美国枪支管制的最大障碍是选民

Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, told a reporter at the National Journal: “This level of carnage is something that the elected officials aren’t going to be able to ignore.

“防止枪支暴力布拉迪运动(Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence)主席保罗·赫姆基(Paul Helmke)告诉《国家杂志》(National Journal)的一名记者：“这种规模的残杀是民选官员们所不能忽视的。

Mr Helmke’s words sound correct, as the US continues to reel from the murder of 20 six and seven-year-olds in a school in Newtown, Connecticut, in mid-December. Then again, his words also seemed correct when he first uttered them, which was back in April 2007, just after a disturbed undergraduate, Seung-Hui Cho, massacred 32 people on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic University before turning his weapons on himself. Elected officials have proved quite capable of ignoring Cho’s rampage, not to mention several more since then. There is no guarantee the outrage over Newtown will spur them to action, either.

在美国依然为12月中旬康涅狄格州纽顿一所小学20名六、七岁孩子遇害事件感到震惊之际，赫姆基这话听起来没错。2007年4月，弗吉尼亚理工大学(Virginia Polytechnic University)一名叫做赵承熙(Seung-Hui Cho)的心理异常的学生在该校杀害32人并自尽之后，赫姆基的说法似乎也同样正确——那是他第一次表达这样的观点。结果证明，民选官员们就是能够忽视赵承熙的暴行，更不用说其后发生的更多案件。同样，人们对纽顿案件的愤怒，并不一定就能让民选官员们行动起来。

In seeking to prevent the next massacre, it is natural and right to focus on mass gun ownership, American’s modern-day peculiar institution. There may be a quarter of a billion guns in private hands in the US, and yet the government regulates them less stringently than it does foie gras, tobacco or office humour.

为了避免下一次屠杀案件发生，从大众持有枪支这一点上去抓是理所当然的。允许持有枪支是当代美国一项比较奇特的制度。美国私人持枪总数大约为2.5亿支，但政府对枪支的监管还没有鹅肝酱、香烟，甚至是办公室幽默等方面的监管严格。

President Barack Obama has called for the revival of a ban on so-called assault weapons that was in place for a decade after 1994. On Wednesday he put Vice-President Joe Biden in charge of a task force on gun violence. But Mr Biden will have little scope for action. The lobbying power of the National Rifle Association is part of the problem, but only a small part. The constituency for serious gun control in the US is shrinking.

巴拉克·奥巴马(Barack Obama)总统呼吁恢复1994年生效、实行了十年的攻击性武器禁令。他近日派副总统乔·拜登(Joe Biden)领导一个应对枪支暴力的专项工作组。但拜登几乎没有行动空间。全国步枪协会(National Rifle Association)的游说力量是部分原因，但也只是一小部分。美国支持严格控制枪支的选民趋于减少。

We know where Mr Obama’s heart is on guns. He doesn’t like them.

在枪支问题上，我们知道奥巴马的立场，他反对枪支。他也真心希望监管枪支。2008年他在给旧金山一些富裕的捐赠者们讲话时，还将那些“坚持枪支拥有和宗教信仰的工人的不满情绪描述了一番。然而，毫不夸张地说，到目前为止，总统还从未公开谈论枪支控制这个话题。他只是将自己描述为宪法第二修正案的捍卫者。该修正案规定“人民持有和携带武器的权利不得侵犯。

He would sincerely like to regulate them. To a roomful of rich San Francisco donors in 2008 he described disgruntled workers who “cling to guns and religion. And yet it is hardly an exaggeration to say that gun control is a topic that the president has, until now, never discussed in public, except to describe himself as a defender of the second amendment, which protects “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.

对奥巴马来说，问题是，早在好几届选举以前，民主党最明智的政治顾问们就认为，反对持有枪支将让民主党遭受重挫，在此后的几乎每一次选举中他们的观点都被证明是正确的。47%的美国人家中有枪。

The problem for Mr Obama is that his party’s smartest political consultants decided several elections ago that hostility to guns was killing the Democratic party, and they have been proved right in almost every election since. Forty-seven per cent of Americans have guns in their homes.

