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"Million" Mom March rally in Washington, D.C., on Mother's Day,
drew about 100 people, according to CNN.
In Nashville, the MMM obtained a permit for a rally at the state
capitol, but didn't even show up. At the MMM
rallies around the country, crowds tended to around the size
of the D.C. rally.
At most MMM rally sites, pro-rights demonstrators, led by the Second
Amendment Sisters(sometimes in conjunction with the Tyranny
Response Team) staged counterprotests.
A few weeks beforehand, the MMM had laid off 30 of its 35 paid staff.
And thanks to outstanding investigative work by www.keepandbeararms.com,
the MMM was expelled from its offices in San Francisco General Hospital.
The MMM had obtained office space from the Trauma Foundation, without
SF General's knowledge, and was using the space for lobbying, in
violation of the city-owned hospital's rules.
The MMM was the darling of the media in the spring of 2000, but
its abysmal election results in November have shown both politicians
and the media that the group had little of the grassroots political
power that it claimed.
Now, the leading organizations in the anti-gun movement are two
groups which were unknown a year ago. Americans
for Gun Safety is the creation of the billionaire founder of
Monster.com.
Its goal differ little from those of Handgun
Control, Inc., (HCI) on whose board the AGS billionaire used
to serve. But AGS--in sharp contrast from MMM, HCI, and most of
the rest of the anti-gun movement — avoid incendiary rhetoric
attacking gun owners or gun manufacturers.
The other anti-gun group worth watching is the Violence
Policy Center (VPC), a non-lobbying educational organization
which explicitly favors prohibition of handguns and a huge number
of shotguns and rifles, and which criticizes other anti-gun groups
for timidity and incrementalism.
Two years ago, Handgun Control, Inc., was king of the anti-gun movement.
Led by Sarah Brady, the group had achieved unprecedented success
in promoting gun control at the federal level, and had achieved
important victories in some states. But the 2000 election results
also hurting HCI, which can legitimately take responsibility for
Al Gore's defeat and for continued Republican control of the House
of Representatives, as well as for the 1994 Republican take-over
of Congress. Newsweek reports that the group is planning
on changing its name, having belatedly discovered that "control"
isn't something that resonates well in American political culture.
HCI's educational/legal spinoff, the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence,
is having trouble too. The group is swimming in money, with tremendous
support from Hollywood and foundations. But the CPHV's flagship
project — promoting government lawsuits against handgun manufacturers,
retailers, wholesalers, and trade organizations — has been
a bust. Following well-established precedent, many courts have dismissed
the lawsuits as a transparent attempt to win in court what the anti-gun
groups cannot win in the legislature. If the suits are to survive
anywhere, their best prospects are in Ohio and (to a lesser degree)
in California, where anti-gun civil lawsuits are before the state
supreme courts, and in Boston.
As a political tactic, the lawsuits have been a pure loser. While
HCI/CPHV have usually been adroit at framing issues (like waiting
periods and "assault weapon" bans) which have intuitive appeal to
a majority of the public, opinion polls show that a large majority
of the public opposes the lawsuits. This is one reason why 26 state
legislatures have now enacted laws banning such vexatious suits.
The process of lobbying for the anti-lawsuit laws has helped the
NRA build closer ties with mainstream business groups, which recognize
that if the gun lawsuits succeed, many other product manufacturers
and distributors will be vulnerable to similar suits. Indeed, they
will be more vulnerable, since guns are sold under a regulatory
system that is stricter than the regulations for any other major
consumer product except prescription drugs. If full compliance with
strict regulation isn't sufficient protection from legal liability,
then compliance with the looser regulations for alcohol, fast food,
and other products would likewise be legally insufficient.
A second political effect of the lawsuits is that, for the first
time in history, the American firearms industry has been shaken
from its torpor, and begun major political and public education
efforts, rather than simply relying on the consumer-oriented National
Rifle Association.
Under the direction of the National
Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), firearms manufacturers have
finally started to make their case to the public.
The only company that caved in to the CPHV lawsuits was Smith &
Wesson, which was acting under orders of its British parent, the
conglomerate Tomkims PLC. As detailed by sources such as MSNBC and
the National Journal, the "Smith & Wesson sell-out" has been a disaster
for the company. Consumer revulsion at S&W's betrayal of Second
Amendment principles has seriously cut sales, no new government
contracts materialized as a result of the S&W settlement, and hardly
any of the anti-S&W lawsuits have been dismissed.
