Bowling for Columbine

Historically, concern about gun violence has usually followed a high-profile shooting, as it did with the Kennedy assassination. On March 30, 1981, another such shooting occurred, this time a failed assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan. The president and three others were wounded, and presidential press secretary James S. Brady was permanently disabled from his injuries. His wife Sarah subsequently became the head of Handgun Control Inc., the leading gun control advocacy group in the United States.

In the wake of the assassination attempt, gun control advocates pushed for tighter restrictions on gun sales. They argued that while the 1968 Gun Control Act banned gun sales to most criminals, it was still easy for criminals to lie to gun dealers about their identity or their past. A bill, named after James Brady, was introduced in Congress that would require background checks of all gun purchasers. Since the background checks could take several days, the bill also necessitated a waiting period on gun purchases.

The Brady Bill, however, faced considerable opposition from many congressmen, as well as President Reagan and his successor George Bush. The bill did not become law until 1993, after President Bill Clinton took office. The Clinton administration also instituted a ban on militarystyle “assault weapons” as part of its 1994 Omnibus Crime Bill. Since these two bills were passed, however, there has been no major gun legislation from the federal government.

This lack of federal government action is partly the result of Republican control of both the House and Senate since 1995. (Broadly speaking, Democrats tend to favor gun control legislation, while Republicans are generally resistant to stricter gun laws.) Many Republican legislators side with the National Rifle Association (NRA) on gun control issues. The NRA is the nation’s largest organization of gun owners, and its members believe that gun control laws are unconstitutional and ineffective in reducing crime.

In the late 1990s, however, a series of school shootings, such as the one at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, in which two heavily armed students killed 12 students and one teacher, shocked the nation and again renewed public debate over the availability of guns. Gun control advocates argued that many of the shootings could have been prevented if the students had not had such easy access to guns.

Gun rights advocates countered that responsible gun use sometimes saves lives. For example, the October 1997 incident in Pearl,