01/28/11 - VCDL Update 1/28/11 - Part 2

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10. Kaine throws support behind gun control measure as White House remains silent
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Anti-gun ex-Governor Tim Kaine, ever an embarrassment to Virginia gun owners, is on his hobbyhorse yet again following a tragedy, calling for more gun control - this time for a magazine ban. There is no such thing as "reasonable" or "sensible" gun control, any more than there is a "gun show loophole":

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From The Huffington Post: http://tinyurl.com/4dcrc48


Kaine Throws Support Behind Gun Control Measure As White House Remains Silent
Sam Stein
stein*huffingtonpost.com
First Posted: 01/21/11 04:48 PM
Updated: 01/21/11 04:51 PM

WASHINGTON -- Steadfastly refusing to weigh in on the gun rights debate following the deadly shootings in Tucson, the Obama administration now finds itself behind not only former Vice President Dick Cheney but also the head of its own party committee.

Appearing on "Political Capital with Al Hunt," airing Friday night, Democratic National Committee Chair Tim Kaine said that he supports measures to restrict the number of bullets that can be fired from a single magazine.

"[The proposal by Carolyn McCarthy is the] kind of legislation that I've long supported," Kaine said, of legislation that would limit high-capacity clips to no more than ten bullets, "back from the days when there was an assault weapons ban, before it expired."

"I have long been a supporter of what I think are reasonable regulations, the kind of contemplated, frankly, by the Second Amendment, and I think those and others would be reasonable," Kaine said, according to an advanced transcript. "In Virginia we worked in the aftermath of Virginia Tech to do some important things here and nationally on the databases of folks who have been adjudicated mentally ill and dangerous so that they couldn't purchase guns."

Kaine's backing of McCarthy's measure is not -- at least in these times -- necessarily surprising. Though he is a prominent supporter of the Second Amendment, other gun rights enthusiasts, notably Cheney, have said they are open to the idea as well.

All of which has made the White House's silence that much more conspicuous. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has declined to give any indication as to whether the president or his legislative team supports the McCarthy measure, let alone a policy prescription of their own.

"I have no doubt that there will be proposals offered as a result of different circumstances that would have happened in Tucson. And the administration will evaluate those proposals," he said during Thursday's briefing.

Was there any possibility of the president being proactive and proposing something on his own?

"I have not heard anything particular in here," Gibbs added, giving off the distinct sense that there won't be anything unveiled during Tuesday's State of the Union address.


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11. Hidden life of guns: more slanted reporting from the Washington Post
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"When you double and triple the amount of the clip size, you don't double or triple the number of deer you kill, you double and triple the amount of innocent people who are killed in shootings like this," said Goddard, 25, who was shot four times by Cho.

Huh? First, for a paid lobbyist, I can't believe that Colin doesn't know the difference between a clip and a magazine. Second, if you double the magazine size and it doesn't double the number of deer a hunter can kill, why would it double the number of people a murderer could kill?

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From the Washington Post:
http://tinyurl.com/4s3x436


Va. data show drop in criminal firepower during assault gun ban
By David S. Fallis and James V. Grimaldi
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, January 23, 2011; 9:17 AM

The number of guns with high-capacity magazines seized by Virginia police dropped during a decade-long federal prohibition on assault weapons, but the rate has rebounded sharply since the ban was lifted in late 2004, according to a Washington Post analysis.

More than 15,000 guns equipped with high-capacity magazines - defined under the lapsed federal law as holding 11 or more bullets - have been seized by Virginia police in a wide range of investigations since 1993, the data show.

The role of high-capacity magazines in gun crime was thrust into the national spotlight two weeks ago when 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner allegedly opened fire with a semiautomatic handgun outside a Tucson grocery store, killing six and wounding 13, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.). Authorities say Loughner used a legally purchased 9mm Glock 19 handgun with a 31-round clip and was tackled while changing magazines.

Of the seized Virginia weapons, 2,000 had magazines with a capacity of 30 or more bullets. Some states still limit magazine capacity. California, for example, limits them to 10 and Maryland to 20.

Last year in Virginia, guns with high-capacity magazines amounted to 22 percent of the weapons recovered and reported by police. In 2004, when the ban expired, the rate had reached a low of 10 percent. In each year since then, the rate has gone up.

"Maybe the federal ban was finally starting to make a dent in the market by the time it ended," said Christopher Koper, head of research at the Police Executive Research Forum, who studied the assault weapons ban for the National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the Justice Department.

