NRA Ads Focus on Kerry Gun Rights Record
'What a phony,'" Massachusetts voter Marc Folco says in the infomercial.
"He's no sportsman, he's no hunter."
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=536&e=8&u=/ap/20040909/ap_on_el_pr/nra_interview
Wed Sep 8, 8:52 PM ET
By SHARON THEIMER, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - The National Rifle Association mocks John Kerry's attempts to portray himself
as friendly to hunting and other gun sports, putting the Democrat in its sights with a
$400,000-a-week television ad buy in several presidential battleground states.
"There's a 20-year record he's trying to run away from," said NRA chief
executive Wayne LaPierre, who announced the ad buy in an interview with The Associated
Press on Wednesday.
The ad, a half-hour infomercial that was to run first in South Carolina, Georgia, Ohio,
Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Missouri and Florida starting Wednesday or Thursday, tells
viewers that Kerry's voting record in the Senate shows that if elected president, he would
try to erode gun owners' rights.
"As you'll see, the truth is that John Kerry is trying to deceive voters by the
millions," LaPierre says in the ad. "So ask yourself, if John Kerry will lie
about his position on something as sacred as the Bill of Rights, what issue won't he lie
about? You'd think a man who claims to represent Massachusetts would stand for the
freedoms won there."
In appearances in battleground states, Kerry has frequently portrayed himself as friendly
to hunters and other sportsmen and sportswomen. At a Labor Day campaign stop in West
Virginia, the Massachusetts senator displayed a union-made shotgun the president of the
United Mine Workers, Cecil Roberts, gave him.
"It's a beautiful piece," Kerry said. "It's a beautiful gift, Cecil, but I
can't take it to the debate with me."
Kerry has called himself a hunter from age 12 and a gun owner who supports the Second
Amendment. But he has voted in favor of gun control. Kerry supports extending the
soon-to-expire ban on assault-style weapons and requiring background checks at gun shows.
He opposes granting gun makers immunity from civil lawsuits.
Responding to LaPierre's criticism, Kerry campaign spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said,
"The NRA leaders are tools of the Republican Party and out of touch with their
members, so it's no surprise they're doing George Bush (news - web sites)'s dirty
work."
In the NRA ad, union members and hunters accuse Kerry of misrepresenting his position on
gun rights. "I look at him and I go, 'What a phony,'" Massachusetts voter Marc
Folco says in the infomercial. "He's no sportsman, he's no hunter."
LaPierre said the shotgun Kerry displayed during his recent West Virginia appearance would
be banned under a bill Kerry co-sponsored.
The NRA plans to make decisions on where the anti-Kerry infomercial will run next on a
weekly basis, LaPierre said.
The ad is financed with limited individual contributions to the NRA's political action
committee, the only way the group can legally air it until Election Day under a campaign
finance law that bans the use of corporate or union money on ads targeting presidential or
congressional candidates close to elections.
The 4 million-member NRA, which sued unsuccessfully to overturn the ban on so-called
"soft money," had about $7 million in its PAC as August began, the most recent
figures available. The group hopes to raise enough from its members to spend about $20
million on its election activities, about as much as it spent in the 2002 election when it
could still use soft money, LaPierre said.
To keep its political views on the air despite the soft-money ban, the NRA is broadcasting
"NRA News" three hours a day on Sirius satellite radio, which reaches roughly
400,000 listeners, LaPierre said. The NRA, also looking at acquiring broadcast properties,
contends it is as legitimate a news outlet as TV networks and newspapers and deserves a
media exemption to the campaign law's political ad restrictions.
Addressing another major issue, LaPierre said the NRA is so confident Congress and
President Bush will allow a federal assault-weapons ban to expire on Monday that it
doesn't plan to run any ads pushing for an end to the 10-year-old ban.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said Wednesday that the Senate wouldn't
revisit the assault weapons-ban issue this year. Republicans tabled the issue earlier this
year at the NRA's request.
Many Democrats who supported the ban in 1994 now think it cost them House control in that
year's elections, and both parties know union members with guns at home could swing a
close presidential election this year, LaPierre said.
The NRA wants Congress to pass legislation allowing corrections officers to carry guns
when they are off-duty, he said, praising a federal bill passed earlier this year allowing
retired police officers to carry firearms.
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[We now know the horrible ending of the Beslan incident, but Kopel's point remains
valid.]
Follow the Leader
Israel and Thailand set an example by arming teachers.
David Kopel, research director of the Independence Institute
September 02, 2004
http://www.nationalreview.com/kopel/kopel200409022215.asp
Islamist terrorists in Beslan, Russia, are currently holding hundreds
of children hostage, threatening to execute them. No one knows how
this horrible situation will end; but we do know that it could have been
prevented. Decades ago, Israel adopted a policy that swiftly ended
terrorist attacks against schools. Earlier this year, Thailand adopted
a similar approach. It is politically incorrect, but it does have the adv-
antage of saving the lives of children and teachers. The policy?
Encourage teachers to carry firearms.
