Will Heller Help Gun Control Advocates?

16.07.2008

Dennis Henigan of the Brady Center has a thoughtful essay up on Cato Unbound, in which he identifies what he calls the "Heller paradox." By shutting the door completely on the nightmare scenario of a total ban on guns, while at the same time declaring less draconian regulations "presumptively lawful," Heller could actually help generate momentum for such laws:

One of the gun lobby’s core arguments against reasonable gun laws is that every new restriction on guns is but a step down the “slippery slope” to gun confiscation and thus is a threat to ordinary gun owners. ... [T]he gun lobby needs the debate to be about banning guns that are commonly used by law-abiding Americans. By erecting a constitutional barrier to a broad gun ban, the Heller ruling may have flattened the gun lobby’s “slippery slope,” making it harder for the NRA to use fear tactics to motivate gun owners to give their time, money and votes in opposing sensible gun laws and the candidates who support those laws. This is especially true since the majority of gun owners support reasonable gun control proposals on their merits. A recent poll shows that 83% of gun owners support closing the “gun show loophole” by extending Brady background checks to private sales at gun shows.

I have my doubts as to whether this will come to pass, at least in the short term. It seems like there's just no appetite among Democratic politicians even for gun control measures that are popular and constitutional, since the public discourse right now is so toxic. As the inimitable Dave "Mudcat" Saunders told Matt Labash, "with a slogan like 'Close the gun show loophole,' what are the first four words of that? 'Close the gun show.' Bubba...doesn't need to hear 'loophole,' after he's heard the first four words." I don't really see how Heller changes that argument; after all, it's not as though the prospect of an all-out ban was ever remotely plausible (outside of D.C., anyway), but it still had emotional resonance. Maybe eventually we'll get to a point where proposals can be evaluated on their own merits, but it's not likely to happen anytime soon.

--Josh Patashnik

Posted: Wednesday, July 16, 2008 5:36 PM with 2 comment(s)

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Rhubarbs said:

Josh, the bigger problem than the gun lobby's "first step toward outlawing guns like the Nazis" bogeyman is the gun control lobby's more or less total ignorance of firearms as a subject. The problem isn't that the 3 million NRA members hear gun-control proposals and believe that they're the tip of the socialist spear. The problem is that the other 61 million gun owners hear gun-control proposals and realize that the people making them don't know what they're talking about. From "cop-killer bullets" to "self-reloading" semiautomatic guns, the language used by mainstream gun-control advocates is deeply ignorant of the basic facts of firearms operation.

For example, DC is preparing to vigorously defend its ban on semiautomatic pistols. Ask any DC pol, and you'll be told that semiautomatics are effectively a form of machine gun where every time you pull the trigger, the gun fires a bullet. But that's also true of double-action revolvers, which happen to be the only type of revolver that anyone interested in defending his home or committing a gun crime would bother buying. Every time you pull the trigger on an average revolver, the gun fires a bullet, and you can shoot as fast as you can pull your trigger finger until the gun runs out of bullets, just like a semiautomatic. So ignorance of how firearms work leads gun-control advocates to seek bans on weapons that make sense only if you assume either (A) They have absolutely no idea what they're talking about; or (B) They are frightened by the word "semiautomatic," not by how a semiautomatic pistol actually works.

And in either case, even if you're for gun control, if you DO know even a little bit about how firearms work, you're not going to support a nonsensical measure proposed by someone who obviously doesn't know what he's talking about.

Heller may help change the environment in the long run, but the only viable solution is for gun-control advocates to correct their own ignorance and start pushing measures that make sense using language gun owners can understand.

July 17, 2008 11:21 AM

jfelliott said:

"From 'cop-killer bullets' to 'self-reloading' semiautomatic guns, the language used by mainstream gun-control advocates is deeply ignorant of the basic facts of firearms operation."

Thank you! This is a real problem here in California, to the point where our firearms law allows grandfathered-in handguns to be sold no problem and the newer, safer versions of the same model is ruled illegal.

I've tried several times to see if there's any interest among local Democrats to create a gun-owners caucus, and I get nothing but dismissal.

July 17, 2008 3:19 PM