Date: Sun, 23 Jan 1994 23:55:19 -0800 From: Jeff Chan To: ca-firearms, firearms-politics@ns1.rutgers.edu Subject: Corrected: Firearms Coalition Online Report, 1/21/94 >From: "Christopher W. Knox" >Subject: (Resend) Firearms Coalition Online 1/21 >To: cknox@crl.com (Blind CC sent to the Firearms Coalition Online) >Date: Mon, 24 Jan 1994 00:06:14 -0700 (MST) This is a resend -- the original got garbled on the end. -- Chris ======================================================================== Online Report to the F I R E A R M S C O A L I T I O N Box 6537, Silver Spring, MD 20916 ======================================================================== January 21, 1993 Release 1.4 ======================================================================== In this issue: * Commentary on Snyder's "A Nation of Cowards" and Sobran editorial * Gun bills before New York, Maryland, and Florida legislatures * Odds and Ends * New York Daily News op-ed article A Note from Chris Congress is on its way back, state legislatures are gearing back up, and keep in mind that it's an even-numbered year. The silly season will be upon us before we know it. The primary elections in the Spring can be a place to flex a bit of muscle -- the generally light voter turnout means that one vote means more. Here's an idea that's been kicking around in my head for a while: a Registered Match. Not necessarily registered with the usual organizations, although it might be, but registered in the sense that you have to be registered to vote to shoot. Have election registrars available and make folks sign up to get their score cards. Just a thought. This list now has well over 300 subscribers and filters out to Leroy Pyle's Paul Revere Network and beyond. If you're reading this from an indirect source such as a local bulletin board, welcome. And a reminder that you should feel free to repost this notice anywhere, in any manner so long as you include our name and address. Need a bit of help now. I've posted notices about the list in the usual places in News, next I want to start working on the commercial information services. GEnie is taken care of. I'm sending directly to a couple of Compuserve subscribers, but I don't see anyone from American OnLine or, dare I say it, Prodigy. If you know anyone over there, you might drop a copy on them. ======================================================================== Targeting Brutality By NEAL KNOX WASHINGTON, D.C. (Jan. 20) -- With the prodding and in coordination with the White House, the TV networks are on a huge "anti-violence" -- that is, anti-gun -- campaign. The networks and movie industry are under attack in Congress, and from the people, for their violent programming and films, and -- as usual for the left -- are attempting to equate guns with violence (never the prevention of violence). Not all violence is equal, and not all violence is bad. Brutality is always bad. When a woman is raped, that's brutality. If she shoots the rapist it's violence, but it's not brutality. That distinction between violence and brutality is tremendously important, but seldom made. Leftists never use the word "brutality," for only individuals (and animals) can do brute-like things. They much prefer the softer generic term "violence," which can apply to natural events (such as a violent thunderstorm). To the leftist, there is no difference between the violent act of murder and the violent act of lawful self-defense with a knife, club or gun. That is why the left is so totally opposed to allowing the law-abiding to carry -- or even possess in our homes -- the means of self-defense. Jeff Snyder is a Washington attorney who wrote "A Nation of Cowards" in the Fall 1993 issue of "The Public Interest" (which severely dented the anti-Second Amendment fervor of commentator George Will). In this morning's "Washington Times" Snyder derides the Clinton and HCI scheme to pass a handgun ownership licensing law in the name of assuring safety and technical proficiency with firearms. We don't really care if a thug hurts himself with a gun; what we're worried about is his hurting the innocent. Snyder points out that the Clinton/HCI intent is to set up the system by which government will determine who "needs" to own a gun -- which "converts the Constitutional right to own firearms into a privilege granted and administered by the government." Snyder calls for decriminalizing the carrying of firearms, noting that criminals ignore those laws anyway. "We must carry arms," he writes. "Not because we are frightened of crime. Not because it is an unfortunate necessity of modern life. We must carry arms because we value our lives and those of our loved ones, because we will not be dealt with by force or threat of force, and do not live at the pleasure and discretion of the lawless. "Failing that ... we will be condemned to wonder why criminals have no respect for our lives, when we ourselves do not value our lives enough to assume the responsibility to defend them." Amen, and Amen! Nationally syndicated