Last week, Mexican President Felipe Calderon unveiled a giant billboard, made with three tons of crushed firearms used in drug violence and visible from the American side of the border, exclaiming, “No More Weapons!” It was yet another plea to the United States to enact the strong gun laws desperately needed to stop the trafficking of guns from U.S. gun shops to Mexico.  Perhaps states like California, New York and Massachusetts should consider erecting similar billboards in the southern and western states that feed gun trafficking here at home.

The Mexican drug cartels come to America for their firearms because weak American gun laws make our country the path of least resistance. Thus, President Calderon said in English when he unveiled the billboard near Ciudad Juarez, “Dear friends of the United States, Mexico needs your help to stop this terrible violence that we’re suffering.”  He continued, “The best way to do this is to stop the flow of automatic weapons into Mexico.”  Similarly, armed criminals in states with strong gun laws get their guns in the states where weak laws offer the path of least resistance as well.

The Brady Campaign’s latest “scorecard” of state gun laws dramatically demonstrates that states with strong laws are at the mercy of states with weak laws.  The Brady report finds that California, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut and Hawaii have the strongest gun laws in the Nation, as well as the lowest gun death rates.  It also finds that the 31 states with the weakest gun laws, including states like Arizona, Utah and Florida, “export” crime guns to other states at a rate nine times higher than the states with the strongest gun laws.  For example, it has long been known that traffickers who supply criminals in cities like New York, Newark and Boston exploit the ready supply of guns from dealers in Florida and other southeastern states.  Maybe the Northeast states, taking a page from President Calderon, should erect a billboard along Interstate 95 in Miami.

In the rare instance when a gun “exporting” state did the right thing and strengthened its laws to reduce trafficking, it made a difference.  In 1993, Virginia passed a law limiting the number of handguns an individual could purchase to one gun every 30 days, as a way of ending bulk sales by gun dealers to traffickers.  The law caused a significant drop in Virginia’s share of guns trafficked from the Southeast to the Northeast.  Under pressure from the gun lobby, seeking to vindicate the sacred right to buy more than twelve handguns in a year, the Virginia legislature recently passed legislation repealing the “one handgun a month” law.  A recent poll shows that 66% of Virginia voters favor retaining the law.  Only a veto by Governor Robert McDonnell can save it.  Not only Virginians, but all Americans, should urge the Governor to veto the repeal bill and protect this valuable law.

The solution to gun trafficking to Mexico is also the solution to gun trafficking within the U.S.: stronger federal gun laws.  At the very least, high-firepower assault weapons and assault clips should be banned, background checks should be required for all gun sales, uniform limits should be placed on bulk sales of handguns, and greater authority should be given to federal law enforcement to shut down the dealers who aid and abet the traffickers.

For gun traffickers, there should be no more “path of least resistance” from American gun shops to Mexico, or to American cities and towns.  Trafficking of assault weapons and handguns out of American gun shops is not just a Mexican tragedy.  It is an American tragedy as well.

Dennis Henigan is the Acting President of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and the author of Lethal Logic: Exploding the Myths That Paralyze American Gun Policy(Potomac Books 2009).

It is hard to find a federal judge more friendly to “gun rights” than Judge Sam Cummings of Lubbock, Texas. Yet even Judge Cummings refuses to follow the NRA off the cliff of Second Amendment extremism.

Judge Cummings achieved iconic status in the “gun rights” community in 1999 when, in U.S. v. Emerson, he became the first federal judge to rule that the Second Amendment confers an individual right to possess guns for private purposes. That ruling, literally, was unprecedented. It also was out of step with the Supreme Court’s view of the matter, reflected in a 1939 opinion that since the “obvious purpose” of the Second Amendment guarantee was “to assure the continuation” of a “well regulated Militia,” the Amendment “must be interpreted and applied with that end in view.” At the time of his ruling, no federal Circuit Court had read the Amendment as conferring a right divorced from the militia purpose.

Indeed Judge Cummings was sufficiently committed to a broad reading of the Second Amendment that, in the Emerson case, he dismissed the indictment of a very dangerous man for possession of a gun while subject to a restraining order. Timothy Joe Emerson had issued death threats against his estranged wife and her boyfriend, as well as pointing a Beretta pistol at his wife and their daughter during an argument. Judge Cummings, nevertheless, came down foursquare for Emerson’s constitutional right to be armed.

