Target Practice.

A media gun show.

If the public is outraged about loose gun laws after the Littleton massacre, politicians outside Washington haven't heard the news. Sure, the California assembly restricted gun purchases to one a month within 48 hours of the killings (which were planned for at least a year and involved four guns, but never mind). And efforts to crack down on gun shows in Oregon have accelerated. But most of the action in the states has been pro-gun.

In the weeks since Littleton, Arizona, Arkansas, and Nevada have prohibited cities from suing gunmakers for the costs of gun-related crime. Legislatures in Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas have sent similar bans to governors who will certainly sign them. Also since Littleton, the Michigan house, by a two-to-one margin, has passed legislation to let citizens carry concealed weapons; it stands a good chance to become law.

Are these state legislatures "out of touch with the tides of public concern," as the New York Times editorialized about pro-gun forces in the nation's capital? No. Polls suggest the public disapproves of the municipal lawsuits. But that fact is getting washed away by the tide of media coverage of the public's supposed "outcry" and "uproar" against guns.

Actually, it's not clear that Littleton has changed public attitudes toward gun control much. True, polls show that large majorities of men and overwhelming majorities of women back gun locks, waiting periods, and the like. But that's been the case ever since polls started to ask about these topics. Karlyn Bowman, the American Enterprise Institute's pollwatcher, says that the biggest long-term change in public attitudes has been a slow and steady erosion in support for a total ban on civilian handgun ownership: Gallup found 49-44 percent support for one in 1965 and 39-58 percent opposition post-Littleton.

Most people do not believe gun control will do much to reduce violent crime; they just consider the minor restrictions on offer unobjectionable, and possibly helpful. One sign of the shallowness of support for controls is that Democrats have a measly eight-point advantage in the ABC/Washington Post poll of which party the public trusts more to handle gun issues. The voters who actually cast their ballots on the issue, meanwhile, object to almost all controls. There's no evidence that has changed, either. As for the bogeyman of the NRA, in several polls more people view it favorably than view it unfavorably, even after Littleton.

In truth, the new "outcry" on which the press is reporting is its own. And even the public's longstanding support for some regulations is partly a result of abysmal reporting on basic facts about guns and federal law. When Elizabeth Dole came out against automatic weapons and assault weapons, nobody pointed out that automatic weapons have essentially been illegal since 1934 or that "assault weapons," a category invented by the gun-control lobby, are different only in appearance from other weapons.

The other change in the Beltway dynamics of gun control, besides self- fulfilling media spin, has been a shift in the strategy of gun-control groups. In the past, even when they pursued small-scale initiatives, their ultimate goal-a ban on civilian ownership of handguns-became clear. That's what happened during their push in 1993 and 1994 for waiting periods to buy guns (the Brady bill) and a ban on assault weapons. "They got cocky and pushed too hard on legislation and even more in rhetoric," says David Kopel, a law professor at New York University. "A lot of gun owners might not have minded the Brady bill within its four corners. But when they saw it was a deliberate strategy to change the culture, they said no." This provocation of gun owners was an important factor in the Democrats' loss of Congress in 1994, as even President Clinton has said.

The gun-control lobby no longer talks about banning handguns, only about keeping guns from criminals and children. The pro-gun coalition is left making the slippery-slope argument: Accept this tiny regulation, and eventually all guns will be outlawed. Now this is in fact what the gun-control lobby clearly hopes for, and some proposed regulations make sense only as way stations to a sweeping ban. But to most people, the slippery-slope argument sounds paranoid. So the anti- gun side achieves a strategic objective: making the NRA and its allies look first unreasonable and then disreputable. And the Democrats achieve their objective: getting suburbanites to associate the GOP with people for whom they feel no cultural affinity.

Republicans are playing right along with this strategy. The surest way to make an issue or an ally an embarrassment to oneself is to act embarrassed by it. This is what Georgia Republicans are doing by trying to rescind a speaking invitation to NRA official Wayne LaPierre. Since they are not converting to the gun-control side en masse, the main effect is to suggest that these Republicans have something to be embarrassed about. Still more harmful to the party is Mrs. Dole's insinuation that her rivals for the presidential nomination are bowing to "special interests," namely the NRA.

