Another revealing article from The Oregonian, with excellent additional links on the right hand side.
One item in particular sums up the BIG problem with the antis (regarding the Thurston High School shooting): "A reporter called, but Burdick was TOO EMOTIONAL [my emphasis] to talk. Then she realized she had to compose herself. After all, Burdick, a Democrat, had become the foremost champion of gun control in the Legislature."
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/99/11/st112806.html
A NEAR MISS
How gun control failed in the 1999 Oregon Legislature
Sunday, November 28, 1999
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Jeff Mapes of The Oregonian staff
Rescuers were still pulling wounded children from the cafeteria floor when Ron Harder took a call from a state senator who lived just two blocks from Thurston High School.
As the National Rifle Association's lobbyist in Oregon, Harder had no better pal in the Legislature than Bill Dwyer. The two had teamed up regularly over the years to stop gun-control bills, and they hosted a trap-shooting party that was the social highlight of every legislative session.
Now, Dwyer gave Harder every detail he had. A teen-ager had turned a .22-caliber rifle on a roomful of students. Two of them were dead.
Harder's son was a paramedic, and he could picture all too vividly the horror rescuers faced as they scrambled to help dozens of hurt and scared kids.
But Harder also was a professional. As he dutifully passed on Dwyer's information to his bosses at NRA headquarters in Virginia, one thing seemed crystal clear: The politics of guns in Oregon would no longer be the same.
While Harder worked the phone in Salem, state Sen. Ginny Burdick pulled into the driveway of her Southwest Portland home and caught something on the radio about a school massacre. Burdick ran inside, turned on the TV and crumpled to the living-room floor as the chaotic scene played out in front of her.
I should go to Thurston, she thought. No, that seemed useless.
A reporter called, but Burdick was too emotional to talk. Then she realized she had to compose herself. After all, Burdick, a Democrat, had become the foremost champion of gun control in the Legislature.
As she returned media calls, Burdick's outrage slowly overcame her despair. This should be an issue in every campaign, Burdick said. We have to do more to keep kids and kooks from getting their hands on guns.
After a decade of doing nothing about guns, she thought, maybe this was the shock the Legislature needed.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pearl, Miss., West Paducah, Ky., Jonesboro, Ark. -- and now Springfield, Ore. Two more students dead and 25 wounded.
School shootings had become a national tragedy that rekindled all the old debates about gun control. Groups such as Handgun Control Inc. said the issue was now child safety, while the NRA and other opponents said these tragedies were being used as a stalking horse to take away the legitimate rights of gun owners.
Although little was happening in Congress, both sides knew Oregon could be a major battleground as a result of Thurston. The state had a proud Western heritage, a place where rifle racks on pickups are a common sight, but polls showed its growing urban population was nervous about easy access to guns.
Burdick, a normally ebullient and sturdy woman entering her 50s, had fallen into the gun issue almost by accident.
A former reporter turned political consultant, she understood the rhythms of campaigns. So when she ran for the Senate in 1996, she knew she had to say something about crime.
She had worked on a project for a gun-control group, so she decided to focus on that. She correctly figured it fit her well-to-do, liberal district, which sprawled across the hilly precincts south of downtown Portland.
Burdick pressed the issue with little success in the 1997 Legislature, her first. Now, even after Thurston, she knew who her biggest obstacle would be -- Ron Harder.
In Oregon, Harder owned gun issues.
No firearms bill moved that had so much as a comma he disliked. Two years earlier, his lawmaker allies wouldn't even allow a hearing on any gun-control bill.
In conversation, Harder presented the earthy demeanor of an outdoorsman who loved to stalk elk with a bow and arrow. A broad mustache crept down the sides of his mouth, toughening his grimace. On his office wall hung a huge photo of a bobcat chasing a fox.
He could be passionate about the constitutional rights of gun owners. The way to stop gun violence, he insisted, was with tougher crime laws, education and an end to media glorification of violence.
Thurston happened, Harder said, because police failed to keep the shooter, Kip Kinkel, behind bars after he was caught with a gun in his locker the day before the attack. "If you passed every bill last session -- from trigger locks to (limits on) gun shows -- it would not have stopped that kid," he said with a growl.
