Senator’s gun control effort enlists military’s help

WASHINGTON – Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., urged the Obama administration on Sunday to require the military to inform the FBI when a prospective enlistee is rejected for excessive drug use, saying such a policy would have prevented Jared Lee Loughner from buying a weapon.

Loughner had attempted to enlist in the Army but was rejected for failing a drug test, according to a report by the Associated Press.

Schumer said he would push to require the military to notify the FBI about such incidents so recruits who were found using drugs would be flagged in the FBI database – even as he acknowledged that there was little political support for comprehensive gun-control efforts.

“Let’s be honest here: There haven’t been the votes in the Congress for gun control,” Schumer said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “We’re looking for some things where we can maybe find some common ground.”

Republicans have resisted calls for gun control after the Arizona shootings in which six people were killed and U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was wounded, saying the incident speaks to the need for better mental-health intervention, not further gun control.

“The problem with gun laws is they limit the ability to defend yourself,” Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said on “Meet the Press.” “The people that are going to commit a crime or are going to do something crazy aren’t going to pay attention to the laws in the first place. Let’s fix the real problem: Here’s a mentally deranged person who had access to a gun that should not have had access to a gun.”

Republicans are getting little pushback from Democrats, who, after championing gun control in the 1980s and ’90s, have largely backed away from the issue, wary of losing support among rural voters.

There have been a few gun-control proposals over the past week. One by Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg, D-N.J., and Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., would ban the sale and import of high-capacity ammunition magazines, like the one police say Loughner used. Such magazines were prohibited under the assault-weapons ban enacted under President Bill Clinton in 1994. That ban lapsed a decade later.

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat, on Sunday urged lawmakers to restore the ban.

“We need a rational discussion on guns, where we put aside the pressure from interest groups and we take a look and say, ‘Does any citizen protecting themselves or their home or using a handgun to hunt – do they need a clip that has 33 bullets in it?’ ” he said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “And the answer is, ‘Of course not.’ I think the nation’s spirits would be lifted if the Congress acted quickly with the president and reinstated the assault-weapons ban, which also had the ban on these large magazines, these clips that carried 30-plus bullets.”