Could LaPierre be right?

I don’t know whether political strategists at the National Rifle
Association actually planned last week’s
controversial comments made by Executive Director Wayne LaPierre against
the Clinton administration, but I assume they did.

At first glance, the gamble paid off: The results of having the
nation’s leading gun-rights group accuse Clintonites of having “blood on
their hands” for lax enforcement of U.S. gun laws has certainly been
favorable, if you consider new enrollees on the NRA membership roster.

Since LaPierre made his remarks, the NRA has seen a surge in badly
needed membership, lending at least some validity to the belief that it
was simply tired of being labeled as a haven for compromising wimps.
Whatever; when the membership of any gun-rights group swells, I’m
happy.

The fact is LaPierre — or whoever dreamed up the charges — was
right. A couple of stories earlier this week prove this — again —
beyond any doubt.

On Sunday, the Denver Post reported that officials with the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms
allowed “two Colorado
gun stores (to) stay in business long after investigators reported they
had sold guns to criminals and were operated by men forbidden to possess
weapons.”

The report blamed a lax BATF branch office, and said the agency had
“granted a new firearms license to (area resident) Lawrence Lockert
after state investigators concluded he repeatedly had sold handguns to
people disqualified on background checks, including a convicted felon
found running his shop. Lockert kept the license despite a 1998
restraining order prohibiting him from having weapons and a 1999 guilty
plea to a domestic violence charge.”

Then, in another incident, Colorado resident “Ronald Jackson Sr., a
man imprisoned three times on kidnapping and weapons charges, was
operating a store with a federal license to sell guns. The ATF let the
shop, licensed in the names of his wife and son, sell guns until its
license expired more than a year later. No charges were filed.”

That was in 1996. Who knows how many cases have escaped detection
since then?

On Monday the Washington Times ran
a front-page piece outlining new NRA charges blaming last week’s killing
of an Atlanta-based deputy sheriff, allegedly by a former Black Panther
militant, on the Clinton administration’s notoriously lax gun law
enforcement.

“The National Rifle Association intensified its verbal warfare with
the Clinton administration (on Sunday), linking the federal government’s
failure to prosecute a former black militant for a 1995 gun offense to
the fatal shooting of a deputy sheriff in Atlanta last week,” the paper
said.

“(LaPierre) and NRA President Charlton Heston,” both of whom were
interviewed on numerous talk shows last weekend, “criticized the Clinton
administration for failing to enforce existing gun laws,” said the
Times.

“This lack of enforcement is killing people,” Mr. LaPierre said on
“Fox News Sunday.”

Of the cop who was killed, the paper said, “The deputy and another
officer were gunned down when they tried to arrest Jamil Abdullah
Al-Amin, the former Black Panther leader once famous as H. Rap Brown.

“… The NRA officials said Mr. Al-Amin was carrying an unlicensed
handgun when he was arrested in Atlanta five years ago after a man said
Mr. Al-Amin shot him,” though “the man later recanted his accusations.

“Mr. LaPierre said police in the Atlanta area called the Clinton
administration at the time to see if federal officials wanted to
prosecute Mr. Al-Amin for illegal possession of a firearm,” according to
the Times. “‘The Clinton administration refused to prosecute, and he
wound up killing someone,’ Mr. LaPierre said on Fox. At this point, Mr.
Al-Amin has only been accused in the shootings, not convicted. He
remains at-large.”

Naturally, the Clinton spin machine was cranked up to full capacity
in yet another attempt to control the negative publicity this issue is
generating. Speaking as though he knows, White House spokesman Joe
Lockhart said in televised interviews on Sunday, “The idea that the
president and vice president are responsible for murders, nobody
believes that.”

I think the correct statement is, “Nobody would like to
believe that,” Mr. Lockhart.

No reasonable American relishes the thought that his or her president
or vice president or congressional leaders really do favor policies that
endanger citizens’ lives. But then this is the very politically
motivated Clinton administration, and there are also statistics to back
up the NRA’s claims.

According to Clinton Domestic Policy Advisor Bruce Reed, federal gun
prosecutions have risen 16 percent since Clinton took office. Maybe, but
the other side of the story is that gun crime prosecutions have
fallen about 50 percent since President Bush’s term in
office — a net decrease of about 34 percent.

Political agenda at work here? You be the judge; after Columbine last
year, the Clinton administration can’t help but mention that tragedy
(and others) when stumping for even more gun control.

While much of the solidly pro-White House establishment press will
make sure Americans learn to hate LaPierre and the NRA (even more than
some already do), the facts — as usual — speak for themselves.
Besides, Lockhart forgets: There is the nagging reality that this White
House has virtually no credibility left whatsoever after spending the
entire time in office frittering it away in a plethora of other
scandals.

Nobody believes the NRA, Mr. Lockhart? Think again —
thousands of new members obviously do.

But the NRA’s charges, believe it or not, aren’t new.

In a roundabout way, LaPierre and the NRA have alleged the Clinton
administration is an accessory to murder. I’ve done that already —
except that I was “all-inclusive.” To me, all pro-gun control liberals
could be similarly held responsible.

In my Nov. 5 column
last fall, I wrote: “But liberal statists — those weird creatures who
perceive a utopia that simply cannot exist in this world — continue to
insist that you and I play the hapless, helpless victim. Their gun
control policies have gotten more decent people killed than crazies with
guns.” That was true then, and it’s true now.

Welcome to the battle, Mr. LaPierre. May your membership ranks swell
to unimaginable new heights for having the guts — finally — to speak
the truth.