The Future of the Gun

PRAISE FOR

THE FUTURE OF THE GUN

If you want to know what role guns are likely to play in the United States in this century, you’re certainly not going to get any kind of unbiased or accurate answer from general news sources. Frank Miniter, who has been writing about guns for his entire career, fills the void with his new book. Want to see what’s coming? Here is about as good a look at the future of firearms as you are likely to get.

—David E. Petzal, rifles field editor, Field & Stream

Guns are demonized, idolized, politicized, and mostly misunderstood. With a clear voice, a reporter’s curiosity, and a polemist’s agenda, Frank Miniter explores the technology, politics, and influence of guns in America. His look ahead at the next generation of guns and how they will shape public policy is especially fascinating.

—Andrew McKean, editor in chief, Outdoor Life

Americans who know their history and understand that all humanity is created equal know this: the Second Amendment defines a civil right. Chapter Five, ‘How Gun Rights Beat the Media,’ is alone worth the price of admission. Read it, and you’ll never watch cable TV news the same way again. Read this book and you will be armed with the truth about your freedom and what’s to come.

—J. Scott Olmsted, author of Make Every Shot Count and editor of American Hunter

Frank Miniter is one of the finest writers and investigative journalists I know. He does a remarkable job describing the context and history of firearms in America, and then delves into their contemporary lawful and positive use. And in analyzing the criminal use of firearms and the effect the government restriction of gun rights has had on our society, this book makes a dramatic impact on the national debate. Woven into his narrative is the history and big picture of firearm manufacturing in the United States (guns kick started the Industrial Revolution) and what effect technological developments are having and will have on firearms in the near future.

—Mark A. Keefe IV, editor in chief, American Rifleman

"The Future of the Gun is an interesting, honest, thought-provoking treatment that you won’t want to put down. I would expect no less from my amigo Frank Miniter."

—Jim Wilson, senior field editor, Shooting Illustrated and Texas sheriff (ret.)

"The Future of the Gun is an insightful look into gun politics and policy, written with Frank’s trademark wit. An important read for every American."

—Chris W. Cox, chief lobbyist, National Rifle Association

"I first met Frank at the Supreme Court covering the Heller case. From his work there, I knew he was a top-notch reporter, and he shows his writing chops in The Future of the Gun. He’s taken two centuries of the gun in our culture and boils it down to give the back-stories on guns in America. He uses that foundation to offer an informed, yet highly readable look into our future. And he’s done it all in under three hundred pages."

—Jim Shepherd, editor and publisher, The Outdoor Wire Digital Network, including The Shooting Wire, and founding member of CNN

Copyright © 2014 by Frank Miniter

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, website, or broadcast.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014942665

ISBN 978-1-62157-244-2

Published in the United States by

Regnery Publishing

A Salem Communications Company

300 New Jersey Ave NW

Washington, DC 20001

www.Regnery.com

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Books are available in quantity for promotional or premium use. For information on discounts and terms, please visit our website: www.Regnery.com.

Distributed to the trade by

Perseus Distribution

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New York, NY 10107

Appendix photos credit: NRA Museums, NRAmuseums.com, except for the Remington R-51 photo, which is courtesy of Remington Arms.

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,

Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,

Here once the embattled farmers stood,

And fired the shot heard round the world.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Concord Hymn

Contents

INTRODUCTION: American Guns: Freedom’s Tool

PART I: Future Glock?

CHAPTER ONE

Every American Should Hear This

CHAPTER TWO

The Rifle Grows a Brain

CHAPTER THREE

Technology Perfects the Pistol

PART II: The Politician’s View of Your Future

CHAPTER FOUR

Embedded with the Gun Lobby

CHAPTER FIVE

How Gun Rights Beat the Media

CHAPTER SIX

Into Gun-Free America

CHAPTER SEVEN

What Happens to Disarmed Peoples

PART III: Winning the Future of the Gun

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Gun Marketplace of the Future

CHAPTER NINE

The Solution to Gun Violence

CHAPTER TEN

The Armed Citizen of the Future

APPENDIX: The Evolution of Freedom’s Tool

NOTES

INDEX

INTRODUCTION

American Guns: Freedom’s Tool

Among the many misdeeds of British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.

