Gun Ban: a Step for Life

President Clinton’s action Monday to ban the importation of 58 types of assault-style rifles means that as many as 1.6 million of these murderous weapons will not enter the United States this year and countless others will be barred in future years, assuming the ban survives expected challenges in Congress or the courts. Regardless of what the National Rifle Assn. may claim, this step means lives will be saved.

The president made permanent a suspension ordered last November so Treasury experts could study imported arms modified to be classified as sporting weapons. As such they would have eluded a 1989 Bush administration ban on semiautomatic assault rifles. Of 59 types studied under the presidential suspension, only one was deemed to fit the definition of a sporting weapon.

An estimated 600,000 weapons already approved for importation were held up pending the study. Requests for an additional 1 million weapons piled up while the study was underway. Now, none will enter the country.

The NRA insists that Clinton’s action is cosmetic and that these guns are not the criminals’ weapon of choice. But imagine, 1.6 million more semiautomatic assault rifles than we already have in our homes and streets. Just think how many of these would have found their way into the hands of criminals, terrorists or disturbed people bent on exacting revenge for some perceived wrong. Or consider how many accidental deaths of men, women and children might have been caused by the careless handling of these weapons, no matter how well-intentioned their owners.

Assault rifles with large-capacity military-style magazines--many of them variations on the Uzi and the AK-47--were not designed to hunt game. They were designed to kill people.

Considerable credit goes to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who has been the vanguard of weapons control in the Senate. Clinton’s decision should serve as an example to wavering Assembly members in the California Legislature facing a decision on AB 23, put forward by Assemblyman Don Perata (D-Alameda) to overhaul California’s assault weapons law.

The president’s action Monday makes this country a slightly more civilized place. Think of the deaths and wounds not caused, the funerals not held, the grief not expended. Now, the California Legislature’s support of AB 23 could be another decision for life.