Last night, on 60 Minutes, Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, was asked about reinstating the federal assault weapons ban:
"There was an assault weapons ban in the United States for ten years. It expired in 2004. Would you consider asking Congress to reinstate that?" Cooper asked Napolitano.
"I haven't thought that far," she replied. "What I have worked on is working with customs, with ATF and saying "what do we need to do by way of identifying who is putting these unlawful gun into the hands of the traffickers who are using them to murder people. And what do we need to do to stop it."
She’s right by focusing attention on the unlawful guns. This is about crime and criminal activity. That is where the Obama administration should focus its resources.
Unfortunately, last week, Attorney General Holder took a different tack last week:
Responding to a reporter's question on weapons' regulations, Holder said, "Well, as President Obama indicated during the campaign, there are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would be to reinstitute the ban on the sale of assault weapons. I think that will have a positive impact in Mexico, at a minimum."
Holder refused to speculate when legislation would move forward.
"There are obviously a number of things that are -- that have been taking up a substantial amount of [Obama's] time, and so, I'm not sure exactly what the sequencing will be," he said.
After I read Holder’s comments, as President of the American Hunters and Shooters Association (AHSA), I wrote to him strongly urging that he reconsider his misguided comments about renewing the federal assault weapons. The full letter can be found here. This is an excerpt:
Based on your comments, it appears that the Obama administration intends to reinstate [the federal assault weapons] ban. I would strongly encourage you to negate that effort. The assault weapons ban is an issue of great import to America’s law-abiding hunters and shooters, who I represent through my role as President of AHSA. But, this issue shouldn’t be based on politics, it’s about policy.
Most importantly, as studies have shown, the law had no measurable effect on crime reduction and created an easily avoidable template for gun manufacturers to work around. Instead, the law demonized lawful gun owners and became a lightning rod for a decade long public debate over gun crime that merely served to divert time and resources from our already over-burdened law enforcement agencies. Frankly, it has been an unnecessary distraction. Gun owners support efforts to keep our communities safe. We just want those policies directed at the root cause of crime and violence and not just symbolism, which is how the Washington Post accurately described the ban back in 1994.
I have no compunction about setting the Obama administration right on this one. I campaigned in key battleground states doing over 40 appearances and AHSA was responsible for over a million pieces of direct mail for Barack Obama last fall. I know how gun owners feel about this issueand it would be a disaster.
This has the potential to be a major – and completely unnecessary – distraction for the president. And, right now, Obama doesn’t need to be distracted from the important work he is doing. Because a major distraction is all this legislation will accomplish. (Although, it will be a fund-raising boon for the NRA and the gun control groups, too.)
Policy should dictate this decision and it’s been obvious from the beginning that this law didn’t work. Holder won’t find a legitimate study that says it did. (Even the most hard-core gun ban advocates admit the law was "badly flawed" and "open, cynical joke.") All the ban really did was aggravate an important constituency, a law-abiding constituency. I know. It aggravated and annoyed me. Like I said, and as my diaries show, I was on the campaign trail for Obama last fall and everywhere I went, gun owners wanted to know his position on the assault weapons ban. They were willing to listen to Obama on the economy and other issues because they believed him when he said he didn’t want to take anyone’s guns away. Obama often reiterated his position that the Second Amendment was an individual right. That helped win everybody over. So, I know the White House must be aware that this is very bad politics and will only disillusion the millions of law-abiding gun owners who voted for him.
Before this debate gets out of hand, let’s be clear: the assault weapons ban is never going to see the legislative light of day. In what some may consider a surprise, the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, is on the right track on this issue:
The Speaker gave a flat "no" when asked if she had talked to administration officials about the ban. "On that score, I think we need to enforce the laws we have right now," Pelosi said at her weekly news conference. "I think it's clear the Bush administration didn’t do that."
Enforcing the gun laws is the best policy. And, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid took the same view:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will join House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in opposing any effort to revive the 1994 assault-weapons ban, putting them on the opposite side of the Obama administration.
Reid spokesman Jim Manley said the Nevada Democrat will preserve his traditional pro-gun rights voting record.
"Sen. Reid would oppose an effort [to] reinstate the ban if the Senate were to vote on it in the future," Manley told The Hill in an e-mail late Thursday night.
It was not immediately clear whether Reid would block the bill from the Senate, but his opposition casts serious doubt on its chances.
Gun owners want safe communities, not symbolism. We don’t want criminals and terrorists to get guns. That’s where the Attorney General should focus his energy and resources – not on law-abiding gun owners. If gun laws are being broken to arm Mexican drug lords, laws need to be enforced and the criminals brought to justice. The AG should work with Secretary Napolitano on that. We’ll all be better off.