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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A leading gun rights advocate refused on Sunday to apologize for saying President Clinton exploited gun violence for political gain, while a key U.S. senator signaled that he may strip gun control provisions from a bill before Congress.
National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre intensified his attack on the White House despite moves by some pro-gun supporters, including leading Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush, to distance themselves from his explosive anti-Clinton comments last week.
"No apology,'' said LaPierre on Fox News on Sunday when asked if he would back away from his assertion that Clinton was responsible for gun deaths because, LaPierre said, authorities failed to aggressively prosecute violations of federal firearms laws. LaPierre dug in when pressed on other programs about whether he would apologize or retract his statements.
LaPierre said last week that Clinton had "blood on his hands'' for the 1999 killing of Ricky Birdsong, a college basketball coach killed by a man not prosecuted for allegedly violating a federal gun laws before going on a shooting spree.
And on Sunday, LaPierre linked a failure by federal authorities to prosecute an alleged gun violation to the shooting death of a police officer in Atlanta last week.
He said Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, 56, a former 1960s radical known as H. Rap Brown, was carrying an unlicensed gun when arrested in a 1995 case, but that federal prosecutors never pursued it.
"They could have taken him off the streets for up to 10 years,'' said LaPierre. Al-Amin is suspected of killing Fulton County Deputy Sheriff Ricky Kinchen, 35, on Thursday and remains at large.
"There's 179,000 felons and fugitives and stalkers walking the streets tonight because he (Clinton) hasn't prosecuted any of them,'' LaPierre said.
White House press secretary Joe Lockhart, traveling with Clinton in India, told NBC's "Meet the Press'' that LaPierre's claims were "really sick rhetoric'' and "should be repudiated by anyone who hears it.''
White House Domestic Policy Adviser Bruce Reed said LaPierre's allegations of lax enforcement were "just not true,'' and he said federal prosecution of gun crime had risen 16 percent since Clinton took office in 1993.
"We've stopped 500,000 felons, fugitives and stalkers from getting their hands on guns,'' Reed said on Fox. "And the most important statistic is that gun crime in the country is down 35 percent.''
LaPierre disputed that figure, saying that federal enforcement of gun crime had dropped by 50 percent in the past seven years.
While the White House and the NRA continued to wage rhetorical combat, a senior lawmaker critical to passage of any gun control measure suggested a way to radically redirect the gun debate in Congress.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (news - web sites), a Republican from Utah, said he might remove gun provisions from a $5 billion juvenile justice bill, which contains major gun control proposals now being considered by Congress. It has been stalled for months.
Hatch said there are other important measures in the bill to combat juvenile crime, and proposed that lawmakers take up separate, all-inclusive gun legislation down the road.
"I'll tell you what I'm thinking of doing,'' Hatch said on CBS's "Face the Nation. "I'm thinking of stripping the gun provisions off that bill, and then having one major battle on guns and let the chips fall where they may.''
Congressional negotiations over gun control have mainly stalled over a Democratic proposal to give law enforcement three business days to complete background checks for weapons purchased at gun shows. Many Republicans want those checks to take only 24 hours.