It's been just over three weeks since Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 18 others were shot - six fatally - in a rampage at a suburban mall where the congresswoman was holding a constituents' meeting. Yet the prospect of any new gun-control laws stemming from that shooting has already drifted away. The predictable passivity on the congressional front has been accompanied, as well, by silence from President Obama.
Though Obama took office promising to seek restoration of the assault weapons ban, he has failed not only to make such a proposal, but also to say much at all about the proliferation of guns since the ban was repealed. Indeed, he has distanced himself so far from gun-control issues that he failed even to mention the shooting rampage in Arizona in his State of the Union address. He gave just a passing nod to the seat that Giffords' Arizona delegation left vacant for the address.
The assault weapons ban, which existed from just 1994 to 2004, should be reinstated. There's no real need for such weapons among Americans generally, and massive sales of these weapons at thousands of lightly monitored gun stores along America's border with Mexico have helped arm the Mexican drug lords and enriched the smugglers who cater to them.
The ban on high-capacity magazines, like the 33-bullet magazine which Giffords' shooter used in his Glock semi-automatic pistol, also should be restored. They were part of the assault-weapon ban, and were dropped along with it when the assault rifle ban was rescinded. Aside from police and military needs, however, there is no legitimate justification for sales of such magazines. Banning them again would not intrude on Americans' Second Amendment gun rights. Even former Vice President Dick Cheney, a cozy defender of the National Rifle Association, recently admitted that the ban on high-capacity magazines should be reconsidered.
That the idea of restoring the two bans has not even arisen is a measure of the clout of the NRA, which fiercely fought to defeat both. Its success in spurring defeat of the bans, and since then on a wide range of gun-carry issues, is a telling commentary on both the NRA's lobbying strength, and the Republican embrace of the NRA as a symbolic statement to lure support from conservatives.
In fact, as Democrats have backed away from gun-control issues, the NRA and Republicans have used their bully powers in state legislatures across the country, including Tennessee, to push an unbridled agenda of their view of Second Amendment rights. They are promoting laws - all out of proportion to public safety, and over the opposition of law enforcement professionals - to allow gun carry, concealed or open, in schools, bars, churches, restaurants and local, state and national public parks.
Advocates of this unbalanced agenda lash out at any semblance of restraints for public safety, even the most mild, as an attack on Second Amendment rights. That is wrong, and bodes ill for the nation.
Commonsensical standards, for example, should require background checks for sales to individuals by private sellers at gunshows. The absences of such a requirement is the most ludicrous loophole imaginable in the law that provides for such checks to restrict sales to convicted criminals, the mentally unstable and persons under restraining orders.
Other suggested reforms would require all states to enter the names and records of persons in the latter two categories into the federal files used for background checks: some do not do so now.
Restrictions on volume sales of guns to individuals, improved serial number and bullet identification techniques, and more accessible records of gun stores to police and federal officials are among other reforms that would reduce the massive gun-running from states with lax purchasing rules to those with stricter standards.
Lastly, Congress should re-establish funding for studies on the public health consequences of gun ownership and the sales and prevalence of guns. NRA lobbying successes against such studies by the National Center for Injury Control and Prevention, a unit of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over the last 15 years has virtually dried up these studies. Yet similar studies in other countries, such as Australia, have clearly demonstrated the public safety advances made under modest efforts at gun control.
Such studies have shown that gun-related fatalities - suicides, homicides and accidental deaths - all decline significantly in homes were guns are not kept; that guns do not improve personal safety; and that gun ownership does not deter home invasions or prevent crime.
The NRA, of course, doesn't want concrete public studies that might serve to weaken its grip on Congress and the mindless pursuit of ever more guns in America. But its selfish reasons are no reason to avoid serious scientific inquiry on the efficacy of virtually uncontrolled gun rights.