http://www.sacbee.com/campaign2000/whitehouse/articles/sep/20000905whitehous
e1.new.html

Gun crimes, not sales, upset Bush

By Dennis Love
Bee Capitol Bureau
(Published Sept. 5, 2000)

Third in a six-part look at the records of Republican presidential
candidate George
W. Bush and Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore.

DIME BOX, Texas — Along U.S. 290 near this small backwater town, a road
sign depicts a
brandished musket with this legend: “Texas Independence Trail.”

Farther up the road in Austin, the state capital, the walls of the ornate
Texas Senate
chamber are filled with huge tableaus of the Battle of San Jacinto and the
famous fall of the
Alamo, both seminal events in state history.

“Guns are just a part of who we are,” says Nadine Walker, 61, a
grandmother of 10 whose
family goes back several generations in this east Texas countryside. “It’s
not a bad thing.
Around here, we take pride in taking care of ourselves.”

Wherever one goes in Texas, it seems, reminders are plentiful of the Lone
Star State’s
violent history, of its bloody battle for independence from Mexico, and of
its reliance on
guns to win that struggle. Today, Texas arguably is the most gun-friendly
region in America
— which has rained attention on the gun policies of George W. Bush, the
Texas governor
and Republican presidential nominee.

The issue of guns and what restrictions should be placed upon them always
plays a
significant role in presidential elections. But the tragic rash of
shootings in places like
Littleton, Colo., Los Angeles, Springfield, Ore., and Texas’ own Fort
Worth have pummeled
the public psyche, making the gun control debate more prominent in this
year’s White House
race than in the past.

And while Democratic nominee Al Gore has called for more stringent laws
regarding the
sale and licensing of handguns, Bush has suggested a much more measured
approach, a
tack which accurately reflects his unquestionably pro-gun record as
governor of Texas.

In the six years since Bush took office, the concept of an
armed citizenry as a deterrent to crime seems to have
taken a cement-like hold here. In his first campaign for
governor in 1994, Bush promised that he would sign a bill
ending the state’s century-old ban on the carrying of side
arms by civilians — and he did. Now, to the dismay of
gun-control advocates, more than 200,000 Texans are now
licensed to carry concealed handguns, and the numbers
are rising.

Bush signed an amendment in 1997 to allow licensees to
carry guns into churches, nursing homes and amusement
parks, unless a sign to the contrary is prominently posted
outside those areas.

Last year, amid a nationwide trend of lawsuits against gun
makers by communities seeking to recoup the health costs
of gun violence, Bush was among 14 governors who
signed laws barring local jurisdictions from bringing such
cases. And he took a pass on an opportunity to back
legislation here that would have expanded background
checks on buyers at gun shows in the state.

Nearly 60 percent of households in Texas have firearms,
compared to 34 percent nationwide, a recent National
Rifle Association survey found. In turning his pro-gun
sentiments into public policy, Bush has reflected not only
the position of the controversial NRA, but the relentless pro-gun passion
of the state that
has twice elected him governor.

“What people want to know is, does a candidate have a practical view of
guns, and I do,”
Bush said earlier this year. “I support the vigorous prosecution of people
who break the law
with guns. There ought to be vigorous prosecution for people who sell guns
illegally as well.”

Yet despite his relative “hands-off” attitude regarding guns, Bush’s
campaigns have not
benefitted greatly from gun interests. The NRA and its Texas affiliate
gave Bush $6,000 for
his re-election campaign in 1998, a tiny fraction of the $17.7 million he
collected.

Nor is Bush a member of the NRA, although aides say he owns two shotguns
and a rifle for
dove- and quail-hunting. His father, former President George Bush, quit
his NRA life
membership in 1995 to protest a fund-raising letter in which the
organization called federal
law-enforcement officers “jackbooted government thugs.”

Nina Butts, a lobbyist for Austin-based Texans Against Gun Violence, says
the governor “is not a rootin’-tootin’ cowboy, and I
think he does have a sense of what’s necessary and right to stop gun
violence. But the NRA gets to him over and over, and he
doesn’t do what’s right.”

His decision to not work for passage of the bill that would have required
mandatory background checks of people who buy
firearms at gun shows is particularly rankling to gun-control advocates.
San Antonio police, who endorsed the bill, say 20 percent
of the guns used by felons and juveniles to commit crimes in 1998 were
bought at gun shows.

The day of the Colorado shootings, a Texas House committee killed the
bill. The next day, Bush reversed field and said there
should be background checks at gun shows. Supporters of the measure
thought he would then help them revive the bill.

