On March 14, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed legislation that would ban almost 160 specific military-style guns and limit the size of ammunition clips to 10 rounds. Shortly before this legislation was passed, GPPReview Associate Interview Editor Hillel Kipnis talked with Dr. Kristin Goss, author of Disarmed: The Missing Movement for Gun Control in America, about the politics of gun control in the wake of Sandy Hook.
Georgetown Public Policy Review: Has the tragedy of Sandy Hook fundamentally reframed the gun control debate, or do you view it more as a temporary effect?
Dr. Kristin Goss: I don’t think it has reframed anything. It feels very similar to me to the late 1990s after Columbine. There are a few things that are different this time around, that I think are really important, but we are debating almost exactly the same policies. The policy that was under debate in 1990 was closing gun show loopholes and expanding the background checks. So the policy option that is at the top of the agenda right now—and that everybody seems to think has the best chance of passing Congress—is exactly what the Congress debated in 1999 after Columbine. I don’t think it has reframed the debate.
GPPR: What do you think are the similarities and differences between what is happening now and what happened after Columbine?
KG: There are a lot of similarities. Mothers have mobilized, traditional gun control coalition partners speaking out (law enforcement, educators, progressive interest groups), Democrats from the coasts. This is your familiar gun control coalition, they were active before.
What’s new this time around is that there is a much larger platform for the family members and survivors of the mass shootings. After Columbine, there was one or two parents (Tom Mauser was the most famous) speaking out. Now you’ve got Virginia Tech families who are well organized and who have been active since 2007 being brought in under the umbrella of Mayors Against Illegal Guns. You now have Virginia Tech survivors and families who actually have paid positions at national gun control organizations. Victims and family members have always been a part of the movement, especially at the local level where they started a lot of volunteer groups. A few have had a national spotlight, but now they have reached a critical mass.
I wrote a piece about how I think it would be interesting if we start hearing more from military leaders. One of the big differences between now and 99 is that we’ve had the experience of Afghanistan and Iraq. War is very fresh in our consciousness now, and you have a lot of military leaders coming out and saying these are military style assault weapons that are adapted for civilian use. These are weapons of war that have no place on the streets of America. Ret. General Stanley McChrystal said it, Colin Powell said it, and so did Mark Kelly. He testifies about his experience in combat, and he said he knows what it’s like to be shot at, and he knows how chaotic the situation is. Beau Biden, Delaware attorney general, proposed a gun control proposal in Delaware, and he was a major in Iraq. Military leaders have a lot of moral authority in this debate, they know the technology of firearms, they have experience of firearms, and many are conservative who are unlikely to be painted as emotional liberals.
Then there is also the rise of the Internet and social media. After Columbine, there was a huge mothers’ march on Washington, organized largely over email. The social media had not yet been invented; now we have Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr… that is helping to level the playing field between the pro-gun rights side that has always been well organized at local, state, and national level, and the pro-gun control people who have never had a good way to bring people together. I don’t want to overstate Facebook as an organizing tool. I think it is a great communication tool. For me the jury is still out on how well it will do to incite political action; whether it is writing your congressmen or showing up at a protest or signing a petition.
Final, big difference is Michael Bloomberg. Like most social movement organizations, the gun control movement has not had steady or large amounts of funding. In the past there have been some large philanthropic foundations that have tried to fund research or build capacity, but it hasn’t been a huge amount of money, and it hasn’t been sustained in any big way, and there are limitations of what these orgs can spend money on: they have to stay away from electoral politics and lobbying. Bloomberg, on the other hand, can spend his billions of dollars on whatever he wants. He is passionate about this issue. He has shown that he is willing to spend money in a variety of venues using a variety of strategies. He is willing to spend money to defeat pro-gun democrats as he did with Joe Baca in California. He is starting to get involved in the Illinois Congressional race against [Debbie] Halvorson. He can do the hard politics, the liberal politics. He created the advocacy group “Mayors against Illegal Guns.” He is also funding research. He can—on his own, through his private funds—do these things, and he is supporting existing organizations as well. I think that makes a big difference. If you have people that are energetic and creative, but they don’t have money to execute their ideas, then their energy and creativity aren’t worth much.
