http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/19/AR2007041902washingtonpost...

Dingell, NRA Working on Bill to Strengthen Background Checks

By Jonathan Weisman

Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, April 20, 2007; A10

With the Virginia Tech shootings resurrecting calls for tighter gun
controls, the National Rifle Association has begun negotiations with
senior Democrats over legislation to bolster the national background-check
system and potentially block gun purchases by the mentally ill.

Rep. John D. Dingell (Mich.), a gun-rights Democrat who once served on the
NRA's board of directors, is leading talks with the powerful gun lobby in
hopes of producing a deal by early next week, Democratic aides and
lawmakers said.

Under the bill, states would be given money to help them supply the
federal government with information on mental-illness adjudications and
other run-ins with the law that are supposed to disqualify individuals
from firearms purchases. For the first time, states would face penalties
for not keeping the National Instant Criminal Background Check System
current.

The legislation, drafted several years ago by Rep. Carolyn McCarthy
(D-N.Y.), has twice passed the House, only to die in the Senate. But Cho
Seung Hui's rampage Monday has given it new life.

Since 1968, individuals deemed mentally ill by the legal system are not
supposed to be able to buy guns. A court's ordering Cho into treatment in
late 2005 should have been reported to the federal background check
system, congressional aides said. Instead, his background check came up
clean, and he legally bought the two handguns used to kill 32 students and
teachers before he committed suicide.

"The states are not putting records into the system," McCarthy said
yesterday.

The measure could be the first gun control law to pass Congress since
enactment of the now-lapsed assault weapons ban 13 years ago. But,
McCarthy said, the deaths at Virginia Tech are not enough to propel the
bill to passage. That is why the NRA is being brought into the process.

Multiple gun control measures were introduced after the Columbine High
School shootings eight years ago, but the NRA helped thwart them all, then
helped defeat Vice President Al Gore's 2000 bid for the White House. With
that in mind, Democratic leaders are anxious to bring the NRA aboard as
they try to respond to this week's shootings.

The gun lobby stayed relatively neutral during past efforts to pass the
measure, but this time Dingell is pushing for an endorsement, or even for
the NRA to make it a "key vote" for its supporters.

McCarthy, whose husband was killed during a gunman's rampage on the Long
Island Rail Road, admits her crusades for far more stringent gun control
measures have made her toxic in gun circles.

So Dingell is handling negotiations with the NRA, said an aide
participating in those talks. Dingell is also in talks with Sens. Orrin G.
Hatch (R-Utah) and Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), House Minority Leader John A.
Boehner (R-Ohio) and Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner (Wis.), the senior
Republican on the House Judiciary Committee.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has asked Dingell to broker a deal
by Tuesday. But the aide said Dingell and NRA negotiators are skeptical
they can reach an accord that quickly.

"We'd rather get a good bill than a quick bill," he said.

But pitfalls remain. The NRA must balance its desire to respond to the
worst mass shooting by a lone gunman in the nation's history with its
competition with the more strident Gun Owners of America, which opposes
any restrictions on gun purchases.

An NRA lobbyist said last night that the group would not comment on the
effort.

--
We have an inveterate dislike of the profusion of safety devices with
which all automatic pistols are regularly equipped. We believe them
to be the cause of more accidents than anything else. There are too
many instances on record of men being shot by accident either because
the safety-catch was in the firing position when it ought not to have
been or because it was in the safe position when that was the last thing
to be desired. It is better, we think, to make the pistol permanently
"unsafe" and then to devise such methods of handling it that there will
be no accidents.
- Captain William Ewart Fairbairn and Captain Eric Anthony Sykes