House of Contempt

What does it take to incite contempt for the great majority of Americans, those who are outraged by lax gun laws? Not much, at least in the House of Representatives. A $1.5-million lobbying effort by the National Rifle Assn., directed at its legislative lap dogs, has produced this shameful result: Gun control legislation might be dead for this session of Congress, even the modest measure passed last month by the Senate that would make it harder for felons and the mentally ill to buy weapons at gun shows.

A series of House votes late last week demonstrated what have become familiar regional and party splits on gun control. Those votes also showed the apparently undiminished power of the NRA, which every two years spends a lot of money to see that its political friends are rewarded.

A fatally weakened House bill was killed Friday on a final vote of 280 to 147, with the majority provided by gun control advocates who found the measure too diluted and gun control opponents who rebelled at any proscriptions. The legislation included a requirement for trigger locks on new guns and a ban on minors possessing assault guns. This was the first time in five years the House even had a chance to vote on gun control--an opportunity that became possible only after the April massacre in Littleton, Colo. Many in the House apparently did not have to struggle hard to put the memory of that tragedy behind them. But determined to show its seriousness of purpose, the House did vote to allow the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public schools, as an inducement to upstanding behavior.

The most grievous evasion of responsibility came in the wee hours Friday--in “the dead of night,” as President Clinton scornfully described it--when the House refused to go along with the sensible Senate-passed plan to tighten background checks on buyers at gun shows. The House instead voted for an NRA-backed amendment to exclude small gun shows and limit to 24 hours the time allowed to run a check on a gun show purchase instead of the three days typically needed, and called for in the Senate bill.

Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut, a moderate Republican, said afterward, “I hope in my lifetime that the marriage between my party and the NRA ends in divorce,” though it should be noted that the sponsor of the NRA-backed amendment was Democrat John D. Dingell of Michigan. Perhaps the House should require the Ten Commandments to be posted at gun shows as an incentive to do the right thing, something of which the House seems incapable when it comes to regulating guns.