—Mohandas Gandhi, An Autobiography

In a way, the future of gun ownership in America is about what happens to Mike K.

He grew up in an inner city without a father, joined a gang, stole cars, had a felony conviction at eighteen, and odds are should have been incarcerated or shot dead by twenty-one. He’s a linebacker-sized black man whose first experiences with guns were with illegal semiautomatic handguns tucked into pants and stuffed into puffy jackets. Yet it was guns that eventually saved him from all the bad stuff. We met so he could tell me his story.

We’re seated in little plastic chairs made for middle school students. There is a small wood school desk between us. Mike is now in his mid-thirties and drives a truck to pay the bills. He has tattoos on his arms of his three children’s names. Two of the names are in the shape of a crucifix on his left forearm and the third is on his right bicep. The two making the cross are wrapped in ivy, his wife’s name. He can’t own a gun, because of his youthful felony conviction. It was nothing really. Just a stupid thing, he tells me, but then he pauses. I sense he knows he’s paid a hefty price for his mistakes—and is grateful to be alive and in a better place.

He tells me slowly, warily, You know, I’d be dead or locked up if John didn’t teach me to handle a gun.

John is John Annoni, who is speaking in a nearby classroom to thirty kids, most of whom are in middle school. The kids are here for Camp Compass, an after-school program designed to save inner-city kids from the bad influences of rough neighborhoods. The kids are friendly, respectful, and courteous and will shake your hand when you meet them and call you sir or ma’am. John has found a way to save these kids by using guns as a carrot at the end of a long stick.

The classroom is not in a public school. We’re actually in an upstairs room of Joe Mascari’s Carpets & Rugs in Allentown, Pennsylvania. If you’re wondering what we’re doing in a carpet store, so is Joe Mascari. He never thought he’d give up floor space to a program for inner-city kids. It all started when the public school where John teaches and began this after-school program told him he couldn’t use guns as a teaching device, because guns are a bad influence. John says guns helped save him when he grew up in a bad neighborhood; and guns, he says, are part of these kids’ lives, though too often in bad ways. Teaching them about guns in the right way is what, he thinks, makes his after-school program so effective.

Like a lot of kids from these asphalt-and-brick neighborhoods, John grew up without a father. His grandmother raised him. On weekends he went to his mother’s apartment in the projects. It was a violent and abusive place, he says, so I started going out behind the projects and hiding in this little woodlot. I’d sit there in the woods where nobody could hurt me. Pretty soon I saw a squirrel and I started to stalk it. As time goes on I got better at stalking and tracking game around that little woodlot. I was safe and happy there until I had to go back to the apartment—Mother Nature was saving me. Later an uncle took me hunting and I found a real connection to the outdoors. Guns, in this very different culture from [what] I knew on the streets, helped save my life.

John says he found himself between two cultures, so he decided to take good parts from both. A lot of students wonder where I grew up and what color I am, he often tells people. New students sometimes ask me, ‘What are you?’ I think they’re looking for a role model they can relate to by skin color, so I reply by asking them, ‘What do you think I am?’ After they guess, I tell them, ‘I’m half-black and half-white but I look Spanish and I eat Chinese food.’ They laugh. I let them all know I’m just like them.

A friend of John’s introduced him to Joe Mascari. At first, when John broached the idea of having his after-school programs there, Joe said, Are you nuts? This is a carpet store. But John kept talking and pretty soon Joe gave him these rooms to use for free.

Joe’s wife was killed by a knife-wielding murderer. Most people would say he shouldn’t be helping us because of that, says John, but he gets it. He gets that if she had a gun she might be alive. He gets that something is rotten in this inner-city culture and he gets that we’re doing something about it. He even says if that thug had come to Camp Compass he never would have done such an evil thing. So he helps us use guns to teach responsibility, to grow upstanding adults.

Mike K., sitting across from me, tells me that two of his close boyhood friends are in jail for shooting at cops and that others are dead. He waves his tattooed right arm at the city streets of Allentown, Pennsylvania, and says, People blame guns for all that bad stuff out there. I tell ’em it’s not guns. I tell them how John used guns to save my life.

