Executive Director's Corner
Sunset the Clinton Gun and Magazine Ban
James J. Fotis, LEAA's Executive Director

Ten years ago then-President Bill Clinton stubbornly pushed his useless gun ban agenda down America’s throats on the empty promise that passage would take a bite out of crime. By the narrowest margin, the gun-grabbing measure passed and outlawed nearly 20 types of common, legal semi-automatic firearms, dubbed “assault weapons” by the liberal media and outlawed all 10-plus round magazines. And now, a decade later, we have the chance to end the ban for two main reasons: there isn’t one shred of evidence that the prohibition did anything to reduce crime or disarm violent criminals and it’s unconstitutional. It’s time congress, cops and constituents admit once and for all... Gun bans don’t work!!! Period

Old Rhetoric Lingers

Unfortunately, there are still some liberal hand-wringers in this country who cling to the most remote tidbit of circumstantial information to base their “gun bans equal safety” mantra. One of their more outlandish claims is that the decade old gun ban contributed to the current downward trend in crime.

The fact that crime is down nationwide is a coincidence that has absolutely nothing to do with passage of the Clinton gun ban in 1994. Violent crime began dipping across the country in 1991 after crime centers, like New York City, implemented a widely-acclaimed crackdown on a broad range of crimes and new police strategies. More criminals were being jailed and an aging population simply became less prone to violence.

Frankly, no one should have expected Clinton’s gun ban to reduce crime because they never have in the past. A dozen years after Washington, D.C.’s 1977 handgun ban took effect our nation’s capital murder rate tripled, and all gun murders were committed with “banned” handguns. Chicago’s 1982 handgun ban preceded a doubling of that city’s annual murders. California banned “assault weapons” in 1989 yet that state's annual murder rate climbed 32 percent higher than the rate for the rest of the country.

Quite simply, anti-gun laws generally-- and gun bans specifically-- don’t reduce crime. Instead, they seem to help increase it. Anyone who attributes today’s lower crime rates to a gun ban is simply ignoring a tidal wave of evidence to the contrary. Not only did that law take effect well after the decrease began, so-called “assault weapons” were and are used in only a very small percentage of violent crime.

Nevertheless, the ban passed and took effect on Sept. 13, 1994. That was a sad day. Even sadder was another day, 120-days earlier, when the gun ban was first voted on and passed by a whisker.

I remember pacing the halls of the Capitol during the historic vote four months earlier in May that catapulted the semi-auto gun and magazine ban into the eager laps of Clinton’s legislative architects who would make the bans a hallmark of his pork-barrel Crime Bill. In an exhaustive nationwide grassroots campaign to rally cops against the measure, LEAA led a non-stop charge canvassing rank-and-file officers across the country. LEAA spread the facts about gun control and dismantled the lies put forward by ambitious politicians who know little to nothing about solid investigative police work and effective crime prevention.

I wanted to make certain that the average street cop’s opposition to Clinton’s “feel good, do little” gun ban scheme was heard. When I wore the badge and patrolled the streets, rank-and-file police officers supported the Second Amendment. The majority of officers believed law-abiding citizens should have the option to use firearms for self-defense. I knew that it would be an uphill battle to get the truth out.

Cops Oppose Gun Ban

LEAA stood virtually alone trying to show America and the media that gun and magazine bans were a bad idea, and that law enforcement professionals did not want it.

In a 1991 gun-control survey published in Law Enforcement Technology, 85 percent of rank-and-file officers said that gun control did not reduce crime. A scientific survey of members of Southern States PBA in June 1993 showed that 97 percent of rank-and-file officers strongly support firearms ownership for self-protection.

LEAA built a coalition of rank-and-file police groups, law enforcement professionals, victim’s rights advocates, criminal justices scholars and crime victims to publicly oppose the Clinton ban on semi-automatic firearms and 10-plus round magazines. Our struggle produced a politically powerful wedge of credible street cops and crime victims who splintered the public’s wrongly held perception that the “law enforcement community” supported Clinton’s gun ban schemes.

LEAA’s efforts successfully put the brakes on the revolving door of politically motivated police administrators and bureaucrats. These were the “cut out” cops who were recruited by Clinton’s gun ban flunkies only to be rolled out in front of the public and the liberal media to regurgitate a litany of half-truths, exaggerations and outright lies about the need for an “assault weapons” ban.

LEAA’s battalion of real cops telling the truth started to shed light on the murky maze of crime-fighting mumbo-jumbo bandied by bogus political cops. LEAA made significant gains in the media and with the public. We started winning back support and that forced Clinton and his cronies to pull out all the stops. They began promising pork-barrel goodies to fence-sitting legislators in exchange for a vote.

It was intense. I knew the vote would be close. But I believed the Clinton gun and magazine ban would fail.

I was right... it was close.

And I was wrong, it passed... by the slimmest 216-to-214 margin.

