Forty years ago today, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was felled by an assassin’s bullet. He was 39.Robert F. Kennedy, campaigning for President in 1968, was in Indianapolis on the evening of April 4, 1968. The first to tell the crowd the terrible news, he reminded them of what Dr. King lived and ultimately died for:

Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice for his fellow human beings, and he died because of that effort. In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. … [W]e can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, with compassion and love. 

Out of nearly 100 major cities in America that rioted at the news of Dr. King’s assassination, Indianapolis was not among them. Just two months after this speech, Robert Kennedy too would be assassinated by gunshot.From these horrible losses would come the Gun Control Act of 1968, one of the few pieces of national gun control legislation on the books today.Dr. King said many profound things in his public and ministerial career. His statement at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, on May 3, 1963 – one month before I had the opportunity to hear him and meet him in my hometown of Fort Wayne, Indiana – seems particularly meaningful today:

The reason I can’t follow the old eye-for-an-eye philosophy is that it ends up leaving everybody blind. Somebody must have sense and somebody must have religion. I remember some years ago, my brother and I were driving from Atlanta to Chattanooga, Tennessee. And for some reason the drivers that night were very discourteous or they were forgetting to dim their lights …. And finally A.D. [King’s brother] looked over at me and he said, “I’m tired of this now, and the next car that comes by here and refuses to dim the lights, I’m going to refuse to dim mine.” I said, “Wait a minute, don’t do that. Somebody has to have some sense on this highway and if somebody doesn’t have sense enough to dim the lights, we’ll all end up destroyed on this highway.”And I’m saying the same thing for us here in Birmingham. We are moving up a mighty highway toward the city of Freedom. There will be meandering points. There will be curves and difficult moments, and we will be tempted to retaliate with the same kind of force that the opposition will use. But I’m going to say to you, “Wait a minute, Birmingham. Somebody’s got to have some sense in Birmingham.” 

If Dr. King is looking down on us today, I can imagine him seeing 12,352 gun murders a year in the United States – nearly 34 every day – and telling us that “the old eye-for-an-eye philosophy leaves everyone blind.�Somebody’s got to “have some sense� in America.(Note to readers: This entry, along with past entries, has been co-posted on bradycampaign.org/blog and the Huffington Post.)

In the late 1970’s, Saturday Night Live ran sketches called “Consumer Probe� or “On The Spot� featuring Dan Aykroyd as the sleazy Irwin Mainway, President of Mainway Toys, Mainway Novelties, or Mainway’s Kiddie Funworld, usually being interviewed by consumer reporters played by Candace Bergen or Jane Curtin (as Joan Face).

Aykroyd played Mainway like a con-man, complete with pencil-thin mustache, slicked-back hair, pinky ring, and tacky polyester sport jacket, whose “toys� and “rides� were some of the worst ever marketed to children.

Examples from the Mainway Toys product line included the “Bag O’ Glassâ€� for $1.98 – which was just a plastic bag filled with pieces of broken glass. (Other products in this category were the “Bag O’ Nails,â€� “Bag O’ Bugs,â€� “Bag O’ Vipers,â€� and the “Bag O’ Sulfuric Acid.â€�) Then there was “Johnny Human Torch,â€� a package of oily rags and a lighter, where the child was supposed to pin the rags on his body (“like a hobo,â€� Mainway said) and light himself on fire.

The Mainway Latex Corporation featured the Halloween costume called “Invisible Pedestrian,� a sack of black clothes meant cover the kid’s body from head-to-toe, which made him completely invisible to oncoming traffic when out trick-or-treating.

Then, there was the “Johnny Combat Action Costume�:

Joan Face: Alright, Mr. Mainway. But surely even you can see the danger in this next costume, which you call Johnny Combat Action Costume. This is an actual working rifle!

Irwin Mainway: An M-1, yeah.

Joan Face: I mean, this is a deadly weapon, and you’re selling it to children!

Irwin Mainway: The ammo’s not included. I mean, this is a very popular item, you know? Give the kid a little something extra! Field glasses, a little helmet there, the gun, you know, it makes ‘em feel like a real general! I mean, this product is very popular in Texas and Detroit!

These skits (you can find some of the transcripts here, here, and here) were funny precisely because they were so outrageous and unbelievable.

But now, in a case of life imitating “art,� we read about a company in Wisconsin promoting “a rainbow of candy-colored paints� – including bright pink, green, even something called “Barney Purple� – to make guns look like toys. The company will even send you a kit to paint your own guns. Another report says a different Wisconsin gun dealer charged $200 to paint an AK-47 “Pepto-Bismol pink,� and put the cartoon character “Hello Kitty� on the stock.

