Senate Tests Answers to Youth Violence

WASHINGTON — Still rattled by last month’s school massacre in Littleton, Colo., the Senate on Tuesday opened a wide-ranging debate on how to respond to such outbursts of youth violence--a debate that gun control proponents hope will produce the first new restrictions on firearms since Republicans took charge of Congress more than four years ago.

While most Republicans are still resisting, some have indicated that they may try to fend off more drastic controls by endorsing modest new limits on gun sales to criminals and children.

A task force of Senate Republicans announced Tuesday that during debate on a juvenile crime bill, they would propose measures to impose a lifetime ban on gun ownership by anyone who commits a violent felony as a juvenile, expanded background checks for people who buy firearms at gun shows and new limits on minors’ purchase of assault weapons.

Those proposals fall far short of the broader restrictions sought by gun control advocates--such as a one-a-month limit on a person’s gun purchases. And gun control advocates charge that the proposals are riddled with loopholes.

But the fact that some traditional foes of gun control laws are even making a gesture toward increased regulation is a sign of how the political dynamic has shifted since the 1994 elections, when some analysts believed that support for gun control contributed to the Democrats losing control of Congress.

“The Democratic Party for a long time lost seats because of our support for” gun control, said Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.), chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “Now it’s Republicans’ turn to take political damage.”

Whatever the outcome of this week’s Senate debate, gun control proponents are encouraged by recent signs of the political wind shifting in their favor. Last month, even before the Colorado shootings, Missouri voters rejected a referendum backed by the National Rifle Assn. to allow people to carry concealed weapons. And last week, two gun manufacturing groups endorsed elements of President Clinton’s gun control initiative, including the lifetime ban on violent juveniles from ever buying guns and new regulation of gun show sales.

The Senate’s gun control debate is springing up around a long-stalled bill designed to crack down on juvenile crime. The bill would allow federal prosecutors to try violent criminals as young as 14 as adults, authorize $5 billion over five years in grants to states for juvenile crime prevention and law enforcement, and increase penalties for gang members.

Most Republicans argue that such steps--and better enforcement of existing gun laws--are the best response to youth violence, not more gun control laws.

Still, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) promised gun control advocates a chance to offer amendments on the subject during debate on the juvenile crime bill. Now, a key question is whether Lott will cut off debate before allowing the most controversial gun control amendments to be offered, thus avoiding an up-or-down vote on them. Debate opened Tuesday with members of both parties conceding that no one had a simple answer to the problems laid bare by the Colorado tragedy.

The proposed solutions range far beyond gun control. Indeed, even some Democrats--particularly from rural states--have resisted more gun regulation.

Republicans are planning amendments that focus heavily on the entertainment industry and seek to curb explicit violence in children’s movies, video games and music. These potential amendments would:

* Finance a study by the Federal Trade Commission about whether violence is used to market entertainment to children.

* Give the entertainment industry an antitrust exemption to develop a “code of conduct” to voluntarily limit violence.

* Call for a study by the National Institutes of Health of the impact of violent music lyrics and videos on children’s behavior.

* Prohibit movie companies from using federal lands or property in making excessively violent movies.

The GOP task force, appointed by the leadership to plan strategy on the crime bill, also endorsed the three measures focusing on guns.