Posted on 09/07/2004 8:17:57 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Gun control activists, health care advocates and law enforcement groups geared up on Tuesday for a last-ditch effort to prevent a 1994 ban on assault weapons from expiring next week, but even its most ardent backers acknowledge the drive is all but futile.
But the influential National Rifle Association gun lobby, meanwhile, said it would "not take anything for granted" as it works to send the ban into oblivion.
Ban advocates called on President Bush (news - web sites) to intervene and get Congress to act. But Bush, who in his 2000 campaign promised to sign legislation, has been publicly silent for months as the clock ticked.
The ban on such weapons as Uzis and AK-47s will expire at midnight next Monday unless Congress votes to renew it. While warning that high-powered guns and large-capacity ammunition clips could flood America's streets, even the most ardent backers of the ban in Congress admitted that it is almost certain to lapse.
"The likelihood (of extension) is remote," said California Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein (news, bio, voting record). House Republican aides concurred, and predicted that ban advocates would not have an opening to try to get legislation through this week.
"I'm trying to put pressure on the president," said New York Democrat Carolyn McCarthy, elected to Congress after her husband was slain in 1993 by a gunman on a Long Island, New York, train. "This whole thing is in Bush's court."
Several public opinion polls, including one released this week by the National Annenberg Election Survey, have found deep public support for the ban, even among many gun-owners and conservatives. But the NRA has fought it fiercely.
"The NRA is an extremely powerful group, there's no two ways about it," said McCarthy, adding ruefully that politicians "don't want to tick them off" two months before elections.
EARLIER EFFORT SUNK
The Senate did vote to extend the ban earlier this year, but as part of a larger bill on gun-maker legal protections that was later sunk at the NRA's behest. Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives strongly oppose the ban and have not allowed a vote on it. McCarthy had hoped to force a vote this week, but said she would not be allowed to bring it to the floor under House rules.
With the clock ticking, groups favoring a ban on the high-powered weapons have tried to draw public attention to it. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence has a full-page ad running in the New York Times and Washington Post asking, "Why does President Bush want to put cop-killing guns back on the street?"
More than a dozen leading health groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Physicians for Social Responsibility and the American College of Emergency Physicians (news - web sites) jointly called for the ban's extension on Tuesday, describing gun violence as a public health crisis.
"It is a health-care crisis and it is an incredibly costly health-care crisis," said Amy Sisley, an emergency room doctor at the University of Maryland Medical Center, speaking on behalf of Physicians for Social Responsibility.
She said 90 percent of spinal cord injuries in the United States are caused by gunshot wounds and noted that $1.8 billion a year is spent on spinal cord injuries.
Major law enforcement groups, including police chiefs from big U.S. cities, plan to rally for the ban's extension at a Washington memorial for fallen police officers on Wednesday.
The NRA in a statement posted on its Web site dismissed the campaign for the ban as a "PR show to blame inanimate objects for the acts of criminals."
But warning its well-organized and highly motivated members against complacency, the NRA said, "We have come too far in the past 10 years not to pull out all the stops in the next week and a half to ensure that this ban expires as Congress intended, and becomes nothing more than a sad footnote in America's history." (Additional reporting by Maggie Fox)
It seems like it's been a lifetime since Klinton made me stock up my arsenal with HC clips and semi-automatic rifles and evil ammo......
Let them EVER try to take it...
G-d help me, for a split-second I read that as "The Hamster." Before my brain could correct the error, I had an image of Kerry giving him CPR.
"Several public opinion polls, including one released this week by the National Annenberg Election Survey, have found deep public support for the ban, even among many gun-owners and conservatives"
Yea, right!
after her husband was slain in 1993 by a gunman on a Long Island, New York, train
Liberals murdered the individuals on that train as the black Jamaican immigrant coldly inserted clip after clip and shot the commuters.
News media said it was caused by racism---White Americans had mistreated him until they drove him to this act.
Never prosecuted as a hate crime.
Not a single conviction for first degree murder.
If only one of the innocent business people on the train had a CCW...
But this was New York....
LOL! If there was "deep public support for the ban, even among many gun-owners and conservatives", Kerry would be braying like a jackass about it.
"LOL! If there was "deep public support for the ban, even among many gun-owners and conservatives", Kerry would be braying like a jackass about it."
There is so little support for it that the Democrats do not want to force the issue.
By the way, what is this about spinal injures?
Are people shooting themselves in the back?
I never knew DeLay was that good a dancer.
I'll be out of town Monday. But that should give the gun & ammo catalog outfits time to put some of the goodies in the next issue. I love SALES.
If in fact she said any such thing - this is Reuters, remember - then the lady lied. HERE is what the CDC has to say about it - the principal causes are motor vehicle injuries for those under 65, falls for their elders. Overall, 18% are caused by sports injuries.
This stuff took all of 30 seconds to check. Reuters didn't.
Tick tock. Tick tock.
Less than six days and counting.
Tick tock. Tick tock.
Maybe she's right and we should privatize this "crisis" by getting the government out of the health care business!
Yep. I'm waiting to get some more high caps for my Glock and I'll probably slap a folding stock on my AK as well.
No, not yet, but I'll do my duty. I'm sure Di Fi is waiting anxiously to hear from me.
The fully autos (and virtually any machine gun at that) have been illegal for decades (unless you get all sorts of special licensing and paperwork). Almost all of the guns covered in the Clinton ban were semi-auto civilian versions of better known fully auto counterparts. Put another way, Clinton banned a bunch of perfectly useful and decent semiautomatic rifles because they kinda sorta _looked_ like the big mean scary things that the army people carry.
She said 90 percent of spinal cord injuries in the United States are caused by gunshot wounds and noted that $1.8 billion a year is spent on spinal cord injuries.
Call them anyway. If nothing else, maybe you can give one of their staffers an ulcer. $:-)
I got some practice a couple of weeks ago calling the staffers of my rabidly anti-gun "representatives" over the pending anti-gun legislation here. They voted "Aye", as I knew they would. I have emailed and written the governator asking for his veto for the bills landing on his desk. I plan to send a copy of my letter to gov to my "representatives" just for general principles. Not that they'll care. But, hey, at least they'll know we aren't all in lockstep out here.
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