Tom Diaz is an American writer, lawyer, and public speaker on the gun industry and gun control issues. He was formerly senior policy analyst at the

Violence Policy Center The Violence Policy Center (VPC) is an American nonprofit organization that advocates for gun control. Organizational background According to Josh Sugarmann, its founder, the VPC approaches violence, and firearms violence in particular, as a ...

and is one of the more prominent advocates for a strict system of federal gun control in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

Biography

His father was born in Mexico but emigrated to the United States in his teens, becoming a career soldier but spending most of his time in the military as a bandleader. Tom Diaz is a graduate of the

University of Florida The University of Florida (Florida or UF) is a public land-grant research university in Gainesville, Florida. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida, traces its origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its ...

and the

Georgetown University Law Center The Georgetown University Law Center (Georgetown Law) is the law school of Georgetown University, a private research university in Washington, D.C. It was established in 1870 and is the largest law school in the United States by enrollment and ...

, where he was an editor of the Law Journal. He has been in private and government practice since 1972. He was a gun enthusiast and NRA member until while working as a Congressional staffer he did research on gun legislation and interviewed victims of gun violence. Mr. Diaz was counsel to the Congressional House Subcommittee on Crime and Criminal Justice from August 1993 to January 1997. During that time, he was the lead Democratic counsel in the House on firearms and terrorism, but worked on a range of other issues. Diaz was assistant managing editor of ''

The Washington Times ''The Washington Times'' is an American conservative daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., that covers general interest topics with a particular emphasis on national politics. Its broadsheet daily edition is distributed throughou ...

'' from 1985 to 1991. From 1991 to 1993 he worked at a think tank specializing in international organized crime and counter-terrorism. From 1993 to 1997 he was the lead Democratic counsel on counterterrorism and firearms issues for the Crime Subcommittee of the U.S. House of representatives, helping to conduct fact-finding hearings and write key antiterrorism and gun control legislation. He was also the lead Democratic counsel during 10 days of intensive House hearings in 1995 on the events at the Branch Davidian church in

Waco, Texas Waco ( ) is the county seat of McLennan County, Texas, United States. It is situated along the Brazos River and I-35, halfway between Dallas and Austin. The city had a 2020 population of 138,486, making it the 22nd-most populous city in the st ...

in 1993.

Views

Diaz has written numerous monographs on the proliferation of firearms in the United States and on the impact of the easy availability of specific classes of firearms on gun crime, death and injury in the United States. He has appeared on numerous television and radio media outlets, has been written about and quoted in print media, and his op-eds have been widely published. He has charged that the gun industry uses claims of increased lethality to increase sales. David Corn wrote: :In his book ''Making a Killing: The Business of Guns in America'', Tom Diaz, a former NRA member and competitive shooter who became a gun control activist, shows that the gun industry in recent years responded to flat sales by producing increasingly deadly guns. But the gun culture—centered on a device that enables lethal violence — is not part of the right’s " culture of death." He has also pointed to the way the NRA and gun industry use violent movies and images of death to promote firearms, claiming that the NRA's National Firearms Museum exhibits weapons used in notorious on-screen murders. He claims the NRA promoted

concealed carry Concealed carry, or carrying a concealed weapon (CCW), is the practice of carrying a weapon (usually a sidearm such as a handgun), either in proximity to or on one's person or in public places in a manner that hides or conceals the weapon's pr ...

laws to help sell additional smaller firearms to people. He has been the backing behind the campaign to ban rifles chambered in .50 BMG. Diaz is known for his public policy stances that eschew the incremental political approach taken by others in the gun control community, such as Americans for Gun Safety and the

American Hunters and Shooters Association The American Hunters and Shooters Association (AHSA) was a United States-based non-profit 501(c)(4) organization which operated from 2005 to 2010. The group described itself as a national grassroots organization for responsible gun ownership and ...

. For example, Diaz openly stated that the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban would not have any impact on violent crime statistics and that it only affected cosmetic features on semi-automatic firearms.

Works

* ''Making a Killing: The Business of Guns in America'' (1999) * ''Lighting Out of Lebanon: Hezbollah Terrorists on American Soil'' (2006) * ''No Boundaries: Transnational Latino Gangs and American Law Enforcement'' (2011). About the rise of American street gangs, notably

MS-13 Mara Salvatrucha, commonly known as MS-13, is an international criminal gang that originated in Los Angeles, California, in the 1970s and 1980s. Originally, the gang was set up to protect Salvadoran immigrants from other gangs in the Los Ange ...

and the

18th Street gang 18th Street, also known as , , , or simply in Central America, is a multi-ethnic (largely Central American and Mexican) transnational criminal organization that started as a street gang in Los Angeles. It is one of the largest transnational ...

* ''The Last Gun: How Changes in the Gun Industry Are Killing Americans and What It Will Take to Stop It'' (2013)

References

External links

''Gunning for a New Life'' A Biographical Article on Tom DiazAppearances
on C-SPAN {{DEFAULTSORT:Diaz, Tom Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American gun control activists University of Florida alumni Georgetown University Law Center alumni American lawyers Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs