Deadly Fix : LETHAL PASSAGE: How the Travels of a Single Handgun Expose the Roots of America’s Gun Crisis, <i> By Erik Larson (Crown: $20; 288 pp.)</i>

In “Lethal Passage,” Erik Larson aims the journalist’s most potent weapon--an assembly of unadorned facts compelling rational conclusions--at those America citizens who remain “unaligned” in the endlessly raging debate about gun control.

Bull’s-eye!

Using the device of tracing a single handgun from conception to manufacture to distribution to retail sale, Larson clearly illustrates the frightening ease with which weaponry of mass-murder capability can be acquired. Nicholas Elliot hardly qualified as a criminal mastermind. Sixteen years old, with a “mental age of 12 or 13” and suffering from both dyslexia and a “schizoid personality disorder,” Nicholas came to school one day with a Cobray M-11/9, a cheap semiautomatic pistol capable of firing 32 rounds on a single clip. He was seeking a larger boy who had tormented and bullied him for some time. On his way to his intended target, one teacher was killed and another severely wounded. Had the pistol not malfunctioned, the potential body count is too terrifying to calculate--Nicholas was carrying six full clips plus hundreds of additional rounds in ammo boxes, including some he had modified to create “dumdum” and “hollow point” effects.

For too many Americans, homicide is a problem solver. The sociopath for whom humans arouse no more empathy than the characters in a video game has two main consumer demands: firepower and the look--that all-important air of menace. Accuracy is of no consequence to the urban punk killing machine--his shooting style is “spray and pray.”

American teen-agers know this--and arm themselves accordingly--to such an extent that many schools would sooner dispense with textbooks than metal detectors.

The message--that guns “fix” things--pervades our culture. From stalkers to schizophrenics, from the paranoid to the pursued, from the frightened to the fascinated, guns dominate consciousness and dictate behavior.

Larson takes us past the absurd myths (one can “count the shots” during a firefight), past the numbing statistics (every year handguns alone account for 22,000 deaths), past the rhetoric and into the face of the reality--the American public is armed and dangerous.

Journalism at its highest form is “investigative art.” “Lethal Passage” qualifies. Neither “gun nut” nor “anti-gun,” the author uses a highly accessible style to illuminate the path that led us to the current situation. Guns may be a religious experience for some, but for those who manufacture them, they are a product--a product to be marketed.

“The domestic gun industry, despite its privileged status as the least regulated of consumer-product industries, sold so many guns in America it saturated the market and now must scramble for ways to open new markets.”

And the marketers have been so successful that even the language of guns is loaded. One detective summed up Nicholas Elliot’s mobile arsenal by saying the teen-ager was “ready for war.” Hardly an accurate description--in wars, people shoot back. But “combat” is a much more acceptable raison d’etre for handguns than “slaughter.”

Expecting profiteers to self-regulate is absurd. The author, after pointing out that we have “child-safe” requirements for bottles of vitamins but not for guns tells us: “Buying a gun should be the most difficult consumer ritual in America, instead of one of the easiest.”

Part of the blame is ascribed to “historians” whose purple prose made heroes of career criminals and assorted psychopaths. “Strip away the legends enshrouding the famous outlaws and what you find are pathological killers,” the author writes. I must have missed something--is that supposed to have changed?

But the real culprit is not criminals lusting after weapons, it is a combination of National Rifle Assn. (NRA) “fundamentalists” who hold the right to own guns so sacred that it must never be subservient to mere species survival . . . and a cowardly Congress, which gives lip service to crime prevention but will not even protect its own law enforcement officers from the deluge of guns available for the asking.

The word fundamentalist is well-chosen. NRA extremists view the “right to bear arms” with the same ferocity the Anti-Choice zealots view in utero “life.” As Larson points out, the mainstream NRA member is not opposed to handgun registration--in fact, the majority favors such laws.

