Political Odd Couple Team on Gun Bill

In a surprising alignment of onetime rivals, one of the National Rifle Assn.’s most stalwart backers in Congress has teamed up with one of its biggest opponents to try to make it tougher for felons and other banned gun owners to purchase firearms.

The measure would provide states with more than $1.1 billion over the next three years to upgrade records that help ensure compliance with gun purchasing laws. It would penalize those states that do not get up to speed, and it could expand the data that states have to give the federal government about banned gun owners, such as the mentally ill.

The proposal caught the attention of gun control advocates and foes alike because of the backing of Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.). His unlikely co-sponsor is Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), who was elected after her husband was gunned down on a Long Island train in 1993.

A former NRA board member, Dingell has helped stall major gun control legislation in the past, but he said Thursday that the federal system is failing to keep guns out of the hands of people banned from owning them.

“Because states aren’t automating their records or sending them to the FBI [to do instant checks], convicted felons, spousal abusers and the mentally ill are getting guns illegally,” Dingell said.

Is Dingell undergoing a change of heart, or is his newfound stance motivated by his tight reelection race in a reconfigured Michigan district against an incumbent who supports gun control?

Political observers were split Thursday, but regardless, Dingell’s very public push for tightened gun purchase standards signaled the measure’s likely passage.

The NRA signaled Thursday that it would not oppose the measure. And while gun control legislation has been bottled up in Congress in recent years with the help of Dingell, his stance on the background check reforms portends the potential passage of the first significant gun control measure since 1994’s ban on assault rifles.

McCarthy and Dingell are old rivals.

In 1999, after the Columbine High School massacre, McCarthy sponsored a proposal in the House to tighten background checks at gun shows. But Dingell teamed with House Republican leaders to pass an NRA-backed alternative that effectively killed the measure.

“When you have John Dingell and Carolyn McCarthy together on a gun bill, it’s hard to see how it could be stopped,” said Matt Bennett, a spokesman for Americans for Gun Safety, a moderate gun control group in Washington.

“Dingell has been the voice of the NRA in the House, and Carolyn McCarthy was elected almost entirely on gun control. You’ve got polar opposites coming together.”

With the strong pairing, the bill is expected to have nearly universal Democratic support and draw significant Republican support. A companion bill is pending in the Senate, which generally has been a friendlier forum for gun control measures in recent years.

The NRA has voiced concerns about provisions in the bill regarding the federal government’s expanded access to state medical records on those deemed mentally incompetent to own a gun. But on Thursday, an NRA spokesman voiced support for the Dingell-McCarthy measure.

“In its current form, the bill is a step in the right direction,” NRA spokesman Kelly Whitley said. “It benefits law-abiding citizens while taking the criminal element off the street.”

A recent study by Americans for Gun Safety found that the average state has automated only 58% of its criminal convictions, and that 10,000 prohibited buyers were able to obtain a gun because the background check could not be completed within the three business days allowed by law. It also found that 33 states cannot stop anyone with a mental health disqualification from purchasing a gun because they keep no mental health records.

McCarthy, in an interview, said: “I don’t want it to be a 2nd Amendment issue....Basically, we’re just going to enforce the current gun laws.”

But some provisions of the bill could prove controversial.

The measure would provide much more concrete standards for the type of material states must supply to the federal government about people who may be banned from buying guns because of mental problems. It would, for instance, require states to give the FBI the names and relevant medical information on anyone who has been committed to a mental institution in the last five years for treatment of alcoholism or drug abuse.

“That definitely marks something of an expansion,” said Kristen Rand, legislative director at the Violence Policy Center, a Washington gun control group.

But she noted that the measure also gives the attorney general significant discretion to determine whether states are in compliance in providing records and whether they should lose 10% of their federal crime grant money for failing to comply.

Rand said that if the measure goes into effect under Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, a staunch defender of 2nd Amendment rights, “the effect might become illusory....His record doesn’t bode well for making something like this a priority.”

At the Justice Department, however, a senior official who had not yet seen the bill said Ashcroft recently has put in place administrative measures aimed at speeding up the gun background check system and plugging holes.

“This is something we’re already doing internally and administratively in the absence of legislation,” the official said.

“We don’t look at background checks as a gun control issue. Having accurate records of people who are prohibited from owning firearms is just sound policy.”