Justice Official Backs Gun-Buying Wait : Controls: Acting Atty. Gen. Gerson urges enactment of such a delay as the Brady bill is reintroduced in Congress.

Acting Atty. Gen. Stuart M. Gerson, in a break from policies held by the George Bush Administration, Monday urged enactment of a nationwide waiting period for the purchase of handguns so buyers could be screened for criminal records and mental problems.

Gerson, a self-described conservative and Bush Administration appointee who is running the Justice Department until the confirmation of Attorney General-designate Janet Reno, said: “We are in a battle to save a culture constantly being devalued by violence.”

Gerson’s comments came as the so-called Brady bill, which would establish a five-day waiting period, was reintroduced in Congress on Monday.

The measure, named for former President Ronald Reagan’s press secretary, James Brady, who was shot and crippled in the March, 1981, assassination attempt on Reagan, passed the House and Senate in 1991. But after emerging from a House-Senate conference as part of a larger measure, the bill was blocked last year by Senate Republican gun control foes who threatened a filibuster late in the session.

President Clinton supported the bill during his campaign and told Congress in his economic message last week that he would sign the measure if it reaches his desk.

Richard E. Gardiner, legislative counsel for the National Rifle Assn., said he was not surprised that a former Bush Administration official is now backing the Brady Bill. He said Gerson “is now dependent on somebody else,” referring to his temporary status as acting attorney general.

Gerson first disclosed his pro-Brady bill stance last week at an FBI conference on violent crime, and elaborated Monday in an interview in which he attacked as “no longer persuasive” the two major arguments cited by the NRA and other opponents of the legislation.

Acknowledging that most weapons used illegally are obtained illegally, Gerson said: “A mandated waiting period will be a worthwhile burden on those who go out of state to buy guns.” He said the waiting period could be coupled with new state laws limiting the number and frequency of gun purchases to produce “a beneficial result.” One such law, now under consideration by the Virginia Legislature, would limit gun purchases by an individual to one per month.

He said that concentrating on producing better criminal record data for use at the point of sale--often cited by the Bush Administration as an alternative to a waiting period--is a worthy goal and noted that the FBI is “making progress” in this area. “As we wait for better and more easily available data, we should not avoid doing the best we can do at the moment.”

Gerson also dismissed the argument that the Second Amendment to the Constitution on the right to bear arms is a barrier to enacting a waiting period. “The framers (of the Constitution) tied an uninfringeable right to bear arms to the protection of the security of the country by ‘a well-regulated militia,’ ” Gerson noted, adding that: “They did so at a time when there was no standing army or organized reserve and where the ‘militia’ was composed of every able-bodied man, each of whom was expected to arm himself for the common defense in war.”

Gerson declined to say when he decided to support enactment of waiting-period legislation, but noted that as assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s civil division, the post he held during the Bush Administration, “it was not on my plate.”

He said he has received “a lot of positive response” from police chiefs and federal law enforcement agents since he backed the Brady bill at the FBI conference. “I’m sick of seeing policemen’s funerals,” he said. “I’m sick of seeing kids gunned down in random violence.”