“The NRA Is Not A Victim”: It’s Time For A Media Reset Of The Gun Debate
Hysterical at the prospect that at least a few elected officials might stop treating its pronouncements as political gospel, the National Rifle Association announced Tuesday that it had attracted 250,000 new members in the month since the slaying of 20 children by a gun-toting killer in Newtown, Connecticut.
The NRA’s release of the new numbers was timed to “counter” President Obama’s Wednesday announcement of legislative proposals and executive orders developed by Vice President Joe Biden’s task force on mass violence.
Most of the media, having lavished coverage on the NRA’s vitriolic response to its meeting with Vice President Joe Biden, has in recent days been dutifully reporting a series of announcements and “leaks” by the group about its self-declared appeal—just as it will now heap attention on the NRA’s vitriolic response to the reforms advanced by the Biden-led task force.
But the other side of the story is at least as compelling as the latest declarations from what former Bush administration ethics lawyer Richard Painter has decried as “the NRA protection racket.”
Since the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary school shocked the nation in December, support for the gun-safety movement—and presumably for the initiatives that Biden and his task force are announcing—has grown at an exponentially greater rate than support for the NRA.
The Mayors Against Illegal Guns campaign, which has opened its membership rolls to citizens who want to work with local elected officials to promote gun safety, attracted 400,000 new members in late December and early January. And more than 900,000 Americans signed a “Demand a Plan” petition seeking specific details of what will be done to dial down gun violence.
The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence has literally been overwhelmed by calls and emails offering support, and by the response to a rapidly-expanding “We Are Better Than This” campaign featuring members of thirty-two families that have lost loved ones in deadly mass shootings.
The new “Americans For Responsible Solutions PAC,” launched last week by former Congressman Gabby Giffords and her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, has, according to Forbes magazine, “gone viral,” attracting more than 35,000 “likes” on its Facebook page and—as political action committees are measured by money raised—showing signs that it will exceed its goal of raising $20 million to counter the NRA in the 2014 election cycle.
The new organization is blunt about its determination to go up against the lobbying group for gun manufacturers. “As gun owners and victims of gun violence, Gabby and Mark know preventing gun violence and protecting responsible gun ownership go hand-in-hand,” ARS says in its statements. “This country can put its divisive politics aside and come together to support commonsense measures to make us feel more secure in our communities. You can support the Second Amendment AND policies to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill. 74 percent of NRA members agree—and so do Gabby and Mark.”
Beating the NRA on the campaign trail isn’t as hard as it used to be. The group’s political high-water mark came almost two decades ago, in the 1994 mid-term elections when it was a significant player in the special-interest coalition that swept former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and his allies to power. In 2012, however, a Sunlight Foundation study of spending by the “National Rifle Association of America Political Victory Fund” found that only 0.83% of the $10,536,106 it spent in the general election “had the desired result” of backing a winner or defeating a targeted contender.
Yet, the NRA continues to be treated by much of the media as something more than it ever was, and something far greater than it now is: a definitional political player. This is a “Wizard of Oz” circumstance, where the fantasy of power actually creates the power. If it really had the power, the man it poured its resources into defeating—Barack Obama—would not be the president of the United States. And the Democratic candidates the NRA spent most of its resources seeking to defeat would not have increased its majority in the U.S. Senate and won 1.4 million more votes than were cast for Republicans in races for the U.S. House.
Of course, the NRA has been and will continue to be a political presence in the United States. It is well integrated into the networks of the political right, having recently installed former American Conservative Union chief David Keene as its new president.
But the NRA is no longer the only significant player in gun-violence and gun-safety debates.
This reality poses a challenge for major media. We’re talking here about more than just fact-checking the notoriously truth-challenged pronouncements of NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre—although Media Matters for America is right when it reminds us that: “The media has a responsibility to evaluate the truthfulness of the claims made the NRA and should not merely pass along statements made (by LaPierre) as fact.”
