by Peter Mackler
WASHINGTON, Sept 13 (AFP) - Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, seeking to cut George W. Bush's edge on security issues, branded him Monday a puppet of the US gun lobby who allowed a decade-old ban on assault weapons to lapse.
The president countered by hitting back at one of Kerry's strong points, health care, accusing the Democrat of promoting a plan fraught with bureaucratic red tape and mammoth costs that would raise taxes.
With Bush leading in the polls seven weeks before the November 2 election, Kerry stepped up his attacks, accusing the Republican of wrong-headed choices on issues from street crime to North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
On Monday, the Massachusetts senator alleged that Bush had bowed to pressure in refusing to fight to renew a ban on AK-47's, Uzis and other military-style weapons that expired Monday.
Bush has said consistently that he supported extension of the ban. But the president did not battle for its renewal in the face of opposition from the Republican leadership in Congress.
"George Bush chose to make the job of terrorists easier and make the job of America's police officers harder, and that's just plain wrong," Kerry said here in accepting the endorsement of the National Association of Police Organisations.
"When it became time to fight, when it became time to lead, when it became time to stand up and ask America to do what was right, George Bush's powerful friends in the gun lobby asked him to look the other way, and he couldn't resist, and he said, 'sure'.
"And so tomorrow, for the first time in 10 years, when a killer walks into a gun shop, when a terrorist goes to a gun show somewhere in America, when they want to purchase an AK-47 or some other military assault weapon, they're going to hear one word: 'Sure'."
White House spokesman Scott McClellan dismissed the remarks as "another false attack from Senator Kerry" and said the government had been successful in clamping down on gun crimes, with prosecutions up 68 percent.
"The best way to deter and combat violence committed with guns is to vigorously enforce our laws," he said. "And this administration has a strong record of vigorously and strictly enforcing our laws."
Kerry, a veteran lawmaker and decorated Vietnam war veteran, has been seeking to narrow Bush's double-digit lead in the polls on the issues of terrorism, Iraq and leadership in general.
He pressed his attacks Monday on Bush's approach to North Korea after reports of a massive blast in the insular Asian state fueled new speculation about whether it had or was preparing to set off a nuclear weapons test.
In an interview published Monday in the New York Times, Kerry said Bush was guilty of a massive national security failure for allowing "a nuclear nightmare" to develop by focusing on Iraq and ignoring North Korea.
Kerry said Bush had pursued six-party regional talks on the crisis half-heartedly and refused direct contact with Pyongyang on a range of issues affecting stability on the Korean peninsula.
McClellan countered that Kerry would return to the "failed" policy of president Bill Clinton's administration of direct talks and material incentives to try to wean the North Koreans off their nuclear ambitions.
"That failed policy allowed North Korea to dupe the United States," he told reporters aboard Air Force One. "It would be the wrong approach to go down that road again."
Bush surged to the lead after the Republican national convention two weeks ago that succeeded in putting the campaign spotlight on his "war on terror" after the September 11, 2001 onslaught.
But he changed tack Monday while campaigning in the key midwestern state of Michigan and took aim at Kerry's ambitious plan to deal with growing medical costs and the tens of millions of people without health insurance.
He called the proposal "a massive, complicated blueprint to have our government take over the decision-making in health care. ... His (Kerry's) plan, if you listen carefully to what he says, would have bureaucrats be the decision makers."
Bush cited a conservative think-tank's estimate that the Democrat's health care proposal would cost 1.5 trillion dollars over 10 years, and warned: "He can't pay for it unless he raises your taxes."
The Kerry campaign disputes the figure.