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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stockman_scott who wrote (621805)	9/10/2004 4:00:43 PM
From: E. T.	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

Keep assault rifle ban in place The gun industry has made the best argument possible for extending an assault rifle ban that will expire Monday unless President Bush and Congress act immediately. Gleeful ads by dealers feature minute-by-minute countdowns to the ban's demise, as well as exhortations to buyers to act quickly to get the higher firepower and greater lethality provided by the weapons outlawed in 1994. Those guns are often called "cop killers," which is why 2,000 sheriffs, police chiefs, law enforcement groups and prosecutors from around the country are begging Bush to help keep the deadly rifles off the streets, as he pledged during his first campaign. Even now, the president claims to support a renewal of the ban, but he has done nothing to push the GOP-controlled Congress to act. Apparently he values the votes of the gun lobby over the lives of police officers. On Wednesday, Washington Police Chief Charles Ramsey publicly pleaded with Bush for help renewing the ban. The gun lobby contends that only law enforcement honchos support the ban, but 70 regular officers stood with Ramsey. Those police officers understand only too well that it's the rank-and-file cops on the streets who die from assault weapons, not the top brass in the desk jobs. The public also understands that sports enthusiasts and hunters don't need an Uzi, AK-47 or TEC-9 to hunt deer or shoot targets. Respondents in virtually every national poll endorse renewing or even strengthening the assault rifle ban. The National Rifle Association, on the other hand, is waging all-out war to see that the ban is not renewed. "We have come too far in the past 10 years not to pull out all the stops in the next week and a half to ensure this ban expires as Congress intended, and becomes nothing more than a sad footnote in America's history," says the NRA Web site. "I believe the most solemn duty of the American president is to protect the American people," Bush said at the GOP convention last week. That statement is nothing but campaign rhetoric if Bush fails to use his clout on Capitol Hill to extend the assault rifle ban. ajc.com