Guns and America’s sacred rights
Guns and America’s sacred rights
By Jacob Weisberg
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: April 18 2007 18:33 | Last updated: April 18 2007 18:33
Why is it so easy to get guns in America? Cho Seung Hui purchased one of the pistols he used to shoot 50 of his classmates at a shop after showing an identity card and passing an instant background check. He appears to have got the other handgun he used legally as well. In Virginia, where his killing spree took place, guns are about as difficult to come by as Mexican food in Mexico.
School shootings are a regular occurrence in the US. Every one of them underscores the obvious point that guns should be harder to obtain. So does America’s death rate from firearm suicides, homicides and accidents, which is double or treble that of other developed countries. But, at least until this week, gun control simply had fallen off the national agenda. The assault weapons ban that Bill Clinton signed in 1994 expired in 2004. Even most Democrats have avoided the question of renewing it. Only in big cities have politicians not quite given up on the issue.
The most common explanation for this retreat is the clout of the National Rifle Association. Like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the American Association of Retired Persons, the NRA’s acronym is a synonym for Washington power. But the NRA is an expression of the strength of gun owners, not the reason for it. The gun lobby’s success in derailing regulation illustrates how American conservatives win on a range of social and cultural issues where they actually represent a minority viewpoint.
This point becomes clearer when you compare the politics of gun control with the politics of abortion. On both issues, the public opposes a blanket ban by a 2:1 margin, but supports restrictions. Thirty-seven per cent of those polled by Gallup agree that abortion laws should be stricter, as against 23 per cent who want them less strict. On guns, 49 per cent say the laws should be stricter, while only 14 per cent say less so.
Given those numbers, it should in theory be easier for liberals to require handgun registration than for conservatives to constrain abortion. In practice the opposite is true. Conservatives have been remarkably successful in promulgating parental notification laws, waiting periods and bans on specific procedures. Gun control advocates have tried to borrow from the right’s playbook, promoting minor restrictions that sound reasonable and poll well, such as waiting periods, background checks, and banning semi-automatic weapons. But they have accomplished very little. The only meaningful federal restriction on handgun purchases, the Brady bill, was considered a huge accomplishment when it passed in 1993. But thanks to a loophole, some 40 per cent of sales remain invisible to law enforcement.
What explains the success of Republicans in regulating abortion, where only a small majority of the country agrees with them, while preventing the regulation of guns, where a much larger majority disagrees? To begin with, the conservative movement is more disciplined and better skilled than the liberal side at framing political debates. It has cast both issues in terms of absolute principle: the right to life on abortion, personal liberty in the case of guns. The call to conscience tends to be more compelling than the call to practicality, and the contradiction between these two positions, the one libertarian, the other anti-libertarian, bothers very few people.
Republicans also have a leg up on both abortion and guns because rural America, where their positions are most popular, has disproportionate power under the constitution. Thinly populated western states, where guns are loved, have the same two votes in the Senate as big northern states, where guns are feared. Within states, cities are similarly disadvantaged in bicameral legislatures. The anti-majoritarian features of our republican system give conservatives strength beyond their numbers and insulate them from the long-standing decline in both rural population and gun ownership.
Advocates of the second amendment, which protects the right to bear arms, also benefit from an institutional supremacy that does not extend to their pro-life allies. Everyone knows the NRA, but few could name its liberal counterpart, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. In 2006, pro-gun groups donated 33 times as much money to candidates as their opponents did. This discrepancy stems in part from a social advantage. Hunting and shooting clubs bring together people who share not just a political cause, but a consuming hobby. There are no lodges for gun control advocates.
The final point is about passion. Gun-owning in America is a way of life whereas gun control is just a political opinion. This accounts for an enormous disparity in zeal. There are single-issue voters on both sides of the abortion divide for whom the issue trumps everything else. But when it comes to guns, the issue is a litmus test only for those militant about preventing any restrictions. A huge constituency considers this right sacred, cares about it exclusively and needs little prompting to disgorge torrents of letters and e-mail messages to congressmen and editors. Gun controllers, by contrast, tend to be less excitable, see the issue as one of many and struggle to motivate those inclined to agree with them.
The massacre in Blacksburg could change all that, but I doubt it.