But as the NRA leadership moves further away from a centrist position, continuing to alienate law enforcement as well as virtually everyone concerned with the safety of our citizens, how does it maintain its political clout? The answer is both simple and depressing--politicians don’t conduct plebiscites, they simply react to “leadership.” And that leadership’s hostility to regulation in any form implies a promise to deliver a massive voting bloc on a moment’s notice.

Far more media-savvy than their opponents, the pro-gun lobby operates on all levels, from “screen credits” for specific weapons used in movies to production of NRA “educational” films. One such film featured a Congressman proclaiming: “If I were to select a jackbooted group of fascists who are perhaps as large a danger to American society as I could pick today, I would pick ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the agency which enforces laws relating to firearms).”

Larson responds, “Gun aficionados may liken the (ATF) to the Gestapo, but in its relationship to America’s gun dealers, it behaves more like an indulgent parent.” After repeated attacks by the NRA, the ATF has become “gun-shy,” and is reluctant to assume the sort of proactive stance that could prevent crime (as opposed to merely documenting it).

How easy is it to obtain handguns in the United States? To become a “dealer,” entitling you to buy and sell guns, you need a Federal Firearms License. “In 1990, 34,336 red-blooded Americans applied for an FFL. ATF denied license to only 75.”

No surprise. After all, the ATF requires prospective gun purchasers to answer all of eight questions about their background and mental health--public protection being predicated on the concept that felons will tell the truth and lunatics will self-diagnose.

The author shows us not only the marketing of guns, but the “after-market” as well. That shadow-land includes, for example, so-called “cop-killer” bullets specifically designed to penetrate the “bullet-proof” vests worn by law enforcement. The accompanying “advertising” claims citizens need such ammunition because some criminals are now wearing those same vests. Sure.

And out on the border where the First Amendment meets the Second, there are how-to books on assassination, bomb manufacturing and the construction of silencers.

The Second Amendment of “right to bear arms” fame, is, of course, biblical--that is, it may be quoted for virtually any purpose. The author takes a journalist’s view: “All the noise and dust generated by the debate over the true meaning of the Second Amendment obscures a fundamental question: Who cares?”

Chain saws don’t cut down trees--but they make it so much easier. It takes a different mindset to kill up close--ask any maximum-security convict. And when was the last time that horrifying symbol of the ‘90s--the armed “disgruntled employee”--committed mass murder with a knife?

The simple purchase of a gun without specialized training makes as much sense as taking a few karate lessons and pronouncing yourself a master of self-defense. No rational person could argue against a proficiency test for gun ownership. Nor against the registration, by unduplicatable serial number, of every handgun purchased. But for the NRA, any regulation is a step toward abolition.

That perception may, in fact, be closer to the truth than anyone realizes. An editorial in Australia’s largest newspaper, the Sydney Herald, illustrates not only that the world is watching closely, but that even the slightest step forward will be seen as laudable progress.

“With difficulty, the so-called Brady Bill has become law in the United States. . . . The new law does nothing about the 200 million guns already in circulation . . . and will be easily circumvented. But it is a symbolic first step that, if followed up by more serious measures, will represent as significant a social reform as any that President Clinton is likely to bring about.” (From the Sydney Morning Herald, as quoted in World Press Review, February, 1994)

Because the NRA’s power is not in its numbers but in the perception that such numbers are a single-minded voting constituency, any crack in the armor is likely to reveal the truth. To some extent, this perception is even shared by the author, who, as the book’s centerpiece, proposes the “Life and Liberty Preservation Act,” an omnibus law focusing on control of distribution, purchase and design of handguns, but concludes the act “doesn’t have a chance in hell of being passed” because “(e)ven those of us who favor strong regulation lack the conviction of those who oppose such laws.”

“Lethal Passage” charges that a passive minority has allowed a dedicated minority to determine gun control policy in America. If that charge is valid--and all the evidence indicates that it is--our choices are both very limited and very clear: We can actively demand fundamental changes in gun control laws . . . or we can passively continue to count the bodies.