A U.S. soldier fires a Colt M16 in Vietnam in 1967. U.S. Army

But besides a rare consensus on restricting the availability of so-called bump stocks, which Paddock used to enable his dozen semi-automatic rifles to fire like machine guns, it’s unclear if anything meaningful will come of it.

If advocates for reform despair after such a tragedy, I can understand. The politics seem intractable right now. It’s easy to feel powerless.

But what I’ve learned from a decade of studying the history of the arms trade has convinced me that the American public has more power over the gun business than most people realize.

Gun maker Simeon North made this flintlock pistol around 1813. Balefire/Shutterstock.com
 

Washington’s patronage

The U.S. arms industry’s close alliance with the government is as old as the country itself, beginning with the American Revolution.

Forced to rely on foreign weapons during the war, President George Washington wanted to ensure that the new republic had its own arms industry. Inspired by European practice, he and his successors built public arsenals for the production of firearms in Springfield and Harper’s Ferry. They also began doling out lucrative arms contracts to private manufacturers such as Simeon North, the first official U.S. pistol maker, and Eli Whitney, inventor of the cotton gin.

The government provided crucial startup funds, steady contracts, tariffs against foreign manufactures, robust patent laws, and patterns, tools and know-how from federal arsenals.

The War of 1812, perpetual conflicts with Native Americans and the U.S.-Mexican War all fed the industry’s growth. By the early 1850s, the United States was emerging as a world-class arms producer. Now-iconic American companies like those started by Eliphalet Remington and Samuel Colt began to acquire international reputations. Even the mighty gun-making center of Great Britain started emulating the American system of interchangeable parts and mechanized production.

This is an advertisement for a Remington rifle in the Army and Navy Journal in 1871. Army and Navy Journal
 

Profit in war and peace

The Civil War supercharged America’s burgeoning gun industry.

The Union poured huge sums of money into arms procurement, which manufacturers then invested in new capacity and infrastructure. By 1865, for example, Remington had made nearly US$3 million producing firearms for the Union. The Confederacy, with its weak industrial base, had to import the vast majority of its weapons.

The war’s end meant a collapse in demand and bankruptcy for several gun makers. Those that prospered afterward, such as Colt, Remington and Winchester, did so by securing contracts from foreign governments and hitching their domestic marketing to the brutal romance of the American West.

While peace deprived gun makers of government money for a time, it delivered a windfall to well capitalized dealers. That’s because within five years of Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, the War Department had decommissioned most of its guns and auctioned off some 1,340,000 to private arms dealers, such as Schuyler, Hartley and Graham. The Western Hemisphere’s largest private arms dealer at the time, the company scooped up warehouses full of cut-rate army muskets and rifles and made fortunes reselling them at home and abroad.

A soldier fires the Sig Sauer P320, which the Army has chosen as its new standard pistol. U.S. Army
 

More wars, more guns

By the late 19th century, America’s increasingly aggressive role in the world insured steady business for the country’s gun makers.

The Spanish American War brought a new wave of contracts, as did both World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and the dozens of smaller conflicts that the U.S. waged around the globe in the 20th and early 21st century. As the U.S. built up the world’s most powerful military and established bases across the globe, the size of the contracts soared.

Consider Sig Sauer, the New Hampshire arms producer that made the MCX rifle used in the Orlando Pulse nightclub massacre. In addition to arming nearly a third of the country’s law enforcement, it recently won the coveted contract for the Army’s new standard pistol, ultimately worth $350 million to $580 million.

Colt might best illustrate the importance of public money for prominent civilian arms manufacturers. Maker of scores of iconic guns for the civilian market, including the AR-15 carbine used in the 1996 massacre that prompted Australia to enact its famously sweeping gun restrictions, Colt has also relied heavily on government contracts since the 19th century. The Vietnam War initiated a long era of making M16s for the military, and the company continued to land contracts as American war-making shifted from southeast Asia to the Middle East. But Colt’s reliance on government was so great that it filed for bankruptcy in 2015, in part because it had lost the military contract for the M4 rifle two years earlier.

Overall, gun makers relied on government contracts for about 40 percent of their revenues in 2012.

Competition for contracts spurred manufacturers to make lethal innovations, such as handguns with magazines that hold 12 or 15 rounds rather than seven. Absent regulation, these innovations show up in gun enthusiast periodicals, sporting goods stores and emergency rooms.

