"Holy fucking shit!", he exclaimed, which set all of the kids to giggling.
Marilyn looked at our offspring and scolded them. "Just because Uncle Tusker said a bad word doesn't mean you get to."
"Do we get to wash his mouth out with soap?", asked Charlie. Bucky was grinning and nodding.
"You bet, as soon as you figure out a way to wrestle him to the ground.", replied Marilyn.
Charlie eyed Tusker, who gave him a menacing look in return. "Maybe later."
"If you're getting a professor, why do they call him a chair, Uncle Carl?", asked Bucky.
I had to blink at that. "I'm not really sure, Bucky. I think that they used to give you a really fancy chair to sit on at some old time colleges, but I never asked that before."
"Oh."
Thus was born the Carter Henry Tusk Chair for Pediatric Oncology at Johns Hopkins. There was a fair bit of paperwork involved, and then the university had to hire somebody to fill the chair. That we couldn't decide, on the theory that none of us knew anything about pediatric oncology. That was pretty much true. The professorship would become effective in the fall semester of 1994, and we and the Tusks were invited to attend the grand opening, or whatever they called it. That would be for the future, though, almost a year away.
In the meantime, I needed to get back to my job as one of the leaders of the free world. I won't say that this had been a distraction from that. It was more like being a Congressman had been a distraction from being a friend. Still, I needed to get back to Washington and start fighting for my Defending the Second Amendment Bill, which was planned to be the formal name.
I had some fairly specific thoughts in mind for the bill, which we were abbreviating as D2A. I had a few very specific things I wanted in the bill, and my biggest foes were not going to be the Democrats, but my fellow Republicans! The Democrats wouldn't allow anything I wanted, plain and simple, but after 1994 they would be in the minority. They could vote against it, but the odds were that we would have enough of a majority to ram through even vetoed legislation. Putting any kind of sensible restrictions on guns, however, was the sort of thing that the NRA would never allow. What I had in mind was:
* Require all states to be 'shall issue' states rather than 'may issue' states for concealed carry permits.
* Require all states to recognize each other's permits.
* End the assault weapons ban (which wasn't law yet, but would be next year. It would be one of the last gasps of the Democratic Congress.)
* Limit all civilian weapons magazines to a maximum of 10 rounds, no matter what the actual weapon could fire.
Some of the items would be near and dear to the Republicans, and would pass without any question. For years there had been discussion of changing the rules on concealed carry. After my experiences with Hamilton's stalking of Marilyn and Charlie, I was all in favor of this. I also knew that some of the more liberal states, like Maryland and Massachusetts would be a very tough sell. Still, I figured we could count on Congressional votes from the more rural and conservative districts of those states.
Likewise, ending the upcoming assault weapons ban would be popular with the Republicans. It was one of our stupider laws, basing decisions on whether a gun was an 'assault weapon' on purely cosmetic items. Military people know full well what an assault rifle is. It is a fully automatic rifle firing an intermediate (smaller size than a rifle) cartridge with a detachable magazine. What Congress had tried to do was ban guns based on what they looked like. If it looked like an AK-47, even if it was semi-automatic, it was an assault weapon. An M-1 Garand, which looked like a regular rifle, was also semi-automatic and was actually far more powerful and accurate, but wasn't considered an assault weapon. They made up all sorts of silly rules and exceptions based on whether the stock folded up, or it had a flash suppressor, or a pistol grip, or even a grenade launcher! Never mind that grenade launchers and fully automatic weapons were already illegal, and the mere possession of them would land you in the slammer. No, they now constituted a convoluted assault weapon category.
Most of that stuff was just flash and plastic parts. For another thing, almost no crimes are actually committed with long guns. They are hard to conceal and quite impractical. What criminals use are handguns. What made these weapons dangerous wasn't what they looked like, it was that they were designed to use military sized magazines of ammunition. Some of the magazines were really amazing. You had extended thirty round magazines for some pistols that stuck out the bottom of the regular handgrip, and some assault weapon types could accommodate a hundred rounds or more in military issue circular magazines.
What we needed was something vastly simpler. Eliminate the rules on what was or wasn't an assault weapon. Simply state that civilians couldn't own automatic weapons and couldn't use magazines with more than a ten round capacity.
The NRA would love to end the assault weapons ban. As far as they were concerned any restriction on gun ownership was pure anathema. Any time a state overrode Federal law on guns, they were there to fight it the next day. They would also fight against a restriction on magazine capacity, but I figured I could probably swing that one through. Most of the public couldn't understand why you needed an M-16 style 'hunting rifle' (the AR-15) with a thirty round magazine.
I also knew they would protest that it couldn't be done. They would line up a bunch of gun and ammunition manufacturers who would swear on a stack of Bibles they couldn't make magazines in those capacities, that it would be too expensive and drive them all into bankruptcy. That was the sheerest bullshit. All that needed to be done was to take an existing magazine and position a plug at the bottom to take up space, and then replace the spring with a smaller one. We could even add a provision to the bill preventing conversion of a ten round civilian magazine to a full sized military magazine, much like there were laws against converting semi-automatic weapons to fully automatic versions.
What I didn't see happening was a repeal of the Brady Bill, the Federal law requiring background checks on all handgun purchases. My own feelings on this were mixed. No, it's probably not a good idea to let crazy people and criminals buy guns, but it wouldn't stop them from getting their hands on them. The bill itself was chockfull of loopholes anyway. More importantly, as a tactical decision, the Democrats were going to squawk loudly about D2A, and would trot out Jim Brady shamelessly. D2A would be easier if we didn't mess with the Brady Bill. The NRA was going to have to lump it on this one.
By now we had the outline of the ten bills we were going to make the centerpiece of the Contract with America. The entire concept was still under a fairly tight hold, and the media hadn't twigged to our plans yet. Newt was planning on rolling it out after the primary season was finished, in the spring. In the meantime, most of the Gang of Eight were making regular trips over to the Heritage Foundation, and several nights a week we had meetings at the Clubhouse (my den, in the house on 30th) with lawyers from the Heritage Foundation. We had the following bills in the works, although with some of them the names kept changing, as we tried to find better sounding alternatives:
Bill 1 – Balanced Budget Act, John Boehner to be in charge. This was a big one, mandating a move towards a balanced budget and a line item veto for the President. I expected this one to be massively pawed over by every interest group under the sun!