Congress is considering legislation to reinstitute the assault weapon ban's prohibition on high-capacity magazines, a measure strongly opposed by gun rights advocates.

The analysis of the Virginia records, obtained under the state's public information law, provides a rare window into the firepower of guns used in crimes. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which traces guns for local police agencies and regulates the firearms industry, does not track magazine sizes. Academic researchers said they were unaware of any other comprehensive study of firearms magazines.

The pattern in Virginia "may be a pivotal piece of evidence" that the assault weapons ban eventually had an impact on the proliferation of high-capacity magazines on the streets, said Garen Wintemute, head of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California at Davis.

"Many people, me included, were skeptical about the chances that the magazine ban would make a difference back in 1994," Wintemute said. "But what I am seeing here is that after a few years' lag time the prevalence of high-capacity magazines was declining. The increase since the ban's repeal is quite striking."

Guns with high-capacity magazines have appeared in Virginia crimes ranging from the mundane to the murderous. The Post found that 200 guns with high-capacity magazines figured in Virginia homicides, including these incidents:

In Richmond in 2003, Michael Antoine Wilson, 21, used his semiautomatic rifle with its 30-round magazine to shoot his 17-year-old girlfriend to death in front of children and relatives. Then he went to a nearby convenience store, killed two workers and stole a van before turning the gun on himself.

In Roanoke in 2004, Marcus Jerome Nance, 22, used his legally purchased 9mm Glock 17 handgun with a high-capacity magazine to spray 33 bullets into a crowd that had gathered outside a Roanoke gas station after a nightclub closing, killing one and wounding two.

In Newport News last year, Antonio Johnson, 34, began shooting at police during a traffic stop with a 9mm semiautomatic handgun outfitted with a 15-round magazine. "Subject shot police officer and then killed himself with weapon," state records say.
In the Arizona shootings, Loughner allegedly used a Glock 19 that he had legally purchased at a Tucson sporting goods store in November. The gun's capacity allowed Loughner to squeeze off more than 30 shots without reloading, authorities said.

The federal assault weapons ban from late 1994 through late 2004 prohibited the manufacturing of magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds. But the act permitted the sale of magazines manufactured before the ban.

The federal prohibition was spurred by a mass killing in 1989 in Stockton, Calif., where Patrick Edward Purdy, 24, a mentally unbalanced drug addict, fired 110 shots from an AK-47 into a schoolyard, killing five children and wounding 29 others and a teacher. He used a 75-round rotary clip and a 35-round banana clip, one of four he was carrying.

New legislative interest

Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (N.Y.) and 57 other Democrats proposed legislation last week to ban the sale or transfer of high-capacity magazines, no matter when they were manufactured. McCarthy's husband and five others were killed in 1993 on the Long Island Rail Road by a gunman armed with a semiautomatic pistol and four 15-round magazines. He fired 30 shots before being subdued while changing magazines.

The bill's prospects are considered slim in the Republican-controlled House. In the Senate, the National Rifle Association says it has a solid 50-senator pro-gun block that could delay any legislation.

The NRA has announced its opposition to proposals that limit magazine capacity.

"These magazines are standard equipment for self-defense handguns and other firearms owned by tens of millions of Americans," according to a statement on its politics Web page, and in a letter circulating to members of Congress. "Law-abiding private citizens choose them for many reasons, including the same reason police officers do: to improve their odds in defensive situations."

The firearms industry also opposes the proposal. "The tragedy in Tucson was not about firearms, ammunition or magazine capacity," said Ted Novin, a spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a gun industry group. "It was about the actions of a madman. Period."

The analysis by The Post is possible because of a little-known database of guns seized in Virginia. The database, called the Criminal Firearms Clearinghouse, has information on more than 100,000 firearms recovered by more than 200 local police departments since 1993. A federal law in 2003, known as the Tiahrt Amendment after the congressman who sponsored it, banned the release of federal data on guns recovered in crimes.

Last year, The Post mined the database to pierce the secrecy imposed by Congress on federal gun-tracing records. The analysis found that a fraction of licensed dealers in Virginia sell most of guns later seized by police. The vast majority of the guns in the database were confiscated because of illegal-possession charges. But thousands were swept up in the wake of assaults, robberies and shootings.

Two months before the ban expired in September 2004, Marcus Nance bought an extended magazine and a 9mm Glock 17 handgun at a Roanoke gun store. Three nights later, down the street from the store, Nance opened fire on a crowded parking lot after arguing and fighting with people in the crowd.

