Word: mccollum
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Florida Republican Congressman Bill McCollum Jr. offered a way out of the quandary. He proposed replacing the waiting-period requirement with a provision to give all 275,000 federally licensed gun dealers in the U.S. instant access to a nationwide list of convicted felons. Prospective gun buyers could be fingerprinted and the samples sent electronically to Washington for an instantaneous check against the FBI's millions of prints...
...felons, no way to make such data quickly and widely available, and no speedy means of sending and matching fingerprints. A network to provide such information could take years to create and cost up to $500 million; making it available to gun dealers could violate civil liberties. Beyond that, McCollum's system would not prevent gun sales to illegal aliens and the mentally...
Still, a majority of House members reached for this fig leaf. They voted to kill the Brady amendment and replace it with McCollum's phantom plan. Even leading Democrats from states where the N.R.A. is strong, like House Majority Leader Tom Foley of Washington and House Whip Tony Coelho of California, supported the gun lobby. They contended, as has George Bush, who boasts that he is a life member of the N.R.A., that such restrictive legislation should be left to the states. But only 22 states require waiting periods. A gun buyer in a hurry need only cross a state...
...argued. "This is a national problem. If we made it a little more difficult for someone who is angry and wants to kill, maybe we would save some lives." Demonstrating how the issue cuts across both ideology and geography, Speaker Jim Wright of Texas joined Hyde in opposing the McCollum proposal, despite his home state's animus to gun control...
Organizers of the Harvard chapter say they seek to use a coed fraternity here as a bargaining chip to wrest a compromise from an adamant all-male faction, most in the West. McCollum says Harvard may experience difficulty in winning recognition from the national organization...