Since gun ban zealotry took hold in America about
eighty years ago, each set of increasingly onerous and draconian gun ban
statutes enacted has been the product of an irrational, reactionary, political
response to short lived or isolated and rare violence perpetrated with
firearms. The underlying targets of each of these ban statutes have been: first,
the “rum” runners of the alcohol prohibition era; then political assassinators
of the 1960s; followed by certain violent anti-Vietnam-War protest groups of
the 1960s and early 1970s; coupled with certain militant (1) black civil rights
activist groups in the 1960s; and most recently a series of mass shooting
massacres committed by extremely mentally disturbed people.
The first major gun ban statute to be enacted in the United States
was the 1934 “National Firearms Act”. The 1934 National Firearms Act was a
reactionary response to the violence perpetrated by gangs and the mafia who illegally
trafficked in liquors during the alcohol prohibition era. Alcohol prohibition
caused gangs and the mafia to flourish, as they smuggled liquor in from Canada , and used sub-machine-guns, such as the famous Thompson
sub-machine gun aka the
“Tommy Gun”, as their lethal enforcement tool. The gun ban zealots of that era,
dubbed them, “gangster weapons”. The consequences of the 1934 federal gun ban
statute remain today as part of the foundation of federal gun restriction
statutes, restriction of gun sales generally, and of federal registration and
taxation of certain restricted firearms still owned by a few U.S. citizens
willing to pay the required special excise taxes and undergo intensive FBI /
ATF background checks. Until the 1934 federal Firearms Act, fully automatic
machine guns, sawed off shotguns, and other short barreled rifles, were all
legal to manufacture, sell, and own, in America .
 |
| 1920s era Thompson Sub-Machine-Gun |
Then along came the 1960s, during which at least three
different but related political movements led to the 1968 federal “Gun Control
Act”. The 1968 federal “Gun Control Act” was an angry, politically reactionary,
response by the Democratic Party to a variety of militant 1960s political
movements, an attempt to disarm them, most of which ironically were radical
left ideologies, including : violent splinter factions from groups like
Students for a Democratic Society and the Weather Underground, who turned violent, began to use guns and
explosives, and were labeled seditious terrorist organizations; and similarly with
various black civil rights protest groups such as the Black Panthers, the Black
Liberation Army, and others, which the government also deemed terrorists. In
addition, as Sandy Hook has been exploited to stir up reactionary sentiment, in
the 1960s, the string of rare political assassinations that included: John F.
Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr.; created an
equally reactionary political environment then, but one which succeeded, with
the result being the gun ban statute known as the federal “Gun Control Act of
1968”. Thus was born the 1968 gun ban and restriction act, and the euphemism
known as “gun control”. That gun ban statute is the basis for much of what
today is considered the status quo with regard to firearms restriction laws.
Before 1968 however, few such restrictions existed.
The specious political notion of the civilian “assault
weapon” was born out of various events of the late 1980s. It was California that enacted the first such major ban in 1989,
as a reactionary political response to various shooting incidents there, most
notably after Patrick Purdy killed five school children in Stockton , CA California ’s
Dianne Feinstein to enact the failed 1994 federal “Assault Weapons Ban”. The
political environment during the year that preceded its enactment was eerily
similar to the current, very contentious, firearm rights climate. During 1993
and 1994 there was a panicked run on guns, with the same sort of price gouging
and inventory depletion that exists today. After the ban became law however,
firearms manufacturers found ways to produce guns that complied with the
statute, while still maintaining the core functionality of the firearm. As is
true even with Dianne Feinstein’s latest 2013 attempt to enact similar
legislation, the ban is based primarily on cosmetic features of firearms that
do not have any direct relation to its ability to fire projectiles. Due to
extreme political pressures, the statute included a ten year expiration clause.
The 1994 federal gun ban was signed into law on September 13, 2004. A little
more than a month later, most U.S.
Senators and Representatives who voted in Congress for the ban, were voted out
of office by their constituents, creating a Congressional shift that still
remains. There remains a significant caucus of the Congressional membership
that was elected specifically because they promised constituents they would
never allow another gun ban statute to be enacted.
Meanwhile, Dianne Feinstein and her cohorts have been
quietly and repeatedly filing gun ban bills similar to her latest gun ban bill,
since 2004, all without gaining much traction in the U.S. Congress. As is
readily apparent, when Sandy Hook occurred,
gun ban zealot politicians seized at the opportunity. With just a few edits to
the same bill Dianne Feinstein has filed throughout the past decade, she has introduced
her sweeping gun ban bill again. Other gun ban zealot politicians have
introduced a variety of gun ban bills as well. Among them U.S. Senator Frank
Lautenberg’s multiple gun ban bills are notable. Meanwhile, members of Congress
from so called red states quietly but vigorously oppose all the proposed gun
ban statutes. Members of Congress are doing everything possible to delay
consideration of any of the gun ban bills, with the hope that the political
climate will soften, and all the gun ban bills can be quietly defeated in
committee. One of the ways they do this is by setting up negotiation groups who
argue over the details and then walk away, able to tell the public they tried
to reach compromise and failed, enabling both sides to save political face,
while at the same time defeating the legislation.
As should be apparent from this brief history, gun ban
zealotry in America
is and has been the product of irrational, reactionary, political opportunism.
One of the ironies for so called left wing Democratic Party politics is that
gun ban zealotry has been, in part, a racist people control tool enacted in the
1960s with the hope of disarming militant left wing Black Protest Groups, and Anti-Vietnam-War
protestors. Throughout the eighty year history of American gun ban zealotry it
has also been sold to the public as a way to disarm violent gangs, first against
the prohibition era alcohol trafficking gangs, and then the illegal substance trafficking
gangs of the last forty or fifty years. None of the gun bans has ever decreased
the type or quantity of guns in the possession of and used by such gangs as
lethal enforcement and territory control tools. The gangs are just as willing
to traffic in illegal guns as they are to traffic in illegal substances. All three
major unconstitutional attempts to disarm feared groups have failed, with the
unacceptable side effect that law abiding U.S. citizens have been hamstrung in
the process by the gun ban statutes and onerous licensing and permitting
schemes that exist in many states, such as New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts,
Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, and California, and which the gun ban zealots
would like to see enacted federally. Thankfully, it appears that by summer
2013, some of the hysteria over Sandy Hook will have subsided, and the current disarmament
siege will have failed, at least this time, while having left firearm rights
supporters forever with a permanently heightened sense of vigilance against the
ever present threat of gun ban zealot politics, not just from Americans, but
imported from other countries as well.
(sources)
(1) militance / militant - a great word that is rarely used
these days.
