It is commonly claimed that the United States has over 20,000 gun laws on the books at the local, state, and federal levels. Those who oppose greater controls argue that enforcement of these laws is only necessary to control gun violence.
but what they rarely mention, or may not even know, is that most of these laws do not regulate the sale or possession of guns, but rather have to do with zoning regulations for gun stores, the transportation and unloading of firearms within municipal limits. , and so on. therefore, whether or not gun laws actually number 20,000 or more, they have had little or no impact on the ability of citizens, both criminally and benignly intent, to obtain guns.
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local laws
In 1981, a community attempted to enact true control legislation at the local level. the village of morton grove, illinois, became the first community in the country to ban the sale and possession of firearms. Although restrictive laws already existed in other places, the importance of Morton Grove lies not so much in the law itself but in two consequences of its approval.
first, morton grove’s gun ban allowed gun control advocates the opportunity to demonstrate to the nation a point they had long advocated: that nothing in the constitution prohibits the ban on guns of fire.
The second effect of the law was that it doomed future similar legislation. Faced with a stalled agenda on Capitol Hill, cities and towns offered the gun control movement a new battleground where attacks by armed lobbyists could pose as big-money special interests thwarting the democratic will of America’s small towns. Gun control advocates spoke earnestly of a prairie of gun bans sweeping the nation.
didn’t happen. The NRA launched a state-by-state campaign to enact preemptive laws that would prohibit local laws stricter than state regulations. Some states, such as Massachusetts, had existing preferences that had been upheld through litigation. others soon passed laws to ensure that no local law hinders gun ownership.
The nra may have been aided by political infighting in the gun control movement over the value of local laws, but it was the superior organization and funding of the nra that decided the matter. Unlike gun control groups, the NRA had state lobbyists and active grassroots members. Prior to the Morton Grove ban, only three states had approved or confirmed firearms preference through litigation. By 1991, the number had reached 41. Morton Grove’s dream had been smothered in the cradle.
state laws
In response to years of inaction at the federal level, many states have passed their own gun laws. Over the past decade, state laws have typically emerged from two scenarios: a frustration over federal inaction on gun issues that have received intense media attention, or the occurrence of a high-profile shooting that spurs a public call to action. action (and reduces the influence of organized gun lobbying).
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Widespread statewide action against armor-piercing bullets, dubbed “cop killers” because of their ability to pierce body armor, in the mid-1980s is illustrative of the first scenario. (The passage of federal legislation in 1986 effectively ended state-level action.) The second scenario is illustrated by the schoolyard massacre in Stockton, California in 1989. The horror of the shooting led not only to the passage of a well-intentioned (albeit easily circumvented) California assault weapons ban, But it fueled the debate that led to the passage of bans in New Jersey and Connecticut.
federal laws
Unfortunately, the limited success of state and local gun laws can be attributed to the free interstate flow of guns. the lesson of such laws is that effective measures that work to reduce gun violence must be enacted at the federal level. however, federal laws have been characterized for the most part by a timidity that has practically guaranteed their ineffectiveness.
The first law passed regulating the possession of firearms was the National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA), which was enacted after the wave of violence that accompanied the ban on controlling access to “firearms”. of gangsters”, such as fully automatic firearms, sawn-off shotguns and silencers. The NFA requires anyone who purchases one of the regulated weapons to undergo an extensive application process that includes a background check and a four- to six-month waiting period. Early versions of the bill proposed to include handguns under the NFA’s comprehensive licensing structures, but that provision was eventually removed from the bill at the urging of the NRA.
Four years later, the federal firearms law represented the government’s first attempt to regulate interstate and foreign trade in firearms and ammunition. the law required importers and dealers to obtain licenses and keep limited records and prohibited interstate sales to those in proscribed categories, such as felons and fugitives from justice. But because there was no background check to exclude buyers in prohibited categories, and merchants only needed to have “reason to believe” that the buyer was eligible, the law could be circumvented simply by lying.
for the next 25 years there was a lull in gun control activity. The problem returned in the early 1960s with the assassination of John F. Kennedy took center stage in 1968 with the murders of Martin Luther King, Jr. and robert kennedy, which occurred against a background of rising crime and a rising gun population and resulted in the laws that make up the Gun Control Act of 1968.
