July 17, 2007

Leadership of Congress has shifted to the Democrats, but the National Rifle Association's power to block sensible steps to curb gun violence endures. Last week, a bipartisan majority of the House Appropriations Committee bowed to the N.R.A.'s warped agenda and rebuffed two attempts to repeal a four-year-old measure that denies police and local governments broad access to federal data needed to effectively combat illegal gun trafficking.

The outcome was a defeat for public safety and for the efforts of Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York and more than 30 national and state police organizations to repeal the so-called Tiahrt provision. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and other lawmakers who supported its repeal, must now focus on preventing further damage. The Senate Appropriations Committee has approved an even more noxious bill that would threaten law enforcement officials with prison time for using gun tracing data beyond a specific investigation, say, for identifying and targeting trafficking patterns.