NEAL KNOX REPORT Gun Bills Moving By NEAL KNOX WASHINGTON, D.C. (March 20) -- There's going to be action on both sides of the Hill in the coming week -- and it's likely to be just as hot and heavy through April or May. If we start losing, it's going to be happening all year. This Wednesday Sen. Paul Simon's Senate Constitution Subcommittee is holding the first of two sets of hearings on Howard Metzenbaum and Handgun Control Inc.'s registration, licensing and everything else bill. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders is the lead-off witness, followed by a string of ban-all-guns physicians and crime victims. I didn't even ask to testify, for it's better to respond in kind: Dr. Ed Suter and other medical professionals who oppose attacks on firearms instead of criminals, and victims of criminals who insist that they have the right to be armed for self-defense -- like Dr. Suzanna Gratia who could only watch in horror as her parents were among 20 defenseless people killed in Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen, Tex. On the same day the House will take up their version of the crime bill which, as it came out of Judiciary Committee last week, has no firearms provisions. We're attempting to keep it that way by forcing a vote on Rep. Charles Schumer's version of the Senate-passed Feinstein ban on so-called "assault weapons" -- so we can defeat it. Schumer -- and Sarah Brady -- don't want to vote right now for they're not sure they can win. So Sarah and Schumer are trying to delay the vote until a coordinated network television blitz in late April, unless they can add it to the final crime bill without a separate House vote. Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) told the New York Times last week that he would insist on including the Senate-passed Feinstein ban in the House-Senate Crime Conference Committee, of which he will be co-chairman. Although the House Judiciary Chairman (who will be co-chair of the conference) is opposed to the gun ban, he may be outnumbered. If the Feinstein ban becomes part of the conference committee compromise, the House -- and Senate -- would have only one up-or-down vote on the entire package. So the only House vote on the semi-auto ban would be fuzzed by the rest of the package -- including provisions for more cops, more prisons and "three strikes you're out." The ranking minority member on the critical House Rules Committee, Rep. Jimmy Quillen (R-Tenn.), is attempting to be sure there is a clean vote on the semi-auto ban -- so it can be defeated. Thankfully, Mr. Quillen is one of those stalwarts who insists that no matter what good things are in the crime bill, if any gun ban gets hung on it, the entire bill must be killed. The Senate-passed bill bans future production of all magazines over ten rounds, requires over-ten-round mags to be treated as firearms, and lists 19 models that could no longer be made. But as BATF has admitted, the bill's generic definition would prohibit manufacture of 26 additional "currently advertised" guns. The bill's generic definition puts at least 184 makes and models into a "restricted" class whose owners could keep them only if they registered the guns with a dealer within a 90-day amnesty period. If so registered, and the required procedure were exactly followed, the affected guns could be subsequently transferred. Trouble is: Anyone possessing or transferring one of the 184 models without having registered it, then following the exacting procedures, would be subject to a $1,000 fine, six months in jail, and permanent loss of the right to own any firearm. If the Feinstein/Schumer ban passes, "we will see the beginning of a landslide which the NRA thugs will not be able to stop," to quote a supposed Handgun Control Inc. document which has been broadly circulated since early January. Whether that purported HCI document is genuine makes no difference, for the bulk of their "confidential plan" is already being pushed in Congress and the states. --- (Retain Neal Knox Associates as your lobbyist and begin receiving the bi-monthly "Hard Corps Report" by contributing to the Firearms Coalition, Box 6537, Silver Spring, MD 20906. For legislative updates call (301) 871-3006 [automated voice] or the Bullet'N Board [computers] (703) 971-4491. Email: NEALKNOX@GENIE.GEIS.COM) March 26 update -- The House and Senate have adjourned for the Passover/Easter holiday. They will return April 12. The House Rules Committee wrangled for almost two days over what amendments would be in order on the crime bill, which Speaker said will have No. 1 priority when they return. Rules committee reportedly will meet during the recess. The speaker remains opposed to any gun provisions being added to the crime bill. Odds are that there will be a vote on a standalone version of the Senate-passed Feinstein Amendment, or a non-binding resolution to instruct House conferees to keep it off the eventual House-Senate Conference version of the crime