On Guns: Tucson Shows Two Visions of America

Dennis A. Henigan
Brady Center Vice President and Author of "Lethal Logic"
January 14, 2011
http://blog.bradycampaign.org/?p=3106

The gun issue confronts us with two competing visions
of America. The Tucson tragedy puts those visions in
stark, clarifying relief.

The gun lobby's vision is guns in every corner of
American society. The National Rifle Association wants
guns in more American homes. It wants more guns on the
streets, in grocery stores, in restaurants, in coffee
houses, in bars, in churches, at workplaces, at
political events, and on college campuses. Guns
everywhere, to deter criminals from attacking and to
shoot back when they do.

Arizona is fast becoming the quintessential realization
of this vision. Arizona has virtually no restrictions
on guns (the Brady Center gives it 2 points out of a
possible 100 in its state law ratings) and the state
recently became the third state to allow people to
carry concealed weapons in public places without a
permit. The state also recently allowed concealed
carriers to take their guns into bars.

Have weak gun laws made Arizonans safer? The state
ranks 6th in the nation in gun deaths. FBI data
indicates it ranks 13th in homicides per 100,000
population. Arizona criminals don't appear to be
cowering in fear of armed, law-abiding citizens.
Arizona also has become a favorite source of lethal
weaponry for the Mexican drug cartels. Three Arizona
gun dealers are among the top 12 American dealers in
supplying Mexican crime guns.

Indeed, Arizona's gun laws are so non-existent that it
was entirely legal for Jared Loughner to be carrying
his Glock outside that Tucson Safeway up until the
moment he pulled the trigger. He actually was one of
the "law-abiding citizens" the NRA thinks is making us
safer by carrying concealed weapons where we live, work
and shop. If Loughner's community college, which
expelled him because he was thought too dangerous to be
in class, had reported his behavior to the Tucson
police, Arizona law allowed them to do nothing to
prevent him from carrying a concealed weapon.

All those Arizonans packing heat did not prevent the
carnage in Tucson. There was, in fact, a law-abiding
citizen with a gun on the scene at that Safeway. He
told Ed Schultz he got to the shooter after someone
else had grabbed the gun from the shooter's hands and
he initially thought the hero was the shooter. In the
NRA's America, where everyone has a gun, it is tough to
tell the good guys from the bad.

Most Americans support a very different vision of
America. It is a nation that allows responsible
citizens to have guns in the home for self-defense, but
imposes reasonable restrictions on guns to make it
harder for dangerous people to be armed. In this
America, a Jared Loughner would not be permitted to
legally carry a gun to a Tucson Safeway. And he would
not have available to him ammunition magazines that
allowed him to fire over 30 shots from a semi-automatic
without the need to reload, firepower that one law
enforcement official has said "increased the lethality
and body count of this attack."

Don't tell me the Second Amendment enforces the gun
lobby's vision for America. The Supreme Court's recent
rulings are entirely consistent with the alternative
vision of reasonable restrictions. In its landmark
opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller interpreting
the Second Amendment to grant an individual right to
have a gun in the home for self-defense, the High Court
went out of its way to make clear that it was not
recognizing a "right to keep and carry any weapon
whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever
purpose." Justice Scalia pointed to a host of gun
restrictions that remain "presumptively lawful" even
under the newly-recognized right, including bans on
"dangerous and unusual weapons."

Loughner's 33-round ammunition magazine made his Glock
pistol a very "dangerous and unusual" weapon. It is
telling that Robert Levy, Chair of the libertarian CATO
Institute and the mastermind behind the Heller case,
this week told reporter Michael Isikoff that he thought
a ban on high-capacity magazines would not violate the
Second Amendment and makes sense from a policy
standpoint.

There are pundits who say that now is not the time to
address divisive issues and that we should move to the
middle of the political spectrum in our policy debates.
The punditry needs to understand, however, that support
for reasonable restrictions on guns is in the middle of
the political spectrum. Contrary to the conventional
wisdom, gun control is not an issue that necessarily
must divide those who own guns and those who do not.

If you don't believe me, ask Republican messaging maven
Frank Luntz, who about a year ago did a far-reaching
survey of gun owners, and particularly self-
acknowledged NRA members, on their attitudes toward gun
control. In an op-ed he wrote with Tom Barrett,
Democratic Mayor of Milwaukee, Luntz reported, for
example, that 86% of non-NRA gun owners, and 69% of NRA
members, support extending Brady Law background checks
to all sales at gun shows. Luntz said his poll "also
found support among NRA members and other gun owners
for numerous other policies to strengthen safety,
security and law enforcement." He concluded that "the
culture war over the right to bear arms isn't much of a
war after all."

There is, in fact, a strong national consensus
supporting specific additional gun restrictions that
still allow law abiding and responsible adults to make
the ultimate choice about owning a gun. This consensus
has not been translated into public policy because too
many of our elected officials are intimidated by the
NRA -- a noisy, threatening lobby that does not even
represent its own members on the question of reasonable
regulation of guns.

Those who own guns and those who do not, to a
surprising degree, have the same vision for America.
Now that a much-admired Member of Congress lies
seriously wounded, and the nation mourns yet another
mass shooting and the fatal wounding of yet another
child, is it too much to ask for a modicum of courage
from Congress, and the President, to make that vision a
reality?

For more information, see Dennis Henigan's Lethal
Logic: Exploding the Myths that Paralyze American Gun
Policy (Potomac Books 2009)

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