GUN CONTROL WATCH : Nuts Over Guns

When will America get the message?

When Dean Mellberg legally purchased a military-style assault rifle from a federally licensed gun dealer in suburban Spokane, Wash., he was asked what he intended to do with the gun. His reply, “Target plinking and maybe some hunting.”

Right. Five days later the former serviceman, 20, who was discharged from the Air Force in May because of psychiatric problems, calmly entered nearby Fairchild Air Force Base, took out his newly purchased Chinese-made MAK-90 semiautomatic assault weapon and began firing as fast as he could pull the trigger. The result: five people killed, including an 8-year-old girl, and 23 others wounded before Mellberg himself was shot to death by military patrol officers.

Would the pending federal assault gun ban have prevented such an atrocity? We’ll never know. But we do know that the legislation, despite have cleared both the House and the Senate, is languishing in a conference committee. That’s inexcusable.

House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.), who represents the district where the shootings took place, called the incident a “senseless tragedy.” But so is congressional dithering on the gun issue.

Congress must get the assault gun ban to the President. And it should pass the so-called Brady II bill, which mandates national gun licensing and registration provisions, sets limits on gun possession and tightens restrictions for gun dealers.

That’s the kind of future we want for America--not more Spokane-style tragedies.