Jonesboro Spurs Gun Control Push
Gun control advocates are using the Arkansas school shooting to press a reluctant Republican Congress to take up bills that would ban the sale of some ammunition clips and require safety locks on guns.
Since the March 24 school ambush in Jonesboro, Ark., that left five dead, gun control advocates have introduced legislation that would close a loophole in the 1994 Crime Control Act and ban the sale of all ammunition clips of more than 10 rounds. Another bill would impose criminal penalties on adults who don't properly store or have safety locks on a firearm that a child uses to harm others.
President Clinton, meanwhile, issued an executive order permanently banning importation of 58 assault-style weapons modified to skirt 1994 restrictions on such firearms.
Supporters of each measure cited Jonesboro in stressing the urgency for action. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., said the boys accused of the Arkansas shootings used a 15-round ammunition magazine. Sens. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., and John Chafee, R-R.I., said the boys allegedly stole their weapons from one boy's relative, and their child access bill would hold that adult accountable.
The guns used at Jonesboro are not covered by Clinton's extended ban, but White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said the president acted "within the context of a nation that is still grieving" from the incident.
But opponents of gun control said it was wrong to use gun incidents for political purposes.
"People are talking about the breakdown of the family, about gratuitous violence on television," said Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association. "We ought to be looking at this as a tragedy rather than trying to make political hay out of it."
"Those who advocate gun control are exploiting the terrible grief surrounding the tragedy in Jonesboro," said Sen. Larry Craig, R-Wyo.
Such tactics have worked in the past. One of the first gun control laws, to restrict sawed-off shotguns, machine guns and silencers, came in 1934 after an assassination attempt on President Roosevelt and widespread gang killings.
The major gun control act of 1968 barring imports of non-sporting weapons including "Saturday Night Specials" followed the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King.
President Bush banned imports of assault-style weapons in 1989, the year a drifter opened fire on a Stockton, Calif., schoolyard with an AK-47 and other weapons, killing five children and wounding 29 others.
The Brady Bill, requiring a five-day waiting period and background checks on handgun purchasers, was enacted Nov. 30, 1993. The next year, the crime act banned future manufacture and imports of semiautomatic assault-style firearms.
But under Republican leadership of Congress, there's been a stalemate at best on gun control legislation, said Bob Walker, preident of Handgun Control. Congress did make it a crime for people convicted of wife-beating or child abuse to own a gun. However, the House also voted to repeal the ban on assault-style firearms -- the Senate didn't go along -- and efforts to require child safety locks on guns failed last year.
Feinstein and DeGette said they hoped Congress would act because the nation was so horrified by the accounts of heavily armed 13- and 11-year-old Jonesboro boys killing their classmates.
Sarah Brady, a leading gun control advocate with her husband Jim, the White House press secretary disabled in the 1981 assassination attempt on President Reagan, said it took seven years for the Brady Bill to pass. But "the leadership generally will give in if the American public speaks out loudly enough."
Written by Jim Abrams
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