“Like Sands Through The Hourglass”: The Original GOP Gun Flip-Flop
If you’ve been following the gun control debate, you probably know that universal background checks are on life support after Republicans lawmakers flip-flopped on their support for closing the private seller loophole. You may also know that the National Rifle Association itself once supported universal background checks, even though it’s leading the charge against them now.
But would Republicans really kill a bid to expand background checks, even though they supported them so recently and despite polls showing nine in 10 American favor an expansion?
We don’t have to wonder because they already did, back in 1999 after the Columbine shooting. Thirty-one Senate Republicans — including current Minority Leader Mitch McConnell — joined with Democrats to close the gun show loophole, only to have their colleagues in the House kill it. The saga has largely escaped notice so far this year, but offers some important lessons for those who favor gun control today.
By 1999, pro-gun control forces hadn’t seen progress since Republicans captured control of both houses of Congress five years earlier. But after the Columbine school shooting in late April, public opinion shifted dramatically and President Clinton pushed to close the so-called gun show loophole and pass a host of other gun control measures.
A Washington Post/ABC News poll found that 89 percent of Americans favored background checks for people buying guns at gun shows — almost identical to polls today.
In fact, when Senate Republicans narrowly defeated a Democratic measure to close the gun show loophole on May 12 of that year, the public outcry was so intense that the GOPers reversed course within less than 24 hours. “As outraged constituents lit up phone lines on Capitol Hill to protest the earlier vote and the Clinton administration launched a barrage of criticism, Senate leaders huddled with National Rifle Association lobbyists and GOP strategists to undo what several Republicans feared could arouse voter reprisals in next year’s elections,” the Philadelphia Inquirer reported at the time.
Sen. John McCain joined with Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch and Sen. Larry Craig, an NRA board member, to come up with their own proposal. The GOP bill required anyone attending a gun show with the intent of selling a firearm to get a background check on purchasers, but gave law enforcement only 24 hours to review the check, instead of the typical three days, and didn’t cover flea markets or pawn shops. It passed by a single vote, largely along party lines.
“There was a realization that there was a loophole that had to be closed,” McCain said. (A year later, McCain would go on to cut an ad endorsing two state measures to enact universal background checks, as Greg Sargent reported yesterday.)
But Democrats weren’t satisfied and demanded more. Clinton said the GOP bill was “riddled with high-caliber loopholes” and Republicans caved — they dismissed their own bill and took up the Democratic proposal once again. “They’re getting the shit kicked out of them in the media and they know it; they’re in complete disarray. Basically, the country is seeing just how beholden the Republican caucus is to the NRA,” an unnamed Democratic staffer told Jake Tapper, then at Salon.
Just two weeks later, victory came when Vice President Al Gore cast the deciding vote to approve the Democratic amendment, which was attached to a larger juvenile justice bill introduced by New Jersey Democrat Frank Lautenberg, one of Congress’ most outspoken proponents of gun control.
Six moderate GOPers voted for the amendment to close the loophole. But a whopping 31 Senate Republicans voted for final passage of the larger bill, including the Democratic provision to mandate background checks at gun shows, giving it a huge 73-25 majority. McConnell voted in favor, as did Orrin Hatch and Jeff Sessions, two of the most powerful Republicans in the upper chamber today, along with conservative stalwarts like Rick Santorum, Strom Thurmond and Jon Kyl.
“This is a turning point for our country,” Gore proclaimed. But the victory was short-lived.
In June, the Republican-controlled House passed a bill with a much weaker background check provision, and rejected the Senate version. Then nothing happened. Usually, the Senate and House would each appoint representatives to hash out the differences between their two bills. But instead, House Republicans simply refused to appoint negotiators for months, sapping momentum from the bill.
By the time the first anniversary of the Columbine shooting rolled around in April of 2000, there had still been no forward motion.
Activists kept up the pressure for months, as did Clinton, but the public had grown weary and lawmakers no longer faced the constituent pressure of the previous year. ”Despite a series of tragic shootings in our nation’s schools, places of worship, day care centers, and workplaces Congress has stalled passage of common-sense gun safety legislation that passed in the Senate for over one year,” Clinton said in November of 2000, 18 months after the Senate passed a bill with a large bipartisan majority to close the loophole. But by then, the election had sealed the fate of the Democratic bill and universal background checks, at least until 2013.
