April 6–13, 2000

cover story

What if the Gun Nuts are Right?

	Top gun: U.S. Attorney Michael Stiles quintupled his office’s prosecution of pistol-packing felons last year, with only a minor impact on the federal court’s workload. photo: Shoshanna Wiesner

by Noel Weyrich

Gerald Smith probably had no idea how much trouble he was in when the cops busted his crack house on South Bouvier Street on January 11, 1999. Although Smith was arrested on serious charges (police said he was carrying two huge, illegal handguns and had sold crack cocaine to an undercover cop) his past experiences with the Philadelphia courts suggested he had little reason to worry.

Even with two robbery convictions on his record, Smith hardly stands out in a justice system that handles 4,000 gun possession cases per year and has room for only 5,600 prisoners. Smith likely thought he’d be arraigned, released and home for dinner. Eventually, he would trade a guilty plea for a suspended sentence and probation.

But the prosecutors in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office made sure that Gerald Smith never got a third chance in Philadelphia’s felon-friendly courts. Under a then-new program called Operation Cease Fire, the District Attorney’s Office shipped Smith’s case over to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. They literally made a federal case out of it, and Gerald Smith has not been home for dinner since. Instead, he was placed in federal custody, awaiting trial for violating strict federal statutes on illegal guns and drugs. With no chance of a suspended sentence or probation, the goateed 34-year-old with the winning smile and 2-year-old twins was staring at 30 years of hard time in a federal lockup.

To Smith, a veteran defendant in Philadelphia’s courtrooms, it must have seemed like he had landed in another country.

Behind bars: Caught with two illegal handguns, Gerald Smith was sentenced last week to seven years in a federal lockup. In the city courts, he would have gotten probation. photo: Philadelphia Police Department

Since January 1999, the federally funded Operation Cease Fire program has hauled more than 300 of Philadelphia’s most egregious gun offenders off the streets and into federal court. In 1999 alone, gun possession indictments by the U.S. Attorney’s Office here more than quintupled from 1998. Out of 173 gun cases disposed of, only one defendant was acquitted, while 149 others simply pleaded guilty and went straight to federal prison.

Philadelphia’s rates of shootings and killings have been dropping steadily since Cease Fire’s launch 15 months ago. And although no one can be certain what role Cease Fire has played in making the city a safer place, it’s hard to imagine how so many dangerous characters could be put out of action without making some impact on crime. The only other program in the country like Cease Fire — Richmond, Virginia’s three-year-old Project Exile — has been widely credited with helping cut that city’s murder rate almost in half.

Perhaps what is most curious about both Cease Fire and Exile is that they are pet projects of the gun-loving fanatics who run the NRA — the National Rifle Association. In fact, it’s doubtful Cease Fire ever would have happened without prodding from the NRA.

For decades, the NRA had complained rather hollowly that guns don’t kill people, that criminals kill people. Congress, they said, should stop cooking up new restrictions on law-abiding gun owners since federal authorities were doing little or nothing to catch and prosecute convicted felons who violate existing gun laws. Intellectually, they had a point — why pass new laws when you don’t use the ones you’ve got? But the argument was always tainted by association, dismissed as little more than a specious debating trick to help defend any number of the organization’s unpopular positions.

In the last few years, however, the NRA finally started putting some of its considerable wealth and influence toward a federal crackdown on felons with guns — and the payoff is shaping up to be huge. By helping first to fund public outreach efforts for Project Exile, and then lobbying Congress to find seed money for Cease Fire, the NRA has spawned a federal gun-enforcement movement that has taken the U.S. Justice Department by storm. In January, President Clinton asked Congress for an extra $280 million for 1,000 new prosecutors and investigators to work on gun cases. Although Clinton has been a frequent target of the NRA’s contempt and derision, this is the first time any White House has ever sought such substantial funding to enforce gun laws, many of which are more than 30 years old and hardly ever used.

With their history of fanatical opposition to even the simplest of gun-control measures, the NRA and its Pennsylvania affiliates have long been political pariahs in Philadelphia, a city that has been bleeding to death for decades from drug-related warfare. Many local police, in particular, despise the NRA for its insane opposition to a federal ban on Teflon-coated "cop-killer" bullets — bullets designed for the express purpose of piercing police body armor.

Yet with Exile and Cease Fire, it is quite possible that the NRA has already helped prevent more gun violence in Richmond and Philadelphia than any gun-control law ever has.

True, the NRA may be a bunch of gun nuts. But when the NRA claims that controlling criminals makes a lot more sense than controlling guns, the Cease Fire experience in Philadelphia suggests that on this single point, the gun nuts may be right.

part 2