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The Gottlieb-Tartaro Report
Issue 032
August, 1997
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Dear Subscriber,
We could call this issue of the G-T Report our “Hypocrisy in Gun Control” special because of numerous bizarre events in the news.
First, consider the recent events in Massachusetts, where anti-gun U.S. Representative Joseph P. Kennedy II (“Little Joe”) injured one of his 16-year-old twin sons with fireworks during a July Fourth celebration at home.
Although the possession and use of fireworks is outlawed in Massachusetts, State Fire Marshal Stephen Coan said he would not seek charges against the congressman. COAN remarked, “We would classify this as an unfortunate accident.”
There is clearly a double standard at work here, because COAN is the same fire marshal who arrested carload after carload of Massachusetts residents returning on I-95 with fireworks bought in New Hampshire, where they are legal.
With the help of the Massachusetts State Police, the fire marshal “cuffed and stuffed” many possessors of fireworks as they crossed the state border into Massachusetts.
KENNEDY and his son MATTHEW were setting off fireworks on the beach outside the family’s Hyannisport compound when a device, described by KENNEDY aides as a “spark emitting firework” exploded prematurely.
MATTHEW was burned on his left forearm and taken to Cape Cod hospital. The young man was treated and released.
COAN said no law enforcement official witnessed the accident and the hospital did not report it to his office. Massachusetts law requires doctors and hospitals to report fireworks-related injuries to the fire marshal if they involve burns over more than 5 per cent of the body. However, MATTHEW’s injury was described as “minor.”
But is the hypocrisy involved here “minor”?
Congressman KENNEDY broke state law by possessing fireworks. He also used illegal fireworks in a reckless manner and thereby injured his son. State authorities, who had arrested numerous ordinary citizens for mere possession of illegal fireworks, winked, nodded and looked the other way.
Fireworks are explosive devices. Many fireworks contain chemical components that are also used in bombs, but fireworks lie outside the authority of the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, the federal agency charged with investigating incidents involving explosive devices. Thus, there will be no federal investigation into the KENNEDY fireworks incident.
At least one insider has told us that the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office and the Governor’s office have been asked by numerous concerned citizens to investigate the KENNEDY fireworks incident. State officials are not eager to pursue it.
Keep that in mind the next time a KENNEDY — Joseph, Patrick or Edward — tells their House and Senate peers how “irresponsible” gun owners are.
POLITICAL HYPOCRISY IN GOVERNMENT SCIENCE
Scientists are supposed to pursue knowledge without a political agenda and without all their allegiances sworn in advance — particularly government scientists, who have a public trust. It doesn’t always work that way, says Dr. TIMOTHY WHEELER, director of the Claremont Institute’s Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership.
Dr. WHEELER recently wrote that anti-gun activist medical researchers on government payrolls have run up against a check and balance in Congress — but it’s not stopping the propaganda machine.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recently had $2.6 million cut from its 1997 firearm research budget by the House Appropriations Committee in Congress.
The Committee said it “does not believe it is the role of the CDC to advocate or promote gun control initiatives, or to discourage private responsible gun ownership.”
The Committee also advised that the government’s injury research should henceforth represent views from multiple scientific disciplines, not just medical doctors.
The man who previously headed the CDC, DAVID SATCHER, has publicly defended the Center’s firearms research, which has been widely criticized as both ideologically biased and factually flawed.
For example, Dr. WHEELER wrote, CDC director of gun research, Dr. Mark Rosenberg, stated in a Rolling Stone interview that he “envisions a long-term campaign ... to convince Americans that guns are, first and foremost, a public health menace.” Hardly the stuff, said Dr. WHEELER, “of true science, which requires finding the facts before reporting the conclusions.”
Other scientists who know something about guns — criminologists — are ignored by the CDC, said Dr. WHEELER. “Researchers under CDC authority have ignored 20 years of academic firearms research conducted by criminologists. Not surprisingly, much of this work shows gun crime to be the work of a small minority of violent thugs, not of responsible gun owners. This finding is heresy to the CDC doctors, who view guns themselves as the problem — even those owned by law-abiding citizens.”
