What the gun control movement can learn from gay rights
Andrew Cuomo and a rainbow flag. Azi Paybarah via flickr
10:07 am Aug. 14, 201216
There's a reason that nothing's happening to improve gun safety in America despite the mass shootings that now occur so regularly: No one in power is scared of the gun control movement.
Go ahead, if you want, and knock on all the doors in the Rayburn House building on Capitol Hill and ask what the political repercussions are for inaction on gun control. (People will laugh.) Then ask what the consequences are of acting in defiance of the National Rifle Association.
The N.R.A. has an estimated yearly budget of $220 million, and spent $64.5 million over the last decade to influence federal elections, targeting wayward legislators for defeat and providing an implicit threat to others that they mean business.
The leading gun control group, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, spent $3.1 million in 2010, the most recent year for which they have an annual report online. Its spending over the last decade on federal elections? Just over half a million dollars, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Know what’s not the reason nothing is happening on gun control? Public opinion.
Americans support an assault weapons ban by 57-42, according to a new CNN poll. Yes, polls like this can't provide an accurate measure of passion—the likelihood that respondents will actually go out and cast their votes based on this particular issue. And it is generally assumed that the people who say they oppose gun control are more likely to vote on the basis of that issue than the people who support it.
But there's this, too: Most members of the N.R.A. itself support straightforward gun safety measures that are adamantly opposed by the organization’s leadership and funders, indicating, as The New Republic’s Amy Sullivan suggests, that N.R.A. members are more positively disposed at the moment toward gun safety regulation than Congress is.
Conclusion: The gun control movement, such as it is, is doing something very wrong.
For ideas on how to improve their effectiveness, gun control advocates could do worse than to study the playbook of the most effective liberal policy initiative in recent years: the movement to legalize same-sex marriage.
While gun control and gay rights are very different things, there are a couple of key directives that apply to both: Play political hardball, put your money where your mouth is and reframe the debate to deprive the opposition of fuel.
While the gay rights movement did transformational work in moving public opinion, that’s not the only way it achieved significant legislative progress. In New York, the largest state to legalize same-sex marriage, the key players knew that to get legislators to act, there needed to be force behind the political threats, and protection for officials who might be endangering themselves by voting for the law.
This meant that Democratic lawmakers in Albany who were iffy on supporting the bill knew they'd face a plausible primary challenge is they balked, and sympathetic Republicans knew they'd get funding help to deal with whatever backlash they'd face for voting with the other side.
Enter mega-rich supporters of gay marriage like billionaire Paul Singer, hedge fund executives Cliff Asness and Daniel Loeb, financier Steve Cohen, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg, among others.
These donors were not just financially useful, but happened to be politically symbolic, because they were Republicans. In addition to executing a precise political strategy, gay marriage advocates understood the importance of expanding their coalition. As a result, they sought to lower the temperature in their approach to the issue; gone were the days of denouncing "bigots" and protesting the church, in place of a more inclusive and benign message that amounted to, Don't feel obliged to perform gay marriages but please don't prevent them from being recognized.
With commitments from a politically diverse coalition of deep-pocketed backers, activists and their most powerful political ally, Governor Andrew Cuomo, were able to get three Democrats who had voted against marriage equality just two years earlier to switch their vote, and more remarkably, to get four Republicans to do the same.
(Months later, the Republicans who voted for the historic law were duly showered with donations.)
So Step One for the gun control movement is to do a better job of leveraging the resources of its wealthiest supporters, and to find more of them. There are lots of rich liberals in Hollywood, Silicon Valley and Wall Street who have no natural affinity for the gun lobby or the gun manufacturers that support it, and who might be willing to put their money behind the first advocacy group that can convince them it will be spent effectively.
Here, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a registered independent who is now the nation's most prominent advocate of gun control, provides an example and a counterexample of how that might work.
He's coming through with the money (much as he did with the gay-rights Republicans) with the promise of much more to come when he leaves office.
