March 8 Neal Knox Update - Sen. Orrin Hatch declared ""We are poles apart" after yesterday's "summit meeting" between President Clinton and Congressional leaders.
Clinton said Congress "has kept the American people waiting long enough," and called for breaking the impasse between the House and Senate. He said he wants to discuss "Does it work" -- while making it clear that nothing short of the Senate-passed bill will suit him.
House Judiciary Chairman Henry Hyde said he will work with committee Ranking Democrat John Conyers to try to find a solution. He and Conyers went through the same exercise last fall, and Hyde angrily broke off because Conyers and the White House would accept nothing less than the Senate gun provisions.
Clinton met privately yesterday with the mother of murdered Michigan first-grader Kayla Rolland, who he White House implied wants more gun laws. But the mother made no public statements other than her desire to do something to prevent any other child from being killed.
The girl's father, however, has hired Dr. Jack Kevorkian's lawyer, who promptly put the blame for Kayla's murder with a stolen gun on gun manufacturers, plural.
When asked if a trigger lock wouldn't have prevented Kayla's death, Sen. Hatch scoffed: "Get real!" He said it was ludicrous to suppose that the residents ofthe crack house where the boy found the stolen gun would have made sure it had a trigger lock installed.
Bob Delfay, whose organization represents gunmakers and distributors, sent a letter to Clinton pointing out that a triggerlock bill was passed by the Senate and tentatively approved by the House last year. He wrote: "It would have passed the House of Representatives except for the opposition of your White House and your allies like Rep. Dick Gephardt, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, and the other 195 House Democrats who voted against it."
Those facts have been ignored by the press, as has Delfay's point that firearms accidents are at the lowest level since statistics began being kept in 1904.
Tomorrow, the "Bipartisan Work Group of Youth Violence," co- chaired by Reps. Jennifer Dunn (R-Wash.) and Martin Frost (D-Texas) is scheduled to be reported.
As expected, Clinton's order for BATF to "crack down" on "rogue gun dealers" is resulting in pure harassment of the largestgun dealers -- those who sell so many thousands of guns that at least 10 wind up being traced, supposedly as "crime guns."
If BATF wanted to find problem dealers -- instead of embarrassing honest businessmen -- they would determine what percentage of sales wind up being misused. They won't because that would primarily identify dealers in and near predominantly minority, inner-city, high-crime areas -- most of whom sell in strict compliance with the law.
Also, for the last few weeks I've been getting queries about BATF letters to dealers requiring them to send a list of used gun sales, by make, model and serial number, but not the name of the purchaser or person from whom the gun is acquired.
I know of no legal requirement for dealers to comply with such a time-consuming demand, and believe the computerization of such information would be a violation of both the Gun Control Act and BATF's appropriations restrictions.