Lethal Weapon 2

By Kevin Fedarko

The heart-stopping House vote on whether to ban 19 kinds of assault weapons had come down to a near tie last week when Andrew Jacobs developed a crisis of conscience. The Indiana Democrat, who was worried that the ban might infringe on the rights of law-abiding gun owners, had already voted against the bill. But now he was disturbed by the electronic tote boards displayed at either end of the chamber. They read 213 for the ban, 214 against. At that moment, Jacobs recalled, he realized he had "an opportunity to cast a decisive vote for public safety." So while opponents of the ban chortled in anticipation of a razor-close victory, Jacobs padded down the aisle and told the House clerk to change his ballot -- something that rarely happens on major issues.

With that, attention suddenly turned to the trio of holdouts whose decision would determine the fate of the bill. One voted in favor of it. Another against. And then Douglas Applegate, an Ohio Democrat who had exceeded the 15- minute time limit for electronic voting, paced up to the House clerk and filled out a ballot by hand. It was colored green, signifying "Yes." The measure had passed, 216 to 214.

The win was a surprise, come-from-behind victory for a cause that had been written off as lost. Only a few days earlier, supporters calculated that they were 15 to 20 votes short. But a late lobbying push by the President, a surge of support from voters, and the conversion of Illinois Republican Henry Hyde made the difference.

The drama was immense for a measure that is so limited in its scope. The bill would ban the manufacture and sale of 19 types of assault weapons, a category of guns that constitutes only 1% of the firearms owned by the American public. Yet the bill's passage represents the second defeat in six months for a seemingly bulletproof gun-control lobby, which, spearheaded by the National Rifle Association, has managed for years to thwart even the smallest restrictions on ownership of guns. At the same time, the House vote is a victory for thousands of law-enforcement groups and grass-roots advocates, who may now be emboldened to open a new and bigger front in the battle for gun control. The House bill, similar to a provision in the omnibus crime bill passed by the Senate in November, would apply to a group of semiautomatic assault weapons that are among those increasingly favored by drug dealers, armed robbers and mass murderers. Unlike automatic weapons -- strictly regulated firearms that continue firing as long as the trigger is held back -- the guns targeted by the ban can discharge only one round with each pull of the trigger. But in every other respect, they are virtually identical to battlefield weapons that are designed for the purpose of killing or maiming large numbers of people as quickly and efficiently as possible. They have such features as folding stocks, pistol grips and large magazines that enable the shooter to fire as many as 150 rounds without reloading.

The most notorious recent use of an assault weapon occurred late last month in Waukesha, Wisconsin, where two bank robbers tumbled out of their getaway car and shot to death a veteran police captain through the windshield of his vehicle with M1-A1 assault rifles. "He didn't have a chance," said a colleague, Captain Terry Martorano. "They executed him."

The House bill's narrow margin of victory is testimony not only to the intense emotions aroused on both sides of the gun-control issue but also to the odd dynamic that gun-control bills create in the House. Instead of splitting Congress along its traditional fault lines of party and ideology, gun control hinges largely on geography. Lawmakers from urban areas whose constituents feel they are held hostage to crime supported the ban, while Representatives from rural areas where hunting and target shooting is deeply woven into the local culture tended, irrespective of their party, to oppose the bill. This unusual dichotomy divided the leadership on both sides of the House.

On the Democrats' side, majority leader Tom Foley, who comes from a rural district in eastern Washington, found himself in the extraordinary position of opposing a measure sponsored by his President. Career plans probably made a difference too. In the G.O.P., Republican minority leader Bob Michel, who represents Peoria, Illinois, and plans to retire from Congress at the end of this term, voted in favor of the ban, while his designated successor, Georgia's Newt Gingrich, voted against. It was the first time in four years that the Republican leadership split over a such a high-visibility issue.

