Guns Lose in Latest Poll : Americans are increasingly fed up with handgun epidemic

The latest Louis Harris poll should be the handwriting on the wall to Congress and the National Rifle Assn., which have for too long ducked any responsibility for soaring gun violence. For the first time, a majority of Americans--52%--favor not just the registration requirements contained in the pending Brady bill, but “a federal law banning the ownership of all handguns.”

This astonishing sea change in public attitudes toward gun control has come at an exceedingly high cost. One in five adults, according to the poll, say they know someone whose child has been shot by another child. One in six parents knows a child who was found playing with a loaded gun. And only one in four parents, 25%, feels that “most children in America live in safe neighborhoods,” down from 36% in 1986.

Those perceptions track with the increasingly grim reality of life in America. Handguns were used to murder 12,090 people in 1991, a 14% increase from the previous year. That same year in Los Angeles County, guns accounted for 2,383 deaths, including homicides, accidents and suicides.

The poll is strong evidence that attempts to control gun violence that have focused on the criminal justice system, such as stiff mandatory prison terms for gun crimes, have not been successful. “You cannot just respond with punishment,” said Deborah Leff, president of the Joyce Foundation, which funded the Harris poll. “People have to figure out how to prevent gun violence.”

“Guns are now perceived as a major health problem for children,” according to Harris, who prepared the poll for the Harvard School of Public Health. As such, violence-prevention involves teaching kids how to settle disputes without resorting to guns.

But those efforts must focus on keeping guns out of the hands of children in the first place. And to a majority of Americans, that means keeping guns away from adults as well.

Nine out of 10 Americans surveyed supported the Brady bill, a relatively unrestrictive proposal that would simply require a five-day waiting period before a handgun may be purchased, allowing local authorities to check the background of the buyer. Among just the women polled, 60% said they support a federal handgun ban.

Congress ignores these numbers only at its own peril.