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One of the most polarizing issues in America concerns the ability of citizens to purchase and own firearms. Relative to other developed nations such as Great Britain, where handguns have been banned since 1996, the U.S. has a higher violent crime rate. Advocates of gun control argue that by reducing the number of guns in circulation, or at least the number of those that are able to obtain them, that the U.S. could reduce lethal incidents of violence, but opponents of gun control argue that significant restrictions on gun ownership would violate the Second Amendment and empower criminals. While remaining dormant for the last fifteen years, gun control has now become a hot political topic again, especially after a recent string of mass shootings over the last few years such as the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, the murder of black churchgoers in Charleston this summer, and at Umpqua Community College in Oregon. Democratic presidential candidates such as Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Martin O’Malley have made the case for greater firearm restrictions, possibly setting up 2016 as a referendum on how America should handle gun control. Furthermore, President Barack Obama is contemplating greater executive action on gun control, which could also shift the political balance for upcoming gubernatorial elections and congressional races in 2016.
This topic brief will provide extempers with some background information on the American gun control debate, analyze the recent proposals that have been raised for increasing gun control, and then explore the political impact of gun control on voter behavior.
Readers are also encouraged to use the links below and in the related R&D to bolster their files about this topic.
Background Information
Before giving a speech on gun control, it is very important than an extemper has a good understanding of the topic, especially its terminology and what policy actions could classify as gun control. The New York Times on October 7 defines gun control as “a broad term that applies to any sort of restriction on what firearms can be bought or sold, who can possess or sell them, where they can be sold, how they can be stored, what duties a seller has to vet a buyer, and what obligations buyers and sellers have to report that transaction to the government.” You should never give a speech where you argue that gun control does not exist in America because it does. In fact, there are several existing provisions on the federal or state level when it comes to who can own a firearm and what retailers of firearms have to do before officially selling a gun to a perspective customer. As The New York Times explains, federal law bars those who are “adjudicated as mentally defective” by a court or other authority from owning a gun. Similarly, people who are drug addicts, immigrants without legal status, veterans who left the military with a dishonorable discharge, and anyone with a permanent restraining order that bars them from seeing a partner or former partner’s children are barred from owning a gun. States and municipalities have also been relatively free to establish their own gun control regulations. More significant restrictions exist in more liberal areas of the country as New York, California, and Illinois have some of the strictest laws on firearm possession and ownership. States that are more rural or in the Deep South, which tend to lean conservative, do not have significant firearm restrictions. This characterization can also apply to states that are more libertarian in their leanings such as New Hampshire.
One of the obstacles that gun control advocates face is the sheer size of firearm ownership in the United States. The Week reports on October 5 that there are 310 million civilian firearms in the United States, which roughly equates to one per person. In fact, it has been calculated that authorities would have to remove 30,000 guns from circulation in order to prevent a single gun-related homicide. The large numbers of firearms in the United States would make any type of gun confiscation program difficult to enforce. When Great Britain and Australia moved to prohibit handgun ownership, the governments established an amnesty period where citizens were told to bring their guns and ammunition into government authorities and were then compensated for their firearms. If such a program were to be established in the United States it could prove prohibitively expensive. There are also questions about whether it could pass constitutional muster (more on this later).
Advocates of gun control also face a problem of mobilizing their forces as the pro-gun National Rifle Association (NRA) is one of the fiercest lobbying groups in the country. Political liberals hate the NRA just as conservatives despise groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and The Nation, a left-wing news outlet, argues on October 8 that the NRA is one of the major obstacles in the quest for “sensible legislation” on firearms. The NRA claims that it has more than four and a half million members, although some have said that number is an exaggeration, and it does not hesitate to put pressure on politicians and gun manufacturers. For example, The New York Times previously cited notes that in 2000 gun manufacturer Smith & Wesson broke with the gun industry and agreed to several strict gun control measures to settle lawsuits with the federal government. The NRA blasted Smith & Wesson’s decision and led a boycott against the company, eventually forcing it to back out of its deal with the federal government since sales of its guns among NRA members plummeted. Similarly, having a good rating from the NRA is deemed essential for politicians that are running in conservative areas, especially those that have high rates of gun ownership. The Huffington Post adds on October 7 that since 1978 opponents of gun control have been more likely than gun control advocates to contact political officials, thereby adding to the resistance against further gun control measures. Furthermore, the nation’s police forces are not of a similar mind on the effectiveness of gun control. According to National Public Radio on October 9, there is a divide between metropolitan and rural police forces, with those from rural areas having a greater reluctance to support further restrictions on gun ownership. This is very different from the 1990s when police forces showed a more united front in calling for an assault weapons ban and more enhanced background checks.
