Assault on Common Sense
Today the assault weapons ban expires after 10 years, and Congress seems ill-inclined to renew it. From a strict Constitutional sense, that’s OK with me. I interpret the Second Amendment as a measure that denies the government a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, and provides rights to citizens’ militias equal to those of a professional standing army (which was, in those days, a highly class-bound institution and an instrument of absolutist government). In the 18th century, this concept was even more radical than freedom of speech or separation of Church and State, and was just as fundamental to the democratic basis of American government. Perhaps these ideas are no longer appropriate to the present day, but that’s a larger debate than the terms on which gun control is typically argued, e.g., sportsmen vs. public safety. It seems to me that limiting citizens’ access to arms and ammunition is a Constitutional question not legitimately settled by mere legislation, although, since the Supreme Court does not agree, this is simply a personal opinion.
Strangely, it is also an opinion that is not shared by the National Rifle Association (NRA) – at least not in their official opposition to the ban. A few days ago, NRA honcho Wayne LaPierre appeared on CNN’s Inside Politics to defend his organization’s position. He said, in part:
The fact is, all the guns that are on this '94 ban are no different than guns that are available now. Rifles, shotguns, handguns that are available now, none of these guns under the '94 ban are any more powerful than rifles, shotguns and handguns that exist right now.
…I mean, so much of this is cosmetic nonsense. All you're talking about are bayonet logs and handles on a gun. You're not talking about the way the gun shoots.
If this is true, it begs the question – why expend so much energy fighting it? Sarah Brady, the guiding force behind the modern-day gun control movement as a result of the shooting of her husband James Brady during the Reagan assassination attempt in 1981, makes a convincing case for public safety. It’s clearly a hot-button issue for gun control advocates, enjoys the support of law enforcement, and, by LaPierre’s own admission, makes absolutely no difference to the shooting power of the weapons. It was passed with great fanfare in 1994 and, if LaPierre is to be believed, has not impacted the freedom of a single gun owner in a meaningful way in ten years.
It would seem that extending the Assault Weapons ban poses an outstanding opportunity for Second Amendment advocates to make a show of social responsibility at little or no inconvenience to themselves or their fellow citizens. Rather than set themselves at odds with police and law-enforcement officers, who enjoy great prestige and credibility in the community, and exacerbate the rural-urban divide that separates the hunters and sportsmen from gun control advocates in big cities, they can make a token gesture toward conciliation and use their cooperative spirit as leverage against further, meaningful measures.
Of course, this falls apart for two reasons. First, it seems likely that LaPierre is understating the impact of the ban in a way designed to deceive the public. He probably perceives that there is little support for the Second Amendment in principle, and so has decided to fight the battle on the turf of public safety, where his organization’s case is weakest. Therefore, he has no choice but to mislead and misstate the facts in order to win support.
Second, the NRA’s interest is in perpetuating the conflict over gun rights, not solving it. Their funding and continued relevance depends on keeping their constituency in a siege mentality – a persecuted minority of upstanding rural folks whose rights are always under attack from the big bad guv’mint. Without this narrative of victimhood and salvation, the NRA is merely a shill for the arms and ammunition industry, with a few do-good gun safety programs as community-centric window dressing.
The rest of the world – Europe in particular – sees American’s preoccupation with guns as evidence of our barbaric nature and nostalgia for a bygone frontier past. And they may well be right. We certainly pay a high price for our principles in this particular area. However, the concept of citizen ownership of arms was written into our fundamental law for reasons bigger than preserving the rights of hunters and sportsmen at the expense of public safety. If the NRA is prepared to defend those rights absolutely on that basis, as the ACLU does with the First Amendment and the procedural protections against illegal actions by law enforcement, then they are to be commended. But when they act, as they are doing here, to curry favor with the public on the basis of false claims and putting their own institutional interests above the interests of gun owners and the greater community, then they are no friend to anyone.
9:35:03 AM 
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