Gun Show Amendment Won’t Pass, Republicans Say

Top Republicans negotiators on the youth crime bill flatly predicted Thursday that the gun show background check measure approved by the Senate would not be included in a final compromise version.

Neither of the Republicans, House Judiciary Chairman Henry Hyde of Illinois and Senate Judiciary Chairman Orrin G. Hatch, ruled out some gun show legislation.

But they said the specific Senate amendment, sponsored by Democrat Frank R. Lautenberg of New Jersey, will not survive. It passed by one vote in the Senate, with Vice President Al Gore casting the tie-breaking vote, and it was defeated in the House.

“It can’t pass. . . . You can’t have that amendment written that way,” Hatch said after the first session of the House-Senate conference committee.

The meeting was held on the eve of Congress’s monthlong summer break. Many children will be returning to school before Congress resumes work on the gun bill, inspired in part by the school shootings in Littleton, Colo.

Democrats warned that they will not accept an alternative too watered down to be effective.

“We must keep criminals and children from having easy access to guns. It’s as simple as that,” Lautenberg said. “Anything that falls short is unacceptable.”

Currently, licensed gun dealers must run background checks at stores or shows, but the law does not apply to more informal vendors at shows.

Lautenberg’s amendment requires checks for all gun show sales and allows three business days for the background work to be completed. The House rejected that, as well as a modified version allowing three calendar days, including weekends when it is harder to get police and court records.

The National Rifle Assn., an influential lobby, strongly opposes the Lautenberg amendment.

President Clinton supports the Senate-passed gun measures and, in a statement Thursday, urged the conferees to adopt them “so we can give our nation’s parents more peace of mind as our children return to school.”

Clinton called on the conferees to give up their August break and stay and work, and the Democrats made a token attempt to do that. But they knew it had no chance of passage.