Date: Wed, 21 Aug 1996 03:55:03 -0400 From: [E--rS--r] at [aol.com] To: Multiple recipients of list <[n--b--n] at [fs1.mainstream.net]> Subject: Dismantling the Brady Law 2/2 The following examples provided by attorney and public policy analyst David Kopel33 are instructive: Bonnie Elmasri On March 5, 1991 Bonnie Elmasri called a firearms instructor, worried that her husband-who was subject to a restraining order to stay away from her-had been threatening her and her children. When she asked the instructor about getting a handgun, the instructor explained that Wisconsin has a 48-hour waiting period. Ms. Elmasri and her two children were murdered by her husband twenty-four hours later. Rayna Ross On June 29, 1993, at three o'clock in the morning, a 21-year-old woman named Rayna Ross was awakened by the sound of a burglar who had broken into her apartment and entered her bedroom. The burglar was her ax-boyfriend, a man who had previously assaulted her. This time, having smashed his way into her apartment, he was armed with a bayonet. Miss Ross took aim with a .380 semiautomatic pistol and shot him twice. The burglar's death was classified as a "justifiable homicide" by the Prince William County commonwealth's attorney, which determined that Miss Ross had acted lawfully in shooting the attacker. Miss Ross had bought her handgun one full business day before the attack, thanks to Virginia's "instant background check." Virginia's 1993 Democratic candidate for governor, Mary Sue Terry (endorsed by Handgun Control, Inc.), proposed that-although the Virginia instant check already checks all handgun buyers-Virginia handgun purchasers should undergo a "cooling-off period" of five business days. Had the proposal been law in Virginia in 1993, Rayna Ross would now be undergoing a permanent "cooling-off period.''34 Sonya Miller Armed with a knife, Charles A. Grant, Jr., sexually assaulted a 33-year-old woman on a Virginia beach one Tuesday in 1991. The assault was videotaped by a tourist who (not having a permit to carry a concealed handgun for protection) apparently could do nothing to help except record the crime. The following day, Wednesday, Charles Grant raped a 12-year-old girl. News broadcasts of the videotape of Grant's Tuesday assault frightened many people in the nearby Nags Head community. A young woman named Sonya Miller had been wanting a handgun for a while, and on that Wednesday, her father bought her a .38 Special revolver. He gave her the revolver that evening. At about 9 P.M., Miss Miller went to the post office to pick up her mail. As she stepped into the dimly lit parking lot near the post office, Charles Grant saw her, and she saw Charles Grant. They both screamed. Grant told the young woman he would not hurt her, but when she attempted to get into her car, Grant lunged at the door. He stuck a .25 caliber pistol in her face, began climbing into the car's back seat, and said, "I'm going to kill you." "No," she replied, "I'm going to kill you." Sonya Miller picked up the revolver she had acquired less than fifteen minutes before. When she pulled the hammer back (a step preparatory to firing), he dropped his gun and fled. Miss Miller drove home; her father called the sheriff's offices, and Charles Grant was apprehended. Regarding the handgun Miss Miller had just acquired, "It's the only thing that saved her life," her father observed.35x Virgen Blanca At the age of seventeen, Virgen Blanca emigrated to the United States from Spain. By the time she was twenty-three, she had three children and was divorced. To make ends meet for her family, she had to work two or three jobs, as long as eighteen hours a day. In 1993, Ms. Blanca and her three teenage children moved from Mesquite, Texas, to Dallas, in order to be closer to her job as a house painter. The family moved into a seven-unit apartment building, where they were the sole tenants. During the night of Saturday, July 24, 1993, a prowler twice attempted to break into the apartment. The second time, Ms. Blanca's 15-year-old son Reel jumped out a second-story window to call the police. By the time they arrived, the prowler was gone, having left behind a message scrawled on a light switch next to the Blanca apartment, "I'll be back." On Sunday, Mrs. Blanca purchased a Bryco semi-automatic pistol [an inexpensive pistol]. On Monday night, Mrs. Blanca left the apartment to buy food. Moments later, 15year-old Reel, 14-year-old Alexandra, and 10-year-old John Paul heard a door creaking outside the apartment house. Recognizing the man to be the same man who had twice attempted to break in Saturday night, Reel took the Bryco pistol from his mother's room, and aimed it out the window at the