Capitol Hill Cross-Fire

The gun lobby in Congress, as brazen as it is shameless, recently scored an alarming coup among compliant lawmakers by jamming a routine appropriations bill with amendments to undermine federal laws that track illicit firearms. The legislative blitz, engineered by the National Rifle Association, took the House Appropriations Committee by surprise last month. Yet it was approved 31 to 30, in bipartisan homage to the N.R.A.'s power to stir politicians' fear and obeisance.

The amendments would take a wrench to the existing powers of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to close in on unscrupulous gun dealers by checking on their licenses, sales records and inventories. The rifle linked to last year's fatal sniping attacks on 13 people, most of them in metropolitan Washington, came from just such a questionable dealer, who claimed that 238 firearms were somehow "lost" from his inventory.

Of course, the smell of campaign money can be as pungent as the smell of burnt gunpowder to politicians who witnessed the N.R.A.'s propaganda power in last year's elections.