There is a more fundamental issue, especially for broadcast media outlets. If coverage of what is going to be a long and arduous gun debate is to be even minimally “fair and balanced,” it must feature more voices. And those voices must be accorded at least a reasonable measure of the attention that is accorded the NRA’s “pronouncements from on high.”
Too much coverage since the Newtown shootings in December has been deferential to the NRA—as if the group was somehow the victim. Major media outlets have literally scheduled programming around the increasingly temperamental demands of the group, while accepting “no questions” press conferences as serious new events. So it was that Americans were treated to breathless “wall-to-wall” reporting on a press conference statement from the NRA’s LaPierre that veered into such bizarre territory international media outlets reportedly felt compelled to warn viewers that what they were watching was not a spoof. Indeed, as a columnist for Britain’s conservative Spectator magazine wrote: “Reading the transcript I thought at first that it must be a parody written by gun-control activists determined to discredit the National Rifle Association. Turns out there’s no need to attempt that, not when the NRA is prepared to do the job itself.”
The NRA must be covered, and it must be covered fairly. But honest coverage of the gun debate can and should place the NRA in perspective. And that means the NRA’s pronouncements should be balanced with coverage of the gun-safety groups that appear to be far more in touch with popular sentiment in the aftermath of the Newtown shootings.
By: John Nichols, The Nation, January 15, 2013
“The NRA Is Becoming The Great Oz”: There’s Nothing Behind The Majic Curtain But The Voice Of A Special Interest Bully
For years the NRA has struck terror into the hearts of many Members of Congress. The organization’s officers and lobbyists purported to represent the interests and wishes of millions of American gun owners.
Members of Congress believed that negative NRA ratings — and a flood of NRA money — could sink their political careers faster than you could say “AR-15.”
But the American people, and Members of Congress, are gradually awaking to the fact that — just as with the Wizard of Oz — there isn’t much behind the NRA’s magic curtain but the big booming voice of a special interest bully whose power derives more from perception than reality.
It is of course true that in politics the perception of power translates into the reality of power. The problem is that once it becomes clear that you’re all hat and no cattle, the myth of power rapidly collapses into a pile of dust. That is exactly what is happening to the NRA. Here’s why.
Reason #1. First and foremost, in 2012 the NRA had exactly zero effect on the outcome of the General Election — or to be more precise, it had about .83 percent effect.
One of the big stories of the 2012 election was the failure of some of the big name right-wing PACs to win many races. The Sunlight Foundation calculated the relative effectiveness of a number of right-wing PACs and found that most of their money did not buy success.
The National Republican Congressional Committee had only a 31.8 percent percent success rate.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce only had a 6.9 percent success rate.
Karl Rove’s non-profit, Crossroads GPS, did a little better, spending $70 million with a 14.43 percent success rate. But his American Crossroads Super Pac had only a 1.29 percent success rate after spending over $104 million.
The NRA’s Legislative Institute had only a 10.74 percent success rate.
But the NRA main PAC wasn’t just your run of the mill failure of the 2012 election year. It won the prize for the very worst performance of the entire gang. In fact of the $11.1 million it spent, only .83 percent went to winning candidates.
And to make matters worse, it didn’t just have a dismal batting average; many progressive PACs spent just as much, and were much more effective.
The League of Conservation Voters raised and spent $11 million, but instead of a .83 percent success rate, they had an 83 percent success rate.
Planned Parenthood’s two PACs raised and spent over $11 — and had a 98 percent success rate.
Part of the reason for the NRA’s horrible success rate is the fact that rather than back candidates that support the Second Amendment — a goal endorsed by many of its individual members — it has become for all practical purposes a wing of the Republican Party.
But that isn’t the only disjuncture between the interests of NRA members and those of its officers and lobbyists.
Reason #2. Turns out that the officers and lobbyists of the NRA actually represent weapons manufacturers, not rank and file gun owners. That’s why they refuse to support common sense restrictions on military style assault weapons, magazines that hold a hundred bullets, or background checks for anyone who buys a gun, even though most Americans — and many gun owners — support these measures.
