NO CHANCE FOR QUICK RELIEF

The latest assassination attempts have brought renewed outcries to restrict and reduce the 40 million handguns that will take more than 10,000 lives in the U.S. this year. Said Los Angeles Mayor Thomas Bradley: "We can no longer live with the nightmare staring at us out of the barrels of handguns." Calling for the "complete elimination of handguns," Chicago's Mayor Richard Daley scoffed, "You don't see someone shooting rabbits with a handgun. The only thing you hunt is human beings." With a greater sense of grievance than most people, Senator Edward Kennedy declared, "If America cares about the safety of its leaders, it can no longer ignore the shocking absence of responsible gun control."

Some members of Congress were stirred to action. Representative John Murphy, a New York Democrat who authored the ineffective 1968 gun-control law banning some imports, introduced a new bill to require registration of all guns and owners; anyone buying a gun would have to get a certificate of eligibility. Democratic Congressman John Conyers from Detroit proposed confiscating almost every handgun except those used by the police and armed services.

These bills came on top of no fewer than 150 others under consideration by Conyers' House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime. They range from a weak measure offered by President Ford that would prohibit the import and manufacture of cheap ($25) "Saturday night specials" to a proposal to outlaw the sale, ownership or possession of all handguns by private citizens. This and many other measures would be largely unenforceable. But the appalling fact is that despite the recent near tragedies and the countless tragedies that lie ahead for victims of gun wounds, not one of these 150 bills has much chance of passing.

The reasons, in part, are all too familiar. Many Americans treasure their guns, and have persuaded themselves that their liberties would be in jeopardy if their weapons were removed or even registered. For a variety of historical reasons, they care more passionately about keeping their guns than other Americans care about disarming them. Though polls indicate that 64% of the public favors some kind of tougher Federal restrictions on guns, these people do not carry the political weight of the determined and well-organized gun supporters. They have proved that they will punish a politician if he so much as mentions gun control, and they have shown that they can defeat him.

Much of the power of the gun enthusiasts is embodied in the National Rifle Association. With 1,050,000 members and an annual budget of $10 million, it is one of the most powerful lobbies in the nation. Though the N.R.A. has eased its stand against the banning of Saturday night specials, it has managed to squelch any legislation with teeth. When the N.R.A. objected to a recent CBS television documentary on hunting, all except one sponsor--Block Drug Co.--canceled out, and CBS ran a sequel giving the rifleman's point of view. The N.R.A. takes pride in its nationwide programs, which offer instruction in the proper use of firearms and safety in hunting. Nevertheless, the N.R.A. is too soft on gun control for some gun supporters. They have formed the National Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, which is striving to repeal the mild 1968 gun law. Some 60 members of Congress have signed up.

Guns have bred more guns. Because of the terrifying proliferation of handguns in the past few years--they are increasing at the rate of 2.5 million per year--more people are buying them in self-defense. It is not just the frontier mentality that lingers on in America; to a considerable extent in big cities, frontier conditions have been reestablished because of the surge in violent crime. Ira Latimer, executive vice president of the American Federation of Small Business, told Conyers' subcommittee: "The gun is the self-defense weapon of the cities. Small businessmen need them to survive." Some law-abiding citizens are reluctant to lay down their guns until the criminals have done so. The nation has reached a fearful impasse.

Every proposal seems to have drawbacks and arouses opposition beyond the N.R.A. Many blacks, for example, are opposed to banning the Saturday night specials because they are the only means the poor have of defending themselves. Detroit's Mayor Coleman Young, a black, overruled his own police chief when he tried to ban handguns. A ban on the manufacture of handguns would certainly cut down one source of supply, but the production of guns would hardly be eliminated. "It would create rather than solve a problem," says Lieut. James Eisel, an officer in Wayne State University's public safety department. "You would wind up with a vast black market supplied and run by organized crime."

Another possibility is registration or licensing. Massachusetts passed a law last spring imposing a mandatory one-year sentence on anybody caught with an unlicensed gun away from his home or place of business. It is still too early to tell if the law will be a deterrent; much depends on whether people arrested will actually be convicted. New York State has had a tough registration law on the books--the Sullivan Law--since 1911, but it results in few arrests, fewer convictions and no jail sentences. A federal registration law would undoubtedly help keep track of all guns and deny them to potentially dangerous or mentally unstable people. Conyers points out that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms already has the authority to keep central records of gun purchases, but it has been reluctant to exercise its power.

Registration, however, would do little to cut down on the number of handguns in circulation unless police powers are increased; no criminal would surrender his gun voluntarily. "Under our present civil liberty standards," says

Donald Santarelli, former chief of the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, "you'd have to engage in a massive house-to-house search that would clearly be unconstitutional without a search warrant based upon reasonable cause."

While almost no one thinks that anything dramatic can be done soon, former New York City Police Commissioner Patrick Murphy says: "Any step forward, even just a ban on the Saturday night specials, is a step in the right direction." Adds John Kaplan, professor of law at Stanford: "It is going to take 30 years to resolve this problem. Even then you are never going to end all gun crimes. But you can substantially reduce the number of them by restricting guns, which gradually wear out or disappear. Once they are less available, fewer crimes will be committed with them."

For all the obstacles, gun lovers and gun haters are beginning to find a common cause in support of harsher sentences for persons committing a crime with a gun. Both the criminal and the gun would then be removed from society for a long time. Last week in California, Governor Jerry Brown signed a new law requiring a mandatory sentence, generally in the range of five years, for anyone using a gun to commit a felony. Said Brown: "By signing this bill, I want to send a clear message to every person in this state that using a gun in the commission of a serious crime means a stiff prison sentence. Whatever the circumstances, however eloquent the lawyer, judges will no longer have the discretion to grant probation even to first offenders. The philosophy of this bill is based not on sociology or Freudian theory but on simple justice."

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