Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 12, 1994                   TAG: 9401130027
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

LICENSE FEES

For a federal license to sell guns, all you needed until recently was $10 per year and lack of a felony conviction in your past. As a practical matter, you likely could get away with lying about the felony part. (In Virginia, no state license is needed.)

This, fortunately, is changing.

The recently passed Brady Bill raised the fee for a gun-dealer's license to $200 for the first three years and $90 per year thereafter. That's good. The Clinton administration wants to raise the annual licensing fee to $600 per year. That would be even better:

Higher fees help shift a bit of the social costs of the gun trade from the general taxpayer to the user. The old $10 annual fee was a farce: It didn't cover even the basic costs of the dealer-licensing system.

On that score, the Brady Bill fees are more realistic. But the $600 fee could go farther, by providing resources for more thorough background investigations of dealer-license applicants and for tougher enforcement of gun laws generally by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

Higher fees would add to dealers' incentive to ensure that background checks are being made, and to stay alert to signs of such violations as adults buying weapons for juveniles. Revocation of a $600 license for inattention to such details is more painful to the pocketbook than revocation of a $10 license.

Higher fees would reduce the number of licensed gun dealers - 7,900 in Virginia; 284,000 nationwide - by eliminating those who aren't in the business in any serious way.

The issue on this point isn't whether occasional sellers operating out of their homes are less or more scrupulous than bigger dealers. The issue is how to make the brisk gun business easier to monitor by bringing a measure of order to it.

Higher license fees won't end the arms proliferation on America's streets and in America's homes. They won't by themselves break the cycle of violence and fear of violence that is a cause and consequence of 200 million guns now in circulation nationwide.

But higher dealer-license fees are a small part of an effort of many parts. That guns are not the kind of product to be casually bartered is a notion that needs reaffirming.

Society sees to it that considerable care is taken in dispensing powerful medicines. Society should see to it that more care is taken in dispensing powerful weaponry.