Tucson Tragedy: Is Gun Control a Dead Issue?

Like them or not, guns are as American as covered wagons and the infield-fly rule. The revolutionaries and pioneers who forged the nation and peopled its wilderness really did cling to their guns as tenaciously as they clung to their religion. And while modern cosmopolitans may be shocked by the gun violence in this country — the worst among wealthy nations by far — well, that’s an American tradition too.

Gun control is not. The mayhem in Tucson has revived a debate over America’s gun culture that resurfaces every time some lunatic overexercises his right to bear arms. How could Jared Loughner be considered too dangerous to attend community college but not too dangerous to buy a Glock? Why are we allowed to pack heat at a Safeway when we can’t pack shampoo in our carry-ons? Does the Second Amendment really protect our right to a magazine that holds 30 bullets? It’s a necessary debate, but in the political arena, at least, the results are consistently lopsided. As National Rifle Association executive vice president Wayne LaPierre proclaimed two years ago, the guys with the guns make the rules.

(See pictures of gun culture in America.)

Arizona, with its Old West heritage, has been at the forefront of the gun-rights movement. Last year, it passed a law making it the third state — after predominantly rural Vermont and Alaska — to allow citizens to carry concealed weapons without a permit. Another law allows Arizonans to carry guns in bars, as long as they’re not drinking. The vast majority of the state’s politicians — including Loughner’s primary target, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, a Democrat and gun owner — are strong Second Amendment supporters. Congressman Trent Franks, a Republican and gun owner, points out that Arizona has a much lower gun-violence rate than Washington, D.C., which has much more restrictive gun laws. “Criminals always prefer unarmed victims,” Franks says. There have been no reports out of Arizona of any credible push for new gun restrictions; in fact, several reports show citizens are flocking to gun shops to increase their firepower.

(See pictures of politicians and their guns.)

Unfortunately, the gun-rights vision of well-armed citizens shooting down an outlaw like Loughner midrampage did not come true in this case. Nationally, less than 1% of all gun deaths involve self-defense; the rest are homicides, suicides and accidents. In a study of 23 high-income countries, the U.S. had 80% of the gun deaths, along with a gun homicide rate nearly 20 times higher than the rest of the sample. Still, the gun-control movement has gotten little political traction outside selected major cities, and all but three states have laws that invalidate local gun restrictions. According to the NRA, 25 states have adopted “your home is your castle” laws that give homeowners wide latitude to shoot people on their property without fear of prosecution, and only 10 states prohibit or severely restrict the carrying of firearms in public.

(Read “Why Are the Mentally Still Bearing Arms?”)

In recent years, despite periodic spasms of attention after mass killings like those at Columbine and Virginia Tech, gun control has made no headway at the federal level either. It’s telling that a progressive Chicago Democrat like President Obama — a longtime gun-control advocate whose election inspired fervent warnings about Big Government’s confiscating firearms — has carefully avoided the topic in the White House. He even signed two laws that included provisions expanding gun access, one in national parks and one on Amtrak trains. If he objected to the provisions, he kept his objections to himself. A Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence report gave Obama an F for leadership on gun control. “We haven’t seen a lot of political courage on this issue,” says Brady Campaign president Paul Helmke, a former Republican mayor of Fort Wayne, Ind. “Republicans march in lockstep with the NRA, and Democrats are scared to death.”

See TIME’s complete coverage of the Tucson shooting.

See pictures of messages for the Tucson victims.

Modern gun politics can be traced to a brief flurry of federal restrictions set early in Bill Clinton’s presidency. In 1993, Congress passed the Brady Bill, requiring licensed gun dealers to perform background checks to keep guns away from would-be buyers with felony records or histories of dangerous mental illness. And in 1994, Clinton’s crime bill included a 10-year ban on many assault weapons and huge magazines, which seem to be designed more for gangbangers than sportsmen. But the Republican electoral sweep that November persuaded many Democrats that anti-gun stances were politically toxic in many swing districts and reflected a kind of elitist, wine-rack, city-slicker mentality that condescended to working-class, beer-track rural voters. It suggested an ignorance of values shared by millions of Americans who like guns for reasons that have nothing to do with economic insecurity and resent gun restrictions for reasons that have nothing to do with paranoia.

(See the top 10 crime stories of 2010.)

On the Republican side, George W. Bush vowed to extend the assault-weapons ban in 2000 when he was running as a “compassionate conservative” and was keen to tailor his appeal to suburban moms. But he allowed the ban to expire in 2004 after shifting his focus to the GOP base. When Democrats took back Congress in 2006 — thanks in part to a new wave of pro-gun candidates like Giffords, who was recruited by a former Clinton aide turned Illinois Congressman named Rahm Emanuel — the ban did not return. Obama has made no effort to revive it, even though he talked about gun restrictions during the campaign; Attorney General Eric Holder, who called for renewing the ban early in 2009, swiftly walked it back, and the Administration’s rhetoric since has echoed NRA talking points about enforcing gun laws already on the books.

The NRA remains incredibly influential, but it isn’t omnipotent. In 2008, it spent millions bashing Obama in several states, almost all of which he won anyway. In 2010, 27 NRA-endorsed Democrats lost, while all but two Democrats who had cosponsored gun-control legislation were re-elected. The NRA has been uncharacteristically muted since the massacre, merely offering condolences to the victims. And polling data suggest that Americans support at least some gun restrictions — requiring background checks for all gun sales, requiring a waiting period and limiting sales of assault weapons. Helmke hopes the attack on one of their own will finally galvanize members of Congress into action, if for nothing else than to reinstate the ban on magazines with over 10 rounds. If that law had been in place Jan. 8, Loughner might have gotten off 20 fewer shots.

(See pictures from a grieving Tucson.)

Still, it’s never wise to bet against the NRA, especially now that Republicans control the House. The Second Amendment is pretty clear about the right to bear arms, although scholars argue about that “well-regulated militia” clause, and the Supreme Court has invalidated blanket handgun bans. Meanwhile, the NRA has done a brilliant job persuading some gun owners and many politicians that even modest restrictions represent ominous steps toward tyranny. But the court has suggested that less draconian gun regulations are perfectly constitutional, and some politicians have searched for middle ground on an issue dominated by macho hands-off-my-gun posturing and maudlin think-of-the-children appeals.

One of those politicians is now recovering from head trauma at Tucson’s University Medical Center. It has become well known that Giffords owns guns and that she filed a friend-of-the-court brief opposing a handgun ban in Washington. It is less well known that as a state legislator, she favored restrictions on guns in Arizona. Her NRA grade was a D. “She told me she believed in the Second Amendment,” Helmke says, “but she also believed in being reasonable. Maybe now that it’s personal, Congress will as well.”

Read “What Motivated Giffords’ Shooter?”

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