The GCA prohibited the interstate sale of pistols, rifles, and shotguns except through federally licensed dealers. it also set minimum ages for the purchase of weapons: 18 years for a long weapon and 21 for a short weapon. new licensing and recordkeeping standards and fees for dealers, manufacturers, and importers were established; and a “sporting purposes” test was established to ban the importation of surplus Saturday night military and special weapons (although disassembled parts can still be imported and reassembled on US-made frames). /p>
the nra and pro-gun members of congress pushed for years for a legislative package to weaken the gca. in 1986 they finally prevailed. The Gun Owners Protection Act (FOPA) was sponsored by former Rep. Harold Volkmer, D-Mo., and then Sen. James McClure, R-Idaho, who insisted that abuses by guns needed to be curbed. Federal officials from gun owners and law-abiding firearms dealers.
Although the parliamentary dispute over the measure was intense, it was eventually passed and ronald reagan soon signed it into law. the fopa changed the gca to:
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- explicitly prohibit the establishment of any firearms registration system.
- limit the number of unannounced inspections of dealers by federal officials to one per year. previously, such inspections were allowed at “reasonable” times.
- impose a higher standard of proof and reduce penalties for dealer violations.
- eliminate record-keeping requirements for ammunition dealers and allow the sale of ammunition by mail order.
- legalize the interstate sale of rifles and shotguns as long as the transaction is conducted face-to-face and the sale complies with the laws of the jurisdictions of origin of both the buyer and the seller. however, gun control advocates managed to attach a ban on the production of new machine guns for civilian sale.
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After the approval of the fopa, the congress acted on two issues that, unlike the fopa, had strong police support. In 1986, Congress banned the sale of police-killing bullets composed only of specific hard metals (tungsten alloys, steel, brass, bronze, iron, beryllium copper, or depleted uranium) that could be used in a pistol. Alarmed by the increased use of plastics in firearms, Congress passed a law in 1988 requiring all new firearms to be detectable by standard x-ray security devices or metal detectors.
Finally, in November 1993, Congress passed the Brady Act, a five-day national waiting period for carrying firearms to give local police time for a background check. After five years, the national waiting period is scheduled to be replaced by an NRA-backed “instant check.” dealers will be able to access a national criminal records database to ensure guns are not sold to buyers in restricted categories. those who pass the control will take possession of the weapon at the time of purchase. however, the instant check will not waive state waiting periods.
the failure of control efforts and the brady law
Whether at the local, state, or federal level, the primary flaw that has plagued legislative efforts has been an almost exclusive focus on over-the-counter standards and a mistaken belief that it is possible to separate “good” handguns (those in our hands for self-defense) from “bad” guns (those in the hands of criminals). however, as noted above, most firearm deaths are not crime related. And as the NRA rightly points out, criminals will be the last to obey any gun control law.
The limitations of this approach are illustrated in the recently enacted Brady bill. waiting periods create a cooling-off period between the time a customer buys a gun and the time he can own it. In theory, this delay helps stop crimes of passion, and while anecdotal evidence suggests this happens occasionally, most suicides and shootings between friends and family occur with weapons already available.
In theory, background checks increase the chance of identifying those in proscribed categories who attempt to purchase firearms through legal channels. such laws define the proscribed group as those with a prior felony conviction or deemed mentally incompetent, yet such individuals rarely attempt to purchase weapons in person at retail stores.
A second conceptual flaw is the implicit assumption that anyone who does not have a criminal record is, by definition, “law-abiding.” under such systems, people with criminal records and felony convictions can legally acquire guns because they have never been convicted of a felony. Patrick Purdy, the stockton schoolyard killer, had a nine-year criminal history replete with gun violations, but he could legally buy a firearm under California law.
Recently, following the passage of the Brady Bill, the focus has been on licensing firearms owners. Licensing offers some benefits: the information is useful for tracing weapons; identification of those in proscribed categories attempting to purchase firearms through legal channels is increased; and the application process itself can discourage sales to casual buyers. the limitations of licensing are that such systems are expensive to administer; it would have little effect on most cases of gun violence, such as suicide or shootings between people who know each other; and anyone in a proscribed category who wants a gun could easily find one on the non-retail alternative market.
and although the most common argument heard in favor of licenses is “we license cars, why don’t we license firearms?” public health experts note that automobile licensing had little effect on the death rate associated with automobiles. It wasn’t until changes were made to the product itself, such as seat belts, airbags, and improved structural design, that the number of fatalities began to decline.
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