A Blow to The N.R.A.

By ALEX PRUD''HOMME

Like rival gunfighters, the National Rifle Association and Handgun Control Inc. stalked each other for months. The contest hardly seemed equal: with 2.7 million members and an annual budget of $86 million, the giant N.R.A. seemed to tower over the bantamweight gun-control group, which has only 1 million members and a $6.5 million budget. But after the smoke cleared from last week's shootout on Capitol Hill, advocates of gun control had triumphed in a surprisingly lopsided 239-186 House vote for the so-called Brady bill.

Named after James S. Brady, the former White House press secretary who was crippled in the attempted assassination of President Reagan in 1981, the bill calls for a seven-day waiting period for the purchase of handguns. The proposal is designed to give police time to check a purchaser's criminal and mental-health records (although it does not require such checks); furthermore, say advocates, the wait will provide a "cooling-off" period for hot-headed customers.

Before voting on Brady, the House rejected an N.R.A.-backed counterproposal: a national computerized data bank allowing for immediate checks on a gun buyer's record. Critics claimed it would take years and cost hundreds of millions of dollars to set up such a computer network and charged that the plan was really designed to scuttle the Brady bill. "The stranglehold of the N.R.A. on Congress is now broken," crowed Representative Charles E. Schumer, ; a New York Democrat and a co-sponsor of the waiting-period bill. "They had this aura of invincibility . . . and they were beaten."

It was a very different story in 1988, when a similar Brady proposal was roundly defeated in the House. But as crime statistics continued to soar, Brady and his wife Sarah -- both conservative Republicans -- kept up their single-minded fight. By last March, a Gallup poll showed that 87% of Americans favored a seven-day waiting period. During the same month, the Brady bill gained political momentum when Reagan, an N.R.A. lifetime member, endorsed it.

But the battle is far from over, and progun forces still stand a good chance of success in the Senate. Reason: since the gun-control debate is largely defined by geographical rather than party affiliations -- the fear of inner- city crime being countered by the rural affinity for firearms -- the preponderantly rural Senate may well vote against Brady. Both Senate majority leader George Mitchell of Maine and Republican leader Bob Dole of Kansas, oppose the Brady bill, partly because they hail from rural states. Lifetime N.R.A. member President Bush does not support the gun-control plan either, but has vaguely suggested that he would not veto it if it were incorporated into his omnibus anticrime package.

Whether or not the Brady bill ultimately succeeds, the momentum built by the measure has helped put the N.R.A. on the defensive. Long considered one of the country's most powerful lobbies, the progun group has been facing a steady decline in membership and revenue over the past few years. A bruising internal battle, in which hard-liner Wayne LaPierre last month replaced moderate J. Warren Cassidy as executive vice president, has left the N.R.A. with what some describe as a "siege mentality."

In response to the Brady bill, LaPierre has spearheaded a blitzkrieg of mailings, phone calls and advertisements designed to inflame N.R.A. members and intimidate foes. On the day of the House vote, the organization poured its money into full-page ads in the Washington Post, while the airwaves were flooded with anti-Brady spots. "The N.R.A. really overplayed their hand with the massive advertising campaign," said Representative F. James Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican. It "became a vote on whether you support the N.R.A. or not." It remains to be seen whether the gun lobby will make good on its threat to defeat opponents in future election campaigns, as it has effectively done in the past.

The Brady bill, which does not require identity checks and will not remove guns that are already in the hands of criminals, is a very limited piece of legislation. Said House Speaker Thomas S. Foley, a Washington State Democrat who did not vote on the gun-control issue last week: "I think all handgun- violence controls overpromise their results, without exception." But Brady's approval by the House represents a significant symbolic victory for the gun-control forces and shows that legislators are responding to the public's concerns about crime. Says Houston homicide division Captain Bill Edison, one of the many top police officials around the country who favor Brady: "I can't sit out here amongst the carnage I see on the streets and not support a waiting bill. A waiting period will save x number of lives. How many, we could argue about forever."

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: TIME Chart

[TMFONT 1 d #666666 d {Source: FBI Crime in the United States}]CAPTION: U.S. murders by handguns

With reporting by Jonathan Beaty/Los Angeles and Hays Gorey/Washington