NRA Firing Wildly Once Again

Another senseless shooting and what we get from the National Rifle Assn. is more nonsense. Two weeks ago, a 6-year-old Michigan boy took a loaded gun to school and used it to kill a 6-year-old classmate who had ticked him off. Tragedies like this tend to make even hardened gun advocates nervous. When one first-grader kills another, the usual 2nd Amendment incantations on the right to bear arms fall way off the mark. But instead of keeping silent, the gun lobby insists on turning every tragedy into another display of insensitivity.

Accordingly, in a television interview Sunday, Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s executive vice president, lambasted President Clinton, who had tried once again last week, unsuccessfully, to prod Congress into making gun laws a teensy bit tighter. “I’ve come to believe that he needs a certain level of violence in this country,” LaPierre said. “He’s willing to accept a certain level of killing to further his political agenda, and his vice president too.”

The modest changes that Clinton seeks are supported by a solid majority of Americans. His proposals include background checks on handgun sales at gun shows and swap meets. Surely it’s hard to argue that criminals are entitled to buy guns under a show tent that the Brady law bars them from purchasing in a gun store.

Remember the line that emerged from the pro-gun crowd after two Colorado high school students opened fire on their schoolmates nearly a year ago? The scope of that tragedy--the teenagers killed 12 fellow students and a teacher and wounded 23 others before taking their own lives--renewed calls for tougher gun laws. Clinton, who tried to channel that outrage into legislative action, got nowhere with Congress. Meanwhile, more than one gun spokesman insisted, with a straight face, that the real lesson of Littleton was that high schoolers should be able to bring guns onto campus so they could defend themselves.

For his part, LaPierre refuses to back away from his shameful accusations against the president. In the short run, with Congress reflexively solicitous of the NRA for its campaign generosity, any hope for legislative progress is dim. But in the long run the NRA will be shown for what it is: obstructionist, hysterical and dangerous.