A police officer called to investigate a disturbance heard shots and saw Nance holding a gun at arm's length and firing "randomly into the mass of people" before shooting several rounds into the air.

A police car's dashboard camera recorded the jackhammer sound of gunfire. In a car parked nearby, police found a Glock gun box and two boxes of ammunition, one of them partially empty.

Police went to the gun shop and confirmed that Nance had bought the handgun ($555), a laser sight ($380) and two extended magazines ($135), paying cash in an entirely legal transaction. Police noted: "The magazines in question were manufactured before 1994 and not considered prohibited."

Nance, who said he had been attacked by members of the crowd and shot in self-defense, was convicted of second-degree murder and is in prison.

The 2004 study

Koper's 108-page 2004 study for the National Institute of Justice found the ban on assault weapons had mixed results.

"Assault weapons were rarely used in gun crimes even before the ban," he said in the report. But he also concluded that the prohibition on high-capacity magazines might have affected public safety, because such magazines allow shooters to inflict more damage.

"Tentatively I was able to show that guns associated with large-capacity magazines tended to be associated with more serious crimes, more serious outcomes," he said.

Some gun rights activists argue that a ban on high-capacity magazines would violate the Second Amendment right to bear arms. One prominent gun rights activist who takes a less absolute position is Robert A. Levy, chairman of the Cato Institute. He is also the lawyer who brought the case that overturned D.C.'s handgun ban.

But Levy said the government would need to prove that such a ban was effective.

"The burden is on the government, not on the individual to show that the regulation isn't unduly intrusive," Levy said.

Colin Goddard, a lobbyist for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and a victim of the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings, said the high-capacity ban could save lives. The Virginia Tech shooter, Seung Hui Cho, used several 15-round magazines to fire 174 shots and kill 32 people in the worst gun-related mass murder by an individual in U.S. history.

"When you double and triple the amount of the clip size, you don't double or triple the number of deer you kill, you double and triple the amount of innocent people who are killed in shootings like this," said Goddard, 25, who was shot four times by Cho.

Bradley A. Buckles, ATF director from 1999 to 2004, said bureau officials advised Congress to focus on high-capacity magazines, which were "completely unregulated" and had almost no sporting purpose.

"The whole thing with magazine capacity came out of ATF," Buckles said. "It wasn't so much guns, but it was firepower. What made them more deadly than a hunting rifle was the fact that you could have a 20-round, 30-round clip, when most hunting rifles wouldn't have more than five rounds."

Buckles said lawmakers should have extended the ban on high-capacity magazines in 2004. Banning them now, he said, just puts everyone back at square one.

"There are so many millions of them out there, it probably wouldn't make any immediate difference over the course of 20 years," Buckles said. "It is not a short-term solution to anything."

fallisd*washpost.com
grimaldij*washpost.com


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12. After Giffords shooting, no slowdown for gun rights
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From stateline.org: http://tinyurl.com/4cjpdgn


FRIDAY, JANUARY 21, 2011
After Giffords shooting, no slowdown for gun rights
By John Gramlich, Stateline Staff Writer

For Patrick Hope, a former congressional staffer who is now a state representative in Virginia, one of the biggest differences between working at the U.S. Capitol and working at the statehouse in Richmond became apparent shortly after he took office last year.
Hope, a 38-year-old Democrat, was riding in an elevator in the state Capitol when he noticed that a political activist standing beside him had a handgun strapped to his leg.

Carrying firearms is banned in the halls of Congress, where Hope worked for several years as an aide to Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey and Texas Congressman Henry Gonzalez. But it is perfectly legal at the Virginia Capitol, where lawmakers and visitors can -- and often do -- openly carry their guns with them.

"I was very uneasy seeing the weapon," Hope recounted in a telephone interview with Stateline. "I'm not sure what (the activist's) intentions were or why he felt like it was needed."

In the wake of the shooting of U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords and 18 others in Tucson, the proximity between elected officials and armed citizens is drawing fresh attention and, in some cases, worry. Security personnel have stepped up their presence in some state capitols as new legislative sessions begin, and the typical raft of proposed pro- and anti-gun legislation has taken on a new urgency as a result of the events in Arizona.

Hope is among those who is concerned. He sees no reason for armed visitors to enter Virginia's statehouse, and he is pushing legislation this session that would ban firearms in the building for members of the public, although it would exempt lawmakers. Virginia is one of nine states that allow residents to bring guns into the Capitol, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. "I don't see why it is so inconvenient for people to give up their firearms for the few minutes that they're here visiting our Capitol," Hope says. "You know never who's coming through the door."