Dr. WHEELER also exposed a CDC grant (the exact amount has not been disclosed) to the Trauma Foundation, an anti-gun group, which used it to produce an anti-gun newsletter called What Advocates Can Do. It advised citizens to “organize a picket at gun manufacturing sites” and to “work for campaign finance reform to weak the gun lobby’s political clout.” When this tax-supported pamphleteering brought a complaint from Rep. BOB BARR, R-Georgia, SATCHER had to admit the grant violated anti-lobbying provisions and was inappropriate.
Now, SATCHER is the nominee for surgeon general. Past surgeons general have used the position as a bully pulpit from which to preach against firearms. The office of surgeon general, wrote Dr. WHEELER, requires fidelity to scientific method and the determination to put science above politics.
That’s not likely to happen if SATCHER is confirmed as surgeon general. A recent CDC-funded article in the Archives of Internal Medicine rehashes old data from earlier studies shown to be seriously flawed. Worse, says Dr. WHEELER, “the authors ignore the two most significant scholarly works of firearms self-defense in the last two years: the Lott and Mustard study from the University of Chicago, and the Kleck and Gertz study from Northwestern’s Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. Omitting contrary evidence is CDC’s pattern.
GUN DEATHS DOWN, TRAFFIC DEATHS UP
Americans today are less likely to be killed with guns but more likely to die in car crashes, according to a government report documenting reversals in two long-standing trends.
The National Center for Health Statistics recently released the findings of data from 1995 that show more children and young adults die from injuries than from disease. Most were killed in motor vehicle accidents. Firearms deaths lagged behind vehicular deaths.
POLL SHOWS LITTLE SUPPORT FOR BAN OF CHEAP HANDGUNS
The Orange County Register recently posed the question to its “County Line Poll” readers, “Do you support efforts to ban the manufacture and sale of cheap handguns?”
The newspaper’s readers could call one number to vote “yes,” another to vote “no.”
There were 2,666 responses. Of those, only 25 per cent said “yes,” that they did support a ban on cheap handguns. The remaining 75 per cent said “no,” they did not support such a ban.
Such call-in polls are not a scientific sampling of opinion because the respondents are not randomly selected.
CANADIAN NEWSPAPER QUESTIONS GUN REGISTRATION
The Ottawa Citizen recently ran a somewhat surprising editorial pointedly noting that the federal Liberal government’s gun registration operation does not work.
There is a constitutional challenge now before the Alberta Court of Appeal, and the Ottawa Citizen used court documents to make its own case to readers. The federal government and the Coalition for Gun Control assert in court documents that gun registry is a tool to reduce the criminal use of firearms. The Ottawa Citizen acidly said, “Their arguments include no hard evidence directly linking gun registration to reduced crime.”
Handguns in Canada have had to be registered since 1934, yet only 55 of the 437 handguns seized by police in Ontario in 1995 (12.5 per cent) were registered. The year before, only 10.6 per cent of guns seized by police were registered.
In a particularly snide aside, the editors wrote, “As surprising as this may be to justice ministers, criminals don’t register their weapons, no matter how nicely they’re asked.”
It somehow seems strange for the media to be making such a case, but that’s just the beginning: “Worse,” said the editorial, “the Coalition for Gun Control throws up an intellectual smokescreen to hide the embarrassing absence of a clear link between registration and crime reduction.” The British gun registry, claims the gun control group, has been a success because “Britain has a lower rate of firearm homicide and firearms crime than most other countries. It also has more stringent gun control laws.”
The Ottawa Citizen commented wryly, “Students of logic will note the blatant conflation: ‘gun registry’ becomes ‘gun control laws.’”
