felt most hunters and sports shooters
I spent most of the first half of the month campaigning for my gun safety measures: closing the gun show loophole, putting child trigger locks on guns, and requiring gun owners to have a photo-ID license showing that they had passed the Brady background check and had taken a gun safety course. America had been rocked by a series of tragic shooting deaths, one of them caused by a very young child firing a gun he had found in his apartment. The accidental gun death rate for children under fifteen in America was nine times higher than that of the twenty-five next largest economies combined.
Despite the crying need and rising public support for gun control, the NRA so far had kept anything from happening in Congress, though most gun manufacturers, to their credit, were now providing child trigger locks. On the gun show loophole, the NRA said, as it had in opposing the Brady bill, that it didnt object to instant background checks, but it didnt want anyone inconvenienced for the publics safety by having to endure a three-day waiting period. Already, 70 percent of the checks were completed in an hour, 90 percent in a day. A few took longer. If we didnt have a waiting period, people with bad records could buy their guns at closing time on Friday afternoon. The NRA was also adamantly against licensing gun owners, seeing it as the first step toward depriving them of the right to own . It was a spurious argument; we had required drivers licenses for a long time, and no one had ever suggested banning automobile possession.
Still, I knew the NRA could scare a lot of people. I had grown up in the hunting culture in which its influence was greatest and had seen the devastating impact the NRA had had on the 94 congressional elections. But I had always felt most hunters and sports shooters were good citizens and would listen to a reasonable argument plainly stated. I knew I had to try, because I believed in what I was doing and because Al Gore had put himself squarely within the NRAs gunsights by endorsing the licensing idea even before I did.
On the twelfth, Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice president of the NRA, said that I needed a certain level of violence and was willing to accept a certain level of killing to further my political objectives, and his vice presidents, too. LaPierres position was that we should prosecute gun crimes more severely and punish adults who recklessly allow children access to guns.
Processing your request, Please wait....