A CBS News poll showed that 57 percent now support stronger laws, an 18-point increase since last April (39 percent). A USA Today/Gallup poll showed a similar trend, with 58 percent supporting stronger laws, 15 points above the level of support in October 2011 (43 percent).
In a CNN/ORC poll, the most pronounced shift was on support for a ban on assault guns like the AK-47, with 62 percent of Americans supporting such a ban, a 5-point increase from last August.
In fact, according to the CNN/ORC poll, 95 percent of all Americans think that everyone who buys a gun should have to undergo a background check. A December Washington Post poll shows this strong support for universal back ground checks extends to gun owners as well. Many people believe background checks are already required for all gun purchases, but the fact is that 40 percent of all gun sales are “private transactions” — at gun shows or from private gun sellers where no background check is currently required. That’s like having two lines in airport security — one that checks for bombs and weapons and one that doesn’t. Which one do you think would be chosen by those who seek to do us harm?
And to make matters worse, databases of many states are not maintained. Bottom line: it easy for dangerous criminals and the mentally ill to buy deadly weapons.
According to the Huffington Post, a recent bipartisan poll conducted for Mayors Against Illegal Guns found that:
“Large majorities of Americans agree with the 2008 Supreme Court ruling that the Second Amendment confers an individual right to own guns, and Americans strongly oppose efforts to ban handguns,” said Bob Carpenter, vice president of American Viewpoint, the Republican polling firm that joined with Democratic firm Momentum Analysis to conduct the survey. “But Americans and gun owners feel with equal fervor that government must act to get every single record in the background-check system that belongs there and to ensure that every gun sale includes a background check. Most Americans view these goals, protecting gun rights for the law-abiding and keeping guns from criminals, as compatible.”
That is directly contrary to the positions of the NRA’s high command.
The goal of the officers and lobbyists of the NRA is not to protect the rights of gun owners; it is to maximize the profits of weapons manufacturers and arms dealers.
They love to frighten law-abiding gun owners with the prospect that common sense measures to reduce gun violence put America on the “slippery slope” to end the right to bear arms and to the confiscation of your hunting rifle. Their attempts to develop paranoia about confiscation — and about government tyranny — are good for business; it’s that simple.
After the Sandy Hook tragedy, the NRA’s fear-mongering caused a massive spike in the sales of semi-automatic assault weapons.
And the reason the NRA is so keen on preventing a new assault weapon ban is that its customer base is shrinking from about 50 percent of the population forty years ago, to about a third. And that base of current gun owners already owns a whopping 270 million guns. In fact, with 5 percent of the world’s population, America already has about 50 percent of the world’s guns. One way to continue to raise the profit margins of gun manufacturers is to sell increasingly powerful, expensive guns like the “Bushmaster” that was used to kill the children at Sandy Hook elementary school.
The problem for the NRA’s officers and lobbyists, is that events like the Sandy Hook massacre make it crystal clear that there is no relationship between the NRA’s defense of semi-automatic weapons that can fire off dozens of rounds in a few seconds, and the weapons everyday gun owners need for hunting or for their personal safety.
No one uses a “Bushmaster” to shoot ducks. And there are not many Americans who keep a loaded semi-automatic assault weapon under their pillow for self-defense.
And there is another reason why all the talk about “slippery slopes” increasingly rings hollow.
Reason #3. The Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia vs. Heller made it crystal clear that the Second Amendment does in fact protect the right to own guns for hunting and self-defense. It also made clear that this right does not preclude the government from imposing common sense regulations on the sale and performance of weapons that can be marketed to the general public — nor does it prevent the passage of laws that prevent dangerous individuals from buying a gun.
The Supreme Court decision makes the “slippery slope” argument — the fear that the government is on the verge of confiscating their guns — into complete hogwash.
As more and more Americans recognize that their right to own guns is not jeopardized by common sense measures to curb gun violence, it will be harder and harder for the NRA leadership to continue to frighten gun owners with the phony specter of confiscation.
