Senate Backs GOP Plan for Gun Show Checks

Senate Republicans pushed through a proposal Friday that they said would mandate background checks on people who buy firearms at gun shows and also indicated they would endorse a provision to require safety locks on all guns sold.

The Senate voted, 48 to 47, to approve the gun show provision, which Republicans had helped to defeat only two days before. The earlier vote--on a Democratic version of the push for the new background checks--had sparked a backlash that sent GOP leaders scrambling to recoup.

Also Friday, Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), a longtime foe of gun control bills, announced that he would co-sponsor a proposal by Sen. Herbert Kohl (D-Wis.) to require anyone selling a gun to equip it with a safety lock. A vote is expected Tuesday, and the unusual Hatch-Kohl alliance makes passage all but certain.

The back-to-back actions were the latest in a series of efforts by Republicans to soften their opposition to some limited gun control legislation, given an apparent shift in voter sentiment after last month’s high school massacre in Littleton, Colo.

But part of the Republican effort ran into fire from Democrats, who complained that the GOP gun show proposal is too rife with loopholes to be effective. As a result, GOP Senate leaders have agreed to meet with Democrats this weekend to discuss ways to close the gap.

For all the developments on the gun control front this week, the fate of the various amendments still remains unclear.

Senate leaders warned Friday that the continuing debate is threatening to jeopardize the overall bill containing the gun control provisions. The bill is a juvenile justice measure aimed at preventing more school violence.

In an effort to speed the process, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) scheduled a series of floor votes for Tuesday, in hopes of completing action on the juvenile justice bill that day. He warned that if senators prove unwilling to meet that schedule, he may shelve the bill.

The dispute over the GOP-crafted gun show amendment that the Senate narrowly passed on Friday--drafted by Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho), a member of the board of the National Rifle Assn.--was especially contentious.

Although Republican leaders said the proposal mandates background checks for those buying firearms at gun shows, Democrats charged it creates a broad class of exemptions and allows too little time--24 hours instead of the usual three days--for background checks.

The Democrats also asserted that it opens up a new loophole by allowing anyone who pawns a gun to retrieve it without undergoing a background check.

“Anyone who thinks that we’ve closed the gun show loophole with this amendment is wrong,” Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) told the Senate during floor debate. He dismissed the Craig provision as “a Swiss cheese amendment.”

But when Hatch tried to allay the Democrats’ fears by proposing changes to require background checks for all firearm sales at gun shows without exceptions, suspicious Democrats moved to block him, forcing the Senate to vote on the Craig amendment as proposed. In that vote, 47 Republicans and Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W. Va.) supported the proposal, while 40 Democrats and seven Republicans opposed it. California’s two Democratic senators, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, were among those voting against the proposal.

President Clinton, en route to a political appearance in Seattle, joined in the criticism of the GOP’s gun show provision, saying it would make it “easier for criminals to get guns and harder for law enforcement to do its job.”

He asserted that, if the Senate really “wants to do right by the American people,” it will revive the Democratic version of the proposal that was rejected Wednesday and “close the gun show loophole once and for all.”

But traditional opponents of gun control legislation warned that they too had limits on how far they would be willing to go in accepting changes.

Craig told reporters he would not support two key Democratic demands: that people who redeem guns from pawnshops be required to undergo background checks and that gun sellers be protected from civil suits in cases where the guns they sell are used for crimes.

In other action Friday, GOP lawmakers shelved a proposal by Schumer that would have required background checks on anyone who buys a gun over the Internet. The 50-43 vote was essentially along party lines.

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Times staff writer James Gerstenzang contributed to this story.