Ban On Assault

Political fallout from the Oklahoma City tragedy has dimmed Republican prospects for repeal of the 1994 Crime Bill ban on assault style weapons -- and a good thing too. While there is obviously no connection between a truck bomb capable of destroying a skyscraper and a rapid-fire rifle, the American public is upset as never before by the general menace of terrorism. GOP leaders in the House and Senate have consequently delayed plans to push for repeal votes in the near future.Whether the mood will change later in the session is conjectural.

Baltimore County Police Chief James W. Johnson added a much-needed voice of reason to the national debate over gun control last week when he appeared before Congress to testify in favor of universal background checks for gun purchases and a ban on assault rifles and large capacity ammunition magazines. It was only common sense, he told lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee, to extend the reporting requirements for federally licensed firearms dealers to the private individuals who account for 40 percent of gun sales in this country.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Six years ago this month, a disgruntled businessman named Gian Luigi Ferri took two TEC-9 semiautomatic pistols into the office tower at 101 California St. and, in less than 15 minutes, killed eight people and wounded six others, before fatally shooting himself.The sound of those shots has rung through California politics ever since, helping to inspire a long-running debate over gun control that reached a milestone yesterday when Gov. Gray Davis signed into law the nation's toughest and most comprehensive ban on assault-style weapons.

Mayor Martin O'Malley urged state legislators yesterday to ban assault weapons, something the General Assembly has shied away from for three years running. O'Malley and the bill's sponsor, Del. Neil F. Quinter, a Howard County Democrat, said at an Annapolis news conference that banning the high-powered guns would make Maryland safer. "This isn't about hunting," said O'Malley, a Democratic candidate for governor. "This is about removing high-powered assault weapons from the hands of those who would use them."

SEATTLE -- Hoping to achieve nationwide what he so far has been unable to do at home, Gov. William Donald Schaefer has called on President Bush and Congress to impose a federal ban on high-powered assault-style weapons.Schaefer, clutching an automatic Uzi handgun, made his plea yesterday at a news conference here where the National Governors' Association is holding its 83rd summer conference.Schaefer, who appeared before television cameras and reporters with the governors of Delaware and New Jersey, said assault weapons have no legitimate purpose.

Despite a Saturday Night Special law passed three years ago, public awareness campaigns and pleas from Mayor Schmoke and the police, the danger of being killed in the streets of Baltimore is ever-present and increasing. The latest statistics show homicides last month were up 10 percent over January 1990 -- a year in which the city registered 20 percent more killings than in 1989.One of the fastest-growing threats is the proliferation of military-style assault weapons. Designed for military combat, these guns have no legitimate sporting or self-defense use. But they have become a favorite of drug dealers and other criminals who have turned the nation's cities into war zones.

Although Gov. William Donald Schaefer has proposed legislation that would ban the sale of new assault rifles and require people who already own assault weapons to register them, callers to The Evening Sun oppose the plan.Of 1,714 callers to SUNDIAL Friday, 1,264 (74 percent) said they did not support a ban on assault weapons, while 450 callers (26 percent) said they did. Of 1,718 respondents, 1,238 (72 percent) said they did not think people who already own assault weapons should be required to register such weapons, while 480 (28 percent)

WASHINGTON - Carrying homemade signs and photographs of loved ones killed by gunfire, gun control advocates used a Mother's Day rally yesterday to begin a campaign to lobby for renewal of a ban on assault weapons. The rally, the Million Mom March, attracted about 2,500 people, its organizers said. It focused on supporting legislation to renew the 1994 ban on semiautomatic assault rifles, which is to expire in September. The legislation is unlikely to move forward in the Republican-controlled Congress, and gun control advocates hope to make it an election-year issue.

FROM the attorney general's "Weekly Press Availability," Justice Department, Dec. 8:QUESTION: Ms. Reno, could we talk about politics for a couple of minutes? As recently as Sunday Speaker-to-be Newt Gingrich criticized the assault weapons ban, saying it would be particularly ineffective.If the Republican majorities seek to repeal the assault weapons ban and the Brady Law in particular over their first 100 days, how vigorously will the administration oppose it, and would that opposition include a presidential veto if that -- he got to that point?

WASHINGTON -- Despite its bucks and bluster, the National Rifle Association hasn't made many friends among Maryland's congressional delegation.Although the powerful lobby enjoys the strong support of freshman Republican Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett, many of the state's members of Congress support gun control proposals like the Brady bill and a ban on assault weapons.Baltimore Democrats Benjamin L. Cardin and Kweisi Mfume are advocates of both those plans, as are Prince George's County Democrat Albert R. Wynn and Montgomery County Republican Constance A. Morella.