When speaking about gun control, it is good to marshal statistics to support your analysis. If your team competed at the 2007 National Speech and Debate Association (NSDA) National Tournament in Public Forum Debate they may have some evidence that can support you as the topic for that event was whether handgun ownership should be banned in the United States. Slate points out on October 7 that in 2013 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) listed 16,000 homicides in the United States, 11,000 of which were done with a firearm (mostly handguns). Gun deaths lag behind automobile accidents, which kill three times the number of those killed by a firearm each year. However, gun violence is not simply about homicides. The New York Times writes on October 8 that more than 60% of people in the country that die from firearms each year do so in suicides, which is the second-most common cause of death for Americans between the ages of fifteen and thirty-four. Advocates of suicide prevention argue that greater firearm restrictions could reduce gun deaths as suicide attempts with a firearm are more successful than other methods, and the immediacy of access to a firearm can create problems as individuals who have decided to take their lives usually perform an attempt shortly thereafter. There is some statistical evidence that curtailing firearms could reduce homicides and other instances of violent crime. As Slate reveals, Australia’s homicide rate dropped by 50% after enacting strict gun control measures in the mid-1990s, but the problem with these statistics is that the United States also saw a 50% decline in violent crime during the 1990s without enacting gun control legislation to the same scale as Australia. NBC News reveals on October 7 that America’s murder rate fell from 9.4 per 100,000 people in 1990 to 4.7 per 100,000 people today, and there has been a remarkable decrease in instances of violent crime from 729 violent crimes per 100,000 people in 1990 to 386 per 100,000 people in 2012. This muddled statistical picture makes it harder for gun control advocates to link greater gun control measures to positive reductions in crime. Some of this is made even more difficult by legislative steps to prevent such research. According to Scientific American on February 19, 2013, a CDC study in the 1990s found that having a gun in the home tripled the likelihood that a family member would be shot so pro-gun advocates inserted language into federal legislation prohibiting the CDC from conducting future research that would advocate a gun control agenda. Scientific American argues that greater research is needed into firearm ownership to take the passion out of the issue, and it explains that research into vehicle design and the use of seat belts in the 1950s and 1960s created an 80% reduction in automobile deaths per mile traveled since 1966.
Extempers are just as likely to confront gun control questions in constitutional issues rounds as they are domestic social rounds. As such, extempers should be familiar about the controversy that surrounds the Second Amendment, which reads “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” As The New York Times on October 7 explains, there are different interpretations about what the Second Amendment means. For pro-gun forces, they say that the amendment grants individuals the right to own firearms. However, opponents of firearms argue that the amendment merely gives a collective right to firearm ownership. In other words, the amendment provides for the establishment of regulated militias through the government but does not give an individual a right to possess a firearm. The Supreme Court has had two significant rulings on the Second Amendment and extempers should be familiar with both. The first is Miller v. United States in1939 when the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the National Firearms Act of 1934 that required the registration of specified automatic weapons with the organization that is today the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). Those who favor gun control argue that Miller provides a precedent that justifies federal regulation of firearms. The other major decision came in 2008 when the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in District of Columbia v. Heller Washington D.C.’s prohibition on handguns and its requirement for gun owners to have trigger locks on their weapons was unconstitutional. The Court found that an individual’s right to own a firearm was protected by the Second Amendment. The Court elaborated on this decision in McDonald v. Chicago in 2010 where it said that Second Amendment rights were incorporated to the states under the Fourteenth Amendment and thereby voided elements of Chicago’s ban on handguns (Chicago then moved to require safety classes, require gun owners to register their weapons with government officials, and force re-registry of those weapons every three years). Chicago may soon find itself back before the Supreme Court as the Court may choose to hear the case of Friedman v. City of Highland Park where gun rights advocates are arguing that restrictions on semi-automatic “assault weapons” that carry more than ten rounds of ammunition are a violation of the Second Amendment. If the Court hears the case, a big issue, according to The Los Angeles Times on October 9, would be whether cities have the right to restrict the ownership of high-powered weapons. If the Court chooses not to hear the case, the decision of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals would stand, which agreed that the ban was constitutional.
