European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - May 31, 1989, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Page 10 the stars and stripes Flora Lewis Nof hint w/7/ be quite the some As before in China = tin in excuse. Pfc Paris the drama of the news these Days has induced vertigo intoxication with the idea that if some things can change so fast and so unexpectedly everything can and must be changed Over night. For the last several years people who watch the communist world attentively have had to argue against die hard sep tics that something important was Hap pening Hal new questions were emerging which require new Western answers. Suddenly the resistance to Day by Day accumulating reality has swung completely around. The collapse of communism has been proclaimed by those who said it would always be the same familiar enemy. They Are indignant Hal the United slates did t do something to fulfil Stu Dent aspirations for democracy in China to make the new soviet legislature work like a Western parliament. The chinese protesters never said they wanted to overthrow the regime. They had no real program and they arc losing now. Bui their remarkable demonstration will leave effective traces. Nothing will be quite the same As before. Whatever repression May be imposed in the Short run. The chinese leadership has had to learn that it miscalculated in supposing Singapore Taiwan. South Korea and Hong Kong proved asian so Cielin can flourish economically without concessions of political Power. The confucian heritage docs make a difference in the social fabric. It does t Grant immunity to the Rule that economic and political development arc linked even if there s a time lag. I yearn As much As anyone for the president of the United states to provide an Agenda and a sense of direction for the West. But George Bush was right to urge restraint on both sides in China. It would have been disastrous for the United states to appear to Promise what it could t possibly deliver. And in Moscow the Kremlin to spectacular of Public debate and Challenge was no less historic and significant for slopping far Short of ending the communist i any monopoly of Power. It was another impressive sign of re form. The end of the extremely difficult Andrew j. Glass uncharted Road to transformation is still far away. In a similar sense the crisis of wills on How nato should respond to changing East West relations is not an ultimatum for the Alliance. Those who demand West Germany Salute on Washington s command or the United slates will quit Europe and dedicate itself to Trade wars arc carried away with to s Aura of immediacy. It is necessary to step Back and re member that life goes on which Means continuous change even when the Cam Era in t looking. The occasional eruptions that compel attention arise from underlying pressures of adjustment. These Are clearly visible in the East. They Are taking place in Western Europe As Well. On nato s 40th anniversary celebrated at this week s Summit meeting the Alliance is a different kind of partnership than it was when the United Stales summoned it into exis tence to Ward off being called Back into a third europ wide War. West Germany is now a flourishing state. Citizens who reached maturity after world War ii but not they alone As their thoughtful president Richard von Weizsacker showed Are chafing that their country still has not regained full sovereignly. The reason is Hal there has never been a German peace treaty politically impossible because of partition. The awareness was sharpened by America s plan to install new Short Range nuclear missiles when everybody wants to focus on getting out of the cold War confrontation. A hidden Strain a kind of race against time is pulling at europeans now. On one Side there is inc push to consolidate the european Community to look beyond the 1992 deadline for a full com Mon Market toward More integration. On the other Side inc Community s very Success has created tremendous magnetism which is drawing not Only smaller Western outsiders Lilac Austria and Norway but also East bloc countries who seek some kind of affiliation mos cow no longer seems to object to this kind Lofback route out of Yalta. If the Community does t press ahead in defining itself politically before tile East must be accommodated it risks being diluted into the Mere customs Union that is the limit of prime minister Margaret Thatcher s ambition. If it does whether or not Britain Falls behind the East will be left out much longer. West Germany is caught in the Middle of All this. It wants both solid Community and an undivided eur  these movements have been com ing gradually. They will persist. The sporadic tensions make the headlines but they Are Only the lip of underlying shifts to be addressed. New of k times gun registration still considered unnecessary in Beirut some years ago i Nice a Man who sought to sell me a Nice Mercedes right on the spot he d hand Over the keys he said if i d hand Over $1.500, since i had the Money and needed a car i asked him for the registration. But surely you jest the would be seller replied smoothly. Everybody knows that in Lebanon we have no use for such a  that conversation came to mind in reflecting upon the debate Over gun registration enlivened of the currently hot topic of so called assault guns. For the attitude toward guns in the United states is much the same As the attitude toward cars . Reliable statistics show that on dec. 31, 1988, there were 183,468,560 vehicles of All types rolling on Amer ican roads. Equally reliable numbers Are to be found on the number of . Drivers and on How Many of them have had their licenses suspended in the past year As lawbreakers. There arc no comparable figures on How Many guns americans possess. White House officials estimate 160 million. The National Rifle association believes the figure approaches 200 million. Bui nobody knows for sure because the gun lobby has so far successfully blocked Universal gun registration. Police officials do know that criminals repeatedly use certain weapons. Over a 15-month period they have sent the Arm of the Treasury department charged with monitoring such matters nearly 43,000 individual requests to Irace the origin of weapons Hal had been used in crimes. The feds kept i Csc paper forms in a warehouse on the outskirts of Washington. Until my colleagues Jim Stewart and Andrew Alexander leased a Bank of computers and hired people to punch in the data the nation lacked an Overall View of who was using what to shoot whom. A government that currently spends $3.1 billion a Day could not raise the wherewithal to com pile such a Villa database. La did nol do so of course because the powerful gun lobby adamantly opposes gathering such statistics. The May Issue of guns Magazine informs its read ers that incredible As it May sound under currently proposed legislation the definition of military Type assault rifles includes All semiautomatic rifles and shotguns and pump  its editors ask whether in will eventually include handguns As Well. There is such a proposal. These Days one can pro pose Bills As easily As in most slates one can buy a Schiau Romalic assault gun. But in truth the Only fed eral legislation Hal has a Chance of passage focuses squarely upon such firmly establish cd cop killer weapons As the ak-47, the Uzi and the Tec-9. They  be outlawed. But owners would have to Register them. The owners would be treated in the same Way As people who own machine guns have been treated since 1934 and As owners of another potentially lethal machine the semiautomatic Auto Mobile have been treated since Well before 1934. Still Many americans rebel at the notion of gun licenses in the belief perhaps that it would be the first step toward confiscation. Some cite the Constitution which proclaims a Well regulated militia being necessary to the Security of a free stale the right of the people to keep and Bear arms shall not be infringed. I once asked Warren e. Burger. The retired chief Justice of the supreme court a conservative and a constitutional scholar what he thought those words meant. He said the framers in drafting the second amendment stressed the opening clause. So the amendment read As a whole serves As underpinning for gun regulation he said. Perhaps deep in the bowels of Lebanon some legislators and jurists actually favor car registration. Then again in such an unhappy land one can never know where such a bold step could Lead. Cox nows service the opinions expressed in the columns and cartoons on this Page represent those of the authors and Are inno Way to be considered As representing the views of to stars and stripes or the United Stales government