Britain's Gun Culture

[Gary Sisco]

Remember, as you read, that it's virtually impossible to legally own a firearm in the UK:

Gun culture: 'Independent' survey uncovers 109 incidents just this week
By Jason Bennetto, Crime Correspondent
11 October 2003


Anti-gun crime tactics deployed by Scotland Yard specialists are to be deployed throughout the country in an attempt to curb the burgeoning menace of firearms and gang warfare.

Other initiatives targeting drug dealers and gun gangs, such as those developed in Manchester and Bristol, will also be adopted nationwide.

To highlight the scale of the problem The Independent publishes a diary today of a week of gun crime in Britain. On average, there are 30 firearms incidents a day and about 100 people die a year. The majority of gun crime involves gangsters, drug dealers, and other criminals shooting each other - known by police as "bad on bad".

But, as the violence spills on to the street, as in the case of the jewellery shop owner in Nottingham who was shot dead in a robbery 10 days ago, the number of "innocent" victims is bound to rise.

There is no more poignant example than that of seven-year-old Toni-Ann Byfield, who was shot dead last month, along with her father, at a bedsit in London.

Incidents during the past week include the fatal shooting of a 60-year-old man as he and three friends drove home from a night out in Nottingham and the shooting of a professional footballer and two other people in Liverpool. The Independent's survey shows how widespread the use of guns has become.

As the toll of death and injury gradually rises - two people were killed this week - so does the fear for the public and pressure for the police and politicians to take action.

Deputy Chief Constable Alan Green, of Greater Manchester Police, who heads the Association of Chief Police Officers' firearms working group, has spent the past few weeks examining the country's gun crime operations to identify what tactics work best. The Metropolitan Police's Operation Trident has had impressive results in reversing the murder rate, mainly among black crack-cocaine dealers. In 2002, Operation Trident investigated 24 murders; this year there have been 12 deaths so far.

A combination of intelligence, rapid response teams, proactive operations, and the support of the black community mean police are gradually winning the battle.

But a Scotland Yard analysis has also concluded gun crime is increasing due to a growing number of replica firearms converted to fire live rounds, according to The Guardian. Latest statistics reveal 9,974 crimes involving firearms in England and Wales in the year to April 2002. With airgun incidents included, it rises to 22,314. Ninety-seven people died and 558 were seriously wounded.
11 October 2003 10:01

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[Pete C]

Gary, since you've posted this, can I assume you consider it an argument against gun control?

[Gary Sisco]

Pete -- It's hardly even impossible to have more gun control than they already have in the UK. Result? An enormous increase in firearms violence.

Please note, however, who it is that is responsible for the enormous bulk of the violence. Certainly not the law-abiding and disarmed civilian population. So what has been accomplished by disarming them? Where was the huge wave of firearms violence when they *were* able to legally own firearms? Remember, back when the "bobbies" didn't even carry one themselves?

On the other hand, it's now a very reasonable surmise that the only people with firearms in Britain are, um, cops and outlaws.

Kind of like the dreaded NRA (and I, I might add) has always insisted would happen (and has in fact happened in the US, where the places with the toughest laws have the highest firearms crimes rates, while the place with no firearms laws at all, Vermont, has the lowest).

Predators, like anyone else, measure the odds before acting (okay, some lose but then so do lots of money managers). If the odds are virtually 100% that your prospective victim is unarmed, and the predator is not... Well, I'm sure you can follow the logic yourself.

Also, please note that, as in the insane crack violence wave of the 80s/early 90s in the US, most of the firearms violence involves "bad on bad," as the Brit cop put it. There wasn't a bit of difference in the US. Anywhere there's that much money and that much cocaine, there's going to be firearms violence -- whether firearms are legal, illegal or what. Coke gangs don't much give a shit, either way, and why would they?

There's also a bit of bullshit in there, since "converting" a replica to an actual firearm is virtually impossible itself, in almost every case. Not even gun nuts can defy the laws of physics, which require a technology designed in every way to contain a controlled explosion, which replicas, for obvious reasons, are not. No one with a clue about firearms would ever have asserted such utter nonsense.

[Tom Storer]

Originally posted by Gary Sisco
It's hardly even impossible to have more gun control than they already have in the UK. Result? An enormous increase in firearms violence.