As is now well known, Judge Cummings’ unprecedented view of the Second Amendment was endorsed by the Supreme Court nine years later in District of Columbia v. Heller, in which the High Court, in a 5-4 decision, defied its own precedent in reading the Amendment to confer an individual right unrelated to militia service. Since Heller, the National Rifle Association and other “gun rights” groups have launched a massive legal offensive against existing gun laws (while at the same time arguing that we need to “enforce existing laws” instead of enacting new ones).

Given Judge Cummings’ record in gun cases, it is obvious why the NRA chose his court to file a constitutional challenge to the Texas law setting 21 as the minimum age to carry a concealed weapon in that State. Crime statistics show that arrests for murder and manslaughter peak at age 18, but the NRA was undeterred in arguing that 18-year-olds have a constitutional right to carry concealed and loaded handguns in public places.

James A. D'Cruz TX NRA Plaintiff

The NRA’s biggest problem, though, was that Judge Cummings was careful to read the Supreme Court’s Heller opinion and understand that it does nothing to support the gun lobby’s constitutional extremism. Much to the NRA’s chagrin, Judge Cummings emphasized that the right recognized in Heller was, in his words “quite narrow,” finding that “the Second Amendment does not confer a right that extends beyond the home.” Judge Cummings cited the legion of other post-Heller rulings also confining Heller’s scope to the possession and carrying of guns within the home. Not only did the NRA’s handpicked federal judge find no constitutional right for an 18-year-old to carry handguns in public, he found no such right for anyone to do so. It is also worth noting that, four months ago, Judge Cummings rejected another NRA lawsuit and upheld the federal ban on gun dealer sales of handguns to persons under 21 years of ago, a restriction that obviously impacts the freedom of young people to have a gun inside the home for self-defense.

These Texas rulings are just the latest in a series of painful courtroom setbacks for the gun lobby. A Republican-appointed judge recently upheld the Obama Administration’s modest regulatory effort to curb gun trafficking to Mexico against gun industry attack, and the D.C. Circuit, in an opinion by Reagan-appointee Douglas Ginsburg, rejected the NRA’s challenge to the District of Columbia’s current gun registration system and its assault weapon ban.

These gun lobby legal defeats underscore how much the NRA and its gun industry funders are dependent for their success on the tactics of political threats and intimidation. In too many legislative bodies, including the U.S. Congress, those tactics have often prevailed. A federal courtroom, however, is a far different forum, in which threats of reprisal have no place and advocates are required to offer facts and reasoned argument in support of their positions.

When the task is persuasion, instead of intimidation, the gun lobby has been firing blanks.

Dennis Henigan is the Acting President of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and the author of Lethal Logic: Exploding the Myths That Paralyze American Gun Policy (Potomac Books 2009).

Last week, a federal judge in Washington handed the gun industry a painful legal setback in its efforts to prevent the Obama Administration from attacking the highly-profitable trafficking of assault rifles to the Mexican drug cartels.

Judge Rosemary Collyer – who, incidentally, was appointed by George W. Bush — upheld the Administration’s new policy of requiring federally-licensed gun dealers in four border states to notify federal law enforcement authorities whenever there is a multiple purchase of certain semi-automatic rifles. Judge Collyer found this modest reporting requirement “reasonable” in light of evidence that “certain powerful long guns are weapons of choice of Mexican drug cartels” and “multiple sales of such guns is a strong indicator of gun trafficking.”

The industry’s reaction was a study in hypocrisy. The National Shooting Sports Foundation – the industry trade association that brought the lawsuit – issued a statement expressing its disappointment in the ruling, but emphasizing that “members of the firearms industry take great pride in their longstanding cooperative relationship” with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Yes, the industry is so “cooperative” that it took the ATF to court because retailers could not abide having to tell ATF when someone walks out of a Texas gun shop with ten semi-automatic assault rifles. I guess it’s easy to be “cooperative” with ATF until the Bureau actually requires you to cooperate to fight gun trafficking.

