NATION/WORLD UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Monday, February 21, 1994
7
Brady law puzzles gun dealers
Specifics of checks on gun sales unclear
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The Brady law's five-day waiting need for heat-dampening buildings.
week, and confusion abounds among gun dealers and law enforcement officials preparing for paperwork and background checks.
"I don't know anything," said Ron English of Olde English Gun Shop in Tipp City, Ohio, near Dayton.
the law kicks in Feb. 28. The gang-girl totp rants in Washington don't disseminate information to the
field. The net result will be a bottleneck until every thing gets ironed out."
Even the federal official in charge of implementing the law expects preparations to go down to the wire.
"In a lot of places, it's going to be a photo finish," said Robert Creighton of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
Dan Grogan, owner of The Gun and Tackle Store in Dallas, said he didn't have a copy of the form ATF expects gun dealers to use to report a handgun buyer's name and date of birth.
But he does know he's supposed to send it to the chief law enforcement officer of the city or county where the person lives.
"I don't see that it's going to be a big problem," he said.
ATF representative Jack Killorin said all federally licensed gun dealers should receive a package with a copy of the form in the next few days.
Creighton said the biggest issues would be making sure the chief law enforcement officers, or CLEOs, designated to do background checks know they are the designees and letting gun dealers know where to send the Brady forms.
The officer has five days after receiving notice of a prospective gun sale to conduct the background check. The purchase can be stopped if the buyer is found to be a felon or charged with a felony, a fugitive, an illegal alien, a drug user or addict, an adjudicated mental incompetent, or someone dishonorably discharged from the armed forces. If no move is made to stop the sale in five days, the dealer can sell the gun.
Although police pushed for the opportunity to do the background checks, some were expressing bewilderment about what will happen Feb. 28.
"There's supposed to be a background check, but I haven't seen anything about how specific that needs to be," said police Chief Tom Davidson of Tipp City, a town of about 7,000 people.
The law says the officer doing the check — and state and local officials are supposed to determine who that is — must make a "reasonable effort" to check the gun buyer's background.
"We expect a good-faith effort that would include a check of the National Crime Information Center computer system," Creighton said.
"You run a criminal records check and it comes back with an arrest — say it's a violent crime, an armed robbery," he said. "Now you have to follow through to see if the individual was actually convicted. The majority of those records don't show it to conclusion, so the CLEO has to make phone calls and pursue it."
In Seattle, police Sgt. Verlin Judd said he was unsure if the Brady waiting period even applied to Washington, since it has its own five-day wait and background check.
But Washington is covered, Killorin said. Its law requires a check by police or sheriff where the gun store is located, whereas the Brady law says it must be done by officials where the buver lives.
Ohio is trying to develop a statewide system in which the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation and Identification would do all the checks, said Dayton police Chief James E. Newby.
"I'm thankful we're going to have the state system, because it would stretch the police," said Newby, adding that Ohio may impose a fee on gun buyers to cover the cost.
Afghanistan capital suffers food crisis
The Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan — This battered capital is suffering perhaps its worst food shortage in Afghanistan's 15-year war, as heavy fighting and blocked roads have reduced the city's food stocks to a bare minimum
Bread, meat and other essentials are still available in the markets, but prices are beyond the reach of many residents, most of whom are jobless.
The United Nations and the Red Cross have warned that food shortages could soon lead to starvation unless fresh supplies reach the besieged city soon.
"No food or medicine is being allowed to go into Kabul," said Peter Stocker, the head of the Red Cross in Kabul. "We estimate we have one to two weeks of food stocks left."
Afghans have proved amazingly resourceful during the country's long war. Much of the central Asian nation is mountainous and barren, but there have been no major food crises. The
extended family network has ensured that everyone gets enough to eat.
However, President Burhanuddin Rabbani's forces have been embroiled in a battle with rivals since Jan. 1, disrupting supplies in Kabul.
Two large markets have been destroyed in the fighting. About 50,000 people living in schools, mosques and other public buildings are dependent on handouts. About 300,000 more, forced from their homes, have moved in with other families in Kabul, according to the Red Cross.
Pakistan's Foreign Minister Sardar Assef Ali met with Hekmatyar on Friday in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad. Assef Ali said that Hekmatyar had agreed to let food supplies enter Kabul but that there had been no evidence of that happening yet.
Conditions worsened in recent days due to a blockade of the main roads leading into Kabul by one of Rabbani's enemies, Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
Political violence escalates in South Africa
The Associated Press
JOHANNEBURG, South Africa — African National Congress leader Nelson Dlamelo blamed his main black rival, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, yesterday for a massacre of young NC election workers.
