Shooting in Las Vegas, Nev. — the NRA wins, society loses

In 1989, I had a conversation with a high school senior from Anacostia in Washington, D.C. She had been accepted at a major university from her high school, one of the lowest-ranked in the D.C. region. And I was curious about what had been the seeds of her academic success. So, I asked her, if she could have had more of any one thing to help her in high school, what would it have been?

Much to my amazement and shock, she replied, “More courage. Then, when the gang-bangers on the corner taunted me with their guns and threatened to hurt me if I stayed on my path to college, I could have walked up to them, shook my fist and said, ‘Get out of my way! You don’t scare me and I am going to college!’ But I just kept my mouth shut and slunk on by.”

At the time, I was a freshman congressman from Vermont and a gun owner and occasional hunter (though the deer did not have much to worry about). And I was a habitual signer of the “no gun control” pledge offered by the National Rifle Association, because it was so simple and, well, after all, it was politically safe.

But after that conversation, I felt a tug on my heart and conscience that wouldn’t let go. And, the next morning as I was shaving, I looked at the face in the mirror and said to myself, “Peter, you are going to have to look at that face every day for the rest of your life. And you want to be proud of the person you are seeing.” So, that day, when I went to work, I looked at the gun bills available to co-sponsor and signed on to then-California Democratic Rep. Pete Stark’s bill to ban semiautomatic weapons.

Fast-forward to the following year. I lost my bid for re-election, falling before a massive effort by the National Rifle Association to discredit me. Now, I was devastated at the time, because who likes losing? But I never regretted the reason I lost and the principle for which I stood. Now, almost 30 years later, I am well over the loss and still proud that I had the strength to look defeat in the eye and stand fast.

That high school senior from Anacostia lived in fear. Fear of being harmed every day because she aspired to something better than the average in her neighborhood. And it was that stark fact, a fact that I had never experienced personally, that changed my direction. There are many things we can do to curb this epidemic of violence, some of it intentional, some not. And Nicholas Kristoff ’s column (“Let’s mourn and then let’s act,” Oct. 4) in The New Mexican had a good starting list. But I want to mention three other things that might inform the discussion about guns.

First, this is the best example I can see of money in politics defeating the public will. I belong to a group of former members of Congress, Issue One and the ReFormers Caucus (www.issueone. org). We are committed to controlling dark money in politics and other financial reforms that will put the people back in control of elections. The NRA is a billiondollar entity when you include its leading corporate members and the money they collect and spend on politics to protect their corporate interests. And, in so doing, they are denying the wishes of the public on many gun-related issues. Money is winning, and public opinion is the loser.

Second, we have laws that govern many aspects of our lives, for example owning cars. These laws determine when you can have a car, how fast you can go, and they stipulate when you lose the right to drive. And we all probably bend those rules from time to time. But they are there for a reason: to avoid mass mayhem on our highways. Correspondingly, the Second Amendment also gives rights and has limits. Avoiding mayhem in our communities, mayhem such as Sandy Hook or Las Vegas, Nev., was the object of having a “well-regulated militia,” controlled by elected officials. Which brings me to my third point.

I fear that, like the shooter in Las Vegas, there are, in America, very few people and groups amassing huge arsenals of weapons under the protections currently given by Congress and the NRA’s pernicious influence. They, as unregulated militias, represent a tiny percentage of our population. Remember the dust-up in eastern Oregon last year when a paramilitary group took over federal land? Such groups have no place and deserve no extra protections. Moreover, they actually undermine the rule of law.

I am still proud of the stand I took in 1990. But it is time for me, and for many other New Mexicans and Americans, to refuel our determination and use the ultimate weapon we have to defeat this evil, the ballot box.