Printed in the USA.
The Gottlieb-Tartaro Report
Issue 065
May, 2000
GUNS & CONGRESS:
NATIONAL ROUNDUP
Lame duck President BILL CLINTON is so worried about his gun control agenda faltering in Congress that he’s lobbying the states instead.
Congressional Republicans have CLINTON on the run not only because his gun control bill is stuck in a House-Senate conference committee, but also because they have seized the initiative and passed the House "Project Exile" bill promising millions of dollars in block grants to states that enact tougher minimum mandatory sentences for criminals who carry guns.
CLINTON, on the other hand, recently junketed to Annapolis, Maryland for the signing by Gov. PARRIS GLENDENING of a newly passed state bill requiring ballistics tests and internal safety locks for handguns, saying Congress should follow their example. Then CLINTON campaigned in Denver for a Colorado ballot initiative on sales at gun shows.
"The president is trying to force action here in Washington," said White House legislative adviser JOEL JOHNSON.
CLINTON used the same "outsider strategy" in 1997 to pressure congressmen by addressing three state legislatures on his education testing bill when it stalled in Congress.
It didn’t work then and it’s not working very well now.
Congressional Democrats have pinned their gun control hopes on the shooting deaths at Columbine High School a year ago. Dozens of gun control bills have been introduced since then, but none have passed, frustrating the president’s agenda.
A juvenile crime bill passed the Senate last year, with a package of gun control measures attached. But the bill is still hung up in a conference committee that cannot reconcile differences between the House and Senate versions, angering Democrats.
One point of contention in the Senate-passed bill would set a 72-hour background check on gun-show sales, which conflicts with the House-passed bill demanding that checks be completed within 24 hours.
House Judiciary Chairman HENRY HYDE (R-IL) floated a compromise closer to the president’s position. It would allow background checks to apply both to prospective gun purchasers with unresolved arrest records and those with red flags for other offenses such as drug use, mental incapacity, domestic violence or stalking.
But the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, Rep. JOHN CONYERS (MI) rebuffed HYDE’s offer, saying it was "further capitulation by the Republican leadership to the gun lobby’s political gamesmanship."
CLINTON, too, offered a compromise, reducing the time the FBI retains records from background checks for 90 days rather than the current 180 days. Congressional Republicans have said that no authority exists to keep the records at all.
The conference committee has met only once, last August, and Senate Judiciary Chairman ORRIN HATCH (R-UT) has not scheduled another meeting.
Congressional Republicans are counting on the American public to demand full enforcement of the gun laws already on the books before adding more that the administration won’t enforce. The Project Exile bill passed by the House is a major step toward stronger enforcement.
GRANT-DRIVEN ANTI-GUN MOVEMENT?
The Los Angeles Times recently reported a split in the gun control movement. An "increasingly vocal minority," the Times reported, believes that the widely touted gun safety projects of trigger locks, "smart guns," and other technology will actually cause more criminal shootings, not less.
The Washington-based Violence Policy Center warns that technology such as "smart" weapons, whose development has been pushed by President CLINTON, will increase gun sales. They are seen as advocating a total handgun ban.
On the other hand, JOE SUDBAY, Handgun Control Inc.’s political director, said HCI doesn’t think a ban is necessary, but critics doubt the sincerity of their statement. SUDBAY played down any divisions over the handgun-ban issue.
The L.A. Times quoted ERIC GOROVITZ, policy coordinator for the San Francisco-based Bell Campaign as saying, "Historically, if you talked about banning handguns, it was political suicide. I don’t think that’s true anymore. There’s a split in the gun-control movement about it. There’s some resistance to even talking about bans because it’s been taboo so long."
The Bell Campaign bears close watching. This group, said the Times, "has taken no position on a handgun ban." What the Times didn’t report was that a month ago the Bell Campaign received $1,000,000 from the David and Lucille Packard Foundation to establish an anti-gun "comprehensive prevention program over the next three years."
