Fear of terrorists, but not of guns
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BY GREGG LEE CARTER
Gregg Lee Carter is professor of sociology at Bryant University in Smithfield, R.I., and editor of "Guns in American Society".
September 12, 2004
The 10-year-old federal ban on the manufacture and transfer of assault weapons will quietly expire tomorrow, under the watch of a president who is running for re-election as the candidate most likely to keep the country safe. While George W. Bush has said he would sign an extension of the ban if Congress voted for it, he has done little to encourage this.
Opinion polls reveal that most people, including law enforcement officers, support the assault weapons ban. Nevertheless, it is not surprising to those who study the gun-control issue that the ban has been allowed to die. Serious federal gun legislation in the past four decades - the Gun Control Act of 1968, the 1993 Brady Law and the 1994 assault weapons ban - has come only when Democrats control the presidency and both houses of Congress.
What is a surprise, at least at first wash, is that the war on terrorism has consumed public and political debate at the expense of our attention to the issue of gun control, as if both weren't ultimately about the public's safety.
To be sure, the National Rifle Association, the biggest opponent of the assault weapons ban, and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, its biggest proponent, are in dispute on their Web sites over whether terrorists might buy weapons at gun shows from unlicensed dealers who are not required by law to have a background check. But such groups are only preaching to their respective choirs. The connection between the war on terror and gun control has yet to appear in a wider public dialogue.
Why? First and foremost, the war on terrorism brings no new ideas to the gun-control debate. Since the 1960s, proponents of gun control have feared madmen - whether disgruntled employees, anomic teenage boys or political fanatics - having access to firearms, especially handguns and military-style assault weapons. And since the 1960s, gun-rights groups have argued that gun control is antithetical to the fundamental right of self-defense - whether against a mugger, a tyrannical government or a political terrorist. This debate has treated the war on terrorism as it has every other violence-related phenomenon, with both sides using the same data and the same contemporary events to support their agendas.
When a George Hennard, Jr. drives his truck through the window of a cafe in Killeen, Texas, jumps out and methodically murders 23 patrons, or when a Colin Ferguson enters a crowded Long Island Rail Road train and with no wisp of a conscience shoots 25 innocent riders at point-blank range, gun-control groups respond: Stop the insanity! Get guns out of our communities, at least out of public areas (let firearm owners shoot their weapons at gun ranges or in the woods). The gun-rights enthusiasts respond: Stop the insanity! Let our cafe patrons and our subway riders defend themselves.
The demise of the assault weapons ban ultimately does not mean much for the war on terror or for the controlling of violence. It is a symbolic victory for gun-rights groups. This was a small patch in the crazy quilt of gun regulations the sum total of which produces little control of guns and little deterrence of gun violence.
Gun control that seriously increases the public's safety by reducing violence and ensuring that those using guns to commit violence get caught and convicted will only come about when our nation is ready to ban handguns, as is generally the case in Europe and Asia, and require the registration of all firearms. Public opinion polls over the past three decades show that Americans are not ready for the first of these essential control measures but have no problem with the second.
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