Mitchell Declines to Back Clinton on Gun Control

President Clinton’s uphill struggle against the gun lobby and the difficulty he faces in persuading Congress to adopt stricter gun laws were underscored Friday when the Senate leader of his own party declined to endorse his pledge to press for additional gun control legislation next year.

Majority Leader George J. Mitchell of Maine agreed with Clinton that the public is “way ahead” of Congress in wanting more controls on firearms and said that, once the President submits additional proposals to Congress, the Senate will consider them.

But Mitchell, whose constituency includes many hunters and others opposed to gun control, declined to comment on specific proposals that the President raised in a recent interview with Rolling Stone magazine. Nor would the senator endorse Clinton’s comment that it is time to challenge the powerful National Rifle Assn.

Clinton said that he would “go a long way” on gun control, including proposing federal laws identical to some tough state laws and considering more regulations and additional license fees on the nation’s 286,000 gun dealers.

Mitchell, interviewed at a Times Washington Bureau breakfast, spoke of “great difficulty” just trying to get Congress to pass laws banning automatic weapons and providing for a five-day waiting period for handgun purchases. And, with Congress still struggling with both issues, he offered no hope that additional gun control legislation will be enacted next year.

Asked if he agrees with Clinton’s comment that it is time to challenge the NRA, Mitchell said that he prefers to “put it another way.”

The Senate, he said, “should examine the issues, make the best judgment we can on what changes in law ought to occur and proceed to make them. I don’t cast it in terms of challenging anyone. . . . I think that we’re making significant strides.”

Despite a strong gun lobby in his own state, Mitchell has taken the lead in working for congressional approval of both the Brady bill, which would require a five-day waiting period before a gun could be purchased, and of a ban on automatic weapons that is included in the crime bill.

Gun control advocates now consider him an ally but during at least his first eight years in the Senate they considered him an opponent. Five years ago the senator, a former prosecutor and U.S. district judge, wrote a letter to the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine saying that he was “a senator who throughout my Senate career has had a perfect voting record on issues of concern to the NRA.”

On other subjects, Mitchell said that the nation has a serious problem of illegal immigration that will get “much more difficult” and that measures the President plans to propose to deal with the matter will join welfare reform and health care reform as major issues on next year’s congressional agenda.

While America should be proud that immigrants still see the United States as a place of freedom and economic opportunity, he said, “our first obligation is to our own society and we cannot have open immigration.”

The United States must permit a continuing flow of legal immigrants and must permit persons persecuted elsewhere to find a haven here, he said, “but we must always keep in mind that our foremost obligation is to members of our own society--for personal safety and security, for economic reasons and for a variety of others.”

On another issue, Mitchell said that Clinton’s capacity to lead clearly has been strengthened by his decisive victory in the House on the North American Free Trade Agreement. He predicted that the Senate will approve it by a decisive margin, with 55 to 60 senators voting for it.

But he cautioned against concluding that the victories will help the President win passage of other legislation.

Although some analysts say that Clinton and the Democrats in Congress who supported the trade agreement face a difficult job of patching up differences with Democrats who opposed it, Mitchell said that it will be “much less difficult than is currently believed or stated.”

“The reason for that is our entire economic system, and our political system is, while complex in nature, based on a very simple premise. That is that human beings act out of self-interest.

“Ultimately, those persons will recognize that their self-interest does not lie in opposing or defeating a President or members of the Congress with whom they agree almost all of the time.”