Delivering Death

If ever there was a case of members of Congress being totally out of touch with public opinion, it was Wednesday’s vote in the Senate that allowed traveling gun shows to continue bringing their deadly wares to hometown America with about as much regulation as vacuum cleaners. How could a majority of senators continue to hew to the worn-out line of the National Rifle Assn. that easily purchased guns and teenage violence have nothing to do with each other? Don’t they understand that the American people are fed up with the appalling trafficking of guns in this country?

When the backlash hit Thursday morning, senators scrambled to save some face. Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-Ida.), an NRA board member, offered a substitute provision that he said would mandate background checks on all gun show sales. A vote on the Craig legislation was expected today, but nothing can erase the infamy of Wednesday’s vote.

The background checks are similar to those done by registered gun dealers under the Brady Act, which is credited with preventing gun sales to 250,000 felons and others who sought to buy firearms despite restraints.

Background checks are required under California law, but state Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer demonstrated this week how gun shows can serve as poorly regulated weapons bazaars. He sent undercover agents carrying $4,000 to a Southern California gun show and they returned with a host of illegal arms, including a rocket launcher, a handgun that had been converted to automatic fire and kits for turning rifles into machine guns.

The NRA’s friends in the U.S. Senate continue to insist that gun controls will not end teenage violence. It will take nothing less, they say, than a change in the moral and cultural climate. Perhaps, but it is certain that if Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris had not possessed a rifle, two shotguns and a semiautomatic pistol last month--and yes, their homemade bombs--there would have been no massacre at Columbine High.