The National Rifle Association leadership suffered a major defeat in the U.S. Senate today, losing a key vote on a bill that would have radically weakened rules governing the concealed carrying of firearms around the country.

Gun violence prevention advocates across America worked day and night contacting their Senators, convincing them to defeat the gun lobby’s dangerous proposal.  Today, all their hard work paid off as Senators voted to protect American communities and reject gun lobby threats.

One point of interest is the fact that three targets of strong NRA attacks in the 2008 elections for U.S. Senate, who went on to win their elections anyway, were part of a group that made the difference today in helping keep our communities safe.

Last November, these three individuals were all rated ‘F’ by the NRA.  The NRA went on to spend more than a combined $600,000 to defeat them and elect their opponents.  What’s more, the NRA’s preferred candidates in each of these three races were incumbents, and all three incumbents were defeated.

What good did the NRA’s money and endorsements do for former Senator Norm Coleman, former Senator John Sununu and former Senator Gordon Smith?  Not enough to return them to the Senate. Voters in those states rejected the gun lobby’s attacks last November and voted for their opponents.

Today, while gun violence survivors and victims’ families, law enforcement, and the American public can express their gratitude for the leadership of Senators Richard Durbin of Illinois, Dianne Feinstein of California, Charles Schumer of New York and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, there are others to thank for today’s win.

Victims of gun violence can also thank the people of Minnesota for electing Senator Al Franken, the people of New Hampshire for electing Senator Jeanne Shaheen, and the people of Oregon for electing Senator Jeff Merkley.

Today’s vote is proof that hard work, and elections, have real-life consequences that can help save lives.  The NRA’s diminished clout at the ballot box is now translating into diminished clout on the Hill.

After today’s victory, I am hopeful that our Congress will begin to address proactive measures to reduce gun violence in this country by doing things like requiring criminal background checks for all gun sales, particularly at gun shows.

We’ve heard a lot about gun rights so far in this Congress.  Now is the time to talk about gun responsibilities.

(Note to readers: This entry, along with past entries, has been co-posted on bradycampaign.org/blog and the Huffington Post.)

Senator John Thune of North Dakota has introduced an amendment (No. 1618) to the Department of Defense appropriations authorization bill (S. 1390) , which could come up for a vote as early as Monday, July 20.

This proposal would override state law by forcing every state (except Illinois and Wisconsin) to accept the carrying of loaded, concealed firearms by non-residents of their state, even if those persons are legally barred from possessing guns in that state.

Under this proposal, states would be forced to recognize all concealed weapons permits – even if the requirements for out-of-state permit-holders fall well below their own.

Take training requirements, for example.  Some states, like Mississippi and Georgia, require no training at all for the carrying of concealed weapons.  Texas, by contrast, requires at least 10 hours of range time before the Lone Star State issues a permit.  States like Texas would see their standards gutted under Sen. Thune’s plan.

Also, states that currently allow relatively few out-of-state visitors to carry concealed weapons within their borders – such as Oregon, Maine and Nebraska – will be negatively impacted by Sen. Thune’s amendment.

Under the dangerous provisions of the Thune Amendment, a resident of a state with tight restrictions on concealed weapons who could not qualify for a concealed weapons permit under their own state law, could now receive a non-resident permit from another state with a lower threshold, and police in their state of residence would be forced to honor that permit. [Correction: Our analysis here was based on S. 845, an earlier version of Sen. Thune's proposal.  The version currently under debate has addressed this particular issue.]

Why does all this matter?  You could be forced by Congress to tolerate dangerous people in your neighborhood armed with concealed weapons and legal permits to carry them – permits that were issued by other states with weak or non-existent safety requirements.

Gun pushers, in response, often extol the virtues of permit-holders regardless of the requirements they have to (or don’t have to) meet, as if they were amateur police officers, claiming that they’re all “law-abiding citizens” we can trust to carry their loaded handguns wherever they want – from college classrooms to airports.

The real world is different.  The fact is that too many gun owners with concealed carry permits are not “law-abiding citizens” at all.

• For example, there is Richard Poplawski, the white supremacist armed with an AK-47 who allegedly murdered three Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania police officers this past April on his front porch.  Poplawski has been charged with three counts of homicide, aggravated assault, and a weapons violation.  He was a concealed carry permit-holder.