An activist is led away by security after protesting during a statement by NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre, left, during a news conference in response to the Connecticut school shooting in 2012. AP Photo/Evan Vucci
 

NRA helped industry avoid regulation

So how has the industry managed to avoid more significant regulation, especially given the public anger and calls for legislation that follow horrific massacres like the one in Las Vegas?

Given their historic dependence on U.S. taxpayers, one might think that small arms makers would have been compelled to make meaningful concessions in such moments. But that seldom happens, thanks in large part to the National Rifle Association, a complicated yet invaluable industry partner.

Prior to the 1930s, meaningful firearms regulations came from state and local governments. There was little significant federal regulation until 1934, when Congress – spurred by the bloody “Tommy gun era” – debated the National Firearms Act.

The NRA, founded in 1871 as an organization focused on hunting and marksmanship, rallied its members to defeat the most important component of that bill: a tax meant to make it far more difficult to purchase handguns. Again in 1968, the NRA ensured Lyndon Johnson’s Gun Control Act wouldn’t include licensing and registration requirements.

In 1989, it helped delay and water down the Brady Act, which mandated background checks for arms purchased from federally licensed dealers. In 1996 the NRA engineered a virtual ban on federal funding for research into gun violence. In 2000, the group led a successful boycott of a gun maker that cooperated with the Clinton administration on gun safety measures. And it scored another big victory in 2005, by limiting the industry’s liability to gun-related lawsuits.

Most recently, the gun lobby has succeeded by promoting an ingenious illusion. It has framed government as the enemy of the gun business rather than its indispensable historic patron, convincing millions of American consumers that the state may at any moment stop them from buying guns or even try to confiscate them.

Hence the jump in the shares of gun makers following last week’s slaughter in Las Vegas. Investors know they have little to fear from new regulation and expect sales to rise anyway.

People have been leaving memorials and tributes in honor of the victims of the Las Vegas mass shooting. gotpap/STAR MAX/IPx via AP Photo
 

A question worth asking

So with the help of the NRA’s magic, major arms manufacturers have for decades thwarted regulations that majorities of Americans support.

Yet almost never does this political activity seem to jeopardize access to lucrative government contracts.

Americans interested in reform might reflect on that fact. They might start asking their representatives where they get their guns. It isn’t just the military and scores of federal agencies. States, counties and local governments buy plenty of guns, too.

For example, Smith & Wesson is well into a five-year contract to supply handguns to the Los Angeles Police Department, the second-largest in the country. In 2016 the company contributed $500,000 (more than any other company) to a get-out-the-vote operation designed to defeat candidates who favor tougher gun laws.

Do taxpayers in L.A. – or the rest of the country – realize they are indirectly subsidizing the gun lobby’s campaign against regulation?
 

Brian DeLay, Associate Professor of History, University of California, Berkeley

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The post How the US government created and coddled the gun industry appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Weapons used in the attack in San Bernardino in 2015. Reuters/San Bernardino County Sheriffs Department/Handout

The fact is that, even leaving aside the assault in Las Vegas and terrorist attacks like the one in San Bernardino, California, in 2015, gun violence is becoming almost routine in many American neighborhoods. The U.S. homicide rate increased more than 20 percent from 2014 to 2016, while last year’s 3.4 percent rise in the violent crime rate was the largest single-year gain in 25 years.

The guns carried and misused by youths, gang members and active criminals are more likely than not obtained by transactions that violate federal or state law. And, as I’ve learned from my decades of researching the topic, it is rare for the people who provide these guns to the eventual shooters to face any legal consequences.

How can this illicit market be policed more effectively?

Police officers stand at the scene of a shooting near the Mandalay Bay resort and casino on the Las Vegas Strip. AP Photo/John Locher
 

Undocumented and unregulated transactions

The vast majority of gun owners say they obtained their weapons in transactions that are documented and for the most part legal.

When asked where and how they acquired their most recent firearm, about 64 percent of a cross-section of American gun owners reported buying it from a gun store, where the clerk would have conducted a background check and documented the transfer in a permanent record required by federal law. Another 14 percent were transferred in some other way but still involved a background check. The remaining 22 percent said they got their guns without a background check.

The same is not true for criminals, however, most of whom obtain their guns illegally.

A transaction can be illegal for several reasons, but of particular interest are transactions that involve disqualified individuals – those banned from purchase or possession due to criminal record, age, adjudicated mental illness, illegal alien status or some other reason. Convicted felons, teenagers and other people who are legally barred from possession would ordinarily be blocked from purchasing a gun from a gun store because they would fail the background check or lack the permit or license required by some states.

