Hair-Trigger Politics
THOMAS, ANDREW PEYTON
Hair-Trigger Politics They won't admit it, but Clinton and the NRA agree on more than you think. BY ANDREW PEYTON THOMAS RARELY DOES President Clinton encounter a political actor as demagogic as...
...When you know it's wrong, that's a lie...
...The Justice Department has subtly disparaged the Syracuse study while proffering more favorable statistics of its own...
...The NRA fired first last week with a TV ad in which president Charlton Heston called on the president to stop misrepresenting the facts about gun control: "Mr...
...NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre followed up by asserting on This Week that Clinton "needs a certain level of violence in this country," and that he's "willing to accept a certain level of killing to further his political agenda and his vice president, too...
...In 1998, the numbers rebounded to 4,391...
...A conviction for violating federal firearms laws carries a minimum sentence of five years without parole in a federal prison out of state—hence the name of the undertaking, Project Exile...
...Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) for federal gun-law prosecutions...
...Still, even Justice's own statistics reveal interesting variations within that period...
...Convicted felons in Richmond who are discovered to be in possession of a firearm and in violation of a federal law are referred automatically for federal prosecution...
...Clinton spent the rest of the week quoting LaPierre's hyperbole and pressing into political service the children slain recently in America's schoolhouses, as he advocated greater federal regulation of gun ownership...
...A Justice Department spokesperson, while acknowledging, "I've not really looked at the gun study," cautions vaguely: "There's a general problem with a TRAC study because it involves lumping numbers together which don't necessarily have context or meaning...
...Clinton, when what you say is wrong, it's a mistake...
...The administration has responded to this criticism by denying it, and at the same time seeking Andrew Peyton Thomas is an attorney in Phoenix...
...In light of these numbers, the Clinton administration's request for $280 million for additional firearms-law enforcement looks like tacit acceptance of the NRA critique...
...More armed criminals received prison sentences in Virginia in 1998 than in California, New York, and New Jersey com...
...One recent federal experiment in stricter gun-law enforcement in Richmond, Virginia, has already had a substantial chilling effect on firearms traffickers in the city...
...And only in 1999—the year the TRAC study came out and was trumpeted by the NRA—did the number surge to 5,500, a jump which yielded the overall 16-percent increase...
...Published in 1999, the TRAC study found that from 1992 to 1998, the number of ATF-referred cases plunged from 9,885 to 5,510—a 44 percent decrease...
...280 million in additional funding to address it...
...TRAC), a database of federal prosecutions...
...From 1992 to 1997, the number of firearms cases tumbled, from 4,754 to 3,703...
...BY ANDREW PEYTON THOMAS RARELY DOES President Clinton encounter a political actor as demagogic as he is, so you could say he finally met the enemy he deserves in his fight with the National Rifle Association...
...These trends paralleled significant staff cuts at ATF in the 1990s, including a 14 percent reduction in criminal investigators...
...And indeed, if administered properly, this proposed funding could produce significant gains in crime control...
...Since the program began in 1997, the number of murders in Richmond has been cut by a third...
...Lost in the exchanges was the gravamen of the NRA's original complaint against Clinton: that his administration has a poor record of enforcing existing gun laws...
...TRAC studies, in fact, are well regarded among criminal justice professionals...
...The study also calculated that the median prison sentence for ATF-referred cases fell from 57 months in 1996 to 46 months in 1998...
...The NRA points to a sharp decline in the number of referrals by the U.S...
...More substantively, Justice points out that the number of federal cases involving gun-law violations (as opposed to ATF referrals) actually rose 16 percent from 1992 to 1999...
...In making its case against the administration, the NRA touts a study of ATF referrals culled from Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse The growing consensus on stricter enforcement of gun laws is far more likely to yield lower rates of crime and violence than vainly requiring crack-addled parents to place trigger locks on their illegal handguns...
...The remarks clearly rankled Clin-ton—particularly Heston's well-delivered jibe, though LaPierre's tasteless rhetoric presented the riper target...
...The NRA has spent $1 million in advertising on radio, television, and city buses to publicize Project Exile...
...This money, proposed as part of the president's budget, would go to hire more ATF agents and inspectors and federal prosecutors...
Vol. 5 • March 2000 • No. 27
