Outlook Dims for Gun Control Bills in Congress

Gun control legislation that seemed to be gaining momentum in Congress just six months ago appears dead for the year, even as a new spate of shootings has focused attention on the issue.

Democratic and Republican leaders traded charges Thursday over who was responsible for holding up final action on several gun control measures that the Senate approved in May after a shooting rampage at a Littleton, Colo., high school claimed 15 lives, including those of the two gunmen.

But both sides agreed on one thing: They are unlikely to settle the gun control impasse before Congress recesses soon for the year. The issue still would be alive when lawmakers return in January, but chances for action are likely to decline as the 2000 election draws closer.

“No progress has been made,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a key advocate of the pending measures, lamented Thursday. Indeed, House-Senate negotiators have not formally met on the issue since August.

And Rep. John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, who as the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee is a key player in the negotiations, said that conferees are not scheduled to meet again this year. “This means that the Senate gun safety provisions are dead,” Conyers said.

Although some lawmakers held out hope that agreement still could be reached, the gun control debate is emblematic of a larger problem hampering Congress: its inability to bridge differences, even seemingly small ones, and approve major legislation on topics ranging from Social Security reform to increasing the minimum wage. With Republicans controlling the House by five votes and both parties preoccupied with strengthening their political positions going into next year’s campaign, a broad array of issues has been bogged down in fierce partisan wrangling.

Gun control has proved an especially difficult issue to resolve because it does not simply divide lawmakers along party lines. In the House, a small group of Democrats is allied with the majority of Republicans in backing limited or no new gun control laws, while a small number of GOP lawmakers join the bulk of Democrats supporting tougher measures.

The key item that has caused the continuing deadlock in congressional negotiations involves background checks at gun shows.

An aide to Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said that his boss is having so much difficulty trying to broker a compromise on the issue that it is like standing on two stools moving further apart.

“He is getting a legislative hernia,” said spokesman Sam Stratman.

The bill the Senate passed in May includes a provision extending to unlicensed private sellers at gun shows the same requirement for background checks that applies to federally licensed dealers. It would allow police up to three business days to conduct the checks.

Currently, anyone is barred from buying a gun who has been convicted of a felony or a domestic violence misdemeanor, has been involuntarily confined to a mental institution, dishonorably discharged from the military or is subject to a domestic violence restraining order. But gun control advocates say that criminals and other people who should be disqualified can buy firearms at gun shows because there is no requirement for background checks by unlicensed sellers.

Opponents of the Senate provision, however, say that it would put an unfair burden on sellers at gun shows, which generally take place on weekends.

In California, the state requires background checks for buyers at gun shows. But gun control advocates say that the law does not stop people from going to neighboring states to buy firearms at gun shows without background checks.

The Senate bill also would require all handguns to be sold with trigger locks or other safety devices, would impose a lifetime ban on gun ownership for anyone convicted of a violent crime as a juvenile, would ban possession of assault weapons by juveniles and would prohibit imports of high-capacity ammunition clips.

But a House bill containing most of these provisions went down to defeat after the gun show proposal was watered down, a move led by Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.). Dingell’s amendment would have reduced to 24 hours the period for background checks on sales at gun shows. It narrowly passed, but the entire bill was defeated by an odd coalition of those who viewed the legislation as too weak and those who thought it went too far.

Hyde’s effort to incorporate some parts of the Senate gun control provisions into a bill that would pass the House has been thwarted by the continuing dispute on the gun show issue.

Vice President Al Gore, who cast the tie-breaking vote incorporating the tougher gun show provision into the Senate bill, traveled to Capitol Hill on Thursday to turn up the heat on negotiators, accusing the GOP leadership of “frustrating the will of the American people by refusing to take up legislation that the American people support.”

During a news conference, House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) held up a fund-raising letter signed by House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas), expressing his determination “to stop passing unnecessary laws that restrict your freedom to protect your family.”

The Democrats unleased their rhetorical barrage following office shootings this week in Honolulu and Seattle that left nine dead and two injured.

Coincidentally, Charlton Heston, president of the National Rifle Assn., was on Capitol Hill on Thursday to testify in support of expanding a Virginia anti-crime program to other cities. But he touched on the NRA position in the gun control debate, asking: “Why does [President Clinton] ask for more federal gun laws if he’s not going to enforce the ones we have?”

The NRA has been running radio and TV ads in Washington and other areas spotlighting that message. The White House, for its part, has strongly disputed the charge.

NRA spokesman Bill Powers said that the group does not oppose background checks at gun shows but that the Senate proposal would put weekend gun shows out of business.

Referring to this week’s shootings, he said: “I don’t think these tragedies have much to do with laws as much as they do with society, culture and just human decency.”

Hyde said in letters to Democratic leaders Thursday that they should “not let the perfect become the enemy of the good.”

As a compromise, Hyde has proposed limiting background checks to 24 hours unless a computer check raises a red flag. But Democrats have said that anything less than the Senate version would be riddled with loopholes.

Asked about the prospects for gun control legislation, Adam Eisgrau, director of federal relations and public policy for Handgun Control Inc., which lobbies for stronger gun laws, answered: “Bleak.”