
spree at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The measure would also ban ammunition
magazines that can hold more than 10 bullets, which have facilitated
battlefield-scale killing of the innocent in the Newtown school, the movie
theater in Aurora, Colo., and dozens of similar tragedies.
Making federal background checks universal, instead of limiting them to sales by
licensed gun dealers, is no less vital, closing a loophole that lets 40 percent
of firearm sales take place with no oversight. This proposal is the chief goal
of many gun-control groups and has a different aim than the assault weapons ban:
the proliferation of handguns that are used in most gun violence, particularly
in cities.
Another measure would create a separate criminal offense for gun trafficking and
toughen penalties on those involved, including the “straw buyers” who purchase
weapons later funneled into criminal hands. This should be accompanied by
tighter restrictions on high-risk gun dealers who sell a disproportionate number
of the guns traced to crimes, as well as new resources for more frequent
inspection of all gun stores. Congressional corridors and committee evasions are
not the way to advance these bills. They should be debated and voted on in
public view so each lawmaker can be tallied on these major issues. The Second
Amendment is nowhere at stake.
The fight will not be easy. A bill introduced by Senator Dianne Feinstein of
California would, for example, ban 157 of the worst assault weapons while
leaving 2,200 guns untouched in the sportsmen’s marketplace. “I understand how
difficult this is,” Ms. Feinstein said. “That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.”
The reform effort will require an unprecedented outpouring of public support and
pressure on Congress — a national drive that President Obama needs to make
unrelenting and well-organized. The sponsor of the assault weapons ban in the
House, Representative Carolyn McCarthy of New York, wisely says nothing will
come of the reform effort unless the president is “out there selling it.”
Mr. Obama is supposed to follow Vice President Joseph Biden Jr. in leaving
Washington for drumbeating rounds with community leaders. Mr. Biden is already
emphasizing his mantra for audiences: “Tell your congressman.”
Republicans and wobbly Democrats in the House are waiting on results from the
Senate, where the Democratic majority leader, Harry Reid, will play a crucial
role. He is skeptical of an assault weapons ban and wary of losing Senate
Democrats in next year’s elections. But he admits, “We need to accept the
reality that we are not doing enough to protect our citizens.”
Mr. Reid aims to have legislation shaped by the Judiciary Committee for floor
debate that will be freely open to amendment. This unusual process has the
virtue of putting senators on the record for each major proposal, but could
weaken a measure as much as strengthen it.
Nothing is settled in Congress. The outcome depends to a great degree on how
demanding the public is for credible action against the gun violence ravaging
the nation.
•
This is part of a continuing series on the epidemic of gun violence
and possible
solutions. Other editorials are at nytimes.com/gunchallenge.
Eleaquin Temblador had plans. He was working to earn his high school diploma and
wanted to join the U.S. Marine Corps and marry his girlfriend. ... Instead,
family members are planning Temblador’s funeral. For reasons no one can explain,
gunmen in a light-colored, older-model vehicle gunned down the 18-year-old ...
as he rode his bicycle home from his girlfriend’s house.
— Dailybreeze.com, Los Angeles
Relatives of a teen who was shot while playing basketball at a local park said
the 16-year-old is now paralyzed from the waist down. ... Police said the
shooter, a 17-year-old boy, had a gun stuck in his waistband. While he was
playing basketball, someone bumped into him and the gun went off. ...
— Click Orlando.com
Tuesday, Jan. 22:
A Baton Rouge man who authorities said was playing with a gun was booked ... in
the accidental shooting of his 2-year-old brother. ... [The man’s uncle] said
the teen had armed himself due to “environmental pressure” from neighborhood
friends.
— The Advocate, Baton Rouge, La.
The New Mexico teenager who used an assault rifle to kill his mother, father and
younger siblings told police he hoped to shoot up a Walmart after the family
rampage and cause “mass destruction.” ... Nehemiah Griego, the 15-year-old son
of an Albuquerque pastor ... “stated he wanted to shoot people at random and
eventually be killed while exchanging gunfire with law enforcement,” the
[police] report said.
— ABC News
Wednesday, Jan. 23:
Kansas City police arrested a 16-year-old Ruskin High School student accused of
shooting at a school bus after the driver refused to allow him to board on
Wednesday.
— The Kansas City Star
A 4-year-old boy has died after being shot in the head Wednesday. ... The deputy
[sheriff] located the child’s body inside of a Ford Taurus. There was a bullet
hole in the roof of the car. ... “Jamarcus loved Batman, Spider-Man and football
and was looking forward to starting kindergarten,” [his mother] said.
— Newsnet5.com, Akron, Ohio
Thursday, Jan. 24:
The estranged husband of a woman found dead in her Madison apartment Thursday
was found dead in his home ... of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. ...
“We can’t really believe it; I mean, these things happen on TV, they don’t
happen to us,” [her stepmother] said. “We’re middle class, normal Americans, and
she was a nice girl.”
— WISC-TV, Madison, Wis.
Police said an 11-year-old girl is in critical condition after being shot in the
face by her father in a New Jersey home on Thursday night. Investigators said
27-year-old Byaer Johnson apparently entered the home to visit his young
daughter. ... He was asked to leave, then picked up a handgun and shot his
daughter.
— CBS News
Friday, Jan. 25:
An Oakland police officer was shot and wounded Friday evening, the second
officer in the city to be injured by gunfire this week. ... The shooting
happened after a man in a car ran a stop sign, crashed into another car ... and
ran off. Shortly thereafter, an uncle and his nephew reported that they were
shot a block away by a man who tried to steal the uncle’s bicycle.
— SFGate.com
A man has been charged with murder for fatally shooting his brother during a
“domestic” dispute outside a South Side Englewood home Friday afternoon. ...
— Chicago.CBSlocal.com
Saturday, Jan. 26:
A party in Salem that spilled outdoors ended in drive-by gunfire that hit at
least two people and riddled a car and nearby homes. ...
— KOINlocal6, Salem, Ore.
A 55-year-old man has been released from custody after allegedly shooting and
killing his own dog. Police say Gordon Lagstrom was drunk Saturday night when he
pulled a .38 caliber handgun and shot to death his 4-year-old Australian
terrier, Lena.
— Boston.CBSlocal.com
The city broke a nine-day murder-free streak last night when a man was found
dead in the basement of a Queens apartment complex, police said. The 20-year-old
victim, whose name was not released, had been shot in the head.
— New York Post
Among those killed Saturday was a 34-year-old man whose mother had already lost
her three other children to shootings. Police say Ronnie Chambers, who was his
mother’s youngest child, was shot in the head while sitting in a car. Police say
two separate double-homicide shootings also occurred Saturday about 12 hours
apart. ... Chicago’s homicide count eclipsed 500 last year for the first time
since 2008.
NEWTOWN,
Conn. — The gunfire ended; it was so quiet they could hear the broken glass and
bullet casings scraping under their boots. The smell of gunpowder filled the
air. The officers turned down their radios; they did not want to give away their
positions if there was still a gunman present.
They found the two women first, their bodies lying on the lobby floor. Now they
knew it was real. But nothing, no amount of training, could prepare them for
what they found next, inside those two classrooms.
“One look, and your life was absolutely changed,” said Michael McGowan, one of
the first police officers to arrive at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14,
as a gunman, in the space of minutes, killed 20 first graders and 6 adults.
Officer McGowan was among seven Newtown officers who recently sat down to share
their accounts of that day. Some spoke for the first time, providing the fullest
account yet of the scene as officers responded to one of the worst school
massacres in United States history, one that has inflamed the national debate
over gun control.
It is an account filled with ghastly moments and details, and a few faint
instances of hope. One child had a slight pulse, but did not survive. Another
was found bloody but unhurt, amid her dead classmates. Teachers were so
protective of their students that they had to be coaxed by officers before
opening doors. And the officers themselves, many of them fathers, instinctively
used their most soothing Daddy voices to guide terrified children to safety.
The stories also reveal the deep stress that lingers for officers who, until
Dec. 14, had focused their energies on maintaining order in a low-crime corner
of suburbia. Some can barely sleep. Little things can set off tears: a
television show, a child’s laughter, even the piles of gifts the Police
Department received from across the country.
One detective, who was driving with his wife and two sons, passed a roadside
memorial on Route 25 two weeks after the shooting, and began sobbing
uncontrollably. “I just lost it right there, I couldn’t even drive,” the
detective, Jason Frank, said.
Officer William Chapman was in the Newtown police station along with Officer
McGowan and others when the first reports of shots and breaking glass came in
early on the day of the massacre. The school was more than two miles away. They
traveled up Route 25, then right onto Church Hill Road. “We drove as fast as
we’ve ever driven,” Officer McGowan said.
They made it in under three minutes, arriving in the parking lot while gunfire
could still be heard.
“I got out of the car and grabbed my rifle and it stopped for second,” Officer
Chapman said. “But then we heard more popping. You could tell it was rifle fire.
And it was up so close, it sounded like it was coming from outside. So we were
all looking around for someone to shoot back at.”
As the officers converged on the building, the gunfire stopped again. Officers
Chapman and Scott Smith made their way to the front entrance. It was here, only
minutes earlier, that a rail-thin 20-year-old named Adam Lanza, armed with a
.223 Bushmaster semiautomatic carbine, two semiautomatic pistols and hundreds of
rounds of ammunition, had blasted his way through the glass.
Leonard Penna, a school resource officer who had raced to the scene from his
office at the Newtown Middle School, entered the school with Sgt. Aaron
Bahamonde and Lt. Christopher Vanghele, through a side door that leads to the
boiler room, he said. Officer McGowan and two other officers entered through a
locked rear door. One of them knocked out the glass with his rifle butt so the
rest of the officers could get in.
The halls were familiar to Officer McGowan. He attended the school as a child.
But now, they were eerily silent.
“The teachers were doing a phenomenal job keeping their kids quiet,” Officer
Chapman said.
The officers turned their radios down. They entered the front lobby and saw the
first bodies, those of Dawn Hochsprung, the principal, they would later learn,
and Mary Sherlach, the school psychologist.
“You saw them lifeless, laying down,” Officer Penna recalled. “For a split
second, your mind says could this be a mock crime scene, could this be fake, but
in the next split second, you’re saying, there is no way. This is real.”
The officers went from room to room, urgently hunting for the killer before he
could do more harm.
They found a wounded staff member in one room, made sure her co-workers were
applying proper first aid and moved on.
As Officers Chapman and Smith approached the second classroom in the hallway on
their left, they spotted a rifle on the floor. Inside, they found the gunman,
Adam Lanza, dead by his own hand, along with the bodies of several children and
other adults.
The officers searched the room for any other gunmen, then began searching for
signs of life among the children. One little girl had a pulse and was breathing.
Officer Chapman cradled her in his arms and ran with her outside, to an
ambulance. Officer Chapman, a parent himself, tried to comfort her. “You’re safe
now; your parents love you,” he recalled saying. She did not survive.
Most of the bodies were found in the classroom next door, where, Detective Frank
recalled, “the teacher had them huddled up like a mother hen — simple as that,
in a corner.”
Officer Penna, who was the first officer to enter the second room, found a girl
standing alone amid the bodies. She appeared to be in shock, and was covered in
blood, but had not been injured. He, not knowing the gunman had been found, told
her to stay put.
He ran into the next classroom and saw the dead gunman, with Officers Chapman
and Smith standing nearby. State troopers and other officers were now flooding
in. Officer Penna returned to the second classroom, his rifle slung around his
chest, grabbed the uninjured girl by the arm and ran with her out to a triage
area set up in the parking lot.
With state troopers coming in, the officers began to evacuate the children who
were still behind locked doors. But many of the teachers, seeking to protect
their students and following their own training, refused to open up.
“We’re kicking the doors, yelling ‘Police! Police!’ ” Officer McGowan said. “We
were ripping our badges off and putting them up to the window.”
Detective Frank, who had been off duty and rushed to the scene so quickly that
he had to borrow a gun from a colleague once he arrived, remembers ripping the
handle off one of the doors, “just trying to get through.”
As the children emerged, the officers tried to reassure them. “Everything is
fine now,” they said, even as they stayed alert for a possible second gunman.
“Everybody hold hands, close your eyes,” they told the children.
Some officers formed a human curtain around the bodies of Ms. Hochsprung and Ms.
Sherlach, to shield the children from the sight as they filed past. Others
blocked the doorways of the two classrooms.
As the scene settled that day, officers standing guard outside warned newly
arriving colleagues not to go in if they had children. Detective Joe Joudy, one
of the senior members of the force, spotted Officer Chapman walking back to the
building, covered in blood. “I was a mess, and he looks at me and says, ‘They’ve
got to get you guys out of here,’ ” Officer Chapman said.
Newtown’s three-man detective squad, which also included Dan McAnaspie, would
spend much of the next week working with the State Police to collect and
inventory every bit of evidence from the crime scene.
“Words can’t describe how horrible it was,” said Detective Joudy, who has been
with the department for 27 years.
As he left the building that day, Officer Tom Bean, who had also been off duty
when he rushed to the scene, realized he had not told his wife where he was. He
fumbled for his phone in the parking lot, and called her. “That’s when I broke
down in tears, crying,” he said.
More than a month later, the officers continue to feel the pain of that day.
Some spoke reluctantly, not wanting to compare their torment with the agony of
the families of the children and adult victims. But they also worried about
their ability to do their jobs, as they continue to suffer. They said they
omitted some details out of sensitivity to the victims, and to protect the
investigation as it continued.
At least one person, Officer Bean, said he has already received a diagnosis of
post-traumatic stress disorder. He said he had been unable to return to work
since the shootings, and had needed medication to sleep.
The officers and their union are reaching out to state lawmakers, hoping to
expand workers’ compensation benefits to include those who witness horrific
violence.
“Our concern from the beginning has been the effects of PTSD,” said Eric Brown,
a lawyer for the union that represents the Newtown police. “We estimate it is
probably going to be 12 to 15 Newtown officers who are going to be dealing with
that, for the remainder of their careers, we imagine, from what we’ve been told
by professionals who deal with PTSD.”
For Detective Frank, who spent days sequestered in the school, meticulously
collecting evidence, the images keep recurring — and not just of the children.
The monster-truck backpack he found that was identical to his 6-year-old’s. The
Christmas ornaments that sat unfinished, drying on the windowsill.
“It’s heartbreaking,” he said. “These kids will never take those ornaments home
to their parents.”
January 28,
2013
The New York Times
By RAY RIVERA and PETER APPLEBOME
HARTFORD —
Victims of gun violence, burly men clad in hunting jackets and National Rifle
Association hats, mothers wearing stickers reading “We Demand Change Now.”
They were among hundreds of people who packed into the State Capitol on Monday
for a charged and often emotional hearing on gun laws. The turnout highlighted
the deep divisions in a state that has become a focal point of the national gun
control debate since the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown last
month that killed 20 children and 6 adult staff members.
Among those to testify Monday were parents of some of the youngest Newtown
victims, who took opposing sides.
“The sole purpose of those AR-15s or AK-47s is to put a lot of lead out on the
battlefield quickly, and that’s what they do and that’s what they did at Sandy
Hook Elementary School,” said Neil Heslin, whose 6-year-old son, Jesse Lewis,
was a victim. Mr. Heslin told lawmakers that he had grown up around guns and was
the son of an avid hunter, but that he believed that there was no reason any
citizen should have an assault-style weapon like the one used to kill his son.
“That wasn’t just a killing. That was a massacre,” he said. “Those children and
those victims were shot apart. And my son was one of them.”
But Mark Mattioli, whose son James, 6, was also killed at Sandy Hook Elementary
on Dec. 14, said: “I believe in a few simple gun laws. I think we have more than
enough on the books. We should hold people individually accountable for their
actions.”
Mr. Mattioli said he also thought some liberals were using the attack in Newtown
to spread fear on gun issues.
“The problem is not gun laws,” he added. “The problem is a lack of civility.”
The hearing, one of several scheduled by the legislature’s Bipartisan Task Force
on Gun Violence Prevention and Children’s Safety, was expected to run deep into
the night. Nearly 1,500 people, including family members, gun control advocates,
gun rights advocates and gun industry representatives, had signed up or were
invited to testify, although it was not clear how many would get the chance. The
task force hopes to have legislation prepared for passage by the end of
February.
Outside the building, people braved frigid temperatures and driving snow while
waiting to pass through metal detectors, part of the heightened security
measures for the hearing. Women from groups like March for Change and One
Million Moms for Gun Control, which are calling for stricter gun laws, stood far
outnumbered by gun rights supporters, most of them men.
One man carried a sign reading “Gun Control Does Not Make You Safer.” Another
wore a jacket that said “N.R.A. Empowerment Member.”
David Gentry, a personal trainer from Stamford, wore a holster on his waist with
a copy of the Constitution tucked in it. “I just feel that’s where the
conversation should start,” he said.
Mr. Gentry, a father of two, said he was saddened by the Newtown massacre but
also worried about “knee-jerk reactions” to it. Immediately after the attack, he
said, he renewed his N.R.A. membership, bought four N.R.A. T-shirts and decided
to attend the hearing on Monday to oppose stricter gun proposals.
“There are things we can do in this country to help secure our children and
improve firearms safety,” he said. “Better training, securing firearms, yet not
making them inaccessible to authorized owners.”
Kori Hammel, a musician and mother from Stratford, came with March for Change.
“Sandy Hook was 10 minutes from where I grew up,” she said. “I just can’t act
like everything is O.K.”
Inside the hearing room, gun rights supporters wore round yellow stickers
reading “Another Responsible Gun Owner.” People on the other side of the issue
wore green ribbons, which have become a symbol of the Newtown tragedy.
Connecticut is considered to have some of the strictest gun control laws in the
country. But gun ownership has been on the rise, and the gun industry and
pro-gun groups have flexed more muscle in Hartford in recent years. Last year,
gun rights advocates showed up by the hundreds at a hearing to oppose
legislation that would have restricted high-capacity ammunition magazines like
the ones used by Adam Lanza in the Newtown massacre.
On Monday, the state’s gun manufacturers said they supported stricter background
checks but warned the task force against legislation they said could harm the
state’s historic gun industry. Connecticut is the nation’s seventh-largest maker
of firearms.
“We have a reason to consider the ramifications on the firearms industry that
has contributed much to the state’s history and culture and continues to play a
vital role,” said Dennis Veilleux, president and chief executive of Colt
Manufacturing, which has been based in Connecticut since the mid-19th century.
Robert Crook, president of the Coalition of Connecticut Sportsmen, a gun rights
lobbying group, said none of the gun control bills floating around Hartford
would have stopped Mr. Lanza and would instead restrict the rights of lawful gun
owners.
“Remember, gun owners are the good guys,” he said.
The testimony was marked by plenty of poignant moments.
Veronique Pozner, whose son Noah died in the attack, showed task force members
the last picture taken of her son the night before the shooting as she urged
broad new restrictions.
She recalled her son’s inquisitive nature. “He used to ask, ‘If there are bad
guys out there, why can’t they just all wake up one day and decide to be good?’
”
Ms. Pozner said she did not always have an answer.
January 27,
2013
The New York Times
By JUSTIN CRONIN
BELLAIRE,
Tex.
I AM a New England liberal, born and bred. I have lived most of my life in the
Northeast — Boston, New York and Philadelphia — and my politics are devoutly
Democratic. In three decades, I have voted for a Republican exactly once,
holding my nose, in a mayoral election in which the Democratic candidate seemed
mentally unbalanced.
I am also a Texas resident and a gun owner. I have half a dozen pistols in my
safe, all semiautomatics, the largest capable of holding 20 rounds. I go to the
range at least once a week, have applied for a concealed carry license and am
planning to take a tactical training course in the spring. I’m currently
shopping for a shotgun, either a Remington 870 Express Tactical or a Mossberg
500 Flex with a pistol grip and adjustable stock.
Except for shotguns (firing one feels like being punched by a prizefighter), I
enjoy shooting. At the range where I practice, most of the staff knows me by
sight if not by name. I’m the guy in the metrosexual eyeglasses and Ralph Lauren
polo, and I ask a lot of questions: What’s the best way to maintain my sight
picture with both eyes open? How do I clear a stove-piped round?
There is pleasure to be had in exercising one’s rights, learning something new
in midlife and mastering the operation of a complex tool, which is one thing a
gun is. But I won’t deny the seductive psychological power that firearms
possess. I grew up playing shooting games, pretending to be Starsky or Hutch or
one of the patrolmen on “Adam-12,” the two most boring TV cops in history.
A prevailing theory holds that boys are simultaneously aware of their own
physical powerlessness and society’s mandate that they serve as protectors of
the innocent. Pretending to shoot a bad guy assuages this anxiety, which never
goes away completely. This explanation makes sense to me. Another word for it is
catharsis, and you could say that, as a novelist, I’ve made my living from it.
There are a lot of reasons that a gun feels right in my hand, but I also own
firearms to protect my family. I hope I never have to use one for this purpose,
and I doubt I ever will. But I am my family’s last line of defense. I have
chosen to meet this responsibility, in part, by being armed. It wasn’t a choice
I made lightly. I am aware that, statistically speaking, a gun in the home
represents a far greater danger to its inhabitants than to an intruder. But not
every choice we make is data-driven. A lot comes from the gut.
Apart from the ones in policemen’s holsters, I don’t think I saw a working
firearm until the year after college, when a friend’s girlfriend, after four
cosmopolitans, decided to show off the .38 revolver she kept in her purse. (Half
the party guests dived for cover, including me.)
It wasn’t until my mid-40s that my education in guns began, in the course of
writing a novel in which pistols, shotguns and rifles, but also heavy weaponry
like the AR-15 and its military analogue, the M-16, were widely used. I
suspected that much of the gunplay I’d witnessed in movies and television was
completely wrong (it is) and hired an instructor for a daylong private lesson
“to shoot everything in the store.” The gentleman who met me at the range was
someone whom I would have called “a gun nut.” A former New Yorker, he had
relocated to Texas because of its lax gun laws and claimed to keep a pistol
within arm’s reach even when he showered. He was perfect, in other words, for my
purpose.
My relationship to firearms might have ended there, if not for a coincidence of
weather. Everybody remembers Hurricane Katrina; fewer recall Hurricane Rita, an
even more intense storm that headed straight for Houston less than a month
later. My wife and I arranged to stay at a friend’s house in Austin, packed up
the kids and dog, and headed out of town — or tried to. As many as 3.7 million
people had the same idea, making Rita one of the largest evacuations in history,
with predictable results.
By 2 in the morning, after six hours on the road, we had made it all of 50
miles. The scene was like a snapshot from the Apocalypse: crowds milling
restlessly, gas stations and mini-marts picked clean and heaped with trash,
families sleeping by the side of the road. The situation had the hopped-up feel
of barely bottled chaos. After Katrina, nobody had any illusions that help was
on its way. It also occurred to me that there were probably a lot of guns out
there — this was Texas, after all. Here I was with two tiny children, a couple
of thousand dollars in cash, a late-model S.U.V. with half a tank of gas and not
so much as a heavy book to throw. When my wife wouldn’t let me get out of the
car so the dog could do his business, that was it for me. We jumped the median,
turned around, and were home in under an hour.
As it happened, Rita made a last-minute turn away from Houston. But what if it
hadn’t? I believe people are basically good, but not all of them and not all the
time. Like most citizens of our modern, technological world, I am wholly reliant
upon a fragile web of services to meet my most basic needs. What would happen if
those services collapsed? Chaos, that’s what.
IT didn’t happen overnight, but before too long my Northeastern liberal
sensibilities, while intact on other issues, had shifted on the question of gun
ownership. For my first pistol I selected a little Walther .380. I shot it
enough to decide it was junk, upgraded to a full-size Springfield 9-millimeter,
liked it but wanted something with a thumb safety, found a nice Smith & Wesson
subcompact that fit the bill, but along the way got a little bit of a gun-crush
on the Beretta M-9 — and so on.
Lots of people on both sides of the aisle own firearms, or don’t, for reasons
that supersede their broader political and cultural affiliations. Let me be
clear: my personal armory notwithstanding, I think guns are woefully
under-regulated. It’s far too easy to buy a gun — I once bought one in a parking
lot — and I loathe the National Rifle Association. Some of the Obama
administration’s proposals strike me as more symbolic than effective, with some
300 million firearms on the loose. But the White House’s recommendations seem
like a good starting point and nothing that would prevent me from protecting my
family in a crisis. The AR-15 is a fascinating weapon, and, frankly, a gas to
shoot. So is a tank, and I don’t need to own a tank.
Alas, the days of à la carte politics like mine seem over, if they ever even
existed. The bigger culprit is the far right and the lunatic pronouncements of
those like Rush Limbaugh. But in the weeks since Newtown, I’ve watched my
Facebook feed, which is dominated by my coastal friends, fill up with anti-gun
dispatches that seemed divorced from reality. I agree it would be nice if the
world had exactly zero guns in it. But I don’t see that happening, and calling
gun owners “a bunch of inbred rednecks” doesn’t do much to advance rational
discussion.
Thus, my secret life — though I guess it’s not such a secret anymore. My wife is
afraid of my guns (though she also says she’s glad I have them). My 16-year-old
daughter is a different story. The week before her fall semester exams, we
allowed her to skip school for a day, a tradition in our house. The rule is, she
gets to do whatever she wants. This time, she asked to take a pistol lesson.
She’s an NPR listener like me, but she’s also grown up in Texas, and the fact
that one in five American women is a victim of sexual assault is not lost on
her. In the windowless classroom off the range, the instructor ran her through
the basics, demonstrating with a Glock 9-millimeter: how to hold it, load it,
pull back the slide.
“You’ll probably have trouble with that part,” he said. “A lot of the women do.”
“Oh really?” my daughter replied, and with a cagey smile proceeded to rack her
weapon with such authority you could have heard it in the parking lot.
A proud-papa moment? I confess it was.
Justin Cronin
is the author, most recently, of the novel “The Twelve.”
In one of
the 23 executive orders on gun control signed this month, President Obama
instructed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other federal
science agencies to conduct research into the causes and prevention of gun
violence. He called on Congress to aid that effort by providing $10 million for
the C.D.C. in the next budget round and $20 million to expand the federal
reporting system on violent deaths to all 50 states, from the current 18.
That Mr. Obama had to make such a decree at all is a measure of the power of the
gun lobby, which has effectively shut down government-financed research on gun
violence for 17 years. Research on guns is crucial to any long-term effort to
reduce death from guns. In other words, treat gun violence as a public health
issue.
But that is precisely what the National Rifle Association and other opponents of
firearms regulation do not want. In the absence of reliable data and data-driven
policy recommendations, talk about guns inevitably lurches into the unknown,
allowing abstractions, propaganda and ideology to fill the void and thwart
change.
The research freeze began at a time when the C.D.C. was making strides in
studying gun violence as a public health problem. Before that, the issue had
been regarded mainly as a law enforcement challenge or as a problem of disparate
acts by deranged offenders, an approach that remains in sync with the N.R.A.
worldview.
Public health research emphasizes prevention of death, disability and injury. It
focuses not only on the gun user, but on the gun, in much the same way that
public health efforts to reduce motor vehicle deaths have long focused on both
drivers and cars.
The goal is to understand a health threat and identify lifesaving interventions.
At their most basic, gun policy recommendations would extend beyond buying and
owning a gun (say, background checks and safe storage devices) to manufacturing
(childproofing and other federal safety standards) and distribution (stronger
antitrafficking laws), as well as educating and enlisting parents, physicians,
teachers and other community leaders to talk about the risks and
responsibilities of gun ownership.
But by the early 1990s, C.D.C. gun research had advanced to the point that it
contradicted N.R.A. ideology. Some studies found, for example, that people
living in a home with a gun were not safer; they faced a significantly elevated
risk of homicide and suicide.
The N.R.A. denounced the research as “political opinion masquerading as medical
science,” and in 1996, Congress took $2.6 million intended for gun research and
redirected it to traumatic brain injury. It prohibited the use of C.D.C. money
“to advocate or promote gun control.” Since then, similar prohibitions have been
imposed on other agencies, including the National Institutes of Health.
