WASHINGTON — Arkansas’ congressional delegation slammed gun-control proposals announced by President Barack Obama on Wednesday, calling the president’s attempts to restrict gun ownership unconstitutional.
Obama and Vice President Joe Biden admitted in their announcement that passage of gun-control measures by Congress would be a long shot.
In addition to 23 executive orders that are designed to, among other things, increase school safety, study gun violence and treat mental illness, Obama and Biden pushed Congress to reinstate a ban on assault weapons, limit ammunition clips to 10 rounds of ammunition and strengthen federal background checks required for gun purchases.
Sen. John Boozman, a Republican from Rogers, said the White House was taking the wrong approach.
“Taking away people’s guns is not the answer,” he said.
Rep. Rick Crawford, a Republican from Jonesboro, said the 23 executive orders have “ruffled the feathers” of his constituents.
“Firearms are the tool for the people who are bad actors,” Crawford said, “They’re not the cause of their bad actions.”
Rep. Tim Griffin, a Republican from Little Rock, predicted that Obama’s plan will fall flat on Capitol Hill. On Wednesday, as he drove from Washington to Little Rock, he said, he was “bombarded” by text messages from opponents of tighter gun restrictions.
Connecticut’s tougher gun control laws didn’t prevent the massacre in Newtown, Conn., and they won’t stop similar attacks elsewhere, Griffin said.
“It’s a feel-good thing,” Griffin said of Obama’s plan. With movies, video games and music glamorizing violence, people have become anesthetized to brutality and bloodshed, Griffin said.
“We need to look inside ourselves as Americans, and the culture we have, which is a crude and violent culture in many ways,” he said.
Boozman, Crawford and Griffin said they like some of Obama’s ideas, in particular the mental-illness aspect.
In written statements, Republican Reps. Tom Cotton of Dardanelle and Steve Womack of Rogers also criticized the president’s gun proposals.
Cotton said the president is “flaunting his disregard for our Constitution.” Womack said anti-gun laws are “not the appropriate reaction to senseless acts of violence.”
Sen. Mark Pryor, Arkansas’ only Democrat in Congress, issued a statement promising to “continue to look for areas of common ground” on the issue.
Limiting gun ownership won’t solve the problem of school violence, said Asa Hutchinson, a likely Republican candidate for governor who was tapped by the National Rifle Association to lead a study group on school safety.
But he favors Obama’s efforts to add up to 1,000 police officers in schools. The former Arkansas congressman also agreed with Obama’s call for school districts to develop emergency-response plans.
“He’s basically agreeing with common sense, that if we want to protect schools, we need well-trained and armed officers,” Hutchinson said.
Placing armed guards in schools across the country would cost at least $2 billion, Hutchinson said.
Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe said adding armed school-resource officers might make schools safer, but it’s a decision for schools and police departments to make.
“It can be notoriously expensive, but if it saves a kid’s life, that’s something all of us ought to be thinking seriously about,” Beebe said.
Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel, a Democratic candidate for governor, said he opposes efforts to restrict assault weapons, but he’d be “open-minded to hearing a debate on the issue.”
Arkansas gun advocates said restricting gun ownership won’t stop violent crime.
“The big part that’s missing here is that it’s already against the law to kill people,” said Bronson Castleberry, who lives near Cabot and serves as an alternate Arkansas delegate to the Amateur Trapshooting Association. “Obama should just leave law-abiding people alone and pick up the crazies,” Castleberry, 53, said.
Information for this article was contributed by Sarah Wire of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 01/17/2013