The New York Times
May 15, 2001

A Timid Gun Bill
Editorial

President Bush's plan to hire scores of attorneys at the federal, state and local levels and redirect the duties of others to strengthen the prosecution of gun crimes is a move that few people on either side of the nation's gun control debate would disagree with. The new Project Safe Neighborhoods program that Mr. Bush announced yesterday seeks to replicate on a national scale a successful Virginia program of stepped-up enforcement against people who commit gun crimes. The original program began four years ago in Richmond, and has since spread to other jurisdictions, including Mr. Bush's home state of Texas.
The trouble with Mr. Bush's plan is its timidity. While making it more likely that people who use guns to commit crimes will be prosecuted, and making improvements in ballistic testing to ease gun tracing, the president's program pointedly omits steps to make it harder for people who should not have guns to obtain them in the first place.
This one-sided approach is in keeping with Mr. Bush's campaign pledge to enforce existing gun laws, and it avoids picking a fight with his close allies at the National Rifle Association, whose mantra in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary has long been that the nation does not need any more gun laws. But Mr. Bush's new program falls far short of the sort of balanced presidential leadership the problem requires.
The two-year effort, using $550 million in funds that were mostly available already, appears to include no money for a meaningful crackdown on the rogue gun dealers who, studies have found, sell a disproportionate number of the guns used in crimes. Most glaring, Mr. Bush's gun violence package does not propose to do anything about closing the so- called gun show loophole that allows children, criminals and others disqualified under current federal law from buying handguns to purchase them from unlicensed dealers at gun shows.
A gun show bill died in Congress last year. Senators Joseph Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, and John McCain, Republican of Arizona, will attempt to revive the issue today by introducing a revised bipartisan version in the Senate, but their effort to frame a compromise that protects public safety has garnered no support from the White House.
Mr. Bush says he supports background checks at gun shows, but he remains opposed to allowing three days for the checks, a period that experience under the Brady handgun law has shown is essential given the present state of the computerized record- keeping system. Likewise, Mr. Bush's plan calls for expanding the availability of trigger locks to keep guns away from criminals and children. But his concern does not extend to supporting standards to make sure the trigger locks really work, or to require gun manufacturers to incorporate a lock into their design, or to spur the development of so- called smart-gun technology that would prevent guns from being fired except by the lawful owner. His approach is too weak and too narrow to curb gun violence effectively.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/15/opinion/15TUE3.html

Did you know that liberals, such as at democraticunderground.com, believe the media is slanted towards the right/conservative?  I don't know about you, but this editorial is FAR from the right.  Such phrases as, "...National Rifle Association, whose mantra in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary has long been that the nation does not need any more gun laws.", is the pure outcome of a liberal "open mind" that has been brainwashed by Sarah Brady, Diane Finestien, Rosie O'Donnell, . . .

Feel good laws feel REAL good to criminals, who aren't affected by them!

How about,

so- called gun show loophole that allows children,....to purchase them from unlicensed dealers at gun shows.