The history of gun control, part 1
Posted: June 07, 2007
1:00 am Eastern



By Sandy Froman
© 2008 </FONT>



Philosopher George Santayana said that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. It's true. One of the reasons to study history is to avoid repeating past mistakes. When it comes to freedom, we cannot afford to forget the lessons of the past. So you and I need to know the history of gun control, because history teaches us there is a terrible price to pay when we lose our right to keep and bear arms.

Over 200 years ago, when the Founding Fathers drafted the Second Amendment, no one questioned the need for private gun ownership. The Framers considered private firearms to be essential to protecting personal liberty, both as a means of opposing foreign threats and also as a check against excessive government power. The Framers were passionately devoted to the idea that a self-sufficient armed citizenry is the best means of preserving liberty.

But many on the left do not want you to know this. They keep the truth from being taught in public schools, and they even write books laden with falsehoods in a dishonest attempt to rewrite history.

Seven years ago, Emory University historian Michael Bellesiles published a book purportedly proving there were few guns and gun owners in early America. The book garnered Columbia University's coveted Bancroft Prize. Two years later, primarily due to the efforts of a brilliant young research historian, Clayton Cramer, who had studied that period in history extensively, the book was revealed to be a total fraud, full of lies and fabrications. Bellesiles was forced to resign from Emory University and, for the first time in history, Columbia University rescinded the Bancroft Prize.

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Every American who values his or her constitutional rights should know something about these frauds that gun control advocates perpetrate so we can be watchful and teach the truth to our young ones.

Early Americans were gun owners. Private firearm ownership was widespread from the coasts to the frontier, in both the North and the South.

Our ancestors not only knew the value of gun rights, they actually practiced those rights. Many early Americans provided for their family through their skill with a firearm, and many more Americans had a gun hanging over the hearth or in the bedroom to protect the house and the children against wild animals or criminals. These firearms were also seen as an insurance policy against American Indians, the British or French, and even against our own central government.

This honored tradition went completely unchallenged until the 1900s. Then New York passed the Sullivan Act in 1911, one of the first gun control laws. This law required that firearms small enough to be concealed on a person be registered. This state law became a test measure for future gun control laws.

Opponents of the Second Amendment started to mobilize at the federal level in the 1930s. It came during the New Deal, when the federal government was growing rapidly. Two laws enacted during this period, the National Firearms Act of 1934 and the Federal Firearms Act of 1938, established the first federal gun controls. While most of these regulations were uncontroversial by current standards (such as licensing gun dealers and regulating possession of machine guns), they introduced the concept of national regulation of firearms.

It was also during this time President Franklin Roosevelt appointed a number of liberals to the United States Supreme Court. Starting in 1937, the high court began moving in a liberal direction, and by the 1960s had become a court favoring full judicial activism, a judicial philosophy that has threatened our Second Amendment rights ever since.

During this period, anti-Second Amendment politicians began testing the waters on gun control. The highest-ranking official to do this was FDR's anti-gun attorney general, Homer Cummings. Attorney General Cummings started planning for federal gun control measures such as a national registry in the hands of the central government for guns and gun owners.

But then World War II broke out, and Germany and Japan invaded their neighbors. The American people were reminded how important it is to have a firearm handy when you need one. Cummings' early attempts to regulate guns and gun owners suddenly became unpopular. Gun control advocates lowered their voices until a more opportune time.

Most American leaders in both political parties were pro-gun. In fact, Democratic presidents Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy were NRA members. Gun control advocates were always present in policy debates, but did not have much political clout.

In the 1960s, gun control came back with a vengeance. Modern liberalism became the dominant political philosophy in this country. And after the deaths of JFK, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., an all-out national push for gun control was launched.

This period in the late 1960s was the beginning of significant gun control in America. Liberal activist judges, led by the Warren Court, enacted a widespread liberal agenda. American society was being secularized. President Johnson was forcing a hard-left agenda through the Great Society. And the Vietnam War was becoming increasingly unpopular. It was against that backdrop the left finally launched an open, concerted effort to implement national gun control. And that's what we'll talk about next week, remembering that if we ignore the lessons that history offers us, our children will pay the price with their freedom.

The history of gun control, part 2
Posted: June 14, 2007
1:00 am Eastern



By Sandy Froman
© 2008 </FONT>

Read "The history of gun control, part 1."

