#56

Subject: NYTimes tells truth about Bush

First, let me introduce the author. His name is R.W. Apple, Jr.
I remember him for his truthful reporting of how Dukakis was
losing Texas because of gun control.
I also saw him on David Brinkley's show. A stout middle-aged gentleman
with a Southern accent.
His article was on the front page on NYTimes today, March 16th, (1989)
and it knocked me off.
It actually sounds like truth. And if it turns out to be that way,
Bush is not having my vote next time.

----------------
    THE SEARCH FOR AN ISSUE

    President's Reversal on Assault Weapons Was Response to a Pressing
    Political Need

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    At a little publicized meeting last weekend in Charlottesville, Va.,
    between Republican leaders in Congress and senior White House officials,
    the conclusion was unanimous. "We're in trouble, we need an issue, and we
    need one fast" after the failure to win confirmation of former Senator
    John G. Tower as secretary of defence, one Capitol Hill participant
    reported afterward.

    Could that issue be semiautomatic weapons? President Bush made a start in
    the direction of tighter restrictions on their sale on Tuesday; politicians
    in both parties believe that public opinion is swinging behind more
    aggressive legislation, and hundreds of law-enforcement officials want it.

    Mr. Bush and his aides have considered, of course, a whole range of
    possible initiatives.

    The president might have seized upon the Eastern Airlines strike, but
    neither the management nor the Unions involved in the Eastern struggle
    command broad public sympathy, and it seemed doubtful to the White
    House that Presidential intervention would do much more than delay the
    inevitable.

    Or Mr. Bush might have focused on the plight of the homeless; indeed, on
    Tuesday he branded the presence of band of "ragged and pathetic figures"
    on the streets of the capital and other cities across the country a
    "national shame".  He has proposed spending $694 million on the problem
    but -- and here's teh catch that robs the proposal of its political appeal
    -- only if the Democrats in Congress agree to cut that much from social
    programs, which they will not.

    But an attack on semiautomatic assault weapons, the kind of rifle used
    in January's murder of five schoolchildren in Stockton, Calif., would
    cost little and it might win widespread support. The president signaled
    his willingness to consider new measures Tuesday, shifting ground
    slightly to ban the importation of such guns indefinitely.

    Mr. Bush, a life member of the National Rifle Association, which opposes
    all gun control, had said less than a month ago that he was "not about to"
    impose a ban on the weapons. But he changed his mind, it is said, after
    lobbying by his wife, Barbara, and by William J. Bennet, the director
    of national drug policy. Today, a senior White House official described
    the President as "deeply torn" on the entire question of gun control,
    and said that during the last month he had requested information on
    the California incident as well as "volumes" of date on automatic and
    semi-automatic weapons.

         Bothered on a 'Personal Level'

   "This is indeed something that has bothered him on a personal level,'
   the White House official said.

   In political terms, Mr. Bush's aides believe, he has relatively little to
   lose, unless changing his stance is interpreted as a flip-flop instead
   of a response to changin circumstances. For that reason, the Administration
   made much of reports that new applications for permits to import the
   weapons were running at nearly triple the rate for all of last year.

   Conservative Republicans, the White House believes, will be hard-pressed
   to oppose restrictions because the guns are so closely identified withe
   drug traffickers and other violent criminals. Certainly, Mr. Bennet, a
   favorite of the right wing, has not balked.

   There is ample support at the other end of political spectrum, too.

       Drugs: a pervasive issue

    "Anything dramatic like this that you can do that even appears to address
    the problems of crime and drugs, you better do it quick," said Clifford L.
    Alexander Jr., a leading liberal Democrat who served as Secretary of
    the Army in the Carter administration. "The drug issue is absolutely
    pervasive politically. It cuts across every line that you can think
    of."

    But as Mr. Alexander and others pointed out, Mr. Bush has banned only
    new imports. That has no impact on further sales of American-made
    semiautomatics rifles or on the estimated 88,000 such weapons already
    in private hands.

    Yet the climate of opinion is cleary changing, both on Capitol Hill and o
    in the nation. As if to prove the point, Colt Industries, a major
    manufacturer, said today that it would voluntarily stop selling
    the AR-15, a semiautomatic version of the Army's M-16, to the general
    public. The step was a response, an official said, to "the way the
    government is headed".

    Many people in political circles now expect Mr. Bush to seek tighter
    limits on ownership of the weapons. Among them is no less a conservative
    than Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, the Republican leader, who said Sunday
    he expected action not only from Mr. Bush but perhaps from the NRA to
    modify their stands on weapons capable of such mass slaughter.

          Doubts even in the South

    "Even people in my part of the country, much as they like to hunt,
    are starting to have doubts about these machine guns," a Southern
    Democrat in the House of Representatives said.

    And Senator Tim Wirth, a Democrat from Colorado, a stronghold of
    outdoorsmen and hunters, is a co-sponsor of a tough limitation bill
    drawn up by Senator Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio. Protests from NRA
    members are rolling in, he said, but he believes an outright ban on
    the sale of assault rifles would prove popular.

    A poll taken last month for Time magazine and the Cable News Network
    showed that most people in the United States support private ownership
    of guns, but not on an unrestricted basis. Fifty-one percent of those
    interviewed said they would make civillian ownership of semiautomatics
    weapons illegal, which is a more-than-adequate base of support for
    Mr. Bush should he decide to move further in that direction, as state
    legislatures are already doing.

    A two-month study undertaken last year for a California assemblyman,
    Robert J. Campbell, to which 206 state and local law-enforcement
    agencies responded, showed overwhelming support for stronger measures
    to limit the ownership of assault weapons, ranging from an outright
    prohibition on their sales. (I meant up to an outright, etc. --df)
    One who favors much tighter controls is Darryl F. Gates, the
    LA police chief, who usually sides with the NRA on gun control
    issues (???).

    "I don't want any more officers to be spray-gunned by street punks
    armed with high-tech killing machines," said Mr. Gates, who advised
    Mr. Bush on crime and drug-abuse during the 1988 Presidential
    campaign.

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