By Patricia Lee Sharpe
I never understood why the National Rifle Association supported easy access to AK-47s and other ugly weapons that have absolutely no use for hunting or for winning medals in sharp shooting. Clearly, someone was out to make money. But who was buying all those weapons? Not deer hunters in Pennsylvania. Not elk hunters in New Mexico.
And why, if American gun owners were so harmless (except to animals) and legal in their use of guns, all the hooha over registration? We register the great big lethal weapons called automobiles, don’t we? As symbols of the American character surely cars are more significant than guns, at least for most of us.
Steamrolling Congress
And yet the N.R.A. always has enough money to keep Congress from sensibly regulating the sale, possession and use of fire arms.
Yes, there are some nutty (and dangerous) anarchists in the remoter areas of Idaho. And there are some Second Amendment fanatics who hate gun control on principal. (All of us have our own powerful Constitutional hobbyhorses. Mine are—well, another time.) But the very thought of legalizing concealed weapons in national parks is enough to put me off hiking forever (which would not be good for my physical or mental health) and I’m not alone in this. Moreover, most Americans are not hoarding heavy duty weapons against the day when they’ll have to charge into Washington to bring down a despot.
Home Sweet Hazard
The gun lobby regularly trots out other reasons for opposing gun control laws. Consider arguments like those which resulted in having an anti-gun control amendment attached to the recent vote in favor of giving the District of Columbia an honest-to-god voting seat in the House of Representatives. Senator John Ensign, Republican of Nevada, accused D.C. officials of making it “more and more difficult for district residents to own a gun to be able to protect themselves in their own homes.” He forgot to mention that firearms in the home kill more children (accidentally) than interlopers (intentionally). They also make domestic quarrels lethal (although knives are also useful here).
Such falsifications notwithstanding, the gun lobby has used fear very effectively to gain support for its rabid rejection of gun control legislation. Why have they taken such a hard line? Why have they lobbied so hard? Why have they worked so hard to bamboozle the American public with specious arguments?
Now my puzzlement is over. We now know where huge numbers of truly lethal weapons are going: to support the drug wars in Mexico. Mexico, you see, has tough gun laws. You can’t saunter into a gun store and walk out with a gruesome arsenal in Mexico. The baddies have to buy the guns in the U.S. and smuggle them into Mexico, which is pretty close to a narco-state these days. In fact, it’s said that the criminals are better armed than the police and the army. Muchas gracias, America!
Once upon a time, I believe, weapons from the U.S. were smuggled into Ireland to support the I.R.A. This trade was semi-countenanced by U.S. officials, thanks to the Irish lobby. Meanwhile, American Tamils have been supporting with U.S. dollars, if not necessarily U.S.-bought weapons, one of the most vicious groups in the business, the Tamil Tigers, whose ignoble final act is to hide behind unarmed civilians to blackmail the Sri Lankan army into letting up the pressure.
I wonder what terrorist organizations, aside from Mexican narcotrafficantes, are currently being supported by guns got for cash and a hearty back slap in the U.S.? (Aside from the ones that the Army has so stupidly lost track of in Iraq and Afghanistan, of course.) And who is profiting? As in names of buyers and sellers, not generalities.
Follow the Money
So here’s my demand of U.S. legal authorities in the U.S. Get on the money trail! Start examining the financial records of the NRA (and any other anti-gun control groups) and all their contributors down to the last vague detail that needs elucidating. From what sources are they getting the huge sums they need to so completely control the debate on an issue of U.S. domestic safety? Get authorization to examine the books of gun merchants, too, by which I mean those who deal in weapons of war.
No, guns don’t kill people by themselves, but people with guns kill people, and some people want to make it incredibly easy to get weapons of all sorts, including those that are useful only for war, not for legitimate hunting or even for rational self-protection. Those who lobby against gun control are, purposely or negligently, corrupting and subverting government north as well as south of the border. Once the American people learn what such weapons are really for, they may be less complacent about the way their representatives vote.