Bell Campaign literature says, "This is the largest grant ever given to youth in the United States for the prevention of gun violence." You can bet it won’t be spent promoting safer guns.
The Times did report that the gun control movement is receiving a vast infusion of cash from super-wealthy foundations. Anti-gun groups last year generated more money than ever, said the Times, "including tens of million in grants from philanthropic groups such as George Soros’ Open Society Institute, the San Francisco-based Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund and the Chicago-based Joyce Foundation."
Reports of a split in this increasingly wealthy faction should be taken with a healthy grain of salt.
Gun owners need to become more aware of the power being massed against them by huge concentrations of wealth and malice toward guns.
LIBERTARIAN PARTY TAKES ON ANTI-GUN MEDICAL CAMPAIGN
Saying that a plan by pediatric doctors to lobby for a ban on handguns because they’re a "risk" to the safety of children - and to quiz parents about guns in the home during children’s physicals - is "malpractice against the Constitution," the Libertarian Party recently charged.
STEVE DASBACH, the party’s national director, said, "Pediatric doctors should concentrate on helping children, not attacking the Constitution. Pediatric doctors have no business lobbying to restrict the rights of adult Americans - and trying to disguise their politics as medicine."
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recently passed a new policy statement demanding that handguns be banned by the federal government; that trigger locks and other safety features be mandated until that happens; and that the Consumer Product Safety Commission be allowed to regulate handguns.
DASBACH said the AAP should get out of the anti-freedom lobbying business and go back to the medical business.
Be on guard against your pediatrician brainwashing you and your children.
LEGAL BATTLES: PHILADELPHIA
Claiming that the firearms industry has acted in a way "that is harmful to all who reside, work or travel in the city," Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has become the latest municipality to take gunmakers to court.
Like others, the city is suing to recover costs from "gun violence," criminals illegally using firearms — including medical care, police protection, emergency services and prisons. No actual violent criminals are included in the lawsuit.
Pennsylvania has a law barring local governments from suing firearms manufacturers, but Philadelphia City Solicitor KENNETH TRUJILLO said the law affected the legal marketing of guns, and the city is contending gunmakers marketed their products illegally.
Gov. TOM RIDGE instructed his office to review the city’s lawsuit to see if it is barred by state law.
LEGAL BATTLES: ATLANTA
THELMA WYATT CUMMINGS MOORE, chief judge of Fulton County Superior Court, recently handed firearms manufacturers a victory against a lawsuit filed by the city of Atlanta, Georgia.
Judge MOORE issued an injunction barring any further action in the suit until the state Supreme Court rules on its constitutionality. The gunmakers had claimed that questions of state constitutionality are at the core of this issue, and the judge ruled that "it is important to preserve the status quo" until the Supreme Court can rule on those constitutional questions."We are absolutely elated," said FRANK SEGAL, attorney for gunmaker Browning and the Austrian firm Glock, which assembles its U.S. guns in Smyrna, Georgia.
The city’s suit seeks millions of dollars in damages for criminal shootings and to force firearms makers to comply with various rules.
Mayor BILL CAMPBELL issued a statement saying, "We are confident we will prevail, and this will be allowed to be litigated."
LEGAL BATTLES: BATF
U.S. District Court Judge MARVIN J. GARBIS has ruled that a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) program designed to force a Maryland firearms dealer to hand over records on firearm transfers was a violation of the 1986 Firearm Owners Protection Act (FOPA).
The suit, brought by Valley Gun of Baltimore, was prompted by a "demand letter" from the BATF requiring the company to surrender past and future records to help trace firearms used in crimes.
BATF asserted that it needed the records to trace crime guns, but Judge GARBIS ruled that the vast amounts of data demanded had nothing to do with bona fide criminal investigations.
FOPA also prohibits any federal agency from maintaining records on firearm transfers and from developing any system or registration of firearms, firearms owners, or firearms transactions, and BATF would have kept an electronic database.