The actual foreign experience, notes the newspaper, is considerably less rosy than registry advocates would have us believe. A Study of the New Zealand rifle registry between 1967 and 1973 found that two-thirds of the registration certificates had faulty information, such as expired addresses. Even after decades of use, thousands of rifles remained unregistered.
The newspaper commented, “It’s not surprising that New Zealand’s police decided the registry was a waste of resources and recommended it be scrapped, which, in 1983, it was.”
The Ottawa Citizen concluded, “However the courts settle the constitutional issues, we are endebted to the provinces’ challenge for making one thing clear: The benefits of gun registries are unsubstantiated, their failures well documented.”
Now, is there a way these Canadian editors could convince U.S. editors?
NEW JERSEY “ASSAULT RIFLE” LAWSUIT STATUS
The Coalition of New Jersey Sportsmen recently won the right to proceed with its lawsuit to strike down a state law that bans a wide range of semi-automatic rifles, including target shooting rifles and .22-caliber rifles.
On June 20, 1997, Judge Joseph Rodriguez denied the State of New Jersey’s motion to dismiss the Sportsmen’s lawsuit. The State was given 30 days in which to respond to the Sportsmen’s complaint, which was filed a year earlier.
The story behind this lawsuit is a remarkable example of the power of grassroots organizing. After the so-called “assault rifle” ban was passed by the New Jersey legislature in 1991, the Coalition of New Jersey Sportsmen led a person-to-person campaign urging gun owners to work in the legislative elections.
Observers give substantial credit to the Coalition for tossing out the Democrat majority and giving control of the legislature to the Republicans.
The Coalition then pushed a bill to repeal the “assault rifle” ban, which made it through both houses and onto the desk of Democrat Governor Jim Florio, who vetoed it.
The Coalition kept working and came within a hair’s breadth of overturning Florio’s veto. Undaunted, the Coalition went to work on the gubernatorial election with the motto, “Florio Free in ‘93!” They won. Florio was defeated.
Governor Christine Todd Whitman made the campaign promise to “remove target shooting rifles and .22s” from the list of illegal firearms. To date, Gov. Whitman has removed neither.
Noting that politicians have short memories, the Coalition sought relief in federal court. They hired Dr. Stephen P. Halbrook, one of the nation’s top constitutional law attorneys, to handle their case. Dr. Halbrook has won cases overturning similar “assault rifle” laws in Ohio and Colorado, as well as participating in the successful effort to dismantle the Brady Act, parts of which were overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Coalition’s lawsuit may have been what prompted the New Jersey Attorney General to remove two current-production semi-automatic rifles from the ban list: the Springfield Armory M1A and the Colt Match Target Rifle.
However, no pre-1994 rifle is legal in New Jersey. The lawsuit remains an essential part of restoring gun rights to New Jersey.
The Coalition of New Jersey Sportsmen has taken this battle to its present status with more guts and grassroots organizing than money. They have managed to keep the bills paid — until now. Coalition leaders are concerned over the costs of carrying their lawsuit into federal court now that the motion to dismiss has been denied.
But they are going back to the grassroots once more. Coalition Foundation mailings have a very “down-home” feel, urging supporters, “Contribute to our lawsuit. It’s tax deductible. If you have already contributed, please consider contributing again. Get a friend to contribute also.”
They’re determined to win. Gun owners everywhere owe them a debt of thanks for standing up and doing something about one of the most serious assaults on our gun rights in America.
Readers of the Gottlieb-Tartaro Report who may be interested in the case may contact the Coalition of New Jersey Sportsmen Foundation, Paul Constanza, financial secretary, P.O. Box 5292, Deptford, NJ 08096.
SENATOR PUSHING TO EXPAND BATF CONTROL OVER FFLs
Senator JOE BIDEN (D-Del.) is proposing to limit the number of licensed gun dealers in the U.S. His method is to pass laws codifying “security” system requirements for Federal Firearms Licensees. Mandating government prescribed security measures for FFLs in federal law would expand the BATF’s authority and bureaucracy. Gun rights advocates contend that such an addition to the federal statutes is unnecessary and burdensome.
