Newtown

By Charles Hayslett,
CEO Hayslett Group

                I’ll confess.  When news of the Newtown slaughter broke on Friday, my first cynical reaction was: it won’t matter.  Nothing will change. 

                Maybe I was wrong. 

                If public revulsion at the massacre of 20 first-graders and six educators might have been expected, the reaction of a political community in thrall to the gun lobby has been nothing short of stunning.  We may have reached a turning point, if not a tipping point.

                This is not, by the way, a blog about the pros or cons of gun rights in America – although, full disclosure, I am one who has long thought our country’s policies on this issue are, for lack of a more technical term, nuts.  Even Old West saloon keepers had the good sense to make customers check their guns at the door.  A couple of years ago the Georgia General Assembly made it legal for Georgians to pack heat in bars.

                But already I digress.  This is, rather, intended as a brief disquisition about what may be a unique moment in the history of managing public issues and crises of this type.  Rarely if ever has a single event so clearly and dramatically changed the dynamics of such an important public policy issue.  When the smoke finally clears, there will be books, seminars, speeches, polls, case studies and op-ed columns aplenty about what happened and why.

                How will it turn out?  I don’t know; it’s too early to tell.  Until Newtown, it was pretty much game over and the National Rifle Association and the pro-gun lobby had won.  As New York Times columnist Gail Collins noted after the Aurora massacre in July, the NRA long ago reached a point where it had to make up things to lobby for – “like the right to bear arms in airport lobbies.”

                And, indeed, public opinion has clearly been shifting away from gun restrictions for quite a while.  In his current post, Gallup editor-in-chief Frank Newport lists many of the all-too-familiar shootings between 1999 and 2012, and adds: “Despite all of these incidents over the past 13 years, Americans have, in general, become less likely to say that the country needs stricter gun control laws. In February 1999, the last poll before the Columbine shooting, 60% of Americans said the nation needed stricter gun control laws (this was in response to three options given to respondents in Gallup’s basic trend question: more strict, less strict, or kept as is). Within days of Columbine, an April 26-27 survey showed a slight increase to 66% in 1999. From that point on, the “more strict” percentage began to decline. It fell below 50% for the first time in October 2008. Last year it was 43% in October, the all-time low.”

                While it may be too early to speculate about the long-term impact of Newtown, it’s not too early to think – from the perspective of issues and crisis management – about the major forces and factors that will shape whatever that outcome is.  Here’s my short list:

Ø  Sustained political leadership.  This is obvious but still needs to be listed first.  President Obama has signaled his intention to press the issue, but he already had a full plate before Newtown and there are practical questions about how much time, energy and political capital he can afford to invest in the issue.  He’ll have plenty of help from New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg and others, but it’s hard to see anything happening if he steps back.  I don’t think he will.  Look for the issue to come up in his second inaugural and the State of the Union.

Ø  Whether gun control advocates can reframe the debate.  As the polling data cited above and recent public policy trends make clear, the fight for “gun control” has been lost.  The challenge now is whether it’s possible to reframe the issue and the debate.  We’re already beginning to hear political pundits and others talk about “gun safety” and see thoughtful discussions about balancing Second Amendment rights with legitimate public safety concerns.  In this morning’s AJC, Jay Bookman has an excellent column suggesting that the policy path we’ve taken on drunk driving in recent years can be a blueprint for gun safety.

Ø  How quickly things happen.  As horrific as Newtown was, it still has a limited shelf life as a news story and as an important public issue.  It’ll be interesting to see how long it takes before it falls off the front page and out of the national consciousness – and that will happen.  If President Obama and his allies can’t get the ball rolling by the time that happens, nothing will happen.

Ø  How business and markets react over the medium- and long-term.  This is perhaps the single most interesting post-Newtown development.  The private equity firm Cerberus announced yesterday that it will sell its stake in the company that manufactured the Bushmaster .223 used to kill many of the Sandy Hook first graders, and I caught a blurb on the news last night to the effect that a major sporting goods store near Newtown was taking down its gun display.  Here you have businesses putting brand considerations ahead of the bottom line. 

Ø  How the NRA and its allies respond.  It bears mentioning that these folks know what they’re doing.  They’ve successfully pressed the expansion of gun rights for decades, and they will not go quietly into the night.  For now, they’ve gone into bunker mode; they’ve gone dark on social media and have made no substantive comments about Newtown, except to say on their website that they’ll hold a “major news conference” on Friday.  They may not have faced a firestorm like Newtown before, but this is not their first rodeo. 

               

                Again, it’s too early to predict how events will unfold from here.  But these are some of the topics you’ll be reading about as it does.