In the wake of the Littleton tragedy Clinton proposed legislation which included:

* restricting purchases of handguns to one per month per person,
* a waiting period for the purchase of handguns,
* banning minor's possessing semiautomatic assault rifles,
* raising the minimum age for possessing a handgun from 18 to 21,
shows, and
* impose penalties on adults who "knowingly and recklessly" allow a child to have access to a gun that is used to commit a crime

"A central theme is there are plenty of gun laws on the books... and they didn't prevent the tragedy at Columbine High School.... The assumption here is that because existing laws aren't doing the job, we should give up on trying to fix them.  But in virtually every every other area where laws weren't working, from drunk driving to drugs to street crime, the response has been to toughen the statutes.  We were so concerned about drunks driving that we raised the drinking  age to 21.  Why is it so hard to raise the age for the purchase of guns?" E.J. Dionne. Washington Post
"We used to have a problem with aspirin poisoning of children in our country and we appealed for better parenting and better parental controls of children, but not until there were childproof caps on the aspirins did the problem get significantly solved."  V.P, Al Gore NYT 5/23/99

All four weapons involved in the Littleton shootings, including the Intratec TEC-DC9 semiautomatic pistol with a fingerprint-resistant handle, were bought at gun shows.
"Cash and Carry" "No Paperwork, No Questions Asked"  Signs at one of the 5,000 gun shows held annually in the United States where guns can be legally bought and sold anonymously since background checks are not needed.  These shows attract 5,000,000 people -- including Timothy McVeigh , Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.
The firearms trade association, the American Shooting Sports Council recently parted ways with the NRA because it supported background checks on people purchasing guns at a gun show, and safety locks on firearms.  NYT 4/28/99
No gun has to meet even the minimum safety standards required by law for toy guns or teddy bears.
"It's ludicrous that the Consumer Products Commission has authority over the Mattel Toy Company but not the gun manufacturers." E. Rendell, Mayor of Philadelphia, noting that guns are produced without any child-proofing safety features.
The United States has banned the sale of handguns to gun dealers in Venezuela, Paraguay, and Britain to prevent the proliferation of weapons in criminal and terrorist hands.  NYT 5/6/99  But not in the U.S.A.
A few days earlier [before Littleton] an elderly man gunned down six people in a Salt Lake City library. Two died.  There was no motive.  He was crazy.  He was a paranoid schizophrenic who had stopped taking his pills....  Last summer another mentally ill gunman invaded  the Capitol in Washington and killed two guards... and got as far as the suite of Republican Congressman Tom DeLay of Texas before he was shot by police.  In response, Congress decided to spend $20 million on itself to beef up security in the Capitol complex.  How much money was appropriated to protect the library in Salt Lake City against another attack?  If you guess $12.57, you are way too high."  Froma Harrop, Providence Journal-Bulletin 4/25/99
There are no legal consequences for a parent who leaves a loaded handgun within easy reach of a child, and no restrictions prohibiting an adult from giving a 7 year old an AK-47 rifle for his birthday.
Hundreds of merchants on the Internet are selling rifles, revolvers and semi-automatic pistols and they can get you one as quickly as Amazon.com can send you a book, only with less paperwork."  A. Orr, Reuters, ZDNT 5/30/99

Francesco Duran, who fired bullets at the White House in 1994, used a rifle which he bought without any background check after he had been turned down when he attempted to purchase a handgun because he had a prior felony conviction the check uncovered.
The background check and five-day waiting period provisions of the Brady Bill were replaced December 1, 1998 by a less restrictive instant criminal background check.
The instant background checks do not contain most state and local records, or court restraining orders, involuntary commitments to mental hospitals, and domestic misdemeanors.
The Brady Background checks stopped 250,000 ineligible buyers including 180,000 felons.
"The NRA and its members believe there's a plot to take their guns away to make way for a dictatorship.  They equate those who advocate any type of gun control to Nazis, saying Hitler's first step was gun control.  But there's another reason their hatred for the AFT has recently intensified.  They can't stand that the Brady Law is a raving success."  3/5/95 Atlanta Journal & Constitution
Since there is no national gun registration system, Federal, state and local law enforcement officials needed 2 weeks to trace the guns used in the Littleton Colorado shooting.
"The NRA maintains that with so many guns in America little can be done to stop people from getting guns for crimes.  However within the last 3 years that traditional view has been refuted by tracing guns used in crimes which showed that about 1/3 rd of guns used in crimes by juveniles were manufactured within the past 3 years and acquired legally though friends or straw buyers.  It also showed that 1 percent of Federally licensed firearms dealers sold nearly half of the guns traced to crimes in 1998.  But as the gun tracing has become increasingly successful, the NRA through its supporters in Congress has mounted an effort to purge some of its gun tracing data base."  NYT 4/30/99

"Everyone is scared except the criminals.  The way to change that is, give the criminals something to be afraid of.  That something is a well-armed public."  Sen. T. Lott NYT 6/8/98 Sen.. Lott was the keynote speaker at the 1998 NRA Meeting
"Our most conservative estimates show that by adopting shall-issue [concealed carry] laws, states reduced murders by 8.5 percent."  John Lott, Univ. of Chicago Professor.  Even assuming Mr. Lott's figures are somehow accurate, is reducing murders by 8.5% a solution? Hobiedog
On the theory offered by economist John Lott (more guns equal less crime) leaves me with the feeling something is afoul.  Does anyone truly believe that if everyone carried weapons, we would all be safer?  Dr. Lott might be advised to turn his vision toward studies larger than the one he did that tracked crime rates in every county in the United States.  Britain, with a population of about 59 million, has tougher gun laws than the United States.  In 1992, it had less than 1 homicide per 100,000 people.  Compare this with the number of homicides in the typical American city."  Christopher Brown, NYT Letters 6/17/99
"Does anyone believe that having more people walking around with loaded weapons will make society safer?"  J. Gilchrist, counsel for Ohio Association of Police Chiefs, Cols. Dispatch 4/9/99
"All the state's professional football and baseball teams opposed concealed carry, as did the players' associations. None relished a grandstand populated by gun-toting fans." E.J. Dionne on the defeat of the referendum in Missouri on allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons, even though the NRA outspent its opponents 5-1. Washington Post Writers Group 3/16/99

"A concealed weapon has one ultimate purpose - to be available to hurt someone or kill someone if the need arises....  We don't put drivers on the road without training.  We don't put pilots in the sky without training.  We shouldn't put untrained people with weapons on the street without training."  Huron Daily Tribune, Bad Axe MI 4/20/99  Unfortunately the NRA opposes any mandatory training as a requirement for gun purchases or gun possession.
Is it rational to escalate the arming of the populace to deter crime since most crimes occur in nondeterrable situations?
"Even among trained professionals, the presence of a gun for defense is no guarantee of safety or success.  Among all police officers killed in the line of duty from 1984 to 1988, about 20% were killed with their own weapons."  Spitzer, p. 77
"The following suggestion is offered to calm Mr. Polk's burning desire -- as a trained law-abiding citizen of Ohio -- to carry a gun for 'the sole purpose of self-defense.'  At this time it is not, repeat not, illegal for a resident of Ohio to carry a nonconcealed weapon in public.  Until the decision is made, Mr. Polk, just strap it on!"  D. M. Agin, Letters, Columbus Dispatch 5/25/99
"Mr. Polk and his kind are besotted by the fantasy of an armed citizenry -- all 'law-abiding,' of course -- confronting and intimidating a cadre of armed 'criminals' and thus maintaining public order and safety.  But the public cannot be crudely dichotomized into 'law-abiding citizens' and 'criminals' with the assumption that the boundary between them is definite and fixed.  Every criminal was a law-abiding citizen before he or she committed that first crime.  And it seems to be assumed that once a person crosses this border, then it's a life of crime and no going back.... In my own version of the gun lovers fantasy, I am walking down Broad Street  on a busy day with the knowledge that every person in the crowd that flows around me is packing heat, and that, as a consequence any scuffle, argument or confrontation might escalate into an exchange of gunfire.  Am I  safer under these conditions than I would be if strict gun control laws were in effect?  I don't see enough criminals normally to have cause to worry about them, so I'm quite willing to leave the shooting to the police.  What really scares me are the people like Mr. Polk.  I don't know him well enough to trust his definition of self-defense, and I'd rather not find it out the hard way."  Charles Wheeler, Letters, Columbus Dispatch 5/25/99
"The fact is we do not need another law to be able to carry a gun.  The law currently permits a person to carry a firearm exposed and if one is so darned paranoid that he feels it's necessary to carry a gun, he should let me see him coming with the gun exposed.  It will at least give me time to get away.  Mental cases carrying guns scare me.... I've been a police officer for more than 29 years.  I have been shot.  This proposal [concealed carry] is dangerous -- no, deadly -- and wrong."  Detective R. Young, Letters, Cols. Dispatch 5/18/99