Insiders feel BIDEN is trying to help President CLINTON in his goal of reducing the number of FFLs to around 50,000 from the present count of 110,000. In 1993 there were 286,000.
NRA EXEC DRUBS ANTI-GUN SENATOR
It was one of those debates that struck sparks in every sentence and left you wishing you’d said that when the pro-gun debater was finished.
NRA’s WAYNE LaPIERRE took on anti-gun Rep. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, at a recent National Press Club luncheon. Looking at his opponent, LaPIERRE said, “The problem is you want to take away every American’s firearm in the country and I’m not going to let that happen.”
Then he turned to the radio and TV audience and declared, “This is a freedom we have, a freedom to own a firearm under the Constitution. Do you want to give that freedom up because they won’t enforce the gun laws? Let’s prosecute the bad guys. Let’s stop beating up on the NRA.”
Rep. SCHUMER is as skilled in debate as LaPIERRE, and came back with, “I have never stood for that. I admit in rural areas guns are a way of life. He knows what he’s saying is not true. I couldn’t use the same kind of ad hominem attacks you use, Wayne.”
Then Rep. SCHUMER accused the 2.8-million member NRA of harboring a “hatred of their government.” This attack from the left has become so commonplace it’s now lame, and has little appeal to the general public, which has been found in recent polls to have a majority who are suspicious of their government.
LaPIERRE shot down SCHUMER’s support for the Brady Act by noting that only three persons have gone to jail after the background checks it mandates. And the Supreme Court recently struck down the Brady Act’s provision requiring local law enforcement officials to conduct background checks on gun license applicants.
SCHUMER retorted that local agencies will do the checks anyway.
The debate ended with a humorous question from the audience: “Did either of you as a child own a water pistol?”
WAYNE LaPIERRE grinned, “He’d probably want to ban it.” SCHUMER said, “I go the other way, Wayne. I might even let criminals get a water pistol.”
On points, it was LaPIERRE over SCHUMER, at least 2 to 1. In controlling the public debate, LaPIERRE showed himself a veteran leader.
AROUND THE STATES
WASHINGTON: Strongly anti-gun Initiative I-676 has been qualified to appear on the November ballot. Anti-gunners portray it as a “public safety” measure, part of their national strategy of getting the public to perceive guns as a public health menace.
In fact, I-676 is nothing more than a repressive anti-gun measure, which would mean:
The official sponsor of I-676, “Washington Citizens for Handgun Safety,” is actually a front for HCI’s Washington state affiliate, Washington Ceasefire.
The initiative’s co-chairman is none other than federal prosecutor Tom Wales, coincidentally also president of Washington Ceasefire.
Supporters of I-676 raised more than $145,000 in the first four months of 1997. The second largest donor was Microsoft chairman BILL GATES, the world’s richest man. He donated $35,000. Broadcast maven Harriet Bullitt gave $50,000.
Several others in the Seattle-area wealthy elite wrote $10,000 checks in support of I-676. Since the majority of gun owners in Washington State are blue-collar workers and rural dwellers, this initiative looks like class warfare.INTERNAL FEUD OF “POLITICAL REALISM” VS. “NO COMPROMISE” GOES PUBLIC
It is unfortunate that a movement as important as preserving our Second Amendment rights can generate disagreements and disputes between colleagues. However, the reality is that human nature does not change just because the mission is lofty.
Therefore, we are obligated to report a recent exchange of barbed letters between Tanya Metaksa, executive director of the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA), and Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America (GOA).
Mrs. Metaksa sent a letter dated April 23, 1997 to key audiences complaining about GOA. Mr. PRATT issued a lengthy response on June 12.