Technically, the prohibition is not a ban on all research, but the law has cast
a pall that even prominent foundations and academic centers cannot entirely
overcome. That is in part because comprehensive public health efforts require
systematic data gathering and analysis, the scale and scope of which is a
government undertaking. To understand and prevent motor vehicle deaths, for
instance, the government tracks more than 100 variables per fatal crash,
including the make, model and year of the vehicles, the speed and speed limit,
the location of passengers, seat belt use and air bag deployment.
Guns deaths do not get such scrutiny. That does not mean we do not know enough
to act. The evidence linking gun prevalence and violent death is strong and
compelling; international comparisons are also instructive.
But we need more data to formulate, analyze and evaluate policy to focus on what
works and to refine or reject what does not. How many guns are stolen? How do
guns first get diverted into illegal hands? How many murderers would have passed
today’s background checks? What percentage of criminal gun traces are accounted
for by, say, the top 5 percent of gun dealers? How many households possess
firearms: is it one-third as some surveys suggest, or one-half?
The gun lobby is likely to claim that any federally financed gun research, per
se, is banned by law, a charge that would force debate of whether evidence-based
policy recommendations are tantamount to lobbying. Or the C.D.C. may choose to
focus on data collection and leave the policy recommendations to outside
researchers. That would be a sorry situation for government scientists, but an
improvement over the status quo.
It is obvious that gun violence is a public health threat. A letter this month
to Vice President Joseph Biden Jr.’s gun violence commission from more than 100
researchers in public health and related fields pointed out that mortality rates
from almost every major cause of death have declined drastically over the past
half century. Motor vehicle deaths per mile driven in America have fallen by
more than 80 percent. But the homicide rate in the United States, driven by
guns, is almost exactly the same as it was in 1950.
January 26,
2013
The New York Times
By MIKE McINTIRE
Threatened
by long-term declining participation in shooting sports, the firearms industry
has poured millions of dollars into a broad campaign to ensure its future by
getting guns into the hands of more, and younger, children.
The industry’s strategies include giving firearms, ammunition and cash to youth
groups; weakening state restrictions on hunting by young children; marketing an
affordable military-style rifle for “junior shooters” and sponsoring
semiautomatic-handgun competitions for youths; and developing a target-shooting
video game that promotes brand-name weapons, with links to the Web sites of
their makers.
The pages of Junior Shooters, an industry-supported magazine that seeks to get
children involved in the recreational use of firearms, once featured a smiling
15-year-old girl clutching a semiautomatic rifle. At the end of an accompanying
article that extolled target shooting with a Bushmaster AR-15 — an advertisement
elsewhere in the magazine directed readers to a coupon for buying one — the
author encouraged youngsters to share the article with a parent.
“Who knows?” it said. “Maybe you’ll find a Bushmaster AR-15 under your tree some
frosty Christmas morning!”
The industry’s youth-marketing effort is backed by extensive social research and
is carried out by an array of nonprofit groups financed by the gun industry, an
examination by The New York Times found. The campaign picked up steam about five
years ago with the completion of a major study that urged a stronger emphasis on
the “recruitment and retention” of new hunters and target shooters.
The overall objective was summed up in another study, commissioned last year by
the shooting sports industry, that suggested encouraging children experienced in
firearms to recruit other young people. The report, which focused on children
ages 8 to 17, said these “peer ambassadors” should help introduce wary
youngsters to guns slowly, perhaps through paintball, archery or some other less
intimidating activity.
“The point should be to get newcomers started shooting something, with the
natural next step being a move toward actual firearms,” said the report, which
was prepared for the National Shooting Sports Foundation and the Hunting
Heritage Trust.
Firearms manufacturers and their two primary surrogates, the National Rifle
Association of America and the National Shooting Sports Foundation, have long
been associated with high-profile battles to fend off efforts at gun control and
to widen access to firearms. The public debate over the mass shootings in
Newtown, Conn., and elsewhere has focused largely on the availability of guns,
along with mental illness and the influence of violent video games.
Little attention has been paid, though, to the industry’s youth-marketing
initiatives. They stir passionate views, with proponents arguing that
introducing children to guns can provide a safe and healthy pastime, and critics
countering that it fosters a corrosive gun culture and is potentially dangerous.
The N.R.A. has for decades given grants for youth shooting programs, mostly to
Boy Scout councils and 4-H groups, which traditionally involved single-shot
rimfire rifles, BB guns and archery. Its $21 million in total grants in 2010 was
nearly double what it gave out five years earlier.
Newer initiatives by other organizations go further, seeking to introduce
children to high-powered rifles and handguns while invoking the same rationale
of those older, more traditional programs: that firearms can teach “life skills”
like responsibility, ethics and citizenship. And the gun industry points to
injury statistics that it says show a greater likelihood of getting hurt
cheerleading or playing softball than using firearms for fun and sport.
Still, some experts in child psychiatry say that encouraging youthful exposure
to guns, even in a structured setting with an emphasis on safety, is asking for
trouble. Dr. Jess P. Shatkin, the director of undergraduate studies in child and
adolescent mental health at New York University, said that young people are
naturally impulsive and that their brains “are engineered to take risks,” making
them ill suited for handling guns.
“There are lots of ways to teach responsibility to a kid,” Dr. Shatkin said.
“You don’t need a gun to do it.”
Steve Sanetti, the president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, said it
was better to instruct children in the safe use of a firearm through hunting and
target shooting, and engage them in positive ways with the heritage of guns in
America. His industry is well positioned for the task, he said, but faces an
unusual challenge: introducing minors to activities that involve products they
cannot legally buy and that require a high level of maturity.
Ultimately, Mr. Sanetti said, it should be left to parents, not the government,
to decide if and when to introduce their children to shooting and what sort of
firearms to use.
“It’s a very significant decision,” he said, “and it involves the personal
responsibility of the parent and personal responsibility of the child.”
Trying to
Reverse a Trend
The shooting sports foundation, the tax-exempt trade association for the gun
industry, is a driving force behind many of the newest youth initiatives. Its
national headquarters is in Newtown, just a few miles from Sandy Hook Elementary
School, where Adam Lanza, 20, used his mother’s Bushmaster AR-15 to kill 20
children and 6 adults last month.
The foundation’s $26 million budget is financed mostly by gun companies,
associated businesses and the foundation’s SHOT Show, the industry’s annual
trade show, according to its latest tax return.
Although shooting sports and gun sales have enjoyed a rebound recently, the
long-term demographics are not favorable, as urbanization, the growth of indoor
pursuits like video games and changing cultural mores erode consumer interest.
Licensed hunters fell from 7 percent of the population in 1975 to fewer than 5
percent in 2005, according to federal data. Galvanized by the declining share,
the industry redoubled its efforts to reverse the trend about five years ago.
The focus on young people has been accompanied by foundation-sponsored research
examining popular attitudes toward hunting and shooting. Some of the studies
used focus groups and telephone surveys of teenagers to explore their feelings
about guns and people who use them, and offered strategies for generating a
greater acceptance of firearms.
The Times reviewed more than a thousand pages of these studies, obtained from
gun industry Web sites and online archives, some of them produced as recently as
last year. Most were prepared by consultants retained by the foundation, and at
least one was financed with a grant from the United States Fish and Wildlife
Service.
In an interview, Mr. Sanetti said the youth-centered research was driven by the
inevitable “tension” the industry faces, given that no one under 18 can buy a
rifle or a shotgun from a licensed dealer or even possess a handgun under most
circumstances. That means looking for creative and appropriate ways to introduce
children to shooting sports.
“There’s nothing alarmist or sinister about it,” Mr. Sanetti said. “It’s
realistic.”
Pointing to the need to “start them young,” one study concluded that
“stakeholders such as managers and manufacturers should target programs toward
youth 12 years old and younger.”
“This is the time that youth are being targeted with competing activities,” it
said. “It is important to consider more hunting and target-shooting recruitment
programs aimed at middle school level, or earlier.”
Aware that introducing firearms to young children could meet with resistance,
several studies suggested methods for smoothing the way for target-shooting
programs in schools. One cautioned, “When approaching school systems, it is
important to frame the shooting sports only as a mechanism to teach other life
skills, rather than an end to itself.”
In another report, the authors warned against using human silhouettes for
targets when trying to recruit new shooters and encouraged using words and
phrases like “sharing the experience,” “family” and “fun.” They also said
children should be enlisted to prod parents to let them join shooting
activities: “Such a program could be called ‘Take Me Hunting’ or ‘Take Me
Shooting.’ ”
The industry recognized that state laws limiting hunting by children could pose
a problem, according to a “Youth Hunting Report” prepared by the shooting sports
foundation and two other groups. Declaring that “the need for aggressive
recruitment is urgent,” the report said a primary objective should be to
“eliminate or reduce age minimums.” Still another study recommended allowing
children to get a provisional license to hunt with an adult, “perhaps even
before requiring them to take hunter safety courses.”
The effort has succeeded in a number of states, including Wisconsin, which in
2009 lowered the minimum hunting age to 10 from 12, and Michigan, where in 2011
the age minimum for hunting small game was eliminated for children accompanied
by an adult mentor. The foundation cited statistics suggesting that youth
involvement in hunting, as well as target shooting, had picked up in recent
years amid the renewed focus on recruitment.
Gun companies have spent millions of dollars to put their recruitment strategies
into action, either directly or through the shooting sports foundation and other
organizations. The support takes many forms.
The Scholastic Steel Challenge, started in 2009, introduces children as young as
12 to competitive handgun shooting using steel targets. Its “platinum” sponsors
include the shooting sports foundation, Smith & Wesson and Glock, which donated
60 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistols, according to the group’s Web site.
The site features a quote from a gun company executive praising the youth
initiative and saying that “anyone in the firearms industry that overlooks its
potential is missing the boat.”
Larry Potterfield, the founder of MidwayUSA, one of the nation’s largest sellers
of shooting supplies and a major sponsor of the Scholastic Steel Challenge, said
he did not fire a handgun until he was 21, adding that they “are the most
difficult guns to learn to shoot well.” But, he said, he sees nothing wrong with
children using them.
“Kids need arm strength and good patience to learn to shoot a handgun well,” he
said in an e-mail, “and I would think that would come in the 12-14 age group for
most kids.”
Another organization, the nonprofit Youth Shooting Sports Alliance, which was
created in 2007, has received close to $1 million in cash, guns and equipment
from the shooting sports foundation and firearms-related companies, including
ATK, Winchester and Sturm, Ruger & Company, its tax returns show. In 2011, the
alliance awarded 58 grants. A typical grant: 23 rifles, 4 shotguns, 16 cases of
ammunition and other materials, which went to a Michigan youth camp.
The foundation and gun companies also support Junior Shooters magazine, which is
based in Idaho and was started in 2007. The publication is filled with catchy
advertisements and articles about things like zombie targets, pink guns and,
under the heading “Kids Gear,” tactical rifle components with military-style
features like pistol grips and collapsible stocks.
Gun companies often send new models to the magazine for children to try out with
adult supervision. Shortly after Sturm, Ruger announced in 2009 a new,
lightweight semiautomatic rifle that had the “look and feel” of an AR-15 but
used less expensive .22-caliber cartridges, Junior Shooters received one for
review. The magazine had three boys ages 14 to 17 fire it and wrote that they
“had an absolute ball!”
Junior Shooters’ editor, Andy Fink, acknowledged in an editorial that some of
his magazine’s content stirred controversy.
“I have heard people say, even shooters that participate in some of the shotgun
shooting sports, such things as, ‘Why do you need a semiautomatic gun for
hunting?’ ” he wrote. But if the industry is to survive, he said, gun
enthusiasts must embrace all youth shooting activities, including ones “using
semiautomatic firearms with magazines holding 30-100 rounds.”
In an interview, Mr. Fink elaborated. Semiautomatic firearms are actually not
weapons, he said, unless someone chooses to hurt another person with them, and
their image has been unfairly tainted by the news media. There is no legitimate
reason children should not learn to safely use an AR-15 for recreation, he said.
“They’re a tool, not any different than a car or a baseball bat,” Mr. Fink said.
“It’s no different than a junior shooting a .22 or a shotgun. The difference is
in the perception of the viewer.”
The Weapon
of Choice
The AR-15, the civilian version of the military’s M-16 and M-4, has been
aggressively marketed as a cool and powerful step up from more traditional
target and hunting rifles. But its appearance in mass shootings — in addition to
Newtown, the gun was also used last year in the movie theater massacre in
Aurora, Colo., and the attack on firefighters in Webster, N.Y. — has prompted
calls for tighter restrictions. The AR-15 is among the guns included in a
proposed ban on a range of semiautomatic weapons that was introduced in the
Senate last week.
Given the gun’s commercial popularity, it is perhaps unsurprising that
AR-15-style firearms have worked their way into youth shooting programs. At a
“Guns ’n Grillin” weekend last fall, teenagers at a Boy Scout council in
Virginia got to shoot AR-15s. They are used in youth competitions held each year
at a National Guard camp in Ohio, and in “junior clinics” taught by Army or
Marine marksmanship instructors, some of them sponsored by gun companies or
organizations they support.
ArmaLite, a successor company to the one that developed the AR-15, is offering a
similar rifle, the AR-10, for the grand prize in a raffle benefiting the
Illinois State Rifle Association’s “junior high-power” team, which uses AR-15s
in its competitions. Bushmaster has offered on its Web site a coupon worth $350
off the price of an AR-15 “to support and encourage junior shooters.”
Military-style firearms are prevalent in a target-shooting video game and mobile
app called Point of Impact, which was sponsored by the shooting sports
foundation and Guns & Ammo magazine. The game — rated for ages 9 and up in the
iTunes store — allows players to shoot brand-name AR-15 rifles and semiautomatic
handguns at inanimate targets, and it provides links to gun makers’ Web sites as
well as to the foundation’s “First Shots” program, intended to recruit new
shooters.
Upon the game’s release in January 2011, foundation executives said in a news
release that it was one of the industry’s “most unique marketing tools directed
at a younger audience.” Mr. Sanetti of the shooting sports foundation said
sponsorship of the game was an experiment intended to deliver safety tips to
players, while potentially generating interest in real-life sports.
The confluence of high-powered weaponry and youth shooting programs does not sit
well even with some proponents of those programs. Stephan Carlson, a University
of Minnesota environmental science professor whose research on the positive
effects of learning hunting and outdoor skills in 4-H classes has been cited by
the gun industry, said he “wouldn’t necessarily go along” with introducing
children to more powerful firearms that added nothing useful to their
experience.
“I see why the industry would be pushing it, but I don’t see the value in it,”
Mr. Carlson said. “I guess it goes back to the skill base we’re trying to
instill in the kids. What are we preparing them for?”
For Mr. Potterfield of MidwayUSA, who said his own children started shooting
“boys’ rifles” at age 4, getting young people engaged with firearms — provided
they have the maturity and the physical ability to handle them — strengthens an
endangered American tradition.
Mr. Potterfield and his wife, Brenda, have donated more than $5 million for
youth shooting programs in recent years, a campaign that he said was motivated
by philanthropy, not “return on investment.”
“Our gifting is pure benevolence,” he said. “We grew up and live in rural
America and have owned guns, hunted and fished all of our lives. This is our
community, and we hope to preserve it for future generations.”
January 26,
2013
The New York Times
By JESS BIDGOOD
NEWPORT,
N.H. — When the New Hampshire Association of Chiefs of Police was looking to
raise money for an annual cadet training program, it sold raffle tickets for $30
apiece. The drawing was scheduled for May, but by Jan. 12 all 1,000 tickets had
been sold.
The prize: 31 guns, with a new winner drawn each day of the month.
The fund-raiser, sponsored by the association in partnership with two New
Hampshire gun makers, Sig Sauer and Sturm, Ruger & Company, has prompted a
chorus of protests from lawmakers and gun-control advocates questioning why the
police are giving away guns, even in the name of a good cause.
Some in law enforcement have also raised questions. When Chief Nicholas J.
Giaccone Jr. of Hanover pulled up information about the raffle on the Internet,
he said, he was flabbergasted.
“I looked at the first weapon and Googled that one,” said Chief Giaccone, who
recalled using an expletive when he pulled up information about the Ruger
SR-556C, a semiautomatic weapon. “It’s an assault rifle.”
In a letter to the editor of The Eagle-Tribune, which covers southern New
Hampshire, Richard J. O’Shaughnessy of Salem wrote, “People who should know
better are adding to the glorification of the gun culture in this state.”
And referring to the shootings last month at Sandy Hook Elementary School in
Connecticut, State Representative Sharon L. Nordgren, a Hanover Democrat, said,
“They’re just the same kind that were used in Newtown.”
The Ruger that caught Chief Giaccone’s attention is an AR-15-style rifle, which
is the most popular style of gun in America, according to dealers, and was the
type used by Adam Lanza to kill 20 children and six adults at the elementary
school. Another gun in the raffle, the Sig Sauer P226 handgun, was also carried
by Mr. Lanza, according to the Connecticut State Police.
“It’s just ironic that that would be their choice of the kind of gun that
they’re raffling,” Ms. Nordgren said.
Organizers of the raffle are standing firm. In a statement released this month,
Chief Paul T. Donovan of Salem, the president of the association, defended the
fund-raiser, saying that all winners would be required to meet all applicable
rules for gun ownership.
“While this raffle falls on the heels of the recent tragedy in Newtown, Conn.,
the New Hampshire Association of Chiefs of Police extends their deepest
sympathies to the families and first responders,” Chief Donovan wrote. “New
Hampshire Chiefs of Police feel the issues with these tragic shootings are ones
that are contrary to lawful and responsible gun ownership.”
The proceeds from the raffle go toward a cadet program involving participants
ages 14 to 20 who are given instructions in various kinds of police skills and
procedures. Some of them go on to pursue careers in law enforcement.
The guns will be distributed through another raffle partner, Rody’s Gun Shop, a
windowless outpost here in Newport, a town that comes to life when employees of
Ruger, which is one of its main employers, leave work for the day.
“Around here, most people are into guns,” said Michael Gaffney, an employee of a
nearby hardware store who won a rifle in a raffle years ago. “You get a chance
to win a free gun! It’s like any raffle, very much akin to trailer raffles,
snowmobile raffles or turkey raffles.”
On a recent weeknight, the Rody’s parking lot was filled with idling cars, their
occupants waiting for the store to open at 6 o’clock. The store filled up
immediately. Customers, some with their children in tow, browsed the shotguns
and rifles on the walls and discussed the possibility of gun bans. While the
shop’s owner would not comment on the raffle, his customers were nonchalant.
“Honestly, I don’t see what the big deal is — they’re just talking about it
because of Sandy Hook,” said Lorraine Peterson of Litchfield. “I don’t mean to
sound insensitive. This is New Hampshire. This is a sport.”
Gun raffles are business as usual here and in many other parts of the country —
frequently used by hunting clubs and sometimes by athletics booster clubs to
raise money and anchor galas.
“We host raffles like this all the time,” said Richard Olson Jr., the president
of the New Hampshire Wildlife Federation and the Londonderry Fish and Game Club.
“Anybody that’s speaking up is using the Newtown massacre as a pretext to poke
at the issue negatively.”
Mr. Olson said that he once planned a gun raffle to raise money for a fishing
derby and that he was considering using one to raise money for the wildlife
federation’s conservation efforts on New England cottontail rabbits.
Shifting economic and political conditions have spread gun raffles to other
spheres, too. Josh Harms, a Republican state representative in Illinois, intends
to raffle three guns in March to raise money for his campaign treasury.
Greg Hay, a firefighter from Quincy, Ill., said his union decided last January
to hold a gun raffle to replenish its accounts after a drawn-out arbitration. He
said the sluggish economy had limited fund-raising from the union’s annual
country music concert.
“We didn’t really want to have any more assessments, so we needed to start
looking at better moneymakers,” said Mr. Hay, who expects the union, Quincy
Firefighters Local 63, to take home about $25,000 from the raffle, which started
last June and awards one gun per week for a year.
The fund-raiser has been so successful that the union had planned to sponsor a
second one until a recent increase in gun prices — fueled by increased demand
amid fears of gun bans in the wake of the Newtown shooting — made the effort
less promising.
“Maybe we’ll hold off until gun prices go down and start to go back to a decent
level,” Mr. Hay said.
Opponents of the raffle in New Hampshire are quick to say it is not the guns
they oppose, but the fact that the police are conducting it.
“I think in some respects it shows the wrong message,” said State Representative
Stephen Shurtleff, Democrat of Merrimack. “For law enforcement, normally they’re
dealing with firearms in a negative way. For that reason, it’s just not an
appropriate thing. We’re trying to get guns off the street.”
January 24,
2013
The New York Times
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
WASHINGTON
— During a lengthy and at times emotionally wrenching news conference, Senator
Dianne Feinstein of California on Thursday announced legislation that would ban
the sale and manufacture of 157 types of semiautomatic weapons, as well as
magazines holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition.
The bill, which Ms. Feinstein introduced in the Senate later in the afternoon,
would exempt firearms used for hunting and would grandfather in certain guns and
magazines. The goal of the bill, she said, is “to dry up the supply of these
weapons over time.”
Surrounded by victims of gun violence, colleagues in the Senate and House and
several law enforcement officials, and standing near pegboards with several
large guns attached, Ms. Feinstein acknowledged the difficulty in pursuing such
legislation, even when harnessing the shock and grief over the shooting of 20
schoolchildren in Newtown, Conn., last month. “This is really an uphill road,”
Ms. Feinstein said.
Since the expiration of a ban on assault weapons in 2004, lawmakers have been
deeply reluctant to revisit the issue. They cite both a lack of evidence that
the ban was effective and a fear of the gun lobby, which has made significant
inroads at the state and federal levels over the past decade in increasing gun
rights.
Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, recently said that he was
skeptical about the bill. Ms. Feinstein immediately called him to express her
displeasure with his remarks.
Many lawmakers, including some Democrats, prefer more modest measures to curb
gun violence, like enhanced background checks of gun buyers or better
enforcement of existing laws.
One such measure has been introduced by Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of
Vermont and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who will begin hearings
next week on gun violence. Among the witnesses will be Wayne LaPierre, the chief
executive of the National Rifle Association.
“Senator Feinstein has been trying to ban guns from law-abiding citizens for
decades,” said Andrew Arulanandam, a spokesman for Mr. LaPierre. “It’s
disappointing but not surprising that she is once again focused on curtailing
the Constitution instead of prosecuting criminals or fixing our broken mental
health system.”
More legislation is expected to arise over the next week or two, and some of it
will have bipartisan support. Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand, Democrat of New
York, and Senator Mark Kirk, Republican of Illinois, have agreed to work
together on gun trafficking legislation that would seek to crack down on illegal
guns. Currently, federal law does not define gun trafficking as a crime.
Mr. Kirk is also working on a background check proposal with Senator Joe Manchin
III, Democrat of West Virginia, who is considered somewhat of a bellwether among
Democrats with strong gun-rights records.
Mr. Leahy’s bill would give law enforcement officials more tools to investigate
so-called straw purchasing of guns, in which people buy a firearm for others who
are prohibited from obtaining one on their own.
Ms. Feinstein was joined on Thursday by several other lawmakers, including
Representative Carolyn McCarthy of New York, who will introduce companion
legislation in the House, and Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, who
emotionally recalled the day when the children and adults were gunned down in
Newtown. “I will never forget the sight and the sounds of parents that day,” he
said. Several gun violence victims, relatives of those killed and others gave
brief statements of support for the bill.
Ms. Feinstein’s bill — which, unlike the 1994 assault weapons ban, would not
expire after being enacted — would also ban certain characteristics of guns that
make them more lethal. More than 900 models of guns would be exempt for hunting
and sporting.
Such a measure is vehemently opposed by the N.R.A. and many Republican
lawmakers, as well as some Democrats. “I don’t think you should have
restrictions on clips,” said Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who has said he
welcomes a Senate debate on guns. “The Second Amendment wasn’t written so you
can go hunting, it was to create a force to balance a tyrannical force here.”
Proponents of the ban argue that in spite of claims to the contrary, the 1994
measure, of which Ms. Feinstein was a chief sponsor, helped curb gun violence.
“The original bill, though flawed, had a definite impact on the number of these
weapons faced by the police on streets and used in crimes,” said Adam Eisgrau,
who helped write the 1994 ban while serving as Judiciary Committee counsel to
Ms. Feinstein. The new bill, with more explicit language on the types of
features on banned weapons, “is far more respectful of firearms for recreation
uses,” he said.
Bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines were among the proposals
unveiled by President Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. last week.
Mr. Biden took the campaign for tougher gun laws to the Internet on Thursday in
an online video chat that was part of an effort by the White House to build
public support for its guns package. Mr. Biden, who developed the plans embraced
by Mr. Obama, will host a round-table event in Richmond, Va., on Friday, and
officials have said that Mr. Obama will travel at some point to promote the
package.
January 23,
2013
The New York Times
By MANNY FERNANDEZ and EMMA G. FITZSIMMONS
HOUSTON — A
man was charged late Tuesday in a shooting at a community college here that left
four people hospitalized and touched off fears that the campus had been the site
of another mass shooting.
The man, Carlton Berry, 22, was charged with aggravated assault but remained
hospitalized for injuries sustained in the shooting.
A dispute between Mr. Berry and another man on Tuesday led to the shooting at
Lone Star College’s North Harris campus, the authorities said. At least one of
the men may have been a student or a former student at the college. Both were
detained by the authorities.
Three people were wounded by gunfire, including the two men in the altercation
and a maintenance worker who was shot in the leg. A fourth person, who was not
shot, was taken to a hospital with medical problems.
School officials said the campus would reopen on Wednesday morning on a normal
schedule.
On Tuesday, Joshua Flores, a senior, was standing outside the cafeteria with
friends when they heard gunshots. “We thought it was fireworks, so we didn’t go
anywhere,” said Mr. Flores, 21. “And then a bunch of people came running our
way, yelling: ‘The guy has a gun! Run! Run!’ ”
The college, which has 19,000 students, was evacuated, and Houston police
officers and Harris County sheriff’s deputies spent hours clearing the buildings
and deeming them safe.
Officials with the Sheriff’s Office said they received the first call at 12:19
p.m. They said they did not know what the dispute was about. One of the men in
the altercation had student identification, but officials had not confirmed that
he was enrolled at the college.
An official with the Sheriff’s Office, Maj. Armando Tello, said there appeared
to be only one gun involved. Major Tello was the acting sheriff because Sheriff
Adrian Garcia was out of town.
The shooting shocked students, faculty members and administrators at the
200-acre campus. The school is in northern Harris County and about 30 minutes
from downtown. It is so close to George Bush Intercontinental Airport that
college officials said one can often look up and wave at the passengers.
Students said they did not realize that the shots were actually gunfire. Because
the shooting occurred outdoors — in a center courtyard near the library and
academic buildings, officials said — many heard the sounds. One student sitting
at a table on the third floor of the library thought it was a book cart
toppling.
“Later we heard people screaming, and we knew it was gunshots,” said the
student, Jonathan Moreno, 19, a freshman.
Mr. Moreno hid with other students in a back room on the third floor of the
library in the moments after the shooting. “It was a scary thing,” he said.
“Some people were panicking. Some lady was about to have like an asthma attack.
There were some people crying.”
Other students sat or crouched in classrooms in buildings with the lights turned
off. Some fled classrooms and buildings so quickly that they left their
belongings behind and planned on returning late Tuesday night to retrieve them.
Richard Carpenter, the chancellor for the Lone Star College System, said the
North Harris campus, the system’s first, was celebrating its 40th anniversary
this year. “In 40 years, this is the first kind of incident like this we’ve ever
had,” Mr. Carpenter said. “The campus will be reopening tomorrow. It has been
safe for 40 years. We think it’s still safe.”
One freshman, Whikeitha Thomas, 21, had been in math class for about 15 minutes
when he heard loud bangs. “A teacher came in,” Mr. Thomas said. “She said:
‘There’s been a shooting on campus. Lock the doors. Turn off the lights.’ ”
Mr. Thomas and his classmates hid in the classroom. In those tense moments, one
of the students, a 23-year-old woman, collapsed. Mr. Thomas and another student
gave the woman CPR inside the classroom and called 911. “The lights were off at
first until she passed out,” Mr. Thomas said. “When she passed out, they turned
the lights back on so I could perform CPR.”
