Abstract
1995: Supporting the Second Amendment at a Michigan Militia rally.
It's scary, sometimes, how civilized the conversations can be. Last fall, at a Belgian government-sponsored meeting on the links between disarmament and development, a lobbyist for the National Rifle Association (NRA) asked me about my children and told me of his desire to have several grandchildren. Meanwhile, a gun-control advocate from South Africa told me that he and the lobbyist had discussed their mutual interest in rose gardening at an earlier meeting.
So civilized. Yet the NRA pays this lobbyist to try to derail initiatives that would limit the free flow of firearms, domestically or internationally. In recent decades, millions of people have been killed by the kinds of weapons the NRA thinks should be readily available. If the work of the NRA and similiar organizations cannot be overcome, millions more may die in the next century.
The view from the other side
“What will you do when they come for your guns? Maybe you have a bumper sticker that says “pry it from my cold, dead fingers.” Do you mean it? What will you really do when the BAT-men and the FBI put on their black SWAT outfits and ski masks and knock on your door with a battering ram? Will you quietly turn over your guns? Or will you force them to ‘Wacoize’ you?”
Tyranny Page, www.teleport.com/~dputzolu/tyranny.html
“The anti-gun forces within the federal bureaucracy flourish in an atmosphere of subjective quasi-academic activity, developing restrictive regulations concerning the total control of firearms owned by law-abiding civilians. They are feeding a circular U.N. process, using it and indeed being used by it, with the ultimate aim of prohibiting virtually all civilian ownership of firearms.”
from The United Nations and Your Firearm Rights Sporting Shooters of Australia, www.ssaa.org.au
“The Christian's Guide to Small Arms is an electronic book which makes the biblical, constitutional, and historical argument that it is not only the right, but in fact, the duty of Christians to be armed. ‘He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one’ (Luke 22:36).”
Christian's Guide to Small Arms, www.frii.com/~gosplow/cgsa.html
“Gun control has an evil downside–genocide!”
Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, www.jpfo.org
On the National Rifle Association: “Crusty and cranky as only something over 120 years old can be. But let's face it, if you're being mugged in your front yard, crusty and cranky is what you want to come to your help, not some nice touchy feely agency more interested in lecturing you on the psychological needs of your assailant than in saving your skin.”
Second Thoughts: The Web Page for the Armed Liberal, www.arcrafts.com/2think.html
“Every 13 seconds an American gun owner uses a firearm in defense against a criminal. Criminal attacks stopped by guns this year [as of December 1]: 2,222,493.”
The World Wide Web Gun Defense Clock, www.netstorage.com/pulpless/gunclock.html
Nongovernmental organizations–NGOs–versus the NRA. It hardly seems a fair match. The NRA has 2.5 or 3 million members in the United States alone. While the NRA claims that the average member contributes “only” $27, $27 times 2.5 million is a lot of money. Besides, that doesn't include the direct and indirect corporate support the NRA receives.
If activists want to fight the NRA and like-minded groups on the international level, they must confront them at home, because domestic and international weapons issues are intertwined. Simply put, it will be difficult if not impossible to control the illicit international market in light weapons without monitoring and controlling domestic access to weapons.
Activists working on small arms and light weapons issues believe that it is possible to reduce the killing by establishing a new international norm that supports limitations on the manufacture and transfer of light weapons. Many analysts and activists also support intermediate steps such as better enforcement of existing domestic gun laws, improving border controls, and increasing the information flow about weapons manufacture and transfers.
In contrast, gun groups argue that the most important international norm is the one that protects the “right” of law-abiding people to “appropriate” possession of small arms and light weapons. They say there is no connection between levels of gun ownership and levels of violence, and they point to Switzerland as proof. In that country, they say, gun ownership is high but violence is low.
The gun groups are right to fear that those who advocate controls on small arms and light weapons internationally are also likely to advocate stronger national controls. But the gun groups' claim that they are simply trying to preserve the rights of hunters and sportsmen does not ring true. Put bluntly, they are really trying to preserve their “right” to contribute to the daily violence and carnage on our streets.
They are also wrong when they say that people in the United States–let alone the rest of the world–have a right to buy and own as many weapons as they want. And they are wrong when they say that Switzerland is peaceful because everyone has guns.
What about Switzerland?
The Swiss case provokes controversy. Gun groups argue that virtually everyone in Switzerland is armed because of their system of military service, but that gun violence is virtually non-existent.
Gun control advocates counter that Switzerland is not all that peaceful, although to the extent that it is more peaceful than the United States, it is because there are strong domestic controls on weapons and ammunition. Both arguments are probably overstated.
Gun ownership is by no means universal in Switzerland. Swiss criminologist Martin Killias says that about 27 percent of Swiss households have guns. Canadian analyst and activist Wendy Cukier points out that this is approximately the same level as Canada.
It is true that men participating in home-based military service–and that is virtually all men between 20 and 42 years of age–are issued fully automatic weapons and ammunition, which they keep in their homes. But the weapons are not loaded, and the ammunition is in sealed containers. While breaking the seal on an ammunition container would not be much of a barrier to use in a crisis, it is a long way from there to keeping a loaded weapon by the bedside.
