The Public Policy: Good Government Guns
Bovard, James
by James Bovard Good Government Guns Private owners will be handed semiautomatic Play-Doh. W hat is the difference between a private machine gun and a government machine gun? Thirty,...
...The agent did not even have both hands on the machine gun: If the weapon had fired, he would have had no control over who got sprayed...
...The ensuing battle over the raid has gone to the heart of the administration's efforts to anesthetize Americans to government...
...He appeared to know full well that th e Diaz photo would undercut his efforts to delegitimize fear of government...
...He asserted that "the agents knocked on the door once, they waited ten seconds, the).- knocked on the door a second time, waited 20 seconds, their at that time went into the house...
...Less than three hours after the raid, CBS news anchor Dan Rather asserted: "Even if the photographer was in the house legally...there is the question of the privacy, beginning with the privacy of the child...
...Make no mistake, our view prevailed...
...Which federal court--the one that denied the administration a requested court order...
...Admittedly the muzzle of the gun was not inside Elian's mouth, just pointed toward the man holding the boy...
...Wills concluded, "The readiness of people to deplore 'jack-booted' tactics reveals the intransigence that made the rescue necessary...
...Within eight hours of the raid, CNN host ]udyWoodruff characterized the morning's action as "the Elian Gonzalez handover...
...Martin's Press...
...Fihn footage clearly shows the agents storming the front door with a battering ram within a few seconds of entering the yard...
...Two days after the April zz raid in Little Havana, a Justice Department lawyer implored the Supreme Court to permit judges to add 3o extra years to the prison sentences of anyone who commits a violent crime with an automatic weapon...
...Television footage of an INS agent absconding with Elian showed horror on the boy's face...
...In Clinton's view, privately owned six-shooters are a dire threat to public safety, even if kept in a dresser drawer in the bedroom of a private house--white government machine guns pose no threat, even if pointed at a cowering child...
...N The American Spectator " Jur~e ~o o o 59...
...Deputy Attorney' General Eric Holder asserted that the boy' "was not taken at the point of a gun...
...In other words, call us fascists and we'll give you fascism...
...The media did its part to drown Americans in political unreality...
...His administration explicitly argued before the Supreme Court that every gun owner must be presumed guilty, the same as drug dealers--simply because the gun owner should have known that guns are dangerous items subject to regulation...
...Meissner declared, "The squeezing of P]ay-Doh is the best thing that you can do for a child who might be experiencing stress...
...ment, wrote in a Times op-ed: "The familiar picture of the menacing INS agenf flourishing a machine gun shows us an officer trying to avoid violence, not one inviting it...
...Asked about excessive force, White House Spokesman Joe Lockhart emphasized that the agents "drove up in white mini-vans"-as if vehicle color proved this was a mission of mercy...
...Since 1993, he has signaled his desire to ban ownership of up to 35 million guns...
...But what's the correct dosage of Play-Doh after a child has faced a 3o-round magazine...
...In a puff interview on NBC's "Today" show two days later, Reno declared: "One of the things that is so very important is that the force was not used...
...In a speech to the Democratic National Committee on January 21,1997, he bragged: "We ended the notion that government is the problem...
...It was a show of force that prevented people from getting hurt...
...But the week after the raid the ACLU seemed preoccupied championing gay marriage and partial-birth abortion...
...Now Americans are less likely to regard government as a hovercraft floating gently above their lives...
...Thirty, years...
...Such weapons are so heinous, the lax~yer asserted, that there ~as no need to have a jury verdict on whether defendants actually used them...
...Clinton then added, "The 58 Jr, he 2o o o ' The American Spectator most important thing was to treat this in a lawful manner, according to the established process...
...In her raid-day press conference, Attorney General Janet Reno denied Diaz's photo showed anything out of the ordinary...
...As we learned from the Clinton administration and nmch of the media, a machine gun in the hands of a federal agent is now a symbol of benevolence and concern for a child's well-being...
...The Hechler and Koch MP- 5 submachine gun sprays 80o rounds a minute-and a finger a half inch away from the trigger means nothing...
...For their part, the agents made no attempt to present the residents with the dubious warrant they had squeezed out of a low-ranking federal magistrate the evening before...
...In 1996, he championed legislation that created lOO,OOO gun-ban zones nationwide and he helped enact a law that retroactively turned a million gun owners into felons...
...But government machine guns are different...