He leans closer, puts his hands on the little school desk between us, and says, The only way to save people like me is with good examples and by not lying to them about guns and all that. Those politicians who blame guns are making the streets worse. They’re sentencing kids to death and jail ’cause they just don’t understand. He shakes his head and says, All those counselors I saw. He pauses again. His eyes tell me he’s repressing a lot of things he doesn’t want to get into. He says, Only John told me the truth. Only John cared enough to do that. You tell the truth like he does in your book and, I dunno, maybe it’ll make some difference.

He takes a deep breath and continues, "Back in 1995 I was getting into fights, stealing, getting suspended from school and all that. Mentor after mentor quit on me. I was a lost cause in their eyes, someone that would either end up in jail or dead by twenty-one. Let me tell you I was ready to give up, too. But then I was introduced to John. Sure, I knew of John from elementary school. I remember walking by his classroom, always seeing smiling faces and hearing laughter. It was such a positive atmosphere. But I thought he was going to be another mentor to quit on me. But then weeks had passed and John was still there. He took me out to do positive things. He showed me life!

It was weird. Guns in my neighborhood were bad things. The guys who had them got them because a gun made them powerful. Guns made them cool. Most of my friends got handguns. No one taught them about guns. Most of their dads weren’t around. All they knew was a gun tucked in their pants made them feared, made them dangerous.

But you know, Mike says, John took me out to a gun range and taught me to shoot a shotgun, then a rifle. He showed me how to unload a gun and to shoot safely by keeping my finger off the trigger until I’m gonna shoot and teaches me to keep the barrel in a safe direction and all that. He teaches me responsibility. He shows me how a real man handles a gun. He trusted me. No one ever did that. I didn’t want to let him down.

Mike shifts his feet and says, "So I stopped getting in trouble and got my grades up. John took me hunting. Soon I’m back in the neighborhood showing my friends the picture of the deer I got and they think it’s so cool. So all I want to do is go hunting. It was so good, so far away from the streets and in my hands was this great responsibility, this gun, and all I had to do was handle it right, like a man does, and I’d be right and good and maybe get a deer or whatever.

But looking back now, I know something else was going on. When John took me hunting in those days we’d sit and talk about what was going on in my life and ways to make things better. I connected with John because I looked at him as a big brother, not as some social worker and because he was showing me something I never saw before—how guns are tools and that when you do things right they’re good and you’re good. I finally found someone to look up to and a way to prove myself with the very thing my friends feared and respected most—guns. I had to earn everything I did with John. I had to learn discipline by hunting and shooting.

He pauses again and his eyes go down to the wood table before coming back up again, and he tells me that some of his friends from the streets wanted to pull him back. They thought those hunting photos were pretty cool, but they wanted him to hang out and do all that bad stuff he was getting away from. Mike says, Eventually, John and I spent less time together. I was finally happy with myself, with my life, and I owed that to John. But then one day I was with a group of friends and they decided to rob some kids standing on a street corner. Not thinking, I stayed in the car instead of leaving. Naturally, we got arrested. I thought my life was over because I was the only one of adult age—the blame fell squarely on my shoulders. I didn’t know what to do or who to turn to. I never had a father figure. My friends were all I had. I couldn’t call John. I was scared. I didn’t want to disappoint him. Besides, I hadn’t spoken to John in months, why would he help me? Although every bone in my body didn’t want to, my heart told me to call him. John took me in with open arms. He sat me down just like in the beginning of our relationship and we came up with a plan to get myself back on the correct path. I have been on that same path ever since.

Mike shifts his weight in his little plastic chair, frowns, and his eyes get emotional as he explains that he’s now trying to get his gun rights back after that awful mistake almost twenty years ago. He didn’t get any jail time for that robbery, just probation. Nevertheless, he has a felony conviction so he can’t own a gun. Now his wife can’t have a gun because, as a felon, Mike can’t be in the same house with a gun. That’s eating away at him. She’s not safe when I’m out driving the truck. She’s not safe because of me, he says. He has a lawyer helping him try to get his Second Amendment rights back. He hopes he can have his freedom again. He only wants to live free and to protect his family and for his wife to be safe when he’s away driving trucks, but the law is stopping him.

