Cow kicked Nellie in the barn Didn't do her any good, didn't do her any harm. Gun-control laws can never substitute for the hard work of apprehending and convicting criminals. Still, the Brady bill is a small price to pay if Congress also agrees to the administration's crime bill. No one believes that this gun bill would have a measurable effect on violent crime, or even that it would have stopped John Hinkley from buying the gun he used five months later to shoot Mr. Reagan and James Brady. There would be a seven-day waiting period before any gun dealer sells a handgun to a customer. During that week, state law-enforcement officials can (but wouldn't have to) investigate whether the purchaser is a felon or has spent time in a mental institution. The gun could be sold at the end of the week unless the police find the evidence to stop the sale. The first problem is that there is no way of knowing who is a felon, much less a mental patient. There is no computer list of the criminal records from the states. Nine states do not even require that courts report the final disposition of felony cases. At the federal level, the FBI doesn't have records showing the final results in half of its arrests. The Brady bill would not create any national record of people who cannot buy handguns. With no list for gun dealers to consult, the bill's effectiveness dims. There is also something breathtaking in the claim that crime can be stopped by regulating gun dealers. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh calls this the "17% solution." Fewer than one-in-five handguns acquired by felons are bought from gun dealers. There is an active gun market, including rent-a-gun operations in some public-housing projects. Making it harder to buy from legitimate dealers will boost street sales. Gun control has become the $600 toilet seat of the crime debate. Yes, it would be good to keep firearms out of the hands of felons and the mentally incompetent. But all the talk about gun control has prevented the serious discussion on crime this country desperately needs to have. For example, why don't we have records of felons? Part of the answer is to imagine how long it would take an ACLU affiliate somewhere to file a lawsuit alleging that the rights of felons or certifiably dangerous mental patients would be violated by a national registry. As with the drug problem, the only solution to crimes with guns is on the demand side. Americans own perhaps 150 million firearms; that is more guns than cars. Even if we somehow banned sales of all weapons from butter knives to imported semi-automatics, the current supply is more than adequate for street crimes. This is why a Brady bill, which won't work but which also won't cause much harm, would be a reasonable trade-off for the Bush crime bill. Under the administration's bill, criminals, especially ones who use firearms, would face more certain punishment. The bill would finally limit the endless appeals from death-penalty convictions and create new death penalties for drug-related killings. Our favorite provision would offer more effective gun control than the Brady bill. This is Mr. Thornburgh's "inclusionary rule" to replace the exclusionary rule's absurd result that a criminal goes free because a constable blundered. The jury would still get to see the evidence of the gun and convict the criminal even where evidence of a firearm is obtained under a faulty search warrant or some other technical problem. Instead of keeping the truth from jurors, the evidence would be allowed. But to encourage lawful searches, the Justice Department would also set up a system to pay compensation to people who are wrongly searched and to discipline erring officers directly. Over the past 30 years, everything from "Miranda" censoring of confessions to activist judges declaring that jails are "too crowded" has created a reign of lawlessness. The chances of a crime leading to an arrest, conviction and serious prison term are well under one-in-100 in many parts of the country. We may have more people in jail than ever before, but it is still true that a rational criminal can calculate the odds that crime does pay. Gun-control proposals only hide the deeper problem that the country still lacks the will to punish criminals. Our idea of real gun and crime control starts with freeing the law-enforcement system from the many procedural hurdles that deter it from providing law, order and justice.
An article in the Wall Street Journal reports that problems abound in the Brady Bill gun control proposal which mandates a 7-day waiting period. During that week law enforcement officials can, but are not required to investigate the purchaser. Part of the problem is a lack of national criminal records; dealers have no list to check. Another argument is that fewer than 20% of guns are purchased from dealers and, there are already 150 million guns in circulation in the U.S. The Bush proposal, however, closes some of the loopholes for punishment.