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The Gottlieb-Tartaro Report
Issue 024
December, 1996
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Dear Subscriber,
An unusual attack on handgun ownership by the Massachusetts attorney general has led Smith & Wesson Corp., the world’s largest manufacturer of handguns, to consider locating its factories in another state.
Attorney General Scott Harshbarger attempted to make Massachusetts the first state to impose gun controls without passing a law by issuing new regulations under existing consumer protection laws.
The regulations, which would go into effect later this year, include requirements for increased trigger pressure or grip safeties, that would allegedly prevent the average 6-year-old from discharging a handgun; use-limitation devices such as a lock or sm art-gun technology, to prevent unauthorized use; a load indicator to show if the gun is loaded; and tamper-resistant serial numbers to assist in criminal investigations.
The new rules would also flatly ban the sale of all handguns with barrels under 3 inches and with a melting point below 900 degrees, an effort to eliminate the inexpensive handguns the media calls “Saturday Night Specials,” which are used in many street crimes.
Smith & Wesson has threatened to end its 140-year stay in Massachusetts unless Harshbarger modifies his proposal to its satisfaction, taking 900 jobs and $40 million in annual salaries with it.
Michael J. Albano, mayor of Springfield, the present home of Smith & Wesson, said that losing the firm is not an acceptable scenario. The company also equips the city’s police force with free guns.
“We have worked hard to keep this company here, and we do not want to see that work jeopardized by these regulations,” said Albano, a Democrat who has supported Harshbarger in the past.
Harshbarger is a Democrat candidate for governor in 1998, which explains a great deal about this new gun control ploy.
Last year, proposed legislation to ban certain types of automatic weapons failed to pass the Massachusetts legislature. With the new regulations, Harshbarger bypassed the legislature. He said he was the first attorney general in the United States to us e his consumer protection power to regulate handgun sales.
When Smith & Wesson threatened to move away, Harshbarger quickly backpaddled, offering modifications to pacify the company. However, his proposal remains essentially unchanged.
An aide, First Assistant Attorney General Thomas Green, said, “Smith & Wesson obviously does not make the cheap Saturday Night Specials we see in so many juvenile crimes.”
That ban would not affect Smith & Wesson, but Harshbarger has not backed off on the regulations, which are the major concern. Green, however, said, “The attorney general is very confident that he can address their concerns.”
Stephen Teret, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy Research, said he suspected other states would follow Massachusetts’ lead and extend handgun regulations.
“It’s my guess that the ripple effect will also change the incidence of gun deaths in the United States overall,” he said.
Harshbarger realized he may lose an important part of his state’s economy, so he quickly created some deniability for himself: His aide Green said, “We can strike a compromise that will satisfy Smith & Wesson. If it leaves anyway, its motives will have nothing to do with the proposal.”
A Northeastern University crime specialist, James Alan Fox, had no sympathy for the argument of Smith & Wesson. “What’s more important, 900 jobs or the lives of children? This may increase their costs, but sorry, that’s just the way it is.”
With hard-line attitudes like that to contend with, Massachusetts gun owners have their work cut out for them.
More importantly, gun owners everywhere have a new menace to watch out for: new gun control imposed by bureaucrats without new gun control laws. Watch those regulators!
NEW FIGHT IN CONGRESS: IMPORTING OLD WWII WEAPONS FOR COLLECTORS How many war stories have World War II veterans told about their M-1 Garand rifles, hard to jam and accurate to 1,000 yards? The great old gun is considered the best weapon of that war. It even has a fan club and an Internet home page.
An M-1 in good condition can fetch $1,000 and gun dealers would love to be able to meet the demand. So the gun industry wants Congress to approve the import of millions of M-1s and other surplus American military firearms that the Pentagon gave away or sold at a discount to U.S. allies during the Cold War.
The Clinton administration is up in arms against the idea, saying many of these guns can be easily converted to automatic weapons and are attractive to criminals. Clinton also dislikes the idea that U.S. gun dealers might realize windfall profits and gi ve unearned money to nations such as the Philippines, Turkey and Pakistan, that got the guns for little or nothing.
