• NY Times - 02/27/2004

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/27/opinion/27FRI2.html

Editorial ... a scourge on the NYTimes

February 27, 2004

Down and Dirty in the Gun Debate

resident Bush has long been on record supporting two crucial gun-control measures: the renewal of the assault weapons ban, which has been the law for 10 years, and a new law to close the loophole that shady dealers can use to slip weapons to buyers at gun shows. For an equally long time, he did nothing to back up his words. Now, in the early days of his re-election campaign, Mr. Bush has finally acted. He has stepped in at a critical hour in an attempt to kill both of those vital laws and promote instead a plan to grant unreasonable immunity from victims' damage suits to reckless gun dealers and manufacturers.

As the immunity bill heads toward expected approval in the Senate, the White House has sided with the National Rifle Association, gun makers and gun dealers, putting out the word this week that it considers any attempt to amend the immunity bill "unacceptable." This effectively opposes the vital campaign by gun-control advocates to attach the assault weapons ban to the law as an amendment, along with the gun-show measure.

Mr. Bush is actually on record from his 2000 campaign as favoring renewal of the assault rifle ban. The extension of a proven law that fights domestic mayhem from weapons of war is far more essential for the nation than the shield from legitimate damage suits that the gun industry is wringing from Congress. House Republican leaders, hand in glove with the gun lobby, flatly oppose renewing the ban. Gun-control advocates hoped to get a last chance to salvage that law by adding it to the Senate's immunity bill and then hoping that popular pressure would prod reconsideration in the House.

This struggle in Washington is a measure of just how regressive political leaders have become in their responsibility to protect the public from gun violence. The gun industry's immunity bill is woeful enough. But scrapping the assault weapons law and keeping open the gun-show loophole would mark a disastrous retreat in the nation's checkered history of battling the scourge of gun deaths. President Bush could still save these laws by speaking up for them as firmly as he has for the gun industry.