Obama’s newly nominated “drug czar” is Seattle Police Chief Gil
Kerlikowske. And just like a real czar, the drug czar, whose formal
title is director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, can
destroy rights instantly, and he can set the stage for additional harm.
Before the dark days of the Clinton administration, few federal
government officials had done more to damage Second Amendment rights
than William Bennett, the so-called “drug czar” under President George
H.W. Bush. In March 1989, Bennett set off a national panic by pushing
the first Bush administration to ban the import of so-called “assault
weapons.”
Bennett claimed that “assault weapons” were the
firearms of choice for violent drug dealers. The claim, of course, was
nonsense. Police gun seizure data showed that the guns were rarely used
in any type of crime. Yet Bennett’s massive publicity stunt prohibited
dozens of models of high-quality guns. And it set the stage for
state-level bans on so-called “assault weapons,” and, in the long run,
for the 1994 Clinton gun ban.
Czar Kerlikowske’s first major opportunity to promote gun bans may be based on Mexico.
More
than 5,000 people–most of them employees of drug cartels–were killed
last year alone in the Mexican drug wars. Partly as a result of the
pervasive corruption within the Mexican government, some analysts warn
that the government could collapse and Mexico could turn into a
narco-state.
The Mexican government and many of its American
media allies are busy blaming American gun owners for the carnage and
demanding a host of restrictions on American gun rights: “assault
weapons” bans, gun registration, gun-owner licensing, special
restrictions on gun shows, gun purchase rationing and so on.
Supposedly, these restrictions would prevent guns from being smuggled
from the United States into Mexico, supplying firearms for the
narcotraficantes.
But all the restrictions in the world have
not prevented the Mexican cartels from acquiring grenades, machine
guns, mortars and other weapons that are already either prohibited or
very severely restricted. The Mexican cartels have gross revenue of
about $26 billion a year. Gun smuggling for the cartels is currently a
$22 million-a-year business–less than 1 percent of the cartel’s
revenues. These cartels obviously want weapons, and if a crackdown on
law-abiding American gun owners somehow doubled or tripled the cartels’
costs of weapons acquisition, the cartels could easily afford to pay
the higher prices.
Instead of demanding restrictions on the
rights of Americans, the Mexican government ought to begin respecting
the rights of Mexicans. Mexico is the kidnapping center of the world
right now; even poor people who have no wealth or connection to the
drug trade are being kidnapped and held for ransom. Yet the Mexican
government allows only the very wealthy and well connected to obtain
permits to carry handguns for lawful protection. As a result, ordinary
law-abiding Mexicans are easy prey for kidnappers.
Although
there is no reason to believe that infringing the rights of American
gun owners will help the good people of Mexico, there is every reason
to believe that Kerlikowske will soon begin pushing such infringements.
Besides serving as police chief of Seattle, Kerlikowske is
president of the Major Cities Chiefs Association. That group, comprised
of several dozen big-city chiefs, joined in the Brady Center’s amicus
brief in District of Columbia v. Heller. That brief argued that the
D.C. handgun ban, and the ban on using any firearm for protection in
the home, are both constitutional and are not violations of the Second
Amendment. Remember that next time Kerlikowske claims he respects the
Second Amendment.
As Seattle chief since 2000, Kerlikowske has
been a gun-banner’s delight. He has been a strong ally of Washington
Ceasefire, lobbying the state legislature on behalf of their gun-ban
agenda on ending gun shows, on making an adult liable if a minor lays
hands on a loaded gun and on outlawing so-called “assault weapons.” In
March 2006, he was honored in a ceremony by Ceasefire for his role in
supporting their agenda.
Like Education Secretary Arne Duncan,
who won an award from the leading gun-ban group in Illinois, the
Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence (see April 2009 cover story,
p. 32), Kerlikowske deserved the honor. As police chief, he even used
taxpayer money to pay for a Ceasefire anti-gun press conference in
Seattle.
After being criticized for spending the public’s money
for the special interest anti-gun press conference, Kerlikowske paid
his own airfare to participate in another press conference–this one
put on in the nation’s capital for the release of a Brady Center report
criticizing the Tiahrt Amendment.
The Tiahrt Amendment–which
has been added to Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives
(BATFE) appropriations bills in the last several Congresses–requires
BATFE to share firearm trace data with local law enforcement for
specific investigations, but forbids BATFE from providing aggregate
data to politicians like Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and New York City
Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who want to use the data in abusive lawsuits
trying to make firearm manufacturers liable for the acts of criminals
who misuse guns.
At that press conference that Kerlikowske so
proudly attended, the author of the report, Brady lawyer Daniel Vice,
announced, “This report reveals the NRA’s true colors as the criminal’s
best friend.” He also claimed, “The NRA’s tireless efforts to undermine
enforcement of our gun laws has helped criminals and gun traffickers
obtain illegal firearms and fueled the recent surge in gun violence.”
While
William Bennett did not discover the “assault weapon” issue until he
became a czar, Kerlikowske has a longstanding passion on the issue.
He
evidently believes that the 1994 Clinton ban did not go nearly far
enough in outlawing firearms. One of his more recent publicity
campaigns has been to carry around a picture of an SKS rifle, stating
“This is a SKS 7.62 weapon, high-capacity magazine, which is associated
with an assault weapon, it has the bayonet holder on the front which is
associated with an assault weapon.”
Note that according to
Kerlikowske, a carbine is “associated with an assault weapon” because
it has “a bayonet holder”–as if gang members were perpetrating
drive-by bayonetings. Further, the standard fixed, non-removable,
10-round magazine on the SKS is “high-capacity” to few people other
than anti-gun activists.
