Outcome uncertain in battle over gun control
by Chris Mondics and
Jackie Koszczuk
Knight-Ridder Tribune
April 13, 2000
WASHINGTON Lee Davis gets
decked out in cowboy duds and blasts
away at metal targets with a .45- cali
ber Colt revolver. He has heard the
arguments for gun control, and says
they’re bunk.
Linda McCarthy-Raffier, a subur
ban mother with a five-month-old
son, has never fired a gun in her life
and calls them “distasteful.” She’s
planning to join the Million Mom
March in Washington next month,
hoping to pressure Congress into en
acting tougher gun controls.
Although they’ve never met, Davis
and McCarthy-Raffier are part of the
reason Washington remains
gridlocked over gun control, even af
ter the killings last April 20 at
Colorado’s Columbine High School
and a string of other high-profile
slayings, and why both political par
ties are trying harder than ever to ex
ploit the issue.
The debate over guns is much more
than a contest between competing leg
islative and political agendas. It also
is a cultural tug-of-war between Davis
and McCarthy-Raffier, between rural
America and the cities and suburbs,
between the South and West and the
Northeast and Pacific Coast, between
those who view guns as tools or toys
and those who view them as murder
weapons
Gun owners groups are strongest in
rural areas, particularly the South and
West, where gun ownership is com
monplace and hunting and target
shooting are popular. The strongest
efforts to restrict the sales of arms
come from suburban areas particu
larly from suburban women where
gun ownership is less common and
increasingly stigmatized.
“There is an urban-rural split to
some extent,” said Christopher Fore
man, an analyst at the Brookings In
stitution, a Washington think tank.
“People who live in rural America are
generally much more comfortable
with firearms than are people in cit
ies. There is a cultural tension be
tween someone who lives in rural
Wyoming and someone who /lives in
a place that] overlooks Central Park.”
The same fundamental splits that
have paralyzed attempts to pass
tougher gun laws have made gun con
trol an issue both major political par
ties can use to rally members and de
monize opponents. And for the first
time in a generation, the issue may
play a pivotal role in the presidential
election and could have a huge im
pact on some House and Senate races.
“This issue has a higher profile now
than it has ever had in the 20 years
I’ve been (in Washington],” said Jim
Baker, the National Rifle
Association’s chief lobbyist.
“It is a result of Columbine,” added
pollster Andrew Kohut of the Pew
Russia ratifies START II
by Maura Reynolds and
Norman Kempster
Los Angeles Times
April 14, 2000
MOSCOW After more than seven
years of discord and delay, Russia’s
lower house of Parliament signaled a
new era in U.S.-Russian relations Fri
day by ratifying the landmark START
II arms-control treaty.
The treaty, which was ratified by the
U.S. Senate in 1996, is the most ambi
tious and extensive arms-control agree
ment ever between the two nuclear
states, requiring each to roughly halve
their arsenals by 2007.
The treaty’s ratification one of the
Clinton administration’s central foreign
policy goals was approved by an
easy margin by Russia’s lower house,
the Duma. The margin of victory was
higher than expected, apparently en
hanced by a last-minute personal ap
peal from President-elect Vladimir V.
Putin.
“We don’t need an arms race,” Putin
told lawmakers. “We faced one before,
and if we allow it again it will be worse
than last time.”
In Washington, President Clinton
praised the Duma action, saying,
“START II will make our people safer
and our partnership with a democratic
Russia stronger.”
But at this stage, the treaty that
former Presidents Boris N. Yeltsin and
George Bush signed in 1993 has be
come something of a strategic anach-
Research Center. “There were so
many deaths; it really had the power
to shock.”
With polls suggesting that voters
are paying much closer attention to
guns than they have in past elections,
both candidates for the White House,
as well as both parties in Congress,
have staked out starkly different po
sitions on how to control gun crime.
As governor of Texas, Republican
George W. Bush signed legislation
giving Texas residents the right to
carry handguns provided they had no
felony arrests and met other minimum
qualifications.
Vice President Gore has proposed
photo licensing and testing for new
handgun owners, measures that go
well beyond the mandatory trigger
locks and gun-show background
checks that Democrats tried to push
‘7 don’t believe that I gained five votes
in Kansas because I voted for the as
sault weapons ban. But I lost thousands
of votes because l voted for it. The 25
percent who oppose gun control oppose
it with a vengeance, and with great emo
tional intensity. ”
through Congress last year after the
Columbine killings.
Despite all the focus on Columbine
and the deep national dismay that fol
lowed. the outcome of the fight is very
much in question.
