"Honey, I forgot to duck."

     Remember the day Ronald Reagan was shot? The President, grinning up from his hospital bed on March 30, 1981, was able to joke about a gunman's attempt on his life. His press secretary, James Brady, fared much worse; shots from the same pistol left him permanently disabled.

     The nation was shocked, the gun control movement galvanized.

     This years observance of 14 years since shooting of Reagan and Brady by John Hinckley is an occasion for renewed consideration of what can realistically be done to keep firearms from falling into the wrong hands and being used for the wrong purposes.

     The leading proposal has been to require that any retail purchase of a handgun be preceded by a waiting period during which a background check on the purchaser's criminal and mental health record could be conducted.

     Well, we have it the Brady Law, and already law enforcement agencies from all over the country are decrying their inability to comply. They have been told in some cases to dispense with the background check. So much for ill conceived legislation.

     A waiting period has strong initial appeal. The tradeoffs appear positive...relatively small costs in exchange for significant gains in public safety.

     An exhaustive study of the issue by attorney and gun control expert David Kopel concludes that this perception is misleading. When all the evidence is dispassionately weighed, all the consequences traced, Kopel finds that there is a very real possibility that gun waiting periods threaten public safety.

     The reason...law enforcement resources diverted and law-abiding citizens disarmed. Proponents are doubtless right in saying that a federally imposed waiting period would save at least one life somewhere, the author concedes.

     That is beside the point if America as a whole would be marginally less secure against crime, violence, and fear as a result of the Brady Law. Kopel's research and analysis show why the waiting period's vast cost is likely to more than cancel its apparent benefits.

     Advocates of the waiting period use the Hinckley case as a symbol, opinion polls to suggest momentum, criminological studies and state experience for empirical validation. None of the four stands up to scrutiny, however. The Brady Law would not in fact have halted purchase of the gun used to shoot Reagan and Brady, just as it would not have stopped Colin Ferguson, responsible for the Long Island Rail Road shootings.

     Polling results turn out to be flawed and mixed. No criminologist has shown that waiting periods work. California and other states with waiting periods show only a minuscule arrest rate and widespread unfairness to the law-abiding. Name one state with waiting periods where the crime rate has been reduced!

     There is shock value in the scenario of guns "too easily bought" by drug dealers, psychotic killers, persons bent on killing a spouse or themselves, or purchasers intending to use them in hot blood. Yet hard data and common sense show little benefit from a waiting period even in such lurid situations.

     Against the meager-to-nil impact such waiting periods have on crime we must weigh their clearly negative impact on the average American's ability to count on police protection or protect himself.

     Specifically, is it desirable:

• To have law enforcement agencies bogged in a vast new paperwork morass and harried with lawsuits over insufficient background checks?

• To have a threatened person face dangerous, sometimes indefinite, delays in obtaining a self-defense gun?

• To set in place a mechanism for de facto universal gun registration and a political stepping stone to outright gun prohibition?

• To legislate in disregard of the principles that should safeguard not only the Second Amendment, but the whole Bill of Rights?

     Alternatives to the waiting period proposal might include a Virginia style instant phone check on the purchaser's background, creation of a firearm's owner ID card, or adding one's fingerprint to a computerized driver's license [the so-called 'smart card']. These measures are preferable in many respects, since they are at least as effective as waiting periods at disarming criminals, and are less likely to be used to disarm citizens.

     Yet these alternatives, like the waiting period, are subject to evasion by criminals and abuse by government administrators, and create the serious risks of privacy violations.

     Ultimately, the Kopel study concludes, practicality and constitutionality are best served by strategies that aim to cut gun crime not by targeting the legitimate firearm's trade, but instead by aiming at the black market where most criminals get most of their guns.