Reason #4. The NRA is led by officers and lobbyists that have lost touch with the reality of the American electorate. NRA Executive VP, Wayne LaPierre’s press conference immediately after Sandy Hook was completely tone-deaf. It didn’t demonstrate an ounce of empathy for the six-year old children who were murdered — or for the grief felt by their families. Instead it focused entirely on promoting the sale of more and more guns.
That might be good for short-term gun sales, but it continues to unmask the massive gulf between everyday Americans — including the millions of everyday American gun owners on the one hand, and those on Wall Street that make hundreds of millions of dollars selling weapons like the “Bushmaster” on the other. The “Bushmaster” — or AR-15 — has no purpose other than killing the largest number of human beings in the shortest possible period of time.
And it turns out we haven’t had to wait long to see the image of the NRA’s invincibility dissolve before our eyes.
For years the NRA has had a net positive rating with the public. No longer. A recent poll from Public Policy Polling found that in the period following the Sandy Hook massacre, support for the gun advocacy organization fell from 48 percent to 42 percent, while negative views increased from 41 percent to 45 percent.
For decades, the conventional wisdom in Washington has held that if the NRA opposed a gun bill, it was doomed. But there is a new reality in America. The faces of the children and women who died at Sandy Hook — and the faces of all of those who are dying in cities across America every day — have transformed the debate.
Increasingly, the struggle to reduce gun violence is being seen for what it is. Instead of a fight between gun owners and the “government” — it is becoming a battle between the rights of innocent victims of violence and the profits of weapons manufacturers.
And with every passing day, more and more politicians are beginning to realize that the NRA is nothing more than “the Great Oz.”
By: Robert Creamer, The Huffington Post, January 14, 2013
“Degrees Of Principle”: In A Sane World, Gun Control Proposals Are Hardly Draconian
Unlike many who recently have joined the debate about gun rights, I have a long history with guns, which I proffer only in the interest of preempting the “elitist, liberal, swine, prostitute, blahblahblah” charge.
I grew up in a home with guns, lots of them, and was taught early how to shoot, care for firearms and treat them respectfully. My father’s rules were simple: Never point a gun at someone unless you intend to shoot them; if you intend to shoot, aim to kill.
Dear ol’ Dad was a law-and-order guy — a lawyer, judge and World War II veteran who did everything by the book — except when it came to guns. Most memorable among his many lectures was a confidence: “There is only one law in the land that I would break,” he told me. “I will never register my guns.”
I suppose if he hadn’t also opposed bumper stickers, he might have attached the one about “cold dead fingers” to his fender. He also might have liked a slogan I read recently: “With guns, we are citizens; without them, we are subjects.”
By today’s standards my father would be considered a gun nut, but his sentiments were understandable in the context of his time. Like others of his generation, he had witnessed Germany’s disarming of its citizenry and the consequences thereafter. Thus, the slippery slope of which gun-rights advocates speak is not without precedent or reason.
But the history of gun-control laws is not without contradictions and ironies that belie the current insistence that guns-without-controls is the ipso facto of originalist America. In fact, the federal government of our Founders made gun ownership mandatory for white males, while denying others — slaves and later freedmen — the privilege.
Today, the most vociferous defenders of gun rights tend to be white, rural males who oppose any regulation. But theirs was once the ardently held position of radical African Americans. Notably, in the 1960s, Black Panthers Bobby Seale and Huey Newton toted guns wherever they went to make a point: Blacks needed guns to protect themselves in a country that wasn’t quite ready to enforce civil rights.
In one remarkable incident in May 1967, as recounted in The Atlantic by UCLA law professor Adam Winkler, 24 men and six women, all armed, ascended the California capitol steps, read a proclamation about gun rights and proceeded inside — with their guns, which was legal at the time.
Needless to say, conservatives, including then-Gov. Ronald Reagan, were suddenly very, very interested in gun control. That afternoon, Reagan told reporters there was “no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons.”
The degree of one’s allegiance to principle apparently depends mainly on who is holding the gun.
While black activists were adamant about their right to protect themselves, the National Rifle Association wasn’t much interested in the constitutional question until the mid-’70s, when an organizational split produced a new leader, Harlon Carter, who was dedicated to advocacy and determined to dig a deep line in the Beltway sand.