bill. Handgun Control Inc. is trying to delay the vote until after a television network blitz which CBS is attempting to organize for the last week of April. -------------------- On Monday, Crime Subcommittee Chairman Charles Schumer of New York and New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley will announce a new bill requiring handgun licenses issued by the states after a thorough background check and basic firearms instruction. It would require registration of all handgun transfers, including private transfers; limit licensed buyers to one handgun purchase per month; etc., etc. Schumer has said the bill will eliminate the restrictions on BATF imposed by NRA as part of McClure-Volkmer. The bill sounds like the handgun section of the Schumer/Metzenbaum bill, H.R. 3925/S. 1878/S. 1882 except that it provides for the license for handgun dealers to be boosted to $3,000 per year -- instead of "only" $1,000. ------------------- One of the nastiest provisions of H.R. 3925/S. 1878 is the $300, three-year "arsenal license" required of anyone with more than 20 firearms or 1,000 rounds of ammo, or primers. IF the local police give permission for the license, BATF could inspect your home without warrant three times per year. When I told the advanced collectors about it at the annual Baltimore Gun Show last weekend, some told me it didn't affect them because their guns were made before 1898, and aren't considered "firearms." The BATF apparently intends to try to change that, judging by a March 7 article in the Topeka Capital-Journal. A BATF agent complained that black powder firearms aren't covered by the Gun Control Act of 1968. Some of you younger folks are unaware that the earlier bills tried to include all firearms, all cartridge firearms after 1870, or all modern replicas. March 23 update -- Sens. Howard Metzenbaum and Paul Simon held the first hearings today on Brady II -- Handgun Control Inc.'s registration, licensing, banning and limiting bill. The supposed focus was the emotional and financial cost of gunshot wounds to children. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders led off, followed by the American Pediatric Association and Marian Wright Edelman of the Children's Defense Fund. Those three witnesses took over two hours of the three-hour hearing. Two anti-gun medical doctors were allowed to be challenged by two pro-gun rights physicians -- Dr. Edgar Suter and Tim Wheeler. For no good reason the HCI President was allowed on the panel. Dr. Suzanna Gratia, whose parents were murdered in the Luby's Cafeteria massacre in Texas, was allowed to testify only after a knock-down, drag-out argument behind closed doors. She had Sen. Simon squirming when she blamed legislators for denying her the means to defend herself. It was unfair, but they were smart to make her go last -- when no other Senators were there to be influenced by her testimony. -------- Over on the House side, the Rules Committee wrangled yesterday afternoon and until about 7:30 tonight over which of some 60 amendments would be in order on the crime bill, H.R. 4092. The committee will continue tomorrow, and the House has been told to plan to be voting on the bill until late Friday. It is most unlikely that the House will complete the crime bill before the Passover and Easter recess, which begins this weekend until April 11. No gun provisions are in the crime bill, but Sen. Joe Biden will attempt to attach the Feinstein semi-auto and magazine ban in the House-Senate conference. It's doubtful that we can force a vote on the Feinstein amendment -- which, if we defeated it, would keep it from being added in conference. There is an unconfirmed rumor that Rep. Mel Reynolds has received Rules Committee approval for an even more restrictive gun amendment. ---------- The Maryland Senate yesterday passed a much watered-down ban on so-called assault weapons. It now goes to the House, where the vote will be close. When the vote was taken, a Maryland gun owner silently unfurled an upside down American flag in the Senate gallery. He was removed by order of Senate President Mike Miller, arrested, and hauled down to state police headquarters personally by State Police Col. Lawrence Tolliver. -------------- Everybody in the country seems to have gotten a copy of a supposed secret Handgun Control Inc. 5-year plan. I don't know if its a hoax or not, but the first guys that showed it to me in early January claim that it's real. One version has a distribution list that includes the former HCI President and the former chairman, who is dead. So I wonder. But as ILA Director Tanya Metaksa told me, it doesn't make any difference, for the claimed plan is precisely what they've introduced in Congress or various states, or are publicly talking about doing. ------------------- Several have asked me who I'm supporting for the NRA Board. I'm supporting myself and any 24 others of the 27 nominating committee recommendations listed on page 64 of the American Rifleman.