In Their Own Words

The Unfortunately Armed Citizen

Dangerous, anti-consumer legislation was killed earlier this month by Senate Democrats. The bill, designed to severely limit the rights of consumers in product liability lawsuits, would have had particularly devastating effects on cases involving victims of gun violence. Unfortunately, President Clinton supported the proposal.

The gun industry is the last unregulated manufacturer of a consumer product in America. The product liability system serves as the only safety "regulation" of an industry making a product that kills nearly twice as many Americans every year as all other household and recreational products combined.

The product liability bill would have placed an arbitrary cap on the amount of punitive damages that could be assessed against so-called "small businesses." The bill would impose an absolute cap of $250,000 on damages assessed against corporations with fewer than 25 full-time employees and annual revenues of less than $5,000,000 when those companies engage in conduct displaying a conscious, flagrant disregard for safety.

The VPC's study "Small" Favors— A Sampling of Assault Weapon and Saturday Night Special Manufacturers that Would be Protected by the Product Liability Bill's "Small Business" Cap on Punitive Damages revealed that many firearm manufacturers fall within this definition of "small business," and would be protected from liability for injuries and deaths caused by their deadly products. For example, the cap would protect the manufacturers of many guns that have exhibited serious safety defects as well as makers of the TEC-9 assault pistols and AK-47 assault rifles. The study received widespread press coverage, including a New York Times article and front page stories in the Boston Globe and Chicago Tribune.

The bill's "product seller" provision would have offered unwarranted protection under some circumstances to gun dealers who engage in negligent conduct such as selling guns to felons, convicted domestic violence abusers, or minors. The bill would also have diluted new and innovative theories that may work to hold the gun industry accountable for the death and injury wrought by its products. For example, the bill could undermine lawsuits like the one recently filed by parents of children murdered by guns in Chicago. In order to protect such suits, the city of Chicago passed a resolution decrying the legislation and calling upon Illinois Senators Carol Moseley-Braun and Richard Durbin to oppose the bill.

Senators Robert Torricelli (D-NJ) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) sponsored an amendment to exempt guns from the bill. The Senators' action helped to galvanize Democrats against the bill. All 45 Senate Democrats opposed the bill along with Republican Senator William Roth of Delaware.

Representative Rod Blagojevich (D-IL) has introduced legislation (H.R. 3833) to require that gun show promoters be licensed. The Violence Policy Center has dubbed gun shows "Tupperware® parties for criminals" because the shows have become a gathering place for extremists and a significant source of guns for criminals. Like all other aspects of the gun industry, such shows are virtually unregulated.

The problems associated with gun shows are documented in the VPC study Guns Shows in America: Tupperware® Parties for Criminals. The New York Times Magazine cited the study in a May 1998 article.

Gun shows are deservedly gaining increasing attention from the press and policymakers. Rep. Blagojevich's legislation is a very important step in monitoring this booming segment of the gun industry.

While most Americans were marking the 30th anniversary of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, the National Rifle Association was opening the doors to its 127th annual convention. In a rare visit to the east coast, the NRA's annual meeting was held June 5-7 in Philadelphia, PA. As usual, the "meeting of members" held that Saturday offered the NRA's leadership the opportunity to dispatch its internal enemies while quelling any possible dissent from the membership ranks.

Two personalities dominated the NRA meeting. The first was NRA board member and hard-line conscience Neal Knox. The second was NRA First Vice President and actor Charlton Heston. Knox—once lauded as the NRA's Goldwater—was now portrayed as an embittered Kurtz. Throughout the morning, NRA leadership attacked Knox and his supporters from the stage, although at first not by name. Knox was reduced to repeatedly yelling for a "point of personal privilege" from the floor, which NRA President Marion Hammer would occasionally grant, until she would tire of him and turn off his microphone. It wasn't until NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre spoke that Knox was attacked by name. Accusing him of "turning the internet into a sewer pipe of lies," LaPierre concluded, "I don't even know you any more." LaPierre warned, "What you've said and written about me is one thing, but to attack and malign Charlton Heston is unforgivable!" Knox was left to commiserate with his supporters in the back of the convention center while a film hagiography of Heston was shown to the crowd.