The industry’s strategy of contesting the reporting rule in court has clearly backfired. The gun industry has enthusiastically joined the National Rifle Association in denying that U.S. gun dealers are a primary source of guns for the Mexican cartels. Ironically, the industry’s own lawsuit has given the government an opportunity to present the full range of evidence that the cartels are arming themselves with American guns, evidence the industry was unable to overcome.

For example, Judge Collyer cited a General Accountability Office report concluding that a “large proportion of the firearms fueling Mexican drug violence originated in the United States, including a growing number of increasingly lethal weapons.” Judge Collyer relied on actual crime gun traces indicating that over 20,000 firearms seized by Mexican authorities and traced between 2004 and 2008 originated in the United States, mostly from the border states. This is likely a vast undercount since not all crime guns seized in Mexico are traced. Contrary to the gun lobby’ s denial of reality, Judge Collyer found that “the states bordering Mexico have been shown to be major sources of guns related to crime in Mexico.”

Indeed, the gun lobby has so distanced itself from reality on the issue of gun trafficking to Mexico that it now claims that the ATF’s misguided “Fast and Furious” operation, in which ATF allowed some 2,000 guns to move from the U.S. to the cartels in an effort to get at cartel leaders, was itself a conspiracy to justify the rifle reporting rule. In the paranoid universe of the gun lobby, there was no trafficking of guns to Mexico until ATF authorized it during the Obama Administration to justify more gun restrictions.

This absurd theory struggles to explain the fact that the Bush Administration used similarly flawed tactics to combat the tidal wave of guns moving to Mexico long before the “Fast and Furious” operation was implemented.   Given that “Fast and Furious” has come under fire because ATF may have allowed guns to “walk” into Mexico, it is odd that the NRA and the gun industry would object to a reporting requirement that would enable ATF to better stop trafficked guns before they get to the border.

Let’s face it. Although there are some gun dealers responsible enough to voluntarily inform the authorities about suspicious transactions, the industry is dominated by manufacturers, distributors and retailers who profit so handsomely from high-volume sales to traffickers that they will fight any serious effort to curtail them. In Judge Collyer’s ruling, the industry’s hypocrisy is laid bare for all to see.

Dennis Henigan is the Acting President of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and the author of Lethal Logic: Exploding the Myths That Paralyze American Gun Policy (Potomac Books 2009).

Family and friends of Christina-Taylor Green lit candles during a private ceremony at the family farm, where she was born

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once observed that “Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only light can do that.” On Sunday, the sad first anniversary of the Tucson shooting, many thousands of Americans joined together to light candles of remembrance and protest against the darkness of gun violence.

They lit candles of remembrance for the six killed in Tucson, including 9-year-old Christina-Taylor Green. They lit candles of remembrance and hope for the thirteen who were injured but survived, including the courageous Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who summoned the strength to lead the Pledge of Allegiance at a ceremony in Tucson. They lit candles of remembrance for all the gun violence victims in our nation’s recent history, over 500,000 murdered with guns since Dr. King fell to an assassin’s bullet in 1968.

They lit candles of protest as well. The candlelight vigil campaign, culminating in sixty-eight vigils and related events in twenty-two states and the District of Columbia on a single day, unified under the name TooManyVictims. They sent a single message. Our nation has seen many victims of gun violence. It can no longer be endured. It must stop.

They lit candles from New York City to Chicago to L.A. They lit candles from Duluth to Austin. From Reading to Columbus to Eugene. They lit them in public parks, at courthouses, at city halls, in places of worship, even at barber shops and on street corners.

They lit candles at the National Historic Site honoring the Brown v. Board of Education decision in Topeka, Kansas, where Park Rangers honored one of their own — Ranger Margaret Anderson, recently killed by gunfire in the line of duty at Mt. Rainier in Washington State.
And the victims’ voices were heard. Even those whose lives long ago were cut short by gunfire. Their loved ones stepped forward and told their stories. They told them to those who gathered with candles; they told them to the world through the Brady Campaign’s website, www.toomanyvictims.org.

The question is: Are our political leaders listening? Too many of them hear only the intimidating drumbeat of the National Rifle Association and the gun extremists the NRA represents. When a horrible shooting like Tucson happens, too many of our leaders freeze with fear – not fear for the next innocent victims that may be struck down, but fear of gun lobby political reprisal against any politician who dares to call for sanity in our nation’s gun laws.