As Mr. Thomas was trying to revive the woman, she told him that she was more
frightened than the others. She said she had survived the Virginia Tech
shooting. “She said, ‘I went through this already at Virginia Tech, and I just
don’t like this feeling.’ ”
January 20,
2013
The New York Times
By MANNY FERNANDEZ
AUSTIN,
Tex. — Attention New Yorkers: Texas wants you. And your guns.
Last week, the day after Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York approved a broad
package of gun-control measures that made New York’s tough gun laws even
tougher, the Texas attorney general, Greg Abbott, began running Internet
advertisements in Manhattan and Albany asking New York gun owners to consider
moving to Texas.
The two ads — displayed on news sites and aimed at Web users with Manhattan and
Albany ZIP codes — promote the state’s low taxes and gun culture, with one
asking, “Is Gov. Cuomo looking to take your guns?” The other reads, “Wanted: Law
abiding New York gun owners looking for lower taxes and greater opportunity.”
When clicked on, the ads lead users to a Facebook page where a letter from Mr.
Abbott, the state’s chief law enforcement official, promotes Texas’s strong
economy and lack of an income tax, allowing transplanted gun owners “to keep
more of what you earn and use some of that extra money to buy more ammo.”
The ads are a rare burst of political theater from Mr. Abbott, a former State
Supreme Court justice who has built a reputation as a gentlemanly yet fiercely
conservative litigator eager to challenge the Obama administration, and who, in
a speech last year, described his job this way: “I go to the office. I sue the
federal government. And then I go home.”
Mr. Abbott has been laying the groundwork and raising millions of dollars for a
possible run for governor in 2014, regardless of whether Gov. Rick Perry, his
ally and fellow Republican, decides to seek re-election.
Mr. Abbott’s ads were paid for not by the attorney general’s office but by his
political campaign, Texans for Greg Abbott. A campaign spokesman, Eric Bearse,
said the ads began running on Wednesday and were “interest targeted” to those in
Manhattan and Albany who visited several news sites, including The Wall Street
Journal and The New York Times.
Mr. Bearse said the ads were created in response to New York’s new gun-control
laws as well as the executive actions that President Obama announced the same
day to curb gun violence. He declined to say how much they had cost Mr. Abbott,
whose campaign account has grown to $18 million.
“It’s a somewhat unconventional method to weigh in on a very serious issue,” Mr.
Bearse said. “It makes the point that Texans value freedom, and specifically
their freedom to protect themselves. Our state has experienced the largest
population growth in the country from places like California and New York
because our culture does value freedom.”
The ads illustrate the extent to which the debate over guns and gun violence
since the mass shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., has played
out differently in Texas than it has in other parts of the country.
In Texas, guns and the right to carry them continue to be closely linked to the
state’s self-image. Those licensed to carry a concealed weapon can do so in
restaurants, shopping malls and even the Capitol building here in Austin.
Responding to Mr. Obama’s gun proposals, Mr. Perry said in a statement that he
was disgusted to see the political left and the news media use the school
shooting to advance a pre-existing agenda, and he suggested that prayers rather
than laws were in order.
A day after the president unveiled his proposals, a different sort of gun debate
unfolded here, after a Republican state senator from Granbury, Brian Birdwell,
filed a bill to allow those with a concealed handgun license to carry their
firearms on college campuses.
Mr. Abbott posted his ads on his Facebook page, creating an impromptu
cross-state forum and occasional shouting match between New Yorkers and Texans
on both sides of the issue. A woman from Jarrell, Tex., called the ads “another
embarrassing example” of politicians in the state. Another woman in Texas
complained of Yankees and their liberal attitudes, adding, “Stay up North we
don’t want you in Texas.”
And one Republican New Yorker wrote that she was sick of Mr. Cuomo, ready to
move to Texas and would greatly appreciate “any info, regarding employment,
schools, and city to live in.”
New Yorkers moving to Texas might find that the two places have more in common
than they expect: each is as much a state of mind as it is an actual state. The
century had barely gotten started when Mr. Perry declared in his inaugural
address in 2011 that historians would look back and call it “the Texas century.”
New Yorkers are as New York-centric as Texans are Texas-centric.
And there is at least one place where newly arrived New Yorkers might feel
strangely at home: New York, Tex., an unincorporated community amid the green
acres of East Texas, about 1,500 miles from Times Square. It is made up of a
handful of houses, a cemetery, a church and Reynolds New York Store.
Carolyn Reynolds, who runs the feed and fertilizer store, paused when asked for
the population. She started counting under her breath. “Right now, I’d consider
it 11,” she replied.
Still, Mr. Abbott said in a statement, because of the state’s low taxes and gun
laws, “our New York is better than their New York.”
In 2006,
Cerberus Capital Management, the private equity firm run by the secretive
financier Steven Feinberg, set out to raise $6.5 billion in a new fund called
Cerberus Institutional Partners Series IV. Feinberg’s reputation for extracting
value from troubled companies — by replacing management, shuttering facilities
and creating “efficiencies” — was such that by May 2007, when the fund was
finally closed, it had gotten commitments for nearly $1 billion more than it had
sought.
Cerberus Institutional Partners Series IV is the fund that took over Chrysler in
2007. It bought General Motors’ financing arm, now called Ally Financial. It
gobbled up hospitals, purchased bus companies, and even bought the raunchy
magazine Maxim.
It is also the fund that bought Bushmaster Firearms, the company that made the
assault weapon used by Adam Lanza to massacre 20 children and seven adults in
Newtown, Conn., last month. It bought Remington Arms, the maker of the
pump-action shotgun that was among the guns James Holmes used to kill 12 people
and wound 58 in Aurora, Colo. It bought a handful of other firearms companies,
which it then merged into a new parent company, Freedom Group. At which point,
Cerberus was the largest manufacturer of guns and ammunition in the country.
Not long ago, I obtained a partial list of the institutional investors that
committed money to the Cerberus fund. One of the investors, the California State
Teachers’ Retirement System, which put in $500 million, has already announced
that it will divest its gun holdings. “We shouldn’t be investing in things like
that,” says Bill Lockyer, the California state treasurer. He noted that assault
weapons are illegal in California.
Most of the other big investors, however, have kept their heads down. TIAA-CREF,
the financial services giant, committed $147.8 million to the Series IV fund.
(“No comment,” said a spokesman.) The State of Wisconsin Investment Board put up
$100 million. The University of Texas endowment made a $75 million commitment;
the Regents of the University of California kicked in $40 million; the
University of Missouri endowment was an investor. So were the Los Angeles Fire
and Police Pension system, the Indiana Public Retirement System, and the
Pennsylvania Public School Employees’ Retirement System (which kicked in $400
million). And plenty of others.
When I called these investors to ask their rationale for investing in a fund
that financed a gun “roll-up,” as the Cerberus strategy is called, I got three
main responses. The first was that the percentage of their investment that went
to Freedom Group was minuscule. “We have a very small investment in Bushmaster,
which translates to about $1 million,” said Dianne Klein, a spokeswoman for the
University of California system. (She added that the California system was going
to divest its gun holdings.) Jennifer Hollingshead at the University of Missouri
told me that the endowment’s exposure was less than $450,000 — “which represents
about 0.01 percent of our total portfolio.”
The second response was that, as limited partners, the institutional investors
didn’t have a say in how Cerberus invested the money. The fact that Feinberg
decided to buy companies whose guns have repeatedly been used for mass slaughter
was, in effect, his decision to make.
The third was that the core duty of a pension fund or university endowment is to
maximize returns. Nobody made this point more vehemently than Bruce Zimmerman, a
spokesman for the University of Texas Investment Management Company. “We have no
plans to divest,” he said. “We invest strictly on economic considerations, and
we do not take into account social and political consideration.”
Cerberus never tried to hide what it was doing. And why would it? It was proud
of its gun strategy. It held annual meetings with its investors and talked
freely about Freedom Group. Investors were also aware that in 2010, Cerberus had
tried (and failed) to take Freedom Group public.
But until Newtown, none of the investors gave the business a second’s thought.
Aurora, Fort Hood, Wisconsin — and dozens of other mass slaughters — came and
went, and the investors stuck with Cerberus.
Newtown, it is often said, has changed that dynamic, sensitizing the country to
the insanity of its gun laws, and giving gun control advocates hope that reform
might finally be possible. But with the tragedy barely a month old, you can
already feel the pushback. Supporters of the National Rifle Association in
Congress are vowing to resist any effort to tighten the nation’s gun laws.
Gun-friendly state legislators are pushing absurd laws aimed at pre-empting
federal gun legislation. And then there are the investors, who have a unique
ability to push companies to change, if they so choose. (Just recall the South
African boycott.)
What I learned this week is that, Newtown notwithstanding, too many of them have
other priorities. Making money is still more important that saving lives.
January 18,
2013
The New York Times
By WENDY BUTTON
A FEW years
ago, I awoke at 2:30 a.m. to more than a “rapping, rapping at my chamber door.”
It was a full-force pounding of a body trying to break into my little house in
Washington, D.C. It was the sound and scenario that, as a single woman living
alone, I feared more than spiders in the house.
Because I was writing political speeches at the time, my BlackBerry slept on the
pillow beside me. I grabbed it and looked out my bedroom window at the stoop
below. There he was: tall, dark clothes, big. He backed up and then raced to the
door, pounding his body against it. Then he kicked at it the way actors take
boots to the heads of bad guys in the movies.
I dialed 911 and ran downstairs, my 100-pound Newfoundland with me.
I gave the dispatcher my address, let her know that I lived around the corner
from a police station and said, “Please hurry.” She heard the loud noise and
remained on the line with me.
I put the BlackBerry on speaker and pushed a heavy armchair toward the door. I
watched as the wood expanded with each pound. The white paint splintered some.
The deadbolt held at the top, but the bottom half of the door popped open,
letting in the steam heat from the summer night. I took that chair and slammed
it so the side pushed the door back in line with the frame. I held that chair
with everything my 5 foot 3 inches had. My dog sat right by me on the rug,
ready.
“The police are outside,” the dispatcher said.
I let go of the chair’s arms and thanked the woman for staying on the phone with
me. I answered the questions from the police and looked at the drunk man in the
back of the patrol car, kicking at the seats. When they left, I pushed the
couch, chair, coffee table and even a lamp in front of the locked door. I did
that every night for a week until a steel-gated security door was installed.
And then, I did more.
I considered buying a gun. The threat of violence rattles you like that. What
rolled round my head after that dark morning was: what if I hadn’t heard the
noise, what if it’s different next time? While I held that chair with all of my
strength, I wished that I had had a gun because if he had gotten in, then I
could have pointed it at him, maybe deterred him and if necessary pulled the
trigger.
So I looked at guns. Some had mother-of-pearl handles and looked like something
Mae West would use in a movie. Others were Glocks, shotguns and rifles. I had
gone as far as to dial the number of the Metropolitan Police Department’s
firearms registration division and begin the process. Then I stopped and put my
BlackBerry down.
I remembered who I am.
I am one of the millions of people in this country who live with depression. I
knew that in the gun registration form there would be a version of this
question: Have you ever voluntarily or involuntarily been committed to a
hospital? The answer is yes — voluntarily. But because my hospitalization was
years earlier and I wasn’t in treatment at the time, I could have gotten a gun.
My depression appeared for the first time in the late ’90s, right before I began
writing for politicians. It comes and goes like fog. Medicine can help. I have
my tricks to manage and get through it. Sometimes it sticks around for a day or
a week, and sometimes it stays away for a couple of years. But it never leads me
to sleep all day, cry and wear sweat pants like the people in the commercials.
You’d look at me and never know that sometimes my fight against the urge to die
is so tough the only way I get through it is second by second; I live by the
second hand.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 38,364 Americans
lost that fight in 2010 and committed suicide; 19,392 used a gun. No one ever
attempted to break down my door in the early morning again, but I had an episode
when my depression did come back in full force in the early winter of 2009,
after I made a career-ending decision and isolated myself too much; on a January
night in 2010; and again in May 2012, after testifying in the federal criminal
trial of John Edwards, my former boss. If I had purchased that gun and it had
been in my possession, I’m not sure I would have been able to resist and would
be here typing these words.
The other day, the president and the vice president announced their plans to
curb gun violence in the wake of the shooting in Newtown, Conn. I agree with all
of their measures. But I believe they should be bolder and stop walking on
eggshells about what to do with people like me and those not even close to being
like me but still labeled with the crazy term “mentally ill.” The executive
actions the president signed to increase access and treatment are all good,
although the experts will struggle with confidentiality and privacy issues.
But since most people like me are more likely to harm ourselves than to turn
into mass-murdering monsters, our leaders should do more to keep us safe from
ourselves.
Please take away my Second Amendment right. Do more to help us protect ourselves
because what’s most likely to wake me in the early hours isn’t a man’s body
slamming at my door but depression, that raven, tapping, rapping, banging for
relief.
I have a better chance of surviving if I never have the option of being able to
pull the trigger.
January 17,
2013
The New York Times
By MICHAEL COOPER and DALIA SUSSMAN
The
massacre of children at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., appears to be
profoundly swaying Americans’ views on guns, galvanizing the broadest support
for stricter gun laws in about a decade, according to a New York Times/CBS News
poll.
As President Obama tries to persuade a reluctant Congress to pass new gun laws,
the poll found that a majority of Americans — 54 percent — think gun control
laws should be tightened, up markedly from a CBS News poll last April that found
that only 39 percent backed stricter laws.
The rise in support for stricter gun laws stretched across political lines,
including an 18-point increase among Republicans. A majority of independents now
back stricter gun laws.
Whether the Newtown shooting — in which 20 first graders and 6 adults were
killed — will have a long-term effect on public opinion of gun laws is hard to
assess just a month after the rampage. But unlike the smaller increases in
support for gun control immediately after other mass shootings, including after
the 2011 shooting in Tucson that severely wounded Representative Gabrielle
Giffords, the latest polling results suggest a deeper, and possibly more
resonating, shift.
In terms of specific gun proposals being considered, the poll found even wider
support, including among gun owners.
The idea of requiring background checks on all gun purchases, which would
eliminate a provision that allows about 40 percent of guns to be sold by
unlicensed sellers without checks, was overwhelmingly popular. Nine in 10
Americans would favor such a law, the poll found — including 9 in 10 of the
respondents who said that there was a gun in their household, and 85 percent
whose households include National Rifle Association members.
A ban on high-capacity magazines, like the 15- and 30-round magazines that have
been used in several recent mass shootings, was supported by more than 6 in 10,
and by a majority of those who live in households with guns. And just over half
of all respondents, 53 percent, said they would support a ban on some
semiautomatic weapons.
After the mass shootings at Virginia Tech in 2007 and Tucson in 2011, polls
found that 47 percent of Americans favored stricter gun laws.
“I’m from a rural area in the South, I grew up in a gun culture, my father
hunted,” Leslie Hodges, a 64-year-old graphic artist who lives in Atlanta and
has a gun, said in a follow-up interview. “However, I don’t believe being able
to have a gun keeps you from thinking reasonably about changes that would keep
someone from walking into a school and being able to kill 20 children in 20
seconds. I think that we can say, O.K., we want the freedom to have guns in this
country, but there are rules we can all agree to that will make us all safer.”
The poll also gave an indication of the state of play in Washington at the
outset of what is expected to be a fierce debate over the nation’s gun laws, as
the National Rifle Association and several members of Congress, particularly
Republicans in the House, have criticized the gun control measures that Mr.
Obama proposed Wednesday and have vowed to block them.
Americans said that they trusted the president over Republicans in Congress to
make the right decisions about gun laws by a margin of 47 percent to 39 percent,
the poll found.
The National Rifle Association, the powerful gun lobby, is viewed favorably by
nearly 4 in 10 Americans, the poll found. All told, 38 percent said that they
had a favorable opinion of the group, while 29 percent had a negative view and
the rest had no opinion. The N.R.A. was viewed positively by 54 percent of those
with guns in their homes.
But the group is deeply unpopular with people in households without guns, who
were twice as likely to have a negative view of the N.R.A. as a positive one: 41
percent of them expressed a negative view of it, while only 20 percent expressed
a positive one.
The survey underscored how common guns in America are: 47 percent of those
surveyed said that they or someone in their household owned a gun, and 31
percent had close friends or relatives who did. The top reasons cited for owning
guns were protection and hunting.
The national poll was conducted by land lines and cellphones from Jan. 11 to
Jan. 15, before the president announced his proposals to curb gun violence. It
surveyed 1,110 adults and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three
percentage points.
Some gun owners, like Sally Brady, a 69-year-old retired teacher who lives in
Amissville, Va., explained in follow-up interviews why they would support some
restrictions on ammunition or more thorough background checks of all gun buyers.
“I see no reason for high-capacity magazines if you want to go hunting,” said
Mrs. Brady, an independent who owns a hunting rifle. “The purpose of hunting is
sport, and you don’t need a whole big bunch of bullets to shoot a deer or a
squirrel. If you’re that poor of a shot, stay out of the woods.”
Despite the higher support for stricter gun laws, many Americans do not think
the changes would be very effective at deterring violence. While most Americans,
53 percent, said stricter gun laws would help prevent gun violence, about a
quarter said they would help a lot.
Other steps were seen as being potentially more effective. About three-quarters
of those surveyed said that having more police officers or armed security guards
would help prevent mass shootings in public places. And more than 8 in 10 said
better mental health screening and treatment would help prevent gun violence.
Violence in popular culture is seen by a large majority of Americans, 75
percent, as contributing to gun violence in the United States, including about 4
in 10 who say it contributes a lot.
Marjorie
Connelly, Megan Thee-Brenan and Marina Stefan
January 17,
2013
The New York Times
By MICHAEL COOPER
WASHINGTON
— Some mayors spoke about the bad feeling they got with each call that there had
been another shooting in their city. Others described the pain of burying police
officers who had worked for them. Many recalled their attempts to console
grieving families.
So as mayors from around the nation gathered here on Thursday for the 81st
winter meeting of the United States Conference of Mayors, many said they were
heartened by President Obama’s call for new laws to curb gun violence, which
included several measures that the conference had sought for decades. Many said
they planned to urge Congress to enact them.
“Far too often it is the mayor who gets the call about a tragic crime committed
with an illegal gun that’s resulted in a loss of life,” Mayor Michael Nutter of
Philadelphia, the president of the conference, said in a speech. “It may be the
life of a child. A police officer. A young black man. A young woman. It could be
anyone in our cities. But it’s the mayor who visits the family members who have
had their hearts torn out, and the mayor who attends funeral after funeral after
funeral.”
Mayor Ron Littlefield of Chattanooga, Tenn., recalled a police officer who was
shot to death while responding to a robbery at a pawnshop. Mayor Sly James of
Kansas City, Mo., lamented what he called the “slow-motion mass murder” that
claims the lives of more than 100 young people in his city each year. And Mayor
R. T. Rybak of Minneapolis said he had “heard too many eulogies for amazing
people whom I will never know.”
The mayors gave a standing ovation to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who
praised the work they had done over the years on gun issues and urged them to
push for the passage of the president’s proposals.
“There are some who say the most powerful voice in this debate belongs to the
gun lobby and those who demand a stop to these common-sense approaches to save
lives,” Mr. Biden told the Conference of Mayors. “I think they’re wrong.”
“Newtown has shocked the nation,” the vice president said. “The carnage on our
streets is no longer able to be ignored. We’re going to take this fight to the
halls of Congress. We’re going to take it beyond that. We’re going to take it to
the American people.”
Many mayors said they were eager at the prospect that new gun laws might pass.
Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. of Charleston, S.C., who has been in office for more
than three decades, said he hoped that the country would “seize this moment.”
“I know that no police officer wants to be confronted with an assault weapon,”
he said. “They would be out-ammoed. And I think that it’s time for our country
to deal with this, it’s time for Congress to deal with this.”
But even here, at a meeting of a group that has advocated stricter gun laws for
decades, there was not unanimity. Mayor Mick Cornett of Oklahoma City, a
Republican, said he did not believe that the gun control proposals being
discussed would “resolve the problem they’re trying to resolve.”
“There are larger issues out there, and more specific issues, and I really would
like to see us get a better handle on mental health,” he said. “I think the way
that has trended in the last 10 years, the way that filters out into our jails
and types of violence like this needs to be addressed. I wish they’d concentrate
on that.”
One thing the mayors who are seeking new gun laws seem to lack is a high-profile
sitting Republican mayor who agrees with them — the way, say, Mayor Rudolph W.
Giuliani became an influential voice in the debate in the early 1990s when he
expressed his support for an assault weapons ban. (Mr. Giuliani reiterated his
support for such a ban in an interview this month on NY1, the New York cable
news channel.)
But some Republican mayors from smaller cities support tighter gun laws. Mayor
Richard Ward of Hurst, Tex., a Republican, came here to lobby Congress with
Mayors Against Illegal Guns, an advocacy group led by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg
of New York and Mayor Thomas M. Menino of Boston.
Mr. Ward, a gun owner who said he enjoyed “blasting away” at targets, said that
after he joined the group, he got more than 100 letters from constituents who
belonged to the National Rifle Association urging him to leave it.
“The next election I got 90 percent of the vote,” he said, chuckling. “After
that I got 86 percent — they’re gaining on me!”
Mr. Rybak, the Minneapolis mayor, suggested that his counterparts, who buy
thousands of guns to arm their police departments, should use their clout with
the gun industry.
“We buy a boatload of guns in this country,” he said Wednesday at a news
conference called by Mayors Against Illegal Guns. “If the gun lobby comes here
to Congress and starts throwing their weight around about what’s going to happen
with guns, well, the mayors of America are going to stand up: we buy a lot more
guns than almost anybody in this country.”
State
lawmakers in Wyoming didn’t need to hear President Obama’s gun-control proposals
on Wednesday in order to attack them. A week ago, before the White House had
even decided what actions to take, Republicans introduced a bill in the Wyoming
Legislature to block any federal limitation on firearms, such as an assault
weapons ban. A federal agent seeking to enforce such a ban would be guilty of a
felony and face five years in prison.
This ludicrous bill would be laughable if the idea weren’t spreading. A similar
bill filed in Tennessee would also make federal gun enforcement a state crime,
though it’s more “moderate” than Wyoming’s: federal agents doing their jobs
would be charged only with Class A misdemeanors. Inevitably, a bill like
Wyoming’s has been filed in Texas. And, in Mississippi, Gov. Phil Bryant
announced that the state would block federal gun measures. A proposed law in the
state would claim that Washington has no jurisdiction over weapons made in
Mississippi.
There’s no point in telling these fanatics that federal gun restrictions are
completely constitutional, even under the Supreme Court’s latest interpretation
of the Second Amendment, or that federal law pre-empts state law. They already
know these bills will be unenforceable. They are merely legislative
fist-shaking, letting pro-gun voters know that lawmakers share their antipathy
to the Obama administration, and signaling to the National Rifle Association and
other gun-manufacturing lobbies that they are worthy recipients of rich
political contributions.
Already, states like these have done enormous damage to public safety by
acceding to the N.R.A.’s demands for laws that are anything but symbolic. The
gun lobby hasn’t been content with the ability of Americans to lawfully possess
hundreds of millions of handguns and assault rifles. It wants gun owners to be
able to carry these weapons anywhere they want, even among children, concealed
or displayed, and preferably without the annoyance of permits, background
checks, or safety precautions.
After the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007, the N.R.A. defied logic and pushed a
bill to allow guns on college campuses. Thanks to help from the American
Legislative Exchange Council, the conservative organization of state lawmakers
to which the N.R.A. contributes heavily, five states now allow campus guns. Only
nine states prohibit guns at sporting events, and just 26 prohibit them where
alcohol is served.
Wisconsin actually allows guns in the public gallery that looks down on the
state assembly, and the N.R.A. pressured lawmakers last week to keep it that
way. The N.R.A. and the American Legislative Exchange Council were behind the
“stand your ground” laws that allow people to shoot others if they believe they
are in danger, which has led to hundreds of deaths while allowing killers to
walk free.
State gun laws matter. Of the 10 states with the most restrictive laws, seven
also have the lowest gun death rates, according to a study by the Law Center to
Prevent Gun Violence. Similarly, lax gun laws correlate to a high level of gun
deaths.
That’s why it’s good to see several states step up to their responsibilities to
prevent violence instead of following the southern and western states that
appear to be encouraging it. New York was out front this week in passing a ban
on assault weapons and large-capacity magazines, among other measures. A similar
ban is moving ahead in Illinois. New Jersey and Connecticut are moving more
slowly, appointing task forces to make recommendations, but are at least heading
in the right direction.
California is considering legislation that would limit sales of ammunition,
requiring background checks and permits for bullet buyers. Gov. John
Hickenlooper of Colorado, the site of so much carnage, has reversed his
opposition to new restrictions, proposing universal background checks as well as
an overhaul of the state mental health system to identify those who should be
kept away from weapons.
Still, too many states continue to put their citizens at risk as they pledge
ever-greater fealty to the gun manufacturers. It’s time the states became
laboratories for safety rather than violence.
•
This is part of a continuing series
on the epidemic of gun violence and possible
solutions.
Re “Obama to ‘Put Everything I’ve Got’ Into Gun Control” (front page, Jan. 17):
It has become fashionable of late to lament the unbridgeable divide over guns in
our country. President Obama’s critics charge that his recent action on gun
control puts him at odds with all gun owners and enthusiasts.
As a hunter, gun owner and gun control advocate, I believe that the reality is
different. In fact, Americans are far from poles apart on the issue of gun
control. We recognize that all things entail some measure of risk as well as
benefit, and we legislate regulations accordingly. Guns divide us because they
fall in the gray area; we disagree as to whether their utility outweighs their
risk.
This is largely because we lack the data to inform our opinions. For decades,
the gun lobby has done its best to suppress all research on firearms and their
dangers. And as President Obama said on Wednesday, “We don’t benefit from not
knowing the science of this epidemic of violence.” His promise to back research
into this area is encouraging.
Only when we understand the cold, hard facts behind gun violence will we be able
to properly balance Second Amendment rights with the fundamental human right to
peace of mind and safety.
ZACHARY MILLER
Fleetwood, Pa., Jan. 17, 2013
To the Editor:
“Gun Reform for a Generation” (editorial, Jan. 17) holds out hope for an attempt
at sanity in the effort to control gun violence.
I would happily register as a non-gun-owning citizen who is qualified to use a
weapon accurately and safely. This would be no intrusion on my civil liberties.
It would simply note that I have been trained in the safe use of firearms (in my
military days). If there were a reasonably accurate and functioning national
database, it might catch some mentally ill people who applied for or had already
registered for their guns.
No one is trying to take guns away from those who feel they are needed. But
government has every right to know who has what guns and to what use the guns
and ammunition may be put.
As a veteran, I trust our military and our civilian police to intelligently and
openly protect me from “all enemies, foreign and domestic.” They have guns, have
gone through security checks and know how to use them safely. It’s past time for
“gun reform for a generation.”
THEODORE S. VOELKER
New York, Jan. 17, 2013
To the Editor:
Re “I Went After Guns. Obama Can, Too” (Op-Ed, Jan. 17):
While I’m not usually inclined to agree with John Howard, the former Australian
prime minister, he was right to introduce broad and sweeping gun laws in
Australia in 1996. But his article did not address a stark difference between
the thinking of Americans and Australians.
Australians, myself included, simply cannot comprehend this embedded and
unwavering belief in the United States Constitution and the refusal to update
the Second Amendment. As far as I’m aware, there is no desperate need for any
“regulated militia” to exist within the United States in 2013.
The talk of guns is something that isn’t discussed too regularly in Australian
society, and we don’t believe that the government is trying to curb our freedom.
I hope that history looks back in generations to come and sees the Newtown,
Conn., massacre and President Obama as the catalysts that brought about a safer
America.
VINCENT ALVARO
Sydney, Australia, Jan. 17, 2013
To the Editor:
Re “Warning Signs of Violent Acts Often Unclear” (front page, Jan. 16):
While Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York Legislature are truly to be
congratulated on their swift passage of strong gun control legislation, their
efforts to involve mental health professionals as an early warning system may be
overly optimistic.
As your article notes, psychological prediction tools are uncertain, and the new
law is shortsighted as to how such efforts could backfire and make disturbed
people less likely to reveal their intentions. After all, the cornerstone of
psychotherapy is confidentiality.