When it comes to putting new limits on guns, however, Hope appears to be in the minority, both in Virginia and nationally, even though the Giffords shooting has rattled politicians from Arizona to Washington, D.C.

Virginia has a long tradition of gun rights, and state lawmakers in both parties are loathe to vote "yes" on any bills that could be seen as infringing on the Second Amendment. Even in the aftermath of the shootings at Virginia Tech, where a mentally ill gunman killed 32 people and himself in 2007, Virginia lawmakers declined to close the so-called "gun show loophole," which allows firearms to be sold without a background check by private sellers at gun shows. Last year, Virginia expanded gun rights to allow residents to carry concealed guns into bars and restaurants, provided they aren't drinking alcohol. And just last week, Governor Robert McDonnell changed state policy to allow residents to openly carry guns in state parks.

Hope acknowledges that his legislation faces long odds in Virginia. "I have come to recognize that the gun lobby has a very strong grip on the General Assembly here," he says. "I've known this was a heavy lift from the beginning."

Pro-gun bills proliferate

For every bill like Hope's that seeks to impose new limits on guns this year, there are just as many pro-gun bills being introduced in legislatures around the nation. Overwhelming victories by Republicans in November's state-level elections have increased the chances of such bills passing, and many lawmakers believe the right legislative response to fatal shootings like the one in Tucson is to expand, not limit, gun rights. Ensuring broader access to guns for law-abiding citizens, they argue, can help residents defend themselves if an attack or other emergency occurs.

In one of its first legislative moves, the GOP majority that took control of the New Hampshire House of Representatives earlier this month voted to allow concealed guns and other weapons in the statehouse and surrounding legislative buildings. Republicans also reversed a 40-year-old chamber policy that banned concealed guns on the House floor itself.

A Montana state senator, Verdell Jackson, is pushing legislation that would allow lawmakers with concealed carry permits to bring their guns into the statehouse in Helena, pointing to the shooting of Giffords as the reason for the proposed change. "I think what happened (in Arizona) is exactly what could happen right here," Jackson told the Helena Independent Record.

In several other states, the Giffords shooting appears to have done little to dampen enthusiasm for pro-gun bills that could significantly expand the presence of guns in society.

A state representative in Utah -- which, according to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, has the most lenient gun-control laws in the nation -- wants to eliminate a requirement that residents need a permit to carry a concealed weapon. Only three states, Arizona, Alaska and Vermont, currently do not require such permits, and Arizona has drawn attention since the Giffords shooting because Phoenix is the only major metropolitan area in the nation where such a law is in place.

In Nebraska, where a high school student fatally shot an assistant principal earlier this month, a state senator has introduced legislation that could allow teachers and administrators to carry concealed guns with them to school. The legislation would give final say to local school boards, which could vote whether to allow concealed firearms on school property. The vast majority of states explicitly ban guns from K-12 schools.

In Arizona itself, the shooting of Giffords is unlikely to result in a toughening of the state's gun laws. Governor Jan Brewer, Senate President Russell Pearce and House Speaker Kirk Adams all have vowed not to pursue new limits on guns or ammunition. To the contrary, lawmakers will consider a bill that would allow guns on college and university campuses -- legislation that also is being explored by Republican lawmakers in Florida and Texas, where powerful new GOP majorities ensure it will get a serious look. Only Utah now allows guns on its public college campuses.

Is gun debate on the wane?

Gun control has subsided as a political wedge issue over the past 15 years as Democrats have won congressional and statehouse seats in traditionally conservative areas, partly by touting their pro-gun credentials. It is common for Democrats today to support gun rights and receive favorable ratings from the National Rifle Association, the influential pro-gun lobbying group. Giffords herself is a proud gun owner who has long championed the Second Amendment. And President Obama, who took office amid a perception among many gun owners that he would tighten firearms laws, has only loosened them, signing legislation to allow guns in national parks.

Public opinion surveys have long shown support for gun rights, and the U.S. Supreme Court has added momentum by ruling in June 2008 that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to bear arms. The ruling -- which marked the first time the high court weighed in on one of the foremost political debates about guns -- has opened the door to a broad array of legal challenges to state and local gun-control laws, most notably those in Washington, D.C., and Chicago.