“We were so excited, because we had no Republican support. We thought, ‘My
God, the governor wants the same thing we do.
We’re going to get his help now,’” Butts recalls. But Bush didn’t press
for the bill. “It became clear so quickly that he simply
wasn’t serious.”

Bush says the proposed state law was flawed because vendors who sell guns
at shows don’t have access to the federal criminal
registry.

“The first step is to get federal legislation to allow them access,” Bush
says. “It has to happen at the congressional level.” He has
reiterated his support for expanded background checks on the campaign
trail.

As for concealed weapons, Bush says the law he signed is “a piece of
legislation which says to every Texan that, in order for
you to protect yourself, we want to know who you are, we want to know your
background, we want you to take a gun safety
class and we want you to register. And crime is down.”

But Bush clearly has some sensitivity on the issue. Earlier this summer,
Bush announced the state will distribute free trigger
locks for handguns after months of contending that a law requiring trigger
locks would be unenforceable. President Clinton,
among other critics, said Bush simply was trying to convince Americans he
is not under the sway of the NRA.

“If he comes out and gives away gun trigger locks, then he doesn’t have to
explain why we’re still importing large-capacity
ammunition clips and why he doesn’t want to close the gun-show loophole,”
Clinton said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

Bush said on NBC’s “Today” program that he would expand the Texas trigger
lock program nationwide if elected president.

“It seems like to me one of the things we ought to do is be
common-sensical about how we deal with gun safety,” said Bush. “I
think this makes sense.”

Bush’s announcement came on the eve of the Million Mom March, which drew
hundreds of thousands of women in the nation’s
largest demonstration to date for gun controls.

The Bush campaign defused another bubbling gun-issue controversy last
winter by accepting the resignation of an assault
weapons manufacturer as Bush’s finance chairman in Maine after inquiries
were made about his campaign post.

“I don’t need anti-gun people making an issue out of it when he (Bush) has
nothing to do with the business I run,” Richard E.
Dyke said shortly after he resigned. “I just don’t want to be any
baggage.”

Dyke owns Bushmaster Firearms, a company that manufactures automatic
weapons for government agencies, semiautomatics
for public use and a rifle widely used in shooting competitions. His
company was one of nine makers of assault weapons that has
been sued by a Los Angeles police officer wounded during a high-profile
gun battle with bank robbers armed with such rifles.

Back home in Texas, of course, there’s little political risk for a
statewide candidate to oppose gun control. Eight Democrats
representing Texas in the U.S. House of Representatives recently voted
with every Republican in the delegation to defeat a
gun-control bill in Congress.

And while Bush has had to walk a finer line as a presidential candidate,
he makes no apologies for his record. Instead, he
continues to emphasize that current laws are adequate if they are
aggressively enforced. “What worries me is that we’re not
prosecuting people who commit crimes with guns,” he says.

In a form letter sent to people who write to him about guns, Bush writes:
“I support tough laws and long sentences for those who
use guns to commit crimes. Additional gun-control laws, such as requiring
arbitrary waiting periods, do not achieve this goal.”

Initiating gun-control legislation in Texas remains a tall order. State
lawmakers filed 110 bills during the last legislative session
that would have limited firearms; none of them passed.

Randy Gibson, executive director of the Texas State Rifle Association,
said he is proud his organization helped to stall those bills,
which he said “weren’t going to solve any of the problems.”

And, he said, it has helped to have a governor sympathetic to their cause.
Bush has been “very nice to work with,” he said.

If Bush became president, “it would probably go from the most anti-gun
administration in the history of the country to one that
will listen to reason,” Gibson said.

Comments such as those raise again the question of how close Bush is to
the NRA. Recently, Handgun Control Inc. launched a
national TV ad that sought to directly link Bush with the NRA’s pro-gun
agenda; the spot included a secretly videotaped pep talk
by NRA first vice president Kayne Robinson saying, “If we win, we’ll have
a president … where we work out of their office.”

Bush responded that he “didn’t care” for those comments and would not be
beholden to the gun lobby if elected president. “There
are areas where they agree and there are areas where they disagree,” said
Bush spokesman Scott McClellan.

Bush seemed to express his feelings on the gun issue most eloquently in
the wake of a shooting last September in Fort Worth at
a Baptist church that left eight people dead, including the gunman.

“There seems to be a wave of evil passing through America,” Bush said the
day after the killings. “And we as a society can pass
laws and hold people accountable for the decisions they make, but our
hopes and prayers have got to be that there is more love
in our society.”

“I don’t know of a law … that will put love in people’s hearts.”