Colin Goddard knows something about guns on college campuses.

On April 16, 2007, Colin was a student at Virginia Tech when he was shot four times by a mentally disturbed armed classmate who killed 32 fellow students and faculty.

Colin survived his wounds that day, and has become an eloquent activist for sensible gun laws in this country. If you haven’t seen it yet, watch Colin’s story here:

All over America, ordinary citizens and elected officials have been listening to his story.

One of the issues Colin has spoken most forcefully about is an effort by the gun pushers to force colleges and universities to accept loaded, concealed firearms on their campuses.

In 2009, Colin teamed with other young people, college and university faculty and administrators, and campus police chiefs to fight these proposals in state legislatures across the country.

In one battle after another, the gun lobby was defeated after elected officials heard the arguments of new groups like Students for Gun Free Schools and young leaders in the gun violence prevention movement such as Colin, his friend Lily Habtu of Virginia – a fellow survivor of the Virginia Tech shooting who still carries bullet fragments in her jaw; John Woods of Texas, who lost his girlfriend at Virginia Tech; Brian Roach of Missouri, and hundreds of other young activists who were instrumental in defeating these ridiculous and dangerous proposals.

Although gun lobby-backed legislation was introduced in 12 states in 2009, not a single “guns on campus” bill was enacted into law, including failed proposals in Texas, Alabama, Missouri and Louisiana.

In fact, since the shooting at Virginia Tech in 2007, the gun lobby has suffered 34 consecutive defeats in trying to pass such legislation.  In addition, Colorado State University reversed its previous policy and now prohibits guns on its campuses.

Andy Pelosi, director of the organization Gun Free Kids, had it right when he explained, “There comes a point where the gun lobby’s agenda just becomes too extreme for state lawmakers to support.  Most lawmakers simply don’t want to have to explain the fact that they risked the safety of college students just to appease the radical ideology of the gun lobby.”

Colin Goddard has been a big part of this fight, as he personally campaigned in Missouri, wrote letters to Louisiana state legislators, and published op-eds in major Texas newspapers.  For example, in an opinion column for the Dallas Morning News explaining why Texas should reject a “guns on campus” bill under consideration there last spring, Colin recalled that when the shooting started on April 16, 2007:

[M]y whole class thought it was construction noise. Then I thought the killer was a police officer. I barely had time to make the [911] phone call. Anyone who thinks I could have gotten to a weapon and shot somebody I never fully saw watches too many movies.  Instead of putting more guns in that classroom two years ago, I would work toward removing the two that were there, in the hands of the shooter. Guns on campus were the problem two years ago, not the solution. And we have to solve the problem, not make more of them.

Legislators in Texas, Missouri and Louisiana listened to this courageous young man.  It’s time for more sensible politicians to put these “guns on campus” bills away for good.

Instead, elected officials should focus on another effort that Goddard and other young leaders have been advocating for: closing the loophole that allows dangerous people to buy assault weapons, semi-automatic pistols and other firearms at most gun shows from “private sellers” without first passing a Brady criminal background check.

You can see undercover footage that Colin filmed at gun shows across America documenting such dangerous gun sales practices in this remarkable video:

I’m grateful that 2009 was the second straight year when common sense policies on college campuses were upheld without exception.

We need to take more sensible steps to reduce gun violence in 2010.  That would make for a happier new year for us all.

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

A U.S. soldier, under investigation by the FBI for his communications with a radical Yemeni cleric tied to al-Qaida, uses a gun to kill thirteen and wound thirty-eight at Fort Hood, one of our nation’s leading military bases. A Nigerian terrorist with ties to the same radical cleric comes close to detonating a bomb on a U.S. airliner about to land in Detroit, stopped only by the bravery of a passenger. As to the airline bomber, President Obama acknowledged that “the system has failed in a potentially disastrous way.” The President undeniably is on the defensive, as his opponents do their best to paint him as “soft on terror”.

I have a modest suggestion for the President. In the State of the Union address, demonstrate that national security trumps fear of the gun lobby.