State lawmakers who are promoting greater gun rights this year reject the notion that allowing guns in more places will lead to more gun violence, particularly the kind seen in Tucson. No amount of legislation, they say, will ever prevent a mentally unstable person from harming others, and bills that seek to clarify the rights of law-abiding residents to defend themselves should not be misconstrued.

"Each legislative session, there's a moment in time that's going to captivate everyone and pull the wind out of the room," says Glenn Hegar, a champion of gun rights in the Texas Senate. "In D.C. and across the nation, the tragedy in Arizona has been one of those moments in time."

But Hegar, a Republican who is sponsoring legislation giving Texans the right to keep concealed guns in their cars when they are parked on company property, believes the Arizona shooting should not stall proposals that allow average gun owners to protect themselves more easily. "We have to very clearly look at the difference between citizens who are following the law," he says, "and those who are criminals who want to commit horrible crimes."

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13. After Tucson: Stricter gun laws aren't the answer
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James Durso emailed me this:

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From the Huffington Post:
http://tinyurl.com/6entmzg


After Tucson: Stricter Gun Laws Aren't the Answer

Dan Baum
Former staff writer for the New Yorker
Posted: January 20, 2011 01:55 PM

It's tempting, after a hideous event like the shooting in Tucson, to want to "do something" about gun violence. But let's pause to consider what that something could be, and what price we might pay for doing it.

Much has been made of Arizona's notoriously lax gun laws. But Arizona law was irrelevant to Jared Loughner's purchasing the gun. The background check is federal, and he passed it. Yes, his carrying concealed to the Safeway, without a permit, was legal under Arizona's new law, but if it hadn't been, would he have been dissuaded? He headed off to commit murder; he was already far over the line where a concealed-carry law would have made any difference to him.

As a liberal Democrat, I worry about the damage we might do by rushing toward a fresh raft of gun-control laws. It's very hard to demonstrate that most of them -- registration, waiting periods, one-gun-a-month laws, closing the gun-show loophole, large-capacity-magazine restrictions, assault-rifle bans -- have ever saved a life. It's a hard thing to accept, but in a country of 350 million privately owned guns, the people who are inclined to do bad things with guns will always be able to get them. One might as well combat air crashes by repealing gravity.

I'm not one for slinging statistics, because everybody can read into them what he wants to see. One, though, seems pretty hard to ignore: The rates of murder and other violent crime have dropped by about half in the past 20 years -- one piece of unalloyed good news out of the past two decades. During those same 20 years, gun ownership has gone way up, and gun laws have become far looser.

Gun guys are convinced there's a causal relationship -- they say that criminals become timid in the face of an armed citizenry. I think the crime drop has more to do with changing demographics and smarter policing. Either way, it is obvious that more guns and looser gun laws did not cause crime to rise. We on the left, who have an impulse toward ever tighter gun laws, need to look squarely at that. If what we want to do is reduce violent crime, perhaps we should continue what we're doing. While it may be true that nothing can be done to keep guns out of the wrong hands, it is plainly false that nothing can be done to reduce violence. Lots is being done, and quite successfully. It just doesn't involve restricting guns.

Gun control not only does no practical good, it actively causes harm. It may be hard to show that it saves lives, but it's easy to demonstrate that we've sacrificed a generation of progress on things like health care, women's rights, immigration reform, income fairness, and climate change because we keep messing with people's guns. I am researching a book on Americans' relationship to their guns, and keep meeting working-stiff gun guys -- people whose wages haven't risen since 1978 and should be natural Democrats -- who won't even listen to the blue team because they're convinced Democrats want to take away their guns. Misguided? Maybe. But that's democracy for you. It's helpful to think of gun control as akin to marijuana prohibition -- useless for almost everything except turning otherwise law-abiding people into criminals and fomenting cynicism and resentment. All the talk of a new large-magazine ban hits gun guys' ears like liberals using this disaster to trim back gun rights a little. It reinforces the toxic narrative that the Democrats are the enemy of regular guys, which is the last thing we need right now.

If, say, a ban on large-capacity magazines would actually do some good -- i.e. save some lives -- we could argue about whether it's worth taking some heat from the gun guys over it. But politics is a cost-benefit analysis -- what are you going to get vs. what you're going to lose. In this case, progressives have a tremendous amount to lose, and almost nothing to gain. As a nation, we have a lot of work to do on many fronts, and all of it is going to require cooperation. Let's not make the job harder, in our hour of grief, by blindly running toward new gun-control "solutions" that will do little if anything to prevent further tragedies.