man in the courtyard below. Reel yelled "Freeze!" but the man began to open the door to the apartment building. Reel shot the gun three times, wounding the man in the groin. The man limped two blocks, asked someone to call an ambulance, and claimed that he had merely been looking for a place to urinate. Because Mrs. Blanca could not make a positive identification of the man, police dropped burglary charges.36 What a Difference a Day Makes In 1985 in San Leandro, California, a woman and her daughter were threatened by a neighbor. Instead of being able immediately to obtain a handgun for self-defense, the woman had to wait fifteen days. The day after she finally was allowed to pick up her gun, the neighbor attacked them, and she shot him in self-defense. Had the man attacked fourteen rather than sixteen days after his initial threat, the woman and her daughter might have been raped. Catherine Latta In September 1990, a mail carrier named Catherine Latta of Charlotte, North Carolina, went to the police to obtain permission to buy a handgun. Her ex-boyfriend had previously robbed her, assaulted her several times, and raped her The clerk at the sheriff's office informed her the gun permit would take two to four weeks. "I told her I'd be dead by then," Ms. Latta later recalled. That afternoon' she went to a bad part of town, and bought an illegal $20 semiautomatic pistol on the street. Five hours later, her ex-boyfriend attacked her outside her house, and she shot him dead. The county prosecutor decided not to prosecute Ms. Latta for either the self-defense homicide, or the illegal gun.37 These anecdotes illustrate our contention that innocents suffer and die when denied timely access to the safest and most effective means of protection - guns. The Brady Law waiting period and the extraordinary number of Brady background check errors - almost the rule rather than the exception - deny timely access to dozens of thousands of good and needful people. In so doing, it is our contention that the Brady Law costs many more lives than it saves. Recommendations In balance, the Brady Law is a constitutionally offensive political fraud, a public policy failure, and should be dismantled in its entirety. We strenuously object to the concept of proving qualification to exercise an inherent and irrevocable right to self defense. We strenuously object to even the suggestion of proving qualification to exercise a pre-existent and constitutionally guaranteed right to keep and bear arms. If despite our most strenuous objections there is to be an infringement of these rights to self-defense and right to keep and bear arms, let it be the least intrusive infringement available; let it be the Instant Check system as freely adopted by states (rather than imposed by the Brady Law's usurpation of Tenth Amendment state powers). State Instant Check systems are less intrusive and less destructive of individual rights and state powers than the Brady Law. On a purely pragmatic level devoid of constitutional concerns (an unprincipled position we neither adopt nor recommend), there are no benefits whatsoever from the Brady Law except those that are better served by Instant Check systems. 1 Lott JR and Mustard DB. "Crime, Deterrence, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns." Journal of Legal Studies. January 1997 forthcoming. 2 Suter EA Waters WC 4th Murray GB Hopkins CB Asiaf J Moore JB Fackler M Cowan DN Eckenhoff RG Singer TR et al. "Violence in America - Effective solutions." J Med Assoc Ga June 1995; 84(6):253-263. 3 Sugarmann J and Rand K. Cease Fire - A comprehensive strategy to reduce violence. Washington DC: Violence Policy Center. 1993. 4 this voluminous literature is best summarized in Kleck G. Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. 1991. 5 McGonigal MD, Cole J, Schwab W, Kauder DR, Rotondo MF, and Angood PB. Urban firearms deaths: a five-year perspective. J Trauma. 1993; 35(4): 532-36. 6 Hutson HR, Anglin D, and Pratts MJ. Adolescents and children injured or killed in drive-by shootings in Los Angeles. N Engl J Med. 1994; 330: 324-27. 7 Suter EA Waters WC 4th Murray GB Hopkins CB Asiaf J Moore JB Fackler M Cowan DN Eckenhoff RG Singer TR et al. "Violence in America - Effective solutions." J Med Assoc Ga June 1995; 84(6):253-263. 8 Kleck G and Gertz M. "Armed Resistance to Crime: the Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun." Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology. Summer 1995:; 86:143-186. 9 Suter EA Waters WC 4th Murray GB Hopkins CB Asiaf J Moore JB Fackler M Cowan DN Eckenhoff RG Singer TR et al. "Violence in America - Effective solutions." J Med Assoc Ga June 1995; 84(6):253-263. 