columnist Joseph Sobran wrote on the same theme in the Dec. 12, 1993 "Washington Times," stating: "Because the state can no longer protect us from crime, it wants to take away the means of protecting ourselves." Sobran pointed out that Colin Ferguson knew his victims would be helpless -- provided they were law-abiding. "What a pity there wasn't a Bernhard Goetz in the same car." "The law gives the edge to those who despise the law. That's the craziness of our current way of life. Those who call for gun control, like Bill Clinton and his Cabinet ... want to increase the criminal's edge. "Is it so hard to understand that law should give the advantage to the law-abiding?" "Bill Clinton wants to license all handguns in the United States. He affects not to know that the Second Amendment forbids the federal government to infringe our right to keep and bear arms. He doesn't ask, because he doesn't care, where the federal government gets the lawful power to require the licensing of guns. He thinks it has the actual political power to do it, and for him that's all that counts. "So law-abiding citizens are left at a disadvantage -- caught between a criminal class that disdains the law and a ruling class that disdains the Constitution." Again, Amen, and Amen! ======================================================================== January 18 update -- I just got back from Texas where I worked in a couple of days quail hunting with the SHOT show, Dallas Gun Show and a gun rights rally that included rock star Ted Nugent. It's another week before Congress opens, but legislatures across the nation are firing up, and the anti-gun crowd is orgasmic about their prospects for hammering us. Gov. Mario Cuomo called an extraordinary session in New York yesterday to push five gun bills. The lead is a so-called assault rifle bill. Among other things he would ban rifle and pistol magazines that carry over seven rounds and shotguns over five. On Jan. 12 the New York Post's Fred Dicker obtained state data showing that instead of 88 "assault rifle murders" in the state last year, as Cuomo has claimed, there were only 20 with all types of rifles -- far less than the 117 killed with hands and feet. There were 1,653 with handguns -- prohibited for 82 years unless licensed. The Republican-controlled Senate took no action, a sign that they're rethinking their too-clever scheme to have a Republican semi-auto ban with a death penalty provision -- which an embarrassed Mario Cuomo would supposedly veto. Those letters and phone calls seem to be having the proper effect, but the Senate will vote on the bills next week. Nevertheless, Republicans, including one I've known for several years, have introduced their own more-modest version. Call it "Assault Rifle Lite." The Maryland crowd is also seeing visions of sugarplums, boasting that their gun owner licensing bill is now possible, along with their requirement for a limit of two handgun purchases per year and ten in possession. I'm reminded of a meeting in the Nixon White House in 1971, when we were told that we were merely delaying the inevitable, and that if we didn't draft and support a "Saturday Night Special" ban that we could live with, that Congress would shove a far-worse one down our throats. I replied that we weren't fighting a delaying action but a holding action; that the pendulum for "gun control" was at its height, and already beginning to swing toward criminal control. We held. Twenty-two years later there is still no Federal "Saturday Night Special" ban. Again the pendulum is at the peak of its swing to gun control, and already moving toward criminal control. Again, we must hold until the public focuses on the criminal -- as they're already starting to do. The Florida legislature is considering its first so-called "assault weapons" ban since 1989 -- one that would require owners of listed guns to get them out of the state, surrender them without compensation, or pay $200 per gun to try to register them. If the registration is denied, the state would keep the money and take the gun. Cute. Monday night there was a rally against the ban in Ocala, called by a coalition of groups that don't usually get involved in the gun issue. According to the local newspaper it drew 5,000 people, including the top local law enforcement officers -- who blasted the effort to draw attention to the guns least-used in crime, and away from criminals. Marion Hammer tells me the Ocala rally is the talk of the State Capitol. --- The Jan. 12 New York Daily News -- a virulently anti-gun tabloid -- ran my 1,000-word op-ed article advocating more firearms carry permits as the only solution for preventing future mass murders like the one on the Long Island Railroad. The article is included at the bottom of this update. Also last week's People magazine ran a two-page picture of me and my handsome over-under 28 gauge Winchester. They called me a "ferocious lobbyist," which is a contradiction of terms. They also quoted Mike Beard of National Coalition To Ban Handguns as