Although the letters covered many subjects, the core dispute was over the two groups’ different approaches to influencing legislation: NRA-ILA tends to practice “political realism,” to seek what is possible from lawmakers, while GOA tends to practice “political idealism,” no-compromise lobbying based on principle.
This type of realist-idealist split afflicts virtually every movement that gains wide public support, and the gun rights movement is no exception. Realists point out that idealists are impractical, frequently losing legislative battles, while idealists note that realists are forced to give up their rights piecemeal — and even reward bad votes — in order to maintain access to politicians.
Advocates of both approaches assert that their shortcomings are only temporary, and that their approach is the correct path to prevailing completely in the future.
However, the Metaksa-Pratt letters went further. Mrs. Metaksa wrote, “GOA’s stated philosophy is a purist defense of the Second Amendment. However, their actual motivations appear to be a desire to get to the “right” of NRA on any issue or any political race, regardless of their chance of producing any positive results.”
Mr. PRATT responded: “Regrettably, there are those races where GOA and the NRA have gone their separate ways. But GOA’s motives have not been to get to the “right” of the NRA. Rather, our decisions are a good faith attempt to support the candidate who will best support and defend the Second Amendment.”
Mrs. Metaksa charged in her April 23 letter that GOA “considers non-firearms issues in their candidate evaluations,” noting that GOA passed over Sen. Phil Gramm in the last presidential election in favor of Pat Buchanan “because when Gramm was Chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), the NRSC paid an honorarium to former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev when Gorbachev spoke at an NRSC fundraising event.”
Mr. PRATT responded: “I can unequivocally state that our rating of Sen. GRAMM was in no way a result of the financial support given to Mikhail Gorbachev — as regrettable as that was. To the contrary, GOA considered several Second Amendment issues in evaluating Sen. Gramm’s record.”
Pratt then listed several GRAMM negatives, including a vote against the 1986 SYMMS amendment removing rifle ammunition from the armor piercing bullet ban, a 1993 vote for the crime bill containing the Feinstein ban on semi-automatic firearms and magazines, and a 1995 vote for a terror bill that contained numerous anti-gun provisions. PRATT also noted Sen. Gramm’s failure to introduce a bill repealing the Brady Act or the semi-automatic gun ban.
Several pages of Pratt’s response letter were taken up with reasons why GOA supported various candidates that NRA-ILA had opposed (and vice-versa), including opposing Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK), supporting Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD), opposing Rep. Jack Brooks (R-TX), supporting Rep. Joe Scarborough (R-FL), supporting Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) and others. For each individual, PRATT listed a series of gun-related reasons for supporting or opposing the candidate.
Mrs. Metaksa took exception to GOA’s work at the federal level, stating that in 1995, “GOA worked to block a vote on H.R. 1488, Congressman BARR’s gun ban repeal bill.”
PRATT responded by denying any effort to block that vote. “We did work to strip out a dangerous provision so that we could then get to the business of repealing the gun ban,” wrote PRATT. He went into detail about Section 3 of H.R. 1488, which appeared to expand the power of the BATF, explaining that GOA’s effort successfully removed the threat in the original bill by convincing Rep. BARR to delete Section 3 provisions. PRATT emphasized that GOA may indeed oppose one section of an otherwise good bill in order to improve legislation, not block it.
The nub of the conflict between NRA-ILA and GOA lies in the mixed signals that legislators get when realists part company with idealists. Mrs. Metaksa wrote of GOA, “the letters, faxes and phone calls received on Capitol Hill as a result of their alerts caused confusion among pro-firearms Members of Congress.”
PRATT responded by submitting that such “confusion” would only occur “if these Members of Congress were being told by GOA that there was a Second Amendment problem in one section of the bill, but then were told elsewhere that there was absolutely nothing wrong with the bill.”
Mrs. Metaksa wrote that GOA’s approach is “to lash out viciously at any who don’t adhere to whatever they are promoting as a ‘pure’ on a particular day.”
