Authors: Dan Baum
Gun Guys (50 page)
For excellent articles on Stembridge Gun Rentals, I refer the reader to “Shoot for Effect,” by John Fasano in the October 1998 issue of
Guns
magazine, and, even better, “7,000 Guns for Hire,” by Bob Thomas, in the January 1969 issue of
True
magazine (“For Today’s Man”).
Not all goes smoothly in the Hollywood gun business.
USA Today
reported on December 12, 2011, in “Weapons Reportedly Meant for Brad Pitt Film Seized,” that Hungarian authorities had confiscated about a hundred live weapons headed for the set of
World War Z
, Pitt’s zombie-war movie.
Anybody interested in wasting many hours could visit
imfdb.com
—the International Movie Firearms Database—which attempts to list every firearm used in every movie. If you need to know, say, how Jack Bauer armed himself in the second season of
24
, what Jimmy Stewart used to shoot Liberty Valance, or which pistols gunned down Marlon Brando in
The Godfather
, you can look them up. You can answer for yourself the question that inevitably arises as gun guys sit in the dark before a flickering screen: What
is
that gun? The database is cross-referenced, too; type in the name of a gun and imfdb will tell you every movie in which it has appeared. The Bernardelli Model 60?
Dawn of the Dead
(1978) and the first six episodes of
The X-Files
. The Haenel-Schmeisser?
Metropolis
(1927). My Glock 19? Too many to list.
Imfdb.com
is one of those realms of arcana that the Internet was practically invented to foster. It tries to identify guns in movies you’d have thought contained no guns—the Colt New Service that flashes by in the international trailer for
Water for Elephants
or the Remington 700PSS seen for a nanosecond in
Up in the Air
. Imfdb is where you go to learn that the first time an M16 appeared in a movie was in
Seven Days in May
, in 1964, or that until the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989 and its weapons became available to Hollywood, almost all the Soviet guns in movies were mocked-up American guns disguised with plastic and sheet metal. Woe betide the Hollywood director who commits the sin of anachronism or inaccuracy. The makers of the 2002 Mel Gibson film
We Were Soldiers
get high marks from imfdb for scattering shell casings from live rounds on the ground; they look different from the crimped casings made by blanks. But imfdb dismisses the overall effort this way: “Many rifles used in this movie were not actual XM16E1s. The historical XM16E1s had only a partial magazine fence. Many rifles were actually M16A1s mocked up to look like XM16E1s, modified with chromed bolt carriers and 3 prong flash hiders.”
Well!
I must not have been much of an arma-cinephiliac; I was impressed that the filmmakers had gone to the trouble of modifying guns with chromed bolt carriers and 3-prong flash hiders. And for the record, gun guys aren’t the only ones policing movie props with obsessive compulsion. Witness these websites: the Internet Movie Cars Database, the Internet Movie Plane Database, Watches in Movies, and Rotary Action (helicopters in movies). Even The Fountain Pen Network maintains a page to track—and argue over—movie sightings.
This is how Thomas, the Library of Congress’s online service, summarizes the Brady Act of 1994:
Title I: Brady Handgun Control—Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act—Amends the Federal criminal code to: (1) require the Attorney General, within five years, to establish a national instant criminal background check system (system) for firearm licensees to contact for information on whether receipt of a firearm by a prospective transferee would violate Federal or State law; and (2) establish an interim five-day waiting period for handgun purchases and procedures for checking with the chief law enforcement officer of the place of residence of the purchaser (police official) for such information.
(Sec. 102) Prohibits, under the interim procedures, any licensed importer, manufacturer, or dealer from transferring a handgun to an unlicensed individual unless: (1) the transferor has received a statement of eligibility from the individual, verified the individual’s identity, and notified the police official and during the next five business days the transferor either has not received information that the transfer would violate the law or has received notice that the transfer would not violate the law; (2) the individual has presented a statement from the police official that he or she requires a handgun because of a threat to a family member; or (3) applicable State law requires, before any transfer, verification that possession of a handgun by the purchaser would not be unlawful. Requires notified police officials to make a reasonable effort to make the relevant determinations within five days.
Prohibits the transfer of a firearm to an unlicensed individual after the system is established unless the transferor has verified the individual’s identity and contacted the system and either: (1) the system has provided the transferor with a unique identification number for the transfer; or (2) three business days have elapsed and the system has not notified the transferor that the transfer would violate the law.
Permits a transfer (before or after the system is established) if: (1) the individual has presented a permit issued in the past five years by a State that verifies that the individual is legally qualified; (2) the Secretary of the Treasury has approved the transfer under specified provisions of the Internal Revenue Code; or (3) the Secretary has certified that compliance with the applicable background check requirements is impracticable.
Requires the destruction of records pertaining to any transfer to an eligible individual.
Sets penalties of up to a $1,000 fine, imprisonment for not more than one year, or both, for violations of this Act.
(Sec. 103) Directs the Attorney General to: (1) determine a timetable by which each State should be able to provide criminal records on an on-line
capacity basis to the system; (2) expedite the upgrading of State records in the Federal criminal records system maintained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the development of hardware and software to link State systems to the national system, and the FBI’s revitalization initiatives for technologically advanced fingerprint and criminal records identification; and (3) notify each licensee and the chief law enforcement officer of each State upon establishment of the national system.
Provides for the correction of erroneous information in the system and for regulations to ensure the privacy and security of system information.
Prohibits any Government entity from using the system to establish any system for the registration of firearms, except with respect to persons prohibited from receiving a firearm.
Authorizes appropriations.
(Sec. 106) Amends the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 to permit the use of formula grants under the drug control and system improvement grant program for the improvement of State record systems and the sharing with the Attorney General of specified records for the purpose of implementing this Act.
