Are guns the only culprit here? Isn't violence endemic to American culture?

I'm sort of in the camp of Mario Cuomo; I'm more concerned about real guns than pictures of guns. American entertainment basically saturates the world, and the only difference between us and Canada or England or other industrial nations is that we have the means to carry out the fantasies as portrayed in film. The difference is not what's being seen on the evening news or in mass-market entertainment; it's the unique access we allow our citizens to a wide range of weapons that is unparalleled in the world.

This aspect of the gun culture is protected by the absolute views of groups like the NRA and the fealty paid to the pro-gun movement by many of our political leaders. One of the striking things is that the NRA has become grass-roots troops for the conservative movement in America. If you look at the gun industry and you look at the NRA, they're all facing the same problem: Their core is eroding. They're getting older, they're dying off. And there has been an effort -- this is since the advent of Charlton Heston -- to basically use gun ownership as a cultural marker for conservative America.

When Clinton was first elected, there was a dramatic shift in the language of the NRA. What we saw for the first time was an anti-government language of the militia movement being repeated in NRA publications. They attacked the FBI and compared them to goose-stepping Nazis. They had a cover that said, "The final war has begun." But then Timothy McVeigh took them at their word. When McVeigh blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City, that was the first shot fired in the NRA's war. And McVeigh was an NRA member.

And that's why you saw the backlash. They retreated from their "final war" language and brought in Charlton Heston to take them back into the mainstream. And Charlton Heston brought all the conservative baggage into the NRA's office. It went beyond guns -- to homophobia, opposition to affirmative action. Heston gave his now infamous speech to the Free Congress Foundation. The speech went after feminists, blacks, gays, gun-control advocacy. Heston is basically the catalyst that led to the change to the NRA that we see today, which is now far more influential than when it represented only a small angry picture.

How influential? What about the NRA's role in the current administration?

I think you can say fairly confidently that there has not been a more pro-gun administration in the history of this country. When you look at the full range of activities that the Bush administration has undertaken, the fact is that the NRA is calling the shots in this administration. And certainly the Bush administration is completely beholden to the NRA ... Look at the comments that have come out of the White House, on any gun issue. The White House treated the sniper shooting almost like it was an act of nature. There was no recognition that it's a man with a gun and that the issue is, how do we stop weapons like this from being used against our fellow citizens?

How do you see this playing out over the next few years?

In the wake of high-profile shootings like Columbine, like the sniper shootings, there's a pretty predictable pattern that emerges. What happens is that people on my side of the debate try to find a discrete issue that is defined by the political reality at this given time. There's never the effort to take a step back and talk about the big picture.

For example, following Columbine, the things offered by President Clinton were things like closing the gun-show loophole [which allows private sellers at gun shows to skip background checks], things like trigger locks, and other limited measures.

Closing the gun-show loophole, now that's a legitimate policy debate, but it's not going to solve gun violence in America. And to take it a step further, if you look at what's now being discussed in the wake of the sniper shootings, ballistic fingerprinting certainly may offer promise as an investigative tool, but once again, it's not going to solve gun violence in America. When people on my side of the issue offer these very limited discrete policy proposals in the wake of truly horrendous shootings, it just reinforces the mistaken notion that gun control can't solve these problems. The fact is that gun control can solve these problems. But we're talking about such limited measures that we don't even get to the point where we can have a real policy debate. The issue in this country is the ease of access we allow our citizens to a wide range of weapons.

Once again, say from Columbine to the sniper shootings, the issue of assault weapons comes into play, and the question is: In this country, are we going to accept things like Columbine, like the sniper shootings, and just say -- as the NRA has said in the past -- that it's the price of freedom? Freedom as defined by the National Rifle Association is: "We can do anything we want and for those who are hurt by gun violence, too bad." I would argue that it's too high a price, and I think that most people would probably agree.

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