10 Kellermann AL. and Reay DT. "Protection or Peril? An Analysis of Firearms-Related Deaths in the Home." N Engl J. Med 1986. 314: 1557-60. 11 Kates D, Schaffer HE, Lattimer JK, Murray GB, and Cassem EW. "Guns and Public Health: Epidemic of Violence or Pandemic of Propaganda?" Tennessee Law Review. Spring 1995; 62(3): 513-596. 12 Suter EA. "Guns in the Medical Literature - A Failure of Peer Review." Journal of the Medical Association of Georgia. March 1994: 133-48. 13 Suter EA, National Chair, Doctors for Integrity in Research & Public Policy. testimony before the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Judiciary Committee of the United States Senate. March 23, 1994 14 Waters, WC 4th, Eastern Director, Doctors for Integrity in Policy Research, Inc.; Wheeler TW, President, Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership; Faria M, Professor of Neurosurgery and Adjunct Professor of Medical History, Mercer University, former editor of the Journal of the Medical Association of Georgia; and Kates DB, civil rights attorney and criminologist. testimony before the House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education. March 6, 1996. 15 Bennett A and Sharpe A. "Health Hazard: AIDS Fight Is Skewed By Federal Campaign Exaggerating Risks." Wall Street Journal. May 1, 1996, pp 1 & 6. 16 Clinton WJ, President of the United States of America. Remarks at the Democratic National Committee Gala. Washington Convention Center. Washington DC. May 8, 1966 10:32PM EDT. 17 Clinton WJ, President of the United States of America. Remarks to the people of DesMoines. Knapp Center, Drake University, Des Moines IA. February 11, 1996 2:05PM CST. 18 United States General Accounting Office. "Report to the Committee on the Judiciary - House of Representatives - Gun Control: Implementation of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act." GAO/GGD-96-22 Washington DC: USGAO. January 1996. hereinafter "GAO survey." 19 GAO survey Chapter 2. 20 Wright JD and Rossi PH. Armed and considered dangerous: a survey of felons and their firearms. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter. 1986. 21 Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. "Protecting America: The Effectiveness of the Federal Armed Career Criminal Statute." Washington DC: US DOJ BATF. undated. page 28. 22 Federal Bureau of Investigation, US Department of Justice. Uniform Crime Reports: Crime in the United States 1993. Washington DC: US Government Printing Office. 1994. Table 5. and Federal Bureau of Investigation, US Department of Justice. Uniform Crime Reports: Crime in the United States 1994. Washington DC: US Government Printing Office. 1995. Table 5. 23 GAO survey at page 5. 24 Wright JD and Rossi PH. Armed and considered dangerous: a survey of felons and their firearms. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter. 1986. 25 Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. "Protecting America: The Effectiveness of the Federal Armed Career Criminal Statute." Washington DC: US DOJ BATF. undated. page 28. 26 Aborn R, President of Handgun Control Inc. Letter to the editor. Washington Post. September 30, 1994. 27 Howlett D. Jury still out on success of the Brady Law. USA Today. December 28, 1994. p A-2. 28 Clinton WJ, President of the United States of America. Remarks on MTV's "Enough is Enough" forum on crime. Kalorama Studio. Washington DC. April 19, 1994 11:30AM EDT. 29 Jacobs JB and Potter KA. "Keeping Guns Out of the 'Wrong' Hands: The Brady Law and the Limits of Regulation." Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology. Summer 1995:; 86:93-120. 30 Federal Bureau of Investigation, US Department of Justice. Uniform Crime Reports: Crime in the United States 1992. Washington DC: US Government Printing Office. 1993. Table 5. 31 Federal Bureau of Investigation, US Department of Justice. Uniform Crime Reports: Crime in the United States 1994. Washington DC: US Government Printing Office. 1995. Table 5. 32 Suter EA Waters WC 4th Murray GB Hopkins CB Asiaf J Moore JB Fackler M Cowan DN Eckenhoff RG Singer TR et al. "Violence in America - Effective solutions." J Med Assoc Ga June 1995; 84(6):253-263. 33 Kopel DB. "Guns: Who Should Have Them?" Amherst NY: Prometheus Books. 1995. pp 61-65. 34 "No Duty to Protect." Washington Times. July 13, 1993. page missing. 35 Thiel E. "Gift of a Gun Warded Off Attack, Father Says." Virginia-Pilot. April 12, 1991. p. D-1. 36 Gilman TJ and Talley O. "Violent Reactions: Citizens' Growing Use of Force Stirs Societal Questions." Dallas Morning News. August 1, 1993. page 1-A. 37 Wright GL. "Woman Won't Be Charged: Boyfriend's Slaying Ruled Self-Defense." Charlotte Observer. October 3, 1990. page missing.