Oregon had always been a pro-gun state; 300,000 residents hunt, and about half the households have firearms. And Harder's power increased when Republicans took control of the Legislature in 1995. They worked closely with him because the NRA's fervent grass-roots membership -- even more than its campaign money -- was an important element that kept them in power.
Harder talked about the 1999 legislative session being his last. He was 62, and he would lose a lot of friends in the Capitol, including Dwyer, because of term limits. He couldn't leave now, though.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the seven months between the shootings and the Legislature's opening gavel, Burdick and Harder girded for war. And the rules had changed.
Republican leaders made it clear they no longer could bury gun control. So Harder diligently called on legislators and candidates, pushing the idea that new laws couldn't have stopped someone as determined as Kinkel.
In his fight, Harder had allies -- of a sort.
Although the NRA remained the legendary force against gun control, the organization was bracketed by two other groups in Oregon.
The Oregon Gun Owners, led by John Nichols, was much quicker to look for compromise. Nichols once had represented the NRA in Oregon before his willingness to deal got in the way.
Nichols, a soft-spoken collector of machine guns, managed to stay a player on gun issues -- thanks, of all things, to bingo. His nonprofit group earned proceeds from a Southeast Portland bingo hall, taking in $334,000 in 1998.
The money paid for a full-time lobbying effort run out of a former Salem funeral home by a young political operative, John Hellen. If the Oregon Gun Owners could cut a deal that headed off tougher regulations, they'd do it.
On the opposite flank stood the Gun Owners of America, a hard-line group that also had a strong presence in Oregon. Their local leader, Kevin Starrett, had a pugnacity that matched his New York City upbringing, even if his staunchly conservative politics didn't.
Starrett talked at length about states and foreign nations that went from regulating guns to confiscating them. He believed people needed guns to protect themselves from crime -- and a tyrannical government. Fittingly, he had named his son Sam Colt.
Harder and Starrett were friends. But Starrett hated how the NRA lobbyist cozied up to legislators, even liberal Democrats. Starrett didn't even want to be around politicians. Instead, his weapon was the Internet.
Even so much as sniff at gun control, he liked to warn legislators, and the wrath of e-mail will come down upon you.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Burdick traveled the state to build her own coalition. She talked guns with everybody from emergency-room doctors at Oregon Health Sciences University to PTA leaders. Her home, car and office became a mad dash of paper, persuasion and blunt cuss words.
Sometimes, in the oddest of ways, it seemed to take over her life. Her 11-year-old daughter, struck by the constant talk of firearms, visited Burdick's sister one fall weekend and couldn't resist rooting through a closet to find an unlocked handgun. She didn't pick it up, but the episode caused a family fight.
Burdick's supporters had plenty of ideas about how to tackle gun control.
One of her former clients, Tuck Wilson of Oregonians Against Gun Violence, promoted a rewrite of the firearms code. Handgun Control Inc. wanted laws that penalized adults if children took their unlocked guns and hurt someone.
But Burdick would let others introduce those bills. She stuck closely to the one group she knew would be pivotal -- the cops.
Every politician wants to appear tough on crime, and that gives police chiefs, sheriffs and district attorneys tremendous influence in Salem. The Legislature would never give gun control a second look if law enforcement didn't want it. And what law enforcement really cared about were Oregon's ubiquitous gun shows.
Promoters and gun groups held about 160 of these weekend emporiums a year in the state, eighth-highest in the nation. Thousands of guns changed hands, often without anyone having to do a background check on the buyers.
The cops said these shows were an easy source of supply for the bad guys -- felons or people who might have a serious mental illness.
Burdick knew that requiring background checks at gun shows didn't have much to do with what happened at Thurston. But the politics -- including polls -- said it had the best chance of breaking the gun lobby.
If a state such as Oregon could pass such a bill, she said, it could begin to break the power of the gun lobby in this country.
As legislators prepared to gather in Salem, Burdick convinced herself the mission hadn't changed from the moment she watched bloody survivors being helped out of Thurston on TV.
One way or another, she vowed, Oregon would take a stand.