• Perhaps you also recall Michael McLendon.  He was the “suicide shooter” who went on a rampage through the small towns of Kinson and Samson, Alabama this past March, murdering 10 people before killing himself.  He too was a concealed carry permit-holder.

• You likely do not know the name Michael Iheme.  A year ago, he was charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of his wife, Anthonia, in St. Louis Park, Minnesota.  This past February, he was found guilty of second-degree murder.  Anthonia Iheme had an active restraining order against her husband due to an alleged history of domestic abuse.  After shooting his wife, Michael Iheme called 911 and said, “I have killed the woman that mess my life up [sic]….”  He was a concealed carry permit-holder, as well.

• Then there is James Patrick Wonder.  Wonder was charged last August with the first-degree murder of Donald Pettit – a federal agent with U.S. Customs and Border Protection – in Pembroke Pines, Florida.  Wonder reportedly shot Pettit in the head in front of Pettit’s twelve-year-old daughter.  Wonder was also a concealed carry permit-holder.

• And according to reporting released just today, there is the case of Darryl Inman who pleaded guilty to felony charges of pointing a handgun at fellow motorists during a road rage incident in Edmond, Oklahoma.  Inman has been ordered to pay his victims $500 to cover counseling costs and lost wages, and is reportedly serving a 10-month deferred sentence with anger management classes.  He has also been ordered to forfeit his firearms, as well as his permit to carry a concealed handgun for life.

As a spokesperson for the Edmond Police Department said, “You can have a license to carry a gun.  That does not give you a license to threaten people. You can’t pull a gun out and wave it at somebody in a threatening way.”

In fact, the Oklahoma County District Attorney handled the case personally, in part, because he said, “I felt it was another concealed carry license incident that crossed the line for self-defense.”

There are hundreds of other examples like these listed here and here, with new ones being reported every week.  Dangerous people have concealed carry permits who shouldn’t be allowed near a handgun, much less be given permission to carry one anywhere in the country.

The Brady Campaign has prepared a fact sheet with helpful information that details the problems with Thune’s Amendment.

Sen. Thune’s amendment would endanger public safety, put law enforcement at risk, and trample states’ rights to make their own gun laws. We encourage all who are concerned about this to contact your Senator today to help ensure that a dangerous proposal like this does not become the law of the land.

(Note to readers: This entry, along with past entries, has been co-posted on bradycampaign.org/blog and the Huffington Post.)

Rep. Eliot Engel of New York recently held a hearing in his House Foreign Affairs subcommittee about the Government Accountability Office report on American guns being trafficked to criminals across our southern border into Mexico.

That hearing included an exchange between Ranking Member Connie Mack, Jr. from Florida and Jess Ford of the GAO – the single witness called to present the report’s findings.

I present that exchange at length below [available from Lexis and here] because I believe it reveals the shallowness of the opposition to requiring criminal background checks for nearly all gun sales and to restricting access to military-style assault weapons.  These are measures that would slow the flow of illegal guns – not just to Mexico, but right here within the United States.

Rather than argue about percentages, let’s focus on the fact that 20,000 trafficked guns from America have ended up at Mexican crime scenes. 

With that kind of information, I hope our opposition will now acknowledge there is a serious problem that needs to be addressed:

…REP. MACK:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

And as I mentioned in my opening statement, I’m having a little bit of difficulty in — or having any confidence, real confidence, in the [GAO] report.

It’s not to say that I don’t think some of the recommendations that you come up with might be good ones. But I don’t know that the report itself is something that we should put a lot of value in.

I would — most of the things that you have talked about, most of the numbers you’ve talked about has been based upon the number of guns that you were able to trace. And we know that a majority of those guns that are — that you’re able to trace are the ones that come from the U.S. But that leaves out a majority of the guns that are being seized.

So I’d ask, how many guns were you able to trace to Cuba or Venezuela or Bolivia or Ecuador or from other continents? That would be a question that I’d have for you.

Also, in — you know, just I think two days ago we were at another hearing together where you had said that Radio or TV Marti — that less than 1 percent of the people in — or Cubans see it. And I suggested then that how could you do — how would you even contemplate that someone — a Cuban would answer the phone and say, “Yes, I watch TV Marti,” when they’re in Cuba living under a brutal dictatorship?

So these two things — this report and that report — I’m having a hard time having any kind of real confidence in the report itself.

So if you could comment on how many of the weapons do we know come from Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador? ….

