Every gun has a history, and this one was potentially explosive. Federal officials quickly traced the XS-15 mechanism to a company in Maine owned by one Richard Dyke. Until last month, he was Bush’s state finance director in Maine. He’s an ally of top Bush political supporters; he had flown down to Austin, Texas, to take part in a luncheon with the governor. And, as bad luck would have it, Dyke’s company bears an unfortunate name: Bushmaster Firearms. “We were looking at a public-relations nightmare,” said one Bush adviser. By Friday, police said that Furrow, in fact, had used other weapons in his arsenal: an Uzi and a Glock 9mm pistol. Even so, Democrats thought they had found a way to attack the Republican presidential front runner. The gun-control issue, Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York told NEWSWEEK, “could be the No. 1 chink in George Bush’s armor.”
The guns in the schools and the streets have touched off a war in the world of politics. It’s not the first of its kind, but it’s the first that could end up as a central feature of a presidential campaign. In the new NEWSWEEK Poll, 78 percent of voters said that gun control would be an “important” factor in their choice of a president. After the Kennedy and King assassinations in the ’60s, gun control surfaced as an issue, and did so again after the attempt on Ronald Reagan’s life in 1981. But this time the emotional driving force is different, and arguably more powerful: the continuous loop of murderous assaults on children in schools, workers at computer terminals and unassuming citizens in the streets. This time, it’s not about distant victims, but about your kids and co-workers.
As a result, state legislatures are passing new gun-control measures once thought impossible to enact. Congress, when it returns from recess next month, will debate new curbs with a new sense of urgency–or at least the kind of made-for-cable hysteria designed to excite each party’s grass roots in time for the 2000 election. Bill Clinton and his attorney general, Janet Reno, are proposing sweeping new measures. Al Gore and Bill Bradley, vying for the Democratic nomination, are offering dueling gun-control proposals. Republican contenders, meanwhile, stand shoulder to shoulder with the gun lobby, as do most–though not all–GOP leaders on Capitol Hill. And all the while the National Rifle Association gains members, launches new ad campaigns and girds for an electoral Armageddon next year. “We’ll be ready,” NRA spokesman Bill Powers told NEWSWEEK. “We will see you all on Election Day.”
The American people, as usual, are more sensible and centrist than the political insiders who use overwrought rhetoric to build their get-out-the-vote lists. The NEWSWEEK Poll shows that even most gun owners are in favor of some significant new gun-control measures. According to the poll, 81 percent of non-gun-owners want all handgun owners to register with the government–but, surprisingly, so do 66 percent of gun owners. The same with mandatory courses on gun safety: 88 percent of non-owners favor it, but so do 80 percent of owners. There is near-universal support for child-safety locks on guns, and for a waiting period to allow background checks for all handgun purchases. There’s even substantial support among gun owners–45 percent in the poll–for requiring the owners of hunting rifles to register with the government.
But voters also know what gun-control hard-liners refuse to admit: that gun control is no panacea. Asked in the poll to identify “the most effective” deterrent to violent incidents, only 18 percent said “stricter gun control.” By comparison, 33 percent said the best answer was to pay closer attention to antisocial behavior, and 23 percent favored increasing security in schools and offices. Only a third of the public thinks that stricter gun-control laws would reduce violent crime “a lot.”
That realistic view is supported by the facts investigators have compiled in the Furrow case. Every one of the seven guns in his possession, NEWSWEEK has learned, was legally in circulation. They were all first sold by a licensed retail dealer. Two were purchased by Furrow from licensed dealers at least two years ago, according to officials of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. The Glock semiautomatic pistol that authorities say Furrow used to kill the postal worker also followed a legal chain of custody. It was purchased in 1996 by the police department in Cosmopolis, Wash. The department swapped it at a firearms store in town. The store’s owner sold it to a legal buyer, and that buyer gave it to a friend, who sold it at a gun show to Furrow in early 1988. Furrow, a senior ATF investigator told NEWSWEEK, apparently bought the four other weapons in similar fashion.