------------------
The New World Order has a Third Reich odor.
One item in particular sums up the BIG problem with the antis (regarding the Thurston High School shooting): "A reporter called, but Burdick was TOO EMOTIONAL [my emphasis] to talk. Then she realized she had to compose herself. After all, Burdick, a Democrat, had become the foremost champion of gun control in the Legislature."
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/99/11/st112806.html
A NEAR MISS
How gun control failed in the 1999 Oregon Legislature
Sunday, November 28, 1999
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Jeff Mapes of The Oregonian staff
Rescuers were still pulling wounded children from the cafeteria floor when Ron Harder took a call from a state senator who lived just two blocks from Thurston High School.
As the National Rifle Association's lobbyist in Oregon, Harder had no better pal in the Legislature than Bill Dwyer. The two had teamed up regularly over the years to stop gun-control bills, and they hosted a trap-shooting party that was the social highlight of every legislative session.
Now, Dwyer gave Harder every detail he had. A teen-ager had turned a .22-caliber rifle on a roomful of students. Two of them were dead.
Harder's son was a paramedic, and he could picture all too vividly the horror rescuers faced as they scrambled to help dozens of hurt and scared kids.
But Harder also was a professional. As he dutifully passed on Dwyer's information to his bosses at NRA headquarters in Virginia, one thing seemed crystal clear: The politics of guns in Oregon would no longer be the same.
While Harder worked the phone in Salem, state Sen. Ginny Burdick pulled into the driveway of her Southwest Portland home and caught something on the radio about a school massacre. Burdick ran inside, turned on the TV and crumpled to the living-room floor as the chaotic scene played out in front of her.
I should go to Thurston, she thought. No, that seemed useless.
A reporter called, but Burdick was too emotional to talk. Then she realized she had to compose herself. After all, Burdick, a Democrat, had become the foremost champion of gun control in the Legislature.
As she returned media calls, Burdick's outrage slowly overcame her despair. This should be an issue in every campaign, Burdick said. We have to do more to keep kids and kooks from getting their hands on guns.
After a decade of doing nothing about guns, she thought, maybe this was the shock the Legislature needed.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pearl, Miss., West Paducah, Ky., Jonesboro, Ark. -- and now Springfield, Ore. Two more students dead and 25 wounded.
School shootings had become a national tragedy that rekindled all the old debates about gun control. Groups such as Handgun Control Inc. said the issue was now child safety, while the NRA and other opponents said these tragedies were being used as a stalking horse to take away the legitimate rights of gun owners.
Although little was happening in Congress, both sides knew Oregon could be a major battleground as a result of Thurston. The state had a proud Western heritage, a place where rifle racks on pickups are a common sight, but polls showed its growing urban population was nervous about easy access to guns.
Burdick, a normally ebullient and sturdy woman entering her 50s, had fallen into the gun issue almost by accident.
A former reporter turned political consultant, she understood the rhythms of campaigns. So when she ran for the Senate in 1996, she knew she had to say something about crime.
She had worked on a project for a gun-control group, so she decided to focus on that. She correctly figured it fit her well-to-do, liberal district, which sprawled across the hilly precincts south of downtown Portland.
Burdick pressed the issue with little success in the 1997 Legislature, her first. Now, even after Thurston, she knew who her biggest obstacle would be -- Ron Harder.
In Oregon, Harder owned gun issues.
No firearms bill moved that had so much as a comma he disliked. Two years earlier, his lawmaker allies wouldn't even allow a hearing on any gun-control bill.
In conversation, Harder presented the earthy demeanor of an outdoorsman who loved to stalk elk with a bow and arrow. A broad mustache crept down the sides of his mouth, toughening his grimace. On his office wall hung a huge photo of a bobcat chasing a fox.
He could be passionate about the constitutional rights of gun owners. The way to stop gun violence, he insisted, was with tougher crime laws, education and an end to media glorification of violence.
Thurston happened, Harder said, because police failed to keep the shooter, Kip Kinkel, behind bars after he was caught with a gun in his locker the day before the attack. "If you passed every bill last session -- from trigger locks to (limits on) gun shows -- it would not have stopped that kid," he said with a growl.