Muslim extremists in Thailand’s southern provinces of Narathiwat,
Yala, and Pattani have been carrying out a terrorist campaign,
seeking to create an Islamic state independent of Thailand, whose
population is predominantly Buddhist. Most teachers are Buddhists,
and they have been a key target of the terrorists, who have also
perpetrated arsons against dozens of schools.
As reported by the Associated Press (“Thailand allows teachers in
restive south to carry guns for protection”) on April 27, 2004, “Interior
Minister Bhokin Bhalakula ordered provincial governors to give teach-
ers licenses to buy guns if they want to even though it would mean
bringing firearms into the class-rooms when the region's 925 schools
reopen May 17 after two months of summer holiday.”
The A.P. article explained: “Pairat Wihakarat, the president of a
teachers’ union in the three provinces, said more than 1,700 teachers
have already asked for transfers to safer areas. Those who are willing
to stay want to carry guns to protect themselves, he said.”
Gun-control laws in Thailand are extremely strict, and are being tight-
ened even more because of three school shootings (perpetrated by
students) that took place in a single week in June 2003. Two students
were killed. But though Thailand’s government is extremely hostile to
gun ownership in general, it has recognized that teachers ought to be
able to safeguard their students and themselves.
Will Thailand’s new strategy work? It did in Israel, as David Schiller
detailed in an interview with Jews for the Preservation of Firearms
Ownership. Schiller was born in West Germany and moved to Israel,
where he served in the military as a weapons specialist. He later return-
ed to Germany, and was hired as a counterterrorism expert by the
Berlin police office, aswell as by police forces of other German cities.
For a while he worked in the terrorism research office of the RAND
corporation, and for several years he published a German gun mag-
azine.
Schiller recalls that Palestine Liberation Organization attacks on Israeli
schools began during Passover 1974. The first attack was aimed at a
school in Galilee. When the PLO terrorists found that it was closed
because of Passover weekend, they murdered several people in a
nearby apartment building.
Then, on May 15, 1974, in Maalot:
Three PLO gunmen, after making their way through the border fence,
first shot up a van load full of workers returning from a tobacco factory
(incidentally these people happened to be Galilee Arabs, not Jews),
then they entered the school compound of Maalot. First they murder-
ed the housekeeper, his wife and one of their kids, then they took a
whole group of nearly 100 kids and their teachers hostage. These
were staying overnight at the school, as they were on a hiking trip. In
the end, the deadline ran out, and the army’s special unit assaulted
the building. During the rescue attempt, the gunmen blew their explo-
sive charges and sprayed the kids with machine-gun fire. 25 people
died, 66 wounded.
Israel at the time had some strict gun laws, left over from the days of
British colonialism, when the British rulers tried to prevent the Jews
from owning guns. After vigorous debate, the government began
allowing army reservists to keep their weapons with them. Handgun
carry permits were given to any Israeli with a clean record who lived
in the most dangerous areas: Judea, Samaria, and Gaza.
All over Israel, guns became pervasive in the schools:
Teachers and kindergarten nurses now started to carry guns, schools
were protected by parents (and often grandpas) guarding them in
voluntary shifts. No school group went on a hike or trip without armed
guards. The Police involved the citizens in a voluntary civil guard proj-
ect “Mishmar Esrachi,” which even had its own sniper teams. The Army’s
Youth Group program, “Gadna”, trained 15 to 16-year-old kids in gun
safety and guard procedures and the older high-school boys got invol-
ved with the Mishmar Esrachi. During one noted incident, the “Herzliyah
Bus massacre” (March ’78, hijacking of a bus, 37 dead, 76 wounded),
these youngsters were involved in the overall security measures in
which the whole area between North Tel Aviv and the resort town of
Herzlyiah was blocked off, manning roadblocks with the police, guard-
ing schools kindergartens, etc.
After a while, “When the message got around to the PLO groups and
a couple infiltration attempts failed, the attacks against schools ceased.”
This is not to say that Palestinian terrorists never target schools. In late
May 2002, an Israeli teacher shot a suicide terrorist before he could
harm anyone.
On May 31, 2002, as reported by Israel National News, a terrorist threw
a grenade and began shooting at a kindergarten in Shavei Shomron.
Then, instead of closing in on the children, he abruptly fled the kinde-
rgarten and began shooting up the nearby neighborhood. Apparently
he realized that the kindergarten was sure to have armed adults, and
that he could not stay at the school long enough to make sure he act-
ually murdered someone.
Unfortunately for the terrorist, “David Elbaz, owner of the local mini-
market, gave chase and killed him with gunshots. In addition to several
grenades and the weapon the terrorist carried on him, security sweeps
revealed several explosive devices that he had intended to detonate
during the thwarted attack.”
People can spend months and years studying the “root causes” of ter-
rorism, and pondering the merits of the grievances of Islamic terrorists
in Malaysia, Israel, and Russia. But it’s fair to say that schoolchildren
and teachers are not legitimate targets even of people who have leg-
itimate grievances.
No one knows if civilized nations will ever eliminate the root causes of
terrorism. But we do know that terrorist attacks on schools and school-
children could be almost completely eliminated in a very short time —
if every nation at risk of terrorist attacks on schools began following the
lead of Thailand and Israel.