He got mugged recently when he pulled his truck into a loading dock to make a delivery. The guy jumped on his truck’s running board, pointed a pistol in his face, and said, Sorry man, I gotta eat. Give me whatever money you got.

Right there my life was in this guy’s hands, says Mike. He didn’t want to shoot me and I gave him my wallet and he ran away, but it made me think about my wife and kids alone at home and that drives me crazy.

Mike pauses, looks at the floor, and then back at me as he says, In my time on the streets I’ve seen what gun laws do. They ban handguns. So then all my old friends have handguns anyway, but the law-abiding people don’t. What good does that do? You want to make the streets safer, you need to let law-abiding people carry if they want. That way you’ll have people who’re responsible being, you know, good examples. They’ll show kids by example how guns should be treated. There are too many guns out there to just ban them. I can take you to places right now where you can buy an illegal handgun no problem. You want this to get better, you want a brighter future, then enforce the gun laws—let me tell you they’re not—and let good people carry concealed if they want to. That would have stopped me from doing a lot of the bad stuff I did all those years ago. It would reduce violence now.

Mike’s story is powerful, but he’s far from alone. I talk to other people from the rougher parts of town who were saved by John.

Andrew M. is twenty-two years old and of Egyptian descent. He is about to graduate from college and become a teacher, like John. He says, When I was in the sixth grade the police came and took my father away. It was in all the papers. The whole street knew they were arresting my father. He was convicted of rape and is still in jail. My father used to walk me to school, but now we had to move and I was in a new school in a tough neighborhood. So suddenly I’m all alone—just a little scared sixth grader. John sees me there and he knows all about it. He says, ‘Don’t worry, it’s my first day, too.’ It wasn’t, of course, but he knew just what to say. Right away he welcomes me into Camp Compass. He saves my life. I’d be dead or in jail now if John didn’t take me in and use guns and hunting to show me how to be a positive, hard-working adult.

Two others join me. Tiffany S. and Mike M. Tiffany is white and Mike is black. They tell similar stories. They say the only way to make the streets safer is with good examples, with people like John. Tiffany tells me about the guns she saw in high school. She went to a rough inner-city school with gang problems; illegal guns were easily had and were used to victimize people. You take the freedom to own a gun away and you get what John saved us from on these streets. You do that and all you have left is the bad, says Tiffany. She’s twenty-four years old now and has a college degree that helped her get a job in a hospital.

Tiffany has always had health issues. They make her weak. They used to make her feel helpless. She says, When John took me shooting and hunting I learned confidence. He gave me this rite of passage to become a good adult.

Most of the people I talk to tell me they don’t hunt anymore. Many don’t even own guns. But they all back gun rights.

I wish those who back gun-free zones could meet these people and spend time on their streets. Murder and violence took place before the invention of guns, and they will continue to take place—and have taken place, at high rates—even in localities with stiff gun-control laws. Guns don’t cause violence. What guns can do in the hands of honest people is equalize the odds between a one-hundred-pound woman and a two-hundred-pound potential assailant, or between the good guys and the bad guys.

There are two wildly different gun cultures in America—the freedom-loving, gun-rights culture that upholds the responsible use of guns for hunting, sport, and self-defense, and the criminal culture that thrives in spite of, or even because of, government attempts at restricting gun rights. Those two cultures lead to two different futures. The path we take will determine the future of the gun and the future of our freedom.

PART I

Future Glock?

CHAPTER ONE

Every American Should Hear This

Like history it repeats itself.

—A 1904 ad for the Winchester Automatic Rifle, a semiautomatic .22 rimfire rifle¹

Isay, swallowing a laugh, Just tell me what you really think about America’s love affair with the gun, Phil. Don’t let me stop you.

Phil Schreier, the senior curator for the NRA’s National Firearms Museum, and I are standing right in the middle of the biggest gun museum in all the world, and he’s just said, Since David killed Goliath, the person with the more advanced weapon, not the guy with biggest muscles, has always won the fight.

He says this as we’re looking at the Mayflower gun, a wheel-lock carbine brought to America on the Mayflower by John Alden in 1620. Alden was one of the Pilgrim leaders of Plymouth Colony, so his gun was certainly at the first Thanksgiving.

"From