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NRA’s Eye Is Fixed on Bush

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Just under four months from today, Americans will be able to walk out of a gun store with an AK-47 rifle, an Uzi or other weapon of mass murder under their arm.

Unless Congress acts -- and Republican leaders show no inclination to do so -- the 10-year-old federal assault gun ban will expire Sept. 13. A word from President Bush would get a renewal before lawmakers, a majority of whom would probably approve it. But the president is silent.

Most people, including most gun owners, are properly alarmed. A survey released last month by the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center found that 71% of those surveyed and 64% of gun owners wanted Congress to extend the ban.

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But congressional leaders, too accustomed to taking marching orders from the National Rifle Assn., have stymied the reauthorization bill that Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), John W. Warner (R-Va.) and Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) introduced last year.

The 1994 ban bars the manufacture and importation of 19 specific semiautomatic gun models and other models with similar features. These are not hunting weapons; what they do best is mow down humans, from factory workers to 6-year-olds in a school cafeteria. That’s why Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton and his colleagues in other cities steadfastly support renewing the ban. Bans by the states on such weapons, including California’s, would stay in effect. But there would be no bar against Californians buying such guns in Nevada or elsewhere.

The NRA disingenuously insists that the federal law is flawed because it prohibits some guns while permitting virtually identical weapons cosmetically tweaked to evade the law’s reach. But when Feinstein proposed a more inclusive ban, similar to California’s, which defines assault guns by their generic characteristics, the NRA crushed it. It also blocked her effort to close a loophole in the current law that allows importation of high-capacity bullet clips.

However tempting it is to blame Congress for the stalemate over this bill, the leadership failure is really the president’s. Bush has said he backs the ban. He also wants the NRA’s political endorsement, which the gun group is withholding until after the ban expires. So Bush has put no pressure on Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) or House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) to move Feinstein’s measure or its House counterpart.

If Bush says the word, Frist and Hastert will put the gun ban extension before their colleagues for a vote. And if Bush means it when he says his top priority is to keep Americans safe, he will do just that.

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