Attackers used automatic weapons and knives early Saturday to kill 15 ANC supporters — 12 of them teenagers — who were preparing to conduct a voter education program in the Natal village of Mahehel, 300 miles southeast of Johannesburg. Police have been unable to trace the attackers.
Buthelezi, the head of the Inkatha Freedom Party, condemned the massacre. But Mandela said the Zulu nationalist was fanning violence with his opposition to the country's first all-race election.
Mandela criticized calls from leaders in the violence-torn Natal region to resist the vote April 28-28.
"These are the results of that talk, which we regard as irresponsible talk," Mandela told reporters yesterday.
That was a reference to Buthelezi, who told a rally of his followers last weekend that his call for an election boycott could lead to violence.
"One of them has gone so far as to say he does not want to lie and to promise the people of Natal that there will be no bloodshed in the course of their campaign to disrupt the election," Mandela said.
Natal is considered an Inkatha stronghold, and much of the political violence raging there has been between supporters of the ANC and Inkatha. Inkatha opposes
the election, fearing ANC dominance in a post-apartheid South Africa.
Mandela led a meeting yesterday between the ANC and its political allies, who unanimously endorsed concessions meant to bring conservative Blacks and pro-apartheid whites into the election process. The proposals will be taken up by constitutional negotiators today.
The concessions, which Mandela announced last week, include separate ballots for national and regional elections. A single ballot, as originally planned, would have virtually assured the huge ANC a majority in all the provinces as well as in the national legislature. Two ballots would give small, regionally based parties, such as Inkatha in the KwaZulu Black homeland, a chance to win power bases in their strongholds.
Yesterday, the militant Pan-Africanist Congress released its election platform, promising to return the land to the Black majority. The group is unlikely to get much support in the election, recent polls have shown.
Political violence is expected to intensify as South Africa prepares for its first all-race election in April.
Yesterday, gunmen fired on a bus traveling to an Inkatha rally near Durban, wounding seven people, police said. Three houses in the area were burned to the ground.
Near Johannesburg, dozens of houses were gutted and at least eight people were wounded in a Black township battle linked to the ANC-inkatha feud.
More than 3,000 Black South Africans have been killed by political violence during the past year.
Murder trial for activist set to begin
Secrecy surrounds proceedings in death of abortion physician
The Associated Press
PENSACOLA, Fla. — Barricades are up outside the courthouse, and jury selection is already cloaked in protective secrecy for today's start of a murder trial for Michael F. Griffin, accused of shooting David Gunn outside an abortion clinic a year ago.
The 47-year-old Eufaula, Ala., physician was shot three times in the back March 10 while he was parking behind Pensacola Women's Medical Services. An abortion protest was being held in front of the clinic.
The trial of Griffin, 32, a Christian fundamentalist and former chemical plant worker, is being closely watched by activists for the impact it may have on the national abortion debate.
Gunn's death already has convinced many state and federal lawmakers that special laws are needed to protect abortion clinics, asserted
Eleanor Smeal, president of The Feminist Majority Foundation, which advocates abortion rights.
"It reframed the debate so that this violence was taken more seriously," she said. Smalel also said a first-degree murder conviction would put a chill on anti-abortion violence.
John Burt, a lay minister who was leading the demonstration when Gunn was shot, said he well understood the high interest of abortion rights advocates.
"If Mike got off, gracious, they'd go crazy because that would be a license for everybody else to do something like that. I would guess," Burt said. "I would like to see him get something like second-degree if he has to get anything at all ... so he'd be able to get out and have some kind of life."
Griffin is charged with first-degree murder, and the prosecution is seeking the death penalty.
Griffin's lawyers plan to call local anti-abortion activists to the stand to try to show that they, and Burt in particular, influenced Griffin through speech and action and by giving him anti-abortion videos and literature.
The attorneys contend that such exposure enraged and deluded Grif-
fin, either driving him to temporary insanity or prompting him to kill in the heat of passion. The defense also still could take the line that Griffin did not shoot Gunn at all but falsely confessed to the murder under influence of the anti-abortion material.
The trial is expected to run at least two weeks, with jury selection taking the first five days.
Against the wishes of lawyers on both sides, Circuit Judge John Parnham ordered that jurors be sequestered throughout the trial. Prospective jurors' identities will be kept secret, and each will be questioned in private on matters related to abortion.
The extreme measures are to ensure juror privacy and safety because of the "escalating pattern of violence and intimidation surrounding the abortion issue." Parnham wrote in a pretrial order.
Within days of Gunn's killing, some doctors around the country donned bulletproof vests, and clinics stepped up security.
Five months after Gunn's death, George Tiller was wounded outside his abortion clinic in Wichita. He survived.
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