American Notes FIREARMS

Having served one's country abroad, each discharged soldier should have the right to bring home a submachine gun as "small recompense for the isolation, the boredom and the risk of overseas duty." So argues the National Rifle Association in a letter to drug czar William Bennett, who championed the ban on imported semiautomatic rifles. Bennett, the N.R.A. letter gratuitously points out, was neither isolated nor at risk during his draft-vulnerable years at the height of the Viet Nam War but instead was engaged in "scholarly pursuits" as a graduate student.

Assistant N.R.A. counsel James Warner says he only meant to describe the life of a soldier to Bennett and explain why bringing back a semiautomatic weapon "bought in good faith" is so important to G.I.s. Is Bennett going to answer Warner's letter soon? No, says Bennett's office. Is he ever going to answer Warner's letter? "Basically, the answer is no."