Shot Down

Both houses of Congress last week virtually shot down any hope of meaningful federal control of guns. The major defeat occurred in the House, where it came in the form -- but not the substance -- of victory for tighter laws. Voting 305 to 118, the House passed and sent to the Senate a bill that would limit interstate mail-order sales of long guns and certain types of ammunition.* However, charged the bill's disappointed floor manager, Brooklyn Democrat Emanuel Celler, the measure left loopholes "aswide as the Grand Canyon." Among the 19 amendments adopted was one permitting gun collectors to qualify as "dealers" and thus become exempt from the interstate ban. Another amendment -- a clear victory for the National Rifle Association -- would exempt long-gun ammunition from the mail-order ban.

Even so, the minimal bill was almost certainly more than the House would have passed before Robert Kennedy's death. It will accomplish some useful purposes, such as banning over-the-counter sales of rifles, shotguns, and bigger weapons to most out-of-staters, those under 18, fugitives, mental defectives, felons and anyone under indictment for a crime.

Neither the House bill nor a similar Senate bill, cleared by the Judiciary Committee the same day, provides for licensing gun owners or federal registration of firearms. The bitter opposition of South Carolina's Strom Thurmond had convinced the Senate's chief gun-control proponent, Joseph Tydings, that his only chance for a tough bill lay on the Senate floor itself, where the Maryland Democrat hopes to revive the measure after the conventions.

Thurmond further emasculated the weaker Dodd bill with six amendments, similar to those in the House, before the Judiciary Committee reported it out.

In the House, New Jersey Democrat Charles S. Joelson was not heartened when told that gun-control foes "could live with" the watered-down bill. "I suggest," he chided his colleagues, "that tens of thousands of Americans can die with it."

* Interstate shipment of handguns to individuals and their over-the-counter sale to out-of-staters had already been prohibited in the previously passed omnibus crime bill.

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