While ammunition issued to those undergoing military service is generally well accounted for, other ammunition is available at shooting ranges, which exist in every municipality. Ammunition is supposed to be used only at those ranges, but compliance is said to fall well short of a hundred percent.
Since 1993, however, the Swiss government has been considering a number of proposals for federal gun laws. Citizens would retain the right to own guns, particularly Swiss military-issue arms. But the new laws, if passed, would probably ban fully automatic weapons and their ammunition and require a record check before any firearms purchase, to ensure that firearms could not be easily obtained by criminals.
The government is also evaluating proposals to require proof of “legitimate need” before providing the right to carry a gun for other than hunting or training purposes.
It is theoretically possible that in orderly, controlled, homogeneous societies such as Switzerland, the “mere” existence of guns may not necessarily produce much violence. It is not yet clear to what extent guns by themselves create criminal activity.
Yet guns frequently contribute to a cycle of violence, and they certainly exacerbate violence and criminal activity when they are present. More to the point, few societies these days are very orderly. The contemporary model looks much more like the United States–diverse and disorderly–than Switzerland.
Gun groups' global reach
Gun groups are worried that increased recognition of the significant relationship between domestic and international flows of light weapons will increase the pressure for domestic gun control, as well it might.
In response to recent efforts at international light-weapons control, gun organizations have taken two steps; they have worked to strengthen their own international links, and they have directly attacked proposals for light-weapons control and the organizations sponsoring those proposals.
Gun enthusiasts have, for instance, set up the World Forum on the Future of Sport Shooting Activities, established in 1997 by gun organizations and firearms manufacturers from a dozen countries. Few details about the World Forum are available, which is ironic given the NRA's frequent complaints that anti-gun groups fail to hold open meetings or invite gun groups to brief them. The organization is said to be developing a web page. Meanwhile, tidbits of information are available from other groups.
According to an item on the Sporting Shooters Association of Australia's (SSAA) web page [www.ssaa.org.au], “The Forum will facilitate the exchange of information, the reaching of consensus positions and actions by the member associations or the Forum itself in those situations which warrant it.”
The SSAA also says that the World Forum would “receive at regular intervals representatives from all over the world who are active in target shooting, hunting, and firearms collection, to discuss subjects of common interest and in particular regulatory efforts currently harming sports shooting.”
According to the fall 1997 issue of Gun News Digest, within a few months of its formation, the World Forum had 21 participating organizations. The United States provided the largest number, with at least six groups. Other groups were generally from countries with significant gun industries, including Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Britain.
Meanwhile, the group's existence and activities remain under wraps, despite a pledge that “Adhering to the principles of openness and inclusiveness, the Forum will offer its cooperation, solutions, and alternatives to various decision-making authorities.”
Last March, the World Forum met in Nuremberg, Germany, on the second anniversary of the Dunblane massacre, named after the town in Scotland in which a deranged gunman killed 16 schoolchildren and their teacher.
As with other details of the organization's function, its budget is closely held. One press account said the World Forum's annual budget was just $200,000, but that is clearly wrong. Gun policy researcher Philip Alpers has learned that one NRA international lobbyist alone receives $200,000 per year in fees, plus $125,000 in expenses for his work with the NRA and the World Forum.
The NRA takes the lead
During the past two years, gun groups have been spending considerable time and financial resources attacking international efforts at light-weapons control, with mixed results.
At meetings of the firearms panel of the U.N. Economic and Social Council in 1997, the NRA failed to block a resolution that recommended continued U.N. data collection and dissemination on firearms regulation as well as urging member states to institute regulations on firearm safety, licensing of firearm businesses, and marking firearms at the point of manufacture and import.
The NRA's competing resolution was never formally introduced, suggesting that it could not get a single country to support its position.
But last October, at the Belgian government's International Conference on Sustainable Disarmament for Sustainable Development, the NRA representative and Belgian government officials reportedly worked together to construct a footnote to the “Call for Action” produced by the meeting.
Accepted in the wee hours of the morning, with no opportunity for subsequent public comment, this footnote constituted a significant loophole. In contrast to the main text, which emphasizes the importance of controlling small arms and light weapons, the footnote states: “These measures are not aimed at banning appropriate possession and use of sporting weapons or self-defense firearms by individual citizens in strict accordance with national laws and regulations.”
Pro-control activists have criticized the Brussels document because of its non-binding nature. But in this case, the ability of governments to pick and choose within the text may be a strength. Governments that wish to do so can simply ignore the footnote and pay attention to the remainder of the document.
Baltimore: A 15-year-old skinhead looks at a gun magazine.
One frequent NRA tactic is to suggest that the views of other countries or organizations are irrelevant to U.S. policy. At the November 1997 meeting of the firearms panel of the U.N.'s Economic and Social Council, for example, the NRA representative repeated his message that, “With all due respect to the main supporter of this effort, non-hunting societies should not seek to impose their values on hunting societies.” (Emphasis in original.)