比尔·克林顿(Bill Clinton)签署攻击性武器禁令之后，民主党在国会就失去了维持了四十多年的多数地位。2000年的总统大选中，如果民主党人阿尔·戈尔(Al Gore)没有试图将自己描述成在枪支问题上比其党内主要竞争对手比尔·布拉德利(Bill Bradley)更加倾向于变革，他可能有望当选为总统。2006年，民主党赢回参议院多数席位，他们的候选人中有一些是强烈支持枪支持有的人——弗吉尼亚州的吉姆·韦布((Jim Webb)、蒙大拿州的乔恩·提斯特(Jon Tester)以及宾夕法尼亚州的小鲍勃·凯西(Bob Casey Jr)——民主党候选人们还在枪支控制问题上实行了“沉默誓言，并让支持枪支持有的哈里·里德(Harry Reid)担任参议院多数党领袖。

After Bill Clinton signed his ban on assault weapons, Democrats lost the congressional majority they had held for four decades. Al Gore might have been elected president in 2000 had he not sought to paint himself as more liberal on guns than Bill Bradley, his Democratic primary challenger. Democrats won the Senate back in 2006 when they recruited gun-enthusiasts as candidates (Jim Webb in Virginia, Jon Tester in Montana, Bob Casey Jr in Pennsylvania), enforced a candidates’ vow of silence on gun control and then put the chamber under the control of a gun-friendly majority leader, Harry Reid.

这一同盟阵线已经产生影响。据报道，参议员们同意对2010年具有里程碑意义的医疗改革方案做出调整，防止保险公司向枪支所有人收取更高的保费。

This alliance has had consequences. Senators reportedly agreed to alter their landmark 2010 health reform to prevent insurers from charging higher premiums to gun owners.

给民主党带来压力的是选民，而不是全国步枪协会。美国人对武器的兴趣越来越浓厚，其中原因至今没有人能够完全说明白。盖洛普(Gallup)民调显示，上世纪五十年代，60%的美国人支持手枪禁令。2011年的时候，却有73%的人反对这种禁令。即使是在康涅狄格枪击案之后，枪支控制在选民看来也是最不受欢迎的补救方式之一。近期的盖洛普民调显示，42%的美国人认为枪支禁令有效，低于支持强化警力（53%）、更完善的心理健康筛查（50%）、打击暴力视频游戏（47%）的比例。在重大枪杀案件之后，枪支购买往往会急剧增加，因为潜在的枪支购买者希望在法律做出调整、禁止购枪之前行动。去年夏天科罗拉多州奥罗拉市一家电影院发生枪击案（致死12人，致伤58人）之后，该州枪支购买者背景调查在一周之内就增加了41%。

It is voters, not the NRA, who are intimidating Democrats. For reasons no one has fully explained, Americans are getting fonder and fonder of firearms. In the 1950s, 60 per cent of Americans said they would support a ban on handguns, according to Gallup; in 2011, 73 per cent said they would oppose one. Even in the immediate aftermath of the Connecticut shootings, gun control strikes voters as among the least appealing remedies. This week Gallup showed 42 per cent felt gun bans would be effective, well behind beefing up the police (53 per cent), doing better mental-health screening (50 per cent) and cracking down on violent video games (47 per cent). After mass shootings, gun purchases soar as potential gun buyers decide to act before the law changes to stop them. After last summer’s slaughter (12 dead, 58 wounded) at a cinema complex in Aurora, Colorado, the state saw a 41 per cent rise in firearms background checks from one weekend to the next.

反对枪支的游说团体在组织性上并不亚于支持枪支的游说组织，尽管前者没有后者的规模大。形成一个立法方案不需要太多的思考和研究。拜登“工作组的目标之一可能是制定政治策略，避免总统被指责利用一场悲剧来让其政治同盟的意愿获得通过。

The anti-gun lobby is as well organised as the pro-gun lobby, even if it is not quite so big. It will not need much thinking or study to produce a programme of legislation. A likely purpose of the Biden “task force will be to plot political strategy and to protect the president against accusations that he is exploiting a tragedy to pass the wish list of his political allies.

然而，一个特别的因素将有利于形成新的枪支法案：没有哪一次重大枪击案离下一次国会选举如此之久。现在投票的议员们有22个月到23个月的时间来让枪支拥有者淡忘他们的所为。他们通过的任何立法都可能是有限的、具党派倾向的、饱受诟病的。而另外一种可能就是不通过任何相关立法。

One unusual factor, though, is working in favour of fresh gun laws: never has there been a mass killing this far from the next congressional election. Representatives casting votes now will have 22 or 23 months to make gun owners forget. Any legislation they get through will probably be limited, partisan and resented. The alternative is no legislation at all.

本文作者是《旗帜周刊》(The Weekly Standard)高级编辑

The writer is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard