| Chapter
11
Guns and Gun Control
By David J. Krajicek
Gun and the Laws
Gun ownership has been a contentious issue in the United States for much of its history.
States have tried to control firearms for at least 170 years. In 1837, Georgia became the first to ban handguns. The law was ruled unconstitutional.
After the Civil War, some southern states passed laws banning blacks from owning firearms. During the same era, in 1871, the National Rifle Association was founded.
For years, the NRA has been saying that America doesn’t need more gun laws; it needs enforcement of the 20,000 gun laws already on the books.
But the count of gun laws is nearly as elusive as the count of guns.
The 20,000 figure apparently was first used in uncredited congressional testimony in 1965. After he was shot in 1981, President Reagan repeated the figure to reject calls for new guns laws.
But in 2003, Steve Bowers, a policy analyst with the Brookings Institution, published a study asserting that the country has only 300 “relevant federal and state laws regarding the manufacture, design, sale, purchase, or possession of guns.”
Bowers said no state had more than 13 guns laws, including those covering mandatory minimum sentencing, dealer background checks, carrying a concealed weapons, dealer licensing and child access protection.
Bowers and fellow researchers said even the broadest count of gun laws, including local legislation often overridden by state laws, would still fall far short of the 20,000 figure.
For current gun laws, the San Francisco-based non-profit Legal Community Against Violence maintains a comprehensive, searchable database of federal, state and local laws at its website, www.lcav.org. The Brady Center has another state-by-state gun law website at www.stategunlaws.org.
A timeline of some of the country’s most important firearms laws and legal initiatives:
1911
New York State passed the Sullivan Act, named for a state senator, following an assassination attempt on New York City Mayor William Gaynor. The act required residents of the city to apply for a permit to legally own a handgun. The NRA, then still a relative fledgling, noted the law “would make it very difficult for an honest man and a good citizen” to get guns and would “have the effect of arming the bad man and disarming the good one.”
1934
The National Firearms Act of 1934 is regarded as America’s first attempt at federal gun control. Supported by President Franklin Roosevelt and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, the measure imposed an excise tax on the manufacture and sales of machine guns, silencers and short-barreled rifles and shotguns. It also created a national registry of the manufacturers and owners of those weapons. The act was approved a year after the repeal of Prohibition, and the political backdrop included a national panic over the gangland violence of criminals such as John Dillinger. Although it did not ban machine guns and short-barreled weapons, the act set an exorbitant tax of $200 for each of those weapons transported across state lines.
1938
The Federal Firearms Act of 1938 required federal licensing of gun dealers.
1968
The political tiptoeing required to secure passage of the next substantial federal effort to regulate firearms, the Gun Control Act of 1968, was made clear in its first paragraph:
“The Congress hereby declares that the purpose of this title is to provide support to federal, state, and local law enforcement officials in their fight against crime and violence, and it is not the purpose of this title to place any undue or unnecessary federal restrictions or burdens on law-abiding citizens with respect to the acquisition, possession, or use of firearms appropriate to the purpose of hunting, trapshooting, target shooting, personal protection, or any other lawful activity, and that this title is not intended to discourage or eliminate the private ownership or use of firearms by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes, or provide for the imposition by federal regulations of any procedures or requirements other than those reasonably necessary to implement and effectuate the provisions of this title.”
The act was passed after much argument in the midst of national hand-wringing following the Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy assassinations. It prohibited interstate and mail-order sales of firearms to individuals, and it banned gun sales to certain convicts, drug addicts and mental patients. It required serial numbers on new firearms manufactured or sold in the U.S.
1977
Washington, D.C., banned private ownership of handguns and mandated registration of all shotguns and rifles in the district. (In 2007, the U.S. Court of Appeals struck down the handgun ban as a violation of the Second Amendment.)
1986
A change in the political climate over firearms is apparent in the title of next important federal gun legislation, in 1986. Eighteen years after the Gun Control Act came the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act, championed by Harold Volkmer, a Democratic congressman from Missouri, and Sen. Jim McClure, an Idaho Republican. (Volkmer went on to become a board member of the NRA, which supported the act.) It rolled back federal oversight of firearms transactions by reversing some provisions of the 1968 act. It eliminated the ban on interstate sales of rifles and shotguns and limited inspections and prosecutions of gun dealers. It also authorized sales of guns between private firearms owners—the exemption that allows unregulated trafficking of firearms at gun shows. It prohibited the government from creating a database of gun dealer records. (Click here for a brief sidebar on gun shows.)
1987
In the 1800s, American states began reining in vigilantism and Wild West lawlessness by limiting the rights of citizens to carry concealed weapons. That pendulum began to swing back in 1987 when Florida became the first state to enact a “right-to-carry” law. About half of all states now have some form of the law, with most enacted since 1995.
1993
The McClure-Volkmer legislation intensified the political tug-of-war over firearms, leading to the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993, which mandated background checks of gun purchasers by local authorities and imposed a waiting period of up to five days to prevent handgun sales to those prohibited under the 1968 act. The Brady bill was the subject of polarizing debate for a decade before it passed. It was named for James Brady, left brain damaged by John Hinckley Jr. in the 1981 attempted assassination of President Reagan. Brady’s wife, Sarah, became a key figure in the national firearms debate as chairman of Handgun Control Inc., which later became the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
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