Make no mistake about it, the gun lobby’s influence has made the war against terrorists harder to fight.

First, during the Bush Administration, Congress responded to the gun lobby’s paranoia about “gun registration” by enacting a requirement – as part of the infamous Tiahrt Amendments named for their sponsor Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.) – mandating that records of Brady Law background checks on approved purchasers be destroyed within 24 hours of the purchase. During the Clinton years, these records were preserved for 90 days, which allowed auditing of the background check system to determine if some illegal gun buyers had slipped through the cracks. The National Rifle Association failed in its lawsuit challenging the temporary retention of the records as an illegal “gun registry”; indeed, such a registry was precluded by the Brady Act itself, which mandated the destruction of the records, but did not say when that had to occur.

In the case of Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, the Tiahrt requirement meant that investigators had no way of knowing a rather material piece of information – that Hasan had purchased a gun. Because Hasan had no disqualifying record that would have blocked his purchase, the FBI’s record of his purchase disappeared after 24 hours. (The only other federal record of his purchase – the form he would have filled out at the gun shop – by law must remain at the gun shop, yet another irrational restriction on gun records that has its origins in gun lobby paranoia about “registration.”) According to former FBI agent Brady Garrett, “The piece of information about the gun could have been critical.” Earlier this year, the Obama Administration supported some changes to the Tiahrt Amendments, but proposed no change in the record destruction provision.

Second, due to gun lobby opposition, Congress has done nothing to close the so-called “terror gap” in federal gun laws. Our gun laws are so weak that individuals who have close ties to terrorist groups can be denied guns only if they have already committed a felony, or fall into another of the limited categories of prohibited buyers. The result is a shocking anomaly: a person on the terrorist watch list can be barred from getting on airplanes, but not barred from buying as many guns as he wants. According to the Government Accountability Office, in the five years ending in February of last year, 865 individuals on the terrorist watch list were able to buy guns at licensed gun dealers. As we contemplate why Nidal Hasan and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the airline bomber, were not on the terrorist watch list, let us not overlook the absurdity that, under current law, their inclusion on the list would not have disqualified them from buying 20 assault rifles from a gun shop.

Repealing the Tiahrt record destruction requirement and closing the “terror gap” are not only good policy; for the Obama Administration, they are also good politics. The President should challenge those in Congress who are trying to hang the “soft on terror” label on him to demonstrate their own toughness by standing up to the gun lobby in the interest of national security. He should make them choose between pandering to the paranoia of the gun extremists and preventing terrorists from arming themselves. Keep in mind that a recent survey by Frank Luntz – that most Republican of pollsters – found that 82% of NRA members support “prohibiting persons on the terrorist watch lists from purchasing guns.” On this issue, the NRA’s extremist leadership is hopelessly out of touch with its membership.

We saw multiple U.S. Senators with “A” ratings from the NRA defy the gun lobby to vote to confirm Justice Sotomayor. Which NRA supporters in Congress are willing to vote to allow suspected terrorists to buy guns?

On the politics, don’t take my word for it. Listen to Rahm Emanuel who, slightly more than two years ago, addressed a Brady Center gathering with these words:

“The most important thing we can do, and we’ve got to make this a number one issue . . . if you are on the no-fly list . . . you cannot buy a handgun in America . . . As my old boss used to say, give me that vote, and throw me into that briar patch, and I’ll make politics out of that every day, because if it’s between that terrorist list and the NRA, I know where America is going to be every time and they’re going to make the right choice . . . .”

Rahm, you were right then. And you can do something about it now. Sometimes, on certain issues, the policy and the politics are perfectly aligned. On the issue of guns and terror, that time is now.

For more information, see Dennis Henigan’s new book, Lethal Logic: Exploding the Myths that Paralyze American Gun Policy.

New developments in the Christmas Eve gunplay between Gilbert Arenas and Washington Wizards teammate Javaris Crittenton seem to come out every hour.

