Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 21, 1993 TAG: 9311210122
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The compromise keeps the major provisions of the bill but provides that the waiting period would be phased out after four years, unless the attorney general extends it for 12 months, instead of the flat five years called for in the version that has passed the House.
The Senate vote was 63 to 36, with Virginia Sens. Charles Robb, a Democrat, and John Warner, a Republican, voting in favor.
The measure - named after James Brady, the former White House press secretary who was seriously wounded in the 1981 assassination attempt against President Reagan - had been stalled since late Friday when supporters failed by three votes to break a Republican-led filibuster.
Throughout the day, pressure mounted on Republicans not to allow the Senate to adjourn without passing the measure. Public support for the bill is high, and it has the almost unanimous backing of law enforcement.
"This is a significant action," said Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, D-Maine.
The Senate's action was "a great step," said the bill's chief sponsor in the House, Rep. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. But he added that "the House is going to have to clear up the debris [of added Senate provisions]."
After the Senate failed to break the filibuster Friday, some proponents accused a "small group of extremists" of holding the bill hostage and predicted opponents would pay a political price at home. But there also was some Monday-morning quarterbacking about the legislative strategy of steering the bill to passage.
It is, both supporters and opponents acknowledge, a special bill because it is named after Brady.
Brady, his wife, Sarah, and the handgun control lobby that has pushed for enactment of the measure since the mid-1980s wanted a separate bill instead of attaching it to the $22 billion crime package.
"It was a miscalculation," said Sen. Paul Simon, D-Ill., a supporter of the Brady bill. "We could have done it in the crime bill."
"As a strategic matter, rarely do you forgo an opportunity to attach your piece of legislation to something that's headed for the president's desk," said an aide to Sen. Howard Metzenbaum, D-Ohio, the Senate sponsor of the Brady bill who favored attaching it to the crime package.
But the aide added, "This bill is unique in that it is personified in the Bradys, and that is a very powerful symbol."
He and other Democrats also said Republicans would be making a "political mistake" by not allowing the bill to be brought up before Congress adjourns.
by CNB