Privately the vast majority of politicians share the public's concern and support for gun controls -- and indeed believe if the NRA "dropped its opposition to any legislation with the word 'gun' in it;" many reasonable restrictions would be passed "overnight " [Spitzer, p. 111]  But like Nixon, Reagan and Bush, politicians are afraid to confront the NRA .... not only because the NRA can mobilize its troops to make 1,000,000 calls a day to Congress -- so many in fact that out-going calls are interrupted -- and not only because so many of the calls are vitriolic in nature, but because politicians know that this extreme activism carries over to zealous work for pro-gun candidates, pestering all candidates at call-in shows and public appearances, and ultimately votes....
And politicians are acutely aware that the NRA often punishes legislators who support gun control.  A vivid example was Freshman Representative Peter Smith from Vermont who after co-sponsoring a bill to ban semi-automatic weapons in 1989 was targeted for defeat in the 1990 elections.  Besides "Impeach Peter Smith, Traitor" posters, and flyers paring his picture with Adolf Hitler, "my mother was almost driven off the road.  People were shooting my lawn signs at night.  That is the level of emotion the NRA was able to stir up."  The opposing candidates views don't matter:  Smith was defeated by a self-professed socialist Bernard Sanders, who also supported an assault weapon ban.  Spitzer, p. 112-13
This tactic is extremely effective since politicians love their job and the overriding goal for most is to be re-elected.... even if it means siding with an organization that not only is  anti-government, but freely distorts the truth in order to raise money and incite their members to action....

For example "Fables, Myths & Other Tall Tales" on the NRA Webpage as of 6/3/99, at printed page 19 out of 33, states: "In New York Times v. Sullivan (376 U.S. 254, 256, 1964), the Supreme Court held that civil law suits cannot make it impossible for a free press to survive.  That decision was based on the intent of the Framers, with respect to the First Amendment, that citizens should not be punished or suffer financially for criticizing officials. In his concurring opinion, Justice Hugo Black applied the principle to the right to keep and bear arms as well.  Quoting 'America's Blackstone,' St. George Tucker, Justice Black noted, 'Whenever... the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.'" [Note:  All underlining here and in other quotes is added for emphasis.]
Simply put, these words, or anything like them, do NOT appear in Justice Black's concurring opinion.  Moreover, it is highly unlikely those words were even somehow implied since Justice Douglas joined Justice Black's concurring opinion, and since in another case Justice Douglas said: "A powerful lobby dins into the ears of our citizenry that these guns purchases are constitutional rights protected by the Second Amendment.... There is under our decisions no reason why stiff state laws governing the purchase and possession of pistols may not be enacted.... There is no reason why all pistols should not be barred to everyone except police."  Adams v. Williams, Justice Douglas' dissenting opinion, joined by Justice Marshall, 407 U.S. 143, 1972.

This blatant distortion is not unusual.  For example William Weir in his book A Well Regulated Militia; the Battle over Gun Control, Archon Books, 1997 at pp. 167-8 details the NRA's publicizing Handgun Control Inc.'s "Five Year Plan in the June, 1994 American Rifleman which headlined: "The Final War Has Begun.  A document secretly delivered to me reveals frightening evidence that the full-scale war to crush your gun rights has not only begun, but is well underway."  This 8 page article included photos of pages from documents marked "Confidential," "Do Not Distribute or Copy," etc.  But the full document sent at Weir's request was not what had been pictured; and Weir notes that: (1) Sarah Brady called the document a "hoax," (2) no passage pictured in the magazine was in the document, (3) the document wasn't secretly delivered but had been posted on the Internet, and (4) the documents distribution list included one HCI person who had died almost a year earlier.  Clearly "The NRA has often sacrificed both a sense of perspective and the truth, leading to a general erosion of credibility outside its own core constituency."  Spitzer, p. 125
Thus for any legislator accept the NRA positions means they either are not smart enough to know better (in first instance one only had to look up a legal decision), or know better and fail to call the NRA on their lies and distortions which are designed to whip up hysteria.... The first is stupidity... the second reprehensible....