Where do you get "enormous increase" from? The article talks about a "gradual rise." It also says the cops have had "impressive results in reversing the murder rate" and that "a combination of intelligence, rapid response teams, proactive operations, and the support of the black community mean police are gradually winning the battle."

Maybe that's just rah-rah stuff for the papers about the police winning the battle. But even if the increase were greater than it seems to be, it's a bit of a stretch to say that it results from gun regulation. At the most you could say those laws don't make it entirely impossible for guns to circulate.

What's the population of the UK, around 60 million? One-fifth the US population? If we multiply their statistics by 5, we get 150 "firearms incidents" a day and 500 deaths a year. What are US statistics? Quite a bit more, I believe.

Can the UK residents tell us if the British public is clamoring for the right to have easier access to firearms?

[Douglas]

Tom, no.

After the, at the time very shocking, gun massacres of Dunblane and Hungerford the British public supported calls to prohibit gun ownership almost totally in the UK to stop "Mad on Good". IMO it was an excessive reaction, but understandable. You have to remember that gun ownership was tiny compared to the US.

[Dan G]

There's a simple solution - stop manufacturing guns. That way nobody gets them. There is ZERO reason that anyone, beyond law enforcement, needs to own a hand gun. When criminals can't get them, the law abiding citizens won't need them for protection.
Also stop manufacturing toy guns, so that kids will be weened off of the idea of shooting. It may take a while, but maybe it would work.

[Uli]

Originally posted by Dan G
There's a simple solution - stop manufacturing guns.

You can't stop big corporate gun manufacturers produce what the free people of Vermont want.

[Salvador Dali Lama]

Originally posted by Dan G
There's a simple solution - stop manufacturing guns. That way nobody gets them. There is ZERO reason that anyone, beyond law enforcement, needs to own a hand gun. When criminals can't get them, the law abiding citizens won't need them for protection.
Also stop manufacturing toy guns, so that kids will be weened off of the idea of shooting. It may take a while, but maybe it would work.

meanwhile, back in the real world...

[Dan G]

Originally posted by Uli
You can't stop big corporate gun manufacturers produce what the free people of Vermont want.

Why not? A government can say that marijuana, that can't be used to kill people, is illegal. They can say that it is illegal for US citizens to go to Cuba. There's no reason they can't say that guns and violence are not what the majority of reasonable people want, therefore take them out of society. But the problem is that American culture is about violence (has been since we Europeans came over here and started killing everyone who got in our way) - movies, television, games, everything. It is impossible for a child to go for a day without being exposed to a gun in some form. I'm not blaming the culture industry - they are only reflecting society.

So the solution is to stop people from wanting guns. But how? First, get over the idea that we have the right to anything we want. Some "freedoms" are worth giving up. And which freedom is more valuable - freedom to own a gun, or freedom not to be shot?

What are the reasons for owning guns, beyond killing people (and innocent animals)?

[Uli]

Dan, I am not arguing with you. I am agreeing with you. My post was just as means to have a reality check. If people want guns for whatever reasons (the constitution, self defense, whatever) certainly the big bad companies are gonna make guns. There is no fucking way to stop them from making the produce.

If I thought I needed to defend myslef agains the state, the feds or whateverI'd need the mutherfucking US army/ marines/airforce etc to really have an argument.

If country folks want to have guns for hunting rabbits and shit, of course tha's ok with me.

meanwhile, back in the real world...

After the buzzy feeling in my head from reading Dan G's post susbsided, this was my though exactly.

Dan, yes, the government has said that Marijuana is illegal. Um, I'll let you guess how much that curbed it's consumption.

Besides, if the big bad companies, as so aptly described by my good friend Uli, stop making guns, well,..........................................gee, there are lots of folks out there with the skills and the tools to make their own if it really became necessary to do so.

If country folks want to have guns for hunting rabbits and shit, of course tha's ok with me.

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww...........................

[HenryMc]

Maybe its just me but the poms are going through their own arts led stupidity a la Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrells, much like the US has been going through since Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, The G men movies and Black Rap Gang Banging Haute Culture. Life sadly imitates Art.

[Tom Storer]

Who or what are "the poms"?

[Henry Mars]

Gun control dosen't work ... never did work and never will work.

The bad guys still get the guns some way and the good guys get disarmed ... makes a lot of sense ........NOT.

[Gary Sisco]

Alright, we'll stop manufacturing them. (Right. Like they've stopped growing tobacco.) There are an estimated 200 million plus firearms in private hands in the US today. That's enough to last for a while, anyway. So how will you prevent those from circulating? What kind of police state would you like to live in? How do you suppose they'll be collected?

As for where the "enormous increase" in firearms violence remark, it's not in this article, but this is an issue I follow more closely than any these days, and, since Britain put its toughest ever laws in place a few years back, it has experienced the world's highest rate of *increase* of firearms violence, far eclipsing the US, which has, for all the media sensationalism and outright lies of the antigun nuts, in fact been experiencing historically unprecedented *reductions* in violent crime of all sorts, very much including firearms violence (which has been steadily declining since the crack plague of the 80s) for many years now. According to the FBI, violent crime in the US today is at a thirty year low (so back to pre-crack wars figures), firearms violence including in schools is also in steep decline and has been for years.

The states and cities that have the toughest laws in the US also have the very highest incidents of firearms violence. This is so true and common that it can be, and has been, graphed and remarked upon in article after article, book after book, for years. Meanwhile, those with the most lenient laws, including VT which has no laws at all but the federal Brady Bill and the federal law that preceded it (for the same reasons and which accomplished the same ends, only more effectively because it was enforced now and then, at least, unlike the Brady Bill) have the least violent crimes, including firearms crimes. Indeed, Vermont, though the population is armed proportionate to population to a much larger degree than any place I've ever lived apart from Nicaragua and El Salvador (and possibly Nevada), released its most recent figures a few weeks ago. Even though firearms are common as running water and as easy to own, only about a quarter of the homicides in recent years have involved firearms, and none of those have involved random crimes of stranger against stranger. In other words, they were personal vendettas, and all, like elsewhere in the US, had alcohol on board as at least a major causal factor, as does almost all American violence.

These are the facts revealed by objective numbers. People are of course free to "believe" whatever they want, even if it defies logic and reality. Almost everyone in the US claims to believe in angels, too, and a startling number of them go so far as to claim their own personal angels that watch over their own little particular ass. Kind of makes you wonder why they worry about violence, so, but never mind. How could you expect rationality or logic when people make up their minds about things based on faith and opinion untested by fact?

This is an issue that's like abortion. People are one side or another and neither side can persuade the other. (Which is one of the reasons why, like abortion, it's one of my litmus tests as far as political support goes.) Therefore, it becomes a question of political power and its exercise, and, thankfully, the antigun nuts in the US have not the political pull they imagine. In fact, quite the opposite. The Constitution's there to be amended, but they won't even try, because they know they can call an organization the "Million mom" whatever but that doesn't make the numbers add up when you count them. Further, they lack the sustained commitment such a campaign would require. Finally, their opponents are light years more organized and committed.

As for me, I'll never live in a society where only cops and the army and the crack gangs have firearms. No, thanks.

But what I'd really like to know is how exactly do the antigun nuts think they're going to go about collecting the hundreds of millions of weapons already in private hands in the US. Do they think people are just going to march down to the town square and stack their arms like a defeated army, or what? Fat chance. So, therefore, what? There aren't enough cops in the entire country, combined, to search everyone (which they'd have to do because there are no records of many millions of those firearms, which traditionally get handed down as gifts from one generation to the next, or are traded privately, or sold privately, or what have you -- in any case, there are no records of where they are, or were, or are going).

There are also a goodly number of those hundreds of millions of firearms owned by guys who simply aren't going to surrender their rights to the state, no matter how many laws it passes. Say it's only, oh, four million that are that committed, which would be a hugely conservative estimate. Say one human, cop or fed or citizen, dies in every attempt to disarm those guys. Who's talking firearms violence now, and on what kind of mad level?

Because one thing the antigun nuts don't seem to know or understand is that there are still millions of Americans who believe that rights are rights, which makes them exempt from laws passed by governments, and what makes them rights in the first place. A government can't grant rights or take them away. It can only violate them. And there are still plenty of people who aren't going to stand mildly by and be disarmed against their wills and against their political heritage in the Constitution and the American (and British before that) Revolution.

Don't think this hasn't figured into the cops' minds already, because it has. And there's another factor: Many of the most committed firearms guys are ... cops. And soldiers. Draw your own conclusions.

[Gary Sisco]

As for "what are they good for besides killing people and bambis": Now there's a remark that has the whiff of fascism in it because being made by a mentality that is more than ready to use the state to crush any activity of which it happens to object. Never mind that the only force the state has in the first place is *armed force.* So, it's not really force they oppose. It's force exerted by anyone outside the state, even, in most cases these days, if its exerted in outright self-defense, which used to be almost univerally recognized as the most basic form of personal right. Even a protozoan, in its own way, will seek to preserve itself from harm. Weirdly, in certain sections of the American population, its become accepted dogma that it's more wrong to defend oneself than it is to attack another, judging from people's attitudes and remarks.

First, hunting has been a human activity for as long as there's been human beings. Because an urban and suburban mentality has developed as people have become more and more removed from their food sources in the US won't change that for the people who are aware of where food comes from and how it is killed before it becomes food, whether it's a poor bambi out in the woods, or a poor steer being murdered assembly-line style by the thousands in three shifts 24-7. Someone does the killing, however neatly wrapped and dyed it might appear in the Piggly Wiggly. I don't hunt personally, although I used to and have no problem with others doing so if they want to. I'm not a fascist and have no desire to dictate to others how they should live, much less call upon the state to enforce my own values on people who don't share them and don't want to.

And, having had to defend myself against armed aggression, I'm simply not ever going to concede that I don't have a right to defend myself and my loved ones, never mind my political freedom -- and certainly not to anyone who *hasn't* been under armed attack or who might even deny that I *can* defend myself, rightly.

Fuck that. It'll never happen and happily I'm far from alone on this question. No one has or will have the power to deny me the right to the means of self-defense. Like Bob Marley said, "If they fight with sticks and stones where you live, fight with sticks and stones." Exactly my thoughts on the question.

Finally, believe it or not, it's a very interesting and challenging pastime to learn how to use a firearm properly, safely, and effectively, even if one never shoots at anything but a target. Hell, it's even part of the Olympics for chrissake, for that reason. Millions and millions of American of all kinds, ages, and gender, participate in shooting sports, every day. They're not harming anyone and haven't. So what's the big deal. They're not bothering anyone and they know more about firearms and firearms safety -- and are more opposed to armed crime, in most cases -- than the antigun nuts ever will hope to.

[Tom Storer]

Originally posted by Gary Sisco
firearms violence including in schools is also in steep decline

That's good news, but the phrase "including in schools" says it all for me. In France, where firearms are responsibly regulated, there *is* no firearms violence in schools. I exaggerate: in recent years, there have been two or three incidents in which one kid shoots another in school - actually I believe they weren't in school but in the street outside the school. Each one, of course, is immediately headline news.

I find it hard to believe that the surge in firearms violence in Britain - which has yet to bring it anywhere approaching US levels - is explicable solely because of increased regulation of gun ownership. It's just as plausible to me that the increased regulation was a reaction to increasing gun violence but failed to stem it. One interpretation is that gun laws have no effect on gun violence, but I'd want plenty more statistics to support that interpretation.

The easy availability of guns is only one factor in gun violence. Clearly not everyone who has a gun uses it criminally or irresponsibly. Arguably, making it hard to get your hands on a gun will not deter a criminal. On the other hand it can definitely deter law-abiding citizens who shoot a gun and injure someone through panic, hot-headedness, irresponsibility or incompetence, and they make up a good proportion of gun violence.

[Uli]

I'd probably not pass Gary's litmus test as if I'd have to chose between a gun nut and an anti gun nut I would chose the anti gun nut. It would seem to make the excersise of my right of self defense a bit easier.

[john williams]

Originally posted by Tom Storer
Who or what are "the poms"?

Pom, Pommie, Pommie Bastard: an Englishman; someone from England.

I think it stands for Prisoner Of Mother England. Being of English birth I have been referred to as a pommie for most of my life, which is laughable because of my Romany heritage.