Without that, very few patients would reveal anything that would risk a report
to the authorities. Much more input from mental health professionals experienced
with severely disturbed and potentially violent patients should be sought in
shaping legislation.
LOUIS J. JACOBSON
Manhasset, N.Y., Jan. 16, 2013
The writer is a former chief psychologist at the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center
and Kingsboro Psychiatric Center.
To the Editor:
Given the problems with requiring mental health professionals to report certain
patients to law enforcement, I propose an alternative. Many commercial companies
and government agencies screen job applicants for sensitive positions using the
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory test.
Gun permit applicants should be required to take this test and achieve passing
scores on the schizophrenia and psychopathic deviation scales.
The proven ability of this test to identify fake responses would eliminate a
flaw in the background check process — falsifying or fudging background
information.
JOHN I. ERDOS
East Hampton, N.Y., Jan. 16, 2013
To the Editor:
Re “White House Denounces Web Video by N.R.A.” (news article, Jan. 17):
The Republican Party desperately needs someone to stand up to the National Rifle
Association and say “enough!” When the children of the president of the United
States are used in a political ad of any kind, a boundary of decency and respect
has been crossed.
To mention his daughters and their school to promote gun freedom reflects an
organization that is no longer just tone deaf to the vast majority of Americans,
but overtly defiant. Until someone in the G.O.P. denounces the organization, the
exodus from the party will continue, and with good reason.
January 17,
2013
The New York Times
By WENDY RUDERMAN and CHRISTOPHER MAAG
The mother
of a 7-year-old student who took a handgun to his public elementary school in
Queens, was arrested on Friday, the police said.
The woman, Deborah Farley, 53, was charged with criminal possession of a weapon
and endangering the welfare of a child along with several other weapons-related
charges.
The police declined to provide further details.
It remained unclear how or why the weapon, a .22-caliber semiautomatic pistol,
was in the second-grade boy’s backpack, but its discovery set off a tense few
hours as the school was placed on lockdown while the police made sure there was
no danger.
The police said that a magazine, separated from the pistol but loaded with 10
bullets, and a plastic bag with 7 to 10 additional rounds of ammunition were
also found in the boy’s bag. Officials had yet to determine whether there was a
bullet in the gun’s chamber, Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief
spokesman, said on Thursday, but the weapon was not fired.
“The question of whether the child saw” the gun and ammunition “and put it in
his backpack, or an older brother hid it there, is still under investigation,”
Mr. Browne said.
The boy arrived at Wave Preparatory Elementary School in Far Rockaway about 7:30
a.m. About two hours later, the boy’s mother learned that he had the gun and she
raced to the school. She told administrators that she needed to take him out of
school for a dentist appointment, Mr. Browne said.
“Initially, it would appear that her intention was just to get the gun back and
get it out of the school,” Mr. Browne said.
But after the mother asked her son if he had a gun in his bag, he told her that
he had given the weapon to a classmate, prompting her to alert the principal.
The school was placed on lockdown just after 10 a.m., Mr. Browne said.
Two school safety officers assigned to Wave Preparatory went to a second-floor
classroom and found the other student. Upon searching his bag, the officers
found a flare gun, but not the .22-caliber pistol, which they discovered moments
later in the first child’s backpack, along with the ammunition and loaded gun
clip, Mr. Browne said. The police believe that the flare gun, which was
unloaded, may also have come from the first boy’s home.
Investigators were trying to determine exactly how the pistol ended up in the
boy’s backpack and how his mother learned it was there.
The boy has two older half brothers, ages 21 and 27, Mr. Browne said.
On Thursday night, two police officers stood at the top of the stairs inside an
apartment building, listed as the mother’s address, above a barbershop on
Cornaga Avenue.
Earlier in the day, students at Wave Preparatory described a nervous few hours
that began when the principal went on the intercom to say that the school was
being locked down and that they were to remain in their classrooms.
“I thought we were going to get killed,” said Javier Ferrufino, an 11-year-old
in fifth grade. “We went to the back of the classroom. I hid with my friend
behind some computers.”
Officials at the school declined to comment.
The city’s Education Department released a statement confirming that a gun had
been found and that the school had been locked down.
When parents arrived in the afternoon to pick up their children, more than a
dozen police officers were at the school.
A notice given to parents said: “Due to an incident today there was need to
secure all students in their classrooms. This procedure is called a lockdown.
Our school-based support team is prepared to assist you with any emotional needs
as a result of today’s lockdown.”
Giovanni Dennis, an 8-year-old third grader, said he hid under his teacher’s
desk after the principal announced the lockdown. His mother, Cecelia Dennis,
said she was upset that she did not know about the lockdown until she arrived to
get Giovanni. “I think they did a good job of locking down the school,” she
said. “But they could have notified the parents earlier.”
Lawrence Clark, 49, went to pick up his stepdaughter Shakyla Howard, 8, at 4:15.
“I live 30 seconds from the school, and I just found out about this five minutes
ago from my brother-in-law’s Facebook page. And he lives in Utica,” Mr. Clark
said. “This school sends out texts and e-mails about all this stupid stuff, like
parent-teacher conferences. But I didn’t find out about this until just now?”
Shakyla said: “They made us turn off the lights and hide behind the teacher’s
desk. I almost cried. I was afraid we were going to get shot.”
Marc Santora
and Jack Styczynski contributed reporting.
January 17,
2013
The New York Times
By WENDY RUDERMAN and CHRISTOPHER MAAG
A handgun
was found in the backpack of a 7-year-old student at a public elementary school
in Queens on Thursday morning, New York City officials said, leading to a tense
few hours as the school was placed on lockdown while the police made sure there
was no danger.
It remained unclear how the gun, a .22-caliber semiautomatic pistol, ended up in
the boy’s backpack. The police said that a magazine, separated from the pistol
but loaded with 10 bullets, and a plastic bag with 7 to 10 additional rounds of
ammunition were also found in the boy’s bag. Officials had yet to determine
whether there was a bullet in the gun’s chamber, Paul J. Browne, the Police
Department’s chief spokesman, said on Thursday, but the weapon was not fired.
“The question of whether the child saw” the gun and ammunition “and put it in
his backpack, or an older brother hid it there, is still under investigation,”
Mr. Browne said.
The boy, a second grader, arrived at Wave Preparatory Elementary School in Far
Rockaway about 7:30 a.m. About two hours later, the boy’s mother learned that he
had the gun and she raced to the school. She told administrators that she needed
to take him out of school for a dentist appointment, Mr. Browne said.
“Initially, it would appear that her intention was just to get the gun back and
get it out of the school,” Mr. Browne said.
But after the mother asked her son if he had a gun in his bag, he told her that
he had given the weapon to a classmate, prompting her to alert the principal.
The school was placed on lockdown just after 10 a.m., Mr. Browne said.
Two school safety officers assigned to Wave Preparatory went to a second-floor
classroom and found the other student. Upon searching his bag, the officers
found a flare gun, but not the .22-caliber pistol, which they discovered moments
later in the first child’s backpack, along with the ammunition and loaded gun
clip, Mr. Browne said. The police believe that the flare gun, which was
unloaded, may also have come from the first boy’s home.
Investigators were trying to determine exactly how the pistol ended up in the
boy’s backpack and how his mother learned it was there. Mr. Browne said that
whether the boy’s mother would face charges was “still under review.”
The boy has two older half brothers, ages 21 and 27, Mr. Browne said.
On Thursday night, two police officers stood at the top of the stairs inside an
apartment building, listed as the mother’s address, above a barbershop on
Cornaga Avenue.
Earlier in the day, students at Wave Preparatory described a nervous few hours
that began when the principal went on the intercom to say that the school was
being locked down and that they were to remain in their classrooms.
“I thought we were going to get killed,” said Javier Ferrufino, an 11-year-old
in fifth grade. “We went to the back of the classroom. I hid with my friend
behind some computers.”
Officials at the school declined to comment.
The city’s Education Department released a statement confirming that a gun had
been found and that the school had been locked down.
When parents arrived in the afternoon to pick up their children, more than a
dozen police officers were at the school.
A notice given to parents said: “Due to an incident today there was need to
secure all students in their classrooms. This procedure is called a lockdown.
Our school-based support team is prepared to assist you with any emotional needs
as a result of today’s lockdown.”
Giovanni Dennis, an 8-year-old third grader, said he hid under his teacher’s
desk after the principal announced the lockdown. His mother, Cecelia Dennis,
said she was upset that she did not know about the lockdown until she arrived to
get Giovanni. “I think they did a good job of locking down the school,” she
said. “But they could have notified the parents earlier.”
Lawrence Clark, 49, went to pick up his stepdaughter Shakyla Howard, 8, at 4:15.
“I live 30 seconds from the school, and I just found out about this five minutes
ago from my brother-in-law’s Facebook page. And he lives in Utica,” Mr. Clark
said. “This school sends out texts and e-mails about all this stupid stuff, like
parent-teacher conferences. But I didn’t find out about this until just now?”
Shakyla said: “They made us turn off the lights and hide behind the teacher’s
desk. I almost cried. I was afraid we were going to get shot.”
Marc Santora
and Jack Styczynski contributed reporting.
January 16,
2013
The New York Times
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
When I
travel abroad and talk to foreigners about the American passion for guns, people
sometimes express a conclusion that horrifies me: in America, life is cheap.
President Obama announced a terrific series of gun-control measures to show that
we do indeed hold life dear. But the fate of these proposals ultimately will
depend on centrist Americans who are torn. They’re troubled by the toll of guns
but also think that it’s reassuring to have a Glock when you hear a floorboard
creak downstairs.
So, to those of you wavering, let me tell you the story of a goose.
I grew up on a farm in Yamhill, Ore., a rural town where nearly every home had
guns. My dad gave me a .22 rifle for my 12th birthday, and I then took an N.R.A.
safety course.
I understand the heartland’s affection for guns, and I share that sense of
familiarity. A farm needs a gun or two to deal with coyotes with a fondness for
lamb, and, frankly, it’s also fun to shoot.
But all those guns didn’t make us safer. Take the time we gave a goose to a
neighbor.
That goose would wander off to a different neighbor’s property and jump into the
watering trough for his sheep. The sheep owner was furious that the water would
be fouled, and one time he was so fed up he threatened to shoot the goose.
He was probably just making a point, but, since he had a gun handy, he pulled it
out and aimed it in the direction of the goose. Seeing this, the goose-owner
(who had come to fetch his bird) saw the need to protect his property and pulled
out his own gun. They faced off — over a goose!
Our neighbors were both good, admirable, law-abiding people, but their guns had
led to a dangerous confrontation. The N.R.A. might say that guns don’t kill
people, geese kill people, but in the absence of firearms they wouldn’t have
menaced each other with axes or hammers.
The sheep-owner’s wife eventually persuaded the men to stand down. Good sense
prevailed, the goose survived, and so did the neighbors.
But I think of that episode because it underscores the role that guns too often
play in our society: an instrument not of protection but of escalation.
Lovers throw plates at each other and then one indignantly reaches for a gun —
maybe just to scare the other. And then, too often, something goes wrong.
One study, reported in Southern Medical Journal in 2010, found that a gun is 12
times more likely to result in the death of a household member or guest than in
the death of an intruder. Another study in 1993 found that gun ownership creates
nearly a threefold risk of a homicide in the owner’s household.
Far too many Americans are like Nancy Lanza, who may have thought that her guns
would make her safer, and then was killed with them. Something similar happened
in Yamhill, where a troubled teenager took a gun that his grandmother owned and
shot her dead. The N.R.A. is right that most guns are used safely, but it’s also
true that guns are more likely to cause tragedies than to avert them.
President Obama said that there have been 900 violent gun deaths since Sandy
Hook, but that was a rare error. He perhaps was speaking of gun homicides only,
but he should also include gun suicides — which are even more common and
certainly qualify as violent firearms deaths.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calculates that each year there
are more than 11,000 gun homicides and nearly 19,000 gun suicides. That’s 30,000
firearms deaths a year in the United States. At that rate, there have already
been some 2,500 violent gun deaths since Sandy Hook.
David Hemenway, a public health specialist at Harvard, says that having a gun at
home increases the risk of suicide in that household by two to four times.
To reduce auto deaths, we’ve taken a public health approach that you might call
“car control” — driver’s licenses, air bags, seat belts, auto registration. The
result is a steady decline in vehicle fatalities so that some time soon gun
deaths are likely to exceed traffic fatalities, for the first time in modern
American history.
There are no magic solutions to the gun carnage in America. But in the same
spirit as what we’ve accomplished to make driving safer, President Obama has
crafted careful, modest measures that won’t solve America’s epidemic of gun
violence but should reduce it.
If we could reduce gun deaths by one-quarter, that would be 7,500 lives saved a
year. Unless life in America really is cheap, that’s worth it.
We usually
cringe when politicians drag ordinary people onstage for their events. But the
four children who appeared with their parents and President Obama in the White
House on Wednesday at his announcement on gun control proposals drove home the
nature of the crisis facing the country. While guns and gun control have been a
subject of debate among politicians and lawyers and lobbyists and pollsters and
political groups in the center and on the fringes, our children have been living
in a free-fire zone for sociopaths with virtually unfettered access to
instruments of mass murder.
It is past time that elected leaders did something about it without worrying, as
Mr. Obama said on Wednesday, about getting “an A grade from the gun lobby.” It
has been a bipartisan betrayal of the public’s safety, the fault of Democrats
and Republicans, and of a string of presidents who have said mournful things
after the mass murders at Columbine and Virginia Tech and Aurora and Newtown but
did not act.
Wednesday was the exception. One month after the Newtown, Conn., murders, Mr.
Obama presented a comprehensive set of initiatives that was, for a change,
structured around what needs to be done and not what political tacticians think
the president could get a dysfunctional Congress to pass. Mr. Obama can be
frustrating at moments like this, and his delivery today was as professorial as
ever. But he stepped up to the broader issue before the nation in remembering
the tragedy at Newtown.
“While there is no law or set of laws that can prevent every senseless act of
violence completely, no piece of legislation that will prevent every tragedy,
every act of evil,” he said, “if there is even one thing we can do to reduce
this violence, if there’s even one life that can be saved, then we’ve got an
obligation to try.”
•
Mr. Obama said he believes the Second Amendment bestows an individual right to
own guns. We have disagreed with that position, but it is now the law as judged
by the Supreme Court, and as Mr. Obama said so passionately, it should be no
impediment to gun regulation.
“Along with our freedom to live our lives as we will comes an obligation to
allow others to do the same,” Mr. Obama said, noting that 900 people have died
in gun violence since Newtown, a vast majority of them on the streets of “big
cities and small towns.”
We have “the right to worship freely and safely; that right was denied to Sikhs
in Oak Creek, Wis.,” Mr. Obama said. “The right to assemble peaceably; that
right was denied shoppers in Clackamas, Ore., and moviegoers in Aurora, Colo.
That most fundamental set of rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness, fundamental rights that were denied to college students at Virginia
Tech and high school students at Columbine and elementary school students in
Newtown; and kids on street corners in Chicago on too frequent a basis to
tolerate.”
Mr. Obama’s announcement was preceded by a blast of propaganda from the far
right that his proposals would be confiscatory and tyrannical. Anyone who was
paying attention to the news in the last couple of weeks knew that this was
nonsense, and the proposals announced on Wednesday were not remotely similar to
what the gun lobby wanted Americans to believe they would be. They will not
limit any law-abiding American’s right to own guns for hunting, or sport, or
collection, or self-protection.
The package is a mix of executive orders intended to tighten and heighten
enforcement of existing gun laws and sweep away ideologically motivated
restrictions on government action against gun violence, and new laws that will
have to be passed by Congress.
•
Mr. Obama’s bills would require universal criminal background checks for all gun
sales, doing away with the loopholes for gun shows, private sales and Internet
sales that have exempted 40 percent of all gun sales from those checks. He
called on Congress to reinstate and toughen the ban on assault weapons that was
allowed to expire in 2004. He wants to restore a 10-round limit on ammunition
magazines and to ban armor-piercing bullets that are used by criminals to kill
police officers. The president asked Congress to pass a $4 billion measure
intended to retain 15,000 police officers who are being laid off as states and
localities react to the recent recession and to budget cuts from Washington.
Mr. Obama also issued executive orders to make the background checks system more
comprehensive and strengthen enforcement of existing gun laws. He is ending a
freeze on research into gun violence at the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention that was imposed by lawmakers at the behest of a gun lobby that is
terrified by the prospect that gun violence could be viewed, as it should be, as
a public health issue. He also signed an order making it clear that doctors and
other health care providers are not prohibited by any federal law from reporting
their patients’ threats of violence and that the health care reform law “does
not prevent doctors from talking to patients about gun safety.”
Mr. Obama and Vice President Joseph Biden Jr. acknowledged that getting any of
the president’s proposals through Congress was going to be a herculean task. Mr.
Biden said, “I also have never seen the nation’s conscience so shaken by what
happened” in Newtown. We have hoped, too, that the murders last month would
finally inspire action, especially if Americans pressured their representatives
in Congress to do something about this crisis.
Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden will have to make good on Mr. Obama’s promise to do
everything they can to fight for these proposals in Congress — and that will
mean twisting arms and making threats to members of his own party as well as to
Republicans.
The gun lobby is focused within the Republican Party, but Democratic lawmakers
have also been to blame for failing to pass meaningful gun regulations. Already,
some Democrats who should be strongest on gun controls are showing familiar
signs of weakness.
Senator Pat Leahy, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, will be needed as a
leader in this effort but has been mumbling about the need to hold extensive
hearings. And Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, was making ominous,
cowardly remarks over the weekend about tailoring whatever the Senate does to
what he thinks could get through a House dominated by the far-right fringe of
the Republican Party. He has started to wriggle away from the idea of an assault
weapons ban, for example.
This is not a time for lawmakers to do the politically safe thing or the
N.R.A.-approved thing, even if they know it is less than needed. It is time to
reach for big ideas and strong laws on gun violence.
•
This is part of a continuing series on the epidemic of gun violence and possible
solutions. Other editorials are at nytimes.com/gunchallenge.
January 16,
2013
The New York Times
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR
WASHINGTON
— The National Rifle Association provoked a furious response from the White
House on Wednesday by releasing a video accusing President Obama of being an
“elitist” and a “hypocrite” because he opposes posting armed guards at schools,
while his daughters have Secret Service protection.
The video also prompted commentary on social media about whether the gun rights
organization might have been too strident, even for its own members.
The White House lashed out at the N.R.A. even as Mr. Obama stood with young
children to unveil broad proposals to create tougher gun laws and use the power
of the presidency to keep guns out of the hands of criminals.
“Most Americans agree that a president’s children should not be used as pawns in
a political fight,” said Jay Carney, the White House press secretary. “But to go
so far as to make the safety of the president’s children the subject of an
attack ad is repugnant and cowardly.”
The N.R.A. video refers to Mr. Obama’s strong reservations about the group’s
idea to prevent school massacres by posting armed guards at all of the nation’s
schools.
“I am skeptical that the only answer is putting more guns in schools,” Mr. Obama
said during a recent interview on the NBC News program “Meet the Press.” “And I
think the vast majority of the American people are skeptical that that somehow
is going to solve our problem.”
The video, posted at a Web site called N.R.A. Stand and Fight, starts by asking,
“Are the president’s kids more important than yours?” The video does not show
Mr. Obama’s daughters, Malia, 14, and Sasha, 11, but it suggests that Mr. Obama
holds their safety to a different standard than he is willing to offer for other
children.
The N.R.A. does not appear to have spent much money paying for the video to run
as an advertisement on television. But it still generated ire among Democrats
and gun control advocates who said it improperly dragged the president’s
daughters into the national debate over guns.
Kim Anderson, a top official with the National Education Association, a
teachers’ union, said the video “demonstrates a level of insensitivity and
disrespect that N.E.A. members wouldn’t tolerate in any classroom in America.”
The video prompted quick declarations of outrage among liberal talk show hosts
and on Twitter, with many people saying that the N.R.A. had gone too far by
referring to the president’s children.
But the video also generated expressions of support, with some conservatives
criticizing the president for standing with children at his event. On Twitter,
N.R.A. backers used the hashtag #standandfight to express support.
“Patriots, we must back the #NRA in their efforts to preserve our liberties,”
one person wrote on Twitter.
The N.R.A. has been the subject of intense criticism in some quarters since the
shooting in Newtown, Conn., last month. Shortly after the massacre, Wayne
LaPierre, the chief executive and vice president of the N.R.A., held a news
conference in which he called for more security in schools and an end to the
“gun-free zones” that are common around school buildings.
“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” Mr.
LaPierre said at the time.
But the organization has said that its rejection of any new restrictions on guns
has led to a surge in new members, suggesting that its influence on Capitol Hill
is not about to wane.
In a second video posted to its Stand and Fight Web site on Wednesday afternoon,
the organization replays parts of Mr. LaPierre’s news conference and suggests
that the “elite” news media and the president are out of touch with everyday
Americans.
“America agrees with Wayne and the N.R.A.,” the four-and-a-half-minute video
says.
January 16,
2013
The New York Times
By PETER BAKER and MICHAEL D. SHEAR
WASHINGTON
— Four days before taking the oath of office, President Obama on Wednesday
staked the beginning of his second term on an uphill quest to pass the broadest
gun control legislation in a generation.
In the aftermath of the Connecticut school massacre, Mr. Obama vowed to rally
public opinion to press a reluctant Congress to ban military-style assault
weapons and high-capacity magazines, expand background checks, and toughen
gun-trafficking laws. Recognizing that the legislative fight could be long and
difficult, the president also took immediate steps by issuing a series of
executive actions intended to reduce gun violence.
Surrounded by children who wrote him letters seeking curbs on guns, Mr. Obama
committed himself to a high-profile and politically volatile campaign behind
proposals assembled by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. that will test the
administration’s strength heading into the next four years. The first big push
of Mr. Obama’s second term, then, will come on an issue that was not even on his
to-do list on Election Day when voters renewed his lease on the presidency.
“I will put everything I’ve got into this,” Mr. Obama said, “and so will Joe.”
The emotionally charged ceremony, attended by family members of those killed at
Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., reflected a decision by the
White House to seize on public outrage to challenge the political power of the
National Rifle Association and other forces that have successfully fought new
gun laws for decades.
The White House is planning a multifaceted effort to sell its plans, including
speeches around the country by the president and vice president and concerted
lobbying by interest groups to influence several dozen lawmakers from both
parties seen as critical to passage. The White House created a Web page with
video testimonials from victims of gun violence and a sign-up for supporters to
help advocate the president’s plan.
“I tell you, the only way we can change is if the American people demand it,”
Mr. Obama said. “And, by the way, that doesn’t just mean from certain parts of
the country. We’re going to need voices in those areas, in those Congressional
districts where the tradition of gun ownership is strong, to speak up and to say
this is important. It can’t just be the usual suspects.”
The N.R.A. made clear that it was ready for a fight. Even before the president’s
speech, it broadcast a provocative video calling Mr. Obama an “elitist
hypocrite” for opposing more armed guards in schools while his daughters had
Secret Service protection. After the speech the group said it would work to
secure schools, fix the mental health system and prosecute criminals but
criticized the president’s other proposals. “Attacking firearms and ignoring
children is not a solution to the crisis we face as a nation,” the N.R.A. said
in a statement. “Only honest, law-abiding gun owners will be affected, and our
children will remain vulnerable to the inevitability of more tragedy.”
Mr. Obama’s plan included 4 major legislative proposals and 23 executive actions
that he initiated on his own authority to bolster enforcement of existing laws,
improve the nation’s database used for background checks and otherwise make it
harder for criminals and people with mental illness to get guns.
Mr. Obama asked Congress to reinstate and strengthen a ban on the sale and
production of assault weapons that passed in 1994 and expired in 2004. He also
called for a ban on the sale and production of magazines with more than 10
rounds, like those used in Newtown and other mass shootings. Mr. Obama’s plan
would require criminal background checks for all gun sales, closing the
longstanding loophole that allows buyers to avoid screening by purchasing
weapons from unlicensed sellers at gun shows or in private sales. Nearly 40
percent of all gun sales are exempt from the system.
He also proposed legislation banning the possession or transfer of
armor-piercing bullets and cracking down on “straw purchasers,” those who pass
background checks and then forward guns to criminals or others forbidden from
purchasing them.
For Mr. Obama, the plan represented a political pivot. While he has always
expressed support for an assault weapons ban, he has made no real effort to pass
it on the assumption that the votes were not there. But he and the White House
are banking on the idea that the Newtown shooting has changed the dynamics. “I
have never seen the nation’s conscience so shaken by what happened at Sandy
Hook,” Mr. Biden said Wednesday. “The world has changed and is demanding
action.”
The future of the plan may depend on how much political energy Mr. Obama puts
behind it, not just to pressure Republicans but to win over Democrats who
support gun rights. Even the White House considers passage of a new assault
weapons ban exceedingly difficult, but there did seem to be some consensus
building for expanding background checks.
Senator Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat and a longtime gun control
supporter, made no mention of the assault weapons ban in a statement but pointed
to the background checks. “If you look at the combination of likelihood of
passage and effectiveness of curbing gun crime,” he said, “universal background
checks is at the sweet spot.”
On the other side, Representative Robert W. Goodlatte, Republican of Virginia,
who is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, dismissed an assault weapons
ban as ineffective. “But in terms of background checks, in terms of keeping
weapons out of the hands of criminals and people who have serious mental health
difficulties, we want to do that, and we would take a close look at that,” he
told C-Span.
Gun control groups said they would campaign hard for the president’s proposals.
Mark Glaze, director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, said his group would focus
on as many as 25 Congressional districts, including those of Democrats and
Republicans. “We will be doing what we can do to make sure that sitting on their
hands is the least safe place to be,” he said.
Senator Bob Casey, Democrat of Pennsylvania, a gun rights supporter, said he
re-evaluated his position after Newtown. “I was shaken by it, and that caused me
to think in a much more probing way about the policy,” he said in an interview.
“If it has anywhere near the impact on others that it did on me, then I think
the ground shifted a lot.”
But Mr. Obama’s plans still generated strong opposition. “Nothing the president
is proposing would have stopped the massacre at Sandy Hook,” said Senator Marco
Rubio, Republican of Florida. “President Obama is targeting the Second Amendment
rights of law-abiding citizens instead of seriously addressing the real
underlying causes of such violence.”
Other Republicans echoed those sentiments. “The Second Amendment is
nonnegotiable,” said Representative Tim Huelskamp of Kansas.
Representative Dan Benishek of Michigan said in a Twitter message: “Let me be
clear, I will fight any efforts to take our guns. Not on my watch.”
Also Wednesday, Mr. Obama nominated B. Todd Jones, the acting director of the
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, to lead an agency that has
not had a Senate-confirmed director since 2006.
The 23 executive actions Mr. Obama signed on Wednesday were largely modest
initiatives to toughen enforcement of existing laws and to encourage federal
agencies and state governments to share more information. Mr. Obama lifted a ban
on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from conducting research on
gun violence and directed that a letter be sent to health care providers saying
doctors may ask patients about guns in their homes.
Several Republicans accused Mr. Obama of flouting Congress. “Using executive
action to attempt to poke holes in the Second Amendment is a power grab,” said
Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa.
January 16,
2013
The New York Times
By JOHN HOWARD
SYDNEY,
Australia
IT is for Americans and their elected representatives to determine the right
response to President Obama’s proposals on gun control. I wouldn’t presume to
lecture Americans on the subject. I can, however, describe what I, as prime
minister of Australia, did to curb gun violence following a horrific massacre 17
years ago in the hope that it will contribute constructively to the debate in
the United States.
I was elected prime minister in early 1996, leading a center-right coalition.
Virtually every nonurban electoral district in the country — where gun ownership
was higher than elsewhere — sent a member of my coalition to Parliament.
Six weeks later, on April 28, 1996, Martin Bryant, a psychologically disturbed
man, used a semiautomatic Armalite rifle and a semiautomatic SKS assault weapon
to kill 35 people in a murderous rampage in Port Arthur, Tasmania.
After this wanton slaughter, I knew that I had to use the authority of my office
to curb the possession and use of the type of weapons that killed 35 innocent
people. I also knew it wouldn’t be easy.