The move has the support of a prominent figure, firearms industry folk say: John H. Sununu, President George Bush’s first chief of staff who resigned in 1991. He’s been a commentator on CNN’s “Crossfire,” and is said to have arranged Third World deals f or U.S. companies wanting to import old weapons.
One Massachusetts-based firearms wholesaler, Lew Horton Distributing Co., has applied to the Treasury Department for permission to import 820,000 M-1 Garands,
M-1 carbine rifles and .45-caliber M1911 pistols from the Philippines, federal officials have said.
Other gun dealers have applied to import many thousands of guns that were donated to India, Morocco, Turkey and other countries.
A bill in Congress to allow the imports is expected soon. Last July, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) got the Senate appropriations committee to pass such an import provision, and then inserted it into the continuing resolution and emergency spending bill that u sually passes both houses of Congress with almost no discussion. However, it got removed last September when the Clinton administration resisted. The new bill is expected to allow import from any nation of M-1s, M-1 carbines and M1911 pistols, and to fo rbid federal officials from blocking the guns’ entry.
The gun industry says the guns are militarily obsolete and no threat to anyone, but are prized by collectors. Such hobbyists are just like collectors of art and antiquities, interested in a period of history and an investment.
Import advocates say the transactions will give U.S. allies needed hard currency. Opponents, predictably, said the deals may involve shady middlemen connected to foreign government ministries (as if most Third World business deals don’t).
The guns in question generally sell for $300 to $500, but some could go for as much as $1,000, especially those still packed in grease. Some of the guns were sent in the 1980s and early 1990s to nations such as Peru, Greece and Oman, although some 2.4 m illion went during the 1950s and 1960s to bolster allies’ cash-starved militaries against communist attack.
One wonders how likely a criminal would be to lug a bulky, heavy M-1 to a robbery. But federal officials worry that the M-1 carbines could be converted to fully automatic weapons.
The reports of Sununu’s participation in the import project could not be confirmed. He doesn’t give interviews and Sen. Stevens’s office would not talk about it.
Insiders tell us the bill has a good chance of passage in the next Congress.
GUN BUY-BACK PROGRAM, EL SALVADOR STYLE We all remember New York City’s Guns-for-Toys program back in 1993, which offered $100 gift certificates from Toys R Us for each gun turned in. We remember the rash of similar gun turn-in programs in other U.S. cities.
In El Salvador, businessman David Gutierrez is running a guns-for-goods program that trades guns for certificates for groceries, shoes and other items.
The kind of stuff his outfit has collected in four weekends since September makes America look like a nation of pacifists:
Salvador Hernandez, a farmer from the eastern part of the country, turned in two antitank missiles in a gunny sack. Joaquin, a former communist guerrilla from San Vicente province, brought in a Claymore land mine, complete with detonator wires and blast ing cap.
The 12-year civil war, which ended in 1992, left El Salvador awash in weaponry, probably 250,000 bazookas, mortars and other military armament. El Salvador’s murder rate of 114 per 100,000 is 14 times the U.S. rate.
Knight-Ridder Newspapers reporter Mark Faziollah noted that David Gutierrez, the director of the program, went to Villanova University in Philadelphia in the 1970s. But he did not tell us who Gutierrez is working with, whether or not he has an organizat ion, or where the money comes from.
Newspaper ads placed by Gutierrez read, “Weapons kill. Turn in your guns for consumer goods, and no questions will be asked.” The ad gave a price list: about $56 for revolvers, $113 for grenade launchers, and $340 for automatic rifles.
Thus far, 3,050 weapons and 49,000 rounds of ammunition have been turned in, including rusty pistols, well oiled AK-47s and M-16s, grenade launchers, 1,036 grenades and 15 land mines. There’s also 87 pounds of TNT and 43 pounds of C-4 plastic explosive.