Anyone providing the gun in such transactions would be culpable if he or she had reason to know that the buyer was disqualified, was acting as a straw purchaser or if had violated state regulations pertaining to such private transactions.

The importance of the informal (undocumented) market in supplying criminals is suggested by the results of inmate surveys and data gleaned from guns confiscated by the police. A national survey of inmates of state prisons found that just 10 percent of youthful (age 18-40) male respondents who admitted to having a gun at the time of their arrest had obtained it from a gun store. The other 90 percent obtained them through a variety of off-the-book means: for example, as gifts or sharing arrangements with fellow gang members.

Similarly, an ongoing study of how Chicago gang members get their guns has found that only a trivial percentage obtained them by direct purchase from a store. To the extent that gun dealers are implicated in supplying dangerous people, it is more so by accommodating straw purchasers and traffickers than in selling directly to customers they know to be disqualified.

A makeshift memorial in Chicago lies at the site where a baby girl, her mother and her father – a known gang member – were shot in 2013. Most Chicago gang members appear to get their guns secondhand. AP Photo/M. Spencer Green
 

The supply chain of guns to crime

While criminals typically do not buy their guns at a store, all but a tiny fraction of those in circulation in the United States are first sold at retail by a gun dealer – including the guns that eventually end up in the hands of criminals.

That first retail sale was most likely legal, in that the clerk followed federal and state requirements for documentation, a background check and record-keeping. While there are scofflaw dealers who sometimes make under-the-counter deals, that is by no means the norm.

If a gun ends up in criminal use, it is usually after several more transactions. The average age of guns taken from Chicago gangs is over 11 years.

The gun at that point has been diverted from legal commerce. In this respect, the supply chain for guns is similar to that for other products that have a large legal market but are subject to diversion.

In the case of guns, diversion from licit possession and exchange can occur in a variety of ways: theft, purchase at a gun show by an interstate trafficker, private sales where no questions are asked, straw purchases by girlfriends and so forth.

What appears to be true is that there are few big operators in this domain. The typical trafficker or underground broker is not making a living that way but rather just making a few dollars on the side. The supply chain for guns used in crime bears little relationship to the supply chain for heroin or cocaine and is much more akin to that for cigarettes and beer that are diverted to underage teenagers.

There have been few attempts to estimate the scope or scale of the underground market, in part because it is not at all clear what types of transactions should be included. But for the sake of having some order-of-magnitude estimate, suppose we just focus on the number of transactions each year that supply the guns actually used in robbery or assault.

There are about 500,000 violent crimes committed with a gun each year. If the average number of times that an offender commits a robbery or assault with a particular gun is twice, then (assuming patterns of criminal gun use remain constant) the total number of transactions of concern is 250,000 per year.

Actually, no one knows the average number of times a specific gun is used by an offender who uses it at least once. If it is more than twice, then there are even fewer relevant transactions.

That compares with total sales volume by licensed dealers, which is upwards of 20 million per year.

Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik acquired most of their guns legally. Reuters
 

All in the family

So how do gang members, violent criminals, underage youths and other dangerous people get their guns?

A consistent answer emerges from the inmate surveys and from ethnographic studies. Whether guns that end up being used in crime are purchased, swapped, borrowed, shared or stolen, the most likely source is someone known to the offender, an acquaintance or family member.

For example, Syed Rizwan Farook – one of the shooters in San Bernardino – relied on a friend to get several of the rifles and pistols he used because Farook doubted that he could pass a background check. That a friend and neighbor was the source is quite typical, despite the unique circumstances otherwise.

Also important are “street” sources, such as gang members and drug dealers, which may also entail a prior relationship. Thus, social networks play an important role in facilitating transactions, and an individual (such as a gang member) who tends to hang out with people who have guns will find it relatively easy to obtain one.

Effective policing of the underground gun market could help to separate guns from everyday violent crime. Currently it is rare for those who provide guns to offenders to face any legal consequences, and changing that situation will require additional resources to penetrate the social networks of gun offenders.

Needless to say, that effort is not cheap or easy and requires that both the police and the courts have the necessary authority and give this sort of gun enforcement high priority.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on Jan. 15, 2016.
 

Philip Cook, Professor of Public Policy Studies, Duke University
 

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Protests began almost immediately outside senior journalist Gauri Lankesh’s residence in Bengaluru’s Rajarajeshwari Nagar after she was shot dead this evening.

