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Congress Seeks action on safety locks, big ammo clips, checks on background
Friday, March 03, 2000
By Karen MacPherson, Post-Gazette National Bureau
WASHINGTON -- President Clinton called on Congress yesterday to "break the logjam" on gun safety legislation, but the gun industry and gun control advocates still find little common ground, despite shootings this week in Wilkinsburg and Michigan.
Clinton set a meeting for Tuesday with a bipartisan group of congressional leaders to discuss gun control legislation, which has been held up for eight months by bitter disputes over its scope. But Clinton noted that 13 children are killed by guns each day and signaled that he wasn't necessarily ready to compromise on the issue, calling for licensing gun owners as drivers are licensed -- an idea that is anathema to gun industry groups.
"I think it's long, long past time to license purchases of handguns in this country," Clinton told reporters.
As he spoke, a seminar on children and guns sponsored by the Child Welfare League of America drew vague promises to work together from gun industry officials and gun control advocates.
Both sides appeared to agree on dramatically boosting funding for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to enforce exising gun laws. But it was also clear that the sides remained far apart on licensing gun owners and registering firearms, proposals that Joshua Horwitz of the Educational Fund to Eliminate Handgun Violence said "would help curb -- not eliminate -- the transfer of guns to young people and criminals."
James Chambers, executive director of the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers' Institute, Inc., contended that licensing and registration of firearms would "punish law-abiding citizens and have very little impact on the criminal element."
The suddenly intense spotlight on gun legislation comes in the wake of the fatal shooting in Michigan Tuesday of a 6-year-old girl by a classmate and a gunman's rampage in Wilkinsburg in which three people were killed and two wounded.
Clinton yesterday urged Congress to approve legislation requiring safety locks on guns, banning the import of large-capacity ammunition clips, and requiring background checks before someone can buy a weapon at a gun show.
Gun safety legislation has languished in Congress because of "the heat the [National Rifle Association] has put on [lawmakers]. I don't think most Americans have any idea what a stranglehold the NRA has had on this Congress," Clinton said.
NRA Executive Director Wayne LaPierre responded with a statement saying that it was Clinton, not the NRA or Congress, who had prevented passage of a bill requiring safety locks and instant gun-show background checks because he wanted tougher gun restrictions than are supported even by most Democrats.
While Clinton and others --- including GOP presidential candidates George W. Bush and John McCain -- support legislation requiring safety locks, LaPierre said that would merely be "codifying existing practices." Beginning this year, the vast majority of U.S.-manufactured guns will have some form of locking device, according to gun industry officials.
"It's all just politics," LaPierre added. "It has nothing, in my opinion, to do with making America safer, and that's sad."