From: [r--l--r] at [Think.COM] (Ralph Palmer)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns
Subject: WSJ ed 11/4/93
Date: 5 Nov 93 16:49:47 GMT

At least one newspaper is getting the point

Wall Street Journal Editorial 11/4/93

Criminal Control Beats Gun-Control

If there's one bumper sffcker that
emerged from Tuesday's election, this
is it: Criminal Control.

Criminal control trumps gun con-
trol when voters can choose between
two candidates clearly associated with
those alternatives. That is what hap-
pened in the Virginia gubernatorial
race between George Allen and Mary
Sue Terry. Criminal control is what
swept Washington state's remarkable
"Three Strikes and You're Out" ini-
tiative to victory Tuesday. The crimi-
nal-control issue is a reality that is go-
ing to start sinking in among the peo-
ple who actually have to run for Omce,
like Jim orio or Ms. Terry.

Specifically, we are likely now to
see the spread of measures suchas
"Three Strkes and You're Out, "
which passed Tuesday by a whopping
margin of 76% to 24%. This was in a
liberal state that Bill Clinton carried
easily. The measure provides that per-
sons convicted of three major felonies
go to prison,forever, no parole.

A result like that deserves a lot of
serious thinking by the policy-making
community. What it tells us is that a
lot of liberal voters are parting ways
with their betters in the intellectual
and pundit community. What they're
saying is: The caring classes that run
our legal and social service profes-
sions can spin whatever theories they
want around these thugs over the bro-
ken bodies of two major crimes, but
after the third, enough is enough.
You're gone.

Still want a public spending in-
crease of some sort? You've got it-for
more prisons. Tuesday a $1 billion
Texas bond issue for more prisons
and, perhaps logically, more mental
health facilities, passed 62% to 38%.

So what's the problem with gun
control as a voting proposition?
Partly, we suspect the truth is that
some of the NRA's philosophical argu-
ments about self-defense still resonate
with many people (an NRA commer-

                 _  .

cial in Washington featured a wonnan
raped, at knifepoint, by a multiple
felon, just out on parole). The larger
problem, though, is that liberals are
asking gun control to carry more
weight than it can bear. Believing that
"get tough" violates deeply held lib-
eral principles, they won't push much
beyond gun-control alone, other than
maybe calls for more drug treatment
centers. Jim Florio got to Chrisffe
Whitman's right on assault weapons,
then stopped.

How can it surprise them that less
deologicaUy constrained voters won't
buy into this standard solution? New
York City, New Jersey and the District
of Columbia all have-strict gun-control
laws. But we are living in an age of
record urban murder rates, the Dis-
trict of Columbia's mayor calling for
the National Guard, slaughtered New
York City cab drivers, the Miami
tourist crime wave, the Denny verdict
and Jesse Jackson issuing calls for an
end to black-on-black violence against
four-year-old innocents.

In Virginia, an exit poll asked vot-
ers if they favored eliminating parole
for people convicted of crimes like
rape or murder. Some 65% said yes.
That was George Allen's campaign
position. Mary Sue Terry was pro-
moting a five-day waiffng period on
gun purchases.

If indeed crime is one of the decid-
ing electoral issues of our era, the ad-
herents of gun control won't be decid-
ing much of anything until they figure
out a way to also talk in public, credi-
bly, about controlling the criminals.
How about this: Any juvenile arrested
for committing a crime with a gun gets
tried as an adult.

Two final political thoughts: Seat-
tle's mayor, Norm Rice, who is black
and who won re-elecffon Tuesday,
supported the Three Strikes iniffa-
tive. And 57% of the people who
signed the petition to get it on the
ballot were women.