U.S. may up arms exports

WASHINGTON _ As the nation reels after yet another school mass-shooting, the Trump administration is quietly moving forward with a new rule to boost U.S. firearms exports _ a measure strongly backed by the gun lobby.

The rule bears an unwieldy title: Control of Firearms, Guns, Ammunition and Related Articles the President Determines No Longer Warrant Control Under the United States Munitions List.

What it does is transfer authority to license U.S. gun manufacturer sales overseas from the State Department to the Commerce Department. It also takes Congress out of the loop, ending the current practice of notifying Capitol Hill of sales above $1 million.

For manufacturers in New York such as Remington Arms Co. in Ilion and Kimber Manufacturing in Yonkers, the rule could open up new markets.

It would offset flat firearms sales in recent years, particularly since former President Obama _ "the greatest gun salesman ever," as the National Rifle Association put it _ was replaced last year by President Trump, a gun-rights enthusiast.

The new rule, expected to be published in the Federal Register this week after which it is subject to a 45-day comment period, is at the top of the National Shooting Sports Foundation's regulatory and legislative agenda.

"This development is a crucial milestone to allowing U.S. manufacturers to compete on a more even playing field with international manufacturers," said Larry Keane, NSSF senior vice president and general counsel, in a blog post.

The foundation, based in Newtown, Conn., is the gun industry's leading trade group.

But activists in gun-violence prevention and human rights see the proposal as a license to export higher levels of death to nations that lack the Constitutional protections of the U.S.

And the mass-shooting Friday at Santa Fe High School in Texas, which left 10 dead and 13 wounded, raises anew the question that has surfaced since the school shootings in Parkland, Fla., and Newtown, Conn.: Is the gun industry the guarantor of the right of self-protection, or do its sales propel wave upon wave of mayhem?

"If you have a society that is much less subject to the rule of law than the U.S., then the market for firearms is going to produce greater harm," said John Lindsay-Poland, who monitors human rights and violence in Mexico for the American Friends Service Committee. "If you have a state being disrupted by organized crime or that is collaborating with organized crime, you have a situation in which violence is only looking for tools. Those tools only become available through exports."

An NSSF spokesman disputed the questions raised by the rule as "based on massive misrepresentation."

A Washington lawyer hired by NSSF to advise it on navigating the rule through the bureaucratic maze insisted such objections are "a red herring."

"If it was denied before, it would be denied again," said Kevin Wolf, who represents NSSF now but worked on the same issue in the Department of Commerce under Obama. Overseas gun sales "are going to get the same human-rights input, only it's going to happen in a more rational way."

Under the rule, responsibility for oversight of gun sales will transfer from the State Department _with its traditional focus on diplomatic solutions and human rights _ to the Commerce Department, which is primarily concerned with promoting U.S. business abroad.

It is in line with President Trump's oft-stated promotion of U.S. business interests overseas. In announcing arms sales to Saudi Arabia last year, Trump proclaimed it was all about U.S. "jobs, jobs, jobs."

Sales under the new rule still will be subject to inter-agency review, including the State Department, Wolf said.

"This is really boring," said Wolf, who was Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Export Administration from 2010 to 2017. "It's all about housekeeping and good government organization. State is good at regulating sensitive military items, and Commerce is good at everything else."

Lawmakers immersed in the gun issue see a danger in promoting greater U.S. exports of firearms.

"The Trump administration is once again caving to the gun lobby," said Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., a leader in the Senate on guns. "Making it easier for gun manufacturers to sell more weapons of war to civilians is the absolute wrong thing to do. All this does is incite more violence around world, further damaging our nation's standing and credibility."

New York has a long history of gun manufacturing dating back centuries. Remington was founded in 1816 by Eliphalet Remington as E. Remington and Sons.

It now employs 1,000 in its Herkimer County plant. The company's parent, Remington Outdoors, filed for bankruptcy earlier this year. No job losses were said to be imminent in Ilion.

Remington, the maker of the Bushmaster AR-15 variant used by the Newtown shooter, produced 296,669 rifles in 2016, according to data compiled by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives. Of those, it exported a modest 246.

Five years ago in 2013, it produced 190,530 rifles and exported one.

Kristen Rand, legislative director of the D.C.-based Violence Policy Center, said the issue posed by new export opportunities was "a matter of human values."

"Do we want to de-escalate violence, or do we want to just get in on the market?" she said.

The second choice "doesn't sound very American," she said. "'Everyone else is doing it' should not be the standard."

The rule itself makes no secret of the sales windfall that awaits the U.S. firearms industry once it goes into effect. The transfer of responsibility from State to Commerce could result in an additional 30,000 license applications being filed annually, it said.

The advocates also are concerned that the rule would eliminate the current requirement that Congress be notified of sales exceeding $1 million. They pointed to the role of Congress in forcing cancellation of sales of arms to police in the Philippines and Turkey.

In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte has unleashed a bloody official war on drug dealers, resulting in the execution-style deaths of thousands.

The Turkey deal, involving weapons made by popular gun manufacturer Sig Sauer, was canceled last year after television video captured members of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's security detail bludgeoning and kicking protesters at the Turkish Embassy here.

Wolf responded that he could not be certain the weapons at issue in these deals would be included in the rule, and thus exempt from Congressional notification.

He also said that in his time at Commerce working on a comparable rule, there was no attempt to do an "end run" around Congress. But keeping Capitol Hill in the loop "wasn't a motivating factor."

The rule was on the verge of release in 2012 when the mass-shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut occurred.

As a result, Wolf said he personally ordered a halt to transferring gun-export responsibility from State to Commerce.

"I decided this was not the right time," he said. "Guns are an emotional topic on both sides. There would have been a lot of misunderstandings."