Handgun Control

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.

* Pete Manchikes,Pete Manchikes, host during the 1950s and '60s of the national radio program "Music 'til Dawn," died Tuesday at age 70 in Erlanger, Ky. He was one of several hosts for the all-night music show sponsored by American Airlines and broadcast by WLW in Cincinnati.* Lucia M. Cormier,Lucia M. Cormier, 83, a former Maine state legislator who in 1960 lost to Sen. Margaret Chase Smith in the nation's first U.S. Senate race between two women, died Tuesday in Daytona Beach, Fla. As the first woman to be a floor leader in the Maine House of Representatives, she played a key role in the Democratic Party's resurgence in Maine in the 1950s.

A tough handgun control law passed in Washington, D.C., in 1976 "substantially and abruptly" reduced both homicides and suicides, a new University of Maryland study shows, providing further compelling evidence that gun control saves lives.After Washington adopted the law -- which banned the purchase, sale, transfer or possession of handguns by civilians -- the homicide-by-firearm rate fell 25 percent and the suicide-by-firearm rate by 23 percent. The study published today in the New England Journal of Medicine compared homicides and suicides committed from 1968 to 1976 with those from 1976 through 1987, the last year for which statistics were available.

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.

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.

WASHINGTON -- With his former press secretary, James S. Brady, flashing a thumbs-up, Ronald Reagan capped an emotional return yesterday to the hospital that saved their lives 10 years ago by backing a handgun-control bill that the gun lobby strongly opposes."

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.