CURSE.TXT
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   Larry Pratt wrote what I consider an excellent essay on this topic.
   It is much better than anything I could come up with and I'll let it
   speak for me.

                            The Curse of Compromise
                                      by
                                  Larry Pratt
                  Executive Director of Gun Owners of America


Neville Chamberlain thought he brought us peace when he made a deal with
Hitler in 1938.  A year later, World War II began.  Compromise is seldom
the road to victory.  It is too bad that some supposedly pro-gun
congressmen and their allies do not realize this.  Compromise is a
popular strategy in Washington, DC.  But in terms of the Brady law and
other gun control legislation, compromise means giving away what your
enemy is not strong enough to take.

As I write these words, Handgun Control, Inc. has issued its new
legislative agenda.  This anti-gun lobbying group, headed by Sarah
Brady, wants gun registration, firearms bans, etc.  But such enemies as
Handgun Control are not our most dangerous foes.  The most deadly enemy
is the person or politician who pretends to be your friend until a
crucial moment arrives.  Suddenly he makes a deal and you lose a bit
more of your constitutional protections.

A compromise in the political arena is different from other forms of
compromise.  If I make a compromise on the price of a new car, the
dealer can't jack up the price after I drive off the lot.  But a
political compromise is grounded on nothing firmer than the word of a
politician.

Unexpected Results

Sometimes, pro-gun advocates think they can make a good trade by giving
up something to get something.  But the other side doesn't play fair.
In 1989 in Oregon, gun rights groups traded a mandatory background check
and a tripling of the state's waiting period (from 5 to 15 days) for
what they thought would be an easier system for getting a permit to
carry a concealed handgun.  Yet the fee for concealed carry licenses was
increased by 16 percent in 1990.  And those licenses are good for just
two years.  As of 1990, it cost $50 to apply for a permit, which a
sheriff could still deny at his discretion.  The gun control side
remains unsatisfied.

The instant check system, which was supposedly a great victory because
it was incorporated into the Brady bill, turns out to be a means of
computerized gun owner registration.  Even the Congressional Office of
Technology Assessment admitted in its 1991 report, Automated Record
Checks of Firearm Purchasers: Issues and Options:

"The fact remains that computerized criminal records systems maintain,
as standard operating procedure, transaction logs to document who is
using the system, when, and for what purposes.  Transaction logs are
needed to help assure system accountability and security.  The Virginia
transaction log does not include the names of firearms purchasers, but
the potential exists regardless of legal prohibitions."

It was this ability to keep a computer file on all gun purchasers that
became the basis for Virginia's "one gun per month" law passed in 1993.
Had the computer system not already been set up and paid for, the state
of Virginia's ability to administer any gun rationing law like this one
would have been virtually impossible.

Thus, the much touted "alternative" to a waiting period turns out to be
a permanent means of building a national, centralized, computerized gun
registration scheme.  When the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms
tried this in 1978, the National Rifle Association (NRA), with Neil
Knox's leadership, slapped them down.  But starting in 1989, the NRA,
under Warren Cassidy, chose to fight gun control with national
computerized gun control.  This created problems for the organization's
hard-working lobbyists.  Jim Baker of the NRA found himself forced by
Cassidy's compromise to tell USA Today (October 26, 1993): "We already
support 65% of the Brady bill, because it moves to an instant check,
which is what we want."

I don't think the instant check is what Jim Baker or most NRA members
wanted. But that is what they were stuck with.  Any compromise our side
offers is somehow treated as permanent; the other side's deals, however,
are written in disappearing ink.

In the state of New Jersey the Second Amendment is a virtual dead
letter.  The voter revolt that has swept the state since Governor Jim
Florio's tax increases and stricter gun control has succeeded in
changing some policies in the state. But the gun rights climate is
unlikely to improve, even under the state's new governor, thanks to the
short-sighted efforts of some members of that state's pro-gun community.

One New Jersey sportsmen's group endorsed a political nobody, Christine
Todd Whitman, against Senator Bill Bradley in 1990.  When some folks
tried to tell these people that Whitman was anti-gun, they wouldn't hear
of it.

