Alternatives Are Needed to Check on Gun Buyers

The U.S. Supreme Court’s disappointing decision Friday on the Brady Act need not hamper enforcement of this worthy and popular law governing handgun sales. Indeed, just hours after the court released its ruling, concluding its current term, the president and members of Congress were huddling over how to continue background checks on prospective gun buyers. Several options are available and sensible.

A divided court struck down a key part of the 1993 Brady gun control law, saying that Congress cannot constitutionally compel local police to conduct background checks during a federally established five-day waiting period. Writing for a 5-4 majority, Justice Antonin Scalia said that the federal government could not direct states to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program because “such commands are fundamentally incompatible with our constitutional system.”

But Justice John Paul Stevens delivered a blistering dissent, arguing that the background check requirement “is more comparable to a statute requiring local police officers to report the identity of missing children to the Crime Control Center of the Department of Justice than to an offensive federal command to a sovereign state.”

The case arose from suits brought by two rural sheriffs, from Arizona and Montana. The court agreed that they were, in Scalia’s words, “pressed into federal service,” diverted to ferreting out felons and others that the Brady law bars from handgun ownership. Under Friday’s decision, states and localities no longer will be required to perform these checks but are left free to do so. To do so, we think, would be time and money well-spent.

Opponents of gun control, including the Montana sheriff, were gleeful at news of the court’s ruling. “This is a victory for the American people,” he exclaimed.

Baloney. Since the Brady bill took effect in 1994, the White House estimates, 250,000 felons, fugitives and mentally unstable people have been denied handguns. The number of handgun murders dropped the year after the bill became law. That’s the victory. More conclusive evidence of the law’s effectiveness in deterring crime awaits future data, but the measure’s popular support seems well- founded.

More than half the states, including California, have statewide background check laws in place; Friday’s ruling does not affect those programs. Moreover, the Brady law envisions an instant federal background check that by late 1998 should allow gun dealers, who must hold a federal license, to instantly tap into a Department of Justice database containing nationwide data on criminals. Local sheriffs or police would then be out of the loop altogether as far as background checks are concerned.

It is constant political pressure by a fed-up populace that will keep handguns out of the wrong hands. There should be no argument here.