ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, March 14, 1997 TAG: 9703140059
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: NEWSDAY
Three out of 4 Americans believe the government should regulate the safety design of guns.
Nearly nine out of 10 Americans favor a requirement that all new handguns be childproofed and nearly seven out of 10 want the guns ``personalized'' so they could be fired only by an authorized user, a new national survey showed Thursday.
Sponsors of the survey said it documented - for the first time - strong public demand that handguns be treated like other consumer products. Three out of four Americans believe the government should regulate the safety design of guns.
``It's bizarre to think that a 4-year-old, who can't open an aspirin bottle, can operate a loaded pistol,'' said Stephen Teret, director of the Center for Gun Policy and Research at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.
Teret's center and the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center jointly released the results of a telephone survey of 1,200 people across the country on a range of gun-related issues. The survey, with a sampling variation of plus or minus 3 percent, was funded by the Joyce Foundation of Chicago.
Among its major findings:
86 percent of those surveyed support laws requiring all new handguns to be childproofed.
82 percent favored mandatory registration of handguns.
81 percent want handgun sales to an individual limited to one per month.
72 percent say private gun sales not involving a licensed dealer should be subject to the same background checks as those required for dealer sales.
70 percent want handgun owners to be licensed and trained.
61 percent want a gun owner who fails to obtain a criminal background check before selling a firearm to be held legally liable for later crimes committed by the purchaser.
Tom Smith, who directed the survey at the University of Chicago, said the responses indicate ``people want to expand the current patchwork system of regulation into a more comprehensive system of regulation analogous to what exists now for automobiles ...''
``We register cars and require that people have a license to drive; similarly, we could register guns and license gun owners,'' Smith said at a news conference.
Teret, whose Baltimore-based center has been in the forefront of efforts to improve the safety design of guns, said the same type of safety regulations that govern all other consumer products ``can and must be applied to handguns.''
LENGTH: Medium: 56 linesby CNB