The Loaded Gun to Their Heads

When lawmakers vote against a proposal supported by 84% of the electorate, they’re usually driven to it by one of three things. Sometimes they do it out of principle. Sometimes they do it for personal gain. Most of the time they do it because they’re afraid of something more vindictive than a spurned voter--a special interest.

There is no clearer recent example of legislation by fear than the California Senate’s treatment of AB 497, a common-sense public-safety proposal that has been approved by the Assembly and today will receive reconsideration in the other chamber. The measure, which was introduced by Sacramento Democrat Lloyd G. Connelly, simply proposes to extend to all firearms the current 15-day wait between the purchase of a handgun and its delivery. That brief interval would allow the state’s Department of Justice to check on whether the buyer is a person prohibited from owning a gun. These would include individuals found mentally infirm under law, convicted felons, those found guilty of specified violent misdemeanors within the previous 10 years and people forbidden to possess a weapon as a condition of probation.

The bill’s advantages are self-evident. The waiting period has been tested with handguns for years, and has worked no hardship on ordinary people and legitimate sportsmen. Since so many killings really are crimes of passion, there are obvious advantages to imposing a legal “cooling- off” period on unstable or distraught individuals in search of a gun. These common-sense facts have been enough to win AB 497 bipartisan backing in both legislative chambers, the support of every major law-enforcement official in the state and the approval of more than two-thirds of the Californians surveyed in a recent Times Poll.

Sadly, they have not been enough to overcome the fears of a handful of senators intimidated by the well-financed, single-issue lobbyists of the National Rifle Assn. Those fearful lawmakers helped the pro-gun ideologues defeat AB 497 on its first Senate vote. When the measure comes up for another vote today, it deserves the support of every senator with a decent respect for the public’s safety.

Dealing with the violence in our streets begins with a little courage in the Statehouse.