On the other hand, rhetoric notwithstanding, his approach has been constrained so far by his self-styled centrism, which seems to require him to avoid easily comprehensible statements of principle that might be construed as partisan or ideological.
So instead of making support for an assault-weapons ban into an easily comprehensible litmus test—the way the N.R.A. does, to terrific effect—Bloomberg rewards what he regards as political independence on a situational basis, as he did with his recent decision to hold a fund-raiser for Republican senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts, a regular ally of the N.R.A. who opposed his party on one particularly controversial piece of "concealed carry reciprocity" legislation that would have affected New York City.
Here, too, Bloomberg and any other would-be benefactor of the gun control movement would be wise to follow the same-sex-marriage model, by focusing on a consistent message that changes the terms of the debate.
At the moment, those terms are dictated pretty precisely by the N.R.A., boiling the argument down to pro-gun versus anti-gun. The fact is that the vast majority of gun owners would not be affected by safety regulations. By reaching out to them, the movement could expand its coalition and reduce the passion of the opposition. Emphasizing a libertarian message—it is liberating to law-abiding citizens to take assault weapons out of the hands of criminals—could also broaden support.
At the very least, it would start to weaken the N.R.A.'s "slippery slope" argument, that any gun-safety measure is a first step by big-government liberals toward confiscation of the weapons they keep for hunting and self-defense.
Which gets at what may be the most important difference between the push for gay marriage and the push for more effective regulation of guns: When gay-rights advocates achieved their marriage victory in New York, they benefited from a relatively weak and poorly organized opposition movement. That's a luxury that gun control advocates will never have.
But if Bloomberg and other wealthy supporters of gun control were to create a single-issue Super-PAC, seed it with $200 million, hire experienced operatives to scare on-the-fence legislators and protect rebels, the political fight with the N.R.A. would start looking a lot fairer, fast.
Democracy by definition is two wolves and sheep voting on what is for dinner. In this light it is very important to understand our founding fathers tended to take a different view on self governance of the people, by the people, and for the people. They knew that there would be challenges to the inherent god given rights of all men, among these the right to free speech and freedom of assembly; To be secure in your persons, papers, and property from un-warranted seizure without due process of law; The right against self incrimination; and above all the right to keep and bear arms (they might have meant it to say the right to keep and arm bears, but that is a discussion for another day). The key ideal is that they decided to keep checks and balances to keep the majority from stripping the rights of the minorities away. The right enumerated in the US constitution and the Constitutions of many states is mere an enumerated right granted by the persons very birth into this world. It is not in the power of the wealthy or corrupt to impose their wills on others who do not see it their way......
If you wish for tragedies like the shootings not to occur take broader steps at education and community involvement. Tragic shootings like happened are of course very much a loss, but the real fact is the pale in comparison to the amount of self defense uses that happen every day, where a law abiding citizen defend their lives and the live of those they love from serious bodily harm or death. However here are list of such tragic incidents of gun violence:
- Zug, Switzerland, September 27, 2001: a man murdered 15 members of a cantonal parliament.
- Tours, France, October 29, 2001: four people were killed and 10 wounded when a French railway worker started killing people at a busy intersection in the city.
- Nanterre, France, March 27, 2002: a man kills eight city councilors after a city council meeting.
- Erfurt, Germany on April 26, 2002: a former student kills 18 at a secondary school.
- Freising, Germany on February 19, 2002: Three people killed and one wounded.
- Turin, Italy on October 15, 2002: Seven people were killed on a hillside overlooking the city.
- Madrid, Spain, October 1, 2006: a man kills two employees and wounds another at a company that he was fired from.
- Emsdetten, Germany, November 20, 2006: a former student murders 11 people at a high school.
- Southern Finland, November 7, 2007: Seven students and the principal were killed at a high school.
- Naples, Italy, September 18, 2008: Seven dead and two seriously wounded in a public meeting hall (not included in totals below because it may possibly have involved the mafia).