These stories are not jokes like those old Dan Aykroyd skits.

As New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said,

Making a quick buck by coloring a handgun to look like a toy is craven and beneath any honest businessman. By coloring these guns, a real one looks like a toy, and a police officer won’t be able to tell the difference.

This is not an idle fear. There was another story recently about police officers being forced to distinguish between fake guns that look real – in that case air guns made to look like actual firearms. Here, with weapons painted in cartoon colors, we have real guns that look fake.

No one benefits – except maybe some “Mainway�-like businesses – when we make our police officers work even harder to distinguish real guns from toy guns.

Painting a gun “Barney Purple� is something only Irwin Mainway could be proud of.

(Note to readers: This entry, along with past entries, has been co-posted on bradycampaign.org/blog and the Huffington Post.)

In the three days since oral arguments were held in District of Columbia v. Heller, I’ve had the chance to reflect on the day’s events and develop some perspective.

I was in the courtroom on Tuesday, and counted myself fortunate to have had a ringside seat to history. It was probably the most extensive discussion ever by the Supreme Court of the United States regarding the nature and scope of the Second Amendment, and whether and to what extent elected representatives have the power to pass the reasonable gun control laws they believe are necessary to keep their communities safe.

In the cold morning air outside before the white marble steps of the Court building, Brady activists were respectfully carrying signs and speaking to the media. They were joined and cheered on by passers-by – school children, government workers, and tourists – and encountered little opposition from the National Rifle Association or other gun groups.

Meanwhile, inside the courtroom, I watched the lawyers present their cases and I was constantly aware of how critically and immediately the Justices’ decision will affect the gun laws that protect you and your family every day, including the Brady Law, the federal machine gun ban, plus many strong state gun laws in California, New York, Illinois, and others.

What I saw on Tuesday were nine Justices struggling to come to terms with opposing approaches to the Second Amendment.

While we believe that legal precedent, historical records, and a contextual reading of all the words in the Second Amendment make it clear that the “right� of the people to “keep and bear arms� must be related to service in a “well regulated militia� (see our amicus brief), a majority of the Justices seemed to be leaning against this view. At the very least, they were interested in exploring the idea that the Amendment protects some private, individual right to own guns unrelated to service in a well regulated militia.

What still stands out to me three days after the argument, however, is that there was broad support from all sides for all current and proposed regulations concerning guns, short of a near-total ban on all guns. It was intriguing to watch the Justices search for an “individual rights� interpretation of the Second Amendment that would also allow most existing gun control laws.

For example, Justice Breyer wanted to know what sorts of gun control laws would survive under a “reasonableness” standard vis-à-vis some new interpretation of the Second Amendment. Questions from Justices Breyer, Stevens and Ginsburg managed to extract concessions from Mr. Heller’s attorney, Alan Gura, toward the end of his argument.

Machine gun bans? Reasonable, Gura conceded. Plastic gun bans? Reasonable. Licensing? “We don’t have a problem with the concept of licensing,” Gura said. Requirements to demonstrate competency with a gun? Reasonable. Background checks? Reasonable “of course,” Gura said. Gun bans by college campuses? Mr. Gura said that “Might be doable.”

In a matter of about 10 minutes, Mr. Heller’s own attorney ended up endorsing (or at least not opposing) key portions of the Brady Campaign’s legislative and policy agenda.

After looking over the oral argument transcript, we have good reason to be hopeful that the Justices’ ruling will uphold action by elected officials at all levels to enact sensible gun laws they feel are needed to protect their communities.

Regardless of whether the District wins or loses, and regardless of how the Justices rule on the individual’s “right” to bear arms, their questioning clearly acknowledged the importance of and the need for reasonable regulations on guns. Their ruling this summer will determine what happens next as we work to reduce and prevent gun violence in this country.

(Note to readers: This entry, along with past entries, has been co-posted on bradycampaign.org/blog and the Huffington Post.)

The Brady Law went into effect 14 years ago today, February 28, 1994.

On anniversaries like this, it is important to remember what the Brady Law has accomplished, how effective the law has been at helping reduce gun crime, and how bitterly the NRA fought to kill it - including their effort to have the Brady Law struck down as unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Since 1994, the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (the “Brady Law”) has stopped an estimated 1.4 million criminals and other “prohibited purchasers” from buying guns from Federally licensed gun dealers. As the Bureau of Justice Statistics has shown, the rate of gun crime in America then plummeted for years. “After peaking in 1993,” the BJS reports, “the number of gun crimes reported to police declined and then stabilized at levels last seen in 1988.” Furthermore, according to the BJS, “nonfatal firearm-related crime has plummeted since 1993, before increasing in 2005.