Attorney STEPHEN HALBROOK represented Valley Gun in the successful case.
LEGAL BATTLES: CHICAGO
The Wall Street Journal recently reported on the failed sting operation by the Chicago Police Department against gun stores to see if retailers would bend or break the law on firearm sales.
The trial ended in total victory for the gun store targets.
The article was headlined, "High-Profile Sting, Operation Gunsmoke, Shows How Hard It Is to Win a Conviction," and detailed the incredibly political undercover dud.
The grainy surveillance video of the sting appeared repeatedly on local and national television, "becoming Exhibit A in the antigun movement’s campaign to hold the firearm industry financially liable for urban crime," the Journal said.
In a retrial after an earlier mistrial, the jury took just 10 minutes to acquit the gun store and personnel accused.
FEDS BUYING GUNS
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is buying guns. Lots of guns. And then destroying them. With your tax dollars.
It’s BuyBack America, the public relations name of HUD’s new 84-community gun buyback campaign aimed at removing guns from public housing projects.
HUD Secretary ANDREW CUOMO kicked off the huge program with the assertion, "Every gun we take off the street in a buyback is one less gun that can fall into the wrong hands and kill or wound an innocent victim."
The CLINTON administration had help from TOM MAUSER, father of slain Columbine student DANIEL MAUSER, who quit his job to become a full time anti-gun advocate with "Sane Alternatives to the Firearms Epidemic" (SAFE) Colorado.
MAUSER said "I welcome this buyback program because it is an effective way of eliminating guns from our streets."
CUOMO was also joined by Annapolis, Maryland, Mayor DEAN JOHNSON, whose city conducted its first-ever HUD-funded gun buyback, and five other mayors from across the country.
The HUD gun buyback was announced by President CLINTON last September, and slated to use funds from HUD’s Drug Elimination Grant Program to buy back guns. HUD provides 43 cents in matching funds for every dollar in HUD Drug Elimination Grant funds which housing authorities set aside for a gun buyback.
HUD suggests a price of $50 for each gun. In addition, businesses are encouraged to donate gift certificates for food, toys, and other goods to people who turn in guns.
Similar buyback programs have netted largely old and inoperable guns.
MINORITIES FORMING THEIR OWN GUN GROUPS
A shooting range in Sussex County, New Jersey, is getting more and more of its clientele from minority groups.
The 1521 Sportsman Association of Teaneck shoots there, a gun club formed two years ago by people with one thing in common: all 70 are Filipino.
Last year, 130 women turned out for the first Women’s Day at the Range.
The Tenth Cavalry Gun Club of Newton is a group of 25 black gun enthusiasts. The members of the Tenth borrowed the club name from the African-American "Buffalo Soldiers" who fought with TEDDY ROOSEVELT’s Rough Riders.
More than 150 blacks, Latinos and Asians are registered to attend two days of gun training in June at the same range, which is owned and operated by the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs.
It’s not so much a matter of a new kind of segregation — nearly every minority individual in these clubs has participated in integrated gun groups where there was no overt racism — it’s a matter of getting together with people of similar background that they can have a good time with.
Professor MARY ZEISS STRANGE, author of "Woman the Hunter," and co-author of "Gun Women: Firearms and Feminism in America Today," told a reporter, "Women are the fastest-growing single group taking interest in gun ownership."
In her book, STRANGE contends that women were common in hunting circles in the early part of the last century, "before changing social mores pushed them back indoors."
Nowadays women are going back to hunting, she says. "Women are moving from the range into the field to stalk game." Prof. STRANGE herself has been hunting for over 15 years.
Minorities have been going out into their communities to get others involved in shooting sports. The 1521 Sportsmen Association, which took its name from the date explorer Ferdinand Magellan was killed in the Philippines and Filipinos began fighting back against the Spanish conquerors, gathered its members from those interested in firearms, hunting and fishing and just being Filipino in a group.
