House GOP Seeks Quick Gun Ban Repeal

House Republicans want to repeal before the end of the year the federal ban on military-style assault weapons in what gun control forces say is an “unorthodox rush job” to overturn the broadest weapons regulation ever passed.

“The intention is to have a vote by the end of the year,” Lauren Sims, deputy press secretary to House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), said Tuesday, a period that suggests there would be no hearings to discuss the merits of the 1994 law that bans the possession and sale of 19 types of semiautomatic assault weapons.

“A sudden assault weapons vote in December would be nothing more than a sneak attack,” Rep. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) wrote in a letter Friday to Gingrich. “The American people are entitled to a full, fair and orderly debate, not an eleventh-hour vote on a phantom bill.”

The National Rifle Assn., which has been pushing House leaders for a floor vote, was delighted at the prospect that one could come before the holidays.

“We have been given assurance for the last few months that there will be a vote on repealing the Clinton gun ban before the end of the year,” said Tanya Metaksa, the NRA’s chief lobbyist. “Gun owners certainly would view a vote on the repeal of the Clinton gun ban as a nice Christmas present for 1995.”

An aide to House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) said no date has been set to take up the repeal and that a vote depends on how long the current budget impasse lasts.

But gun control advocates are taking no chances. With House passage of a repeal all but certain, their strategy is to block it in the Senate or by presidential veto, which Clinton has promised.

“The time has come, particularly for Californians and the people of Los Angeles who are so besieged with violence . . , to stand up and say to the NRA we have had enough of your selfishness,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who ushered the ban to passage last year against odds once thought insurmountable.

“It is reprehensible to try to repeal a law that is just now beginning to work,” she said.

Feinstein has renewed her promise to stage “the mother of all filibusters” to block any repeal attempt, and her office already has activated the gun control network that helped pass the ban. Aides said that if the repeal is attempted, the senator will launch a series of press conferences and make a floor speech weekly until the law is out of danger.

A repeal vote was scheduled for last May but was derailed by Republican leaders after the terrorist bombing April 19 in Oklahoma City.

Gingrich has never suggested that the GOP abandon its intention to overturn the law in the House, and NRA supporters in Congress have been pressing him to bring the matter to a swift vote.

GOP freshmen also have been intent on repealing the ban, which they say is an infringement of a constitutional right to bear arms.

But some Republican strategists said that resurrecting the weapons ban just before Christmas--with Gingrich’s job approval rating a dismal 27%, according to last month’s ABC/Washington Post poll--may not be in the party’s best interests.

“This is a political loser for them,” said Bob Walker, legislative director of Handgun Control Inc.

Said one Democratic congressional aide: “The truth is a lot of Republicans don’t want to touch this with a 10-foot pole. And right before Christmas? Can you imagine the cartoon of Newt with a sack of assault weapons on his back? I would draw it right now and give it away free.”