In his speech, Heston—who two days later was elected NRA President—promised to lead the NRA back into the "mainstream." How he plans to do this when his own views—not just on guns, but on the issues of race and diversity in America—are so wildly out of the mainstream remains to be seen (please see related article). If David Letterman's Top Ten List the day after Heston's ascension to the NRA throne is any gauge, he's got an uphill battle (two samples from the Top Ten Charlton Heston Pick-Up Lines: Number Eight—"You have the right to bear my children"; and Number Five—"I know a secluded spot in the woods where we can riddle each other with bullets." And while the NRA is now attempting to portray Heston as "a man's man" whose movie role as Moses makes him the perfect choice as the organization's "constitutional evangelist," for most Americans—especially the children and youth Heston is leading the campaign to recruit into the gun culture—he's an apes' man (Number Nine —Whoa, are you from the planet of the babes?). Or as Captain George Taylor might have noted, "guns don't kill people, apes on horseback kill people." The horror. The horror.

On June 1st, the Violence Policy Center added a new section, www.vpc.org/nrainfo, to its web site in anticipation of the June 5, 1998 annual meeting of the National Rifle Association in Philadelphia. The site explores controversies surrounding the NRA—particularly actor Charlton Heston, who was elected the organization’s president immediately after the meeting.

The new VPC web site includes video clips, audio clips, and text of a little-known speech Heston delivered recently, which includes inflammatory remarks about African Americans, women, and gays and lesbians, and trivializes Holocaust victims.

“Everyone should know how wildly out of the mainstream his views are. He praises ‘white pride’ while denigrating millions of Americans,” said VPC Executive Director Josh Sugarmann. “This web site shows, in words and pictures, that `Moses’ has joined the far right.”

In the site’s video clips, Heston repeatedly refers to “cultural warfare” and tells his ultra-conservative audience, “Mainstream America is depending on you—counting on you—to draw your sword and fight for them.”

The site also includes responses to Heston’s speech from leading activists, including NAACP Board Chairman Julian Bond, Feminist Majority President Eleanor Smeal, Ms. Magazine Editor-in-Chief Marcia Gillespie, feminist author Gloria Steinem, and Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation Executive Director Joan Garry.

Heston’s speech at the annual meeting—outlining his extreme platform of opposition to gun control—was delivered on Saturday, June 6th, the 30th anniversary of the death of Robert F. Kennedy. Ironically, documents from the LBJ Presidential Library, which are available on the VPC web site, reveal that 30 years ago Heston pleaded for stricter gun control laws in the wake of Kennedy’s assassination.

The NRA also faced widespread criticism for holding its 1996 annual meeting on the first anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing.

Other features at www.vpc.org/nrainfo include:

• NRA Efforts to Market Guns to Kids: VPC studies and firearms industry advertisements exposing the gun lobby’s concerted strategy of marketing guns to kids as a means of recruiting new customers.

• NRA Internal Strife: Memos and newsletters from NRA insiders outlining their grievances with current NRA leadership, including the organization’s declining membership and troubled finances.

• Gun Violence in Philadelphia: News articles and statistics demonstrating that the city hosting the NRA has not enjoyed the same decline in gun violence as other urban areas. The biggest reason: an NRA-backed state law in Pennsylvania that increases criminals’ access to guns.

One observer who praised Heston’s rhetoric is former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke. The VPC’s new web site offers a link to Duke’s site, where he reprints an excerpt of Heston’s speech and states: “I was astounded to read these courageous remarks by Charlton Heston. I am thankful to hear a man with such high esteem say essentially the same things for which I have been reviled by the liberal media. His words should be reproduced and put into the hands of every American.”

The federal government has quietly proposed a little-noticed regulation that will dramatically weaken the Brady Law in 29 states, according to comments filed by the Violence Policy Center (VPC) opposing the plan.

The draft rule—written by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF)—would exempt a gun buyer from the Brady Law's required federal background check if he or she holds a permit to carry concealed weapons under state law. The comments by the VPC argue that states perform inadequate background checks on applicants for concealed-carry permits, allowing buyers with criminal records to purchase guns in many instances.

"Lax state laws are no substitute for a consistent, strong nationwide instant background check," says Kristen Rand, VPC's director of federal policy. "ATF's plan takes a giant leap backwards, and puts guns back in criminals' hands. It will allow hundreds of thousands of gun buyers to do an end run around the Brady Law."

The VPC has conducted three in-depth studies of concealed-carry permits in Texas and Florida, the two most populous states with concealed-carry laws (see fact sheet—Why a Concealed Carry License Should Not Substitute for the Brady Background Check). These analyses uncovered massive errors, including applicants with criminal records who were nonetheless granted permits. They also found permit holders who committed crimes, yet retained their permits for months or even years.