The Second Amendment debate about what the Founders intended was clarified in 2008 when theSupreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller determined that the right of the people to keep and bear arms included individuals, not just a “well-regulated militia.” However, as Winkler pointed out, Justice Antonin Scalia’s opinion left wiggle room for exceptions, including prohibitions related to felons and the mentally ill. Scalia was not casting doubt, the justice wrote, on “laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”
This still leaves open the loophole of private sales that do not require background checks, which President Obama wants to close. We will hear more about this in coming weeks, but the call meanwhile to ban assault weapons or limit magazines in the wake of the horrific mass murder of children and others at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut is hardly draconian. It won’t solve the problem of mentally disturbed people exacting weird justice from innocents, but it might limit the toll. Having to stop one’s rampage to reload rather breaks the spell, or so one would imagine.
One also imagines that the old Reagan would say there’s no reason a citizen needs an assault weapon or a magazine that can destroy dozens of people in minutes. He would certainly be correct and, in a sane world, possibly even electable.
By: Kathleen Parker, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, January 11, 2013
“A Need To Exercise Judgment”: When The First And Second Amendments Clash
Battles over either the First Amendment or the Second Amendment often share similar dynamics, with defender/exercisers of the amendments arguing that the freedoms granted by the founding fathers are (nearly) absolute, and should not be modified just because sometimes people get hurt by them. But the issue gets stickier when a situation pits the First against the Second.
A newspaper in White Plains, N.Y., has enraged local (and not-so-local) gun owners by publishing an interactive map revealing the names and addresses of gun owners in the area. The information is public (and New York’s Freedom of Information Law is fairly expansive), so it’s not as though the newspaper unearthed secret documents or data and published it. What’s different now is that the Internet and other technology allows a newspaper—and for that matter, any blogger or website commentator—to make public information very, very public—so much so that the people affected feel they have been violated.
Some of the gun owners reacted aggressively, posting the names and addresses of editors and reporters at the Journal-News (including the guy who does the puzzle page) and making not-so-veiled threats against the journalists’ safety. The Journal-News has been unfazed, and is seeking similar gun owner information from another county to publish. That county is balking, and the paper is ready to go to court. Since the information is public, experts believe the paper will likely win, a victory for the First Amendment.
Meanwhile, the paper has been forced to hire armed guards at two of its offices to protect employees in light of the threats. That, in a way, is a victory for the gun owners and their interpretation, at least, of the Second Amendment. The First Amendment is in full force on the paper’s website, but without the Second Amendment, editors and reporters might not feel safe publishing it. On the other hand, were so many guns not so easily available, perhaps they might not have felt threatened in the first place.
There will surely be a discussion in Washington—though perhaps not much action—on gun safety and gun rights. And newspapers will continue to defend the right to free speech. But in both cases, there’s an issue of sheer judgment. Sure, some information is available to the public and should be. Does that mean newspapers should make it that much easier to learn? Some newspapers routinely report the names and salaries of public employees—even low-level employees. It’s not secret, and the workers are paid by public funds. But is it really necessary to publish what most of us consider private information? There’s an undercurrent of judgment to such lists, as though the public employees have to defend every penny they make (while well-paid CEOs of privately-held companies do not).
The names of convicted sex offenders are also public. Should newspapers publish these names, perhaps with an interactive map? To a parent, the answer might be a no-brainer; wouldn’t you want to know if a pedophile was living in the neighborhood? But publication of such information also makes it virtually impossible for an ex-con to return to society. He or she would be shunned, even in danger, wherever he went. How does someone become part of a noncriminal community in those circumstances?
Gun owners are not by definition criminals, of course. But guns are dangerous weapons if they are in the wrong hands or if there is an accident. Surely, many people would want to know if someone in their neighborhood had a gun. But is the publication of the information itself not just a little provocative? And perhaps it’s also a bit revealing—the anonymous people who posted threatening comments on the Internet (along with the addresses of Journal-News employees) probably weren’t the sort of people, prior to the controversy, neighbors feared would shoot them. But their aggressive reaction to the Journal-News list suggests some of them might have a dangerous streak.