Our challenges were different from America’s. Australia is an even more
intensely urban society, with close to 60 percent of our people living in large
cities. Our gun lobby isn’t as powerful or well-financed as the National Rifle
Association in the United States. Australia, correctly in my view, does not have
a Bill of Rights, so our legislatures have more say than America’s over many
issues of individual rights, and our courts have less control. Also, we have no
constitutional right to bear arms. (After all, the British granted us nationhood
peacefully; the United States had to fight for it.)
Because Australia is a federation of states, the national government has no
control over gun ownership, sale or use, beyond controlling imports. Given our
decentralized system of government, I could reduce the number of dangerous
firearms only by persuading the states to enact uniform laws totally prohibiting
the ownership, possession and sale of all automatic and semiautomatic weapons
while the national government banned the importation of such weapons.
To make this plan work, there had to be a federally financed gun buyback scheme.
Ultimately, the cost of the buyback was met by a special one-off tax imposed on
all Australians. This required new legislation and was widely accepted across
the political spectrum. Almost 700,000 guns were bought back and destroyed — the
equivalent of 40 million guns in the United States.
City dwellers supported our plan, but there was strong resistance by some in
rural Australia. Many farmers resented being told to surrender weapons they had
used safely all of their lives. Penalizing decent, law-abiding citizens because
of the criminal behavior of others seemed unfair. Many of them had been lifelong
supporters of my coalition and felt bewildered and betrayed by these new laws. I
understood their misgivings. Yet I felt there was no alternative.
The fundamental problem was the ready availability of high-powered weapons,
which enabled people to convert their murderous impulses into mass killing.
Certainly, shortcomings in treating mental illness and the harmful influence of
violent video games and movies may have played a role. But nothing trumps easy
access to a gun. It is easier to kill 10 people with a gun than with a knife.
Passing gun-control laws was a major challenge for my coalition partner: the
rural, conservative National Party. All of its members held seats in nonurban
areas. It was also very hard for the state government of Queensland, in
Australia’s northeast, where the National Party was dominant, and where the
majority of the population was rural.
The leaders of the National Party, as well as the premier of Queensland,
courageously supported my government’s decision, despite the electoral pain it
caused them. Within a year, a new populist and conservative political party, the
One Nation Party, emerged and took many votes from our coalition in subsequent
state and federal elections; one of its key policies was the reversal of the gun
laws.
For a time, it seemed that certain states might refuse to enact the ban. But I
made clear that my government was willing to hold a nationwide referendum to
alter the Australian Constitution and give the federal government constitutional
power over guns. Such a referendum would have been expensive and divisive, but
it would have passed. And all state governments knew this.
In the end, we won the battle to change gun laws because there was majority
support across Australia for banning certain weapons. And today, there is a wide
consensus that our 1996 reforms not only reduced the gun-related homicide rate,
but also the suicide rate. The Australian Institute of Criminology found that
gun-related murders and suicides fell sharply after 1996. The American Journal
of Law and Economics found that our gun buyback scheme cut firearm suicides by
74 percent. In the 18 years before the 1996 reforms, Australia suffered 13 gun
massacres — each with more than four victims — causing a total of 102 deaths.
There has not been a single massacre in that category since 1996.
Few Australians would deny that their country is safer today as a consequence of
gun control.
January 16,
2013
The New York Times
By ERICA GOODE
One
obstacle President Obama may face in proposing a new federal ban on assault
weapons could lie in the use of the term “assault weapon” itself.
The label, applied to a group of firearms sold on the civilian market, has
become so politicized in recent decades that where people stand on the gun issue
can often be deduced by whether they use the term.
On Internet forums there is perhaps no more fiercely discussed topic than the
question of what constitutes an assault weapon. And some argue that it would be
impossible to come up with a definition comprehensive enough to effectively
remove the weapons from the market.
Advocates of an assault weapons ban argue that the designation should apply to
firearms like those used in the Newtown, Conn., shootings and other recent mass
killings — semiautomatic rifles with detachable magazines and “military”
features like pistol grips, flash suppressors and collapsible or folding stocks.
Such firearms, they contend, were designed for the battlefield, where the goal
is to rapidly kill as many enemy soldiers as possible, and they have no place in
civilian life.
“When the military switched over to this assault weapon, the whole context
changed,” said Tom Diaz, formerly of the Violence Policy Center, whose book
about the militarization of civilian firearms, “The Last Gun,” is scheduled for
publication in the spring. “The conversation became, ‘Is this the kind of gun
you want in the civilian world?’ And we who advocate for regulation say, ‘No,
you do not.’ ”
But Second Amendment groups — and many firearm owners — heatedly object to the
use of “assault weapon” to describe guns that they say are routinely used in
target shooting and hunting. The term, they argue, should be used only for
firearms capable of full automatic fire, like those employed by law enforcement
and the military. They prefer the term “tactical rifle” or “modern sporting
rifle” for the semiautomatic civilian versions.
They argue that any attempt to ban “assault weapons” is misguided because the
guns under discussion differ from many other firearms only in their styling.
“The reality is there’s very little difference between any sporting firearm and
a so-called assault weapon,” said Steven C. Howard, a lawyer and firearms expert
in Lansing, Mich.
The semantics of the assault weapon debate are so fraught that they can trip up
even those who oppose a ban.
Phillip Peterson, a gun dealer in Indiana and the author of “Gun Digest Buyer’s
Guide to Assault Weapons” (2008), said he had fought with his publishers over
the use of the term in the title, knowing that it would only draw the ire of the
gun industry.
After the passage of the 1994 federal ban on assault weapons, Mr. Peterson said,
the gun industry “moved to shame or ridicule” anyone who used “assault weapon”
to describe anything other than firearms capable of full automatic fire.
His instinct proved correct: The National Rifle Association refused to sell the
book on its Web site, he said. So in 2010, Mr. Peterson produced another version
that contained “90 percent of the same info,” but was retitled “Gun Digest
Buyer’s Guide to Tactical Rifles.” That book made it onto the N.R.A. site, he
said.
Equally controversial are the definitions for which firearms should qualify as
assault weapons. Most assault weapons bans have been primarily aimed at rifles
like the AR-15, a semiautomatic version of the military’s M-16 sold on the
civilian market, although certain pistols and shotguns have also been included.
The most basic criteria have to do with a firearm’s ability to fire multiple
rounds quickly. Because of this, the firearms included under any assault weapons
ban are usually semiautomatic, meaning that a new round is automatically
reloaded into the chamber but is not fired until the trigger is pulled again.
The weapons also have detachable magazines, allowing them to fire 10, 20, 30
rounds or more without the need to insert a new magazine.
After that, however, the definition becomes more difficult. In calling for a
renewed ban, Mr. Obama on Wednesday singled out “military style” weapons.
Those could include features like a pistol grip, designed to allow a weapon to
be fired from the hip; a collapsible or folding stock, which allows the weapon
to be shortened and perhaps concealed; a flash suppressor, which keeps the gun’s
user from being blinded by muzzle flashes; a muzzle brake, which helps decrease
recoil; and a threaded barrel, which can accept a silencer or a suppressor.
Bayonet lugs or grenade launchers are also sometimes included.
But there is disagreement about which features are worrisome enough to include
in a ban. And existing state bans differ in how many features they allow.
Advocates for an assault weapons ban argue that the military features were
intended to enhance the firearms’ ability to kill.
But many gun owners argue that they are simply “cosmetic.” The owners reel off
makes and models of firearms — rifles by Saiga and Remington, for example — that
are mechanically identical to the weapons singled out by bans but that do not
have pistol grips or other styling features.
Previous attempts to ban these weapons proved problematic. Loopholes in the 1994
federal assault weapons ban rendered it virtually useless, many believe. And
even in states with meticulously written bans, manufacturers have managed to
find ways to work around the restrictions.
In the end, said George Lakoff, a professor of cognitive science and linguistics
at the University of California, Berkeley, the arguments often come down to
language. “No matter what language you use about guns, it’s going to be a
problem because it’s not just about guns, it’s about personal identity,” he
said.
Yet as Mr. Peterson noted in his buyer’s guide, it was the industry that adopted
the term “assault weapon” to describe some types of semiautomatic firearms
marketed to civilians.
“Assault rifle” was first used to describe a military weapon, the Sturmgewehr,
produced by the Germans in World War II. The Sturmgewehr — literally “storm
rifle,” a name chosen by Adolf Hitler — was capable of both semiautomatic and
full-automatic fire. It was the progenitor for many modern military rifles.
But the term “assault rifle” was expanded and broadened when gun manufacturers
began to sell firearms modeled after the new military rifles to civilians. In
1984, Guns & Ammo advertised a book called “Assault Firearms,” which it said was
“full of the hottest hardware available today.”
“The popularly held idea that the term ‘assault weapon’ originated with antigun
activists, media or politicians is wrong,” Mr. Peterson wrote. “The term was
first adopted by the manufacturers, wholesalers, importers and dealers in the
American firearms industry to stimulate sales of certain firearms that did not
have an appearance that was familiar to many firearm owners. The manufacturers
and gun writers of the day needed a catchy name to identify this new type of
gun.”
The broad
gun control bill approved Tuesday by the New York Legislature substantially
strengthens the state’s gun control laws and, if vigorously enforced, could make
New York one of the toughest places in the country to buy, sell or own dangerous
weapons. But the bill also contains troubling provisions involving mental health
and public access to important records that should be revisited and reworked.
The bill was muscled through with disturbing speed after days of secret
negotiations and a late-night vote Monday by state senators who had barely read
the complicated measure before passing it. Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who signed it into
law on Tuesday, obviously calculated that it was necessary to move quickly
before gun advocates could marshal serious opposition. Even so, Albany’s
customarily top-down and largely undemocratic legislative methods were
inappropriate for such a complex bill.
The law has several strong provisions. It expands the current ban on assault
weapons to include any semiautomatic weapon with a detachable magazine and one
military-style feature (instead of two). It limits magazine clips to 7 rounds of
ammunition instead of the current 10.
The law will require gun licenses to be renewed every five years; in some
counties, a single license can last a lifetime. Background checks will be
required at all gun sales, including most private ones, with an exception for
immediate members of a gun-owner’s family. There will be a new electronic
database for gun permits, and a new registry for ammunition sales that will
allow the authorities to track people who are buying cartridges in unusually
high volumes.
Some sections of the law, however, were not fully vetted in the rush. One
provision asks health care professionals — physicians, psychologists, registered
nurses or licensed clinical social workers — to report to local health care
officials when they have reason to believe that patients could harm themselves
or others. Such a report, after wending its way through other bureaucratic
layers, and after crosschecking against a database of gun owners, could
eventually authorize police to confiscate firearms owned by a dangerous patient.
The provision would seem to raise significant legal questions. It is not clear
who has the final authority to order the seizure, or at what point in the
process the gun owner can appeal. The concept would also threaten established
norms about doctor-patient relationships.
In addition, the law unwisely restricts public access to gun license records, an
overreaction to a suburban newspaper’s recent publication of names and addresses
of licensees in Westchester and Rockland Counties. And the law requires safe
storage of guns only if the house is being shared with a convicted criminal or
someone else not authorized to have a gun license. Safe storage of guns should
be a requirement for everyone.
Mr. Cuomo’s law is an important and timely step toward sane gun control. But it
needs a few fixes before it can become a national model.
January 15,
2013
The New York Times
By MICHAEL COOPER, MICHAEL LUO and MICHAEL D. SHEAR
A new
federal assault weapons ban and background checks of all gun buyers, which
President Obama is expected to propose on Wednesday, might have done little to
prevent the massacre in Newtown, Conn., last month. The semiautomatic rifle that
Adam Lanza used to shoot 20 schoolchildren and 6 adults complied with
Connecticut’s assault weapons ban, the police said, and he did not buy the gun
himself.
But another proposal that Mr. Obama is expected to make could well have slowed
Mr. Lanza’s rampage: banning high-capacity magazines, like the 30-round
magazines that the police said Mr. Lanza used, which have been factors in
several other recent mass shootings.
Those shootings, whose victims have included a member of Congress in Arizona,
moviegoers in Colorado and first graders in Connecticut, have horrified the
country and inspired Washington to embark on the most extensive re-examination
of the nation’s gun laws in a generation. But some of the proposals that Mr.
Obama is expected to make at the White House on Wednesday, which are likely to
include a call for expanded background checks, a ban on assault weapons and
limits on high-capacity clips, will be intended not only to prevent high-profile
mass shootings, but also to curb the more commonplace gun violence that claims
many thousands more lives every year.
“The president has made clear that he intends to take a comprehensive approach,”
Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said Tuesday. Mr. Carney said the
proposals were aimed, broadly, at what he called “the scourge of gun violence in
this country.”
While semiautomatic rifles were used in several recent mass shootings, including
those in Newtown and in Aurora, Colo., where 12 people were killed at a movie
theater in July, a vast majority of gun murders in the United States are
committed with handguns.
In 2011, 6,220 people were killed by handguns, and 323 by rifles, according to
the Federal Bureau of Investigation. So while the administration is expected to
try to restrict some types of assault weapons, it is also focusing on ways to
keep more commonly used firearms out of the hands of dangerous criminals and
people with mental illness.
Of course, the administration must keep political realities in mind as it drafts
its proposals: getting any new gun regulations through Congress, particularly
through the Republican-controlled House, is seen as difficult. So the White
House must not only weigh the effectiveness of its proposals, but also their
political feasibility.
The top priority of many gun control groups is to expand the background checks
so that they apply to all buyers. All federally licensed firearms dealers are
required to run background checks through the computerized databases that
comprise the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. But the
requirement does not cover guns that are sold at gun shows and in other private
sales, which account for about 40 percent of gun purchases in the country.
Better background checks would have had little effect on several recent mass
shootings — both Mr. Lanza, in Connecticut, and Jacob T. Roberts, who opened
fire on a mall full of Christmas shoppers a few days earlier in Clackamas, Ore.,
were using weapons that they did not buy. But gun control groups say that
expanded background checks would help keep guns out of the hands of dangerous
criminals and people with mental illness, and would go a long way toward
increasing public safety and could help prevent mass shootings.
Gun control groups have encouraged the administration to look beyond mass
shootings. When the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a leading gun
control group, issued its recommendations to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.,
who has been developing the administration’s proposals, it urged him to develop
ideas that could help curb everyday gun violence as well.
“Every death is a tragedy, whether in a mass shooting that horrifies our entire
nation, or one of the 32 gun murders or 90 gun deaths in our communities and
homes every day,” it wrote.
With many of the proposals in Washington expected to be somewhat limited in
scope, some public health researchers and gun control advocates said it was
difficult to know what impact the recommendations might have.
“To have a huge, huge effect, we’re going to need a sea change in not just the
laws but social norms,” David Hemenway, the director of the Harvard Injury
Control Research Center.
American civilians have 250 million to 300 million firearms, said Dr. Garen J.
Wintemute, the director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the
University of California, Davis. “Those firearms are not going to go away
anytime soon,” he said.
More serious steps — like those taken by Australia, which reacted to a 1996 mass
shooting by banning the sale, importation and possession of semiautomatic rifles
and by removing 700,000 guns from circulation — are seen as politically
untenable. In the 18 years before the new gun laws, there were 13 mass shootings
in Australia, and in the decade afterward, there were none, according to a 2006
article in Injury Prevention, a journal.
But expanding background checks in the United States would help disrupt criminal
gun markets, a crucial driver of urban gun violence, Dr. Wintemute said. While
there has been a debate over how effective background checks have been, Dr.
Wintemute pointed to studies of prisoners incarcerated for crimes involving
firearms that have found that at least 80 percent of them obtained their guns
through private transfers.
“If we eliminate those, I think it’s completely reasonable to expect a
substantial drop in crimes related to firearms,” he said.
When a two-day meeting on reducing gun violence wrapped up at Johns Hopkins
University on Tuesday afternoon, researchers made some suggestions that have
been the subject of relatively little public discussion in Washington.
They called, for example, for expanding the categories of people who are
prohibited from buying firearms to include those who have committed violent
misdemeanors. And they called for banning not just the sale of high-capacity
magazines, but their possession as well.
Other measures being discussed in Washington include strengthening federal laws
to combat gun trafficking. Gun control advocates argued that other steps were
needed as well, like limiting the number of guns that can be bought by an
individual every month.
“If you want to dam the river, you have to address all the channels,” said Josh
Horwitz, the executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. “You’re
not going to stop it until you dam the whole river.”
Some people who met with Mr. Biden as he developed his recommendations said that
they hoped the final proposals would address gun violence in its many forms.
“I think there was a recognition that we’re not going to stop every mass
shooting or gun homicide,” said Hildy Saizow, the president of Arizonans for Gun
Safety, who met with Mr. Biden last week.
“But we can go a long way to take action that would result in fewer gun deaths,
fewer gun injuries. This is not just a narrow perspective that the task force is
addressing, not just mass shootings or school shootings.”
Michael Cooper
and Michael Luo reported from New York,
and Michael D.
Shear from Washington.
Ray Rivera
contributed reporting from New York,
Dan Frosch
from Denver and Kirk Johnson from Seattle.
The next
few weeks represent a once-in-a-generation opportunity to harden the nation’s
gun laws and reduce the threat of rapid-fire violence in America. A month after
the slaughter of 20 children and seven adults in Newtown, Conn., Vice President
Joseph Biden Jr.’s commission is about to present a series of recommendations
for new laws, and it is vital that his panel gets it right and that Congress
immediately takes action on its report.
Federal laws on guns have been kept so lax, for so long, that the Biden panel
could suggest scores of ways to improve public safety. But there are a few
policies that clearly have to be in any serious legislative package, the first
two of which were endorsed on Monday by President Obama: requiring criminal and
mental-health background checks on every gun buyer, including sales from
individuals; a ban on military-style assault weapons and high-capacity
ammunition magazines; a strong statute prohibiting gun trafficking; and an end
to the hobbling of the federal agency that enforces gun laws.
The need for background checks on every gun buyer has never been greater, now
that the Internet has made it easy for private individuals to buy and sell guns
without screening. The reason that both the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun
Violence and Mayors Against Illegal Guns have made universal background checks
their top priority is that 40 percent of gun sales now take place privately,
including most guns that are later used in crimes.
Requiring background checks at gun shows, parking-lot sales and Web sites would
reduce the cash-and-carry anonymity of millions of gun transactions, putting
buyers on notice that their sale is being recorded and can be traced. It is
largely supported by legitimate gun dealers, who already have to conduct the
checks and have long grumbled about competition from those who do not. And it
would have no effect on law-abiding buyers who want a hunting rifle or a handgun
to keep at home.
Such a law should be supplemented by a presidential order requiring federal and
state agencies to contribute to the background check system with criminal and
mental health information. Federal prosecutors, who have a dismal record of
pursuing charges against those who lie on a gun application, need to enforce the
system vigorously.
The assault weapons ban that expired in 2004 should be renewed and tightened,
with a special emphasis on prohibiting magazines that hold more than 10 rounds.
The millions who already own such weapons — unnecessary for hunting or
protection — should be required to register them and submit to a background
check to reduce the mass killing that produced this agonized debate.
A new law is needed to crack down on the trafficking of guns that an individual
has reason to know will be used in a crime, increasing penalties and making it
easier to track corrupt gun dealers. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms
and Explosives needs to have a permanent director, more financing and expanded
authority to inspect dealers, and an end to restrictions that keep it from
tracking all gun sales and retaining background-check data. Some lawmakers are
already talking about focusing on the background checks and bowing to gun
lobby’s opposition to an assault weapons ban. That shouldn’t stop the
administration and its allies from demanding that all these provisions be passed
immediately. With the deaths of Newtown’s children still so fresh, the public
will be repulsed by lawmakers who stand aside and do nothing.
January 14,
2013
The New York Times
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and JENNIFER STEINHAUER
WASHINGTON
— President Obama this week will embrace a comprehensive plan to reduce gun
violence that will call for major legislation to expand background checks for
gun purchases and lay out 19 separate actions the president could take by
invoking the power of his office, lawmakers who were briefed on the plan said
Monday.
Lawmakers and other officials said that the president could use a public event
as soon as Wednesday to signal his intention to engage in the biggest
Congressional fight over guns in nearly two decades, focusing on the heightened
background checks and including efforts to ban assault weapons and their
high-capacity clips. But given the difficulty of pushing new rules through a
bitterly divided Congress, Mr. Obama will also promise to act on his own to
reduce gun violence wherever possible.
Actions the president could take on his own are likely to include imposing new
limits on guns imported from overseas, compelling federal agencies to improve
sharing of mental health records and directing the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention to conduct research on gun violence, according to those briefed
on the effort.
White House aides believe Mr. Obama can also ratchet up enforcement of existing
laws, including tougher prosecution of people who lie on their background
checks.
At a news conference on Monday, exactly one month after the school massacre in
Newtown, Conn., Mr. Obama said a task force led by Vice President Joseph R.
Biden Jr. had “presented me now with a list of sensible, common-sense steps that
can be taken to make sure that the kinds of violence we saw at Newtown doesn’t
happen again. He added: “My starting point is not to worry about the politics.
My starting point is to focus on what makes sense, what works.”
The administration’s strategy reflects the uncertainty of gun politics in
America and the desire by White House officials to address the Connecticut
shooting while also confronting the broader deficiencies in the country’s
criminal justice and mental health systems.
By proposing to use the independent power of his office, Mr. Obama is inviting
political attacks by gun owners who have already expressed fear that he will
abuse that authority to restrict their rights. Representative Steve Stockman,
Republican of Texas, threatened Monday to file articles of impeachment if the
president seeks to regulate guns with executive orders. “I will seek to thwart
this action by any means necessary,” Mr. Stockman said in a statement.
White House officials and Democratic lawmakers said that there are clear limits
to what the president can and cannot do, and that Mr. Obama has no plans to push
beyond what he would need Congressional authority to accomplish.
On Capitol Hill, Mr. Obama’s legislative effort will face intense opposition
from gun rights groups, including the National Rifle Association, and the
lawmakers they support with millions of dollars at election time and who see gun
rights as a defining issue in their districts. But Mr. Obama’s allies see a rare
opening for tighter gun rules after Congress has shied away from the politically
charged issue for years.
“He’s putting together a pretty comprehensive list of what could be done to make
a difference in this area,” said Representative Mike Thompson of California, who
is heading a Democratic task force in the House. “There’s some huge, huge holes
in the process that are set up to keep communities safe. We need to close those
holes.”
Representative Jackie Speier, Democrat of California, said Vice President Biden
had informed lawmakers during a two-hour briefing on Monday that there are “19
independent steps that the president can take by executive order.” Ms. Speier
said the executive action is part of the “most comprehensive gun safety effort
in a generation.”
Rahm Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago and Mr. Obama’s former chief of staff, joined
the debate on Monday and said that the president should “clear the table” by
doing whatever he can administratively so small issues do not get in the way of
the bigger legislative fights over access to guns.
“Don’t allow a side issue to derail these things,” Mr. Emanuel said during a
discussion about gun policy. While many gun control advocates are eager to
harness what they believe is a ripe moment in American life for new and robust
restrictions on the kinds of guns that were used in Newtown, there is an
emerging consensus on Capitol Hill and among gun education groups that improving
the system of background check legislation that currently exempts private gun
sales and gun shows is the most viable legislative route to pursue.
“The assault-weapons ban is a low priority relative to the other measures the
Biden task force is considering,” Matt Bennett, a spokesman for Third Way, a
left-leaning research group, said after hearing from Mr. Biden last week.
“Political capital in the gun debate only goes so far. We think it should be
spent on things that would have the greatest impact on gun violence, like
universal background checks and cracking down on gun trafficking.”
Any efforts to get gun legislation through Congress will require an enormous and
ceaseless pressure campaign by the administration. Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden are
likely to keep up the pressure on lawmakers with public events in the weeks and
months ahead, according to those familiar with the White House strategy.
Scores of senators, including many Democrats, will be wary of voting on any
effort to curb access to guns or ammunition. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the
Democratic leader, is a longtime supporter of gun rights. Still, gun legislation
is likely to begin in the Senate because the House is controlled by Republicans,
many of whom oppose new restrictions on guns.
With fiscal issues continuing to dominate the political calendar for the next
several weeks, White House officials and lawmakers say the gun safety effort is
likely to be debated in separate pieces of legislation that could be introduced
over time. In coming weeks, Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York,
will reintroduce a measure that would require every gun buyer, with limited
exceptions, to undergo a background check and would force states to feed all
relevant data into the background check system so those with criminal
convictions and the mentally ill could be flagged.
NEWTOWN,
Conn. — Many people here still remember the huge green footprints that once led
up to the front entrance of Sandy Hook Elementary School. Children were told
that they had been left by the Jolly Green Giant.
That was one of the many fond memories of the school, memories that connect
families and generations. Now, as this community of 27,000 struggles to recover
from a mass shooting that killed 20 first graders and six staff members at the
school, public officials and residents have begun preparing for the painful
decision over what to do with the building.
Residents packed into the auditorium of Newtown High School on Sunday afternoon
for the first of what might be several meetings to discuss the school’s future.
Opinions varied sharply about whether to reopen the school, renovate it, turn it
into a shrine or a park, or raze it.
Stephanie Carson, who has a son who was at the school on Dec. 14, the day of the
shooting, said it should be knocked down.
“I cannot ask my son or any of the people at the school to ever walk back into
that building, and he has asked to never go back,” she said. “I know that there
are children who were there who have said they would like to go back to Sandy
Hook. However, the reality is we have to be so careful. Even walking down the
halls, the children become so scared at any unusual sound. I don’t see how it
would be possible.”
A month after the shooting, Sandy Hook Elementary remains a crime scene. Few
have been allowed past the police cars and barricades still guarding the roadway
and into the building where Adam Lanza, for reasons still unknown, went on a
horrifying killing spree before fatally shooting himself.
Earlier this month, the school’s 400 students began attending a school that had
been shuttered in nearby Monroe, Conn. That building was reopened after the
hallways and classrooms were remade to resemble the ones they had left behind.
Audra Barth, the mother of a third grader and a first grader at Sandy Hook, was
among the parents who said closing the school would further rob children who had
already lost so much.
“My children have had everything taken away from them,” she said. Referring to
the numerous gifts, including candy, that had been donated since the shooting,
she added, “Chocolate is great, but they need their school.”
If there was a unifying theme among parents and others in Sunday’s comments, it
was that the children should be kept together, at least for the next several
years, and not split apart into separate schools. The concerns, raised by many
of the parents who spoke, stemmed from discussions last year — before the
shooting — in which school officials proposed closing down an elementary school
and shuffling the district. E. Patricia Llodra, Newtown’s first selectwoman,
said that proposal was no longer being considered.
Discussions over the school building’s fate seemed to be the latest step in the
community’s slow path to recovery, coming after the Public Works Department
began picking up the bounty of flowers, teddy bears, paper angels and other
tributes that had accumulated on the roadsides around the school.
More meetings will come when the town begins looking at how to honor the victims
with a permanent memorial.
Ideas on Sunday included turning the school into a planetarium where children
could gaze at the stars and converting it into a center for peace education.
Newtown is the latest in a growing list of communities that have been thrust
into making such a choice.
After two students killed 12 other students and a teacher at Columbine High
School in Colorado in April 1999, that community ultimately decided to keep that
school open. Some $2.6 million, much of it donated, was spent on renovations
that included turning the library, where the gunmen ended their rampage, into a
glass atrium with a canopy of evergreens and aspens painted on the ceilings.
At Virginia Tech, where 32 people were gunned down by a student in April 2007,
the building where 30 of the killings occurred was turned into the Center for
Peace Studies and Violence Prevention.
Mergim Bajraliu, 17, a senior at Newtown High School who attended Sandy Hook
Elementary and whose sister, a fourth grader, was there the day of the shooting,
urged the town to follow the examples of Columbine and Virginia Tech.
“Despite everything that happened to my sister, both her and I have amazing
memories of that school,” he said on Sunday, recalling sack races and visits to
the nearby firehouse. “I think children in the future deserve the same youthful
memories I have.”
January 13,
2013
The New York Times
By THOMAS KAPLAN
TONAWANDA,
N.Y. — Harold W. Schroeder’s first gun was his late father’s prized Winchester
12-gauge shotgun, bequeathed to him when he turned 16. In college, Mr. Schroeder
and his classmates kept guns in their fraternity house so they could hunt
pheasant.
