A SMALL-BORE SUCCESS

By Richard Lacayo

At Colorado's thriving weekend gun marts, business is pretty good these days. In the Denver suburb of Commerce City, where gun shoppers graze the warehouse aisles, you can buy a .22-cal. pistol for just $70. Granted, prices are down from a year ago, when passage of the Brady Law led to a surge of panic buying. But it's because of Brady that business is also done a little differently now--most gun dealers are frequently on the phone, calling state agents for a background check on every would-be purchaser. Not all the gun dealers, however. At the sales tables of unlicensed sellers like Larry Snyder, a Denver home builder and gun fancier, you don't see phones. He does ``private-party sales,'' which don't require sales records or background checks. For unlicensed sellers, not much has changed. ``People are buying as many guns as ever,'' Snyder says with a shrug.

One year ago, on Feb. 28, Brady became law. Its five-day waiting period allows local law-enforcement authorities time to perform the background check that is intended to weed out felons and others who are denied handguns. The law applied immediately to the 30 states that had no similar regulations on the books and prompted others to put in place computer checks that permit a yes or no answer within minutes, sparing buyers the five-day wait.

The Brady Law may have been the greatest victory for gun control in American history. In a nation that bought almost as many handguns last year (2 million) as fax machines, that isn't saying much. And from the moment it was passed, its effectiveness has been at issue. People who love it are worried about loopholes like the ``private dealer'' exemption, which makes flea markets into gray markets for handguns. People who hate it say it burdens lawful gun buyers but not criminals, who get most of their guns illegally.

Has the Brady Law been effective? Yes--within the narrow definition of what it was intended to do. The law was never supposed to prevent legal sales or, all by itself, to significantly reduce gun crimes. It was expected to make life more difficult for criminals by denying them legal gun sales. Because the Brady-mandated background checks are carried out by a patchwork of state and local authorities, just how effective it has been is hard to say. By federal estimates, 40,000 felons have been kept from getting handguns. In West Virginia, for example, ``we've had at least 180 denials this past year, and I think that no matter what, that's good,'' says Sergeant Thomas Barrick, who oversees background checks for the state police.

``That to me is an effective law,'' says Richard Aborn, president of Handgun Control, the antigun lobby that helped write the bill and promoted it to victory. ``We designed it to stop felons from buying guns, and it's doing that.'' But it is hard to measure whether the law has had an impact on crime. In Colorado the state's handgun crime rates in the year after Brady have remained steady when compared with the year before. Another problem is loopholes. Brady prohibits gun sales to the mentally ill, but because of laws protecting the confidentiality of medical records, such people often can't be distinguished by computer checks. There are similar difficulties in identifying illegal aliens and anyone with a dishonorable discharge from the military, two other groups singled out by the law. ``The law says you're supposed to make a reasonable effort to find out,'' complains Richard Carlson, assistant public safety director for the state of Arizona. ``But how?''

In response to N.R.A.-backed lawsuits brought by county sheriffs in four states--Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi and Montana--judges have also ruled Brady unconstitutional because it compels localities to adopt national standards. In Val Verde County, which covers 3,240 sq. mi. in southwestern Texas, sheriff J.R. Koog says his 15 deputies are stretched to the limit. Echoing the Capitol Hill debate over unfunded mandates, he complains about the ``horrendous effect'' on his operations budget. ``The government can operate in the red, pink or whatever,'' he says. ``I have to operate in the black.''

Brady also quickly lost one of its most effective provisions, which required a background check and waiting period for anyone reclaiming a gun from a pawnshop. According to Handgun Control, Houston police reported that of 199 gun sales that were blocked in the first three weeks after Brady went into effect, 177 involved pawnshop transactions. But the crime bill passed by the last Congress contained a little-noticed provision that removed from scrutiny anyone reclaiming pawn merchandise.

Skeptics insist the real problem with the law is that most criminals bypass gun shops in favor of underground dealers. ``It's easy for the criminal to get a gun,'' scoffs Dent Myers, who owns a Civil War surplus store in Kennesaw, Georgia, where the town council passed a law last year obliging every head of household to own a gun. ``They don't go to the store, because the waiting period for an illegal gun is about five minutes--or as long as it takes to open up a trunk.''

Brady's biggest supporters agree that the law is just a partial measure at best; their prescription is tighter gun controls. But in the current Congress, the sentiment is just the opposite. In the midterm election, the N.R.A. spent an exceptional $3.2 million to support gun-friendly candidates. Almost all those it supported won, including 10 new Senators. Though the Republican leadership is in no mood to bring up an issue as divisive as gun control now, Newt Gingrich has promised the N.R.A. a chance later this year to repeal the assault-weapon ban that passed the Senate last year by only two votes. If that works, a push to repeal Brady could be next, though the odds of repealing it are far longer.

Meanwhile, the Brady Law will make things harder for criminals, though maybe not hard enough. For instance, late on a Friday night last month, a store surveillance camera picked up eight men in ski masks outside the entrance of Ed's Gun & Tackle in Marietta, Georgia. One of them took a hard swing at the display window with a sledgehammer. Nothing happened. (Sometimes that shatterproof glass really works.) The group scattered, then returned in a car, which they drove straight through the glass doors. What followed was a frenzied minute of supermarket sweep as the intruders grabbed 60 semiautomatic handguns. Three of the thieves have been arrested, but only two of the guns have been retrieved. The rest have presumably made their way to the thriving pathways of the underground market.

--Reported by John F. Dickerson/Washington, Sylvester Monroe/Atlanta and Richard Woodbury/Denver

With reporting by JOHN F. DICKERSON/WASHINGTON, SYLVESTER MONROE/ATLANTA AND RICHARD WOODBURY/DENVER