The use of no-knock searches became a routine law enforcement tool during the Reagan Administration in which George Bush was vice-president, and intensified in Bush's administration when Bush ginned up the war on drugs while paying scant attention to Constitutional rights.
Although Bush didn't say so, the NRA's criticism of lawless federal law enforcement is indirect criticism of Bush himself. The killings of Donald Scott and the Weavers were perpetrated under the Bush administration. The Waco attack was perpetrated in the early weeks of the Clinton Presidency, but the planning took place under Bush.
George Bush's membership in the NRA was a cynical charade from the beginning. He only joined in 1988, shortly before his run for President, plunking down $500 to make himself an instant "life member." The $500 was a good investment for him, since the NRA made a six million dollar independent expenditure for him in the general election, turning what would have been a close race into a landslide, by providing Bush's margin of victory in states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, Montana, and Maryland.
Bush had written a public letter in September 1988, declaring his opposition to banning guns, but the promise did not survive the first few weeks of the Presidency. The Bush administration not only banned the imports of dozens of types of semi-automatic rifles, it proposed a ban on magazines holding more than 15 rounds, offered to sign the Brady Bill and an extensive ban on semiautomatic firearms in exchange for passage of an administration crime bill with other civil liberties restrictions, and never exerted the slightest effort to help pro-gun forces win close Congressional votes.
While the Bush White House treated the NRA with contempt, and froze it out of gun policy discussions, Mr. Bush apparently felt himself wronged when the NRA refused to endorse him in 1992 (a fact which he forgets to mention in his self-righteous resignation letter).
Notably, President Bush proposed completely abolishing the exclusionary rule in all cases where a gun was found. In other words, no matter how flagrantly illegal and violent the police conduct, if a gun was found, the gun would be admitted in evidence. Such a law would, of course, be a green light for jack-booted attacks on gun-owners.
Fortunately, Congress rejected Bush's lawless proposal, but the Bush administration, through deliberate indifference, encouraged the growth and intensification of federal law enforcement violence to its current crisis state. President Clinton hasn't handled the problem very well, but the problem was one that he inherited, not one he created.
Back in 1989, after President Bush had shown that his pro-gun election promises were merely a scrap of paper, grassroots NRA activists in Texas started circulating petitions to have him expelled from the organization. In retrospect, the NRA leadership was wrong in squashing the petition. If federal law enforcement's reputation is suffering these days, it's not because of NRA fund-raising letters; it's because of George Bush's failure to uphold his Presidential oath to defend the Constitution.
Dave Kopel is Research Director of the Independence Institute in Golden, Colorado.
The Bush administration not only banned the imports of dozens of types of semi-automatic rifles, it proposed a ban on magazines holding more than 15 rounds, offered to sign the Brady Bill and an extensive ban on semiautomatic firearms in exchange for passage of an administration crime bill with other civil liberties restrictions, and never exerted the slightest effort to help pro-gun forces win close Congressional votes.