In 2008, a criminal showed up at a
house party in Seattle. He had previously been arrested in Montana for
the felony of shooting a sculpture with a shotgun and a handgun, and
had a record of juvenile delinquency, but he was allowed to plea
bargain to a misdemeanor. The criminal murdered six people, later
killing himself when police arrived. A note from the killer was
subsequently found stating that the murders were based on his hatred of
what he called the “hippie” lifestyle and its sexual freedom.
The
criminal’s shotgun was a Winchester Model 1300 Defender with a pistol
grip. Chief Kerlikowske asserted: “Of course, as everyone knows, a
pistol-grip shotgun is designed not for hunting purposes, but for
hunting people.”
This is patently untrue, since several
companies offer pistol grips on turkey shotguns. More generally, there
are plenty of people who add a pistol grip to a rifle or shotgun
because the grip can make the gun easier to handle for defending one’s
home and family.
Yet Kerlikowske’s remarks suggest that he sees little if any role for defensive gun ownership.
Last
October in New York City, the organization Intelligence Squared held a
debate on the proposition that “guns reduce crime.” Arguing against the
proposition were Brady Campaign head Paul Helmke, Yale professor John
Donohue and Kerlikowske.
Kerlikowske praised the British policy
under which most police do not have guns. He said the British police
liked being unarmed, because if they had guns, “it will only increase
assaults on themselves, and that it will be a tit-for-tat or a
proliferation of guns in the U.K. Which, like rabies, they have very
few of.”
It would be fair to say that James Madison and the
other American founders did not think that guns and rabies were in any
way comparable.
When Kerlikowske asserted in the same debate
that American police officers “are routinely wounded and assaulted with
their own guns,” Professor Gary Kleck corrected him by pointing out
that there is only about one case a year in which one of America’s
600,000 officers is killed with his own gun.
But Kerlikowske
was firm. As the debate transcript reads: “There are lots of cases in
which these guns could protect you, [REPEATING WARNING TONE] there are
far more cases in which the gun does not.”
For nearly half a
century, Washington has been a “shall-issue” Right-to-Carry state, in
which permits to carry a handgun for lawful protection are issued to
adults who pass a background check. As a U.S. Senate candidate in 2004,
Barack Obama told the Chicago Tribune that he favored a national ban on
concealed carry. Chief Kerlikowske did not go that far, but he did tell
the New York City audience that he did not like the Washington state
law: “I think reasonableness should enter into this, it should be more
than just being upright and not being blind to allow you to carry a
gun.”
Asked about so-called gun “buy-backs,” he admitted, “A
lot of times they’re old guns, they’re guns that are not being used in
crimes and they’re being found by people cleaning out garages, etc.”
But he liked getting rid of the guns anyway: “Taking those guns off the
street is not a bad thing–remember, a 100-year-old firearm can kill
someone.”
In his new Obama administration position, Kerlikowske
will likely be even more effective as a gun-ban advocate than was
William Bennett, whose previous jobs were secretary of Education and
head of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Kerlikowske, before
Seattle, was deputy director of the U.S. Justice Department’s Community
Oriented Policing Services grant program, the police commissioner of
Buffalo and the police chief of Fort Pierce and Port St. Lucie, Fla. He
has undergraduate and master’s degrees in criminal justice, and
graduated from the FBI’s National Executive Institute.
Kerlikowske
has already used that background to make authoritative-sounding
pronouncements about gun control. He asserts that so-called “assault
weapons” are the “choice for criminals”–even though a mountain of data
about police firearm seizures shows that the overwhelming majority of
criminals choose other guns.
He described the Clinton gun
ban–which by its generic definitions applied to more than 200 models
of firearms–as “a narrow and specific law to deal with military-style
weapons.” Yet not one of the banned guns was actually used by a
“military” anywhere in the world. He claimed that the guns are “used to
assault police officers,” although FBI data show that such guns are
very rarely used to assault police officers.
Although
Kerlikowske is a staunch gun control advocate, there is one aspect in
which his gun control habits could stand some improvement.
In
2004, Kerlikowske lobbied hard in Washington, D.C., to prevent the
sunset of the Clinton ban on so-called “assault weapons.” The day that
the ban expired, he appeared on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and
warned: “We also know that when the family gun becomes an assault
weapon, then that’s the gun that’s going to be stolen and will get out
on our streets.” Likewise he asserted, “We know that people will buy
them and that, unfortunately, they will get stolen from their homes and
out of their cars.”
Given that warning, one might think that
Kerlikowske would be especially diligent about securing his own gun.
And, of course, one would expect he’d be diligent about his duty as a
police chief to set a good example of gun safety.
Yet just
three months later, on December 26, 2004, the chief and his wife used
his government-owned Crown Victoria to go shopping in downtown Seattle.
Kerlikowske left his Glock Model 26 pistol in the car. Someone broke
into the car and stole the handgun, which has never been recovered. It
is fair to say that Kerlikowske’s stolen gun is now much more likely to
be used in a crime than is any so-called “assault weapon” belonging to
a law-abiding citizen.
As for Kerlikowske’s record in Seattle,
not everyone applauds his performance. In March 2002, the Seattle
Police Officers’ Guild voted “no confidence” in the chief. In June
2007, a civilian review board reported that Kerlikowske had interfered
with an internal investigation of two officers, and had so seriously
damaged the police department’s credibility that there was a need for
greater outside oversight.
In 1989, when the Senate confirmed
William Bennett as drug czar, his decision to spend his first day in
office promoting a gun ban was a surprise to nearly everyone.
If
Kerlikowske turns the Office of National Drug Control Policy into the
Office of National Gun Control, no one should be surprised.
This
article which is made available for public reproduction here, also
appears in the latest issue of America’s First Freedom magazine.