Word: handgun
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Earlier this year, gun-control advocates won a rare victory on Capitol Hill when the House endorsed a seven-day waiting period during which police may check the backgrounds of prospective handgun purchasers. They argued that the ban on domestic semiautomatics and the restriction of magazines containing more than seven rounds was a logical next step that could prevent haunted individuals from committing mass murders. During the House debate, one legislator did switch his vote: Chet Edwards, a Texas Democrat and gun-control opponent whose district includes Killeen, site of last week's killings. "Suddenly, the old arguments ring hollow...
There would seem to be a large potential audience. According to a 1988 Gallup poll, 15.6 million American women own a rifle, shotgun or handgun. The latest issue includes feature stories on fashionable holster bags and how to choose a .38 Special revolver. Gun-control advocates, meanwhile, have gone ballistic about the new magazine. Says Susan Witmore of Handgun Control Inc. in Washington: "It is published by a gun lobby and designed to prey on the legitimate fears of women, saying, in effect, that their only protection...
...heart of the bill is a trade-off between advocates of stricter gun control and proponents of broader use of capital punishment. The bill requires a five-day waiting period for handgun purchases, establishes annual allocations of $100 million for a computerized background check and bans nine kinds of semiautomatic weapons. But it also extends the federal death penalty to 51 crimes, including drive-by shootings, torture, hostage taking and racketeering...
Today anyone in Michigan who wants to buy a handgun must take a 10-item true-or-false test, responding to such propositions as "You should treat every pistol as if it were loaded" and "You should always keep the barrel of a pistol pointed in a safe direction." Just in case the questions are too tough, the answers are all "true" and are printed on the back...
...Pretending to have a test is worse than having no test at all," says Bernie Horn, director of state legislation for Handgun Control, Inc. "You have to do more to get a driver's license." But Kevin Frailey, a member of the Basic Pistol Safety Review Board, says, "It wasn't supposed to stop a person from purchasing a firearm." On the contrary: in April and May alone, Detroit issued 530 handgun permits. In all of 1990 it gave...