by Bob Lesmeister
We can learn a lot from fairy tales.
Take the story of “Little Red Riding Hood.” It didn’t take her long to discover that the person in her grandma’s bed was not grandma at all but the big bad wolf. Unfortunately, an outfit called the Consumer Federation of America Foundation (CFAF) is treating the American public like ignorant children. The CFAF is dressing itself in grandma’s clothes to hide the fact that it is really a wolf bent on destroying the firearms industry and personal gun ownership.
Fortunately, when people find out exactly what this organization is and who’s behind it, they won’t have an ignorant public buying their anti-firearms gloss. The CFAF was founded in 1972 as the private, non-profit research and education arm of the Consumer Federation of America.
Who’s guiding this “independent” organization that is so concerned with public safety?
How about Howard Metzenbaum? He is the Consumer Federation of America’s chairman. This former senator from Ohio made his political career by promoting the anti-firearms cause. Now, as the head of the consumer group, he’s promoting federal regulations based on the same consumer protection dictate that is now being enforced in Massachusetts, which gives the state the right to determine how guns can be produced, distributed and sold.
Presently, Metzenbaum and the CFAF are desperately trying to drum up support for the Firearms Safety and Consumer Protection Act (HR-920 and S-534), which would give the federal government the authority to say how, when and where firearms could be manufactured. Those who support this act evidently do not believe in states’ rights.
If Metzenbaum and the CFAF have their way, the Secretary of the Treasury would have the sole authority to prohibit the manufacture, importation, transfer, distribution or export of any firearm it deemed posed a “threat” to public safety. The problem with this scheme is that no firearm can pass the safety test with CFAF’s criteria.
For example, some of these folks already claim that small-caliber, light-frame handguns are bad because they are easily concealable and therefore pose a threat. Large-caliber handguns are dangerous because the larger projectiles do irreparable damage. Cheap rifles are a danger because they are not accurate and prone to malfunction. Accurate rifles are a health hazard because they can be used by snipers with “extreme accuracy…capable of pinpoint shots from distances up to 2,000 yards.” Shotguns are evil because they offer a “wide area of lethal danger as the shot spreads out from the barrel.” In CFAF’s world, caseless ammunition and the use of polymers and lightweight alloys should be banned because any modernization of a firearm poses a health threat and great risk to the public in general.
Another name that may be familiar with those who cherish their Second Amendment rights is Susan Glick. She is listed as the CFAF firearms project manager. She has also been a paid staff member of the Violence Policy Center (VPC), Josh Sugarmann’s anti-firearms group.
Glick is a co-author of such Violence Policy Center papers as “Female Persuasion: A Study of How the Firearms Industry Markets to Women and the Reality of Women and Guns,” “Joe Camel with Feathers: How the NRA with Gun and Tobacco Industry Dollars Uses its Eddie Eagle Program to Market Guns to Kids,” and “Use the Schools: How Federal Tax Dollars Are Spent to Market Guns to Kids.”
According to Glick, firearms manufacturers, in order to make up for a slump in sales back in the mid-1980s, directed their marketing toward women. And women, heaven forbid, were being tricked into buying firearms and putting their families in danger!
Evidently, Glick doesn’t think women are smart enough to make rational decisions in the marketplace. Nor does she take into account that at no time in this country’s history have women been more independent and more financially secure. More women than ever before are independent heads of households, single mothers, major wage earners, and informed consumers. To insinuate that women are less smart and less able to use a firearm for sport or self-defense is highly prejudicial, even if it comes from another woman. As for Eddie Eagle, he is probably responsible for saving more children from firearms accidents than all of VPC’s and CFAF’s efforts combined. This NRA program is an effective teaching tool that in no way promotes or markets firearms to kids. Glick also detests the fact that the US Fish & Wildlife Service and the National Shooting Sports Foundation use conservation funds gathered from taxes to teach responsible gun ownership, hunter ethics and conservation in schools.
While the Violence Policy Center and the CFAF claim one of their main goals is to create safer guns for the consumer, one doesn’t have to be paranoid to know that they have an agenda that is far more insidious.
The Kentucky Coalition to Carry Concealed has published a report that exposes VPC’s and CFAF’s true intent. The report relates a transcript of a conversation between Glick and a caller on a Dec. 4, 1997 talk radio show from WVLK (590 am), of Lexington, KY. The conversation went as follows:
Glick: “Sir, we’re not hiding behind anything. We…we endorse a handgun ban. I will tell you that right now. We absolutely endorse that ban…”
Caller: “Now, you’re saying that’s what your ultimate goal is…”
Glick: “That’s right, and we are absolutely vocal about it.”
