Month: March 2018

Many conservatives (see this op-ed, for example) criticize the tactics being used by the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students and other youths in their remarkable campaign for gun reform. These critics accuse the students of engaging in over-the-top rhetoric that demonizes gun rights advocates while offering no workable countermeasures to stem the carnage from guns that seems to be an all too common feature of American life. Gun control issues are complicated, the critics say, and call for reasoned, fact-based debate rather than demagoguery.

The latter point is certainly valid; effective measures to abate gun violence will only come through the good faith, fully informed and thoughtful efforts of many actors. However, for the NRA and its supporters to press this point is beyond hypocritical. They have spent decades doing everything within their considerable powers to prevent any rational, fact-based debate over gun control. They relentlessly attack even the most modest reform proposals as existential threats to Second Amendment rights. They have gone so far as to actively impede federal efforts to conduct research and even to develop and share background data relevant to guns. While they claim to support rigorous enforcement of existing gun control laws, they often work behind the scenes to subvert enforcement of those laws.

To the extent that the campaign by student activists currently elevates hyperbole over reasoned analysis, it simply takes a page directly from the NRA’s playbook. Unfortunately, this approach probably is the only way to focus attention sufficient to initiate substantive action on any controversial subject in today’s hyper-polarized environment. Hopefully, the students’ campaign will prove to be the catalyst so badly needed to generate real discussion and develop meaningful strategies to address our epidemic of gun violence. The tragedy at Stoneman Douglas already has prompted some “baby steps” in this direction but much more needs to be done.

As the attached article points out, an annual appropriation rider sought by the NRA and first enacted in the 1990’s greatly impedes federal research efforts aimed at developing strategies to reduce gun violence. Of all the sorry aspects of our ludicrous gun politics, this one takes the cake. Due to the rider’s restrictions, policymakers currently have little objective hard data to inform what strategies might or might not be effective, and consequently, they are left to consider often radically different approaches largely in a vacuum.

The appropriation rider has received little scrutiny over the years, probably surviving due in part to its obscurity. Surely the time has come to shine the light of day on it. In today’s climate, it’s hard to imagine how anyone (including a halfway savvy NRA representative) could argue with a straight face for its continuation. Reportedly, even the original congressional sponsor of the rider came to regret it. The issues surrounding the causes and prevention of gun violence are complex. In the absence of credible research findings, however, the so-called debate over these issues will continue to default to the mainly fact-free assertions, tendentious political rhetoric, and outright demagoguery of ideologues on all sides and their partisan allies.

If there is any “low hanging fruit” to target in terms of a meaningful bipartisan first step toward addressing gun violence, eliminating this absurd appropriation rider undoubtedly qualifies.