Senate Rejects Attempt to Kill Proposed Curb on Handgun Purchases : Legislation: Vote is a stinging defeat for gun lobby. Lawmakers earlier had adopted amendments that would stiffen the omnibus crime bill.

The Senate early today defeated an attempt by the gun lobby to kill the so-called Brady bill, which would impose a seven-day waiting period for handgun purchases.

Voting 54 to 44, the senators scuttled a proposal that instead would have required an instant, computerized check of prospective gun buyers.

The vote followed similar House action last month on the bill, which is named after former White House Press Secretary James S. Brady, who was wounded in the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan in 1981.

It was another stinging defeat for the National Rifle Assn. and other gun-owner groups that had lobbied to strike the waiting period from an omnibus crime bill before the Senate.

Opponents could make another attempt to alter the waiting-period proposal, but the size of the vote margin today heartened gun-control advocates.

“Stand up to the NRA and stand with the police organizations that support a waiting period,” Sen. Howard M. Metzenbaum (D-Ohio) declared before the vote.

Metzenbaum claimed that the gun lobby’s plan of instant background checks of computerized criminal records was “a sham” because it would take years to set up at a cost of millions of dollars.

But Sen. Steve Symms (R-Ida.) called waiting periods “a sham” because in states such as California that already have them, homicide rates have soared and police are bogged down in record-checking paperwork, he claimed.

The Senate planned to resume work on the crime bill today but appeared to have given up hope of finishing it before Congress departs on a weeklong Fourth of July recess.

The far-reaching legislation would greatly broaden the federal death penalty, severely curb Death Row appeals, increase aid to law enforcement agencies and add new gun controls.

Republican allies of the gun lobby threatened to filibuster the bill in protest against the handgun waiting period as well as a proposal to expand a ban against certain semiautomatic assault weapons.

Sen. John Seymour (R-Calif.) voted for the Brady bill substitute, while Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) opposed it.

In earlier action Thursday, the Senate attached a host of amendments to the omnibus crime measure, including major proposals to stiffen federal penalties for:

--Using a gun in a felony.

--Selling drugs at truck stops and public housing projects.

--Exploiting minors in the commission of a crime.

--Pirating computer software.

--Trafficking in counterfeit goods.

--Being convicted of at least three violent or serious drug crimes.

With lawmakers clearly using the crime bill to score points with voters in next year’s elections, the Senate adopted other amendments that ranged from cracking down on telemarketing fraud and drug paraphernalia to banning the advertising of marijuana seeds.

Another amendment added to the bill, offered by Seymour, would order government agencies to study legal issues surrounding women who violently retaliate against physical abuse from men.

“The admissibility of ‘battered women’s syndrome’ as a defense” in a criminal trial “is being debated in a number of states, including California,” Seymour said. “Some of these women have taken the law into their own hands to bring a halt to their torture. Frankly, I sympathize with them . . . . Both Congress and the courts need a thorough psychological and legal analysis of the issue.”

The day’s most sweeping amendment, approved by 88 to 11, would require a minimum 10-year sentence for using a gun in a felony, at least 20 years for firing it and a minimum of 30 years for using a machine gun or a silencer.

“It’s time for real gun control,” declared the author, Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.).

A day earlier, he won Senate adoption of an even tougher amendment, authorizing the death penalty for any murder involving a gun transported across state lines. That measure would let federal prosecutors seek executions in 14 states where capital punishment is not on the books.

On the proposed waiting period on handgun purchases, the Senate measure requires that police run a background check on prospective buyers during the seven-day waiting period.

The House bill does not mandate such a check of criminal and mental health records to determine if the customer is eligible to own a gun.

Neither version would apply to California, which already has a 15-day waiting period.

On assault weapons, the Senate legislation would extend President Bush’s ban on 47 types of imported assault weapons to 14 domestically produced models. The NRA vigorously opposes the ban as unconstitutional.

As it stood Thursday night, the omnibus bill would give Bush nearly all he has sought on expanding the federal death penalty to cover 52 crimes and on curbing so-called habeas corpus appeals by prisoners on Death Row.