njured when he was shot during a 1981 assassination attempt against
             Reagan) was signed by President Clinton, on November 30, 1993, and took effect
             in March 1994. This measure imposes a 5-day waiting period for the purchase of
             handguns and provides for the creation of a national computer network to check
             the backgrounds of gun buyers. The Clinton Administration was also able to pass
             an assault-style firearms bill that banned the sale and distribution of certain
             types of automatic weapons. The ban, part of a 1994 crime bill, took effect
             just months before Republicans gained control of Congress.
             During the past year, President Clinton's Administration pushed to get a
             terrorism bill passed and signed into law. During the whole fight, the
             President and his allies insinuated more than once that opponents of the bill
             were weak on crime. Gun laws tend to be passed in an atmosphere of hysteria
             that discourages critical reflection. The Gun Control Act of 1968 was approved
             soon after the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.
             ...