Import of Guns Blocked From Former U.S.S.R.

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Warren Christopher has decided to block the importation of as many as 7.6 million handguns and rifles from the former Soviet Union, the State Department said Monday.

Christopher also ordered a study to determine why so many Russian guns are appearing on the world market and recommend what U.S. policy should be, spokesman Mike McCurry said.

“This is a huge increase in the volume of license applications that we’ve seen,” McCurry said, noting that only 18,000 firearms were imported from the former Soviet Union last year. “We think it’s a good idea to know a lot more about this before any of those applications are approved.”

Christopher acted to deny the import licenses after several members of Congress, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Rep. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), learned about the huge volume of applications from a report in The Times and demanded that they be blocked.

But a State Department official said that the decision “was already in the works.”

Gun imports are regulated by the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. But licenses for imports from the former Soviet Union must also be approved by the State Department.

McCurry said that U.S. firms have filed more than 250 applications to import small arms and ammunition from the former Soviet Union, totaling 7.6 million guns and more than 7 billion rounds of ammunition.

However, importers routinely file applications for much larger numbers of guns than they expect to sell, other officials noted.

The United States already imports more than 1 million guns a year from countries such as Belgium, Brazil, Italy and Germany. Until recently, the states of the former Soviet Union were prohibited from selling significant numbers of guns to U.S. importers under Cold War regulations.

Russia complains the regulations are discriminatory.