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Bush’s True Aim On Guns

by Stephen Young

OpEdNews.com 

 

Four years ago gun violence was a key issue as the nation moved toward the choice of a new president.  After a series of mass shootings across the country and the failure of Congress to pass one piece of legislation addressing them, voters wanted answers.  On Mother’s Day, 2000, 750,000 people gathered in Washington at the Million Mom March to demand action of our nation’s leadership. 

 

On Mother’s Day 2004 the Million Mom March put out the call for another gathering of the faithful and 2,500 showed up.  What happened to the gun control movement?

 

War, terrorism, and jobs have pushed the gun issue off the political radar screen, which is where the Bush administration would like it to stay. 

 

But they’re not going to get their wish.

 

Assault rifles, weapons made for military combat, are about to become legal in September when the Assault Weapons Ban sunsets.  These are the same weapons our troops are trying to take off the streets of Baghdad .  In 2000 candidate George W. Bush said he supported the ban.  Early in 2004 Bush said he’d sign an extension of the ban if it reached his desk.  That’s turned out to be a big if.

 

In election year politics saying he’ll sign it doesn’t mean he supports it.  With Republican control of both houses of Congress, the only action Bush likely took on the Assault Weapons Ban was to tell his legislative leaders to make sure it didn’t reach his desk.  Recently an Illinois congressman confided to gun control activists that Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert has received no White House directive to put the ban extension bill on the House floor.

 

This past March the White House was caught unprepared when an extension of the ban was heading toward Bush’s desk as an amendment to the “Lawful Protection Of Commerce Act,” also known as the gun industry legal immunity bill.  The immunity bill, which sought almost 100% protection from lawsuits against the gun industry, so enraged the gun control movement that in a rare display of teamwork, it unified to defeat the bill.  The victory saved dozens of lawsuits currently pending against gun manufacturers and retailers from being dismissed; including a suit I’ve filed in Illinois arising from the shooting death of my son with an illegally trafficked handgun.   

 

Over the past twenty years the gun industry’s products have taken the lives of over 30,000 Americans annually.  The industry’s critics accuse it of refusing to police itself allowing junk gun manufacturers and unethical retailers to pour guns into illegal markets.  Many of the lawsuits currently pending against the gun industry, allege that low-end handgun manufacturers can’t make a profit without funneling their products into the illegal underground market. 

 

The ‘Lawful Protection of Commerce Act” was a product of the NRA in reaction to the slew of lawsuits brought against the industry by victims and governmental entities.  The NRA was afraid that eventually a suit would succeed (a la “Big Tobacco”) opening the floodgates to huge settlements.  They argued the suits have financially stressed an industry selling a “legal” product and more suits could close firearms companies throwing thousands of employees out of work.  No mention was made of the hundreds of thousands of workers who have lost the ability to work because they were shot dead by a bullet. 

 

Bush said he’d sign the bill claiming tort reform is needed to protect defendants from unreasonable lawsuits.  If it had become law who knows how many other industries, (pharmaceuticals, construction, autos)  would line up asking for protection?

 

Bush also specified he wanted the bill to reach his desk “clean,” meaning no amendments.  It was just that strategy the bill’s opponents used to bring it down.  Three amendments attached in the Senate survived by narrow margins despite the all out opposition of NRA lobbyists.  The first required trigger locks be sold with all handguns.  The second stipulated that the gun show loophole be closed, which currently allows felons and the mentally unstable to buy weapons without a background check.  The third was the extension of the assault weapons ban. 

 

To moderate voters, the three amendments seem like reasonable solutions to denying firearm access to the wrong people.  But an ideological war erupted within the NRA between the hard-core Second Amendment crowd and those willing to compromise in order to obtain the legal immunity that could save their industry millions of dollars in legal fees and potential judgments. 

 

The extremists won.  The NRA refused to accept the three amendments and the White House ordered the bill defeated.

 

On Sept. 13 the assault weapons ban will expire and Bush will tell the electorate he would have signed the bill had it reached his desk.  Police support the ban almost unanimously and about 75% of the American public.  Still, Bush has decided he’s going to stick with his radical right wing base in the NRA.  

 

 As we approach the election Bush will continue to claim he’s the stronger candidate in dealing with terrorism, but if the gun control movement is smart they’ll ask him a question he can’t answer.  How is it we’re safer if assault weapons are now legal when Bush could have prevented it, and felons and terrorists can waltz into weekend gun shows to buy a military combat rifle with no questions asked?

 

Stephen Young is an adjunct lecturer in the Department of Political Science at Northwestern University