[Tom Storer]

Oh, right. I'd heard "pommie bastard" all right, but not "pom."

My sympathies, you pommie bastard.

[bluenoter]

Originally posted by JBW
my Romany heritage.

JBW--Can you recommend a decent book or two on the Rom (or whatever the correct plural is)?

[Alastair]

Originally posted by JBW
Pom, Pommie, Pommie Bastard: an Englishman; someone from England.

I think it stands for Prisoner Of Mother England.

This always struck me as false logic. Surely the Australians would be the poms if this acronym was true?

I was called a pom when I was part of a predominately Australian expatriate community as a child. Anytime I expressed my displeasure at anything (or just didn't agree with someone) I became a "whingeing pom". My first experience of blind prejudice.

[john williams]

Originally posted by Alastair
This always struck me as false logic. Surely the Australians would be the poms if this acronym was true?

I was called a pom when I was part of a predominately Australian expatriate community as a child. Anytime I expressed my displeasure at anything (or just didn't agree with someone) I became a "whingeing pom". My first experience of blind prejudice.

Yes, I agree and I am sick to death of it actually. I never got the prisoner of mother England either. English folk are hated with a passion here by many ignorant Aussies, its almost like another sport here. However, if you really want to hear a whinger spend a few moments with an Australian farmer. Around one third of Aussies are of Irish descent which might help explain their hatred of English folk. Aussies are as whingy as any "pom" I have ever met.

If I happen to point this out, which I do more often as I get older, I get looks like I just shat in the coleslaw.

JBW--Can you recommend a decent book or two on the Rom (or whatever the correct plural is)?

I have PMd you with a list and some personal recommendations Bluenoter.

[Alastair]

Originally posted by JBW


If I happen to point this out, which I do more often as I get older, I get looks like I just shat in the coleslaw.

I've not heard that one before but I plan to use it in the future.

[Gary Sisco]

Tom -- It might seem plausible to you, but the facts are otherwise, and all you've offered is an alternative hypothesis, without having done any research into the subject yourself. I can come up with alternative hypotheses for just about any question all day long, but those and a metro card, as you know, get one a ride on the bus. And there hasn't been "increased regulation" in Britain. Private ownership of firearms is, for all practical purposes, banned, now, in the UK. We're talking perhaps the strictest ban in the "Western" world.

Second, no one said that the violence was approaching US levels (not surprisingly, given that UK is what, the size of New Jersey?), although it may well, given present trends, as the US violence rate *decreases* dramatically over the years, as it has been, and the UK's increases dramatically, as it has for years. They may well meet up sooner than you think, as the graph lines intersect in passing.

Still, the facts remain. The levels of firearms violence in the UK since the ban have dramatically increased and they continue to increase, all the time.

The same is true in every area of the US. Wherever the strictest firearms laws exist, so does the violence. When laws are created that allow private citizens to carry, the violence in those areas goes down. This has happened repeatedly. The research is all there and it has appeared repeatedly in article after article and book after book and study after study. There is almost no firearms violence in US schools, and, according to FBI crime statistics, the levels of what does exist are substantially below any that have existed in decades, something I'd consider remarkable in itself for a country with a population approaching 300 million people, that has at least 200 million firearms in private hands.

There is a reason why everyone uses the word "Columbine" all the time. They have a hard time naming any other schools, because the fact of the matter, no matter what people find "plausible" or want to believe, firearms violence in American schools is close to none, in any given year. (On the other hand, I was beaten, way back in the 1960s, by three different teachers and nearly daily by redneck students during my thankfully brief high-school career -- and no one came to my defense. No cops, no social workers, no teachers, no "administrators," nada.) Their behavior was considered normal, and mine perverse, in those days. And reading about the way the kids who went off at Columbine were treated by the "normal" kids at their school, especially the jock superstars, the most amazing thing to me about the whole event was the nonreaction about the "normality" of students being allowed to torment other students for years at a time, with no authorities interfering or intervening on behalf of those being tormented. I can dig that because it's a longstanding practice, apparently, since I had the same experience a generation ago, when I cannot recall anyone being concerned over the school violence that *did* exist, almost daily, with the complete knowledge of the adults in the area.

