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Why Gun Owners Are Right to Fight Against Gun Control

The anti-gun crowd doesn't want "compromise." They want confiscation and control

David Hardy has a new law review, published by the Thomas M. Cooley LawSchool in PDF format: "Gun Owners, Gun Legislation, and Compromise" -- avery comprehensive analysis. Below is an article also written by David Hardy,from 2013, which deals with the elements of 'control' and confiscation, associated with those who would see usdisarmed without compromise.Read also - "It's about confiscation", by Dan Gifford, also from 2013 and covering similar subject matter.

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By David T. Hardy. July 18th 2013

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In April, the Senate rejected the Toomey-Manchin gun control proposal. In the wake of itsdefeat many asked why gun owners and their organizations resisted so limited a measure.Granted, it would have had little but symbolic benefit. Its core was to require backgroundchecks at gun shows (which Bureau of Justice Statistics concluded involved a whole 0.8percent of crime guns) and on Internet gun sales (a miniscule proportion, most of whichprobably go through licensed dealers anyway). But why not accept something so modest, inlight of the draconian ideas then being floated as alternatives?

Understanding the rejection requires understanding gun owners’ shared experiences.Compromise requires that both parties relinquish something. If your counterpart’s position is “give me this now, andI’ll take the rest later,” there is no real compromise to be had. Over decades, that has been precisely the experience ofAmerican gun owners.

Back in 1976, Pete Shields, chairman of what is today the Brady Campaign, candidly laid out the blueprint for TheNew Yorker:

We're going to have to take one step at a time, and the first step is necessarily — given the political realities — goingto be very modest. Right now, though, we'd be satisfied not with half a loaf but with a slice. Our ultimate goal — totalcontrol of handguns in the United States — is going to take time. My estimate is from seven to ten years. The problemis to slow down the increasing number of handguns sold in this country. The second problem is to get them allregistered. And the final problem is to make the possession of all handguns and all handgun ammunition — except forthe military, policemen, licensed security guards, licensed sporting clubs, and licensed gun collectors — totally illegal.

The group’s first target was “Saturday Night Specials,” inexpensive small revolvers, alleged to be criminals’ preferredgun. When that approach gained traction, Shields shifted to a larger target, claim that criminals were now using“expensive, but small pistols,” so all small pistols had to be banned. “Concealability is the key,” he now explained.

As the years passed, it became apparent that this was going nowhere; a different first “slice” would have to be found.In 1990, Violence Policy Center (VPC) announced that it had found it. The debate must be switched from small

handguns to large “assault rifles.”

Handguns, VPC explained, had become a media and political nonissue, while calls tooutlaw “assault rifles” would benefit from mistaken impressions, i.e., “the public's confusionover fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything thatlooks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun.” That rifles of all types wereinvolved in about 300 homicides a year was beside the point. The search was for a target ofopportunity, not a solution to crime.

The major gun control organizations bought the idea, to the point of changing their names to replace “handgun” with“gun.” Pete Shields’ group, Handgun Control, Inc., became the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. The NationalCoalition to Ban Handguns became the Coalition To Stop Gun Violence.

The change underscored a lesson gun owners had already learned. Their opponents would go for any target ofopportunity—if handgun restrictions didn’t fly, try to restrict rifles—and use that as a foundation to take more in thefuture. Any “reasonable compromise” would simply be a first step in a long campaign to make firearm ownership asdifficult, expensive, and legally risky as possible.

Take the example of California. There, 1920s legislation required a permit for concealed carry of a firearm, requireddealers to report handgun sales to the state, and imposed a one-day waiting period for handgun sales.

The one-day wait was meant to impede “crimes of passion,” but in 1955 it was increased to three days, in 1965 tofive days, and in 1975 to 10 days.

Open carry of a firearm was initially allowed. In 1967, open carrying of loaded guns was prohibited. In recent years,open carrying even of unloaded guns was forbidden in incorporated areas. The mere sight of an unloaded gun wasapparently too much for the California legislature to tolerate.

In 2001, dealers were forbidden to sell handguns that were not approved by the government, after rigorous laboratorytesting, funded by the manufacturer. Every slight variation, even changes in color or finish, required a newcertification. The tests actually had nothing to do with reliability or safety, as evidenced by the exemption of lawenforcement firearms from them.

Along the way, the state banned “assault weapons,” magazines holding more than 10rounds, and private gun sales that didn’t go through dealers. In 1999, “one gun a month”was enacted, for no discernible reason (why would a gun runner pick the most tightlyregulated state in the West as his source?)

Today, the weapons regulation portion of the California Penal Code Annotated spans over1,050 pages, yet at last count 68 more gun control measures are pending in thelegislature. No matter how much the advocates of gun control get, it will never be enough.

Or try New Jersey, which requires a license to own guns, plus a separate permit for each handgun. Carrying open orconcealed is in practice forbidden (the legal standard for a permit is “urgent necessity”), carrying of hollow-pointbullets is subject to complex rules, and magazines are limited to 15 rounds.

That’s not enough, apparently, since the New Jersey legislature is considering bills to cut the magazine limit to fiverounds, and to require psychiatric evaluations and home inspections before issuance of the firearm ownershiplicense. Recently three legislators had an embarrassing “hot mike” problem after a gun bill hearing, in which someoneproclaimed, “We needed a bill that is going to confiscate, confiscate, confiscate.”

Or try New York, long considered to have the strictest gun laws in the country, including requiring pistol possessionpermits (issued at the sole discretion of police, with application fees as high as $340), carry permits limited in some

jurisdictions to government officials and celebrities, and a 10 round magazine limit. Then came the Newtown slayings,and the legislature decided it must do something more. The legislation it rushed through reduced the allowedmagazine capacity to seven rounds (effectively outlawing the many firearms for which seven round magazines havenever been made), required background checks to buy ammunition, and greatly broadened its “assault rifle ban.”

New York’s Attorney General described this as “modest first step.”

So much for compromise.

David T. Hardy is a Tucson, Arizona attorney and author. He has published 21 law review articles onthe right to arms, two of which have been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court, and produced thedocumentary film In Search of the Second Amendment.

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