Handgun Control

TEN YEARS ago today I was held up and shot.It was about 9 o'clock on a balmy evening. I was going to see a friend in Baltimore to take her to a movie. Outside her apartment, two thugs asked me for directions. I told them how to get there, but they wanted me to take them. I refused, and then one pulled a gun and asked me to "hand it over!" I gave the other my wallet.He searched me and then stood back. We stood there silently for what seemed an eternity but was really only a few seconds. I said, "OK, you got what you wanted.

The executives of Maryland's two most populous counties said yesterday that they will propose local laws requiring gun dealers to include a childproof trigger lock with every handgun they sell.With national gun control advocate Sarah Brady by their side, Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan and Prince George's County Executive Wayne K. Curry said at a news conference that children must be protected from shooting themselves or others with guns they find at home."Surely if we are going to require child safety seats in cars, we should require child safety locks on handguns.

The National Rifle Association and Handgun Control Inc., the nation's most visible anti-gun lobby, can usually be found at diametric ends of the debate over gun control.But the two organizations apparently have found a common ground against the proposed absorption by the FBI of the criminal investigation section of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms."We're in agreement -- maybe for the first time ever," says Richard Aborn, a former New York City prosecutor and current president of the Washington-based anti-gun lobby.

WASHINGTON -- At the time President Clinton is proposing new anti-terrorism legislation after the violence that rocked Oklahoma City, there's a special irony in the Supreme Court's 5-4 vote throwing out the federal law banning guns in the nation's schoolyards.The decision, based on the majority's view that federal legislators unconstitutionally invaded a realm of local responsibility, has potential ramifications far beyond the case of a Texas schoolboy convicted for bringing a concealed pistol to school.

WASHINGTON -- In signing the Brady bill requiring a five-day waiting period on the sale of handguns, President Clinton called it "step one in taking our streets back." It may be no more than that, but considering the carnage that handguns cause in the country -- one shooting every 20 minutes, Clinton said -- a first step has been sorely needed.It has been a national disgrace that it has taken so long to achieve enactment -- more than 12 years after Jim Brady, its namesake, was felled in the hail of bullets intended to kill, and nearly did kill, President Ronald Reagan.

If history is any indication, the $20,000 advertising campaign begun this week by gun-control advocates may have an unwanted side effect: the sale of more guns.The General Assembly is considering a bill by Gov. William Donald Schaefer that would ban military-style assault weapons. Both sides of the issue have been very public in their views, and Handgun Control Inc. this week started a campaign of television and radio ads.In other states that have passed such measures -- and in Maryland when it banned cheap handguns -- the debate itself proved a boon for gun sales.

Three surveys show that a year after the Brady law was passed a significant number of criminals has been stopped from buying handguns by the required background checks.The surveys found that up to 45,000 convicted felons, or 2 percent to 3.5 percent of all applicants for handguns, were turned down after the reviews.The studies were conducted by the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, CBS News and the International Association of Chiefs of Police in conjunction with Handgun Control Inc. Handgun Control is headed by Sarah Brady, the wife of James Brady, the former White House press secretary who was wounded in the assassination attempt in 1981 against President Ronald Reagan and for whom the Brady law is named.

WASHINGTON -- Once again, crunch time is approaching on the Brady bill, the legislation that would impose a five-day waiting period on the sale of handguns while a check is made to determine that the prospective buyer has no criminal record. And its strongest advocates are worried that once again, despite overwhelming public support, it may fall between the cracks for lack of a major push by President Clinton, who says he favors it.The bill, named for James Brady, former President Ronald Reagan's press secretary severely wounded in the 1981 attempt on Reagan's life, has been before Congress for six years.

BILL STRUEVER is Baltimore's big idea man when it comes to reusing old buildings, so I wouldn't presume to tell him what to do with Fort Carroll, now that he's taken a lease on the place and has ideas about buying it. But such dream-hatching is irresistible. Fort Carroll has been sitting out there, a long-abandoned, rat-infested, manmade island in the Patapsco River just south of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, waiting for a new life. Someone wanted to put a casino there once upon a time.

WHEN FORMER President Ronald Reagan "celebrated" the 10th anniversary of his near-assassination here the other day, his endorsement of pending legislation to require a seven-day waiting period for a handgun purchase was greeted as some kind of breakthrough. But it really was Rip Van Winkle awakening from a decade of stupor to say something he should have said even before he was shot.All through Reagan's White House tenure, it was a not-so-well-kept secret that he was a man held captive by the rigidity of conservative dogma.