Gun Guys

by Dan Baum

  That nearly a third of gun sales are private and therefore don’t involve a background check at a federally licensed firearms dealer comes from Guns in America: Results of a Comprehensive National Survey of Firearms Ownership and Use, by Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig for the Police Foundation in Washington, D.C., 1996.

  When I assert on this page that gun controllers didn’t talk much about banning private gun sales, one exception would be Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who, according to the article “New DNC Chief Wants to Screen All Gun Sales,” by Mike Lillis, in the April 18, 2011, edition of The Hill, told a rally sponsored by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, “It is outrageous that gun buyers evade the background-check system every day, even in broad daylight.” She could point to such cases as Eduardo Sencion, a man with a documented history of mental illness who—according to an item titled “Carson City IHOP Shooter Fired About 60 Rounds from Fully Automatic Rifle,” on RGJ.com on October 5, 2011—bought his gun in a private sale. Even though he broke the law by possessing a full-auto weapon without going through the steps required by the National Firearms Act of 1934, buying a gun privately was perfectly legal. Representative Carolyn McCarthy of New York was “expected” to introduce a bill requiring all gun sales to pass through a background check, though if she did so, it seems to have gone nowhere.

  James D. Wright and Peter H. Rossi discovered, when researching Armed and Considered Dangerous: A Survey of Felons and Their Firearms, that only 16 percent of the felons they surveyed said they got their guns from gun stores, in all likelihood because their criminal records made them “prohibited persons.” And Wright and Rossi conducted their survey in 1986, eight years before the Brady Act would mandate computerized background checks.

  Ross Douthat’s column arguing that Christianity is punching below its weight was “A Tough Season for Believers,” The New York Times, December 19, 2010.

  CHAPTER NINE: CONDITION BLACK

  One of Rick Ector’s inspirations was Kenneth Blanchard, author of the book and podcast Black Man with a Gun. His book, whose subtitle is A Responsible Gun Ownership Manual for African Americans, begins with “A Letter to My Sisters,” addressing African American women, who are among the strongest adherents of gun control.

  “You will unknowingly contribute for the first time to the destruction of our people,” Blanchard writes. “Proof that you have been targeted for manipulation is that gun control groups use your tears and your suffering as sound bites in commercials and in public hearings.… You are being used to disarm African Americans by allowing the increase of senseless and repetitive laws.”

  There’s a connection, Blanchard writes, between the high rate of murder among young black men and the strict gun-control laws that exist in many majority-black cities. “We are allowed to destroy ourselves because this negative image is profitable.… The people that want us unarmed and helpless don’t have a hard time convincing us.… Racially motivated violence is not the only threat to which blacks are more vulnerable. An African American has at least a forty percent greater chance of being burgled and a one hundred percent greater chance of being robbed than a white person.”

  If young black urban men liked guns so much, the gun blogger Robert Farago had a solution: train more of them to shoot. He argued in a March 26, 2012, posting titled “Guns and Inner City Kids: A Modest Proposal on Guns” that disciplined, supervised firearms instruction might satisfy these young men’s natural fascination with guns, teach them safe gun handling, and demystify guns to the point that they don’t feel a need to carry. Moreover, he argued, by holding out the prospect of getting a permit to carry legally if they stayed straight and passed their gun-handling classes, training young men to get their concealed-carry licenses might actually make better citizens of them. “If you can convince inner city kids on a rifle team that staying out of trouble will allow them to carry a gun legally when they reach adulthood and make it happen, you will create a new corps (in the nonmilitary sense) of trained, responsible gun owners within inner city communities. People ready, willing and able to defend themselves and the rule of law. How great is that?”

  While most black civil rights groups support gun control, the big exception is the Congress of Racial Equality, founded in 1942, which pioneered the Freedom Rides, among other achievements. CORE, whose national chairman, Roy Innis, was a member of the NRA board, frequently took the gun-rights side in writing amicus briefs; one example is its brief in Edward Peruta v. County of San Diego, a 2011 case. CORE opened its argument with a historical argument. “CORE’s interest in this case stems from the fact that the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms for self defense is an important civil right that was denied to African Americans under the antebellum Slave Codes, the Black Codes passed just after the Civil War, and under the Jim Crow regimes that persisted into the twentieth century.”

