
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, November 29, 1993                   TAG: 9311290063
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

2 GOP MAYORS WANT MORE GUN CONTROL

Breaking ranks with top congressional Republicans, GOP leaders of the nation's two largest cities voiced support Sunday for waiting periods for gun purchases and tougher laws to restrict the proliferation of handguns.

New York City Mayor-elect Rudolph Giuliani said he advocated a "uniform licensing system with real teeth in it," including background checks, lessons, tests and required renewals every two years to "show you're stable, you're healthy, you're able to handle a gun."

Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan said California already has a 15-day waiting period, well beyond the five-day waiting period of the Brady bill just passed by Congress. "It doesn't go far enough," Riordan said. "We need some very strict legislation to get guns out of the hands of teen-agers."

The two Republicans, appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press," skirted any direct criticisms of their party for holding up passage of the Brady bill. But both said they would campaign for tougher gun controls.

"Anything we can do . . . that will reduce the number of weapons in the country will help cities in particular and help police officers," Giuliani, a former U.S. attorney, said. "Handguns should be in the hands of police officers."

Riordan, who took office last June, agreed that "we should try to as much as we can keep handguns in the hands of police." He said 13- and 14-year-olds are committing murders and robbing banks and "it's just gotten so out of hand that we've got to get tough on it."

Giuliani also praised the crime bill now making its way through Congress, although he said he wished there was more federal money committed to the plan to put 100,000 more police on the streets.

He said one aspect of the bill that would set up a police corps - paying for college educations in exchange for four years of service on an urban police force - would "have a very big impact on the number of minorities in police departments."

Riordan said he fully supported a Senate amendment to the crime bill, introduced by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat and former mayor of San Francisco, that would ban sales of some semi-automatic weapons.

by CNB