GUN CONTROL Assault-rifle ban heads for expiration

Nearly two-thirds of Americans support the ban, a poll says.
BALTIMORE SUN
WASHINGTON -- Byrl Phillips-Taylor sat in the office of Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California 10 years ago, clutching a photo of her dead son, as Feinstein worked the phones to try to keep a nationwide ban on assault weapons in a crime bill. At the last minute, two senators changed sides and prevented a National Rifle Association-led effort from killing the ban.
"What I don't understand is why I am here again, now, after everything," Phillips-Taylor said Wednesday in a Senate office building, holding the same photo. "I need somebody to explain to me how this is possible."
Set to expire
On Monday, with little fanfare or public notice -- and barely a mention from President Bush or John Kerry -- a ban on the sale of 19 kinds of military-style assault rifles, capable of firing dozens of bullets in seconds, will expire after 10 years. Despite broad public support for the ban, Republican leaders said they intend to let the law lapse.
Wednesday, Phillips-Taylor, whose son was gunned down by an assault rifle-wielding teen-ager in 1989, and more than three dozen police chiefs from across the United States are waging an uphill fight to try to save the ban. They gathered on Capitol Hill with a few lawmakers to plead with the Republican-led Congress and Bush to renew it.
"I shudder to think what will happen if these weapons are made available again," said Charles H. Ramsey, the District of Columbia's police chief. "It would be a catastrophic leap backward."
Police outgunned
Until the ban was signed into law by President Clinton in 1994, Ramsey and other chiefs said, their officers would often find themselves outgunned as criminals equipped assault rifles with flash suppressors, stabilizers, telescoping handles and detachable magazines, while police struggled to reload their handguns.
Wide support
Since then, the law has amassed wide support in opinion polls, including from more than half of NRA households, according to a nonpartisan survey whose results were released in April. The poll, by the National Annenberg Election Survey, found that 71 percent of Americans -- including 64 percent of those with a gun in their home -- favor extending the ban on assault weapons.
Supporters say the law has succeeded despite some serious loopholes. They point to a drop in crime rates and the fewer number of police officers killed by what was, until 1994, the weapon of choice for many drug dealers.
"It has huge public support; why the hell is this looking like it's about to expire?" asked Eric Howard, a spokesman for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, who has spent weeks trying to bring attention to the law's expiration. "That's the question."
The answer, supporters of the ban say, is politics.
Clinton has said that while he views the ban as one of his highest achievements, he believes it cost his party at least 20 seats in the House that year, when many Democrats were attacked as being broadly opposed to gun rights.