Momentum May Not Win the Day for Gun Control

It was the political equivalent of the stars and planets aligning. The right bill. The right climate. So after almost five years of fighting what seemed a lost cause, Sen. Dianne Feinstein took full advantage--pushing through the Senate last week a ban on imports of high-capacity ammunition magazines for assault weapons.

She was understandably jubilant but there was no champagne, just a late night slice of pizza with her staff. It was too early in the game to celebrate, and nobody knew that better than the California Democrat.

By tonight, the Senate juvenile crime bill could be dead and Feinstein’s magazine ban amendment gone with it, a sign that--even after the worst school massacre in the nation’s history--the politics of gun control are incalculable and shifting.

Advocates still hope that the public outcry sparked by the Columbine High School shootings that took 15 lives last month in Littleton, Colo., will sustain the measure, which has become a lightning rod for potential remedies ranging from investigating Hollywood’s marketing of violence to a ban on juveniles possessing certain semiautomatic weapons.

But the GOP clearly is reaching the limits of how much gun control it can tolerate and, after a week of political showdowns and about-faces, the Senate may very well accomplish nothing, even as polls portray an electorate clamoring for more firearms restrictions.

“I have to say it looks like it will be difficult to get this bill done this week,” Sen. Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said Monday.

Senate Republicans said that they will resume debate on the crime bill only if Democrats agree to whittle down some of their 50 proposed gun control amendments and wind up discussion in the next day or two. Senate Democrats, determined to take advantage of the political climate, are holding out for a longer, more definitive discussion on the nation’s glut of guns. The clashing agendas have the look of a stalemate in the making.

“If the Republicans take this bill off the floor, they create a campaign issue which will last and resonate through the next election,” Feinstein said Monday. “The American people have reached a watershed. They want meaningful regulation. It would be such a stupid thing to pull that bill.”

The surge in support--among the public and within Congress--for tougher gun laws after the Columbine shootings clearly has left Republicans in a bind.

On one side is the powerful National Rifle Assn., which helped the GOP win its congressional majority in 1994 and remains a generous fountain of campaign dollars. On the other side are the so-called soccer moms--women voters who favor moderate gun restrictions.

Nowhere was that more evident than when Senate Republicans last weak endorsed a relatively weak measure calling for voluntary background checks on firearms sold at gun shows. After a public backlash, Republicans reversed course to line up behind an amendment that they said would make the checks mandatory. It passed narrowly, even as Democrats scoffed that the substitute remains full of loopholes.

Feinstein capitalized on the GOP’s embarrassing turnabout, working the floor for hours last Thursday until her ban on high-capacity magazines passed, 59 to 39, a margin that surprised even her.

Jim Margolis, a Democratic consultant in Washington, said: “The Republicans are getting tremendous pressure from the NRA to drop this thing. At the same time, Democrats recognize this is a potent issue and there is no reason to give in--no reason to fold the cards without making an attempt to take the whole pot.”

But if the pot ultimately is lost, so would be two provisions that California’s Democratic senators have spent years fighting to win: Feinstein’s magazine ban and an amendment long pressed by Sen. Barbara Boxer, requiring all new firearms to be sold with child safety locks, that has been expected to win passage this week.

“I won’t consider our efforts a success until we have enough effective laws on the books to keep guns away from children, criminals and the mentally disturbed,” Boxer said, opting to fight for all that the Democrats can get.

But Republicans said the Democrats are more concerned with making political points, charging that some would prefer the bill not to pass, giving the minority party a political issue in 2000.

“Do we make speeches or make a law?” said John Czwartacki, Lott’s spokesman. “I’m sure the Democrats believe they had a good week last week and want to keep beating the drum. We’re interested in making a law, not just making speeches.”

Analysts on both sides of the aisle agreed that the GOP might be damned either way--debating the bill could lead to more gun restrictions but killing it could paint them as do-nothings.

“The danger for the Republicans is that the overall gestalt will be that they oppose any gun control,” said James Pinkerton, a political science professor at George Washington University and a GOP consultant. “The Democrats are building up a talking point--when children died in Littleton, Democrats said we have to do something; Republicans said no we don’t.”

Although some Senate Republicans are tempted simply to kill the juvenile crime bill, others believe that it would be easier to settle the issue now rather than allow Democrats to blow it into even bigger election year fodder.

“We’ve already suffered a great deal because of this,” conceded a Senate Republican leadership aide. “It’s a question of whether you want to have the pain in May 1999, or drag it out.”

Even if their provisions die in the Senate this time, California’s senators probably will benefit.

“They gained even more stature and recognition as real leaders on this issue, not just in the Senate, but in California,” Margolis said of Feinstein and Boxer. “They were on the right side of this one and that pays political dividends.”