...instead, a judge should have authori b' to throw people into prison for what's left of their lives based solely on the allegation that automatic weapons were in the same building as they were when a crime was committed...
...President Clinton stepped up to a Rose Garden microphone to announce that "there was no alternative but to enforce the decision of the INS and the federal court...
...This picture illustrates what happens to those who defy the rule of law and how far our government and people will go to preserve it.'" Garry" Wills, author of A Necessary Evil: A History of American Distrust of GovernThe ACLU was conspicuously silent about the raid...
...His FBI created an illegal national registry of all people who bought firearms after November 1998...
...A laudatory Washington Post article claimed Reno had personally insured that not all journalists would be beaten during the raid...
...The American Civil Liberties Union was conspicuously silent...
...MSNBC's Brian Williams warned a few days after the raid that the government's action could be "stirring up the right-wing whackos...
...A striking thing about Clinton's Rose Garden press appearance was the hangdog look on his face...
...The photo also undercuts Clinton's attempts to persuade Americans that o1@ government officials should be allowed to possess firearms...
...Times writer Thomas Friedman, in a column headlined "Reno for President," declared that the machine gun photo "warmed my heart" and said it should be put "up in every visa line in every U.S...
...The Times gave the AP photo treatment usually reserved for doubtful propaganda images from Communist regimes...
...Showing enough docility to be a Washington beat reporter,NBG interviewer Katie Couric made no mention of the two NBC employees who got whacked by reds during the raid...
...The only problem: Associated Press stringer Alan Diaz snapped his famous photo...
...was more than an hour before sunrise...
...According to the Los Angeles Times, there was a hot internal debate at the ACLU on whether to react...
...Kosovo...
...In 199 ~ it had joined the National Rifle Association and other conservative groups to protest the militarization of federal law enforcement...
...The Times reported that "the newspaper's top editors believed that the photo of the agent with the assault rifle needed to be put in context, because it was not clear where the gun was pointed and whether the agent's finger was on the trigger...
...Ruby Ridge...
...Clinton has been far and away the most anti-gun president in American history...
...Holder denied that the raid occurred at night, even though 5:15 a.m...
...For Clinton, government is "a champion of national purpose"-"the instrument of OUT national comnmnity" and % progressive instrument of the common good...
...James Warren, Washington bureau chief of the Chicago Tribune, fretted the picture "will ignite all the crazies...
...As I understand it, if you look at it carefully, it shows that the gun was pointed to the side, and that the finger was not on the trigger...
...In office Clinton has never made a single public remark recognizing that a citizen may have legitimately used a firearm in self-defense...
...Lockhart implored the media: "It's certainly my hope that those who are in the business of describing such things to the public will use great care and great perspective" in how they presented Diaz's photo...
...rifle-butts to the head...
...consulate around the world, with a caption that reads: 'America is a country where the rule of law rules...
...The case involved the excessive sentences that a vindictive federal iudge slapped on Branch Davidian survivors of the April 19,1993 fire at Waco...
...One cynic commented that fire female agent looked like a vampire excitedly car~ing away her breakfast...
...Much of the news media-including Time magazine and the New York Times-- gave far greater play to a Christmas card-like photo of the father-son reunion snapped by $8oo-an-hour lawyer Gregory Craig (and distributed by Justice Department officials) than to the AP action photo...
...When challenged about the machine gun, Holder explained: "They were armed agents who went in there who acted very sensitively...
...Forgotten was the ACLU's defense in the 198o's of zz-yearold Walter Polovchak's right not to be forcibly returned to the Soviet Union...
...Established where...
...Besides, the administration had learned its Waco lesson: no tanks or Bradley Fighting Vehicles...
...eventually, the organization quietly announced that it was "troubled" by the incident...
...The INS attack went pretty much as planned--the agents grabbed six-yearold Elian Gonzalez and left shattered doors, a broken bed, roughed-up CubanAmericans, and two NBC cameramen writhing in pain from stomach-kicks or JAMES BOVARD is the author of Freedom in Chains: The Rise of the State & the Demise of the Citizen (St...
...Administration officials scrambled to provide Americans a deeper understanding of the stunning image...
...INS chief Doris Meissner assuaged concerns about file boy's well-being by revealing that Elian was given Play-Doh on the government plane that took him to Washington...
...The editors decided to run that photo with an article by one of the newspaper's media critics about the photos and how they were used...
...At Waco...
Vol. 33 • June 2000 • No. 5