The S&W disaster has also reinforced solidarity within the rest
of the firearms industry. Thus, the CPHV's lawsuits have accomplished
a feat which gun rights activists had failed to accomplish: turning
firearms companies into a united, active, highly-engaged political
force.
According to Fortune, the National Rifle Association is now
rated as one of the two most powerful lobbies in Washington, a remarkable
comeback from April-May 1999, when a media frenzy over Columbine
sent the NRA reeling.
When serving as United States Representative from Wyoming, Dick
Cheney was so strongly supportive of Second Amendment rights that
he even voted
against two (relatively mild) gun-control laws which the NRA
supported. As vice president, Cheney has been put in charge of firearms
policy for the Bush administration. Notwithstanding President Reagan's
pro-gun rhetoric, the current Bush administration is far more closely
allied with the gun rights movement — and staffed by strong
Second Amendment supporters — than any administration since
the days of Jefferson and Madison. This is a remarkable change from
the Clinton administration, which was the only administration in
American history with a comprehensive anti-gun agenda that permeated
the executive branch. Some previous presidents, such as Lyndon Johnson
and George Bush III, had supported isolated gun control laws, but
had not devoted their tenure in office to a war on the Second Amendment.
NRA Executive Vice-President Wayne LaPierre's campaign to restore
the NRA to its traditional status as a mainstream organization has
succeeded. One result is that 33 states now have laws guaranteeing
that law-abiding adults can obtain
a permit to carry a concealed handgun in public for lawful protection.
The right to carry was, as a practical matter, destroyed in almost
all the United States by gun laws which were enacted as a result
of alcohol prohibition violence in the 1920s and 1930s, and of racial
unrest in the 1960s. The contemporary renaissance of concealed carry
has saved many thousands of lives, and deterred or foiled hundreds
of thousands of violent crimes.
The new handgun carry laws are also playing a major role in bringing
legitimate firearms ownership even further into the mainstream of
American thought. From Florida to Alaska — and most places
in-between — Americans who don't own guns are getting used
to the idea that the woman sitting next to them on the bus might
have a Glock 9mm in her purse. And (contrary to the hysterical and
mean-spirited warnings of the anti-gun groups), she poses no threat
to anyone except a violent predator.
In order to pass concealed carry laws, the NRA sometimes supports
regulations which offend Second Amendment purists — such as
requiring a license applicant to pass a safety training class. Similarly,
the NRA sometimes supports (or does not oppose) limited gun control
legislation in order to maintain good working relationships with
elected officials.
The NRA's mainstream success, in turn, has led some gun rights advocates
to shift their support to Gun
Owners of America (GOA); the group's lobbyists have little clout
with most offices on Capitol Hill, but the GOA's e-mail and fax
grassroots network has become extremely effective. GOA was the most
important organization behind the failure in the last two Congresses
of Senator Orrin Hatch's bill to federalize much of the juvenile
justice system. Because of GOA's strong conservative grassroots
network, and its libertarian leanings, GOA has developed good working
relationships with left-leaning civil liberties groups in Washington,
such as the American Civil Liberties Union, and the National Association
of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
While GOA may have a good relationship with the national ACLU, its
relationship with the NRA is acrimonious. Yet ironically, the better
that GOA does, the better for the NRA. Membership defections to
GOA haven't exactly crippled the NRA, which now has record four
million members. And the more attention that GOA's grassroots generates,
the more the NRA can present itself, quite accurately, as a reasonable
organization which lawmakers can work with.
There is still a long way to go before all the infringements on
the Second Amendment are removed, and there are still serious new
threats to Second Amendment rights, such as gun-show
amendments that will be offered to the education bill which
comes before the Senate soon; the effort to close the non-existent
"gun show loophole" is simply an incremental step towards putting
every gun owner in a government database, which itself is an incremental
step towards confiscation.
And the greatest asset of the anti-gun prohibition — the media
— has hardly decided that Second Amendment rights deserve even
a tenth as much protection as First Amendment rights. Even so, Mother's
Day 2001 found even the media acknowledging that political momentum
is on the side of gun rights. That's quite a contrast from two years
ago, and it's good news for mothers, children, and everyone else
concerned with public safety.
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