Restricting Gun Ownership and Use. Part 2 (Joe Rothstein's Commentary)

August 10, 2009

By Joe Rothstein
Editor, EINNEWS.COM

To those of you who may be wondering, the answer is, yes, I did get quite a response to my recent column, “Congress Stops An NRA-Backed Gun Law? What's This Country Coming To?” (July 25).

In fact, I received so many emails I've decided the only way I can properly answer them is to write another column. This one.

First, an apology is in order. Everyone who wrote pointed out that I erred in assuming that automatic weapons are legal. They are, but the cost is so prohibitive and they are so tightly regulated that it's mostly bona fide deep-pocketed collectors who buy them. Automatic weapons aren't the problem.

I should have focused my attention instead on semi-automatic weapons, which were largely banned under the Brady Act, but only for 10 years. Those 10 years were up in 2004, when President Bush and Congress allowed that part of the act to expire. So now it's perfectly legal to buy weapons that feed multiple rounds, one at a time, into firing chambers. Not automatic, but pretty lethal just the same. Not for nothing do they call them “assault” weapons.

The gun industry, as it turns out, wasn't bothered much by the ban, since it tweaked its weapons just enough to conform to the new law, producing guns and fast loading ammo mechanisms that were close substitutes.

My July 25 column also contained this nugget: “The purchaser's mental health doesn't seem to matter. Neither does past criminal activity.”

My email bag was filled with challenges to that contention, pretty much summed up by this writer: “Just about any crime that can send you to jail for a year will prohibit you from owning a gun. Where's the problem there? Mental health? Current federal law prohibits habitual drunkards or those adjucated insane from owning guns.”

True enough. But these laws are so loosely written they are easily circumvented. Just go to any gun show. Even going to a bona fide dealer will often work, since the Brady law says if a background check isn't finished in three days the applicant can have the gun anyway. If the background check is completed, the applicant's record must be destroyed within 24 hours, destroying with it any opportunity to catch those falsifying information, or identifying those who buy guns for those who legally can't.

Because of NRA-sponsored legislation, law enforcement officers are so tightly restricted in trying to trace weapons used in crimes there's minimal sharing of data among federal, state and local law enforcement agencies. The law even prevents federal agents from requiring annual inventories from gun leaders, data that would be a reasonable check on guns disappearing out the back door.

In 2007, a check of just 10% of the registered gun dealers turned up 30,000 missing weapons.

So, yes, my writers are correct that criminals and those of questionable mental health and other risky potential gun buyers have legal hurdles. But in the real world, the gun lobby has successfully blunted effective implementation of many of these restrictions.

There were many other points of contention, and I'll address them in a future column.

What prompted me to write on July 25 was a seldom seen defeat for the NRA---the U.S. Senate's failure to come up with 60 votes to give people carrying concealed weapons the unrestricted right to transport them across state lines. Mayors from more than 400 cities across the U.S., along with a lot of others, objected on the grounds that those from states with lax gun permit laws could be a threat in states that take permitting more seriously.

What's the argument against that? It really boils down to the gun lobby's objection to any government imposed weapons restrictions, summed up in two email writers' responses to me:

“I believe that the 2nd Amendment is as fundamental a right as the 1st Amendment to free speech is.”

“The law did not intend to 'undermine' anything. It was attempting to return a right to the people, where it has been infringed upon by well meaning, but wrong, people.”

In 2008 a federal court generally agreed with these writers that gun ownership is an individual right. But the court left the door open for the federal government (it was a District of Columbia case) to impose restrictions on that right. What restrictions? The 2008 court punted that one down field for future judges and Supreme Court justices to decide.

Weapon defenders argue not only that the right to own weapons is equivalent to free speech but that universal ownership of weapons makes us all safer.

I don't question their sincerity about this. Just about every email response I received was thoughtfully written and well documented. But I keep asking myself why, if the unfettered weapons defenders are right, the U.S. has one of the highest crime rates of any developed country, and four times the murder rate of England, where private gun ownership is severely restricted.

I don't have the answers to the gun control questions, but I do believe there's plenty of room for reasonable discussion. And I thank all those who've written to me for their reasonable comments.

(Joe Rothstein can be contacted at joe@einnews.com)