John Lott, whose University of Chicago study became a popular book titled, More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws, also had an opportunity to test Glick’s honesty on the gun issue. The following, in his own words, is taken from the June 22, 1998 issue of the National Review.
“When I was preparing to present the study at the Cato Institute in early August 1996, I wanted to get a proponent of gun control to provide critical comments on the paper… Some of the people I approached—like Susan Glick, of the Violence Policy Center—said straight out that they were unwilling to act as a commentator because, as Miss Glick put it when I spoke to her that June, she didn’t want to ‘help give any publicity to the paper.’ When I asked her if I could at least send her a copy of the paper because I would appreciate any comments she might have, she said, ‘Forget it. There is no way that I am going to look at it. Don’t send it.’
“But when the story broke anyway in USA Today on Aug. 2, Miss Glick was among the many people who left telephone messages asking for a copy of the paper. The media were calling and she ‘need(ed) (my) paper to be able to criticize it.’ At around 3p.m. that day, ABC News reporter Barry Serafin called me saying that certain objections had been raised about my paper; he mentioned that one of those who had criticized it was Susan Glick. After talking to Mr. Serafin, I gave Miss Glick a call to ask her if she still wanted a copy of my paper. She said that she wanted it right away and wondered if I could fax it to her. I then noted that her request seemed strange because Mr. Serafin had just told me that she had said the study was ‘flawed.’ I asked how she could have said it was flawed without having looked at it. At that point Miss Glick hung up.”
Safety Standards
According to the CFAF, since added gun laws haven’t had any effect on the misuse of firearms, the only way to bring the firearms industry to its knees is to have the federal government subject the firearms industry to certain safety and health standards. But if the past is any window to the future, the CFAF will probably base its reasons for restricting the gun industry on junk science and illogical reasoning.
It brags how the Federal Drug Administration and Environmental Protection Agency protect the American public with their authority to ban certain food additives and chemicals. As history proves over and over again, government agencies often do what they do in order to boost their budgets or carry out the whims of the current Administration. Such was the case of the cyclamate ban. Flawed studies in the late 1960s gave indication that cyclamates and saccharin produced cancerous tumors in rats. On closer inspection it was found that this was a symptom peculiar to rats and not humans, and the amounts the rats were fed far exceeded what a human could ingest. A person would have to drink over 350 cans of diet soda a day to get the same tumors that developed in the rats. It took 30 years for people to find out that this cancer scare had no merit and was based purely on junk science.
In spite of the National Academy of Sciences’ admission that DDT, in 20 years of use, prevented the deaths of 500 million people, William Ruckelshaus, EPA administrator, banned it for virtually all uses in 1972. The reason for its ban? In a 1969 study, rats fed DDT developed tumors. The fact that no human would or could digest the amount of DDT to cause the same effects was dismissed by the EPA.
So, what does all this have to do with the CFAF and guns? Simple. The CFAF wants the Treasury Department to have the final say as to how firearms will be manufactured, distributed and used. Based on over 30 years of the federal government’s dependence of junk science, you can imagine what the Treasury Department’s idea of a “safe” gun would look like or how it would function.
According to CFAF literature, “(the) Department of Treasury (would) regulate the design, manufacture and distribution of firearms and ammunition.” The organization claims its goal is not to ban firearms, but to make firearms “safe.” To do this, Treasury would ban the manufacture and transfer of specific firearms if the agency determines that no other remedy would be sufficient to prevent unreasonable risk of injury.
Administration’s Stooge
By that definition, Treasury could ban all guns that expelled a projectile. It should also disturb any clear-headed citizen that the Treasury Department is not the government agency you want to regulate something as important as firearms manufacture, especially when it has proved to be a willing stooge of the current Administration and the attorney general.
It audited many of the conservative groups and individuals at odds with the President. The most recent victim of the Treasury Department was Katherine Prudhomme, a New Hampshire housewife who challenged Al Gore at a town meeting about Bill Clinton’s alleged rape of Juanita Broaddrick. She joins Broaddrick, Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Liz Ward Gracen and a whole bunch of others who have been targeted for audits base on their opposition to either Bill Clinton or his Administration. You can imagine what a field day the Treasury will have auditing companies that produce firearms and individuals who own them.
CFAF bemoans the fact that the Treasury Department has no authority to restrict the availability of those guns “most prone to criminal use.” Problem with this scheme is that the same guns police use can also be used by criminals and vice versa. Any firearm that can be used for crime can also be used for self-defense and life saving.
The group wants to allow emergency action by Treasury to protect the public from “immediately hazardous” firearms. This action would include declaring a firearm illegal, banning its production, sale and ownership and all without Congressional action. Banned guns would be those deemed by Treasury to have no hunting purpose or sporting purpose and the definition of those two terms would be determined by Treasury.
