Voting at gunpoint

A push IN CONGRESS to shield gun makers and dealers from most liability lawsuits is a spectacularly dangerous idea that is being muscled to a Senate vote by its die-hard leadership. Senate moderates have a choice: submit now and swallow the shame later, or stand up to the National Rifle Assn. and its electoral threats.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) has shoved aside the nation’s more pressing needs to force a vote on the NRA’s top priority. Even the $491-billion defense appropriation bill is off the schedule until at least September.

Lawmakers will start losing days of their precious August vacations until they vote on the bill, which could happen as early as today.

What makes this bill so awful? For starters, some gun lawsuits actually work.

Lawsuits coupled with legislation put most of the six Southern California handgun companies dubbed the “Ring of Fire” out of business. In 1993, those companies had flooded the country with nearly 900,000 “Saturday Night specials” -- rapid-fire, low-caliber handguns that went for as little as $50 apiece.

The “frivolous lawsuits” that the bill’s supporters want to scuttle put an end to a cynical corporate misuse of gun laws to funnel cheap weapons directly to criminals.

There are still far too few checks on gun purchases in the United States. Federal background-check data on potential gun buyers must be destroyed hours after a purchase is approved, making the information useless for later law enforcement and antiterrorism operations.

A recent Governmental Accountability Office study discovered that 35 people whose names appeared on terrorism watch lists were able to buy a gun, despite the checks. Private and swap-meet sales are even less regulated.

In a 1998 sting, dozens of Chicago undercover officers walked into gun stores and bragged about their criminal intentions for the weapons. In each case, the dealers handed over a gun after being paid cash. The city’s resulting lawsuit against dealers and manufacturers was thrown out in a ruling that was widely criticized in the legal community.

The legislation before the Senate would afford a particularly lethal industry among the most sweeping lawsuit protections ever conceived. The exceptions cited by proponents as protecting the rights of the truly wronged are so narrow as to be virtually unusable.

Frist and company are driving their pro-gun steamroller in defiance of public opinion and in defiance of large police departments. Cities struggling to stop heedless gun sales complain bitterly about the absence of federal firearms law enforcement.

The history of Congress in standing up to the NRA is poor (think of last year’s refusal to renew the assault weapons ban, much less strengthen it). Senators who vote the NRA line not out of conviction but in fear of losing the next primary election should at least consider whether the gun lobby has finally gone too far in voters’ eyes.