ary 4,
             1987. The bill was referred to the Judiciary Committee, and the debate began. Throughout the debate on the Brady bill, there was always a clear partisan split; most
             of the Democrats, except for those from the Southern states, supported the bill while most of the Republicans were in the opposition. For example, when the first introduced Brady bill lost to an amendment by Bill McCollum (R-FL) for a study of an instant check system (228-182), most Republicans voted for the McCollum amendment (127 for and 45 against) while the majority of the Democrats voted against it (127 for and 137 against). The exception was the Southern Democrats most of whom joined the Republicans to vote for the amendment. This party division was not so surprising, however, considering the huge campaign contributions made by the chief gun lobby, the National Rifle Association (NRA), directed mostly to the Republicans, and the exception of the Southern Democrats could be explained by the gun right supportive nature of their constituents. In the 1992 election for example, this organization made $1.7 million contribution to its sympathetic congressional candidates and sp!
             ent another $870,000 in independent expenditures for congressional races.1 The influence the NRA exercised on the legislation was enormous since the final bill passed in 1993 was a compromise version reflecting some of the NRA-sought provisions. I could say that it was because of this persistent lobby that the Brady
             bill took as long as 7 years to become a law. On the other side, the advocates of the bill enjoyed a wide support from the public as well as from the Handgun Control Inc., the chief gun control lobby led by Sarah Brady, the wife of James Brady. The consistent public support for the bill from the introduction through the passage of the bill was manifested by many polls. One of the polls conducted by NBC News and Wall Street Journal on the enactment of the bill said that 74...