Gun Control
Public Opinion
Throughout the 1990s political parties established policy positions on gun control in their platforms, politicians vigorously campaigned on one side or the other of the gun-control issue, and interest groups lobbied Congress and the courts to increase or reduce restrictions on firearms ownership. The controversy centered around the need to curb crime, on one hand, and the Second Amendment right to bear arms, on the other. Pro-gun-control advocates claimed that the scales must be slightly tipped in favor of maintaining public order. Antigun-control proponents argued that law-abiding citizens have the constitutional right to protect themselves and their property with firearms. The issue, however, involved more than public and private security. At times, gun control became a Tenth Amendment issue. Some states contended that the federal government overstepped its bounds when it attempted to mandate that states perform background checks before allowing citizens to purchase handguns. These fundamental constitutional issues were often decided by the courts.
Brady Bill
Reflecting the public concern over violent and drug-related crime, Democratic President Bill Clinton worked with the Republican majority in Congress to pass groundbreaking crime-control legislation. Efforts to require background checks for handgun purchases had been debated in Congress since the attempted assassination
of President Ronald Reagan on 30 March 1981, but there was not enough support for passage of stricter gun controls. In 1994, however, amid a flurry of public controversy and media coverage, the Brady bill became law. Named after Sarah Brady, antigun lobbyist and wife of James Brady, who was severely injured by a bullet from a handgun during the Reagan assassination attempt, the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, or Brady Law, was signed into law on 30 November 1993 and went into effect on 28 February 1994.
Provisions
The Brady Law established a national five-business-day waiting period—a "cooling off' interlude—and required local law enforcement to conduct background checks on handgun purchasers. The waiting period applied only to handgun sales through licensed dealers. Transfers between private individuals, as well as sales at gun shows and through the Internet, were not included. Within one day of the proposed transfer, a dealer is required to provide information from the purchaser's statement to the chief law enforcement officer where the purchaser resides. This statement, verified by some form of photo identification, must include the purchaser's name, address, date of birth, and the date it was made. Local officials are then required to conduct a background check. The law made the theft of a gun from a federal firearms licensee a federal crime punishable by a fine of up to S10,000 and imprisonment up to ten years. It also increased the fee for a gun-dealer license to $200 for three years.
Challenges
The mandatory background check imposed on states by the Brady Act, a provision scheduled to expire in 1998, was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court on 27 June 1997 in a five-to-four decision. In Printz, Sheriff/Coroner, Ravalli County, Montana v. United States (1997) the Court ruled that requiring states to conduct background checks prior to the sale of handguns violated the principles of federalism protected in the Tenth Amendment. The five-day waiting period for handgun purchases, however, was unanimously upheld since it was directed at gun-store owners and was not a federal mandate to state officials. The Court rested its decision solely on the Tenth Amendment and its view of the federal-state relationship. In the majority opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote, "The Federal Government may neither issue directives requiring the States to address particular problems, nor command the States' officers, or those of their political subdivisions, to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program." The Court made no mention of the "right to bear arms" provision of the Second Amendment. The ruling had no effect in twenty-seven states that enacted background-check laws. According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF), the Brady law was an effective deterrent to crime.
CONCEALED WEAPONS PERMITTED
As the federal government imposed restrictions on firearms in the 1990s, states increasingly passed legislation that allowed private citizens to carry concealed weapons. In 1985 only eight states issued "carry permits." By 1998 thirty-one states had enacted "right to carry" laws.
Supporters of concealed weapons contended that citizens had the right to protect themselves against criminals, whether at home or on the streets. Moreover, they suggested that allowing private individuals to carry concealed weapons served as a deterrent to crime.
Opponents countered that carry permits posed a danger to both the carriers and law-abiding citizens, since most permits were issued with only minimal firearm-training requirements. They also argued that allowing private citizens to carry concealed guns would increase crime rates.
There are two general types of concealed-weapons laws. Some states have a "Shall Issue" provision in their state law, while others issue licenses on a "Discretionary" basis, which leaves more room to deny the permit. In both cases, background checks on applicants are conducted by local, state, or federal law enforcement agencies. In "Shall Issue" states, carry permits are easier to obtain than in "Discretionary" states. However, even if an individual has no criminal record, law enforcement officers in "Shall Issue" states have the authority to block the issuance of a permit, but must substantiate the reason—and the decision is open to appeal.
CHARLTON HESTON SPEAKS
In a 1997 interview on Meet the Press (NBC) Charlton Heston, president of the National Rifle Association (NRA), stated:
There are no good guns. There are no bad guns. Any gun in the hands of a bad man is a bad thing. Any gun in the hands of a decent person is no threat to anybody—except bad people.… You know, the Bill of Rights guarantees every citizen the right to own and bear firearms. It doesn't say anything about how many, how much you can pay for them. That's in the Bill of Rights. That's a sacred document in our country. There's no other country in the world that has such a document. And you know what its purpose is? To prevent the federal government from interfering with private citizens' rights.
Source:
Meet the Press, 18 Mav 1997.
Instant Background Checks
In December 1998 Congress replaced the five-business-day "cooling off' period with a national "instant" felon-identification system to be used by dealers in screening all gun purchasers. Two million
lion dollars in federal funds was made available to law enforcement agencies to assist in computerizing state criminal records and linking them to a national system. Responding to public concerns over the ease with which handguns could be purchased, Congress also introduced the Brady Waiting Period Extension Act in 1999. This bill, which was still pending in Congress at the end of the decade, calls for a mandatory seventy-two-hour waiting period for handgun purchases. It further requires that registration forms be sent to the chief law enforcement officers of the buyer's home locality, giving local police the opportunity to screen handgun purchasers to determine whether records indicate that the buyer is a prohibited purchaser.
