The Case for Gun Control

It took former mental patient Nathan N. Trupp just minutes to buy a .38-caliber revolver at a New Mexico gun shop last week. Within five days of the purchase, Trupp had used that handgun to kill five people. His shooting spree, which wiped out a family of three in Albuquerque and two unarmed security guards at Universal Studios, might never have happened if this nation imposed even minimal controls over the sale of handguns to felons, drug abusers and the mentally ill.

Just three months ago the U.S. House of Representatives narrowly rejected a measure that would have mandated a seven-day waiting period on all handgun purchases. During that period, police would have been able to check whether the would-be buyer had a history of mental illness, drug addiction or serious crimes. Although only people with criminal records or histories of incompetence would have been denied guns, the National Rifle Assn. used every bit of its influence to defeat the measure. Intimidated lawmakers adopted a mild substitute for the waiting-period bill that directed Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh to develop a system to identify, at the point of purchase, gun buyers who should not be entrusted with weapons; that provision became law.

Popular opinion seems to be running against the NRA’S implacable view that any gun-control effort encroaches on some God-given freedom. The Gallup Poll recently reported that 91% of Americans favor a federal waiting period for gun purchases; 22 states, including California (but not New Mexico), already have such laws on the books. A federal waiting period may yet come about; it is unlikely that any system that Thornburgh might recommend to screen gun buyers could work without giving law-enforcement officials some time to investigate. And Handgun Control, Inc., the moving force behind the idea, expects sympathetic congressmen to introduce another waiting-period bill in the new Congress.

If a federal waiting period had been in place when Trupp went shopping, the New Mexico authorities might have discovered that at least twice he had been committed to mental institutions, most recently in 1987, and had been discharged only last April. His brother told Times staff writer Michael Connelly that Trupp, who had no history of violence, was “not a murderer in his heart and soul.” Perhaps if he had not found it so easy to buy a gun, Trupp would not have ended up charged with multiple murders.