Chillingly, Furrow from 1992 to 1995 held a federal firearms license, which allowed him to buy and sell guns across state lines. He also would have been eligible to apply for a permit to own fully automatic weapons such as machine guns. At the time, officials now know, Furrow was deeply involved with white-supremacist groups, but officials couldn’t have denied him the license on that basis. ATF officials are looking into what trafficking in guns–if any–Furrow conducted. He didn’t renew the license.
Still, by the time he went on his L.A. rampage, Furrow was legally barred from having any guns at all. Convicted in May of assaulting mental-health workers last fall, Furrow served 165 days in jail. As a felon, he was prohibited by federal law and by a Washington state court order from possessing firearms. State officials had the discretionary authority to search his home and arrest him if he still had any guns. They reportedly were planning a search, but too late.
Rather than make the case for new laws, gun advocates contend that Furrow’s story makes their point: that the answer to the criminal use of guns is strict enforcement of criminal laws already on the books. Their favorite example is Richmond, Va., where violent street crime has been dramatically curtailed. The reason, they say, is that the U.S. attorney there has made a crusade of prosecuting in federal court–and asking for maximum penalties–all cases in which perps are found with a gun while committing a crime.
Some gun-control advocates are willing to concede that enforcement can make a difference, but they press for new limits on guns anyway. “We don’t have to argue that gun control is the only answer,” says Democratic consultant Robert Shrum, who began his career as an aide to Bobby Kennedy. “All we’re saying–all we have to say–is that further gun control can help.” The opposite side, led by the NRA, is left to argue an absolutist case–that virtually no new legal measures will do any good–and in the current political mood that has become a tougher case to make in the court of public opinion. “Gun control has never been a ‘voting issue’–the kind that really draws people to the polls,” says Shrum. “This time, I think, it will be.”
Democrats are betting on their side–and there is a sliver of evidence in the NEWSWEEK Poll to support them. Democratic voters, who tend to favor strict measures, are more than twice as likely as Republicans to say that gun control will be the “single most important issue” to them next year. In California, the leading national indicator of political trends, the Democratic-controlled legislature recently passed–and the Democratic governor signed–a new bill that goes well beyond the assault-weapons ban enacted by Congress in 1994. Rather than list specific guns, the California measure describes them by type, making it harder to skirt restrictions. In a growing list of cities, among them New Orleans, Atlanta and Chicago, Democratic mayors are now supporting sweeping cost-recovery suits against manufacturers, which would force them to pay for injuries caused by their guns. In Los Angeles, even the Republican mayor, Richard Riordan, has joined the litigation crusade.
It’s a different, more complex story in Congress. Both parties, for different reasons, have mixed feelings about taking any real action. Democratic hard-liners such as Schumer truly want a tough new bill, and see little or no downside risk in actually passing one. But it’s easy for him to say: he represents liberal New York. Elsewhere in the country, advocating gun control can be hazardous to political health. The NEWSWEEK Poll shows why: in rural areas, 59 percent of those polled say they own a gun, compared with 41 percent nationally. The South is the region with the highest percentage of gun ownership, 46 percent.
Not surprisingly, the few gun-control Democrats left in the heartland aren’t eager to vote for a bill. Some Republicans genuinely want action, led by two prototypical Lincoln moderates from Illinois: Speaker Dennis Hastert and Judiciary Committee chairman Henry Hyde. But the pro-NRA forces in the GOP rank and file are led by the powerful Republican whip, Tom DeLay of Texas. And he wants no bill at all.
The measure Congress will debate next month is hardly revolutionary. It would require that safety locks be sold with all new handguns. It would make it illegal for an adult to own a gun if he had committed a crime as a juvenile. It also would require a federal background check for sales at gun shows, and here’s where the vehement arguments begin. Democrats want to allow authorities three days to complete the background checks; GOP hard-liners want “instant” checks, which can sometimes be less reliable. Democrats want to broadly define a “gun show,” requiring permits for any event at which more than 50 guns are displayed for sale by two or more people. “That’s absurd,” says the NRA’s Powers. “I’d need a federal permit to sell my grandfather’s gun collection.”
