Kerry fires both barrels at Bush on gun stand

ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Sen. John Kerry, who likes to present himself as a hunter and gun owner, accused President Bush on Friday of being beholden to the National Rifle Association and the gun lobby because he hasn't pressed Congress to extend the 10-year-old assault-weapons ban that expires Monday.

Bush, on a campaign bus tour through West Virginia and Ohio, slammed Kerry again for shifting his position on Iraq and said Saddam Hussein would still be in power if Kerry were president.

Kerry advocates renewing the assault-weapons ban. He chose two states with sizable hunter populations to issue his toughest indictment of Bush yet on the issue. He first made his point in Missouri, a state with nearly half a million hunters, and reiterated it later in Pennsylvania, home to some 1 million hunters.

During the 2000 presidential campaign, Bush said he'd support an extension of the ban. But while he's been effective in pushing his own legislation through the Republican Congress, he hasn't actively encouraged congressional leaders to renew the 1994 law.

"George Bush, who said, 'Oh, I'm for that,' never asked the Congress to pass it, never pushed the Congress to pass it, never stood up, gives in to the NRA, gives in to the special interests, and America's streets will not be as safe because of the choice George Bush has made," Kerry said.

Kerry portrayed the ban as a means to deter terrorism, thus trying to weaken Bush on turf where polls show the president is strong.

"If you're going to make America safe . . . you have to stand up for homeland security, stand up for police officers and keep those weapons off the streets of our country," he said in Allentown.

Kerry's remarks came two days after the NRA launched a $400,000 ad campaign in several crucial election states portraying Kerry as an opponent of the Second Amendment's right to bear arms. Kerry is banking on polls that show two-thirds of Americans believe the ban should be renewed. The stance is also popular with liberals and suburban women, many of whom believe in even tougher gun restrictions.

For his part, Bush included the Second Amendment in a laundry list of things that he said he stands for when reciting his otherwise standard stump speech in Huntington, W.Va. Kerry has cultivated an image of an avid and skilled sportsman in an attempt to reverse his party's image as anti-gun. He's gone hunting in Iowa and shot skeet in Ohio. Campaign workers distribute pictures of Kerry shotgun in hand at union halls in battleground states.