Oregon had always been a pro-gun state; 300,000 residents hunt, and about half the households have firearms. And Harder's power increased when Republicans took control of the Legislature in 1995. They worked closely with him because the NRA's fervent grass-roots membership -- even more than its campaign money -- was an important element that kept them in power.
Harder talked about the 1999 legislative session being his last. He was 62, and he would lose a lot of friends in the Capitol, including Dwyer, because of term limits. He couldn't leave now, though.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the seven months between the shootings and the Legislature's opening gavel, Burdick and Harder girded for war. And the rules had changed.
Republican leaders made it clear they no longer could bury gun control. So Harder diligently called on legislators and candidates, pushing the idea that new laws couldn't have stopped someone as determined as Kinkel.
In his fight, Harder had allies -- of a sort.
Although the NRA remained the legendary force against gun control, the organization was bracketed by two other groups in Oregon.
The Oregon Gun Owners, led by John Nichols, was much quicker to look for compromise. Nichols once had represented the NRA in Oregon before his willingness to deal got in the way.
Nichols, a soft-spoken collector of machine guns, managed to stay a player on gun issues -- thanks, of all things, to bingo. His nonprofit group earned proceeds from a Southeast Portland bingo hall, taking in $334,000 in 1998.
The money paid for a full-time lobbying effort run out of a former Salem funeral home by a young political operative, John Hellen. If the Oregon Gun Owners could cut a deal that headed off tougher regulations, they'd do it.
On the opposite flank stood the Gun Owners of America, a hard-line group that also had a strong presence in Oregon. Their local leader, Kevin Starrett, had a pugnacity that matched his New York City upbringing, even if his staunchly conservative politics didn't.
Starrett talked at length about states and foreign nations that went from regulating guns to confiscating them. He believed people needed guns to protect themselves from crime -- and a tyrannical government. Fittingly, he had named his son Sam Colt.
Harder and Starrett were friends. But Starrett hated how the NRA lobbyist cozied up to legislators, even liberal Democrats. Starrett didn't even want to be around politicians. Instead, his weapon was the Internet.
Even so much as sniff at gun control, he liked to warn legislators, and the wrath of e-mail will come down upon you.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Burdick traveled the state to build her own coalition. She talked guns with everybody from emergency-room doctors at Oregon Health Sciences University to PTA leaders. Her home, car and office became a mad dash of paper, persuasion and blunt cuss words.
Sometimes, in the oddest of ways, it seemed to take over her life. Her 11-year-old daughter, struck by the constant talk of firearms, visited Burdick's sister one fall weekend and couldn't resist rooting through a closet to find an unlocked handgun. She didn't pick it up, but the episode caused a family fight.
Burdick's supporters had plenty of ideas about how to tackle gun control.
One of her former clients, Tuck Wilson of Oregonians Against Gun Violence, promoted a rewrite of the firearms code. Handgun Control Inc. wanted laws that penalized adults if children took their unlocked guns and hurt someone.
But Burdick would let others introduce those bills. She stuck closely to the one group she knew would be pivotal -- the cops.
Every politician wants to appear tough on crime, and that gives police chiefs, sheriffs and district attorneys tremendous influence in Salem. The Legislature would never give gun control a second look if law enforcement didn't want it. And what law enforcement really cared about were Oregon's ubiquitous gun shows.
Promoters and gun groups held about 160 of these weekend emporiums a year in the state, eighth-highest in the nation. Thousands of guns changed hands, often without anyone having to do a background check on the buyers.
The cops said these shows were an easy source of supply for the bad guys -- felons or people who might have a serious mental illness.
Burdick knew that requiring background checks at gun shows didn't have much to do with what happened at Thurston. But the politics -- including polls -- said it had the best chance of breaking the gun lobby.
If a state such as Oregon could pass such a bill, she said, it could begin to break the power of the gun lobby in this country.
As legislators prepared to gather in Salem, Burdick convinced herself the mission hadn't changed from the moment she watched bloody survivors being helped out of Thurston on TV.
One way or another, she vowed, Oregon would take a stand.
------------------
The New World Order has a Third Reich odor.