  Readers might also enjoy reading “The Second Amendment: Toward an Afro-Americanist Reconsideration,” by Robert J. Cottrol of Rutgers School of Law and Raymond T. Diamond of Tulane University Law School, in Georgetown Law Journal, vol. 80 (1991–92): 309.

  Representative Bobby Rush’s son Huey was shot dead in Chicago in 1999. According to the website OnTheIssues.org, which tracks the positions political leaders take, Rush has voted against reducing the waiting period to buy a handgun, voted against laws that would indemnify the gun industry from product liability lawsuits, voted in favor of closing the gun-show loophole, and has an F rating from the NRA.

  CHAPTER TEN: IT’S NOT GOING TO BITE

  Jeff Cooper wrote in Jeff Cooper Commentaries, vol. 5, no. 7 (June 1997), “I coined the term ‘hoplophobia’ in 1962 in response to a perceived need for a word to describe a mental aberration consisting of an unreasoning terror of gadgetry, specifically, weapons. The most common manifestation of hoplophobia is the idea that instruments possess a will of their own, apart from that of their user. This is not a reasoned position, but when you point this out to a hoplophobe he is not impressed because his is an unreasonable position. To convince a man that he is not making sense is not to change his viewpoint but rather to make an enemy. Thus hoplophobia is a useful word, but as with all words, it should be used correctly.”

  Jeff Cooper’s classic volume is Principles of Personal Defense, published in 1972 but reissued many times since.

  CBSNews.com reported Robert Reza’s shooting as “Emcore Shooter Robert Reza Kills Two, Self, Say Police,” on July 12, 2010.

  The statement on this page that support for gun control among the public is dropping comes from a Gallup report on November 26, 2010, “In U.S., Continuing Record-Low Support for Stricter Gun Control.” In 1990, 78 percent of Americans thought gun laws should be made more strict. By 2010, that was down to 44 percent.

  President Obama’s decision to allow holders of concealed-carry permits to wear their guns in national parks was reported in The Washington Times on February 22, 2010, by Stephen Dinan, as “Parks Open to Holders of Concealed Guns.”

  The National Shooting Sports Foundation’s annual report, Industry Reference Guide, is a trove of information about the gun business and gun-guy demographics. All of the information about the aging of the shooting community comes from the Industry Reference Guides of 2010 and 2011. The line about the future of shooting sports being “precarious” comes from the second paragraph on page 1 of The Future of Hunting and the Shooting Sports: Research-Based Recruitment and Retention Strategies, published by the National Shooting Sports Foundation in 2010.

  To the extent young people are hunting, they are more and more doing it with bows. Archery was the one type of shooting sport that the Industry Reference Guide reported to be on the rise. Everyplace Margaret and I traveled, we found lots of floor space in gun stores given over to archery. On the approach to Belle Fourche, South Dakota, for example, we encountered Triggers, a compact store wedged into a roadside strip mall. Inside were only about twenty-five rifles and ten handguns, while dozens of bows hung from
the ceiling in long, colorful echelons. Really, Triggers was an archery store with a little bitty gun annex.

  “Young people are all over archery,” said Justin Raber, the fit and eager young owner. “It starts when they’re little. The 4H has an archery program, but no riflery. And look at the hunting shows on the Outdoor Channel—they’re all about archery. It just looks better on television than gun hunting—the string being pulled back, the arrow flying through the air—you can see it hit the deer. There’s more to watch than when a guy puts a gun to his shoulder and goes bang.”

  Archery season always comes before rifle season, he said. Young people want to be out when the weather is good and the elk are bugling. It’s warmer. It’s easier to camp. “And young people don’t want to do what their fathers did,” he said. “They want more of a challenge.”

