Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns
Subject: Time magazine anti-gun piece (bRady bill)
From: [kim 39] at [scws8.harvard.edu] (John Kim)
Date: 25 Oct 1993 04:59:40 GMT

Pro-gun-control article in _Time_ magazine.  October 11, 1993 
(with David Letterman, Beavis and Butthead on cover)
 pg. 33, by Tom Morganthau

"Why Not Real Gun Control"
Lethal Weapons: Outraged voters ask an obvious question, but
Congress is slow to answer.

     This was a robbery in which no one died, and because it
occurred during a period of almost daily mayhem directed against
Asian shopkeepers in northwest Washington, it barely made the
police blotter.  But a security-camera videotape of the crime
brought the reality of gratuitous, predatory violence to millions
of American viewers last week.  Three men entered a Vietnamese-
owned jewelry store on Georgia Avenue and, in 90 terrifying
seconds, pistol-whipped a woman employee across the face, smashed
the glass display cases, helped themselves to the merchandise and
roughed up another woman who was obviously pregnant.  Finally,
their leader aimed his pistol at a male employee lying on the floor
behind a counter and fired three shots at his legs.

     The tape, broadcast repeatedly by Washington TV stations,
produced a flurry of tips that led to the arrest of four suspects
within days.  But the crime was emblematic of what is happening all
over America--a new level of criminal violence that seems linked to
the nation's ever-expanding arsenal of handguns.  Guns--revolvers,
nine-millimeter automatics, even Saturday-night specials--are
everywhere, and they are being used in increasingly horrific ways. 
Shopkeepers, foreign tourists and young people pay the price: in
America, firearms kill more people between the ages of 15 and 24
than do all natural causes combined.  Gun deaths, including
suicides, now total more than 37,000 a year, and handgun homicides
have reached 13,000 a year.  By comparison, the number of handgun
murders in Britain during 1990 was 22.  

     Brady redux: What should we do about it?  The answer, outraged
voters say in poll after poll, is to pass more restrictive laws to
control handguns.  This mood is moving a reluctant Congress toward
renewed consideration of the Brady bill, named after Jim Brady, who
was permanently disabled in John Hinckley's attempt to assassinate
Ronald Reagan in 1981.  The brady bill is now pending in the House
and Senate and was formally endorsed by the Justice Department last
week.  The bill is a commonsensical and admittedly modest attempt
to impose a five-day waiting period for the purchase of handguns,
and to require local police agencies to make a "reasonable" effort
to ensure that the buyer does not have a criminal record.  Its
chances for becoming law either this year or next are pretty good.

     But the Brady bill rests on a largely unsupported assumption
that the combination of waiting period and police background checks
will somehow reduce handgun crime.  There is no real proof of this. 
Although its supporters cite encouraging statistics from states
that already have imposed background checks (like Delaware), few
who have studied the trade in black-market guns doubt that
criminals can and do find middlemen to buy their weapons for them. 
(Background checks also cannot catch crime-minded wanna-bes who
don't have records yet.)  This problematic assumption proved
embarrassing for the bill's supporters during hearings before a
House subcommittee last week.  Under persistent questioning by
Republican Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, Assistant Attorney General
Elenor Acheson was forced to concede that the administration has no
statistical proof tat Brady would reduce handgun homicides or
handgun crime.  The bill's backers, Smith complained, are building
"false hopes... that crime will be reduced by passing the Brady
bill when that is not the case."

     Symbolism.  Smith's objection is valid.  He happens to be an
ardent opponent of all forms of gun control, but some hard-line gun
controllers agree with him about the bill's central shortcoming. 
They say brady has been oversold and that it is mostly political
symbolism.  "Brady will save some lives," says Josh Sugarmann of
the Violence Policy Center, a tiny gun-control group headquartered
in Washington.  "But as far as having any real effect on gun
violence?  It won't.  And it could have long-term damaging effects
on the gun-control movement."  As Sugarmann sees it, the battle to
pass Brady could lead Congress, the public and the news media to
believe that real gun control had been achieved.  It could exhaust
support for more aggressive policies, and it could give the
National Rifle Association grounds to argue that gun control
doesn't work.  A Senate staffer takes a similarly gloomy view.  "It
might even be to the NRA's benefit to let Brady get through." he
says.  "Then they can stop everything else."

     Handgun Control, Inc, the lobbying group that is the prime
backer for the Brady bill, contends Brady will work and that it is
only a first step toward a "sensible" national gun-control policy
that need not include an outright ban on handguns or some form of
licensing for gun owners.  HCI, chaired by Jim Brady's wife, Sarah,
controls the high ground in the gun-control movement and believes
that the centerpiece of its 10-year campaign will finally pass. 
"We have never said the Brady bill is a panacea, and I think people
understand that it isn't." says HCI's Susan Whitmore.  "It's an
important cornerstone, and we need to build on it."  Whitmore says
that the question of whether the bill will actually reduce gun
violence is "unfair," and will push for new restrictions on federal
licenses for gun dealers and a ban on the domestic production of
assault weapons.  HCI is "absolutely" opposed to a ban on handguns,
she says.  

     Bill Clinton has already directed the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms to tighten its policies on federal gun-dealer
licenses, and various attempts are underway to ban assault weapons. 
Neither of these measures is likely to produce dramatic reductions
in gun crime, and a ranking House Democrat says the question of
banning assault weapons is "the big fake" of the gun-control
debate.  The real problem, he says, is handguns, which are easily
concealed and widely available on the street.  But no one thinks
Congress will be able to overcome its fear of the National Rifle
Association to do anything much about limiting handgun sales any
time soon.  And that, in all probability, means America's tragic
obsession with lethal weaponry will continue for years to come.

[end of article]
posted by J. Case Kim
[kim 39] at [husc.harvard.edu]

-- 
J. Case Kim				P.O. Box 1264
[kim 39] at [husc.harvard.edu]			Cambridge, MA 02238
****These opinions mine alone, unless specifically
noted to the contrary.  I do not speak for Harvard University. *****