saying I was a nice guy and that he would like to have me as his grandfather. I was touched. If I were Mike I'd call People magazine and scream misquote. --- I've received sketchy reports that there was some looting after the Los Angeles earthquake, and that some homeowners and shopowners used personal firearms to protect themselves and their property. But there was no widespread looting, as in the L.A. riots in 1991. Maybe the looters have gotten the word that far more law-abiding Californians are now armed. ======================================================================== SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Published as op-ed Jan 12, '94 as "What N.Y.C. Needs: More Guns" (Knox had protested an earlier N.Y.D.N. editorial blasting him by name; the News wanted to interview him for a "Question and Answer piece to get your views out, like we did with Jesse Jackson." Knox refused, telling them he wouldn't let them get their biased editorial pencil anywhere near anything he said; he told them to send down the questions and the number of words that they intended to allow for response, and he would provide written answers. The editorial page director said he didn't know enough about the issue to ask the right questions [though that didn't prevent him from claiming he had all the answers -nk]. Knox then offered to do this op-ed, to the assigned length, without any editing except by mutual consent. The following is the final version, as Knox wrote it -- except for the headline.) Rube Goldberg's Gun Control Scheme By Neal Knox Rube Goldberg knew that his delightfully convoluted, deceptively reasonable mechanisms couldn't and wouldn't work. But his disciples, like Rep. Charles Schumer of Brooklyn and the editorial staff of the New York Daily News, can't seem to get it through their heads that Goldberg was only kidding. The fundamental flaw in the Rube Goldberg scheme called "gun control" is that it requires water to flow uphill. For "gun control" to work, the same criminals who pay no attention to the laws against rape, robbery and murder, must fully comply with the *next* gun law. Similarly, the mentally, emotionally and morally challenged, like Colin Ferguson, who sought to "get even" -- for something -- by killing and maiming whites and Asians on the Long Island Rail Road, aren't about to be deterred by whatever legal barrier Mr. Schumer expects their deranged minds to honor. [Mr.] Schumer wants to enact a national handgun licensing law like the one his predecessor, Tammany Hall pol (Big Tim) Sullivan, imposed on New Yorkers in 1911. That law has been made more restrictive and more complex by every legislature since. Alas, it still doesn't work. No matter how many bells, whistles, barriers and roadblocks are built into Goldberg's Gun Control machine, water still runs downhill, and the morally and mentally challenged still disobey, evade or ignore gun laws. That's why not one gun law has slowed, stopped or reversed the trend toward higher crime rates. Foreign countries with prohibitive gun laws and low crime rates had even less crime before they enacted their gun laws. You can engrave it in stone: *No City, No State, and No Nation Has Ever Reduced its Crime Rate by Passing a Gun Law.* For each failure, the Schumerites have only excuses. Like snake oil salesman, they insist that brutality will be cured if the public will just take a stronger dose of their magic elixir. Quit telling the public what *ought* to work, show us what *has* worked. In 1978, the Carter Justice Department gave a $192,000 grant to University of Massachusetts sociologist -- and "gun control" advocate -- James D. Wright to determine what type of gun law is most effective. He could find no evidence that any restrictive gun law, or combination of laws, had reduced crime. So he was given a $397,000 grant to find out *why* the gun laws didn't work. He interviewed 1,847 felons in 11 state prisons and learned: Criminals don't obey gun laws. Wright found that 93 percent of gun-using predatory criminals had avoided regulatable commercial firearms dealers. Even in the "lax-law" states of Texas and Arizona they got their guns by theft or "on the streets." Before the 1968 Gun Control Act, guns were *really* available. The seamiest character on the Lower East Side could anonymously mail-order any pistol, rifle or shotgun. Any New Yorker vacationing in Florida could buy as many guns as he wanted without violating any law until returning to New York. GCA '68 didn't work. Now there are twice as many illegal guns in New York City and the murder rates have quadrupled. L.I.R.R. murderer Colin Ferguson violated at least a dozen felony gun laws. It's ludicrous to think yet another, no matter how structured, would have prevented that tragedy. Ferguson evaded New York's laws by going to California, where he fraudulently obtained a driver's license with the address of the cheap hotel where he stayed just long enough to complete the state's 15-day waiting period and records check. He also violated the