Recent Gun Control Proposals
During the 1990s there was a significant push for greater gun restrictions. States and municipalities debated and/or passed legislation that mandated a registration of firearms, required trigger locking mechanisms on weapons stored in the home, and prohibited certain firearms such as assault rifles. In 1993, Congress passed the Brady Bill that mandated federal criminal background checks for individuals that purchased their firearms from federally licensed dealers and initiated a five-day waiting period for individuals to buy a firearm. The next year saw Congress pass the Federal Assault Weapons Ban that prohibited ownership of semi-automatic weapons with a detachable magazine that allowed for rapid fire. These pieces of legislation were advanced by a Democratic Congress under Democratic President Bill Clinton, who at that point was in the midst of his first term, and some political analysts postulate that this anti-gun push was partly used by Republicans to win control of Congress in the 1994 midterms. Once this occurred, gun control legislation ground to a halt on the federal level and in 2004 the Federal Assault Weapons Ban expired. While gun control advocates blasted Congress for not extending that legislation, it should be noted that the Justice Department did a study near the expiration of the ban that did not find a statistical correlation between the bill and preventing lives lost due to gun violence.
The recent shootings on college campuses and other similar events at movie theatres and other community centers has produced calls, largely from Democratic presidential candidates, to introduce more gun control legislation. The Business Insider reports on October 5 that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has issued a series of gun control proposals. These include enhancing universal federal background checks, closing the “Charleston loophole” whereby a gun sale can be completed if a background check is not completed within three days, expand inspections of firearms dealers, criminalize the purchasing of guns on behalf of someone who is prohibited from having them (these are referred to as “straw purchases”), enhance laws prohibiting someone with a mental illness from owning a firearm, and repeal federal legislation passed in 2005 that protects gun manufacturers from lawsuits for negligence. Of all of the proposals, the last is probably the most controversial. Gun control advocates allege that if the gun manufacturing industry can be held responsible for crimes committed with its weapons, especially if a certain manufacturer’s firearms are used more frequently than others, that it could start reducing the number of guns in circulation in the United States. Lawsuits have been powerful weapons in the past against major corporations such as big tobacco, but the NRA and Republicans are likely to filibuster any type of legislation such as this on the federal level. Clinton’s proposal, according to The Business Insider, was likely made to help distinguish her from Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in the Democratic presidential contest as Sanders had a history as a House member of opposing waiting periods for firearms ownership (he voted against the Brady bill) and was actually given some support by the NRA. Therefore, extempers should see how this debate plays out in the Democratic primary as it is one area of stark contrast between Clinton’s ongoing campaign and Sanders.
Following the Umpqua Community College shooting, President Obama quickly gave an angry press conference where he said that the issue of gun violence should be politicized. The Christian Science Monitor writes on October 10 that the Obama administration is considering executive action that would circumvent Congress on the issue. Thus far into his presidency, President Obama has issued twenty-three executive orders that relate to gun sales that have expanded background check requirements and encouraged greater prosecution of gun-related crimes. New executive actions may work to close a “gun show loophole” that allows individuals selling guns at gun shows from having to carry out a background check on purchasers. Gun control experts argue that to close this loophole it should be required that individuals that sell between fifty and one hundred firearms at a given time, whether in person or online, should be required to perform background checks on those that buy their products. Another action that President Obama could take might be to use the federal government’s power with regards to purchasing firearms to demand greater self-policing by gun manufacturers. For example, if a particular manufacturer refused to follow certain conditions (e.g. experimenting with “smart gun” technology where a firearm does not discharge unless an individual’s authorized fingerprints are recognized as holding the gun), the federal government could make the decision not to purchase firearms from that manufacturer, thereby costing that business a lucrative source of revenue. Executive action would be controversial and could very well provide the NRA with a fantastic recruiting tool, but President Obama may find it as a preferred source of action due to the fact that Republicans in Congress are unlikely to agree to any of his gun-related proposals.