Gun control advocates pretend not to be alarmed by the emergence of minority gun clubs, but they are well aware it means increased gun ownership.
ZERO BRAINS?
There’s stupid and then there’s stupid.
Four kindergarten kids were suspended from Wilson School in Sayreville, New Jersey for playing "cops and robbers," pretending their fingers were guns, and played shooting each other. You know, "Bang, bang, you’re dead."
Classmates saw them and reported them to a teacher, who told the principal. Principal GEORGIA BAUMANN suspended the children, saying she was following school district policy on threats and violence.
"This is a no tolerance policy. We’re very firm on weapons and threats," district superintendent WILLIAM L. BAUER said.
One of the children’s father complained that officials overreacted.
"It was at a time when these kids were supposed to be playing. They don’t even understand what happened."
District officials plan to review the "zero tolerance" policy.
IS YOUR KID A VIOLENCE RISK?
There’s stupid and then there’s really stupid.
A brilliant 12-year-old boy was "flagged" as a violence risk at a Holland, Michigan middle school for answering a social studies teacher’s question about how to prevent school shootings: he said the school should train and arm instructors.
The reply got him targeted as a potential violence risk by teachers and school administrators, who then contacted his parents to ask that they meet with the school’s "Hazard and Risk Assessment Team."
The student, DEREK LOUTZENHEISER, has such good grades he was recommended for early pre-college performance testing, and was asked to participate in a classroom discussion about "school shootings and safety." He had frequently spoken favorably about the First and Second Amendments in class discussions.
School officials told the parents that because of DEREK’s comments in the social studies class, he should be separated from the other students and forced to enter the school’s "Mentor" program, where he would be studied by an adult supervisor who would monitor DEREK’s thought processes.
The sixth grader’s father, TIM LOUTZENHEISER, said, "My son simply stated that his opinion was that he would feel safer if some of the adults at the school were trained and allowed to carry firearms."
The parents refused to have their son subjected to such persecution and have sought legal representation.
LIFE IS LIKE A BOX OF CHOCOLATE GUNS
There’s stupid and then there’s totally stupid.
A high school student in Rimbersburg, Pennsylvania alarmed his school bus driver ANGELO SALVO, who saw him in the rear view mirror waving a gun at other students. SALVO slammed on the brakes and rushed back to confiscate the gun from the student, JAMIE HINDERLITER, 16, of Sligo.
The gun was made of chocolate by Char-Val Candy Company, which has marketed the gun-shaped confection for decades. HINDERLITER had bought it at a Spanish Club fund-raiser at Union High School, where he is a student. Fellow students on the bus doubled over with laughter at SALVO’s panicky failure to recognize the gun for candy.
But this is no laughing matter to school officials. ROBERT McWILLIAMS, principal at Union High and superintendent of schools, said SALVO was right not to assume the gun was fake, and he filed charges against the 16-year-old.
HINDERLITER will be charged with disorderly conduct and forced into a court hearing. Disorderly conduct is a summary offense punishable with a fine.
The boy’s foster father, JAMES BARGER, said HINDERLITER was "a good kid," but he thought the boy was wrong.
However, BARGER felt that filing charges was overkill and that writing an essay would be adequate to solve the problem.
McWILLIAMS defended his decision to file charges. He said, "What we had was a disruption on the bus, which endangered all these kids."
DOCTOR CONTROL INC?
Congressman JAMES A. TRAFICANT, Jr. (D-OH), gave a recent "One Minute Speech" from the House floor that should get the widest dissemination possible.
Rep TRAFICANT said:
"Mr Speaker, something does not add up.
"The number of accidental deaths involving guns averages 1,500 per year, and the number of accidental deaths caused by doctors, surgeons, and hospitals averages 120,000 a year.
"That means the ratio of accidental medical-related deaths to accidental gun deaths is 80 to 1.
"It is 80 times more possible of being killed accidentally by a doctor than a gun.
"Tell me, Mr. Speaker, should we mandate a five-day waiting period on vasectomies?