Wrong to blame Bush for lapse of weapons ban The law banning assault weapons expired on Monday, and Sen. John Kerry blames President Bush for its lapse ("Kerry assails Bush over lapse of gun ban," Sept. 14). Am I missing something here? Under our republican form of government, legislation is enacted by Congress and signed into law by the president. It is the job of Congress, not the president, to pass a bill to extend the ban on assault weapons. The job of the president is to agree and sign the bill or disagree and veto it. President Bush said that he would sign into law legislation to extend the assault weapons ban if it were passed by Congress.

Gun dealer Sanford Abrams says the expiration of a nationwide ban on assault weapons only means that a right that should have never been denied, to buy and collect those firearms, will be returned. Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan, whose county saw the deadly effects of a military-style weapon in the hands of a sniper, is concerned. That the gun used to kill 10 Washington-area residents two years ago is not covered by the federal ban only shows that the law should be strengthened, not weakened, he says.

WASHINGTON - Byrl Phillips-Taylor sat in the office of Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California 10 years ago, clutching a photo of her dead son, as Feinstein worked the phones to try to keep a nationwide ban on assault weapons in a crime bill. At the last minute, two senators changed sides and prevented a National Rifle Association-led effort from killing the ban. "What I don't understand is why I am here again, now, after everything," Phillips-Taylor said yesterday in a Senate office building, holding the same photo.

WASHINGTON - Carrying homemade signs and photographs of loved ones killed by gunfire, gun control advocates used a Mother's Day rally yesterday to begin a campaign to lobby for renewal of a ban on assault weapons. The rally, the Million Mom March, attracted about 2,500 people, its organizers said. It focused on supporting legislation to renew the 1994 ban on semiautomatic assault rifles, which is to expire in September. The legislation is unlikely to move forward in the Republican-controlled Congress, and gun control advocates hope to make it an election-year issue.

Gun control advocates pressed yesterday for new measures that would ban assault-style weapons, expand ballistic fingerprinting and require immediate reporting of lost or stolen handguns - and their efforts picked up tentative support from Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. With Montgomery County police Chief Charles A. Moose and the mother of slain sniper victim Conrad Johnson appearing yesterday at an Annapolis news conference in support of the bills, gun...

SAN FRANCISCO -- Six years ago this month, a disgruntled businessman named Gian Luigi Ferri took two TEC-9 semiautomatic pistols into the office tower at 101 California St. and, in less than 15 minutes, killed eight people and wounded six others, before fatally shooting himself.The sound of those shots has rung through California politics ever since, helping to inspire a long-running debate over gun control that reached a milestone yesterday when Gov. Gray Davis signed into law the nation's toughest and most comprehensive ban on assault-style weapons.

Boston. -- There were murders over the weekend. Everyday, garden-variety murders, or should I say everyday, urban-variety murders.Most of them ended up buried, if you will excuse the expression, in the back of the paper. When there are 16,000 murders by firearms every year, every homicide isn't front-page news. Boys and young men are shot over turf, over drugs, over money, over nothing, all the time.Sometimes it takes a fresh angle, a new twist, something unusual to make a headline out of a mere murder.

Remember these names: American Joe Miedusiewski, George Della, Vernon Boozer, Thomas Bromwell, Nancy Murphy and Michael Wagner.These are metro-area fence-sitters in the drive to ban 18 brands of semi-automatic pistols, known as assault weapons, from Maryland. Most of these state senators have made a commitment to groups trying to remove assault pistols from the streets but are now equivocating.We find it appalling that these senators actually believe assault pistols serve a legitimate sporting or self-defense purpose.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- One day after ordering a four-month halt to imports of modified assault weapons, President Clinton ridiculed yesterday the notion that such firearms could be used for anything but making mayhem."

WASHINGTON -- The White House decision to begin running television commercials for President Clinton a year before the general election campaign has set off some predictable hand-wringing among politicians shaken up by something so new and different.The most common criticism from political consultants is that running the commercials at this point means that everything Clinton does from now on will be viewed as part of his campaign for a second term.It also can be argued that the unorthodox approach suggests the president is very much on the defensive -- to the point that he cannot even use the White House bully pulpit to project the kind of image he prefers.