Suffice to say, if Arenas violated the law by bringing guns into the District of Columbia to keep them at the Verizon Center, he should go directly from the basketball court to a court of law.

If he is found guilty, Arenas — and any others who have violated the law in this incident — should be required to serve punishment up to and including appropriate jail time.

If media reports are accurate, on top of violations of the law and NBA policy, Arenas also likely violated at least two of the four fundamental rules of responsible gun ownership, the first of which is to remember that “all guns are always loaded.”

Even a casual reading of the news across the nation shows that assuming a gun is unloaded is a recipe for disaster.

• A Texas father thought his weapon was unloaded before he accidentally shot his 2-year old daughter with it.

• A Florida radio personality accidentally shot his wife and his dog with a weapon he believed was unloaded.

• An Ohio teenager accidentally shot and killed a friend with a firearm he believed was unloaded.

The principle here is that guns are not toys.  Guns are designed for killing people — and are used to do so over 30,000 times every year in America.  They should never be treated as a joke.

As captured in a now-iconic photograph, the fact that Arenas and his teammates would laugh while Arenas pretended to gun them all down shows that this message hasn’t even begun to sink in.

Washington Post columnist Dan Steinberg put it best, saying of this spectacle:

What a monumental, colossal, skull-crushingly bad idea that was.

An NBA player who is reckless with firearms is far from the role model that the parents of thousands of his young fans expect him to be.

To that end, NBA Commissioner David Stern was right to suspend Arenas for his behavior, but much more needs to be done.

It is time for America’s athletic community to use its clout and prestige to push for positive reforms in our nation’s gun laws as well as the way American culture addresses — or too often, fails to address — its horrific gun violence problem.

Perhaps as part of his restitution, Gilbert Arenas — like Michael Vick and other athletes before him — could become part of that reformative process.

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

If the National Rifle Association’s leaders want to help suspected terrorists get easy access to guns, bucking the wishes of their own membership, they should come out and say so.

Instead – even in the wake of the Fort Hood shooting massacre – NRA bosses cloak their opposition to legislation that would close the Terror Gap in our nation’s gun laws with misdirected readings of the Constitution, as if our founding fathers said anything about the “rights” of suspected terrorists to arm themselves before slaughtering innocent Americans.

To the contrary, as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson wrote 60 years ago, the Constitution is not a “suicide pact”:

No liberty is made more secure by holding that its abuses are inseparable from its enjoyment… The choice is not between order and liberty. It is between liberty with order and anarchy without either. There is danger that, if the Court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact….

Justice Jackson wrote this in a First Amendment case. Yet while many may disagree over how to apply his principle to questions of free speech, the issue should be clear when it comes to access to firearms.

Speech is used to express ideas. Firearms are used to kill over 30,000 Americans every year and wound another 80,000.

What the NRA’s leaders ignore is that America has always been about striking a balance between order and liberty, rather than always favoring one over the other. By sacrificing public safety at the altar of an “any gun, anywhere, any time” dogma, NRA bosses attempt to wreck this balance.

There is no room for this sort of mindset in America, especially after 9/11, and most recently, the Fort Hood shooting.

Making it easy for suspected terrorists to buy the weapons they would use to attack us on our own soil – just to adhere to some fundamentalist reading of the Second Amendment that even the founders, as well as the current Supreme Court, would not recognize – is dangerous and suicidal.

According to a recent survey by Republican pollster Frank Luntz, most NRA members agree. Luntz found recently that 82% of NRA members favor prohibiting people on the “Terrorist Watch List” from buying guns. The NRA’s bosses, however, are either unaware of their members’ views on this issue or they don’t care.

When it comes to protecting our communities from terrorism, Americans do not read the Constitution as a theoretical exercise. We live it and breathe it every day. So while the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own a gun in the home for self defense, we also know that it isn’t a “suicide pact” that requires us to allow suspected terrorists to easily acquire all the weapons they desire.

Most Americans – including NRA members and gun owners – reject the NRA leadership’s false choice between order and liberty.

We choose both.