“Before the Brady Law was enacted, most states didn’t require background checks of gun purchasers at all. While the Gun Control Act of 1968 made it illegal for felons, fugitives, the dangerously mentally ill and other “prohibited purchasers” to buy firearms, there was no national mechanism to help enforce this rule.

This meant that until February 28, 1994, gun dealers and gun buyers worked on the “honor” system. As long as gun buyers promised they weren’t dangerous on a Federal form, prohibited purchasers could get away with buying, and gun dealers could get away with selling, as many guns as they wanted. And if their guns were later used in crime, a gun dealer could always say, “The buyer lied to me. How could I know?” Before 1994, criminal gun buyers and dealers could ignore the Gun Control Act with impunity.

After 1994, however, we entered the era of “Trust, but verify.”

President Ronald Reagan often used that phrase in the context of international arms control in dealing with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and others.

When it comes to “domestic arms control,” the Brady Law does the same thing. It recognizes that most gun buyers and gun dealers are honest, but it works to filter out those purchasers who are dishonest - about 1.4 million people so far - by checking to make sure.

It only makes sense that President Reagan would come out in favor of passing the Brady Bill. In an eloquent Op-Ed in the New York Times on March 29, 1991, one day before the 10th anniversary of the assassination attempt on his life and that of his Press Secretary, James S. Brady, President Reagan described his own incredible ordeal of surviving the shooting, and then went on to talk about Jim:

 

“I was lucky. The bullet that hit me bounced off a rib and lodged in my lung, an inch from my heart. It was a very close call. Twice they could not find my pulse. But the bullet’s missing my heart, the skill of the doctors and nurses at George Washington University Hospital and the steadfast support of my wife, Nancy, saved my life. “Jim Brady, my press secretary, who was standing next to me, wasn’t as lucky. A bullet entered the left side of his forehead, near his eye, and passed through the right side of his brain before it exited. The skills of the George Washington University medical team, plus his amazing determination and the grit and spirit of his wife, Sarah, pulled Jim through. His recovery has been remarkable, but he still lives with physical pain every day and must spend much of his time in a wheelchair. “Thomas Delahanty, a Washington police officer, took a bullet in his neck. It ricocheted off his spinal cord. Nerve damage to his left arm forced his retirement in November 1981. “Tim McCarthy, a Secret Service agent, was shot in the chest and suffered a lacerated liver. He recovered and returned to duty.”

Then, President Reagan made his position crystal clear:

“Still, four lives were changed forever, and all by a Saturday-night special — a cheaply made .22 caliber pistol — purchased in a Dallas pawnshop by a young man with a history of mental disturbance.  

“This nightmare might never have happened if legislation that is before Congress now — the Brady bill — had been law back in 1981.”

Those moving thoughts are worth remembering still.

A gaping loophole in the Brady Law remains, however, and Congress needs to take action immediately to help close it. Currently, only Federally licensed gun dealers are required to run Brady background checks on gun purchasers. That means there are millions of gun sales by unlicensed sellers not subject to Brady checks at all. In fact, one study done for the National Institute of Justice reports that about 40% of all firearms sold in America are sold by unlicensed sellers with no Brady background check required. A significant proportion of these unlicensed sales occur at gun shows, allowing criminals and other prohibited purchasers to arm themselves with no questions asked.

That’s wrong, and Congress needs to do something about it. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (NJ) and Sen. Jack Reed (RI) recently introduced a bill to close the gun show loophole and require checks on all gun purchases at gun shows. I urge the Congress to pass this bill as soon as possible.

Make no mistake, it’s been a long and difficult fight, but America is turning the corner on the gun issue. The country should not let the gun lobby stand in the way of public safety.

Common-sense gun control like the Brady Law saves lives, and the American people know it.

(Note to readers: This entry, along with past entries, has been co-posted on bradycampaign.org/blog and the Huffington Post.)

I wanted to take a moment to let you know about a new addition to the Brady Campaign Web site: the Brady Research Update. The Update will be a regular web feature providing updates on recently published research articles, fact sheets, and other resources.

This new feature now makes www.bradycampaign.org/issues even more of a valuable site for research and statistics, as well as a resource center for advocates, the media, and the general public. (You can also find it at www.millionmommarch.org/learn.)

Both sites are updated regularly, so check back often.

(Note to readers: This entry, along with past entries, has been co-posted on bradycampaign.org/blog and the Huffington Post.)