  He took a bow off the wall. “Tell you something else: There’s no hassle to buying a bow. No 4473s. No bullshit with the ATF. You put down your money and you walk out with it.” He placed the bow in my hands. It was light, made of carbon fiber. With pulleys at either end and an electronic red-dot sight, it seemed less like a throwback to Indian times than something issued by NASA. “That’s the future you’re holding there,” Justin said.

  Given that the National Shooting Sports Foundation is the trade group for the firearms industry, it’s surprising how many gun guys ignore it so completely. When I quoted the figures from the Industry Reference Guide in an article about the AR-15 business called “Guns Gone Wild,” published on Kindle Singles in September 2011, the gun blogger Robert Farago of The Truth About Guns took off after me as though I’d quoted Charles Schumer or Sarah Brady, and judging from his readers’ comments, most agreed. I sent Farago the pages from the Industry Reference Guide, but if he looked at them, he didn’t respond. Six months later he was still going on about it, telling his readers, “Dan Baum Is Still Wrong, But You Knew That,” even though I’d published nothing further on the subject. I was reminded of the wisdom of the sociologist C. Wright Mills, in his 1959 book The Sociological Imagination: “First one tries to get it straight, to make an adequate statement. If it is gloomy, too bad. If it leads to hope, fine.”

  The point isn’t the insults against me. What’s striking is the refusal of many gun guys to acknowledge the demographic problem that their own trade group has identified. As someone who likes to shoot and thinks that firearms instruction, properly done, can be good for young people, I’d like to see the shooting sports continue. While I assume most gun guys would say likewise, many seem to prefer the defensive crouch to acknowledging that something about guns and shooting is failing to appeal to young people. The hostile, defensive crouch may well be it.

  The article about young people turning away from automobiles and driving is “To Draw Reluctant Young Buyers, G.M. Turns to MTV,” by Amy Chozick in The New York Times, March 22, 2012.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: SPIN DRIFT

  Those who participate in practical shooting—running and gunning—insist that standing still and squeezing off aimed shots at a target is useless practice for defending yourself with a gun. “You take Olympic shooters, and they practice all the time, and they can hit a fly off a cow’s nose from 100 yards,” a retired New York police commander told Al Baker of The New York Times in the December 9, 2007, article “A Hail of Bullets, a Heap of Uncertainty.” “But if you put a gun in that cow’s hand, you will get a different reaction from the Olympic shooter.” Typical New Yorker: He thinks cows have hands.

  That the magazine Soldier of Fortune held the first three-gun contest in the 1980s is common wisdom, but I was never able to document it.

  CHAPTER TWELVE: FRIEDRICH AND BARNEY

  One can read about Cincinnati’s German regiments in the Civil War at cincinnati.com and about the Kolping Society at kolpingcincinnati.com.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: HE UPPED, I UPPED

  For information about police killings during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, readers are referred to the case of the Danziger Bridge, in which eight officers of the New Orleans Police Department were involved in the killing of two unarmed civilians on September 4, 2005. Although state charges were originally dismissed, five of the officers were convicted in federal court on August 5, 2011, on charges related to covering up the shooting and deprivation of civil rights.

  Here is a sample of the invective directed against me on AR15.com after I asked if any gun buriers would like to be interviewed anonymously. First someone discovered this passage I had written in a 2010 blog about the Tanner Gun Show:

  The weapons at this Denver show seem to have been designed by Klingons. Many are short, black, high-tech semi-automatics—ARs in the jargon—the civilian version of the rifles American soldiers carry in Iraq and Afghanistan. They fire a bullet unsuitable for most hunting, and are crusted with combat-ready lasers, flashlights, night-vision scopes, and red-dot sights. They start at around a thousand dollars. The tables that don’t cater to the AR crowd hold other modern man-killers: rough-finished Yugoslav AK-47’s for three hundred dollars apiece; Barrett .50-caliber rifles capable of penetrating an armored limousine; brand-new stainless-steel semi-automatic pistols with fifteen-shot clips selling for upwards of eight hundred dollars; tinny chrome-plated pocket pistols for less than a hundred bucks. There’s also plenty of body armor, web gear, combat fatigues, silencers, stacks of thirty- and fifty-round magazines. It feels less like a “show” than an arms bazaar in Peshawar.

