| Chapter
11
Guns and Gun Control
By David J. Krajicek
1994
Signed into law by Democratic President Bill Clinton, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 imposed a 10-year moratorium on the manufacture of specific assault weapons.
1997
- The Florida Supreme Court upheld a jury's $11 million verdict against Kmart for selling a gun to a drunk man who used it to shoot his former girlfriend. The department store soon began phasing out sale of guns and ammunition.
- The Clinton White House and 20 handgun manufacturers enter into a voluntary agreement on trigger locks that headed off a potential legislative mandate on the devices. In a move opposed by NRA as unwarranted government intrusion, the manufacturers agreed to include child safety trigger devices on all new handguns. The deal was brokered by Bob Ricker, a longtime lobbyist for the gun industry. The NRA turned on Ricker, who became an advocate for “common sense” gun ownership. Ricker is active in the American Hunters and Shooters Association, a competing organization for gun enthusiasts. (See Chapters Six and Eight.)
1998
- In 1998, the waiting period provision of the Brady Act was replaced by the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, known by the acronym NICS. (Click here for a brief sidebar on NICS.) Before selling a weapon, firearms dealers use the NICS computerized system to determine whether the prospective buyer is banned by law from purchasing a gun. Thirty states use the federal system, and others use their own or a combination of federal, state and local databases.
- In October 1998, New Orleans became the first American city to file a civil lawsuit against gun makers and dealers seeking reimbursement for the costs of gun violence. Chicago and 30 others states, counties and cities eventually filed similar lawsuits. In 2000, gun manufacturers agreed to change marketing strategies and certain designs.
2003
In August 2003, a Kansas congressman added an amendment to the vast bill that
funded several federal government departments. The item was directed at
limiting the power of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and
Explosives—a pet cause of the NRA, which helped write the legislation. The
amendment barred the ATFE from requiring firearms dealers to inventory their
guns and from denying licenses to low-volume, “kitchen-table” gun dealers. Most
contentiously, it limited the documentation required on sales by gun dealers,
and it prevented the ATFE from publishing gun-purchase data that could be used
to trace the ownership of guns used for illegal purposes. It also limited the
bureau’s ability to share this “trace data” with other police agencies. The
congressman who introduced the amendment was Todd Tiahrt, a Republican from
Kansas’ Fourth Congressional District, which includes the city of Wichita and
all or parts of 11 mostly rural counties in the south-central section of the
state. Both Tiahrt and the NRA have spent considerable time defending the
amendment, which has been included as a rider in the annual Justice Department
appropriations bill each year since 2003. Tiahrt and the NRA say it protects
the privacy of gun owners. Opponents say the amendment is an attempt to protect
firearms dealers from lawsuits when guns are used for criminal purposes. The
amendment, included once again in the 2008 Justice appropriations bill, was the
subject of intense lobbying in the summer of 2007. In the end, the amendment
stayed when a bipartisan majority of the House Appropriations Committee
rebuffed attempts to repeal the measure.
2004
The federal assault-weapon ban of 1994 expired.
2005
In 2005, Florida became a trend leader as the first state to enact a “Castle Doctrine” law, affording legal protection to citizens who defend themselves from a criminal attack in one’s home, vehicle or place of employment. Opponents say the laws amount to a “shoot first” doctrine. Supporters see the right-to-shoot initiatives as a natural progression of the right-to-carry laws. Other states that have passed or are considering such a law include Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Washington.
2006
American mayors, led by New York’s Michael Bloomberg and Boston’s Thomas Menino, banded together as Mayors Against Illegal Guns. Bloomberg says the mayors seek common-sense solutions to the gun violence burgeoning in urban areas. The Tiahrt Amendment has been among the coalition’s targets.
2007
- On March 9, the U.S. Court of Appeals struck down Washington, D.C.’s handgun ban as a violation of the Second Amendment. It was the first federal appeals court to strike down a gun regulation on that basis, and the action was expected to set up court challenges of restrictive gun laws in other big cities, including New York, Chicago and Detroit.
- As a result of the April massacre of 32 students and teachers at Virginia Tech University by a deranged man, Congress moved to fix a loophole in the NICS system that allowed the killer to buy guns. The measure required states to automate their lists of convicted criminals and the mentally ill who are prohibited under a 1968 law from buying firearms, and enter those lists into NICS. The NRA supported the move after winning concessions.
2nd Amendment
The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution has fewer than 30 words:
“A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Yet millions of words have been written and dictionaries have been emptied of adjectives in attempts to explain and analyze what James Madison and his colleagues had in mind in 1789.
Treatises have been written over the punctuation and capitalization alone.
Were “militia,” “people” and “arms” intended to be capitalized, as they were in some copies? Were commas supposed to appear after the words “militia” and “arms,” as in some copies?
If so, how might that change the amendment’s meaning? Or were these simply typographical errors by William Lambert, the government scribe who copied it?
Some believe the amendment ensures ownership of guns by members of the military. Others say it protects the right of individual citizens to own guns. Still others say the amendment should be regarded as irrelevant today and should be changed or disregarded, regardless of interpretation.
As Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz puts it, “The Second Amendment has no place in modern society.”
The following are excerpts of the Second Amendment analysis by the pro-gun National Rifle Association and the Brady Center, which advocates gun control.
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