Congress’ Shame

Americans, especially those who bear scars from shots fired in anger, must wonder what mysterious hold the National Rifle Assn. has on the men and women of Congress. Campaign contributions are the simple answer. But even a candidate desperately in need of money for a House race should be able to find the nerve to slow the senseless slaughter in this country by making it harder to buy a gun.

Last Thursday Congress suffered a scandalous loss of nerve.

As a result, the House passed a bill that, if it is signed into law, will override thousands of state and local measures that make it difficult to transport guns. It will reduce the burden on gun dealers to keep records; presumably that will make it more difficult to trace the owners of handguns involved in crimes. Federal officials will have a harder time making surprise inspections of gun dealers.

Uniformed policemen from all over the country, lobbying to maintain gun controls that were not tight enough to begin with, may have shamed the members into saving one scrap of the 1968 law. It will still be illegal to buy a handgun unless you live in the state where you are buying it.

The measure must now be reconciled with one that passed the Senate last year, but this is viewed as a certainty.

President Reagan, wounded by a bullet from a $29 handgun, apparently will sign the bill. He has long voiced support for changing the gun laws. It is not likely that he would invite his press secretary, Jim Brady, critically wounded in the head in the same attack, to any bill-signing ceremony. Brady’s wife, Sarah, does not share the President’s sanguine views on gun laws. Congress could not even bring itself to achieve one thing that she really wanted--a waiting period before the delivery of a handgun, to allow time for a background check of the buyer.

The National Rifle Assn. strong-arms its opponents and even its friends, as Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) found out during the drive for passage of this legislation. He got a $10,000 contribution from the association during the last election campaign, and he supported moves to change the gun laws. But when he balked at a parliamentary maneuver involving the gun bill, the association fired a volley of mail to his constituents saying that he was “basically anti-gun.”

The ban on interstate handgun sales remains in place, but, as the law officers repeatedly pointed out, easing the law on transportation may put more guns in cars and more police in danger. The rifle association has put a private goal--owning a gun--ahead of public safety. For the ease of a few, more will suffer. The 1968 Gun Control Act was passed after the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, as well as the earlier murder of President John F. Kennedy. Congress has a short memory.