The saga provides two big lessons. First, it shows that advocates must move quickly in order to capitalize on the public outcry following a mass a shooting like the one at Columbine. Already, three and half months after Sandy Hook, momentum seems to be flagging as Republicans walk away from one commitment after another. It may be too late, but if it’s not, Democrats need to move quickly while they can.
And second, it shows that those opposed to reform are not above using every procedural hurdle at their disposal to thwart reform, even when the vast majority of Americans support change and when their own party has voted for it just months earlier. In 1999, the public opinion landscape was even more favorable than it is today, but a minority of Republicans in leadership were able to kill it. More important, they weren’t punished for it in the next election. If you were a Republican lawmaker today, the experience of 14 years ago might convince you to obstruct, hunker down and hope the issue just goes away.
UPDATE: In 2001, the NRA’s official magazine wrote a lengthy article attacking John McCain, calling him “one of the premier flag carriers for the enemies of the Second Amendment.”
By: Alex Seitz-Wald, Salon, April 4, 2013
“We Are Failing”: Father, Forgive Us, For We Know Not What We Do
Jonylah Watkins died on a Tuesday.
She was with her father, who was sitting in a minivan in Chicago on the night of March 11 when someone opened fire. Doctors worked 17 hours trying to repair what a bullet had done to her body, but to no avail. She died the next morning. Her funeral was about two weeks ago. She was six months old.
Antonio Santiago was seven months older when his mother put him in a stroller and took him for a walk in their Brunswick, GA, neighborhood. Sherry West says they were accosted by two teenagers demanding money. She told them she didn’t have any. West says they shot Antonio in the face and killed him. This happened two days after Jonylah’s funeral.
An Associated Press reporter was on hand a day later as the boy’s father tried to comfort his child’s mother. “He’s all right,” Luis Santiago told her, smiling for her benefit. “He’s potty training upstairs in heaven.”
Which is, of course, the very foundation of faith, the belief that even tragedy will work ultimately for the good, that in the end, the bitterest tears transmute to the greatest joy. That is, in essence, what is commemorated this Easter week. It marks the morning when, we Christians believe, a carpenter turned itinerant rabbi overcame death itself, rolled a stone aside and walked out of his own tomb.
In the King James Bible, in the book of Matthew, the rabbi — Jesus — is quoted as saying, “Suffer little children and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”
When I was a kid, that always confused me. I wondered why children were commanded to suffer. But, as later translations confirm, the word was used in its old English sense, meaning: to permit or allow. Let the children come to me, He is saying, for they are the essence of grace. Love the children.
Two thousand years later, a singer named Marvin Gaye turned that command into a stark plea: Save the children.
As a nation, as a people, we have failed at both.
Nearly 100,000 people will be shot this year according to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Seventeen thousand will be younger than 19. So almost 5,000 kids have been shot since the Newtown massacre in December, the one that was supposed make us finally get serious about gun violence.
That toll speaks unflattering volumes about our seriousness. As does a Politico report that support is softening for laws that would expand background checks and impose other common-sense restrictions on gun ownership. A Florida state legislative panel just voted to support a bill allowing teachers to bring guns to school. Once again, the nation endorses the Orwellian logic that would “solve” the problem of too many guns by adding more guns.
How do you suppose we would explain that to Jonylah or Antonio? Which of the gun lobby’s inane platitudes would we use to justify our failure to keep them safe? Jonylah, guns don’t kill people; people kill people. Antonio, the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun …
Sigh.
This year as every year, foes of abortion publicly mourn the loss of babies who could have been. But they — we — remain silent on the loss of babies who actually were, who died because we could not get our act together, because ours is a nation that does not simply enable private gun ownership, but that worships and fetishizes it to the point where sensible restriction — even sensible conversation — seems impossible.
As a result, we are a nation where what happened to Jonylah and Antonio has become grimly, sadly… routine. That fact alone starkly illustrates the insanity to which we have devolved, and the challenge that faces faith this Easter week.
We keep crying the bitter tears. We are still waiting for the joy.
