Third Way Take Published March 7, 2016 · Updated March 7, 2016 · 4 minute read
Senator Sanders’s Record on Guns
Senator Sanders (I-VT) has two major problems in his gun record. They happen to be on the two most important pieces of gun legislation of the past 30 years. He opposed the 1993 Brady Law which requires a background check on all firearm purchases from licensed firearms dealers (gun stores). This law, together with the 1968 Gun Control Act, is the cornerstone of all current gun laws. The 1968 law prohibited certain categories of individuals from purchasing and possessing firearms: convicted felons, fugitives from the law, those who are dangerously mentally ill, dishonorably discharged veterans, drug abusers, those who renounce their citizenship, and a few other categories (domestic abusers and a handful of other violent misdemeanants were eventually added to this list). Prior to the Brady Law, federal law only required gun buyers to sign a form stipulating that they were not among the prohibited categories. That’s it. Under the Brady Law, a federal or state law enforcement agency now has a certain amount of time to check on the veracity of that form. Today, it’s 3 business days. As noted above, Sen. Sanders opposed this bill. And he opposed it in previous incarnations. It’s now the law of the land.
The second bad vote is even more pernicious, if only because of its sweeping nature. It’s known as the “immunity bill,” but its proper name is the Protection in Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.
A layman’s way of describing this bill is that Congress said gun sellers and manufacturers will have special protection against civil suits that no one else has. They can only potentially be sued for 6 things at most (listed here), including product defect (a gun blows up in your hand), knowingly breaking the law (but only if you can prove that knowledge directly caused the harm), or “negligent entrustment” which is one very narrow kind of negligence claim that is allowed in some states for some situations. By passing this bill, then, Congress said that every other state, local, or federal reason other people and companies could ever be sued in our nation’s history can’t be applied to gun sellers or manufacturers.
This law was written because the Brady Campaign and large city mayors had mounted an effort on the gun industry similar to the attack on tobacco. They were targeting gun stores that were high-volume sources of crime guns and had some pretty shoddy records on keeping track of their firearms or working with law enforcement. They went after gun makers who continued to supply these bad dealers with guns that were showing up in crimes again and again. If successful, these lawsuits would have changed the behavior of the entire gun industry. There would be safer guns, more careful dealers, and greater partnership with law enforcement. Gun manufacturers had already been coming to the table to change their behavior in order to avoid lawsuits. But with the help of Sen. Sanders, they got a free pass, and the immunity bill made it through Congress and was signed by President George W. Bush in 2005—putting a halt to lawsuits that were already making their way through our justice system, and winning.
Sen. Sanders has had a handful of good votes on guns. He voted to close the gun show loophole on several occasions (which expands the Brady law he opposed in the first place), and he supported the assault weapons ban (which took guts).
But on the whole, he’s voted like a Southern Republican—not a liberal Democratic Socialist.