Not only is the NRA factually dishonest, its arguments are based on two intellectually deficient premises.  The FIRST underpinning premise is that guns make "a positive contribution to public safety"... and so more guns will make will make the public safer.
"The major hunting lobby, the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, defended the right to bear arms, but only, in its words, 'the freedom to possess and use sporting arms.'  This may appear to be a 'reasonable' position, which demonstrates that gun owners are not bloodthirsty nuts wanting to shoot people, but are simply harmless sportsmen.  But in fact, the concession that guns are only for sports critically undermines defense of the right to bear arms.  If guns are not to be owned for defense, then guns make no positive contribution to public safety.  And while sportsmen may wish to shoot game and clay pigeons, guns do sometimes fall into hands of criminals, who use them to shoot people.  So as the public evaluates the issue, it sees the gun control advocates talking about safety and the gun owners talking about sports.  Given the trade-off, who wouldn't trade lots of damage to sports in exchange for minimal gains in public safety?"   D. Kopel, "Lost Rights," NRA Webpage, 6/3/99
Thus to prevail the NRA must vigorously criticize and discount every study that shows guns are themselves a safety hazard... or that an easy availability of guns decreases safety.  But all their criticisms can't explain or erase Littleton, Colorado and the other school and workplace shootings, and the NRA's admission that such tragedies will happen again... and the only answer is for society to arm itself more... is increasingly at odds with the facts... and increasingly unacceptable to the  American people, especially when so much of the gun violence is by and toward their children.

The SECOND faulty premise is that even the most reasonable proposal is just a step toward total gun confiscation.  The NRA cites the experience in the United Kingdom where, after similar tragedies, gun sales and ownership have been restricted.  While again this is an effective way to scare gun owners, it begs the larger question... i.e. the restrictions on guns in the U.K. haven't led to restrictions on freedom ... U.K. citizens haven't lost their right to vote to a dictatorial government... and indeed if anything the notoriously free-wheeling British press has been even outrageous....   The NRA and other gun advocates also point to Hitler's Germany which used gun registrations to selectively enforce citizens of conquered countries to turn in weapons.  But Hitler came to power before any efforts were made to disarm any citizens, and the key point is Hitler came to power because the great good German middle class failed to speak up against a fanatical minority, in part because they feared the violence of the Brown Shirts.  And finally as noted before, the NRA freely admits that 20-30,000 laws restricting guns have already been enacted, including almost total restrictions on handguns in Washington D.C. and New York City.... without the loss of any freedoms....
Indeed the NRA positions appear to have far more in common with Mao Tse-tung -- who said: "Every Communist must grasp the truth, 'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun'" --  than with our founding fathers who would be appalled at the increasing level of violence -- as well as with the belief "that serial killers getting guns is 'part of the price we pay for  freedom.'" Weir, p.157
This hard line position has cost the NRA many strategic allegiances.  For example, the NRA's four year opposition "to regulating armor-piercing bullets (so-called cop killer bullets),  infuriated many in law enforcement, because the bullets had no sporting or hunting purposes -- unless the quarry was a police officer wearing a bulletproof vest.... The final straw for police organizations came when the NRA began to single out for attack particular police chiefs who supported gun controls....  As a consequence, nearly every established police organization has broken with the NRA, siding with the gun control efforts of HCI and others."  Spitzer, p. 114

The disjunction between broad popular support for firmer gun laws and the failure to enact most such laws might be interpreted as a failure of democracy.  But as Professor Spitzer explains: (1) since gun control has become an emotional issue with serious misrepresentations taken as fact, addressing it is "like trying to build a house in a hurricane;" (2) enacting policy is harder than blocking the enactment of policy;  (3) since the normal press cycle is short and there are so many other important  issues on the national agenda, the outrage-action-reaction cycle is short and once outrage has subsided gun control opponents retain the edge.  But the most important reason is pressure-group politics, or what Spitzer calls "special interest democracy:"  legislators don't serve "constituents as a community, but the best-organized, best funded, and politically active interests groups within the constituency."  Sen. J.W.. Fulbright
"People often say that, in a democracy, decisions are made by a majority of the people.  Of course, that is not true.  Decisions are made by a majority of those who make themselves heard and who vote -- a very different thing."  W. H. Judd