"Beam me up! Congress does not need more gun laws. America must enforce the laws that we have.
"I yield back all the American lives saved by an honest law-abiding American who just happened to have a gun."
WHAT IF WE REALLY LICENSED GUNS LIKE WE LICENSE CARS?
Senator LARRY E. CRAIG (R-ID), recently gave some thought-provoking remarks on the floor of the U.S. Senate.
Sen. CRAIG said:
"Last November, the Centers for Disease Control reported 34,000 Americans die each year from firearm injuries. If there is good news to be found in that terrible statistic, it is that the number has declined every year for the last four years. It is a number that is fewer than the 43,000 Americans who die every year from motor vehicle accidents. And it is a figure that is far less than the 44,000 to 98,000 patients who die every year by medical error. When we consider that there are over 200 million privately owned guns in the United States, we cannot escape the conclusion that the overwhelming majority of America’s 80 million gun owners are peaceful and extremely responsible.
"The problem isn’t guns — it’s criminals. In Richmond, Virginia, a Republican initiative called Project Exile has stepped up prosecution of gun-toting criminals and cut the murder rate by 30 percent every year since 1997. In fact, it is said in Richmond that a man walked into a Seven-Eleven with a baseball bat to rob it. They caught him. They said: Why didn’t you use a gun? He said: You get locked up if you use a gun. Isn’t it amazing that the criminal element of our society will read and respond to the effective and targeted enforcement of a law?
"Over the past seven years, the Clinton-Gore administration has cut the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms’ pursuit of criminals who use guns by nearly half. The number of prosecutions fell by nearly as much, and the number of gun-toting criminals convicted fell by one-third.
"The President said something the other night that is the most radical proposal on gun control by any President in the history of this country.
"Here is what he said:
"‘Every state in this country already requires automobile drivers to have a license. I think they ought to do the same thing for handgun purchases.’
"What the President failed to grasp is that no state requires a license to purchase a car.
"You need a license to drive a car on a public right of way, on a public road. So if the president wants to license handguns like cars, then he is talking about issuing licenses to take a firearm out in public because it would be against the Constitution to require a license to buy one. Well, we already do that. It is called concealed carry permits. Thirty states already say you can get a license to carry a gun in public.
"Mr. President, are you then talking about a national concealed carry law?"
Good question, Sen. CRAIG. Too bad President CLINTON has the wrong answer.
GUN NEWS TICKER: SHORT TAKES ON GUNS
• Illinois Governor GEORGE RYAN has signed HB-739, ending a long battle over the punishment for transporting firearms in violation of the law. RYAN had wanted felony charges for first-time offenders, but state Senate President PATE PHILIP prevailed by guiding the bill into law with misdemeanor charges for law-abiding gun owners who unwittingly transported firearms illegally.
• A package of anti-gun legislation has gone down to defeat in Maine. Backed by the Maine Citizens Against Handgun Violence, it included limits on Right To Carry permits, a new commission to study firearm violence, and a ban on sales of guns to individuals under 21 years of age.
• Maryland’s Governor PARRIS GLENDENING recently made a total fool of himself in a press conference demonstrating how "easy" it was to use trigger locks, then fumbling with a real trigger lock for two minutes, unable to open it. He later said, "The lock worked perfectly. What didn’t work is my knowledge that I had to release the safety on the gun." If the reporters who watched him show how easy it is to open a trigger lock had been thugs, he’d be a statistic.
• Denver Republican state senators have defeated a Democrat proposal to ban holders of concealed-weapons permits from taking their guns onto school grounds. The Democrat effort arose in the wake of the Columbine shootings. Sen. MARYANNE TEBEDO (R-Colorado Springs) expressed a common sentiment in voting against the ban, saying she has attended night classes at area universities and the campuses can be scary places at night. "I’m voting no, for the right to self-protect."