However “difficult” it is for a politician to stand up to the gun lobby, it is far more difficult for a parent to bury a child, for a sister to bury a brother. Indeed, the fatal shooting of Park Ranger Anderson was a bitter reminder of the human cost of appeasing the gun lobby – the Coburn Amendment passed two years ago legalizing loaded guns in national parks.

If Dr. King were alive today, he would have led a candlelight vigil against the devastation of gun violence. If more of our political leaders had a fraction of Dr. King’s moral courage, countless lives could be saved.

The “Too Many Victims” candlelight vigils were only a beginning. Every American who is tired of cowardly politicians who dance to the NRA drummer should follow the path lit by those candles on Sunday by getting involved. Join committed Americans like Yoko Ono, Beau Bridges, Lewis Black, Plaxico Burress and Kate Walsh, who all spoke out to say there have been too many victims and the killing must stop. Go to www.bradycampaign.org and you’ll see how you can join with many thousands of other Americans to seek a safer America.

Dennis Henigan is the Acting President of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and the author of Lethal Logic: Exploding the Myths That Paralyze American Gun Policy (Potomac Books 2009).

For most Americans, the holiday season is about the peaceful enjoyment of family and friends –those who mean the most to us in our daily lives. But even this season of peace knows no respite from the plague of gun violence. For too many Americans, this holiday season will be remembered only for the devastating sense of loss as their loved ones are torn from their lives by senseless gunfire.

In Texas, on Christmas Day, a man facing marital and financial problems shoots and kills his estranged wife, two teenage children and three other family members while dressed in a Santa Claus outfit.

In Colorado, a three-year-old accidentally shoots and kills his five-year-old playmate.

In Indiana, a 7-year-old boy is shot in the head during a Christmas celebration with his family, as shots are fired from the street outside his house.

In California, a soldier who had received a Purple Heart for his wounds in Afghanistan is shot and paralyzed during an argument over a football team.

On some level, it seems we ought not to have to confront such horror during the season of peace. But not even the most joyous time of the year can immunize us against the reality of gun tragedies. The deadly drumbeat of gun violence just goes on and on, an American tragedy of a kind and dimension unknown to other western nations. Among all the western, high-income nations of the world, 80% of gun deaths occur in the U.S., a particularly unwelcome instance of American exceptionalism.

Many thought the Tucson mass shooting of almost a year ago would rouse the Washington politicians to action. After all, one of the most admired Members of Congress – Rep. Gabrielle Giffords – was herself struck down and still struggles bravely to recover from a grievous head wound. Yet the only gun-related legislation to reach a vote in Congress since the Tucson shooting would make it easier for dangerous carriers of concealed weapons – like the Tucson shooter Jared Loughner – to carry their guns across state lines. The politicians are not listening to the voices of ordinary Americans whose families and communities have been devastated by gunfire. They hear only the intimidating voice of the gun lobby, with its finely-honed message that any demonstration of common sense on the gun issue will be met with political reprisal.

Yet this is an issue that should transcend politics. No one who hears the stories of the victims – those who survived the gunshots and those who did not – can possibly believe that gun violence is an issue to be determined by the politics of the moment. No one who hears these stories can escape the conclusion that the unnecessary loss of life and untold suffering from easy access to deadly weaponry presents not a political issue, but a moral issue. The politicians are not hearing, because they are not listening.

That’s why, on January 8, 2012, a year to the day after Tucson, Americans will join together to ensure that the voices of the victims are honored, and are heard. From San Francisco to New York, from Austin to Duluth, Americans will light a candle in remembrance of those struck down, and in protest against the callous inaction of those in power who seem able to find every flimsy excuse for national policies that guarantee that the deadly drumbeat of gun violence will go on and on. The Too Many Victims Candlelight Vigil campaign allows ordinary Americans to make a simple, yet powerful statement, that our country deserves more than cowering politicians afraid to stand up to the bullies of the gun lobby.

Our country deserves a season of peace uninterrupted by the tragic reminders that, for too many Americans, there is no peace from gun violence.