The weapons are slated to be welded together to form a giant sculpture of a plow, Gutierrez said. The military will destroy the explosives.
Gutierrez recognized that his program is heavy on public relations while doing little to stop crimes. Real criminals do not come to turn-ins. And, like the American projects, his suffers the same criticism that crime will not be affected in any measura ble way.
Gutierrez told the reporter, “One less gun could mean one less murder.” It sounds like a familiar script. “We’ve already collected enough weapons to equip an army.”
But it probably means food on the table for some who might not have it otherwise. Joaquin, who brought in the land mine and wouldn’t give his last name or village, admitted being a former communist rebel. “What am I going to use this for now?” he asked . He got a $3 food certificate for his Claymore mine.
GLOBAL GUN CONTROL? GLOBAL FIGHTERS FOR GUN RIGHTS U.S. gun owners were alarmed last December when the General Assembly of the United Nations ordered a U.N. study to investigate ways “to prevent and reduce the excessive and destabilizing accumulation and transfer of small arms and light weapons.”
That sounded a lot like a gun grabber’s version of bad movie dialog, “Today, America, tomorrow, the World.”
The study group, the U.N. Panel of Governmental Experts on Small Arms, began work in June.
So the National Rifle Association applied for status as a non-governmental organization participating in U.N. activities, obtained preliminary approval from a committee of U.N.-affiliated NGOs, and then got final approval from the U.N. Economic and Socia l Council last month.
Only such status will allow NRA representatives access to U.N. headquarters and give them the right to submit papers and otherwise lobby participants at U.N. meetings.
No one can yet see which direction the U.N. study may take. It could fizzle with a General Assembly adoption of a non-binding resolution urging governments to better control the domestic and international trade in small arms. Or it could turn into a re al problem by promoting a treaty on arms smuggling that would require signatory nations to regulate the market.
The panel is composed of representatives of 16 nations, including the United States, and will submit its report in mid-1997. Any recommendation would be submitted to the 1997-98 assembly session.
Colombia has been particularly active in seeking U.N. action on arms sales. The government feels besieged by a flood of assault rifles and handguns smuggled in from the United States, usually by Colombian drug traffickers.
Last March, the Colombian government plainly blamed the relatively free U.S. gun market in a report to Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali. The report said that nations which produce and allow the sale of light weapons —which Colombia does not— must “face up to their responsibilities in this area and ... commit their governments to a policy of strict regulation of the sale, possession, bearing, import and export of such weapons.”
The Colombians got nowhere with their complaint until last year when Japan, where the criminal underworld is also armed with smuggled U.S. weapons, introduced the resolution establishing the experts’ panel and pledged to support it financially.
One wonders why these nations wish to intrude on American rights instead of forbidding the import of such weapons into their own borders. Criminals will not heed treaties any more than they heed their own nation’s laws. If law enforcement in Japan and Colombia were better at catching their own crooks, they wouldn’t have to come to the U.N. seeking ”strict regulation of the sale, possession, bearing, import and export” of American guns.
Colombia’s representative in the study group criticized the U.S. gun lobby’s U.N. activism. Graciela Uribe de Lozano said, “The NRA has influence in the United States. Why should they involve themselves with international problems? They’re showing the world they’re really involved in the international trade.”
That’s an odd attitude from someone who is proposing to involve themselves in the internal right to keep and bear arms of the United States. Is Colombia showing it’s really involved in trying to change the U.S. Constitution? Should we accuse other nati ons of other hidden agendas? An open forum serves the public best.
With its new NGO status, the NRA does not automatically get a hearing before the U.N. panel, whose periodic meetings so far have allowed only invited NGOs and academicians.
NRA chief Washington lobbyist Tanya Metaksa, said of her organization’s new accredited advocacy group status, “We had members concerned about what was going on at the United Nations.”
MICHIGAN FACES LEGAL BATTLE OVER GUNS In 1994 Michigan Attorney General Frank Kelly delivered a legal opinion declaring that out-of-state licenses to carry a concealed weapon are not valid in Michigan. Opinion Number 6798 stated that a Michigan resident may not carry a concealed pistol in M ichigan if the resident has only acquired a license to carry a concealed pistol from another state.” It provoked a storm of protest—and a lawsuit.
