Gun Violence in America

GUN VIOLENCE IN AMERICA GUN VIOLENCE IN AMERICA The Struggle for Control Alexander DeConde Northeastern University Press Boston Northeastern University Press Copyright 2001 by Alexander DeConde All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data DeConde, Alexander Gun violence in America : the struggle for control / Alexander DeConde. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1–55553–486–4 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Gun control—United States. 2. Violent crimes—United States. 3. Firearms ownership—United States. 4. United States—Politics and government. I. Title. HV7436.D43 2001 363.3Ј3Ј0973—dc21 00–054821 Designed by Janis Owens Composed in Electra by Coghill Composition Company in Richmond, Virginia. Printed and bound by The Maple Press Company in York, Pennsylvania. The paper is Sebago Antique, an acid-free sheet. Manufactured in the United States of America 050403020154321 Contents Introduction 3 1 Origins and Precedents 7 2 The Colonial Record 17 3 To the Second Amendment 27 4 Militias, Duels, and Gun Keeping 39 5 A Gun Culture Emerges 53 6 Reconstruction, Cheap Guns, and the Wild West 71 7 The National Rifle Association 89 8 Urban Control Movements 105 9 Gun-Roaring Twenties 119 10 Direct Federal Controls 137 11 Guns Flourish, Opposition Rises 155 12 Control Act of 1968 171 13 Control Groups on the Rise 189 14 Gun Lobby Glory Years 203 15 A Wholly Owned NRA Subsidiary? 219 16 The Struggle Nationalized 235 17 The Brady Act 249 18 School Shootings and Gun Shows 265 19 Clinton v. the NRA 281 20 Summing Up 299 Notes 311 Bibliography 341 Index 379 Introduction xcept possibly for abortion, no social issue of recent decades has produced E more distorted data and contention among Americans than has the struggle to control gun violence. The controversy stems in part from myths entan- gling the history of gun keeping, one of the most prominent being that Americans have a special intimacy with firearms going back over three hundred years. Believers in this intimate relationship cite comments such as those of a visiting Englishman in 1774 to support it. ‘‘There is not a Man born in America that does not Understand the Use of Firearms and that well,’’ he wrote. A gun ‘‘is Almost the First thing they Purchase and take to all the New Settlements and in the Cities you can scarcely find a Lad of 12 years that does not go a Gunning.’’1 Other writers perceive such depiction as part of ‘‘a long and, in many cases, glorious tradition of gun ownership and gun use.’’ They represent this inheri- tance as having developed from the customs of a uniquely ‘‘gun-minded’’ people who handled firearms ‘‘in a very American way.’’2 Conventional theory holds that this attitude toward the possession of firearms began with English colonists. Supposedly they loved guns so much that when they created their own nation and established a second constitution they guarded the right to own guns with fundamental law. That legal protection laid the basis for Americans equating the right to own guns with a rough-and-ready, self-reliant patriotism. ‘‘How wonderful to be a nation of gun lovers!’’ one de- fender of private gun-keeping explained later as a sentiment of many, where ‘‘there is no right more inherent to an American than the right to own a gun.’’3 Available statistics tell us that in exercising this alleged right Americans have used guns, particularly in the twentieth century, ‘‘more often to assault, maim, and kill one another’’ than have most other peoples in the world. In the 1990s, 3 4 Gun Violence in America for instance, Americans killed more people with guns in a typical week than did western Europeans in a whole year.4 This record stands out because peoples in other technologically advanced countries have not had, and do not have, homi- cide rates connected to shooting as high as those of Americans. Nor have those countries allowed their citizens to possess firearms with a freedom comparable to that tolerated in the United States.5 Richard Hofstadter, one of the first historians to assess this heritage, portrayed the United States as ‘‘the only nation so attached to the supposed ‘right’ to bear arms that its laws abet assassins, professional criminals, berserk murder- ers, and political terrorists at the expense of the orderly population.’’ It is ‘‘the most passive of all major countries in the matter of gun control.’’6 Spokespeople for those who cherished shooting immediately disputed these generalizations, countering that firearms in private hands had been and contin- ued to be beneficial to society. They praised the idea of the nation in arms, a conception a number of Athenian, Florentine, Swiss, French, and English thinkers long ago embraced as an antidote to tyranny from above. The many Americans who perceived the arming of a people with their own weapons as a virtue built a folklore about the social value of firearms and embedded that idea in history books and popular literature. This imaginative rendering of the past portrayed pioneers as building the nation with gun in hand. This version of the past carried the message that ownership of guns had been and should continue to be an essential element of American life. This glorified perspective of civilian gun-keeping had significant social con- sequences. It offered an appealing reason why private citizens should have easy access to firearms. Various researchers have viewed this exalting negatively, or as an important piece of the puzzle of why Americans have a unique record for tolerating gun violence. The popularity of guns often intimidated those who deplored their lethal use and wished to curb it. Nonetheless, even in the early Republic among those who disliked private gun-keeping a few spoke out. As the country expanded westward, became urbanized and industrialized, and small firearms became increasingly numerous and deadly, critics rose in number and increasingly challenged the alleged virtues of keeping firearms. What values, they asked, did unfettered civilian gun-toting bring to society? How valid was the assumed legal right of enthusiasts to use firearms as they pleased? Gun keepers had their own answers or joined associations that provided answers for them. They funded an effective lobby dedicated to protecting their interests. Later, the dispersed critics of the gun culture who felt deep concern over its proliferating casualties organized local groups that advocated restraints on the Introduction 5 possession of firearms. This citizenry became the nucleus of an amorphous gun-control movement that lobbied for federal, state, and municipal regulation of personal firearms. As the politicking over gun rights intensified, it aroused emotions cutting across divisions of class, ethnicity, race, and religion. Clashes between pro- and antigun advocates produced rancorous debate, or what some writers call the great American gun war. Protagonists battled in print, on radio and television, and in local, state, and national politics to advance their causes. They also generated an extensive literature recognized widely as ‘‘tainted by obvious bias.’’7 Even the works of scholars who researched firearms use reflected partisan emotion. As a rule, control advocates wanted to restrict private gun-keeping but not abolish it. Firearms advocates who opposed virtually any form of control argued that regulation would not reduce gun violence. In the words of social critic and historian Garry Wills, an ‘‘industrious band of lawyers, historians, and criminologists . created a vast outpouring of articles [and books] justify- ing individual gun ownership on the basis of the Second Amendment.’’ They contended that their version of history created the ‘‘Standard Model for inter- preting the Second Amendment.’’8 Dedicated control advocates dismissed this gun-keeper version of constitu- tional history as flimsy or the work of National Rifle Association hacks. But the books and articles of progun lawyers, criminologists, and historians form an important part of the debate over the proper means of stemming gun violence. This struggle to control the private possession of firearms with federal legisla- tion became significant in the twentieth century but it had roots in the more distant past. A number of fine scholarly articles, such as those of Michael A. Bellesiles, treat the pertinent colonial and nineteenth-century past of gun keeping in depth and have enriched my understanding of the problem. I regret that in my researches I was unable to make full use of his fine, well-documented book, Arming America (New York, 2000). It was published shortly after my manuscript went to press. So far, however, only one book, The Gun in America (1975), has attempted to cover the whole of what its authors, Lee Kennett and James L. Anderson, called at the time a largely unexplored field of historical inquiry. That pioneering account, which has become an invaluable source for those who enter the field, concentrates on firearms as part of American culture and an important tool in the national experience. Although this history also deals with that experience, it goes beyond the previous work and differs from it. It focuses 6 Gun Violence in America on gun violence in America and the struggle to control it rather than on the place of the weapon itself in the nation’s history. This synthesis, based on an array of primary sources, such as government documents, and an extensive secondary literature, analyzes the politics of gun keeping, assesses conflicting interpretations in the historiography of firearms in civilian use, and explores controversies over their use.

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