The lawmaker who led the charge was New York Democrat Charles Schumer, an aggressive Brady Law supporter who has an appetite for media attention and a flair for skating through political opposition. From his perch as chairman of the crime subcommittee, Schumer defied his powerful boss, Judiciary Committee chairman Jack Brooks, to force the bill to the floor. He then told the White House that contrary to Washington wisdom, the measure could actually survive the opposition of the N.R.A. The gun group fought the bill on the grounds that it would have no significant impact on crime. N.R.A. vice president Wayne LaPierre denounced the ban as "cosmetic nonsense."

The gun lobby has a fearsome reputation for staging the electoral equivalent of drive-by shootings against lawmakers who defy them. "They are very powerful," says California state senator David Roberti, who three weeks ago managed to beat back an N.R.A.-sponsored drive to recall him from office for supporting his state's 1989 ban on assault weapons, the first in the U.S. "They have a single-issue intensity that is awesome. In my case, five years after I authored a bill, they tried to recall me. They just didn't forget."

What the gun lobby has recently collided with, however, is an increased fear of violent crime. Twenty-two cities had a record number of homicides last year. That has left many citizens feeling vulnerable and increasingly unsympathetic to those who interpret the Second Amendment as protecting the right of Americans to own guns that seem to have no purpose besides killing large numbers of people. Polls showed that people supported the ban by ratios as lopsided as 4 to 1; a much quoted statistic by proponents of the measure held that though assault weapons may constitute only 1% of the firearms in the U.S., they are responsible for 8% of the killings. Reminding lawmakers of this fact was a letter addressed to the U.S. House of Representatives and signed by three ex-Presidents: Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan (only George Bush abstained).

Finally, there was the White House. Until last week, the Clinton Administration had expected to lose the vote. On Sunday night, one official even confided that with the President 35 votes behind and unlikely to catch up, "we are going to get creamed." But when Schumer began dangling the tantalizing prospect of a come-from-behind victory, the gears shifted.

The Administration got busy with a barrage of media events and tag-team use of the telephone by the President, Vice President, Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen and Attorney General Janet Reno. On Monday, Clinton and Bentsen put in an appearance together, posing with a display of the 19 weapons targeted by the ban. Their strategy represented a novel move: actually identifying with gun owners by recalling fond memories of their own hunting and target-shooting experiences -- and then talking about responsibility. Abandoning the patrician air of the Washington power broker, Bentsen seized hold of a Street Sweeper, a semiautomatic shotgun capable of firing 12 shells from a revolving cylinder, and asked an imaginary audience of fellow duck hunters, "Can you imagine that in a duck blind? That's to kill people."

By Tuesday the scrambling was beginning to pay off as the President bagged his first trophy: Stephen Neal, a Democrat from North Carolina, who told the White House he had changed his mind and was planning to support the ban. The Administration withheld the announcement until Thursday morning, then paraded Neal out into the Rose Garden so that Clinton could praise Neal's change of heart as "an act of conviction and courage" -- thereby ensuring that CNN would pipe news of his conversion into congressional offices just before the voting took place.

As the afternoon wore on, the race was too close to call until Ohio representative Applegate sealed the two-vote margin of victory. When the measure passed, Schumer and his co-sponsor, Mike Synar of Oklahoma, leaped into each other's arms in a rapturous embrace. Similar displays of bear- hugging affection were unfolding at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, where Rahm Emanuel, coordinator of the White House effort, joined senior adviser George Stephanopoulos in the Oval Office for a moment of high-five bonding with the President.

Amid the jubilation, the question remained whether the bill will pave the way for even more restrictive gun laws in the future. Although that is clearly the hope of many gun-control advocates, most congressional legislators seem only too glad to leave this volatile issue behind and move on to other things. As for the N.R.A., the gun group seemed stunned by the defeat. "We have not decided what to do next," said Tanya Metaksa, the organization's chief lobbyist. "It's a Mexican standoff." Only one thing seems certain: the next engagement, when it does arrive, is bound to be bloody.

With reporting by Laurence I. Barrett, James Carney and Michael Duffy/Washington, Jon D. Hull/Chicago and Sylvester Monroe/Los Angeles