Adults have a duty to protect children. In Beslan at this very moment,
seven people are dead, and hundreds more are in deadly peril, bec-
ause the teachers lacked the tools to stop the evildoers. If we are really
serious about gun laws that protect “the children,” then it seems clear
that — whatever other gun laws a society adopts — every civilized
nation at risk of terrorist attack ought to ensure that armed teachers
can protect innocent children.
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Banning Guns In the U.K. Has Backfired
By John R. Lott, Jr. - Sept 3, 2004, in Wall Street Journal Europe
http://johnrlott.tripod.com/op-eds/BritainToyGunsWSJE.html
Worried that even showing a starting pistol in a car ad might
encourage gun crime in Britain, the British communications
regulator has banned a Ford Motor Co. television spot because
in it a woman is pictured holding such a "weapon." According
to a report by Bloomberg News, the ad was said by regulators
to "normalize" the use of guns and "must not be shown again."
What's next? Toy guns? Actually, the British government this
year has been debating whether to ban toy guns. As a middle
course, some unspecified number of imitation guns will be
banned, and it will be illegal to take imitation guns into
public places.
And in July a new debate erupted over whether those who own
shotguns must now justify their continued ownership to the
government before they will get a license.
The irony is that after gun laws are passed and crime rises,
no one asks whether the original laws actually accomplished
their purpose. Instead, it is automatically assumed that the
only "problem" with past laws was they didn't go far enough.
But now what is there left to do?
Perhaps the country can follow Australia's recent lead and
ban ceremonial swords.
Despite the attention that imitation weapons are getting, they
account for a miniscule fraction of all violent crime (0.02%)
and in recent years only about 6% of firearms offenses. But
with crime so serious, Labor needs to be seen as doing some-
thing. The government recently reported that gun crime in
England and Wales nearly doubled in the four years from 1998-99
to 2002-03.
Crime was not supposed to rise after handguns were banned in
1997. Yet, since 1996 the serious violent crime rate has soared
by 69%: robbery is up by 45% and murders up by 54%. Before the
law, armed robberies had fallen by 50% from 1993 to 1997, but
as soon as handguns were banned the robbery rate shot back up,
almost back to their 1993 levels.
The 2000 International Crime Victimization Survey, the last
survey done, shows the violent-crime rate in England and Wales
was twice the rate in the U.S. When the new survey for 2004
comes out, that gap will undoubtedly have widened even further
as crimes reported to British police have since soared by 35%,
while declining 6% in the U.S.
The high crime rates have so strained resources that 29% of
the time in London it takes police longer than 12 minutes to
arrive at the scene. No wonder police nearly always arrive on
the crime scene after the crime has been committed.
As understandable as the desire to "do something" is, Britain
seems to have already banned most weapons that can help commit
a crime. Yet, it is hard to see how the latest proposals will
accomplish anything.
• Banning guns that fire blanks and some imitation guns. Even
if guns that fire blanks are converted to fire bullets, they
would be lucky to fire one or two bullets and most likely
pose more danger to the shooter than the victim. Rather than
replace the barrel and the breach, it probably makes more
sense to simply build a new gun.
• Making it very difficult to get a license for a shotgun and
banning those under 18 from using shotguns also adds little.
Ignoring the fact that shotguns make excellent self-defense
weapons, they are so rarely used in crime, that the Home
Office's report doesn't even provide a breakdown of crimes
committed with shotguns.
Britain is not alone in its experience with banning guns. Aust-
ralia has also seen its violent crime rates soar to rates simil-
ar to Britain's after its 1996 Port Arthur gun control measures.
Violent crime rates averaged 32% higher in the six years after
the law was passed (from 1997 to 2002) than they did the year
before the law in 1995. The same comparisons for armed robbery
rates showed increases of 74%.
During the 1990s, just as Britain and Australia were more
severely regulating guns, the U.S. was greatly liberalizing
individuals' abilities to carry guns. Thirty-seven of the 50
states now have so-called right-to-carry laws that let law-
abiding adults carry concealed handguns once they pass a
criminal background check and pay a fee. Only half the states
require some training, usually around three to five hours'
worth. Yet crime has fallen even faster in these states than
the national average. Overall, the states in the U.S. that
have experienced the fastest growth rates in gun ownership
during the 1990s have experienced the biggest drops in murder
rates and other violent crimes.
Many things affect crime; the rise of drug-gang violence in
Britain is an important part of the story, just as it has
long been important in explaining the U.S.'s rates. Drug gangs
also help explain one of the many reasons it is so difficult
to stop the flow of guns into a country. Drug gangs can't
simply call up the police when another gang encroaches on
their turf, so they end up essentially setting up their own
armies. And just as they can smuggle drugs into the country,
they can smuggle in weapons to defend their turf.
Everyone wants to take guns away from criminals. The problem
is that if the law-abiding citizens obey the law and the
criminals don't, the rules create sitting ducks who cannot
defend themselves. This is especially true for those who are
physically weaker, women and the elderly.
Mr. Lott, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise
Institute, is the author of "More Guns, Less Crime"
(University of Chicago Presss, 2000) and "The Bias Against
Guns" (Regnery 2003).