"The NRA latest brainstorm is that it should be given 'one large American city' in which to try out its ideas on how to bring the murder rate down:  encourage residents to own guns and learn self-defense; be uncompromisingly tough with criminals.  This is a terrific idea.  The NRA should find a cooperative city government that will give the idea a test for five years.  If at the end of that time the murder rate in that city is as low as the rates in Geneva, Paris, London and other European cities, the NRA will have established a model."  R. Sherman  NYT Letters 6/10/98
"They [gun manufacturers] aren't even willing to take steps to prevent accidental deaths, let alone the purposeful murder the industry thrives on."  B. Rubenstein, Corporate Legal Times  "It is axiomatic that where regulation is lacking, litigation is inevitable."
The assault weapon ban expires in September 2004.
"'The Stupid Party' is not just an epithet used by enemies of the GOP.  It's a label the Republican Party has earned....  Americans are horrified by the carnage and deeply disturbed by the ease with which children seem to acquire firearms.  And naturally, legislators are responding.  The surprise is not that the measures were too radical; it was that they were so limited:  Make those who buy firearms at gun shows subject to the same background checks required at gun shops; mandate that safety locks or other safety equipment be sold with each firearm; make gun owners responsible if their guns fall into the hands of children who then harm others.... Measures such as these aim to reduce the availability of guns to children, making it more difficult for youngsters bent on slaughter to obtain the means to carry it out.  Only a stupid political party would be against that.  Only the Stupid Party was against it.... And the GOP wasn't just on the wrong side of this issue.  It has squandered so much political capital on it that would have been invested more wisely elsewhere, such as in reforming Social Security, Medicare and education and focusing attention on President Clinton's muddled foreign policy and derelict stewardship of national security."  Cols. Dispatch Editorial 5/23/99

"The so-called 'campaign finance reform' legislation is once again rearing its ugly head.... The McCain-Feingold bill is nothing more than an attack on the First Amendment and an attempt to silence voices outside of the political party process!  NRA has testified on many occasions against this legislation, and we have urged you to make your opposition to this outrageous attack on our Constitutional right to free speech known to your elected representatives....  Tell them that we hold all of the Constitution to be inviolate -- including the First AND Second Amendments!"  NRA webpage 1/30/99
Sen. McConnell said "'What the reformers want to do is shut everyone up.'  Thanks to the efforts of individuals like Sen. McConnell, law makers will be sure to hear your voice, and that of your NRA, loud and clear."  NRA Grassfire!  4/2/98

"That so many GOP members want to protect the NRA at a time when kids are shooting their classmates and teachers at schools is incomprehensible.  That crimes are committed by felons and others who buy their weapons at gun shows, where such sales are not subject to restrictions of the Brady law, is outrageous....  There are far bigger issues facing the nation than whether buyers at gun shows are subjected to an additional check or another page of paperwork before completing their purchases."  Columbus Dispatch, Editorial 6/20/99
Instead of feeding the darkest fears of honest gun owners, you might hope politicians and gun organizations would dispel them.  But theses fears keep gun organizations in business and give a block of politicians an issue to talk about election after election.  A three-day waiting period at a gun show is not aimed at law-abiding gun owners and is not the first step to dictatorship.  Why is it so hard to agree on that.  E.J. Dionne. Washington Post
"You report that the NRA sent letters to its members warning that President Clinton would 'demand that you pay the price for the insanity of the killers' at Littleton.  This warning is misguided:  Those in favor of gun control, including gun owners like me, feel that the young people who died at Littleton, their parents, families and friends have already paid the price.  Those of us who are in favor of gun control ask that gun owners do their part in forestalling the next incident of gun-enabled insanity.  We can do this by registering firearms, insuring them and by requiring that no citizen be allowed to buy a gun before being properly trained in its safe use."  Peter Molan, NYT Letters 5/17/99
The NRA worked since Memorial Day to mobilize its members to call and write their representatives, and it worked as the Republican bill included the precise provisions demanded by the NRA including shorter background checks and a looser definition of a gun show.
"This is a rallying cause.  NRA members rally together just like the Serbs support Milosevic, because they think their country is being attacked."  Gerald Solomon, former Representative and NRA member, quoted in NYT 6/12/99

"Now that the election is behind us, it is time to start redoubling our efforts for 2000, when the gun owning community will have the opportunity to further increase our pro-Second Amendment majorities in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, as well as elect a President who will support our right to keep and bear arms....  The more Second Amendment activists wo get involved with our efforts, the better our chances of driving a stake through the heart of the anti-gun, anti-freedom movement.  NRA Alert 11/6/98
"Women, mothers, kids are scared this time and still talk about it more than two weeks later.  Usually these shootings have only a five-to-seven day spread.... Unless each and every American who cares about this issue becomes involved, reform will die here."  Rep. C. McCarthy in NYT 5/10/99