The NRA apparently has found alarmist rhetoric useful in fundraising. A fall 1997 direct mail letter from then-Executive Director Tanya Metaksa to supporters of the NRA's Institute for Legislative Action said that the consideration of a U.N. Declaration of Principles on Firearms would likely be followed by an international treaty:
“We are just two steps away from an international treaty that could cost you and your family your rights and your guns–without even a full vote by Congress!…
“As I write, a multi-national cadre of gun-ban extremists is lobbying the United Nations, demanding that this Declaration include a virtual worldwide ban on firearms ownership. …
“Would you be forced to get a government license to keep a gun in your home? Would you be forced to register all the firearms you now own? Would your handguns, semi-auto hunting rifles, and pump shotguns be outlawed, and subject to government seizures, [as] we have witnessed in Australia and Great Britain? What would happen if the United Nations demands gun confiscation on American soil?”
Beyond the NRA
Several other gun groups have joined the NRA in efforts to counter the various initiatives at controlling light weapons. In the November 1997 issue of the Gottlieb-Tartaro Report, one such group, the U.S.-based Second Amendment Foundation, said that the U.N. Panel of Governmental Experts on Small Arms “could turn into a real problem by promoting a treaty on arms smuggling that would require signatory nations to regulate the market.”
Meanwhile, Gun Owners of America has characterized the United Nations as “a tourniquet that is slowly being drawn around gun owners' necks” and a front for domestic gun control in the United States. They recommend U.S. withdrawal from the United Nations to avoid what they see as dangerous momentum toward global gun control.
“Pretty soon,” says their literature, “we will be told that we need a ‘one-gun-a-month’ rationing scheme to stop the flow of guns not just to poor crime-racked Washington, D.C., but to drug-lord oppressed Colombia.”
Other gun groups argue that the NRA has not gone far enough. Champaign County Grassroots, based in Illinois, has criticized the NRA. Part of a July 1998 article titled “Global Gun Control Efforts” posted on its web site was headlined “NRA to the rescue? NOT A CHANCE.” The article continued:
“Some American firearm owners might be quick to say that the NRA now has ngo status at the United Nations and that their Second Amendment rights and national sovereignty are being adequately protected. Most do not know that the NRA is a non-voting member, can only speak at a public forum if invited to do so, and does not have access to closed meetings where final policies are decided.” (Emphasis in original.)
Prospects for change
Many gun-control advocates draw an analogy between gun control and auto safety. Some of the auto safety measures that have come about in the last 30 years would have had limited impact by themselves. But together, they made a huge difference.
The gun control conundrum is similarly complex. Activists can make a difference by understanding that control of small arms and light weapons is a consumer protection problem, a public health problem, a public safety problem, a domestic problem, and an international problem. It must be dealt with in all its aspects if the killing is to be reduced.
One way to gain leverage is to press the NRA to live up to its public rhetoric about supporting openness.
Countries must be more open about the manufacture and transfer of small arms and light weapons. Important ways to improve available information on these weapons include obtaining and publicizing information about relevant policies and laws of various countries. In addition, marking all small arms and light weapons at the time of manufacture, and establishing databases of authorized manufacturers and dealers are ideas whose time has come.
For many countries, simply monitoring and enforcing the laws and regulations that already exist regarding weapons manufacture and sale, licensing, and storage would have a significant effect.
Oversight can also be improved by providing sufficient resources to monitor and police national borders. Similarly, requiring suppliers and recipients to verify that weapons reach the intended recipients will help highlight where improving regulatory mechanisms is most likely to be useful.
NRA representatives have often said they want to eliminate illegal weapons transfers because so many of the weapons are stolen from their members. But it's not that simple. The illicit weapons trade is most often a multinational or regional problem. Some countries are primarily transshipment points, while others are key points of origin or destination. All are important links in illicit weapons transfers.
It is unrealistic to think that all aspects of the problem can be attacked simultaneously. Determining weak links in the chain–such as frequent and predictable routes for illicit transfers–may be more cost effective.
Imposing stiffer penalties at the national level for illegal possession of weapons and for smuggling is also likely to reduce the international trade in illicit weapons. In many countries, simply enforcing existing laws would make a tremendous difference.
In contrast to their rhetoric supporting openness and the control of illicit weapons, the NRA and other gun groups oppose measures to actually control light weapons. Most control proposals are intended to limit the quantity or quality of weapons by controlling production, access, and availability or transfers.
Countries can break the supply line of especially dangerous weapons by ending production, as is now occurring with anti-personnel land mines. They can also destroy surplus weapons, weapons gathered through amnesty or buy-back programs, and weapons that remain when conflicts end.
Despite the opposition of the gun groups, there has been significant progress in national, regional, and global forums on these issues in recent years. One key to future progress: joint action by analysts and advocates working on a variety of issues, including humanitarian aid, disarmament, gun control, and development.
Analysts, activists, journalists, and the public can sometimes pressure reluctant governments to construct higher standards for light weapons manufacture, storage, and transfer, and then make these higher standards work.
Continued progress also depends on sharing information, maintaining active contacts with international organizations working on these issues, and finding governments willing to take the lead in organizing regional and global efforts.
It may even be possible to make common cause with the gun groups–if they live up to their rhetoric about wanting to stamp out illicit transfers.