On Friday night, Mr. Schroeder, now 77, gathered with friends at the Mohawk
Rifle and Pistol Club, slipping .22-caliber rounds, one after another, into the
magazine for his Smith & Wesson Model 41 pistol. He fixed his eyes on a
quarter-sized bull’s-eye hanging 50 feet away and pulled the trigger.
Mr. Schroeder, known to all as Budd, is an accomplished shooter; for decades he
has been a regular at pistol competitions in western New York. And for just as
long, he has devoted himself to protecting gun rights in New York State, joining
a grass-roots organization in 1966 to fight measures proposed in the wake of
President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, and fighting gun control laws ever
since.
Now, in the aftermath of last month’s massacre of first graders in Newtown,
Conn., Mr. Schroeder is pleading with lawmakers, in what he acknowledges is an
uphill battle, to block what his group has deemed the biggest threat to New York
gun owners since the 1960s. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, propelled into action by
recent mass shootings, has proposed what he says would be the nation’s toughest
package of gun laws, including an expanded ban on assault weapons and
high-capacity magazines. The Legislature appears prepared to go along, perhaps
as soon as this week. Aides to Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, and state lawmakers
continued to negotiate on Sunday.
Mr. Schroeder’s efforts are emblematic of those by gun rights advocates around
the country, who are desperately trying to head off what they view as
ill-advised restrictions that they do not believe would solve the problem of gun
violence. Mr. Schroeder, a retired park superintendent who teaches gun-safety
instruction and is a former board member of the National Rifle Association, said
that gun owners felt demonized in the wake of the shooting and that they looked
upon what happened in Newtown in the same way as those who had never fired a
gun.
“I’m every bit as angry as they are,” he said. “It’s an atrocity that these
things happen — I mean, a real atrocity. But somewhere along the way the system
broke down. Now, this kid obviously had mental problems, but it wasn’t brought
to the attention of people who could help him or put him away.”
Mr. Schroeder is more than 250 miles and a world away from the State Capitol,
but he has been meeting with lawmakers from western New York, many of whom he
has known for years, in an effort to persuade them to stand firm against Mr.
Cuomo’s proposals. He writes a weekly political column for two local newspapers
that emphasizes the Second Amendment.
He is chairman of the board of directors of the Shooters Committee on Political
Education, or SCOPE, which has about 3,000 members and 200 affiliated gun clubs
across the state. The group is one element of the loose coalition of groups and
individuals that make up the gun lobby in Albany — there are also the
professional lobbyists who represent gun manufacturers; the N.R.A. and its state
affiliate, the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association; and bloggers, talk
show hosts and local groups all trying to influence the debate. And there are
sympathetic lawmakers, many of them from rural parts of the state.
“Downstate, we’re a bunch of criminals,” Mr. Schroeder said. “Upstate, it’s a
different story.”
Mr. Schroeder traces the movement back to the fight over the federal Gun Control
Act of 1968, enacted after the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin
Luther King Jr.
“Ever since that bill passed, which was supposed to be the be-and-end-all of gun
control, that was just the tip of the iceberg,” Mr. Schroeder said. “And from
there on we’ve been doing the fight ever since.”
Every legislative session brings a new fight: he has battled year after year
with the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, a Manhattan Democrat, whose chamber
has passed numerous new gun controls, and clashed bitterly with Gov. George E.
Pataki, a Republican, who won a package of gun laws in 2000 (and, Mr. Schroeder
said, “sold out the gun owners for a 15-minute press conference.”)
“I don’t think we’ve ever had a pro-gun governor in our lifetimes,” he said. Mr.
Schroeder used his first Winchester shotgun for bird hunting. An uncle gave him
a .22-caliber rifle, perfect for shooting rats at a nearby railroad dump. In
college, he joined the Army Reserve as a bandsman, playing the alto saxophone,
and was later called into active duty and sent to Fort Bragg, N.C., where he
made the pistol team. (“It saved me from digging foxholes,” he said.) Some of
Mr. Schroeder’s concerns are practical: he says New York already has enough
restrictions on guns, and pulls out a plastic binder containing Article 265 of
the State Penal Law, on firearms and dangerous weapons, to demonstrate how
voluminous the existing laws already are. Some concerns are more philosophical:
he argues that an expanded ban on assault weapons is simply a wrongheaded
approach to reducing violence.
He said Mr. Cuomo and others were using the Newtown violence to push measures
that would take them toward a goal they held long before any recent mass
shootings — banning guns altogether. He also said upstanding, taxpaying, legal
gun owners were being punished for the actions of a few madmen. “It’s like
saying you shouldn’t have any politicians because we got a couple of crooks we
caught,” he said.
He also argued on constitutional grounds, recalling the American colonists who
resisted the British at the Battles of Lexington and Concord. He says of the
Second Amendment, “The sole purpose of that was to prevent a dystopic government
from taking over the population.” He added, “Sometimes you get accused of being
paranoid, but if you watch history, no republic or democracy has ever gone to a
totalitarian form of government without first disarming the populace.”
Mr. Schroeder’s fellow gun enthusiasts at the pistol club, located near Buffalo,
shared his outrage over the proposals, but were pessimistic about stopping them.
They said politicians needed to focus on keeping guns out of the hands of the
mentally ill; making sure that people who have illegal guns and use them to
commit crimes are properly punished; and improving security in schools. They
said Mr. Cuomo’s proposal to ban more guns would not address the problem.
“It would outlaw most of the guns we shoot,” said Frank Bialy, a retired chemist
who used to coach a high school rifle team. “What’s so frustrating is the people
who are here obeying the law are the ones who pay all the prices when these
crazy things happen.”
SARATOGA
SPRINGS, N.Y. — The line to enter the Saratoga Arms Fair at the City Center here
had never been so long, and David Petronis, its organizer, said he had never
shaken so many hands in one morning.
“I appreciate you opening this show, not giving into the pressure,” a man told
him as he clasped Mr. Petronis’s hand in the echoing convention hall, where
hundreds of dealers of guns, ammunition, hunting equipment, war memorabilia and
antiques were behind tables, talking up their wares.
Mr. Petronis grinned back. He had not had any intention of giving in, not when a
resident recently started a petition to shut down the gun show he had put on in
Saratoga Springs four times a year since 1984. Not when several dozen people
showed up at a City Council meeting two weeks ago to speak out against his event
— too soon after the tragedy in Newtown, Conn., they said, and too close by. Not
when reporters began calling and his name appeared in newspapers as far west as
Las Vegas.
And not on Saturday, the first day of the show, when thousands of attendees,
three protests and a counterprotest made Saratoga Springs — more known for its
racetrack and mineral springs — the latest American city to play host to the
national debate over gun control.
The dispute has made for outstanding business. The deaths last month of 20
schoolchildren and 6 adults in Newtown prompted politicians to propose
additional gun-control legislation. Since then, Mr. Petronis’s shop in
Mechanicville, N.Y., called Hudson River Trading Company, has sold out of
assault-type weapons, said his wife, Cathy, the store’s co-owner. On Saturday, a
line of mostly male attendees stretched out the doors and around nearly two
blocks.
For Mr. and Ms. Petronis, the attention amounts to free advertising. “The more
people to the event, the more dealers are happy,” he said. “I’ll be answering my
Web mail for months.”
The show had not attracted so many people before, City Center staff members
said. And it had never attracted so many protests. As traffic snarled and
parking spots filled outside the convention center, about two dozen members of
the newly formed Saratogians for Gun Safety held up 26 painted wooden angels,
copies of those a Connecticut artist planted in Newtown after the Dec. 14
shootings.
The group’s members say they oppose the use of the City Center, which is run by
a public authority, to support sales of firearms. And there is the matter of
sensitivity, they added: other towns in Connecticut and New York have canceled
gun shows, with some officials saying they are concerned weapons would be sold
that could someday be used in a mass shooting.
“Newtown just happened a few weeks ago,” said Deirdre Ladd, 46, one of the
protest’s organizers. “There are lots of similarities between Newtown and
Saratoga, but the difference is that Saratoga has a gun show four times a year.”
Many in the area would say that is a difference to be proud of. Owning a gun or
two, or even a dozen, is not uncommon, especially in the nearby Adirondack
Mountains. Hunting, skeet shooting and target shooting are popular hobbies.
The protests had left more than a few gun-show attendees feeling beleaguered.
Second Amendment advocates handed out fliers to reporters and gathered in small
groups, talking anxiously of the state and federal gun-control legislations that
many feared were soon coming. “I don’t have enough angels to represent genocide
by tyranny,” read one of the signs in the pro-gun camp opposite the angel
holders, attracting honks and waves from passing drivers.
“I feel we’re kind of persecuted,” said Sean Garvey, 60, the president of
Dunham’s Bay Fish and Game Club nearby, who has been coming to the Saratoga show
for 20 years. He sighed and added: “Gun owners are blamed for certain things.
We’ve been under attack for a long time, and we’ve been framed for things.”
Donald Fangboner, 70, a retired police officer from Lake George, N.Y., said he
had come not just to browse, but also to lend his support.
“I want to see a free America, and if we lose this, it’s over,” he said, patting
an anti-Cuomo button on his chest. (Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo recently vowed to enact
the country’s “toughest gun assault weapon ban” in New York.)
A concession Mr. Petronis made was to bar dealers from selling military-style
assault rifles similar to those used in recent mass shootings.
Mark Baker, the City Center’s president, said that while he and other center
officials were sensitive to the concerns of residents who said holding the gun
show was inappropriate, they also wanted to honor the center’s contract with the
Petronises. The arms fair, which runs both days this weekend, is also “a
significant piece of economic activity for this weekend,” he said.
But he said the City Center authority would review future contracts, including
that of the gun show, which, like all other organizations that exhibit at the
center, must renew its contract yearly. The officials are also keeping an eye on
proposed gun legislation in Albany and in Washington, which could affect the
types of weapons that are sold in gun shows or how the sales are conducted.
Anticipating a larger crowd than usual, center officials brought in additional
security guards, and the Saratoga police stood near the protest area. But as the
day wore on, an uneasy truce appeared to hold.
“Our goal is not to confront them, and I believe theirs is not to confront us,”
said Mike Winn, 52, as he hoisted a wooden angel into the air.
January 11,
2013
The New York Times
By MICHAEL COOPER
As
Washington focuses on what Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. will propose next
week to curb gun violence, gun and ammunition sales are spiking in the rest of
the country as people rush to expand their arsenals in advance of any
restrictions that might be imposed.
People were crowded five deep at the tiny counter of a gun shop near Atlanta,
where a pastor from Knoxville, Tenn., was among the customers who showed up in
person after the store’s Web site halted sales because of low inventory.
Emptying gun cases and bare shelves gave a picked-over feel to gun stores in
many states. High-capacity magazines, which some state and federal officials
want to ban or restrict, were selling briskly across the country: one Iowa
dealer said that 30-round magazines were fetching five times what they sold for
just weeks ago.
Gun dealers and buyers alike said that the rapid growth in gun sales — which
began climbing significantly after President Obama’s re-election and soared
after the Dec. 14 shooting at a school in Newtown, Conn., prompted him to call
for new gun laws — shows little sign of abating.
December set a record for the criminal background checks performed before many
gun purchases, a strong indication of a big increase in sales, according to an
analysis of federal data by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a gun
industry trade group. Adjusting the federal data to try to weed out background
checks that were unrelated to firearms sales, the group reported that 2.2
million background checks were performed last month, an increase of 58.6 percent
over the same period in 2011. Some gun dealers said in interviews that they had
never seen such demand.
“If I had 1,000 AR-15s I could sell them in a week,” said Jack Smith, an
independent gun dealer in Des Moines, referring to the popular style of
semiautomatic rifle that drew national attention after Adam Lanza used one to
kill 20 children and 6 adults at a Newtown school. “When I close, they beat on
the glass to be let in,” Mr. Smith said of his customers. “They’ll wave money at
me.”
Mr. Smith said many people were stocking up on high-capacity magazines in
anticipation that they might be banned. Two weeks ago, he said, a 30-round rifle
magazine was $12, but it now fetches $60. Popular online retailers were out of
many 20- and 30-round rifle magazines.
In Washington, Mr. Biden said the task force he leads is “shooting for Tuesday”
to make its recommendations to President Obama about preventing gun violence.
The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, one of the nation’s leading gun
control groups, said its top priority was to close the loopholes that currently
allow 40 percent of gun sales to be made without background checks.
Some groups that support gun control urged the White House not to focus too much
energy on an assault weapons ban, which they said could be hard to persuade
Congress to pass. Officials at Third Way, a left-leaning research group in
Washington, urged the president to save his political capital for
higher-priority goals like universal background checks and cracking down on gun
trafficking.
Outside Greta’s Guns, a gun store in Simi Valley, Calif., about an hour
northwest of downtown Los Angeles, several customers said that they opposed any
assault weapons ban, but would support more thorough background checks.
George Gray, 60, who said that he already owned “more arms than arms to bear
them,” said that he was in favor of more background checks. “If you own a
weapon, you should be stable,” said Mr. Gray, who said he had come from Los
Angeles to buy a gun for his daughter. “You should be accountable for your
actions. I don’t mind stricter background checks. What we’ve done with the
mental health in this country — these people used to get care and were in
facilities. And in most of these instances, it’s been people with mental
problems.”
Some customers at Greta’s said that they wanted to buy guns before any new gun
control measures made it more difficult. Bob Davis, 64, said that he wanted a
new pistol. “They want to take guns out of citizens’ hands,” he said. “So as a
consequence I ordered a gun. And they’re not going to be able to get me a gun
for like six months, because of the backlog. They can’t make guns fast enough.”
The gun industry expected a surge in sales even before the Newtown shooting. Gun
sales rose after President Obama was first elected in 2008, and many
manufacturers expected an increase in gun sales in the event of his re-election.
“We believe the continued economic uncertainty and the outcome of the 2012
presidential election is likely to continue to spur both firearms and ammunition
sales,” the Freedom Group, which owns Bushmaster, the company that makes the
rifle used in Newtown, wrote in a financial report on the quarter that ended
Sept. 30.
The possibility that the federal assault weapons ban — which lasted from 1994 to
2004 — might be reinstated was enough to spur sales of semiautomatic rifles with
military-style features.
Dale Raby, who manages one of two Gus’s Guns shops in Green Bay, Wis., said his
inventory of guns and ammunition was almost cleaned out, and that most of the
interest was in AR-15-style rifles.
“I had almost fistfights over the remaining inventory of that type gun,” he
said.
Joel Alioto, 44, an Iraq war veteran who lives in the area, said he recently
sold an AR-15 rifle at a gun show for $1,700, more than three times what he had
paid for it. “I think the shooting in Connecticut was a terrible thing,” said
Mr. Alioto, who is unemployed. “But before the shooting the gun was worth 500
bucks. I don’t think I did anything wrong. I wanted to get my teeth done, get a
computer and pay for my first year of Bible college.”
Brad Williamson, one of the owners of Quint’s Sporting Goods in Saraland, Ala.,
said the waiting lists for some products are double what they normally are —
especially for guns that are mentioned in the gun control debate. “Whenever
there’s a blip on the news about a particular model, the next day people want to
come in wanting whatever they named,” he said. “When Biden makes his
recommendation next week, you’re going to see another surge.”
At Georgia Arms in Villa Rica, Ga., west of Atlanta, the ammunition business was
brisk, with dozens of the yellow bins that usually held ammunition empty. The
Rev. Laurence Hesser, a pastor at Memorial United Methodist Church near
Knoxville, stopped by because he had been unable to buy ammunition on the shop’s
Web site, which halted sales because inventory was so low.
He likened the current run on ammunition to the rush to buy Twinkies last year
after its maker, Hostess Brands, announced it was closing. “It’s the same
thing,” he said. “When you are threatened with the possibility that you are
going to lose something, you get a bunch of it.”
Reporting was
contributed by Kim Severson in Villa Rica, Ga.;
January 11,
2013
The New York Times
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
SANTA ROSA,
Calif. — A California congressman leading a House Democratic task force on gun
violence wrapped up a series of heated and packed town hall meetings on gun
control here Thursday night, providing a glimpse into how the debate is
resonating beyond Washington after last month’s massacre at Sandy Hook
Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.
Representative Mike Thompson, the congressman, who was recently appointed by
Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, to seek new curbs on guns, said he
would use information gleaned from three meetings this week in his district
north of San Francisco to issue a set of recommendations early next month. His
efforts join those by the White House and by politicians in states from New York
to California to draft a legislative response to the mass killing even as the
National Rifle Association and other gun rights supporters gather their forces.
More than 200 people jammed into an auditorium at a government building here,
spilling into the hallways and speaking for three hours. Just a few hours
earlier, in Taft, a central California town, a 16-year-old high school student
was arrested after entering a classroom armed with a shotgun and shooting
another student, though not fatally.
At the meetings, which were held in a heavily Democratic part of California, the
state with the nation’s strictest gun regulations, advocates of gun rights
clearly outnumbered supporters of stricter regulations. Many had responded to
calls by the N.R.A. to attend the meetings and hewed to the organization’s
talking points, trying to steer the debate to what they say is the real source
of violence in America: mental health problems, a lack of personal
responsibility, and violent video games and the news media.
This week’s meetings ran smoothly and were generally free of the shouting and
chaos that marked the town hall meetings surrounding the nation’s last
polarizing debate, over health care in 2009.
Still, gun rights supporters sometimes drowned out advocates of stricter
regulations. Several warned of a coming civil war and said they were “willing to
fight.” There were a few tense moments that Mr. Thompson — a Purple Heart
recipient in the Vietnam War, a gun owner and hunter — defused.
“Look, I have 30 seconds. I’ll do what I want, O.K.? You work for me; I pay your
salary,” said one gun rights supporter to cries of “yeah!” from the audience as
he stood before the congressman.
“I’ll give you a buck and a half and pay you back right now,” the congressman
told the man.
Mr. Thompson, a Democrat and a member of the centrist Blue Dog Coalition,
supports banning the kind of assault weapons used in the Connecticut shootings.
But he cautioned that there is “no one bill that could be passed, no magic
wand.” While he described Sandy Hook as “the worst gun tragedy” in his lifetime,
he added that hundreds of Americans “have been killed with firearms” in the four
weeks since the massacre.
On Thursday, gun rights advocates here rejected any attempts to restrict access
to high-powered guns. Echoing statements by the N.R.A., they stressed that the
roots of the violence lay elsewhere, particularly in the lack of mental health
care.
A man from Santa Rosa strongly endorsed the N.R.A.’s call to arm school guards.
“The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” he
said to both applause and boos from the audience.
Like the N.R.A., other speakers blamed violent video games and the news media.
“Every time you get somebody killing 10 people, somebody wants to kill 20
people,” one man said. “Get the media to quit naming the names.”
Still, other self-identified gun owners expressed an openness to restrictions on
assault weapons.
“I know from personal experience that the N.R.A. does not speak for all gun
owners,” one woman said. “The N.R.A. is mostly a lobbying organization and
represents gun manufacturers, and is mostly motivated by profit. The time is
now.”
A man who described himself as a hunter and a former member of the N.R.A. said:
“If you need more than three rounds when you’re hunting, you need to spend some
time at the range before going out.”
Several speakers accused “a tyrannical government” of trying to take away their
guns, each time to loud applause. “It’s like you’re being controlled by a
foreign operation or something, you’re voting for somebody other than the
American people here,” one man told the congressman.
“Don’t give that man a gun,” said a man in the audience.
Another responded immediately, “He can have mine!"
Supporters of greater gun control sometimes had a hard time making their points.
“There is not a tyrannical government trying to take away your guns,” one man
said. “Everybody needs to be respectful here and give everybody a chance to
speak.”
One woman, voicing support for a ban on assault weapons, said that gun rights
supporters were trying to shift the debate away from guns. “I hear a lot about
personal responsibility,” she said. “But what’s really being said is: ‘Trust no
one but ourselves and our assault weapons. Every man for himself.’ That’s not a
community. That can’t raise our children to be healthy. That’s an insane
asylum.”
It was the middle of the workday — a bright, chilly Wednesday afternoon in
Lexington, Ky. — but Bud’s Gun Shop was crowded. Why was I surprised? The
combination of President Obama’s re-election and the Newtown massacre has caused
gun proponents to stock up, fearing, against all available evidence, that the
federal government was about to crack down on gun ownership. As I opened the
door, I felt like a teenager about to buy a condom.
My plan was to shoot a gun, something I had never done before. I thought it
would help me understand why gun owners are so passionate about their deadly
possessions.
The daughter of a local friend, Don McNay, offered to accompany me. Gena Bigler
is the chief financial officer of her father’s financial firm, a personal
finance columnist and the mother of two. Gena, Don said, is “very liberal in all
her politics, except pro-gun.” Just like his wife, his ex-wife and many other
women in Kentucky, he added.
Bud’s Gun Shop was cavernous, with scarcely a square inch of wall space that
didn’t have a gun on it. As we headed for the shooting range, I asked Gena why
she liked guns. “In the Old West,” she said, “the gun was the great equalizer. I
think for women that is still the case.” The first time she shot a gun, she told
me, she was 8.
“Let’s start easy,” Gena said as we approached the shooting range. At the
counter, Dave, a retired policeman who served as the “range officer,” brought
out a Ruger Mark .22 semiautomatic handgun. It was a gun that a newbie like me
could handle, he gently suggested. A box of bullets in hand, we headed out to
the shooting range.
The target was a bright green human silhouette. Gena and I took turns shooting.
It took awhile, but once I got the hang of it, I stopped worrying about the
shape of the target and focused on hitting it. The .22 made small bullet holes.
Gena told me that when she used to shoot in the woods, you could see the
enormous damage guns could do to a tree. “I think children need to be better
educated about guns,” she said, “so they’ll understand better what a gun can
do.”
We next moved to a .45 semiautomatic handgun. “Do you want one that shoots
really well, or do you want one you can hide?” asked Dave. He gave us a Kimber.
Its manufacturer describes Kimbers as “no compromise, purpose-built pistols.”
Certainly from my point of view, it was more difficult to ignore its purpose
than with the .22. The bullets made much bigger holes, fire often came out of
the barrel, and it had a big kick. It was meant to kill people.
The gallery was filling up. I saw two women shooting handguns, three young men
sharing an assault weapon and a man who needed crutches taking target practice.
The only noise you could hear was the pop, pop, pop of guns being fired.
Finally, Gena and I rented a Kriss Vector, a shiny black assault weapon. The man
who handed it to us called it a “P.D.W.” — or personal defense weapon. “This gun
is made for something like the Secret Service,” he added. Dave looked at the gun
and smiled wryly. “Blast away,” he said. The gun had a 30-bullet magazine, which
I emptied as quickly as my trigger finger would allow. It took, literally,
seconds.
Using the assault weapon was a frightening experience. Even Gena thought so. “I
don’t see why anybody would need a gun like that,” she said. But when I asked
her whether such guns should be outlawed, she didn’t hesitate: “That’s the
beginning of the slippery slope.”
Did I discover on Wednesday afternoon why shooting a gun appeals to so many
people? Not really. But I did get a glimpse of why it will be so difficult to
change America’s gun culture. You can say until you’re blue in the face that a
gun owner or his family is far more likely to be hurt or killed by that gun than
an intruder. But people like Gena — decent, honorable citizens who grew up
around guns — will never believe it. They will always think of guns as the great
equalizer. According to The Cincinnati Enquirer, Kentucky, which has some of the
least restrictive gun laws on the books, has no intention of tightening its laws
after Newtown.
A few days later, I called Bud’s Gun Shop to ask Dave what he thought about the
renewed effort to regulate guns. In his calm, unflustered way, he said he
thought the problem was mental health care, not guns. “People have rights,” he
said.
In the background, I could hear the pop, pop, pop of guns going off in the
shooting range.
January 11,
2013
The New York Times
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
WASHINGTON
— With the Newtown, Conn., massacre spurring concern over violent video games,
makers of popular games like Call of Duty and Mortal Kombat are rallying
Congressional support to try to fend off their biggest regulatory threat in two
decades.
The $60 billion industry is facing intense political pressure from an unlikely
alliance of critics who say that violent imagery in video games has contributed
to a culture of violence. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. met with industry
executives on Friday to discuss the concerns, highlighting the issue’s
prominence.
No clear link has emerged between the Connecticut rampage and the gunman Adam
Lanza’s interest in video games. Even so, the industry’s detractors want to see
a federal study on the impact of violent gaming, as well as cigarette-style
warning labels and other measures to curb the games’ graphic imagery.
“Connecticut has changed things,” Representative Frank R. Wolf, a Virginia
Republican and a frequent critic of what he terms the shocking violence of
games, said in an interview. “I don’t know what we’re going to do, but we’re
going to do something.”
Gun laws have been the Obama administration’s central focus in considering
responses to the shootings. But a violent media culture is being scrutinized,
too, alongside mental health laws and policies.
“The stool has three legs, and this is one of them,” Mr. Wolf said of violent
video games.
Studies on the impact of gaming violence offer conflicting evidence. But science
aside, public rhetoric has clearly shifted since the shootings, with politicians
and even the National Rifle Association — normally a fan of shooting games —
quick to blame video games and Hollywood movies for inuring children to
violence.
“I don’t let games like Call of Duty in my house,” Gov. Chris Christie of New
Jersey said this week on MSNBC. “You cannot tell me that a kid sitting in a
basement for hours playing Call of Duty and killing people over and over and
over again does not desensitize that child to the real-life effects of
violence.”
Residents in Southington, Conn., 30 miles northeast of Newtown, went so far as
to organize a rally to destroy violent games. (The event was canceled this
week.) Mr. Biden, meeting with some of the industry’s biggest manufacturers and
retailers, withheld judgment on whether graphic games fuel violence. But he
added quickly, “You all know the judgment other people have made.”
Industry executives are steeling for a political battle, and they have strong
support from Congress as well as from the courts.
Industry representatives have already spoken with more than a dozen lawmakers’
offices since the shootings, urging them to resist threatened regulations. They
say video games are a harmless, legally protected diversion already well
regulated by the industry itself through ratings that restricting some games to
“mature” audiences.
With game makers on the defensive, they have begun pulling together scientific
research, legal opinions and marketing studies to make their case to federal
officials.
“This has been litigated all the way to the Supreme Court,” Michael Gallagher,
chief executive of the industry’s main lobbying arm, said in an interview,
referring to a 2011 ruling that rejected a California ban on selling violent
games to minors on First Amendment grounds.
Twenty years ago, with graphic video games still a nascent technology,
manufacturers faced similar threats of a crackdown over violent games. Even
Captain Kangaroo — Bob Keeshan — lobbied for stricter oversight. The industry,
heading off government action, responded at that time by creating the ratings
labels, similar to movie ratings, that are ubiquitous on store shelves today.
This time, with a more formidable presence in Washington, the industry is not so
willing to discuss voluntary concessions.
Game makers have spent more than $20 million since 2008 on federal lobbying, and
millions more on campaign donations.
Mr. Gallagher’s group, the Entertainment Software Association, has five outside
lobbying firms to push its interests in Washington. And the industry has enjoyed
not only a hands-off approach from Congress, which has rejected past efforts to
toughen regulations, but also tax breaks that have spurred sharp growth.
Game makers even have their own bipartisan Congressional caucus, with 39
lawmakers joining to keep the industry competitive.
One of those lawmakers, Representative Kevin Brady, a Texas Republican,
suggested that the focus on violent video games is misplaced. He called the
games “a healthy form of education and entertainment for our family” and said
ratings made it easy to keep inappropriate games from his children.
“We find it harder, though, to shield our children from the relentless,
in-your-face glorification of violence promoted on our TV screens and in the
movies,” he added. “It’s everywhere, and you can’t seem to find the remote fast
enough.”
Executives cite 2009 research by the Federal Trade Commission crediting game
makers for going further than any other media group to shield children from
inappropriate material. Major retailers like GameStop consistently refused to
sell “mature” rated games to minors, the commission found, and game makers
usually did not market them to children.
The industry’s biggest political asset may be the 2011 ruling by the Supreme
Court that found restrictions on the sale of video games to be unconstitutional.
Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, wrote that evidence linking
games to violence was unpersuasive and that games had the same legal protection
as violent literary classics like Grimm’s Fairy Tales or “Snow White.”
The scientific record is mixed.
Some researchers have found that games bring out real-life aggression, making
players less empathetic. But other studies say the linkage is exaggerated and
that game-playing does not predict bullying or delinquency.
The authorities have linked some past attacks, directly or indirectly, to the
gunman’s fascination with violent games.
In the 2011 rampage in Norway that killed 77 people, for example, the gunman
played Call of Duty six hours a day to practice shooting. In the 1999 shooting
at Columbine High School in Colorado, which killed 12 people, the two teenage
gunmen were said to have been obsessed with a game called Doom, featuring
bloodshed and explosions.
There have been reports that Mr. Lanza, 20, the Newtown gunman who killed
himself after his rampage, liked World of Warcraft and other violent games, as
do many young men. James E. Holmes, 25, who is accused in last summer’s massacre
at a theater in Aurora, Col., was a fan of the same game.
But the authorities in Connecticut and Colorado have not established a direct
link between those attacks and the gunmen’s interest in those games.
January 11,
2013
The New York Times
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR
WASHINGTON
— The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, one of the nation’s leading gun
control groups, said on Friday that it wanted the White House to focus its
attention on expanded background checks for gun buyers as part of a broad push
to reduce gun violence in the wake of the school attack in Connecticut last
month.
The group made the recommendations this week to Vice President Joseph R. Biden
Jr. and plans to release them publicly Friday afternoon. The Times obtained a
copy of the document, which stresses that “closing the massive hole in the
background check” system is the group’s top policy priority.
“Calling it a ‘gun show loophole’ trivializes the problem,” the document
provided to Mr. Biden says. “Universal background checks on all gun sales would
have a clear positive impact on public safety, and is also clearly compatible
with the rights of law-abiding citizens to own guns.”
Dan Gross, the group’s president, said he and other advocates still feel
strongly about the need to limit the availability of military-style assault
weapons. The group said in its recommendations to Mr. Biden that any proposals
should find ways to “limit the availability of military-style weapons and
high-capacity ammunition that are designed for mass killing.”
But Mr. Gross said that the group does not want a debate that focuses primarily
on a possible ban of assault weapons.
“We’re not rating any solution as bigger or more important than the other. But
it’s vitally important that the conversation be broader than just an assault
ban,” Mr. Gross said. “Background checks clearly stake out a middle ground that
can save lives.
An even stronger message comes from Third Way, a left-leaning research group in
Washington D.C., that has long advocated for stronger gun control laws. Matt
Bennett, the vice president for public affairs at Third Way, said Friday that
President Obama should not get into a knock-down fight with the National Rifle
Association over an assault-weapons ban.
“The assault-weapons ban is a low priority relative to the other measures the
Biden Task Force is considering,” Mr. Bennett said. “Political capital in the
gun debate only goes so far. We think it should be spent on things that would
have the greatest impact on gun violence, like universal background checks and
cracking down on gun trafficking.”
The caution about the politics of fighting for an assault-weapons ban from some
advocacy groups comes as Mr. Biden signaled his interest in focusing on other
parts of the gun debate. In public comments Friday, Mr. Biden did not mention
the idea of a gun ban.
The White House says President Obama still supports a ban on assault weapons and
fully intends to propose and fight for one as part of a broader package of
changes. But they acknowledge that the political fight will be difficult,
especially in the Republican-controlled House.
Some advocacy organizations are still pushing for a sustained effort to revive
the assault-weapons ban, which was initially imposed in 1994 and expired a
decade later. But Mr. Bennett said his group was concerned that a prolonged and
difficult fight with the N.R.A. over such a ban would make it more difficult to
achieve the other parts of the plan.
“While they won’t admit it, the N.R.A. probably wants the A.W.B. fight,” Mr.
Bennett said, “because it will dominate the debate, drive away some moderate
members of Congress, and put the focus on a gun ban, rather than their
outrageous and indefensible opposition to background checks, a modern gun
trafficking law, and the use of gun violence data by law enforcement.”
January 10,
2013
The New York Times
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and PETER BAKER
WASHINGTON
— While President Obama pledged to crack down on access to what he called
“weapons of war” in the aftermath of last month’s schoolhouse massacre, the
White House has calculated that a ban on military-style assault weapons will be
exceedingly difficult to pass through Congress and is focusing on other measures
it deems more politically achievable.
As a task force led by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. readies
recommendations on reducing gun violence for delivery to the president next
week, White House officials say a new ban will be an element of whatever final
package is proposed. But given the entrenched opposition from gun rights groups
and their advocates on Capitol Hill, the White House is trying to avoid making
its passage the sole definition of success and is emphasizing other new gun
rules that could conceivably win bipartisan support and reduce gun deaths.
During a day of White House meetings on the issue on Thursday, including one
with the National Rifle Association, Mr. Biden focused publicly on universal
background checks for gun purchases and the need for more federal research on
gun violence. In 15 minutes of public remarks, Mr. Biden made no mention of
curbing the production and sale of assault weapons, even though he was a prime
author of such a law that passed in 1994 and expired 10 years later. Both he and
the president say they strongly support an assault weapons ban.
But Mr. Biden noted that his former colleagues in the Senate have long been
“pretty universally opposed to any restrictions on gun ownership or what type of
weapons can be purchased.” He said they now seem more open to limits on the
purchase of high-capacity magazines.
A spokesman for Mr. Obama said later in the afternoon that the vice president’s
remarks merely reflect a desire for a broad approach to gun violence.
“President Obama has been clear that Congress should reinstate the assault
weapons ban and that avoiding this issue just because it’s been politically
difficult in the past is not an option,” said Matt Lehrich, the spokesman. “He’s
also stressed that no single piece of legislation alone can solve this problem,
which is why he has asked Vice President Biden to explore a wide array of
proposals on topics ranging from gun laws to mental health to school safety.”
The calculation on the assault weapons ban underscores the complicated politics
of guns on Capitol Hill despite public outrage after a gunman killed 26 people,
including 20 children, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in
December. While the shootings prompted some pro-gun lawmakers to endorse limits
on assault weapons, Republicans who control the House Judiciary Committee still
oppose such limits.
A statement by the N.R.A. after Thursday’s meeting underscored the political
challenges. The group accused the White House of having an “agenda to attack the
Second Amendment,” and said it would go to the halls of Congress in its efforts
to stop gun restrictions.
“We will now take our commitment and meaningful contributions to members of
Congress of both parties who are interested in having an honest conversation
about what works — and what does not,” the statement said.
The calibrated public focus by Mr. Biden also reflects a tension within the
administration and Democratic circles, with some gun control advocates pressing
for a robust effort on the assault weapon ban and others leery of being caught
in a losing cause at the expense of other measures with more chances of success.
While Mr. Biden has included Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., Janet
Napolitano, the Homeland Security secretary, and other cabinet officials in his
working group, officials said the process is being driven by the White House.
In addition to limits on high-capacity magazines and expanded background checks,
Mr. Biden’s group is looking at ways of keeping guns out of the hands of the
mentally ill and cracking down on sales that are already illegal. One
possibility is tougher laws against straw purchasing with longer prison terms
for those who buy guns for others. Some officials would like to expand mandatory
minimum sentences for gun law violations, but the White House in general does
not like such sentences. Mr. Biden’s group is also considering seeking
additional money to enforce existing laws.
Mr. Biden’s comment this week about taking executive action was seized on by
some opponents as evidence that the president wanted to unilaterally restrict
gun sales to legal buyers. But officials said executive action refers to limited
measures like directing more attention and resources to pursuing violations of
existing gun laws and studying gun violence.
The ammunition limit has drawn attention from Democrats in Congress, both
because they think it might be easier to pass and because it might have more
impact than an assault weapon ban. To pass the last assault weapon ban through a
Democratic Congress more amenable to gun control, Mr. Biden had to accept
compromises that allowed many guns to be sold.
The White House effort is coming even as some governors are seeking state
legislation that would limit the availability of guns and ammunition. In
Colorado, Gov. John W. Hickenlooper, a Democrat, called on Thursday for
universal background checks on all gun sales in his state.
In New York, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has made gun control efforts a centerpiece of
his next year in office, pledging to pass a tough new assault weapons ban in his
state, limits on large-capacity magazines and measures to keep guns out of the
hands of criminals and the mentally ill.
Mr. Obama’s push for new federal action is the first serious one in many years.
Mr. Biden held several meetings Thursday with representatives of hunting and
wildlife groups, advocates of gun ownership, and officials with the
entertainment industry. At the start of the meetings, Mr. Biden said he would
give Mr. Obama his recommendations on Tuesday, though they may not be made
public until later.
In their own closed-door meetings with the vice president on Wednesday, gun
control advocates emphasized their belief that measures other than the assault
weapons ban could be even more effective in preventing the kinds of recent
massacres that have captured public and political attention, several
participants said.
“There’s a natural gravity that happens toward the ban in the wake of
tragedies,” said Dan Gross, the president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun
Violence, who attended the meeting. “But it’s very important to point out that
background checks could have an even bigger impact.”
January 9,
2013
The New York Times
By CHARLES M. BLOW
This time
things are different.
This time, nearly a month after the horrible mass shooting in Newtown, Conn.,
the public attention hasn’t ricocheted to the next story. On the contrary,
sorrow has hardened into resolve.
This time, something can and must be done. And it looks as if something will.
The Washington Post reported Saturday that:
“The White House is weighing a far broader and more comprehensive approach to
curbing the nation’s gun violence than simply reinstating an expired ban on
assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition, according to multiple people
involved in the administration’s discussions.”
According to The Post’s sources, this could include measures “that would require
universal background checks for firearm buyers, track the movement and sale of
weapons through a national database, strengthen mental health checks, and
stiffen penalties for carrying guns near schools or giving them to minors.”
And in addition to whatever legislative package the president may push, Vice
President Joe Biden made clear Wednesday that the president wouldn’t shy away
from using executive action.
“The president is going to act,” Biden said, according to CNN. “Executive
orders, executive action, can be taken.”
So, as we move into this season of change on gun policy, let’s take a moment to
better frame the debate.
First, let’s fix some of the terminology: stop calling groups like the National
Rifle Association a “gun rights” group. These are anti-regulation,
pro-proliferation groups. They prey on public fears — of the “bad guys with
guns,” of a Second Amendment rollback, of an ever imminent apocalypse — while
helping gun makers line their pockets.
(Sturm, Ruger & Company’s stock has gone up more than 500 percent since
President Obama was first elected, and Smith & Wesson’s stock is up more than
200 percent.)
And the gun makers return the favor. According to a 2011 report by the Violence
Policy Center, a group advocating stronger gun regulations:
“Since 2005, corporations — gun related and other — have contributed between
$19.8 million and $52.6 million to the NRA as detailed in its Ring of Freedom
corporate giving program.”
The report continued:
“The vast majority of funds — 74 percent — contributed to the NRA from
‘corporate partners’ are members of the firearms industry: companies involved in
the manufacture or sale of firearms or shooting-related products. Contributions
to the NRA from the firearms industry since 2005 total between $14.7 million and
$38.9 million.”
Groups like the N.R.A. aren’t as much about rights as wrongs. The money being
churned is soaked in blood and marked by madness.
Second, more reasonable people of good conscience and good faith, including
responsible gun owners, need to talk openly, honestly and forcefully about the
need for additional, reasonable regulations.
There is power in speaking up. We know the face of unfettered gun proliferation.
Now it’s time to see more faces of regulation and restraint.
Retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal joined those ranks on Tuesday when he said on
MSNBC:
“I spent a career carrying typically either an M16, and later an M4 carbine. And
an M4 carbine fires a .223 caliber round, which is 5.56 millimeters, at about
3,000 feet per second. When it hits a human body, the effects are devastating.
It’s designed to do that. And that’s what our soldiers ought to carry. I
personally don’t think there’s any need for that kind of weaponry on the street
and particularly around the schools in America. I believe that we’ve got to take
a serious look. I understand everybody’s desire to have whatever they want, but
we’ve got to protect our children, we’ve got to protect our police, we’ve got to
protect our population. And I think we’ve got to take a very mature look at
that.”
A “mature look” indeed. And that comes from a real soldier, not just someone who
wants to feel like one.
Third, we must be clear that we are not talking about prohibition and
confiscation but about de-escalation — in both the volume and lethal efficiency
— and accountability.
No one is talking about forbidding law-abiding, mentally sound citizens to
purchase nonmilitary-style weapons that don’t hold more bullets than we have
digits.
The point is to ensure that we don’t sell military weapons with extended clips
to the public and that the guns we do sell are purchased only by responsible
people. And, once the guns are purchased, we need to ensure that they all remain
in responsible hands. One place to start is to require background checks of all
purchases and to track the guns, not just for the life of the purchaser, but for
the life of the gun.
Last, we must understand that whatever we do now is not necessarily the whole of
the solution but a step in the right direction on a long walk back from a
precipice. Our search for solutions must be dynamic because the gun industry is
wily and our quandary is epic.
We don’t want to pass the point where society is so saturated with the most
dangerous kinds of weaponry that people feel compelled to arm themselves or be
left vulnerable, if indeed we haven’t already passed that point.
According to The Associated Press, a small Utah town is making a “gun in every
home a priority.” The A.P. reported:
“Spring City Councilman Neil Sorensen first proposed an ordinance requiring a
gun in every household in the town of 1,000. The rest of the council scoffed at
making it a requirement, but they unanimously agreed to move forward with an
ordinance ‘recommending’ the idea. The council also approved funding to offer
concealed firearms training Friday to the 20 teachers and administrators at the
local elementary school.”
January 9,
2013
The New York Times
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER and THOMAS KAPLAN
New York
State is nearing agreement on a proposal to put what would be some of the
nation’s strictest gun-control laws into effect, including what Gov. Andrew M.
Cuomo vowed on Wednesday would be an ironclad ban on assault weapons and
large-capacity magazines, and new measures to keep guns out of the hands of
criminals and mentally ill people.
Lawmakers in Albany, seeking to send a message to the nation that the recent
mass shootings demand swift action, say they hope to vote on the package of
legislation as soon as next week.
The Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, a Manhattan Democrat, told reporters on
Wednesday that Mr. Cuomo and legislative leaders were “95 percent” of the way
toward an agreement. Senate Republicans, considered the only possible obstacle
to the governor’s proposal, indicated they did not intend to block a deal.
“When you hear about these issues all across the nation, whether it’s in the
movie theater in Aurora, Colo., or Columbine, something needs to happen —
something transformative,” said Senator Timothy M. Kennedy, a Democrat from
Buffalo.
The dash to enact new gun controls made New York the first flash point in the
battles over firearm restrictions that are expected to consume several state
capitals this year.
But the debate also raged elsewhere on Wednesday, from Denver, where supporters
of gun rights rallied to oppose weapon restrictions in the new legislative
session, to Connecticut, whose governor, Dannel P. Malloy, in an emotional
speech to lawmakers — he lost his composure talking about the mass killings at a
Newtown elementary school last month — said, “More guns are not the answer.”
At the White House, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. met with gun-control
advocates and said the Obama administration planned both to pass legislation and
to use executive orders to try to reduce gun violence. “The president and I are
determined to take action,” Mr. Biden said. “This is not an exercise in photo
opportunities.”
Mr. Cuomo’s aides said the proposed legislation in New York would expand the
definition of what is considered an assault weapon to match California’s law,
currently the most restrictive in the nation. But the overall package would go
further, they said, by limiting detachable ammunition magazines to 7 rounds from
the current 10, and requiring background checks for purchases of ammunition, not
just weapons.
Limiting magazines to seven rounds would give New York the toughest restrictions
in the nation. Only around half a dozen states currently limit the size of
magazines, and most of them allow magazines that contain up to 10 rounds,
according to a survey by the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which advocates
gun control. The New York law would also close a loophole that has thwarted
enforcement of limits on the size of magazines.
Even as Mr. Cuomo detailed his plans, gun-rights groups mobilized to oppose the
new restrictions.
“We fully expect that New York state’s gun owners will be completely engaged in
this debate and N.R.A. will be there to lead them,” said Chris W. Cox, the chief
lobbyist for the National Rifle Association, which has donated more money to
state politicians in New York than anywhere else, much of it to Senate
Republicans.
And immediately afterward, Budd Schroeder, the chairman of the Shooters
Committee on Political Education, a New York gun-rights group, said he planned
to meet with every state senator he knew to ask them to stand up to the
governor.
“The legislators are going to be getting a lot of phone calls in their district
offices,” Mr. Schroeder said. “How is taking away my rights to own any type of
firearm I choose going to change the attitude of a criminal?”
Yet Mr. Schroeder’s group, on its Web site, acknowledged the challenging
terrain. “We can say with certainty,” it warned, “that anything short of
overwhelming our legislators with calls, e-mails and letters, we have virtually
no chance.”
Mr. Cuomo’s initiative drew praise from Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who has made
gun control his signature cause. “I was particularly struck by his passionate
leadership on gun violence,” Mr. Bloomberg said in a statement. “New York State
has led the nation with strong, common-sense gun laws, and the governor’s new
proposals will build on that tradition.”
Mr. Cuomo is a possible 2016 presidential contender who is seeking to elevate
his stature among Democrats base nationally, after a much-praised victory on
same-sex marriage in his first year in office. His push for enhanced gun control
even drew praise from Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York, in a letter that
otherwise criticized Mr. Cuomo’s support for abortion rights.
Mr. Cuomo had already stirred up anxiety among gun rights groups by saying in a
radio interview in December that “confiscation could be an option” for existing
assault weapons.
But on Wednesday, Mr. Cuomo backed away from that statement. “This is not about
taking away people’s guns,” he said in his State of the State address. “It is
about ending the unnecessary risk of high-capacity assault rifles. That’s what
this is about.”
The expectation from Senator Dean G. Skelos, the Republican leader, and his
aides that the gun-control legislation would come to the Senate floor for a vote
is significant; Senate Republicans have consistently rebuffed efforts by
Democrats to pass more restrictive gun laws.
But Republicans now have partial control of the chamber because of a coalition
they recently established to share power with a group of dissident Democrats who
favor more gun control. And Democrats believe that Republican leaders would
rather accept a deal than jeopardize their warm relationship with Mr. Cuomo or
risk a public relations backlash.
Many Senate Republicans sought re-election in part by touting their bond with
the governor, who remains popular with Republican voters as well as with
Democrats; Mr. Cuomo, recognizing the extent of his political power, has vowed
to travel the state blaming Senate Republicans if they do not back his efforts
for gun control.
The gun-control debate had already flared up in other ways in New York State
since the shootings last month in Newtown and in Webster, N.Y., where two
firefighters were killed. A newspaper’s publication of a map showing the names
and addresses of gun owners in suburban Westchester and Rockland Counties set
off a wave of threats against and harassment of the paper’s employees.
In his State of the State address Wednesday, the governor told lawmakers it was
their duty to “stop the madness” of violence.
“Forget the extremists — it’s simple,” Mr. Cuomo said to a crescendo of
applause. “No one hunts with an assault rifle. No one needs 10 bullets to kill a
deer.”
Michael Cooper
and Michael D. Shear contributed reporting.
January 8,
2013
The New York Times
By THOMAS KAPLAN
ALBANY —
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, pushing New York to become the first state to enact major
new gun laws in the wake of the massacre in Newtown, Conn., plans on Wednesday
to propose one of the country’s most restrictive bans on assault weapons.
New York is one of seven states that already ban at least some assault weapons.
But Mr. Cuomo has described the existing law as having “more holes than Swiss
cheese,” and he wants to broaden the number of guns and magazines covered by the
law while also making it harder for gun makers to tweak their products to get
around the ban.
Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, will outline his proposal in his State of the State
address, but even before he speaks, he has incited anxiety among gun owners by
acknowledging in a radio interview that “confiscation could be an option” for
assault weapons owned by New Yorkers. Since that interview, Mr. Cuomo has not
mentioned the idea, and his aides have acknowledged that it would be
impractical.
But gun rights groups have seized on the comment, even promoting a petition on
the Web site of the White House that declares, “We do not live in Nazi Germany,”
and asks the Obama administration to block any effort at confiscation by Mr.
Cuomo.
Since the shootings in Newtown, Mr. Cuomo has been trying to negotiate an
agreement on gun laws with legislative leaders in Albany — he even contemplated
calling them back into special session last month — and the talks continued into
Tuesday, as the governor sought an agreement before his speech.
According to people briefed on the talks, the governor is considering not only
rewriting the state’s assault weapons ban, but also proposing more expansive use
of mental health records in background checks of gun buyers, lower limits on the
capacity of magazines sold legally in New York and a new requirement that gun
permits be subject to periodic recertification.
New York already has some of the toughest gun laws in the country, and the
debate over new restrictions here reflects a significant change in the national
conversation over guns, as states and the federal government grapple with
whether and how to limit the possession of weapons that have been used in
multiple mass killings in recent years.
Mr. Cuomo, a shotgun owner, has long spoken in favor of tougher gun control but
has not used his considerable political muscle to make the issue a priority over
his two years as governor. Now, citing the recent killings, he is seeking to
strike a deal that could be used as a model in other statehouses.
“I think what the nation is saying now after Connecticut, what people in New
York are saying is ‘Do something, please,’ ” Mr. Cuomo told reporters recently.
New York’s existing assault weapons ban was approved in the aftermath of another
mass shooting, at Columbine High School in 1999. The next year, Gov. George E.
Pataki surprised his fellow Republicans by pushing through the Legislature a
package of tough new gun laws, including the measure to outlaw assault weapons.
But many high-powered rifles now in production are exempt from the ban because,
advocacy groups say, manufacturers have altered their products to circumvent the
law.
“This is a singular moment in the history of the gun control movement,” said
Richard M. Aborn, the president of the Citizens Crime Commission of New York
City. “The governor has the opportunity to set the high-water mark and continue
New York’s leadership position in having the most effective gun control laws in
the country.”
The state’s District Attorneys Association sent a letter to the governor and
legislative leaders on Tuesday calling for, among other things, the elimination
of a grandfather clause that allows some high-capacity magazines. And nearly 100
lawmakers have endorsed a set of proposals that includes limiting handgun
purchases to one per month, requiring a new form of ballistics identification
and putting in place universal background checks.
But Mr. Cuomo faces a complicated political landscape in Albany. The Assembly is
controlled by Democrats who are eager for more gun restrictions, while the
Senate this year is to be controlled by an unusual coalition of Republicans, who
have largely resisted new gun laws, and dissident Democrats, who support more
gun control. Mr. Cuomo, during his first half of his term, assiduously courted
Senate Republicans, even persuading them to allow the vote that legalized
same-sex marriage, but he has indicated that he is now willing to challenge the
Republicans over the gun issue.
On Saturday, after the Senate Republicans called for stiffening penalties for
violations of existing gun laws, but not tightening the assault weapons ban, Mr.
Cuomo’s spokesman said the Republican proposal “insults the common sense of New
Yorkers.”
Gun rights advocates argue that Mr. Cuomo is wrong to focus his attention on
assault weapons; of 769 homicides in New York State in 2011, only five were
committed with rifles of any kind, according to the State Division of Criminal
Justice Services.
“This issue is not about guns, and the reason they are pushing the gun issue is
because it’s much easier for them to say, ‘Look what we did; we’re going to make
people safer in New York. We passed more gun laws,’ ” said Thomas H. King, the
president of the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association. Mr. King, echoing
the recommendation of the National Rifle Association, said that instead of
banning certain guns, New York should require armed security at all schools.
Senator Catharine Young, Republican of Olean, in western New York, said she had
been receiving calls from constituents who were worried about what action the
Legislature might take.
“The vast majority of people who own firearms in my district are law-abiding and
extremely responsible,” Ms. Young said. “They aren’t the problem; it’s illegal
guns and untreated mental illness that are the problems.”
Cracking down on high-powered weapons has long been a priority for many urban
Democrats in the Legislature; to draw attention to the issue, one senator even
went to a gun shop near Albany to buy ammunition for an AK-47 while the
transaction was recorded with a hidden camera.
“A lot of people look at this as a battle between people who want to take away
all the guns and people who want to have no restrictions on guns; but most
members of the public and most members of the Legislature understand that
reasonable restrictions on guns make sense,” said Assemblyman Brian Kavanagh, a
Manhattan Democrat. Last weekend, he said, brought another reminder of the
urgency at hand: a 16-year-old from Mr. Kavanagh’s district was shot dead on
Friday.
Instructed
by President Obama to find ways to curb gun violence after the Connecticut
school massacre, a working group led by Vice President Joseph Biden Jr. appears
ready to recommend a package of proposals that go beyond reinstating the expired
ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.
Mr. Obama has already expressed support for a bill being prepared by Senator
Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, that would provide a more effective
ban on military-style assault weapons than the law that lapsed in 2004. The
Biden task force, according to a report in The Washington Post, is considering a
broader range of other measures backed by key law enforcement leaders and by
Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the group started by Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New
York.
These measures include making background checks universal for all gun buyers,
creating a national database to track the movement and sale of firearms,
expanding mental health checks, and increasing penalties for carrying guns near
schools or giving guns to minors.
Even this sensible list could be enlarged and improved. Notably missing is a
concerted crackdown on illegal gun trafficking. The task force’s final
recommendations, which are due to be released by the end of the month, should
include a measure to stem the illegal gun trade and make it easier for law
enforcement agencies to investigate and prosecute gun traffickers and the straw
buyers and rogue dealers who enable them.
A strong starting point is a measure first proposed four years ago by Senator
Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York Democrat, which she is about to reintroduce in
the new Congress.
The Gun Trafficking Prevention Act would create, for the first time, a separate
criminal offense for gun trafficking. It would also toughen penalties at every
point in the trafficking chain — from straw buyers who purchase a gun for
someone else to evade required record-keeping and background checks, to corrupt
gun dealers who supply illegal weapons to the kingpins running the trafficking
rings. Study after study has shown that a tiny minority of bad gun dealers are
responsible for selling a huge number of the guns traced to crimes.
The measure would give the Justice Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
Firearms and Explosives new authority to impose civil penalties and special
restrictions, like increased inspections and inventory checks, on “high-risk”
gun dealers suspected of assisting traffickers. Finally, it would authorize the
addition of hundreds of new agents and other personnel for the underfinanced
bureau to allow for more frequent inspections of all gun stores.
This time next year, as you’re keenly aware, you will no longer be the mayor of
New York. We all know how much you love the job, and how much you’ll miss it. No
question about it: though you have had your critics (including, at times, me),
you’ve been a very good mayor.
They say that you’re thinking a lot these days about what to do next. When you
step down you’ll be 71, and plenty vital enough to do something significant. And
of course, with a net worth of $20 billion or so, you certainly have the
financial wherewithal to affect the issues that are important to you. You showed
it in the last election, ginning up a super PAC and spending around $10 million
on a handful of elections across the country where you thought your money could
make a difference. Even though you got into the game late, you won more than you
lost.
I know you have lots of interests, but after listening to you these past few
weeks — ever since the horrible massacre in Newtown, Conn. — I am hoping you
will direct your postmayoral energies to one issue: gun control. There is, quite
simply, no one else in America who has a better chance of moving the country
toward a saner gun policy than you. It is an effort worthy of your talents, and
your money.
First, there is your obvious passion for the issue. They say it was your
experience as mayor that sensitized you to the issue — and how could it not,
with the funerals you’ve had to attend, and the mothers of murdered children
you’ve had to console? Since the Newtown tragedy, no other high-profile
politician has been as forceful in condemning gun violence and demanding
“immediate action” in Congress. Millions of Americans — indeed, a majority of
them — agree with you. They are looking for somebody to lead the charge against
the National Rifle Association.
Second, though your message has been blunt, your tactics have been politically
shrewd. In 2006, you started a new organization to fight gun violence: Mayors
Against Illegal Guns. You thought that mayors had the credibility to reframe the
issue as one of crime control, rather than gun control. Mayors Against Illegal
Guns now has more than 800 mayors, and nearly one million “active supporters.”
It has lobbyists in Washington and elsewhere, and has had success resisting
recent N.R.A. legislative initiatives. Its short-term agenda — ban assault
weapons, require background checks for all gun sales, make gun trafficking a
federal crime, and so on — is a good, sensible place to start regulating guns.
