By LAWRENCE M. O'ROURKE
June 19, 2002

Sen. John McCain has been an irritant to fellow Republicans, leading the fight for campaign finance reform, criticizing them for pork-barrel spending and unsuccessfully challenging George Bush in a hard-fought 2000 White House campaign.

Now the Arizona senator's at it again, but this time he's also making the Democrats nervous. He's teaming up with Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., on an issue that both parties fear might be too hot and time-consuming to handle only a few months before the midterm congressional election:

Gun control.

McCain wants to require criminal background checks on all firearms transactions at the 4,500 gun shows in the United States each year.

"It just makes no sense to allow criminals and terrorists to evade background checks at a time when we are tightening homeland security," McCain says.

But the senator has come under pressure from both Democratic and Republican leaders to let the bill lie dormant until after the election and congressional approval of President Bush's plan for reorganizing the government to enhance homeland security, according to Senate sources.

"Outside urban areas, gun control is a kiss-of-death issue for Democrats," said Joseph DiSarro, political scientist at Washington and Jefferson College in Washington, Pa.

There were indications Wednesday that McCain might be backing away from pressing the issue this year.

McCain's press spokesman said McCain has not made a decision on when and how he will ask the Senate to vote on his plan.

Previously, McCain suggested he would make such a move prior to the July 4 recess, a week away.

McCain has argued that his bill would be a major step toward ending the sale of weapons to terrorists, as well as ordinary criminals, through a loophole in federal law that permits sales at gun shows without a background check.

The National Rifle Association responded that the McCain camp is "exploiting the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 in order to further its anti-Second Amendment agenda."

Even supporters of the McCain proposal agree that the legislation almost certainly won't go anywhere this session, which expires in early October.

In the meantime, Congress has its plate full with the Bush anti-terrorism plan and a slew of spending bills needed to keep the federal government operating beyond the close of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.

But the McCain bill has gotten noticed because it could force a vote in the Senate that would be awkward both for advocates and opponents of closing the gun show loophole.

For congressional supporters of stricter gun control, mostly Democrats, the bill could generate a campaign issue that might disrupt the core Democratic campaign theme.

Democrats want to tell voters that Republicans have defaulted on a social agenda of prescription drug coverage, a patient's bill of rights, aid to education and protection of Social Security.

On the other hand, political analysts say that Senate Republicans up for re-election don't want to vote against legislation that McCain contends would help keep guns out of the hands of terrorists.

"Without question, many Democrats are fearful of the gun issue. They hide their heads in the sand," said Matt Bennett, spokesman for Americans for Gun Safety, a new advocacy group for tougher gun laws. The group is sponsoring ads to promote the McCain legislation.

"Democrats don't want to provoke the NRA into mobilizing its grassroots and money against them," Bennett said. "But the NRA will be in the campaign anyway because they want to keep power in the hands of Republican leaders who are very hostile to gun control."

One indication of the political skittishness over the McCain-Lieberman proposal is the short list of co-sponsors. The list includes New York Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles Schumer, Delaware Democrat Tom Carper and Ohio Republican Mike DeWine.

While McCain's gun control bill faces dim prospects, a surprising duo in the House might have a brighter outlook.

That duo consists of one of the strongest advocates of gun control, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., and one of the implacable foes of gun control, Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich.

They are sponsoring a bill to spend $1.1 billion for three years to put together a complete national database of people who have committed crimes with guns or violence. Gun control advocates see it as a critical step toward keeping guns away from criminals and terrorists.

McCarthy came to Congress with gun control as her core issue after a gunman killed her husband and seriously wounded her son on the Long Island Railroad.

Dingell, the senior member of the House serving his 23rd term, has persistently fought proposals to curb gun ownership. In 1999, two months after the Columbine High School murders, Dingell, a former NRA board member, teamed with conservative House Republicans to reject a three-day background check on sales at gun shows.

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)

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