Ms. Whitman lost to Bradley in 1990, but that race made her Florio's
leading opponent in the governor's race, which she ultimately won.  In
1993, the New Jersey legislature passed a repeal of part of the Florio
gun control package, but Florio vetoed the repeal.  Whitman thanked her
pro-gun supporters by publicly supporting Florio's veto.  "Pro-gun"
Christine Todd Whitman was nothing of the kind.  She was anti-gun in
1990 and she remains anti-gun today. But a pro-gun group which allowed
itself to become obsessed with partisan politics decided to make a star
out of an enemy.

Beware the temptation to compromise on any Second Amendment issue.  For
the compromise we accept today, no matter how tempting the bargain and
now unwillingly we accept it, simply becomes the starting point for
negotiations tomorrow.

What Was Bob Dole Doing?

Senate Republican Leader Bob Dole of Kansas has a demonstrated ability
to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  His legislative strategy on
the Brady bill has perplexed political experts from coast to coast.

Remember the political climate.  On November 2, 1993, anti-gun
politicians were bounced in both New Jersey and Virginia.  These
pro-Second Amendment victories seemed to put the chill on gun control.
Yet the U.S. Senate passed a ban on certain rifles and shotguns, a ban
on magazines of over ten rounds capacity, and agreed to a waiting period
all in the same month as those elections.  How did this happen'?

To the astonishment of most experts, Bob Dole and his fellow Republicans
agreed to hurry up procedures for considering all the gun control bills.
Opportunities to filibuster legislation were mostly avoided.  Had
senators been allowed to offer amendments on issues that the anti-gun
lobby hates - like establishing a death penalty in Washington, DC -
important gun control bills could have been blocked, or at least slowed
down.  According to the Associated Press, Dole was willing to prevent
"some Republican senators [from] keep(ing) open the option of
filibustering Brady."  Every delay works to our advantage - yet our side
was not delaying matters.  Many of these opportunities were lost by
unanimous consent.  Had Senator Dole, or any other senator, really
wished to stop the gun control express, all it would have taken was
their one "no" vote.

Yet even when Second Amendment allies in the Senate were finally allowed
to filibuster and won on Brady twice (November 19th), Dole was already
reportedly willing to negotiate on November 20th.  A virtually dead
Brady bill was suddenly revived.

During the critical November 20th-21st period, what was Bob Dole
actually saying?  According to the New  York Times of November 22nd, he
said: "Let's get the best deal we can and move on."  Thus, when the
Senate finally passed the Brady bill (by unanimous consent), just three
senators were on the floor.  An objection by any one of those present,
or an objection by any other senator who bothered to show up, would have
defeated the Brady bill until at least after Thanksgiving, and quite
possibly for the year.  Yet no one objected.  It seemed as though Bob
Dole's "best deal" plan had become both Senate and NRA policy.

There were two major flaws with this approach. First, Second Amendment
advocates who fought waiting periods (and won) in places like Texas and
Arkansas found their victories snatched away in Washington.  Alienating
hard-working allies at the state and local level is not good politics.
Second, had the Brady bill been delayed, Congress would have been
dealing with it this year.  Instead, Congress has plenty of time (and a
new year) to debate a boatload of other anti-gun bills.

Some will argue that we did get a commitment to a vote on changes in the
Brady law in 1994 from George Mitchell. But according to the
Congressional Record, Mitchell made no promises except that a vote could
occur:

"We have just now ended a lengthy filibuster, and the price of ending
the filibuster was that we had to agree to bring up a bill and not
filibuster it.... I want to make clear to the Republican leader that he
has not asked for nor have we given an agreement or a commitment to
support the measure."

All we needed were 40 votes to kill the Brady bill.  Instead, Bob Dole
traded that opportunity for the chance to get 51 votes to change Brady
later.  Anyone who can count votes knows that 40 votes are easier to get
than 51.  But that was the compromise.

Learning From the Past

A fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitution has suffered great
damage. Our so-called allies seemed more concerned with preventing
legislative gridlock than in protecting our liberties.  Some people
think that no one can be held responsible. I say, let us learn from our
mistakes, and let us not forget how they were made and by whom.  For to
forget history is to be compelled to repeat it.

                -copied from The New American magazine, April 4, 1994


   I'll say this for Larry Pratt -
He had the good sense to become a co-chairman of the Buchanan for
President campaign.
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