Assault Weapons
In 1994 Congress passed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act or "Assault Weapons Ban," which made illegal the sale of nineteen different types of semiautomatic weapons. Though many other rifles, shotguns, and handguns are semiautomatics, they were not included in the ban. At the time the law was passed, there were between one and two million semiautomatic assault weapons in circulation in the United States. The bill also banned "copies" or "duplicates" of the illegal weapons; failure to do so would have opened the door for widespread evasion of the legislation. Manufacturers were also prohibited from producing firearms with certain assault-weapon features, such as bayonet mounts and grenade launchers, as well as semiautomatic versions of fully automatic weapons. While the manufacture and importation of assault weapons was made illegal, existing weapons were grandfathered—guns lawfully possessed prior to the effective date could be legally retained, sold, or transferred to anyone entitled to own a firearm. The act also prohibited the production of magazines or ammunition-feeding devices capable of holding more than ten rounds. Like the exemption of prohibited semiautomatics owned prior to the ban, high-capacity magazines made before the date of enactment could be lawfully possessed, sold, or transferred. As a result, tens of thousands of such clips remained in circulation in the United States.
Protecting Children
On 17 June 1998, with bipartisan support, the 106th Congress passed a comprehensive bill crafted to address the problem of children gaining easy-access to firearms. The Children's Gun Violence Prevention Act mandates that by the year 2001 new child-resistant safety devices be placed on guns manufactured and imported into the United States, including child-resistant safety locks, magazine disconnect safeties for pistols, and manual safeties. Furthermore, the act prohibited the sale of an assault weapon to anyone under the age of eighteen and increased criminal penalties for selling a gun to a juvenile.
Gun Control and the Courts
Scores of lawsuits were filed against gun manufacturers and dealers in a nationwide effort to regulate firearms. On 17 July 1997 the Florida Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision in Kitchen v. KMart, ruling that a retail gun dealer had a legal duty to refrain from selling a firearm to an intoxicated buyer and was liable for the harm that results when the purchaser then uses the gun to shoot an innocent third party. The victim in this case, Deborah Kitchen, filed suit against the discount store for injuries she suffered ten years earlier when her intoxicated former boyfriend purchased a rifle from KMart and shot her through the neck, rendering her a quadriplegic. In San Diego County Gun Rights Committee v. Janet Reno (1996), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit dismissed a legal challenge brought by two pro-gun groups against the federal law banning the manufacture and sale of assault weapons and large-capacity ammunition magazines. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal of a similar case brought by a gun collector in Kropelnickiv. United States (1996). On 30 October 1998, New Orleans became the first city to file suit against the gun industry. In Mortal v. Smith & Wesson, et a/., the city claimed that the industry, including well-known gun manufacturers Smith & Wesson, Beretta U.S.A., Colt, and Glock, was negligent for not incorporating safety systems into guns that would prevent widespread firearm misuse by unauthorized users, namely children, and was therefore liable for gun-related violence. Chicago followed with a lawsuit against the industry in November 1998. Chicago v. Beretta U.S.A. Corp., et al. attacked gun
makers for their role in the problem of gun trafficking in the city.
Effects
While it is difficult to link directly the federal and state restriction on firearms with declines in the number of gun dealers, weapons purchases, and firearm-related crimes, the statistics are interesting to note. In 1993 Berkeley, California, had thirty-four licensed dealers; in 1996 it had two. During the same period gun dealerships in San Francisco dropped from 155 to 10. By the end of the decade three quarters of the gun dealers in New York City gave up their licenses. Overall U.S. pistol production fell nearly 60 percent, from 2.3 million to just under 1 million. While manufacturers of more expensive firearms reported only moderate decreases in production, companies that made less expensive guns claimed sharp declines. In 1993 Lorcin manufactured 341,243 inexpensive pistols and became for that year the leading pistol producer in the United States. In 1996 it manufactured only 87,497, a 74 percent reduction. During the same three-year period, the number of violent crimes committed with guns declined 20 percent. The number of homicides dropped by 23 percent and continued to fall throughout the rest of the decade.
Opposition
While gun control measures received support from many law enforcement agencies, Democrats in Congress, and large segments of the public, these efforts were strongly opposed by many firearms enthusiasts, interest groups, and Second Amendment supporters. One of the most vocal opponents of the restrictions was the National Rifle Association (NRA), which opposed the Brady Law, the Assault Weapons Ban, mandatory waiting periods, and restrictions on the manufacture, importation, and sale of any type of firearm, including semiautomatic "assault" weapons. The NRA claimed that such laws infringe on the Second Amendment, the right of citizens to "bear arms." Moreover, the organization contended that gun-control measures fail to keep career criminals from purchasing guns because they do not acquire them through licensed dealers, but from private individuals or through theft.
Sources:
Kitchen v. Kmart, 86 FL 812 (1997).
Kropelnickiv. United States, 92 F.3d 1179 (4th Cir. 1996).
Erik Larson, "Squeezing Out The Bad Guys: How ATF and Local Police Have Dramatically Turned the Tide in the Battle Against Crime Guns," Time, 154 (9 August 1999): 32.
Printz, Sheriff/Coroner, Ravalli County, Montana v. United States, 117 Sup. Ct. 2365 (1997).
San Diego County Gun Rights Comm. v. Reno, 98 F.3d 1121 (9th Cir. 1996).
Brian J. Siebel, City Lawsuits Against the Gun Industry: A Roadmap For Reforming Another Deadly Industry (Washington, D.C.: The Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, Legal Action Project, 1999).
