Three years ago, the nation's capital region lived in fear of a pair of snipers who killed 10 people and wounded three in random attacks with a Bushmaster XM-15 .223-caliber telescopic rifle - a gleaming civilian version of the Army's basic M-16 assault rifle popular with recreational shooters. In the aftermath, the rifle was traced to a shoddy gun dealer who claimed he somehow "lost" that war weapon and some 200 other guns to the underground market. Victimized families sued in grief and outrage and won $2.5 million in a settlement that most Americans - except Congress - would pronounce proper.

The House of Representatives, in callow disregard of cause and effect in the nation's harrowing gun carnage, is about to take aim at the Bushmaster settlement by voting what is expected to be final approval of a bill to grant assault-proof protection from damage suits to the gun industry, from manufacturers to dealers. This extraordinary shield, written to the diktat of the National Rifle Association, is so sweeping that it would have barred the D.C. sniper settlement and other valid negligence claims, according to legal experts stunned that any industry could ever win such blanket immunity.

With all the critical issues on the national agenda, from the Iraq war to hurricane recovery, the House's eagerness is obscene as the gun lobby herds lawmakers from both parties behind a bill to deny victimized families their fair day in court. The bill goes beyond barring lawsuits to shielding black-market dealers from administrative loss of their licenses without near impossible burdens of proof.

President Bush talked favorably about the assault weapons ban as a candidate but was notoriously mute when the Republican Congress let the ban expire last year. Surely he would not compound the nation's gun scourge by signing the immunity bill.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company