Until Lyndon Johnson came to the White House in 1963 following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, gun control was simply not a national issue. There were no significant federal gun control laws on the books, and the NRA was a shooter's organization that intentionally shied away from any political involvement.

All of that changed with the 1968 assassinations of Sen. Robert Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King. In the civil unrest that followed, the media found a new whipping boy – America's gun owners. The media blitz against gun rights was unprecedented and became the driving force behind Democrat leaders proposing national gun control.

Although JFK and his brother, Sen. Robert Kennedy, had been NRA Life Members, America's new president, Lyndon Johnson, was a committed gun control advocate. No president ever matched his power and his will when it came to controlling the legislative process. His attorney general and much of his senior staff searched for new ways to restrict gun ownership among the American people. This was part of Johnson's Great Society vision of an all-powerful federal government controlling the lives of ordinary Americans.

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LBJ also put anti-gun judges on the federal courts at every level. Liberal Thurgood Marshall, an opponent of the Second Amendment, was appointed to the United States Supreme Court. All three branches of the federal government lurched to the left in most policy areas, including firearms.

Keep in mind that up until this time, private ownership of firearms was not in any meaningful way controlled by the federal government. Johnson's administration was the beginning of the federal government superseding state authority in all aspects of people's lives, including ownership and lawful commerce in their private property – in this case, firearms.

The other major factor that created the federal gun control movement was that the NRA, as an organization, was totally unprepared to deal with the media, Lyndon Johnson, or the anti-gun politicians in the U.S. House and Senate. Up until that point, NRA refused even to have a registered lobbyist. In fact, NRA sent mixed signals to the Hill in reference to Johnson's anti-gun legislation.

If NRA had held nominally pro-gun House members' feet to the fire, the 1968 Gun Control Act, or GCA, would not have become law. With no direction from NRA, however, those legislators simply didn't vote. And the worst piece gun control legislation in history was enacted into law.

GCA made many common gun-related commercial activities federal crimes. Suddenly, firearm sales became heavily regulated and restricted. Some supporters of GCA saw it as the first step toward the ultimate goal of ending private gun ownership in the United States. The GCA has served as the basis of virtually every piece of gun control legislation, federal or state, that has been enacted since.

Nothing changed politically for gun owners until former NRA President Harlon Carter, a true visionary and often a lone voice on the NRA board, convinced NRA that gun owners needed a powerful grass-roots lobby focused on saving the Second Amendment.

Following Senate passage of a Saturday Night Special bill, which would have banned one-third of the handgun designs in the United States, Harlon Carter got his way. NRA created the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, or ILA, in 1975.

With the creation of ILA, Carter and his small band of young staffers – talented communicators, lawyers, lobbyists, and grass-roots organizers – turned the battle on its head.

Just months after ILA was created, gun owners celebrated a remarkable victory when ILA helped U.S. Sen. James McClure personally hand Massachusetts anti-gun rights Sen. Edward Kennedy an equally stunning defeat.

Kennedy wanted handgun ammunition banned by the Consumer Product Safety Commission as a "hazardous substance." When it came to a roll call vote, 75 senators – among them a majority of Democrats – voted against Kennedy's gun control scheme. Only 11 senators stood with Kennedy. The dynamic had changed. At last, frustrated gun owners across the country welcomed a real Second Amendment lobby.

With his singular vision of the future, Harlon Carter began recruiting young scholars, writers, researchers and lawyers who fervently believed in the Second Amendment as an individual right. Carter often said that we would see the day when these young men and women would be old and wise and their ideas powerful.
In my next column, I'll talk about what went wrong in the '70s and how grass-roots gun-rights activists worked with NRA to fix it.

The history of gun control, part 3
Posted: July 12, 2007
1:00 am Eastern



By Sandy Froman
© 2008 </FONT>



Sadly, modern history is full of instances where the anti-gun left tries to capitalize on tragedy and fear to push their agenda. Sometimes the push is immediate, while at other times they lay in wait gathering strength until an opportune time, like the evil Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter novels.

Those who support the Bill of Rights need to be aware of these tactics so we can fight to protect our civil liberties when terrible events unfold.

One such event happened on March 30, 1981.

The anti-gun left had hit a brick wall in the 1970s. Ever since Harlon Carter had taken the reins as CEO of the NRA in 1977, re-establishing the NRA's political lobbying arm and mobilizing a national grass-roots opposition campaign to anti-gun legislation, gun control efforts had virtually stopped dead in their tracks. It took the anti-gun left several years to retool their political machine to try to combat the organized efforts of the NRA to protect the right to keep and bear arms.

