To my surprise, I did not come in last place. Out of the seventy-five competitors, I finished ahead of two people, one of them a female prison guard. Pepin noted that I was probably the only participant with so little experience. “You did good,” she said, “and you didn’t shoot yourself, which is always a plus.”
CHAPTER 16
Glock Goes to the White House
In October 1997, Washington broiled under an intense autumn sun. Whatever the temperature, the gun executives would have been sweating, for Paul Jannuzzo and Richard Feldman had led them into the enemy’s lair. Sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with President Bill Clinton, his attorney general Janet Reno, and other administration notables were senior executives from Smith & Wesson and seven other major American handgun manufacturers. The public affairs network C-SPAN broadcast the ceremony live. At the Northern Virginia headquarters of the NRA, which routinely demonized Clinton as the “most anti-gun president ever,” top association officials stared in disbelief at their television screens.
Before the formal Rose Garden announcement started, the industry representatives made nervous small talk in the Oval Office. “I want to thank you, Mr. President,” Feldman joked, “for offering to find me a spot in the witness protection program.” Clinton laughed, relishing his guests’ unease.
The peculiar gathering stemmed from a White House push for federal legislation mandating that firearm manufacturers ship a trigger lock with every handgun. Democrats in Congress had introduced a bill and appeared to have the votes for passage. The NRA was preparing for scorched-earth resistance, even though gun-control proponents seemed to have an attractive argument: that “child safety devices” would deter accidents. Who opposed child safety?
Feldman, with Jannuzzo’s support, suggested an alternative idea: Why couldn’t gun manufacturers voluntarily provide safety devices? The mechanisms could be as simple as a padlock blocking the trigger or a cable threaded through the gun’s barrel. Gun makers could take credit for helping protect the families of their customers. The cost would be modest—$5 to $10 per handgun—and most of that could be passed along to consumers.
A young Clinton aide, Rahm Emanuel, negotiated in secret with Feldman over a mutually beneficial pact: Glock and other gun manufacturers would swallow their pride and chance the NRA’s wrath, accepting an invitation to the White House, where they would share credit with Clinton for a commonsense advance in gun safety. In exchange, the proposed legislation mandating locks would be dropped, sidestepping an ugly fight.
“Mr. President, we are all Americans,” Feldman said when it was his turn to speak in the Rose Garden. With the red record light of the TV cameras illuminated, he continued: “By being here today, we demonstrate that there are issues on which we can all agree and work together.”
“This administration and the gun industry from time to time have stood on different sides of various issues,” Clinton told an audience dominated by police officers being honored for their heroism. “But today we stand together and stand with the law enforcement community to do what we all know is right for our children.”
Afterward, Jannuzzo defended the deal in a gun industry trade magazine. It would “avoid a train wreck.… I’d much rather have something on a voluntary basis where we can make the decision as to what fits mechanically our own products, as opposed to somebody whose real goal is to outlaw firearms deciding how they should be locked up.” Glock stood for pragmatism. “If you’re only working one side of the aisle, you’re bound to get screwed sooner or later, because people will take you for granted,” Jannuzzo said. “When the Republicans wake up, they’ll realize that what could have been a very contentious issue has been taken off their plate.”
A day after the White House photo op, the top official of the NRA, Wayne LaPierre, sent a vitriolic open letter to Jannuzzo and the other executives who’d braved the Rose Garden. The rebuke offered an illustration of how the NRA did not always see eye-to-eye with gun companies like Glock. “Firearms safety—as it’s being pressed by the Administration—is a phony,” LaPierre wrote. “It is simply a stalking horse for gun bans.” Without explaining how providing trigger locks would lead to banning guns, LaPierre added: “You are not selling firearms to Bill Clinton and Janet Reno. And he is not selling firearms safety to the public. He is selling a means to an end. Your end.… You have made a grievous error. It is now left to others—your customers, all peaceable gun owners—to keep it from being a fatal error.”
Most gun executives maintained stoic public silence in the face of the NRA’s condemnation. But Glock did not. In a letter he faxed back to LaPierre, Jannuzzo reproached the gun-rights activist for his extremism, including past comments in which LaPierre had compared federal agents to fascists. “Finally,” Jannuzzo concluded, “if you ever again feel the need to speak to me in such a condescending manner, have the spine to do it in person, but be prepared to have your head slapped.”
People in the gun industry did not communicate with Wayne LaPierre like that. With a pat on the back or a sharp word, LaPierre could make or break careers. His friendship translated into instant influence. Jannuzzo’s temper temporarily outweighed his sense of caution.
The NRA wasn’t the only constituency left out. Excluded from the Rose Garden festivities, gun-control activists fumed. “The big winners today are American gun manufacturers, not America’s children,” said Kristen Rand, the legislative director at Josh Sugarmann’s Violence Policy Center.
Nonetheless, the trigger-lock truce received resoundingly positive coverage on television news shows and in the press. As it had in the past, Glock had managed to turn unlikely circumstances to its commercial advantage.
The tension between the NRA and Glock actually began several years earlier. The enactment in 1994 of the assault weapons ban, including the magazine-capacity limit that ironically proved such a boon to Glock, became a central Republican campaign issue in the midterm elections that year. Newt Gingrich, the conservative Republican from Georgia, made the rollback of gun control a top priority. With characteristic hyperbole, the NRA paid for advertising campaigns calling the assault weapons ban and the Brady Act “the largest step ever toward the disarmament of American citizens.” (Neither provision even hinted at disarming law-abiding gun owners.) Local NRA affiliates mobilized to oust powerful congressional Democrats, including those who traditionally promoted Second Amendment rights, such as House Speaker Tom Foley of Washington and Judiciary Chairman Jack Brooks of Texas. In November 1994, Foley and Brooks were defeated, and Republicans took over the House of Representatives, elevating Gingrich to Speaker. “The NRA,” said a chagrined Bill Clinton, “is the reason the Republicans control the House.”
The 1994 election exacerbated paranoia on the fringes of the gun culture. Militia groups, some inspired by the standoffs at Ruby Ridge and Waco, expanded in parts of the Midwest, the Plains states, and the Southwest. Rumors materialized about deployment of unmarked black helicopters and foreign-speaking United Nations troops. Survivalists dug backyard bunkers, storing rifles and ammunition in sealed polyvinyl chloride drainpipes. Computer bulletin boards bristled with alerts about the “Zionist Occupation Government.”
The NRA fueled the fear. Its chief lobbyist, Tanya Metaksa, met with members of the Michigan Militia during a trip to Lansing. Neal Knox, one of the organization’s more vituperative figures, insinuated in a column in the December 1994 Shotgun News that the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, as well as various mass killings in the United States, reflected a plot to justify private gun confiscation.