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Democratic Leadership Council sent an important sign about gun politics
recently, unveiling a new article "Changing
the Gun Debate. " The revealing piece is written by Jonathan
Cowan and Jim Kessler, president and policy director, respectively,
of Americans for Gun Safety. AGS is the creation of billionaire
Andrew McKelvey, who briefly served on the board of Sarah Brady's
Handgun Control, Inc., then quit because the organization was making
so little progress.
Their message is the need to develop a new perspective on the gun
debate if the gun-control lobby and the Democratic party are going
to make any further advances. Cowan and Kessler are to be commended
for speaking plainly to Democrats about gun control. They point
out the futility of trying to influence gun-owning voters by insulting
them and acting as if owning a gun makes one a sociopath. This November's
elections demonstrated that Rosie O'Donnell-style hate-mongering
frightens many more voters than it encourages.
Yet AGS quickly returns to the politics of false demonization. Cowan
and Kessler assert that the NRA stands for "no restrictions on the
sale, manufacture, or possession of firearms." This is nonsense.
It was the NRA that successfully pushed for the National Instant
Check System for gun buyers as an alternative to the seven-day waiting
period pushed by Handgun Control, Inc. When some NRA Board members
objected to the NRA supporting gun control, Wayne LaPierre (chief
operating officer of the NRA) and Jim Baker (chief lobbyist) threatened
to quit if the NRA backed away from instant background checks.
It is also the NRA, under LaPierre and Baker's tenure, that has
successfully pushed for concealed handgun licensing laws,
which are now on the books in 33 states. These laws set up a fair,
uniform, licensing procedure, including a background check,
for law-abiding adults who wish to carry a firearm for lawful protection.
The NRA's promotion of background checks and licensing has earned
it the wrath of Gun
Owners of America, which accurately promotes itself as "The
only no-compromise gun lobby in Washington" — in pointed contrast
with the National Rifle Association. Anybody who's followed gun
control politics for more than a few weeks knows about the NRA/GOA
fight.
Cowan and Kessler then complain that the "NRA spent tens of millions
of dollars in the last election to persuade gun-owning union households
that a Gore administration would take away their guns. Although
unions fought hard to persuade their members to vote their union
and not their gun, the NRA's bogus scare tactic had an impact."
Well, the most visible signs of the NRA's "bogus" campaign were
billboards containing the text of a letter from Clinton/Gore Solicitor
General Seth Waxman claiming that the Second Amendment guaranteed
no individual rights and that the federal government could take
away everyone's guns, if it wanted to. After a shooting at the National
Zoo in Washington, D.C., Gore said that he favored banning self-loading
handguns, which constitute over half of all handguns. Gore ran television
ads touting his tie-breaking 1999 Senate vote in favor of the Lautenberg
Amendment on gun shows. Yet Cowan and Kessler themselves denounce
the Lautenberg Amendment because it treated "hobbyists who attend
these shows like dangerous social misfits."
So Gore's administration says there's no right to own a gun; Gore
endorses banning most handguns; and Gore applauds himself for his
decisive vote in favor of treating gun hobbyists like dangerous
social misfits. And yet Cowan and Kessler claim that the NRA is
guilty of n "bogus scare" tactics for warning gun owners about Al
Gore?
After echoing the absurd anti-NRA propaganda lines of the gun prohibition
lobbies, Cowan and Kessler announce that Democrats and "gun safety"
advocates "need to make gun owners partners in developing policies
that help keep guns out of the hands of criminals and make guns
safer in the home." They also call for Americans to "embrace a 'third
way' gun policy that treats gun ownership as neither an absolute
right nor an absolute wrong ."
First of all, the "third way" that Cowan and Kessler advocate happens
to be what the NRA has been promoting all along. The gun activists
who want an "absolute right" have long ago defected to Gun Owners
of America.
Cowan and Kessler extensively tout their proposal for imposing special
restrictions on firearms sales at gun shows, and falsely claim that
there is a "gun show loophole." To the contrary, current federal
law applies the same no matter where a gun sale takes place. If
the sale is by someone "engaged in the business," then the seller
needs to have a Federal Firearms License, and every sale needs permission
from the FBI--including sales at gun shows.
If on the other hand, the seller is not "engaged in the business"
(e.g., a collector selling a couple guns in order to pay for the
family's summer vacation), then the federal restrictions on dealers
are not applicable. Whether he sells the two guns to a friend at
work, to a neighbor, through the classified ads, or at a gun show,
the law is the same.
Whatever the merits of making the collector's occasional sales at
a gun show subject to special restrictions not applicable elsewhere,
to claim that these special restrictions are "closing a loophole"
is Orwellian. The majority of the American public may be misinformed
about the existence of a "gun show loophole" — but gun-rights
activists (the folks who delivered five states and thus the Presidency
to George Bush last November) certainly are not. If Cowan, Kessler,
AGS, and the DLC are serious about defusing opposition from gun
rights activists, a good first step would be to stop mischaracterizing
existing gun laws.
And if Americans for Gun Safety actually believes its public rhetoric
about supporting the right of law-abiding citizens to own guns,
then how about supporting repeal of the handgun prohibition
laws in Chicago and District of Columbia? In fact, AGS was recently
asked about supporting repeal of gun-prohibition laws — which
would seem to be a rather easy idea for people who genuinely support
a "third way" between the gun-prohibition lobbies and the NRA. AGS
refused.
What Cowan and Kessler are really advocating is not a genuine "third
way," but rather classic Clintonian sleight-of-hand. They pay lip
service to the "rights" of gun owners--but they won't even go so
far as to state that the Second Amendment guarantees any rights.
Presumably, the hope is to fool some poorly informed gun owners
into believing that their rights are safe while the antigun lobby
pushes gun control a bit farther down the slippery slope.
Mr. Cowan, by the way, is former chief of staff to former HUD Secretary
Andrew Cuomo. This makes him the right-hand man of the most antigun
Cabinet member of the most antigun administration in American history.
As Cuomo's chief of staff, Cowan was hip-deep in working with the
hard core of the antigun lobby (the very folks he claims to be distant
from, today) to threaten abusive government lawsuits against American
gun manufacturers. Would a genuinely moderate, third-way group make
someone with Cowan's background its president?
As one might expect from an article written by a former Clinton
official, much of the article is devoted to an analysis of polls,
feelings, political maneuver and clever use of labels like "gun
safety" instead of "gun control." Although the authors point out
that some people believe the Second Amendment confirms an individual
right, they are careful not to agree or disagree.
Reading between the lines, it seems that Cowan and Kessler are simply
telling the antigun enthusiasts of the Democratic party to control
their emotions, to muzzle the counter-productive hate speech, to
impose control by salami tactics, and to stop harming their cause
by grabbing for more than they have the political force to take.
There really are some Democrats who usually support gun control,
but who sincerely believe in at least some Second Amendment rights.
Wisconsin senator Russ Feingold is one of them. But if the DLC wants
voters to believe that there's really a New Democrat vision on gun
control, the DLC ought to publish someone who affirms the Second
Amendment and who stands against gun prohibition — rather than
an old-fashioned Clinton official who's discovered Fabian tactics.
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