Clinton offers new gun-control measures (from USAToday)
WASHINGTON (AP) - One week to the day after the Colorado school shooting, President Clinton proposed gun-control legislation Tuesday to raise the legal age for handgun possession from 18 to 21, and hold negligent parents liable when their children commit crimes with guns.
Buyers of explosives would also be subject to the same Brady law background checks as gun purchasers.
''It is criminal how easy it is for children in America to obtain guns,'' Hillary Rodham Clinton said at a White House ceremony, where she led her husband and an assembly of lawmakers in a moment of silence for the community of Littleton, Colo.
In extensive remarks preceding the president, Mrs. Clinton said she doubted the administration's ability to ''create a perfect set of solutions that, if followed, would have prevented what happened at Columbine High School.''
But, she added, ''That does not mean that we are either hopeless or helpless.''
The president's omnibus crime package, which the White House trumpeted as ''the most comprehensive gun legislation any administration has put forward in 30 years,'' also proposes banning juvenile possession of semiautomatic assault rifles, halting imports of all high-capacity ammunition clips and limiting an individual's handgun purchases to one per month.
''One of the biggest sources of crime guns is straw purchasers who make multiple purchases in one state and transfer those guns to another state where they flood the streets,'' White House domestic policy adviser Bruce Reed said Tuesday.
In addition, Clinton renewed measures that died in the last Congress. Aides said he is counting on outrage over the Colorado school shooting to push them through this year.
''The prospects are good,'' White House press secretary Joe Lockhart said Monday. ''Unfortunately, oftentimes it takes tragic events to catalyze work here in Washington.''
The explosives provision, which aims to treat the sale of explosives the same way gun sales are treated under the Brady law, would cover dynamite, blasting caps and the like, not materials that can be blended into an explosive mixture. In Littleton, Colo., the student killers used homemade hand grenades and pipe bombs in their rampage through Columbine High School. In Oklahoma City, two tons of explosive made from common fertilizer were used to blow up the federal building in 1995.
Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., praised Clinton's initiative cracking down on explosives but wondered if it was a problem too loosely defined to tackle.
''If you're talking about propane gas tanks and agricultural chemicals, I'm anxious to see how they define the component parts of this,'' Durbin said.
Clinton, aides said, also is proposing:
Mandatory child-safety locks on all guns sold.
Extension of an existing ban on juvenile possession of handguns to include semiautomatic assault rifles; also a ban on importation of all ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds, an extension of current law banning imports of those made since 1994.
Background checks on buyers for all gun-show sales.
A lifetime ban on gun ownership for people who commit violent crimes as juveniles.
A three-day waiting period for all handgun purchases, with an additional two days if law officers need them to complete their investigation. Until last year, the Brady Act provided five days for police to conduct background checks on buyers if they needed that much time. Now, it limits them to three days, but most checks are instantaneous. Never before has there been a minimum, mandatory waiting period.
Mandatory prison sentences of three to 10 years and $10,000 fines for adults, including parents, who allow children access to guns.
The adult could be held liable whenever a juvenile crime is committed and the adult ''knowingly or recklessly allowed it to occur,'' said White House spokesman Barry Toiv. He added that the legislation's standard of reckless conduct would be ''a difficult standard to meet.''
Clinton raised this provision long before the Littleton shootings and it is not meant to suggest that those killers' parents should be blamed, Toiv said.
Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle, who represents South Dakota, where guns are popular among ranchers and sportsmen, was skeptical about passing any new restrictions.
''I'm not sure that gun legislation is what we need,'' Daschle told reporters Monday. He suggested the school shootings were a societal problem stemming from parental and teacher neglect and violence in the media and on the Internet.
''Those are the kinds of things we better be looking at,'' Daschle said.
Another Democratic senator, Charles Schumer of New York, said he wants to plug an Internet loophole that allows gun buyers to circumvent the Brady law. ''The firepower that can be acquired simply by going online is chilling,'' Schumer said.
Andrew Molchan, director of the National Association of Federally Licensed Gun Dealers, said the 7,000 gun dealers he represents support a lifetime ban on gun ownership for anyone who commits a violent crime.
But the rest of Clinton's package, Molchan said, ''is an unfortunate diversion and, in our view, a dangerous diversion that takes energy, time and thought away from the real issues.''
''Somebody doesn't decide to walk into a school and murder several people because of lack of a gun lock or something,'' he said. ''It's a horrible, profound, moral issue.''
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