Harry Tuttle
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Politics, paranoia fuel war of words over guns
Rhetoric runs hot, statistics are stretched thin when powerful interests chash on firearms control
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStorie...y=REGIONOTHER&BCCode=HOME&newsdate=10/18/2004
_
By JORDAN CARLEO-EVANGELIST, Staff writer
First published: Monday, October 18, 2004
It was July 1998. Newspapers were full of stories about a seeming rash of shootings in schools. About 40 representatives of law enforcement, public health and other fields were summoned to Washington, D.C., to talk about ways to deal with gun violence in America.
Alan Lizotte, a University at Albany criminologist, recalls with certain satisfaction the way former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno took notes as he and his colleagues spoke.
"It was all very impressive," Lizotte said, adding that he was quickly frustrated by the discussion.
The premise of the session was not quite right, he said. Like many attempts to address the problem, it was organized after an unusual but high-profile tragedy and was the product of conventional thinking: Someone broke a law, so tougher laws are needed.
"Every time we start to do something sensible about gun control, somebody shoots John Lennon and then we legislate to that," he said.
So Lizotte and some of his colleagues offered this advice to Reno: "School shootings are not the issue. The issue is kids selling drugs on street corners in big cities."
School shootings are rare. Disarming drug dealers would save more lives than banning certain types of guns or making it harder for otherwise law-abiding people to own one, they said.
The panel identified promising strategies to reduce gun violence that appeared to be working in Buffalo, New York City and other places. The programs encourage citizens to get involved in community improvement while police step up efforts to seize illegal weapons from known criminals.
Following that strategy, Lizotte said, New York City cut homicides from 2,245 in 1990 to 598 in 2003.
"No new laws were passed," he said. "New York is the shining example that something can happen while enforcing existing laws."
When it comes to guns in America, experts agree that debate and legislation are driven largely by politics, paranoia, ignorance and media sensationalism -- forces that rarely result in sensible public policy.
Those who study the issue say pro- and anti-gun forces are so polarized and concerned about protecting their ideological points they stymie credible policies that could reduce gun violence. Last month's expiration of the federal assault weapons ban, they say, is a case in point.
Critics of the assault weapons ban -- including some backers of gun control -- say it had little or no effect on crime. Yet many gun control advocates dismissed any question about the law's impact and instead blamed the law's demise on what they call a grotesquely powerful gun lobby -- led by the 4 million member National Rifle Association.
"The NRA wields incredible power with the Republican leadership," said Kristen Rand, legislative director for the Violence Policy Center, which she called the largest national gun control advocacy group seeking a ban on handgun production.
The NRA does have clout, thanks to a big membership and a deep wallet at election time. In the current election cycle, the NRA and like-minded groups had contributed $849,564 to candidates for federal office, mostly Republicans, by mid-September.
By comparison, gun control advocates had given $62,700, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics in Washington.
"People like (House Majority Leader) Tom Delay are rabidly opposed to gun violence prevention measures," said Chad Ramsey, a spokesman for The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, which led the pro-gun control donors.
Delay, a Texas Republican whose campaign and political action committee both have taken donations from the NRA, refused to allow a House vote on reauthorization of the ban, saying it lacked enough votes to pass.
The NRA proved its unwillingness to compromise, opponents say, when it succeeded in redirecting $2.6 million in federal funding that had been slated for a 1996 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study of firearm-related injuries. The NRA never fully explained its reasons, but it was seen at the time as a move to quell support for redefining gun violence as a public health issue rather than a crime issue.
Why oppose a study? Falling crime rates help the NRA's argument that tougher gun control laws are not needed. Redefining gun control as a way to prevent suicides and accidental deaths -- public health concerns the law was never intended to address -- would weaken the NRA's position.
No matter how the issue is defined, the NRA dismisses any suggestion that restricting gun ownership would help reduce gun violence.
"We know the basic premise of gun control is flawed," spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said in an interview from NRA headquarters in Fairfax, Va.
The NRA wins in Congress not because of any unfair advantage, he said. The association simply has a huge, motivated membership. Gun control advocates, meanwhile, twist facts to intentionally mislead and frighten the public, he counters.
Arulanandam cited last year's Violence Policy Center report "Officer Down," which said that one in five law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty is slain with an assault weapon. The statistic was repeated by major news organizations in writing about the law, but it's not quite right.