- Kauhajoki, Finland, Sept. 23, 2008: 10 people were shot to death at a college.
Winnenden, Germany, March 11, 2009: a 17-year-old former student killed 15 people, including nine students and three teachers.
- Lyon, France, March 19, 2009: ten people injured after a man opened fire on a nursery school.
- Athens, Greece, April 10, 2009: three people killed and two people injured by a student at a vocational college.
- Rotterdam, Netherlands, April 11, 2009: three people killed and 1 injured at a crowded cafe.
Vienna, Austria, May 24, 2009: one dead and 16 wounded in an attack on a Sikh Temple.
- Espoo, Finland, Dec. 31, 2009: 4 killed while shopping at a mall on New Year's Eve.
- Cumbria, England, June 2, 2010: 12 people killed by a British taxi driver.
You know what all of these incident have in common. They all happened in countries that were liberal, progressive, and with very strict gun laws...or even better yet. A total ban on gun ownership period. None of these countries were on the border of where guns could be had easily and legally. They were obtained through a black market system and at high cost to the individual. The only object that was removed from this equation was that law abiding citizens were denied the right to defend themselves! That is it!
Let however take a look at what some of our founding fathers said about the right to keep and bear arms:
“The great object is that every man be armed.” - Patrick Henry
“Let Mr. Madison tell me when did liberty ever exist when the sword and the purse were given up from the people? Unless a miracle shall interpose, no nation ever did, nor ever can retain its liberty after the loss of the sword and the purse.” – Patrick Henry
“Are we at last brought to such a humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in our own possession and under our own direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?” – Patrick Henry
“No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms within his own lands or tenements” – Thomas Jefferson
"The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference - they deserve a place of honor with all that's good" - George Washington
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." - Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers at 184-188
It is very clear what history, our founding fathers, clearly ascertainable data on firearms, and millions of American think of Gun control. It speaks volumes that it was enshrined and Enumerated in the US Constitution. The impassioned and emotionally charged article your wrote has little to do with reality or the true intent of our founding fathers. I served this nation for well over eight years in the military, was wounded in service to this country, and then served a further six years in law enforcement. I believe that as long as we keep the right to keep and bear arms tyranny either foreign, domestic, or on an individual level shall never prevail.
Now I am the average American that is fiscally conservative and a social libertarian....You wish to strip me of my rights I say No way!
There is a good reason why same-sex marriage doesn't have the kind of opposition that gun control does; same-sex marriage opponents don't have any real arguments that stand up to logical tests. Both sides of the gun rights debate have data to debate with.
The similiarities between gun rights and gay rights are much greater than those between gun control and gay rights.
Gun owners just want to be left alone. 80 to 100 million gun owners and millions of gays are good neighbors, parents, co-workers, friends, and didn't commit any crimes last year. The extremely small fraction that did commit crimes should be punished. Collective punishment and discrimination against people who have harmed no one is wrong and a very strong motivator. This injustice is the reason the NRA can motivate gun owners to vote against politicians. Politicians don't fear the NRA. They fear gun owners who vote.
That there even exist gun control organizations is a stain in our political environment. Just as gay, black, Jew, and women control organizations would be and have been.
"nothing's happening to improve gun safety in America"
NRA Eddie Eagle program
Appleseed Rifle Shooting program
Development and sale of retention holsters for police and citizen use
Expansion of legal concealed carry to 48 states
Promulgation of the 4 Rules of Gun Safety, originated by Jeff Cooper, throughout the gun using community
Development and sale of Gun Vault quick access secure storage for handguns
NRA Project Exile to use gun crime convictions to increase incarceration time for criminals
Decrease in rate of gun accidents and firearm crimes in the US since the 1960s through the present
I think your definition of "nothing's happening" is at odds with reality.
