As controversy swirls in the wake of the expiration of the 10-year ban on assault weapons, the bigger issue at hand has been lost in the deluge of campaign rhetoric and fire from both sides of the aisle.
While Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry jumps at the chance to condemn President George W. Bush for expediting terrorism and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist talks vaguely about following the "will of the people," each party has missed the mark.
The ban was set to expire last week, and expire it did, with barely a blink from the White House. The vote to extend it never even got to the floor.
The expiration of the assault weapons ban symbolizes a problem in the United States that extends far beyond partisan politics and the war on terrorism. This is the latest manifestation of the National Rifle Association's influence in the White House and only further testimony to the stranglehold special interests hold over the democratic process.
In 2000, after donating nearly $3 million to Republican candidates, NRA First Vice President Kayne Robinson told his supporters, "If we win, we'll have a president ... where we work out of their office."
They got their wish. Five months later, Bush was inducted into the Oval Office. The rest, as they say, is history.
Congress passed the assault weapons ban in 1994 after a spree of particularly horrific shootings swept the nation - including one notorious incident in downtown San Francisco where one man gunned down 14 victims with two TEC-9 semi-automatic rifles. The assault weapons ban was stipulated to last 10 years: one decade in which, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, the nation experienced a 66 percent decline in the criminal use of assault weapons. Prior to the ban, assault weapons were responsible for the deaths of one out of every five police officers killed on the job.
While campaigning four years ago, Bush swore to "protect our children, in our schools and streets, by finally and strictly enforcing our nation's gun laws." But forget principles, forget campaign promises, and forget the 68 percent of your constituents that want the ban extended. This is politics after all, a game in which the idea of actually serving your electorate is a quaint, outmoded notion: pleasing, but pointless.
For the NRA, as for other special interest groups, money means access, influence, and power. Over the last two decades, the NRA has funneled well over $16 million into the White House, primarily to Republican legislators. In this election cycle, while the NRA has contributed $58,000 to the Democrats, it has given more than six times that amount to Republicans. "We help Republicans that help us out," says Wayne LaPierre, the NRA's executive vice president. Theirs is an investment well made. Coddled by the NRA's coffers and cowering under the lobby's political clout, the White House continues to trade principle for election-season payoffs.
The influence of money in politics has always posed the greatest threat to the principle of democracy. We've seen it in this administration; we've seen it for years before. Democrat or Republican, this is not a red or blue issue, not even a red-white-and-blue issue.
Special interests and fat cats make ample fodder for political cartoonists. But there is nothing humorous in the structural disenfranchisement in an electoral system that systematically privileges the interests of the well-heeled and the well-connected over that of the public good.
When Enron has more friends in the administration than the 36 million people of California, something is grievously wrong. When the tobacco industry can put over $30 million into Congress to roadblock legislation that would help prevent some 400,000 tobacco-related deaths annually, then the so-called democratic process has betrayed us.
Years ago Thomas Jefferson argued, "The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."
The Bush administration has given us back our Uzis and AK-47s. But such weapons afford us little protection from the more subtle tyranny of a government that retains the rhetoric of democracy while it remains in servitude to special interests.
Te-Ping Chen '07 may not admit it, but she is quite well-heeled and well-connected.