The Violence Policy Center acknowledges that it included officers killed with weapons that were not covered by the assault weapon ban, calling it an insignificant difference.
Arulanandam said his opposition shifts attention from effective gun violence prevention measures because it focuses instead on one goal: banning guns. It isn't even honest about its intent, he said, noting that The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence was called Handgun Control Inc. until 2001.
"The reason these folks feel like they have to camouflage their agenda is because they know the vast majority of the voting American public stands with the NRA," Arulanandam said.
Ramsey, the Brady spokesman, said the name change was a tribute to the family of James Brady, a former presidential aide wounded in the 1981 attempt to assassinate President Ronald Reagan.
"Our goal is to stop gun violence, not to control guns," Ramsey said. "It's gun violence prevention. It's not handgun control."
Earlier this year, the debate got so convoluted the NRA pleaded with lawmakers to kill a bill that would have protected gun manufacturers from lawsuits rising from the use of their products in crimes, which was the association's top priority. Gun control advocates managed to amend the bill to include an assault weapons ban extension and to require instant background checks at all gun shows.
NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre e-mailed a warning to senators: Vote against the bill or the NRA would marshal its influence against them in November. In the end, the bill failed 90-8.
Nothing changed.
Both sides claimed victory.
Neutral observers say all factions in the gun control debate play to the most extreme hopes and fears of their supporters: The NRA insists each new gun control law is a step toward confiscation; groups like the Violence Policy Center insist a handgun ban is needed to reduce gun violence.
"The gun control nuts are going to say, 'We're going to collect up ... guns,' so they can raise money and get elected," said Lizotte, the UAlbany professor. "And the gun nuts are going to say, 'They're going to take away your guns,' so they can collect money and get elected. Both sides know it's not going to happen."
A ban would be politically impossible in a nation where there's a gun in 43 percent of all homes and where 5 million new firearms are purchased every year, Lizotte said. Collecting those guns from people who believe they have a constitutional right to them would be costly and daunting, he said.
Conversely, gun control remains popular, particularly in the Northeast. Even a third of all NRA members who responded to a recent University of Pennsylvania poll supported the extension of the assault weapons ban.
"What's happened is that both organizations have come to rely on increasingly strident rhetoric to rally support. ... And that rhetoric is like a narcotic" that must be taken in ever-larger doses, said Robert J. Spitzer, a political science professor at the State University College at Cortland and author of a book about politics and gun control. "It's very difficult to backtrack on that kind of strident, inflexible approach."
Meanwhile, reasonable, attainable solutions are ignored, said John Lacey, a spokesman for Americans for Gun Safety, a relatively new, nonpartisan group that claims to support both the Second Amendment's protection of the right to bear arms and also what it calls sensible gun control legislation.
"We are sick and tired of people playing politics with the gun issue," he said, laying equal blame on both sides of the debate. "We have a number of very good gun laws, and we need to enforce them."
Lacey's group is in the interesting position of being disliked by both sides in the debate.
Since its creation in 2000 by Andrew McKelvey, a former Handgun Control Inc. board member whose company runs the employment Web site Monster.com, Americans for Gun Safety is listed by the NRA as an "anti-gun" organization and criticized by gun control groups as too willing to compromise with the gun lobby.
The deep philosophical and political division in the gun control debate manifests itself in New York state as well. Here, gun rights groups disdain and distrust gun control groups, while leaders of the gun control groups have all but given up on compromise.
It's a fight fueled in part by geography. New York, like the country as a whole, is sharply divided between urban and rural areas, and demography plays a large role in cultivating diverse attitudes about the role of guns in society.
People who grew up in or near big cities are more likely to see guns as implements of mayhem; those from rural areas see them as a tool in everyday life, said Brian Anse Patrick, a professor of communications at the University of Toledo, Ohio, and author of the book "NRA and the Media: The Motivating Force of Negative Coverage."
"People hear and believe what they already believe," said Patrick, who is studying the public debate in many of the 28 states that over the past 20 years have made it easier for citizens to carry concealed handguns.
"I think most of what we have is a philosophical difference," said Thomas King, director of the Troy-based New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, which claims 40,000 members statewide. "(It is) fostered by the media and it's fostered by a different lifestyle."
Split New York at the Westchester County line and the new states would have radically different gun laws, said state Sen. Dale Volker, R-Depew, who has tried several times to overhaul the state's concealed carry laws.
