November 4, 1999
Laws That Can't Stop a Bullet
By JOSH SUGARMAN
WASHINGTON -- In the past two days, back-to-back attacks in Honolulu and Seattle have added new episodes to an ongoing American drama: everyday scenes of work or leisure suddenly transformed into carnage by killers who open fire with handguns. We recoil in horror and search for explanations, but we never face up to the obvious preventive measure: a ban on the handy killing machines that make the crimes so easy.
There have always been workplace pressures, shunned teenagers who dreamed of revenge and quiet neighbors who went berserk. What is new in the past 30 years is a deluge of high-powered, high-capacity handguns being marketed widely to consumers. These are the weapons that spray into crowds and cut people down in groups before the intended ictims can even react.
Most gun-control groups -- and politicians who take up their cause --are too timid to champion a forthright handgun ban like those in Britain and Japan, offering instead a weak assortment of regulatory doodads like requiring "smart" guns and new variations on licensing and registration. The role these groups and politicians play as enablers is even more disappointing than the predictable loud protests to any sort of regulation from the shrinking minority who own guns -- one n four who own any gun at all and one in six who own a handgun.
Gun-control groups have squandered vast reservoirs of popular energy in favor of ending the violence. They also find themselves increasingly defending the ineffective: why, the pro-gun faction reasonably asks, didn't some of the nation's toughest laws on gun licensing and registration prevent the carnage in Hawaii?
The man apprehended in Honolulu owned guns legally despite Hawaii's hurdles. Licensing and registration may slow down gun trafficking and provide useful tools for after-the-fact criminal investigation. But they can't screen out the killer who conceals a murderous intent or arrives at it later; nor can they guarantee that a gun won't end up with someone other than the legal owner.
The flaw in "smart" guns, with devices that allow only so-called "authorized users" to fire them, is that the vast majority of death and injury is caused by the people the guns would be programmed to recognize as authorized: from people who commit suicide to angry spouses to criminals who will simply get their smart guns from organized traffickers.
Another much vaunted control device, trigger locks, can reduce deaths and injuries only at the margins; hundreds of children might be saved, but adults who intend to kill would still be free to do so.
The public is way ahead of the politicians in understanding that incremental regulation won't control handgun violence. Polls show that in the past year up to half of Americans have supported a ban on handguns.
A gun-control movement worthy of the name would insist that President Clinton move beyond his proposals for controls -- such as expanding background checks at gun shows and stopping the import of high-capacity magazines -- and immediately call on Congress to pass far-reaching industry regulation like the Firearms Safety and Consumer Protection Act introduced by Senator Robert Torricelli, Democrat of New Jersey, and Representative Patrick Kennedy, Democrat of Rhode Island. Their measure would give the Treasury Department health and safety authority over the gun industry, and any rational regulator with that authority would ban handguns.
Real gun control will take courage. In the long run, half-measures and compromises only sacrifice lives.
Josh Sugarmann is executive director of the Violence Policy Center.
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company