Rarely had so many politicians altered their positions so radically and so swiftly. As mail cascaded into their Capitol Hill offices, Senators and Representatives who had long opposed even the mildest gun-control legislation nimbly switched sides. "Times change," said Nebraska's Republican Senator Roman Hruska, once Capitol Hill's strongest opponent of controls, "and sometimes they change rapidly."
Capitalizing on Congress' receptive mood, Connecticut Democrat Thomas Dodd's Juvenile Delinquency Subcommittee voted unanimously to send the President's bill banning mail-order sales of rifles and shotguns to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will tackle the issue this week. The House Judiciary Committee, which deadlocked 16...