People watch too much fucking television, is my take. It distorts their perception of reality, to an enormous extent. Just the other day in Burlington -- a place so peaceful that there are literally millions of people in the US who would think they lived in a paradise, compared to walking to a corner store in their neighborhoods -- a teacher saw a kid walking down the street, outside the school, minding his own business, not a student at the school, not approaching the school but in fact moving away from it, carrying "a long-barreled shotgun." She went hysterical and called 911. Everyone freaks out. They lock the school up tight. Cops come screaming from every direction. Patrol cars all over the place. Cops all pumped up.

Turns out the kid was walking home with his entirely legal bb-gun, and wasn't bothering a soul and represented a threat to no one. Indeed, far's I'm concerned, all of the adults in question are not only a threat to a democratic society but a public menace, since it's not at all uncommon in the US for *cops* to start sending high-caliber rounds indiscriminately around the neighborhood when they "think" someone has a gun.

And, in fact, in Vermont, if he'd been walking home with a "long barreled shotgun," he'd still have been entirely within his rights to do so, since he wasn't bothering a soul and wasn't engaged in any threatening or illegal activity. Lots of kids get their first shotguns in VT at age eleven or so, as did I, and everyone else I know. So what?

It's the reaction that is insane to me, and this sort of thing happens all the time. A few years ago, also in Burlington (which most VTers don't really consider a part of VT, except in the most geographical sense), a guy was walking downtown with his pistol, holstered, magazine in his pocket, totally legal and correct behavior in every way in VT. Yuppies freaked out and flooded the cop shop with reports of a guy with a gun on the street. Again, cops everywhere. Freaking out. Clearing the street. When all was said and done, much ado about nada. The guy was entirely legal and not engaged in any threatening or illegal activity. Just minding his own business on the way home. Nothing else. Turns into a huge scene, which further freaks people out, as the yuppies who freaked out in the first place, freaked out all of their cohorts with insane claims and rumors and gossip, none of which was true or accurate, except for the one single fact, which was that a man with an entirely legal handgun (which wasn't even loaded, though it legally could have been, and wasn't concealed, though it legally could have been), behaving entirely within his rights, all of sudden is in the middle of an insane hysteria, with cops all over, weapons out all over the place, *truly* threatening public safety in every way.

This kind of shit is simply bizarre to me. There isn't a more peaceful place on the planet today than Vermont, except perhaps Antarctica. Riding the bus to school and back is probably the most dangerous situation they'll encounter on any given day. And the carnage on the highways every year eclipses all firearms violence in the US including suicides and civilians killed by police (more often wrongly than not). (And also, a brief aside, the gun-control nuts, without in any way announcing it in their propaganda, also include suicides and civilians killed by police in their almost always bogus statistics that are never backed by any objective information -- a practice that dramatically but dishonestly increases the statistics they *want* to see but can't otherwise find.) Especially when everyone seems to be so all fired hysterical about school safety, this question is almost never raised. For instance, even given the objective facts of the danger on the highway, which is real and present, not imagined, kids don't wear seat belts on school busses, even, creating a continuously imminent danger for them, given the essential unsafety of a school bus as a vehicle in a collision or on bad road conditions, as in winter.

I've long remarked that any issue that receives dramatic forms of attention in the US is more than likely a nonissue. The very serious issues we face as a society, on the other hand, receive only a tiny fraction of the attention.

Whatever. It's a weird life, in Disneyworld, Inc, but what else would we expect?

[Alastair]

Originally posted by Gary Sisco
.

Second, no one said that the violence was approaching US levels (not surprisingly, given that UK is what, the size of New Jersey

England, Scotland and Wales (excluding Northern Ireland to avoid controversy) have a combined area of 136,232 square miles. This makes "Mainland Britain" slightly larger than New Mexico but slightly smaller than Montana. If it were a US State (pipe down at the back there) it would be the fifth largest, behind Alaska, Texas, California and Montana. The UK's population is approximately 60 million, which is more than any one US State and equivalent to between a quarter and a fifth of the population of the USA (281,421,906: April 2000 Census). New Jersey has a population of around 8.5 million (a seventh that of the UK) and an area of 8,722 square miles (one fifteenth that of mainland Britain).

So I don't think that's the greatest comparison.