"There was never a real drumbeat upstate. It was all about New York City," said Volker, a former police officer who represents Wyoming County, as well as parts of Erie, Livingston and Ontario counties.
As on the national scene, there's little common ground in New York.
"There are no moderates in the gun control movement," said King, who concedes that his side has its share of radicals but says the other guys are "rabid."
"If you talk to them about anything they immediately say, 'Do away with guns: Guns are evil,' " King said.
New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, the state's leading gun control lobby, is based in New York City and claims about 1,000 members.
"We're not an anti-gun organization, we're an anti-gun-violence organization," said Andy Pelosi, the group's executive director and lobbyist. He maintains that his group is willing to compromise, pointing out that it seeks national handgun licensing, rather than a ban.
That said, however, Pelosi counts any sort of compromise as increasingly unlikely.
"I think when it comes to the gun lobby, the folks at the top, I don't think they have any desire to compromise," he said. "They're about a right-wing ideology.
"We just come at this from two fundamentally different positions," he added. "I just don't think we're going to get them to the table."
Rather than try to get their opponents to budge, Pelosi said, gun control advocates need to do a better job of getting more Americans involved in the debate. Once they do that, he said, the advantage will clearly swing in their favor.
In the end, resolution of the impasse may resemble something politically attainable rather than perfect, said Russ Haven, legislative counsel to the New York Public Interest Research Group.
In the days leading up to the demise of the assault weapons ban, Haven lobbied for its renewal, arguing that just because it wasn't perfect doesn't mean it should be tossed.
"That analysis lets the perfect be the enemy of the good," he said. "If you can't do the ideal than you can't do anything. No, it's not perfect, and certainly it can be fixed, but politics and policy-making is the art of the possible."
But UAlbany's Lizotte points out that the "art of the possible" didn't work when it came to the assault weapons ban. Gun control advocates, he said, went after assault weapons because they were an easier sell to a public that would not accept a handgun ban, he said.
"There's 60 million handguns out there," he said. "Assault weapons? There were relatively few. It's an easy thing to go after. That's why you do it."
But just because it's attainable doesn't make it good policy, said the Rifle and Pistol Association's King.
"When you're a politician and you look at a way of judging whether you're successful at your job as how many bills you get introduced, how many bills you get passed, that's not necessarily productive to society as a whole."
Rhetoric runs hot, statistics are stretched thin when powerful interests chash on firearms control
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStorie...y=REGIONOTHER&BCCode=HOME&newsdate=10/18/2004
_
By JORDAN CARLEO-EVANGELIST, Staff writer
First published: Monday, October 18, 2004
It was July 1998. Newspapers were full of stories about a seeming rash of shootings in schools. About 40 representatives of law enforcement, public health and other fields were summoned to Washington, D.C., to talk about ways to deal with gun violence in America.
Alan Lizotte, a University at Albany criminologist, recalls with certain satisfaction the way former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno took notes as he and his colleagues spoke.
"It was all very impressive," Lizotte said, adding that he was quickly frustrated by the discussion.
The premise of the session was not quite right, he said. Like many attempts to address the problem, it was organized after an unusual but high-profile tragedy and was the product of conventional thinking: Someone broke a law, so tougher laws are needed.
"Every time we start to do something sensible about gun control, somebody shoots John Lennon and then we legislate to that," he said.
So Lizotte and some of his colleagues offered this advice to Reno: "School shootings are not the issue. The issue is kids selling drugs on street corners in big cities."
School shootings are rare. Disarming drug dealers would save more lives than banning certain types of guns or making it harder for otherwise law-abiding people to own one, they said.
The panel identified promising strategies to reduce gun violence that appeared to be working in Buffalo, New York City and other places. The programs encourage citizens to get involved in community improvement while police step up efforts to seize illegal weapons from known criminals.
Following that strategy, Lizotte said, New York City cut homicides from 2,245 in 1990 to 598 in 2003.
"No new laws were passed," he said. "New York is the shining example that something can happen while enforcing existing laws."
When it comes to guns in America, experts agree that debate and legislation are driven largely by politics, paranoia, ignorance and media sensationalism -- forces that rarely result in sensible public policy.
Those who study the issue say pro- and anti-gun forces are so polarized and concerned about protecting their ideological points they stymie credible policies that could reduce gun violence. Last month's expiration of the federal assault weapons ban, they say, is a case in point.
