THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, March 27, 1996 TAG: 9603270011
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 63 lines
Republican leaders in the U.S. House held their noses last week and went ahead with a vote they knew would do them little good in an election year: an attempt to repeal the 2-year-old ban on the sale and manufacturer of some assault-style weapons.
Speaker Newt Gingrich had promised the tally to the National Rifle Association, which lately has been funneling most of its hefty political war chest to Republicans.
Predictably, the debate was loud and angry. Few subjects stir the emotional juices of Americans so much as Second Amendment gun rights.
At one point House Rules Committee Chairman Gerald B.H. Solomon, R-N.Y., invited Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy, D-R.I., outside for a little one-on-one score settling. Kennedy, who lost two uncles to gun violence, had opined that no other American families should have to undergo what his has suffered. Solomon countered that his wife, who lives alone five days a week, shouldn't be unprotected.
Neither was on point. John and Robert Kennedy were not killed by assault weapons. On the other hand, Mrs. Solomon ought to be able to protect herself without rapid-fire military arms.
Mass killings from the recent massacre of kindergarten students in Scotland to the 1993 slaying of passengers on a Long Island commuter train were invoked, even though in truth not all such cases - and certainly not the nation's embarrassing homicide rate - are a direct consequence of the banned guns.
A few years ago, when a state task force was considering a Virginia assault-weapons ban, a forensic scientist in the state's Consolidated Laboratory said assault weapons accounted for about 6 percent of the guns evaluated there in homicide cases.
Still, as GOP leaders well know, most Americans apply common sense to the gun scene and see no practical reason, either for sportsmanship or personal protection, why law-abiding consumers need to spray out 25 to 150 rounds of shot when a few would do. The popular view is that assault weapons in the hands of civilians is, literally, overkill.
That's why GOP leaders were conspicuously absent from last week's debate, and why GOP presidential-nominee-in-waiting Bob Dole won't have the Senate take up the repeal anytime soon. Or ever.
In November, Democrats will paint the Republican Congress as extreme on issues from the environment to Medicare. The vote to repeal the assault-weapons ban plays into the Democrats' hands.
Yet knowledge that the vote was largely symbolic left House members free to act unencumbered by any consequence actual repeal might entail. Some undoubtedly favored repeal out of conviction, others because they want NRA support or want to keep it from going to their opponents.
Four of six Virginia Democrats, including Rep. Owen Pickett of Virginia Beach who does not accept NRA money, voted for the repeal. Two of five Republicans, including Rep. Herb Bateman of Newport News, voted no.
Fortunately, the 239-173 vote in favor of repeal was a great deal of sound and fury signifying little. The ban should stand. Voters who agree should remember which members voted to repeal and hold them accountable. That's the way the NRA operates. by CNB