Under the Brady Law, the federal government has a November deadline to create a system for gun dealers to perform an "instant check" of a potential buyer's background by telephone or computer. This check would replace the five-day waiting period currently in place.

States where concealed-weapons permits would substitute for the background check include Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Georgia.

A groundbreaking new historical analysis of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution exposes links between the amendment's approval and appeasement of slave states during the campaign to ratify the Constitution, according to three professors who spoke at a Violence Policy Center panel discussion on May 12, 1998.

These revelations—which could forever change the way Americans view the Second Amendment—were published in a recent U.C. Davis Law Review article, "The Hidden History of the Second Amendment," written by Carl T. Bogus, a professor at Roger Williams University School of Law.

"The Second Amendment takes on an entirely different complexion when instead of being symbolized by a musket in the hands of the minuteman, it is associated with a musket in the hands of the slave holder," Professor Bogus writes.

At the luncheon, held at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, Professor Bogus analyzed his findings in a panel discussion with Emory University Professor Michael Bellesîles, an early American legal historian, and Robert Spitzer, a political science professor at SUNY Cortland who has written extensively on gun control. Syndicated columnist Julianne Malveaux moderated the discussion.

Professor Bogus' article demonstrates that, during debate over the new Constitution, Southern states feared the proposed federal government would use its new powers to disarm their state militia, rendering the states defenseless against a slave rebellion. Guarding against such an insurrection was a core function of the militia. As the idea of outlawing slavery gained support in the North, Southerners worried that undermining the militia might be a back-door way to achieve this goal.

Scholars who endorse this new thesis include Pulitzer Prize winning historian Garry Wills, who agrees that James Madison was responding to this fear when he wrote the Second Amendment. "Carl Bogus gives a powerful answer to the problem of the Second Amendment," Wills states. "Madison was reassuring the states that had other uses for their well-regulated militias, including the internal policing of slave populations."

In his 99-page article, Professor Bogus reviews wide-ranging evidence—including an analysis of Madison's original language and an understanding of how he and other founders drew on England's Declaration of Rights. Madison's concern, Professor Bogus concludes, was not hunting, self-defense, national defense, or resistance to governmental tyranny—but slave control.

"We hear so many myths about the history of the Second Amendment," states VPC Executive Director Josh Sugarmann. "By exposing the connection between slavery and the Second Amendment, this article gives us a whole new perspective and debunks some of the romantic half-truths about the history of gun ownership in America."

During the panel discussion, all three experts said that "The Hidden History" has dramatic implications for the contemporary debate over gun control. Rather than applying to individual gun ownership, the three agreed, the Second Amendment is rooted in the political battle over control of militia forces and ratification of the Constitution. This history, which has been endorsed by the U.S. Supreme Court, is often ignored by modern day pro-gun lobbyists.

"The right to bear arms is invoked constantly on the political stump, the op-ed page, the radio talk show, and the floors of Congress," Professor Bogus writes in his article. But, he notes, "The history of the Second Amendment is both more complex and more interesting than previously understood."

Each month the Violence Policy Center receives mail from participants on both sides of the gun issue. This month we examine mail that we have received regarding our link to the Stormfront White Nationalist website as a pro-gun site. In our In Their Own Words section we have provided a few examples of the pro-gun content of the Stormfront site.

You can contact the VPC by sending your correspondence to Violence Policy Center, 1350 Connecticut Avenue NW, Suite 825, Washington, DC, 20036. Or you can e-mail us at news@vpc.org.

Unfortunately, because of the Center's limited staff size we are unable to respond individually to each inquiry.

All mail is reprinted as received by the Violence Policy Center.

From: Gerald Stutts (gdstutts@juno.com)

Please post a retraction of the link to Stormfront as a pro-gun link, I saw and could find no "plank" in their platform for existing that stated they were pro-gun. This link you have used to degrade perception of the pro-gun organizations that would like to base their arguments on supportable facts and legal activities. This link association you have used is just like the use of unsupportable statistics in your press releases and "studies" that are presented as factual. Where do you advocate education of gun owners and children to safe gun practices? Where do you call for the enforcement of the gun laws on the books today? Why don't you examine the enforcement (how many people were arrested and convicted under Brady?) of laws on the books now?

I will listen to your arguments with an open mind if you will do the same for those who obey the laws and wish to own and use guns to their enjoyment and protection.

