Gingrich, Hypocrisy, and Guns

Gingrich, Hypocrisy and Guns

"We, too, have a dream. Our dream is of a Monday morning when we wake up and not a single child has been harmed in America."

--Newt Gingrich at GOP convention, 8/13/96

"Slightly to her left and no more than five or six feet away was a man with long brown hair. He was dressed in combat fatigues and firing a rifle....The man was making wide, slow sweeping movements with the gun as he fired....His expression was strangely blank, the the face of a mannequin...Hundreds of children were scattering in all directions as they tried to escape from the barrage of bullets. She saw some children, hit by gunfire, tumble to the ground and lie there screaming. Others collapsed in small heaps and didn't move at all."

--Account of Eddie Purdy's schoolyard rampage in Davidson, Under Fire, pp. 14-15. Purdy shot 33 children and one teacher with an AK47 assault rifle on January 17, 1989, in Stockton, California; five children, six to nine years old, died.

"A relatively new phenomenon, originating in the mid-1980's, is the inclusion of young children on the list of urban gunshot homicides. In 1987 a team of researchers from the UCLA Medical Center and King/Drew Medical center in Los Angeles found that, until 1980, King/Drew hadn't admitted a single child for gunshot wounds. From 1980 to 1987 the center admitted thirty-four. The study, published in The American Journal of Diseases of Children, included a macabre one-page table that listed the children's injuries, the relationship of the shooter to the victim, and other data that sketched the true horror of gunshot wounds....The children, ranging in age from one to nine, were shot in the head, neck, chest, leg and rectum. A five-year-old lost a hand. A three-year-old, shot in the rectum, endured a colostomy. Other children on the list lost fingers, eyes, and brain tissue, with at least one--an eight-year-old girl--consigned to an institution most likely for the rest of her life. They were shot by grandfathers, robbers, cousins, snipers, friends, and, in a particularly cruel twist, by gang members seeking to exact revenge on an elder sibling by killing a younger brother or sister....

"More than sixty percent of children who lived in cities said they could get a handgun if they wished; 58 percent of suburban kids claimed they could too...

"Kids have begun using their guns against each other. From 1985 to 1990, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the rate at which children age ten through seventeen were arrested for homicide increased by 332 percent..."

Larson, Lethal Passage, pp. 17-20.

NRA Direct Contributions to Newt Gingrich

NRA POLITICAL VICTORY FUND, G, Dir, 10/19/80,  $1,000 
NRA POLITICAL VICTORY FUND, G, Dir, 9/15/82,  $1,000 
NRA POLITICAL VICTORY FUND, G, Dir, 9/15/82,  $1,000 
NRA POLITICAL VICTORY FUND, P, Dir, 6/11/84,  $250 
NRA POLITICAL VICTORY FUND, P, Dir, 8/11/86,  $500 
NRA POLITICAL VICTORY FUND, P, Dir, 10/14/87,  $500 
NRA POLITICAL VICTORY FUND, G, Dir, 10/31/88,  $1,000 
NRA POLITICAL VICTORY FUND, P, Dir, 9/19/89,  $500 
NRA POLITICAL VICTORY FUND, P, Dir, 3/20/90,  $2,500 
NRA POLITICAL VICTORY FUND, P, Dir, 4/26/90,  $1,000 
NRA POLITICAL VICTORY FUND, G, Dir, 10/12/90,  $2,757 
NRA POLITICAL VICTORY FUND, P, Dir, 3/18/92,  $4,950 
NRA POLITICAL VICTORY FUND, G, Dir, 10/12/92,  $4,950 
NRA POLITICAL VICTORY FUND, P, Dir, 6/30/93,  $1,000 
NRA POLITICAL VICTORY FUND, P, Dir, 5/26/94,  $500 
NRA POLITICAL VICTORY FUND, P, Dir, 6/30/94,  $3,450

Source: Newtwatch

January 27, 1995

Ms. Tanya Metaksa
National Rifle Association
11250 Waples Mill Road
Fairfax, Virginia 22030

Dear Tanya,

There were several articles in the paper regarding discussions that we have been having with the NRA and other fire-arms freedom groups regarding repealing the gun ban and other issues affecting the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans. Let me say that this is both a discussion among friends but more importantly among like-minded individuals. As long as I am Speakerof this House, no gun control legislation is going to move in committee or on the floor of this House and there will be no further erosion of their rights. What we are going to have is partnership of strengthening laws against the criminal misuse of firearms, which everyone agrees is the real problem issue, and eliminating harassment of law abiding gun owners who are not the problem. Republicans want to demonstrate the Second Amendment is more about the fundamental rights of the people in a government of and by the people. Our purpose is to remove ill-conceived and unnecessary government interference in those rights. I look forward to working with you.

Your friend,
Newt Gingrich

Source: NRA Web Pages

"The simple equation of guns equal violent crime simply doesn't add up. For example, consider the most famous trial in America today. The O.J. Simpson case involves the alleged killing of an ex-wife and her friend by someone who used a sharp instrument. There was no gun involved....

"The second half of the liberal argument, the need to ban certain types of 'dangerous' weapons, makes a great emotional argument. Factually, it is nonsense."

--Newt Gingrich, To Renew America, pp. 202-203.