According to USA Today on October 9, there are also some political action committees (PAC) working for gun control legislation, one of which is organized by former Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was the target of a deranged shooter in 2011. Giffords Women’s Coalition for Common Sense is a bipartisan group of former female public officials such as former Secretary of State Madeline Albright, former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman, and former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm. The group is moving to close existing gaps in federal law that does not apply a prohibition of firearm ownership to individuals that abuse former dating partners and individuals accused of misdemeanor stalking.
Voting Behavior and Gun Control
Although there are exceptions, the American political scene is becoming increasingly divided between liberals that support gun control, who are mostly in the Democratic Party today, and conservatives that oppose gun control, who are now mostly in the Republican Party. Prior to the time period when parties became ideologically cohesive, which was a process that began to take place during the late 1960s and did not reach its apex until the 1990s, it was not uncommon to see supporters and opponents of gun control within the same political group. That is changing, though, and with it the national debate on gun control. The NBC News article cited earlier notes that only 26% of Republican voters favor gun control today versus 73% of Democrats. In 1993 these numbers were 47% for Republicans and 65% for Democrats.
For gun control supporters, the above statistics are a sign of good news as the more pro-gun control the Democrats become the more likely it might be to one day advance significant legislation. Whereas before firearms legislation was difficult to pass without a bipartisan consensus, if Democrats ever acquire a sizable number of votes in the House and Senate again (which is likely at some point) then they might be unified around a gun control agenda. The National Journal writes on October 9 that while the gun control issue may have cost Vice President Al Gore valuable votes in the 2000 presidential election in tossup states such as New Hampshire, Arkansas, and Tennessee, the party is less reliant on gun-heavy states today. Also, the party’s demographics have groups that favor more gun control as the Pew Research Center found that 60% of college-educated white women and 75% of African Americans and Latinos favor gun control over gun rights. As the share of white male voters declines – these voters tend to favor gun rights – more gun restrictions could one day be coming to America.
However, extempers should be cautious of reading too much into a public opinion poll that seemingly speaks for greater gun control. For example, Commentary explains on October 8 that after the Umpqua Community College shooting polls found that 55% of registered voters wanted stricter gun laws such as background checks by private sellers, a ban on “assault weapons,” and the elimination of high capacity magazines. However, it was unclear in that poll what was considered an “assault weapon” and also when voters are asked about the term “gun control” generally, support nosedived with only a majority of Democrats agreeing that it is a policy that America should pursue. Polls found that one-third of independents and only 25% of Republicans agreed with the “gun control” wording of the question. Furthermore, gun rights remain a touchy subject in states that will be tossups in future election cycles. For example, two Colorado state legislators were recalled in 2013 after they voted for unpopular gun control measures. In addition, the Pew Research Center found in December that substantial numbers of Americans were more supportive of gun rights than gun control for the first time in twenty years. Politicians that seek to make gun issues a priority may run into stiff headwinds as well, with The Huffington Post explaining that only 10% of voters in a June HuffPost/YouGov poll said that gun control was a priority for them.
The issue of gun control in America is a sensitive one and involves significant questions regarding interpretations of the Constitution, the effectiveness of political lobbying and action groups, and the feasibility of trying to limit firearms ownership. Public shootings at malls, schools, and other public venues have not yet persuaded the public to speak with a united voice on gun control and such a voice may never be found. As a result, the process of attempting more gun control in America is likely to be a slow one, just as implementing universal healthcare proved to be a significant problem for American liberals for nearly a century.