Last May, Michael P. Sessa, chairman of the Gun Owners of Macomb County, filed a class action lawsuit to overturn the attorney general’s opinion. A legal opinion is not a mere statement of official views, but has the force of law.
Michigan law enforcement agencies are statutorily bound to follow the opinion of the attorney general. They have arrested and charged with a felony Michigan residents who carry by virtue of their out-of-state concealed weapons carry permit. Courts have upheld some of the resulting convictions.
Gun rights supporters across America believe Michigan’s stand is wrong-headed, pointing to reciprocal agreements between states, agreements which acknowledge and honor each others’ licensees.
There is reciprocity with driver’s licenses, for example. Drivers in California or Florida or Maine or anywhere in the U.S. can legally drive in any other state because of reciprocal agreements. U.S. drivers do not need fifty different driver’s license s.
Likewise, if you’re licensed to carry a concealed weapon in Texas or Montana, that license should be valid in Michigan.
The lawsuit of Gun Owners of Macomb County is based upon the argument that Michigan law already provides for reciprocity. The requirement that Michigan residents must obtain a concealed carry permit from their county gun board is specifically lifted fro m “a person holding a license to carry a pistol concealed upon his person issued by another state.”
Even more convincing, Michigan law specifically exempts from punishment “a person holding a valid license to carry a pistol concealed upon his or her person issued by another state except where the pistol is carried in nonconformance with a restriction o n the license.”
The gun group’s class action lawsuit, filed in Oakland County Circuit Court, recently made the jump through a crucial legal hoop: the class was certified by the court. This means that the court accepts the group’s claim that all persons who are Michigan residents who presently have a concealed weapons permit issued by another state should be allowed in as plaintiffs to the lawsuit.
Now the gun group is faced with the huge task of notifying and serving all members of the class that can be located. After that, more legal thresholds must be overcome in order to uphold the rights of gun owners.
But even getting this far in a class action lawsuit is a major victory. In many cases, courts will not accept claims that large numbers of people are “harmed parties” just because a few plaintiffs say they are.
Getting the class certified means that Gun Owners of Macomb County has convinced the court that every out-of-state concealed carry permit holder may have been harmed by the attorney general’s legal opinion.
Readers who wish to help with donations to pay legal costs may do so by contacting Michael P. Sessa, 810-463-4032.
Michigan is also in the news for another reason: A new law targeting domestic violence culprits could cost law enforcement officers their jobs.
If you abuse your wife or children, you lose your right to carry a gun. The new law requires police departments to identify any officers currently on the force who were convicted of domestic abuse in the past and take their firearms away from them, whic h is equivalent to dismissal from the force.
Macomb County Prosecutor Carl J. Marlinga said the law is “well intentioned” but overbroad in its language. In effect, it gives a new punishment for a previous conviction, which violates several constitutional rights. The law also applies to private in vestigators, security guards, county and state investigators, soldiers or anyone required to carry a firearm.
SPORTSMEN CLAIM PIVOTAL VICTORIES AT THE POLLS Post-election results from around the country show that several sportsmen-led campaigns posted wins at the ballot box on November 5. Others did not fare so well.
Two states, Idaho and Michigan, claimed resounding and significant victories on hunting-related initiatives that affect gun rights.
In Idaho, sportsmen reacted vigorously to Proposition #2, an anti-hunter initiative that would have outlawed spring bear hunting, baiting and the use of hounds. Led by Idaho’s Sportsmen’s Heritage Defense Fund, sportsmen defeated a well-funded front of anti-hunters led by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). The HSUS is reported to be a takeover target by the radical animal rights group, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). In the past, PETA has absorbed other animal welfare groups and turned their assets to campaigns restricting all human use of animals, including a ban on all hunting, fishing and trapping.