As a gun rights supporter, the thing I find most annoying about your column is the implicit assumption of top-down politics. That what political policies will be followed - on both sides - is to be decided by which super-rich donors give money to which organizations. That the whole gun rights movement is due to the NRA throwing around money to influence politicians against what the people of the country and the NRA's own members think. Money can help in some cases, but changing policy is ultimately about convincing people. The gun control movement has successfully convinced people that it's a crock.
Millions of gun owners have seen by their words and deeds that the real goal of the gun control movement is a total ban of all civilian firearms, and they won't stop at anything less than that. They'll call it all "common sense" and "public safety" so that they can pass multiple conflicting laws that interact in ways that few people really understand in hopes of making it so inconvenient and hazardous to buy a gun that nobody will bother, and then conduct biased polls in an attempt to convince people that they were in favor of it all. They'll cite a bunch of nonsense about hunting (the second amendment has nothing to do with hunting, and 80% of gun owners don't hunt) to support their position.
Both the desire for gun control and the way they think that politics is all top-down screams to me that the fundamental basis of their movement and philosophy is that they don't trust the people, either to own and carry guns or to gather their own information and make up their own minds. What do you really expect us to think that people who think this way will do once they've achieved their dream of a total gun ban?
There is no such thing as an assault rifle. Assault is an action and a behavior. A gun is an inanimate object. Neutral. It can be used for good purposes or for evil purposes. A rapist using a knife to force his will on a victim doesn't prompt a media campaign to ban or restrict access to "assault rapist knives." This is because there is an agenda both domestic and abroad to disarm law abiding citizens and to give government a total monopoly on force; something our forefathers and modern history warned us about. The rhetoric of banning or restricting so called "assault rifles" is an "assault" on semi automatic rifles using the same technology that has been around since the 1800's and comprises of over 90% of all firearms in existence in America. Not only is the assault on semi automatic rifles and normal capacity magazines an assault on our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms, and an assault on our TRUE national security and personal security, but it is treason because of the blow-back that would ensue. Americans will not turn in their firearms like Australians did. Overnight a large portion of the good people in our society would become criminals and a civil war would ensue. Which is the plan. - Sherman K. Wisely.
What the gun control movement fails to see is that gun ownership really isn't a Left v Right issue, the vast majority of US citizens agree with the Second Amendment and think gun grabbers are bad people.
117 people die every day on our roads. This is not news, it is information. When one person is killed by a gun, it becomes news. Using PMC (Perverse Media Calculus) one gun death trumps one highway death.
I know most wont agree with me. You'll say "it's completely different",.. but what, exactly, is different? Dead = Dead. The excuse is the difference. Blame is what we crave yet we can't blame the obvious source: The Media.
A mass murderer spraying a theater with bullets becomes a martyr; his objective wasn't to kill people, but to gain attention. The highest attention. Spraying a theater with bullets was merely a means to and end.
John Wayne, Stalone, Arnold,... every "good guy" slung a gun and killed the bad guy with his gun of choice.
Don't feel obliged to perform gay marriages but please don't prevent them from being recognized.
Don't feel obliged to use self loading rifles but please don't prevent them from being used by law abiding citizens.
Don't feel obliged to exercise your rights to own and carry a gun but please don't prevent them from being recognized.
There is a reason the NRA has tons of money and influence. They represent 4.3 million average Americans. And that is a small fraction of the total number of gun owners in this country. Even with millionaires as their biggest supporters, the anti-gun groups can't even come close to the amount of money raised by the NRA, and that's because they can't come anywhere close to the number of members (the Brady Campaign has somewhere around 28,000 members?). According to your arguments, we should right our laws based on the opinions of a few rich politicians, instead of the millions of people on the other side?
Just like 'assault weapons', the poll numbers for support of gay marriage are skewed by the number of people who simply don't care about something that won't affect them. Someone who owns no guns wouldn't mind a ban on certain ones, just like a straight person doesn't mind a ban on gay marriage. But for the people who these rules affect, the simply fact that you're leaving their rights up to public opinion is offensive.
