Gun Import Fight Pressed by Feinstein

Escalating her campaign against the importation of assault weapons, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein on Thursday appealed to the leaders of Russia, Greece and Bulgaria to prevent the export of thousands of the rapid-fire guns to the United States.

“These are exactly the kind of weapons many Americans are trying to keep off our streets,” the California Democrat wrote in letters to Russian President Boris Yeltsin, Greek Prime Minister Konstandinos Simitis and Bulgarian Prime Minister Ivan Kostov.

The weapons in question are modified versions of the AK47 and Heckler & Koch 91, which were first restricted by federal law in 1989 and again in 1994. The weapons have been cosmetically changed to comply with those legislative restrictions. But, according to Feinstein, these high-capacity, semiautomatic assault weapons still “are not suitable or readily adaptable to sporting purposes,” thus are in violation of the 1968 Gun Control Act, and should be barred from import.

Feinstein is asking the leaders to intervene because, in each case, the companies exporting the weapons to the United States are at least partially owned by the governments in those countries.

“What is becoming more evident is the fact that other countries are beginning to export various mutations--cosmetic mutations--of assault weapons, but the military assault capability and capacity of the weapons are the same,” Feinstein, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Thursday in an interview.

The importation of the weapons at issue was approved by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which has said that it had no choice but to grant an import request if a weapon has been changed enough to comply with the 1994 federal assault weapons law. Feinstein, however, says the agency is misinterpreting the 1968 Gun Control Act, which bars the import of even reconfigured assault weapons if they are not found to have legitimate “sporting purposes.”

“We’re looking into the issues that the senator is presenting,” Brian Burns, an ATF spokesperson, said.

Thursday’s action comes a month after Feinstein asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to block the proposed export to a U.S. gun manufacturer of tens of thousands of modified Uzi and Galil assault weapons--a request the Israeli government is considering.

The action comes three weeks after Feinstein, joined by 29 other U.S. senators, urged President Clinton to suspend the importation of semiautomatic assault weapons until it can be determined that the weapons are in compliance with U.S. law. Clinton has met with Feinstein, and his staff is said to be considering what action, if any, to take.

“The president ought to shut it down,” Feinstein said Thursday.

The proliferation of so-called copycat assault weapons and the pending Israeli transaction were detailed in a recent Times series on the glaring flaws in state and federal assault weapon laws.