You might say that there is no provision in the Second Amendment that restricts firearms ownership to hunting guns or target arms. CFAF claims there is no provision in the Second Amendment that allows individual ownership of firearms at all! CFAF states specifically that “The possession of firearms by individuals is not part of the right to keep and bear arms.”
Buzzwords & Facts
Safety is one of the buzzwords that CFAF uses in order to push its efforts for control over arms manufacturing. But if you look at federal data, you will find that fatal firearms accidents have been on the decline for over a decade or more. If the National Safety Council is to be believed (Accident Facts, 1997 Edition), they are at an all-time low. According to the National Center for Health Statistics (1996), firearms deaths of children account for only 1% of fatal accidents. Even though our population has doubled in the last 70 years and the number of individually-owned firearms has grown to nearly 200 million, fatal firearms accidents among children declined 75% since 1975.
In 1976, the Senate (76-8) and the House (313-86) voted overwhelmingly to exempt the firearms and ammunition industries from the Consumer Safety Protection Act of 1972. The reason for the exemption was firearms are among the very few specifically mentioned products guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. CFAF makes large claims that the firearms industry does little to regulate itself or adhere to stringent manufacturing and safety standards. They prefer the public not know about the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers Institute (SAAMI) which, for the last 74 years has published more than 700 voluntary standards related to firearms and ammunition manufacturing. SAAMI is an accredited standards developer for the American National Standards Institute, and these standards are reviewed every five years by outside concerns such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
If one looks hard at the CFAF literature, one thing becomes crystal clear. Guns and gun manufacturers must be at fault for their misuse, not the user. David Hemenway, a Harvard School of Public Health professor, who is working on a book dealing with firearms as a health hazard and a big supporter of CFAF’s and VPC’s efforts, is quoted in CFAF literature:
“One of the things you learn about injury prevention and public health is that it’s often more effective to try to change the environment and the agent of injury than to try to worry all the time about the user.”
In other words, let’s not hold the felon at fault for misusing a firearm. It is the gun itself and the world around the perpetrator that is really at fault.
Scott Harshbarger, former Massachusetts attorney general, and currently the president of Common Cause, a guncontrol group, shows how far from reality CFAF and its support groups are. He sees a strong link between campaign finance reform and consumer safety gun control. CFAF quotes him complaining, “One of the reasons we haven’t been able to enact responsible gun control legislation is because of the need for campaign finance reform. What we are saying is that the reason you’re not getting responsible gun control legislation is because of the political power of the NRA and other special interests.”
He conveniently fails to mention the great amounts of money gun control special interests pump into Congress each year.
Over the years gunowners and the gun industry have been willing to accept certain gun control measures in order to appease anti-Second Amendment advocates. Yet, they have not learned that no matter how much you give in, the more they want. CFAF admits that the Brady Act and the instant check system do not prevent criminals from obtaining firearms. They also claim that “smart gun” technology would encourage even more gun sales, because people who would not have thought of buying a gun would do so because the “smart gun” would be safer to have around.
Dealer Regulations
CFAF also complains that even with a stepped up enforcement policy by ATF to “screen” firearms dealers, more guns than ever are being sold. With all of these gun control failures, you would think that CFAF and its friends would get the message that gun control is not the answer. But not so. The current attempt to label guns as a health hazard or to define firearms shooting incidents as an epidemic is just another scheme for an eventual all out ban.
According to Glick, the CFAF is starting a three-year project to focus attention on the firearms-as-a-health-hazard issue. The foundation will be doling out a series of mini-grants to organizations in order to develop this issue. The grants would pay for educational (propaganda) programs, publicity, coalition building and recruitment. Grant recipients will be invited to Washington to attend CFAF training sessions that will cover consumer regulation of guns, gun violence (as presented by Violence Policy Center) and gun control in America. CFAF is supported in its efforts by such groups as American Bar Association, Handgun Control Inc., Jewish Women International, NAACP, Silent March and the Million Mom March.
By the way, look out for some anti-firearms costumes this Halloween. Ellen Freudenheim, co-founder of the anti-firearms group, Silent March, is encouraging parents to dress their kids as teddy bears, soda cans and french fries. These are three items that are subject to government regulation as consumer products. Hopefully, people will give the kids who wear these outfits cottage cheese instead of candy. After all, we all know that refined sugar used in candy is a health hazard.
In order to keep up with what the CFAF is up to, it might be a good idea to get on their mailing list. Their address is Consumer Federation of America, 1424 16th St. NW, Washington, DC 20036. Phone: 202-387-6121.