[Gary Sisco]

Speaking of intellectual dishonesty, check out today's column from Bob Herbert in the NYT. Pay close attention to the wording, which makes it sound entirely sinister, somehow, that the NRA -- perhaps the most demonized organization in the US, apart perhaps from Al Q, and precisely by the likes of Herbert, at that -- "deep in the recesses of its website" (now what exactly is that supposed to mean? Did he have to hack it or simply click like a normal human?) has a list of "unfriendly people and organizations." Imagine! I'm shocked, I tell you! Shocked! Note that he himself says it's not an "enemies list," even as he goes on to devote his entire column to making it sound like one. I simply can't imagine why the NRA -- the world's largest and most powerful lobby, made up of *four million* American citizens from all walks of life, the million moms wish they have 1 percent of its paid-up membership, not to mention commitment -- would have such a list of *gun control advocates and organizations that advocate and seek to expand gun control.* Golly gee, the NRA really is an evil organization. I never would have dreamed that itsmembers would like to know the names of "unfriendly" people (like politicians and political candidates and journalists) or organizations they might want to know oppose their political positions before, say, giving them any money. I don't imagine that Greenpeace or Save-The-Bunnies Rescue Service or whatever might do that. Not to mention the government itself, but of course Herbert would find that more than reasonable. What a scandalously dishonest column.

What people like Herbert don't seem to realize is that many millions of Americans would consider him as dangerous and irresponsible as he seems to believe the NRA is. I happen to be one of them, myself, as I have no use for intellectual dishonesty. If my own ideas are challenged by better ideas, or by the verdict of history (as has been the case), I have no problem changing my views so that they come closer to accord with reality. Not so, this column, or many others like it. The fact of the matter is that Herbert would reject any objective information that clashes with his personal desire to prevent responsible citizens from exercising their Constitutional rights.

You know what? No one in the US is required to be armed. You don't like firearms? Good. Don't own one, then. I don't happen to like ski areas, so what? Lots of other people do, even though they're ecological nightmares, including for the poor, defenceless animals whose habitats they destroy on a regular and permanent basis.

You know what else? There's a Constitution. It has a Second Amendment and lots of other stuff. You don't like it? There's also several ways included in the document for amending it. So go ahead and try. Who's stopping anyone? In the meantime, Americans have a long-established and hard-won right to keep and bear arms that the government has *not* been granted the power to abridge. The Second Amendment is in the Bill of Rights. So get used to it, already. It was put there on purpose and has stayed there on purpose and will *continue* to be a part of the rules the people agree to *allow* the government to govern under. The Constitution allows for only the citizenry to change the rules, not the government. That's what "government by consent" means. You don't like it? Tough. Start a movement to amend it if you can or move to Russia or the UK or somewhere more to your liking. Love it or leave it, babeez.


The N.R.A. Is Naming Names
By BOB HERBERT

Published: October 13, 2003

he National Rifle Association doesn't call it an enemies list, but deep in the recesses of the organization's Web site is a long, long compilation of the names of groups and individuals that the N.R.A. considers unfriendly.

I'm happy to report that I'm on the list, but my name is truly one among very many. The A.F.L.-C.I.O. is there, and the American Academy of Pediatrics. The Children's Defense Fund and the Lutheran Office for Governmental Affairs are there. The United States Catholic Conference, the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the Y.W.C.A. of the U.S.A. are all there.

Among the celebrities on the list are Dr. Joyce Brothers, Candice Bergen, Walter Cronkite, Doug Flutie, Michelle Pfeiffer, Vinny Testaverde, Moon Zappa and the Temptations.

Also on the list are the Kansas City Chiefs, Hallmark Cards, the Sara Lee Corporation, Ben & Jerry's, and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City.

I'm sure there's a method to the N.R.A. madness, but to tell you the truth, all I can see is the madness.

All of the groups and individuals listed are supposed to be anti-gun. I can't speak for the Kansas City Chiefs or Moon Zappa, but I'm not anti-gun. I think soldiers, the police and certain other law enforcement officials should have guns. Civilians, however, should be required to demonstrate a good reason for having firearms. We should go to great lengths to keep guns out of the hands of children, criminals and insane people. All guns should be registered. And all gun owners should be properly trained and licensed.