Most polls show that although a
majority of Americans favor new re
strictions on handgun ownership, vot
ers also are receptive to arguments
that government could do a better job
of enforcing the gun laws already on
the books. Some polling also sug
gests deep opposition to the Clinton
administration’s strategy of using liti
gation to force gun companies to
change their manufacturing and mar-
keting practices.
Both parties, sensing public opin
ion is at a crucial juncture, have
stepped up efforts to persuade voters
that they offer the best solutions to
gun violence. On Wednesday, April
12, President Clinton took the unusual
step of attending a signing ceremony
in Maryland for a state bill that re
quires manufacturers to equip hand
guns with built-in locks. The next
day, the President traveled to Colo
rado to mark the first anniversary of
the Columbine slayings and call on
Congress to pass his proposals for
mandatory background checks at gun
shows and other restrictions on gun
ownership. House Republicans, for
their part, passed legislation granting
ronism. It was designed for a Cold War
world with two superpowers, both of
which have been shrinking their arse
nals anyway for financial and practi
cal reasons.
“The strategic situation has changed
significantly because Russia and the
United States have both cut their
nuclear arsenals,” said Andrei V.
Kortunov, president of the Russian Sci
ence Foundation think tank. “They just
couldn’t afford to maintain them.”
The treaty, however, is important
symbolically. Its ratification is a sign
that Putin, unlike his predecessor, has
the support of the Parliament in pursu
ing more substantive cooperation with
the United States after years of dete
riorating relations exacerbated last
year by the Yugoslav conflict and
NATO’s eastward expansion.
“The important thing is not just the
ratification itself, but the fact that it
demonstrates a real, definitive consoli
dation of power,” said Sergei Ivanov,
head of Putin’s powerful Security
Council.
As a goodwill gesture, the ratifica
tion was not unequivocal. The Duma
added a protocol saying that Russia in
tends to withdraw from the treaty if the
United States proceeds with plans to
build a strategic missile defense in vio
lation of the 1972 Antiballistic Missile
treaty the first and most successful
arms control agreement signed with the
Soviet Union.
“1f... the United States destroys the
ABM treaty... [we] will withdraw not
only from the START II treaty but also
financial assistance to states that en-
act mandatory sentences for gun
crimes.
While voters who favor gun con
trol may outnumber the solid core of
support for gun rights, so far they
haven’t matched gun owners in their
passion for the issue or in trans
lating that passion into political
muscle and campaign cash. Typically,
membership in the NRA surges with
every new call for gun restrictions
it has grown by a half million people
in the last six months.
The NRA has spent more money
$2l million —on political campaigns
than any other single political action
committee in the last decade. Baker,
the NRA lobbyist, said he expects the
association to raise and spend more
than the $4.1 million it collected dur
ing the 1996 presidential cycle. Be-
-Jim Slattery,
former 12-year House veteran
and 1994 Kansas governor candidate
fore the end of the year, he says, mem
bership could hit 4 million, a record.
Davis, a Chambersburg, Pa., der
matologist and NRA member who
likes to attend Old West-style shoot
ing matches with his wife, says gun
violence among the nation’s youth has
more to do with cultural problems and
social pathologies than it does with
the availability of firearms.
“The fix always seems to be to have
a new gun law. What have the laws
done that we already have on the
books?” he asks.
The NRA is a sophisticated politi
cal organization skilled at getting out
the anti-gun control vote. One favor
ite strategy is to compare pickup truck
registrations with voter registration
rolls. The NRA contacts truck own
ers who are not voters and urges them
to register, reasoning that if they own
trucks, they are probably pro-gun.
Jim Slattery, a Democrat and
former 12-year veteran of the House,
lost his bid for Kansas governor in
1994 in part because of his votes in
favor of a ban on assault weapons and
for waiting periods to buy handguns.
“I don’t believe that 1 gained five
votes in Kansas because I voted for
the assault weapons ban,” he said.
“But 1 lost thousands of votes because
I voted for it. The 25 percent who
oppose gun control oppose it with a
vengeance, and with great emotional
Treaty for arms control
from the entire system of treaty rela
tions on the limitation and control of
strategic and conventional armaments,”
Putin said. By tying the ratification to
the ABM treaty, Russia puts the United
States in a difficult spot.
During the Cold War, the foundation
of nuclear security was “mutually as
sured destruction,” the idea that be
cause neither side could defend itself
from annihilation, neither side would
launch an attack.
