Brady Bill Alternative Beckoning : Gun control: O.C.’s five congressmen are leaning toward legislation by Rep. Harley Staggers that would substitute for the controversial measure on handgun waiting periods.

Orange County’s five congressmen are leaning toward support of substitute gun-control legislation that is opposed by backers of the Brady bill, the controversial proposal to require a seven-day waiting period for handgun purchases in every state in the nation.

Debate on the Brady bill, scheduled today on the House floor, will be largely symbolic for California representatives, because the state already requires a 15-day waiting period for handgun sales.

Reps. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove) and Ron Packard (R-Carlsbad), who represents southern Orange County, said they have no serious quarrel with a waiting period. But they said they prefer alternate legislation authored by Rep. Harley O. Staggers Jr. (D-W. Va.) that would require an immediate, electronic background check on gun buyers.

The Department of Justice and the congressional Office of Technology Assessment have concluded that it would take years and cost hundreds of millions of dollars to put such a system in place.

Under a rule adopted Tuesday, the Staggers bill will be considered first on the House floor, and the vote is expected to be extremely close. The bill is being pushed by the National Rifle Assn. with the support of President Bush.

Reps. William E. Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton) and Dana Rohrabacher (R-Long Beach), who represents northwestern Orange County, attacked the waiting-period legislation as a sham concocted by liberal Democrats unwilling to enact tough anti-crime measures.

“Liberals will do everything they can to try to regulate the behavior of honest citizens, but at the same time oppose anything we do to try to attack the criminals,” Rohrabacher said.

“I don’t see any problem with honest people who have never committed crimes owning as many guns as they want to own. If they’re handguns, they’re handguns, I don’t care.”

Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach) said he has serious reservations about the Brady bill on constitutional grounds, noting that the Second Amendment to the Constitution bars the federal government, but not the states, from limiting the rights of citizens to bear arms.

Cox said he could support an amended version of the Staggers bill because access to accurate, comprehensive criminal records must be the keystone of any state gun control efforts.

“If we have no different information after seven days than we have instantaneously, one wonders why we would put purchasers to the inconvenience,” Cox said.

Several police chiefs in Orange County have expressed their support of the Brady bill.

“It can saves lives,” said Garden Grove Police Chief John Robertson. “It will give them a chance to find out about the people purchasing weapons. It’s not prohibiting (the sale), just delaying it.

“It will have an impact on those who are doing it (buying guns) in the heat of the moment,” Robertson said. If Orange County’s congressional delegation “votes against it, I would be disappointed in their vote,” he added.

Santa Ana Police Chief Paul M. Walters has also expressed support of the bill.

“Professionally, I think the Brady bill is a good bill. . . . A lot of the violent crimes are attributed to the availability of guns,” Walters said recently.

“There is a right to bear arms in this country, but a lot of people don’t realize what that freedom costs in terms of lives,” he said.

The Brady bill takes its name from James S. Brady, the press secretary to President Reagan who was shot in the head and permanently disabled during the 1981 attempt on Reagan’s life. It is to be considered by the House today. Brady and his wife Sarah have lobbied heavily for the bill in recent years, and were rewarded recently with an endorsement from Reagan.

Times staff writer Matt Lait contributed to this story.