Both issues are a matter of constitutionally protected rights,both of which politicians refuse to accept. This article has it completely wrong, gun-RIGHTS activists and gay-RIGHTS activists should stand together until they are both accepted, even if 'public opinion' doesn't agree with them.
Dear Mr. Zeff,
Gun control equals libertarianism? My, what a strange dictionary you have.
Tsk, tsk
Here's a genuinely libertarian view: What you do in your home, whom you choose to spend your time with, what you own and carry on your person are your business. As long as you aren't harming innocent people--and I mean actual harm here, not causing someone's undies to get in a wad--you are within your rights.
I support gay rights and gun rights, and my reasons for doing so overlap in the area of personal liberty.
IMHO what the gun control movement needs to understand is that British arrogance has once again screwed up their hopes for a glorious future. In 1770 there was the Boston Massacre, called the Incident on King Street by the British government. In 1775 came the Battle of Lexington and Concord which was the initial conflict in the American Revolutionary War. In 1791 came the Second Amendment (Amendment II) to the United States Constitution. Then came the Twentieth Century as outlined in ALL THE WAY DOWN THE SLIPPERY SLOPE: GUN PROHIBITION IN ENGLAND AND SOME LESSONS FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES IN AMERICA by Joseph E. Olson and David B. Kopel culminating with the Firearms (Amendment) (No. 2) Act 1997 prohibiting handguns. Historical fact, not some hypothetical mental exercise, nearly a century of "reasonable" firearms regulation lead to confiscation. It's not paranoia when the threat is real.
Mr. Zeff,
Thank you for reminding me that villians, like yourself, still exist in this world.
I totally agree that there needs to be more of a consequence to legislators for not taking active stances against gun violence. But I also think the anti-gun movement needs an attention-getting wing to connect the American people viscerally with this issue. At this point, it's a game between legislative juggernauts and most people are not connected to the movement.
My husband and I were talking, and it occurs to us that there is no "PETA"-like component to the anti-handgun-violence movement. We'd like to somehow contribute to the formation of such a group, or the promulgation of more provocative types of actions/statements to demonstrate the woeful inadequacy of current American gun policy.
Some ideas we had:
*Thanking Wal-mart (facetiously) for making it so easy to kill our children, via an ad in papers.
*Street-theatre like actions in all the public places that have recently been opened to handguns. There can be a protest at a bar where handguns are permitted, which could make some sort of statement about the stupidity of mixing alcohol and guns. Asking University of Colorado students to brandish toy guns on a designated day, to highlight state-imposed permission to carry handguns on their campus.
*Die-ins at gun manufacturer headquarters, to highlight all the unnecessary murders and suicides that their products have enabled.
These sorts of things. Young people who work for anti-gun violence organizations could use social media to organize "flash mobs" to undertake actions like these to highlight the ridiculousness of gun policies in America.
Few people want PETA to be the only voice of the animal rights movement in America -- but there is no doubt that it plays a useful role in drawing attention to their issue. There should be some equivalent movement in the anti-gun violence movement. Work on legislation is incredibly important, but so are actions that connect people viscerally to the disastrous consequences of American gun policy.
My husband and I have no expertise in this area, but this year's massacres have motivated us to throw this idea out to the activist community. We would be more than happy to do some legwork to get these sorts of strategies implements.
Carmela Federico
carmela@bookbuzz.com
The discourse on gun safety is very disappointing. A gun is not a car; unlike a car, a gun is made to kill. People dying in other countries does not negate our need for more gun safety regulations.
That said, the author does a decent job outlining a strategy to deal with the current lack of gun safety enthusiasm in legislatures around the nation.
What is needed is to more strongly emphasize the need to reframe the debate. Since most people, gun owners or not, believe in "gun safety", let's drop the word "control" and instead use the term "safety."
I don't love guns, but what concerns me are the safety issues, not those that use guns legally and soundly.
Peace,
Tex Shelters