In fact, the only significant defeat for pro-Second Amendment forces in the 1970s was the confirmation of Abner Mikva as a federal appeals judge to the D.C. Circuit. Rep. Mikva was a congressman from Illinois and one of the leading gun control advocates in America. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit is regarded as the second-most important court in the nation. President Jimmy Carter nominated Mikva to the D.C. Circuit. Though the NRA and gun rights community strongly opposed the nomination, it had no experience with judicial appointments, and a Democrat-controlled Senate confirmed Mikva to the court, where he served until 1994. Aside from that, there had been no major victories for the anti-gun crowd.

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That changed just two months into the Reagan presidency. On March 30, 1981, President Reagan gave a lunchtime speech to the AFL-CIO at the Hilton in Washington, D.C. As he was leaving, he stopped beside the open door of his limousine to wave to the friendly crowd. Suddenly, as the president was waving, gunshots rang out. A Secret Service agent pushed the president into the limo, which rushed off surrounded by police cars, sirens wailing.

Another agent tackled the shooter, John Hinckley, to the ground. Additional agents grabbed Hinckley's gun, while still more agents had weapons drawn in combat crouches as they secured the scene.

The country soon learned that one of Hinckley's shots had seriously wounded President Reagan, who almost died following emergency surgery. Secret Service Agent Tim McCarthy had been shot in the stomach, and Police Officer Tom Delahanty had been shot in the neck.

One other man was shot that day during the attempted assassination. James Brady, the White House press secretary, lay on the ground with a bullet hole in his head. A bullet had lodged in his brain. While Brady survived his injury (as did President Reagan and the other two men), he was left permanently handicapped.

The left saw a renewed opportunity to go after firearms. The assassination attempt became a rallying cry for anti-gun activists. If only people could not get guns, they argued, such violence would not occur. Anti-gun activists started laying the groundwork for major gun control legislation. Though nothing came immediately from this incident, the rationale had been established for a new gun control push.

Meanwhile, the NRA had been working since the late '70s to pass what became the McClure-Volkmer Firearms Owners Protection Act. Designed to eliminate the most onerous provisions of the 1968 Gun Control Act, McClure-Volkmer was eventually signed into law in 1986, a tremendous victory for pro-Second Amendment forces (and the subject of a future column of its own.)

But Sarah Brady and her cohorts were hard at work. And in 1987 the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act was introduced in Congress. Ignoring the fact that a lone crazed individual trying to assassinate a head of state is not something a gun law is likely to stop, opponents of the Second Amendment made the incident look like a tragedy that could befall any person walking the streets of America, and offered gun control as the solution.

Ronald Reagan, however, was an NRA Life Member who respected the Second Amendment. As long as Reagan was president, no gun control law would be passed. Facing a sure presidential veto, the bill never reached the White House during the Reagan years, or even during President Bush Sr.'s term.

Meanwhile, Jim Brady and his wife, Sarah, became active in anti-gun circles. Sarah Brady became chairperson of Handgun Control Inc., and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence was created as a permanent source of anti-gun material.

Legislation like the Brady Bill ignores the fact that violence unfortunately has been a fact of life long before firearms were invented. Outlawing guns does not prevent violence, but it does prevent smaller, older, disabled or less powerful persons from effectively defending themselves against larger and stronger attackers.

And although groups like the Brady Campaign say they just want "reasonable" restrictions on gun ownership, by their own logic they cannot completely stop "gun violence" without outlawing all private gun ownership, no exceptions.

Once the anti-gun left has a cause or celebrity to rally around, rational thought goes out the window as they push their proposed legislation.

The Brady Bill, which became H.R.1025, was signed into law by President Bill Clinton Nov. 30, 1993. Though it has not been shown to have had any impact on preventing the criminal misuse of guns (and parts of it were struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1997 case of Printz v. United States), it is still touted by anti-gun activists as a first step to ending what they see as the scourge of private gun ownership in America.

Sarah Brady is still a leading figure in the anti-gun movement. Jim Brady is still an advertisement for gun control.

And the Clintons still oppose your constitutional right to keep and bear arms. Hillary Clinton has praised her husband for enacting this unconstitutional measure, and continues to support it today. We need to remind ourselves of these things, and of the left's tactic of capitalizing on tragedy, as the Clintons seek to retake the White House in 2008.

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