Critics of the assault weapons ban -- including some backers of gun control -- say it had little or no effect on crime. Yet many gun control advocates dismissed any question about the law's impact and instead blamed the law's demise on what they call a grotesquely powerful gun lobby -- led by the 4 million member National Rifle Association.
"The NRA wields incredible power with the Republican leadership," said Kristen Rand, legislative director for the Violence Policy Center, which she called the largest national gun control advocacy group seeking a ban on handgun production.
The NRA does have clout, thanks to a big membership and a deep wallet at election time. In the current election cycle, the NRA and like-minded groups had contributed $849,564 to candidates for federal office, mostly Republicans, by mid-September.
By comparison, gun control advocates had given $62,700, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics in Washington.
"People like (House Majority Leader) Tom Delay are rabidly opposed to gun violence prevention measures," said Chad Ramsey, a spokesman for The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, which led the pro-gun control donors.
Delay, a Texas Republican whose campaign and political action committee both have taken donations from the NRA, refused to allow a House vote on reauthorization of the ban, saying it lacked enough votes to pass.
The NRA proved its unwillingness to compromise, opponents say, when it succeeded in redirecting $2.6 million in federal funding that had been slated for a 1996 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study of firearm-related injuries. The NRA never fully explained its reasons, but it was seen at the time as a move to quell support for redefining gun violence as a public health issue rather than a crime issue.
Why oppose a study? Falling crime rates help the NRA's argument that tougher gun control laws are not needed. Redefining gun control as a way to prevent suicides and accidental deaths -- public health concerns the law was never intended to address -- would weaken the NRA's position.
No matter how the issue is defined, the NRA dismisses any suggestion that restricting gun ownership would help reduce gun violence.
"We know the basic premise of gun control is flawed," spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said in an interview from NRA headquarters in Fairfax, Va.
The NRA wins in Congress not because of any unfair advantage, he said. The association simply has a huge, motivated membership. Gun control advocates, meanwhile, twist facts to intentionally mislead and frighten the public, he counters.
Arulanandam cited last year's Violence Policy Center report "Officer Down," which said that one in five law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty is slain with an assault weapon. The statistic was repeated by major news organizations in writing about the law, but it's not quite right.
The Violence Policy Center acknowledges that it included officers killed with weapons that were not covered by the assault weapon ban, calling it an insignificant difference.
Arulanandam said his opposition shifts attention from effective gun violence prevention measures because it focuses instead on one goal: banning guns. It isn't even honest about its intent, he said, noting that The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence was called Handgun Control Inc. until 2001.
"The reason these folks feel like they have to camouflage their agenda is because they know the vast majority of the voting American public stands with the NRA," Arulanandam said.
Ramsey, the Brady spokesman, said the name change was a tribute to the family of James Brady, a former presidential aide wounded in the 1981 attempt to assassinate President Ronald Reagan.
"Our goal is to stop gun violence, not to control guns," Ramsey said. "It's gun violence prevention. It's not handgun control."
Earlier this year, the debate got so convoluted the NRA pleaded with lawmakers to kill a bill that would have protected gun manufacturers from lawsuits rising from the use of their products in crimes, which was the association's top priority. Gun control advocates managed to amend the bill to include an assault weapons ban extension and to require instant background checks at all gun shows.
NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre e-mailed a warning to senators: Vote against the bill or the NRA would marshal its influence against them in November. In the end, the bill failed 90-8.
Nothing changed.
Both sides claimed victory.
Neutral observers say all factions in the gun control debate play to the most extreme hopes and fears of their supporters: The NRA insists each new gun control law is a step toward confiscation; groups like the Violence Policy Center insist a handgun ban is needed to reduce gun violence.
"The gun control nuts are going to say, 'We're going to collect up ... guns,' so they can raise money and get elected," said Lizotte, the UAlbany professor. "And the gun nuts are going to say, 'They're going to take away your guns,' so they can collect money and get elected. Both sides know it's not going to happen."
A ban would be politically impossible in a nation where there's a gun in 43 percent of all homes and where 5 million new firearms are purchased every year, Lizotte said. Collecting those guns from people who believe they have a constitutional right to them would be costly and daunting, he said.
Conversely, gun control remains popular, particularly in the Northeast. Even a third of all NRA members who responded to a recent University of Pennsylvania poll supported the extension of the assault weapons ban.
