Gore, who had plans to celebrate his wedding anniversary, decided to show up for the vote after consulting with Democrats, reports TIME White House correspondent Karen Tumulty. The dramatic Senate outcome "now hands the Republicans a huge defeat and loads the Democrats with a lot of ammunition" going into the election season, she says. Ever since gun control came to the floor of the Senate last week, the Republican majority has been struggling against strong political winds to minimize any new restrictions, says TIME congressional correspondent John Dickerson. "The Littleton massacre was bad enough," says Dickerson, but the incident at Conyers, a suburb of Atlanta, has whipped those winds to hurricane proportions. "These are images that are too strong to be on the wrong side of," says Dickerson. The upshot is that the Republicans will now be courting political disaster if they decide to kill the entire gun measure, with its new tougher Democratic amendments, as they have threatened to do in the past. Whats more, the anti-gun sentiment is unlikely to abate soon. On Monday, as a result of a prior commitment, Vice President Gore will be in Atlanta.
A Month After Littleton, Bullets Fly Once Again
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Only hours before President Clinton was set to leave for Littleton to comfort the relatives and survivors of the month-to-the-day-old Columbine High School massacre, the nation's most wrenching epidemic struck again. At a suburban high school in Conyers, Ga., at 8.02 a.m. Thursday, a gunman identified as a sophomore at the school opened fire on a group of students, injuring six. "Some guy was in front of the girls' bathroom in the common area, just firing off shots," sophomore Bill Price told the Associated Press. The impact of this latest relapse was felt immediately in Washington. On the Senate floor Thursday, Republicans found it impossible to hold the guns-alone-aren't-to-blame party line, with Vice President Al Gore casting the deciding vote for a key Democratic measure requiring background checks for firearm sales at gun shows and pawn shops. After that the juvenile-crime package won easy passage, soaring throght the Senate Thursday night by a 73-25 vote, and guess what -- the aspiring Veep gets to take the credit for it.