But since the collapse of the Soviet
Union, the United States has grown to
believe that so-called “rogue” states
such as Iraq or North Korea could pose
more of a threat, and it would like to
build a missile defense system
something Russia strongly opposes, be
cause it does not have the resources to
design and build its own missile de
fense.
Despite Putin’s strong words on the
ABM treaty, there have been signs that
Russia might be open to some compro
mise. For instance, Russian diplomats
have floated the idea that Russia would
agree to amend the ABM treaty if the
United States agrees to share its mis
sile defense technology and accept
even deeper cuts in strategic missiles.
Washington’s chief arms negotiator,
John Holum, leaves this weekend for
Geneva, where he plans to begin talks
with Russian experts on a START 111
pact that would reduce total warheads
on both sides to 2,500 or fewer, 1,000
fewer than allowed under the just-rati
fied pact and 15,000 below Cold War
peaks. Russia has indicated that it
intensity.”
But a single, well-publicized shoot
ing can dramatically alter the politics
of the gun control debate. Last spring,
the Senate reversed itself and voted
in favor of background checks at gun
shows just hours after a 15-year-old
high school student in Georgia
opened fire May 20, wounding six
students.
Among those who changed sides
was Sen. Max Cleland, D- Ga., whose
home is near Heritage High School
outside Atlanta, where the shootings
took place. “You talk about pres
sure,” Cleland said, recalling the day
of the vote.
“I had been wondering whether the
[gun show] amendment wouldn’t in
fact do more harm than good. But
the Heritage shooting, in my own
back yard, pushed me over the edge,”
he said. “Whatever I can do to keep
guns out of the hands of kids, I’ll do.”
The measure failed in the House,
where there is strong support for the
gun owners’ agenda among Republi
cans and a small bloc of Democrats.
Membership in groups that support
gun control also has been rising.
There are signs that the Columbine
killings have swayed more voters in
favor of tighter gun restrictions, and
groups that favor gun control are plan
ning on capitalize on that.
Handgun Control Inc., the major
gun-control lobbying group, projects
that it will raise at least $2 million for
direct contributions to federal candi
dates, nearly six times what it raised
in the last election cycle.
The group’s political director, Joe
Sudbay, said the defeat of a referen
dum in Missouri last year on whether
residents should have the right to
carry handguns for self-protection
“proved to us that the NRA can be
beat.”
While Congress remains largely
gridlocked, Sudbay notes that state
governments such as those in Mary
land and Massachusetts have tight
ened controls on gun ownership,
which he says is a sign that some re
gions are more receptive to stricter
controls.
Sudbay and other gun control ad
vocates also are buoyed by polls
showing small but steady increases in
support for tougher gun laws. A
monthly survey by the Pew Research
Center found that support for tighter
controls grew from 57 percent of re
spondents in December 1993 to 65
percent in May 1999. The most dra
matic shift came among Republican
women, who went from 48 percent
supporting tighter gun laws to 72 per
cent during that time period.
McCarthy-Raffier, of Annapolis,
Md., said she never had much inter
est in politics, but was moved by the
Columbine killings to join the call for
new gun restrictions. She says she
would like to see all guns banned.
“I am the sort of person,” she said,
“who believes that nobody should
have them.”
wants to go even lower, to 1,500 war-
One complication is that because the
U.S. Senate failed to ratify the nuclear
nonproliferation treaty last year, Rus
sia now has the moral advantage on
arms control on the world stage.
Russia’s delay in ratifying the treaty
was the result both of domestic poli
tics and U.S. military actions. The
Duma twice before had scheduled rati
fication votes but postponed them
once in December 1998, when the
United States and Britain launched
airstrikes against Iraq, and again last
spring when NATO launched attacks
against Yugoslavia.
Moreover, the Duma was controlled
by the Communists and their allies who
opposed any concessions to the West,
especially after NATO decided to ab
sorb some of Russia's former Soviet
era satellites.
But the Communists lost a signifi
cant number of seats after Parliamen
tary elections in December, and pro-
Putin parties now control a majority of
votes. The Communists and their al
lies in the Agrarian Party were the only
factions to vote against ratification.
Before coming into force, the
START II treaty must be voted on by
the Russian Parliament’s upper house,
the Federation Council, and then signed
by the president. Both are considered
formalities.
In addition, the separate protocols
including one changing the original dis
armament deadline from 2003 to 2007
must be passed by the U.S. Senate.
U.S. gains foothold in
Vietnam as country
embraces English
Sao Mai Do, 15, studies English at her school in Hanoi. Vietnam
is turning to the United States for help with its language programs
by David Lamb
Los Angeles Times
April 14, 2000
HANOI, Vietnam - In another of its on
going breaks from the past, Vietnam has
chosen English over French and Russian
as the favored foreign language for stu
dents to learn and has turned to its former
ideological enemies in the West to help
redesign the educational curriculum.