In Michigan, two separate initiatives were before the voters. Proposal D, which would have banned bear hunting with dogs and over bait, was defeated by a 64 to 36 percent margin. Proposal G countered Proposal D, and won by a margin of 72 to 28 percent, giving the Department of Natural Resources the exclusive authority to regulate the taking of game in Michigan. The Michigan United Conservation Clubs (MUCC) ran a $1.8 million fundraising and advertising program, the largest single sportsmen-led campaig n in history. The huge margins of victory are a tribute to the energetic work of the MUCC.
Perhaps even more impressive, Alabama voters approved the Sportsperson’s Bill of Rights, which makes hunting and fishing in accordance with laws and regulations a constitutional right in Alabama. That puts an additional bulwark in the constitutional rig ht to keep and bear arms.
Voters in three states passed favorable constitutional amendments regarding wildlife management. In Iowa and West Virginia, the amendments protect revenues generated from hunting, fishing and trapping licenses from funding raids for other non-related pu rposes.
Arkansas voters approved a 1/8-cent conservation sales tax to specifically support the state wildlife agency and state parks.
On the down side, sportsmen lost big in five states. Colorado voters approved a constitutional amendment by a 52 to 48 percent margin banning the use of leghold traps and snares, which has only minimal impact on gun rights, but reflects a lackluster eff ort on the part of sportsmen and the state wildlife commission.
Washington and Massachusetts initiatives restricted bear hunting. Washington’s Initiative 655 banned bear baiting and hound hunting of bear, bobcat, cougar and lynx (Yes 64%, No 36%). Massachusetts’ Question 1 banned trapping and bear hunting with dogs , and exempted members of the Fisheries and Wildlife Board from the requirement to hold a sporting license (Yes 64%, No 36%).
Oregon’s Measure #34 turned away a sportsmen’s effort to restore bear and cougar management to the authority of the state fish and wildlife commission, by a 58 to 42 percent margin.
In Alaska, Ballot Measure #3 prohibited same-day airborne hunting of wolves, fox or lynx. This denies licensed trappers the use of airborne hunts as a management tool. It was funded by a national group, Defenders of Wildlife. Passed by a margin of 57 to 43 percent.
These victories in these mixed results mark a significant shift in hunter-related ballot issues. They appear to have marked the end of the momentum gained by anti-hunting groups in recent years.
Before this past election day, it had been four years since sportsmen won a major ballot measure fight. In 1992, Arizona’s Proposition 200 went down to defeat after a hotly fought contest. Since then, anti-hunting forces gained ground by winning at the ballot box in Arizona, Oregon, Colorado and California.
Sportsmen are once again on the way up as defenders of gun rights.
TEXAS HAS MORE THAN 100,000 LICENSED TO CARRY CONCEALED WEAPONS The Texas Department of Public Safety recently reported that more than 100,000 Texans have been licensed to carry concealed weapons since the state’s concealed carry law was approved last year.
The actual number mailed was over 104,000 at press time.
There are still 3,801 people awaiting word on their applications, and 1,015 were denied licenses.
In October, the Department of Public Safety reported the details of 99,266 mailed licenses and 738 denials. Information about concealed carry licenses is released in the agency’s monthly reports.
The latest report shows this breakdown of concealed carry license data:
About 81 percent of the 99,266 licenses (80,274) mailed out were issued to men.
White men, including Hispanics who are not counted as a separate group, had 75,012 or 76 percent of the total.
Black men held 2,737, or nearly 3 percent, of the total.
683 of the 738 people denied licenses were men, including 580 white and Hispanic men and 72 black men.
The oldest concealed gun carrier was 93. The concealed carry law does not allow any personal information about individual carriers to be released.
The Department’s data are required by state law to list the state’s postal ZIP codes and the number of permit holders living in each. ZIP codes are an odd way to count people because they are not all the same size and do not represent a set population s uch as would be required for a legislative district. ZIP codes were chosen because the permits are sent by mail and can be easily tracked by ZIP code.