GPPR: Opponents of gun control seem to be more mobilized than proponents of gun control. Why is there such an asymmetry?
KG: The NRA brings people together around something that is fun. They can offer incentives to members that is really hard for the other side to do the same. They can offer to take you to go recreational shooting and hunting, they can give you magazine subscriptions that will help you improve your shot or learn about new firearms technology. They’ve also done a good job of framing gun ownership as a means of good citizenship, tapping into patriotic values that many Americans have.
For the other side, it’s hard to think of what private incentives they can really offer to would-be members. They rely on people’s outrage at gun violence and desire for more peaceful society. It’s hard to sustain outrage and activism especially when it’s so hard to change policy. So the NRA has built-in advantages.
Also, historically, the pro-control side has focused on national level policy and has found it harder to sustain and mobilize around local and state policy, which is where most gun policies are. They are state policies not national policies. So, part of it is they chose not to, others because states do not allow localities to do anything about guns. So there is nothing to mobilize around at the local level. Also, gun interests tend to be over-represented in state legislatures.
GPPR: According to Open Secrets, the NRA spent 89 percent of its financial contributions on Republicans compared to 62 percent in 1992. What has been the cause of this shift of funding towards the GOP, and will it have an effect on Democratic support for gun control in this session of Congress?
KG: Historically, NRA has funded across the aisle. In the last ten years, there has been more of a splint down the aisle, but party and gun control positions have been more highly correlated. But, historically, NRA has given money to both sides. I haven’t done a systematic review of their strategy, but they have high profile republican operatives on their board, so they developed closer ties to the Republican Party, but there are many democrats who get money from the NRA.
GPPR: According to a Gallup poll taken at the beginning of January of this year, only 38 percent of Americans want to see stricter gun laws in this country, and only 24 percent support a ban on handgun possession. In the past, public opinion has been a major obstacle for lawmakers in Congress to pass gun control legislation. Do you think that now they will be willing to go against “public sentiment”?
KG: I don’t agree with the premise of the question. The thing about public opinion that is interesting is that if you look at the “more strict, less strict” question, you are correct that it has been going down, but those types of general questions are sensitive to what political elites are talking about. So if there is a conspiracy of silence by politicians at national level, then it seems very predictable to me as a political scientist that you wouldn’t have people saying “we need stricter gun laws”. Public opinion follows elite opinion. Those numbers are driven by people saying gun laws should remain the same. If no one is making the case at the elite level, then you wouldn’t expect public opinion to change. However, if you ask people about specific measures, they will say they support the new measures that represent new gun laws. So, the public opinion polls show mostly that people are inconsistent. On the one hand, they say keep it the same, but then the say they support all these new changes to gun laws.
And, I don’t think public opinion has been an impediment. If anything public opinion was highly favorable towards new gun laws. So, that’s the gun control paradox: everyone wants it but we never get any. Why? The real issue is not public opinion, as measured by random samples of average Americans, but the participation gap that I spoke about in my book. The real issue is that the pro-gun, pro-Second Amendment folks have been highly intense, highly participatory and have had their voices heard on that issue and are willing to vote strictly on that issue. That’s what members of Congress are responding to. In the book, I argue that there were plenty of people who wanted new gun laws, but they were unorganized and not well directed. The more public elites talk about an issue, the more public opinion rises on an issue. Just look at public opinion on background checks post-Sandy Hook.
Dr. Kristin Goss is an associate professor of public policy at Duke University. Dr. Goss’s work focuses on why people do or don’t participate in political life and how their participation or non-participation affects public policy making. In addition to Disarmed, she is the author of The Paradox of Gender Equality: How American Women’s Groups Gained and Lost Their Public Voice.
Established in 1995, the Georgetown Public Policy Review is the McCourt School of Public Policy’s nonpartisan, graduate student-run publication. Our mission is to provide an outlet for innovative new thinkers and established policymakers to offer perspectives on the politics and policies that shape our nation and our world.