"What's happened is that both organizations have come to rely on increasingly strident rhetoric to rally support. ... And that rhetoric is like a narcotic" that must be taken in ever-larger doses, said Robert J. Spitzer, a political science professor at the State University College at Cortland and author of a book about politics and gun control. "It's very difficult to backtrack on that kind of strident, inflexible approach."
Meanwhile, reasonable, attainable solutions are ignored, said John Lacey, a spokesman for Americans for Gun Safety, a relatively new, nonpartisan group that claims to support both the Second Amendment's protection of the right to bear arms and also what it calls sensible gun control legislation.
"We are sick and tired of people playing politics with the gun issue," he said, laying equal blame on both sides of the debate. "We have a number of very good gun laws, and we need to enforce them."
Lacey's group is in the interesting position of being disliked by both sides in the debate.
Since its creation in 2000 by Andrew McKelvey, a former Handgun Control Inc. board member whose company runs the employment Web site Monster.com, Americans for Gun Safety is listed by the NRA as an "anti-gun" organization and criticized by gun control groups as too willing to compromise with the gun lobby.
The deep philosophical and political division in the gun control debate manifests itself in New York state as well. Here, gun rights groups disdain and distrust gun control groups, while leaders of the gun control groups have all but given up on compromise.
It's a fight fueled in part by geography. New York, like the country as a whole, is sharply divided between urban and rural areas, and demography plays a large role in cultivating diverse attitudes about the role of guns in society.
People who grew up in or near big cities are more likely to see guns as implements of mayhem; those from rural areas see them as a tool in everyday life, said Brian Anse Patrick, a professor of communications at the University of Toledo, Ohio, and author of the book "NRA and the Media: The Motivating Force of Negative Coverage."
"People hear and believe what they already believe," said Patrick, who is studying the public debate in many of the 28 states that over the past 20 years have made it easier for citizens to carry concealed handguns.
"I think most of what we have is a philosophical difference," said Thomas King, director of the Troy-based New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, which claims 40,000 members statewide. "(It is) fostered by the media and it's fostered by a different lifestyle."
Split New York at the Westchester County line and the new states would have radically different gun laws, said state Sen. Dale Volker, R-Depew, who has tried several times to overhaul the state's concealed carry laws.
"There was never a real drumbeat upstate. It was all about New York City," said Volker, a former police officer who represents Wyoming County, as well as parts of Erie, Livingston and Ontario counties.
As on the national scene, there's little common ground in New York.
"There are no moderates in the gun control movement," said King, who concedes that his side has its share of radicals but says the other guys are "rabid."
"If you talk to them about anything they immediately say, 'Do away with guns: Guns are evil,' " King said.
New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, the state's leading gun control lobby, is based in New York City and claims about 1,000 members.
"We're not an anti-gun organization, we're an anti-gun-violence organization," said Andy Pelosi, the group's executive director and lobbyist. He maintains that his group is willing to compromise, pointing out that it seeks national handgun licensing, rather than a ban.
That said, however, Pelosi counts any sort of compromise as increasingly unlikely.
"I think when it comes to the gun lobby, the folks at the top, I don't think they have any desire to compromise," he said. "They're about a right-wing ideology.
"We just come at this from two fundamentally different positions," he added. "I just don't think we're going to get them to the table."
Rather than try to get their opponents to budge, Pelosi said, gun control advocates need to do a better job of getting more Americans involved in the debate. Once they do that, he said, the advantage will clearly swing in their favor.
In the end, resolution of the impasse may resemble something politically attainable rather than perfect, said Russ Haven, legislative counsel to the New York Public Interest Research Group.
In the days leading up to the demise of the assault weapons ban, Haven lobbied for its renewal, arguing that just because it wasn't perfect doesn't mean it should be tossed.
"That analysis lets the perfect be the enemy of the good," he said. "If you can't do the ideal than you can't do anything. No, it's not perfect, and certainly it can be fixed, but politics and policy-making is the art of the possible."
But UAlbany's Lizotte points out that the "art of the possible" didn't work when it came to the assault weapons ban. Gun control advocates, he said, went after assault weapons because they were an easier sell to a public that would not accept a handgun ban, he said.
"There's 60 million handguns out there," he said. "Assault weapons? There were relatively few. It's an easy thing to go after. That's why you do it."
But just because it's attainable doesn't make it good policy, said the Rifle and Pistol Association's King.
"When you're a politician and you look at a way of judging whether you're successful at your job as how many bills you get introduced, how many bills you get passed, that's not necessarily productive to society as a whole."