MR. FORD: Okay, well, let me maybe respond first to the issue of the data that you indicate you believe the way we portrayed that information is flawed. I don’t agree with that conclusion.

What we’ve got is a summary of information that came from ATF. It’s ATF data. It’s not GAO data. The ATF data is based on guns that were identified and traced from Mexico. As we clearly state in our report, that represents approximately a quarter of the guns that the Mexican government reported that they seized in 2008. So we clearly identify that in the report.

Secondly, the — with regard to — the data is the data. It’s 20,000 guns. Those guns –

REP. MACK: Let me just say this: So it would be — so you would also say that to say that 90 percent or 95 percent of the guns in Mexico are coming from the U.S. is false? That is not an accurate statement?

MR. FORD: That’s right.

And we don’t say that.

REP. MACK: Right. But other people are saying that.

MR. FORD: Well –

REP. MACK: I think it’s important that -

MR. FORD: — our report does not say that. Our report clearly states the facts.

The facts are it’s 90 percent of the guns that were traced, that we were able — that the Mexican government and ATF were able to send back here to be traced by ATF. It does not represent the 75 percent of the guns that we don’t know where they came from because they were never submitted for trace. That’s clearly stated in our report. So if someone’s misreporting that, you know, that’s not my problem. But our report is based on the facts.

The second thing that I think is more important in this is — and the thing that I think that you all should be concerned about is, regardless of whether we know the — 100 percent of all of the guns that have been seized in Mexico — where they came from, I think we should be concerned by the fact that 20,000 of those guns we know for sure came from here….

But the data that we used in our report we believe is sound. And we do believe that further effort actually to expand tracing in Mexico will shed further light on this issue if in fact we can get the Mexican government to send more traces here….

As I said when the GAO released their report, it should be clear that America’s weak gun laws pose not only a public safety crisis here at home, but also a foreign policy crisis across our southern border.

In fact, while I wish I could say I was surprised by the GAO’s findings in their report, researchers at the Brady Center reached many of the same conclusions almost four months earlier in a report of their own, ‘Exporting Gun Violence: How Our Weak Gun Laws Arm Criminals in Mexico and America.’

With 20,000 illegal guns from America recovered at crime scenes in Mexico over the last five years, there is no excuse for Congress and the President not to take steps now to close the gun show loophole in the Brady background check system and give America’s law enforcement the tools it needs to protect public safety.

As the exchange in Rep. Engel’s hearing demonstrates, there is no reason why the gun lobby and their defenders should further dictate gun policy in this country if they persist in refusing to acknowledge that there is even a gun trafficking problem.

(Note to readers: This entry, along with past entries, has been co-posted on bradycampaign.org/blog and the Huffington Post.)

Rasmussen Reports released an interesting poll result yesterday, confirming the persuasiveness of the NRA’s gun industry advertising campaign and the power of the news media to drive public attitudes.

Rasmussen asked respondents the following question: “Are gun sales in the United States up because of the fear of increased crime or fear of increased government restriction on gun ownership?”

Not surprisingly, the results were:

23% Fear of increased crime

57% Fear of increased government restriction on gun ownership

21% Not sure

A few points are worth mentioning here:

• Tellingly, both answer choices begin with the word “fear.”

• The NRA spent 30 times more money building their fear campaign against Candidate Barack Obama than they did against Al Gore in 2000.  While NRA leaders were crushed on Election Day (taking another Senate loss just this week to Al Franken in Minnesota, after spending over $500,000 in a failed bid to re-elect Norm Coleman), their advertising has been a boon to the gun industry.

• One news story after another attributes the increase in gun sales to President Obama’s election and essentially the “fear of increased government restriction on gun ownership.”

• On the other hand, as a general matter, reducing crime currently ranks low on the public’s priority list.

• Importantly, Rasmussen did not report whether the respondents themselves feared such restrictions, or whether respondents themselves were stocking up on firearms.  Rasmussen did ask the abstract question of why respondents believed gun sales in the United States are up.

• In fact, a Rasmussen survey in April reports that 76% of all Virginians – the NRA’s home state – support a key “restriction on gun ownership”: requiring all sellers at gun shows to do background checks on buyers.

It appears that, in the gun sales survey released yesterday, Rasmussen has done a useful service at measuring public attitudes about the cause of an event that has been covered extensively in the news – the apparent rise in gun sales.

The public apparently believes that people stocking up on guns fear increased government restrictions.

That same public, however, appears to be unafraid of that result.