POOR SUBSTITUTE; TOUGHER LAWS BETTER THAN GUN BUYBACK.

Byline: Earl O. Hutchinson

PRESIDENT Clinton's heart was in the right place when he authorized the Department of Housing and Urban Development to shell out $14 million to cities to buy back guns in private hands.

Clinton made the cash offer for two reasons. The first is public fear and outrage over the recent deadly wave of shootings at schools and on city streets that have taken a disastrous toll in lives and human suffering.

The second reason is the deep frustration he has publicly expressed over the antics of an obstructionist Congress, which has dug its heels in and resisted nearly every attempt to pass tougher gun control legislation.

The best that Congress has mustered so far is the Senate passage in May of the relatively tepid measure requiring stricter background checks on all gun buyers who purchase weapons at gun shows and pawnshops.

But public fear, Clinton's good intentions and political frustrations notwithstanding, a gun buyback program is little more than a politically showy, cost-ineffective way to deal with the deadly problem of gun proliferation and violence.

If HUD spent every penny of the $14 million of its gun buyback money, it would buy a paltry 280,000 guns. This would make little dent in the number of legally owned weapons in the country. In California alone, there are an estimated 200 million to 300 million guns in civilian hands.

The biggest flaw in gun buyback programs is that they do not prevent emotionally troubled juveniles from obtaining guns or provide any incentives for criminals to turn in their cache of illegal weapons and risk arrest.

In Compton, a predominantly African-American and Latino city plagued by a high number of gun-related deaths, city officials tried to get illegal weapons out of civilian hands by offering amnesty from criminal prosecution to those who turned in their guns for cash. Embarrassed officials quickly withdrew the offer when they found that an amnesty offer for criminal acts was illegal under California state law.

Even with Compton's offer of $75 per gun, which is more than the $50 rate offered in the HUD program, only two dozen legally owned weapons were turned in. And they were turned in by law-abiding citizens who undoubtedly regarded the buyback program as an opportunity to get rid of their unwanted and probably unused guns.

Another sign that gun buybacks are much less effective than what many politicians promise is that the NRA does not oppose them, and for a good reason. These programs pose no real threat to the group's relentless campaign to torpedo tougher gun control laws.

Even HUD officials have conceded that there is no conclusive proof that gun buyback programs, and that includes its own program, have done much to take more guns off the streets. They plan to spend $1 million to find out what, if anything, these programs actually accomplish.

The far better answer to reducing the carnage of gun violence is still to pass tougher gun laws.

Officials in dozens of cities nationally realize this and have not waited for state legislatures or Congress to act. They have passed ordinances to severely restrict or outright ban the sale of cheap handguns, the so-called Saturday night special, and assault weapons.

This appears to have had some effect in reducing gun-related violence, especially among teens. In August, Los Angeles County took the long overdue and still modest step of banning gun sales at gun shows on county property.

California lawmakers defied the powerful NRA lobby and recently passed landmark legislation that bans assault guns and high-capacity ammunition magazines, limits the number of gun sales, requires child safety locks on new guns and outlaws the sale of cheap handguns.

While the California law is a good model for other states to follow, it still does not significantly limit the massive trafficking in guns across state lines.

Ultimately only Congress can do that. And so far, it has played hardball and resisted the demands from the public and many state and local elected officials to pass a uniform federal standard to restrict the manufacture, sale and transport of guns.

Without such a law, gun buyers can simply purchase guns in states with less restrictive gun laws and cart them back into states with tougher gun laws. Or they can order them by mail or on the Internet.

Clinton, state and city officials certainly can't be faulted for trying to do whatever they can to stem the tide of gun violence. But gun buybacks are no substitute for tough gun laws and tougher lobbying to get them.