Directs the Attorney General, through the Bureau of Justice Statistics, to make grants to States for the creation of a computerized criminal history record system or improvement of an existing system and for assistance in the transmittal of criminal records to the national system.
Title II: Multiple Firearm Purchases to State and Local Police—Requires each Federal firearms licensee to submit a report of multiple sales or other dispositions of firearms to the department of State police or State law enforcement agency of the State or local law enforcement agency of the local jurisdiction in which the sale or other disposition took place. Prohibits agency disclosure of any such form or contents and requires each such department or agency to: (1) destroy any form containing such information and any record of the contents within 20 days after such form is received, except with respect to a purchaser who is prohibited from receipt of a firearm; and (2) certify to the Attorney General (at six-month intervals) that no disclosure contrary to such requirements has been made and that all such forms and records have been destroyed.
Title III: Federal Firearms License Reform—Federal Firearms License Reform Act of 1993—Amends the Federal criminal code to prohibit any common or contract carrier from requiring or causing any label, tag, or other written notice to be placed on the outside of any container indicating that it contains a firearm.
Prohibits: (1) any common or contract carrier from delivering in interstate or foreign commerce any firearm without obtaining written acknowledgement of receipt of the package containing the firearm; and (2) stealing or unlawfully taking or carrying away from a licensed firearms importer, manufacturer, or dealer any firearm in the licensee’s business inventory that has been shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce (subject to penalties of up to a $10,000 fine, ten years’ imprisonment, or both, for violations).
(Sec. 303) Increases license application fees for firearms dealers who do not deal in destructive devices.
Regarding states that have closed the gun-show loophole, the Violence Policy Center, which supports closing the loophole nationally, reports this on its website:
“Only six states (California, Colorado, Illinois, New York, Oregon and Rhode Island) require universal background checks on
all
firearm sales at gun shows, including sales by unlicensed dealers. Three more states (Connecticut, Maryland and Pennsylvania) require background checks on all handgun sales made at gun shows. Eight other states (Hawaii, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, Nebraska and North Carolina) require purchasers to obtain a permit and undergo a background check before buying a handgun. 33 states have taken no action whatsoever to close the gun show loophole. In two states, voters themselves closed the loophole when their legislatures refused to do so. On November 7, 2000, the citizens of Colorado overwhelmingly voted 70%–30% in favor of Amendment 22, closing the gun show loophole in their state. The referendum followed the tragic shooting at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999 (the guns used in the shooting were purchased from private sellers at Denver gun shows). In Oregon, voters also voted overwhelmingly, 62%–38%, in favor of Measure 5, effectively closing the gun show loophole in their state.”
The study referenced on pages 127 and 128, which found that gun shows, with or without the loophole, had little or no effect on violent crime, was published in
The Review of Economics and Statistics
, MIT Press Journals, as “The Short-Term and Localized Effect of Gun Shows: Evident from California and Texas,” by Mark Duggan of the University of Maryland, Randi Hjalmarsson of the University of London, and Brian Jacob of the University of Michigan, September 9, 2010.
That nearly a third of gun sales are private and therefore don’t involve a background
check at a federally licensed firearms dealer comes from
Guns in America: Results of a Comprehensive National Survey of Firearms Ownership and Use
, by Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig for the Police Foundation in Washington, D.C., 1996.
When I assert on
this page
that gun controllers didn’t talk much about banning private gun sales, one exception would be Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who, according to the article “New DNC Chief Wants to Screen All Gun Sales,” by Mike Lillis, in the April 18, 2011, edition of
The Hill
, told a rally sponsored by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, “It is outrageous that gun buyers evade the background-check system every day, even in broad daylight.” She could point to such cases as Eduardo Sencion, a man with a documented history of mental illness who—according to an item titled “Carson City IHOP Shooter Fired About 60 Rounds from Fully Automatic Rifle,” on
RGJ.com
on October 5, 2011—bought his gun in a private sale. Even though he broke the law by possessing a full-auto weapon without going through the steps required by the National Firearms Act of 1934, buying a gun privately was perfectly legal. Representative Carolyn McCarthy of New York was “expected” to introduce a bill requiring all gun sales to pass through a background check, though if she did so, it seems to have gone nowhere.
James D. Wright and Peter H. Rossi discovered, when researching
Armed and Considered Dangerous: A Survey of Felons and Their Firearms
, that only 16 percent of the felons they surveyed said they got their guns from gun stores, in all likelihood because their criminal records made them “prohibited persons.” And Wright and Rossi conducted their survey in 1986, eight years before the Brady Act would mandate computerized background checks.
Ross Douthat’s column arguing that Christianity is punching below its weight was “A Tough Season for Believers,”
The New York Times
, December 19, 2010.
One of Rick Ector’s inspirations was Kenneth Blanchard, author of the book and podcast
Black Man with a Gun
. His book, whose subtitle is
A Responsible Gun Ownership Manual for African Americans
, begins with “A Letter to My Sisters,” addressing African American women, who are among the strongest adherents of gun control.
“You will unknowingly contribute for the first time to the destruction of our people,” Blanchard writes. “Proof that you have been targeted for manipulation is that gun control groups use your tears and your suffering as sound bites in commercials
and in public hearings.… You are being used to disarm African Americans by allowing the increase of senseless and repetitive laws.”
There’s a connection, Blanchard writes, between the high rate of murder among young black men and the strict gun-control laws that exist in many majority-black cities. “We are allowed to destroy ourselves because this negative image is profitable.… The people that want us unarmed and helpless don’t have a hard time convincing us.… Racially motivated violence is not the only threat to which blacks are more vulnerable. An African American has at least a forty percent greater chance of being burgled and a one hundred percent greater chance of being robbed than a white person.”