Vietnam is already phasing out En
glish-language textbooks written by
Russian advisers in the mid-1980s. They
trumpet Sputnik and the World Festival
of Youth in Moscow, and are full of such
“misspeak” as “I am having a tempera
ture” and “My car runs away” ex
plaining in part why many of the 35,000
teachers of English in Vietnam can’t re
ally speak much English themselves.
The new books, to be used in grades
six through 12 throughout the country,
were developed by U.S. and Vietnam
ese educators in partnership with
Vietnam’s Education Ministry and U.S.
corporate sponsors. Some of the 24
sponsors, such as Coca-Cola Co., are the
same companies whose billboards Com
munist officials painted over in 1996 in
an attempt to diminish Vietnam's grow
ing fascination with everything Western.
“This is a very courageous decision
on the government’s part and one, I think,
that shows a lot of trust,” said Adrie Van
Geldergen, Hanoi representative of Busi
ness Alliance for Vietnamese Education,
or BAVE, the nonprofit U.S. organiza
tion overseeing a project that eventually
may cost $5O million. “Can you imag
ine the reaction in the United States if a
bunch of foreigners came in and said,
‘We’re going to modernize your educa
tion system for you’?”
To be sure, the Education Ministry has
not surrendered control. It has approved
every comma and kept the texts nonpo
litical. It ordered an early batch of books
recalled so a reference to the South China
Sea could be changed to the East Sea,
reflecting a territorial dispute between
China and Vietnam about the Spratly Is
lands, and it insisted over some early
U.S. objections that a mention of Gen.
Vo Nguyen Giap, a legendary national
hero who fought the French and the
Americans, not be deleted.
Even before the government’s Febru
ary decision to use the BAVE books ex
clusively and its 1998 edict that all bu
reaucrats under age 50 would be ex
pected to learn English, young Vietnam
ese by the tens of thousands had started
studying the language, many of them on
their own time and at their own expense.
Russian, once widely spoken, fell from
vogue when Moscow’s aid ended with
the collapse of the Soviet Union, and
France has had only moderate success
trying to reestablish its tongue as the sec
ond language of Vietnam, even though
it pays instructors to teach French.
Perhaps most significant, the broad re
form of Vietnam’s education system
supported by the World Bank, Austra
lia, and Britain in addition to BAVE
includes retraining teachers. Under the
new curriculum, Vietnam will move
away from its traditional methodology,
in which students have been expected,
in the words of one educator, to “sit
down, shut up, and listen.” Instead, the
new approach encourages student par
ticipation, independent thinking, the
challenging of academic authority.
‘The government is willing to admit
the problem is with methodology, not
just with English-language teaching,”
said Psyche Kennett, director of Britain’s
English Language Teacher Training
Project. “Without retraining the teach
ers, the endeavor won’t go back because
teachers will subvert the new textbooks
and return to traditional methods in
which students play a passive role.”
Educators point out that the curricu
lum overhaul could result in significant
long-term changes, because its goals
learning to think on one’s feet, question
ing authority, searching for independent,
creative solutions are anathema to
Hanoi’s Communist government. It re
lies on decision by consensus, on like
minded thinking, and on obedience to
the wisdom of the Communist Party. In
deed, officials at the Education Minis
try will not discuss BAVE or the new
curriculum with foreign correspondents.
Such reticence is not surprising in a
bureaucracy where civil servants devote
great energy to ensuring that they don’t
make a mistake or say anything to of
fend superiors. But Western educators
say that the ministry is genuinely excited
about the pending changes and that no
one questions Vietnam’s commitment —
as a people or as a government —to edu
cation.
Even the poorest families are obsessed
with educating their children, though
school is compulsory only through the
fifth grade. It is common for college
age youths to finish their day jobs and
head straight for night classes, then study
at home until 1 or 2 in the morning. The
government has raised the literacy rate
from 88 percent in 1989 to 94 percent in
1999 and is aiming for zero illiteracy
with the introduction of the new curricu
lum.
Western educators consider all this no
small accomplishment in a country that
can afford to spend only $4l a year per
high school student and can pay teach
ers (most of whom are women) only $24
to $39 a month. By comparison, afflu
ent towns in western Connecticut spend
$7,300 annually per student and pay
teachers as much as $60,000 a year. With
a million new students a year entering
Vietnam’s school system, the financial
crisis is not likely to abate any time soon.