The year of the great "assault weapons" scare

Shooting Industry, August, 1989 by Jim Schneider

For the next three months, Bush pounded Dukakis on the gun issue--especially in the South, West and some parts of the Midwest.

Right before the election, Claibourne Darden, an Atlanta political analyst who specializes in Southern polling, reported that, "It's a single-minded, simplistic issue with gunowners, especially hunters. The NRA told them Dukakis would limit their shotguns and rifles, and it scares the bejeezus out of them."

Darden said Dukakis was running even with Bush in Texas until the Republicans fanned out in the rural areas and told them Dukakis was going to take their guns. "In two or three weeks, Texas was gone," Darden noted.

Defeat In Maryland

Pro-gun groups repeatedly have won at the ballot box with virtually no national media coverage. Even the defeat of Proposition 15 in California back in the early '80s went almost unreported. But when we lost in Maryland last Nov. 8, most of the media eagerly carried the details.

Maryland voters defeated by a 58% to 42% margin a referendum that would have overturned a state law setting up a commission to determine which handguns are not Saturday Night Specials and thus may be purchased in Maryland.

Throughout the campaign, the governor and other state officials did everything they could to sustain the anti-gun law. Rank-and-file police officers were prohibited from supporting the pro-gunners, while their superiors openly endorsed the anti's.

Highway authorities removed pro-gun campaign signs from private property adjacent to public highways. The state's Mass Transportation Authority ran free bus advertising for supporters of the law.

On the eve of the election, police raided the Baltimore office of the Maryland Committee Against the Gun Ban, allegedly to investigate complaints of election law violations. No violations were found. But television and radio stations reported the raid the night before the election, and newspapers carried the story the morning and day of the vote. This raid is believed to have had a major impact on the 20% of the voters who had said they were undecided.

As one pro-gun publication reported at the time, "Constitutional and pro-gun scholars have always warned that a ban on the private possession of firearms by law-abiding citizens would lead to a police state. Apparently, in Maryland, the police state comes first."

As expected, the anti's have attempted to exploit this victory by citing it as an example of what can be done in other states.

House Rejects Waiting Period

The media keeps trying to paint the gun lobby as a "paper tiger," but the gun lobby continues to show that its claws are for real. A good example of this came last fall.

In the spring of last year passage of the Brady Amendment with its nationwide seven-day waiting period for handgun purchases appeared inevitable. All the nose counters said the anti's had the votes to push it through Congress. However, as pro-gun groups alerted their members to the problems posed by the bill, gunowners around the country began contacting their senators and representatives.