The N.R.A. sees this as a radical, even lunatic position. So I guess we're at odds.

I asked Andrew Arulanandam, the N.R.A.'s director of public affairs, why the list had been compiled and displayed on the Web site. He said, "We put the list together in response to many requests by our members wanting to know which organizations support the rights of law-abiding Americans to keep and bear arms, and which organizations didn't."

I asked what he thought his members would do with the information. He said, "How they use the information is at their own discretion."

I recently read Jules Witcover's book "The Year the Dream Died: Revisiting 1968 in America." The murders that year of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were among the great tragedies of U.S. history. Both were killed by freaks with guns.

What is not so well known now is that President Lyndon Johnson tried, in the aftermath of the murders, to get Congress to pass legislation requiring the registration of guns and the licensing of owners. The gun lobby fought and killed that effort, and it continues to fight to the death any attempt to bring sanity to the manufacture, sale and possession of guns.

Between 1968, the year of Johnson's failure to get his legislation passed, and 2001, the last year for which complete statistics are available, more than one million Americans were killed by firearms.

No number of gun-related fatalities or serious injuries is sufficient to deter the N.R.A. from its fanatical course. A former N.R.A. lawyer has admitted in an affidavit in a lawsuit that distributors and gun dealers have for years been illegally diverting guns that end up in the hands of criminals, and that the industry has closed its eyes to the practice.

Instead of fighting to end this threat to the public's safety, the gun lobby and its allies in Congress are pushing legislation that would protect the practice by granting special immunity from liability to gun manufacturers and sellers.

The big item on the legislative agenda next year is the federal assault-weapons ban signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1994. Because of a sunset provision, the law will expire next September if it is not renewed by Congress and the president. The gun lobby has made it clear that it will do all in its power to bury the ban. The plan is to not even let the issue come up for a vote.

The N.R.A. Web site and its enemies list (which looks like nothing so much as a broad cross-section of America) has led inevitably to a counter Web site, nrablacklist.com, created by a group called stopthenra.com. In addition to facing off against the gun lobby on legislative matters, the new group and its site are inviting people to volunteer for a spot on the N.R.A. enemies list.

Ah, free expression.



(Free expression, indeed, Mr Access Whenever I Like To The Pages of The New York Times.)

[Gary Sisco]

Alastair -- Well, perhaps you're right. So do the math and tell me how many firearms deaths per hundred thousand that would represent in a country where firearms are essentially illegal, and then do the same math for 60,000,000 Americans, and see how they compare, geography being, true, meaningless in this context. Then go back to pre-ban UK figures per hundred thousand and compare them to that of the US in the same period and today. Then tell me which country is experiencing an increase in firearms violence and which a decrease in the same amount of time, adjusted for population. I think you'll be very surprised with what you find, but my guess is you won't do the research, nor will anyone who disagrees with what it might actually show, outside mere opinion and hypothesis.

People can go ahead and demonize the NRA all it wants, but I'll tell you what: That's mainstream America, guys and gals. There simply isn't another citizens' organization that can compare in size or commitment. Hell, there isn't even a political party that can compare and which also has a clearly defined, dues-paying membership that can be counted. Liberals like Herbert like to think they're the mainstream (just as ultrarightists in the government and out like to maintain the same). But the fact is, he's not.

And also, unlike the organizations of which Herbert and his like might support, the NRA isn't tax-deductible. It depends on real people with real commitment paying the tab and receiving nothing in return but a very large and powerful lobby.

Free expression, guys and gals. No one's preventing anyone from joining any organization of their choice, advocating whatever is their choice.

And you know what else? If the ACLU actually defended people's civil liberties in general, and not only their pet 1st, 4th and 5th Amendments, I'd pay dues to them, too.

But they don't. Because they don't really support the Bill of Rights. They support their own version of it. That's all. They, too, like to pretend that the Second Amendment isn't in the Constitution.

But it is.

Tough.

[Pete C]

I wish people would take the time to remove the extraneous junk, like

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when they cut & paste articles. It only takes a couple of seconds, and makes reading the article easier. And it only takes another second to replace the leading drop cap that doesn't copy.

[Gary Sisco]

True. My apologies. I cleaned it up, Pete.