From: Neal Knox <[email protected]>
To: [email protected] <[email protected]>
Date: Monday, November 01, 1999 2:53 PM
Subject: Gun ‘Compromise’ Brewing

Nov. 1 update – House Republican leaders are supposedly
canvassing their members today about the latest Hyde-Hastert
“compromise”
gun provisions for the Juvenile Justice bill. I haven’t seen the
language, but it’s called “Dingell-Plus.” It supposedly would be
the Dingell gun show language, with its 24-hour maximum wait on gun
show purchases, plus a codified three-day waiting period on
handguns.

I hear the NRA has fired out a letter to Congressmen saying
“Don’t do it.”

President Clinton has been pushing for restoration of the
waiting period, including it in his State of the Union speech last
January. Handgun Control Inc. has been griping about losing the
waiting period ever since they agreed to give it up in exchange for
adding long guns to the “Instant Check” — which was the Bob Dole-
Howard Metzenbaum compromise in 1991.

If the waiting period “compromise” doesn’t fly — and it won’t
if enough of you pound on your Congressman — they plan to fall
back to a “non-controversial” package that would require trigger
locks to be sold with each handgun, prohibit those under 18 from
possessing “assault weapons” and high-capacity magazines except
under direct supervision, and impose a lifetime gun ban for
committing certain juvenile offenses.

That “Plan B” does not include the other provision that has
passed or been approved by both houses, the ban on importing over-
10-round magazines. Without the import ban, the Democrats probably
won’t accept it — but I’ve long thought that they would
“grudgingly” accept a Republican gun bill consisting of everything
that was supported in both houses earlier this year, but without
any gun show language.

That way Clinton will have preserved the “gun show” campaign
issue, he would have some additional gun laws, and gunowners would
be beating up on Republicans for passing them. So, as far as Mr.
Clinton is concerned, he would have the best of all worlds.