Bills Would Not Have Halted Killers

None of the gun control legislation under discussion in Congress would have prevented the purchase of weapons by shooters in a recent spate of firearms violence, including last week’s massacre at a Texas church, gun control supporters and opponents agree.

In that string of violence, all of the killers had either bought their guns legally or found an easy way to get around state and federal laws. The provisions now before a House-Senate conference committee would not have stopped the sales.

“The whole gun control debate is on the fringe of the problem,” said Kristen Rand, director of federal policy at the Violence Policy Center, a gun control advocacy group. “You can’t pretend by plugging loopholes here and there that you’re going to have an effect on the crux of American gun violence.”

Sides Remain Far Apart on Compromise

John Velleco, a spokesman for Gun Owners of America, voiced a similar conclusion for different reasons.

“Not only would the provisions being discussed do nothing to prevent those shootings, neither do the thousands of gun laws on the books today,” he said.

The Senate version of the juvenile justice bill would require unlicensed dealers at gun shows to conduct criminal background checks on buyers. It also would outlaw the import of ammunition clips of more than 10 bullets, require child safety locks on all new handguns and prohibit juveniles from obtaining assault weapons.

The House defeated a weaker package of gun control measures and passed its juvenile justice bill without any gun provisions. The two sides remain far apart on a compromise.

The deadlock reflects Americans’ enduring ambivalence on the issue of federal regulation of gun ownership. Congress is up against another eternal problem: It is impossible to prevent a mentally unstable person who has legal access to guns from using them.

Federally licensed firearms traders must have customers fill out a government form that asks a series of questions, including whether they have “ever been adjudicated mentally defective” or “ever been committed to a mental institution.”

An affirmative answer blocks the sale. But although several of the recent shooters were seeking psychiatric help, none would have been required to answer “yes” on the form.

Determining the mental health of a would-be buyer is a thorny problem, said Adam Eisgrau, chief lobbyist for the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence and Handgun Control. Providing federal authorities or gun dealers with mental health records, he said, raises “substantial privacy issues.”

The current effort to reduce gun violence began in April, after the shooting deaths of 14 students and a teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo.

Columbine Sparked Current Effort

The two teenage killers, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, obtained three of their four guns--two shotguns and a rifle--from Klebold’s girlfriend, Robyn Anderson. Because she was 18 and had no criminal record, her purchase of those guns was legal; though if she served as a “straw purchaser” for Klebold, she violated federal law.

Another provision of the Senate bill would ban the sale or possession of assault weapons by anyone under 18. But neither the rifle nor the two shotguns used in the Littleton slayings fall into that category, and Harris had recently turned 18.

It was illegal for Klebold and Harris to possess the fourth gun, a TEC-DC9 semiautomatic pistol, because federal and Colorado laws bar minors from owning handguns.

Mark Manes, a Columbine graduate, bought the pistol legally at a gun show and then sold it to Harris and Klebold for $500. Manes pleaded guilty in August to supplying a weapon to a minor.

Benjamin Nathaniel Smith, the 21-year-old white supremacist who went on a shooting rampage through Illinois and Indiana in July, bought his two guns from an unlicensed private dealer who was not required to conduct a background check. Earlier, a federally licensed trader refused to sell guns to Smith because a check showed he was under a court order to stay away from his wife.

But even the stronger Senate bill would not have prevented Smith from purchasing the gun from the private dealer, because the bill’s background checks would be required only at gun shows.

In the case of Mark Barton, a distraught day trader in Atlanta who killed nine people before killing himself in late July, all four of his handguns had been purchased legally, federal agents say.

Buford Furrow Jr., who went on a rampage in August at a San Fernando Valley day-care center and is accused of killing a letter carrier, also legally bought the seven guns in his arsenal.

Furrow did not become ineligible to purchase firearms until last fall, after he assaulted an administrator at a psychiatric hospital. He served five months in jail, making him a felon ineligible under federal law to own a firearm. But police had never taken away the arms he had already accumulated.

Last week, after Larry Gene Ashbrook went on a shooting rampage in a Fort Worth Baptist church, law enforcement officials said he had legally purchased the two semiautomatic pistols he carried that night.

James Baker, chief lobbyist for the National Rifle Assn., and other opponents of expanded gun control laws argue that police could do more to reduce firearm violence by enforcing existing laws.

Gun control supporters on Capitol Hill argue that, although the provisions under consideration would not have prevented the recent gun violence, they nevertheless would solve at least one serious problem: the ability of felons to buy handguns, without background checks, from unlicensed dealers at gun shows.