Federal laws against falsifying a government form, acquiring a gun out of state, transporting it into a state where he couldn't possess it, and illegally transporting a gun for the purpose of committing a crime. Finally, he violated the New York laws against possessing or carrying unlicensed, unregistered firearms -- the same laws that had rendered the law-abiding passengers helpless. What would have most increased the safety of those L.I.R.R. passengers? (A) Another gun law. (B) An armed cop on the train? (C) A legally armed, appropriately trained accountant, secretary or housewife? If I had been on that bloody train, the (A) approach having failed, I would have prayed for (B) or (C): an armed cop, licensed citizen, or the means to protect myself. But prayers might not work that quickly, and cops are never around when you need them. An honest citizen should have the right to choose whether to train and arm himself or herself. I don't like the notion of living in a dangerous society where we need to be armed to protect ourselves and our loved ones. Unfortunately, that's the society we live in, and the gun laws have disarmed the wrong people. Dr. Suzanna Gratia is certain she could have stopped the 1991 Luby's cafeteria massacre at Killeen, Texas if the law hadn't forced her to leave her gun in her car. But she could only huddle in horror as her parents and 20 others were murdered. Her 71-year-old father was the only one who attempted to stop the carnage -- barehanded. An armed Texas Highway Patrolman in the restaurant did nothing. Only two months later, another massacre almost occurred at a Shoney's restaurant in Anniston, Alabama. When about 20 customer were herded into a walk-in refrigerator -- where so many robbery victims have died -- Thomas Glenn Terry drew a legally carried .45 semi-auto, killing one robber and critically wounding the other, while being wounded himself. *No one else was injured.* When Florida's legislature required the issuance of carrying licenses to law-abiding citizens who met certain minimal firearms training standards, police protested that there would be a surge of "Wild West" shootouts. It simply hasn't happened. Of the 183,561 licenses issued since the law was enacted in 1987, only 17 have been revoked for gun-related offenses -- mainly for forgetfully carrying guns into prohibited airports or courthouses. But there have been many cases of citizens using their guns to protect themselves and others -- so many, law enforcement officials have noted, that criminals concerned for their safety have targeted tourists. Criminals rightfully fear armed citizens. Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck estimates -- on the basis of surveys from pro-gun and anti-gun groups -- guns are used for self-defense 850,000 to 2.5 million times *per year*, which is far more often than they are used wrongfully. For 80 years New York politicians like [Rep.] Schumer have tried to disarm the lawless by disarming the law-abiding. Isn't it about time that they end their fixation on guns and gun laws and begin focusing on the criminals -- and allowing citizens to have the means to defend themselves? --- Neal Knox is executive director of the Firearms Coalition and a member of the board of directors of the National Rifle Association. ======================================================================== -##- Retain Neal Knox Associates as your lobbyist and begin receiving the bi-monthly "Hard Corps Report" by contributing to the Firearms Coalition, Box 6537, Silver Spring, MD 20916. For legislative updates call (301) 871-3006 [automated voice] or the Bullet'N Board [computers] (703) 971-4491. Email: cknox@crl.com to subscribe to the Firearms Coalition Online Report ======================================================================== Reproduction and distribution of this bulletin by any means is encouraged. Please respect your source with an appropriate citation and include our address. ======================================================================== Dear Neal, Enclosed is my retainer for your services as my Capitol Hill lobbyist: $500 [ ] $250 [ ] $50 [ ] $25 [ ] Other:____ [ ] Bill my MasterCard [ ] Visa [ ] Quarterly [ ]; Monthly [ ]; Once [ ] Card No. ______________________ Expiration Date _____ Mr. [ ] Mrs.[ ]______________________________ Signature ______________________ Ms. [ ] Address __________________________________________ Phone _______________ City _____________________________________________ State ____ Zip_______ Email Address ______________________ Print and mail, or send via Email to nealknox@genie.geis.com Firearms Coalition Box 6537 Silver Spring, MD 20916 ======================================================================== -- And the rifle? Wouldn't go out naked of a rifle. When shoes and clothes and food, when even hope is gone, we'll have the rifle. -- The Grapes of Wrath Send mail to cknox@crl.com to receive the Online Firearms Coalition Bulletin. The finger daemon works! finger cknox@crl.com for more information.