Gerald Stutts

From: Andy Logusz (Alogusz@aol.com)

Dear VPC:

First off, in your "In their own words" section. What is the purpose of having the letter from Machine Gun News? This has nothing to do with gun violence or gun control. It is pointless to have this letter. You should have had this quote from ADOLPH HITLER in your "in their own words section" "This year will go down in history. For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration. Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient and the world will follow are lead into the future"

Second, you link to the Stormfront web site. What is this doing hear? They are not a "pro-gun group" They are a hate group. I checked their page and found nothing to do with guns. It was all Nazi proganda. Why are you trying to compare the Nazi's to gun owners? I am glad you have the link to the JPFO's site. Is that a sad attempt to be PC? Have you ever read anything written by the JPFO? 56 million people killed through genocide because they are disarmed. I hope many people will visit their site so they can learn the truth. Hitler and Stalin had gun control laws, and they killed an estimated 53 million people combined.

Do you have in your Fact sheet section the number of people killed through genocide? Do you have the fact that the police are not required to protect the average citizen (Bowers v. Devito, US Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit, 1982) Why dont you have the story of the girl who shoot her ex-boyfriend who tried to stab her? If she would have had to endure a waiting period, she would have been stabbed to death. And dont give me the garbage about exemptions for people in "danger". What if it was a stranger who broke in? She would not have been exempt.

Thanks for you time,(and I hope your learn something)
Andy Logusz

The spirit of National Socialism was one of manliness, and individual self-defense and self-reliance were central to the National Socialist view of the way a citizen should behave. The notion of banning firearms ownership was alien to National Socialism.

Is Gun Control a Nazi Scheme?, Stormfront website

Question: What does the current media campaign to outlaw the private ownership of semiautomatic weapons by U.S. citizens have to do with the rapidly growing corpus of legislation dealing with "hate crimes"?

Answer: Success of the first is necessary to insure compliance with the second, and both are the creatures of a quasi-governmental secret-police agency of whose existence most Americans are unaware.

Be that as it may, Fein and Company should be aware that there will still be a few White Americans, with or without assault rifles, willing to die for their freedom--but they don't intend to be the only ones to die. Got that, Jew boy?

The ADL: The Drive to Outlaw Free Speech and Thought, Stormfront website

Consider: While Jew Howard Metzenbaum in the U.S. Senate and Jew Charles Schumer in the U.S. House of Representatives spearhead the legislative drive to strip Americans of their right to armed self-defense and are unanimously and vociferously supported in this effort by the Jewish media, a tiny, Milwaukee-based, Jewish pro-gun group calling itself Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (JPFO) manages to attract far more attention to itself than its size ordinarily would merit. JPFO is not just a group of pro-gun people who coincidentally happen to be Jews; it is a group of people who are shouting to the world: "Hey, look at me; I am a Jew, and I am in favor of gun ownership."

By Way of Deception Thou Shalt do War, Stormfront website

Studies indicate that 1,225 Americans were killed in unintentional shootings in 1995, and that the presence of a gun in the home makes it nearly three times more likely that you or someone you care about will be murdered by a family member or intimate partner. Send clippings to: "The Unfortunately Armed Citizen," 1350 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 825, Washington, DC 20036.

Couple Go For Counseling And Then For Guns - New York Times 04/24/98

ALBUQUERQUE, Calif. - An estranged couple drew guns and wounded each other after the husband was late for a marriage counseling session at a church.

Michael Martin, clutching a beer in one hand, fired the first shot on Wednesday and wounded his wife, Bonnie, when she began to leave St. James Episcopal Cathedral, the Rev. Bud Searcy of New Creation Ministries said.

Mrs. Martin took a gun from her purse and shot her husband in the chin, Mr. Searcy said. Mr. Martin shot his wife again after she followed him from the church, Mr. Searcy said.

The Martins were in fair condition at University Medical Center. They were arrested and face charges of attempted murder, Detective Mike Garcia said.

Parking Dispute Erupts Into Deadly Gunfire - MSNBC 03/08/98

It has happened before... a fight over a parking spot ends in murder. But now, family and police are asking why are three men dead?

Hialeah police say it all started because 57-year-old Rafael Garviso was upset his car was towed the night before. He was so upset, he went into a rage Friday morning and shot the man he thought had it towed - the apartment owner, 71-year-old Eduardo Felipe Ponce de Leon. Another man, 49-year-old Marcelino Colina, who also lived at 4801 East Eighth Avenue was nearby and was shot as well.

"The shooter, after he shot two males, knocked on the apartment door and told them to call police that there were two men lying on the ground bleeding. That is the initial call that we received," Lt. Jerry Freeman of the Hileah Police Department explained what happened. "Moments later, he walked to the end of the stairwell...and shot himself."

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