David B. Offer Tuesday, May 15, 2007

-- National Rifle Association press release, April 27

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The National Rifle Association is wrong.

Gun control laws can stop madmen. They can prevent evil.

History offers proof.

After a string of mass shootings in the 1980s and early 1990s, Australia was horrified by the slaughter of 35 people at the Port Arthur Historical Site in Tasmania. Martin Bryant, 28, sprayed death from an AR-15 assault rifle.

Within a few weeks, the government banned semiautomatic rifles and shotguns and launched a gun buyback program that destroyed nearly 700,000 weapons.

There were 13 mass shootings in the 15 years before the horror in Tasmania.

There have been none since.

Gun laws stopped the evil.

Britain banned semiautomatic rifles in 1987 after gun enthusiast Michael Ryan killed 16 people and wounded 13 others in a rural town. The next year, after Thomas Hamilton used four legally obtained handguns to kill 16 children and a teacher at a kindergarten in Scotland, Britain banned most handguns.

"Today, under laws that make it illegal for private citizens to own anything larger than a .22-caliber gun -- and subject them to thorough background checks -- Hamilton would have had a difficult time obtaining the guns he used ... two .357-caliber Smith & Wesson revolvers and a pair of 9mm Browning pistols," the AP reported.

Britain now has one of the world's lowest gun homicide rates -- 0.04 slayings per 100,000 people. The U.S. rate is roughly 100 times higher.

Disarmament such as that in Britain and restrictions as strong as those in Australia are not likely in this country; gun ownership, gun sports and hunting are deeply inbred in our culture. There are constitutional questions about some gun regulations. Neither culture nor Constitution, however demand that we ignore reality.

The reaction to the slaughter at Virginia Tech last month followed a familiar pattern.

First, the nation reels from shock with the news of another terrible crime.

Next, people ask how it could have happened, what motivated the killers. There are calls for stronger, tougher, better laws to control guns.

Then the gun lobby gets to work. You know: Guns don't kill people, people do. Don't trample our constitutional rights. We already have enough laws, just enforce them. The litany repeats itself.

Then nothing happens -- until the next time someone takes a gun and shocks the nation.

I was in the Army in Germany on Nov. 22, 1963, when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. I remember the shock -- American and German -- and the politicians who called for tougher gun laws.

In 1968, when Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were shot, I was a reporter in Hartford, Conn. I covered the grief when a second Kennedy brother was killed, then the riots when King was assassinated. I remember the promises that, finally, something would be done.

I remember the failed efforts to gun down Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan. And more empty promises.

School shootings have become the norm in America, a tragic routine in our lives, shocking for a moment. Then forgotten.

More than 40 years ago -- Aug. 1, 1966 -- Charles Whitman climbed the tower at the University of Texas to gun down 27 people.

Too young to remember that? Ponder more recent events:

1999: Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, kill 14 and wound 23 at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo.

2005: Jeff Weise, 16, shoots his grandfather and his companion, then goes to school and kills a teacher, a guard, five students and himself in Red Lake, Minn..

2006: Carl Roberts shoots 10 Amish school girls, none older than 13, in Nickel Mine, Pa. Five die.

Now we add Virginia Tech. Seung-Hui Cho, 23, kills 32 people.

Following the Virginia Tech shootings, the National Rifle Association said it has long opposed selling guns to "violent criminals and those who have been adjudicated by a court as mentally incompetent."

That sounds good, but it hides reality.

The NRA has spent millions of dollars to intimidate politicians who support even the most gentle restrictions on firearms.

It has fought efforts to establish waiting periods for those seeking to buy guns to allow law enforcement officials time to conduct reasonable background checks.

It fights proposals for gun registration and opposes limits on gun ownership for military veterans with records of mental instability, including post-traumatic stress.

And, of course, the NRA fights efforts to regulate sales at gun shows.

The slaughter will not end until ordinary people demand action and politicians find the courage to face down the NRA.

Don't expect that to happen soon.

David B. Offer is the retired editor of the Kennebec Journal and the Morning Sentinel. E-mail davidboffer@hotmail.com