Limiting handgun purchases to one per month, requiring a modest waiting period and training, and limestone defusers in fertilizers are entirely reasonable, even modest proposals.  The fact that our legislators cannot even summon the courage to pass them means they are still afraid of the NRA.  And the NRA's hard-line positions that are so at odds with common sense and the American people will in the end self-destruct and only harm the vast majority of gun owners who do not share the NRA's fantasies....  "The NRA's policy of hysterical opposition to any curb  on unlimited gun ownership and use has not stopped a slide toward the abyss.  It has greased the slope.  The more unreasonable and inbred the organization becomes, the more popular support it loses.... Gun lobbyists cannot blithely ignore the fact that guns play a part in the high U.S. violent crime rate.... They cannot that is, if they want public support."  Weir, p. 157
"I ask you, America, if we as a society can not protect our most innocent members and our hope for the future, how can we call ourselves civilized?"  Dr. M. Bolton, Letters, Columbus Dispatch, 5/29/99
"So now a California resident will be limited to one gun purchase a month.  Will the next dozen slain high-school students inspire legislators to make it one gun every two months?  At that rate, a mere 144 victims will limit gun buyers to one per year!  It is no surprise that this country is the laughing stock of the rest of the world when it comes to lethal weapons.  It is high time we grew up, abandoned our Wild West mentality, restricted cinematic violence, and joined modern civilization, in which guns are strictly limited to the armed forces, the police, and professional guards -- except, of course, Charleton Heston.  U. Goldberg, New Yorker, The Mail, 6/9/99
"I am not saying handgun control will cure all the evils of our society.  But it would be much more difficult for evil to be expressed as murderous rage without access to handguns.  And I am not saying that the state should sponsor religion.  But we must find what we have lost morally, over the last century....  We can no longer adopt a Band-Aid approach to a patient who is bleeding to death before our eyes.  We have to decide as a society what can be done and then simply summon the moral courage to do it.  If our elected representatives do not have this courage, we need to elect those who do.  But you must act America.  Because if you do not, the next person to die may be your son or daughter."  Dr. M. Bolton, Letters, Columbus Dispatch 5/29/99
But ultimately it is not the fault of timid politicians who cynically trade-off the distorted facts and paranoid fantasy of a few for the safety of our society and children....  it is our responsibility because we elected them ... We don't have to match the of zeal true believers...  we just have to make a simple call or write a simple letter or send a simple email...

The chamber grew hushed as California Assemblyman Dick Floyd, a crusty Korean War veteran, rose to speak.  He started by noting that for over 20 years in the Assembly he had never spoken on any issue relating to guns, and in fact had never voted for any gun control bills. But he said the killings in Littleton brought back the images of combat and the "horrible smell" of it, before announcing:  " I'm no longer going to be a non-participant.  I am willing not only to vote for everything, I'll co-author every gun bill that comes along."  NYT 5/31/99
"I voted, and I woke up feeling ashamed and determined to change this."  Sen. G. Smith on his vote against background checks at gun shows.  His turning point wasn't Littleton, but the school shooting in Springfield, Oregon, his home state, where he "saw kids 'with bullet holes scarred over their bodies,' and heard 'their parents pleading for us to do something.'  And he said, 'It made me determined not just to talk this away.'"  NYT 5/17/99  endorsed by NRA
"The NRA has become very inflexible and almost radical; they appeal to a fringe element of gun owners."  General Schwarzkopf
"They've become abusive, accusatory, sick, violent, threatening bullies."  Colorado Senator Ben Nighthorse
"Political appeals to white male gun owners as victims of government oppression can unintentionally provide silent refuge to right-wing extremists who believe violence is a reasonable means."  Sen. Bob Kerry, wounded veteran
"There is nothing patriotic about hating your country.  How dare you call yourself patriots and heroes?... If you say violence is an acceptable way to make change, you are wrong... If you appropriate our sacred symbols for paranoid purposes and compare yourself to colonial militias, you are wrong."  B. Clinton 5/5/95
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those are cold and are not clothed.  This world in arms is not spending money alone.  It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."  President Eisenhower