By: Leonard Pitts, Jr., The National Memo, March 31, 2013
“The Dead End That Is Public Opinion”: Action Works Best When It Makes Politicians Afraid
As the effort to enact new gun legislation hobbles along, liberals have noted over and over that in polls, 90 percent or so of the public favors universal background checks. In speaking about this yesterday, President Obama said, “Nothing is more powerful than millions of voices calling for change.” Then Jonathan Bernstein explained that opinion doesn’t get political results, what gets results is action. I’d take this one step farther: what gets results is not action per se, but action that produces fear. I’ll explain in a moment, but here’s part of Bernstein’s argument:
See, the problem here is equating “90 percent in the polls” with “calling for change.” Sure, 90 percent of citizens, or registered voters, or whoever it is will answer in the affirmative if they’re asked by a pollster about this policy. But that’s not at all the same as “calling for change.” It’s more like…well, it is receiving a call. Not calling.
Those people who have been pushing for marriage equality? They were calling for change. And marching for it, demanding it, donating money to get it, running for office to achieve it and supporting candidates who would vote for it, filing lawsuits to make it legal. In many cases, they based their entire political identity around it.
Action works. “Public opinion” is barely real; most of the time, on most issues, change the wording of the question and you’ll get entirely different answers. At best, “public opinion” as such is passive. And in politics, passive doesn’t get results.
Politicians are constantly assessing public opinion in ways both formal (polls) and informal (talking to folks, reading the paper, etc.). From their perspective, opinion is complex and multi-dimensional. It has a direction, an intensity, and a relationship to action. It can’t be reduced to one number. And the most important question for them is when opinion can turn into something that threatens them. Right now, that 90 percent figure doesn’t seem to be making too many politicians scared.
If you’re an interest group or a voting bloc, it’s far, far better to be feared than loved. If a politician loves you, he’ll say, “Hey guys, you know I love you, but you’re just going to have to wait on this priority of yours. I promise we’ll get around to addressing it next year.” If a politician fears you, he’ll say, “OK! OK! I’ll do what you want, just don’t hurt me!” The NRA has understood this well, which is why it has spent years working to convince everyone that it can destroy any politician it chooses (as you know, I’ve argued at length that that image is a myth, but the myth’s existence is undeniable). It spends far less time convincing politicians that being in line with the NRA produces wonderful benefits. It’s basically a protection racket; when the local mobster comes into your shop and says, “Nice place you’ve got here. Shame if someone were to burn it down,” the shop owner doesn’t say, “At last! I’m so glad you came to keep me safe!” He isn’t happy about it, but he pays up.
So action works best when it actually makes politicians afraid. It’s a way of getting politicians’ attention, and convincing them that if they don’t go along, they might be risking their jobs. Right now, for instance, politicians in both the Democratic and Republican parties are becoming afraid to be on the wrong side on marriage equality. It isn’t just because of poll results showing a majority of the public in favor; that’s just a number, albeit a significant one. The reason they’re afraid is that they understand this is going to become a culturally defining issue that before long will have the power to end people’s careers. They fear that their position on marriage equality could come to define their entire identity, carrying with it a whole set of judgments people will make about them. You’re seeing all this movement now—Democrats coming out in favor of marriage equality, Republicans stumbling around without a clue as to where they should position themselves—because there’s a collective realization that this is a key moment. And they’re afraid. There’s no question that in the wake of Newtown, members of Congress are less afraid of the NRA than they have been in the past. But the real question is whether they’re afraid of not passing something like background checks. And the answer so far is, not yet they aren’t.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, March 29, 2013
“In Pursuit Of Maximum Mayhem”: Was Newtown The Price Of The Second Amendment?
The gunman in the Newtown, Conn., massacre fired 154 bullets from his Bushmaster military-style rifle in fewer than five minutes, killing 20 first-graders and six adults. He brought with him 10 large-capacity magazines, each holding up to 30 rounds, which allowed him to reload quickly. He also carried two semiautomatic handguns, one of which he used to take his own life.
Is this supposed to be the price of the Second Amendment? Is this the kind of America we want?
I know that realists have concluded there is little chance of getting an assault-weapons ban through Congress. I know that many gun-control advocates believe legislation mandating universal background checks, thought to have a reasonably good chance of being approved, can be even more valuable in preventing Newtown-style tragedies. I know that politics is the art of the possible.
But still it’s hard for me to accept that the right to “keep and bear arms” extends to the kind of arsenal that Adam Lanza — and his mother, Nancy, whom he also killed — assembled and kept in their home.
