First 100 days: Assault weapons ban - The First 100 Days- msnbc.com
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Support evaporated
Congress imposed a ban on what it called assault weapons in 1994, outlawing the sale and importation of 19 military-style weapons, copycat models with similar features, and high-capacity ammunition magazines. In a compromise with Republicans, the Democrats who controlled Congress agreed to let it expire in ten years unless it was renewed. By 2004, with Republicans in charge, support had evaporated.
Democrats again control Congress, and a Democrat is once more in the White House, the same conditions that allowed the ban to be imposed 15 years ago. But the make-up of Congress is different, with little appetite for restricting gun ownership.
The Senate’s majority leader is a westerner, Harry Reid of Nevada, where gun control is political poison. And though the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, comes from the more liberal San Francisco, she has shown no enthusiasm for reviving the assault weapons ban because of opposition among her colleagues.
Sixty-five House Democrats wrote Attorney General Holder in mid-March, saying they “would actively oppose any effort to reinstate the 1994 ban” and predicting “a long and divisive fight” if the administration tried to push for one. Many of them represent rural districts, where gun control is no more popular than in Nevada.
By the time President Obama made his trip to Mexico, he conceded the battle would be futile. “None of us are any illusion that reinstating that ban would be easy.”
“What we’re focused on is how we can improve our enforcement of existing laws,” he said.
Straw buyers
Enforcement of the nation’s gun laws is primarily the responsibility of ATF, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. Its agents and inspectors check to see that gun dealers obey laws governing sales. They look for evidence of “straw buyers” – people legally entitled to buy guns who then sell them to criminals or others who don’t want any records tying them to a specific gun.
ATF says such buyers are responsible for a large proportion of guns that wind up in the hands of violent drug cartels in Mexico.
“These illegal purchases,” ATF’s William Newell told Congress last month, are “a key source and supply of firearms for drug traffickers.”
The best way to improve enforcement of existing gun laws, said one veteran ATF agent, is to put more badges on the street.
“Give us more people to inspect gun dealers, looking for straw buyers, in the states where the guns smuggled into Mexico are coming from,” he says.
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