  The guy who posted this said I was being “overly dramatic and deliberately putting out false information.” I’m still not exactly sure what it was about this paragraph that got him so upset. Nothing in it was untrue; I even avoided the mistake, which gun guys hate, of calling magazines “clips.” Maybe the line about “man-killers.” Several people took exception to the reference to Klingons.

  It wasn’t until someone discovered a Washington Post story about Margaret and me getting cheated out of a D.C. apartment we’d rented for Barack Obama’s inauguration that the “Arfcom army” went completely wacky. Range_Officer posted in tall red letters, “THIS GUY IS AN OBAMA SUPPORTER,” and then the vitriol really flowed. Someone went to my website and posted a picture of me with Margaret and Rosa. Wrote Meadowmuffin: “Is nice that obango lickers were the first to get bent over financially after his inaugeration [sic] then the rest of the country after them. That family pic looks just like a poster for liberal types, go write about your hero the kenyan and wookie instead.” Added Fxntime, “I put forth the motion that said liberal troll-turd be banned as the worthless commie obama butt kissing socialist mangina he is.”

  This went on for about two weeks, and then I was banned from AR15.com by its owner, Edward Avila of Rochester, New York.

  The Dalai Lama quote about shooting back was taken from “Dalai Lama Urges Students to Shape World,” which ran in The Seattle Times on May 15, 2001. Reporter Hal Benton paraphrased the Dalai Lama this way: “The Dalai Lama said acts of violence should be remembered, and then forgiveness should be extended to the perpetrators. But if someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, he said, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun. Not at the head, where a fatal wound might result. But at some other body part, such as a leg.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: GUN SHUL

  Gus Cotey’s and Sarah Thompson’s articles on the mentality of gun-control proponents, and the Theodore Haas interview, can be found on the website for Jews for the Preservation of Firearms ownership.

  I confirmed the story of meeting Gideon Goldenholz with Goldenholz himself, in a telephone interview on January 6, 2011.

  The number of privately owned guns in the U.S. is always a guess. According to “U.S. Most Armed Country with 90 Guns Per 100 People,” a Reuters story by Laura McInnes on August 28, 2007, the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies estimates 270 million. This isn’t too far from the estimate of David Hemenway et al., who in an article titled “The US Gun Stock: Results from the 2004 National Firearms Survey,” in the
journal Injury Prevention, vol. 13 (2007): 15–19, estimated at least one privately owned gun for every adult.

  That Russia has a murder rate four times that of the United States comes from Seventh United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems, covering the period 1998–2000 (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Centre for International Crime Prevention). The U.S. had a 2008 murder rate of 4.2 per 100,000 people, and Russia’s was 20. Ireland, Switzerland, Indonesia, Greece, Hong Kong, Japan, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar were all around 0. Colombia topped the list at 61.

  But not all Americans are necessarily equal. Writing in American Psychologist in April 1993, Richard E. Nisbett of the Institute of Social Research at the University of Michigan argued in Violence and U.S. Culture that guns aren’t the best predictor of violence; white Southerners are. “There is a marked difference in White homicide rates between regions of the United States, such that homicide is more common in the South and in regions of the country initially settled by Southerners.” And it’s not that the South was poorer than other regions, either. “Although differences in poverty are associated with higher homicide rates, regional differences in homicide are by no means completely explained by poverty, because Southernness remains a predictor of homicide even when poverty differences between regions are taken into account.” Why were Southerners more violent? They “are more likely to endorse violence as an appropriate response to insults, as a means of self-protection, and as a socialization tool in training children,” Nisbett wrote.

  The Anti-Defamation League had no use for Aaron Zelman or Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership. In “Revolution and Reality: A Transcript and Analysis of Mark Koernke’s ‘Time is Running Out,’ ” published as part of ADL’s Militia Watchdog series in 1998, it backhanded JPFO as a “small extremist group.” JPFO, the ADL wrote, a “radical pro-gun group, which ironically consists of mostly non-Jews, shrilly makes the (unsupportable) claim that the Holocaust was caused by gun control.”