November 30, 2023: Gun Control Histories: The Brady Bill

[30 years ago this week, Congress passed the groundbreaking gun control legislation known as the Brady Bill. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of key moments and layers to the debate over gun control and guns in American society, past and present!]

On six interconnected figures who together helped create one of the most groundbreaking pieces of gun legislation in American history.

1)      James and Sarah Brady: In recent years, we’ve become all too accustomed to victims of gun violence and their loved ones working as gun control activists; I don’t mean that each and every one of those cases isn’t individual, important, and inspiring, just that the overall story is too damn familiar in 21^st century America. But that wasn’t the case in the 1980s, when former Reagan administration official James Brady (who had been severely wounded by John Hinckley during his March 1981 assassination attempt on Reagan) and his wife Sarah became leading voices in the fight for background checks on gun purchases. The contingencies of history are impossible to unravel with certainty, but I think it’s very fair to say that the Brady Bill was aptly named, that it never would have gotten anywhere without the symbolic, strategic, and significant leadership provided by this couple.

2)      Edward Feighan and Howard Metzenbaum: As that cute little dude from Schoolhouse Rock would remind us, however, for a bill to become a law it takes lawmakers willing to introduce and sponsor it, and in February 1987 these two Ohio Democratic lawmakers, Representative Feighan and Senator Metzenbaum, did just that, introducing the Brady Bill as part of the 100^th Congress. It would eventually be voted down 228-182 in the House of Representatives in September 1988, and would not become a law for more than half a decade, a reflection of the power and pressure of the NRA, the gun lobby more broadly, and its Congressional allies. But those factors only make clearer still how courageous it was for these two elected officials to take on those power structures, risk their own political careers in the process, and start the ball rolling on the Brady Bill becoming a law. 

3)      Chuck Schumer and Bill Clinton: I don’t tend to get into the weeds of debates among Democrats and the American Left on this blog, and I can promise you I plan to continue not doing so as often as possible; see this post on circular firing squads for why. Suffice to say, for many on the Left Chuck Schumer and Bill Clinton represent not just a Democratic Old Guard whose time has come and gone, but also the essence of Neoliberalism. And maybe so, but in that case it’s even more impressive that one of Clinton’s first signature moments as president was a pretty radical one—signing the Brady Bill into law in November 1993, after Representative Schumer had reintroduced it and it had finally passed the House. There might not be a lot about politics in the 1990s that we should seek to emulate today, but I would argue that the era’s gun control victories definitely qualify.

Last gun control history tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Histories or contexts you’d highlight?