Exercisers of the First and Second Amendments are understandably vigilant in defending their beliefs. But both should exercise judgment as well.
By: Susan Milligan, U. S. News and World Report, January 3, 2013
“Stop The Gun Madness”: 2013 Must Be The Year When America Says, “No More”
Guns do kill people. Our national New Year’s resolution must be to stop the madness.
It is shameful that gun control only becomes worthy of public debate following an unspeakable massacre such as Newtown — and even more shameful that these mass killings occur so often. What usually happens is that we spend a few weeks pretending to have a “conversation” about guns, then the horror begins to fade and we turn to other issues. Everything goes back to normal.
“Normal,” however, is tragically unacceptable. In 2010, guns took the lives of 31,076 Americans. Most of the deaths were suicides; a few were accidental. About a third of them — 11,078 — were homicides. That’s almost twice the number of Americans who have been killed in a decade of war in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In Britain, by comparison, the number of gun homicides in 2010 was 58. Here we’d consider that a rounding error.
What explains the difference? Well, I spent a few years as The Post’s London bureau chief, and I can attest that Britain has the same social ills that we have — crime, unemployment, alienation, racial strife, mental illness. Britain also has a powerful, rural-based constituency determined to protect the right of hunters to spend weekends blasting away at shadows in the woods. Gun-loving Brits are no less passionate than gun-loving Americans.
But Britain recognizes the obvious distinction between guns legitimately used for sport — shotguns, hunting rifles, some target pistols — and those meant only to kill human beings. Most handguns are banned. All automatic and semiautomatic firearms, including the kind of assault weapons used at Newtown, Aurora, Tucson, Virginia Tech and the other mass shootings in this country, are banned.
In Britain, individuals must have a “good reason” to obtain a license to own a firearm. Self-defense is generally not considered an adequate reason — nor should it be, since research suggests that guns actually make the owner more vulnerable.
In an often-cited paper published in 1993 by the New England Journal of Medicine, a research group headed by Arthur Kellermann examined homicide records in the Memphis, Seattle and Cleveland metropolitan areas and concluded that guns “actually pose a substantial threat to members of the household.”
“People who keep guns in their homes appear to be at greater risk of homicide in the home than people who do not,” Kellermann’s paper said. “Most of this risk is due to a substantially greater risk of homicide at the hands of a family member or intimate acquaintance. We did not find evidence of a protective effect of keeping a gun in the home, even in the small subgroup of cases that involved forced entry.”
The National Rifle Association has been trying to discredit Kellermann’s findings for 20 years, and surely won’t stop now. The NRA’s appeal to public opinion is based on cultivating a state of paranoia: You need a gun because bad people have guns and they’re coming to get you.
Hence the unbelievable response by NRA chief Wayne LaPierre to the Newtown killings. The solution isn’t to take assault weapons out of the hands of madmen, LaPierre argued, it’s to put armed guards in the schools so there can be a great big gunfight when the homicidal madmen show up. Never mind that armed officers at Columbine tried, and failed, to stop that massacre. Just be paranoid. Fight guns with more guns.
This must be the year when America says: No more.
The solution certainly is to take assault weapons out of the hands of madmen. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) pledges to introduce legislation banning assault weapons and large-capacity magazines as soon as the new Congress convenes. This should be just the beginning.
President Obama gave a moving tribute to the Newtown victims — who included 20 children, seven adults and the troubled assassin — then followed up by assigning Vice President Biden to come up with concrete proposals. That’s all well and good. But we’ve had our fill of elegies and blue-ribbon task forces and reports destined to gather dust. We don’t need talk, we need action — and we need it now.
Politicians, beginning with the president, must show the courage to stand up to the gun lobby. They must do it for the children of Newtown. They must do it for all the 11,000 men, women and children who otherwise will not live to see New Year’s Day 2014.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, December 31, 2012
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