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Sunday, December 13, 1998     Page:

Brady Law deters crimes four hundred at a time
   
Four hundred battered spouses who didn’t become murdered spouses. Four
hundred convenience store clerks who weren’t robbed. Four hundred teenagers
who didn’t get caught in drive-by crossfiresIf we are to gauge the success of
the new expanded national background check system for gun buyers, there is no
better measure than the number of crimes the system may have prevented in its
first week. Beginning with the first week of December, gun dealers across the
nation were required to run background checks on buyers of rifles and shotguns
in addition to the mandatory checks for handguns that were already in place.
    As of Dec. 5, the expanded Brady Law kept more than 400 guns out of the
hands of felons, fugitives, stalkers, and others who are prohibited from
carrying firearms by federal law. And that was just in the 23 states using the
federal computer data base. The results from states such as Pennsylvania that
use their own record system aren’t yet in.
   
How many of those 400 firearms may have eventually been put to criminal
use, no one can say. But no one could argue that America wasn’t just a little
safer after the first week of computerized background checks.
   
And the system was put in service with minimal aggravation for law-abiding
gun buyers. Seventy-six percent of the 62,000 gun purchase requests made in
the first week in states using the federal system were approved within
minutes, according to the U.S. Justice Department. Most of the others were
approved within three days.
   
The Brady Law has once again proven a great success. The law, which went
into effect in 1994 with mandatory background checks for handgun buyers, has
prevented an estimated 242,000 people from purchasing firearms. And it’s done
that without denying law-abiding sportsmen and hobbyists the right to bear
arms.
   
Given that success, the White House has proposed several additions to the
federal law. One would impose a permanent three-day minimum waiting period for
handgun purchases, allowing buyers a cooling-off period and law enforcement
adequate time to check records. A second provision would include violent
juvenile offenses in the list of convictions that can lead to a person being
prohibited from buying firearms.
   
Third, and perhaps most important, the White House wants to close a
loophole in the federal law that allows some people to sell firearms at gun
shows without background checks. The gun show exemption presents an easy
avenue for felons to avoid background checks and ought to be abolished as
qui