Third — and let’s not be coy here — you’re rich. The N.R.A. has an annual budget
that is reported to be $300 million. In 2011, the combined budgets of all the
groups trying to prevent gun violence came to around $16 million. The best-known
of those groups, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, has seen its
support and its funding dwindle in recent years. Meanwhile, the N.R.A. and its
allies have done a brilliant job at pushing through laws that make it nearly
impossible to prevent gun violence. There are more than 200 members of Congress
who regularly get a perfect score from the N.R.A. It is going to take money to
change that because money is what Congress responds to.
To be honest, Mr. Mayor, I wish you could start tomorrow. With each passing day,
the urgency that accompanied the Newtown shooting slips further away. President
Obama, who seems absolutely terrified to take on the gun lobby, didn’t even
mention guns when asked about his second-term priorities. Mitch McConnell, the
Senate minority leader, has said that the first months of the new Congressional
session will be devoted to the issue of federal spending. Guns, he said, will
just have to wait.
In recent years, even in states that experienced horrific mass killings, gun
laws have only become looser. In Virginia, the State Legislature repealed a law
that barred people from buying more than one handgun a month, and passed a law
“to allow permit holders to carry concealed and loaded weapons into bars and
restaurants,” according to ProPublica. That same article reported that in Texas,
two years after the Fort Hood shooting, legislators “gave gun carriers greater
freedom to take their weapons to more places.”
The only two gun bills President Obama has signed were laws that expanded gun
rights. “The country needs his leadership,” you said of Obama after he announced
that Vice President Joe Biden was going to lead a panel making a new effort to
reduce gun violence.
With all due respect, sir, what the country needs is your leadership on this
issue. The sooner the better.
January 6,
2013
The New York Times
By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY
WHITE
PLAINS — Local newspapers across the country look for stories that will bring
them national attention, but The Journal News, a daily nestled in a wooded
office park in a suburb north of New York, may have gotten more than it
bargained for.
Two weeks ago, the paper published the names and addresses of handgun permit
holders — a total of 33,614 — in two suburban counties, Westchester and
Rockland, and put maps of their locations online. The maps, which appeared with
the article “The Gun Owner Next Door: What You Don’t Know About the Weapons in
Your Neighborhood,” received more than one million views on the Web site of The
Journal News — more than twice as many as the paper’s previous record, about a
councilman who had two boys arrested for running a cupcake stand.
But the article, which left gun owners feeling vulnerable to harassment or
break-ins, also drew outrage from across the country. Calls and e-mails grew so
threatening that the paper’s president and publisher, Janet Hasson, hired armed
guards to monitor the newspaper’s headquarters in White Plains and its bureau in
West Nyack, N.Y.
Personal information about editors and writers at the paper has been posted
online, including their home addresses and information about where their
children attended school; some reporters have received notes saying they would
be shot on the way to their cars; bloggers have encouraged people to steal
credit card information of Journal News employees; and two packages containing
white powder have been sent to the newsroom and a third to a reporter’s home
(all were tested by the police and proved to be harmless).
“As journalists, we are prepared for criticism,” Ms. Hasson said, as she sat in
her meticulously tended office and described the ways her 225 employees have
been harassed since the article was published. “But in the U.S., journalists
should not be threatened.” She has paid for staff members who do not feel safe
in their homes to stay at hotels, offered guards to walk employees to their
cars, encouraged employees to change their home telephone numbers and has been
coordinating with the local police.
The decision to report and publish the data, taken from publicly available
records, happened within a week of the school massacre in nearby Newtown, Conn.
On Dec. 17, Dwight R. Worley, a tax reporter, returned from trying to interview
the families of victims in Newtown with an idea to obtain and publish local gun
permit data. He discussed his idea with his immediate editor, Kathy Moore, who
in turn talked to her bosses, according to CynDee Royle, the paper’s editor.
Mr. Worley started putting out requests for public information that Monday,
receiving the data from Westchester County that day and from Rockland County
three days later. All the editors involved said there were not any formal
meetings about the article, although it came up at several regular news
meetings. Ms. Royle, who had been at The Journal News in 2006 when the newspaper
published similar data, without mapping it or providing street numbers, said
that editors discussed publishing the data in at least three meetings.
Ms. Hasson said Ms. Royle told her that an article with gun permit data would be
published on Sunday, Dec. 23. While Ms. Hasson had not been at the paper in
2006, she knew there had been some controversy then. She made sure to be
available on Dec. 23 by e-mail, and accessible to the staff if any problems came
up. A spokesman for Gannett, which owns The Journal News, said it was never
informed about the coming article.
“We’ve run this content before,” Ms. Hasson said. “I supported it, and I
supported the publishing of the info.”
By Dec. 26, employees had begun receiving threatening calls and e-mails, and by
the next day, reporters not involved in the article were being threatened. The
reaction did not stop at the local paper: Gracia C. Martore, the chief executive
of Gannett, also received threatening messages.
Many of the threats, Ms. Hasson said, were coming from across the country, and
not from the paper’s own community. But local gun owners and supporters are
encouraging an advertiser boycott of The Journal News. Scott Sommavilla,
president of the 35,000-member Westchester County Firearm Owners Association,
said 44,000 people had downloaded a list of advertisers from his group’s Web
site. But he emphasized that his association would never encourage any personal
threats. Appealing to advertisers, he said, is the best way for gun owners to
express their disapproval of the article.
“They’re really upset about it,” Mr. Sommavilla said. “They’re afraid for their
families.”
The paper’s decision has drawn criticism from journalists who question whether
The Journal News should have provided more context and whether it was useful to
publish individual names and addresses. Journalists with specialties in
computer-assisted reporting have argued that just because public data has become
more readily available in recent years does not mean that it should be published
raw. In ways, they argued, it would have been more productive to publish data by
ZIP code or block.
“The Journal News, I personally think, should have rethought the idea as
actually going so far to identify actual addresses,” said Steve Doig, a
professor with an expertise in data journalism at Arizona State. “This
particular database ought to remain a public record. Just because it’s available
and public record doesn’t mean we have to make it so readily available.”
Mr. Worley disagrees. “The people have as much of a right to know who owns guns
in their communities as gun owners have to own weapons,” he said.
Mr. Doig pointed out that the recent publication of gun information by other
papers has made access to this public information more difficult because
legislators started blocking the data immediately. “The backlash, very typically
from this, is for legislators to try to close up the access to this type of
data.”
Mr. Worley said he had received mainly taunting phone calls sprinkled in with
callers who said “you should die.” He found broken glass outside of his home and
would not say how much time he was spending there right now. But he said he had
largely been supported by the newsroom.
The Journal News’s features editor, Mary Dolan, said that while she was not
involved with the publication of the article, her home address and phone numbers
were published online in retaliation. She has had to disconnect her phone and
has “taken my social media presence and just put it on the shelf for a while.”
She has also received angry phone calls from former neighbors in Westchester
whose gun information was published.
She said she was especially concerned about the part-time staff members who
write up wedding anniversary and church potluck announcements who have been
harassed. But she supports the paper for its decision.
“It sparked a conversation that needed to occur in this country, and it revealed
tactics that will be employed when gun owners feel their rights are threatened,”
she said.
Putnam County has refused to release similar data, but Ms. Hasson said she would
continue to press for it. She would not say whether the paper had lost any of
its advertisers. According to the Alliance for Audited Media, The Journal News,
like many newspapers nationwide, has had sharp declines in circulation. Its
total circulation from Monday through Friday fell from 111,536 in September 2007
to 68,850 in September 2012.
At the same time, Ms. Hasson has been trying to calm the nerves of her family
after photographs of the home she is renting and references to her adult
children were put online.
“They are concerned about my safety,” she said about her children. “But they are
very supportive.”
January 5,
2013
The New York Times
By RAVI SOMAIYA
Four
people, including a gunman who was suspected of taking hostages inside a house
in Aurora, Colo, died Saturday after a standoff with the police, the authorities
said.
The episode began about 3 a.m. when shots were heard on East Ithaca Place, about
16 miles southeast of downtown Denver, said Sgt. Cassidee Carlson, a spokeswoman
for the Aurora Police Department.
A woman who had escaped from the house told officers that shots had been fired
and “that she observed three people inside the home who appeared lifeless as she
was leaving,” according to a statement released by the police on Saturday
afternoon.
About 50 officers, including members of a SWAT unit and hostage negotiators were
called, Ms. Carlson said. When attempts to talk to the man by telephone and over
a bullhorn were unsuccessful, the police statement said, officers moved in using
an armored vehicle around 8 a.m., which was fired upon.
The police were unable to force the gunman out of the house using gas, Sgt.
Carlson said, and about an hour later, officers shot him to death after he
appeared in a second-floor window, she said.
Inside, the police said they also found the bodies of a woman and two other men.
Sgt. Carlson did not identify the victims or the gunman, and said investigators
did not know what set off the episode.
In July, 12 people were killed and 58 wounded in a shooting at an Aurora movie
theater during midnight screening of the Batman sequel “The Dark Knight Rises.”
The gunman, wearing what the police described as ballistic gear, used an AR-15
assault rifle, a shotgun and a handgun in the shooting, the police said.
James Eagan Holmes, 24, was arrested outside the theater and has been charged in
the killings. Prosecutors are scheduled to present their case against Mr. Holmes
at a preliminary hearing on Monday that is expected to be attended by many of
the survivors and family members of those who died.
Bob Broom, a member of the Aurora City Council, said memories of the movie
theater shootings were still fresh but that life in the city had begun to resume
its normal rhythms. He said he did not believe the shooting on Saturday shooting
would reopen those wounds because it appeared to have been an act of domestic
violence.
“When the theater shooting first happened, there was incredible grief,” said Mr.
Broom, who said he lives in the subdivision where the shooting on Saturday took
place. “But time heals. And it has healed in this situation.”
Barb Helzer, co-owner of the Rock Restaurant and Bar, said she tensed up when
she heard news of the shooting on Saturday. “My whole staff, even the young
staff, who normally don’t pay attention, we all said, ‘Oh my God, there’s been
another shooting,’ ” she said.
Ms. Helzer says she has friends whose Aurora businesses have struggled since the
summer. Others will not go to the movies.
“It is all still a recent reality here. We’re still nervous,” Ms. Helzer said.
“You find yourself looking at people differently. We’re careful when we ask
people to leave the bar. You don’t take things for granted anymore.”
The theater where the shootings took place, the Century 16, is scheduled to
reopen on Jan. 17. The theater’s operator, Cinemark, has been criticized for
sending out invitations for the reopening to relatives of those who were killed.
Parents, grandparents, cousins and a widow of 9 of the 12 people killed said
they were asked to attend an “evening of remembrance” followed by a movie on
Jan. 17, according to an open letter to Cinemark published by The Denver Post.
In the letter, many of the relatives said the company had never offered its
condolences and had refused to meet with them without the company’s lawyers
being present.
“Our family members will never be on this earth with us again, and a movie
ticket and some token words from people who didn’t care enough to reach out to
us, nor respond when we reached out to them to talk, is appalling,” the letter
said.
The families, some of whom have sued Cinemark, described the invitation as a
“thinly veiled publicity ploy” and called for a boycott of the theater. Cinemark
did not immediately return a message seeking comment on Saturday.
Dan Frosch
contributed reporting from Albuquerque, N.M.
January 3,
2013
The New York Times
By RAVI SOMAIYA and WENDY RUDERMAN
Three New
York City police officers were shot Thursday night in two separate encounters,
including one at a Brooklyn subway station that left a gunman dead.
In that shooting, just after 7:30 p.m., two plainclothes transit officers,
Michael Levay, 27, and Lukasz Kozicki, 32, saw a man moving between cars on the
Brooklyn-bound N train at Fort Hamilton Parkway subway station in Brooklyn,
Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said at a news conference late Thursday.
The officers approached the man, removed their shields from under their
bulletproof vests, explained that moving between the cars was not allowed, and
asked him to accompany them off the train, Mr. Kelly said. He moved as if to
comply, the police said, but pulled a gun and shot Officer Kozicki once in each
thigh and in the groin, and Officer Levay once in the back.
Officer Levay, whose vest prevented serious injury, according to Paul J. Browne,
the chief police spokesman, returned fire with seven bullets, killing the man.
The gunman, whose name was not immediately released, landed with his feet on the
platform and his body on the train, the police said. He had at least five
previous arrests, including one for “assault with a knife,” Mr. Browne said.
Both officers were in stable condition Thursday night at Lutheran Medical
Center. One bystander received a graze wound to the leg, the police said.
Earlier, around 6:30 p.m., four men, one with a gun, approached a car dealership
on Boston Road in the Allerton section of the Bronx owned by the family of
Officer Juan Pichardo, 34, and announced a robbery, the police said.
Mr. Pichardo, who was off duty, and another employee were held at gunpoint while
one of the men ransacked the premises, the police said. Mr. Pichardo rushed at
his assailant and was shot in the lower leg, the police said, but despite the
wound, he and the employee subdued the gunman. The gunman and three accomplices,
two waiting in a car outside, were later arrested, the authorities said. Officer
Pichardo was taken to Jacobi Medical Center. His wounds were not considered
life-threatening.
The shootings of the three police officers underscored a violent first few days
of the new year, prompting officers working the late shift Thursday night at
Police Headquarters to shake their heads.
“In recent weeks we’ve heard that what stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy
with a gun,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said on Thursday night at the news
conference, held at Lutheran Medical Center. “But sometimes the good guys get
shot.” Mr. Bloomberg renewed his call for stronger gun restrictions.
The shootings fanned an already boiling debate about gun control. The gun used
to shoot the off-duty officer in the Bronx was reported stolen in North Carolina
in late December; the subway assailant’s gun had been purchased in Pennsylvania
in 2011.
Thursday’s attacks followed two other police-involved shootings so far this
year. In one of those, on Wednesday, an officer shot and seriously injured a
40-year-old man who was wielding a pair of scissors and threatening a woman in a
Brooklyn apartment.
In 2012, the police said, 11 New York City police officers were shot while on
duty, and one while off duty. None of the shootings were fatal. In 2011, three
officers were shot, and one died.
“This is another reminder of how hard we have to work on a nationwide level to
keep illegal guns out of New York City,” Councilman Peter F. Vallone Jr.,
chairman of the City Council’s Public Safety Committee, said on Thursday night.
The exchange of gunfire in Brooklyn was the latest in a series of deadly
encounters at subway stations. In December, two men were pushed to their deaths
underneath subway trains. Suspects have been arrested in both cases.
Christopher
Maag and Angela Macropoulos contributed reporting.
January 2,
2013
The New York Times
By ADAM EISGRAU
Washington
CALLING the massacre in Newtown, Conn., “the worst day of my presidency,”
President Obama recently told NBC’s David Gregory: “My response is, something
has to work. And it is not enough for us to say, ‘This is too hard, so we’re not
going to try.’ ”
Almost 20 years ago, Senator Dianne Feinstein and other lawmakers took the same
approach to build a bipartisan majority in Congress, tortuously, vote by vote,
for legislation banning the future manufacture and sale of assault weapons and
high-capacity ammunition magazines.
As Senator Feinstein’s counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1993, I
worked with her to get the assault weapons bill to President Bill Clinton’s
desk. But the legislation expired in 2004 and hasn’t been renewed. Understanding
what worked then is the key to doing it again in the new Congress, as Senator
Feinstein has vowed to do.
Then, as now, legislation was the product of spectacular violence. On July 1,
1993, a man carrying two semiautomatic pistols equipped with high-capacity
ammunition magazines and “hellfire” triggers, and another pistol, strolled off
an elevator in a San Francisco building. He entered the offices of a law firm
and killed eight people and injured six others before taking his own life. In
the wake of that horror, Senator Feinstein asked me to review earlier bills by
two other Democratic senators at the time, Dennis DeConcini of Arizona and
Howard M. Metzenbaum of Ohio, and blend them with her own proposals to create
meaningful new legislation that could pass Congress.
The law that resulted is best known for regulating certain semiautomatic weapons
and large ammunition magazines, but it’s worth remembering that its official
name was the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act.
That title wasn’t a euphemism: the law needed support from lawmakers who had
viewed prior legislative efforts as toothless, as well as those who feared that
a ban on assault weapons could lead to the confiscation of guns used for hunting
and target shooting.
The bill had three main components. The first was a list of well-known, deeply
feared guns that were banned by name (like Uzis). The second banned the future
manufacture and sale of any new semiautomatic weapon with a detachable magazine
and more than two of several assault-style features (like a forward handgrip).
The third and most critical section was Appendix A, which listed every single
hunting rifle and shotgun in use at the time — there were hundreds — that didn’t
run afoul of the features test in the second component. Those firearms were
unequivocally exempted from the bill.
At the time, gun-control advocates resisted the incorporation of Appendix A. But
the idea behind it was and remains crucial to making any meaningful changes in
America’s gun laws. They must gain the support of gun owners, most of whom are
heartsick over senseless carnage.
By explicitly protecting hundreds of popular sporting guns, the bill enabled
senators and representatives to push back against the tide of protests — many of
them generated by the National Rifle Association — at town hall-style meetings
in their states and districts. They could show their constituents that their
ordinary hunting rifles and shotguns were protected in Appendix A or that their
guns could be added to it, if need be. Proponents of the legislation distributed
blue booklets describing all three parts of the bill, including pictures of the
assault weapons banned by name and the full list of guns protected by Appendix
A.
The nation’s principal law enforcement organizations, whose leaders testified
and lobbied aggressively for the bill, also made great use of the booklets and
Appendix A. In fact, it was a survey showing overwhelming support for an
assault-weapons ban from police chiefs in and around his Congressional district
that persuaded Representative Henry J. Hyde of Illinois, the top Republican on
the House Judiciary Committee at the time, to support the bill. His surprise yes
vote offset the no vote of the committee’s conservative chairman, Representative
Jack Brooks, a Texas Democrat, so that the bill could move to the floor of the
House.
The existence of Appendix A also made it possible for Senator Ben Nighthorse
Campbell, a Colorado Democrat and longtime N.R.A. member — coupled with his own
reaction to a torrent of gun-lobby phone calls — to commit to supporting Senator
Feinstein’s bill if it was essential. That moment came when a motion to table,
or effectively kill, the bill came before the Senate. Although the motion would
have failed with a tie vote of 50 to 50, Senator Feinstein asked Senator
Campbell for his vote to show that a majority of senators supported the bill. He
honored his commitment, and the motion to table failed, 49 to 51, paving the way
for the ultimate passage of the bill by a vote of 57 to 43.
Following the Newtown tragedy, inaction is not an option, morally or
politically. President Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. (who
championed the original assault-weapons ban when he served in the Senate) are on
the right track with their plan to present legislation before the new Congress.
Preventing another slaughter will require not just new gun regulations, but also
education, mental health care, greater access by law enforcement agencies to
mental health records and assistance for parents, while respecting the whole
Bill of Rights.
But the lesson from nearly two decades ago remains clear. If any meaningful
change is to come, legislators must again devise a bill that both regulates
assault weapons and respects and protects gun owners.
If we want to reimpose a permanent assault-weapons ban and restrict high
capacity ammunition magazines, let’s include a new list of exempted rifles and
shotguns used for recreational shooting in a new Appendix A (updated annually)
and actively solicit input from the shooting community to make it work.
If we want to require background checks for all private sales at gun shows,
let’s cap the cost so that private sales aren’t prohibitively expensive. Better
yet, when we do this, let’s find an efficient way to allow individual sellers to
directly use the same F.B.I.-managed background check system they must now pay
federally licensed gun dealers to access for them.
If, once and for all, we want to revoke the de facto exemption from consumer
product safety regulation that, thanks to the N.R.A., guns have historically
enjoyed, let’s bring them under the jurisdiction of the Consumer Product Safety
Commission and require gun makers to build state-of-the-art gunlock technology
(like palm- or fingerprint-recognition sensors) into every handgun or rifle. But
then let’s also relieve gun owners of the burden of identifying and complying
with a patchwork of different state laws covering the transport of firearms and
permit, under federal law, the transport of any lawfully owned gun across state
lines if it’s unloaded and locked in the trunk of a car, in a childproof case.
Finally, if only because it’s the fair thing to do, let’s require states and
localities to process gun registration and other applications by law-abiding gun
owners within a reasonable period of time, and with firm deadlines.
We need comprehensive proposals that can gain wide support. As always, the
resulting legislation won’t be perfect. For example, just as in 1993, it’s
unlikely that a new bill would address assault weapons that people already
lawfully own — like the one Adam Lanza took from his mother before he killed
her, 20 first graders, six educators and himself. We’ll have to address that
problem with publicly and privately sponsored buyback programs and other
approaches. But once enacted, a comprehensive bill would, over time, make
“grandfathered” weapons and ammunition magazines more expensive, harder to find
and harder to repair. If such a compromise kept the wrong gun out of the wrong
hands just once, I’d take it, any day.
Adam Eisgrau,
a lobbyist and communications consultant,
was Senator
Dianne Feinstein’s counsel
for the Senate Judiciary Committee
from 1993 to
1995 and worked for the Brady Campaign,
IN the days following the Newtown massacre the nation’s newspapers were filled
with heart-wrenching pictures of the innocent victims. The slaughter was
unimaginably shocking. But the broader tragedy of gun violence is felt mostly
not in leafy suburbs, but in America’s inner cities.
The right to bear arms typically invokes the romantic image of a cowboy toting a
rifle on the plains. In modern-day America, though, the more realistic picture
is that of a young black man gunned down in his prime in a dark alley. When we
celebrate gun rights, we all too often ignore their disproportionate racial
burdens. Any effort to address gun violence must focus on the inner city.
Last year Chicago had some 500 homicides, 87 percent of them gun-related. In the
city’s public schools, 319 students were shot in the 2011-12 school year, 24 of
them fatally. African-Americans are 33 percent of the Chicago population, but
about 70 percent of the murder victims.
The same is true in other cities. In 2011, 80 percent of the 324 people killed
in Philadelphia were killed by guns, and three-quarters of the victims were
black.
Racial disparities in gun violence far outstrip those in almost any other area
of life. Black unemployment is double that for whites, as is black infant
mortality. But young black men die of gun homicide at a rate eight times that of
young white men. Could it be that the laxity of the nation’s gun laws is
tolerated because its deadly costs are borne by the segregated black and Latino
populations of North Philadelphia and Chicago’s South Side?
The history of gun regulation is inextricably interwoven with race. Some of the
nation’s most stringent gun laws emerged in the South after the Civil War, as
Southern whites feared what newly freed slaves might do if armed. At the same
time, Northerners saw the freed slaves’ right to bear arms as critical to
protecting them from the Ku Klux Klan.
In the 1960s, Huey P. Newton and the Black Panther Party made the gun a central
symbol of black power, claiming that “the gun is the only thing that will free
us.” On May 2, 1967, taking advantage of California’s lax gun laws, several
Panthers marched through the State Capitol in Sacramento carrying raised and
loaded weapons, generating widespread news coverage.
The police could do nothing, as the Panthers broke no laws. But three months
later, Gov. Ronald Reagan signed into law one of the strictest gun control laws
in the country.
The urban riots of the late 1960s — combined with rising crime rates and a
string of high-profile assassinations — spurred Congress to pass federal gun
control laws, banning interstate commerce in guns except for federally licensed
dealers and collectors; prohibiting sales to felons, the mentally ill, substance
abusers and minors; and expanding licensing requirements.
These laws contain large loopholes, however, and are plainly inadequate to deal
with the increased number and lethality of modern weapons. But as long as gun
violence largely targets young black men in urban ghettos, the nation seems
indifferent. At Newtown, the often all-too-invisible costs of the right to bear
arms were made starkly visible — precisely because these weren’t the usual
victims. The nation took note, and President Obama has promised reform, though
he has not yet made a specific proposal.
Gun rights defenders argue that gun laws don’t reduce violence, noting that many
cities with high gun violence already have strict gun laws. But this ignores the
ease with which urban residents can evade local laws by obtaining guns from
dealers outside their cities or states. Effective gun regulation requires a
nationally coordinated response.
A cynic might propose resurrecting the Black Panthers to heighten white anxiety
as the swiftest route to breaking the logjam on gun reform. I hope we are better
than that. If the nation were to view the everyday tragedies that befall young
black and Latino men in the inner cities with the same sympathy that it has
shown for the Newtown victims, there would be a groundswell of support not just
for gun law reform, but for much broader measures.
If we are to reduce the inequitable costs of gun rights, it’s not enough to
tighten licensing requirements, expand background checks to private gun sales or
ban assault weapons. In addition to such national measures, meaningful reform
must include initiatives directed to where gun violence is worst: the inner
cities. Aggressive interventions by police and social workers focused on gang
gun violence, coupled with economic investment, better schools and more
after-school and job training programs, are all necessary if we are to reduce
the violence that gun rights entail.
To tweak the National Rifle Association’s refrain, “guns don’t kill people;
indifference to poverty kills people.” We can’t in good conscience keep making
young black men pay the cost of our right to bear arms.
David Cole is a professor of constitutional law and criminal justice at the
Georgetown University Law Center.
January 1,
2013
The New York Times
By DAVID H. NEWMAN
THERE is an
unspoken rule in medicine: we do not tell tales out of school.
As an emergency room physician, an Army veteran who was deployed to a combat
support hospital in Baghdad in 2005, and a biomedical researcher in the field of
cardiac-arrest resuscitation, I have been and am, on a daily basis, a witness to
grave misfortune. Ordinarily, though, except for medical purposes, I will not
discuss what I have seen.
Last week a colleague asked me to make an exception. The father of two young
children, he was moved by the rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School in
Newtown, Conn., to ask his professional circle to reconsider our silence. I am
an expectant father, and his words resonated with me. They reminded me that we
doctors are at the front lines of the scourge of gun violence, and that to
remain silent as this threat to public health continues unabated would be no
different than for an oncologist or a cardiologist to stay mum on the dangers of
smoking.
The doctor’s balance between discretion and education is complex. But the news
from Newtown, and my colleague’s request, convinced me that we have reached the
threshold. I can no longer stay silent.
Here is just some of what I have seen over the years. In Baghdad, I saw a
5-year-old girl who was shot in the head while in her car seat. Her father, who
knew she was dying before I said it, wept in my arms, as bits of her body clung
to his shirt.
Much of the gun violence I have seen, though, I have seen on home soil, here in
the United States. There was a 9-year-old girl, shot in the chest by an assault
rifle during a “drive-by” gang shooting, in a botched retaliation for a shooting
earlier that day. She was baffled, and in pain, with a gaping hole under her
collarbone.
I have also seen an 8-year-old who found a shotgun in the closet while playing
with a friend. The two boys pointed the weapon at each other a number of times
before the gun accidentally discharged. The 8-year-old arrived in my emergency
department with most of his face blown off. Miraculously, he survived.
Another child I will never forget was a 13-year-old who was shot twice in the
abdomen by an older boy who mistook him for one of a group that had bullied and
berated him a week earlier. Slick with sweat and barely conscious, he groaned
and turned to look at me. Soon after, he died in the operating room. His mother
arrived minutes later, wide-eyed and breathless.
I do not know exactly what measures should be taken to reduce gun violence like
this. But I know that most homicides and suicides in America are carried out
with guns. Research suggests that homes with a gun are two to three times more
likely to experience a firearm death than homes without guns, and that members
of the household are 18 times more likely to be the victim than intruders.
I know that in 2009, the most recent year for which data is available, nearly
400 American children (age 14 and under) were killed with a firearm and nearly
1,000 were injured. That means that this week we can expect 26 more children to
be injured or killed with a firearm.
Emergency rooms are themselves volatile environments, not immune to violence.
Over the last decade, a quarter of gun crimes in American E.R.’s were committed
with guns wrested from armed guards.
I have sworn an oath to heal and to protect humans. Guns, invented to maim and
destroy, are my natural enemy.
Sally Cox, a school nurse in Newtown, told Scott Pelley of “60 Minutes” that
when state troopers led her out of the school after the mass shooting they
instructed her to cover her eyes. This was humane, and right. But some of us see
every day what no one should, ever. If the carnage remains undiscussed, we risk
complacency about an American epidemic — one that is profoundly difficult, but
necessary, to watch, and to confront. That is why I bear witness.
David H.
Newman is the director of clinical research