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

At a recent social gathering, I was approached by a gentleman who had heard I had written a book about the gun control issue. “I am a gun owner,” he began. I braced myself for the usual lecture on the sacrosanct Second Amendment and the futility of gun regulation. What he said next, however, left me surprised and relieved. “I can’t stand the NRA,” he continued. “I quit them years ago. They are so extreme.”

My initial assumption, that a gun owner would simply parrot the NRA line, likely reflects the thinking of many politicians on the gun issue. They simplistically fear that any vote to impose new gun regulations will be seen as an attack on their gun-owning constituents. I should have known better. Opinion surveys have long shown broad gun owner support for a range of stronger gun laws.

But a new survey, by Republican pollster Frank Luntz and commissioned by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a coalition of over 400 mayors, even more dramatically contradicts the conventional political wisdom on the gun issue. Not only does the NRA not represent the views of gun owners on major issues of gun policy; it doesn’t even represent the views of its own membership.

For example, the Luntz survey found that 69% of self-described NRA members agree that all gun sellers at gun shows should be required to conduct criminal background checks on prospective buyers, a reform that would close the infamous “gun show loophole”. Luntz found that 82% of NRA members support “prohibiting persons on the terrorist watch lists from purchasing guns.” Seventy-eight percent of NRA members support “requiring gun owners to alert police if their guns are lost or stolen.” All of these measures are vehemently opposed by the NRA.

The Luntz poll struck a raw nerve at NRA headquarters, which immediately issued an ad hominem attack on Frank Luntz. The gun lobby’s problem, of course, is that no one can credibly accuse Luntz of bias in favor of progressive positions, given his outsized reputation for putting Democrats on the defensive through his effective messaging for Republicans. Moreover, Luntz found that a majority of NRA members strongly support the Second Amendment and oppose some gun control proposals, results that reinforce the credibility of his survey as a whole.

The Luntz poll isn’t the first to indicate a cleavage between the NRA’s policy positions and its members. Indeed, in 1993, researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health, using data from a 1989 Time Magazine/CNN survey, found that “when gun owners are asked about specific regulatory requirements, they often support the regulation, disagreeing with the stated position of the organization [the NRA]. This holds true for both NRA members and nonmembers.” I suspect that the Luntz results, however, coming from a pollster who has spent much of his career devising messages to support conservative Republicans, will have an impact no prior survey has had.

Let’s hope the Luntz results will open some eyes in the political leadership of both major parties. It seems undeniable that the opposition to reasonable steps to reduce gun violence is driven by a cadre of ideological extremists who obsessively communicate their views to Congressional offices, state legislators, newspapers, talk radio hosts and anyone else who will listen (including the Huffington Post!). When the NRA opposes extending Brady background checks to all gun show sales, or other sensible reforms, it is speaking for them, and only for them. The Luntz poll is the most compelling evidence yet that these extremists are both a minority of gun owners and a minority of NRA members.

The Luntz results reminded me of an insightful comment made back in the summer by Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen as he spoke out against an NRA-supported bill passed by his state’s legislature allowing holders of concealed carry permits to carry guns into bars and restaurants that serve alcohol. (Last month the law was struck down by a Nashville judge as unconstitutionally vague.) “This is an issue which is being driven by a few thousand people in the state who are very passionate about this issue,” he said, “but I think there are tens of thousands or millions of people who . . . particularly in cases like the guns-in-bars are just shaking their heads and thinking it’s craziness.” He added that there are “about 3,000 to 3,500 people out there who always engage on these (gun) issues, are constantly there, e-mailing everybody on the issue.” Governor Bredesen understood that it was his duty to serve the majority of his constituents, not simply pander to the noisy few.

How much gun craziness must our nation endure before more of our politicians start standing up to the extremist minority to enforce the common aspiration of the majority of Americans, including NRA members, for reasonable gun laws to protect the safety and security of our families and communities?

For more information, see Dennis Henigan’s new book, Lethal Logic: Exploding the Myths that Paralyze American Gun Policy.