The words of fellow journalist, Pheroze Vincent from the Telegraph say it all: “The moment you killed Gauri, your bhakts celebrated on twitter. The moment you faced a backlash, you and your fronts condemned it on your letter heads. The outrage doesn’t stop. Now you blame the Congress, Maoists, Beastie Boys, Hafiz Saeed, you can’t can this rage because your bloodlust has betrayed you. You fool none, scare none. Come and see us on the streets tomorrow.”

Gauri drove home as is usual and had reached home, parked her car, stepped out of her vehicle and was walking towards the gate whent he first two bullets were fired. They hit her back. As she turned, another three got her straight in the chest and she died instantly. An elderly neighbour called her mother Indira and sister Kavitha informing them that she had fallen down. When they rushed to the spot they discovered that she had been murdered, in cold blood by assassins bullets.

#IamGauri Protests in various parts of India against the assassination of senior journalist Gauri Lankesh.

Protests on September 6:
BANGALORE – 8:45 am, Naik Bhavan
DELHI, CHENNAI – 11 am,  Press Club
MUMBAI – 6 pm, Amphitheater, Carter Road
HYDERABAD – 4 pm, Sunderayya Vignana Kendram
MANGALORE – 4 pm, Town Hall, Gandhi Statue
DHARWAD – 10 am, Prof Kalburghi’s house
PUNE – 4 pm, opp SP College, Sadashiv Peth, Tilak Road

[[ If you are in Bangalore protests against Gauri Lankeshs murder started at 10 pm at Town hall and have now finished and will continue from 1030 am again tomorrow morning. Also Bangalore at 845 a.m. at Naik Bhavan. Mangalore ongoing protests near DCs office now and tomorrow 9 AM @ jyothi circle, 5 PM @ DC office. In Mandya tomorrow morning at 10 am rally from Silver Jubilee Park. 
If you are in Delhi be at Press club to protest at 11 a.m tomorrow, and a protest and condolence meeting is at 3 pm. Kerala union of journalists will also protest at noon at Jantar Mantar and another protest will happen on 7 September at Jantar mantar at 4 pm. If you are in Mumbai 6 pm Amphitheater, Carter Road, Bandra.Hyderabad Sunderayya Vignana Kendram 4 pm. Chennai, 11am, tomorrow, near Press Club. Protests in Kerala at High court junction 6pm, Manaveeyam veedhi Trivandrum, 4pm ]]

There will be more words to remember Gauri tomorrow an therefter. Until then, some images.

In Delhi, the joint protest of the Press Association, Press Club of India and Indian Womens Press Corps will be in front of the Press Club of India tomorrow at 3pm, or join Kerala Union of Working Journalists protest opposite Kerala House at 12noon. There is also a protest by concerned citizens opposite the Press Club of India at 11am and a condolence meeting in JNU’s SL-SIS lawns at 1130am. Dont forget, dont forgive the murder of our colleague. Remember this image, this state of our nation. Feel disturbed, feel rage, lose sleep, feel something

Karnataka police chief R K Dutta said Lankesh was shot dead by unidentified assailants at the entrance of her residence. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah condemned her murder and described it as an assassination of democracy. Absolutely shocked to learn about the murder of renowned journalist Gauri Lankesh,” Siddaramaiah tweeted. “I have no words to condemn this heinous crime. In her passing, Karnataka has lost a strong progressive voice, and I have lost a friend,” the chief minister said.
 
Lankesh was the daughter of journalist and writer P Lankesh.  In November 2016, Lankesh was convicted in two separate defamation cases for her article from January 2008 criticising leaders from the Bharatiya Janata Party. She was out on bail in the case.

There will be more words to remember Gauri tomorrow an therefter. Until then, some images.

Condemning the killing of Ms. Lankesh, Narendra Nayak, president of the Federation of Indian Rationalist Associations, said, “The elimination of voices of reason by silencing them through murder was the hallmark of those cowardly dunces who have no arguments to counter those put forward by us.” She was one of those who was not afraid to speak her mind on any issue which she felt was important, he said.  “As a fellow member on the hit list of these organisations, I feel sad that I have lost a good friend and a supporter… I knew her since three decades right from the days she was a reporter for Sunday. More than a journalist she was a social activist raising her voice for the oppressed and exploited of the society, he said. “It is a shame tor all the citizens of our country that we have tolerated such a sorry state of affairs here that even voices cannot be raised against the forces of irrationalism and communalism. Let those forces clearly understand that such acts by them are not going to silence us. They are only going to become stronger.”

Also Read:

1. Indian journalist critical of Hindu extremists is shot dead in Bangalore

The post Adieu Gauri Lankesh, Fearless Fighter and Dear Friend appeared first on SabrangIndia.