The writer is editor of Slate.com
By Jacob Weisberg
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: April 18 2007 18:33 | Last updated: April 18 2007 18:33
Why is it so easy to get guns in America? Cho Seung Hui purchased one of the pistols he used to shoot 50 of his classmates at a shop after showing an identity card and passing an instant background check. He appears to have got the other handgun he used legally as well. In Virginia, where his killing spree took place, guns are about as difficult to come by as Mexican food in Mexico.
School shootings are a regular occurrence in the US. Every one of them underscores the obvious point that guns should be harder to obtain. So does America’s death rate from firearm suicides, homicides and accidents, which is double or treble that of other developed countries. But, at least until this week, gun control simply had fallen off the national agenda. The assault weapons ban that Bill Clinton signed in 1994 expired in 2004. Even most Democrats have avoided the question of renewing it. Only in big cities have politicians not quite given up on the issue.
The most common explanation for this retreat is the clout of the National Rifle Association. Like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the American Association of Retired Persons, the NRA’s acronym is a synonym for Washington power. But the NRA is an expression of the strength of gun owners, not the reason for it. The gun lobby’s success in derailing regulation illustrates how American conservatives win on a range of social and cultural issues where they actually represent a minority viewpoint.
This point becomes clearer when you compare the politics of gun control with the politics of abortion. On both issues, the public opposes a blanket ban by a 2:1 margin, but supports restrictions. Thirty-seven per cent of those polled by Gallup agree that abortion laws should be stricter, as against 23 per cent who want them less strict. On guns, 49 per cent say the laws should be stricter, while only 14 per cent say less so.
Given those numbers, it should in theory be easier for liberals to require handgun registration than for conservatives to constrain abortion. In practice the opposite is true. Conservatives have been remarkably successful in promulgating parental notification laws, waiting periods and bans on specific procedures. Gun control advocates have tried to borrow from the right’s playbook, promoting minor restrictions that sound reasonable and poll well, such as waiting periods, background checks, and banning semi-automatic weapons. But they have accomplished very little. The only meaningful federal restriction on handgun purchases, the Brady bill, was considered a huge accomplishment when it passed in 1993. But thanks to a loophole, some 40 per cent of sales remain invisible to law enforcement.
What explains the success of Republicans in regulating abortion, where only a small majority of the country agrees with them, while preventing the regulation of guns, where a much larger majority disagrees? To begin with, the conservative movement is more disciplined and better skilled than the liberal side at framing political debates. It has cast both issues in terms of absolute principle: the right to life on abortion, personal liberty in the case of guns. The call to conscience tends to be more compelling than the call to practicality, and the contradiction between these two positions, the one libertarian, the other anti-libertarian, bothers very few people.
Republicans also have a leg up on both abortion and guns because rural America, where their positions are most popular, has disproportionate power under the constitution. Thinly populated western states, where guns are loved, have the same two votes in the Senate as big northern states, where guns are feared. Within states, cities are similarly disadvantaged in bicameral legislatures. The anti-majoritarian features of our republican system give conservatives strength beyond their numbers and insulate them from the long-standing decline in both rural population and gun ownership.
Advocates of the second amendment, which protects the right to bear arms, also benefit from an institutional supremacy that does not extend to their pro-life allies. Everyone knows the NRA, but few could name its liberal counterpart, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. In 2006, pro-gun groups donated 33 times as much money to candidates as their opponents did. This discrepancy stems in part from a social advantage. Hunting and shooting clubs bring together people who share not just a political cause, but a consuming hobby. There are no lodges for gun control advocates.
The final point is about passion. Gun-owning in America is a way of life whereas gun control is just a political opinion. This accounts for an enormous disparity in zeal. There are single-issue voters on both sides of the abortion divide for whom the issue trumps everything else. But when it comes to guns, the issue is a litmus test only for those militant about preventing any restrictions. A huge constituency considers this right sacred, cares about it exclusively and needs little prompting to disgorge torrents of letters and e-mail messages to congressmen and editors. Gun controllers, by contrast, tend to be less excitable, see the issue as one of many and struggle to motivate those inclined to agree with them.
The massacre in Blacksburg could change all that, but I doubt it.
The writer is editor of Slate.com
posted by Carlos T Mock at 9:23 AM
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