December 22, 2009 12:00 AM

National Rifle Association members, take ownership of the organization. A recent poll indicates that when it comes to managing secure and sensible gun ownership, members have more common sense than NRA's officials.

Republican pollster Frank Luntz surveyed NRA members and non-NRA gun owners. Turns out, four out of five who took the survey favor laws that would ban people on the terrorist watch list from buying guns. Nearly seven out of 10 supported requiring gun show dealers to conduct criminal background checks of customers, and nearly eight out of 10 favored a requirement that gun owners alert police if their guns are stolen or lost.

This is good news. For years, the NRA has actively opposed any and all legislation, regardless of how sensible, by inciting fear among gun owners that any limitation was tantamount to a government seizure of their weapons. Anyone who supported any restraints on gun sales was called anti-gun. The poll results show just how wrong that contention is.

So, poll results indicate that most NRA members don't actually share the NRA's tunnel vision. They understand that the importance of keeping guns out of the wrong hands is even greater than an untrammeled ability by any American to buy and own any kind of gun at any time. They don't believe the NRA's contention that reasonable restrictions will inevitably lead to confiscation. And they support ways to help local police and national security personnel track and find illegal weapons and the criminals who use them.

Mayors Against Illegal Guns formed more than three years ago to support reasonable reforms of gun laws aimed at reducing the proliferation of illegal guns even while defending the second amendment. MAIG now has more than 500 mayor members, among them Stroudsburg's Mayor Charlie Baughman. Many MAIG members are also NRA members. This year Baughman and many other mayors with MAIG supported measures to require the reporting of lost or stolen handguns.

NRA members should work with MAIG to repeal the federal Tiahrt amendment, which prevents law enforcement officials from obtaining full access to gun-tracing information from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and which requires the FBI to destroy records of some specific background checks within 24 hours. Nearly seven of 10 respondents to the Luntz poll agreed with the statement that the federal government should not hinder police in such ways.

The U.S. Congress must drop its decades-long deference to the NRA's unfounded paranoia and pass sensible gun laws. Law enforcement officials could do much more to prevent guns from getting into the wrong hands without threatening citizens' hallowed second amendment rights.