• A Secret Service agent assigned to protect first lady HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON during a visit to Chicago last fall had her gun stolen at a hotel bar while off duty. KENNETH BLAKE, a heroin addict who has been arrested 39 times, was charged with possessing the stolen gun. He denied taking the weapon, but had been overheard bragging about it. It was not clear whether veteran agent MARY DRURY was drinking while off duty, which is discouraged at the same location where they’re protecting someone. "It’s something that shouldn’t have happened from our standpoint," said ARNETTE HEINTZE, the special agent in charge of the Chicago Secret Service office. HEINTZE would not say if DRURY was reprimanded.
• The anti-hunting group, Fund for Animals, has accused "the hunting industry" of luring women, especially mothers, into sport hunting. The group recently published a 19-page report titled, Money, Motherhood and the Nineteenth Amendment that blasts an alleged nationwide campaign to promote sport hunting to women under the guise of empowering them. The report claims that mothers are especially important to the future of hunting, since children are more likely to become hunters if Mom approves, and support for hunting among men has been declining to a point that the "hunting industry" is desperate.
• A new silent weapons detector will be used by police to help stop shootings in schools, according to manufacturer Torfino Enterprises, Inc. Training in use of the first silent weapons detector for schools was recently begun by the National Association of School Resource Officers (NASRO) at locations throughout the United States.
• An Australian firm recently unveiled an ultra-fast electronic handgun that will only fire if held by a person wearing a ring containing a tiny transponder which communicates with the gun. The handgun made by Metal Storm Ltd. of Brisbane will fire at a rate of 50,000 rounds per minute. An electric charge fires the propellant behind the first bullet, then the second and so on until the barrel is empty. Metal Storm ammunition has no shell case, so the electric detonation technique allows nearly instantaneous firing of each subsequent charge. Metal Storm is developing a number of ultra-fast firearms, including a 36-barrel gun capable of a firing rate equal to a million rounds a minute.
• Columbine shooting victim LANCE KIRKLIN appeared with President CLINTON on an MSNBC program and said he doesn’t support gun control despite his injuries and that he still likes to hunt. Anchor TOM BROKAW asked if KIRKLIN would be "uncomfortable" with "closing the gun show loophole," and he answered, "Kind of, yeah."
GUNS IN THE AFTERLIFE
Everybody’s heard those famous last words, "You’ll only take my guns from my cold dead fingers."
Ray Herrick, supervisor of the Onondaga County Sheriff’s Department pistol license unit in Syracuse, New York, is trying to get the guns out of deceased owners’ cold dead fingers.
He’s not killing gun owners, but when they die, he’s trying to make sure their guns stay legal.
New York state law requires a relative of a deceased pistol license holder to either register the weapons in their name or turn in the dead person’s handguns within 15 days of his or her death. If the guns remain in the home, it’s a misdemeanor.
That means Herrick reads the obituaries in the newspaper every day, trying to track the whereabouts of handguns owned by people who have died.
It is Herrick’s job to track down dead people’s licenses and then either retrieve the guns or report them missing to a national crime information database. That means patiently tracking down the gun owners’ survivors and asking for weapons that they’re illegally holding, often unwittingly.
Most people don’t know about the law, Herrick said. But they don’t have to fear his knock on their door. "We’re not out to arrest anyone," Herrick said.
"Our responsibility is to investigate the whereabouts of these guns."
Probably more than 4,000 licenses in Onondaga county belong to people who would be at least 75 years old if they are alive.
Many of the gun owners would be in their mid-100s.
"I think it’s safe to assume they’re no longer with us," Sgt. Thomas Metz, head of the sheriff’s department’s records section, said of the oldest license holders. "The question is, where are the handguns?"
Officials at the state police’s pistol license division know of no other county that has started tracking down the licenses of people who are probably dead.
A detective has so far found only one case in which a pistol license holder died and one of his guns wound up on the streets, traded for drugs by a criminal.
Maybe some of the missing guns are still in those cold dead fingers — buried with their owners in the graveyard.
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