Extend weapons ban.

Byline: The Register-Guard

President Bush has little time left to show Americans he's willing to stand up to the National Rifle Association. In the next few days, he must urge Republican leaders in Congress to allow a vote on extending the nation's decade-old ban on assault weapons.

If Bush fails to do so, he will be directly responsible for the expiration of the ban on Sept. 13 - and for the flood of AK-47s, Uzis, Kalashnikovs, Tec-9s and other military-style weapons of mass murder that will soon be legally available in gun stores across the nation.

The debate over the weapons ban has been overshadowed in recent weeks by the war in Iraq and the Sept. 11 commission. It briefly popped on to the nation's radar screen during last week's Democratic political convention, when former President Clinton accused Bush and the Republicans of putting ``assault weapons back on the street.''

Clinton has pride of authorship in the ban, which was part of his $30 billion anti-crime package approved in 1994. The law prohibits the manufacture and distribution of 19 types of semiautomatic firearms - not hunting weapons, mind you, but bullet-spewing machines engineered for the expressed purpose of killing large numbers of human beings.

Republican leaders in Congress come up with a new reason every week for not allowing votes on extending the ban. On Wednesday, House Speaker Dennis Hastert offered the latest, telling National Public Radio that, even if the bill passes in the House, "there's no promise that we can get it out of the Senate."

Say what, Speaker Hastert? On March 2, the Senate passed an amendment to renew the ban in a bipartisan 52-47 vote. The amendment was part of a gun lobby-supported bill that would have given the gun industry immunity from most lawsuits. While the immunity bill eventually was defeated, a majority of the Senate clearly supported renewing the ban. If the House approves an extension (and there is strong support there, as well), it will almost certainly pass in the Senate.

Bush says Congress' GOP leaders are well aware that he supports the ban. Yet the leaders also know the president won't push for it because he fears losing the NRA's endorsement, which the organization shrewdly is withholding until after the ban expires.

Bush should weigh the benefits of an NRA endorsement against public opinion. A recent survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center found that 71 percent of voters support continuation of the ban. Among gun-owning households, 64 percent support the ban. Americans understand that it's possible to ban assault weapons and still support the Second Amendment.

Bush hopes that proclaiming his support for a ban but doing nothing to push it through Congress will give him political cover. But voters aren't foolish - they will understand that the president, not Congress, bears primary responsibility.

Republican leaders have said they will put gun-ban extensions up for votes if the president instructs them to do so. Bush's Democratic opponent, Sen. John Kerry, already has endorsed an extension and interrupted his campaign in March to return to the Senate for the vote on the assault weapons amendment.

The NRA argues that there's no evidence that the ban has reduced crime. Yet Justice Department statistics show the proportion of banned assault weapons traced to crimes had plunged by 65.8 percent since 1995. There's a reason why law enforcement organizations across the country say assault weapons pose a serious, unnecessary threat and support a ban.

If Bush fails to act, he will be handing Kerry a juicy plum of a campaign issue, one that should appeal to those moderate undecided voters whose support the president needs for re-election. Voters won't blame Congress for failing to ban these weapons of mass death and misery. They'll blame the guy who sits in the Oval Office.