OKLAHOMA’S CONCEALED CARRY PERMITS BELOW EXPECTATIONS Oklahoma, like Texas, passed a concealed carry law last year. However, unlike Texas, applications for permits are running below estimates, law enforcement officials say.
When the Oklahoma Self Defense Act went into effect January 1 this year, sheriff’s offices across the state and the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation projected more than 25,000 applications would come in during the year. Only about 15,000 permits h ave been filed.
“When it first started, we envision mountains and mountains and mountains of applications coming in,” said Garfield County Sheriff Bill Addington. The sheriff’s office is the place where would-be permit holders are screened before applications are proce sses by the bureau.
The sheriff was prepared. When the law went into effect, Sheriff Addington hired an administrative deputy to handle the paperwork, background checks and fingerprinting.
A month ago the deputy left the department for an outside job and the sheriff does not plan to fill the vacancy.
The bureau has so far received 15,617 applications. Some 13,935 permits have been issued, 112 have been denied and 1,570 are pending.
WHAT WOULD ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER SAY? Austria’s coalition government plans to introduce psychiatric tests for anyone wanting to buy a gun. Is this a case of “If you want a gun, you must be nuts”?
The proposal was agreed upon recently by the Social Democrats and conservative People’s Party, and is expected to become law at the beginning of next year.
“If we can prevent one murder or stop one person from running amok, then the law is worth it,” an interior ministry spokesman said. The new law was in response to mass killings in other countries.
Austria’s best-known export is move actor Arnold Schwarzenegger. His career would have been quite different without a few guns here and there.
AUTHOR SERVES UP BITTER PILLS AND A TONIC FOR THE BRADY ACT Parting Shot...
President Clinton has bragged, “We stopped 60,000 felons, fugitives and stalkers from getting handguns under the Brady bill.”
James Bovard, the author of Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, has inserted a few sharp facts between the ribs of that boast:
Fact: “A recent national survey of police chiefs found that 85 percent believed the Brady Act has not prevented any criminal from obtaining a handgun from illegal sources in their jurisdiction.”
Fact: “Federal prosecutors in the first 15 months of the new law locked away only three people. (Four others were convicted but not incarcerated). A General Accounting Office report noted, “None of the prosecutions involved prospective gun purchasers w ith previous convictions for violent offenses.”
Fact: “While the feds have not bothered prosecuting felons who sought to buy guns, the Brady Act has proven an administrative nightmare for local law enforcement. Dennis Martin, president of the National Association of Chiefs of Police, estimated in lat e 1993 that enforcement would require at least 10 million hours a year of police and law enforcement employees’ time. Mr. Martin said, ‘Ironically, we may expect an increase in crime as understaffed, overworked law enforcement agencies throughout the nat ion spend millions of hours away from patrols and crime-solving to engage in background checks.’”
Fact: “GAO found that the vast majority of the felons who were denied handgun purchases did not have a history of violence...In Fort Worth, Texas, only 2.3 percent of those denied handgun purchases were violent felons; in Harris County, Texas, 3.4 percen t; and in the state of Ohio, 15.3 percent of the denied applicants had violent felonies on their records—the highest figure GAO found in any area that kept records.”
Fact: Those 60,000 blocked purchases weren’t all “felons, fugitives and stalkers.” Bovard said, “A January General Accounting Office survey found that, in the first 15 months of the law’s enforcement, 38 percent of would-be gun buyers had their applicati ons rejected because of administrative reasons (primarily paperwork snafus), 7.6 percent were rejected because of traffic violations, 2 percent were rejected because of minor drug violations, 0.3 percent were denied because of a dishonorable discharge fro m the Armed Forces (primarily for being AWOL), and 0.8 percent were denied because they were illegal aliens.”
What would that brag sound like? “We stopped 60,000 illiterates, speeders and non-citizens from getting handguns.” Doesn’t have quite the ring, does it?
Bovard recommends instant computerized checks, such as currently done in Virginia, but that’s a common-sense solution without much political sizzle.
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