PRATT defended his purism as a way of holding elected officials accountable, pointing out that GOA “can disagree with a legislator on a specific issue, and still work together on other issues with that legislator.”
Perhaps the most compelling part of the Metaksa-Pratt letter exchange was an attachment to PRATT’s response, an April 2, 1997 letter from Colorado state representative Marilyn Musgrave to the Denver-based Rocky Mountain Gun Owners.
Rep. Musgrave wrote, “Last week I had a conversation with NRA lobbyist Mary Anne Bradfield, the state liaison for Colorado.
“Ms. Bradfield echoed the comments of Steve Schreiner of the Firearms Coalition of Colorado, who rudely told me that any attempt to amend Senate Bill 96 with a “Vermont Law” would be viewed as anti-gun. Ms. Bradfield was even brash enough to threaten me with lowering my NRA rating, telling her members that I am anti-gun.
“In 1996, I carried a “Vermont Law” amendment to the concealed carry bill. I am proud that we got 18 votes for this measure and forced legislators to stand and be counted....
“I pledge to support the “Vermont Law” (i.e. carrying concealed without government permit) because I believe wholeheartedly in our right to personal protection.
“It is outrageous that an NRA lobbyist would suggest that voting to make it easier for citizens to carry a firearm is “anti-gun.”
“Am I to believe that the NRA rates lawmakers based on their willingness to comply with a lobbyist’s wishes, no matter how inane? That would come as a shock to NRA members, who expect ratings to reflect a candidate’s views and record on supporting the Second Amendment.
“I may represent the most pro-gun district in the state of Colorado, and I can assure you that I support the Second Amendment, regardless of the rantings of lobbyists wishing to set public policy behind closed doors and away from public scrutiny.”
Such internal disagreements as these between political realists and idealists quickly become very public and very divisive. Only an informed pro-gun movement can check the all-too-human tendency to demonize those who disagree with us and bring unity to our cause.
SHOOTING YOUR CREDIBILITY IN THE FOOT
Somehow, hypocrisy just seems to go with gun control.
The Gun Grabber’s Creed always appears to boil down to this: We Gun Grabbers have got to disarm the rabble to protect ourselves, but we ourselves can have all the armed bodyguards and guns we want.
Many of us recall the belly-laughs we got back in 1986 when arch-gun grabber Senator Teddy Kennedy had to bail his bodyguard Charles A. Stein, Jr. out of the District of Columbia jail for bringing an arsenal of semi-automatic weapons into the Senate Office Building in preparation for a South American junket.
STEIN was actually trying to check his weapons with what he thought was the proper authority before going up to see his client for departure instructions, but a stupid gun control law caught him in its tangled web. The resulting publicity exposed the hypocrisy behind the Senator’s heated rhetoric against guns.
Teddy Kennedy — Mr. Gun Control himself — inadvertently became an embarrassment to his own gun control crowd by showing what a hypocrite he was.
Then came Bill Clinton, our Gun Grabber President, who is said to have issued instructions to all federal law enforcement personnel to use trigger locks on their sidearms. For a while it looked like the Chief Gun Grabber was actually trying to be fair about it — if he was going to restrict the civilian citizenry with trigger locks, then federal officers would have to do it too.
However...
There appears to be this little slip-up. The Associated Press recently sent a six-paragraph news item over the wire from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It seems that Secretary of State Madeleine Albright went there to attend a conference of Southeast Asian nations. She had this federal bodyguard to protect her from whatever was dangerous in Kuala Lumpur.
In his room at the Sunway Lagoon Hotel, the bodyguard shot himself in the foot while “checking his weapon.” The security agent, whose name was not released, was treated at a local hospital. He was walking the next morning, said Nicholas Burns, a State Department spokesman, indicating that the wound was not serious. said the agent “can’t explain how it happened.”
Well, isn’t it obvious? The government agent wasn’t using a trigger lock.
Although Burns said, “There was no horseplay involved,” they shipped the agent back to the United States.
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