Turncoats and Sellouts

Clinton’s so-called “assault weapon” gun ban would have failed if three, weak-kneed congressmen had just stood by their principles, listened to street cops and not given in to the bullying by their colleagues and the political bribery of their leadership.

The Seattle Post Intelligencer called it “a historic, come-from-behind victory” led by “a frenzy of last-minute arm twisting” to induce the “last-minute switch” of Rep. Andrew Jacobs’ (D-IN) vote from “nay” to “aye.”

The Associated Press said the Clinton assault-weapons provision “barely survived” after a “last-minute vote switch” by Jacobs.

Even the anti-gun Boston Globe couldn’t ignore how “one Democrat switched his vote” and “two other Democrats voted yes after being surrounded by gun-ban advocates” on the House floor.

Joining Jacobs in one of the most repellent displays of congressional wishy-washiness were Sanford D. Bishop Jr. of Georgia and Douglas Applegate of Ohio who voted yes and made the tally 216 in favor of banning perfectly legal semi-automatic hunting, sporting and self-defense rifles, shotguns and 10-plus round magazines.

If Jacobs hadn't punked-out there is good reason to believe the bans would have failed to pass.

And for what? The gun ban never stopped a crime; it just turned a lot of honest, law-abiding gun owners into overnight law breakers.

Was it worth it to the Three Stooges who collapsed in the face of political pressure? Did they advance their political careers? It doesn’t look like it.

Jacobs and Applegate never ran again. Bishop is still serving.

Like I said, Gun Bans Don’t Work. So, what does work?

As a former cop I can tell you that putting the bad guys behind bars and keeping them there works.

Just the Facts

So when the political debate over the semi-auto ban heats up you have to keep cool and remember the facts.

Fact #1: The ban prohibited 19 “types” of semi-automatic guns, so-called “assault weapons.” The law defined firearms as “assault weapons” by name and description. By my count, the law banned more than 175 semi-automatic rifles, pistols and revolving cylinder shotguns.

Fact #2: The guns that were banned are not so-called “crime guns.” FBI data shows that rifles of any type are used in only 3 percent of homicides. Even the gun ban crowd finally admitted to this fact after the measure passed. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) told the San Diego Union-Tribune that she didn’t “doubt at all” that the so-called “assault weapons” she wanted to ban were hardly ever used in crime. Her “doubts” conveniently stayed hidden until after the voting, proving once again that anti-gun politicians will mislead, exaggerate, even lie to get useless gun control measures passed. The true agenda by Sen. Feinstein and her liberal friends is a total gun ban. She admitted as much on network television when she told CBS's 60 Minutes: “If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an outright ban, picking up every one of them, Mr. and Mrs. America turn them all in, I would have done it.” She knows full well that Americans wouldn’t go for that, instead Sen. Feinstein and her “ban-them-all” cronies chip away at the Second Amendment with incremental gun control laws and then make up the reasons for passage later.

Fact #3: The liberal media will mislead you, again. Ten years ago high-powered newspaper giants tossed aside all their journalistic ethics to pimp the latest gun control nonsense until it was adopted. Once done, they switched gears and proceeded to trash the worthiness of the very measure they touted. The Washington Post, which campaigned for the ban, confessed shortly after it was enacted: “No one should have any illusions about what was accomplished (by the ban). Assault weapons play a part in only a small percentage of crime. The provision is mainly symbolic; its virtue will be if it turns out to be, as hoped, a stepping stone to broader gun control.”

Fact #4: The ban will go away in September of 2004 unless congress votes to re-instate it. That means that for the first time in a long time, LEAA wants elected officials to do nothing because doing nothing will help cops and law-abiding gun owners. Doing nothing will allow the heinous law to sunset, go away and lapse. Doing nothing will strip one more gun-control myth from the book of lies propagated by freedom hating liberals. The ban on semi-autos has failed and now, a decade later, we can let this bad law expire, putting an end to the false premise that gun bans stop criminals from getting guns.

But to make certain that elected officials “do nothing” and let the semi-auto ban terminate I need you to do everything possible to guarantee an end to the bans. I am calling on all LEAA Members and supporters to let your senators and representatives know how you feel about the bans.

I need you to get the address and phone number for their hometown offices from the Blue Pages of you local phone book so you can write and call them. I urge you to get the fax number for their Washington, D.C. office to send them a note appealing to them to vote against expanding or extending the gun and magazine ban.

I want you to get on-line and visit http://congress.org or http://thomas.loc.gov and click on your legislators’ name and send them an email message telling them to allow the so-called “assault weapon” ban lapse.

There’s a lot at stake. Your commitment could make the sunset of the gun-ban law the most important civil rights issue in a decade. Your action could make the difference that highlights a representative democracy at work for the people and by the people. But only if you do it.

"The gun ban never stopped a crime; it just turned a lot of honest, law-abiding gun owners into overnight law breakers. "