But wars have started over less. The NRA has been on alert for months, running infomercials on late-night cable featuring chairman Charlton Heston and other actors. Membership is up nearly 500,000, and now approaches 3 million. But the NRA seems to be circling the wagons as much as reaching out. In a new video project, for example, NRA camera crews in Britain, Australia and Canada have been filming citizens turning in their firearms to comply with strict new anti-possession laws. It’s the ultimate nightmare for Second Amendment True Believers: the dread moment when the government comes to “take up the guns.” “We have video of people lining up to turn in their ancestors’ old shotguns,” says Powers. “It’s frightening.” On the Hill, meanwhile, the NRA already has picked out its targets, among them influential and wavering Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee such as George Gekas of Pennsylvania and Howard Coble of North Carolina.
Congress, gridlocked as usual, is likely to pass the buck to where it always stops in American politics, and where it really belongs: the next presidential campaign. On the Democratic side, Gore and Bradley are gun-control advocates of long standing, though Bradley was the first to make it a centerpiece of this year’s campaign. Gore, who once represented gun-toting Tennessee, occasionally threw the NRA a vote in Congress, but as vice president he was a leading force in passing the assault-weapons ban and limits on the ability of felons to own guns. Bradley supports registration of all handguns; Gore would require anyone who wanted to buy a handgun to first obtain a picture ID license. “The differences are dime thin,” insists one Gore adviser. But by avoiding outright gun registration–the reddest of red flags to the NRA–Gore may be trying to save face with voters in key swing states such as Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio and Tennessee, where many gun owners are Democrats.
The GOP “presidentials” are the mirror opposite: genuinely devoted to gun rights, comfortable with the gun-show crowd–and scared to death of crossing the NRA. In Ames, Iowa, last weekend, Republican candidates were dense on the ground, scouring for votes at the GOP straw poll. If the shooting in L.A. registered much, it wasn’t noticeable in the tents outside the Hilton Coliseum. A good example of the GOP attitude is Elizabeth Dole, who began her campaign this spring with a well-advertised swipe at the gun lobby. It wasn’t so much what she said–she opposes assault weapons and favors safety locks–as the forum in which she said it: on her first swing through New Hampshire. But these days she doesn’t mention guns. When asked if the GOP risks alienating voters with its stance on guns, she retreats into a lecture on the evils of pornography on the Internet.
But the candidate with the most at stake–and hardest hand to play–is George W. Bush. Texas is the proud homeland of the American gun culture, and Bush knows how to heft a shotgun, and actually hit a quail with it. He was proud to sign a “concealed carry” law in 1995, and in the Texas Legislature earlier this year followed the NRA line supporting only instant checks at gun shows. In the semiotics of national politics, these are the kinds of signals that would help Bush secure the GOP’s “base” if he’s lucky enough to be the party’s nominee next year. But at the same time Bush’s strategists are obsessed with ensuring that he is competitive–if not a winner–in states such as California and New York. That means appealing to women in the suburbs. And soccer moms don’t generally carry guns.
So it’s not surprising how the Bush campaign decided to deal with Richard Dyke when they first learned about the company he owned. When he’d come down for lunch, he was known only to top Bush campaign officials as a “businessman” and CEO of “Dyke Associates.” Then the Democratic “opposition researchers” vetted the luncheon lists, and discovered his gun company. Soon thereafter, reporters started calling him. Soon after that, Dyke quit the Bush campaign. It didn’t matter that Dyke had never talked with Bush about guns, or that the governor had had no idea what Dyke did for a living. The title “gun manufacturer” was enough. “I didn’t want him to carry my baggage,” Dyke told NEWSWEEK. The feeling was mutual: no one tried to talk him out of leaving.
