From: "John Q. Public" <[j q p] at [globaldialog.com]>
Newsgroups: alt.current-events.clinton.whitewater,alt.politics.clinton,talk.politics.guns,talk.politics.misc
Subject: Clinton's Gun Hoax
Date: Mon, 16 Sep 1996 23:37:07 -0500
not to be used for commercial purposes
Wall Street Journal 9/16
Clinton's Gun Hoax
By JAMES BOVARD
President Clinton is making the Brady Handgun
Violence Prevention Act a centerpiece of his
re-election campaign. He's mentioned the Brady
Act, which requires a five-day waiting period
and police background check for handgun
purchasers, over 300 times in speeches and
interviews since he took office. But as with
many of the president's policies, the reality
doesn't live up to the hype.
In his Aug. 29 acceptance speech at the
Democratic Convention, Mr. Clinton proclaimed
that "we stopped 60,000 felons, fugitives and
stalkers from getting handguns under the Brady
bill." Seven days later, speaking to supporters
in Michigan City, Ind., Mr. Clinton upped the
ante, proclaiming, "We did pass the Brady Bill
and 100,000 felons, fugitives and stalkers lost
their handguns."
White House Deputy Press Secretary Mary Ellen
Glynn explained away the 100,000 figure by
stating that the president "misspoke" and
noting that "he was reaching the end of a train
trip." However, both the 60,000 and 100,000
figures are political hoaxes. The Brady Act may
have resulted in denying 60,000 people
permission to buy a handgun at a specific
store. But to claim that those people were
thereby prevented from getting a gun makes as
much sense as deducing the number of homeless
by how many people have ever been turned down
for a mortgage loan--regardless of whether they
subsequently got another loan or had other
lodging.
Black Market Guns
Few criminals bother filling out federal forms
when they acquire weapons. A recent national
survey of police chiefs found that 85% believed
that the Brady Act has not prevented any
criminal from obtaining a handgun from illegal
sources in their jurisdiction. According to a
1991 Justice Department survey of convicts,
most guns used to commit crimes have been
acquired illegally or on the black market.
The only way that Mr. Clinton could confidently
assert that 60,000 to 100,000 "felons,
fugitives and stalkers" didn't get guns is if
his administration had prosecuted all of them
and locked them up. (It is a federal crime,
carrying a prison sentence of up to 10 years,
for a convicted felon to purchase a handgun.)
However, 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 with
previous convictions for violent offenses."
The lack of prosecutions is especially
surprising, since would-be handgun buyers must
supply their address in filling out the
application. Thus, federal agents need merely
drive to the person's residence and slap on the
handcuffs. The Justice Department, responding
to GAO criticism about the lack of
prosecutions, noted that "prosecutions for
false statements on handgun purchase
applications are inefficient and ineffective."
A high-ranking Justice Department official also
justified the lack of prosecutions because "no
new resources were provided to U.S. Attorney
Offices, which already must make resource
allocation decisions to address competing
demands."
While the federal government may not have the
resources to enforce the Brady Act, the law
does dump a huge administrative load on local
police agencies. Dennis Martin, president of
the National Association of Chiefs of Police,
estimated in late 1993 that enforcement of the
Brady Act would require at least 10 million
hours a year of law enforcement employees'
time. "Ironically," Mr. Martin noted, "we may
expect an increase in crime as understaffed,
overworked law enforcement agencies throughout
the nation spend millions of hours away from
patrols and crime-solving to engage in
background checks not funded by the Brady
bill."
Nor is there any credibility to Mr. Clinton's
claim that all the 60,000 or 100,000 blocked
purchasers were "felons, fugitives and
stalkers." A January GAO survey found that in
the first 15 months of the law's enforcement,
38% of would-be gun buyers had their
applications rejected for administrative
reasons (primarily paperwork snafus), 7.6% were
rejected because of traffic violations, 2%
because of minor drug violations, 0.3% because
of a dishonorable discharge from the armed
forces (primarily for being AWOL), and 0.8%
because they were illegal aliens.
Only 44.7% were denied as a result of felony
convictions, arrests, warrants or indictments.
(Another 1% were denied because they were
classified as "fugitives from justice.") GAO
found that the vast majority of people who were
denied handgun purchases did not have a history
of violence. In Fort Worth, Texas, only 2.3% of
those denied handgun purchases were violent
felons; in Harris County (Houston), Texas,
3.4%. The highest figure that GAO found was in
Ohio, where 15.3% of the denied applicants had
violent felonies on their records.
Even the 44.7% felony number is inflated. GAO
noted that the denials reported by the Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms last year "do
not reflect the fact that some of the initially
denied applications were subsequently approved,
following administrative or other appeal
procedures."
In many instances law enforcement officials are
overly zealous in denying handgun purchases.
Some of the jurisdictions GAO surveyed
(including Arkansas and Nevada) routinely
denied handgun purchase applications based on
records showing a felony arrest, even when no
evidence was found of a conviction. Also, some
jurisdictions are denying the right to buy a
handgun to any person who has ever had been
arrested for "minor drug offenses," regardless
of whether he was convicted. Thus, someone
caught with a single marijuana cigarette at age
19 may be prohibited from ever owning a handgun
for his family's self-defense.
A Charade
The Clinton administration itself has made it
obvious that the Brady Act is a public
relations charade. When the constitutionality
of the act was challenged in 1994, the
administration responded in a court brief that
a local Arizona sheriff need only make a
"reasonable" effort to conduct a background
check--and stated that, if the sheriff's
department was too busy at that time, "a
'reasonable' effort may be no effort at all."
Apparently, as long as political bragging
rights are safe, it doesn't much matter to the
Clinton Justice Department whether the law is
actually enforced.
But the act may not even be on the books much
longer. Four of the five federal district
judges who have examined challenges to the
Brady Act have ruled it a violation of the 10th
Amendment, though a federal appeals court
upheld it. The Supreme Court will hear a
challenge to the act this fall, and the law may
be dead and buried before the next presidential
inauguration. In the meanwhile, Mr. Clinton
will continue to wring maximum political value
from the law.
The Brady Act epitomizes the mindset of
focusing obsessively on guns as the root of all
evil, while letting violent felons skip merrily
along even after they have committed a new
crime. "It is an irony that Clinton is using
the Brady Act as a focus of fighting against
crime," says Gerald Arenberg, executive
director of the National Association of Chiefs
of Police. "You talk to the 650,000 guys in
uniform, and they know it is a joke."
------------------------------------------------
Mr. Bovard is the author of "Lost Rights: The
Destruction of American Liberty" (St. Martin's
Press, 1994).