Lanza was outfitted like a commando, with guns and ammo clips engineered to kill the maximum number of people in the minimum amount of time. There were other weapons in the family’s possession that would have seemed better suited for recreation or self-defense — the reasons why, according to the National Rifle Association, we need to arm ourselves to the teeth. But Lanza left a .22-caliber rifle at home and a 12-gauge shotgun in the car he drove to the school. He had maximum mayhem on his mind.
Search-warrant documents released by Connecticut authorities suggest just how disturbed Lanza was. Among the items discovered was a newspaper article about a 2008 shooting at Northern Illinois University in which six people, including the perpetrator, were killed. There were also three photographs “with images of what appears to be a deceased human covered with plastic and what appears to be blood.”
Police found books on Asperger’s syndrome, a condition related to autism that Lanza, 20, was thought to have. They also found a “military-style uniform” and written journals whose contents have not been disclosed. An affidavit in support of the search warrant quotes an unnamed witness who described Lanza as “a shut-in and an avid gamer who plays ‘Call of Duty,’ ” an extremely violent — and popular — video game.
You read the documents and you begin to form the impression of an extremely troubled young man. The police found NRA shooting certificates for both mother and son, bolstering reports that Nancy Lanza took her son shooting and encouraged his interest in guns, perhaps as a way to bring him out of his shell.
The NRA would say that the issue here is mental health, not firearms. But there are plenty of young men who play gory video games and harbor violent fantasies. How can you pick out the few who lose all distinction between fantasy and reality? Clearly, Nancy Lanza couldn’t. I don’t think anyone really can.
Given that guns are enshrined in the Constitution, there may have been no way to keep firearms out of the Lanza home. But if the federal ban on military-style assault weapons had not been allowed to expire, we might have seen less carnage in Newtown. Lanza probably wouldn’t have been able to get off so many shots in so little time. He wouldn’t have been able to fire so many rounds without pausing to reload.
Maybe just one life would have been saved. To me, that life is worth more than being in the good graces of the NRA; to members of Congress, perhaps not.
I don’t want to play down the significance of universal background checks. Even if they might not have had any impact on the Newtown slayings — Lanza’s mother bought the guns, and it’s unclear whether she would have been red-flagged — it is obvious that comprehensive checks would keep some guns out of the wrong hands and save lives.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is pouring millions of dollars into ad campaigns pressuring Congress to stand up to the NRA. President Obama, in a White House appearance Thursday with mothers of gun victims, noted that “right now, 90 percent of Americans support background checks. . . . How often do 90 percent of Americans agree on anything?”
“Shame on us if we’ve forgotten” the Newtown tragedy, Obama said. “Now is the time to turn that heartbreak into something real.”
Amen.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, March 28, 2013
“Shame On Us”: If Newtown Is Forgotten, Congress Will Forever Have Blood On Its Hands
Shortly after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary, it was fairly common to hear skepticism about President Obama’s willingness to follow through when it came to proposals to reduce gun violence. Sure, the argument went, Obama was saying the right things in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, but would he stick with the issue?
At this point, I think the answer seems fairly plain. About 100 days after the Newtown shootings, the president hosted another event in the White House today, joined by parents and law-enforcement officials, demanding real reforms.
For those who can’t watch clips online, this portion struck me as especially significant:
“There’s absolutely no reason why we can’t get this done. But the reason we’re talking about it here today is because it’s not done until it’s done. And there are some powerful voices on the other side that are interested in running out the clock, or changing the subject, or drowning out the majority of the American people to prevent any of these reforms from happening at all. They’re doing everything they can to make all of our progress collapse under the weight of fear and frustration, their assumption is that people will just forget about it.
“I read an article in the news just the other day wondering ‘Has Washington Missed Its Opportunity?’ because as time goes on after Newtown, somehow people start moving on and forgetting. Let me tell you, the people here, they don’t forget. Grace’s Dad’s not forgetting. Hadiya’s Mom hasn’t forgotten. The notion that two months or three months after something as horrific as what happened in Newtown happens and we’ve moved onto other things? That’s not who we are. That’s not who we are.
“And I want to make sure every American is listening today. Less than 100 days ago, that happened. And the entire country was shocked. And the entire country pledged that we would do something about it and this time it would be different. Shame on us if we’ve forgotten. I haven’t forgotten those kids. Shame on us if we’ve forgotten.”
We don’t yet know whether Congress will even consider popular measures that enjoy overwhelming public support, but it appears the White House’s commitment has not changed.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, March 28, 2013
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