Former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger formed a “secret gun group” within the state’s Consumer Protection Agency in 1995 “to brainstorm a means to attack gun manufacturers” through the creation of new regulations setting strict guidelines covering everything from product design to transfers of used handguns.
Harshbarger did this while ignoring the recommendations of top advisers who counseled against the scheme, asserted the Gun Owners’ Action League (GOAL) in a scathing 38-page report.
Entitled “Regulatory Fraud, A Calculated Deception Against the People of the Commonwealth,” the report contains copies of e-mails, letters and confidential memoranda exchanged between members of this group. GOAL obtained the documents through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
“This report raises serious legal and ethical issues,” said GOAL Executive Director Mike Yacino in a prepared statement. “The internal memos we reviewed clearly document that Harshbarger’s own staff had major objections to the regulations. But the regulations were put forth anyway. They are a perfect example of ‘unfair and deceptive practices’ brought about by an overzealous Attorney General.”
Gun Week tried to reach Harshbarger, now president of the mammoth lobbying organization, Common Cause, in Washington, DC, but he did not respond.
Nancy Snow, GOAL executive secretary, told Gun Week that work on the report began in April 2000, and the group began assembling documents obtained under the FOIA law the following September. Material was still being collected through Thanksgiving of last year, and then the report was written.
Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, called the report “devastating.”
The report describes how Harshbarger and several others, apparently realizing there was no way under existing Massachusetts law to attack gunmakers and retailers, allegedly decided to “create a new set of consumer protection standards,” Snow said.
“It’s because they had no way to go after manufacturers other than this,” she asserted.
The report raises several critical issues, Snow explained. First, she suggested that state lawmakers may want to investigate how, and why, a state agency adopted Harshbarger’s personal anti-gun agenda as policy, and then enforced it. She also thinks the state should investigate how much money was spent in this effort.
“Government needs to be reigned in,” Snow stated.
According to documents contained in the report, there were serious misgivings about the proposed regulation, and how it was being pandered to Massachusetts residents. In an April 24, 1996 memorandum to Harshbarger’s “Executive Committee,” Harshbarger’s Director of Communications, Ed Cafasso, cautioned committee members on key points that did not correlate with their strategies to create the state’s Handgun Regulations.
Wrote Cafasso: “Isn’t it true that most accidental kid deaths are the result of careless owners? This proposal does nothing in that regard. In fact, it appears to blame manufacturers entirely. How does that fit Scott’s (Harshbarger) consistent theme of individual responsibility?
“The argument made by police officers for the past decade is that they are facing new, high-powered guns on the streets,” Cafasso continued. “That is why they have gotten rid of their old six-shot revolvers. Now we are arguing that Saturday Night Specials are the weapon of choice? How is that possible? Doesn’t that fly in the face of reality?”
The new regulations had been advocated as a way to prevent so-called Saturday Night Specials—cheaply-made handguns that often use zinc alloys and other materials—from being sold in the state. Cafasso raised an interesting point that even some in the gun rights community have consistently overlooked: Cops have long claimed that they are up against better-armed thugs than ever before. Yet, if they are facing criminals with higher-tech firearms, why would the regulations focus on inexpensive handguns?
‘Slippery Slope’
Another memo dated the same day, from Bill Lee of the attorney general’s staff, cautioned his colleagues not to announce the new regulations immediately.
“Timing,” Lee wrote. “We shouldn’t announce this until after the ‘assault weapons’ ban has passed. It would only feed into the NRA’s position that the ‘assault weapons’ ban is just the beginning of the slippery slope of taking away everyone’s guns.”
A day earlier, another member of the group, Don Davenport, wrote a memo urging that the announcement of the new regulations be turned into a carefully choreographed media event, complete with “gun control advocates, mayors of the major cities, police officers, families of victims, legislators and others.”
Davenport further recommended lining up “a few people to respond and say good things about it.” He also said the group would need a “response strategy to answer the GOAL people and the NRA attacks.”
“If we don’t go nuclear right off the bat,” he said, “we leave ourselves open for a nuclear response that will eventually erode any support we have with the public on this.”
On July 22, 1996, Cafasso sent another memo, to Harshbarger, Davenport, Tom Green, Glenn Kaplan, Barbara Anthony, Carmen Russo, Carrie Smotrich and George Weber, chief of the Consumer Protection Division. In that message, Cafasso recalled his April 24 memorandum, noting, “Not a single one of these questions has been answered, which I assume is an indication that there are no satisfactory answers.”
Two paragraphs later, Cafasso wrote, “For the record, I consider the idea of banning Saturday Night Specials to be an incredible publicity stunt that will not only subject the Attorney General to unnecessary criticism (and, in some cases, derisive laughter), but also prove to be absolutely worthless from a consumer protection and law enforcement perspective.”
In a Sept. 18, 1996 memo to Weber, Robert Sikellis, chief of the State Police Narcotics and Special Investigations Division, detailed several weapons cases handled by his division. In none of the cases, he said, were guns considered Saturday Night Specials involved.
“Given the absence of any Saturday Night Specials,” he wrote, “it is likely that this information will not be too helpful to you.”
All of this was being done in preparation for hearings on the regulations, scheduled that November.
Conclusions
All of the documents uncovered by GOAL lead to several conclusions, detailed in the organization’s report.
The regulations were created, said GOAL, to “get” gun manufacturers, “and not to solve a crime problem.” GOAL also asserts the regulations were created “before staff had any proof there was a ‘problem’ to solve.”
GOAL is also critical that Harshbarger “did not seek advice from those within the firearm industry or anyone else with the actual expertise necessary for such an undertaking.”
Perhaps most damning of all is the assertion that Harshbarger “ignored the advice of his own staff and self-professed experts against the regulations.”
Snow told Gun Week that State Sen. Guy Glodis (D-Worchester) and Rep. George Peterson (R-Grafton) have filed legislation that would establish oversight of regulations created by the Attorney General. She also suggested that industry may take some action. Massachusetts is home to Smith & Wesson.
While the major media in Massachusetts has not given significant exposure to the GOAL study, release of the report has caused quite a stir on the Internet, and there are indications that more heat will be bubbling up at the grassroots level.
The regulations were first proposed by Harshbarger in the Fall of 1997 and were later challenged in court by the now defunct American Shooting Sports Coalition, but that case was lost on default. The regulations took effect in April 2000 on orders of Harshbarger’s successor, state Attorney General Thomas Riley.