Gun Control War Targets Our Worst Nightmares

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While many Americans tout the Brady Bill and the ban on semiautomatic weapons as victories against gun-toting maniacs, other citizens see them as an all-out assault on their constitutional rights.

The only thing Americans seem to want more than they want guns is gun control. In May, after furious infighting and dramatic last-minute reversals, the House of Representatives passed by only two votes a ban on the manufacture and importation of semiautomatic assault weapons. Just months earlier, after a battle, Congress passed the Brady Bill, which requires a waiting period and background check for the purchase of handguns. The gun-heaven state of Virginia (which once held the dubious distinction of being the gun supplier to East Coast criminals) has enacted a law limiting handgun purchases to one per month. All this, despite massive lobbying efforts by the National Rifle Association and other pro-gun groups.

In the wake of recent mass murders such as those committed on the Long Island Rail Road, where Colin Ferguson killed six people aboard a commuter train, and in San Francisco, where Gian Luigi Ferri stormed a downtown law office and gunned down eight people, public opinion has grown increasingly in favor of gun control. In fact, according to a 1993 Gallup Poll, more than 70 percent of Americans - including a majority of gun owners - like the idea.

This is bad news for gun-ownership advocates, who see their rights being chipped away a little at a time. Civil libertarians - some of whom do not use or own guns - nonetheless are up in arms about erosions of Second Amendment rights. The subject of gun control has even emerged in internal debates among members of the American Civil Liberties Union, which has never come out in full force for the Second Amendment.

Concurrently, gun sales upswing - by as much as 50 percent since 1985, according to some estimates. People who own guns are holding tightly to them as more and more Americans, gripped by a mounting fear of crime, decide to take their safety into their own hands.

There are 200 million legally purchased firearms in the United States; nearly half of all American households contain at least one gun. And a significant number of these are handguns: affordable, concealable, easy-to-use - and the center of the firestorm behind the Brady Bill and other gun-control proposals.

"Handguns are disproportionately used in gun violence," asserts Jeff Muchnick, legislative director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, which advocates a ban on the manufacture, sale and purchase of guns by and to the general public.

Do handguns deserve their dark reputation? Every year, more than 600,000 Americans - mostly …