But for a case study in Republican incompetence, one need only look at the mid-May gunfight in the Senate. The first mistake was majority leader Trent Lott's decision to schedule a juvenile-justice bill for consideration so soon after Littleton-a capitulation to Democrats who had threatened to tie gun controls to every other piece of legislation if he didn't-and to do so without specifying how long, and under what rules, it would be considered.

The next mistake came when Democrats made an issue of gun shows, where criminals were supposedly getting guns from private parties without going through background checks. Republicans offered an amendment to let anyone selling guns at a show, and not just professional dealers, perform background checks. Thus Republicans essentially conceded the Democrats' picture of gun shows-venues where shady figures can pass guns under the table to criminals and psychos-without offering a solution.

And (mistake #3) the Senate's schedule forced this amendment to be written and voted on quickly, before Republicans could discuss it at any meetings. Some senators misunderstood the content of the amendment, let alone the political context, when they voted both to pass it and to kill the Democratic proposal. The press coverage of the votes the next day was scathing, and Bill Clinton and Janet Reno made the most of it. Republicans looked unreasonable.

One would have thought the thing to do in this situation was to press the accelerator and leave the scene. It wasn't as though angry citizens were jamming the phone lines. But the bad press agitated Republicans Gordon Smith of Oregon and John McCain of Arizona, who took to the airwaves to denounce what they had done just the day before and to demand a new vote-mistake #4. ("Smith was practically crying," recalls a Senate staffer.) Republicans had to come up with their own proposal for mandatory background checks at gun shows. And they didn't even cave in credibly, since the amendment sponsor was Larry Craig, an NRA board member (#5).

The news stories the next day were even worse, and more prominent. The Washington Post said Republicans had reversed themselves because they were "stunned" by the "uproar" over their votes-and reported that Democrats rejected their new proposal as "still crammed with loopholes." Republicans now looked weak, unprincipled, incompetent, and out of touch, as well as extreme.

Democrats were of course emboldened. Their leaders' initial reaction to Littleton had been remarkably cautious-South Dakota senator Tom Daschle said gun control was not the answer, and Missouri representative Dick Gephardt did not push the issue-perhaps because their home states are socially conservative, perhaps because they remember how much gun control cost them in 1994. But if pro-gun voters were going to stay home in disgust at wayward Republicans, Democrats could exploit the issue without cost.

So Democrats spent another week denouncing supposed outrages such as the "pawn-shop loophole," which let customers get their own guns back without a background check. Next came the "flea-market loophole." When it became clear that Democrats were more interested in scoring points than in passing law, some Republicans wanted Lott to pull the juvenile- justice bill from the floor. He did not (#6), partly because judiciary committee chairman Orrin Hatch had worked on the bill for years and wanted it to pass. Smith and McCain successfully demanded that Republicans accede to the pawn-shop crackdown. But most Republicans, including those two, finally drew the line at a Democratic proposal aimed mainly at harassing gun shows-a proposal that passed amid the theater of Al Gore breaking a tie vote.

The Republicans didn't look very attractive to the public during these wranglings. But grassroots pro-gunners are downright angry at the GOP, which in their view has conceded that they are to blame for Littleton, and they are going to remember the month of May 1999 much longer. Already stalwart pro-gun senators are taking heat from some constituents. But if pro-gun voters can be convinced Republicans are on their side, as in 1994, the issue might yet help the GOP on balance.

A lot depends on what Republicans do now. One option is to pick up the NRA's argument that the administration has been scandalously lax in enforcing existing gun laws. That would fit with the broader Republican theme that Clinton is more interested in press conferences and signing ceremonies, in spin and sizzle, than in follow-through or executing laws. And it beats just being buffeted by events and reacting to Democrats.

The early signs in the House aren't encouraging. The Republican leadership talks about enforcement, but has also endorsed the outlines of the Senate gun-control provisions. Speaker Denny Hastert favors raising the age at which adults can purchase guns from 18 to 21. It's okay for 18-year-olds to own or use a gun, says John Feehery, a spokesman for the Speaker, just not to purchase one. What about pawn shops and flea markets? "Obviously we want to make sure there are no loopholes," says Feehery. What if Democrats try to close "loopholes" by counting more guns as illegal "assault weapons"? "We have not addressed that at all. We're trying to focus on children."

Uh-oh.